4 dead in Haiti food riots
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Four people were killed in Haiti when demonstrators protesting the high cost of living clashed with security forces, a local official said on Friday.
The United Nations said protesters rioted in the southern town of Les Cayes on Thursday, burning shops, shooting at peacekeepers and looting containers at a U.N. compound.
"At least four people have been killed and about 20 others wounded," said Gabriel Fortune, a senator from the southern region, who condemned the violent behavior of the demonstrators.
"The movement started well, but it was spoiled by the intrusion of a number of criminals that have nothing to do with the legitimate demands of the population," said Fortune.
Decades of turbulence
Food prices in Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas, have soared in recent months, stoking anger against the government of President Rene Preval.
Preval's election in 2006 raised expectations that the country would finally start on the path to stability after decades of turbulence, culminating in the February 2004 ouster of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Les Cayes was tense after the riots and the U.N. force trying to maintain peace in the volatile Caribbean country sent 100 peacekeepers as reinforcements, the U.N. statement said.
A small group of protesters broke into the U.N. compound in Les Cayes, damaging the main gate and ignoring warning shots from peacekeepers, the statement said.
'Hunger is unbearable'
"The protesters also burned shops in Les Cayes and threw rocks and fired weapons at some of the blue helmets during the night."
At least two U.N. vehicles were burned, demonstrators threw rocks at cars and at least one woman was raped, according to local officials and radio reports.
"This hunger is unbearable and the government has to act now, otherwise we will burn down and destroy everything," a demonstrator shouted into a local reporter's microphone.
At a news conference, Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis denounced what he called manipulation of the protests.
"We know that these demonstrations have been infiltrated by individuals linked to drug dealers and other smugglers," he said, calling on the protesters to stop the demonstrations.
Alexis said the government had immediately made available about $10 million to help fight the high cost of living. He announced job creation and credit programs and said food would be distributed and fertilizer prices cut in half.
Haiti, which shares the island of Hispaniola with the more prosperous Dominican Republic, has been relatively tranquil recently, although a resurgence in kidnappings and crime has alarmed the United Nations.
Just under 9,000 Brazilian-led U.N. peacekeepers and civilian police are stationed in Haiti.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon this week called on the international community and Haiti's leaders to keep up their efforts to bring stability to the country. "The potential for regression remains," he said in a report.
Haitians go hungry as food rots at ports
CAP-HAITIEN, Haiti - While millions of Haitians go hungry, containers full of food are stacking up in the nation's ports because of government red tape — leaving tons of beans, rice and other staples to rot under a sweltering sun or be devoured by vermin.
A government attempt to clean up a corrupt port system that has helped make Haiti a major conduit for Colombian cocaine has added new layers of bureaucracy — and led to backlogs so severe they are being felt 600 miles away in Miami, where cargo shipments to Haiti have ground almost to a standstill.
The problems are depriving desperate people of donated food. Some are so poor they are forced to eat cookies made of dirt, salt and vegetable oil to satisfy their hunger.
An Associated Press investigation found the situation is most severe in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. One recent afternoon, garbage men shoveled a pile of rotting pinto beans that had turned gray and crumbled to dust as cockroaches and beetles scurried about.
The men had found the putrid cargo by following a stench through stacked shipping containers to one holding 40,000 pounds of beans. It had been in port since November.
"So many times, by the time (the food) gets out of customs it's expired and we're forced to burn it," said Susie Scott Krabacher, whose Colorado-based Mercy and Sharing Foundation has worked in Haiti for 14 years. "The food is there. It is available. It just can't get to the people."
Though it is unclear how much of Haiti's food supply is tied up in the port delays, the effects could be serious. Haiti imports about 75 percent of its food supply, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And there is little room for error in a country where the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported that almost half the population was undernourished in 2002.
The U.N. World Food Program and large-scale U.S. rice growers say they have been able to get their food into Haiti by hiring local agents to handle bureaucratic procedures. But smaller charities, merchants and private citizens have often been forced by the delays to throw away containers of food or pay exorbitant fees.
The problems stem in part from efforts to clean up a port system the World Bank recently ranked as the second-worst in the region, ahead of only Guyana.
Customs reform efforts
Before the changes were implemented last fall, bribes flowed freely and goods passed through unsearched and without duties being paid. That deprived the government of money and helped make Haiti a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine destined for the United States.
