Agencies to step up food aid to Haiti

April 18, 2008

United Nations programs will distribute 8,000 tons of food and other help for Haitians in coming days as part of efforts to confront unrest over rising prices that set off recent rioting, officials said yesterday. A UN spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said food provided by the World Food Program will focus on children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers in the north, west, and central regions of Haiti, the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. (AP)

RIO DE JANEIRO - Brazil announced a malaria treatment yesterday that scientists say offers a potentially cheap and effective way to attack a disease that largely afflicts the world's poor. The treatment, developed by the Brazilian government in conjunction with the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, combines existing malaria drugs artesunate and mefloquine into a fixed-dose tablet and reduces the cost of treatment. A key benefit is that it reduces the number of tablets patients must remember to swallow. "Now they only need take one to two tablets a day for three days," said Bernard Pecoul, executive director of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative, an alliance of seven health organizations. (AP)

BERLIN - Iran's progress in developing uranium enrichment is slow and recent additions to its nuclear fuel production complex have only been older-model centrifuges, the head of the UN atomic watchdog said yesterday. Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said Iran had between 3,300 and 3,400 centrifuges of the 1970s vintage P-1 type operational in the Natanz enrichment hall, up from 3,000 at the end of last year. He urged Iran to refrain from speeding up its enrichment campaign until a dispute between the Islamic Republic and world powers over suspicions about its intentions was resolved. (Reuters)