Thursday, May 13, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
Quake Kills 51 in Eastern Turkey
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Quake Kills 51 in Eastern Turkey
ISTANBUL — At least 51 people died when an earthquake of 6.0 magnitude struck early Monday in eastern Turkey, officials in the region said.
One village was largely destroyed and four others were heavily damaged, the officials said. A second quake with a 5.6 magnitude hit the same area, among scores of aftershocks.
According to Turkey’s Kandilli earthquake observatory, the epicenter of the quake, which struck three miles underground at 4:32 a.m. local time, was 61 miles from the town of Elazig.
“Our citizens lost their lives in five villages,” Muammer Erol, the town’s governor, told NTV, a private news broadcaster.
There were no people still trapped under debris by Monday night, after rescue operations that lasted for hours, Mr. Erol’s office later announced. Emergency officials put the number of injured at 34.
“The important thing is to train local construction workers on methods to build earthquake-resistant buildings without giving up locally available construction materials,” Miktad Kadioglu, professor of meteorology and head of the crisis management center at Istanbul Technical University to our reporter
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Nepal's Beauty and Grace Hide Poverty
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Nepal's Beauty and Grace Hide Poverty
And while for 40 years it was safe and free for visitors and Nepalese to walk in the cities or trek to villages far beyond the roads, the Nepalese people lacked any say in their government and lived a quasi-feudal life of hardship�a side of life that many visitors failed to see. It was a life of poverty, hunger, and illness caused by lack of jobs, food, and health care.
Since 1951, a decade before the creation of USAID, the United States has provided more than $1 billion in foreign assistance to Nepal for education, farming, infrastructure, health, and government. USAID�s budget in Nepal has remained about $35 million to $45 million per year for the last few years.
A quick visit to farms, villages, and cities from the steep Himalayan Mountains to the hot Terai plains bordering India reveals a country that has made great progress but is still struggling to overcome enormous development problems.
Roads link major cities and some towns, schools have opened, and health programs are reaching most rural communities.
But Nepal remains among the poorest and least developed countries in the world with almost 60 percent of its 28 million people living on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank. Less than threequarters of the people can read.
Nearly 40 percent of children under five are below normal weight. Nearly half the people are unemployed, leading many to seek jobs abroad in India, Malaysia, and the Gulf states.
Poverty is linked in part to the rugged environment. Steep mountains impede transport and use of farm machines. Monsoon rains often lead to flooding, landslides, and spoiled harvests.
 A Nepalese woman and child in a village near Langtang National Park near the border with China. |
Another damper on development has been the long, landlocked borders the country shares with rival Asian giants China and India.
Geographic isolation�along with Buddhist and Hindu teachings of acceptance and nonattachment� let Nepal retain its timeless ways as the world�s only Hindu monarchy until 2006.
U.S. assistance�the focus of the articles in this special report�has already helped achieve important results. Since 1951, with U.S. assistance, life expectancy has more than doubled to 65, literacy has grown, and many diseases have been reduced.
In the 1950s, U.S. assistance eliminated malaria from much of the country, founded the College of Education, trained the first public health nurses, and created the first telephone exchange. In the 1960s, USAID backed administration reforms, set up 104 health units, added a surgery wing to Bir Hospital, helped boost air traffic from 25,000 to 210,000 flights per year, and opened an industrial park.
In the 1970s, USAID helped double primary school enrollment, built the Western Hills road to link the Terai to the hills, tripled the number of people getting health services, introduced family planning, and boosted use of fertilizer by 18 percent. In the 1980s, USAID promoted the private sector and NGOs, female literacy rose to 18 percent, some food-short areas became surplus producers, and real income rose an average 62 percent.
In the 1990s, Nepal became a parliamentary democracy and U.S. aid helped improve government services, privatize some state-run businesses, get women to run for local and national offices, deliver Vitamin A to nearly 80 percent of districts, and handed over 123,000 hectares of forests to community forest user groups.
Protesting journalists clash with police in Nepal
Protesting journalists clash with police in Nepal
KATHMANDU
— Nepalese journalists on Wednesday clashed with police as they picketed a government building in Kathmandu to demand improved security after the murder of a newspaper publisher.Around 100 media workers were chanting slogans and waving placards when the brief outbreak of violence took place, an AFP photographer witnessed.
The protest followed the murder of Arun Singhaniya, the owner of a regional newspaper and radio station, who was shot dead near his home in the southern Nepalese town of Janakpur on Monday. The Federation of Nepalese Journalists said it had organised rallies across the country to demand his killers be brought to justice and to call for media workers to be better protected.
"Our demand is simple -- let us write and live. We want to put pressure on the government to arrest those behind the murder of Arun Singhaniya," organiser Ujir Magar, told AFP. Singhaniya's killing came after the murder in February of another media owner, Jamim Shah, although the two are not thought to be connected.
The editors of Nepal's major newspapers on Wednesday published an open letter condemning Singhaniya's killing and criticising the government for failing to clamp down on assaults against the media.
"We demand that the government immediately make efforts to arrest the criminals and bring them to justice," they said.
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