BOGOTA: The top commander of Colombia’s largest rebel movement was hospitalized Sunday following a stroke and remains in intensive care, just days after his group handed over the last of its individual weapons as part of a historic peace deal.
Rodrigo Londono, better known by his nom de guerre Timochenko, checked himself into a hospital emergency room in the city of Villavicencio shortly after 8 a.m. with slurred speech and numbness in his arm, doctors said in a news conference. They said he remains in intensive care as a precautionary measure but his speech and mobility have already recovered 90 percent from what they described as a temporary blockage of blood to his brain.
Doctors said if there are no complications the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia could be released in the next 24 to 48 hours.
“Of course he’s conscious and making jokes,” another rebel leader known by his alias Pastor Alape said at the press conference.
Londono, who is in his 50s, has suffered a number of health scares of late, the result partly of a lifetime in jungle trenches. Recently the FARC confirmed that in 2015 Londono suffered a heart attack during peace negotiations in Cuba, and earlier this year, after the deal was inked, had another unspecified medical setback for which he received treatment on the communist-run island.
Alape said initially Londono brushed off the symptoms and had to be convinced by his comrades to undergo medical evaluation.
“Thank you to everyone who is concerned about my health,” Londono said on Twitter. “Everything is going well. I also thank the medical team for their care.”
Londono’s hospitalization comes less than a week after Colombia reached a major milestone on its road to peace with the FARC rebels relinquishing some of their last weapons and declaring an end to their half-century insurgency.
The historic step was taken by Londono along with President Juan Manuel Santos at a demobilization camp in Colombia’s eastern jungles near Villavicencio.
Though hundreds of FARC caches filled with larger weapons and explosives are still being cleared out, the United Nations has certified that all individual firearms and weapons, except for a small number needed to safeguard the soon-to-disband camps, have been collected.
The step put Colombia closer to turning a page on Latin America’s longest-running conflict, which caused at least 250,000 deaths, left 60,000 people missing and displaced more than 7 million.
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Top Colombian rebel leader in intensive care after stroke
Top Colombian rebel leader in intensive care after stroke
Beetles block mining of Europe’s biggest rare earths deposit
ULEFOSS: As Europe seeks to curb its dependence on China for rare earths, plans to mine the continent’s biggest deposit have hit a roadblock over fears that mining operations could harm endangered beetles, mosses and mushrooms.
A two-hour drive southwest of Oslo, in the former mining community of Ulefoss home to 2,000 people, lies the Fensfeltet treasure: an estimated 8.8 million tons of rare earths.
These elements, used to make magnets crucial to the auto, electronics and defense industries, have been defined by the European Union as critical raw materials.
“You have rare earths in your pocket when you carry a smartphone,” said Tor Espen Simonsen, a local official at Rare Earths Norway, the company that owns the extraction rights.
“You’re driving with rare earths when you’re at the wheel of an electric car, and you need rare earths to make defense materiel like F-35 jets,” he added.
“Today, European industry imports almost all of the rare earths it needs — 98 percent — from one single country: China,” he added.
“We are therefore in a situation where Europe must procure more of these raw materials on its own,” he said.
In its Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) aimed at securing Europe’s supply, the EU has set as an objective that at least 10 percent of its needs should be extracted within the bloc by 2030.
No rare earth deposits are currently being mined in Europe.
- ‘Rush slowly’ -
Due to environmental concerns, Rare Earths Norway has already been forced to push back its schedule. Now it aims to begin mining in the first half of the 2030s.
Its so-called “invisible mine” project is intended to limit the mine’s environmental footprint. It plans to use underground extraction and crushing — as opposed to an open-pit mine — and re-inject a large part of the mining residue.
But the location of the mineral processing park, where ore extracted underground would be handled and pre-processed, has posed a problem.
The company had planned to transport the minerals on an underground conveyor belt emerging above ground behind a hill, in an area out of sight from the town and largely covered by ancient natural forests, rich in biodiversity.
But experts who examined that site found 78 fauna and flora species on Norway’s “red list” — species at risk of extinction to varying degrees. They included saproxylic beetles (which depend on deadwood), wych elms, common ash trees, 40 types of mushrooms, and various mosses.
As a result, the county governor formally opposed the location during a recent consultation process.
Adding to concerns was the fact that disposing of waste rock would take place within a protected water system.
