AFP

Dozens of turtles, dolphins found dead in Guatemala, probe launched

26 Jun 2022

Dozens of turtles, dolphins and other marine species have been found dead on Guatemala’s Pacific coast, prompting an official investigation, authorities said Thursday.

As many as 65 turtles, most of them of the Olive Ridley variety, and 14 dolphins were discovered dead earlier this week, Guatemala’s National Council of Protected Areas told AFP.

The agency didn’t say where exactly the dead animals were found.

Officials at the agency believe the deaths could have been caused by heavy rains in recent days, which could have carried some toxic materials from the mainland into the sea.

Investigators are also looking into whether industrial fishing being developed offshore could have played a role.

Experts in this Central American nation will now study the animals’ remains to determine what caused the deaths.

Local officials together with volunteers were also looking to see if more dead species were to be found.

Dozens of Suriname villages await aid following unprecedented floods

25 Jun 2022

A boat meanders between the sheet metal roofs of houses in Baling Sula, one of numerous villages in central Suriname hit by devastating flooding.

Heavy rainfall since January led rivers to burst their banks in the small South American nation, forcing the state energy firm, Staatsolie Power Company Suriname, to open scuppers at a hydroelectric power station in early March to avoid an even greater catastrophe.

That, in turn, resulted in the flooding of several villages in Brokopondo district, around 100 kilometers south of the capital Paramaribo.

The waters have yet to recede.

More than 3,000 households in seven districts have been affected, but also businesses, farms and schools.

On a recent day, Elsy Poeketie, 48, who fled to the capital to stay with her daughter, showed her granddaughter pictures and videos of her hotel, the Bonanza River holiday resort that until three months ago had a nice sandy beach, cabins and an outdoor recreation hall.

“Now, all flooded, at some places two to three meters high. No beach, just water everywhere you look,” she sighed.

“It really hurts and stresses me. Where will I find the money to renovate?”

In the flooded village of Asigron, Patricia Menig has put up her brother, while their sister is living with an aunt after both their houses were submerged.

“The water started to rise on April 12 and within a week their house was filled with water, four to five meters high,” she told AFP by telephone.

And Menig lost all the crops at her 1.5 hectare agricultural plot, leaving her without income.

“Many of us depend on government aid now,” she said.

– Waiting for the dry season –

Last month, Suriname President Chan Santokhi declared seven of the country’s 10 districts to be disaster areas and asked international partners for help.

China donated $50,000 on Tuesday and the Netherlands, Suriname’s former colonial power, pledged 200,000 euros through UNICEF.

Nearby Venezuela, which has been ravaged by years of economic crisis, nonetheless delivered 40,000 tons of goods, including food and medicines, and distribution will begin this week.

Dry season isn’t expected until August and authorities proposed evacuating the area. But many residents chose to remain, with the government providing short-term shelter for them.

Remote villages in the interior have been cut off from road transport and are only reachable by boat or helicopter, making distribution of relief goods extra challenging, according to Colonel Jerry Slijngard from the National Disaster Management Coordination Center (NCCR).

A flight from Paramaribo to Kwamalasamutu, an Indigenous village near the Brazilian border, costs roughly $3,900.

“Per flight, I can only bring 40 food parcels and there are 400 households,” said Slijngard. 

– ‘I need money, not food’ –

Some former villagers now living in the capital set up an educational project to help children that cannot make it to school, with funding from a Canadian mining firm digging for gold in the area.

The project produces online videos in Dutch and the Aucan and Saramaccan Indigenous languages.

They also provide USB sticks for those without internet access.

The flooding has created other problems, not least a mosquito infestation.

And along the border with French Guiana, Indigenous Wayana villages that have not been flooded still have lost 60 percent of crops, after heavy rainfall has soaked the ground, causing vegetables to rot, said Jupta Itoewaki from the Wayana Mulokot Kawemhakan foundation, an advocacy group.

Some residents of Brokopondo complain that they are not receiving the help they need.

“I don’t need food parcels, my machines can’t eat. I need money,” said furniture maker Amania Nelthan.

Now he sees no other solution than to move.

