Africa: Getting old on ARVs
UN Integrated Regional Information Network - May 9, 2008
http://www.aegis.org/news/irin/2008/IR080510.html
JOHANNESBURG, 9 May 2008 (PlusNews) - 'Eish, with ARVs [antiretrovirals], you get fat and you get old,...
iCities is a Conference about Blogs, e-Government and Digital Participation.Here come my notes for session I (part II).
Opening Session (part II)
Chairs Carmen Sánchez-Carazo
Intelligent CitiesJosé Gumersindo García
ICTs will improve the image that public administrations have before the citizenry: proximity, transparency, etc.
e-Administration and Modernization go hand in hand and they are co-requisites for the development of both.
The Public Sector does have to bet on digital literacy training for their public servants. But not only their employees, but also firms. With this digital literacy many projects can take place: instant messaging for better communication, datasharing through wireless networks, e-commerce, etc.
Free software is very important for the Public Sector, and again,...
In
Digital Divide,
Connectivity,
meetings,
e-Readiness,
Digital Literacy,
Participation, Engagement, Use, Activism,
icities,
e-Government, e-Administration,
alcalde,
candelaria,
david cierco,
jose sindo garcia,
plan avanza
We recently had a chance to talk with Mark Anielski, Albertan and author of The Economics of Happiness: Building Genuine Wealth. Mark has been working for many years on better ways of measuring progress, and this conversation delves into the potential of moving beyond GNP. Whether in measuring a sense of community or valuing ecosystem goods and services, better measures of progress can align us on the targets that really matter.
Hassan Masum: In your book, you have this great quote from Robert Kennedy about GNP, which I was amazed to read because it was back from 1968 or so - 40 years ago. It seems like we've had some progress, but not a whole lot of progress since then. Could you give us some framing thoughts as to why better measures of progress are so important, and why...
NAIROBI, May 9 (IPS) - The need to give agriculture top billing on
governmental "to do" lists has been highlighted at a
telephone briefing to discuss the current food crisis as it
affects...
JOHANNESBURG, 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - "Eish, with ARVs [antiretrovirals], you get fat and you get old," a patient at Johannesburg Hospital recently told her......
Labor Court Fails 55 South Asian Professionals, Prevents Them From Leaving
Saudi Arabia’s Labor Court should act immediately to address workers’ complaints against the Nukhba House of Medical Services company, including unpaid wages and restrictions on returning home, Human Rights Watch said today....
So why are people doing it? That is, unfortunately, the great conundrum of politics. Why do people do things which are so manifestly harmful in even the medium term? Faced with the rising price of food politicians are segmenting countries off from the world market, even from their own internal temporal markets, to the detriment of future food production. For example, India has halted trading in certain futures contracts (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/05/08/bcnfood108.xml):
The move has been seen as a concession to India's Communist MPs - key
allies of premier Manmohan Singh - who want a full-fledged ban on
futures trading in sugar, cooking oil,...
BOGOTA, May 9 (IPS) - A woman in Pasto, the capital of the western
Colombian province of Nariño, found out that the baby she was
expecting was severely deformed. But when she went to the
provincial university hospital for an abortion, the chief
obstetrician gynaecologist told her that "If your son is born
deformed, take him to a...
The documentary i was dying to see at the Homo Ludens Ludens exhibition at LABoral in Gijon was Gold Farmers, by Ge Jin.
Image courtesy of Ge Jin
Gold Farmers are young people who earn their living by playing MMORPG games. They acquire ("farm") items of value within a game, usually by carrying out in-game actions repeatedly to maximize gains, sometimes by using a program such as a bot or automatic clicker.
They sell the artificial gold coins and other virtual goods they've harvested to players and/or farming organizations and get "real" money in return. Players from around the world will then use the golden coins to buy better armor, magic spells and other equipments to climb to higher levels or create more powerful characters.
World of Warcraft, image gameslander
Many...
