Giant Titanoboa snake ruled the earth

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article5662915.ece

February 5, 2009
Giant Titanoboa snake ruled the earth after the dinosaurs
The Titanoboa grew to 45ft or more
Lewis Smith, Environment Reporter

A titanic snake that snacked on crocodiles and was longer than a London bus has been identified as the top predator to walk, or at least slither, the land when the dinosaurs disappeared.

It weighed 1.25 tonnes and with a length of 45 feet or more it would have been able to take on and eat pretty much any other animal it came across.

The newly discovered type of snake, named Titanoboa in honour of its immense size, was for 10 million years the largest land predator on earth.

At least 28 individual specimens have been uncovered in Colombia and, with all of them being around 40 feet long, researchers said it is likely the species could have reached much further than 45 feet.

Fossils recovered from the site over the last five years have given researchers the most detailed picture yet of life in tropical South America in the years following the disappearance of the dinosaurs.

Alongside the enormous snakes, which were so wide it would have been a squeeze for them to get through a doorway, were fossils of turtles and giant crocodile-like dyrosaurs.

Other fossil finds, including fish, gastropods and plants such as palms, are providing researchers with their first glimpses of the tropical ecosystem that laid the foundations for the Amazon forest.

Jonathan Bloch, of the University of Florida, was one of the researchers who analysed the remains of the snake, the biggest that ever lived.

He said: “It was not only the biggest predator in the region, as far as we know, but it was the largest terrestrial vertebrate known on the face of the planet for at least 10 million years.

“It could have eaten pretty much anything that came its way. If we had to guess, it probably ate a lot of fish and crocodyliforms.

“It is possible that the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years opened up the opportunity for the evolution of another top-predator such as Titanoboa.”

He added: “Truly enormous snakes really spark people's imagination, but reality has exceeded the fantasies of Hollywood. The snake that tried to eat Jennifer Lopez in the movie Anaconda is not as big as the one we found.”

Carlos Jaramillo, of the Smithsonian Institution in Panama, said the specimens uncovered from the mine are likely to have been merely average in size, meaning that some individuals would have been much bigger.

The reticulated python, from South East Asia, is the longest living species recorded, according to Guinness World Records, with one individual reaching almost 33 feet long but the average length for the species is only 20 feet.

The size of the cold-blooded Titanoboa indicated to researchers that the tropical coastal river system it occupied would have been warmer than the tropics today. Using the snake’s proportions they worked out that the tropics 60 million years ago would have been about 32C, some 4C warmer than now.

Jason Head, of the University of Toronto in Canada and the Smithsonian Institution, said as the findings were published in the journal Nature: “The discovery of Titanoboa challenges our understanding of past climates and environments, as well as the biological limitations on the evolution of giant snakes.”

Bolivia Suspends U.S.-Backed Antidrug Efforts

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/02/world/americas/02bolivia.html

November 2, 2008
Bolivia Suspends U.S.-Backed Antidrug Efforts
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — President Evo Morales of Bolivia on Saturday suspended antidrug operations sponsored by the United States as Washington’s relations with his leftist government spiraled downward.

Mr. Morales accused the United States Drug Enforcement Administration of espionage and of financing “criminal groups” trying to undermine his government. He also declared in his address that his government had eradicated more than 12,000 acres of illegally planted coca so far this year — the minimum required under a 1988 law passed under United States pressure.

Coca is the raw material for cocaine, but Bolivians use its less potent natural form as a traditional tea or for chewing.

Relations between Bolivia and the United States have deteriorated in recent months as Mr. Morales’s government limited activities by the D.E.A. and later expelled the United States ambassador over charges of spying and involvement in antigovernment protests.

The United States in turn added Bolivia to its antinarcotics blacklist, causing a cut in trade preferences that Bolivian business leaders estimate could cost South America’s poorest country as many as 20,000 jobs.

Antidrug officials and diplomats from the United States have denied any political involvement.

Mr. Morales’s decision creates “an unfortunate situation,” said Garrison Courtney, an agency spokesman in Washington, but he added, “We will find other ways to make sure we keep abreast of the drug-trafficking situation through there.”

Two antidrug agents were pulled from the Chapare coca-growing region in September after Bolivian officials reported threats against them from coca growers in the area, a bastion of support for the president, who came to prominence as leader of a coca-growers union battling eradication campaigns.