The international community has encouraged Haiti's customs reform efforts, with the U.S. government helping fund port security and U.N. peacekeepers stepping up anti-smuggling patrols along the coast and Dominican border.
But new requirements for licenses and manifests in triplicate have overwhelmed poorly trained workers and the country's archaic, handwritten customs system.
Unlike U.S. ports, where less than 5 percent of containers were scanned last year and only a fraction of those opened up and inspected, Haitian cargo handlers said each container at Cap-Haitien must now be completely emptied and inspected. Customs chief Jean-Jacques Valentin said that policy was Haiti's own decision.
Frustrated by the new procedures and demanding higher pay, striking workers shut down the port at Cap-Haitien for 20 days in December. Graffiti denouncing the port's director still mars its buildings.
And despite the reforms, some say the bribes are continuing.
Jean-Paul Michaud, a Canadian, said he sailed to the capital of Port-au-Prince late last year carrying 60 pounds of donated clothing and medicine — and that port authorities demanded $10,000 in "customs fees" — code for a bribe to make the fees disappear.
"I'd have rather thrown the aid in the water," said Michaud. The Canadian Embassy intervened and the fee was later waived.
Krabacher's group says it has paid nearly $16,000 in fees in the first six weeks of 2008 alone, compared to $23,418 for all of 2007.
Lawmakers concerned about the situation questioned Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis about the port delays during a February no-confidence vote.
"There is a lot of work being done in terms of the ports," Alexis maintained. "We are looking at a way to implement a 'fast-track' policy, so people can get their merchandise out more quickly."
President urges crackdown
He also recommended splitting the National Port Authority into two agencies, one focusing on the logistics of port management and the other overseeing customs because he does not believe the current agency can handle both tasks.
Haitian President Rene Preval echoed those concerns in a speech to parliament in January, calling for a crackdown on illegal contraband and a lowering of exorbitant container fees that are three times higher than those in neighboring Dominican Republic.
After opening the door of the orange container filled with rotting beans last month, the workers were hit by a revolting smell. They let the odor dissipate for a week before spending two days loading the beans into a flatbed truck and hauling them away for disposal.
The garbage collectors grumbled about the waste of precious food, with one saying he wished he could have taken the beans to his neighborhood before they rotted. The workers then went in search of a container loaded with spoiling rice.
Dimitri Torres, the director of container-handler Cap Terminal SA., said he doesn't even know who shipped the beans. They had already been transferred from one container to another during inspection and the shipping documents had disappeared.
Valentin, the customs chief, blames the backlog on shippers who are trying to skirt the new system. He said some intended to smuggle items into Haiti and avoid customs duties.
"They are people that weren't straight with not bringing contraband, and that's why they're making excuses and that's why things are slow," Valentin said.
Cap Terminal normally has about 50 containers at its yard next to the port, Torres said. More than 200 are now stacked up, at least half belonging to Miami-based Frontier Liner Services.
That company, like several others, has stopped shipping to Haiti until the delays are resolved and its empty containers are returned. Haiti-bound cargo traffic in Florida's Miami River is at a virtual standstill.
"We've had to lay off people," said Munir Mourra, president of Miami-based River Terminal Services. "Pretty much all the stevedores on the vessels have been laid off."
China may loosen it's 1 child limit
Beijing — China is studying how to move away from the country's one-child-per-couple restriction, but any changes would come gradually and would not mean an elimination of family planning policies, a senior official said Thursday.
The official, Zhao Baige, vice minister of the National Population and Family Planning Commission, told reporters at a news conference that government officials recognize that China must alter its current population-control policies.
“We want incrementally to have this change,” Zhao said, according to Reuters. “I cannot answer at what time or how, but this has become a big issue among decision makers.”
With more than 1.3 billion people, China is the most populous nation and is home to one of the most stringent family planning regimens. Most urban couples are limited to a single child unless they pay hefty fines. Farmers are generally permitted to have a second child if the first is a girl. Minorities often are allowed to have two or more children.
For more than three decades, the restriction on births has been a centerpiece of government economic and social policy. Local officials receive performance ratings based partly on how well residents adhere to the restrictions. In the 1980s, officials routinely forced women to abort fetuses that would have resulted in above-quota births, and both men and women were often forced to undergo sterilization operations.
