Around 1 million people left homeless by massive flooding were facing a potential cholera outbreak and poisonous snakes slithering through the muddy waters, relief officials said on Tuesday.
Floods caused by a cyclone and rain since June 23 had left nearly 220 people dead, a senior relief official said on Monday, but unofficial estimates are considerably higher. An assessment by five foreign aid agencies described a growing number of skin and stomach ailments among the victims in Balochistan, many of whom were living under open sky and drinking polluted water from rivers.
Some of the villages where we went yesterday had a bad smell. We learned that a lot of livestock was buried under the mud. This is particularly dangerous because of the potential for it to lead to a cholera outbreak, said Gul Wali Khan of Catholic Relief Services in a statement. Some of the community members are living under open sky, under the shade of trees. The rains have started and these people are completely exposed with monsoon just around the corner, said Khan.
The relief agencies planned to provide plastic sheets and bamboo poles for temporary shelter since tents were unsuitable in the extreme summer heat. Oxfam, Save the Children, Concern, and Church World Service were also involved in the assessment.
Balochistan Deputy Relief Commissioner Ali Gul Kurd however said that there were no reports of any disease epidemics despite the large region flooded since Cyclone Yemyin hit a week ago.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2007 00:00 ||
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Faced with the prospect of trying an empty chair, Special Court for Sierra Leone judges on June 25 were forced to postpone the case against Charles Taylor as Liberias former president continued boycotting his trial.
Taylor has refused to attend the hearings - being hosted by The Hagues International Criminal Court, ICC, saying he wont receive a fair hearing, because the court hasnt provided enough money for his defence.
<..>
Judge Judy could do a better job.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/04/2007 00:41 ||
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#1
I bet they'd have no problems with US soldiers.
Posted by: Gary and the Samoyeds ||
07/04/2007 9:36 Comments ||
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#2
Try him in abscentia, that seems to be common.
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/04/2007 10:54 Comments ||
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Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/04/2007 00:35 ||
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#1
Unlike prostitutes, Zimbabwes moneychangers do not operate at night. They hang around on the approaches to luxury hotels like the five star Meikles Hotel or the equally prestigious Holiday Inn...
Holiday Inn? Prestigious? Oh right - this is Zimbabwe.
(SomaliNet) Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni has rejected an African government in the near future, disagreeing that the people across the continent are too diverse. He, however, said there were several areas where African countries could cooperate. In Uganda, we are not in favour of forming a continental government now, Museveni told the over 40 heads of state, gathered in the Ghanean capital Accra for the 9th African Union Summit. While economically I support integration with everybody, politically we should only integrate with people who are either similar or compatible with us.
Since the idea's being pushed by a couple bloody-handed dictators who've made their nations laughingstocks to whit, Muammar Qaddaffy and Bob Mugabe the Ugs are more than willing to pass, having had their experience with the late Idi.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
The thought of an African Continental Goverement brings a great poster at Despair Inc to mind.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
07/04/2007 1:21 Comments ||
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(SomaliNet) The UN-backed radio station Radio Okapi reported on Monday that fighting between rival militia factions in DR Congo's eastern region of Nord-Kivu left at least two people dead and four injured. According to reports, the clashes were between a Mai Mai faction led by Munuka Mtubo Jackson and one led by Kakule La Fontaine, and took place at Kasiki, south of Lubero district and about 100km northwest of the regional capital Goma.
I did not make up those names. Neither of them. Honest to Gawd.
The radio station reported that the casualties reported were all among Jackson's troops. There was no word of casualties on the other side.
The fighting forced many civilians in the area to flee their homes. Colonel Delphin Kahimbi, the second-in-command of Congolese forces in NordKivu, confirmed the clashes. He said that the fighting had started on Saturday, had intensified by late Sunday and continued until early Monday.
The two rival militias have been fighting for control of parts of the Nord-Kivu district of Lubero for several months now. The Mai Mai is a local militia that helped the DRCongo army fight defend the east of the country from their neighbours Rwanda and Uganda in the late 1990s. After the conflict however, they refused to stand down and began fighting to carve out their own fiefdoms in the mineral-rich territory.