The United Nations estimates that Bolivia’s coca crop increased by 5 percent in 2007 — far below the 27 percent jump recorded in Colombia, a close ally of the United States.

Last month Mr. Morales denied a request by the agency to fly an antidrug plane over Bolivia, saying Bolivia needed no help from the United States to control its coca crop.

Death of mythic guerrilla commander in Colombia

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/05/26/america/farc.php

Death of mythic guerrilla commander confirmed in Colombia
By Simon Romero
Monday, May 26, 2008

CARACAS: Manuel Marulanda, the guerrilla tactician who rose from peasant origins to become the top commander of Latin America's largest rebel group, died March 26 in a mountain hide-out in central Colombia, the rebels have confirmed. He was believed to be 76 years old.

The cause was a heart attack, said Timoleón Jiménez, a commander of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, who confirmed Marulanda's death in a video that was broadcast Sunday by the Venezuelan television network Telesur. The Colombian military had announced the death on Saturday, citing intelligence sources.

To the end, Marulanda remained an enigma in Colombia, with his death kept secret for two months by FARC. A mythic figure in Colombia's long internal war, he evaded capture and death from the time he formed a rudimentary guerrilla force as a teenager in the coffee-growing hills of western Colombia in the late 1940s.

Marulanda got his first taste of warfare during the years of La Violencia, from 1948 to 1958, a period of civil conflict that served as the basis for the decades of armed struggle that followed. The civil war between two political factions, Conservatives and Liberals, took more than 200,000 lives.

When the killing subsided, Marulanda settled in Marquetalia, a farming enclave of several dozen families in the Andes Mountains south of Bogotá. But this period of relative tranquility ended when Colombian forces attacked Marquetalia in 1964. That same year Marulanda helped turn Liberal fighters who had remained under his control into FARC.

FARC ultimately evolved into Latin America's most feared insurgency, boasting about 15,000 fighters at its height in the late 1990s. Its roots lay, to some degree, in the personal experiences of Marulanda, who was born Pedro Antonio Marín in Genova, a town surrounded by coffee groves.

The year of his birth was 1928 or 1930 or 1932; Marulanda acknowledged to Arturo Alape, his biographer, that he did not know his precise age. He grew up in Genova listening to tales from his grandfather of the Thousand Days War, an epic conflict at the dawn of the 20th century that is featured in "One Hundred Years of Solitude," the novel by Gabriel García Márquez.

As a child, Marulanda sold sweets on the street and worked in a bakery, but he left home as a teenager to try his luck as a woodcutter. The lure of guerrilla warfare intervened. By 1951, he had adopted the nom de guerre Manuel Marulanda Vélez, in honor of a slain union leader.

His marksmanship also earned him the nickname Tirofijo, or Sureshot. Considered a brutal pragmatist, Marulanda vied for power inside FARC with urban intellectuals and labor leaders. By the 1990s he was the group's supreme leader, after the death of Jacobo Arenas, who hewed to Marxist ideology.

While FARC remained Marxist in name, it evolved into something unrecognizable in the annals of Latin America's guerrilla movements.

It was haunted by the killing - reportedly by right-wing paramilitary groups - of about 4,000 members of the Patriotic Union, a movement created by FARC and the Communist Party in the 1980s to enable former guerrillas to enter political life.

Under Marulanda, FARC's paranoia and military acumen coalesced in the creation of an elaborate cocaine-trafficking apparatus.

The rebels also honed the practice of abducting people for ransom.

Their bombs also killed innocents in the heart of Bogotá, and their land mines still cripple dozens of children each year. Today FARC is one of the most despised groups in Colombia: Opinion polls show just 1 percent of Colombians hold a favorable view of the rebels.

Marulanda was reported to have had more than four children, but it was not possible to determine his survivors, other than an unknown female companion at the mountain encampment, located in the Meta department, where he died. Jiménez, the FARC commander, said he died in the woman's arms, surrounded by his personal guard. Jiménez added that Murlanda died after a brief illness.