“Climate change is a fact. Rains and floods will come. Renovating after the floods is not an option. I need to move to higher ground.”

US Senate advances breakthrough bill on gun safety

24 Jun 2022

US senators advanced a bipartisan bill late Thursday addressing the epidemic of gun violence convulsing the country, approving a narrow package of new firearms restrictions and billions of dollars in mental health and school security funding.

The reforms — which are almost certain to be rubber-stamped by the House of Representatives on Friday — fall short of the demands of gun safety advocates and President Joe Biden, but have been hailed as a life-saving breakthrough after almost 30 years of inaction by Congress.

“This bipartisan legislation will help protect Americans,” Biden said in a statement shortly after the Senate vote. “Kids in schools and communities will be safer because of it.”

The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which was backed by all 50 Democratic senators and 15 Republicans, includes enhanced background checks for buyers under the age of 21, $11 billion in funding for mental health and $2 billion for school safety programs.

It also provides funding to incentivize states to implement “red flag” laws to remove firearms from people considered a threat.

And it closes the so-called “boyfriend” loophole, under which domestic abusers could avoid a ban on buying firearms if they were not married to or living with their victim.

“Tonight, the United States Senate is doing something many believed was impossible even a few weeks ago: we are passing the first significant gun safety bill in nearly 30 years,” Senate Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer said after the legislation passed.

“The gun safety bill we are passing tonight can be described with three adjectives: bipartisan, common sense, lifesaving.”

His Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell said the legislation would make America safer “without making our country one bit less free.”

“This is a common-sense package. Its provisions are very, very popular. It contains zero new restrictions, zero new waiting periods, zero mandates and zero bans of any kind for law-abiding gun owners.”

The National Rifle Association and many Republicans in both chambers of Congress opposed the bill but it is endorsed by advocacy groups working in policing, domestic violence and mental illness.

The Senate and House are on a two-week recess starting next week but the Democratic-controlled House is expected to approve the Senate’s bill with little drama before members leave town on Friday night.

– ‘Historic day’ –

The breakthrough is the work of a cross-party group of senators who have been hammering out the details and resolving disputes for weeks.

The lawmakers had been scrambling to finish the negotiations quickly enough to capitalize on the momentum generated by the fatal shooting of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas and of 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, upstate New York, both last month.

Chris Murphy, the senator leading negotiations for Democrats, hailed a “historic day.”

“This will become the most significant piece of anti-gun-violence legislation Congress has passed in three decades,” he said on the Senate floor. 

“This bill also has the chance to prove to the weary American public that democracy is not so broken, that it is able to rise to the moment.”

The last significant federal gun control legislation was passed in 1994, introducing a national background check system and banning the manufacture for civilian use of assault rifles and large capacity ammunition clips.

But it expired a decade later and there has since been no serious movement on reform, despite rising gun violence.

Biden had pushed for more substantial reforms, including a reinstatement of the ban on assault rifles — which were used in both the Texas and New York shootings — and high-capacity magazines.

But the political challenge of legislating in a 50-50 Senate, where most bills require 60 votes to pass, means that more wide-ranging reforms are unrealistic.

“The morning after the tragedy in Uvalde, the United States Senate faced a choice,” Schumer added. 

“We could surrender to gridlock… Or we could choose to try and forge a bipartisan path forward to pass a real bill, as difficult as that may have seemed to many.”

The vote came as a boon for gun safety activists hours after they were dismayed by a Supreme Court ruling that Americans have a fundamental right to carry a handgun in public.

The 6-3 decision struck down a more than century-old New York law that required a person to prove they had a legitimate self-defense need to receive a permit to carry a concealed handgun outside the home.

Supreme Court says Americans have right to carry guns in public

24 Jun 2022

The US Supreme Court ruled Thursday that Americans have a fundamental right to carry a handgun in public, a landmark decision with far-reaching implications for states and cities across the country confronting a surge in gun violence.

The 6-3 decision strikes down a more than century-old New York law that required a person to prove they had a legitimate self-defense need to receive a permit to carry a concealed handgun outside the home.

