Alle oversettelser

As the massive category five storm Hurricane Dean continues to pound its way towards the Gulf of Mexico, Christian organisations are assembling their relief operations in preparation for large-scale devastation.

World Vision in the US said that its Mexico office had pre-positioned relief supplies in Yucatan in anticipation of huge needs for blankets, bed sheets, personal hygiene articles and medicines.

"This is a potentially historical storm," said Aldo Pontecorvo, director of humanitarian emergency assistance for World Vision in Mexico. "The Mexican coastline has never been hit by a Category 5 storm. We're preparing for extensive damage and widespread displacement."

Christian Aid staff and partner organisations are also stepping up relief efforts, including clearing trees and other debris blocking roads in Jamaica. The development agency will also be providing relief to people in Haiti whose crops have been destroyed.

Rhian Holder, Christian Aid’s programme officer in Jamaica, described the scene as the storm moved in:

“It's very, very loud, the wind is roaring and shrieking. The trees are breaking, you're hearing branches snapping, you're hearing thuds, things falling, you're not sure what it is.”

She added: “There is still no electricity across the island and communication is very difficult. In St Thomas, where one of our partners is based, the cell phone masts fell in a couple of areas, so it is very difficult to get through. The road to the airport in Kingston is blocked with trees, boulders and sand that have been blown across it.”

While other agencies will bring food and water, US-based Christian charity New Directions International has readied equipment for emergency shelter in Jamaica, including plastic tarpaulins and tin sheets for temporary roofing, as well as materials for roof repairs in the wake of the hurricane.

"NDI will focus on providing shelter relief and helping people dig out," according to New Directions’ CEO Joseph Williams, who added that the present hurricane resembled the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina to which New Directions also provided emergency shelter and supply within a few days.

The charity plans to remain in the hurricane-hit regions for the long haul. During the rebuilding phase, it will hand out backpacks full of school supplies among children as part of its Edu-Pack programme, and contribute towards the reconstruction of churches and schools.

The Salvation Army in Texas, meanwhile, has scrambled nine canteens and a mobile command centre to San Antonio in the case Hurricane Dean should take a turn towards the Lone Star State.

The canteens are stocked to feed a hundred first responders while the command centre will allow Salvation Army officers to coordinate their efforts to meet the urgent needs of hurricane victims.

Family members of the Korean hostages are suffering along with the victims in Afghanistan, with reports of parents passing out and being hospitalised from the emotional strain.

One hostage’s family member, who asked to remain anonymous, said, “I try to sleep so that I don’t pass out, but I just can’t sleep. I’m bearing so much, just thinking about my kidnapped child,” according to Chosun Ilbo - South Korea’s largest newspaper.

Family members have dark circles under their eyes and carry weary faces as they take turns with vigils each night. Stress is especially high each time a deadline approaches.

“They are suffering from severe indigestion and heart pains due to the continued mental trauma,” said Dr. Cha Byeong-ho, who is looking after the health of the families at the hostages’ home church in Bundang, just south of the South Korean capital Seoul, according to Chosun Ilbo.

If the families decide to make the trip, they want to make the visit before the two-day summit meeting between Afghan president Hamid Karzai and President Bush starting on Sunday.

The two leaders will discuss strategies on how to stabilise the war-torn country as Afghanistan faces the worst level of violence over the past 18 months since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. Solutions to the hostage crisis are also expected to be discussed.

“We plead with the U.S. government for help: the kidnapped went there to share love, but they are having days like hell. We believe the Bush administration will act for humanitarianism,” read the letter submitted by the families to the U.S. Embassy in Seoul on Wednesday, according to The Korea Times.

A South Korean delegation arrived Thursday in Washington to appeal for U.S. help in the hostage crisis. South Korea expressed hope Friday that advancements will be made during this weekend’s summit to win the release of the hostages, according to Reuters.

South Korea said it has conveyed to the Taliban that it is virtually powerless in granting the rebels’ demand to free prisoners held by the Afghan government and U.S. forces.