$300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE

$300 MILLION FROM CHAVEZ TO FARC A FAKE
Here’s the written evidence… and - please say it ain’t so! - Obama and Hillary attack Ecuador
Friday, March 7, 2008
By Greg Palast
For TomPaine.com / Ourfuture.org

Note: Saturday, Bobby Kennedy hosts Greg Palast on “Ring of Fire” on Air America Radio. Sunday, catch Palast with Amy Goodman on WABC Television (New York), hosted by Gil Noble, Channel 7 at 1 pm(est).

Do you believe this?

This past weekend, Colombia invaded Ecuador, killed a guerrilla chief in the jungle, opened his laptop – and what did the Colombians find? A message to Hugo Chavez that he sent the FARC guerrillas $300 million – which they’re using to obtain uranium to make a dirty bomb!

That’s what George Bush tells us. And he got that from his buddy, the strange right-wing President of Colombia, Alvaro Uribe.

So: After the fact, Colombia justifies its attempt to provoke a border war as a to stop the threat of WMDs! Uh, where have we heard that before?

The US press snorted up this line about Chavez’ $300 million to “terrorists” quicker than the young Bush inhaling Colombia’s powdered export.

What the US press did not do is look at the evidence, the email in the magic laptop. (Presumably, the FARC leader’s last words were, “Listen, my password is ….”)

I read them. While you can read it all in español, here is, in translation, the one and only mention of the alleged $300 million from Chavez is this:

“… With relation to the 300, which from now on we will call “dossier,” efforts are now going forward at the instructions of the boss to the cojo [slang term for ‘cripple’], which I will explain in a separate note. Let’s call the boss Ángel, and the cripple Ernesto.”

Got that? Where is Hugo? Where’s 300 million? And 300 what? Indeed, in context, the note is all about the hostage exchange with the FARC that Chavez was working on at the time (December 23, 2007) at the request of the Colombian government.

Indeed, the entire remainder of the email is all about the mechanism of the hostage exchange. Here’s the next line: “To receive the three freed ones, Chavez proposes three options: Plan A. Do it to via of a ‘humanitarian caravan’; one that will involve Venezuela, France, the Vatican[?], Switzerland, European Union, democrats [civil society], Argentina, Red Cross, etc.”

As to the 300, I must note that the FARC’s previous prisoner exchange involved 300 prisoners. Is that what the ‘300’ refers to? ¿Quien sabe? Unlike Uribe, Bush and the US press, I won’t guess or make up a phastasmogoric story about Chavez mailing checks to the jungle.

To bolster their case, the Colombians claim, with no evidence whatsoever, that the mysterious “Angel” is the code name for Chavez. But in the memo, Chavez goes by the code name … Chavez.

Well, so what? This is what.

Colombia’s invasion into Ecuador is a rank violation of international law, condemned by every single Latin member of the Organization of American States. And George Bush just loved it. He called Uribe to back Colombia, against, “the continuing assault by narco-terrorists as well as the provocative maneuvers by the regime in Venezuela.”

Well, our President may have gotten the facts ass-backward, but Bush knows what he’s doing: shoring up his last, faltering ally in South America, Uribe, a desperate man in deep political trouble.

Uribe claims he is going to bring charges against Chavez before the International Criminal Court. If Uribe goes there in person, I suggest he take a toothbrush: it was just discovered that right-wing death squads held murder-planning sessions at Uribe’s ranch. Uribe’s associates have been called before the nation’s Supreme Court and may face prison.

In other words, it’s a good time for a desperate Uribe to use that old politico’s wheeze, the threat of war, to drown out accusations of his own criminality. Furthermore, Uribe’s attack literally killed negotiations with FARC by killing FARC’s negotiator, Raul Reyes. Reyes was in talks with both Ecuador and Chavez about another prisoner exchange. Uribe authorized the negotiations, however, he knew, should those talks have succeeded in obtaining the release of those kidnapped by the FARC, credit would have been heaped on Ecuador and Chavez, and discredit heaped on Uribe.

Luckily for a hemisphere on the verge of flames, the President of Ecuador, Raphael Correa, is one of the most level-headed, thoughtful men I’ve ever encountered.

Correa is now flying from Quito to Brazilia to Caracas to keep the region from blowing sky high. While moving troops to his border – no chief of state can permit foreign tanks on their sovereign soil – Correa also refuses sanctuary to the FARC . Indeed, Ecuador has routed out 47 FARC bases, a better track record than Colombia’s own, corrupt military.

