Moontown

Bolt, the Jamaican sprinter and winner of three Olympic gold medals, was named for his achievements in 2009, while American tennis player Williams won the women’s award.

Usain Bolt. AFP PHOTO

Taking the Laureus award for the second time, Bolt last year picked up three gold medals at the athletics world championships, setting world records in the 100- and 200-metre competitions.

Williams won Wimbledon and the Australian Open and retook the top spot in tennis world rankings.

Formula One driver Jenson Button received the Laureus Breakthrough of the Year Award after winning his first World Drivers? Championship, and his team last year, the Brawn GP Formula One Team, was named Laureus World Team of the Year.

Apart from the presence of a plethora of former and current sports stars, the ceremony, hosted by US actor Kevin Spacey, was attended by a number of Hollywood names, among them Hugh Grant, Gwyneth Paltrow and Clive Owen.

The winners are chosen by the Laureus World Sports Academy, made up of 46 former sporting greats, including World Cup-winning footballers Franz Beckenbauer and Bobby Charlton, cricketer Ian Botham and three-time Wimbledon tennis champion John McEnroe.

The Academy is chaired by Edwin Moses, an American track and field athlete who won gold medals at the 1976 and 1984 Olympics.

Other awards went to Belgian tennis player Kim Clijsters, who won the Laureus World Comeback of the Year Award, South African swimmer Natalie du Toit, who received the Laureus Disability Award, and three-time World Surfing Champion Stephanie Gilmore, from Australia, named Laureus World Action Sportsperson of the Year.

In a statement on Wednesday, Benjamin Ross, CEO of the Grenada-based owners and operators of the service, BEDY Ocean Lines, said his company has been making significant progress with a number of logistical matters, which had accounted for earlier delays in the start of the service, and is now looking forward to bringing the people of the Eastern Caribbean and beyond, a safe and reliable mode of transportation that provides all their travel solutions.

In the company statement, Ross apologised to the people of the region for the unavoidable delay, and reiterated that the service was “still very much on stream”.

The new ferry service, which will see inter-island passengers paying one-third of the current airfare for travel to the islands by air, will be offered to residents of Barbados, St Vincent, St Lucia, Trinidad and Grenada.

Initially, the company’s two vessels, which are passenger speed boats, will each have a seating capacity ranging from 260 to 300. One of the vessels will make St Vincent its home and will service the St Vincent to Barbados and St Lucia routes, while the second ferry will be based in Grenada and will service the Grenada to Trinidad and Barbados route. (Caribnet)

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) — Adrian Freites mops his forehead as steam rises from the pressing irons behind him in his sweltering Caracas dry-cleaning shop.

Like others in homes and businesses in the Caribbean city, he has switched off the air-conditioning to save electricity and avoid punishment by the government, despite a heat wave.

Venezuela is undergoing its worst-ever power crisis, prompting President Hugo Chavez to declare the nation “in emergency,” impose drastic rationing, and penalize those who fail to cut consumption by 20 percent.

“Our orders have fallen to less than half,” Freites said, explaining that since drying machines can only be used for full loads, he has had to cancel “express” service.

All round Caracas, people are suddenly doing whatever they can to get electricity use down: housewives wash dishes by hand instead of using dishwashers; people work out in gyms without air-conditioning, and some shops close one day a week.

The government is sending home state employees for the day from lunchtime, rationing energy around the South American nation, and doling out millions of energy-efficient light bulbs.

Chavez says the drastic steps are needed to prevent collapse of the oil-producing nation’s grid, which relies on hydroelectric dams for more than two-thirds of its power.

In the Venezuelan capital, where an initial plan to impose rationing by zone was cancelled after a day of chaos, the government has said it will fine or even cut off consumers who use too much power.

At Freites’ “Clean & Clean” shop in the upmarket Los Palos Grandes neighbourhood, a poster has already been stuck on the door to shame its operator for using too much electricity.

“They told us we were over by 0.05 percent,” Freites said.

Fully 65 percent of Caracas businesses have failed to make the required cutbacks, according to government statistics.

The poster warns that a second offense will cause businesses to lose power for 24 hours, while repeat offenders will be disconnected — a threat that has compelled some to close temporarily.

Manager Gustavo Gonzalez shut the Galerias Avila shopping centre for a day last week in an effort to meet the quota.

“It’s hard on the store owners but in the end we all know we are facing a crisis and unfortunately, whoever may be to blame, we are all in this together,” he said.

The mall’s management team also uses an emergency generator for some lighting in public areas, has switched off down-escalators and turned air conditioning to minimal levels.

“One inconvenience we have is that we’re a new shopping centre already with efficient technology, which has hindered our attempts to get usage down further,” Gonzalez said.

Some are angry that the government based its standard for reductions on last year’s Carnival week, a time when many head out of the city and consumption is unusually low.

