[Dawn] The United Nations ...boodling on the grand scale... warned Saturday that humanitarian agencies are running out of resources to assist those affected by floods in southern Pakistain, even as the need for clean water, food, shelter and medical services increases among the more than five million people in affected communities.
Nearly two weeks ago, the UN and its partners launched the Pakistain Floods Rapid Response Plan to support the government's efforts to address the immediate needs of up to 5.4 million people for six months, but that funding request has received only $ 19 million of the $ 357 million needed.
"Urgent relief is critical as families continue to suffer in the aftermath of the floods. Unless we receive new pledges to the Floods 2011 Rapid Response Plan, millions of people will be left in need of food, clean water and essential medicines for months to come," said Timo Pakkala, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Pakistain.
"We are grateful that donors have started to give to the Rapid Response Plan. But to ensure that we can help save lives now as well as tomorrow, we call on the international community to urgently step up their support for the people of Pakistain through this plan," he added.
Humanitarian agencies have food stocks to last a month, while safe drinking water and emergency shelter materials are expected to run out in weeks if not replenished, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs (Ocha).
"It is tragic to see families displaced from the floods with no shelter and barely enough to survive on," said Fawad Hussein, the Ocha Team Leader for Flood Relief.
"These families worry their children will go hungry, and without access to safe drinking water, they fear they will become sick from drinking contaminated water."
Pakistain has been severely affected by floods for the second consecutive year. The UN and its humanitarian partners have to date provided emergency shelter for 314,500 households and more than 1.6 million people have received medicines and medical consultations, the news release said.
More than 413,000 people have received food aid and the UN aims to double its support and provide up to 400,000 new beneficiaries with access to safe drinking water in the coming weeks.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/02/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
"humanitarian agencies are running out of resources to assist those affected by floods in southern Pakistain"
Pakistan seems to have a lot of problems with disaster relief. Is that because it is a 'terrorism sponsor of state' (sic) or because the relief workers who have to actually deliver the aid keep getting kidnapped?
[Emirates 24/7] Saudi billionaire Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has strongly attacked a court which sentenced a local woman to 10 lashes for driving a car, describing the verdict as barbaric just before it was annulled by King Abdullah.
"This was a barbaric and inhuman decision to lash a Saudi lady for driving," said the prince, a nephew of the Monarch and one of the world's richest people.
"It's clear some backward-thinking elements in the Saudi society want to harm the King's name," he told the US Forbes magazine.
Al-Waleed's statement coincided with a landmark decision by King Abdullah to allow Saudi women to vote and run for election in the Shura, the Gulf Kingdom's appointed parliament, according to Forbes.
Alwaleed added that the lashing punishment "goes against the king's announcement" on Sunday to give women the right to vote beginning in 2015
A day after the woman from the western Red Sea port of Jeddah was sentenced to lashing, King Abdullah was reported to have overturned the ruling.
A Saudi court on Tuesday found Shaima Jastaina guilty of violating a long-standing driving ban in the conservative Moslem nation, and sentenced her to 10 lashes. The verdict took Saudi women by surprise, coming just a day after King Abdullah promised to protect women's rights.
The harsh sentence marked the first time a legal punishment had been handed down since female activists began their campaign in June to break the taboo in this ultraconservative Mohammedan nation.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/02/2011 00:00 ||
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#1
A question for 'Burgers in a Position to Know: could this be an indication of a crack forming between the Royal's and the Wahabbi's?
#3
No expert, but I'd suspect a crack between the women and the rulers. How you going to keep them wearing the burqua after they've been to gay Dubai? Arabs may not be interested in modernity, but modernity is interested in them.
#4
A string of successes (by Saudi standards) have done much to persuade the king of the value of considerable liberalization. Basically, every time he makes some minor change, he gets a payoff in spades.
After a spate of grotesque child marriages to old men, the Saudi public has finally had enough, and there is now an informal directive that females should not be married until 17 or older, and males 18 or older.
[Dawn] After months of foot-dragging, the Ministry of Defence has finally constituted a court of inquiry to proceed against three retired army generals who have been found involved in mismanaging the funds of National Logistics Cell (NLC) from 2004 to 2008 which cost the military-run organization a staggering loss of Rs1.8 billion.
"It is a proud moment for the Public Accounts Committee that on its recommendation the defence ministry, for the first time in the country's history, has agreed to set up a full court of inquiry against three former military generals," PAC Chairman Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said.
However, some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them... he lamented that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani ... Pakistain's erstwhile current prime minister, whose occasional feats of mental gymnastics can be awe-inspiring ... , in total contrast, had extended the service of a civilian who was also involved in the NLC fiasco. The decision dealt a severe blow to the supremacy of parliamentary monitoring of government departments, Chaudhry Nisar said at a meeting of the committee held at the Parliament House on Friday to approve the printing of seven PAC reports of previous years.
He recalled that in March this year when the PAC was about to make its final recommendations on the NLC case, the army chief had approached it and sought some time to look into the issue himself because it involved three senior army officials.
Chaudhry Nisar said the committee had waited for the army's response till June, but it was not received. And eventually on July 1 the PAC recommended disciplinary actions against all those found involved in the fiasco.
"Only last week, the defence secretary informed me that a court of inquiry had been set up to proceed against the three generals," Chaudhry Nisar said.
He praised Defence Secretary Lt-Gen (retd) Syed Athar Ali and Chief of the Army Staff Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... for taking the historical step.
According to facts presented before the PAC, bosses of the NLC had made heavy investments in the stock exchange between 2004 and 2008 in violation of government rules. Besides borrowing money from commercial banks at high mark-up rates, they also used pensioners' money for the business.
In return, heavy commissions were received from companies through which the investment of over Rs4 billion had been made in the stock market. The NCL suffered a loss of nearly Rs1.8 billion.
Lt-Gen (retd) Khalid Munir Khan (officer-in-charge of NLC from Jan to June 2005), Lt-Gen (retd) Mohammad Afzal Muzaffar (officer-in-charge from June 2005 to Oct 2008) and Maj-Gen (retd) Khalid Zaheer Akhtar (director general from July 2002 to Jan 2008) were at the centre of investigations.
Former finance and accounts director Najibur Rehman, who worked for the NCL from Oct 2002 to April 2007, and former chief finance officer Saeedur Rehman (June 2004 to Oct 2008) were also found involved in the questionable investment.
At present Mr Rehman is a member in the Capital Development Authority. Despite indictment by the PAC, he was recently given extension in service till further orders by none other than the prime minister.
"I am totally disappointed. This is not the way to treat the most important committee of the house (National Assembly). I am not going to stand by this," Chaudhry Nisar said.
Posted by: Fred ||
10/02/2011 00:00 ||
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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.
The 
