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GUINEA: Elections delay again
CONAKRY, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - Lack of funding and a June shift in government mean landmark legislative elections scheduled for November 2008 will be pushed back, Ben Sekou Sylla, president of Guinea's independent national electoral commission (CENI), told IRIN.
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ZIMBABWE: Ban on NGOs lifted
JOHANNESBURG, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - Zimbabwe has lifted the ban on some non-governmental organisations (NGOs), but aid agencies have been cautious in their response.
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NIGER: Flood victims continue crowding into city schools
ZINDER, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - Weeks after floods ripped through Tillaberi, 120 kilometres west of Niamey, and Niger's second-largest city Zinder, 900 kilometres east of Niamey, thousands of people are still homeless.
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MALI: Saving elephants, saving communities
BAMAKO, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - Implementers of an international project to help endangered elephants in Mali want to prove that by doing so, they can also help local communities adapt to climate change in the Sahel.
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GLOBAL: Food wasted is water lost
JOHANNESBURG, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - To meet growing food demand, in another 40 years the world would need enough water to fill at least three lakes the size of Victoria, Africa's largest body of water, according to a projection in a new policy brief. Lake Victoria's estimated volume is 2,750 km3.
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NIGER: Army seizes outlawed anti-personnel mines
NIAMEY, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - The Niger army says it has seized a stockpile of more than 1,000 anti-personnel landmines it found abandoned on the Niger-Chad border. If confirmed as anti-personnel mines, this would be the first time such a large quantity of these outlawed mines, intended to maim and kill individuals rather than blow up vehicles, has been discovered in Niger.
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MADAGASCAR: Growing food in the off-season
JOHANNESBURG, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - A US$500,000 project by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) is using Madagascar's agricultural off-season to decrease food aid dependency and offset the effects of high food prices.
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ETHIOPIA: Two months of rain but still not enough to eat
BADESSA, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - In normal times, the weekly market in Badessa town, Damot Woyde district of Wolayita zone in Ethiopia's Southern Region, fills with fresh food as farmers and traders bring in crops from the surrounding hills.
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VIETNAM: Uphill battle to raise awareness of bird flu
HAI NAM , 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - The key message that needs to be heard is that Avian Influenza (AI) is endemic in Vietnam and needs to be controlled, say UN officials involved in the battle to identify and contain avian influenza outbreaks.
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SUDAN: South Kordofan the next flashpoint?
KHARTOUM, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - Long overshadowed by conflict in Darfur and a recent outbreak of fighting in oil-rich Abyei, Southern Kordofan is likely to be the next flashpoint in Sudan, said a new report by a Geneva-based independent research project.
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CAMEROON: Rapid intervention military unit strays from its mission
DOUALA, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - In 2001 the Cameroonian government created a special rapid intervention battalion (BIR) to quell hostage-taking and looting by criminal gangs operating on its eastern and northern borders, but this force is now straying from its original mission, causing anger among human rights groups.
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Blog: IRIN video shorts on CNN
NAIROBI, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - CNN World Report starts broadcasting IRIN video shorts from Saturday 30 August. First up is Yemen Gun Culture at 04:30 GMT. All the shorts can also be viewed online at www.worldreport.cnn.com
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Blog: From our feedback files, July
NAIROBI, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - IRIN regularly gets feedback from readers and subscribers. In July, we received a total of 264 unique emails from readers compared with 234 in June, 240 in May, 161 in April, 289 in March, 310 in February and 248 in January. Following we share some of the comments with you.
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VIETNAM: Dramatic rise in child abuse cases
HANOI, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - When Tran Van De strikes his grandchildren, he says he does it out of love. "I know it hurts; it hurts me too," says the 68-year old retiree, a grandfather of four. "But it helps them become good citizens. That was the way I was taught when I was a child. It's not abuse. I love my grandchildren. How could I abuse them?"
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SOMALIA: IRIN interview with Mark Bowden, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator
NAIROBI, 29 August 2008 (IRIN) - After almost two decades of civil war and anarchy, Somalia is now suffering one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world, with 3.2 million people, almost half the population, in need of assistance. To make matters worse because of security problems, killing and kidnappings of relief workers, access to those in need has become almost impossible.
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ZIMBABWE: Listening for the trucks that will bring the food
CHIVA, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - Hungry residents of a village in Masvingo Province, in southeastern Zimbabwe, have acquired an unusual skill: they have learnt to listen for trucks carrying food aid.
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KYRGYZSTAN: Rare case of child-to-mother HIV transmission
YANGI-NOOKAT, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - The story of how Nasiba, 32, and her 2-year-old son, Akram, both became infected with HIV is not the familiar one of an unfaithful husband and a mother unwittingly infecting her child.
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MALAWI: Cheer and concern over ban on private sale of maize
LILONGWE, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - Ordinary Malawians, cheered by the prospect of cheaper food, have welcomed government's ban on the private trading of maize, but food security experts and businesses have expressed concern.
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GUINEA-BISSAU: Security sector reform must go ahead
BISSAU, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - Recent political instability including the early August dissolution of government could delay long-awaited plans to reform Guinea-Bissau's swollen security sector which could impact the country's long-term security says the president of the national defence institute Baciro Dja.
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CONGO: Campaign highlights importance of testing diabetes, hypertension
BRAZZAVILLE, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - A campaign to test for the prevalence of diabetes and hypertension, considered as growing causes of mortality in the Republic of Congo (ROC), has been launched in the main cities of Brazzaville and Pointe-Noire.
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DRC: Tension on the rise in Katanga mining town
KINSHASA, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - Human rights and local government officials in Democratic Republic of Congo's Katanga province have expressed concern about rising tension between different communities in a mining town there.
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AFGHANISTAN: Soya beans to stave off malnutrition?
KABUL, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - Fatema takes her four-year-old daughter, Nafeesa, to a free soya-milk distribution centre in Herat city, western Afghanistan, three times a week in a bid to protect her against malnutrition.
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ISRAEL-OPT: Palestinian water boss reduced to “crisis management”
RAMALLAH/STOCKHOLM, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - The occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) continues to suffer from drought, but the head of the Water Authority told IRIN there was a limit to what he could do to help.
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MYANMAR: Small-scale livestock farmers feel the pinch
KUNCHANGONE, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - For 42-year-old Than Than and her husband, making ends meet has never been harder.
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PAKISTAN: Flour shortages cause despair ahead of Ramadan
LAHORE, 28 August 2008 (IRIN) - Rubina Aslam, 30, cannot read or write. She has never been to school, but considers herself "fortunate to be married to a man who earns nearly 20,000 rupees (approx US$266) a month as a draughtsman".
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