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Visiting Turkmenistani President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov confirmed here Thursday that Bulgaria would be able to buy two or more billion cubic meters of natural gas per year from his country, Bulgarian President, Georgi Parvanov, told a joint news conference after meeting with his Turkemnistani counterpart.

Turkmenistan is seen as a possible gas supplier for the Nabuccopipeline but it has to also balance relations with its neighbor Russia who are not supporters of Nabucco.

Parvanov, one of the pipeline’s most vocal supporters, visited the Turkmenistani capital Ashgabat last December, seeking a Turkmen commitment to becoming an energy supplier for the pipeline.

After a brief stay in Sofia, Berdimuhamedov is expected to visit Ankara for talks with Turkish President Abdullah Gul.

The two Presidents have issued a joint statement announcing their commitment to deepening the bilateral relations and reaffirming the bilateral arrangements achieved in the field of energy.

Bulgarian President, Georgi Parvanov (R) and visiting Turkmenistani President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov shake hands in Sofia, Bulgaria, on Aug. 27, 2009. (Xinhua/Bulgarian News Agency)
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Parvanov thanked his guest for his assessment of Bulgaria as a key factor for Turkmenistan and as a gateway to Europe.

Parvanov stressed that the big issue is about the routes of natural gas, which should be provided with the participation and the efforts of many countries on the way from Turkmenistan to the Balkans and Europe.

Berdymuhamedow noted the support of the Bulgarian side for Turkmenistan’s efforts involving the creation of mechanisms for secure and stable transit of energy sources for the international markets.

According to the presidents, bilateral trade is not satisfactory and they discussed opportunities for its increase and for increasing the variety of products in the field of food industry, construction and energy.

The heads of state underscored the need of establishing an intergovernmental economic commission. Berdymuhamedow noted that they had agreed to support the development of commercial and economic cooperation, joint ventures and provide direct relations between economic entities of the two countries.

As an EU member Bulgaria will be a factor for much more active policy of the union in respect to the region of Central Asia and Turkmenistan, Parvanov said.

He pointed out that Bulgaria values that Turkmenistan’s role in Central Asia and on a global scale in the fight against international terrorism, drug trafficking and illegal emigration.

In addition to the joint statement of the presidents, the two sides also signed agreements on reciprocal revocation of the visa requirement for holders of diplomatic and service passports and on cooperation in tourism.

After meeting with Parvanov, Berdymuhamedow also conferred with National Assembly Chair Tsetska Tsacheva and Prime Minister Boiko Borissov.

The 21st U.N. Conference on Disarmament Issues opened Wednesday in the central Japanese city of Niigata to discuss issues concerning nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation.

Attended by some 90 nuclear experts and government officials from 21 countries, the gathering urges nations of the world to take major steps toward creating a world without nuclear weapons and will debate ways to “translate visions of a nuclear-weapon-free world into concrete actions.”

Major issues such as the denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula, the system of nuclear non-proliferation and conventional disarmament were also on the agenda of the three-day conference.

Hannelore Hoppe, director and deputy to the U.N. High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, was present at the meeting and delivered a speech in the opening session.

Initiated in 1989, the annual conference in Japan is organized by the U.N. Office for Disarmament Affairs through its Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Asia and the Pacific.

Profits of companies controlled by China’s central government continued to fall in the first seven months, but at a slower pace, the state-owned enterprise (SOE) watchdog said Tuesday.

The 136 SOEs directly controlled by the central government generated total profits of 398.35 billion yuan (58.31 billion U.S. dollars) from January to July, down 20.9 percent year on year.

The decline was 5.3 percentage points lower than the January-June figure, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).

The profits for July alone were 80.98 billion yuan, a rise of 7.7 percent from June.

Sales revenue in the first seven months fell 6.2 percent from the same period a year ago to 6.39 trillion yuan. The decrease was0.1 percentage points lower than the first half.

Panamanian Foreign Minister Juan Carlos Varela reaffirmed Friday his country’s decision to withdraw from the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN) and asked other member countries to respect it.

“Panama’s decision is a taken decision, we began the process in a formal and respectful way of the diplomatic practice,” Varela told the press.

“We will not accept that any deputy from the PARLACEN, by any means, question the sovereign decision by the Panamanian President, who was elected by the Panamanian people,” Varela said.

Panama has submitted a letter of intention to quit PARLACEN Wednesday to the organization’s secretary-general as well as informing foreign ministers in El Salvador and Guatemala.

Varela said that Panama’s withdrawal from the PARLACEN was a campaign promised by Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, who won the presidential election on May 3 with more than 60 percent of the votes.

He alleged that some cases in the PARLACEN had crossed the limits of political decency, which did not benefit Panama.

“PARLACEN has been surrounded by issues of immunity and exonerations on vehicles imports, on people who even have been related to drug trafficking,” Varela said.

“Unfortunately, PARLACEN has been involved in scandals which do not share the transparency promise that President Martinelli made to his country.”

