Complete Wellness

Simon Schneller

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 17 2006 (IPS) – Nearly 100 days after the devastating earthquake in Pakistan, survivors are facing a bitter winter while uncertainties over the financing of humanitarian aid still loom large.
I must say that given where we started a few months ago, a lot has been achieved and hundreds of U.N. staff and tens of thousands of Pakistani army people have been working now for 100 days and they have accomplished a lot, Margareta Wahlstrom, assistant secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and deputy emergency relief coordinator, said Monday.

The Oct. 8 disaster, whose epicentre was in the Pakistan-administered region of the disputed territory of Kashmir, has claimed more than 74,000 lives, injured almost an equal number and displaced 2.5 million others.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is now struggling to assist nearly 140,000 survivors left homeless by the disaster and living in nearly 140 earthquake relief camps.

UNHCR is intensifying its winterisation drive in relief camps by replacing low-quality tents, distributing heating stoves and relocating people to camps that are better equipped to cope with the bad weather, UNHCR spokesperson Ron Redmond told a news briefing in Geneva last week.

UNHCR has provided 40,000 stoves to the camps and will continue to supply them with kerosene for heating throughout the winter. Wahlstrom also emphasised that because of the U.N. s relief programme, hundreds of thousands of blankets, tents and food had been distributed in the affected regions.
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On Tuesday, the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) received an 8.1-million-dollar contribution from the European Commission. The EC contribution is helping to ensure that all windows of opportunity will be used to distribute aid in the weeks to come, said WFP Executive Director James Morris.

To date, WFP has delivered 8,600 metric tonnes of food, 1,125 metric tonnes of non-food items, such as tents and tools, and 76 mobile warehouses to the earthquake victims in Pakistan.

No one is going to die because of lack of support through the U.N. development programme, Wahlstrom said in response to a question regarding how many lives could be lost if the United Nations cannot not secure the funds that are needed.

She said that currently the pledges and commitments are getting closer to 60 percent, which doesn t mean that all the money is in the box, but the money is firmly pledged and therefore you can expend against it if you have the resources to do so .

There is yet no reason to declare victory, but we are around 56 percent of the total appeal today, she said, adding We need 100 percent, of course.

In late October, the U.N. increased the level of funds sought to continue its relief operations from 238 million to 550 million dollars.

Leading donors like the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the United States had pledged some 5.8 billion dollars to help Pakistan recover from the earthquake.

Approximately 3.5 billion dollars of this amount are needed for rebuilding the local infrastructure in affected areas.

But besides the reconstruction efforts, which, according to Wahlstrom, of course have to start now , the main issue at the moment is to support the people through the winter . Since early January, bad weather, rain and heavy snowfall, with temperatures dropping between six and minus 16 Celsius, have hit northern Pakistan.

We need to be able to sustain the help until the end of the winter so that the reconstruction efforts can then take off after the winter is lifting, Wahlstrom said. I think they have a funding shortfall until the end of January, but after that they really need to have a confirmation of new pledges.

The winter in Pakistan could last until maybe first of April, at least , she added.

The onset of winter has also hampered air relief operations, which rely mainly on helicopters and have played a vital role in reaching people in remote locations. The effort is the largest of its kind in the WFP s history, with a fleet of 14 MI-8, two MI-26 and two KA 30 helicopters.

On Tuesday, former U.S. President George H.W. Bush the father of the current U.S. leader ended a two-day visit to Pakistan as the secretary-general s special envoy for the South Asia earthquake.

Although the harsh winter weather kept him from visiting the affected areas, Bush met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and made plans to visit these areas as soon as possible, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday.

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Feb 27 2006 (IPS) – The discrimination that people living with HIV face on a day-to-day level in the Caribbean results in frequent violations of their basic rights and is a major hurdle to the implementation of anti-AIDS programmes, say U.N. officials..
Prejudice based on religious, social or other reasons are exacerbated when HIV is thrown into the mix. This is one of the big obstacles to the fight against AIDS in the Caribbean and the rest of the world, Miriam Maluwa, representative of UNAIDS for Jamaica, Cuba and the Bahamas, told IPS.

In the region, there are women who have free access to the antiretroviral drugs that slow or inhibit the reproduction of HIV, the AIDS virus, but who do not show up for treatment in order to avoid the stigma of being identified as seropositive, she said.

People living with HIV/AIDS fear losing their jobs and their homes, not to mention the effects of the stigma on their young children, said the UNAIDS (Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) delegate.

Another hurdle to fighting the epidemic, she said, is the limited social commitment.

People are afraid to work with people living with HIV because they don t want to be lumped in together with them, added Maluwa, who has a long history of involvement in human rights issues.
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She noted that Cuba has the smallest number of people living with HIV and the smallest number of people who die as a result of AIDS. But she also pointed out that last year there was a slight rise in the number of cases detected, arguing that prevention efforts among society at large and among the highest risk groups should be stepped up.

Although those living with HIV in Cuba report that they feel stigmatised, all HIV/AIDS patients have free access to antiretroviral drugs, and their jobs are guaranteed, unless they present a risk to the patient s health.

Maluwa talked to IPS during a four-day visit to Cuba in late February, where she met with authorities, people living with HIV and U.N. representatives.

Some 24,000 people died of AIDS in the Caribbean last year, and 300,000 are living with HIV, according to the UNAIDS/WHO AIDS Epidemic Update, published in December 2005.

In the Caribbean, the region hardest hit in the world by HIV/AIDS after sub-Saharan Africa, AIDS has become the primary cause of death among the 15-44 age group, and the disease is mainly spread through heterosexual sex and prostitution, with poverty and sexual inequality playing a strong role.

The situation varies considerably from country to country, according to UNAIDS and WHO (World Health Organisation) statistics.