For his cool, peaceable handling of the crisis, I will forgive Correa for apologizing for his calling Bush, “a dimwitted President who has done great damage to his country and the world.” (Watch an excerpt of my interview with Correa here.)

Amateur Hour in Blue

We can trust Correa to keep the peace South of the Border. But can we trust our Presidents-to-be?

The current man in the Oval Office, George Bush, simply can’t help himself: an outlaw invasion by a right-wing death-squad promoter is just fine with him.

But guess who couldn’t wait to parrot the Bush line? Hillary Clinton, still explaining that her vote to invade Iraq was not a vote to invade Iraq, issued a statement nearly identical to Bush’s, blessing the invasion of Ecuador as Colombia’s “right to defend itself.” And she added, “Hugo Chávez must stop these provoking actions.” Huh?

I assumed that Obama wouldn’t jump on this landmine – especially after he was blasted as a foreign policy amateur for suggesting he would invade across Pakistan’s border to hunt terrorists.

It’s embarrassing that Barack repeated Hillary’s line nearly verbatim, announcing, “the Colombian government has every right to defend itself.”

(I’m sure Hillary’s position wasn’t influenced by the loan of a campaign jet to her by Frank Giustra. Giustra has given over a hundred million dollars to Bill Clinton projects. Last year, Bill introduced Giustra to Colombia’s Uribe. On the spot, Giustra cut a lucrative deal with Uribe for Colombian oil.)

Then there’s Mr. War Hero. John McCain weighed in with his own idiocies, announcing that, “Hugo Chavez is establish[ing] a dictatorship,” presumably because, unlike George Bush, Chavez counts all the votes in Venezuelan elections.

But now our story gets tricky and icky.

The wise media critic Jeff Cohen told me to watch for the press naming McCain as a foreign policy expert and labeling the Democrats as amateurs. Sure enough, the New York Times, on the news pages Wednesday, called McCain, “a national security pro.”

McCain is the “pro” who said the war in Iraq would cost nearly nothing in lives or treasury dollars.

But, on the Colombian invasion of Ecuador, McCain said, “I hope that tensions will be relaxed, President Chavez will remove those troops from the borders - as well as the Ecuadorians - and relations continue to improve between the two.”

It’s not quite English, but it’s definitely not Bush. And weirdly, it’s definitely not Obama and Clinton cheerleading Colombia’s war on Ecuador.

Democrats, are you listening? The only thing worse than the media attacking Obama and Clinton as amateurs is the Democratic candidates’ frightening desire to prove them right.
******************
Watch Greg Palast’s reports from Venezuela and Ecuador for BBC Television Newsnight and Democracy Now! Compiled on the DVD, “The Assassination of Hugo Chavez.”

http://www.GregPalast.com

Chavez warns of war with Colombia

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080303/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/venezuela_colombia

Chavez warns of war with Colombia
By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer
3-3-8

President Hugo Chavez ordered tanks and thousands of troops on Sunday to the border with Colombia, accusing it of pushing South America to the brink of war by killing a top rebel leader on Ecuadorean soil.

Denouncing Colombia's slaying of the rebel commander in a cross-border raid into Ecuador, Chavez said Venezuela will respond militarily if Colombia violates its border. He ordered Venezuela's embassy in Bogota closed.

Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, also ordered troops to the Colombian border, withdrew his government's ambassador from Bogota and ordered Colombia's top diplomat expelled.

"There is no justification," Correa said Sunday night, snubbing an earlier announcement from Colombia that it would apologize for the incursion by its military.

Chavez called the killing of rebel leader and spokesman Raul Reyes and 16 other rebels on Saturday an attack by a "terrorist state."

"Mr. Defense Minister, move 10 battalions to the border with Colombia for me, immediately — tank battalions. Deploy the air force," Chavez said during his weekly TV and radio program. "We don't want war, but we aren't going to permit the U.S. empire, which is the master (of Colombia) ... to come divide us."

Correa said Colombia deliberately carried out the strike beyond its borders. He said the rebels were "bombed and massacred as they slept, using precision technology."

The Ecuadorean leader said Colombia violated Ecuador's airspace when it bombed the rebel camp, which the Colombian military said was located 1.1 miles from the border.