Enforcement of the policy has softened markedly in recent years, with most areas relying on fines to ensure compliance. But scandals over forced abortions continue to arise periodically. The restrictions also have deepened a severe imbalance in the ratio of boys and girls in the population because many families have used selective abortions to ensure the birth of a son, the traditional preference.
Chinese officials have sought to curb the excesses and abuses and have argued that the one-child restriction has prevented roughly 400 million births and allowed the country to prosper and better live within its resources.
But China's fertility rate is now extremely low, and the population is rapidly aging, especially in urban areas. Experts have warned that China is steadily moving toward a demographic crisis with too many old people in need of expensive services and too few young workers paying taxes to meet those bills. China is often regarded as having a limitless pool of young, cheap labor, but the country's biggest manufacturing centers are already facing labor shortages.
Some of the biggest cities, like Shanghai, have tried to make small tweaks in the policy to spur more births. Nationally, the policy now allows urban couples to have two children if both spouses are from one-child families. But officials have resisted any major policy changes out of fears that a major population boom might follow. In recent months, Chinese officials have pledged to crack down on rich couples that are using their money or influence to disobey the policy.
Zhao said surveys indicated that a strong majority of younger Chinese would like two children. But she warned that current plans call only for studying potential changes and that any adjustments must not lead to a rapid jump in the birth rate.
Zhao's comments come less than a week before the annual meeting of the National People's Congress, the Communist Party-controlled legislative body. They also come as China is trying to soften its human rights image as Beijing prepares to play host to the Olympics in August.
Beijing
Kosovo Declares Independence
PRISTINA, Kosovo - Revelers fired guns in the air, waved red-and-black Albanian flags and set off fireworks in the skies over Kosovo Sunday after parliament proclaimed independence, defying Serbia and Russia, which condemned the declaration of the world's newest nation.
A decade after a bloody separatist war with Serbian forces that claimed 10,000 lives, lawmakers pronounced the territory the Republic of Kosovo and pledged to make it a "democratic, multiethnic state." Its leaders looked for swift recognition from the U.S. and key European powers — but also braced for a bitter showdown.
Serbia called the declaration illegal and its ally Russia denounced it, saying it threatened to touch off a new conflict in the Balkans. Russia called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, which met later on Sunday.
In the capital, Pristina, the mood was jubilant. Thousands of ethnic Albanians braved subfreezing temperatures to ride on the roofs of their cars, singing patriotic songs and chanting: "KLA! KLA!" the acronym for the now-disbanded rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. They waved American flags alongside the red Albanian banner imprinted with a black, double-headed eagle.
Many dressed in traditional costumes and played trumpets and drums, and an ethnic Albanian couple named their newborn daughter Pavarsie — Albanian for "independence."
"This is the happiest day in my life," said Mehdi Shehu, 68. "Now we're free and we can celebrate without fear."
Kosovo had formally remained a part of Serbia even though it has been administered by the U.N. and NATO since 1999, when NATO airstrikes ended former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists.
Ninety percent of Kosovo's 2 million people are ethnic Albanian — most of them secular Muslims — and they see no reason to stay joined to the rest of Christian Orthodox Serbia.
The European Union and NATO, mindful of the Balkans' turbulent past, appealed for restraint and warned that the international community would not tolerate violence.
President Bush said the United States "will continue to work with our allies to the very best we can to make sure there's no violence."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23209610/displaymode/1176/rstry/23203607/
Rain forests fall at an alarming rate
ABO EBAM, Nigeria - In the gloomy shade deep in Africa's rain forest, the noontime silence was pierced by the whine of a far-off chain saw. It was the sound of destruction, echoed from wood to wood, continent to continent, in the tropical belt that circles the globe.
From Brazil to central Africa to once-lush islands in Asia's archipelagos, human encroachment is shrinking the world's rain forests.
The alarm was sounded decades ago by environmentalists — and was little heeded. The picture, meanwhile, has changed: Africa is now a leader in destructiveness. The numbers have changed: U.N. specialists estimate 60 acres of tropical forest are felled worldwide every minute, up from 50 a generation back. And the fears have changed.
Experts still warn of extinction of animal and plant life, of the loss of forest peoples' livelihoods, of soil erosion and other damage. But scientists today worry urgently about something else: the fateful feedback link of trees and climate.
