Author: WHES

Sarah Mohammed, who is eight months pregnant, plans to deliver inside her tent in Galkayo, Somalia, because there is no nearby hospital. Mohammed fled Mogadishu several months ago after watching an explosion tear apart her cousin. Photo:Sudarsan Raghavan/Washington Post

SOUMOUNI, Mali — The half-dozen strangers who descended on this remote West African village brought its hand-to-mouth farmers alarming news: their humble fields, tilled from one generation to the next, were now controlled by Libya’s leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, and the farmers would all have to leave.

Wounds reopened–the price of breakdown in the Ivory Coast

Gunshots at night, beatings, unexplained disappearances of ordinary civilians and makeshift barriers around homes have become commonplace in Côte d’Ivoire’s main city, Abidjan, in the chaotic aftermath of the presidential election. As violence threatens to spiral, Ivoirians say ethnic and regional divisions are sharper than ever.

Rene Le Berre, 78: Entomologist saved millions of Africans from river blindness

Rene Le Berre helped prevent many people from contracting the vicious but largely preventable condition, which mainly affects the poor.Rene Le Berre helped prevent many people from contracting the vicious but largely preventable condition, which mainly affects the poor. (International Bank For Reconstruction And Development/the World Bank)

India’s battle against hunger beset by problems of delivery and corruption. Malnutrition is on the rise, despite nutrition rehabilitation centers and ration shops

There are times when chilli mixed with a little water is not enough to quell the hunger. Then the people of Gautam Nagar, one of 300 slum settlements in the city of Bhopal, India, gather round the only available screen to watch music videos. More than 60 families live in cramped quarters on wasteland that has a filthy stench, with only plastic sheets to protect them from the elements. Children with swollen bellies wander along the road, begging from passersby.

See full article at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/dec/07/india-hunger-malnutrition-ration-shops

 

Telecom scandal erupts in India: corruption and ‘crony capitalism’ appear to have cost the Indian government as much as US$40 billion in lost cell phone spectrum rights

NEW DELHI — Tycoons with friends in high places. Public tenders conducted by irregular rules. Tens of billions of dollars in potential losses for the national treasury. Allegations of government ministers on the take, and of a respected prime minister too aloof to notice.

Ivory Coast country profile: Once hailed as a model of stability, Ivory Coast has slipped into the kind of internal strife that has plagued many African countries

For more than three decades after its independence from France, Ivory Coast was known for its religious and ethnic harmony, as well as its well-developed economy.