Five other states, including California, and Washington, the nation’s capital, have similar laws and the ruling will curb their ability to restrict people from carrying guns in public.

Democratic President Joe Biden denounced the decision, saying it “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all.”

“We must do more as a society -— not less -— to protect our fellow Americans,” Biden said. “I call on Americans across the country to make their voices heard on gun safety.”

Despite growing calls for limits on firearms after two horrific mass shootings in May, the court sided with plaintiffs who said the US Constitution guarantees the right to own and carry guns.

The ruling is the first by the court in a major Second Amendment case since 2008, when it ruled that Americans have a right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.

It was a stunning victory for the National Rifle Association lobby group, which brought the case along with two New York men who had been denied gun permits.

“Today’s ruling is a watershed win for good men and women all across America and is the result of a decades-long fight the NRA has led,” NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said in a statement.

“The right to self-defense and to defend your family and loved ones should not end at your home.”

– ‘Dark day’ –

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it a “dark day,” and vowed to enact gun control legislation.

“It is outrageous that at a moment of national reckoning on gun violence, the Supreme Court has recklessly struck down a New York law that limits those who can carry concealed weapons,” Hochul said.

California’s governor Gavin Newsom termed the decision “shameful.”

“This is a dangerous decision from a court hell-bent on pushing a radical ideological agenda and infringing on the rights of states to protect our citizens from being gunned down in our streets, schools, and churches,” Newsom tweeted.

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion and was joined by the other five conservatives on the court, three of whom were nominated by former Republican president Donald Trump.

Thomas said the New York law prevents “law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms in public for self-defense.”

“We conclude that the State’s licensing regime violates the Constitution,” Thomas said.

New York prohibits open carrying of handguns and rifles and the court ruling does not affect that since it was narrowly focused on the state requirements for a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

Just hours after the court ruling, the Senate moved in a different direction, passing a rare bipartisan bill that includes modest gun control measures.

“The gun safety bill we are passing tonight can be described with three adjectives: bipartisan, commonsense, lifesaving,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The breakthrough is the work of a cross-party group of senators who have been hammering out the details and resolving disputes for weeks.

The lawmakers had been scrambling to finish the negotiations quickly enough to capitalize on the momentum generated by the fatal shooting of 19 children in Uvalde, Texas and of 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo, upstate New York, both last month.

In both cases, the gunmen were teens and used AR-15 style assault weapons.

– Liberals dissent –

The New York state law the Supreme Court overturned dated to 1913 and had stood based on the understanding that individual states had the right to regulate gun usage and ownership.

It said that to be given a permit to carry a concealed handgun outside the home, an applicant must clearly demonstrate “proper cause” — that it is explicitly needed for self-defense.

Gun-rights advocates said that violated the Second Amendment, which says “the right of people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

The three liberal justices on the Supreme Court dissented to the ruling.

“Many states have tried to address some of the dangers of gun violence,” Justice Stephen Breyer said. “The Court today severely burdens states’ efforts to do so.”

Half of the 50 US states allow permitless carry of concealed firearms in public places while the other 25 allow it in some form.

Over the past two decades more than 200 million guns have hit the US market, led by assault rifles and personal handguns, feeding a surge in murders, mass shootings and suicides.

Asian markets rise as recession talk tempers rate hike expectations

24 Jun 2022

Stocks rose in Asia on Friday following another rally on Wall Street as investors try to process central bank moves to fight soaring inflation with the growing possibility that those measures will induce a recession.

Global markets have been thrown into turmoil for months by a perfect storm of crises that have left observers predicting a sharp contraction, including the Ukraine war, China’s lockdown-induced economic troubles, supply chain snarls and spiking energy costs.

Expectations that the Federal Reserve and other central banks will have to keep lifting rates have left many traders fretting that the pain could go on for some time, with sovereign bond yields — key gauges to future rates — continuing to climb.

This week Fed boss Jerome Powell told lawmakers a recession was “certainly a possibility” and suggested officials were ready to press on with big rate hikes, following a three-quarter point lift this month.

