Mar
UN: More Clean Drinking Water, Less Extreme Poverty, Less Tuberculosis and Malaria Since 2000
There has been “broad progress” in achieving the Millennium Development Goals, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told reporters. The goals are targets adopted by world leaders at the United Nations in 2000 to slash poverty, hunger and disease in poor countries by 2015.
Earlier this week the United Nations announced that developing nations have already achieved their 2015 goal of drastically reducing the number of people without regular access to safer drinking water, though much of the credit lies with India and China.
Last week the World Bank said developing countries appear to have already met the U.N. goal of halving extreme poverty in the world’s poorest countries by 2015. That was also mainly due to China’s economic boom.
There have been improvements in other areas, Ban said.
“The world has made progress in driving down tuberculosis, with 40 per cent fewer deaths compared to 1990, and global malaria deaths have declined by nearly a third over the past decade,” he said.
Feb
Clinton calls U.N. Syria vote a "travesty"
Russia and China’s veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria was a travesty, the United States said on Saturday, saying it would work with other nations to support democratic change in the Arab nation.
The resolution vetoed by Russia and China would have urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to give up power after a bloody 11-month uprising.
It also would have supported an Arab League plan under which Assad would have ceded powers to a deputy, withdraw troops from towns and started a transition to democracy.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pulled no punches in criticizing the vetoes by Russia and China, though she did not mention either by name.
“What happened yesterday at the United Nations was a travesty,” she said.
“Faced with a neutered Security Council, we have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people’s right to have a better future,” she said. “We have to increase diplomatic pressure on the Assad regime and work to convince those people around President Assad that he must go.”
Clinton also said the United States would work with other nations to try to tighten “regional and national” sanctions “to dry up the sources of funding and the arms shipments that are keeping the regime’s war machine going.”
“We will work to expose those who are still funding the regime and sending it weapons that are used against defenseless Syrians, including women and children,” she said. “We will work with the friends of a democratic Syria around the world to support the opposition’s peaceful political plans for change.”
Jan
Aug
Famine in Somalia Killed 29,000 Children in the Last 90 Days. DONATE NOW to help save lives.
Click HERE to donate to the UN’s World Food Programme, which provides food to 90 million people every year.
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from CBS:
Nancy Lindborg, an official with the U.S. government aid arm, told a congressional committee in Washington on Wednesday that the U.S. estimates that more than 29,000 children under age 5 have died in the last 90 days in southern Somalia.
The U.N. on Wednesday declared three new regions in Somalia famine zones. Out of a population of roughly 7.5 million, the U.N. says 3.2 million Somalis are in need of immediate lifesaving assistance.
Getting aid to the country has been difficult because al Qaeda-linked group al-Shabab controls much of the country’s most desperate areas.
