Tag: World Food Program

Children suffer in flood-hit Pakistan – Foreign Policy/RTÉ World Report

SUKKUR — In the ad-hoc child malnutrition facility at the Railway Hospital in Sukkur, mothers cradle and nurse their toddlers, all emaciated and weakened. A row of beds runs either side of the ward in the brown and gray-painted Raj-era hospital, upon one of which sits three year-old Zamina. She was malnourished before the floods hit, but the flight from the family farm in Thulla to this heaving city in northern Sindh worsened the tiny girl’s condition considerably, says Dr Sakina Jafri, pausing to speak as she moved from bed to bed. “With the threat of disease all around, young children are most prone,” she said. “And when they are so young and are malnourished, it only adds to that level of vulnerability.”

Biofuels: more heat than light? – ISN

PORT MORESBY — The term ‘Biofuels’ might sound like a catchy green buzzword, but these alternatives to petroleum-based fuels have been around for a long time. The original Ford Model T was configured to run on ethanol rather than gasoline, and Rudolf Diesel ran his first demo engine on peanut oil. Biofuels were revived –  temporarily at least – by the 1970s oil embargo imposed by OPEC, as oil shortages and high fuel prices contributed to western economic stagnation. At the time, alternative energy sources were looked at, but subsequent economic revival and lower oil prices from the 1980s onward put these biofuels on the back burner Biofuels re-emerged in the late 1990s as the US mulled how to diversify its energy sources away from reliance on foreign oil imported from unstable or hostile states such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria