Morocco: 800 Acre Resort Hotel Funded by Fertilizer Cash Béatrice Montagnier, a hotel specialist with consulting firm Horwath HTL, snapped pictures of an old warehouse and a jumble of sun-baked two-story concrete block homes outside the Moroccan town of Khouribga. It was May 2009 and Paris-based Montagnier was scoping out a planned site for an 800-acre hotel resort and museum. While she worked on details of project layout, one issue — funding — was not a concern. The estimated $1 billion needed to build the resort would come from the ground beneath her feet, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Nov. 8 issue. Khouribga and elsewhere in Morocco are home to the world's biggest known deposits of phosphate, used in fertilizer, detergent, food additives, and more recently lithium-ion batteries. Sold for decades in its raw state for less than $50 per metric ton, it's currently at about $125, according to World Bank figures. Algeria acquits ex-Gitmo detainee of terrorism charges Algeria announced on Friday that a former Guantanamo detainee named Sofiane Hadarbache has been acquitted of terrorism charges. Hadarbache was captured by US forces in late 2001 near Kabul, transferred to Guantanamo in 2002, and held until July 2, 2008, when he was transferred to his native Algeria. At Gitmo, Hadarbache was also known as Abdul Raham Houari and given the internment serial number 70. Little is known about Hadarbache's trial. According to the Associated Press, Hadarbache's “lawyers demanded an acquittal, saying that U.S. officials had determined he didn't represent a security threat before releasing him into Algerian custody.” Declassified files produced at Gitmo suggest otherwise. Political parties voice satisfaction at Tunisia's vanguard achievements On the celebration of the 23rd anniversary of the November 7 Change, the national political parties made public declarations in which they voice satisfaction at the avant-garde achievements accomplished in Tunisia, under President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali's leadership, that cover all fields. Political parties emphasize the development recorded by Tunisia in matters of democracy and pluralism, the climate of security and stability prevailing in the country, deepening of dialogue, reinforcement of the state of law and institutions and consecration of Human Rights. Libya's President Al-Qaddafi Supports Kurdish Independence Muammar Al-Gaddafi, president of Libya, said the Kurds have the right to declare independence and everybody including the Arab world should tolerate that, said Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foreign minister. Al-Gaddafi's words to support an independent Kurdistan in the Middle East came after he had criticized the lack of will among the Arab nations to be united like the European Union countries. “We have to be united and respected,” said Al-Gaddafi. “When I say this I don't mean there are no other nations in the Arab world.“ UN rejects south Sudan calls for peacekeepers The United Nations on Saturday rejected calls by south Sudan to send peacekeepers and set up a buffer zone along the country's tense north-south border ahead of a southern vote on independence next year. Sudan's oil-producing south is 66 days away from the scheduled start of a politically sensitive referendum on whether to secede or stay part of Sudan, a vote promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of civil war with the north. BM