Global warming is expected to dry up and kill off vast tracts of rain forest, and dying forests will feed global warming.
"If we lose forests, we lose the fight against climate change," declared more than 300 scientists, conservation groups, religious leaders and others in an appeal for action at December's climate conference in Bali, Indonesia.
The burning or rotting of trees that comes with deforestation — at the hands of ranchers, farmers, timbermen — sends more heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than all the world's planes, trains, trucks and automobiles. Forest destruction accounts for about 20 percent of manmade emissions, second only to burning of fossil fuels for electricity and heat. Conversely, healthy forests absorb carbon dioxide and store carbon.
"The stakes are so dire that if we don't start turning this around in the next 10 years, the extinction crisis and the climate crisis will begin to spiral out of control," said Roman Paul Czebiniak, a forest expert with Greenpeace International. "It's a very big deal."
The December U.N. session in Bali may have been a turning point, endorsing negotiations in which nations may fashion the first global financial plan for compensating developing countries for preserving their forests.
The latest data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) helped spur delegates to action.
"Deforestation continues at an alarming rate of about 13 million hectares (32 million acres) a year," the U.N. body said in its latest "State of the World's Forests" report.
Because northern forests remain essentially stable, that means 50,000 square miles of tropical forest are being cleared every 12 months — equivalent to one Mississippi or more than half a Britain. The lumber and fuelwood removed in the tropics alone would fill more than 1,000 Empire State Buildings, FAO figures show.
Although South America loses slightly more acreage than Africa, the rate of loss is higher here — almost 1 percent of African forests gone each year. In 2000-2005, the continent lost 10 million acres a year, including big chunks of forest in Sudan, Zambia and Tanzania, up from 9 million a decade earlier, the FAO reports.
Across the tropics the causes can be starkly different.
The Amazon and other South American forests are usually burned for cattle grazing or industrial-scale soybean farming. In Indonesia and elsewhere in southeast Asia, island forests are being cut or burned to make way for giant plantations of palm, whose oil is used in food processing, cosmetics and other products.
In Africa, by contrast, it's individuals hacking out plots for small-scale farming.
Here in Nigeria's southeastern Cross Rivers State, home to one of the largest remaining tropical forests in Africa, people from surrounding villages of huts and cement-block homes go to the forest each day to work their pineapple and cocoa farms. They see no other way of earning money to feed their families.
"The developed countries want us to keep the forests, since the air we breathe is for all of us, rich countries and poor countries," said Ogar Assam Effa, 54, a tree plantation director and member of the state conservation board.
"But we breathe the air, and our bellies are empty. Can air give you protein? Can air give you carbohydrates?" he asked. "It would be easy to convince people to stop clearing the forest if there was an alternative."
The state, which long ago banned industrial logging, is trying to offer alternatives.
Working with communities like Abo Ebam, near Nigeria's border with Cameroon, the Cross Rivers government seeks to help would-be farmers learn other trades, such as beekeeping or raising fist-sized land snails, a regional delicacy.
The state also has imposed a new licensing system. Anyone who wants to cut down one of the forest's massive, valuable mahogany trees or other hardwoods must obtain a license and negotiate which tree to fell with the nearby community, which shares in the income. The logs can't be taken away whole, but must be cut into planks in the forest, by people like David Anfor.
He's a 35-year-old father of one who earns the equivalent of 75 U.S. cents per board he cuts with a whizzing chain saw. "The forest is our natural resource. We're trying to conserve," he said. "But I'm also working for my daily eating."
A community benefiting from such small-scale forestry is likely to keep out those engaged in illegal, uncontrolled logging. But enforcement is difficult in a state with about 3,500 square miles of pristine rain forest — and few forest rangers.
On one recent day deep in the forest, where the luxuriant green canopy allows only rare shards of sunlight to reach the floor, the trilling of a hornbill bird and the distant chain saw were the only sounds heard. As forestry officials rushed to investigate, the saw operator fled deeper into the forest, sign of an illegal operation.
Environmentalists say such a conservation approach may work for rural, agrarian people in Nigeria, which lost an estimated 15 million acres between 1990 and 2005, or about one-third of its entire forest area, and has one of the world's highest deforestation rates — more than 3 percent per year.
But lessons learned in one place aren't necessarily applicable elsewhere, they say. A global strategy is needed, mobilizing all rain-forest governments.
