Archives: Morning Breakouts

GOP activists, who increasingly consider both the Senate and White House to be within reach, are developing multi-pronged strategies to roll-back the health law beginning in 2013.

Security issues and torrential rains are hampering relief efforts aimed at fighting severe malnutrition and disease in the Horn of Africa, the Guardian reports. Last week, two workers with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) were kidnapped, allegedly by the Islamist militant group al-Shabab, prompting the group to evacuate some of its staff from two of three refugee camps on the border of Somalia and Kenya, according to the newspaper.

The world's population is expected to reach seven billion this month, which is "cause for profound global concern" and begs the question of "can we enjoy 'sustainable development' on a very crowded planet?" Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, writes in a CNN opinion piece.

"More than 85,000 cases of cholera in West and Central Africa are making this one of the region's most severe epidemics in recent memory," VOA News reports. "Grant Leaity, UNICEF's chief of emergency operations for West and Central Africa, says the epidemic is due, in part, to a greater movement of people across the region," VOA writes, noting, "Three simultaneous cross-border outbreaks are affecting people in two dozen countries along the coast from Guinea, and in the Lake Chad basin to the West Congo basin and around Lake Tanganyika."

"Americans are among the most generous people in the world, giving more money to charities than citizens of any other nation in the world," but "[m]uch of our charity goes to disaster relief," entrepreneur and philanthropist Sheila Johnson writes in an opinion piece in the Huffington Post's "Black Voices." She adds, "I believe we can do more. We need to think long-term and become true partners in reshaping history. We need to boldly invest in innovative responses to Africa's problems that are relevant locally, and that put Africans in the driver's seat of determining the future of their continent."

"During the past 24 hours, cholera has claimed the lives of nearly 200 women and children in famine-stricken Somalia," a Press TV correspondent in Mogadishu reported on Sunday. "More than 800 children suffering from the disease in refugee camps were reportedly transported to medical centers in south Mogadishu," the news service writes, adding, "As the number of sick is on the rise, doctors are facing a shortage of medicine." Press TV notes, "According to the United Nations, drought, high food prices and fighting in Somalia have increased the number of those in need of humanitarian assistance across the Horn of Africa to 13.3 million" (10/16).

"China vaccinated 4.5 million children and young adults over the last five weeks in the western region of Xinjiang in a fight against polio after the disease paralyzed 17 people and killed one of them, the World Health Organization said," according to Reuters. This is the first outbreak of polio in China since 1999, "and scientists say the strain originated from Pakistan," one of four remaining countries where polio is endemic, the news service writes.

Environmental health experts, scientists and government officials attending a conference in London sponsored by the British Medical Journal on Monday "issued a statement warning that climate change could not only bring a global health catastrophe but could threaten global stability and security as well, a journal release said," UPI.com reports (10/17).

A panel hosted by the Aspen Institute's Global Leaders Council on Monday called for "a boost of aid for women in developing countries such as Somalia to help them control their fertility," Agence France-Presse reports. "Somalia has the eighth highest birth rate in the world, and the average family has seven children," the news agency notes, adding that "one percent of married women in Somalia have access to modern contraception, ... according to data compiled by the Population Reference Bureau."

The House Foreign Affairs Committee on Thursday approved legislation (HR 2829) that would withhold up to half of non-voluntary U.S. contributions to the United Nations "if, in two years, the United Nations is not collecting 80 percent of its regular budget in voluntary contributions," Agence France-Presse reports. The panel "approved Republican Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen's (R-Fla.) bill by a party-line 23-15 vote after an angry debate over whether such a move would enhance or diminish U.S. global influence," the news service writes. "The proposal could pass the Republican-led House of Representatives but faces stiff opposition in the Democratic-held Senate and from President Barack Obama, all but certainly dooming the measure," AFP notes (10/14).

In this post in the Guardian's "Poverty Matters Blog," Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies, writes, "We must politicize undernutrition, which is still a major global problem, so that it gets the attention it deserves." He adds, "Three key elements of governance are critical to tackling undernutrition: capacity, accountability and responsiveness."

In this Washington Post opinion piece, Raj Kumar, president of Devex and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and John Hewko, the general secretary and chief executive of Rotary International, report on the Millennium Challenge Corp. (MCC), a government "corporation" established in 2004 under the George W. Bush administration "on the premise that U.S. foreign assistance would have the greatest impact if offered on a non-political basis to developing countries that adopt sound economic and social policies." They write, "Congress has appropriated about $10 billion to the MCC over the past seven years, but the prudent agency has disbursed just a few billion," and "the agency is now a takeover target."

"As South Korean President Lee Myung-bak continued his state visit to the United States on Friday, a group of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) wants the Obama administration to explain what they call unconscionable delays in deciding whether to resume U.S. food assistance to North Korea," Reuters reports. "Rising global commodities prices coupled with summer floods and typhoons have compounded the emergency this year, and the United Nations estimated in March that more than six million North Koreans urgently need food help," the news agency writes.

The New York Times reports on a growing movement in Senegal to end female genital cutting, which was officially banned in the nation more than a decade ago. "The change is happening without the billions of dollars that have poured into other global health priorities throughout the developing world in recent years," the newspaper writes, adding, "Over the past 15 years, the drive to end the practice has gained such momentum that a majority of Senegalese villages where genital cutting was commonplace have committed to stop it."

Toronto's Globe and Mail reports on the death on Thursday of Winstone Zulu, an HIV/AIDS advocate from Zambia who lived with the virus for two decades. "His death has devastated the international community of AIDS activists," the newspaper writes, adding, "Winstone was a one-man force who played a key role in reshaping the global response to HIV/AIDS and (tuberculosis) TB. He personally lobbied every G8 leader; he spoke to mass rallies on five continents; he inspired audiences at schools and in churches and in parliaments in dozens of countries."