Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 1 2006 (IPS) – A survey of more than 50,000 tsunami survivors in five Asian countries has revealed that most of them have been doubly devastated: losing their loved ones in the December 2004 natural disaster, and subsequently having their human rights abused by their own governments.
The five countries Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and the Maldives are accused of discrimination in aid distribution, forced relocation, arbitrary arrests and sexual and gender-based violence.
These governments frequently ignored human rights principles and failed to protect survivors from discrimination, land grabbing and violence , says the five-country study by three non-governmental organisations (NGOs): ActionAid International, People s Movement…
Lisa Söderlindh
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 10 2006 (IPS) – Global measles deaths dropped by nearly half between 1999 and 2004, with the greatest reduction in sub-Saharan Africa, according to a new report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.N. children s agency UNICEF.
Measles is the leading vaccine-preventable childhood killer in the world, particularly affecting children under the age of five in developing countries with inadequate vaccination services.
While almost totally eliminated in North and South America today, nearly half the deaths caused by the contagious disease occur in Africa. But as a result of major national immunisation drives, worldwide measles deaths fell from 871,000 in 1999 to an estimated 454,000 in 2004, a dramatic plunge of 48 percent.
Moyiga Nduru
JOHANNESBURG, Apr 11 2006 (IPS) – AIDS activists have expressed concern about a remark by former South African deputy president Jacob Zuma that he minimised his risk of contracting the AIDS virus during unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman, by taking a shower afterwards.
AIDS activists have expressed concern about a remark by former South African deputy president Jacob Zuma that he minimised his risk of contracting the AIDS virus during unprotected sex with an HIV-positive woman, by taking a shower afterwards.
Zuma also said he believed the chance of getting HIV from a woman was slim for a healthy man.
It is nonsense. There is no evidence to support it, said Nathan Geffen of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), a non-governmental organisati…
Peter Richards
PORT OF SPAIN, May 10 2006 (IPS) – During the visit of Jamaica s first female Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller late last month, her Trinidad and Tobago host, Patrick Manning, made a statement that most people here had heard already.
No doubt encouraged by Simpson Miller s assertion that as a political leader, she is never afraid to say or hesitant that the Almighty God is my master and captain , Manning told reporters that everyone knows that his religious beliefs influence his policies.
Everybody knows I am a Christian. It is not a secret. Everybody knows that I seek to operate closely with Almighty God and that my spirituality is the most important thing about me, he said.
It dictates exactly how I think and how I act, he added.
…
Sylvestre Tetchiada
YAOUNDE, Jun 13 2006 (IPS) – Josiane Matia, making her way along a school route in the Cameroonian capital of Yaoundé, is far less carefree than other 11-year-olds. Walking slowly, she complains of the pain caused by a breast band that her mother has forced her to wear for three months.
Before this breast band, my mother used the grinding stone heated in the fire to massage my chest, she told IPS.
Every night my mother examines my chest (and) massages me, sometimes with the pestle, Matia adds. All this is in a bid to reverse the development of the girl s breasts, to prevent her becoming the object of male attention.
Although I cry hard because of the pain, she tells me: Endure, my daughter; you are young and there is no point in having …
Marina Kozlova – Asia Water Wire*
NUKUS, Jul 26 2006 (IPS) – Until about 15 years ago, very little was known about the Vozrozhdeniye Island in the Aral Sea, except that it was a top-secret testing site for Soviet biological weapons.
Today, the island which has now turned into a peninsula following the drying up of the Aral has become a public health time bomb because of germ residues that scientists say could still be lingering there.
Vozrozhdeniye is a time bomb (in the Aral Sea region) that could cause serious problems in the future, says Gappar Asenov, head of the zoological and parasitological laboratory at the Karakalpakstan Centre for Prophylaxis of Quarantinable and Most Hazardous Infections.
The former Soviet Union first tested biological weapons at V…
Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 1 2006 (IPS) – Despite years of opposition mounted by a determined network of environmentalists and citizen groups, a new paper pulp plant began to operate Thursday in Chile.
The factory is operated by Celulosa Arauco y Constitución (CELCO), a Chilean firm notorious for the ecological disaster it is blamed for in a wetlands system near another of its plants, where hundreds of black-necked swans died off.
In Chile, political decisions continue to take precedence over technical, environmental and social considerations. What we are seeing is a dictatorship of investments and of the power of the big corporations, with the government s complicity, Lucio Cuenca, director of the Latin American Observatory of Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), tol…
ยังเป็นเกมที่มีผู้เล่นให้ความสนใจมากทีเดียวสำหรับ Super Mario ภาค Maker 2 ที่มาพร้อมกับไอเดียสุดเจ๋งให้ผู้เล่นได้มีโอกาสเข้าถึงเครื่องมือในการออกแบบฉากการเล่นสำหรับเกมแนวมาริโอ้แบบตะลุยด่านด้านข้างเพื่อนำมาแบ่งปันกันบนโลกออนไลน์ และด้วยระบบการเล่นดังกล่าวก็ทำให้เกมเมอร์ต่างส�…
โดยปกติแล้ว เกมต่อสู้มักจะมีโหมดเนื้อเรื่องที่ไม่ยาวมากนัก และ Mortal Kombat 1 ซึ่งเป็นเกมที่กำลังจะเปิดตัวเร็ว ๆ นี้ ก็ไม่ใช่ข้อยกเว้น โดยล่าสุดทาง Ed Boon ผู้กำกับเกม ได้ออกมาเปิดเผยว่าโหมดเนื้อเรื่องของเกมจะยาวนานพอ ๆ กับ ภาคก่อนหน้า
Ed Boon ตอบคำถามแฟน ๆ เกี่ยวกับความยาวของโหมดเนื้อเรื่องใน…
Joyce Mulama
MAPUTO, Sep 22 2006 (IPS) – In an ideal world, all of Africa s women would have access to clinics, nurses, obstetricians, medicines: the panoply of staff and equipment needed to make the process of giving birth as safe as possible.
Failing that, what can be done to lessen the risks that come with delivering babies? For one, improve the skills of traditional birth attendants (TBAs), say delegates who met this week in Mozambique at an African Union (AU) gathering on sexual and reproductive health care.
We need to look at upgrading their skills so that they are not TBAs, but are at a higher level such as midwives, Thoraya Ahmed Obaid, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, told journalists in the Mozambican capital Maputo.
This i…