However, analysts said speculation that a recession is on the way has helped push yields down in recent days and led traders to scale back their expectations for the length of rate hikes.

Demand concerns have also helped send oil prices — a key driver of inflation — lower with both main contracts around 15 percent over the past week.

Added to the mix this week are comments from President Xi Jinping suggesting an end to China’s tech crackdown as well as possible new measures aimed at boosting the economy.

“As we have been saying for some time now, for stocks to return to any semblance of form, it would likely require an unlikely upbeat mix of a seamless China growth recovery, a top in US bond yields, and much softer oil prices,” said Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management.

“While a tall order and still a near-term unlikely combination scenario, the fall in commodity prices, especially oil, should be music to the Fed’s ears, so some could be ticking one or two of those boxes off.”

In early Asia trade investors took their cue from Wall Street, where all three main indexes closed with healthy gains, including a more than one percent advance on the Nasdaq.

Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, Manila and Jakarta were well up.

Markets are negotiating “a fraught transition from ‘front-loaded’ synchronised tightening towards demand destruction and peak ‘price-pressure’,” Citigroup Inc. strategists William O’Donnell and Edward Acton wrote in a note.

– Key figures at around 0230 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 0.7 percent at 26,362.24 (break)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 1.1 percent at 21,499.82

Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.7 percent at 3,343.83

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 134.84 yen from 134.94 yen late Thursday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2277 from $1.2259

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0533 from $1.0526

Euro/pound: DOWN at 85.78 pence from 85.80 pence

West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.1 percent at $104.34 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 0.1 percent at $110.05 per barrel

New York – Dow: UP 0.6 percent at 30,677.36 (close)

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 1.0 percent at 7,020.45 (close)

Asian markets rise as recession talk tempers rate hike expectations

24 Jun 2022

Stocks rose in Asia on Friday following another rally on Wall Street as investors try to process central bank moves to fight soaring inflation with the growing possibility that those measures will induce a recession.

Global markets have been thrown into turmoil for months by a perfect storm of crises that have left observers predicting a sharp contraction, including the Ukraine war, China’s lockdown-induced economic troubles, supply chain snarls and spiking energy costs.

Expectations that the Federal Reserve and other central banks will have to keep lifting rates have left many traders fretting that the pain could go on for some time, with sovereign bond yields — key gauges to future rates — continuing to climb.

This week Fed boss Jerome Powell told lawmakers a recession was “certainly a possibility” and suggested officials were ready to press on with big rate hikes, following a three-quarter point lift this month.

However, analysts said speculation that a recession is on the way has helped push yields down in recent days and led traders to scale back their expectations for the length of rate hikes.

Demand concerns have also helped send oil prices — a key driver of inflation — lower with both main contracts around 15 percent over the past week.

Added to the mix this week are comments from President Xi Jinping suggesting an end to China’s tech crackdown as well as possible new measures aimed at boosting the economy.

“As we have been saying for some time now, for stocks to return to any semblance of form, it would likely require an unlikely upbeat mix of a seamless China growth recovery, a top in US bond yields, and much softer oil prices,” said Stephen Innes at SPI Asset Management.

“While a tall order and still a near-term unlikely combination scenario, the fall in commodity prices, especially oil, should be music to the Fed’s ears, so some could be ticking one or two of those boxes off.”

In early Asia trade investors took their cue from Wall Street, where all three main indexes closed with healthy gains, including a more than one percent advance on the Nasdaq.

Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, Manila and Jakarta were well up.

Markets are negotiating “a fraught transition from ‘front-loaded’ synchronised tightening towards demand destruction and peak ‘price-pressure’,” Citigroup Inc. strategists William O’Donnell and Edward Acton wrote in a note.