“We need to start mining as quickly as possible so we can bypass polluting value chains originating in China,” said Martin Molvaer, an adviser at Bellona, a Norwegian tech-focused environmental NGO.
“But things should not move so quickly that we destroy a large part of nature in the process: we must therefore rush slowly,” he said.
- ‘Lesser of two evils’ -
Faced with such objections, the municipality has been forced to review the plans and take a closer look at alternate locations for the above-ground part of the mine.
While there is another less environmentally sensitive zone, neither the mining developers nor the local population favor it.
“We accept that we will have to sacrifice a significant part of our nature,” local mayor Linda Thorstensen said.
“It comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils.”
Thorstensen supports the mine project, given the small town has seen jobs and young people move elsewhere for decades. It is “a new adventure,” she said.
“A lot of people live outside the job market, many receive social welfare assistance or disability pensions. So we need jobs and opportunities,” she said.
In the almost-empty streets of Ulefoss, locals were cautiously optimistic.
“We want a dynamic that makes it possible for us to become wealthy, so that the community benefits. We need money and more residents,” Inger Norendal, a 70-year-old retired teacher, told AFP.
“But mining obviously has its downsides too.”
A two-hour drive southwest of Oslo, in the former mining community of Ulefoss home to 2,000 people, lies the Fensfeltet treasure: an estimated 8.8 million tons of rare earths.
These elements, used to make magnets crucial to the auto, electronics and defense industries, have been defined by the European Union as critical raw materials.
“You have rare earths in your pocket when you carry a smartphone,” said Tor Espen Simonsen, a local official at Rare Earths Norway, the company that owns the extraction rights.
“You’re driving with rare earths when you’re at the wheel of an electric car, and you need rare earths to make defense materiel like F-35 jets,” he added.
“Today, European industry imports almost all of the rare earths it needs — 98 percent — from one single country: China,” he added.
“We are therefore in a situation where Europe must procure more of these raw materials on its own,” he said.
In its Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) aimed at securing Europe’s supply, the EU has set as an objective that at least 10 percent of its needs should be extracted within the bloc by 2030.
No rare earth deposits are currently being mined in Europe.
- ‘Rush slowly’ -
Due to environmental concerns, Rare Earths Norway has already been forced to push back its schedule. Now it aims to begin mining in the first half of the 2030s.
Its so-called “invisible mine” project is intended to limit the mine’s environmental footprint. It plans to use underground extraction and crushing — as opposed to an open-pit mine — and re-inject a large part of the mining residue.
But the location of the mineral processing park, where ore extracted underground would be handled and pre-processed, has posed a problem.
The company had planned to transport the minerals on an underground conveyor belt emerging above ground behind a hill, in an area out of sight from the town and largely covered by ancient natural forests, rich in biodiversity.
But experts who examined that site found 78 fauna and flora species on Norway’s “red list” — species at risk of extinction to varying degrees. They included saproxylic beetles (which depend on deadwood), wych elms, common ash trees, 40 types of mushrooms, and various mosses.
As a result, the county governor formally opposed the location during a recent consultation process.
Adding to concerns was the fact that disposing of waste rock would take place within a protected water system.
“We need to start mining as quickly as possible so we can bypass polluting value chains originating in China,” said Martin Molvaer, an adviser at Bellona, a Norwegian tech-focused environmental NGO.
“But things should not move so quickly that we destroy a large part of nature in the process: we must therefore rush slowly,” he said.
- ‘Lesser of two evils’ -
Faced with such objections, the municipality has been forced to review the plans and take a closer look at alternate locations for the above-ground part of the mine.
While there is another less environmentally sensitive zone, neither the mining developers nor the local population favor it.
“We accept that we will have to sacrifice a significant part of our nature,” local mayor Linda Thorstensen said.
“It comes down to choosing the lesser of two evils.”
Thorstensen supports the mine project, given the small town has seen jobs and young people move elsewhere for decades. It is “a new adventure,” she said.
“A lot of people live outside the job market, many receive social welfare assistance or disability pensions. So we need jobs and opportunities,” she said.
In the almost-empty streets of Ulefoss, locals were cautiously optimistic.
“We want a dynamic that makes it possible for us to become wealthy, so that the community benefits. We need money and more residents,” Inger Norendal, a 70-year-old retired teacher, told AFP.
“But mining obviously has its downsides too.”
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