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Sudan: Darfur aid flight shot down, 4 crew dead
An aid helicopter for the U.N.-African Union mission in Darfur was shot down outside a refugee camp on Monday, killing all four crew members and scattering debris over a half-mile, Sudanese police and the U.N. said.
Police Gen. Hashim Ibrahim Fadul al-Mawla said the helicopter was shot down in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur. The helicopter was operated by a private company and hired by UNAMID to carry relief materials to Muhajiria from Nyala.
UNAMID spokesman Ahmed Salah said the crash killed the Russian pilots of the helicopter, which belonged to the Sudanese Supreme Company and was contracted to deliver food aid...
Read The Rest at the Link... An aid helicopter for the U.N.-African Union mission in Darfur was shot down outside a refugee camp on Monday, killing all four crew m... more -
Zimbabwe in need of new government, facing starvation
New Prime Minister and former leader of opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, told reporters that the country is in need of a newly formed government that will "address the country's food crisis and prevent starvation".
Read more at link. New Prime Minister and former leader of opposition Movement for Democratic Change, Morgan Tsvangirai, told reporters that the country ... more -
W.Va. parents accused of locking up 4 girls, feeding them once a day
Two Charleston parents are charged with felony child neglect for allegedly keeping four of their five daughters locked up and feeding them only once a day.
Thirty-three-year-old Thomas Freeman and 29-year-old Ruby Freeman were arrested Tuesday. Child Protective Services had been investigating the family and took the five kids, ranging in age from newborn to 6 years old, to a grandmother's home until permanent custody is determined.
Thomas Freeman allegedly told police he and his wife had been feeding the four oldest girls only once a day for six months. It's not clear how long the children had allegedly been kept in three locked rooms.
Police Sgt. Aaron James says doctors told him three girls have urinary tract infections and another has a skin infection.
A phone number for the Freemans couldn't be located Wednesday. Two Charleston parents are charged with felony child neglect for allegedly keeping four of their five daughters locked up and feeding ... more -
Green famine in Ethiopia
Guardian: The rains have come, the land is lush but Ethiopians still go hungry.
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Mother Charged in Cult Killing of Son
A woman charged with killing her child was ordered held without bail today during a court proceeding at the Central Booking and Intake Center.
Standing in court with her hands shackled behind her back, Ria Ramkissoon, 21, wore a purple jumpsuit, rocked nervously side to side, and shook her head slightly when Judge Theodore B. Oshrine read the charges against her.
She and four other members of a small group, 1 Mind Ministries, that police have called a religious cult, are accused of abusing and neglecting Ramkissoon's 21-month-old boy, Javon Thompson. In arguing for the judge to give Ramkissoon bail, her attorney, Steven D. Silverman, said in court today that the woman was being controlled by adults during the period when her son died.
"This is not a clear-cut case of one mother's cause and the effect of the death," Silverman said. "You have intervening circumstances. My client was not in control. ... I'm convinced in talking to her that she's been grossly over-charged" by Baltimore police detectives. A woman charged with killing her child was ordered held without bail today during a court proceeding at the Central Booking and Intake... more -
Populations Expanding Where It Is Most Difficult to Grow Food!
Populations are expanding fastest in Regions where it is the Most Difficult to Grow Food.
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Sudan capitalises on food exports while receiving aid for starvation in Darfur
Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own crops to other countries, capitalising on high global food prices at a time when millions of people in its war-riddled region of Darfur barely have enough to eat.
...Why is a country that exports so many of its own crops receiving more free food than anywhere else in the world, especially when the Sudanese government is blamed for creating the crisis in the first place?
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Take sorghum, a staple of the Sudanese diet, typically eaten in flat, spongy bread. Last year, the United States government, as part of its response to the emergency in Darfur, shipped in 283,000 tons of sorghum, at high cost, from as far away as Houston. Oddly enough, that is about the same amount that Sudan exported, according to United Nations officials. This year, Sudanese companies, including many that are linked to the government in Khartoum, are on track to ship out twice that amount, even as the United Nations is being forced to cut rations to Darfur.