– Key figures at around 0230 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: UP 0.7 percent at 26,362.24 (break)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 1.1 percent at 21,499.82

Shanghai – Composite: UP 0.7 percent at 3,343.83

Dollar/yen: DOWN at 134.84 yen from 134.94 yen late Thursday

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2277 from $1.2259

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0533 from $1.0526

Euro/pound: DOWN at 85.78 pence from 85.80 pence

West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.1 percent at $104.34 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: DOWN 0.1 percent at $110.05 per barrel

New York – Dow: UP 0.6 percent at 30,677.36 (close)

London – FTSE 100: DOWN 1.0 percent at 7,020.45 (close)

Indonesian designer's wheels behind leaders' bamboo bike bromance

28 Jun 2022

As Indonesian President Joko Widodo led Anthony Albanese around the lush gardens of a presidential palace south of Jakarta earlier this month, he presented the new Australian prime minister with an unusual gift: a bamboo bike.

The night before, designer Singgih Susilo Kartono learned it would be the Spedagi model he crafts in a small village on the island of Java that the leaders would ride side-by-side in a unique moment of bicycle diplomacy.

Prime Minister Albanese would tuck his trousers into his socks after the statesmen stripped off their jackets and ties and donned helmets, setting off on the light and environmentally friendly two-wheelers for the symbolic bike ride.

The 54-year-old designer told AFP the diplomatic gesture was a “special, magical moment” for him after years spent working on the bike.

“It’s not about the bike being bought by Jokowi, but the fact that it was used to welcome PM (Albanese),” he said.

When not arming world leaders with new bamboo wheels, Kartono is using his sustainable bike craftsmanship to bring jobs to locals and show Indonesian villagers how they can make use of the environment around them.

“I train youths here who lack skills. We have a system to train unskilled people until they can create quality products,” he said.

The model, named after the Indonesian words “sepeda” for bicycle and “pagi” for morning, is built by a team of 15 employees at a workshop in Kartono’s village in Central Java, where he saddles up for his own bike ride every day.

Fast-growing bamboo stalks are cut by his team, coated with preservatives, dried, then laminated before being combined with other parts to assemble the sturdy bike frame.

Pound for pound, bamboo is as strong as steel when used in lightweight structures, studies have shown, with a high tensile strength that makes it a worthy and environmentally friendly substitute.

A fully assembled Spedagi bamboo bike can take a week of intricate work, fetching up to 15 million rupiah ($1,000), and some have been sold as far away as Japan, company co-founder Tri Wahyuni told AFP.

– Friendship on wheels –

The green wheels used by the two leaders were built with more expensive parts, said Kartono, declining to disclose the price of their rides.

Widodo, famous at home for gifting bikes to ordinary Indonesians, is a Spedagi fan and bought one personally from Kartono in 2015. 

Albanese was similarly beaming about the bike, taking it back to Canberra and saying people would see him on the streets riding what might be “the only bamboo bike” in the Australian capital.

Both bicycles and bamboo — affordable and plentiful in Indonesia — are closely linked with the archipelago nation’s lower classes, something that struck a chord with the two leaders from humble backgrounds.

But while the Kartono creation merged two symbols of Indonesian heritage, it is now tied to a blossoming bromance cultivated in the first weeks of Albanese’s premiership.

“Every time I ride on the bike, I will remember the friendship with President Widodo,” he said.

With his own creation now crossing the Pacific, Kartono said it was seeing bamboo bikes being made where the plant is rarely found — such as in northern Europe — that first motivated him to craft his design.

“When I dug deep into bicycle products online, I found that bamboo bicycles are made in countries that do not have bamboo. That served as a slap for me,” said the entrepreneur.

“Bamboo is everywhere around my house.”

Indonesian designer's wheels behind leaders' bamboo bike bromance

25 Jun 2022

As Indonesian President Joko Widodo led Anthony Albanese around the lush gardens of a presidential palace south of Jakarta earlier this month, he presented the new Australian prime minister with an unusual gift: a bamboo bike.

The night before, designer Singgih Susilo Kartono learned it would be the Spedagi model he crafts in a small village on the island of Java that the leaders would ride side-by-side in a unique moment of bicycle diplomacy.

Prime Minister Albanese would tuck his trousers into his socks after the statesmen stripped off their jackets and ties and donned helmets, setting off on the light and environmentally friendly two-wheelers for the symbolic bike ride.

The 54-year-old designer told AFP the diplomatic gesture was a “special, magical moment” for him after years spent working on the bike.