Average HIV prevalence stands at around one percent of the adult population in Barbados, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Suriname, around two percent in the Bahamas, Guyana and Trinidad and Tobago, and three percent in Haiti. In Cuba, meanwhile, prevalence is under 0.2 percent.

Although the Caribbean was the only area in the world where the AIDS rate did not grow last year, a comprehensive approach is needed, that includes prevention, treatment, care and support, said Fritz Lherisson, director of the regional UNAIDS office based in Trinidad and Tobago.

At a press conference in the office of the resident coordinator of the U.N. system in Havana, Lherisson said the epidemic can be prevented, and underlined that we know how to do it. But, he added, what is needed is a change of attitude.

The need to foment cultural, social and legal changes and to modify people s way of thinking is especially urgent given the fact that there are Caribbean island nations, like Jamaica, that still have laws on the book which prohibit homosexual relations and even provide for penalties.

Many men who have sex with men live a double life, said Maluwa on her first official visit to Havana. They have a home, a wife, children. They live, pretending to be what they are not, for fear of stigma and discrimination as a result of their sexual behavior.

Although she acknowledged that the problem is not so pronounced in Cuba, she said the AIDS prevention programme aimed at men who have sex with men must be consolidated and expanded.

Gay men account for around 12 percent of HIV/AIDS cases reported in the Caribbean overall, although the real number could be much higher.

But in Cuba, 80.4 percent of the 6,827 cases reported between 1986 and 2005 involved men, most of whom had sex with other men.

By contrast with other countries in the region, there is a good working relationship with people living with HIV, Raúl Regueiro, national coordinator of work with homosexuals in the National Center for the Prevention of STDs/HIV/AIDS, told IPS.

Regueiro stressed the need to expand prevention efforts geared towards bisexual men, based on activities already being carried out in provinces in eastern Cuba.

The project that works with gay men in Cuba forms part of a much broader programme put into effect by the Cuban government with support from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (26 million dollars for the 2003-2008 period) and from the office of the U.N. system in Cuba.

UNAIDS can support the monitoring and evaluation of efforts by the Cuban government, to see how they can be further expanded and document what has been done in the country, to share it with other countries both within and outside of the Caribbean region, Maluwa told reporters.

Julio Godoy* – Tierramérica

PARIS, Mar 24 2006 (IPS) – The European Commission s (EC) most recent decisions on genetically modified crops have condemned the continent s farms to transgenic contamination, say environmental groups consulted by Tierramérica.
In a report published Mar. 10 in Brussels, the EC considered it unnecessary to separate conventional and organic crops from genetically modified crops.

The EC also deemed illegal any measures to protect sensitive ecosystems against genetically modified organisms (GMOs), also known as transgenic, and threatened to sanction national or regional governments that attempt to ban such crops.

Given the total and irreversible nature of transgenic contamination, the EC report marks the end of traditional and organic farming in Europe, Arnaud Apoteker, head of the biogenetics campaign for the environmental watchdog Greenpeace in Paris, told Tierramérica. The EC is either very naive or completely dishonest.

The EC says it is optional for farmers who use transgenic seeds to obtain insurance to cover potential sanctions against them, in case their products genetically contaminate neighbouring fields through pollination.

The Commission also allows European governments to increase the maximum contamination to 0.9 percent transgenic content in organic or conventional products without risking fines or requiring labelling of products indicating GMO content if the contamination occurs by chance .
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Strict laws against genetic contamination of conventional and organic agriculture are necessary, as is suspending production and sales of GMOs, stressed Apoteker.

In January the EC also authorised three new types of genetically modified maize, including MON 863, whose toxic effects in rats have been demonstrated in laboratory tests.

Gilles-Eric Séralini, molecular biology professor at the French University of Caen and author of a study of MON863 effects in rodents, told Tierramérica that the tests revealed an increase in sugar in the blood, as well as anomalies in the quantity of white and red blood cells, and renal lesions in the animals.

Says Helen Holder, GMO campaign coordinator for the environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, the EC continues authorising imports of transgenics, without laws that protect organic and traditional agriculture against genetic contamination.

The French government is drafting a law on GMOs that, according to Greenpeace, ignores all the evidence about their potential threats to health and the environment.

But despite the efforts of the EC and of the major biotech multinational corporations, the production and sale of transgenics in Europe is limited. There are no European countries among the world s top 10 producers of GMOs, but there are three South American nations: Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay.

Axel Kruschat, director of the German environmental group BUND, said in a Tierramérica interview that fields of transgenic maize represent less than one in a thousand of the total dedicated to growing conventional maize in Germany.

In France, transgenic maize is planted on less than 1,000 hectares, out of a total of three million hectares of maize fields.

The genetically modified maize variety grown in France in Germany is known as bt-maize , because it was grafted with a gene of the Bacillus thuringiensis (bt) to increase its resistance to Ostrinia nubilalis, a larva known commonly as the corn borer.

The corn borer is considered the worst maize pest. It begins by feeding on the plant s leaves, then bores into the stalk, developing two or three generations of larvae.

Despite its anti-pest benefit, bt-maize is avoided by most German farmers, said Kruschat. The consumers don t buy genetically modified maize, he explained.

Kruschat noted that Marka, the bt-maize seed distributor in Germany, offers to buy the entire crops of the conventional or organic farmers neighbouring the transgenic fields at market price, regardless of their contamination with genetically modified maize. For the farmers, it s an interesting proposal, because they have a sure buyer.

Marka thus avoids lawsuits filed by non-bt-maize farmers against its clients whose transgenic crops may cross the legal limits of contamination of nearby fields, according to Kruschat.

Andreas Thierfelder, spokesman in Germany for the agro-tech multinational Monsanto, creator of bt-maize, confirmed this approach in an article in the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

The French growers of transgenic maize don t sell their harvest at home either they export it to Spain. According to a survey published in late February by the environmental group Agir pour l environnement (Action for the Environment), 75 percent of French consumers are opposed to genetically modified foods.