Eric Reeves, a professor at Smith College and an outspoken activist who has written frequently on the Darfur crisis, called this anomaly "one of the least reported and most scandalous features of the Khartoum regime's domestic policies." It was emblematic, he said, of the Sudanese government's strategy to manipulate "national wealth and power to further enrich itself and its cronies, while the marginalized regions of the country suffer from terrible poverty." Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own c... more -
Sudanese Government selling donated food while Darfur starves.
Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own crops to other countries, capitalizing on high global food prices at a time when millions of people in its war-riddled region of Darfur barely have enough to eat. Even as it receives a billion pounds of free food from international donors, Sudan is growing and selling vast quantities of its own c... more
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Emperor - Chapter 8
Cannabis Hempseed as a Basic World Food
In 1937, Ralph Loziers, general counsel of the National Institute of Oilseed Products, told the Congressional committee studying marijuana prohibition that “hempseed... is used in all the Oriental nations and also in a part of Russia as food. It is grown in their fields and used as oatmeal. Millions of people every day are using hempseed in the Orient as food. They have been doing this for many generations, especially in periods of famine.”
That was over 70 years ago. Today we know hempseed is the plant kingdom’s richest source of life-giving essential fatty acids, and may well be the cure for cancer and heart disease. Cannabis Hempseed as a Basic World Food ... more -
Lose Weight.... The Deadly Way...
Across the obesity-ridden United States thousands of people experiment with quick fix, dangerous weight loss methods.
Not knowing what is dangerous is one of the reasons why people die from unhealthy ways to lose weight. Across the obesity-ridden United States thousands of people experiment with quick fix, dangerous weight loss methods. ... more -
Food prices create $6bn deficit every year
The head of the World Bank says poor countries will need some $6 billion in food aid every year because of rising food prices.
Robert Zoellick says he expects food prices to stay above 2004 levels at least through 2012. He says energy prices also will remain high and volatile.
Zoellick says the World Food Program, which feeds the world's hungry, requires $6 billion. But this year an additional $3.5 billion is needed for short-term safety net projects in 50 countries. The head of the World Bank says poor countries will need some $6 billion in food aid every year because of rising food prices. ... more -
Feed A Starving Person With One Click
www.freerice.com is a website with an online vocabulary that promotes self-improvement and humanitarian aid by providing free rice to developing nations through the United Nations. It works by asking the viewer what the vocab of a word. If you get the question right, 20 grains of rice is donated, if you get the qustion wrong, you get an easier word. The rice is paid for by ads at the bottom of each page. FreeRice now gives you a second chance on words you miss.
http://www.freerice.com/ www.freerice.com is a website with an online vocabulary that promotes self-improvement and humanitarian aid by providing free rice to ... more -
1.5 bn people may starve due to land erosion
The U.N. announced on Wednesday rising land degradation reduces crop yields and may threaten food security of about a quarter of the world' population.
"An estimated 1.5 billion people, or a quarter of the world's population, depend directly on land that is being degraded," FAO said in a statement presenting a study based on data taken over a 20-year period. The U.N. announced on Wednesday rising land degradation reduces crop yields and may threaten food security of about a quarter of the w... more -
Food crisis could destroy progress in Africa
LONDON, England (AP) -- Rising global food prices threaten to destroy years of economic progress in Africa and drive 100 million people into poverty, a high-profile international panel said Monday.
Real progress in Africa now risks being undone by the food crisis, says a high-profile international panel.
The Africa Progress Panel also said wealthy countries are likely to fail in their promise to deliver billions more in aid to the continent by 2010.
"Africa has made substantial progress in recent years," said former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who chairs the panel.
"However, the current food crisis threatens to reverse many of the hard-fought gains that have been made," he said.
"With 100 million people on the brink of abject poverty, the cost of food will not be measured in the price of wheat and rice, but in the rising number of infant and child deaths across Africa."
The panel was formed last year to focus world leaders' attention on the continent and monitor progress toward meeting ambitious aid commitments. Its 11 members include former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and anti-poverty activist Bob Geldof.
In its annual report, the panel called on leaders of the Group of Eight industrialized nations to "urgently fund shortfalls against their targets to double assistance to Africa by 2010."
The July 2005 G-8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, garnered commitments to increase foreign aid by $50 billion a year by 2010 -- with half of that going directly to Africa -- and to cancel the debt of the most heavily indebted poor nations.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development reported in April that foreign aid by major donor countries slumped in 2007 as debt-relief plans tapered off and amid a global economic downturn in Japan and some other rich nations.