That's the goal of the post-Bali talks, looking for ways to integrate forest preservation into the world's emerging "carbon trading" system. A government earning carbon credits for "avoided deforestation" could then sell them to a European power plant, for example, to meet its emission-reduction quota.
"These forests are the greatest global public utility," Britain's conservationist Prince Charles said in the lead-up to Bali. "As a matter of urgency we have to find ways to make them more valuable alive than dead."
Observed the World Wildlife Fund's Duncan Pollard, "Suddenly you have the whole world looking at deforestation."
But in many ways rain forests are still a world of unknowns, a place with more scientific questions than answers.
How much carbon dioxide are forests absorbing? How much carbon is stored there? How might the death of the Amazon forest affect the climate in, say, the American Midwest? Hundreds of researchers are putting in thousands of hours of work to try to answer such questions before it is too late.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080202/ap_on_re_af/60_acres_a_minute_i
World's most polluted river
"Citarum, near the Indonesian capital of Jakarta is according to many the world’s most polluted river.
A poignant display of human disregard for the environment."
http://conspiracymemes.com/the-most-polluted-river-in-the-world-nice-huh/
Birth defects soar in China
BEIJING (AFP) - Birth defects in heavily polluted China have increased by nearly 40 percent since 2001, with a deformed baby born every 30 seconds, state media reported on Tuesday.
The rate of defects appeared to increase near the country's countless coal mines, which produce the bulk of China's energy but are also responsible for serious air and water pollution, the China Daily newspaper said, quoting government officials.
Birth defects nationwide have increased from 104.9 per 10,000 births in 2001 to 145.5 last year, it said, citing a report by the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
They affect about one million of the 20 million babies born every year, with about 300,000 babies suffering from "visible deformities."
"A baby with birth defects is born every 30 seconds in China and the situation has worsened year by year," said Jiang Fan, deputy head of the commission and author of the report.
About 30-40 percent of the deformed children born each year die shortly after birth.
There is a correlation between birth defects and proximity to environmentally degraded areas, said An Huanxiao, head of family planning in the heavily polluted northern province of Shanxi, source of much of the nation's coal.
Shanxi tops the nation in birth defects, Xinhua said.
A correlation can also be drawn with parents' poverty and low education, An was quoted as saying.
China suffers from serious pollution, the price of its stunning economic rise, with air quality in major cities regularly exceeding danger levels and millions of people lacking access to clean water.
6 Billion Others
This site is really interesting. It is a close up video of people from all over the world, all walks of life, in different countries telling their fears, what makes them laugh, what they think about an after life, family, dreams, love, anger, change, nature, God, the meaning of life.
These people are from South Africa, Russia, France, India, America, Mexico, Italy, Indonesia, Ethiopia, Brazil, Belgium, Cambodia, Kenya, Algeria, Finland, Switzerland, Iran, Tanzinia, Mali, Japan, Spain, and the list goes on. It's fascinating to see the different perspectives and point of views from different people, but also how similar the responses are.
Women dying after ban on abortions
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - Two weeks after Olga Reyes danced at her wedding, her bloated and disfigured body was laid to rest in an open coffin — the victim, her husband and some experts say, of Nicaragua’s new no-exceptions ban on abortion.
Reyes, a 22-year-old law student, suffered an ectopic pregnancy. The fetus develops outside the uterus, cannot survive and causes bleeding that endangers the mother. But doctors seemed afraid to treat her because of the anti-abortion law, said husband Agustin Perez. By the time they took action, it was too late.
Nicaragua last year became one of 35 countries that ban all abortions, even to save the life of the mother, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights in New York. The ban has been strictly followed, leaving the country torn between a strong tradition of women’s rights and a growing religious conservatism. Abortion rights groups have stormed Congress in recent weeks demanding change, but President Daniel Ortega, a former leftist revolutionary and a Roman Catholic, has refused to oppose the church-supported ban.
Evangelical groups and the church say abortion is never needed now because medical advances solve the complications that might otherwise put a pregnant mother’s life at risk.
But at least three women have died because of the ban, and another 12 reported cases will be examined, said gynecologist and university researcher Eliette Valladares, who is working with the Pan American Health Organization to analyze deaths of pregnant women recorded by Nicaragua’s Health Ministry.
