Weekend Guide: 36 Hours in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

By FREDA MOON

For a refreshing outdoor weekend, head for this coastal stretch of wildflower-strewn hills, beaches, vineyards and open-air cafes.

Source: New York Times

    

Weekend Guide: 36 Hours in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

Africa: Meets With Embassy Djibouti Staff and Families

Meets With Embassy Djibouti Staff and Families

Remarks

John Kerry
Secretary of State

U.S. Embassy Djibouti

Djibouti, Djibouti

May 6, 2015

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SECRETARY KERRY: Thank you very much. Subax wanaagsan. (Laughter.) Except that it’s now afternoon. I don’t know what we’re going to do about that. Anyway, assalam aleikoum. Thank you very much. And I’m really happy to be here with everybody. Bonjour. Bon apres-midi. I’m so proud to be here with this embassy in particular because you’re really at the crossroads and all of you are doing such amazing work – from building a relationship with Djibouti to standing at the crossroads of a region that is filled with too much terror, and you get some of the consequences of that. And when people come here you welcome them with open arms. You’ve done all kinds of extra work and you’re building the future.

So I am profoundly grateful for the opportunity to be able to be here today. And I understand we have a whole bunch of folks. How many total are working – how many local hires are there here?

AMBASSADOR KELLY: Three hundred.

SECRETARY KERRY: Three hundred. Can all of you who are local Djiboutians who are working with us raise your hands, everybody who’s here? (Applause.) Wow, amazing. That’s most of the embassy. Well, we can’t work without you. (In French.) I mean that. And so we thank you very, very much. (Applause.)

And kids – I have a couple of folks here. Is Farah Farah here? Farah Farah?

STAFF: Yes.

SECRETARY KERRY: You are Farah Farah. And Abdi Djama Moussa. Both of you come up here a moment. You guys got to come up here. (Cheers and applause.) Abdi and Farah, these guys have worked here, each of them, for more than 30 years. (In French.) Merci.

So we really thank you for your loyalty. Thank you for being very special to the embassy. Thank you. Merci. Merci beaucoup. Alors. Merci. Merci beaucoup. (In French.)

So let me – hi kids. How are you? I love your crown. (Laughter.) Is that – are you a princess? Is that something – you are? You are? That’s great. I love it. It’s really beautiful. Thank you all for coming out here. What day is it of the week – I don’t even know what day it is – Wednesday, right? What? No school today, though, right? Did you have school?

PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY KERRY: No school? Okay. Well, thank you very, very much for coming out here and thank you for – journey. I guess you didn’t have any choice but journeying along with your parents. I was there once. I remember what it was like to not have any choice. (Laughter.) And it was fun.

Can I say to everybody here, those of you who are local employees, we are very grateful to you because you take on the burdens of the embassy and the burdens of our country in your own country. And I know sometimes that can be difficult. So I simply want to say to you that I hope that what we do to make life better, to help refugees, to try to stop terrorism, to provide opportunity, to open doors to the future, provide scholarships, to work with young leaders and young people, and so many other things – I hope that you feel the same pride that we do every day when we go to work.

And to all those of you who come from the United States who have dedicated your lives either to the Foreign Service or the Civil Service or the military or one of the agencies of our government, and you’re here on duty of one kind or another, you are lucky enough to be able to be part of a great family and a great enterprise that every day goes to work to try to bring peace, to try to make life better for people, to try to go into conflicted areas, bring people together and find tolerance, find, hopefully, possibilities of democracy. It’s really a blessing in many ways. Lots of people never get to work in as an exciting and as rewarding a way as you do.

And at this particular moment in the world, the world needs leadership. The world needs people to stand up for values that don’t exploit and steal and hijack a very beautiful and legitimate religion and try to turn it into a killing machine. The world needs people who are going to stand up for decency and for rule of law and for opportunity and fight for a set of values that a lot of people have given their lives for through history. If you think of the history of the last century, world wars and other conflicts and all that the League of Nations and then the United Nations and all the efforts of countries to come together and build a system by which we actually work to help other people and to live with civility and rule of law, it’s an extraordinary legacy that you are part of.

And we’re at the dawn of the 21st century now when countries are bursting out with a whole lot of new energy – some of them in chaos because of the absence of governance and the absence of some of the opportunities that have guided other nations through the years. They’ll find their way, ultimately, and they’ll find their way because people like you and a lot of other people will stand up for virtues like a justice system, an education system, for democracy, for a parliament, for presidents who don’t stay for life and who aren’t engaged in large-scale criminal enterprises as they are in certain countries in certain parts of the world. Those are the differences that are worth fighting for. So I just want to come here today to say to every single one of you, thank you. President Obama is so proud; he talks constantly about the sacrifices people make, who go abroad, who have to live under very constrained circumstances in certain places and who, nevertheless, are joyful in the enterprise and who give back not only to our country but to the countries that they are visiting. That’s all of you.

