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/ 16 November 2007
A new World Trade Organisation (WTO) accord could improve access to clean-energy tools in poorer countries, but any deal making it easier to ship cargo internationally would also carry a heavy carbon footprint. Environmental economists are uncertain about the relative merits of the WTO’s Doha round.
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/ 2 November 2007
Aid workers are planning to travel to Chad’s western border with Sudan to try to determine the exact background of 103 children at the centre of a child abduction row, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Friday. The group is aiming to meet village and community leaders around the Chadian towns of Adre and Tine.
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/ 30 October 2007
About 36 000 Somalis have fled Mogadishu after weekend fighting, the worst in months between Ethiopian troops backing the interim government and Islamist-led rebels, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. Most of the displaced headed for the town of Afgooye, 30km to the west, which is already struggling to cope with 100 000 people.
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/ 23 October 2007
Talks on a deal to free up world trade are making progress, developing country leaders said on Monday, but the chairperson of key industry negotiations said more needed to be done to reach an agreement. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the Doha round of trade could end in a deal by the end of the year.
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/ 22 October 2007
The nationalist Swiss People’s Party received the highest vote recorded to date for an individual political party in Switzerland, after a bitter campaign blaming foreigners for much of the country’s crime, according to official results released on Monday. The Federal Statistics Office put the party on 29% after Sunday’s elections.
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/ 17 October 2007
South Africa must do more to raise awareness of HIV/Aids amid rising child deaths and over one million children orphaned by the disease, the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) said Wednesday. ”Each year, 100Â 000 children contract Aids in South Africa, and half of them die before the age of two,” Unicef’s representative in the country, Macharia Kamau, said.
Climate change, environmental degradation and economic deprivation are among forces increasingly driving the dramatic growth in migration, the head of the United Nations refugee agency said on Monday, pointing to desertification, rising sea levels, water shortages and political conflicts.
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/ 28 September 2007
Eleven thousand people have fled Mogadishu this month because of intensified violence and the northern part of the Somali capital is becoming increasingly deserted, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. Northern Mogadishu is a stronghold of Islamist insurgents fighting Ethiopian troops supporting the transitional government in the Horn of Africa country.
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/ 28 September 2007
United Nations human rights investigators say people are still being arbitrarily detained, tortured and often denied access to a lawyer in post-war Angola. Wrapping up a 10-day visit to the Southern African country, they also cited credible allegations that civilians are held incommunicado at military facilities in Cabinda province.
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/ 26 September 2007
The Red Cross warned on Wednesday that a food crisis could be looming across East and West Africa due to the massive damage wrought on crops by ongoing flooding. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies highlighted the situation in Ghana, Sudan and Uganda.
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/ 18 September 2007
United Nations agencies on Tuesday warned that the worst floods seen in parts of Africa for decades could intensify in the coming days and appealed for international aid to avert the threat of disease. About a million people have been affected by torrential rains stretching between West and East Africa since July.
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/ 14 September 2007
At least fifty-six people have died while trying to make the perilous Gulf of Aden crossing from Somalia to Yemen, the United Nations refugee agency said on Friday. A UN spokesperson told journalists that a dozen boats carrying 925 Somalis, Ethiopians and others fleeing growing violence and insecurity in the region had arrived in Yemen since September 3.
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/ 12 September 2007
The hole in the protective ozone layer over the Antarctic is forming again, but should remain just below the record size it reached last year, a scientist at the United Nations’s weather agency said Wednesday. The gap in the ozone in the upper atmosphere, at altitudes of up to 25km, has reached a size of about 23-million square kilometres.
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/ 11 September 2007
An outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever, a deadly disease for which there is no treatment, has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the World Health Organisation said on Tuesday. Samples from five people have tested positive for the Ebola virus in the southern province of Kasai Occidental.
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/ 5 September 2007
The boom in cellphones in developing countries has pushed the number of telephone subscribers in the world to four billion, four times the number a decade ago, the United Nations telecommunications agency said on Tuesday. The increase has been especially strong in developing countries such as Brazil, China and India.
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/ 4 September 2007
Severe floods across West Africa have killed at least 87 people, most of them in Nigeria, over the past two months, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Tuesday. Weather conditions worsened considerably in August, with areas of hard-hit northern Togo difficult to reach because bridges were swept away by heavy rains.
