Quoted: PlusNews is an online news and analysis service on HIV and AIDS. Part of the United Nations award-winning Integrated Regional Information Networks IRIN, PlusNews is the largest provider of original and user-friendly reporting on the pandemic covering Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas via internet, radio and TV.

quoted: The pastoralists, including Bela and Lobko, gathered in Kangaten for four days before reaching a consensus and passed a resolution: any person who steals cattle will double the number given back in reparation and anybody who commits murder will be handed over to the government, with 30 heads of cattle given to the bereaved family. However, despite the agreement, Bela and others felt a real reconciliation between ethnic groups should be made the traditional way.

"The Nyangatoms should come to our village and slaughter a goat," said Bela. "Then we should wash our hands with fat together."

Quoted: "Rather than a single transaction demonstrating that this all can be done, we are putting together a comprehensive risk management framework for droughts and for ...

quoted: In Kenya, at least one mature swarm crossed the Ethiopian border into Moyale district, west of Madera, where it was seen near Goda on November 30," the bulletin explained. "In Southeast Ethiopia, locust adults have been seen flying in the Borena zone of Oromia region, which is west of Ogaden and north of Kenya."

closing the gap...I hope they will get the funding soon!

Quoted: The initiative has proved so successful that four of South Africa's neighbouring countries - Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Swaziland - have entered into a partnership with MiET to develop similar programmes.

But the future of South Africa's SCCS initiative is shadowed by doubt, as MiET only has funding until 2009 to establish the programme in 1,192 primary schools in the two provinces.

"We are busy capacitating people, but there is only money until 2009. What will happen then?" said Aubrey Kgobokoe, a SCCS training coordinator in North West. "It should be rolled out in all schools, so that teenagers will also benefit. Are we going to have to leave those who have yet to benefit to fend for themselves?"

Pete you might find this interesting
urbanization without effective planning on infrastructure (speciifcally roads)...this issue is very common in a lot of major African cities (from what I have seen so far)...disparity in urbanization and displacement (eviction) of many poors living in major cities.

Quoted: Central Abuja looks like a modern capital with wide streets and a skyline with spectacular public buildings. But four years after a massive urban demolition programme began in 2003, little progress has been made in resettling the roughly 800,000 people that the Geneva-based Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) estimate have been displaced.

The Bali climate conference will look at a new deal to be put in place after 2012, when the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol (KP), a commitment made in 1997 by 36 industrialised countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least five percent against the baseline of 1990, expires.

"Despite the typhoons eventually veering off and weakening, Governor Salceda said that the preparations were worth it. “Was it worth P19.5 million to save a single life? Yes, it was,” the governor told IRIN, adding that they were now documenting their experience in readiness for the next typhoon. "

Quoted: In a sign of the nation truly coming together to thwart disaster, the Philippine military even suspended counterinsurgency operations against the New People’s Army as the typhoon approached to focus on disaster operations, and the communist rebels responded in kind by declaring an indefinite ceasefire in typhoon-ravaged areas.

quoted: The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said syndicates have been expanding their network of transit areas through Ethiopia, Mauritius and Tanzania and Uganda in an ongoing attempt to disguise trafficking routes. These countries are used as arrival points for illicit drugs from Asia, which are then taken to Kenya, South and West Africa, the main regions for onward drug distribution to Europe and North America.