Colombian officials have long complained that Ecuador's military does not control its sparsely populated border, allowing rebels to take refuge.

The same holds true for Venezuela, where rebel deserters say the guerrillas routinely rest, train, obtain medical care and smuggle drugs. Chavez denies that his country provides refuge to the FARC.

In a statement, Colombia said FARC "terrorists" including Reyes "have had the custom of killing in Colombia and taking refuge in the territory of neighboring countries."

Colombia's police commander Gen. Oscar Naranjo said documents from a computer seized where Reyes was killed suggested Ecuador's president is deepening relations with the FARC.

The two documents, copies of which were obtained independently by The Associated Press, were apparently written by Reyes in the past two months and addressed to the high command of the FARC. An Ecuadorean government spokesman called the Colombian claims a lie.

Ecuadorean soldiers recovered the semi-nude bodies of 15 rebels in their jungle camp, the corpses scattered around the site along with pieces of clothing, shoes, a refrigerator, guns and grenades.

Soldiers stood guard at the camp, saying they also found three wounded women, who were evacuated by helicopter to be treated. One was a Mexican philosophy student injured by shrapnel, while the other two were Colombians, said Ecuador's defense minister, Welington Sandoval.

Ecuadorean officials found that there were two bomb attacks on the camp early Saturday, Lt. Col. Jose Nunez told reporters in the remote village of Angostura, where the bodies were found.

Colombian commandos removed the cadavers of Reyes and one other rebel.

Chavez called the raid "cowardly murder, all of it coldly calculated."

"This could be the start of a war in South America," Chavez said. He warned Uribe: "If it occurs to you to do this in Venezuela, President Uribe, I'll send some Sukhois" — Russian warplanes recently bought by Venezuela.

The situation tested already tense relations between Venezuela and Colombia, though cross-border trade has not yet been seriously affected.

Chavez did not specify how many troops was sending to the border. A Venezuelan battalion traditionally has roughly 600 soldiers.

"Undoubtedly the recent actions on the part of Colombia and Venezuela's response raise the risk for armed conflict," said Miguel Tinker Salas, a Latin American studies professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California. "Although it is unlikely we will see military confrontations, what is clear is that Colombia has been pursuing a military solution to its own internal problem, ... drawing in Ecuador and Venezuela."

Chavez has increasingly revealed his sympathies for the FARC, and in January asked that it be struck from lists of terrorist groups internationally.

The leftist FARC has been fighting Colombia's government for more than four decades, and funds itself largely through the cocaine trade and kidnaps for ransom and political ends.

Chavez said that with U.S. support, Colombian troops "invaded Ecuador, flagrantly violating Ecuador's sovereignty."

U.S Embassy spokeswoman Suzanne Hall, in Bogota, declined comment on the possibility of U.S. involvement, saying it was a Colombian government operation.

In Texas, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said of Chavez's latest moves: "This is an odd reaction by Venezuela to Colombia's efforts against the FARC, a terrorist organization that continues to hold Colombians, Americans and others hostage."

How exactly Reyes was killed was not immediately clear.

Colombia's defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, said Colombian commandos, tracking Reyes through an informant, first bombed a camp on the Colombian side of the Ecuadorean border. He said the troops came under fire from across the border in Ecuador and encountered Reyes' body when they overran that camp.

Colombia and Venezuela have been locked in a diplomatic crisis since Uribe sought in November to halt Chavez's efforts to mediate a prisoner swap. The FARC has since freed six hostages to delegates of Chavez, including four released last week.

The FARC has demanded that a safe zone be created in Colombia to negotiate a swap of some 40 high-value captives, including former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt and three U.S. defense contractors, for hundreds of imprisoned guerrillas.
___
Associated Press writers Frank Bajak and Vivian Sequera in Bogota; Gabriela Molina and Jeanneth Valdivieso in Quito, Ecuador; Diego Norona in Angostura, Ecuador; and Sandra Sierra in Caracas contributed to this report.

Chavez: Pull reserves from US

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080126/ap_on_bi_ge/venezuela_alba_summit

Chavez: Pull reserves from US
By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 26, 2008

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.

Chavez made the suggestion as he hosted a summit aimed at boosting Latin American integration and rolling back U.S. influence.

