IN PORT-AU-PRINCE In the days after the earth shook and the government collapsed, the municipal nursing home here became one of the most desperate sights in Haiti, as old people lay swaddled in dirty sheets, huddled in cramped tents, begging visitors for water.
Author: WHES
Largest crowds yet demand change in Egypt
CAIRO — President Hosni Mubarak declared Tuesday night that he would step down in September as modern Egypt’s longest-serving leader, but that did not go far enough for the hundreds of thousands who poured into Tahrir Square in a sprawling protest that cut across entrenched lines of piety, class and ideology.
South Sudan voters choose secession
Close to 99 per cent of those who cast their ballots in south Sudan’s referendum voted in favour of secession from the north, a referendum official has said.
“The vote for separation was 99.57 per cent,” Chan Reek Madut, the deputy head of the commission organising the vote, told cheering crowds on Sunday in the first official announcement of preliminary results.
Rich, poor, and a rift exposed by unrest
CAIRO — As the government of Egypt shakes from a broad-based uprising, long-simmering resentments have burst into open class warfare.
Army lets protests proceed
CAIRO – Tens of thousands of pro-democracy demonstrators swarmed central Cairo on Saturday in the largest demonstration yet against the rule of the country’s longtime autocratic leader, President Hosni Mubarak. The crowd went unchallenged by troops, who, in extraordinary scenes unfolding around the capital’s central Tahrir Square, smiled and shook hands with protesters and invited them up onto their tanks.
Darfur returning to “past patterns of violence”
Fighting between government and rebel groups in North and South Darfur in western Sudan has displaced tens of thousands of people and hindered access by humanitarian workers to some affected areas, sources said.
Mubarak orders crackdown, with revolt sweeping Egypt
CAIRO — With police stations and the governing party’s headquarters in flames, and much of this crucial Middle Eastern nation in open revolt, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt deployed the nation’s military and imposed a near-total blackout on communications to save his authoritarian government of nearly 30 years.
Côte d’Ivoire: Fear descends on the North
With no sign at present of an end to the political deadlock in Côte d’Ivoire, the country remains partitioned. The economic repercussions of the crisis are being felt in both south and north. In Abidjan and the south, where Laurent Gbagbo and his administration are still in control, in the face of regional and international condemnation and isolation, prices of key commodities have risen dramatically. In the north – long held by former rebels Forces Nouvelles, and providing the main support base for Alassane Ouattara, internationally recognized as the elected president – livelihoods are being crippled and basic services reduced to a minimum in regions which have been marginalized for decades.
Germany suspends payment to AIDS fund over corruption claims
Germany has suspended its annual payment of more than 200m euros (£172m) to the Global Fund against Aids, TB and malaria, following corruption claims.
In China, human costs are built Into an iPad
The explosion ripped through Building A5 on a Friday evening last May, an eruption of fire and noise that twisted metal pipes as if they were discarded straws.