Jackson, after years of fighting the DR Congo army, recently agreed in principle to let his troops merge with the regular army. But his soldiers have yet to report to official military camps for integration into the armed forces.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2007 00:00 ||
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#1
OK, you didn't make them up.
DId your generator?
Posted by: Gary and the Samoyeds ||
07/04/2007 0:20 Comments ||
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Bangladeshs military-backed emergency government has targeted 17 more prominent politicians including two former ministers as part of a corruption crackdown, an official said on Tuesday.
The 17 have each been asked to account for their wealth within seven working days, said Anti-Corruption Commission official Reba Halder. They have to submit their wealth reports, bank accounts and assets of family members, said Halder, adding that the politicians included former law minister Moudud Ahmed and former telecommunications minister Aminul Haque. Both ministers are members of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) which led a coalition government until last October.
Since a political crisis that led to elections being cancelled in January, Bangladesh has been ruled by an emergency government led by former central bank governor Fakhruddin Ahmed. It has pledged to clean up Bangladeshs notoriously corrupt politics before holding rescheduled elections by late 2008. Last month one former BNP minister was jailed for 13 years by a special anti-corruption court set up to try graft suspects.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2007 00:00 ||
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Gordon Brown yesterday ruled out holding a referendum on a new European constitutional treaty as part of a wide-ranging package of reforms to give "more power to Parliament and the British people".
Gordon Brown is expected to sign a new treaty incorporating the bulk of the EU constitution
In his first Commons statement as Prime Minister, Mr Brown offered to give up powers ranging from appointing bishops to declaring war and hinted that general elections could be held at weekends. But he excluded two pressing constitutional issues from his package of reforms: the growing demand for "English votes for English laws" to balance devolution to Scotland and Wales and Labour's manifesto commitment at the last election to hold a referendum on the European Union constitution.
Later this year, Mr Brown is expected to sign a new treaty incorporating the bulk of the EU constitution - including a new foreign policy chief, a permanent president and the surrender of 52 national vetoes - rejected by voters in France and Holland in 2005.
The deal - struck by Tony Blair as one of his last acts as Prime Minister - has led to a campaign calling for a referendum on the issue.
David Cameron, the Conservative leader, while welcoming many of the reforms, challenged Mr Brown to hold a referendum on the treaty, which he said involved the further transfer of power from Westminster to Brussels.
"It should be put to the people," Mr Cameron said.
Mr Brown said that only one of the EU's 27 members - Ireland - had so far proposed a referendum. Parliament, he said, would have the explicit power to ratify the treaty. The last Conservative government did not hold a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 or previous treaties, he said.
Earlier, during Foreign Office questions in the Commons, Tory MPs highlighted Government confusion over the status of the proposed EU treaty, saying that one of Mr Brown's new ministers had labelled it a constitution.
Mark Francois, the Tory spokesman on Europe, said Sir Digby Jones, the business minister, had said the treaty was a constitution and to suggest otherwise was a "con". But Jim Murphy, the Europe minister, said the "constitutional element" had been abandoned in the new treaty.
more at the link, including details of the 'English votes for English laws' issue
#1
...ruled out holding a referendum...to give "more power to Parliament and the British people".
So far he's the odds-on favorite to win the Orwell Newspeak Award. The Brits may soon be wishing they had Tony back. BTW, that pic is just begging for a good caption. He looks seriously plastered...
#3
Sorry, Brits. You've had a good run but it's clear that now you're done. I still just don't understand how a group of people who saw off the Germans and the Japs could surrender to a bunch of unwashed camel herders, though. What happened to you?
Posted by: Mac ||
07/04/2007 4:12 Comments ||
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BigJim, its much worse than that. They don't even get to vote for PM. They just get stuck with one from the majority party. Parliamentary thingy. Its a many nuanceded procedure that's far too complicated for an American such as myself.
Posted by: Mike N. ||
07/04/2007 21:21 Comments ||
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has set a deadline for Brazil and Paraguay to back his country's membership of South American trading bloc Mercosur. Mr Chavez warned the two he would ditch the membership request if they failed to back it within three months.
Awwwww gee.
Brazilian senator Sergio Zambiassi has warned its lawmakers are unlikely to approve the request before September.
