Great Travel News Syndicate

The 800-plus volcanic and coral islands that make up the Pacific nation of Fiji enjoy a tropical climate and host a significant tourism industry.

However, since 1987 racial and political tensions have been a steady source of instability and international isolation.

In 1987 a coup by indigenous Fijians overthrew the elected, Indian-dominated coalition. This triggered a series of adverse events, including the introduction – and subsequent withdrawal – of a constitution enshrining indigenous Fijian political supremacy.

A further coup in 2000, led by businessman George Speight, saw the country's first ethnic Indian prime minister, his cabinet and several MPs held hostage for several weeks.

These events caused great harm to the economy – the tourism industry in particular – and Fiji's international reputation.

Rancour over the 2000 coup persisted, with bitter divisions over plans to grant an amnesty to those behind it. The continuing tensions generated by these disputes culminated in a bloodless military takeover in 2006 – Fiji's fourth coup in 20 years.

In September 2009, Fiji was suspended from the Commonwealth over its lack of progress towards democracy. It was only the second full suspension in the organisation's history.

Fiji's population, which resides mostly on the two main islands of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, is divided between indigenous Fijians and Indo-Fijians, the descendents of indentured labourers brought from India.

The two groups were of roughly equal numbers until the mid-2000s, by which time coups and agitation had prompted thousands of Indo-Fijians to flee. Indigenous Fijians now make up small overall majority.

Mixing between the two groups is minimal, and informal segregation runs deep at almost every level of society.

There are also very small non-Indo-Fijian, non-Fijian minority communities, such as Chinese and Rotumans.

Although the former British colony relies heavily on the sugar and tourism industries for its foreign exchange, its economy is diverse. Gold, silver and limestone are mined, and there is a strong services sector and some light manufacturing.

Nonetheless, Fiji has been hampered by persistent trade and budget deficits, making it one of the world's largest per capita recipients of aid.

A negligence lawsuit filed in Florida last week says the behavior of officers or crew members of the Star Princess was “outrageous and, under the circumstances, so beyond all bounds of decency as to be regarded as shocking, atrocious and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”

Three passengers who were birdwatching on the ship alerted a crew member when they spotted Adrian Vasquez and his companions signaling for help from their fishing boat, the suit says.

Even though crew members “had clear knowledge that people were stranded in an open boat hundreds of miles from shore in the Pacific Ocean and desperately calling for their help,” the suit says, “they consciously ignored the emergency situation and did not deviate from their cruise.”

The fishing boat, Fifty Cents, had been adrift for 15 days when it crossed paths with the Star Princess on March 10, according to the lawsuit. At the time, all three fishermen aboard were alive.

Later that day, according to the lawsuit, 16-year-old Fernando Osorio died, “having lost all hope as the Star Princess steamed away.” Five days later, another fisherman on the broken-down boat, Oropeces Betancourt, 24, died at sea.

Two days after spotting the struggling fishermen, the three cruise ship passengers followed up with a ship officer, asking him what happened to the fishing boat after their report, according to the lawsuit.

“This officer did not have an answer for them and walked away without explanation,” the lawsuit says.

Princess Cruises spokeswoman Karen Candy did not comment on this specific allegation Monday, adding that the company was still investigating the incident.

Robert Dickman, a lawyer for Vasquez, speculated that one reason the Star Princess did not stop was because the cruise ship’s crew didn’t want to get off schedule for their next stop in Puntarenas, Costa Rica — and, thus, lose money.

The ship did arrive in Puntarenas on March 11, noted Candy, but she strongly denied that the crew decided not to help the fishermen for financial reasons.

“This is absolutely false,” she told CNN by e-mail.

Princess Cruises released a statement Monday saying it was “deeply saddened that two Panamanian men perished at sea” and “very sorry for the tragic loss of life.”

