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Storm wrecked crops, officials say

By Times Wires
Published December 15, 2007

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 

Tropical Storm Olga, which killed 27 people in the Caribbean, destroyed thousands of banana and plantain fields across the Dominican Republic, creating what could be its worst agricultural crisis in years, officials said Friday.

The Yaque River flooded more than 9,150 acres of banana fields, leading to an estimated $40-million in lost exports, banana producers said. Another 6,178 acres of plantain fields were ruined, Agricultural Minister Salvador Jimenez said.

The flooding killed at least 20 people after Dominican officials released water from the Tavera Dam late Tuesday. Officials feared the heavy rains from Olga would break the dam, causing a major catastrophe, but gave local residents little warning of the floodwaters headed their way.

Overall, Olga killed 24 in the Dominican Republic, two in Haiti and one in Puerto Rico.

WASHINGTON

Bush, Peru's leader sign trade accord

President Bush and his Peruvian counterpart, Alan Garcia, signed a free-trade agreement in a ceremony Friday.

The first bilateral trade deal approved by Congress this year is also the first under a new Democratic formula that requires negotiators to put labor rights and environmental standards on a par with tariff reductions, investor protections and other key elements of the accord.

The pact lowers trade tariffs on most U.S. exports to Peru. Annual bilateral trade with Peru is small - around $9-billion - but the White House hopes to use the pact to build momentum for pending trade agreements.

SOMALIA 

5 die in new attacks in nation's capital

Mortar shells rained down on Mogadishu for a second day Friday, killing at least five people, and the African Union's new representative for Somalia said he expected more peacekeepers to arrive starting this month.

More troops would bolster a peacekeeping force operating in one of the world's most violent and gun-infested cities.

Elsewhere

Philippines: Two rival Islamic separatist groups - the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Moro National Liberation Front - have agreed to reconcile by next year, a pledge that has raised hopes that the insurgency in the south of the country where the separatists have been fighting for self-determination since the 1970s might finally come to an end, officials said Friday.

Algeria: The United Nations raised the death toll of staffers killed in the car bombing of its Algiers headquarters to 17 on Friday, after rescue workers found more bodies buried under rubble. Tuesday's attack killed 37.

Lebanon: A farewell Friday to a general killed in a car bombing prompted calls for the country's divided politicians to agree on a new president and end a crisis.

Congo: Rival factions are forcibly recruiting hundreds of children and sending them to fight on the front lines of an escalating conflict in the east of the country, the United Nations said Friday.

Egypt: Ayman al-Zawahri, deputy to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, said in audiotape Friday that last month's U.S.-sponsored Mideast peace conference was a "betrayal" of the Palestinians.

[Last modified December 15, 2007, 02:03:21]