Experts say this latest move puts further pressure on already strained relations in Mercosur. "We are making an effort to speed it up ... but I cannot guarantee that it will be approved before September," Senator Zambiassi said.
Venezuela's membership has already been approved by the leaders of all five member states and by the Uruguayan, Argentine and Venezuelan parliaments. However, it must still be ratified by the Brazilian and Paraguayan legislatures.
Relations between Brazil and Venezuela have been tense for some weeks. They deteriorated further after the Brazilian Senate called on Mr Chavez to revise his decision not to renew the licence for opposition TV channel Radio Caracas Television (RCTV). Mr Chavez denounced Brazil as a "parrot" of the US for criticising the decision. Brazil has called for President Chavez to apologise for the comments, something he has so far refused to do.
Brazilian authorities said they raided an Amazon plantation where more than 1,000 laborers were found working 14-hour days in horrendous conditions cutting sugar cane for ethanol production.
Brazil leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was criticized after calling ethanol producers "national and world heroes."
Authorities said the raid was Brazil's biggest to date against debt slavery, a practice that lures poor laborers to remote spots, where they rack up debts to plantation owners who charge exorbitant prices for everything from food to transportation.
But the Amazon plantation's owner -- the biggest ethanol producer in the northeastern state of Para -- vigorously denied the charges Tuesday and said the workers make good money by Brazilian standards.
The raid was in the remote town of Ulianopolis, the government-run Agencia Brasil news agency said late Monday. The company running the plantation said the government action started Friday and lasted three days.
Police found 1,108 poor workers working from 3 a.m. until 5 p.m. with only a short break for lunch, Humberto Celio, coordinator of the Labor Ministry's special unit that frees debt slaves, told Agencia Brasil.
Many of them were sick because of spoiled food or unsafe water, slept in cramped quarters on hammocks and did not have proper sanitation facilities, Celio said.
The company, Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, has been in operation since 1969, and each year produces 13.2 million gallons (50 million liters) of ethanol, often billed as an environmentally friendly alternative to gasoline.
A Para Pastoril executive said allegations of abuse at the 24,700-acre plantation are "totally false."
"We have never had these type of problems, and we must submit to constant government inspections," the executive, Fernao Zancaner, said in a telephone interview. The Labor Ministry said no one would be available to comment until Tuesday afternoon.
The company has 1,800 employees, Zanacer said. Sugar cane cutters receive between 700 to 800 reals ($368 to $421) per month, far above the nation's minimum wage of 380 reals ($200). In the Amazon region, many workers make less than the minimum.
Brazil is a huge user of ethanol because eight out of every 10 new cars sold are "flex-fuel" models that run on gasoline, ethanol or any combination of the two. Ethanol currently sells for about half the price of gasoline in Brazil.
Brazil is also a major ethanol exporter and is receiving billions of dollars of investment amid rising international demand for the alternative fuel.
Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy.
Surging demand for "green" fuel has prompted rightwing paramilitaries to seize swaths of territory, according to activists and farmers. Thousands of families are believed to have fled a campaign of killing and intimidation, swelling Colombia's population of 3 million displaced people and adding to one of the world's worst refugee crises after Darfur and Congo.
Several companies were collaborating by falsifying deeds to claim ownership of the land, said Andres Castro, the general secretary of Fedepalma, the national federation of palm oil producers.
"As a consequence of the development of palm by secretive business practices and the use of threats, people have been displaced and [the businesses] have claimed land for themselves," he said. His claim was backed up by witnesses and groups such as Christian Aid and the National Indigenous Organisation of Colombia.
The revelations tarnish what has been considered an economic and environmental success story. The fruit of the palm oil tree produces a vegetable oil also used in cooking, employs 80,000 people, and is increasingly being turned into biofuel.
"Four years ago Colombia had 172,000 hectares of palm oil," President Alvaro Uribe told the Guardian. "This year we expect to finish with nearly 400,000."
"Four years ago Colombia didn't produce a litre of biofuel. Today, because of our administration, Colombia produces 1.2m litres per day." Investment in new installations would continue to boost production, he added.