Before the ban took effect on Nov. 18, 2006, fewer than a dozen legal abortions were recorded per year in Nicaragua. They were performed only when three doctors agreed a woman’s life was in danger. However, the Roman Catholic Church estimates that doctors and other medical staff carried out about 36,000 “secret” abortions a year, because under the old law they had little fear of government reprisals.
Hemorrhaging most common cause of death
This year the Health Ministry has recorded 84 deaths of pregnant women between January and October, compared with 89 for all of last year and 88 the year before. It listed hemorrhaging as the most common cause, with 27 cases reported. The ministry refused to comment further on the ban.
Abortion rights groups have disrupted Congress several times, demanding that lawmakers lift the ban. On Oct. 25, unable to get past increased security, they held up signs at Congress’ front door that read: “Women assassins” and “They want to keep us quiet and dead.” A minority of lawmakers are still trying to lift the ban, but don’t have enough votes.
The Roman Catholic Church mobilized nearly 300,000 people to march and sign petitions in support of the ban.
“A child is not a sickness,” said Henry Romero, a priest who helped lead the campaign. “When two lives are in danger, you must try to save both the woman and the child. It’s difficult to say now that it isn’t possible to save both.”
Law student Reyes was one of the three confirmed fatalities. She knew something was horribly wrong, and went with her husband to their small town’s medical center. They were sent to Bertha Calderon maternity hospital, more than an hour away in Managua. There, Perez said, Reyes was given a cursory exam, sent home and told to return the next day.
By that time, the bleeding and cramping were worse. Perez said he rushed her to a hospital in nearby Leon, but after she had an ultrasound that confirmed her condition, they left her bent over and in agony for hours in a waiting room. When a doctor at a shift change saw her condition, she was rushed into surgery. She suffered three heart attacks and an exploratory surgery.
Valladares said doctors should have acted quicker.
“They knew she had a limited amount of time before she bled out. The whole world knows that with an ectopic pregnancy,” Valladares said. “They didn’t treat her, out of fear.”
The hospital director, Olga Maria de Chavez, said Reyes arrived late at night, and was told to return the next morning when specialists were available. The doctors who handled her case in Leon refused to talk to The Associated Press.
Walter Mendiata, president of Nicaragua’s Association of Gynecologists and a supporter of the abortion ban, said doctors are taking the new law too far. He argues that surgery for an ectopic pregnancy isn’t the same as carrying out an abortion.
“There’s no discussion in a case like that,” he said. “It’s urgent, and you operate.”
But he acknowledged that many doctors fear they will be accused of performing an abortion, which could mean a license suspension and several years in prison, even though no one has yet been prosecuted.
Some doctors privately admit to carrying out what they believe are illegal procedures, while others say they won’t jeopardize their careers.
“Many are thinking that instead of taking the risk, it is better to let a woman die,” said Dr. Leonel Arguello, president of the Nicaraguan Society of General Medicine.
Infections from illegal abortions
Doctors frequently see women coming in with infections, many likely brought on by illegal abortions that they refuse to disclose for fear they might be punished, said Dr. Carla Cerrato. Because the people with some medical training who used to do illegal abortions have disappeared, Cerrato said, women more frequently take drugs or pull the fetus out on their own using wires or other crude objects.
“What we are seeing are complications that before we never saw,” Cerrato said, sitting in the dingy pre-labor room at a crowded public hospital in Managua.
She added that she sees hysterectomies and severe infections that leave women sterile or dead because obstetricians can’t take any action that might harm a living fetus.
“We have to wait until the fetus dies,” she said. “But often, for the woman, it’s too late.”
That appears to be what happened with Reyes. Her aunt, Gioconda Reyes, a devoted Catholic dressed in a worn T-shirt in which Jesus promises eternal life, said the sudden death has changed her views.
“I don’t support abortion to get rid of unwanted pregnancies, but in cases like that of Olga’s, it is necessary,” she said, adding: “How could they let four days pass when every minute was precious? They denied her the right to medical care, to a life.”
The point to banning abortions is to save a life, the life of an unborn fetus. But if they're so focused on saving a life, what's blinding them so that they can't see the baby is going to die anyway if there are complications, along with the mother. Pride is, the fact that they don't want to admit their religion and their views are wrong. Pride only hurts.
