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| Articles about News Round |
| | Thursday’s iPhone News Round Up | | 2008-03-27 02:25:41 | | Welcome to Thursday! We’ve made it over the hump! Anyways, for today I thought I’d give a shout out to some of the more interesting stories I’ve seen lately. The following sites have written about some interesting news, and now it’s your turn to check them out. Here they are in no particular order:
iPhone Atlas [...] | | By: iPhone in Canada: Tips, Tricks, and News for Canad | | |
| | News Round-up: Tropical Storm Noel | | 2007-11-16 06:51:00 | | Rain caused by tropical storm Noel hit Haiti and the Dominican Republic pretty hard at the end of October.While the press did not pay too much attention to the human emergency caused by Noel's aftermath, the humanitarian organisations did...Here are some pictures we received from our staff in the area: A flooded village in Barradères Haiti.This is how Petit Trou de Nippes in Haiti looks like after the storm. The remains of a banana plantation in the Dominican Republic.Pictures courtesy Alejandro Chicheri and WFPFor updated humanitarian news, check out The Other World News
| | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
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| News Round-up: Today's News Headlines? Do We Still Care? Do We Really? | | 2007-11-08 23:51:00 | | Sri Lanka: Fighting intensified in the war-wracked north as the government asked Parliament for a 20 percent increase in military spending. There were conflicting accounts of casualties by the government and the rebel Tamil Tigers. Government officials have said that they plan to open a major offensive soon against the Tigers’ northern mini-state in an effort to destroy the group.Somalia: Insurgents dragged the bodies of dead Ethiopian soldiers through the streets of the capital Mogadishu after another flare-up of fighting that killed at least 21 people and sent thousands fleeing the volatile city.Ethiopia/Eritrea: The continuing tensions between the two countries, the failure to resolve their longstanding boundary dispute and the military build-up along their common border are causes for serious concern.Picture courtesy AFPFor updated humanitarian news, check out The Other World News
| | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-Up: Oil, Biofuel, World Hunger and Crimes Against Humanity. | | 2007-11-06 11:22:00 | | The world has 800 million people suffering from hunger. About 100-150 million of those receive regular food aid. Up to now, we could say "the world is producing enough food to feed everyone, so it is just a matter of re-dividing the food!". This might no longer be true. In less than 10 years, the price for a barrel of crude oil went from less than US$20 to almost US$100. Soaring fossil fuel prices, and the push for non-fossil fuel -either out of environmental concerns, or to create less dependency on foreign oil- had many governments stimulate farmers to switch from food crops to biofuel crops. As if they really had to stimulate farmers: the growing demand made biofuel a real profitable cash crop.So, more farmers growing biofuel, means less farmers growing food crops. More land in use for biofuel, less land for food crops. The dilemma shows even more drastically in developing countries. As an example, the government of Swaziland announced this week that it would be allocating thousands | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Detained at US Immigration. So I Am Not the Only One! | | 2007-10-30 02:37:00 | | One of the most popular short stories on "The Road to the Horizon", is "The Day I Got Exiled from the US". This non-fiction piece states the dry facts of my detention at Dulles Airport, and in the end of my deportation from the US. I have not been able to get a tourist visa ever since, and nowadays can only get into the US for work on my diplomatic visa. Not without being interviewed each time.And I am not the only one (and not the only diplomat) having problems with US immigration, apparently. The BBC reports how Shahid Malik - a Muslim Member of Parliament and the UK's current International Development Minister - was detained at Dulles Airport (Washington DC). He said the same thing happened to him at JFK airport in New York last year.The funny thing is Shahid Malik was in the US as a keynote speaker at an event organised by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), alongside the FBI and Muslim organisations, to talk about tackling extremism and defeating terrorism. I am extatic th | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
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| News Round-up: Make Love, Not War | | 2007-10-13 05:31:00 | | Vogue published a series of pictures from fashion photographer Steven Meisel approaching the war in Iraq from a different and rather unique angle. Some see it at distasteful, others see it as criticism on the war, others see it as pure commercialism. Whatever it is, it is controversial in a world often dominated by conformism.More pictures from the "Make Love, Not War" series, you find here.
| | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Cost of Wars in Africa Equals Total Value of Aid | | 2007-10-11 09:30:00 | | Wars stripped about $284 billion from Africa's economies between 1990 and 2005, roughly equal to the amount of aid money given to the world's poorest continent, according to a report by Oxfam International. In the study "Africa's Missing Billions," the British aid group said the 23 conflicts engulfing Africa in the period had shrunk economies by an average 15 percent per year at a cost of almost $18 billion a year. Oxfam based its estimate on a calculation of the various costs of conflicts and violence, including higher military expenditures, loss of development aid, rising inflation and medical expenses of those injured or disabled. Picture courtesy of Reuters
| | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-Up: Chavez: More Oil Revenue? More Aid! | | 2007-09-03 09:02:00 | | Bolstered by windfall oil profits, Venezuelan president Chávez's government is now offering more direct financial aid to Latin America and the Caribbean than the United States. This article states Venezuela pledged more than $8.8 billion in aid, financing, and energy funding for its neighbours so far this year.Compare that to the $3 billion of US grants and loans reaching the same region in 2005, and you can see who gains more influence...!Add to this, a previous news round-up showing the UAE investing $10 billion USD in an education package, and you easily see international (financial) aid shifting from the US and IMF's lead "Western Alliance" to... well, to others... Good! Hopefully the same will happen also with the economical power in the world!
| | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-Up: Sudan Still Shipping Arms into Darfur. | | 2007-08-27 22:29:00 | | In an earlier post, I wrote about a leaked UN report accusing the Government of Sudan transporting weaponry into Darfur, disregarding UN security resolutions.New pictures released last week, showed once again Antonov military planes and Russian-supplied Mi-24 military helicopters at an airport in Geneina, a town in Sudan's Darfur region... I wonder how the Government of Sudan will deny this, yet again.Picture courtesy Washington Post
| | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: World Economy Slums - Do We Need a New Cold War? | | 2007-08-24 21:22:00 | | Have you noticed too the slowly but steadily escalating posturing between Russia and the US... ?I guess it all started with their stand-off on the war in Iraq. They certainly did not agree on Iran, with the US trying to force Iran out of their nuclear ambitions while Moscow supplied fuel for the Russian-built Bushehr nuclear plant. Then there was an indirect standoff during the Orange revolution in the Ukraine, taking one more nation away from Putin's area of influence. Add their differences about Kosovo's independence, the recent integration of ex-USSR satellite states into the EU (with the alleged Russian-stoked unrest in Estonia), etcetera etcetera, and you have a recipe for problems.Even more worrying is the recent escalation of direct posturing. NATO wants to install new radar installations in countries which used to be direct USSR allies. Russia says: "Ahaaa" and tests a new long range missile and re-activates its long range spy plane flights, which alerted the UK to scramble RAF | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-Up: DRC UN Staff on Strike | | 2007-08-24 10:00:00 | | E. points out that while yesterday we were discussing whether or not we, aid workers, are not paid too much, at the same time local staff working for the UN Peace Keeping forces in DRC (MONUC) went on strike.They claim lacking of promotions and raises in wages since MONUC started in 1999, and the discrepancy between wages for equally qualified local and international staff.Even though this incident involved UN Peace Keeping Operations (UNDPKO), which are seperate and very different from UN humanitarian operations, it shows the relativity of the issue: while some of us work in comfortable headquarters, feeling we might be paid too much, others working in the field might not paid sufficiently for the work they do...(Full news-item here)Picture courtesy Myriam Asmani-MONUC
| | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Aid Critic Ousmane Sembene, Passed Away | | 2007-06-18 11:38:00 | | Senegal's leading film maker and author Ousmane Sembene, who was a staunch critic of Africans taking aid from the West, passed away.His films and books often touched on issues of colonialism and Western racism but his subject always focused on what Africans need to do for themselves.Born on 1 January, 1923 in southern Senegal's Casamance region, Sembène had little formal education, starting work at age 14 as a fisherman and auto mechanic. He was drafted by the French Army in World War II then worked as a dockworker in Marseilles after which he wrote 'Le docker noir' the first of his many acclaimed books. He also became a trade unionist and member of the French Communist Party until 1961 when he went to Moscow to study filmmaking.Sembène was influenced by the Marxist-based 'dependence theory' which was popular in the years following Africa's independence. The premise of the theory was that wealthy nations need Africa to remain impoverished as a way for them to sustain their own | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: G8 promises $60 Billion of Aid | | 2007-06-08 12:10:00 | | Strange. A day after I posted an introspective blog-entry on the role and usefulness of humanitarian aid, the leaders of the G8 nations meeting in Germany announced to spend $60bn