“Because of what we suspect was a case of unfortunate miscommunication, regretfully the captain of the Star Princess was never notified of the passengers’ concern. Had he been advised, he would have had the opportunity to respond, as he has done numerous times throughout his career,” the statement said. “This is an upsetting and emotional issue for us all, as no employee onboard a Princess ship would purposefully ignore someone in distress. It is our ethical and maritime responsibility to provide assistance to any vessel in need, and it is not an uncommon occurrence for our ships to be involved in a rescue at sea. In fact, we have done so more than 30 times over the last decade.”

Jeff Gilligan, one of the cruise ship passengers who said he saw the stranded fisherman and alerted the cruise ship’s crew, told CNN last month that he took a picture of the fishing boat from about two miles away.

“It’s just a horrible thing. I’m sick about it,” he said.

He saw the tiny vessel through high-powered scopes, he said. It appeared not to be moving, he said, but the men onboard were.

“We were looking through powerful spotting scopes before I took those photographs, and we — the three of us — couldn’t come up with any reasonable explanation why somebody would have been flagging with two different colors of cloth, clothing or whatever it was, to our ship from perhaps two miles away on a little boat that wasn’t moving, over 100 miles from the coast,” he said.

At the time, he and his fellow passengers thought the cruise ship crew members would do something.

“We fully expected the ship to turn around or to send a tender boat out to investigate … our suspicions,” he said.

Vasquez’s lawsuit seeks compensation for physical, emotional and psychological injuries that it alleges he suffered as a result of the conduct of cruise line employees.

The story of Vasquez’s survival gained international coverage when the Ecuadorian navy rescued him north of the Galapagos Islands in March.

The trio’s February 24 fishing trip had started out well, according to Vasquez’s mother, Nilsa de la Cruz. The three caught plenty of fish, she said. But the boat’s engine died without warning and, with no tools and scant navigational experience, there was little the trio could do, de la Cruz told CNN.

Ecuadorian Rear Adm. Freddy Garcia Calle said that at the time he was found, the 18-year-old showed “severe signs of dehydration and lack of nutrition.”

He said the survivor had thrown his friends’ bodies into the ocean “because they had become badly decomposed.”

CNN’s Brian Todd, Dugald McConnell, Catherine E. Shoichet and Rafael Romo contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In what would be a major breakthrough, Pakistan and the United States appeared on Tuesday to be on the verge of clinching an agreement to reopen ground supply lines into Afghanistan, a U.S. official said, as Pakistan confirmed its president will attend a summit of NATO leaders this weekend in Chicago.

Ties between the United States and Pakistan have been severely strained over the past year, fuelling speculation Islamabad might be excluded from the high-level NATO talks on Afghanistan’s future because of the failure to reach an agreement on the supply lines, which have been shut for months.

Pakistan closed down the supply lines for the Afghan war effort following the NATO air strike in November that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers. That strike fanned national anger over everything from covert CIA drone strikes to the U.S. incursion into Pakistani territory last year to kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Nadeem Hotiana, an embassy spokesman, confirmed that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari will attend the May 20-21 summit.

“This meeting will underline the strong commitment of the international community to the people of Afghanistan and to its future. Pakistan has an important role to play in that future,” NATO spokeswoman Oana Lungescu said in a statement.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is also expected to attend the meeting, where NATO nations will hone their plans to withdraw most of their troops by the end of 2014. As the Western presence ebbs, Pakistan, whose tribal areas are home to Taliban and other militants, will be key in shaping Afghanistan’s future.

But the supply routes have been a major sticking point.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the deal now appeared almost certain, even while stressing that nothing had been finalized and surprises were always possible.

The official added that the U.S. military might see some higher costs to receive goods in Afghanistan than it did before Pakistan cut off the supply lines, but did not elaborate.

The United States and Pakistan, which now says it expects the routes to reopen, have long been expected to strike a deal that would include tariffs on NATO supplies going into Afghanistan.

After weeks of talks between U.S. and Pakistani officials in Islamabad, a Pentagon spokesman on Tuesday said he hoped that would occur in the “very near future.”

In a statement, Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani’s office said ministers had backed a proposal to allow NATO to send only non-lethal equipment into Afghanistan on Pakistani roads.

