What Aruba means to GiGi!

ORANJESTAD — You are back and we would like to give you a shout-out by inviting you to send us your favorite vacation picture while enjoying our Happy Island!

Complete the sentence: Aruba to me is ……. Send your picture with that text (including your name and where you are from) to: news@arubatoday.com and we will publish your vacation memory. Isn’t that a special way to keep your best moments alive? Please do note: By submitting photos, text or any other materials, you give permission to The Aruba Today Newspaper, Caribbean Speed Printers and any of its affiliated companies to use said materials, as well as names, likeness, etc. for promotional purposes without compensation.

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For today we received a lovely message from GiGi from New Jersey, USA.

She wrote to us saying: “Aruba to me is finding beauty and wellness in stillness. Phones down, look around. This moment might have been missed. First rainbow I have seen in Aruba while sitting on my balcony. This beautiful scene only lasted a couple of moments. Magical.”

Thank you for sending us this wonderful message sharing what Aruba means to you with us and our readers!

The U.S. State Department said Thursday it was refusing to grant visas to Abbas and other Palestinian officials for next week’s assembly. Only members of the Palestinian mission to the U.N. will be able to attend the meeting, which begins Tuesday.

“The Secretary-General is concerned about the impact of this decision on the ability of the State of Palestine to participate fully in the work of the United Nations,” Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

“The full participation of all delegations in the work of the Organization is essential to its proper functioning.”

Guterres continues to urge the United States, as the host country, “to ensure that visas are issued to all delegations in accordance with its obligations,” the spokesman said.

The Trump administration also denied visas for the Palestinian delegation last year, forcing Abbas, a regular at the U.N. General Assembly, to address the body of global leadership by video.

The General Assembly voted 152-3 on Thursday for Abbas to be able to appear virtually once again this year.

The United States and Israel have objected to the Palestinian Authority’s historical payments to families of imprisoned or slain Palestinians, including those who carried out attacks against Israelis.

The PA recently reformed this system, allocating welfare payments to families on a needs basis rather than political affiliation or prisoner status.

The State Department said Washington also opposed Palestinian “actions to internationalize the Israeli-Palestinian conflict including through the International Criminal Court (ICC) and International Court of Justice (ICJ), seeking to bypass negotiations through seeking unilateral recognition.”

They accused them of “continuing to pay stipends to terrorists and to glorify acts of terrorism and terrorists in public pronouncements and school textbooks.”

The United States is at odds with the 142 U.N. member states that recognized a Palestinian state at the United Nations last year.

– ‘Acts of terrorism’ –

The decision to deny Abbas a U.S. entry visa comes as violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians has escalated in recent months in the West Bank.

Israel has occupied the West Bank since 1967, and violence there has surged since the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack that triggered the war in the Gaza Strip.

According to an AFP tally based on Palestinian health ministry data, Israeli soldiers or settlers have killed at least 1,109 Palestinians in the West Bank — fighters and civilians — since the 2023 attack, which killed more than 1,200 people.

In retaliation, Israel waged relentless strikes on Gaza that have killed more than 73,821 people, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which operates under Hamas authority and whose figures are considered reliable by the United Nations.

The international community has expressed concern over the violence, but the United States has remained largely quiet on the issue, saying only that the U.S. government opposes any annexation of Palestinian territory.

The news brings to an end the revered investor’s more than half a century of running the group, which he turned into a financial behemoth.

Buffett’s resignation is “effective immediately,” although he will remain a member of the board of directors as chairman emeritus, Berkshire Hathaway said in a statement.

Buffett’s son Howard Buffett will take over as chairman, the statement added.

The 96-year-old had announced plans last year to retire from leading the business group.

Berkshire Hathaway, a former small textile company, has grown over the years into a gigantic conglomerate under Buffett’s leadership, and is now worth over $1 trillion on Wall Street — a first for an American group outside the tech sector.

Today, his conglomerate owns dozens of businesses, from Duracell batteries to U.S. insurer Geico, and shares in carefully selected companies, from Coca-Cola to Bank of America.

“Father Time always wins. He has, however, been generous with me,” Buffett said in a letter to shareholders. “He has given me the opportunity to see Berkshire reach a point where I am more confident than ever about what lies ahead. The company is in excellent hands.”

“Recently, I celebrated my 96th birthday with family and friends, including one of my great-grandchildren, who had just turned one,” Buffett said. “He’s moving a bit faster than I am these days.”