fighting Aids, malaria and tuberculosis in Africa.Several aid agencies say member nations have not met the commitments they made at their 2005 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, and G8 leaders are acknowledging as much. Rock stars Bono and Bob Geldof were on the spot to remind the world leaders of their 2005 promise."There is a great crisis of credibility,” said Geldof in this article when he referred to the G8's unfulfilled commitment, “If I sign a contract in my business life and don't fulfil it, I would be sued. I could go to jail. Do these leaders live outside the norms of human behaviour?".Interesting statement, raising an issue which could also be extended to areas other than commitments of foreign aid. Do we actually have mechanisms to keep our politicians to their promise, other than "not re-electi | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: "Please Stop the Aid!" | | 2007-06-07 16:21:00 | | In an article in Der Spiegel, the Kenyan economics expert James Shikwati, says aid to Africa does more harm than good. He explains the disastrous effects of Western development policy in Africa, corrupt rulers, and the tendency to overstate the AIDS problem. Even though it is an older article (which hit digg.com again today), the question is still a right one to ask today.To be honest, as an aidworker with a conscience, I often struggle within myself "if we really make a difference". In both general and in specific cases. Up to what level can we, "the West", "the Industrialized Nations", stand by and watch poverty, decease, starvation, lack of education take its toll in poorer countries. And as of what level is the aid we are providing, starting a vicious circle of making people dependent on this foreign aid. Corrupting their economy? When do we stop? And how do we stop? How do we, the aid agencies, ensure that we do not fall into a trap of 'inventing aid-needs' just to ensure we sti | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Ten Stories the World Should Hear | | 2007-06-03 19:22:00 | | The UN released the "Stories the world should hear more about", for the year 2006.Journalists are often inundated with stories, all competing for their -and the public's- attention. The aim of the stories is to make it easier for the press and the public, to see that important issues do not fade from the headlines."The initiative, first launched in 2004, covers a spectrum of issues and geographical regions, some of which draw on troubling humanitarian emergencies and conflict situations, while others focus on such vital areas as human rights and development. The stories are:Liberia: Development challenges top agenda as the nation recovers from years of civil strife Lost in migration: Asylum seekers face challenges amid efforts to stem flows of illegal migrants DR of Congo: As the country moves boldly towards historic vote, humanitarian concerns continue to demand attention Nepal's hidden tragedy: Children caught in the conflict Somalia: Security vacuum compounding effects of drought | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Dubai is The Biggest. Even in Charity! | | 2007-05-25 19:29:00 | | The ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum is giving US$10bn (ten billion US dollars...) to set up an educational foundation in the Middle East.The money is meant to improve the standard of education and research in the region, and aims to stimulate job creation.It is thought to be one of the largest charitable donations in history. (Full article)And don't give me any crap about oil revenue etc... Oil is only 10% of Dubai's income. Commerce and tourism count for about 80% of the BNP. Talk about vision instead !(Link sent to me by Peter Scott-Bowden. Tnx Peter! ) | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: How Bad is Somalia ? | | 2007-05-21 16:43:00 | | Sixteen years after the established government fell in Somalia, the East African nation just lurches from one disaster to another, some man-made, some natural, each one deepening the humanitarian crisis.Last year marked more than six years of a record-breaking drought, followed by renewed fighting as the Islamic Courts Union sought to oust feuding clan warlords, which they did, establishing a semblance of order in the unruly capital and most of the country for the first time in a decade and a half. Then the drought ended—only to be replaced by devastating floods, cutting off much of the population from aid deliveries. And by the end of 2006, warfare resumed, with Ethiopia, encouraged by the United States, invading Somalia to oust the Islamic Courts, which were a little too pro-Al Qaeda for U.S. tastes, and prop up the Transitional Federal Government (TFG), an amalgamation of former warlords with little popular support in Somalia. (full article)Picture courtesy Irinnews.org | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: The Last Days of the Wolf | | 2007-05-18 12:07:00 | | There was a lot of controversy about the appointment of Wolfowitz as the president of the Worldbank. He is seen as a Bush puppet and one of the architects of the Iraq war. The nomination did not get a lot of support from the UN member states, and certainly not from the general public. Personally, I felt ashamed to be a UN staff member when he became one.Wolfowitz recently became involved in a scandal as he personally intervened in the handling of a high-paying promotion for his girlfriend, Shaha Riza. European countries led by France, Germany and the Netherlands, jumped on the opportunity and have said Wolfowitz should step down to salvage the bank's credibility.A Worldbank board panel now found Wolfowitz broke bank