So thank you for being at the crossroads of one of the most strategic locations in the world today. The only place we have a military base in all of Africa – right here. And the place that, as we all know, a deep-water port, a place that is at the gateway to the Horn of Africa, critical to what will happen in Somalia, critical to what will happen maybe even in South Sudan, and certainly to a host of other challenges that we face in this region.

I’m proud to be here. I wish I could be here longer. But thank you so much for a generous welcome and thank you especially for everything you do. Thank you. (Applause.) Thank you very much. And a big thank you to your Ambassador Tom Kelly who does a fantastic job. And Christine Higgins – where’s Christine? There she is. Come on up here.

The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department.
External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein.

Source: Dept. Of State – Africa

    

Africa: Meets With Embassy Djibouti Staff and Families

Africa: Remarks at the Embassy Djibouti Consular Section

Remarks at the Embassy Djibouti Consular Section

Remarks

John Kerry
Secretary of State

U.S. Embassy Djibouti

Djibouti, Djibouti

May 6, 2015

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SECRETARY KERRY: All right. Well, I’m delighted to see you all here. You guys can’t see. Can you see over there? I’m doing my own press operation here today. (Laughter.) There you go. Wow, we don’t want that to happen.

PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.)

SECRETARY KERRY: There you go. All right. So as these people know better than anybody, and as you know as well as they do, I guess, you have been doing an amazing job under very, very difficult circumstances over the course of these past weeks, and we’re very, very proud of you. In fact, at the State Department I will tell you we’ve been hearing the stories of all of you down at the docks greeting every citizen; there isn’t anybody who’s come in who hasn’t been warmly received. And you’ve done an amazing job not only of protecting American citizens but of working with the community here in order to make this a seamless transition under the most difficult circumstances.

And I know that it’s always a little bit chaotic. I wanted to personally come here really just to tell the world about the story of what’s behind the news headlines when they read “Refugees trapped in Yemen,” or “trapped in Aden, people trying to get out.” And people have no sense of all the machinery that has to come together to work to find a way to get out, a safe way, get onto a boat, the harrowing nature of traveling across water under those kinds of circumstances; your family huddled on a deck or down below, or if you’re lucky, on a larger military ship where you have greater protection and comfort; and then to come into a port in another country and you don’t know what’s waiting for you, you don’t know where you’re going, you don’t know if you’re going to eat, you don’t know what’s going to happen to you. And a – friendly faces on the dock waiting to say, “It’s going to be okay,” makes all the difference in the world.

And the entire State Department family contributed to this effort from – literally, from Madrid to Jerusalem to Casablanca, people have come together in order to work to provide not only additional people, but to provide the connections so people know who’s real, who’s what, how do you connect them to family, make those critical phone calls. And the entire embassy here in Djibouti and the entire embassy community – American and local staff – have all joined together to provide – they’ve donated food, they’ve donated clothing, they’ve donated water to some of the most needy U.S. citizens. And I will tell you everybody appreciates it, but particularly every American back home says thank you to you for doing beyond your jobs.

The – let me tell you a little bit about a few of the people so this gives you a real human being to attach to this. Saleh Mohsen Nasser arrived here from Yemen on April 11th with his wife, Arwa, and their two children, Sharifa and Mohammed. And the family fled together with Saleh’s stepmother from the port of Aden, and they arrived with some 60 other U.S. citizens on the Indian naval ship Tarkash.

Saddam Lashuel arrived here from Yemen. Did I pronounce that – mispronounce it?

PARTICIPANT: Yeah, Saddam. Saddam Lashuel.

SECRETARY KERRY: Saddam Lashuel – all right – came from Yemen on April 16th on the Indian naval ship Sumitra with his wife, their two children, who I see here – Hadeel and Zuha. And he was already documented – they were documented as a U.S. citizen at birth, but Zuha had not yet received her first U.S. passport, so there was a hurdle you have to cross. And through consular officers at the port, Saddam was able to pass a message to his brother in the United States through Ambassador Kelly to let him know that the family had arrived here safely.

Amar Motahar Zabarah arrived here from Yemen on April 16th on the Indian naval ship Sumitra with his U.S. citizen brothers, Hamzah, and Hamzah’s wife, Eman; his U.S. citizen sisters, Nasiebah and Nafiesah and Ala’a and his Yemen-born sister, Aya. And the family was in contact with the department before they left Yemen. Several officers helped them to find the transportation they needed and laid the groundwork for further assistance on arrival here in Djibouti. And actually, members of Congress had reached out to the United States – to the State Department and the embassy on the family’s behalf expressing their concern in trying to help break through the red tape.

So what you have all done and what we do, frankly, every day here – but this is special because it’s been so intense – is to change a catastrophic and daunting situation for individual human beings, American citizens, into something manageable and something less traumatic and something that ultimately can reunite them with family and with country. And so it means an enormous amount to President Obama, to me, and to every American to know that people are over here working like that to represent our country and to take care of American citizens no matter where they may be living and no matter what their circumstances may be.

