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Building Resilience in African Nations is Paramount to Development

STUTTGART, Germany - Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator for USAID's Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA), addresses staff of U.S. Africa Command, March 30, 2012, as part of the Command Speaker Series. Lindborg talked about USAID's efforts in Africa and discussed how U.S. AFRICOM can better work with the interagency organization to achieve common objectives. (U.S. AFRICOM photo by Danielle Skinner)

submitted by Samuel Bendett

U.S. AFRICOM Public Affairs - by Danielle Skinner

STUTTGART, Germany, Apr 3, 2012 — In developing countries experiencing chronic crises, such as those in the Horn of Africa, disaster risk reduction is often just as important, if not more so, than humanitarian response and recovery, according to a senior official from U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

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George Clooney's Satellite Spies Reveal Secrets of Sudan's Bloody Army

      

George Clooney on a visit to the Zamzam refugee camp in north Darfur in 2008. Photograph: Sherren Zorba/AP

by Paul Harris - guardian.co.uk - March 24, 2012

Actor and activist funds a hi-tech project that is tracking troops and warning civilians of attacks.

Nathaniel Raymond is the first to admit that he has an unusual job description. "I count tanks from space for George Clooney," said the tall, easygoing Massachusetts native as he sat in a conference room in front of a map of the Sudanese region of South Kordofan.

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A Taste of Hope Sends Refugees Back to Darfur

       

People who fled the Darfur region of Sudan amid brutal attacks are coming back. A Darfurian in Nyuru, peacekeepers behind her.   Sven Torfinn for The New York Times

The New York Times - by Jeffrey Gettleman - February 26, 2012

NYURU, Sudan — More than 100,000 people in Darfur have left the sprawling camps where they had taken refuge for nearly a decade and headed home to their villages over the past year, the biggest return of displaced people since the war began in 2003 and a sign that one of the world’s most infamous conflicts may have decisively cooled.

The millions of civilians who fled into camps, their homes often reduced to nothing more than rings of ash by armed raiders, are among the most haunting legacies of the conflict in Darfur, transforming this rural landscape into a collection of swollen impromptu squatter towns.

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The Coming Entanglement: Bill Joy and Danny Hillis

scientificamerican.com - February 15, 2012

Digital innovators Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and Danny Hillis, co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, talk with Scientific American Executive Editor Fred Guterl about the technological "Entanglement" and the attempts to build the other, hardier Internet. Web sites related to this episode include http://compass-summit.com and The Shadow Web

(LISTEN TO THE PODCAST IN THE LINK BELOW)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=the-coming-entanglement-bill-joy-an-12-02-15

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Podcast - If You're Happy, How You Know It

scientificamerican.com - February 22, 2012

Social scientist Roly Russell, of the Sandhill Institute in British Columbia, talked with Scientific American's Mark Fischetti at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science about potentially better measures than GDP of a nation's well-being.

(LISTEN TO THE PODCAST IN THE LINK BELOW)

http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=if-youre-happy-how-you-know-it-12-02-21

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World Economic Forum´s Global Risks 2012 Report

submitted by Mike Kraft

stefanomele.it

In its seventh edition, the World Economic Forum´s Global Risks Report features more refined risk descriptions and rigorous data analysis covering 50 global risks. It aims to improve public and private sector efforts to map, monitor, manage and mitigate global risks. It is also a “call to action” for the international community to improve current efforts at coordination and collaboration, as none of the global risks highlighted respects national boundaries.

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World Economic Forum - Global Risks 2012 - Seventh Edition (64 page .PDF file)

http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_GlobalRisks_Report_2012.pdf

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"Syrian opposition seeks to wipe the Assad name off the map -Via Google"

Revolutionaries, anti -government activist  are tearing down signs and renaming "streets, bridges and boulevards" and replacing them with their heroes.
It seems it began from Social Media using Facebook to gain support, and now they are electronically renaming the same in Google maps.

(ARTICLE FOUND HERE) by Colum Lynch, The Washington Post with Foreign Policy,WORLD,National Security February 14,2012

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Sudanese Rebels Free 29 Chinese Hostages

submitted by Bob Cooper

by Nicholas Bariyo - The Wall Street Journal - February 8, 2012

KAMPALA Uganda—Rebels in oil-rich Sudan on Tuesday released 29 Chinese workers, capping a hostage drama that exposed the risks of China's investments in the conflict-prone African region.

In a statement, Sudan's Foreign Ministry said that the Chinese captives were handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross early Tuesday and eventually flown to Nairobi, where they were taken to China's Embassy in Kenya.

China's Foreign Ministry described the 29 as being in good physical health "and stable mood," according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

(READ ARTICLE HERE)

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U.S. Officials Concerned by Israel Statements on Iran Threat, Possible Strike

The Washington Post - February 2, 2012

      

Jack Guez/AFP/Getty Images - Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, right, walks with U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in Tel Aviv last October. Barak said that time is running out for stopping Iran’s nuclear advance, as the country’s uranium facilities disappear into newly constructed mountain bunkers.

U.S. officials fear that an attack by Israel could trigger Iranian retaliation not only against the Jewish state but also against American interests around the world. A prolonged conflict could disrupt oil shipments, drive up energy prices and devastate fragile Western economies, U.S. officials say.

Administration officials have hinted that the United States might not intervene militarily in a hostile exchange between Israel and Iran unless the conflict began to threaten U.S. forces or Israeli population centers. In an interview last month on CBS’s “60 Minutes,” Panetta said that in the event of an Israeli strike, U.S. military officials’ primary concern would be “to protect our forces.”

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The New Land Rush

submitted by Janine Rees

      

Image Gallery - REUTERS / Mohamed Nureldin Abdallah

by Terry J. Allen, from In These Times - utne.com - January-February 2012

A 21st-century land rush is on. Driven by fear and lured by promises of high profits, foreign investors are scooping up vast tracts of farmland in some of the world’s hungriest countries to grow crops for export.

As the climate changes and populations shift and grow, billions of people around the globe face shortages of land and water, rising food prices, and increasing hunger. Alarm over a future without affordable food and water is sparking unrest in a world already tinder-dried by repression and recession, corruption and mismanagement, boundary disputes and ancient feuds, ethnic tension and religious fundamentalism.

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