rules and represented a conflict of interest.Read the full story here. It seems his last days in the Worldbank are numbered. It was just a matter of time...Flash update: Wolfowitz resigns from the Worldbank. Full story here.Picture courtesy Reuters. I found this news item | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: The Hall of Shame. And the Nominees are.... | | 2007-05-17 08:47:00 | | Human Rights Watch has nominated the following people to its Hall of Shame during the International Day Against Homophobia:Pope Benedict XVIUS President George W. BushIranian President Mahmoud AhmadinejadPolish Minister of Education Roman GiertychBienvenido Abante, Chair of the Philippine House Committee on Civil, Political and Human Rights. To get your picture on the Hall of Shame, you have to do a serious effort to undermine human rights by actively promoting prejudice against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. (full article) | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Who Wins the War in Iraq? | | 2007-05-06 17:06:00 | | Who wins? Bah, read the Commander in Chief's version, in this article.The full transcript of the talk of the Commander in Chief, you find here. Real intelligent stuff. I mean deep stuff. He opens his speech with a real winner: "What I thought I would do is talk a little bit, share my mind with you, and then answer questions for a while. We're on the record until I tell you we're not on the record.""My responsibility is to speak as often as I can to the American people.", he adds. Maybe he should not and leave the Republican candidate at least 'some' chance in the next election ! Maybe one that knows how to sing better than McCain? At least a different tune please! We're so tired of war songs!NEXT! Picture courtesy funnypics.dk | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: NATO in Afghanistan Encouraging Heroin Production? | | 2007-05-04 19:09:00 | | Since decennia, Afghanistan has been one of the main producers of heroin. The plant, the poppy, grows easily, needs little water or care in general, and is easy to harvest: farmers milk opium resin from the plants which is processed into heroin and smuggled.Opium and heroin has become Afghanistan's runaway export success. At the end of the Taliban reign, the cultivation of poppy was outlawed, and the crops were eradicated, up to the extend that the UN Drug Control Program (UNDCP) had closed its offices in Afghanistan with a note "Job Done!".Since the fall of the Taliban, the poppy crop soared from 8,000 hectares in 2001 to a record 165,000 hectares last year. The street value of the annual crop is estimated at US$3 billion, representing about 90% of the world's heroin production. An estimated 2.9 million Afghans, 13% of the population, are involved. There are no cartel lords. Western officials believe trade is controlled by 25 smugglers including three government ministers according | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Forgotten Stories. | | 2007-04-24 12:53:00 | | MSF (Doctors Without Borders) published the Top 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian Stories of 2006: The current conflict in Somalia may generate fleeting worldwide attention, but the abysmal day-to-day living conditions faced by Somalis remains largely forgotten. Civilians in the Central African Republic (CAR) once again fell victim to horrific violence in the latest bout of conflict in a string of coups and rebellions that have plagued the country since it achieved independence from France in 1960.While many people in the West consider tuberculosis (TB) a disease of a bygone era, the devastating human toll taken by the disease is increasing worldwide.The conflict in Chechnya and its consequences on civilians has been almost entirely hidden from the rest of the world. While it may be decreasing in intensity, for many people who lived through the ebb and flow of this bitter twelve-year war, physical and mental scars remain. Civilians in Sri Lanka have born the brunt of major fighting th | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Sudan Disguises War Planes as UN Aircraft | | 2007-04-18 14:31:00 | | April 17. The New York Times reports:A confidential United Nations report says the government of Sudan is flying arms and heavy military equipment into Darfur in violation of Security Council resolutions and painting Sudanese military planes white to disguise them as United Nations or African Union aircraft.In one case, illustrated with close-up pictures, the report says the letters “U.N.” have been stenciled onto the wing of a whitewashed Sudanese armed forces plane parked on a military apron at a Darfur airport. Bombs guarded by uniformed soldiers are laid out in rows by its side.Read the NY Times article with a copy of the UN report.. | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
| | News Round-up: Chinese Media Report Darfur To Be "Stable and Natural" | | 2007-04-08 18:09:00 | | A Chinese government delegation visited refugee camps and met officials in western Sudan's strife-torn Darfur province to "get acquainted" with the situation there, Chinese state media reported on Sunday. "Administrative officials said that life of some 50,000 internally displaced people (at the camp) was stable and natural."Continuing their four-day official visit, the delegation also visited a refugee camp with 14,000 people in Nyala, South Darfur province, and met provincial governor Al-Haj Atta al-Mannan Idris. Idris said the general situation was "stable and improving".Yeah, right! Read the full post here | | By: The Road to the Horizon | | |
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