Nearly half of Guatemalan children suffer malnutrition

September 8th, 2009 Guatemala food-starved due to weather, economyGUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared "a state of public calamity" late Tuesday to help mobilize funds and resources to confront a food shortage that will affect thousands of families. "This will help us access resources from the international community that are generously offered for this type of situations and to mobilize national resources more rapidly," Colom said in a statement.

September 7th, 2009 Gunmen kill 4 prison officials in GuatemalaGUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan police say four prison officials have been shot to death in three separate attacks that authorities believe are retaliation for a jail crackdown. Ministry of Interior spokesman Nery Morales says a warden, a deputy warden, a prison guard and a driver were killed Monday after officials seized cell phones and moved inmates to different prisons over the weekend to break up an extortion ring.

August 27th, 2009 NJ woman's death leads to neglect charge for momGARWOOD, N.J. — New Jersey authorities say a woman is to blame for years of neglect that led to her adult daughter's death from malnutrition.

July 10th, 2009 Guatemalan court rules in favor of tweet authorGUATEMALA CITY — An appeals court found insufficient evidence to warrant the trial of a Guatemalan whose Twitter message led to his arrest on charges of inciting financial panic. Jean Anleu was arrested and charged in May after sending a 96-character tweet that urged depositors to withdraw funds from a bank involved in a political-murder scandal.

June 5th, 2009 Mexico drug cartel's grenades from Guatemalan armyGUATEMALA CITY — Thousands of bullets and grenades that were part of a Mexican drug cartel's weapons cache belong to the Guatemalan army, Guatemala's anti-drug prosecutor said Thursday. Prosecutor Leonel Ruiz said investigators have determined that more than 3,800 bullets and 563 grenades seized outside Guatemala's capital in April following a shootout that left five anti-drug agents dead came from military bases in the Central American nation, which has become a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine.

May 20th, 2009 COLOMBO - More than 200,000 refugees are facing 'very critical' circumstances in northern Sri Lanka in the aftermath of the recent war, the Red Cross said. Andreas Lindner, head of the German Red Cross team in the region, said the situation facing Sri Lankan refugees presently was 'one of the most complicated and dramatic' worldwide.

May 4th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Is your child really safe when he is sitting in front of the TV watching his favourite programme? A recent study found that from 1990 to 2007 an average of nearly 15,000 children, younger than 18 years, received injuries from furniture tip-overs. Despite warnings from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission, the number of such injuries involving TV sets and other furniture has increased in the US since the early 1990s.

March 27th, 2009 GUATEMALA - Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt's son has been arrested for allegedly embezzling $15 million, Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reported. Enrique Rios Sosa embezzled the money during the government of President Alfonso Portillo (2000-2004) when he was the army finance chief.

March 24th, 2009 GUATEMALA CITY - Several children listed as missing during Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war were sold in illegal adoptions, the country's social welfare agency records revealed. The director of the government's Peace Archive, Marco Tulio Alvarez, told a press conference here Monday that during the analysis the archive, officials found a series of irregularities that prove the disappearance of children between 1986 and 1987.

February 17th, 2009 HAVANA - Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom has publicly apologized for his country's role in allowing its territory to be used to train the exiles and mercenaries who participated in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, EFE reported. 'Today, I want to apologize to Cuba for our country having offered its territory to prepare the invasion of Cuba,' Colom said during a speech at the University of Havana.

February 16th, 2009 COLOMBO - The UN Tuesday expressed its 'gravest concern' for Sri Lankan children, saying a growing number of them were being recruited by the Tamil Tigers while scores were being killed or injured in fighting. The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) said it has 'clear indications' that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) had stepped up forcible recruitment of children and 'as young as 14'.

February 11th, 2009 BHOPAL - 'Why must a child die at all?' the the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) asked at the first public hearing following reports of deaths due to malnutrition in Madhya Pradesh, NGOs said. The NCPCR Tuesday reached Satna for the first public hearing on alleged malnutrition deaths, said Sachin Jain of Rights to Food Campaign in Madhya Pradesh.

February 9th, 2009 NEW YORK - Children in the Gaza Strip continued to suffer and feel insecure despite a ceasefire that has mostly ended three weeks of intense fighting between Israel and Hamas, the UN special envoy for children and armed conflict has said. Radhika Coomaraswamy said grave violations of child rights had been committed during the fighting that began Dec 27 when the Israeli Defence Forces launched airstrikes against Hamas militants who had been firing rockets and mortars into southern Israel.

February 4th, 2009 SYDNEY - Working men are more likely than women to suffer eye injuries, according to an Australian report released Thursday. The report by Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) said about half the visits to the general practitioner for eye injuries were associated with a foreign body in the eye.

January 13th, 2009 KOLKATA - All mentally challenged inmates of a government-funded organisation in West Bengal will be shifted to another home within a month, a state minister said Wednesday, after a teenager died of malnutrition there. 'All 31 inmates of the Jatio Jorodhi Sansad home at Baruipur town in South 24 Parganas will be shifted to another home, 'Offer', within a month,' Social Welfare Minister Biswanath Chowdhury told reporters here.