Month: October 2012

They said Castro appeared to be moving to put aside an issue that has long damaged Cuba’s international image, trade and diplomatic relations to the detriment of its economy.

“I think the prisoners are being released for a combination of reasons, but all related to the need for tourism, trade and investment to alleviate the economic catastrophe that Cuba is sliding into,” Miami-based attorney Timothy Ashby told reporters.

“The prisoners, especially the hunger strikers, are an international embarrassment and complicate relations with trading partners,” said Ashby, formerly a U.S. Commerce Department official in charge of trade with Cuba and the Caribbean.

The immediate goals, he said, may be to send a positive signal to the U.S. and Europe, where key decisions affecting Cuba could be made in coming months.

Cuba wants the U.S. Congress to pass a pending bill that would end a longstanding ban on Americans traveling to the island – part of a 48-year-old U.S. trade embargo – which could bring a flood of U.S. tourists and much needed revenues to the cash-strapped island.

Recent visiting U.S. trade delegations said Cuban officials had urged them to go back and lobby for the bill’s passage.

Castro has sought improved relations with the EU and pushed for the group to amend its common position, which ties full economic cooperation to the release of political prisoners and improved human rights.

His hopes for a change earlier this year, when Spain led the 27-nation bloc, were dashed by human rights controversies, but the EU is to revisit the issue in September.

Struggling Cuban economy
Castro “surely knows that a substantial prisoner release is likely to draw a reaction from Washington and Europe, as it should,” said Phil Peters, a Cuba expert at the Lexington Institute think tank in Arlington, Virginia.

The Cuban leader, who succeeded his older brother Fidel Castro as president in 2008, has his hands full trying to modernise Cuba’s economy, battered by damaging hurricanes, the global financial crisis and chronic inefficiencies.

He has taken small steps toward economic reform and there have been hints of larger ones to come.

But since February 23, when imprisoned dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in a hunger strike seeking better jail conditions, Cuba has been widely condemned for its human rights record.

Zapata’s death was followed immediately by a long, life-threatening hunger strike by dissident Guillermo Farinas. Government-directed harassment of the dissident “Ladies in White” group during March and April marches by the women also added to the international criticism of Cuban authorities.

Both Farinas and the Ladies in White were demanding the release of prisoners included in the 52 to be freed.

The prisoner release has, for now, quieted foreign critics and may help Castro focus on economic improvement, said Anya Landau French, a Cuba expert at the New America Foundation think tank in Washington.

“Why is Raul doing this? It could be because of internal or external backlash, or to get a distraction off their plate while they focus on the economy,” she said.

Reaction against stagnation
Farinas ended his hunger strike the day after the releases were announced. Ladies in White leader Laura Pollan said that the group will continue its weekly protest marches until Cuba frees all of its estimated 167 political prisoners.

But the group’s central issue was the release of the 52, their sons and husbands arrested in a 2003 crackdown.

Cuba wants to send the freed prisoners and their families to Spain, and so far most have accepted the offer. That means many of the Ladies in White may soon be gone.

Dissident Miriam Leiva said freeing the prisoners both “resolves a great injustice” and reduces an issue “that has stood in the way of any type of internal or external opening.”

“The Cuban people have a lot of opinions … and I think even in the goverment that this society cannot continue to be stagnant,” she said.

Ashby said the release indicated that new blood was beginning to assert itself in the Cuban leadership.

It “signals a broader change in the sense that the younger, business-oriented generation of Cubans in positions of government leadership are uncomfortable with archaic repression and the commercial complications it creates,” he said.

But it remained to be seen, experts said, how the US will respond to the prisoner release.

Washington has demanded the freeing of political prisoners as a condition for improved relations, but may not be in a mood for major change due to the detention in December of U.S. contractor Alan Gross in Cuba on suspicion of espionage.

U.S. officials and his employers have said he was not a spy but was in Cuba facilitating internet access to Jewish groups.

“I don’t know if this (U.S.) administration, timid and not very active so far regarding Cuba, will respond,” Peters said.

Welcome to the 23 de Enero barrio, home to about 100,000 people and something of a laboratory for Chavez’s nationwide socialist experiment. Here you find dogs named “Comrade Mao”, and even a “revolutionary car wash.”

“We are creating a popular bank and are going to issue a communal currency: little pieces of cardboard,” says Salvador Rooselt, a soft-spoken 24-year-old law student and community leader who often quotes Lenin and Marx.

Some 20 militant groups sometimes described as Chavez’s “storm troopers” run this urban jungle in western Caracas, where hulking concrete buildings daubed with colorful murals – one depicting Jesus Christ brandishing an AK-47 rifle – show off the neighborhood’s radical tradition.

“We are giving capitalism a punch in its social metabolism,” said Rooselt, of the Alexis Vive group, wearing its trademark bandana with the image of guerrilla icon Ernesto Che Guevara around his neck.

A deeply-rooted socialist ideology, absolute territorial control and financing from the government have allowed Alexis Vive to put into practice some of the ideas Chavez is struggling to implement in the rest of Venezuela.