Private business leaders say the electricity cuts and shutdowns will diminish national production and prevent the economy from coming out of recession this year.

While the government blames the El Nino weather phenomenon for causing a drought that has cut hydroelectric capacity, some critics blame Chavez for lack of investment in the sector.

One positive spinoff is that Venezuelans are finally becoming environmentally conscious.

“It’s only now that we have this crisis that people are accepting the bulbs,” said state electricity worker Gustavo Muir y Teran, who is helping hand out energy-saving bulbs.

Scores of soldiers have been working their way through Caracas neighbourhoods, swapping traditional incandescent bulbs for new compact fluorescent ones imported from China.

“It’s good,” said Frank Vargas, 38, who runs a photocopier repair business from his home, as soldiers scoured the building for bulbs to exchange. “But they could have started doing all this more than a year ago.”

Like many increasingly energy-conscious citizens, he and his partner only keep one light and the TV on at night.

Even if the rains come and replenish the reservoirs, the crisis will have taken its toll on many Venezuelans.

Alexandro Alberto, owner of the Anas Capelde beauty salon, has cut one shift so he can close three hours earlier. “I had to let four of my hairdressers go,” he said. (Caribnet)

The project will include the installation of nine new two-megawatt wind turbines that will generate 18 megawatts of power, increasing the total amount of energy produced by Wigton to 38.7 megawatts. The power will be sold to the Jamaica Public Service (JPS) for domestic use.

In addition, plant operating facilities will be improved and a resource room for educational and technical information exchange established.

The expansion will mean approximately 55 gigawatt hours of energy, enough to power about 24,000 homes. It will also result in saving of about 32,400 barrels of oil valued at US$2.3 million, and in so doing, avoid 45,954 tonnes of carbon emissions, as wind energy is cleaner than energy derived from oil.

The project advances the new energy thrust by the Government and the Ministry of Energy and Mining, as stated in the National Energy Policy.

Minister of Energy and Mining, James Robertson

According to Robertson, “a cornerstone of this policy is diversifying our energy base. We will find new ways to power our economy and to reduce the amount of energy we use. We will explore indigenous sources of energy and clean technologies, thereby injecting life into research institutions and generating new, green jobs at a time when new jobs are so sorely needed.”

He noted further that “this policy will also enable us to reduce pollution and thereby protect the health of all Jamaicans as they go about their daily business. It will demonstrate that Jamaica is a responsible global citizen as we minimise our emissions of greenhouse gases, and reduce our carbon footprint.”

The expansion of the Wigton Wind Farm will increase Jamaica’s energy output from renewable sources and help the country to meet its target of 11 per cent of energy needs from renewable sources by 2010. At present, only 5 per cent of Jamaica’s energy comes from renewable sources.

Wigton Wind Farm is a subsidiary of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ), which is an agency of the Ministry of Energy and Mining. Wigton was incorporated in 2000 to develop wind farms and similar renewable energy systems to harness energy for generation of electricity for commercial and domestic use.

Wigton has been supplying wind generated energy to the JPS grid and at Munro College, in St. Elizabeth for some time. The expansion will add to this effort.

The project will be built on a turnkey basis by Vestas Eolica of Spain with local input in engineering, studies and construction. Wigton has said that commissioning of the plant is scheduled for July 2010 and the project is 100 per cent financed from the PetroCaribe Development Fund. (Caribnet)

MIAMI, USA (Reuters) — Rebuilding Haiti after its catastrophic earthquake should generate major contracts for private companies specializing in construction, logistics, transport and security, but US executives say they need a clear reconstruction strategy to shape their business plans.

Private sector firms that focus on post-conflict or disaster relief operations gathered at a meeting in Miami this week to consider the business opportunities offered by Haiti’s recovery from the January 12 quake that devastated the capital Port-au-Prince and surrounding towns.

Workers remove rubble in Port-au-Prince from a destroyed school so that it may be replaced. AFP PHOTO

With Haiti’s government saying up to 300,000 people may have died, some economists are calling the Haitian quake the deadliest natural disaster in modern times. Relief experts and business leaders agree the mammoth task of rebuilding what was already the Western Hemisphere’s poorest state will be impossible without private sector participation.

“I don’t think they have any option but to get private companies in to help reconstruct Haiti,” Kevin Lumb, CEO of London-based Global Investment Summits Ltd, which organized the Haiti Reconstruction meeting in Miami, told Reuters.

“I think it opens up a great deal of business opportunities. Most of their infrastructure is destroyed, their roads, communications, buildings, it’s obviously affected water supply, electricity, so that all needs rebuilding,” Lumb said.

The Miami summit was also organized by the International Peace Operations Association, a trade group of companies working in conflict, post-conflict and disaster zones.