HARARE , 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - Hunger is giving a brutal edge to the alleged work of militias implementing Operation Mavhoterapapi (Who did you vote for?), a campaign launched by President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF government in the wake of the ruling party's loss of its parliamentary majority for the first time since independence in...
from The AdvocateLawmaker: Issue affects everyone * By SARAH CHACKOThe state could be required to reduce child poverty by 50 percent under a bill easily approved by a Senate committee Wednesday.Senate Bill 660, sponsored by Sen. Ben Nevers, D-Bogalusa, would create the Child Poverty Prevention Council of Louisiana. Its sole purpose would be to pursue programs to reduce child poverty in the state by 50 percent over the next 10 years.How much it would cost to reach the goal was not discussed.Nevers said it is time for the state — among the worst in the nation when it comes to child poverty — to do something about the problem, which is affecting children’s performance in school and costing the state money in the long run.“I don’t know of any issue that’s more dire than the...
from MSNBCBy CAROLYN THOMPSONBUFFALO, N.Y. - Maria Whyte's two-day experiment living at the poverty level left her with debt, a parking ticket and probably a few gray hairs."I was so stressed out!" the Erie County legislator said Thursday as she joined a call for the city to address its census ranking as the nation's second-poorest big city.Whyte and other community leaders spent the past few days trying to make ends meet on $9.25 a day. If they factored in the daily cost of a car, health care, cell phone and cable television, they were in the hole before breakfast.It was an exercise in solidarity, organizers said, for the 29.9 percent of Buffalo residents the U.S. Census Bureau says are living in poverty — well over the 13.3 percent national rate. The federal poverty guideline is an...
KABEZI, 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - At least 20,000 people have fled their homes near the Burundian capital, Bujumbura, after fighting between the army and rebels, officials said on 9...
from All AfricaThe Post (Buea)By Kini NsomThe Chargé D'Affaires at the German Embassy in Yaounde, Horst Gruner, says despite the fact women are those who generate riches, they are hardest-hit by poverty.He made the remark while launching the gender equality week initiated by the German Cooperation, recently.Launched at the Abbia Cinema in Yaounde, the programme was dubbed "Strong women and girls". It is aimed at sensitising various stakeholders to promote women's right and mainstream gender in every aspect of national life.It was in this perspective that the German diplomat bemoaned the pathetic plight of women in Africa. In Sub Saharan Africa, women produce 80 percent of food crops, he said, yet 70 percent of very poor people are women. He remarked that two-thirds of the world's...
from The Hindu New Delhi (PTI): Noted economist Ashok Mitra expressed concerns over the country's abysmally low human development index and said senior bureaucrats should be deputed in poverty-prone districts of the country to implement various development programmes.Delivering his speech on 'Growth for Whom: Choice or Dilemma?' at the Prem Bhatia Memorial Lecture, Mitra, former West Bengal Finance Minister, said India's low HDI position is apparently of no concern to our politicians and policy makers.He also said that India's growth story is being driven only by the services sector.The services sector is growing at a fast rate and industries at a slower pace, while agriculture is lagging behind and the growing sectors are unable to accommodate the displacement of labour in various...
from the Ancaster News Kevin WernerPublished on May 09, 2008There was few silver linings within the Canadian census data released last week that still featured Hamilton’s poverty rate higher than the provincial average.The city’s poverty rate has become a blight on its community when the last census shocked the community pegging the Low Income Cut-Off (LICO) rate at about 20 per cent.Hamilton’s poverty rate had dipped to about 18.1 per cent, according to Statistics Canada’s 2006 census results. But Hamilton’s rate, which includes a high number of seniors and Aboriginal populations, exceeds Ontario’s 14.7 per cent poverty rate. The census figures include the years 2005 to 2006.Hamilton has almost 90,000 people living below the LICO, while almost the same amount of children,...
BAQUBA, May 9 (IPS) - Water supply is drying out in what was once the
agriculturally rich Diyala province north of Baghdad. Baquba, the
capital city of Diyala, is now running out of water both for
drinking and for...
