All The News That's Being Missed

As usual, there are only a few stories in the news that are getting any attention.  London bombing, hurricane, Karl Rove.  A while back, I though of doing a weekly roundup of the important stories that are getting missed.  However, I never did it.  

Today I thought of it again, and decided to give it a try.  Then I remembered why I had not done it before: it's too damn depressing.

Here's a sample from Reuter's AlertNet:

July 2005

Srebrenica: Lessons of a terrible blunder
International Herald Tribune, July 9, 2005
Ten years ago, the Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica fell to Bosnian Serbs who went on to massacre thousands. Lessons learnt: don't send multi-tasking UN peacekeepers into an ongoing war situation; improve UN intelligence perhaps under the guises of a conflict prevention centre; don't look the other way, says Alexander Ivanko.

Swaziland's sugar farmers face ruin as EU takes axe to special price deal
The Guardian, July 8, 2005
A fixed price for EU sugar farmers has for three decades been extended to farmers in Swaziland and 17 other African, Caribbean and Pacific countries. Sweeping EU subsidy reforms will change this, slashing prices for these 18 and devastating livelihoods of the poorest, reports Kristy Siegfried.

AIDS: Africa's doctors
International Herald Tribune, July 8, 2005
Across Africa 1.3% of the world's health workers fight 25% of the world's disease. Fighting AIDS will be a losing battle until Africa can retain health workers and access money targeted for health and procure drugs reliably, writes Malawi's health minister.

Philip Bowring: Don't blame AIDS on Muslims
International Herald Tribune, July 7, 2005
A U.S. think tank has released a report describing the spread of HIV/AIDS among Muslims as "the newest phase in the global pandemic". Look beyond religion is the response of this editorial.

The repatriation of Liberian refugees
The Guardian, Nigeria, July 7, 2005
The last of thousands of Liberian refugees who fled to Nigeria when war broke out in 1989 are now to return home. But forthcoming elections must proceed smoothly if Liberia's peace process is not to be derailed, says this editorial.

Sudan: What's wrong with this picture?
Christian Science Monitor, July 5, 2005
Interest in Darfur that had built up in the international community has waned and the tsunami now seems to have been a deadly distraction writes G. Jefferson Price III, emergency correspondent with Catholic Relief Services.

Monster of the moment
The Guardian, July 1, 2005
World Bank projects have evicted 10 million, hundreds of thousands are regularly moved on by governments around the world for urban development work and the only reason Mugabe is the West's pet monster is because he chose to reclaim and redistribute land grabbed by whites, John Vidal points out.

Giving and taking away
International Herald Tribune, July 1, 2005
The U.S. has made some important steps, for instance in approving generic anti-retroviral drugs, but at the same time polices such as refusing to fund needle exchange programs, and influencing other UN actors to do likewise, are dangerous, according to this Washington Post editorial.