“It was also decided that the military authorities should negotiate fresh border ground rules with NATO … to ensure that (such border) incidents do not reoccur,” the statement said.

(Additional reporting by Sebastian Moffett in Brussels and Sheree Sardar in Islamabad; Editing by Robin Pomeroy, Cynthia Osterman and Lisa Shumaker)

Ethiopia is Africa's oldest independent country and its second largest in terms of population. Apart from a five-year occupation by Mussolini's Italy, it has never been colonised.

Ethiopia has suffered periodic droughts and famines that lead to a long civil conflict in the 20th Century and a border war with Eritrea.

Eritrea gained independence in 1993 following a referendum. Poor border demarcation developed into military conflict and full-scale war in the late 1990s in which tens of thousands of people were killed.

A fragile truce has held, but the UN says ongoing disputes over the demarcation of the border threaten peace.

Ethiopia is one of Africa's poorest states. Almost two-thirds of its people are illiterate. The economy revolves around agriculture, which in turn relies on rainfall. The country is one of Africa's leading coffee producers.

Many Ethiopians depend on food aid from abroad. In 2004 the government began a drive to move more than two million people away from the arid highlands of the east in an attempt to provide a lasting solution to food shortages.

At the end of 2006 Ethiopia sent between 5,000 and 10,000 troops into Somalia to support forces of the weak transitional government there and helped to oust the Islamists who had controlled southern Somalia for six months.

But, despite initial successes, the Ethiopians were unable to break the power of the Islamists, who gradually began to win back lost territory.

Ethiopia's presence in Somalia formally ended in early 2009, when it pulled its troops under an agreement between the transitional Somali government and moderate Islamists.

A sparsely-populated North Atlantic island, Iceland is famous for its hot springs, geysers and active volcanoes. Lava fields cover much of the land and hot water is pumped from under the ground to supply much of the country's heating.

Iceland became an independent republic in 1944 and went on to become one of the world's most prosperous economies. However, the collapse of the banking system in 2008 exposed that prosperity as having been built on a dangerously vulnerable economic model.

In recent years Iceland enjoyed a standard of living that was among the highest in the world. Its prosperity initially rested on the fishing industry, but with the gradual contraction of this sector the Icelandic economy developed into new areas.

By the beginning of the 21st century, Iceland had come to epitomise the global credit boom. Its banks expanded dramatically overseas and foreign money poured into the country, fuelling exceptional growth.

Before the global credit crunch took hold, Icelandic banks had foreign assets worth about 10 times the country's GDP, with debts to match, and Icelandic businesses also made major investments abroad.

The global financial crisis of 2008 exposed the Icelandic economy's dependence on the banking sector, leaving it particularly vulnerable to collapse.

In October 2008, the government took over control of all three of the country's major banks in an effort to stabilise the financial system. Shortly after this, Iceland became the first western country to apply to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for emergency financial aid since 1976.

The economy shrank by 6.8% in 2009, though by the end of 2010 there were some signs of an improvement, with the first growth recorded for two years.

In the long term, Iceland's well educated workforce and its extensive and as yet largely untapped natural resources are likely to provide the key to its recovery from the economic crisis, though concerns have been raised over the potential environmental impact of developing the latter.

Environmentalists have protested that a major aluminium smelter project and associated geothermal and hydroelectric schemes were being pushed through at the expense of fragile wildlife habitats.

The country has extended its territorial waters several times since the end of the 1950s to protect its fishermen and their main catch of Atlantic cod from foreign fleets.

Traditionally a whaling nation, Iceland abandoned the practice in 1989 in line with an international moratorium. It later resumed scientific whaling, intended to investigate the impact of whales on fish stocks, and in 2006 it announced a return to commercial hunts. The move was condemned by environmental groups.

Although it has no armed forces, Iceland is a member of Nato, and US troops were stationed in the country from World War II until 2006. In 1985 Iceland declared itself a nuclear-free zone.

Icelanders have for a long time been resistant to the idea of joining the European Union, though the country is a member of the Schengen border-free travel zone and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).