IPOA President Doug Brooks cited $13 billion to $14 billion as estimates of the scale of damage inflicted by the Haitian quake, which could provide some measure of the business opportunities created by the reconstruction effort.

Brooks called the Miami meeting a “nuts and bolts conference” bringing together service providers, major humanitarian groups and other stakeholders in Haiti’s rebuilding. The aim was to fit needs to potential contract opportunities ahead of an international donors’ conference for Haiti scheduled for March 31 in New York.

“When the policies come down and the money starts flowing for the reconstruction, we’ll be ready to go,” Brooks said.

Companies looking for business at the Haiti reconstruction meeting included Georgia-based Harbor Homes LLC, which offers self-assembled PermaShelter houses for those left homeless by the quake, and Virginia-based Agility Logistics, which already supplies food rations to U.N. peacekeeping troops in Somalia.

LOOKING FOR “MASTER PLAN”

More than one million Haitians were left homeless and displaced by the January quake and Harbor Homes’ Richard Rivette said his company could provide easily assembled, storm- and quake-resistant galvanized steel homes to create the new villages expected to be set up outside of Port-au-Prince.

But he and other executives at the Miami meeting said they needed to have from the Haitian government and its relief partners a clearer idea of the planned rebuilding strategy.

“Without a master plan, it’s hard to cost estimate it,” said Rivette.

“I think everyone’s looking for the direction, where’s it going to go, how’s it going to work,” said Agility Logistics’ Thomas Shortley, who runs the firm’s business with the United Nations.

Other speakers said any survivors’ resettlement or relocation program could be bedeviled by land ownership issues. “Land rights are the elephant in the room,” said Ian Ridley of World Vision International, an aid group.

Weather forecasters are already predicting a more active than normal Atlantic hurricane season in 2010 and storm-swept Haiti could face a fresh humanitarian disaster if the hundreds of thousands of quake homeless are not under adequate shelter by the time the season starts on June 1.

Political analysts and aid workers say that social unrest — a feature of the cycle of poverty, corruption and violence that has dogged Haiti for decades — is a also major risk if employment and shelter solutions are not found quickly.

“It will not take long before some kind of civil unrest occurs,” said Derell Griffith of Sabre International, a security company, referring to quake survivors’ impatience over delays in relief efforts.

Present too at the Miami meeting was the US government insurer and lender Overseas Private Investment Corporation. “Haiti has become a very strong priority for the US government right now,” said OPIC’S Suzanne Etcheverry.

President Barack Obama met his Haitian counterpart Rene Preval in Washington on Wednesday, and said many Haitians were still in desperate need of shelter, food, and medicine.

“The situation on the ground remains dire,” Obama said. (Caribnet)

Current Chairman of CARICOM, Dominica’s Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit will officially welcome to Dominica tomorrow delegations from various CARICOM Member Countries and regional and international organisations.

Dominica’s Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit

Eight prime ministers, two presidents and one premier are expected in Dominica for the March 11th and 12th Meeting.

President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, Dominque Strauss Kahn and CARICOM Special Envoy to Haiti, former Jamaican Prime Minister, Percival Patterson are among the other high profile officials expected in Dominica to participate in some of the discussions at the two-day meeting.

Other organisations expected to participate in some of the discussions include: the Inter-American Development Bank(IDB), Eastern Caribbean Central Bank(ECCB) Organisation of American States(OAS), Caribbean Development Bank, Caribbean Tourism Organisation(CTO), Caribbean Community Council on Climate Change(CCCCC), Caribbean Development Fund(CDF), Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency(CDEMA) among others.

Matters for deliberation among the Heads of Government include:

• Present situation in Haiti in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake
• Review of the Economies of the Member States by the President of the CDB
• The Global Financial and Economic Crisis and CARICOM’s response
• Status of the CARICOM Single Market and Economy(CSME)
• Tourism: Regional Marketing Fund and the Air Passenger Duty
• CARICOM Development Fund
• The Presence of Small Vulnerable Economies at G20(Observer Status) set for Canada in June, 2010

Other matters related to external trade, border issues, climate change, water resources and institutional developments within the Community will receive the attention of the Heads of Government.

The agenda also includes an Exchange of Views with Jose Miguel Insulza, Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States. There will also be discussions with officials from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter- American Development Bank.

A Grand Cultural Soiree under the distinguished patronage of Prime Minister, Roosevelt Skerrit will bring the curtains down on the 21st Inter-Sessional Meeting of the Conference of Heads of Government of CARICOM. The activity will take place at the State House grounds in Roseau on Friday evening. (Caribnet)

WASHINGTON, USA (AFP) – US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that the situation in Haiti following January’s earthquake was still “dire” and warned that a second humanitarian disaster was possible.

