Source LA Times: Eritrean refugees, wearing white masks, participate in a protest in front of Israel’s Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv. The protesters are seeking refugee status in Israel after coming in from a county where the U.N. says men are often forced into military service for life. Israel has granted refugee status to people fleeing Darfur, but says it will deport all others who have entered illegally.
There are not just Americans and Europeans sitting at the entrepreneur table in the 21st century. Today, entrepreneurs are connecting around the globe for opportunities.
Turns out Nigeria is one of the fastest growing economies on the planet. The International Monetary Fund expected GDP growth over 9% this year and forecasts at least 8% gains in 2009. Most of the boom is due to oil and commodities. Fortunately Nigerians seems to recognize that diversifying the economy beyond oil is necessary to move forward as a nation.
President Yar’Adua has proposed support for companies outside the oil sector in his 2009 budget. But for Nigeria’s media, talk is cheap. They are demanding explicit plans to help entrepreneurs.
Afghan men bring sheep home for the upcoming Eid-ul-Adha festival in Kabul, Afghanistan. Muslims around the world celebrate Eid-ul-Adha by sacrificing sheep, goats and other animals to commemorate Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son on God’s command.
pictured above: Kudakwashe Chiveura digs for crickets to eat in Mutoko, about 80 miles northeast of Harare. Grazing land has been destroyed by poachers setting fires to scare rabbits, rodents and other small animals into traps and nets
pictured above: Children wait by the roadside with wild fruit for sale in Murewa. Zimbabwe’s inflation, the highest in the world, pegged at over 230 million percent, has spiraled out of control at a time when health and education services have collapsed.
Crop failure and economic collapse have left the nation without food. Millions survive on nothing but wild fruit. ‘Children are dying out in the bush,’ one foreign doctor says.
By Robyn Dixon (LA Times)
Reporting from Matabeleland South, Zimbabwe — The child’s name is Godknows, and his mother smiles softly when she explains the choice: Only God knows whether he will live or die.
“I’m leaving everything in God’s hands because the child is always ill,” she whispers.
Godknows is 2 but looks like a frail 6-month-old, wrists and ankles like twigs, dark hollows under his solemn eyes, sores on his face. He flops in his mother’s arms like an exhausted old man, a victim of Zimbabwe’s silent hunger crisis.
The twin miseries of crop failure and economic collapse have left Zimbabwe’s villages without food. Millions survive on nothing but wild fruit, and many have died.
There are no official statistics. But ask people here in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland South province whether they know anyone who died of hunger recently, and the answer is nearly always yes. Sometimes it’s four or six people in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes they just say “plenty.”
“Children are dying out in the bush,” one foreign doctor says, on condition of anonymity. “We are all guarded. We have to keep quiet or else we’ll be kicked out” by the government.
The crisis has been exacerbated by President Robert Mugabe’s decision in June to suspend humanitarian aid during the run-up to his one-man presidential runoff. The long-ruling Mugabe, stunned when he won fewer votes than opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the first round in March, accused aid agencies of supporting the opposition and didn’t lift the ban until August. Critics say the regime, which has a history of denying food to opposition areas, was using hunger as a political tool to force people to vote for Mugabe.
The evening of November 26th, Mumbai, India found itself the target of a ferocious terrorist attack, and the situation remains unresolved even now, three days later. According to reports, upwards of 60 young men entered Mumbai in small inflatable boats on Wednesday night, carrying bags filled with weapons and ammunition, and spread out to nine locations to begin their attacks. Lobbing grenades and firing their weapons, they entered hotels, a railway station and several other buildings, killing scores and wounding even more.
As of this moment, the identity of the attackers has yet to be definitively determined, though there are reports indicating some of the gunmen were Pakistani - at least nine of them have been killed, nine more arrested. As of this writing, there were a reported 151 people killed from 11 different countries - though nearly 100 were Indian. More than 300 injuries have also been reported - those numbers may yet rise as several hostage situations still exist in the city.
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pictured above: A girl looks on at refugee camp near a UN peacekeepers camp on November 07, 2008 in Kiwanja, DR Congo. Over 250,000 people have been displaced after fighting erupted between the rebel CNDP and the army in the last several weeks. According to reports, violence continues despite a ceasefire declared by (CNDP) rebel leader General Laurent Nkunda.
As the Congo crisis continues, over the past days the civilian population has endured more continued fighting amongst multiple factions, cholera outbreaks, separation from family members, hunger, and further losses (of life, property, safety and trust) as both rebel forces and government soldiers have committed many acts of theft, rape and murder while thinly-stretched UN forces have been unable to provide much help.
The organization Doctors Without Borders (Médecins Sans Frontières) has recently launched their own multimedia initiative to “bring global attention to the humanitarian consequences of the intensifying war in eastern DR Congo”, called Condition: Critical (plesae view the video on the website).
[source: Boston Globe]
Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is a sheer beast; a visionary to say the least. He is the Prime Minister and Vice President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the ruler of Dubai.
Pictured above: visitors look at a model of a proposed development entitled “City of Arabia” at the opening of the Cityscape 2008 international real estate exhibition in Dubai.
November 20, 2008 will be the grand opening of the latest addition to the skyline of Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Atlantis Palm Resort, with over 1,500 rooms, will be hosting an opening ceremony with celebrities from around the world tomorrow night. The rapid development in Dubai and across the UAE hasn’t all been easy lately, as infrastructure problems (handling rising levels of waste to match massive development), and world financial struggles have slowed progress. Wealthy Dubai continues to grow though, in both land area as new islands are built, and in height as new, taller skyscrapers are planned to best the Burj Dubai, already the tallest in the world.
By PAOLA SINGER (NY Times)
When the socialites are in town, don’t bother trying to park anywhere near Brava Beach in José Ignacio. The dirt roads are narrow, the Porsches wide, and there are too many drivers anxiously vying for a spot. After all, everyone’s eager to check out the scene unfolding by the shore: models in micro bikinis, wealthy Americans trying hard not to stare, European bon vivants staring unabashedly, and Argentine beauties blowing air kisses every which way.
To the old timers of José Ignacio, a small village on the southern coast of Uruguay, the traffic jams are something of a shock. Not long ago, this was a sleepy fishing outpost, a refuge for loners and the occasional celebrity seeking to escape the paparazzi in nearby Punta del Este, a glamorous playground often compared to St.-Tropez.
But in the last five years, José Ignacio has evolved into arguably the chicest spot in Latin America, favored by jet-setters from around the world.
Photo AP: Congolese vented their outrage at the failure of the United Nations peacekeeping force to stop the rebel advance.
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN (The New York Times)
GOMA, Congo — When Congo shakes, Africa trembles.
This vast linchpin of a country at the green heart of the continent, covering 905,000 square miles and bordering nine nations, never goes down alone.
When the Congolese state began to collapse in 1996, it set off a regional war. When it imploded again in 1998, it dragged in armies from a half-dozen other African countries. The two wars and the mayhem since have killed possibly five million people, a death toll that human rights groups say is the worst related to any conflict since World War II.
The worry now is that Congo is on the brink again, with neighbors poised to jump in, which is why the relatively small-scale bush fighting last week attracted some of the most intense diplomatic activity Congo has seen in years. The French foreign minister, the British foreign minister, top United Nations diplomats and the State Department’s highest official for Africa all jetted in to the decrepit but important lakeside city of Goma.
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