8A NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
WEDNESDAY. SEPTEMBER 5, 2007
DOLE INSTITUTE
Zohra Bensemra/ASSOCIATED PRESS
A member of Sudan's Liberation Movement, cordons off the crowd on Tuesday during the official visit of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, unseen, to the south Sudan's capital Juba Tuesday. Ki-moon arrived Monday to promote peaceful negotiations.
Speakers to discuss Darfur
BY SASHA ROE
sroe@kansan.com
Former U.S. Ambassadors Robert Beecroft and Edward Brynn will speak about the Darfur genocide in the program, "Genocide: What the World Can Do and Should Do" Thursday at 7:30 p.m. at the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics. Heavy student interest in Darfur generated the talk, said Jonathan Earle, interim director of the Dole Institute.
The former ambassadors will compare the Darfur situation to genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. Beeccroft was the head of mission of Bosnia and Herzegovina from July 2017 to July 2004. Brynn was an ambassador to Burkina Faso from 1990 to 1993 and Ghana from 1995 to 1998.
Amanda Applegate, Wichita junior and member of the Dole Institute of Politics Student Advisory
Board, said she wanted to know more about Darfur. Applegate said at past Dole Institute programs she would ask speakers for their opinions on Darfur. Applegate started the campus organization Fighting Ignorance of Global Humanitarian Threats when she was a freshman.
Applelegate said students were heavily involved in the Darfur issue because they thought they could make an impact. She said the program on Thursday would give interested students a different view of the subject. Students would definitely walk away having learned something, she said.
"What students will see and hear at the program isn't something they can see on the news at night," Applegate said.
Barbara Ballard, associate director of outreach, said this generation of students was more involved in the humanitarian side of activism.
She said students today looked at the world's atrocities like Darfur and wanted to help.
Earle said students kept asking for more on Darfur. This was an issue the world community started to take interest in, but he said students were the initiating factor. Earle said the Darfur program would have a good turnout because it was a very timely international issue. The United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon arrived in Sudan Monday to evaluate possible implementation of a peace agreement in Darfur. Last month the Security Council sent police and soldiers to the region to protect Darfur civilians.
The program Thursday is free and open to everyone. Anyone interested in the event may contact the Dole Institute at 864-4900.
—Edited by Rachael Gray
》 NATURAL DISASTERS
Hurricanes hit Central America
BY PAUL KIERNAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CABO SAN LUCAS, Mexico — Felix walloped Central America's remote Miskito coastline and Henriette slammed into resorts on the tip of Baja California as a record-setting hurricane season got even wilder Tuesday with twin storms making landfall on the same day.
While weakening rapidly, Felix's rains posed a danger to inland villages lying in flood-prone mountain valleys and to urban shantytowns susceptible to mudslides.
Felix roared ashore before dawn as a Category 5 storm along Nicaragua's remote northeast corner — an isolated, swampy jungle where people get around mainly by canoe. The 160 mph winds peeled roofs off shelters and a police station, knocked down electric poles and stripped humble homes to a few walls.
"The metal roofs are coming
off like straight razors and flying against the trees and homes," Lumberto Campbell, a local official in Puerto Cabezas, near Felix's Iand-fall, told Radio Ya shortly before his phone line went dead.
Emergency official Samuel Perez said most of the port's buildings were damaged and the dock was destroyed, although there were no reports of deaths.
By late afternoon, Felix had weakened to a Category 1 storm with winds of 80 mph. But forecasters were still worried that the tempest would do great damage inland over Honduras and Guatemala. Up to 25 inches of rain was expected to drench the mountain capitals of Tegucigalpa and Guatemala City, where shantytowns cling precariously to hillsides.
Towns across Honduras were flooding, and residents waded through waist-deep, garbage-strewn water in La Ceiba, on the northern coast.
In 1998, Hurricane Mitch parked
over the same region for days, causing deadly flooding and mudslides that killed nearly 11,000 people and left more than 8,000 missing.
"The major concern now shifts to the threat of torrential rains over the mountains of Central America," said senior hurricane specialist Richard Pasch at the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The Honduran government was draining water from behind dams in an attempt to reduce the flooding danger, and 10,000 people were being evacuated from high-risk areas of the capital, mostly from poor neighborhoods and street markets that ring the city.
"If they don't do it voluntarily, we will force them." Tegucigalpa Mayor Ricardo Alvarez said. "We have 500 soldiers and 200 police for just that purpose."
At 5 p.m. EDT, Felix's center was 110 miles west of Puerto Cabezas, moving westward at nearly 14 mph toward Honduras, the U.S. Hurricane Center said.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A man walks through a flooded street as Hurricane Henriette approaches Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Hurricane Felix slammed into central America while Henriette hit Baja California as a record-setting hurricane gets even with two winds storms make landfall on the sand dune.
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