யாழ்க்கள உறவுகளே !

யாழ்க்கள உறவுகளே !

சிறீலங்காவின் திட்டமிட்ட பரப்புரையானது பாதகமான விளைவுகளைத் தோற்றுவித்து வருகிறது. எனக்கு வந்த மின்னஞ்சலை இதில் இணைத்துள்ளேன். (ஆங்கிலம்) இந்த நிறுவனத்துக்கு எமது பகுதியில் நிகழும் இனஅழிப்புத் தொடர்பான பதிவுகளை அனுப்புவீர்களா?

இதனது உள்ளடக்கத்தை தமிழில் யாராவது மொழிபெயர்த்த உதவுமாறு வேண்டுகிறேன்.

Von: "alertnet@reuters.com" <alertnet@reuters.com>Kontaktdaten anzeigen An: alertnet@reuters.comIf the click-through links below do not work, or if you just prefer to view this digest on the AlertNet website, please go to: http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/digest2009_6.htm

This week's top humanitarian stories from AlertNet

February 11, 2009

JUMP TO: AFRICA * AMERICAS * ASIA * EUROPE * MIDDLE EAST * GLOBAL * ALERTNET INSIGHT * BLOGS AND AID AGENCIES * FEATURES * PHOTOS AND VIDEO

AFRICA

DARFUR CONFLICT: Darfur rebels have accused Sudanese government forces of advancing towards their positions and undermining peace talks that began in Qatar on Tuesday. There was no immediate comment from the army. The talks are the first time since 2007 that the government has sat down with the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), one of the main rebel groups in Darfur. Both sides said they would discuss confidence-building measures that could pave the way to full peace negotiations. But other Darfur groups say the meeting will fail because they have not all been included. Tension has been growing in Darfur as it awaits a decision by International Criminal Court judges on whether to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan! 's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, who is accused of war crimes in Darfur. U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon has said Sudan must work with the ICC whatever it decides.

Separately, U.S. diplomats say Sudan has expelled a foreign journalist for reporting on the country's Darfur crisis and arms industry. Canadian-Egyptian reporter Heba Aly, who wrote for U.S. news agency Bloomberg, the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor newspaper and the U.N. news service IRIN, has left the country telling colleagues that officers from Sudan's security service contacted her and ordered her to leave days after she made enquiries about a Khartoum-based arms manufacturer. Sudan's security service say Aly had been "practicing activities outside her assignment which harm Sudan National Security".

ZIMBABWE: Opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai has been sworn in as prime minister under a power-sharing deal with President Robert Mugabe aimed at rescuing the ruined southern African country. The pact agreed last year has raised hopes a new leadership could ease widespread hardships but mistrust and continued quarrels between the old foes cast doubts over whether they can work together. Reuters has an outline of scenarios on what could happen next and a timeline of events in Zimbabwe's crisis. There is also a factbox on the country's financial meltdown.

Meanwhile, U.N. and aid officials have warned that Zimbabwe's spreading cholera outbreak poses a threat to its neighbours South Africa, Zambia and Mozambique. The U.N. says the number of people suffering from cholera in Zimbabwe has risen to more than 69,000 cases and killed 3,397 people, making it the deadliest outbreak in Africa in 15 years. This U.N. map shows how the disease has spread.

SOMALIA TURMOIL: A growing tide of Somalis fleeing conflict at home has led to overcrowding in refugee camps in neighbouring Kenya. The United Nations doesn't expect the influx to ease soon, a senior U.N. refugee official says. The Dadaab refugee camp in arid northern Kenya received 62,000 new arrivals from Somalia in 2008 compared with only 18,000 in the previous year. Dadaab's three camps of Dagahaley, Ifo and Hagadera - mainly flimsy huts, and tents on sandy scrubland - now house 247,182 people making it one of the biggest refugee camps in the world, according to the U.N. refugee agency's deputy director. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network has warned that at least 3.2 million Somalis will requir! e food aid through June as poor rains and conflict cause high food insecurity across the country.

