International

Montecillo Park for Study and Reflection, which will be located in the surroundings of Cochabamba, will be an addition to other such parks that are located in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, the United States, Brazil, and countries in Europe and Asia. It will be a new place to help ‘unveil that which is Sacred’ in human beings and to promote non-violence and non-discrimination.

The Congolese journalist, Caddy Adzuba, is in Spain to receive the award granted by ‘El Club de las 25’, a women’s journalists’ association, for her work raising awareness of the conflict in her country and how this violence is affecting women in particular. Despite receiving death threats, she is pressing forward with the project ‘A Loudspeaker for Silence’.

A week has already passed since I left Punta de Vacas. I have arrived in Geneva and am going to leave my bags at home, in the Valais Mountains.
I’d love to sum up this wonderful adventure. The World March already seems like a far-away memory and a chapter has just ended. The experience and facts now belong to the past.

The subject of how to approach this “other world” that’s possible is being debated in Porto Alegre. The capital of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul is celebrating ten years of the WSF and is welcoming 30,000 delegates from different organisations that have come to participate in the opening inaugurated by Lula da Silvia, President of Brazil.

Afghan president Hamid Karzai, following his trilateral summit with Turkish president Abdullah Gül and Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari, confirmed in an announcement to the media that he will ask that the *”Taliban names”* be removed from the UN sanctions list during the summit on Afghanistan being held this week in London.

With 142 member nations already signed on, the new International Renewable Energy Agency is promoting a fast, global transition to clean, safe, and renewable energy. Alice Slater explains why it’s so necessary. “Every 30 minutes, enough of the sun’s energy reaches the Earth’s surface to meet global energy demand for an entire year.”

In my Reflection of January 14, two days after the catastrophe in Haiti, which destroyed that neighboring sister nation, I wrote: “In the area of healthcare and others the Haitian people has received the cooperation of Cuba, even though this is a small and blockaded country. Approximately 400 doctors and healthcare workers are helping the Haitian people free of charge.

Haiti is preparing for a massive relocation of survivors of last week’s earthquake out of the capital Port-au-Prince. Some 400,000 people will be moved to camps outside the city. The relief effort has now abandoned most efforts to find people trapped beneath the rubble to focus on keeping the survivors alive. The US is now leading the effort to repair Haiti’s main port.

In three languages, Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish, Evo Morales proclaimed that in Tiwanaku, a new ray of hope was born for humanity and a new Bolivian State, after receiving the ceremonial staff of the indigenous peoples, who anointed him as a spiritual guide in the ruins of a thousand-year-old civilization, to mark the beginning of his second presidential term.

The Obama administration will not unveil the results of a major review of United States’ nuclear weapons strategy until March 1 2010, a senior Defense Department official told Congress late last month, “Because of the complexity of the issues being addressed”. Reports reveal dissension within the Obama administration.