The precautions of Monsanto and Marka are justified. Despite the new directive of the EC, the limit for GMO contamination of conventional agricultural products is 0.9 percent. If it is any higher, the product must bear a label stating that it contains GMOs.

Katja Moch, a biologist with Germany s Ecological Institute of Freiburg, told Tierramérica that the maximum limit for genetic contamination in conventional and organic crops is obeyed, but only if the entire non-transgenic harvest is considered at the time of measuring the percentage of its GMO content.

As such, those parts of the harvest taken from areas farther away from neighbouring transgenic fields have less contamination. But in reality the farmers don t harvest their entire fields at once. In these partial harvests, the GMO content is frequently higher than 0.9 percent, said Moch.

This contamination also occurs as a result of conventional and organic farmers sharing machinery or storage sites with farmers who grow transgenic crops.

Many heavy machines used in farming and shared by several different farmers are difficult to clean, and that permits the dissemination of GMOs, explained Moch.

Environmentalists and organic farming activists insist that the maximum limit for GMO contamination must be reduced to 0.1 percent.

The European Commission continues to ignore their demands.

(*Julio Godoy is an IPS correspondent. Originally published Mar. 18 by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialised news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Programme and the United Nations Environment Programme.)

Jess Smee

BERLIN, Apr 28 2006 (IPS) – Silent playgrounds, boarded up schools, new old people s homes. What sounds far-fetched is actually a glimpse of the future for many German towns if the country s dwindling birth rate fails to stall.
Amid tabloid headlines like We are dying out! and dramatic press predictions that Germans will be extinct in 12 generations, Germany is waking up to the implications of the demographic downturn.

Germany has a birth rate of 8.5 per 1,000 inhabitants, the lowest in Europe and one of the weakest worldwide. With fewer babies, and people living longer, one in three Germans will be 60 or above by 2050, according to official projections.

A third more babies would be needed to maintain the German population as it is now, Bettina Sommer of the Federal Statistics Office told IPS. The demographic structure is undergoing a big change.

A shrinking population is a pan-European trend, according to Eurostat, the European Union s statistics organisation. By 2050, it estimates that Europe s population will fall by around 1.5 percent, or seven million people.

The figures released last month show Germany is hardest hit. In 2005 the number of children born was the lowest since the end of the second world war. Germany s 8.5 births per 1,000 inhabitants are far lower than Ireland with15.2, Britain with12, France with 12.7 and the Netherlands with 11.9.
Germany s birth rate has been flagging over the past 30 years, but policy changes have not managed to significantly stem the decline. Economists and demographers warn that failure to act soon will have serious consequences.

As the population gets older, fewer taxpayers will have to support an inflated pension system and the coveted welfare system. Meanwhile, the German economy will shrink further unless it can recruit 140,000 foreign workers every year, more than is currently the case, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) says.

Painting a bleak picture of the society of the future, the non-fiction book Minimum describes a society lacking families and awash with egocentric only-children. Frank Schirrmacher s book has topped bestseller lists for weeks, reflecting the wave of public concern.

Experts cite many reasons for Germans reluctance to reproduce. These include a scarcity of childcare facilities, schools that finish at lunchtime, and a tax system that discriminates against working women. Meanwhile, protracted university education means that many women study until they are 30, leaving little time to start both career and family.

Germany s traditional family model is a key factor, says Dr Michaela Kreyenfeld, who researches demographics at the independent Max Planck Society. The assumption is that the woman stays at home with the children. This has its roots in the conservative party but has continued to underpin policies by the subsequent left-wing (SPD) government, she told IPS.

Such stereotypes continue to weigh on political discussions she said, pointing out that many right-wing politicians morally object to laws encouraging nursery places for children under the age of three.

Other European countries have modernised their attitudes, especially France, where the crèche system is extensive. Unlike in Germany, it is not socially frowned upon that mothers promptly return to the workplace.

In Sweden, day care is aimed at creating equal chances for women in the workplace, whereas in Germany the politicians are driven by the falling birth rate, Kreyenfeld said.

Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Ursula von der Leyen, a doctor and mother of seven, is spearheading German efforts to become more family-friendly.

Among a raft of proposals to encourage more couples to have children she has mooted plans to allow parents to offset up to 4,000 euros of childcare costs each year. She has also drawn up a new form of state-funded child welfare support, whereby either parent will be entitled to 67 percent of their previous income while staying at home, up to a maximum of 1,800 euros per month.

But these measures must be discussed in parliament before any laws are passed, and there have already been fiery debates on the subject.

Meanwhile, politicians have to deal with stark differences in population patterns across the country. The fewest babies are born in the unemployment-blighted east of the country, where young people, especially women, are moving away to seek work. In contrast, the south, including key cities like Munich and Stuttgart, continues to flourish, according to a report the Berliner Institute published last month.

Researchers at the institute blamed a vicious circle that has become entrenched in much of eastern Germany following reunification in 1990. Where there s a lack of work, people, especially the young, move away. Where there s a lack of families, the economy weakens, they wrote.

Commentators argue that reform, especially to the increasingly costly pension system, is urgent. Public pension payments already take up 12 percent of gross domestic product more than in most other parts of the EU. And that is only going to rise.

As the average age of the electorate rises it will be politically unfeasible for parties to push through measures that tinker with the pensions status quo, even if it means building up more national debt.

Richard Jackson, director of the Washington-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies said in a report that this senior power means that politicians need to push through new laws, and soon.

The bottom line is stark, he wrote. Demography is pushing Germany towards a major crisis and time is running out.

Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, May 31 2006 (IPS) – When the Montreal-based Cambior Inc. closed its depleted gold mine in western Guyana last year, authorities feared that the country would disappear from the map of major gold-producing nations.
After all, they figured that Guyana s brigade of about 20,000 miners, made up mostly of locals and Brazilians who have crossed the southwestern border, could never find the millions of dollars needed to move from small- and medium-scale mines to large projects the size of Cambior, which extracted 3.7 million ounces in 13 years at its Omai site on the western Essequibo River, until production ended last September.

But with gold prices hovering near 700 dollars per ounce, three times more than a decade ago, industry officials say the country is, like a pure nugget, gleaming in the distance to those wiling to invest in gold given predictions that surging prices might be around for a while yet.

We are passing through a golden period that the international analysts say will last quite a few years, said Tony Shields, executive director of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association. We have never had so much interest from people all over in the industry and this is clearly because of the price.

However, safety and environmental concerns about the gold mining industry linger here. Four small-scale miners working in open mud pits have died in recent years when poorly constructed walls collapsed and buried them.

The local environmental protection agency has complained about the use of heavy dredging machinery to extract gold-bearing ore, which is says has changed the courses of small inland rivers and disrupted local ecosystems.
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The Omai mine had also used cyanide to extract gold from ore. Though this process is widely touted as the most efficient system of extracting gold, spills into waterways have caused concerns that the heavy metal may linger for years to come.

In August 1995, two years after mining started, a storage pit holding 3.2 million cubic metres of cyanide-tainted mining waste broke open, spewing the waste for 100 hours into the Omai and nearby Essequibo rivers.

Non-governmental organisations sued the company for compensation for communities living downstream from the mine. Some of the cases have been settled, and others are still pending.

Local miners currently use mercury to extract gold, which is also toxic, but Shields said that campaigns are continuing to educate miners about proper usage of mercury in waterways where indigenous Amerindians and other communities live.

Meanwhile, in neighbouring Suriname, where less than two years ago Cambior opened the Gross Rosebel mine 160 kilometres south of the capital Paramaribo, the company is also cashing in, announcing record profits of 20.2 million dollars last year.

As an indication of how juicy the industry has become in recent months, Rosebel yielded up 341,000 ounces for Cambior at a production cost of a mere 208 dollars per ounce.

There is no doubt we are benefiting greatly from this period. Prices are good, said spokeswoman Seeta Mohamed.

Earlier this month, gold prices hit 730 dollars per ounce. Analysts say that with the insecurity in oil hot spots like Iraq and Nigeria, many investors are likely to stick with gold as a safe haven.

Eyeing Cambior s success across its eastern border, Guyanese officials have succeeded in convincing three Canadian companies to explore large areas in the western and northwestern regions of this former British colony, but none of the projects is expected to come to fruition in less than two years.

The three, Sacre-Coeur Minerals Inc. and Strata Gold, both of Vancouver, and Ontario-based Guyana Goldfields Inc., are expected to invest an estimated 20 million dollars by the time the mines get rolling. They already employ hundreds of skilled and unskilled labourers, and this workforce could double when mining actually starts.

Robeson Benn, head of the national geology and mines commission, says conservative estimates show that each of the three mines could produce a minimum of one million ounces of gold, putting the country back on the map of major producing nations.

Centuries ago, British explorer Sir Walter Raleigh and others had come to Guyana in search of the legendary city of gold, El Dorado, and found nothing but the country briefly lived up to that label between 1993 and September 2005 when Cambior operated Omai Gold Mines at its peak, one of the top three in the western hemisphere.

But even as the Canadians explore the mosquito-ridden Amazonian jungles in earnest, authorities have turned to small-scale miners to extract gold.

National production is expected to reach 200,000 ounces this year, 38,000 more than last year and 65,000 more than in 2004. Shields says that investors with money to spare are knocking on the doors of mining companies, betting that the surging prices will last. The same is true in Suriname, he says.

As an indication of how confident analysts are about prices holding steady, the World Bank recently invested 4.7 million dollars in the Guyana Goldfields project, even though commercial production is still two years away.

When Cambior s mines were rolling, gold had jumped from the fifth most important export earner after sugar, rice, bauxite and timber to second. It is now at number four ahead of timber.

Since the Omai disaster, Guyana has passed an environmental protection act that requires monitoring of the surface and ground water near mining operations, among other oversight measures.

But according to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Guyana and Suriname, gold mining operations still use heavy equipment that damages soil and causes deforestation. They also use mercury to bind and purify the gold, much of which evaporates and is returned to the environment through rain or is dumped directly into surface waters.

Miners in turn are exposed to mercury vapour and can develop health problems, while the surrounding communities can be harmed through eating predator fish contaminated with mercury.

In March, the group launched a project with funding from the Inter-American Development Bank to create a national gold mining association in Suriname and to train thousands of gold miners in new and environment-friendly mining techniques.

We want to make these miners aware that there are methods of mining which will benefit them and the environment, said Michelet Fontaine, director of WWF Guianas regional programme office.

Hopefully, the miners will be persuaded to switch to more environment-friendly methods such as using mechanical means to extract the gold or replacing mercury with less harmful chemicals, he said in a statement.

Juliana Lara Resende

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 7 2006 (IPS) – After famously telling reporters that they don t do body counts , Pentagon officials now say that they have in fact been keeping a record of civilian casualties in Iraq for one year. And while that number remains classified, independent estimates suggest that at least 50,000 people have died in the country since the 2003 invasion.
According to statistics compiled by the Baghdad morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other agencies, as reported recently in the Los Angeles Times, that total is 20,000 higher then the George W. Bush administration had previously estimated.

Last year, Bush asserted that, 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis.

In terms of population size, this would be equivalent to 570,000 U.S. citizens killed in the same period of time, noted the Jun. 25 LA Times article.

However, the Iraqi Health Ministry says this figure is artificially low since it does not include deaths that occurred outside Baghdad in the first year of the occupation, or those in the three northern provinces of the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan..

