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A "doomsday" seed vault built to protect millions of food crops from climate change, wars and natural disasters opened Tuesday deep within an Arctic mountain in the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard.
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai of Kenya were among the dozens of guests who had bundled up for the ceremony inside the vault, about 425 feet deep inside a frozen mountain.
The vault will serve as a backup for hundreds of other seed banks worldwide. It has the capacity to store 4.5 million seed samples from around the world and shield them from man-made and natural disasters.
Dug into the permafrost of the mountain, it has been built to withstand an earthquake or a nuclear strike.
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Kenya's Nobel Peace laureate Wangari Maathai said on Wednesday she has received death threats since urging tribal elders to help stop ethnic killings following a disputed December 27 presidential election.
Maathai, a lauded environmentalist and veteran of the Kenyan civil rights movement, said she reported the matter to police after getting three text messages on her telephone on Tuesday.
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Kenya’s Nobel Peace laureate, Wangari Maathai, and her Greenbelt Movement have set up a peace tent in Kenya’s embattled city of Nairobi. The group will listen to victims of the country’s post-election violence and collect signatures from Kenyans who wish to see face-to-face dialogue between the country’s President Mwai Kibaki and the leader of the opposition, Raila Odinga.
Maathai blamed the government for doing little to prevent the ethnic driven killings in the country. U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger, meanwhile, strongly protested what appeared to be government flyers blaming the U.S. for the troubles. Maathai then planted a tree, symbolic for renewal and hope in a country battered by prolonged violence.
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By Wangari Maathai, in the Washington Post, Feb 7 2008:
"It's make-or-break time for Kenya. After weeks of standoff, Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, who both claim to have won the Dec. 27 presidential election, are engaged in negotiations. Each side in the talks, presided over by former U.N. secretary general Kofi Annan, has agreed to a peace plan. There have been calls for a truth-and-reconciliation commission, which is essential to holding accountable those who are responsible for the recent violence. The African Union has put Kenya's crisis high on its agenda, as have the European Union and the U.S. Congress, which held hearings on the flawed election this week.
"I am cautiously optimistic that a resolution can be found and peace restored to my country. But it is imperative that we unravel the underlying causes of the violence and not paper over them as Kenyan leaders have in the past...
Washington Post (free registration)
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Wangari Maathai urges the international community to act to prevent escalation of conflict in Kenya.
"Today, millions of people are urging intervention in crises in Darfur, Somalia, Chad, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to name only a few," she says. "In the 21st century, the world should not stand and watch as citizens are incited to kill and maim each other because politicians cannot agree on how to manage the state. The international community has a moral responsibility to intervene when life and human rights are threatened on such a scale.
"To allow our egos as Kenyans to be offended by international involvement is a misrepresentation that can only give comfort to the hardliners in Kibaki's and Odinga's camps. As US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said while visiting Nairobi earlier this week: "The time for a political settlement was yesterday..."
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