However the lawlessness created by four decades of insurgency in the countryside has enabled rightwing paramilitaries, and also possibly leftwing rebels, to join the boom. Unlike coca, the armed groups' main income source, palm oil is a legal crop and therefore safe from state-backed eradication efforts.
Farmers who have been forced off their land at gunpoint say that in many cases their banana groves and cattle grazing fields were turned into palm oil plantations.
Farmers who have been forced off their land at gunpoint say that in many cases their banana groves and cattle grazing fields were turned into palm oil plantations. Luis Hernandez (not his real name) fled his 170-hectare plot outside the town of Mutata in Antioquia province nine years ago after his father-in-law and several neighbours were gunned down. When he and other survivors were able to return recently, they found the land was in the hands of a local palm producer.
"The company tells me that it has legal papers for the land, but I don't know how that can be, as I have land titles dating back 20 years," said Mr Hernandez. He suspects palm companies collaborated with the paramilitaries. "I don't know if there was an official agreement between them, but a relationship of some sort definitely exists."
A government investigation reportedly found irregularities in 80% of palm oil land titles in some areas.
A government investigation reportedly found irregularities in 80% of palm oil land titles in some areas. "If there have been abuses and the titles are shown to be false, then the land needs to be returned and all the weight of the law needs to be brought down on those that are responsible," said Dr Castro, of the producers' association.
Christian Aid is funding an effort to protect peasants who are trying to reclaim land from the paramilitaries, said Dominic Nutt, who has visited the plantations. "It is the dark side of biofuel."
The paramilitary groups, first formed in the 80s by businessmen, landowners and drug lords to fend off guerrillas, became a powerful illegal army which stole land, sold drugs and massacred civilians. Under a peace deal with the government they have officially disbanded but many observers say remnants remain active.
Displacement continues, with an average of 200,000 cases registered every year over the past four years, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees, with most coming from palm oil-growing areas on the Caribbean coast. "We can't keep up, they just keep coming," said Ludiz Ruda, of the Hijos de Maria school in a shantytown outside the coastal city of Cartagena. Since opening last year it had been swamped with impoverished newcomers, she said. "More than 80% are refugees."
#1
Palm oil plantations are vast and easily the most environmentally destructive practice I have ever seen. Tropical forest are clear cut and burnt and replaced with uninterrupted palm oil monoculture. For all practical purposes, every single living thing in the forest dies.
Australian farmers are chopping down thousands of trees every day in a dramatic protest against laws intended to curb the countrys fast-rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Fed up with government restrictions on the use of their land, farmers began a civil disobedience campaign by cutting down one tree on each property, with a threat to increase the rate of felling each day until the dispute is resolved. By the end of this week more than 128,000 trees could be lost in a single day.
The farmers claim that the nations vegetation management laws, under which the clearing of trees has been made an offence, are leaving farmers bankrupt or rendering their farms marginal because trees are taking over open grasslands.
But the Government says that the strict land-clearing laws are necessary to preserve forests to soak up carbon dioxide. Without legislation, the Government claims, vast areas would be cleared to increase acreage of arable land.
Australia has the highest per-capita greenhouse gas emissions and has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, claiming that the climate change pact favours Europe and puts other countries at a disadvantage.
Alistair McRoberts, a farmer in Cobar, New South Wales, who has joined the protest, said: How would you feel if the Government regulated to turn the third and fourth bedrooms . . . into accommodation for homeless people, and they didnt pay you any compensation for doing so?
You still pay the mortgage, you still pay the rent, but thats just bad luck. We are being hoodwinked to the highest order by the Government and we need to talk about it.
Brad Bellinger, the chairman of the Australian Beef Association, said that he supported the campaign. On Monday he cut down two trees at his property in New South Wales. He said that, as the fell rate increased, farmers would turn to mechanisation to keep the protest up.
Its a matter of complete desperation, Mr Bellinger said. By Day 10 we will need bulldozers.
Desperate farmers who had campaigned for five years to have the land-clearing laws changed were behind the tree-felling campaign.
Steve Trueman, a Queensland agricultural marketer, who has helped to form a loose coalition of farming groups to take part in the protest, said that desperate farmers who had campaigned for five years to have the land-clearing laws changed were behind the tree-felling campaign.