Socialist stores sell milk and meat from recently nationalised producers at about a 50 percent discount. Residents do voluntary work, kids are encouraged to steer clear of drugs, and some youths have even joined a pioneer organisation modeled on similar groups in Communist Cuba.

“I’m sure President Chavez supports our initiatives and seeks to implement them at a national level,” Rooselt said.

Alexis Vive spreads its message via Radio Arsenal, an underground FM station Rooselt says was inspired by Vladimir Lenin’s experience with a political newspaper a century ago.

They are also turning their hands to urban agriculture and fish farming to feed locals, and say that the future communal bank will extend micro-credit to foster economic independence.

“Tense alliance”
Despite being a stronghold of the “chavista” movement with a massive electoral muscle that has helped the president win votes for more than a decade, 23 de Enero’s radicalism has often proved a political liability for Venezuela’s leader.

A series of attacks targeting opposition symbols such as the Globovision television station, and even the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, have led Chavez to publicly distance himself from these groups in the past – although some neighbours think they still take direct orders from “Comandante Presidente.”

George Ciccariello-Maher, a social scientist with a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley who has studied Venezuela’s radical movements, calls it a “tense alliance” between the president and the barrios.

“Chavez depends on the radical sectors for support, but neither side truly trusts one another … If he were to destroy them, he would be destroying his own base as well,” he said.

Gone are the days when local groups proudly displayed their automatic weapons in front of visiting reporters. Militants from Alexis Vive say their armed struggle is over.

“Ever since the revolutionary process started there haven’t been any weapons. We joined the Bolivarian militias,” said Rooselt, referring to a 35,000-strong armed force recently launched by Chavez to defend his socialist revolution.

But other more belligerent groups within 23 de Enero appear to be still armed to the teeth.

In January, one of the groups released a video to the media showing its members dressed in military attire and brandishing automatic weapons and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

They called on Chavez to clean his government of corrupt “false socialists.”

Security in 23 de Enero remains tight. Rooselt’s told reporters he received a call by cell phone the moment two reporters were spotted in the neighborhood.

That might explain why crime rates here have dropped by 95 percent, according to the militants, who say they have turned it into one of the safest places in crime-ridden Caracas.

“Spearhead of the revolution”
Known in the past as “Little Vietnam,” 23 de Enero has a long history of left-wing radicalism. The neighborhood’s name refers to January 23, 1958, the date on which military dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez was toppled.

The community, mostly made up of rural workers attracted to the capital by Venezuela’s oil boom, played a key role in the 1989 riots known as the “Caracazo,” which claimed scores of lives when the army shelled buildings in the area for days.

Alexis Vive, for instance, honours community leader Alexis Gonzalez, who was killed by the police in 2002.

Berkeley’s Ciccariello-Maher calls 23 de Enero an example of “alternative sovereignty” beyond the control of the state.

“The neighborhood and movements it nurtures represent both the laboratory and spearhead of the Bolivarian Revolution … It is in 23 de Enero that the most radical forces are located, forces which drive the process forward,” he said.

The government is finding new ways of supporting 23 de Enero. In a plot behind a local market, neighbours in Che Guevara bandanas are building a state-funded brick factory equipped with Iranian-technology.

Not far from there, a group of former paratroopers who joined a failed coup d’etat by Chavez in 1992 have set up a “revolutionary car wash” next to a wall displaying a huge picture of the late Colombian guerrilla commander Marulanda.

“Here in 23 de Enero we are committed to take this process to the very end,” said cooperative member Martin Campos, a 38-year-old retired soldier sporting a yellow baseball cap with a red star. “We are chavistas. Red, very red.”

Down the road, however, some of the president’s supporters grumble among themselves at a state food shop where shelves are half-empty, vegetables rotten and meat non-existent.

After 11 years of socialist rule in Venezuela – a flagbearer for a decade of gains by the left across Latin America – trappings of revolutionary fervour are everywhere.

Scratch under the surface, though, and even many poor Venezuelans who still back Chavez are increasingly displeased at the prospect of a second straight year of economic contraction and a government unashamedly dependent on one man.

“He was our only hope, but I can’t stand seeing Venezuela become another Cuba. He’s taking this too far,” said Jose Quintero, who still calls himself “half-Chavista” but plans to abstain at the next election in protest.

Around Latin America, other hard-left leaders like Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega and Cuba’s Raul Castro have won support among the poor with heavy spending on social programmes but have also failed to make their economies shine, to the disappointment of believers at home and abroad.

The centre-left that ruled Chile for two decades has just lost power to a conservative billionaire, Sebastian Pinera, and radical presidential candidates are losing support.

Peru’s pro-Chavez candidate Ollanta Humala and Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador both came close to winning power in 2006, but have faded since and are long shots for the next elections.

The most successful socialists seem to be those like Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who long ago toned down his rhetoric and embraced orthodox policies that helped usher in the biggest economic boom in three decades.

Mexican Economy Minister Gerardo Ruiz says greater political maturity is squeezing radicals on both sides across Latin America, which suffered a string of military coups and left-wing rebellions in the second half of the 20th century.