“Through our contacts, our foremost goal is to make it clear that there is a limit as to what our government can do to meet their demands of releasing the prisoners," presidential spokesman Chun Ho-sun told reporters Friday, according to Reuters.

The Taliban said Friday that it will not kill any of the remaining 21 South Korean hostages before its face-to-face meetings with the delegation from the East Asian country.

Nearly a dozen deadlines and numerous threats thereafter to kill the Christian captives have been made since their abduction on July 19.

With a deadlock in negotiations over the Taliban’s proposed prisoner-rebel exchange, the militant group has been working with South Korea on setting up a face-to-face meeting to discuss other options. Yet despite their agreement to meet, a location has not yet been set where both parties feel safe.

Two South Korean female hostages are escorted after their release in Arzoo of Ghazni province, southwest of Kabul, August 13, 2007. Two South Korean women held hostage by the Taliban for more than.

A powerful earthquake has killed more than 330 people in Peru, the nation's civil defense agency reported early on Thursday.

The massive earthquake hit Peru on Wednesday evening killing scores of people as many homes and a church collapsed.

Peru's health minister initially said few died in the 7.9-magnitude quake, but the toll later rose to more than 330, the nation's civil defense agency said. Hundreds were injured.

"Unfortunately we have official numbers," Luis Palomino, the head of the agency, told Reuters. On its web site, the agency said 337 people died and 827 were injured.

Emergency workers said the coastal province of Ica south of Lima was the hardest hit region.

One fire department official in the area said at least four people were trapped when the main tower of the Senor de Luren church in the city of Ica was toppled.

Rescuers struggled to move south toward Ica as portions of the Pan-American Highway, an key coastal route, were impassable and thieves assaulted stranded travelers, radio reports said.

"I was with my children when the movement started and then the walls collapsed. My house was destroyed," Milagros Meneses, 35, told Reuters in the city of Canete south of the capital, Lima. "The hospital gave me a tent for my kids to sleep in."

At least two people were killed in Canete.

Office workers ran onto the streets in fear as tall buildings in Lima shook in two waves that lasted around 20 seconds each and cut power lines.

A tsunami warning was issued for Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia and a small tsunami was detected. But it posed no major threat and the warning was later lifted.

Out of the three meals a day, breakfast is considered the most important, but is also the most frequently missed.

So why are people missing this important meal? Here are some of the reasons why we shouldn't skip this 'most important' meal of the day...

1) Breakfast is supposed to “break the fast.” After 8 to 12 hours of sleep, your blood sugar levels will be low and your brain and muscles tired. Waking up is hard to do at the best of times, but it’s even harder to keep going if you don't refuel. The body needs a meal to produce the sugar necessary to get you going each day.

2) A balanced breakfast should provide about a quarter of your daily needs for essential nutrients. When breakfast is skipped, the missing nutrients -- particularly iron, calcium and fibre - are not made up in subsequent meals and snacks. So a regular breakfast can help ensure that you meet daily requirements and have a better nutrition profile over the rest of the day.

3) Breakfast helps to regulate your appetite throughout the day. It also jumpstarts your metabolism, which slows down overnight. So missing breakfast to reduce calorie intake is definitely not the answer for weight loss. Breakfast skippers tend to eat more food at the next meal or nibble on high-calorie snacks to curb hunger. Their diets tend to be higher in overall calories and fat than those who enjoy a morning meal. Moreover, dieters who have breakfast tend to be more successful at shedding pounds.

4) A wake-up meal can help you perform better in school, at work or at play by keeping you more alert, improving your ability to concentrate and retain information. When it comes to children, breakfast actually helps them learn better. Kids who skip breakfast have trouble focusing and tend to be inattentive, restless and irritable by late morning. Those who eat breakfast have been found to have better test scores and lower rates of absenteeism.

5) Eating behaviors developed during childhood can last a lifetime. If you never had breakfast as a child, it is likely that you are one of the 30 percent of adults who still skip breakfast... and your children could be doing the same thing.