And due to the ongoing daily violence and security crackdowns, as well as power shortages and failing communications networks, health workers have been unable to compile accurate data concerning how many people die in the country.
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According to the London-based Iraq Body Count (IBC), a non-governmental group that keeps a database on media-reported deaths in Iraq since May 2003, last year s toll was the highest in the three years of the occupation: 36 violent deaths on average per day approximately twice the toll of the first year.

Early last week, U.S. officials in Iraq said they have been counting civilian casualties since July 2005.

Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli, head of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq, told reporters in Baghdad that U.S. soldiers are killing and injuring fewer civilians. According to him, non-combatant deaths at checkpoints have been reduced from about four to one per week in the last six months.

But John Sloboda from IBC notes that checkpoint killings are only one category of death caused by the U.S. military .

We have no proper evidence as to how meticulously the U.S. has been counting all categories of death caused by its own military, he told IPS.

Following Chiarelli s announcement, the Washington-based Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC) and other humanitarian organisations called on the U.S. military to release its data and back up the information with further details.

The U.S. military says they do protect civilians and we do believe them, but we can t know how true that is without the data, CIVIC s executive director, Sarah Holewinski, told IPS.

Sloboda added, Indeed, there are on-record statements from military commanders saying that no way does the U.S. count casualties caused in engagements with hostile forces.

When it is in a situation where its own troops are under fire, each member of the military is asked to guess how many enemy he may have killed. These reports are fed back upwards and combined somehow but obviously this can be no more than a guess and extremely subject to bias and political manipulation by the U.S, he said.

Death certificates are issued and counted separately by the morgue and the Health Ministry, so the two data sets do not overlap.

>From 2003 through mid-2006, the Baghdad morgue received 30,204 bodies, according to the LA Times. The Health Ministry documented 18,933 deaths from military clashes and terrorist attacks between Apr. 5, 2004 and the Jun. 1, 2006. Together, this amounts to 49,137 deaths.

Regarding the U.S. refusal to disclose an official number, Holewinski said, The media is doing a very good job on pushing the military to release it. However, she added that this will not happen unless the Congress requires [the Pentagon] to .

IBC estimates that between 38,786 and 43,215 civilians have died as a consequence of the military invasion of Iraq since the war began, excluding deaths among the Iraqi security forces.

It s a baseline. It s a really good measure, but it s not the whole story, so we need the U.S. to release their data, Holewinski told IPS.

If the U.S. (military) really wants to put information into the public domain, then it should provide the date and place of each incident, the name of all victims and perpetrators, stressed Sloboda. What they are currently doing is self-serving tokenism and an insult to their victims.

It s an utter obscenity, and the whole international community stands judged for its abject failure in this respect, he concluded.

Milagros Salazar

LIMA, Aug 17 2006 (IPS) – Arankartuktaram! This Achuar cry sums up what indigenous communities in the heart of Peru s Amazon jungle region are demanding from the State and multinational oil companies a little respect.
For thirty years the Achuar people in the Corrientes River basin were unable to stop outsiders from polluting their environment. Now, the indigenous group is about to become the first in Peru to take legal action, as it plans to file suit against the companies it blames for the damages.

Oil drilling on indigenous land began in the 1970s with the arrival of U.S.-based Occidental Petroleum Corporation (Oxy). In 1996, Pluspetrol Norte, a local subsidiary of Argentine-based Pluspetrol, began to operate in the upper basins of the Pastaza, Corrientes and Tigre rivers, and expanded its operational area in 2000.

At the most recent indigenous assembly, held Aug. 5-6, the apus (chiefs) accused oil companies of endangering the Achuar people s health and environment.

This group comprises 8,000 inhabitants of 31 communities in the northern department (province) of Loreto. Of these, 3,000 to 4,000 are direct victims of oil drilling, says Racimos de Ungurahui, a non-governmental organisation that works on behalf of the Achuar in Peru s Amazon jungle region.

The State, in complicity with the oil companies, is systematically violating our rights. The government is incapable of sanctioning those who pollute our rivers and land, said Robert Guimaraes, vice president of the Interethnic Association for the Development of the Peruvian Jungle (AIDESEP), an umbrella group bringing together 47 indigenous federations and six indigenous regional organisations. That s why it is up to us to take action, he told IPS.
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Guimaraes brought the issue up in the Peruvian legislature, when on Aug. 9 he and representatives of the Federation of Native Communities of the Corrientes River (FECONACO) participated in events marking the International Day of the World s Indigenous Peoples. AIDESEP leaders believe they have enough evidence to sue the companies. One of the most revealing reports comes from the Ministry of Health itself; it contains the first government warnings about high blood concentrations of cadmium and lead in Achuar people.

The government study of the quality of water and biological testing among communities of the Corrientes River basin was undertaken in response to a FECONACO request. Published in May, it reported the presence of heavy metals in the indigenous community, after analysing samples from 199 people, including 74 children aged 2 to 17.

The report showed that cadmium levels exceeded the acceptable limit of 0.1 mg per litre of blood in 98.6 percent of the children and adolescents examined in the Corrientes river basin area. Cadmium levels in 97.3 percent surpassed even those usually found in smokers 0.2 mg even though the people examined were non-smokers.

Furthermore, dangerous concentrations of 0.21 to 0.5 mg per litre were found in 37.8 percent of the children and adolescents, while the biological tolerance value (BAT) of 0.5 mg was exceeded in 59.4 percent of the minors. Similar levels were found in adults.

Testing for lead also yielded disturbing results: 66.2 per cent of the youngsters were found to exceed the limit for lead established for children (up to 10 mg per litre of blood). However, those over 18 had blood levels under the acceptable limit of 20 mg per litre.

According to La Oroya Cannot Wait , a report authored by the Interamerican Association for Environmental Defence (AIDA) and the Peruvian Environmental Law Society (SPDA), high concentrations of cadmium in the blood can cause lung damage and cancer, kidney disease, weakening of the bones and the immune system, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and heart disease. Lead, in turn, affects the nervous system, endangering the brain and the kidneys.