“Where democracy has truly taken hold, it is very difficult for there to be a radical government from either extreme, left or right,” he told the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit in early May.

So has the left had its heyday in Latin America?

Almost certainly not. Most experts are quick to distinguish between the state of the “Bolivarian” left – named for Chavez’s hero and 19th century South American liberator Simon Bolivar – and the centrist left represented by Lula and the likes of Uruguayan President Jose Mujica.

“It was never a homogenous movement,” said analyst Jimena Blanco of the Latin American Newsletters, based in Britain.

“The radical or ‘Bolivarian’ left has lost a lot of its initial strength and force. It does not have the same appeal. But the centre-left looks here to stay, even though they are more likely to alternate government with the centre-right.”

While frustrating to supporters, the radicals’ problems in Latin America are a relief to Wall Street and President Obama’s administration.

“The vast majority of governments in the hemisphere … have chosen a path which was much more toward the side of ‘let’s open up our economies, let’s try to increase transparency, let’s try to fight corruption’,” US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Craig Kelly told reporters.

“The fact that they are not seeking those Utopian solutions now is a good sign.”

Investor relief
Foreign investors have poured money into Latin America, which generally weathered the global financial crisis well and is expected to grow four percent or more this year.

“The region’s appeal is only going to grow to the extent that the more unorthodox models continue to fail,” said analyst Patrick Esteruelas, of Eurasia Group.

“One left seems to have withered, while the other has kind of consolidated itself as part of a new centre. As much as Chavez and Correa still retain an institutional grip and count on a divided opposition, they are both very much in decline.”

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez’s leftist rhetoric is hailed by Chavez, and her power base continues to be labour unions and the urban poor who have benefited from high spending on social programmes. But her policies are more ad-hoc than ideological, and her popularity is down to below 30 percent.

In Mexico, Lopez Obrador of the left-wing Party of the Democratic Revolution, or PRD, lost the presidency by a whisker-thin margin in 2006, but he upset moderates by contesting the result with crippling street protests. Party divisions mean the PRD is unlikely to get close again in 2012.

Marcelo Ebrard, the mayor of Mexico City, has cast himself as a modern-thinking moderate leftist with an eye to running for the PRD in 2012, and he says the left needs to combine its old emphasis on social support with solid economic policies.

“Brazil is a good example,” he told the summit, referring to Lula’s model of targeted social spending with market-friendly policies.

“I don’t think we can repeat here what Chavez did.”

In Colombia, the radicalism of neighbours Venezuela and Ecuador is a turnoff to voters, with all candidates in May’s presidential vote stressing free-market principles.

Bolivia, perhaps, defies the trend or any simplistic tags, with Chavez ally President Evo Morales – the nation’s first Indian head of state – remaining popular and managing 3.4 percent growth in 2009 despite the global crisis.

“I would put Morales in a class apart,” said Esteruelas. “It is as much an ethno-indigenous political current as an ideological one that he heads.”

Nobody, however, is predicting an early exit for the radical left’s big men like Chavez, Castro or Correa despite the apparent failure of their model of nationalisations, subsidies and greater state control. All have solid power bases, even if there is dissatisfaction among their supporters and fewer admirers abroad.

“I do not see them fading away. It is not like we are going to wake up at the end of this year and Chavez will not be there,” Blanco said. “But it’s also clear now that Latin America is not going to descend into the 1960s or 70s again.”

It was one of the few public events in which the often stern-looking Rousseff showed a more human face and appeared without her mentor and political benefactor, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Buoyed by a roaring economy and the immense popularity of Lula, his chief of staff Rousseff has narrowed the gap in opinion polls with front-runner Jose Serra, the governor of Sao Paulo state from the opposition PSDB party.

But analysts caution that the race has yet to begin in earnest and Rousseff must still emerge from Lula’s long shadow to consolidate her own image and define her policies to win the election on October 3.

“She has yet to present herself to the Brazilian electorate,” said Christopher Garman, Latin America analyst with Eurasia Group consultants in New York.

“And she has yet to learn to do so convincingly.”

Her first challenge will be to convince the rank and file of the Workers’ Party, or PT, that she is as good as Lula says. The leftist former union leader, who is barred from running for a third straight term, has virtually imposed Rousseff’s candidacy despite grumbling in the party, which she only joined in 2001.

Proxy for Lula?
In recent months the 64-year-old Lula has accompanied his protege every step of the way, from ribbon-cutting events and television spots to closed-door cabinet meetings.

As a result, her name-recognition in opinion polls has shot up but many Brazilians still see her as a proxy for Lula rather than a candidate in her own right, pollsters say.

“I don’t know much about her but she’d be a continuation of Lula,” said Jose Silva dos Santos, a 52-year-old taxi driver in downtown Brasilia, echoing a common view.

Despite Rousseff’s stiff public persona, Lula thinks her management skills will make her a good president. He also says Brazil, Latin America’s largest country, is ready for a woman president after he shattered the class barrier to become its first leader that didn’t hail from an elite background.