UGANDA'S LORD'S RESISTANCE ARMY: An offensive against Ugandan Lord's Resistance Army rebels in Congo has had catastrophic consequences for civilians but must go on to drive out the rebels, the U.N. humanitarian chief said during a trip to the country this week. LRA fighters have killed nearly 900 people in northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, mostly since the start of a multinational campaign in December led by Ugandan forces. The United Nations says 700 people, including 540 children, have been abducted to become fighters, porters or sex slaves, while others have been orphaned and traumatised. The LRA's leader Joseph Kony, who has waged a long rebellion in northern Uganda, has vanished.

AMERICAS

COLOMBIA: Colombia's FARC rebels have freed a former lawmaker held captive for nearly seven years in jungle camps in the last of three hostages released within a week by Latin America's oldest insurgency. Sigifredo Lopez was the last politician FARC was holding for prisoner swaps. He was the only survivor among 12 provincial lawmakers captured in a brazen rebel raid on a provincial assembly in 2002. Piedad Cordoba, a left-wing senator who helped broker the releases, said she had brought back a communique from FARC's top commander, Alfonso Cano, and would provide details later. Click here for a factbox on Colombia's rebel-held hostages.

ASIA

SRI LANKA CONFLICT: Sri Lanka's Tamil Tigers have denied they gunned down civilians streaming out of the country's war zone this week. The military has accused the Tigers of killing 19 civilians and wounding 69 more trying to flee. But the Tigers blamed troops for the shooting. Tens of thousands of civilians are trapped in a 175-square-km (67 sq mile) area held by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, surrounded by a military that's intent on crushing the separatist rebels. Earlier this week, a female Tamil Tiger suicide bomber hiding among a group of civilians fleeing the war zone blew herself up, killing at least 28 people and wounding 90, according to the military.

Aid agencies, including Caritas, Christian Aid and German Agro Action, are calling for access to civilians caught up in the fighting. Click here for a Q&A on the fate of civilians in Sri Lanka's war. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka's journalists, lawyers and human rights defenders are living in fear and need better protection from violence, U.N. investigators say. In a joint statement, 10 U.N. experts called on the government to act quickly to halt repressive practices.

MYANMAR HUNGER: Myanmar, once known as the rice bowl of Asia, still boasts a surplus of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of rice and maize. Yet a tenth of the population is going hungry, according to the first U.N. food security report on the country. Despite satisfactory levels of food production overall, many states require food aid because of regional disparities and limited agricultural and financial resources. Separately, officials from the United Nations and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have said that Myanmar needs around $700 million in aid over the next three years to recover from last year's devastating Cyclone Nargis. The appeal, focused on eight key areas including nutrition, health and l! ivelihoods, comes at a time when many countries are being squeezed by the global economic crisis. Foreign donors have also been reluctant to provide aid in the past to the former Burma, under military rule since 1962 and isolated internationally over its dismal human rights record. The international NGO response to Cyclone Nargis almost doubled the number of NGOs operating in Myanmar's Ayeyarwady Delta. About 40 international NGOs were given government permission to operate in the Nargis-affected areas.

CHINA: China has declared an emergency over a drought which could devastate crops and farmers' incomes, official media say, threatening further hardship amid slumping economic growth. The absence of rain or snow in parts of the north and centre of the country since November has affected 43 percent of land used to grow winter wheat and could reduce annual production in major wheat-growing areas by 2 to 5 percent. But experts say fears over the impact of the drought - which officials have called the worst in half a century - are misplaced and overblown. China's main wheat crops may yet emerge mostly unscathed as Beijing moves to fund last-minute irrigation and reviving crops that might otherwise have been left to die by farmers s! truggling with low prices and oversupply. Meanwhile, some of the farmers displaced to make way for China's vast Three Gorges Dam will be resettled again under a plan that vows to cure poverty, unemployment and environmental hazards in the area.

PHILIPPINES-MINDANAO CONFLICT: Philippine soldiers have killed two rebels from an Islamic militant group believed to be holding three members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on a remote southern island, an army general says. Troops clashed with the Abu Sayyaf on Jolo island as the Marines attempted to rescue the aid workers, Brigadier-General Gaudencio Pangilinan said. Two Muslim rebels were killed and 11 soldiers wounded in the firefight. Afterwards the Philippines said it had warned soldiers against opening fire on the kidnappers. The three aid workers, including two Europeans, kidnapped nearly four weeks ago appe! ared in good condition in video footage broadcast by local television before the recent violence. The kidnappers are believed to have ties to the regional militant network Jemaah Islamiah have demanded negotiations with the vice president and three ambassadors.

