Activists say the health minister is in denial over the impact of US funding cuts and accusing them and the media of overblowing the crisis and spreading disinformation
South Africa under-reports human trafficking cases and is poor at apprehending perpetrators
The US government is cutting its funding for the supply of contraceptives to family planning clinics run by Marie Stopes International in Africa.
The United States sent its first aid flight to Burma on Monday, but experts warned the relief effort was floundering and 1,5-million cyclone survivors were at grave risk from hunger and disease. The US military transport plane laden with emergency supplies was permitted to land by the ruling junta.
The first United States military aid flight landed in Burma on Monday, but relief supplies continued to just dribble into the reclusive state nine days after a cyclone. A C-130 military transport plane left Thailand’s Vietnam war-era U-Tapao airbase carrying 12 700kg of water, mosquito nets and blankets.
The ”DC Madam,” whose arrest for running a high-end prostitution ring sent sex-scandal tremors through the United States capital, hanged herself on Thursday in a shed at her mother’s house, police said. Deborah Jeane Palfrey was convicted last month on federal racketeering charges for running the prostitution ring for the rich, famous and powerful.
International aid agencies on Saturday called for emergency food programmes to be overhauled as the soaring price of grain and other staple crops threatens to bring further misery to many parts of the developing world. The call came after it emerged that the United States is to slash the amount of food aid it gives to some of the poorest countries in the world.
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/ 18 February 2008
United States President George Bush handed out hugs and bed nets to battle malaria in Tanzania’s rural north on Monday, saying the US is part of an international effort to provide enough mosquito netting to protect every child under five in the East African nation.
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/ 18 February 2008
An anti-Aids gel that had reached the final phase of testing was unable to prevent the transmission of HIV, research NGO and non-profit organisation the Population Council said on Monday. It said the third phase of the clinical trials into the product found it ineffective in preventing male-to-female HIV transmission during vaginal intercourse.
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/ 4 February 2008
From the Indonesian city where Barack Obama spent part of his childhood to Hong Kong’s bars and a Dublin pub, United States Democrats abroad grabbed their first chance to vote in Super Tuesday primaries. The venues are about as far removed from formal political institutions as possible, from pubs and cafés to bookshops.
Gunmen killed a United States government aid agency official and his driver in Khartoum on Tuesday, US and Sudanese officials said. The unknown assailants opened fire as the official from the US Agency for International Development was heading home in an embassy vehicle shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day, diplomatic sources said.
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/ 2 December 2007
Activists and global leaders used World Aids Day on Saturday to warn against complacency in fighting the disease and called on governments to fill a multibillion-dollar funding gap. ”We have made tangible and remarkable progress on all these fronts. But we must do more,” United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said.
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/ 1 December 2007
Activists on Saturday sought to keep the battle against HIV in the public eye on World Aids Day in the face of growing complacency amid progress in treating and slowing the spread of the disease. The December 1 event is traditionally a time of grim stocktaking as Aids campaigners sound the alarm over the disease’s rampage through Africa.
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/ 20 November 2007
Relief workers and the Bangladesh military on Tuesday reached the last remaining pockets of the country devastated by a cyclone that killed nearly 3 500 people along the Bay of Bengal. It has taken five days to gain access to the hardest-hit areas in an operation involving helicopters, planes and boats.
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/ 10 October 2007
Iraqi authorities on Wednesday condemned the killing in Baghdad of two women by foreign security guards, as the firm which hired the contractors defended its action. Tuesday’s bloodbath comes just days after Iraq vowed to punish United States security firm Blackwater after a probe found that its guards opened "deliberate" fire in Baghdad three weeks ago.
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/ 25 September 2007
Fresh rainfalls and slow relief have deepened the humanitarian crisis caused by record floods in Africa that have affected more than 1,5-million people and killed at least 300, aid agencies warned on Tuesday. The worst floods in three decades have now affected 22 countries and displaced hundreds of thousands.