Still, there has been speculation in political circles that Rousseff, 62, would simply be an “interim president” until Lula can run again in 2014, a claim he dismissed in an interview with O Estado de S.Paulo.

“I have total confidence in Dilma, that she’ll know how to do the right things for this country,” he said.

Lula’s predecessor and longtime political rival Fernando Henrique Cardoso, also of Serra’s PSDB party, publicly belittled Rousseff recently, referring to her as a mere puppet of her boss, foreshadowing a likely theme in the campaign ahead.

Policy risk
Most investors see little risk that either of the leading candidates would stray far from Lula’s market-friendly policies, though some prefer Serra for his executive experience and the PSDB’s more centrist political stance.

Rousseff and much of the PT favor a larger government role in the economy, mainly through big state enterprises.

“This talk of government-induced growth and big state enterprises has us worried. It has failed in the past,” said Rodrigo Nogueira, a partner in the Brasilia-based construction firm JC Gontijo Engenheria.

“She needs to address these concerns soon.”

The daughter of Bulgarian immigrants and a left-wing militant in her youth, the gruff career civil servant is often referred to in political circles as the “iron lady.”

For much of last year, she stuck to an intense agenda while battling lymphoma, a cancer of the immune system, of which doctors say she has been cured.

But Rousseff remains a political novice who often struggles to connect with her audience, a potential pitfall that even her supporters acknowledge.

“Dilma doesn’t have the skills like someone who ran in several elections,” PT president-elect Jose Eduardo Dutra told O Globo newspaper.

“Her opponent also lacks charisma, so it evens out,” he added, referring to the often dour-faced Serra.

Lula’s blessing and proven political skills are sure to work in her favor in the campaign. But Rousseff faces a formidable opponent in Serra, and her stance on some controversial issues could pose problems.

Opposition legislators have summoned her to testify on her support for legalising abortion, a delicate act in an overwhelmingly Catholic society.

Analysts say Rousseff’s lack of charisma and political savvy may not cost her the election but, if she wins, it could make governing with notoriously volatile allies difficult.

“She has difficulty dealing with politicians – voters won’t notice that but her allies may jump on it,” said Cristiano Noronha, head of political Arko Advice.

“Becoming hostage to her allies is Dilma’s biggest risk.”

President Obama has proposed to slow Lockheed Martin Corp’s F-35 Joint
Strike Fighter programme, the Pentagon’s costliest purchase at about
$300bn over the next 25 years.

The Defense Department wants
$10.7bn to continue F-35 development and to buy 43 of the radar-evading
fighters in fiscal 2011, down from $10.8bn this fiscal year, according
a Pentagon budget overview.

The following is a list of how Obama would fund other major weapons programs:

 *
The Navy would spend $1.9bn to buy 22 Boeing Co F/A-18E/F Super Hornet
fighter jets, up from $1.7bn for 18 in the fiscal 2010 budget enacted
by Congress.

 * The Navy would spend $1.1bn to buy 12 Boeing
E/A-18G carrier-based electronic attack aircraft, down from $1.7bn for
22 this year.

 * The Pentagon would spend $1.86bn for new
unmanned Predator and Reaper planes built by privately held General
Atomics, up from $1.18bn.

 * The Army would spend $1.25bn on
Boeing CH-47 helicopters, and $587m on AH-64 Apache Longbow
helicopters, also built by Boeing.

 * The Air Force budget
includes $864m to begin replacing its aging KC-135 refueling planes, a
competition that pits Boeing against Northrop Grumman Corp and its
European partner EADS.

 * The Pentagon would spend $3.4bn to
sustain the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicle program in fiscal
2011 after adding $1bn to complete the programme this year.

 *
The Pentagon also would spend $9.9bn on ballistic missile defense
programmes, up from $9.2bn. The funding includes $1.56bn for Lockheed’s
Aegis missile defense system, $1.3bn for the company’s Terminal High
Altitude Area Defense missile system and $1.3bn on a ground-based
midcourse defense programme run by Boeing.

 * The budget would
spend $12.9bn for munitions and missiles, including $1.2bn for Trident
II ballistic missiles built by Lockheed, more than $700m for Standard
and Tomahawk missiles made by Raytheon Co and $253m for
precision-targeted Joint Direct Attack Munitions made by Boeing.

 *
The budget includes over $25bn in procurement and research funding for
Navy shipbuilding programmes. These include $2.73bn for a new carrier
built by Northrop, $2.97bn for DDG-51 Aegis destroyers built by
Northrop and General Dynamics Corp and $5.4 billion for Virginia-class
attack submarines, also built by GD and Northrop.

 * Spending
on space programmes totals $9.9bn in the fiscal 2011 base budget and
war supplemental budget, a decline of just under one percent from a
year earlier. The request includes $911m for a next-generation
communications satellite built by Lockheed, $598m for an additional
Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite, also built by Lockheed and
$1.2bn for launch vehicles built by a Lockheed-Boeing joint venture.