Attitudes towards the EU slowly softened, and in July 2009 the country formally applied for EU accession.

The government hopes that the path to EU membership will be completed by 2012, but there are a number of obstacles that could disrupt this timetable.

Chief among them is a debt dispute with Britain and the Netherlands arising from the 2008 collapse of the Icelandic banking sector, which hit British and Dutch investors hard. However, efforts to resolve this appeared to be making some headway by the end of 2010.

The debt issue has in its turn led many Icelanders to question whether EU membership is such a good idea after all, and an opinion poll conducted shortly before formal accession talks began in July 2010 showed that a majority was in favour of withdrawing the country's application.

Other areas that have the capacity to derail the negotiations are Iceland's whale hunting industry and its insistence on maintaining its fishing limits – an issue that precipitated the "Cod Wars" of the 1950s and 1970s.

Iceland's announcement that it was unilaterally increasing its mackeral fishing quota for 2011 by nearly 17,000 tonnes looked set to increase tensions with the EU and Norway.

Marissa Alexander unsuccessfully tried to use Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law to derail the prosecution, but a jury in March convicted her of aggravated assault after just 12 minutes of deliberation.

The case, which was prosecuted by the same state attorney who is handling the Trayvon Martin case, has gained the attention of civil rights leaders who say the African-American woman was persecuted because of her race.

After the sentencing, Rep. Corrine Brown confronted State Attorney Angela Corey in the hallway, accusing her of being overzealous, according to video from CNN affiliate WJXT.

“There is no justification for 20 years,” Brown told Corey during an exchange frequently interrupted by onlookers. “All the community was asking for was mercy and justice,” she said.

Corey said she had offered Alexander a plea bargain that would have resulted in a three-year prison sentence, but Alexander chose to take the case to a jury trial, where a conviction would carry a mandatory sentence under a Florida law known as “10-20-life.”

The law mandates increased penalties for some felonies, including aggravated assault, in which a gun is carried or used.

Corey said the case deserved to be prosecuted because Alexander fired in the direction of a room where two children were standing.

Alexander said she was attempting to flee her husband, Rico Gray, on August 1, 2010, when she picked up a handgun and fired a shot into a wall.

She said her husband had read cell phone text messages that she had written to her ex-husband, got angry and tried to strangle her.

She said she escaped and ran to the garage, intending to drive away. But, she said, she forgot her keys, so she picked up her gun and went back into the house. She said her husband threatened to kill her, so she fired one shot.

“I believe when he threatened to kill me, that’s what he was absolutely going to do,” she said. “That’s what he intended to do. Had I not discharged my weapon at that point, I would not be here.”

Alexander’s attorneys tried to use the state law that allows people to use potentially deadly force anywhere they feel reasonably threatened with serious harm or death.

But a previous judge in the case rejected the request, saying Alexander’s decision to go back into the house was not consistent with someone in fear for her safety, according to the Florida Times Union newspaper.

A jury convicted Alexander in March and Judge James Daniel denied her request for a new trial in April.

Daniel handed down the sentence Friday after an emotional sentencing hearing during which Alexander’s parents, 11-year-old daughter and pastor spoke on her behalf.

Several people had to be escorted from the courtroom after breaking out singing and chanting about a perceived lack of justice in the case, but Daniel made a point to say that he had no choice under state law.

“Under the state’s 10-20-life law, a conviction for aggravated assault where a firearm has been discharged carries a minimum and maximum sentence of 20 years without regarding to any extenuating or mitigating circumstances that may be present, such as those in this case,” Daniel said.

Brown, the Jacksonville congresswoman, told reporters after the sentencing that the case was a product of “institutional racism.”

“She was overcharged by the prosecutor. Period,” Brown said. “She never should have been charged.”

Brown has been more complimentary about Corey’s work in the Trayvon Martin case, where her office filed second degree murder charges against neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the February 26 death of the unarmed African-American teen-ager.

That case provoked nationwide protests demanding Zimmerman’s arrest after an initial police investigation released him under the “stand your ground” law.