“It’s not about the bike being bought by Jokowi, but the fact that it was used to welcome PM (Albanese),” he said.

When not arming world leaders with new bamboo wheels, Kartono is using his sustainable bike craftsmanship to bring jobs to locals and show Indonesian villagers how they can make use of the environment around them.

“I train youths here who lack skills. We have a system to train unskilled people until they can create quality products,” he said.

The model, named after the Indonesian words “sepeda” for bicycle and “pagi” for morning, is built by a team of 15 employees at a workshop in Kartono’s village in Central Java, where he saddles up for his own bike ride every day.

Fast-growing bamboo stalks are cut by his team, coated with preservatives, dried, then laminated before being combined with other parts to assemble the sturdy bike frame.

Pound for pound, bamboo is as strong as steel when used in lightweight structures, studies have shown, with a high tensile strength that makes it a worthy and environmentally friendly substitute.

A fully assembled Spedagi bamboo bike can take a week of intricate work, fetching up to 15 million rupiah ($1,000), and some have been sold as far away as Japan, company co-founder Tri Wahyuni told AFP.

– Friendship on wheels –

The green wheels used by the two leaders were built with more expensive parts, said Kartono, declining to disclose the price of their rides.

Widodo, famous at home for gifting bikes to ordinary Indonesians, is a Spedagi fan and bought one personally from Kartono in 2015. 

Albanese was similarly beaming about the bike, taking it back to Canberra and saying people would see him on the streets riding what might be “the only bamboo bike” in the Australian capital.

Both bicycles and bamboo — affordable and plentiful in Indonesia — are closely linked with the archipelago nation’s lower classes, something that struck a chord with the two leaders from humble backgrounds.

But while the Kartono creation merged two symbols of Indonesian heritage, it is now tied to a blossoming bromance cultivated in the first weeks of Albanese’s premiership.

“Every time I ride on the bike, I will remember the friendship with President Widodo,” he said.

With his own creation now crossing the Pacific, Kartono said it was seeing bamboo bikes being made where the plant is rarely found — such as in northern Europe — that first motivated him to craft his design.

“When I dug deep into bicycle products online, I found that bamboo bicycles are made in countries that do not have bamboo. That served as a slap for me,” said the entrepreneur.

“Bamboo is everywhere around my house.”

Swimming and surfing, Gazans savour a cleaner sea

24 Jun 2022

Palestinians in the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip are rediscovering the pleasures of the Mediterranean Sea, after authorities declared the end of a long period of hazardous marine pollution.

“It has been a year since I entered the water,” said 22-year-old surfer Sabah Abu Ghanem.

“As soon as I enter the water and ride the waves, I feel free and happy; all the negative energy is replaced with positive energy,” she told AFP.

Marine pollution has worsened in recent years in Gaza, where insufficient wastewater solutions have turned the Mediterranean into a dump.

The problem has been further exacerbated by the dilapidated infrastructure of the impoverished and overcrowded enclave.

The Gaza Strip is home to 2.3 million Palestinians who have been living under a strict land, sea and air blockade imposed by Israel since the Islamist movement Hamas seized power in 2007.

Only the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt is outside Israeli control and it too has remained largely closed.

Gaza’s only power station, which supplies electricity to wastewater plants, has been repeatedly damaged by Israeli strikes.

But six months ago, a German-funded plant began operating in central Gaza, and now treats 60,000 cubic metres (more than 2 million cubic feet) of wastewater per day, which is half the enclave’s sewage, according to Mohammed Masleh, an official at Gaza’s environment ministry.

– ‘I missed swimming’ –

This is just the first phase of the project, and eventually, the plant could treat all wastewater in the territory.

The quality of marine water in Gaza has already improved significantly.

Now, according to samples collected by Gazan authorities, two-thirds of the enclave’s beaches are suitable for swimming, said Masleh.

With the start of school holidays and hot summer temperatures, the beach offers a refreshing solace for the residents of Gaza, a narrow sliver of land wedged between the Mediterranean, Israel and Egypt.

It’s a turning point for the enclave, where $300 million has gone into wastewater projects over the past decade, according to Maher Najjar, deputy director of the coastal waters authority.