Thousands of people injured in Tuesday’s massive earthquake in the
Caribbean country spent another night waiting for help, many lying on
sidewalks, as their despair turned to anger.

A spokeswoman for
the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said
17 search and rescue teams were deployed in the capital Port-au-Prince,
with six more on their way, but no further teams were needed for now.

“There
are pockets of survival, we shouldn’t give up hope,” spokeswoman
Elisabeth Byrs said. “They are working around the clock.”

No further field hospitals were required but medical teams including surgeons and medicines were badly needed, Byrs said.

At
least 10 percent of housing in the capital was destroyed, making about
300,000 homeless, but in some areas 50 percent of buildings were
destroyed or badly damaged, according to a preliminary assessment by UN
disaster experts.

Under the UN appeal, the World Food Programme
will seek to provide life-saving food rations to two million destitute
people for the next month. A longer-term operation is planned up to
July 15.

“We need high-energy biscuits and ready-to-eat meals as quickly as possible,” WFP spokeswoman Emilia Casella said.

The
WFP had reports from partner aid agencies that its warehouses in Haiti
had been looted, but had not been able to reach them yet to verify
whether its stocks were gone, she said.

“In an emergency,
looting is something that is not unusual. Stores have been cleaned out.
People in a desperate situation will do what they can to get food for
their loved ones,” Casella told reporters in Geneva.

The WFP
distributed food to 4,000 people gathered at the prime minister’s
compound in Port-au-Prince on Thursday following an earlier hand-out in
the town of Jacmel.

“We are trying to get the food we do have
our hands on to people. What we have been able to do so far is a drop
in the bucket,” Casella said.

The WFP was also exploring the
possibility of setting up some 200 collective kitchens in
Port-au-Prince to feed the homeless, she said.

Coal-fired power plants produce half of the world’s electric power and are the most challenged with air quality and emissions issues. Due to heightened environmental concerns, many parts of the globe are likely to see an increase in emissions reduction regulations mandating a transition from traditional fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

While a number of countries within the European Union have had stringent renewable energy source targets for several years, the Obama administration recently acknowledged that carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrogen oxide (NOx) and other industrial emissions endanger the planet. This moves the United States’ position closer to that of the EU nations that have adopted the Kyoto Protocol’s greenhouse gas limits. With this significant shift in US procedure, minimisation of carbon dioxide emissions is truly a global effort.

These emissions are produced by a variety of products and processes, but of particular concern is the amount of emissions produced in the power generation process. In order to reduce emissions and maintain optimal system performance, many power producers are looking for newer, cleaner energy resources.

The pursuit of alternative energy sources has led to the increased utilisation of biomass, which is any living or recently dead biological matter that can be used as fuel. While it does contain carbon, biomass is still a desirable energy source because it is renewable and its CO2 emissions are subsequently absorbed by its replacement crops, resulting in nearly zero net addition of CO2 to the atmosphere.

The partial or complete substitution of fossil fuels with biomass materials for powering industrial or power-generation boilers has a long history of success. However, converting a plant burning coal to biomass presents several challenges. Biomass fuels have different burning characteristics, often contain high levels of moisture and produce residual ash that can be corrosive and laden with a high percentage of unburned carbon. These factors can negatively impact efficiency, capacity and control of other emissions.

However, these challenges have created opportunities for companies experienced in combustion efficiency improvement. Nalco Mobotec, an air protection company operating as a subsidiary of Nalco Company, developed much of its core technology to meet the needs of Scandinavian countries’ early utilisation of biomass in the power generation process. The company’s patented ROTA™ (Rotating Opposed Fire Air) staged combustion system, along with its ROTAMIX™ chemical application systems, have proven effective in tackling the problems associated with biomass burning.

Boiler systems designed to burn coal or oil rely on a hot flame to complete the combustion process and transfer energy to produce steam. Unfortunately, these high temperatures promote the formation of nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the presence of sufficient oxygen. By staging the combustion process, the amount of oxygen is reduced in the burner region of a boiler and is redirected to a cooler location downstream of the burners. While this reduces NOx formation, it also creates the possibility that combustion will not be complete and not enough heat transfer will occur to generate the quantity of steam expected from the boiler. This challenge is even greater when burning biomass fuels due to lower flame temperatures and the difficulty in burning some components of the material. The ROFA system’s unique high∞energy mixing of the second layer of air with the fuel delivers more complete combustion, more efficient heat transfer and reduces NOx generation.

Nalco Mobotec currently has multiple biomass conversions in place or in development around the world, focusing on an immediately available approach of converting coal∞fired plants, rather than building brand new alternative energy facilities. In 2005, a biomass conversion including the installation of ROTA and ROTAMIX was carried out on a 240 MW, tangentially-fired boiler in Helsingborg, Sweden at Västhamnsverket Power Plant.