After talks with Haitian President Rene Preval at the White House, Obama said the looming spring rains in Haiti could pose a severe threat to 1.3 million people left homeless, almost two months after the monstrous earthquake.

“The situation on the ground remains dire and people should be under no illusions that the crisis is over,” Obama said during a joint appearance with Preval in the White House Rose Garden.

US President Barack and Haiti’s President Rene Preval (AFP photo)

The president said that there was a “desperate need” for humanitarian aid in Haiti, describing the quake which killed more than 220,000 people as “one of the most devastating natural disasters ever to strike our hemisphere.”

“The challenge now, is to prevent a second disaster,” Obama said, hours after former president Bill Clinton, now a UN special envoy to Haiti, warned that a new wave of deaths could be caused by poor sanitary conditions.

Obama described his Oval Office talks with Preval as “very productive” and said the Haitian leader had provided him with an update on the “awful scale of Haitian loss.”

“No nation could respond to such a catastrophe alone,” Obama said, adding that an international donors conference for Haiti later this month at the UN would allow the world to keep its commitment to help Haiti rebuild.

“This pledge is one that I made at the beginning of this crisis, and I intend for America to keep our pledge,” Obama said. “America will be your partner.”

Clinton delivered his warning in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations committee, saying his biggest worry was that unsanitary conditions would “lead to a second round of deaths” when the rainy season comes.

Preval used his joint appearance with Obama to thank the American people for a swift and massive response in the wake of the January 12 quake, and offered condolences to Americans who had lost loved-ones in the disaster.

And he also delivered a stark warning that the lessons of his country’s disaster must be recognized, arguing that global warming could cause similar humanitarian catastrophes in future.

“We must draw the lessons from what occurred in Haiti. These are lessons for all of mankind,” Preval said.

“The massive, spontaneous, generous help was a good response to the disaster. However, its effectiveness must be improved, because effectiveness depends on the quality of coordination.”

Preval said that donor funds gathered at the United Nations conference in New York at the end of the month should be administered by one single authority to ensure they were spent wisely.

And he pleaded for help to offer Haitians health care, jobs and education, to forestall a possible wave of migration to the cities which could worsen the humanitarian situation.

Obama also said he was “extraordinarily proud” of each member of the US armed forces who flocked to Haiti in the aftermath of the disaster of help with the relief effort and provide much-needed security.

“They saved lives, countless lives, of men and women and children,” Obama said.

The Pentagon said that the Comfort naval hospital, which is leaving Haiti on Wednesday, treated 871 patients during its seven-week mission and performed 843 surgeries.

The Comfort has spent the past two weeks helping Haitians for ailments unrelated to the earthquake, with the last person treated for earthquake injuries discharged on February 27, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.

The naval doctors also delivered 10 babies onboard the ship, he said. (Caribnet)

NEW YORK, USA (Bloomberg) — The 2010 Atlantic hurricane season will be more active than last year’s and poses an “above- normal” threat to the US Gulf and East coasts, AccuWeather Inc. forecasters said on Wednesday.

AccuWeather foresees 16 to 18 named storms forming in the Atlantic Ocean, with five becoming hurricanes and two or three of them going ashore in the US as major systems. In all, 15 storms probably will be in the western Atlantic or the Gulf of Mexico, and seven may make landfall in the US, said Joe Bastardi, chief long-range and hurricane forecaster.

“This year has the chance to be an extreme season,” Bastardi said in a statement. “Certainly much more like 2008 than 2009 as far as the overall threat to the United States East and Gulf coasts.”

The Gulf of Mexico is home about 27 percent of US oil and 15 percent of US natural gas production, according to the Department of Energy.

Only nine named storms formed during the 2009 season, the fewest in 12 years, and three of them became hurricanes. Last year was the first time since 2006 that no hurricane hit the U.S. mainland. In 2008, there were 16 named storms, and eight of them were hurricanes.

The historical average is for 11 named storms, with six of them becoming hurricanes, two of them major. A tropical storm is given a name when its sustained winds reach 39 miles (63 kilometers) per hour, and it becomes a hurricane when sustained winds reach 74 mph.

A hurricane reaches major status at Category 3 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale with winds of at least 111 mph. The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 through Nov. 30.

Bastardi said he raised his forecast from last year because of a weakening El Nino, the Pacific warming phenomenon that can suppress Atlantic storm development, and because waters are warmer than normal from Africa to the Caribbean while being cooler to the north, a common pattern in major storm seasons.

Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project made its initial forecast for the season in December, calling for 16 named storms with as many as eight of those becoming hurricanes, five of them major.

WSI Inc. in January predicted 13 named storms and seven hurricanes, three of them major, and the Commodity Weather Group called a month later for 11 named storms, as many as five of them hurricanes.

The federal Climate Prediction Center will release its forecast in May.