Varela once said PARLACEN largely was a consultative body and had contributed little to resolving the region’s problems. He said about 95 percent of Panama’s residents supported the country’s resignation.

However, Varela said that the withdrawal would not be an obstacle to strengthening the Central American integration in the commercial and economic fields.

“We have been clear with the foreign ministers of the countries we visited. Panama was a strong advocate of Central American integration and it will be part of the (region’s) dialogue with European Union to reach a commercial agreement,” he said.

PARLACEN, founded in 1991, is based in Guatemala City and has 20 deputies from six member states. Each member must pay 1.7 million U.S. dollars annually to keep the group running.

At least 10 people — including three French tourists — were killed in flood and landslides caused by typhoon Morakot (locally known as “Kiko”) in the northern Philippines, the authorities said on Friday.

The French nationals, two men and a woman, were found Friday morning drowned along a river in the province of Tarlac, said Glenn Rabonza, executive officer of the Philippine National Disaster Coordinating Council. Government officials earlier identified two of the dead as Canadians but later said they were mistaken.

The tourists were swept away in a flashflood along the O’Donnel River Thursday afternoon amid strong rains.

The victims, among others, went there for a trek to Mount Pinatubo’s crater. Pinatubo is a volcano about 90 kilometers north of Manila on the Philippine island of Luzon. The volcano erupted in June 1991 after more than five centuries of slumber. The O’ Donnel River is fed by Mount Pinatubo’s watersheds and snakes down30 kilometers before draining to another river in the lowland.

With the three French nationals, two Filipino tourist guides –who tried to rescue their guests– were also killed in the flood.

Six other French tourists were injured, Rabonza said in a statement.

Morakot did not make a landfall in the Philippines, but gusty winds and torrential rains spawned by the typhoon triggered landslides in the northern city of Baguio, one of which crashed into a shanty house and killed three children of a family. The parents and the eldest son survived.

Two other people died in Zambales province amid the bad weather, according to the statement.

A total of 5,552 families or 28,629 persons were affected by the typhoon, some of whom have been evacuated, said the disaster-relief officer.

Chinese weather forecasters said that the strong typhoon was 180 kilometers southeast of Taiwan, China as of 10 a.m. Friday local time (0200 GMT), packing winds up to 144 kilometers per hour in the center.

It is moving at 15 kilometers per hour northwestward, and is expected to hit Taiwan Friday evening, and would land in northern Fujian and central Zhejiang sometime from Saturday afternoon to Sunday morning.

A pregnant woman with asthma died from the A/H1N1 flu, raising the death toll from the deadly disease in the country to four, the Health Ministry said in a statement Friday.

The 22-year-old woman died on Aug. 7 in a hospital in the central-southern province of Herrera, Health Minister Franklin Vergara said.

There have been four deaths caused by the A/H1N1 flu in Panama, including a nine-month baby, a three-year-old boy and a 72-year-old with Alzheimer’s disease.

Panama has so far confirmed 622 cases of the flu, of which 593 have recovered. The epidemic broke out mainly in the capital of Panama City.

Panama confirmed its first case of A/H1N1 flu on May 8.

Five people in central Nepal have recently died of an unknown disease, state-run newspaper The Rising Nepal reported on Monday.

Public Health Officer Binay Manadhar of the Sindhuli district of Central Development Region, some 80 km east of Nepali capital Kathmandu, had said five local people died of diarrhea, but later a team of health workers reached the site and said the disease was not diarrhea but an unidentified disease.

“We are trying to trace the disease with the symptoms such as high fever, bleeding from nose and mouth, and difficulty in breathing,” the officer said.

Two people of Kalpabrikeha and three others of Kaneshwore in the district, died of the unknown disease on Friday and Saturday. Media reports said that some 100 people have been affected by the disease.

The disease is under control, according to health workers.

Chinese share prices were down 0.24 percent by midday Monday with banks and property developers leading the fall amid renewed concerns over liquidity, dealers said.

The Shanghai Composite Index, which covers both A and B shares, was down 7.69 points at 3,253.00.

The drop came despite Premier Wen Jiabao reiterating over the weekend that China would maintain a pro-active fiscal policy and moderately loose monetary policy.

“Investors are shrugging off Wen’s remark because the growth in new yuan loans in the remaining months… will surely slow down,” Central China Securities analyst Zhang Gang told Dow Jones Newswires.

The Shanghai A-share index shed 8.17 points, or 0.24 percent, to 3,414.65, while the Shenzhen A-share index gained 1.67 points, or 0.15 percent, to 1,144.17.

Top U.S. diplomat on Thursday laid a wreath at a Nairobi memorial park for the victims of the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

Visiting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton laid the wreath, 11 years after suicide bombers targeted the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, in one of the most shocking attacks in 1998.

Speaking at the memorial site, Clinton said Washington should remember the 1998 U.S. embassy attacks to renew their resolve against terrorism, adding that Kenya and the United States should continue partnering to ensure such attacks are not repeated.