The new treatment plant, located in Bureij, features generators and solar panels for electrical supply.

Najjar said it recovers 60 tonnes of solid waste each day, all of which would previously have ended up in the sea.

But although Sabah Abu Ghanem is back on her surfboard, she is still reluctant to bring along her children, who “have sensitive skin and could be infected.”

Sitting on the beach in Gaza City with her children and grandchildren, Umm Ibrahim Sider was also cautious.

“I said no one is to go in the water but when the kids saw all the people, they went in and we couldn’t stop them,” said the 64-year-old Palestinian.

One of her grandchildren, Ibrahim, 13, insisted on staying in the water despite his eyes having turned red from the salt.

“I have missed swimming in the sea,” he said.

Germany raises gas alert level after Russia cuts supply

26 Jun 2022

Germany moved closer to rationing natural gas on Thursday as it raised the alert level under an emergency plan after Russia slashed supplies to the country.

“Gas is now a scarce commodity in Germany,” Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters at a press conference.

Russia was using gas “as a weapon” against Germany in retaliation for the West’s support for Ukraine following Moscow’s invasion, Habeck said, with the aim of “destroying” European unity.

But the Kremlin dismissed Germany’s suggestion there were political motives behind the limits to supply as “strange”.

Germany, like a number of other European countries, is highly reliant on Russian energy imports to meet its needs.

Triggering the “alarm” level — the second of three steps under the emergency plan — brings Germany a step closer to the final stage that could see gas rationing in Europe’s top economy.

The increased level reflected a “significant deterioration of the gas supply situation”, Habeck said.

“If we do nothing now, things will get worse,” Habeck said.

– Russian rebuttal –

Russian energy giant Gazprom cut supplies to Germany via the Nord Stream pipeline by 60 percent last week, blaming the new limits on delayed repairs.

Germany has dismissed the technical justification provided by Gazprom, instead calling the move a “political decision”. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday there was “no double meaning” in the supply decision.

“Our German partners are well aware of the technological servicing cycles of a pipeline,” he said.

“It’s strange to call it politics.”

In recent weeks, Gazprom has stopped deliveries to a number of European countries, including Poland, Bulgaria, Finland and the Netherlands.

Supplies of gas to Europe’s largest economy were “secure”, Habeck said, but action was still required to prepare for the winter ahead.

To mitigate the risks from a supply cut, the government mandated gas storage facilities be filled to 90 percent by the beginning of December.

Currently, the country’s stores stand just under 60 percent full, above the average level of previous years.

In France, the government said Thursday it aimed to fill its natural gas reserves by autumn as it too braces for a drop in supply from Russia.

France will also build a new floating terminal to receive more liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies by ship, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne announced.

The terminal is to be positioned off Le Havre on France’s northern coast.

“We can do without Russian gas,” French Energy Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said later on BFM Business TV.

“This assumes that the LNG tankers arrive on time and that we can comfortably fill our strategic storage,” she added.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) meanwhile said it would lend 300 million euros to Moldova to for gas purchases.

– Supply stoppage –

The German government expects supply to stop between July 11 and July 25 for annual maintenance on the Nord Stream pipeline.

If deliveries do not resume after the service period, Germany could face a shortage of gas as soon as “mid-December”.

Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Germany has managed to reduce the share of its natural gas supplied by Russia from 55 percent to around 35 percent.

The government has found new sources of supply, accelerated plans to import gas in the form of LNG by sea, and put aside 15 billion euros ($15.8 billion) to buy gas to fill storage facilities.

Germany also decided to reactivate mothballed coal-fired power plants to take the burden for electricity generation off gas.

In contrast, the government shrugged off calls to extend the operational lifetime of its nuclear power plants.

Prolonging the use of the final reactors set to be taken off the grid at the end of the year was “not an option”, it said Wednesday.

Germany had to look to see what “energy saving potential” existed, Habeck said Thursday. 

Households could “make a difference” by conserving energy, after Germany launched a campaign to encourage fuel-saving measures, he said, while industry could also make a further contribution.

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