Over 3,000 killed in cyclone
BARGUNA, Bangladesh - Four days after super cyclone Sidr killed more than 3,000 people in Bangladesh, rescuers struggled on Monday to reach isolated areas along the country's devastated coast to give aid to millions of survivors.
"The tragedy unfolds as we walk through one after another devastated village," said relief worker Mohammad Selim in Bagerhat, one of the worst-hit areas. "Often it looks like we are in a valley of death."
The confirmed death toll from the cyclone reached 3,113 Monday, while 3,322 are injured and 1,063 missing, Lieutenant-Colonel Main Ullah Chowdhury told reporters in Dhaka. He said two C-130 aircraft of the U.S. Marine Corp arrived in Dhaka on Sunday night with medical supplies.
Grieving survivors await aid
Survivors of a powerful cyclone grieved and buried their loved ones Monday as they waited for aid to arrive.
In Galachipa, a fishing village along the coast in Patuakhali district, Dhalan Mridha and his family had ignored the high cyclone alert issued by authorities.
“Nothing is going to happen. That was our first thought and we went to bed. Just before midnight the winds came like hundreds of demons. Our small hut was swept away like a piece of paper, and we all ran for shelter,” said Mridha, a 45-year-old farm worker, weeping.
On the way to a shelter, Mridha was separated from his wife, mother and two children. The next morning he found their bodies stuck in a battered bush along the coast.
The coast abounded with such grim tales following the worst cyclone to hit Bangladesh in a decade. Many grieving families buried their loved ones in the same grave because no male member was available to dig them.
Red Crescent: Death toll could hit 10,000
While the official toll rose to more than 3,100 on Monday, according to the Disaster Management Ministry, there were fears it could be much higher.
The Bangladesh Red Crescent Society, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross, warned the toll could hit 10,000 once rescuers reach outlying islands.
The society’s chairman, Mohammad Abdur Rob, said the estimate came from the assessments of thousands of volunteers involved in rescue operations across the battered region.
Helicopters airlifted food to hungry survivors Monday while rescuers struggled to reach remote areas. The army helicopters carried mostly high-protein cookies supplied by the World Food Program, said Emamul Haque, a spokesman for the WFP office in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, which is coordinating international relief efforts.
Relief items slow to reach those in need
International aid organizations promised initial packages of $25 million during a meeting with Bangladesh agencies Monday, Haque said.
But relief items such as tents, rice and water have been slow to reach many. Government officials defended the relief efforts and expressed confidence that authorities are up to the task.
“We have enough food and water,” said Shahidul Islam, the top official in Bagerhat, a battered district near the town of Barguna. “We are going to overcome the problem.”
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement that several million dollars were available from the U.N.’s emergency response funds, depending on the need.
He expressed his “profound condolences to the people and government of Bangladesh for the many deaths and the destruction involved, and the full solidarity of the U.N. system at this time of crisis,” the statement said.
Foreign governments, aid groups pledge aid
The government said it has allocated $5.2 million in emergency aid for rebuilding houses. Many foreign governments and international groups have also pledged to help.
The United States offered $2.1 million. An American military medical team is already in Bangladesh and two U.S. naval ships, each carrying at least 20 helicopters, among tons of other supplies, will be made available if the Bangladesh government requests them, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a statement.
Other governments and organizations that pledged aid include the German government, which offered about $730,000, the European Union with $2.2 million, and the British government with $5 million. France pledged some $730,000, while the Philippines said it would send a medical team.
The Dhaka Foreign Ministry said the King of Saudi Arabia has announced a $100 million grant for the victims. Riyadh would also airlift 300 tons of food and relief materials. India said it would send a comprehensive relief package.
Every year, storms batter Bangladesh, a country of 150 million, often killing large numbers of people. The most deadly recent storm was a tornado that leveled 80 villages in northern Bangladesh in 1996, killing 621 people.
Only two people were killed in Bangladesh by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was spawned off Indonesia’s Sumatra island by a magnitude-9 earthquake, hitting a dozen countries and killing at least 216,858, according to government and aid agency figures considered the most reliable in each country.
Hurricane Katrina, the most destructive natural disaster in U.S. history, killed 1,600 people across the Gulf Coast, destroyed or severely damaged more than 200,000 homes and made more than 800,000 people homeless overnight.