Libya a warning to Mideast authoritarians: Ban

Cairo, Mar 21: The Libya war and revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia should be a warning to authoritarian leaders in the Middle East and North Africa still ordering forces to shoot demonstrators, UN chief Ban Ki-moon said.

Ban, who has castigated the king of Bahrain and strongly condemned the repression of demonstrations in Yemen and Syria in recent days, told AFP as he began a trip to Egypt and Tunisia today that other nations have a duty to speak out.

"It is clear that a wind of change is sweeping this region," he said in an interview.

"The international community, while we closely follow the situation, has a responsibility to help those people, so that leaders could hear clearly and sincerely the voices of the people, their aspirations."

The UN secretary general said leaders in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria must have seen the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and now Libya where Muammar Gaddafi's brutal crackdown led to UN-sanctioned military strikes.

"We are living in an era of globalisation and communications, so they must have been following and they must have been listening to what the international community expects them to do," Ban said.

"I have been talking to all the leaders in the region, all the leaders without exception, every day, urging them to take bold reform measures that respect the will of their people and ensure freedom of speech." In Syria, security forces have shot and killed several demonstrators in the southern town of Deraa.

Ban last week called for "genuine reforms, not repression." In the Yemeni capital Sanaa, more than 50 demonstrators have been killed.

The UN chief condemned the government and yesterday said he doubted that President Ali Abdullah Saleh''s decision to sack the government would calm the population.

Ban spoke with the Bahrain's monarch, King Hamad, last week to highlight his "deepest concern over reports of excessive and indiscriminate use of force by security forces and police in Bahrain." He warned that their actions could breach international humanitarian law.

The Arab League was instrumental in getting the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 1973 last week which approved military action against Gaddafi.

Ban has called the resolution "historic" because it "affirms unequivocally, the international community's determination to fulfill its responsibility to protect civilians from violence perpetrated upon them by their own government."

AFP

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N Koreans told to use pets as quake warning: report

Seoul, Mar 20: North Korea advised its citizens today to use their pets as an early-warning system for earthquakes, amid heightened fears following Japan's quake-tsunami disaster.

Governments worldwide have focused on ensuring their alert systems go some way to protecting them against the horror wreaked by natural disasters such as the massive tremor and giant waves which killed thousands in Japan on Mar 11.

While Pyongyang has also told North Koreans about the technology it has in place to anticipate disasters, state media urged the public to take note when animals behave oddly.

The Sunday edition of Rodong Sinmun, a newspaper of the North's ruling party, and a report yesterday from the official Korean Central New Agency warned that people should beware if they see dogs barking incessantly, cattle refusing to eat or horses constantly trying to storm out of stables.

Evidence of the reliability of animal behaviour in predicting quakes remains mixed, although National Geographic reported after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami that many species fled to safety before the catastrophe.

Elephants ran for higher ground, dogs refused to go outdoors and flamingos abandoned their low-lying breeding areas, nationalgeographic.com reported.

"The belief that wild and domestic animals possess a sixth sense -- and know in advance when the earth is going to shake -- has been around for centuries," the magazine said.
It is thought that low-frequency electromagnetic signals may cause animals to behave unusually before an earthquake.

The state-run Korean Central TV station aired a series of programmes last week on how to respond to government quake alerts, South Korea's Yonhap news agency said.

The programmes detailed how the alerts would be issued via sirens and bells in case of emergency and advised people to evacuate to open spaces such as nearby parks

AFP

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