Lactose Tolerance in East Africa Points to Recent Evolution
By NICHOLAS WADE

A surprisingly recent instance of human evolution has been detected among the peoples of East Africa. It is the ability to digest milk in adulthood, conferred by genetic changes that occurred as recently as 3,000 years ago, a team of geneticists has found.

The finding is a striking example of a cultural practice — the raising of dairy cattle — feeding back into the human genome. It also seems to be one of the first instances of convergent human evolution to be documented at the genetic level. Convergent evolution refers to two or more populations acquiring the same trait independently.

Throughout most of human history, the ability to digest lactose, the principal sugar of milk, has been switched off after weaning because the lactase enzyme that breaks the sugar apart is no longer needed. But when cattle were first domesticated 9,000 years ago and people later started to consume their milk as well as their meat, natural selection would have favored anyone with a mutation that kept the lactase gene switched on.

Check this.

President George W. Bush has continued to reject assertions that Iraq is in the midst of a civil war. But with the President set to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Amman, Jordan, to discuss the country's continuing sectarian violence, some human rights experts are worrying about a different, worse fate for Iraq: genocide.

Gregory Stanton, a professor of human rights at Virginia's University of Mary Washington, sees in Iraq the same troubling signs of preparation and execution of genocidal aims that he saw in the 1990s in Rwanda when he worked at the State Department. Sunni and Shiite militias are "trying to polarize the country, they're systematically trying to assassinate moderates, and they're trying to divide the population into homogenous religious sectors," Stanton says. All of those undertakings, he says, are "characteristics of genocide," and his organization, Genocide Watch, is preparing to declare the country in a "genocide emergency."

As many as 450,000 people have died from disease and violence, and 2.5 million have been displaced in the three-year-old conflict, which began when rebels from African tribes rose up against the Arab-led central government in a huge area of western Sudan. The government has been accused of supporting militias of Arab nomads known as Janjaweed in retaliation against civilians in Darfur. Government officials deny arming the militias, which the United Nations and others have accused of carrying out the worst atrocities.

Moreno-Ocampo's comments in The Hague coincided with charges by the top U.N. humanitarian official that Sudan is deliberately hindering relief efforts in Darfur and is arming militias.

The emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, told the Security Council that the coming weeks might "be make or break for our lifeline to more than 3 million people. The situation in Darfur is closer to the abyss than I have witnessed since my first visit in 2004."

"Time is against us," Secretary General Kofi Annan said. 

World Court Official Reports Evidence on Darfur Criminals
By Nora Boustany
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, November 25, 2006; A08

The International Criminal Court has found sufficient evidence to identify the perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities in Sudan's Darfur region, and the probe offers "reasonable grounds to believe" that crimes against humanity were committed, chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo told the annual meeting of the court's member states in The Hague.

Congo rebels attack government forces in east
Sat Nov 25, 2006 1:52 AM ET

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Fighters loyal to a dissident general attacked army positions in eastern Congo with heavy weapons and small arms on Saturday, said the government and the United Nations.

The attack, after months of relative calm in Congo's east, occurred amid tensions in the capital Kinshasa where supporters of a former rebel chief are protesting against President Joseph Kabila's victory in last month's presidential run-off election.

"Our military positions in Sake have been coming under attack from (rebel general Laurent) Nkunda since early this morning. Our brigade there is fighting back," Congolese Interior Minister Denis Kalume told Reuters.

Why is Africa so attractive to the U.S. in terms of oil?

Africa is on a forward curve in terms of oil production, one of the few places where this is so. This is absolutely critical, because much of the rest of the world is on a downward production curve. Many older oil fields, like in Mexico and the U.S., are in decline.

What makes Africa really appealing is that a lot of the most promising oil fields are offshore. This just lights up the eyes of American oil men, for two reasons. One is that they're the world leaders in the technology necessary to extract deep, offshore oil. Nigeria, Angola, Equatorial Guinea do not possess this technology and know-how, so they have to offer partnerships to the American companies and the Europeans. It's different in Saudi Arabia, or Iran or Iraq, because the oil is not below the ocean, and they've mastered that technology. They don't need the Americans as much. But the Africans do. The Chinese companies are also not up to speed on these technologies.

I lifted the whole article sans images, in case you have a religious objection to visiting Al Jazeera's English site. 

African leaders discuss Darfur

Six African leaders, including the presidents of Sudan and Chad, have begun in Libya a mini-summit on Sudan's Darfur region, where internal strife is spilling over into Chad and the Central African Republic.

Tuesday's meeting, aimed at carving out Libya's wish for a "radical solution", comes amid rising impatience from both the US and the UN.

Sudan's neighbours who have accused Khartoum of backing rebellions against their governments. In addition to Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and Chad's Idriss Deby Itno, Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president, and Eritrea's Issaias Afeworki were in Tripoli, as well as the CAR president, Francois Bozize.