The incidence of childhood obesity is rising; the percentage of overweight children tripling since the 1960's. Teaching kids to eat a healthy breakfast is one way to help reduce these concerning statistics.

Taliban militants have freed two female South Korean hostages on Monday, after much confusion over whether the two Christian aid workers had already been released.

According to Reuters news agency, officials in Seoul confirmed that the women had been freed and handed over the Red Crescent.

Witnesses said that the women were driven in a saloon car by two tribal elders to the village of Arzoo, near the city of Ghazni, where they were released.

Their release is the first good news for anxious family and friends of the hostages in South Korea since two male members of the 23-strong group were shot dead last month, after the government in Afghanistan refused to meet Taliban deadlines to free some of their militant prisoners.

The Christian aid workers were in Afghanistan as medical volunteers with the Saemmul Community Church in Bundang when they were abducted from a bus in Ghazni province more than three months ago.

The Afghan Government has so far refused to meet Taliban demands to free some of their prisoners in exchange for the Korean hostages.

Nineteen South Korean hostages remain in the hands of the Taliban, including 16 women.

Nearly 100 people have drowned in floods in Sudan, where rivers have burst their banks, inundating villages and farm lands, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said on Thursday.

The toll over the past month was reported by the Sudanese Red Crescent, which has been leading the humanitarian response to the worst flooding in a generation.

"The (deaths) figure is a direct results of floods -- people who have drowned," Federation spokesman Matthew Cochrane said.

The floods are worse than those of 1988, when tens of thousands of homes were destroyed and a million people forced to flee their homes, according to the humanitarian agency.

"Whole communities have been devastated ... farms, livestock, roads, bridges, latrines, hospitals and schools have been damaged or swept away," John English, head of the Federation's team in Sudan, said in a statement.

Some 60,000 houses have been damaged or destroyed by the flooding, which has struck 16 of Sudan's 26 states, it said.

The United Nations on Monday reported 64 dead and 335 injured in the flooding, which it said had affected 500,000 people in the past four weeks.

The Federation -- the world's largest disaster relief network -- said it was doubling its appeal to donors to 5.5 million Swiss francs ($4.6 million) for Sudan.

Niels Scott, the Federation's operations coordinator for Africa, said the floods have damaged Sudan's fragile water and sanitation systems, leaving many without access to clean water.

"This is increasing the incidence of water-borne diseases such as acute watery diarrhoea," Scott said.

Sudanese Red Crescent workers have distributed chlorine tablets to purify water, mosquito nets and soap to more than 49,000 people. Tents, plastic sheeting and blankets have also been handed out, according to the Federation.

Heavy precipitation and soaring temperatures are expected to continue until the end of the rainy season in October.

Afghan President Hamid Kazai said on Thursday the abduction of Korean women by Taliban guerrillas had no precedent in Afghan history and would bring shame on the nation.

The Taliban seized 23 Korean Christian volunteers, 18 of which are women, from a bus in Ghazni province 3 weeks ago. The group has killed 2 male hostages and warned it would kill the remaining captives if Karzai did not free jailed Taliban members.

Karzai, who came under harsh criticism for releasing Taliban prisoners for the freedom of an Italian journalist in March, has repeatedly said he would not resort to a prisoner swap again.

"Women from another country are being kidnapped in Afghanistan ... This would bring historical shame and defamation for this country and this nation," Karzai said.

He added: "Women are being kidnapped in this soil today under the name of Taliban, Muslims and Afghans ... In Afghanistan's history, never anyone has kidnapped women."

Karzai made the comments in Kabul during the opening of a grand meeting between Afghanistan and neighbouring Pakistan on finding ways to tackle the resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda allies. The Taliban could not be reached immediately for comment.

The Islamic movement freed a female French aid worker it had kidnapped following several weeks of captivity in May.

The aid worker's French male colleague and three Afghans were freed later after the apparent payment of a ransom.

The Korean's abduction is the largest by the Taliban since the militants' radical Islamic government was overthrown in 2001.