But Pluspetrol Norte, citing the government report s finding that lead concentrations in the water were within acceptable limits, denied that the company is responsible for the high metal concentrations in the blood.

However, the study also underscores the fact that it lacks data on other heavy metals in the river, such as cadmium and copper, due to methodological limitations.

In 2004, China s state-run National Petroleum Corporation, the Asian giant s main oil producer, acquired a 45 percent share of Pluspetrol Norte, which produced 54 percent of Peru s oil that year.

The company adheres closely to the limits set by the law. We believe the ministry s report was carried out in a serious manner, but we cannot conclude that the levels of contaminants in the blood are due to heavy metals in the rivers. No causal correlation can be made between one and the other, one of the oil company s representatives told IPS.

Racimos de Ungurahui said that in order to accurately assess pollution levels in jungle rivers, what is needed is a sediment analysis, because the heavy metals settle in the riverbed.

This, however, is problematic, because as stated in the Health Ministry report Peru has no technical regulations to establish maximum concentration values for heavy metals, hydrocarbons and other elements in sediment.

The NGO said there is also pollution in lagoons and lakes where the indigenous communities fish, and that animals that they hunted for food have fled the area. A Racimos de Ungurahui report describes a domino effect of damages triggered by oil activity, which has violated one of the communities most basic rights: the right to food.

Following a Jul. 20-24 indigenous congress held in Loreto, the Regional Organisation of AIDESEP in Iquitos (ORAI) demanded the establishment of permanent health monitoring mechanisms to prevent future negative impacts on the health of indigenous people in oil drilling areas, and called for an environmental state of emergency to be declared in the Corrientes River basin.

The ORAI statement also demands that the State and the Pluspetrol Norte company clean up Achuar land and implement cutting-edge clean technology for the entire drilling process, throughout the company s operations.

On behalf of the affected communities, Guimaraes emphasised the urgent need to reinject drilling waste deep into the ground, deal with the environmental damages and prevent new oil companies from establishing a foothold in Achuar territory.

Energy and Mines Minister Juan Valdivia Romero told IPS that officials from his ministry are holding meetings with management at Pluspetrol Norte, to encourage the company to fast-track plans to reinject produced waters into the ground as an environmentally acceptable disposal method.

Commenting on the environmental damage caused by oil companies, Valdivia Romero stated that we recognise how important it is to the communities that the environmental liabilities be reduced as soon as possible. We, as the supervisory entity, are strictly enforcing the companies compliance with regulations.

For its part, Pluspetrol Norte announced that it is now reinjecting some 210,000 barrels a day of produced water, which exceeds its original plan of 80,000. The company estimates the work will be complete by 2009.

However, Racimos de Ungurahui said the company is moving too slowly, and has criticised the reinjection plan, which according to the NGO addresses a mere 15 percent of Pluspetrol Norte s total waste waters.

Roberto Ramallo, general manager of Pluspetrol Norte, said in a press release that we are aware of a history of environmental impacts on the zone; consequently, we are developing mitigation plans to improve the quality of life in these communities.

The executive pointed out that the company provides free medical care to 18,000 people, and is building and repairing schools for 4,000 of the area s native students.

But Guimaraes calls this band-aid assistance. We want to achieve our own level of development in harmony with nature, without losing our identity, language, culture and land. We are pushing for a multicultural and multilingual state, he told IPS.

The root of the pollution can be traced to the Peruvian State s vision of development, which is based on a model where natural resources are exploited without respect for affected communities, said José De Echave of Cooperacción, an NGO that works primarily with mining and social issues.

Indigenous communities have also turned to Congress for help. The new chairman of the congressional Amazon and Indigenous Affairs Committee, Carlos Arana, said he began to review the concerns of the communities on Aug. 15.

We will look into the possibility of presenting bills that help address the demands of these communities and that also enforce the standards set by international treaties relevant to the issue, Arana told IPS.

In the next few days, indigenous organisations will make an announcement on the measures to be adopted. Although their spokespeople have not clearly revealed what these may entail, the first step is likely to involve legal action, followed by, as so many times before, negotiations with the companies that drill for black gold.

Julio Godoy

BREMEN, Germany, Sep 21 2006 (IPS) – The Panamanian flagged ship Probo Koala unloaded more than 550 tonnes of toxic waste at Abidjan port in Cote d Ivoire a month back. Emissions from that toxic waste have killed seven people and poisoned thousands.
The deadly cargo was shipped to Abidjan from Amsterdam, where port authorities rejected the tanker Jul.2 because of its toxic load. The Probo Koala had been chartered by Trafigure Beheer BV, a firm that says it specialises in the supply and off-take of crude oil, petroleum products, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), metals and metal ores and concentrates.

Trafigure Beheer BV admits now that the vessel did not undergo mandatory cleaning before taking a new load of gasoline blend. The reason it did not ultimately do so is because the waste disposal company in Amsterdam wanted to renegotiate its original contract, the company said in a statement Tuesday this week.

Company spokesperson Jan Maat told reporters in Amsterdam that cleaning the ship in the Netherlands would have meant losing an enormous amount of money. That would be 35,000 dollars per day of delay at the port. Therefore, we decide to pump the waste again into the tanker, and search for another port, he said.

One port available for unloading the toxic waste was Abidjan, some 7,000 km away.

The whole procedure was illegal, Andreas Bernstorff, a Hamburg-based expert in toxic waste trade and former Greenpeace activist told IPS. The port authorities in Amsterdam should have forced the Probo Koala to go to the incinerator located nearby in Rotterdam.
Bernstorff said the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal regulates the industrialised countries responsibilities for disposing of toxic waste. Following the convention, the port authorities in Amsterdam should have not allowed the Probo Koala to continue its route as if nothing wrong had happened.

