Kiribati president visits towns in Leyte, Samar

TACLOBAN CITY, Philippines — Kiribati President Anote Tong visited typhoon-struck towns in Leyte and Samar Sunday.

Based on the information released by the Philippine Information Agency, Tong visited Tacloban and the towns of Babatngon in Leyte and Mapanas in Northern Samar. He went back to Manila later Sunday to get on a flight back to Kiribati.

Tong is known as a climate change advocate, given that Kiribati is one of the countries severely affected by climate change. The island nation is slowly sinking due to increasing sea level caused by climate change, he said.

According to wikipedia.com, Kiribati is an 800-square-kilometer island nation in the central tropical Pacific Ocean, with a population of a little over 100,000. It is composed of 32 atolls and one raised coral island, Banaba, straddling the equator, and bordering the International Date Line at its easternmost point.

The name Kiribati is the local pronunciation of Gilberts, an island chain, named after the British explorer Thomas Gilbert, who sailed through the islands in 1788. The capital, South Tarawa, consists of a number of islets connected through a series of causeways.

Kiribati became independent from the United Kingdom in 1979. It is a member of the Commonwealth of Nations, the IMF and the World Bank, and became a full member of the United Nations in 1999. — From the wires