The hostages are being kept in separate locations and the Afghan government says it would only use force if negotiations between the Taliban and a Korean team fail.

One of the top-ranked online software companies that aids parents in protecting their children from negative content has improved its mission, and is signifying it with a name change.

SafeBrowse.com – creator of protective software Safe Eyes – will now be called InternetSafety.com, showing the group’s dedication to creating a safe environment to families surfing the web.

"With the Internet providing unprecedented access to negative online influences such as violence, predators and pornography, parents are searching for ways to keep their children safe online," said InternetSafety.com's CEO, Forrest Collier, in a statement. "We're launching InternetSafety.com as part of our continuing effort to provide Internet users with practical information and tools they can use to stay safe online."

Safe Eyes has already been awarded PC Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award for the second consecutive year and was also ranked No. 1 by America’s leading consumer advocacy publication.

Company heads hope to continue with the same quality and strive to help keep kids in proper and healthy check.

At InternetSafety.com, parents will be able to access a number of helpful tools to protect their children from online content. This includes tips, strategies, facts and statistics about internet use, so that parents can now how to integrate their values into internet habits with their kids.

With social networking sites on a huge rise in youth culture – such as Facebook and MySpace – it is becoming increasingly easier for youth to get pulled into inappropriate internet worlds. Parents can now have the resources to monitor this type of behavior as well as use tools for web blocking, time control, and instant messenger (IM) monitoring.

“Keeping children safe online requires a combination of technology, education and people – namely, engaged parents," explained InternetSafety.com’s Chief Technology Officer Aaron Kenny in a statement. "InternetSafety.com's goal is to equip those parents with tools to help protect their families online."

The company promoters feel that parents can feel secure in what their children are looking at, as well as themselves if they too have problems with internet temptations.

For those that are interested, parents can also download a free trial of the company’s award-winning product, Safe Eyes, from the website.

Tragic news of hostage deaths and false reports of a military rescue operation coupled with unrelenting stress and sleep deprivation have the family members of the Korean Christian hostages considering a visit to Kabul or Washington to directly plea for help.

Tragic news of hostage deaths and false reports of a military rescue operation coupled with unrelenting stress and sleep deprivation have the family members of the Korean Christian hostages considering a visit to Kabul or Washington to directly plea for help.

Options are running out for the group of 21 remaining Korean Christian hostages - who have entered their third week of captivity. Negotiations are stalled and Afghanistan has publicly refused to submit to the Taliban’s main demand – the release of rebel prisoners in exchange for the captives.

Exhausted and powerless, the families are discussing the possibility of heading to either or both the United States and Afghanistan to urge the two nations to bolster their efforts to secure the release of the hostages.

“We still lay our hope on the government’s negotiations. But we are so desperate,” said Cha Sung-min, the representative of the families and the brother of abductee Cha Hye-jin, according to The Korea Times Thursday.

“We want to visit both Kabul and Washington to directly seek their help,” he said.

Cha acknowledges that travel to Afghanistan may be impossible after South Korea asked Afghanistan to ban all its citizen from entering the country. The families have informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the South Korean government about their intention, but the government has not yet given a clear reply.

“If the visit to Afghanistan is unavailable, we may choose the U.S.,” Cha noted.

A plug adapter that stops energy being wasted by electrical devices left on standby is to go on sale priced £9.99.

Known as the SMJ Energy Saving Plug Adapter, the gadget stops energy being wasted when televisions and other electrical goods are left on standby instead of being turned off.

Laura Yates, climate and energy campaigner at Greenpeace gave mixed response: "Standby's got to go, but in the meantime it's great news that these energy saving plug adapters are now available."

Negotiations are also under way to launch a similar device known as the 'Standby Saver' which featured on the BBC's television show 'Dragons' Den' - click here to see the show.

Family members of kidnapped South Koreans in Afghanistan make a statement during a news conference in Seoul asking for the safe return of the hostages. (Internet Photo Association)