Continued from here, where I've been posting bits and pieces of news that have been cluttering my desktop ... Mel comes into it down the page a bit ...

From Lisa, a report from Guatemala about life there for many children.

Guatemala has the highest rate of malnourished children in the Western Hemisphere, even higher than... more

Continued from here ...

Adoption continues as a non-option for tsunami kids, by the way. Many thousands of children lost parents the day after Christmas, 2004, and many thousand more have been left behind by mothers and fathers who suddenly had nothing left to give. Some have been taken in by relatives, and we can hope that has worked out to be a good thing for most of them, but reality dictates that we acknowledge that this circumstance does not always work out to be for the benefit of the child. Kids have fallen through huge gaps in systems that were less than adequate... more

Continued from here ...

Two years later, and how is it going? That depends on who you ask. UNICEF has just published their report on the two year anniversary of the Indian Ocean tsunami, called, "Much Done, More to Do".

They're proud of accomplishments, or at least their very effective PR machine is cranking out the 'good... more

Continued from here ...

News is slow to travel in Seychelles, and with the power out we were cut off. Cell phones weren't working effectively, but eventually calls starting coming through from people on the east side of the island: town was flooded; bridges were gone; there were fish on the runway at the airport. Since Mark's parents live right on the beach, we decided we should get home while the getting was good so he could... more

Living as I do among many Brits, and with Mark being half English, we've developed a Boxing Day tradition in our family. In some ways, I prefer it to the Christmas frenzy, as although it still involves friends, it's a smaller, more relaxed group, and since the meal we congregate over consists entirely of leftovers, it's a low-prep, easy-clean version of the previous day's feast. We do this at Gay's, because that's where the leftovers were left. Adhering to no schedule, we're sometimes even enjoying a bit of dessert while waiting for gravy to... more

Continued from here where the topic is female infanticide ...

Government officials and UNICEF are shocked and up in arms. Give me a break.

In a statement marking International Women's Day, UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy issued a strong attack against culturally-sanctioned homicidal violence directed at women and girls around the world. She said 'honour' killings, acid violence, female infanticide... more

I wrote the other day about how sex selection among immigrant groups is affecting the population in Canada.

... there's enough pre-natal sex selection going on in that country these days to skew the demographics much like they skew in China and India.

There the issue is the aborting of female fetuses ... quite the dichotomy for pro-choice feminists with abortion on demand deemed a basic right,... more

Happy Halloween.

There's no celebration here ... no costumes or pillowcases-full of candy or jack-o-lanterns, no tricks or treats. I'm not going to let a little thing like the culture of the country I live in stop me from getting into the spirit of Halloween, though. No way. As I type, I'm wriggling into my costume. By the time the next sentence oozes from my fingertips I will have transformed myself into ...

Ta Da!!!

Adoption Advocate Blogger Chick!

Festooned with Baby Bjorns and Huggies and sporting... more

More on the persecution of journalists continued from the previous post ... Speaking of Reporters Without Borders, that organization that strives to protect journalists from persecution, imprisonment and murder is not happy with the UN. A report titled, "UN Human Rights Council misses chance... more

Yesterday I reiterated George Clooney's question in regard to the impending disaster in Darfur:

If not the UN, who? Today, I ask a different one.

If not the UN, why?

The first 'why' is really a 'why not'?

Why wouldn't the UN step up to the plate it was ostensibly created for?

We've heard some ... more