Would someone please tell me that's not true.

Countries where newborns have the highest risk of dying — among them, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Mali and Nigeria — also have the most easily preventable deaths, according to the report...

Though a majority of newborn deaths occur in the first week of life, most health care providers across sub-Saharan Africa advise mothers to return with their babies for a checkup only after six weeks.

“This is a visit for survivors,” the report said.

I can see how such a taboo would develop, though.

Counting African Lives Lost in First Weeks
By CELIA W. DUGGER

More than a million babies die across Africa every year in their first month of life, a tragedy neglected by donor countries and African governments and hidden from view because the deaths often occur in societies where mothers and their babies are secluded after birth and the children go unnamed for weeks, according to a report by dozens of medical and public health experts released today.

“Look at the reaction in the U.S. or the U.K. if even one baby dies, particularly if there is malpractice,” said Dr. Joy Lawn, a lead author of the report, “Opportunities for Africa’s Newborns.” “Families get very upset and there’s a big hoo-ha. In Africa, there’s a taboo around mourning a baby.”

U.S. Sets Jan. 1 Deadline for Sudan to Act on Darfur
By Glenn Kessler and Nora Boustany
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, November 21, 2006; A24

Andrew Natsios, the U.S. special envoy to Sudan, said yesterday that the Bush administration will resort to an unspecified "Plan B" if the Sudanese government does not agree by Jan. 1 to complete negotiations on an expanded international peacekeeping force for its troubled Darfur region.

Khartoum has adamantly rejected a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a U.N.-led force, so the Bush administration and the United Nations have backtracked and instead sought to win the government's agreement for a hybrid force of African Union and U.N. troops. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan announced last week that Sudan had agreed in principle to such a joint force but that numerous issues must be resolved before Khartoum gives final approval.

[S]ince 2001, the administration had been pursuing a peace deal between southern Sudanese rebels and the regime in Khartoum -- a deal aimed at placating U.S. Christian groups that had long demanded action on behalf of Christian minorities in southern Sudan. The administration didn't want to undermine that process by hammering Khartoum over Darfur.

The people of Darfur never had a chance.

So How Come We Haven't Stopped It?
By John Prendergast
Sunday, November 19, 2006; B01

Early in his first term, President Bush received a National Security Council memo outlining the world's inaction regarding the genocide in Rwanda. In what may have been a burst of indignation and bravado, the president wrote in the margin of the memo, "Not on my watch."

Five years later, and nearly four years into what Bush himself has repeatedly called genocide, the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region is intensifying without a meaningful response from the White House. Perhaps Harvard professor Samantha Power's tongue-in-cheek theory is correct: The memo was inadvertently placed on top of the president's wristwatch, and he didn't want it to happen again. But if Bush's expressions of concern for the victims in Darfur are genuine, then why isn't his administration taking real action?

Thirty villagers were reported killed this week in Sirba, but no outside investigators have been able to enter the town to confirm the reports.

Sudanese rebels accused government troops and militias Thursday of killing more than 50 people in another attack. Two weeks ago, 63 people were reported killed in Jebel Moon, and their bodies buried in the desert...

Journalists able to secure a visa face a bewildering array of permits and paperwork; the Sudanese government must be informed in advance of any travel in Darfur. Officials insist on listening to interviews; they intimidate interviewees, and have attempted to confiscate notebooks.

"I can take any of [your permits] I want ... you're going to hell," one official hissed at this reporter. "Do you think this is a free country?" Last week, all permits for journalists to travel to the region were being denied.

Sudan closing off Darfur to outside world
International observers, journalists, and humanitarian organizations are being forced out by the government.
By Katharine Houreld | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said the report was "made up by the powers who exacerbate the war and bloodshed in Somalia by sending weaponry to that country", Iran's ISNA news agency said. He did not name those powers.

Here's the thing. The report says

The primary violators of a widely ignored 1992 arms ban on Somalia, the report says, are Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are respectively backing the government and Islamists.

Djibouti, Libya, Egypt and "certain Middle East countries" have used Eritrea to funnel aid to the Islamists, it says. Syria and Iran are also named as Islamist backers.

The report links the Islamists to Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, who it says is helping train Somali fighters.

Eritrea and Uganda, which is alleged to be backing the government, on Tuesday denied charges of pouring in weaponry. Iran also denied the charges on Wednesday.

...which does not actually contradict the idea of "powers who exacerbate the war and bloodshed in Somalia by sending weaponry to that country."

It just leaves out one major weapons supplier ...possibly the major one .

Anyway... 

Somali Islamists denounce UN report
Say nations not giving them arms
By Sahal Abdulle, Reuters  |  November 16, 2006

MOGADISHU -- Somalia's powerful Islamists on Wednesday dismissed as "fabrication" a U.N. report which says they are receiving military support from seven African and Middle Eastern nations and international Islamic militants.

“The cost of drugs is an issue, but not the only or even the most important issue for children,” said Dr. Kevin De Cock, the World Health Organization’s chief official on H.I.V./AIDS, who said at an international conference in Toronto this summer that treatment had “so far left children behind.”

“You need to put the medicines into a system that functions,” he said, “and the fact that children aren’t getting treated is a sign of the frailty of health systems.”

African Children Often Lack Available AIDS Treatment
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

YAOUNDÉ, Cameroon — Five-year-old Anastasia Enongo lies curled like a fetus in a hospital bunk here, coughing weakly, intravenous medicine dripping into her arm. Born to a mother who died of AIDS, the girl has always been sick, her relatives said, her life a parade of doctors’ visits for fevers, coughs and diarrhea.

Congo's Wounds of War: More Vicious than Rape
The atrocity reports from eastern Congo were so hellish that Western medical experts refused to believe them—at first.
WEB EXCLUSIVE
By Rod Nordland
Newsweek
Updated: 6:01 p.m. ET Nov 13, 2006

Nov. 13, 2006 - Warning: do not read this story if you are easily disturbed by graphic information, or are under age, or are easily upset by accounts of gruesome sexual violence.

This is about fistulas—and rape, which in Congo has become the continuation of war by other means. Fistulas are a kind of damage that is seldom seen in the developed world. Many obstetricians have encountered the condition only in their medical texts, as a rare complication associated with difficult or abnormal childbirths: a rupture of the walls that separate the vagina and bladder or rectum. Where health care is poor, particularly where trained doctors or midwives are not available, fistulas are more of a risk. They are a major health concern in many parts of Africa.

In eastern Congo, however, the problem is practically an epidemic. When a truce was declared in the war there in 2003, so many cases began showing up that Western medical experts at first called it impossible—especially when local doctors declared that most of the fistulas they were seeing were the consequence of rapes. "No one wanted to believe it at first," says Lyn Lusi, manager of the HEAL Africa hospital (formerly called the Docs Hospital) in the eastern Congo city of Goma. "When our doctors first published their results, in 2003, this was unheard of."

Well over half of the world's Anglicans now live in Africa, Asia, and South America, where the conservative strain of the faith prevails. Bishops in these parts of the world have been among the most critical of the Episcopal Church's stance on gays and the election of Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead a national church in the Anglican Communion....

There are nearly as many worship ers in Ssekkade's Namirembe diocese as there are Episcopalians in all of the United States.

US Episcopalians seek spiritual shelter in Africa
Congregations oppose church's liberal positions
By Shashank Bengali, Mcclatchy Newspapers  |  November 12, 2006

KAMPALA, Uganda -- Angry over their US church's position on homosexuality, a growing number of Episcopal congregations are seeking spiritual shelter thousands of miles away, in the Anglican churches of Africa.

In the Episcopal Church, priests have blessed same-sex marriages and one of the church's bishops is gay. In recent years, dozens of conservative congregations have left the US church and joined Anglican dioceses in Uganda, Rwanda, and elsewhere in Africa.

Chronic Diseases of Rich Countries Begin to Plague Developing Nations

The international community has set its sights on easing the burdens of infectious disease and malnutrition around the world. Yet some projections find that a bigger fraction of deaths in developing countries may soon come from chronic ailments such as diabetes, heart disease, cancer and respiratory illness. In one example of the underlying trend, researchers report that high blood glucose exacts a global death toll comparable to any pathogen and has fueled an epidemic of diabetes in Asia. Another new study surveys the known economic impacts of such chronic diseases.

In 2000 the United Nations issued its eight Millennium Development Goals for poorer nations, including the eradication of extreme poverty. As soon as children stop dying from pneumonia and malnutrition, however, new problems come into focus. "As the same children survive to slightly older ages they start getting hit by chronic disease," says population health researcher Majid Ezzati of Harvard University. "In many places it already has become the dominant cause" of illness, Ezzati notes, with sub-Saharan Africa being the primary exception. People in India, other countries in south Asia and impoverished parts of Latin America all suffer from significant rates of chronic disease, in part from a withering trinity of cheap high-calorie food, tobacco and alcohol, he says.

"[Climate] changes make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely," said British Home Secretary John Reid last March. "The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur. We should see this as a warning sign."

Africans are already facing climate change
Is Darfur the first climate-change conflict? In Kenya, a UN meeting begins Monday to set new fossil-fuel emissions targets.
By Scott Baldauf | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA

As delegates gather Monday in Kenya for a United Nations conference to set new targets to reduce fossil-fuel emissions after 2012, climate change is a present reality for many Africans.