"We should start to bring our reserves here," Chavez said. "Why does that money have to be in the north? ... You can't put all your eggs in one basket."

To help pool resources within the region, Chavez and other leaders launched a new development bank at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Nations of Our America, or ALBA.

The left-leaning regional trade alliance first proposed by Chavez is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.

Chavez noted that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia in recent days, saying "that has to do with this summit."

"The empire doesn't accept alternatives," Chavez told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.

Chavez warned that U.S. "imperialism is entering into a crisis that can affect all of us" and said Latin America "will save itself alone."

Rice left Colombia on Friday after a trip aimed at reviving a free trade deal that has stalled in the U.S. Congress. She sidestepped an opportunity to confront Chavez, who accused Colombia and the United States of plotting "military aggression" against Venezuela.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined Chavez in his criticism of U.S.-style capitalism, saying "the dictatorship of global capitalism ... has lost control." Three days earlier, Ortega had shouted "Long live the U.S. government" as he inaugurated an American-financed section of highway in his country.

The ALBA Bank is "being born with the aim of boosting development in our countries," Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Saturday as he and other officials gathered at the bank's Caracas office for an inaugural ceremony.

Isea has said the bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion.

Chavez welcomed the Caribbean island of Dominica into the ALBA — an acronym that means "dawn" in Spanish — joining Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba. Attending as observers were the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, along with officials from Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti and St. Kitts and Nevis.

Chavez said a new fund created by Venezuela and Iran to support projects in third countries would have links to the ALBA Bank.

10 humanitarian crises forgotten (but not gone)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article3266598.ece

10 humanitarian crises forgotten (but not gone)
If doctors edited newspapers... The frontline physicians at Médecins Sans Frontières have chosen the 10 humanitarian crises that should have been given more coverage in 2007. By Claire Soares and Daniel Howden
Published: 20 December 2007

Colombia

While the cocaine trade regularly features in the headlines, little attention is devoted to the scale of the internal refugee crisis. After four decades of civil conflict that has evolved from a war of political ideologies to a struggle for territory and control over the narcotics trade, large numbers of Colombians live in areas controlled by militia or guerrillas. With basic human rights under threat and unpredictable violence endemic in many rural areas, millions have fled to the shantytowns – or barrios – that ring every major town. Nearly four million people live in these insecure settlements cut off from basic state services such as mains electricity, water and health care. In the endless slums that now choke the capital, Bogota, areas are divided up and fought over by the same paramilitaries and left-wing rebels that blight and dominate the countryside.

Sri Lanka

After a quarter of a century of fighting, this year will be remembered among the bloodiest in Sri Lankan history. The civil war between the government forces and the separatist Tamil Tigers flared back into life last year and has kept worsening. International efforts to resolve the conflict have made no headway as key figures on both sides appear to have decided that a military solution is possible. Targeted bombings, mine attacks, suicide bombings, abductions, recruitment of child soldiers have all followed. The civilian toll in a country already flattened by the 2004 tsunami has been horrendous. Hundreds of thousands of people in need of humanitarian aid have been forced to flee to makeshift camps and the situation has been compounded by a climate of hostility and suspicion towards aid agencies. MSF is among the few agencies still operating in frontline areas, such as Point Pedro and Vavuniya, where doctors are desperately needed.

Somalia

Violence in Somalia hit some of the worst levels in more than 15 years in 2007, prompting UN officials to declare it the worst humanitarian crisis in Africa, surpassing even Darfur in its horror and hopelessness. Ethiopia invaded Somalia on Christmas Day last year and easily overpowered the Union of Islamic Courts, but ever since insurgents have been staging increasingly ferocious guerrilla style attacks, particularly in the capital, Mogadishu. Aid workers say one million people have fled their homes, including 60 per cent of Mogadishu's population. This week mortar shells slammed into a crowded market in the capital, killing a dozen people including a mother and her three children, and a foreign journalist was kidnapped. This precarious security situation means reaching those in need is increasingly difficult. Just yesterday, the UN called for the creation of "safe zones" so that aid could get through to the most vulnerable, particularly children.