“This is an opportunity to renew our resolve and to ensure that we do all that we can so that these attacks don’t take more innocent lives in the future,” she said.

Clinton said Washington was open to work with any countries willing to stop similar violence.

“We also renew our commitment to peace and reconciliation to all who renounce the path of violence,” said Clinton who was accompanied by her Kenyan counterpart Moses Wetangula.

Wetangula expressed the east African nation’s commitment to fighting terrorism. He said the government will not be cowed by the 1998 attacks in Nairobi and Kikambala, Mombasa in 2002.

The official also said Kenya will continue working with the United States to share intelligence and resources to fight global terrorism to ensure such attacks never repeat themselves again.

Clinton later addressed Kenyan civil society and the youth at the University of Nairobi where she said the United States will impose sanctions on the countries funding terrorist organizations in Somalia.

Clinton termed the many refugees holed up in camps in northern Kenya and Nairobi as “a tragedy”. “There is a lot that Kenyans have to worry about,” she said.

Kenya is the first stop of Clinton’s African tour that will also take her to South Africa, Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Liberia and Cape Verde.

It was August 7, 1998 when a yellow van carrying five men drove to the underground garage’s entrance of the embassy, which was located in central Nairobi and the surrounding streets and office buildings were crowded with people then, and set off a bomb that shattered the embassy, demolishing the nearby Ufundi Coop House and gutted the 17-story Cooperative Bank.

The blast killed a total of 213 people, including 12 Americans and 34 local embassy staff, prompting Washington to relocate its embassy outside the city center.

Domestic carriers witnessed an increase in seat kilometer utilization and ticket prices as the tourism industry entered the traditional peak season and fears over the H1N1 flu faded, with analysts saying the aviation sector was likely to report better performance in the third quarter.

“Boosted by the domestic aviation industry’s revival and seasonal demand pickup, listed carriers’ profit will substantially improve in the third quarter,” said Li Lei, an industry analyst with CITIC China Securities.

The lower cost of jet fuel has helped a lot in cost saving, said Ma Ying, an industry analyst with CITIC Securities. “Major business cost of listed airlines dropped by 11 percent in the first six months over last year. Among the cost reduction, average jet fuel cost slipped to 4,167 yuan per ton, a fall of 41 percent from last year,” Ma said.

Research by CITIC Securities showed that jet fuel prices would be capped within a limited range. Crude oil for September delivery was at $71.28 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange yesterday. A day earlier, it rose 3.1 percent to $71.58, the highest since June 12.

Petroleum prices have climbed 60 percent this year. But it has shrunk by 50 percent compared to last year’s record high of $145.18 per barrel.

Major airlines’ interim profit indicated that the domestic aviation market was looking up. The industry made a profit of 4.86 billion yuan in the first half, a record high over the last three years. It made an aggregated profit of 4.62 billion yuan in first half of 2008, and a net loss of 350 million yuan during the same period in 2007.

Both passenger flow and ticket prices rebounded in the first half. Passenger flow increased by 15 percent in the first six months compared to a year earlier. During the bustling travel season in July, August and September, passenger flow will increase further, said Yao Jun, an analyst with China Merchants Securities.

Growing demand has made many agencies cancel deep-discount tickets. According to Michael Peng, a sales manager with Shanghai Business International Travel Service Co Ltd, it was becoming harder to get a discounts of more than 20 percent on any flight.

“The swelling demand from individual travelers has pushed up average ticket prices. At the moment, most tickets are sold at full price,” said Peng.

Although the official figure of passenger flow for July hasn’t been put out yet, Li expected a growth of 27 percent over 2008. “The same period last year was when the Beijing Olympic Games took place. As China imposed many restrictions on air travel at that time, there appeared to be a demand slump,” said Li.

The current price of airline shares cannot completely represent domestic carriers’ earnings over the first half of this year, analysts said.

China’s benchmark stock index surged to a new high of 3471.44 points yesterday, more than double from last October’s 1,664, marking a growth of 35.61 percent in the past three months. During the same period, airline shares had a milder price rise.

China Southern Airlines surged 26.77 percent to 7.15 yuan since May, and Air China leaped to 10.01 yuan, an increase of 44.86 percent.

“The H1N1 flu epidemic stalled airline shares’ performance during that period,” said Yao. “Transportation shares would not usually surge less than the benchmark index,” he said, adding that airline shares would be able to stage a higher rally than the equity market average in the third quarter.

But Li was conservative on China Eastern and Shanghai Airlines’ prospects on the bourse. “Their share prices have already surged a lot due to the restructuring news, and their actual profitability will stop them from further rising,” Li said.

Shanghai Airlines forecast a loss during the first half, while in the same period last year the carrier made a net profit of 23.4 million yuan.

Last week, rumors that the top three airlines would receive another round of capital injection from the central government were thick. “The capital injection from the government will spark investors’ enthusiasm for buying airline shares,” said Yao.

“There is already lots of good news for the aviation industry. Therefore, a further cash injection or so will make the market hotter, but not as significant as they seem,” said Li.