The conversion from coal to biomass was performed gradually by utilising a co-firing process, wherein biomass fuel and a base fuel such as coal combust concurrently. In 1998, a co-firing project was performed using only 15 percent biomass. After a positive experience, the biomass share was increased to 30 percent in 2000, 70 percent in 2004 and 100 percent as of 2006. Throughout the conversion process, various types of biomass such as wood residue, bark and straw were directly co-fired with coal. Because biomass contains high levels of alkali and chloride components, the ROTAMIX system was installed to reduce the risk of fouling and corrosion. After the plant had been fully converted to biomass, all emissions standards were met and steam production was maintained at the optimal pre-conversion levels.

Nalco Mobotec’s programmes are quickly becoming the standard for power plants and coal-burning industrial facilities seeking to reduce the environmental impact of their operations in a practical, cost-effective manner. In an effort to maintain their industry-leading status in the arena of air emission reduction, Nalco created the Nalco Air Protection Center of Innovation to focus on additional air pollution reduction solutions, including an effort to develop advanced CO2 reduction. This endeavour is a combination of the combustion modelling, design, engineering and emission management capabilities of Nalco Mobotec and its parent company’s experience in chemistry and its application – a powerful set of capabilities that may lead to the continued development of proprietary emission control programmes.

While many technologies under discussion today are too costly, years away from being commercial or not reliable for continuous, sustainable use, Nalco Mobotec has engineered solutions that require minimal modification of existing furnaces and associated systems and can be implemented for a fraction of the cost of installing new equipment. Furthermore, these offerings take advantage of a variety of lower-cost or less-polluting fuels while in many cases increasing production capacity and efficiency.

About Nalco
Nalco Company is a global leader providing essential expertise to over 70,000 customers to meet their water, energy and air quality goals in a sustainable manner—benefiting not only the customer, but the planet, the economy and society. It’s committed to sustaining its solutions with the after-sale service of its over 7,000 engineers and technicians around the globe who visit customer sites each day. This legion of highly trained people is backed by technical service resources that include experts in many technology areas and sophisticated remote monitoring capabilities that serve as a backup to the customer’s efforts to maintain efficiency and quality of their operations.
 
The company has received numerous awards including the US Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award for Nalco’s 3D TRASAR technology for cooling water treatment. In 2008, more than 5,000 customer locations in the United States, Canada and Europe used 3D TRASAR technology for their cooling systems, saving an estimated 63 billion gallons of water.

Nalco’s successful commitment to sustainability was recognised in 2008 with its addition to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. This World index is based on a thorough analysis of corporate economic, environmental and social performance, assessing issues such as corporate governance, risk management, branding, climate change mitigation, supply chain standards and labour practices. That commitment is now extended to air protection with the addition of Nalco Mobotec.

Further information: www.nalco.com

Indian entrepreneur Ravinder Singh waxes lyrical about the advantages of doing business in a country that attracted little attention until al Qaeda’s Yemen∞based wing said it was behind a botched December 25 attempt to blow up a US airliner.

“I’m amazed at the quality of Yemeni manpower,” said Singh, who set up a steel plant in the southern port of Aden in 2005. “I’ve worked in India for more than 30 years in several places, but I’ve never seen manpower with the commitment of Yemenis.”

This might seem an unusual tribute in a land where UN agencies estimate that only 54 percent of adults are literate and only 55 percent of children go to school. Most Yemeni men spend half the day chewing qat, a mild amphetamine-like drug.

But Singh, whose plant’s yearly output of 100,000 tonnes of steel covers a sixth of Yemen’s demand, described his workers as intelligent, with “virgin minds” that were easy to train.

He thinks Yemen is ripe for a spurt of industrial growth, an outlook at odds with widespread economic gloom focused on the country’s dwindling oil production and collapsing water supply.

Singh, who works for the Yemeni-Saudi Arab Iron and Steel Corp, is overseeing a $1.6bn expansion of the Aden plant to boost capacity to 1.5 million tonnes a year within a decade.

The company is building 150 factory sheds and housing units for investors who, Singh is convinced, will flock to the plant which now employs 400 Yemenis, a number he plans to increase.

The factory is near the road leading to Lahej province, scene of many separatist protests against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s government in the north, but this doesn’t bother Singh.

Nor is he worried about al Qaeda’s appeal for young Yemenis. “I have met hundreds of them. They want to work, they want to participate,” he said.

Population Pressure
The southern Arabian peninsula country could certainly do with an economic success story – and more jobs for its young population of 23 million, which is set to double in 20 years. Already 45 percent of Yemenis live on less then $2 a day.

Some investors are deterred by the weakness of government authority in many areas. Diplomats say other obstacles to investment include rampant corruption and cronyism, with top jobs often assigned on the basis of loyalty not competence.

Despite Yemen’s meagre resources, funds are available for infrastructure and other projects. Donors pledged $4.7bn in 2006, but the bulk of the money has yet to be spent.

“Many projects get delayed because you find few resources or competent people in ministries,” said a diplomat working for an international organisation in Sanaa. “Often you have to hire expatriate staff to realise a project.”

For better or worse, Yemen is one of the few countries in the world without a McDonald’s or Burger King restaurant – but it is at least trying to draw foreign investors to the Aden free trade zone, where Singh’s steel plant is located.