The Basel Convention was adopted in Basel, Switzerland in 1989, and came into force in 1992. The Convention forbids all forms of hazardous waste export from the most industrialised countries to developing countries.

But several industrialised countries such as the United States, Australia, and Canada have not ratified it. The Netherlands was among all 15 older members of the European Union who signed the convention since its inception in 1989.

The environmental organisation Basel Action Network (BAN) based in Seattle in the United States says disposal of the Probo Koala s toxic waste in Abidjan was a clear violation of international environmental norms.

Leading environmentalists have condemned the move. The disaster in Abidjan is a particularly painful illustration of the human suffering caused by the illegal dumping of wastes, United Nations Environmental Programme executive director Achim Steiner said in a press statement released by the Basel Convention s secretariat.

It s pure petrochemical waste, said Rudolph Walder, a Swiss hazardous waste expert with the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination mission in Abidjan. He said the waste material included solids, oily substances and water products that could come from a refinery, from the petrochemical industry or from the cleaning of ships.

It is very clear to me that (the waste) is a product that violates the Basel convention, he added.

The present situation looks very much like 1988 (before the Basel convention was adopted) all over again, Jim Puckett from BAN told IPS. Now, despite the regulations, there is more evidence of death and disease from waste trade than ever before.

Martin Bézieux, expert on toxic waste at Greenpeace France told IPS that the rules forbidding such exports exist, but their application and the control of their application are insufficient.

Export of toxic waste from industrialised countries to developing countries is routine. According to Greenpeace, inspections of 18 European seaports in 2005 found that as much as 47 percent of waste destined for export, including e-waste, was illegal.

From Britain alone, at least 23,000 metric tonnes of undeclared or grey market electronic waste was illegally shipped in 2003 to South-East Asia, India, Africa and China, Greenpeace reports.

In the United States, the Silicon Valley Toxic Coalition (SVTC), an environmental group campaigning against the export of electronic waste, estimates that 50-80 percent of the electronic waste collected for recycling is being exported to developing countries.

In its report Exporting harm the high-tech trashing of Asia , released in 2002, the SVTC estimated that between 1997 and 2007, some 500 million computers used in the U.S. would become obsolete, leading to production of more than 600,000 tonnes of toxic waste, including plastics, lead, cadmium, chromium, and mercury.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, admits that 50 percent of waste exports leaving European ports do not comply with international legislation. The Commission announced in June this year that it will reinforce application of its own legislation starting 2007.

Environmental experts estimate that more than 100 million tonnes of toxic waste is produced worldwide every year, and about 10 percent of this waste is exported.

These figures give an idea of the dimension of the situation, but cannot completely illustrate the reality of the trade with toxic waste, Pierre Portas, deputy executive secretary at the secretariat of the Basel Convention told IPS.

A particular danger is the export of end of life ships contaminated with asbestos and electronic waste to scrapping yards in Asia.

Earlier this year the French government was forced to abandon export of its asbestos contaminated military aircraft carrier Clemenceau to the Indian scrapping yard Alang. But another ship, the SS Norway, formerly owned by the French government, and which is said to contain 1250 tonnes of asbestos, is waiting to be dismantled at the same scrapping yard.

Asbestos is known to cause a progressive disease of the lungs, and can provoke lung cancer and malignant mesothelioma, a form of cancer in the sac lining the chest or abdomen.

นอกเหนือจากเกมเพลย์การยิงปืนที่มันส์หยดแล้ว อีกหนึ่งสิ่งที่ดูเหมือนว่าจะมาพร้อมกับเกม Call of Duty นี้ทุกภาคก็คือขนาดการติดตั้งที่สูงมากขึ้นแทบจะทุกปีจนบางปีก็พุ่งไปถึงหลัก 200GB แล้ว ซึ่งทางค่าย Activision ก็รับทราบถึงปัญหานี้ดี และพยายามหาทางแก้ไขต่อเนื่องเช่นการนำเสนอระบบแบ่งไฟล์ติดตั้งเพื่อเลือกเนื้อหาที่ต้องการ กระนั้นความสำคัญของกราฟิกในเกมก็เป็นสิ่งที่พวกเขาไม่สามารถมองข้ามเหมือนกัน

ล่าสุด ปัญหาการติดตั้งก็ได้เกิดเป็นข้อถกเถียงอีกครั้งเมื่อผู้เล่นบางส่วนสังเกตพบว่าในหน้าร้านค้าของ Microsoft Store บน Xbox Series X|S ได้มีการแสดงผลให้เห็นว่า Call of Duty Black Ops 6 จะต้องใช้พื้นที่ติดตั้งสูงถึง 310GB นับว่าสูงที่สุดในเกมทุกภาค และยังอาจจะสูงที่สุดเมื่อเทียบกับหลายเกมแฟรนไชส์อื่นๆ ด้วย ทำเอาทุกคนต่างตกใจยกใหญ่ โดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งกับผู้ใช้งาน Xbox Series S รุ่นมาตรฐาน 500GB ที่จะกินพื้นที่การใช้งานเกือบทั้งหมดเลย

ทั้งนี้ทั้งนั้น ในเวลาไม่นาน Activision ก็ได้ออกมาชี้แจงเพิ่มเติมว่าแท้ที่จริงแล้ว เกมจะมีเนื้อที่ไม่ถึง 310GB แต่อย่างใด เพราะว่าบนหน้าร้านค้านั้นแสดงให้เห็นถึงขนาดเมื่อติดตั้งเกมในชุด ‘Call of Duty’ ที่เป็นเหมือน Client หรือไฟล์หลักที่เหมือนกับเมนูสำหรับรวบรวมทั้งช่องทางการเข้าเกมภาค Modern Warfare II, III และ Warzone เช่นเดียวกับไฟล์อื่นที่เกี่ยวข้องนั่นเอง แต่ในกรณีที่ผู้เล่นติดตั้งเพียงแค่เกม Black Ops 6 อย่างเดียว จะมีเนื้อที่ที่ต่ำกว่านี้มาก โดยในอนาคตหน้าร้านจะเปลี่ยนแปลงอีกครั้งเมื่อไฟล์เกมภาคใหม่ได้รับการกำหนดขนาดเรียบร้อย คำพูดจาก สล็อตเว็บตรง