BANGUI, 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - The Central African Republic is striving to turn the page on decades of armed violence linked to mutinies, coups and attempted coups. Hundreds of thousands of civilians remain displaced, many of them unable, or too afraid, to farm their land. This is an overview of the various armed groups, government security forces and international military missions in the country....
from The Richmond NewsRichmond's child poverty highest in region: First Call Nelson BennettRichmond NewsRichmond has the dubious distinction of having the highest child poverty rate in the Lower Mainland, according to the youth advocacy group First Call.However, it's a distinction based on a faulty definition of poverty, according to the Fraser Institute.Census figures for 2006 show Richmond has the highest rate of what First Call defines as child poverty rates: 26 per cent, compared to 24.4 per cent in Burnaby, 22.8 per cent in Vancouver, and 17.3 per cent in Surrey.Mayor Malcolm Brodie acknowledges there are pockets of low-income residents in Richmond, but he wondered how First Call came to the conclusion that it did."I would like to know what are the criteria that are being set out,"...
This post is the fourth in a five part series on a radical new approach to scaling BoP business models, what we call a transformative sector strategy. In this segment, I discuss the common characteristics that make BoP business models in different sectors scalable solutions.Searching for Transformational Models in New SectorsIf building the missing infrastructure could transform rural connectivity and health care, what about access to clean drinking water, especially for smaller rural and peri-urban communities? That's a proposition that WRI and Santa Clara University's Global Social Benefit Incubator are researching. There are some promising models in the field, such as Water Health International, that are beginning to scale. There are a number of additional enterprises, five of...
NAIROBI, 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - Unidentified gunmen killed an official of the UN World Food Programme (WFP) in Kenya's northwestern town of Lokichoggio on 7 May, in what the agency has described as the first killing of a WFP aid worker in the relief hub for Southern Sudan....
BEIRUT, 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - Everyone kept insisting it was not a civil war, but jumping for cover as a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the apartment block beside us, and masked gunmen fired deafening salvos across the road dividing Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods of Beirut, it certainly felt like...
BANGKOK, 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - Aid workers are dismayed at the limited and selective access provided to foreign relief in Myanmar. WFP suspended its limited air cargo deliveries on 9 May, after two loads of food aid were impounded in Yangon, according to...
ZIGUINCHOR, 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - Stéphanie Malak was injured by a landmine in 1998 when her village, was attacked, allegedly by rebels from the Movement for Democratic Change (MFDC), and then mined. She fled with her family to Ziguinchor where she is trying to make ends meet. She told IRIN her...
ZIGUINCHOR, 9 May 2008 (IRIN) - After years of delays linked to instability in strife-torn Casamance, the government finally launched a landmine clearance programme in the region in February 2008, but lack of adherence to the 2004 peace accord is hampering...
Pictured above are U.S. Ambassador Kate Canavan and Zebra's football player Kagiso Tshelametse greeting Nata youth at the Kgotla. It was great to have these two celebrities visit our little village.
Pictured above are folks waiting to test at the Tebelopele Caravan. We want to thank Brian Awsumb, Peace Corps Volunteer with Tebelopele, for providing a summary of the days events. Below is an excerpt from his report. Thanks Brian!U.S. Ambassador Katherine Canavan and Botswana soccer star Kagiso Tshelametse addressed community members at the Nata kgotla on the importance of HIV testing. Both were in the village to wrap up a Zebras4Life—Test4Life football tournament in the area. Canavan also used the date of the occasion, Earth Day, to highlight the...
from the Latin America PressGovernment subsidies fail to reduce poverty that plagues 35 percent of the population“Social work won’t complement anything, but instead will be the base of everything,” said President Antonio Saca when he began his term in June 2004, after announcing he would combat poverty head on. But economists and civil society representatives charge that this promise “is not reflected in the social public investment” and that the programs implemented will not get many out of poverty.Specialists also estimate that the Solidarity Network program, a fundamental pillar in Saca’s social strategy, “is not sustainable” since the funds are meager and depend greatly on international donations and loans.Since October 2005, the Solidarity Network has given monthly...