A Greek-owned oil tanker has been hijacked by pirates in the Arabian Sea, the ship's operator says.

The Liberian-flagged Smyrni, carrying 135,000 tonnes of oil, was seized off the coast of Oman, the company said.

The company said it lost contact with the crew at 11:50 GMT on Thursday. The tanker is reported to be heading for Somalia.

Pirates based on the coast of northern Somalia prey on vital international shipping lanes in the area.

The hijacking is thought to have happened about 630 km from the Omani coast.

This was only the second voyage for the tanker, which first set to sea in 2011.

It is reported to have a crew of about 15 on board, composed of Indians and Filipinos.

The tanker's capture comes after a recent fall in the number of hijackings in the region.

The drop has been attributed to plans by several countries to allow ships using their flags to sail with armed guards.

It has not been reported, however, whether the Smyrni had such guards on board.

EU naval ships are currently on patrol off the Horn of Africa in an effort to protect vessels.

Pirates in Somalia, which has no effective central authority, often receive millions of dollars in ransom in return for hijacked ships.

According to the International Maritime Organisation, 17 ships and close to 300 crew are currently held by Somali pirates.

Two people have been arrested in the United States and charged with trying to extort money from the singer Stevie Wonder.

Alpha Lorenzo Walker and his girlfriend Tamara Eileen Diaz threatened to reveal "embarrassing information" about the star, officials in Los Angeles said.

Both deny the accusations and are in custody awaiting a preliminary hearing on 16 May.

A judge will decide if there is enough evidence for the two to stand trial.

LA district attorney spokeswoman Jane Robison said that Mr Walker contacted Stevie Wonder's representatives and claimed to have embarrassing information about the musician.

Detectives organised a sting operation and the pair were arrested, she said.

Officials said Mr Walker had identified himself as a relative of Stevie Wonder.

Police have not released any additional details about the investigation.

Juventus’ players hold the trophy after winning their 28th Italian Serie A title. (Reuters/Giorgio Perottino)

By REUTERS

Published: May 13, 2012 20:06
Updated: May 13, 2012 20:10

MILAN: Alessandro Del Piero, almost certainly playing his last home game for Juventus at the age of 37, celebrated with a goal as the Serie A champions beat Atalanta 3-1 on Sunday to finish their campaign unbeaten.

Juventus became the second team only to win Serie A without losing a game after Fabio Capello’s AC Milan in 1991-92 and the first to achieve the feat in a 38-match season.

Filippo Inzaghi, 38 and playing his last league game for AC Milan after 11 seasons, scored the winner in a 2-1 victory for the runners-up against relegated Novara.

Del Piero curled the ball in from the edge of the penalty area in the 28th minute after Luca Marrone had fired the opener for Juve, who clinched the title one week ago.

An own goal by Stephan Lichtsteiner put a slight dampener on Juve’s celebrations in the 83rd minute before defender Andrea Barzagli converted a stoppage time penalty.

Barzagli had come on to the pitch one minute earlier following an injury to Giorgio Chiellini and became the 20th Juventus player to score a league goal this season.

Club president Andrea Agnelli said last year that Del Piero’s contract would not be renewed when it expires at the end of the season, although he is under pressure from supporters to backtrack.

Del Piero, who has been used sparingly by coach Antonio Conte, could still feature in one more match for Juventus when they play Milan in the Italian Cup final on May 20.

Milan, where midfielder Gennaro Gattuso and defender Alessandro Nesta were also playing their last home games after announcing they would leave the club, fell behind to a Santiago Garcia goal in the 20th minute.

Defender Matthieu Flamini equalized in the 56th minute before Inzaghi, who came on midway through the second half, grabbed the winner in the 82nd minute, firing in a half-volley from Clarence Seedorf’s pass.

Tough-tackling Gattuso left the San Siro pitch in tears as he ended 13 seasons at the club.

Juventus finished with 84 points, four ahead of Milan, with the two teams taking Italy’s places in the group stage of the Champions League next season.

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