AFGHANISTAN AND PAKISTAN TURMOIL: Afghans are losing confidence in the way things are going in their country but most remain hostile to Taliban insurgents, according to an opinion poll. The poll found that the approval rating of President Hamid Karzai remained high but was steadily falling. A large majority - 77 percent - also said U.S. or NATO air strikes were unacceptable because they put civilians at risk. Meanwhile, fierce fighting in Pakistan's border area with Afghanistan could soon drive more than 600,000 people from their homes, the United Nations refugee agency says. Spokesman Ron Redmond said the agency would ramp up its relief work in northwestern Pakistan, where security has deteriorated sharply since last year.! Latest estimates put the number of displaced people in the region at around 450,000.

NEPAL: More than 2.7 million people in Nepal need immediate food assistance as high food prices plunge them over the edge, the World Food Programme (WFP) has said. The U.N. agency has also warned that it's running out of money and desperately needs more than $40 million to feed hungry people in the Himalayan nation. Although chronic food insecurity is a persistent problem in Nepal, WFP said the global food crisis had left far more people vulnerable, including villagers in fertile areas.

EUROPE

GEORGIA, ABKHAZIA, S.OSSETIA: Georgia's separatist Abkhazia will have a decisive say on whether United Nations peace monitors will be able to continue working in the region, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says. The mandate for the U.N. observer mission expires on Feb. 15 and the separatist administration says it will allow them to operate after that only if their mandate has changed to acknowledge Abkhazia's assertion as an independent state. Russia could use its veto as a permanent member of the Security Council to back the separatists' demands. And in Georgia's other breakaway region of South Ossetia, the goverment has claimed that two unexploded Georgian shells landed in its capital Tskhinvali, but Georgi! a has dismissed the claim as nonsense. Both sides have regularly accused each other of firing across the de facto border since the Moscow-backed region decisively broke from Georgian control in a war last August, but accusations of shell fire is rare.

MIDDLE EAST

ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN CONFLICT: Israel is heading for political gridlock after its election produced rival winners. Analysts say the country is now as split as the Palestinians and the prospects for peace are dimmer than ever. But Egyptian-brokered talks over a longer-term truce between Israel and Hamas in post-war Gaza will continue despite uncertainty over who will form the next Israeli government. In the talks, Israel and Hamas had narrowed gaps around issues including the establishment of a 300-metre wide buffer zone along Gaza's border with Israel. Separately, diplomats say U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is setting up a commissio! n to look into Israeli damage to U.N. premises during the recent Gaza conflict. And the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, was in Gaza and southern Israel last week to assess the situation of children and advocate for their protection. Emergency psychosocial programmes are beginning in Gaza, supported by World Vision, to help children recover.

ALERTNET INSIGHT

Families pay the price of caring for children with HIV

UK government aids struggling charities, as donations fall

Kenyan farmers abandon fields as hunger bites

Nearly 3 million in Nepal need urgent help, WFP warns

BLOGS AND AID AGENCY PERSPECTIVES

Bogota's displaced youth turn to street arts instead of crime

U.N. squirms over case of mistaken worm identity

Quake survivors celebrate new beginning

Gain the trust of the Afghan people

Stop reporting Somalia?

Europe's half-hearted plan to finance climate action

FEATURES AND ANALYSIS

Sudan court decision may prompt new Chad fighting

Timor-Leste: No Time for Complacency

Hungry caterpillars spread misery in West Africa

UGANDA: Water scheme proposed for parched Karamoja

Q+A-What next as Sri Lanka strives to end war?

INTERVIEW - AU calls for quick reinforcement of Somalia force

Militants killing laughter and music in Pakistan region

Indonesian city grapples with quake threat

PHOTOS AND VIDEO

Audio Slideshow: Reducing Indonesia's Peatland Fires

PHOTOS: Gaza recovery begins

PHOTOS: Myanmar's Rohingya refugees

VIDEO: Sri Lankan war claims more victims

VIDEO: Return to shattered Darfur town

VIDEO: Managing Ethiopia's water resources

VIDEO: Australian Tamils demand ceasefire

VIDEO: Summit's global warming warning

VIDEO: Gaza aid boat stopped by Israel

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