China to loan South Sudan $8 billion, Juba says

OTTAWA — A new report from the Parliamentary Budget Office shows the federal government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars less each year on infrastructure than it has planned, with only half of the $8.8 billion from the “Building Canada Fund” projected to be spent over a seven-year period. The government says many of the expenditure discrepancies are simply due to delays in signing agreements with the provinces and receiving funding requests from municipalities.

The president of the autonomous region of south Sudan was sworn in on Friday, after being declared winner last month in the country's first competitive elections in more than two decades.Salva Kiir, the head of the former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement, was sworn in as the first elected president of south Sudan, in a ceremony in the southern capital Juba carried by state television.Kiir was declared winner with 92.99 percent of the votes, in an election that was marred by accusations of fraud and logistical problems.

On 14 November, South Sudan President Salva Kiir declared during a meeting he held in Juba with visiting Kenyan deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta that his country's oil production will be restarted next week after being suspended for nearly a year in the wake of deadlocked discussions with Khartoum on transit fees that South Sudan was to pay to use Sudan’s pipeline network.

South Sudanese president Salva Kiir urged his people on Sunday to "forgive" the north for a devastating 1983-2005 civil war, in his first public declaration since a landmark independence vote ended.Speaking from the pulpit in the Saint Theresa Roman Catholic cathedral in regional capital Juba, Kiir said: "For our deceased brothers and sisters, particularly those who have fallen during the time of struggle, may God bless them with eternal peace."And may we, like Jesus Christ on the cross, forgive those who have forcefully caused their deaths."

South Sudanese president Salva Kiir said on Saturday that there was no alternative to peaceful coexistence with the north as his people prepared to vote on independence after five decades of conflict."Today there is no return to war," Kiir said, speaking in the grounds of the presidential state house in the southern regional capital Juba. "There is no substitute for peaceful coexistence."Fellow compatriots, we are left only with a few hours to make the most vital and extremely important decision of our lifetime.