แน่นอนว่าแม้จะไม่ติดตั้งพื้นที่ในขนาดที่ดูใหญ่แบบระเบิดเถิดเทิงขนาดนั้น แต่ทุกคนก็ยังกังวลเกี่ยวกับขนาดติดตั้งอยู่เหมือนกัน อย่างไรเสียสิ่งที่เราสังเกตได้ก็คือ ทางทีมงานได้พยายามที่จะแก้ไขจุดนี้ต่อเนื่อง และหนึ่งในนั้นคือวิธีการใช้ระบบแสดงผลกราฟิก Texture Streaming ที่จำเป็นต้องเชื่อมต่อกับอินเทอร์เน็ตตลอดเวลา ในการเล่นเพื่อทดแทนการติดตั้งไฟล์กราฟิกคุณภาพสูงโดยตรงลงเครื่อง โดยวิธีใช้งานคือการยิงภาพจากเซิร์ฟเวอร์ผ่านระบบออนไลน์ทดแทนครับ

Call of Duty Black Ops 6 จะเป็นเรื่องราวต่อเนื่องจากภาค Black Ops Cold War ในปี 2020 โดยแคมเปญหลักมาพร้อมกับธีมสปายอยู่ในยุค 1990 พร้อมโหมดการเล่นแคมเปญ – PvP ออนไลน์ครบครัน ซึ่งโหมดมัลติเพลเยอร์จะนำเสนอคอนเทนต์ฉากที่พัฒนาใหม่ถึง 16 ฉาก รองรับความสนุกในโหมดการเล่นทั้ง 6v6 คลาสสิกยอดฮิต และโหมดพิเศษที่จะเปิดตัวในอนาคต โดยมีกำหนดวางจำหน่ายในวันที่ 25 ตุลาคมนี้ทั้งบน PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S และ PC เช่นเดียวกับการให้บริการผ่าน Game Pass

Activision Call of Duty Black Ops 6

นับตั้งแต่ปี 2017 เป็นต้นมาThe Legend of Zeldaก็ได้ยกระดับประสบการณ์การเล่นเกมใหม่อีกครั้งจากรูปแบบแอ็กชันผจญภัยธรรมดามาเป็นเกมโอเพนเวิลด์เต็มตัว มอบอิสระให้ผู้เล่นสามารถสนุกกับเกมด้วยวิธีของตนโดยที่ไม่ต้องบังคับว่าจะต้องเล่นไปตามทางเป๊ะๆ เหมือนภาคสามมิติแบบเก่าๆ อย่าง Twilight Princess และ Ocarina of Time กระนั้นแล้วก็ยังคงมีคนที่หวนคิดถึงเกมเพลย์แบบดั้งเดิมและคอยเรียกร้องอยู่เรื่อยๆ คำพูดจาก สล็อตเว็บตรง

ล่าสุดคุณ Eiji Aonumaโปรดิวเซอร์ของซีรีส์ก็ได้มีโอกาสพูดคุยกับเว็บไซต์สื่อเกมต่างประเทศอย่าง IGN ถึงประเด็นนี้แล้วด้วยเหมือนกัน ซึ่งตนยอมรับแบบขำๆ ว่าบางครั้งพวกเขาก็รู้สึกสนใจมากๆ ว่าทำไมยังมีคนที่กล่าวว่า‘ชอบเกมแบบเก่ามากกว่า’และก็ทำให้อดสงสัยไม่ว่า‘ทำไมถึงอยากจะกลับไปเล่นเกมแบบที่มีการจำกัดฟังก์ชันหรือแอ็กชันการกระทำ’อีก แต่กระนั้นตนก็เข้าใจว่าผู้เล่นเหล่านี้อาจมองในมุมของความรู้สึกนอสตัลเจียนั่นเอง

หากยังจำกันได้ แม้ว่าเนื้อเรื่องของไทม์ไลน์ Breath of the Wild ที่กินเรื่องราวยาวมาสองภาคสเกลใหญ่ยักษ์ถึงภาค Tears of the Kingdom จะจบลงโดยสมบูรณ์แล้ว แต่ถึงกระนั้นผู้พัฒนาก็ยืนยันว่าระบบการเล่นแบบโอเพนเวิลด์กำลังจะเป็นแม่แบบให้กับเกมภาคอื่นๆ ในอนาคตด้วย ดังนั้นก็มีโอกาสสูงทีเดียวที่เราน่าจะไม่ได้เห็นรูปแบบเกมสมัยเก่าอีกต่อไป สำหรับเพื่อนๆ ชื่นชอบหรือไม่อย่างไรลองมาแลกเปลี่ยนกันดูนะ

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomวางจำหน่ายให้กับเครื่องเล่น Nintendo Switch แล้ววันนี้ โดยเป็นการผจญภัยทั้งบนแผ่นดินไฮรูลและอาณาจักรบนท้องฟ้า นอกจากนี้ยังมีการนำเสนอฟีเจอร์ใหม่ๆ เช่นพลังในการเดินทางข้ามกำแพงหรือเพดานต่างๆ ด้วยเช่นกัน โดยเนื้อหาเกี่ยวข้องกับภัยคุกคามครั้งใหม่ที่นำโดยจอมปีศาจ Ganondorf จะทำให้ดินแดนไฮรูลต้องสั่นคลอนอีกครั้ง

IGNThe Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom นินเทนโด เกม