Author: WHES

In India, a struggle for moderation as a young Moslem woman quietly battles extremism

It was Sept. 11, 2001. Television sets in the mosques, tea shops and market were beaming images of the World Trade Center engulfed in flames in New York. Five months later, Rubina’s house was burning as Hindu mobs torched Muslim areas of her city, leaving thousands of people homeless. She remembers smoke hovering over Ahmedabad just as it had over New York

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