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/ 3 September 2007
There has been a ”marked reduction” in human rights violations, road ambushes and illegal firearms in Uganda’s north-east over the past six months, the United Nations said on Monday. In a report, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said the Ugandan national army had made important advances between April and August.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) on Thursday warned that a new deadly infectious disease like Aids or Ebola is bound to appear in the 21st century, in a report urging more global solidarity. "It would be extremely naive and complacent to assume that there will not be another disease like Aids, another Ebola," the 2007 <i>World Health Report</i> said.
The United Nations human rights office on Tuesday accused forces allied with Sudan’s government of mass abduction and rape of women and girls in Darfur, acts it said could constitute war crimes. Its latest report, based on testimony from victims and witnesses, called on Khartoum to investigate reports that about 50 women were forced into ”sexual slavery”.
Concerned about environmental issues and want to talk to an orangutan or a panda? You can from Thursday, after conservation group WWF decided to set up a virtual island in online world Second Life. ”Conservation Island” is aimed at encouraging human residents to live in harmony with nature.
Nearly 100 people have drowned in floods in Sudan, where rivers have burst their banks, inundating villages and farm lands, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Thursday. The toll over the past month was reported by the Sudanese Red Crescent, which has been leading the humanitarian response to the flooding.
Sudan should grant refugee status to tens of thousands of mostly Arab Chadians who have fled into Darfur to escape violence in their country, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday. But the UN urged Sudan to clarify land issues so Chadians do not settle on property abandoned by Darfuris who have themselves fled conflict for shelter in refugee camps.
The world has experienced record extreme weather conditions including unusual floods, heatwaves, storms and cold snaps since the beginning of the year, the United Nations weather agency said on Tuesday. Preliminary observations also indicated that global land-surface temperatures in January and April reached the highest levels recorded for those months.
Somali children are at risk from unexploded ordnance around the capital, Mogadishu, where daily fighting has forced 27Â 000 people to flee since June, United Nations agencies said on Friday. Bombing and gun battles in the capital prevent families from working or buying food, the United Nations refugee agency said.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has pulled out from Ethiopia’s restive Ogaden region following a government order, but still hopes to return, a spokesperson said on Thursday. Authorities in Ethiopia’s Somali regional state last week gave the Red Cross seven days’ notice to leave, accusing it of consorting with rebels.
More than 500 people have been killed in the most devastating floods to hit China for a decade, the Red Cross said on Monday, launching an emergency appeal for aid to the millions left homeless. ”Over the past two months, more than 200-million people have been affected and over 500 have been killed nationwide,” it said in a statement.
Cycling was in the first modern Olympic Games 111 years ago. Some Olympic officials, however, are starting to question if keeping cycling in the family could tarnish the Games as the sport’s doping problems spiral out of control. Cycling’s doping crisis has reached new lows at the Tour de France.
The United Nations Human Rights Committee on Friday called on Sudan to prosecute war crimes committed in Darfur and to ensure that no support is given to militias that engage in ”ethnic cleansing”. The body of 18 independent experts voiced concern that Sudan had not carried out a thorough and independent probe into serious human rights violations.
The International Committee of the Red Cross on Thursday rejected accusations it was consorting with rebels in Ethiopia’s restive Ogaden region, and said its expulsion would hurt needy civilians there. The humanitarian agency denounced the decision on Tuesday by authorities in Ethiopia’s Somali regional state giving it seven days’ notice to leave.
The United Nations on Tuesday appealed for -million to help Somalis fleeing renewed violence and said the overall number of people uprooted in the Horn of Africa country was now estimated at 500Â 000. More than 10Â 000 people fled the capital, Mogadishu, last week, many of them now living in ”deplorable conditions”.
The United Nations human rights chief on Friday called on Sudan to protect a village of 4 500 people in West Darfur where armed men in military uniform have carried out abductions and sexual violence. Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, urged the Khartoum government to set up a permanent police presence in Bir Dagig.
A Swiss police force on Wednesday handed out bars of chocolate to motorists in an attempt to encourage safe driving habits. The one-day "Thank You" campaign targeted clean motorists stopped during routine roadside checks, following a rash of serious road offences this year in the western Fribourg region, cantonal police said in a statement.