Re-emerging insurgencies threaten relief efforts

Global efforts to bring relief to… Re-emerging insurgencies threaten relief efforts

Global efforts to bring relief to some of the areas most devastated by last month’s tsunami are under threat from ongoing insurgencies.

In Indonesia, the militant separatist organization Gam, or the Free Aceh Movement, has fought for independence from Jakarta for 25 years. The group has re-emerged after a tenuous cease-fire was reached in the wake of the tsunami that killed at least 104,000 Indonesians.

The peace was broken after government forces shot and killed seven suspected rebels last week on a beach in Lampook, a coastal village where about 6,000 people died in the tsunami. During the weekend, Indonesia’s army stepped up security throughout Aceh, after gunfire broke out near the United Nation’s main compound in the provincial capital Banda Aceh.

Torrential rain is already hampering the distribution of aid in Aceh, and there are fears that a rise in violence may further disrupt relief efforts. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono quickly attempted to allay concerns for the hundreds of Western aid workers who have poured into the region in the last few weeks.

“The security operation conducted by Indonesia’s military and police will protect and secure the humanitarian efforts,” he said.

Aid agencies reacted calmly to news of the shooting but maintained that they were continually assessing the situation, reported The Guardian.

“You have to proceed with due caution. This has been and is a zone of conflict,” said Aly-Khan Rajami, program manager of CARE International.

In Sri Lanka, the government cited security concerns for preventing U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan from visiting rebel-held areas in the north and east that were affected by the tsunami.

Annan said he hoped the Sri Lankan government will use the world’s support to help reconcile the island’s ethnic division and to end the ongoing civil war.

“I hope Lanka would use the support and the goodwill, not only to recover from this tragedy, but as an opportunity to unite in the work for peace,” he said.

North Korea promotes communist lifestyle through grooming

North Korea has stepped up its campaign against long hair and untidy attire, which represent a “corrupt capitalist lifestyle,” according to the state media.

Citing broadcasts from Pyongyang, a British Broadcasting Corp. dispatch from Seoul, South Korea, said North Korean state television, newspapers and radio have led the grooming drive, urging citizens to cut their hair short and dress well.

Pyongyang television noted that long hair “consumes a great deal of nutrition” and could thus rob the brain of energy, according to the BBC. Also, state radio has said tidy attire “is important in repelling the enemies’ maneuvers to infiltrate corrupt capitalist ideas and lifestyle.”

The threat of national decay through foreign influence was cited by the ruling communist party’s newspaper, Rodong Sinmum, which said, “People who wear others’ style of dress and live in others’ style will become fools, and the nation will come to ruin.”

China’s population reaches 1.3 billion

China proclaimed the first baby born at a Beijing hospital Thursday to be its 1.3 billionth citizen. The official Xinhua news agency reported that the baby boy was born at 12:02 a.m. at the Beijing Hospital of Gynecology and Obstetrics.

“I am the happiest guy in the world, and my boy will be blessed all his life,” said the newborn’s father, 37-year-old Air China employee Zhang Tong.

The birth was not such great news for China’s family planners, reported Reuters.

“1.3 billion is a vast number. It will put great pressure on the economy, society, resources and the environment,” the China Daily reported, quoting Wang Guoqiang, deputy director of the National Population and Family Planning Commission.

Two decades after a one-child policy was implemented to keep the population under control, China still reigns as the most populous nation in the world. The country’s population exploded in the 1950s after late Communist Party Chairman Mao Tse-tung encouraged the masses to multiply in order to strengthen the country.

China put the brakes on this growth with the one-child rule. A large fine is handed out to urban residents who have more than one child, while rural dwellers and ethnic minority groups are allowed two children.

Demographers have credited this policy with delaying the 1.3 billionth citizen mark; the birth rate has dropped from more than 33 births per 1,000 in 1970 to less than eight per 1,000 per year three decades later.

The policy on family size has also created a notable gender imbalance — 117 boys born for every 100 girls — because of the cultural preference for sons, which prompts many couples, predominately in rural areas, to abort girls. Human rights groups have accused overzealous family planners of forcing women to have abortions, sometimes in the ninth month of pregnancy.

Man watches “Fear Factor,” feels sick, sues for millions

A man from Cleveland has sued NBC for $2.5 million, saying watching contestants eating dead rats on the network’s stunt show “Fear Factor” made him feel sick.

Reuters reported that a handwritten, four-page lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Cleveland last week. Austin Aitken, a 49-year-old part-time paralegal, wrote, “To have the individuals on the show eat (yes) and drink dead rats was crazy, and from a viewer’s point-of-view, made me throw up, as well as another in the house at the same time.”

Aitken said the show caused his blood pressure to rise so high that he became dizzy and light-headed and that when he ran away from the television, he bumped his head on a doorway.

Aitken’s suit added, “NBC is sending the wrong message to its TV watchers: that cash can make or have people do just about anything beyond reasoning, and in most cases against their will.”

In a telephone interview with Reuters, Aitken said, “I am not at liberty to discuss the complaint unless it is a paid-interview situation.”

In past years, contestants on “Fear Factor” have eaten many strange things, including ground-up spiders and live worms. Aitken told the Associated Press that he watches the program often and had no problem with the content in the past.

A spokesman for “Fear Factor” said the program did feature a rat-eating scene in New York’s Times Square on Nov. 8 but added that the show would have no comment until it has seen a copy of the complaint.

Young Iranian removes teeth to evade military service.

An unknown 18-year-old conscript in Iran had 15 of his teeth pulled out by a dentist with the false belief that the drastic move could save him from military service. The news organization Agence France-Presse reported that the man, from the city of Karaj, near the capital Tehran, was led to believe a “quick ticket back to civilian life was the loss of 15 teeth, and while on leave back home, he managed to track down an obliging dental surgeon.”

“After he went secretly to the dentist, he came home nervous and upset. Then he could not eat, and we realized he was losing his teeth,” explained his father, adding that the dentist managed to extract 15 teeth in 10 days.

The father filed a complaint with a local court about the dentist and his assistant, saying his son had been disfigured. The pair was arrested and is currently awaiting trial.

There is no word on whether the man will have to return to the army.

Half-ton man loses 450 pounds, learns not to overeat

Patrick Deuel, 42, is scheduled to go home to Valentine, Neb., on Jan. 22, after losing more than 450 pounds in a Sioux Falls, S.D., hospital. When he checked into the facility in June, Deuel weighed half a ton.

Hospital staff structured an exercise program and a 1,200-calorie-a-day diet when Deuel arrived at the Avera McKennan Hospital weighing 1,072 pounds. At the time, the Associated Press reported, Deuel was dying of heart failure, but the diet helped control his problems.

Deuel currently weighs about 650 pounds and hopes to eventually slim down to 240 pounds.

He is still receiving treatment at the hospital for an infection he got in November but said he is not worried about returning to his former lifestyle of excessive overeating.

“I’ve learned a lot while I’ve been here,” he told reporters Tuesday. “I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing, and I think things will be fine.”