We are losing tens of thousands of hectares of formerly productive land [because of] these laws, he said.
He added that one large western Queensland property of 56,000 hectares (138,000 acres) was now overrun by hop bush, a tree-like weed that is protected by law. The property once supported up to 15,000 merino sheep but now has only six head of cattle.
Illegal land clearing has been an acute problem in the large states of New South Wales and Queensland. A WWF study in New South Wales estimated that in the seven years to 2005, 80 million reptiles and 13 million birds had been wiped out because of loss of habitat. About 340,000 hectares of land were cleared in Australia in 2005.
Mr Trueman said that farmers would end their tree-felling only when the environment ministers of each state agreed to meet them and discuss the issues behind the protests.
Farmers dont want to be taking this action, he said. Farmers need trees on their properties as wind breaks and for soil conservation.
He said that if land-clearing laws were not relaxed, there would be consequences for urban dwellers in Australia.
If we dont get better outcomes for farmers Australia will face food shortages in future. It wont be because of climate change. It will be because of land-clearing laws.
John Howard, the Prime Minister, has called for a New Kyoto that will not harm the countrys oil, coal and gas exports and bring in developing nations, such as India and China. Australia was part of the original negotiations that set targets for developed nations, but the Government later decided not to ratify the pact.
New figures yesterday showed that the country was almost certain to exceed its greenhouse emissions target of 108 per cent of 1990 levels by 2012 set under Kyoto.
The latest figures show that transport emissions have risen by 4 per cent in the year to May, already pushing national greenhouse gas emissions to 107.9 per cent of 1990 levels.
I'd start using them now, myself. I wonder how long it's going to take the rest of Oz to figure out that Kyoto really isn't about global warming - it's about economic warfare. And Oz has signed up to be on the losing side.
Millions of Indian coins are being smuggled into neighbouring Bangladesh and turned into razor blades. And that's creating an acute shortage of coins in many parts of India, officials say.
Police in Calcutta say that the recent arrest of a grocer highlights the extent of the problem. They seized what they said was a huge coin-melting unit which he was operating in a run-down shack. The grocer confessed to melting down tens of thousands of Indian coins into razor blades which were then smuggled into Bangladesh, police said. "Our one rupee coin is in fact worth 35 rupees, because we make five to seven blades out of them," the grocer allegedly told the police. "Bangladeshi smugglers take delivery of the blades at regular intervals."
#2
I was behind a guy at a hardware store checkout counter several years ago. The clerk told him the washers he was buying were 8 cents each. He shoved them back to the clerk and said, "never mind, I'll go home and bore holes in a few nickles.
Pakistan will not take foreign aid from any country to overcome the loss and devastation caused by the recent rains and floods, and will itself rehabilitate and help flood affected people, said Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Tuesday.
Nobody's offered to pony up, eh? Tut tut and tut. Well, at least you won't have any foreign NGOs sniffin' around yore wimminfolks.
The provincial and district governments with the collaboration of central government must jointly work to rehabilitate the flood affected areas, he added. The prime minister expressed these views while presiding over a meeting at Governors House to review law and order situation in NWFP and FATA during which he was also briefed about the situation in the flood-affected areas of the province.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/04/2007 00:00 ||
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#3
We, the undeserving, led by the unworthy, have been unbelievably ingratious for so long after being given so much that now we attempt to be impossibly crapulent over nothing.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Around 1 million people left homeless by massive flooding were facing a potential cholera outbreak and poisonous snakes slithering through the muddy waters, relief officials said on Tuesday. 
Bangladeshs military-backed emergency government has targeted 17 more prominent politicians including two former ministers as part of a corruption crackdown, an official said on Tuesday.
Gordon Brown yesterday ruled out holding a referendum on a new European constitutional treaty as part of a wide-ranging package of reforms to give "more power to Parliament and the British people".
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has set a deadline for Brazil and Paraguay to back his country's membership of South American trading bloc Mercosur. Mr Chavez warned the two he would ditch the membership request if they failed to back it within three months. 
Australian farmers are chopping down thousands of trees every day in a dramatic protest against laws intended to curb the countrys fast-rising greenhouse gas emissions. 