For years the zone has offered tax∞free profits, no limits on ownership and cheap land to investors, who have committed about $800m so far, according to its manager Abdul-Galil al-Shaibi.

“We have been moving fast but in my view not fast enough,” Shaibi said, adding that the zone hoped to double investments within five years with the help of Yemenis living abroad.

“We have cheap labour…The process is to interest Yemenis in their country, to develop it so others will come,” he said.

Air of Decay
Aden, once one of the world’s biggest ports, is home to much of Yemen’s oil and gas industry, but the city’s drab residential blocks and potholed roads testify to years of neglect.

The port authority building, with its English signboards and wooden stairways, has changed little since British rule, which ended in 1967 and gave way to a Soviet-backed republic.

Many southerners say they were better off before their former socialist state joined the north in 1990, only to fight and lose a war for secession four years later. Since then, they complain, northerners have grabbed most jobs and resources. Yet there are small signs of new economic activity.

Dubai port operator DP World is expanding the container port, hoping Aden will become a regional hub for ships sailing to or from the Suez Canal – despite the threat from piracy in the Gulf of Aden. It has up to 700 staff and is seeking more.

“We’re working with a local university to help us evaluate and assess staff,” said John Fewer, a DP World adviser in Aden.

Yemen is also in talks with investors to modernise the ailing Aden oil refinery, although experts say this will be daunting job requiring billions of dollars. The refinery was built in the British era and damaged during the 1994 civil war.

Preparatory work for a sugar refinery to be built by Saudi investors has just started, Shaibi said. Some other plans for the free zone are unlikely to see the light of the day, such as construction of a new airport. The existing terminal handles only a few flights a day.

The top oil exporter said this month it would set up commercial and appeal courts in the main cities as part of a $2bn reform to modernise courts and train judges who apply the kingdom’s austere version of Sunni Islam.

The move coincides with a crackdown on trading violations on the Arab’s biggest bourse by slapping heavy fines on major banks or withdrawing licenses for financial firms.

The United States last month also removed its key regional ally from a list of alleged intellectual property violators, citing a better law enforcement environment.

Overhauling the judiciary and improving education are key reforms King Abdullah has tried since taking office in 2005 to create a modern state and combat Islamist militancy.

But the monarch has to balance the views of conservative princes and clerics, who helped the Al Saud family to found the kingdom in 1930s. Many oppose big changes.

“The set up of commercial and other specialised courts will make our legal system very efficient,” said Saudi commercial lawyer Majed Garoub.

But he cautioned it might take more than five years to see the full impact of reform as the kingdom needs to train thousands of judges and faces a shortage of 10,000 lawyers able to deal with more specialised cases.

“We will improve little by little,” said Garoub, who runs a well-establish law firm in the commercial hub of Jeddah.

Foreign investors
The Gulf Arab state needs to attract foreign investors to prepare for the day when its vast oil resources – more than a fifth of global reserves – run dry and to create jobs for its mostly young population of 18 million nationals.

With the kingdom rolling out a $400bn investment programme and opening up its bourse, industrial firms and banks have been coming, but weak legal standards still deter some.

“Concerns about contact enforcement and legal consistency are among the main issues for foreign investors,” said Paul Gamble, head of research at Saudi bank Jadwa Investment.

“The deficiencies of the current local system mean that high-profile commercial disputes are being heard in foreign courts,” he added.

Several struggling family firms have filed multi-billion lawsuits abroad as they have little trust in Saudi courts and law enforcement.

“Effective enforcement of the judgement can take years,” the US Department of Commerce said on its website.

Despite being the biggest Arab economy and a member of the G20 group of the world’s biggest economies, Saudi Arabia lacks codification of judicial verdicts to act as precedent for cases.

In 1992 the kingdom issued a “basic law” to act as a constitution and it confirms Islamic law as the basis of its legal system.

Only some regulations come via the kingdom’s appointed quasi-parliament, the Shura Assembly.

Much is left vague, to custom, royal decrees or religious edicts which are non-binding but have influence in the tribal society. Saudi Arabia is only country where women are banned from driving even though there is no law explicitly stating that.

The lack of rulings based on precedent gives judges wide powers. Rulings for the same charge can differ from region to region and human rights activists say criminal trials are often not fair and lawyers are denied timely access to files.

“Many judges do not accept that lawyers or witnesses are part of the process to find the truth in court. (A judge) thinks his understanding of the case is enough,” said a Western diplomat.

Most judges graduate from the Imam Mohamed Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh, a bastion of the kingdom’s austere version of Islam called Wahhabism, said columnist Abdullah al-Alami.

“More specialised judicial training centres in collaboration with international legal training institutes need to be established,” Alami said.

“There will probably be resistance to emerging secular law, but I’m convinced that the judicial reforms will take place sooner or later.”

To bring changes, King Abdullah removed the hardline head of the Supreme Court, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, last year.

The government is also sending judges abroad to train in modern court procedures but activists are not holding their breath.

“They should send the young judges abroad, not just the old ones who will not change,” said Ibrahim al-Mugaiteeb, head of the independent First Human Rights Society.