(Oranjestad)—The water tanks monument site at Kibaima will now be repurposed as a learning center for the Aruba National Archives (ANA). This is what Monumentsfund Aruba (SMFA) announced Wednesday during the official transferring ceremony held at the historic site in Balashi. SMFA and the Aruban government also signed a collaboration agreement for the restoration of the monument. The restoration of Kibaima forms part of SMFA ongoing project to revitalize worn-down monuments in an effort to conserve Aruban history and heritage.

The plan to repurpose the site was a process that began a few years ago when, together with Dutch restoration company BOEi and several students from Hogeschool Rotterdam, SMFA conducted an investigation on ways to give the site a new function. Once ANA approached the foundation, plans for a learning and heritage center started taking shape.

As the SMFA explains in a recently published press release, ANA was looking for a new location to function as a center for investigation, education, documentation and preservation of Aruban heritage. Established in 1994, the Aruba National Archives houses thousands of historical archives—ranging from official documents to videos and cassettes—and is the official record keeper of the island. With the transferring and restoration of the Kibaima site, SMFA has now designated the newly acquired monument as an active historical facility that will soon be in service to the Aruban community.

History of the Kibaima water tanks

The water structure at Kibaima is a key aspect in the history of how water was distributed on the island. The tanks, standing at 50 meters above sea level, was designed by Dutch architect Pieter van Stuivenberg and played a vital part in distributing drinkable water to the supply system in Oranjestad and San Nicolas. Pieter van Stuivenberg was also responsible for designing the historic water towers in both districts.

For decades, the Kibaima site provided the basic needs of the Aruban community. After many years of abandonment, it will now have another important task—facilitate the history and culture of Aruba.

SMFA confirmed that the restoration of the monument site will happen in phases, with the first already underway. It’s been estimated that restoration will be completed by the end of 2029.

Pictures courtesy of Monumensfund Aruba (SMFA).

Under the sweeping new directive, deaths resulting from foreseeable risks posed by activities such as commercial fishing or logging will be exempt from the landmark 1973 law.

“What’s being put forward by the Trump administration is going to cut the heart out of the Endangered Species Act,” Gib Brogan, campaign director for Oceana Fisheries, told AFP.

He said the law had been successful at saving species for five decades by finely balancing human economic needs against conservation.

The September 14 memorandum, posted online by the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity and confirmed to AFP by the administration, redefines the longstanding definition of “take” — a term that relates to pursuing, killing or capturing of a species.

It is now confined to “affirmative conduct intentionally directed against a particular animal or animals.”

The move, first reported by the New York Times, explicitly cites a dissent by the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia in a 1995 case on the matter.

“A vessel that inadvertently strikes a whale has not taken it, because the vessel’s course was not set against the whale,” the document says, quoting the conservative justice.

“Felling a tree is not a take of the bats roosting in it unless the tree is felled for the purpose of killing or capturing them,” it continued.

In the 1995 case, known as Babbitt v. Sweet Home, an association of landowners and loggers tried to challenge the prevailing definition of “take,” arguing a species of woodpecker and an owl had injured them economically by preventing them from conducting their business.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled against them in a 6-3 decision — but the high court has since shifted considerably rightward.

– Whales, turtles, coral at risk –

The new memo was signed by Brian Nesvik, the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, which falls under the Interior Department.

The department confirmed to AFP that the document was genuine.

“The memorandum accurately reflects the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s guidance for implementing the Endangered Species Act following the final rule rescinding the regulatory definition of ‘harm,'” the department said.

“Under the guidance, the ESA’s prohibition on ‘take’ continues to prohibit conduct including harassing, pursuing, hunting, shooting, wounding, killing, trapping, capturing or collecting protected wildlife,” it added.

The Trump administration has already finalized a series of rules weakening the ESA.

One rescinded the longstanding definition of “harm,” which had covered habitat destruction. Another scrapped a rule that automatically applied endangered species protections to those listed as “threatened.”

And a third requires the government to consider economic and national security tradeoffs when deciding whether to designate a particular area as “critical habitat.” But the latest attack “is maybe the most significant of them,” said Brogan.

“We’re very concerned what this is going to mean for sea turtles, for corals, for threatened and endangered whale species,” he added.

The North Atlantic right whales would be one of the main species threatened by the changes. There are only around 380 of them left, and their main threats come from entanglement in fishing gear and collisions with ship traffic.