The Africa Progress Panel concluded that despite increases in assistance by some countries, "the G-8's commitment to double assistance to Africa by 2010 is not likely to be fulfilled." It said current commitments fell $40 billion short of the Gleneagles target.
The panel called on the G-8 countries -- U.S., Japan, Russia, Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Canada -- to tackle the food crisis and promote trade, infrastructure and governance reforms when they meet in Hokkaido, Japan, on July 7-9. LONDON, England (AP) -- Rising global food prices threaten to destroy years of economic progress in Africa and drive 100 million peopl... more -
UN warns 5m Zimbabweans will face hunger by next year
The United Nations warned yesterday that more than 5 million Zimbabweans are facing hunger as the country staggers towards next week's presidential elections under the burden of increasing violence and economic collapse.
At the same time, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, expressed "profound alarm" at the level of violence and intimidation, and the arrest of opposition leaders. "Should these conditions continue to prevail, the legitimacy of the election outcomes would be in question," Ban told an informal session of the UN general assembly.
Two UN relief agencies, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Program, issued a joint report saying 2 million Zimbabweans would face hunger before September, and projected the figure would rise to 3.8 million by the end of the year, and 5.1 million by next March.
The report blamed a combination of plummeting food production and the world's highest rate of inflation. The United Nations warned yesterday that more than 5 million Zimbabweans are facing hunger as the country staggers towards next week&#... more -
Ethiopia appeals for urgent aid
Ethiopia has launched an urgent appeal to international donors for more than $300m (£154m) of emergency aid.
A total of 4.6 million people are now thought to need food aid, because of the drought which struck most of the country in the early part of this year.
In some parts of the country, health centres and feeding clinics are already being overwhelmed with large numbers of severely malnourished children. Ethiopia has launched an urgent appeal to international donors for more than $300m (£154m) of emergency aid. ... more -
'Forget climate change, we should spend on nutrition'
Malnutrition should be the world’s major priority for aid and development, a panel of eight leading economists, including five Nobel laureates, declared yesterday.
The provision of supplements of vitamin A and zinc to children in developing countries, to prevent avoidable deficiencies that affect hundreds of millions of children, is the most cost-effective way of making the world a better place, the Copenhagen Consensus initiative has found.
Three other strategies for improving diets in poor nations were also named among the top six of 30 challenges assessed by the project, which aims to prioritise solutions to the world’s many problems according to their costs and benefits.
Efforts to control global warming by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, however, were rated at the bottom of the league table, as the economists considered the high costs of such action were not justified by the payoffs. Research into new low-carbon technologies, such as solar and nuclear fusion power, was ranked as more worthwhile, in 14th place.
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This article is the result of the panels voting on the issues most important to deal with in our world. I did not come up with the headline or the story, I am simply the messenger of the news article to the Current community. Thank you all for responding and weighing in on this subject. Both are extremely important to me. Climate change is a long term goal, but starvation is an immediate goal. Please keep that in mind. Malnutrition should be the world’s major priority for aid and development, a panel of eight leading economists, including five Nobel l... more -
Food Crisis: Should the US Go on a Diet?
In this very interesting clip we hear what is going on at the current summit in Rome.
Finally the focus is on supporting local farmers world wide--stop dumping subsidized agriculture into the developing world.
FAO, Global Call to Action against Poverty and Vandana Shiva speak of what needs to be done right now to resolve this crisis.
Lack of food is a man made problem and women and children are the ones who suffer the consequences. In this very interesting clip we hear what is going on at the current summit in Rome. ... more -
Food Crisis: Hard Choices
There is not a food crisis in Indonesia -- at least not yet. But the rise in food prices and other basic goods is hitting the poor the hardest. More than half of Indonesia's 235 million are poor. Many make less than $2 a day. In May, economists warned that rising food prices could reserve gains made in reducing poverty made across Asia. Jonathan Jones and Anna Sussman travel to Jakarta to visit low income neighborhoods, as well as rice wholesale and retail markets, and meet with World Food Program officials to find out how Indonesians have been affected by the rise in global food prices. There is not a food crisis in Indonesia -- at least not yet. But the rise in food prices and other basic goods is hitting the poor the... more
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Starvation