“There is movement but we will have to wait 15-20 years to see real changes until 60-70 percent of judges of the old regime are retired.”

Senior World Bank economist Ricardo Gazel said higher oil prices should help the oil-producing nation recover some of its foreign exchange reserves, which dropped by a third in 2009.

“Angola’s economy is expected to perform much better in 2010 compared to 2009. Preliminary data suggests that oil revenues have improved especially compared to same period in 2009,” Gazel said in his monthly World Bank report.

Oil prices more than doubled in the last year to around $80 per barrel. Oil accounts for over half of Angola’s GDP, 80 percent of government revenues and 90 percent of export revenues.

After emerging from a civil war in 2002 to rival Nigeria as Africa’s biggest oil producer, Angola plans to pump 1.9 million barrels per day in 2010, up from 1.82 million in 2009, according to its 2010 budget.

New loans from the IMF and China should also help bolster the economic recovery, Gazel said, after a slump in oil prices in 2008 and 2009 ended several years of double-digit expansion.

The government predicts the economy will expand 8.6 percent this year, up from 1.3 percent in 2009.

The African nation signed three new credit lines with China at the end of 2009 worth $10 billion, according to the World Bank report. Gazel said Chinese loans to Angola since the end of the civil war in 2002 were now at around $14.5 billion.

“But there may be other loans that haven’t been disclosed,” he said.

Most of these loans are being repaid in oil. Angola has overtaken Saudi Arabia and Iran to become China’s biggest supplier.

Gazel added that strong economic growth and the devaluation of the kwanza currency , down 19.5 percent last year, should continue to fuel inflation.

“Price pressures are likely to remain strong in 2010 due to stronger economic growth and the lag effect of the kwanza devaluation,” he said.

“However, if tight fiscal and monetary policies remain in place, they could help in keeping prices under control.”

Inflation slowed to 13.66 percent year-on-year in February from 13.83 percent in January, according to the National Statistics Institute. The government has targeted average annual inflation of 13 percent in 2010.

“We don’t trust the election or the candidates,” Samir Salahuddin, a mechanic in the northern city of Kirkuk, said.

“I am now searching for kerosene to warm my family during the night, yet we live in a country rich with oil.”

Election campaigning has started with party workers putting up election advertisements across Baghdad. As in last year’s provincial election, fierce competition is likely to turn cities into forests of banners and posters.

But Baghdad’s Sadr City slum, perched atop an oilfield and ravaged by years of bombings and militia battles, is a symbol for many of political incompetence and corruption which have sapped voter enthusiasm and led to mismanagement of Iraq’s vast oil wealth.

“I hear people say that Sadr City is rich, but I do not see the wealth,” Raziqa Fokus, a widow and mother of five, said.

“Why do my children not look rich? Why do the streets look like this?”

“I will not take part in the election because I did not see anything tangible from the government,” she added, while heading out to throw a sack of garbage into the street. Another resident complained that rubbish usually remains uncollected for months.

Iraqi and US officials hope the March 7 parliamentary election will solidify the country’s young democracy and draw former insurgents and militias into the political process – just as US troops prepare to withdraw.

Sectarian warfare unleashed by the 2003 US invasion has faded, but tensions between once-dominant Sunnis and majority Shi’ites are high.

This has been stoked by the Shi’ite-led government’s rhetoric against Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein’s outlawed Baath party and moves to ban candidates accused of Baathist ties.

In Sadr City, one of several Iraqi slums full of unemployed young men ripe for recruitment by insurgent, militia or criminal groups, ragged boys play in stagnant pools of water and the smell of raw sewage and garbage wafts through the air.

An ugly web of crisscrossing wires forms part of an informal electricity grid hooked up to diesel generators to compensate for Iraq’s patchy national network that still provides far less than 24 hours of power per day.

“I’m just an employee. Corruption, a lack of coordination and haphazard decisions at the electricity ministry are to blame,” said an electrical engineer who declined to be named.

Government says much achieved
Jinan Abdul-Jabbar, a lawmaker and member of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition, disputed accusations of poor government performance. Security, on which Maliki is expected to base his campaign, has improved dramatically.

“There were priorities and people understand that – security first then the services,” she said. “I believe that despite the challenges that faced the government, it managed to achieve a lot.”

Rebuilding is a tall order after decades of war and sanctions. But the world’s 11th largest oil producer is trying to revamp its crude oil sector with a series of deals set to vault it into the top three.

Iraq hopes an increase in production capacity to 12 million barrels per day (bpd) from 2.5 million bpd within six or seven years will bring the cash needed for development.

And many may vote along religious, political and tribal lines, and not on the perceived competence of candidates, Baghdad University analyst Saad al-Hadithi said.

In the 2005 elections, religious leaders urged Shi’ites to vote for Shi’ite Islamist parties while Sunnis largely boycotted the polls, helping to fuel the insurgency.

“I believe a lack of services has no big effect in Iraq … It’s affiliations to this or that side. There are political pressures that control the Iraqi voter,” Hadithi said.