Region

Haiti is preparing for a massive relocation of survivors of last week’s earthquake out of the capital Port-au-Prince. Some 400,000 people will be moved to camps outside the city. The relief effort has now abandoned most efforts to find people trapped beneath the rubble to focus on keeping the survivors alive. The US is now leading the effort to repair Haiti’s main port.

The town hall of Fuenlabrada, south of Madrid, is exhibiting thirteen paintings made by students from several local schools. They are inspired by Pablo Picasso’s famous painting that portrays the horrors of war. This initiative is one of the activities developed by ‘World Without Wars and Without Violence’ during the World March for Peace and Nonviolence.

In three languages, Aymara, Quechua, and Spanish, Evo Morales proclaimed that in Tiwanaku, a new ray of hope was born for humanity and a new Bolivian State, after receiving the ceremonial staff of the indigenous peoples, who anointed him as a spiritual guide in the ruins of a thousand-year-old civilization, to mark the beginning of his second presidential term.

Bolivia points the way to emancipation for the world’s indigenous peoples with the consolidation of the process of change and the indigenous leader Evo Morales’ second presidential term. This was affirmed on Wednesday by the Guatemalan Rigoberta Menchú, a well known human rights activist and a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Doctors Without Borders, international humanitarian organisation delivering medical care and awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1999, is carrying out effective action by assisting and helping voluntarily in the city of Port au Prince, recently devastated by an earthquake. The natural and human disaster stirred compassion in numerous organisations and governments around the world.

The Obama administration will not unveil the results of a major review of United States’ nuclear weapons strategy until March 1 2010, a senior Defense Department official told Congress late last month, “Because of the complexity of the issues being addressed”. Reports reveal dissension within the Obama administration.

Premieres on CBC’s The Nature of Things – Thursday, January 21, at 8p.m. (8:30 NT) –
Filmmakers Donna Zuckerbrot and Daniel Zuckerbrot, Reel Time Images, produced, directed and wrote this exciting and intriguing documentary called “Bugs, Bones & Botany: The Science of Crime”, that will surprise even faithful viewers of TV’s many forensic programs.

Authorities in Haiti say as many as 200.000 have died in last week’s devastating earthquake. Another 1, 5 million and a half people have been left homeless. The death toll continues to rise as relief agencies struggle to distribute food and water to those in need. The World Food Programme said it fed about 100,000 people in Port-au-Prince on Monday.

On November 19th, President Barack Obama wrote a stirring tribute in USA Today to the most famous draft resister in US history, Muhammad Ali. On Tuesday, Obama spoke at West Point, calling for an increase of 30,000 troops into Afghanistan, with a speech that recalled the worst shadings of George W. Bush’s “war on terror.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Laureate who won the 1990 general election in Burma and who has been under house arrest for 14 of the last 20 years, has her appeal against her house arrest heard by the Supreme Court in Myanmar. “From a purely legal point of view we should win,” said a member of her legal team.