Thursday, July 22, 2010

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Amy Witherden.

Making headlines:

Energy Minister Dipuo Peters used the first-ever Clean Energy Ministerial meeting, which took place in Washington, DC, this week, to announce that South Africa will release a comprehensive ‘wind atlas', as well as a ‘carbon dioxide geological storage atlas' in August.
The atlas will identify potential sites and provide "accurate information" on the wind resources within the country - information that could be used by potential renewable-energy investors. Peters also noted that South Africa had endorsed the development of a wind and solar global atlas - a programme currently led by Denmark, Spain and Germany. This atlas will cover all countries, including those unable to fund such mapping, and should also support solar and wind energy independent power producers across Africa.
The meeting was hosted by US Energy Secretary Steven Chu and attended by delegations from 24 countries, representing 80% of global energy consumption. Chu unveiled more than ten international clean-energy initiatives, including: plans for cutting energy waste; initiatives to deploy smart grid, electric vehicle and carbon-capture technologies; new support for renewable energy markets; the expansion of access to clean-energy resources and jobs; and plans to support women pursuing careers in clean energy.

United Nations (UN) secretary-general Ban Ki-moon invites nations to a high-level meeting in September on how to revive stalled international disarmament talks following 12 years of inaction at the world's sole multilateral disarmament negotiating forum in Geneva.
The 65-nation UN-backed Conference on Disarmament, created in 1978, negotiated biological and chemical weapons conventions but has been unable to carry out substantive work since 1998, because members could not agree on priorities.
A key proposed task has been to negotiate a halt to production of nuclear bomb-making fissile material but this has been blocked by Pakistan, which says that it would put the country at a permanent disadvantage to rival India.
A UN official said that the meeting is "seen as an opportunity to generate the political will to register some progress." A senior Western diplomat, specialising in disarmament, said that one possibility was that experts would be asked to draft a resolution for the General Assembly to adopt to reform the UN disarmament mechanism.

A poor response from government departments on tackling xenophobic violence is "frustrating", South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) chairperson Lawrence Mushwana told Members of Parliament on Wednesday.
Government departments have simply not responded to recommendations contained in a xenophobia report released by the SAHRC in March, Mushwana told Parliament's portfolio committee on justice.
Mushwana said that the commission's task is to see whether the government had "put systems in place" to prevent an outbreak of xenophobic violence similar to 2008, but that the responses had been apathetic.

Also making headlines:

President Jacob Zuma will lead a South African delegation to the fifteenth Ordinary Session of the African Union Assembly in Kampala, Uganda, which will focus on Maternal, Infant and Child Health and Development in Africa.
The United Nations says that humanitarian activities in Somalia are severely underfunded, hurting Somalis who are outside areas controlled by Islamist rebels.
The Public Servants Association says that about 180 000 workers in South Africa's public service sector will strike next week after wage negotiations with the government deadlocked.
And, Nigeria's Senate approves a Constitutional amendment requiring elections in January, putting pressure on President Goodluck Jonathan to declare whether he will run and shortening the campaign period.

That's a roundup of news making headlines today.