This is not the easiest time, as we all know, for diplomacy in the Middle East. Four United States embassies have been closed because of the security situations in one part of this world or another, and there is extra pressure on the posts, therefore, that are open. And because of the location, Djibouti is carrying a large part of this burden, so that is a major reason why I wanted to come here today. This country, as small as it is, and its mission are extremely important, and everybody here can now begin to see more realistically why that is.

So thank you for carrying the flag, thank you for working the extra hours, for going to such great lengths to represent us as well as you have all done. We are very, very proud of you. Thank you so much. (Applause.)

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The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department.
External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein.

Source: Dept. Of State – Africa

    

Africa: Remarks at the Embassy Djibouti Consular Section

Collected Department Releases: Joint Statement of the U.S.-Georgia Economic, Trade, and Energy Working Group

Joint Statement of the U.S.-Georgia Economic, Trade, and Energy Working Group

Media Note

Office of the Spokesperson

Washington, DC

May 6, 2015

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The text of the following statement was released by the Governments of the United States of America and Georgia on the occasion of the U.S.-Georgia Economic, Trade, and Energy Working Group.

Begin Text:

The U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership Commission’s Economic, Trade, and Energy Working Group met in Washington, DC, on May 4, 2015. Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Economic and Business Affairs Kurt Tong, USAID Deputy Assistant Administrator for Europe and Eurasia Jonathan Katz, and Executive Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Europe, Middle East & Africa Michael Lally represented the United States. First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs David Dondua and Deputy Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development Mikheil Janelidze represented Georgia.

The Economic Working Group reaffirmed the strong bilateral relationship between the United States and Georgia. The United States congratulated Georgia for its significant progress in implementing reforms required by the Association Agreement with the European Union, noting this demonstrated Georgia’s continued achievements in realizing its Euro-Atlantic integration goals. The United States also expressed continued readiness to assist Georgia as it implements the Association Agreement and its Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area.

The Working Group discussed the “Georgia 2020” economic strategy, which the United States encouraged Georgia to implement with continued private sector consultation. The Working Group also discussed bilateral cooperation in agriculture, intellectual property rights, public-private sector engagement, energy security and supply diversification, infrastructure development, innovation, and entrepreneurship. The United States welcomed Georgia’s progress in strengthening intellectual property rights enforcement, labor rights protection and inspection mechanisms, development of the competition law, and establishment of an independent competition agency.

The United States underscored its support of Georgia’s growing economic role as a regional business, trade, and logistics hub, and its contribution to the revitalization of east-west trade routes along the Silk Road to connect European and Asian markets through the South Caucasus. The participants stressed the importance of continued improvements to transportation infrastructure and increased regional cooperation to remove regulatory bottlenecks through the trade corridor. The United States confirmed its support and intent to participate in Georgia’s Silk Road Forum in October.

The United States and Georgia commended each other for progress in expert level trade discussions and agreed to continue discussing various options to strengthen trade and investment between the countries, including the possibility in the future of a free trade agreement. They welcomed announcement of the June 29 meeting of the bilateral High Level Trade and Investment Dialogue (HLTD) in Washington. The Working Group also welcomed the successful U.S. trade mission to Georgia in March of this year and noted the utility of a Georgian trade mission in parallel with the HLTD. To further the U.S.-Georgia economic partnership, the Working Group committed to take practical steps and exchange ideas on economic reforms and opportunities for cooperation in particular sectors.

The Strategic Partnership Commission is the primary mechanism for organizing and prioritizing the broad and deepening cooperation between the United States and Georgia. The Commission includes four bilateral working groups on priority areas identified in the Charter on Strategic Partnership: democracy and governance; defense and security; economics, trade, and energy; and people-to-people and cultural exchanges. For more information, please visit: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/ci/gg/usgeorgiacommission/index.htm.

The Office of Website Management, Bureau of Public Affairs, manages this site as a portal for information from the U.S. State Department.
External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views or privacy policies contained therein.

Source: Dept. Of State – Releases

    

Collected Department Releases: Joint Statement of the U.S.-Georgia Economic, Trade, and Energy Working Group

Turkey Tours

Turkey Tours
Kusadasi, Turkey Sight-Seeing Tours –

Adavegas travel agency has been operating since 1993. We have a sound knowledge base and firm foundations in Kusadasi, Istanbul and Cappadocia. Historically our expertise has been in providing services to small groups.

Source: RealAdventures

    

Turkey Tours

T Magazine: My Man in Japan

By RAFIL KROLL-ZAIDI

For those bored with the one we have, there is a whole other Internet out there. And people ready to help you shop it.

Source: New York Times

    

T Magazine: My Man in Japan

Britney Spears announces her final shows in Las Vegas

By Susan Stapleton If seeing Britney Spears perform in Las Vegas is on your bucket list, then get to Planet Hollywood Resort fast. The pop star just announced the final shows of her two-year residency “Britney: Piece of Me.” ‘

Source: LA Times

    

Britney Spears announces her final shows in Las Vegas