Burma

The extraordinary democracy protests by the Buddhist monks in one of the most repressive countries on earth put Burma back atop the news agenda this year. But the nature of ordinary life under the military junta has remained a dim part of the picture. High levels of malaria and HIV are made unimaginably worse by the negligence of a regime that spent only 1.4 per cent of its budget on health care. Despite the overwhelming need, there are few humanitarian groups able to work within the country and those that do so have to operate under severe restrictions. Comparatively few donors are willing to fund operations in the country for fear of indirectly supporting the regime. Further complicating the situation is the absence of any clear statistics on the health situation. The UN says that as many as 360,000 Burmese, out of 50 million, are living with HIV.

Malnutrition

There may not have been a headline-catching food crisis in 2007 on a similar scale as the one that beset Niger last year, but malnutrition is still a disturbing way of life for many in west and east Africa and south Asia, and is associated with the deaths of five million children under the age of five. MSF is campaigning for international donors to scale up their funding for ready-to-use foods, milk and peanut-based pastes that do not need to be kept in a refrigerator, so can be sent out into the rural mud-hut villages where mothers can feed them to their babies at home, rather than being forced to trek miles to the nearest clinic. In Maradi, Niger aid workers are using these pastes to boost the diets of 62,000 children during the seasonal lean period and stop them becoming malnourished in the first place.

Chechnya

Ninety-nine per cent of the electorate here turned out to vote for Vladimir Putin in the recent Russian presidential election. Such a result defies belief in the breakaway Muslim republic crushed by Mr Putin's forces in the second Chechen war. The Putin-installed strongman who rules the republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, made sure that his boss would not be disappointed. Under his authoritarian rule, Mr Kadyrov has cowed the separatists and terrified their families through torture and abduction. The capital, Grozny, flattened by Russian bombs, has been rebuilt, and the airport reopened. But two wars have left psychological and physical scars on the civilian population with large numbers of people suffering from high levels of anxiety, insomnia and depression. As the military conflict with Russia fades into the background with only sporadic clashes now reported, and western leaders no longer openly challenge Russia on its human rights abuses in the republic, humanitarian needs remain critical.

Zimbabwe

With each new headline warning of economic meltdown in Zimbabwe the litany of impossible statistics has grown this year: inflation at 12,000 per cent, three million fleeing the country, 85 per cent unemployment. Under this extraordinary strain, what had been among the best healthcare systems in Africa has collapsed. As many as 3,000 people are dying every week from HIV/Aids and the chronic absence of life-extending antiretroviral drugs is accelerating this death march.

As many as four million people are in danger of starvation according the World Food Programme and the fuel crisis means that rural clinics are treating patients who have sometimes walked for days in search of medical treatment. The fate of the 83-year-old President, Robert Mugabe, continues to dominate coverage of the country that was once seen as the poster boy of post-colonialism, but it is the impoverished people of this beautiful southern African country paying the price of a man-made crisis.

Central African Republic

While neighbouring Chad and the western Sudan region of Darfur have made their way into global media coverage, the tiny landlocked Central African Republic finds itself starved of attention. This "phantom state" in the middle of Africa has no government institutions functioning outside the capital, in the north bandits and warring factions constitute the law of the land. Rights groups say hundreds of civilians have been executed and at least 100,000 people caught in the crossfire of rival armed groups have fled their villages and are hiding in forests and bush. Complicating a perilous internal situation are the CAR's unpredictable neighbours. The potential for the whole region to tip over into chaos is immense. A small contingent of EU peacekeepers is due to be deployed in the New Year.

Democratic Republic of Congo

With the country's first democratic elections in decades successfully completed in 2006, the Congolese might have been forgiven for expecting an easier time in 2007. But those out in the east, in the North Kivu region, have seen little sign of the stability that re-elected President Joseph Kabila promised. Instead, fighting between armed groups has raged for much of the year and the government is in open combat with rebel leader Laurent Nkunda. Hundreds of thousands of homeless people are hiding in the forest because their villages are no longer safe. They are scavenging food to stay alive and trying to dodge the cholera that is rampant throughout much of the region. And for the women living in this area, there is another nightmare to face: sexual violence is alarmingly high. A peace conference has been scheduled for next week to try to calm the troubled region, but few are optimistic of a rapid solution.

Tuberculosis

Kairat, from Uzbekistan, on the right, was among the 500,000 people to be diagnosed with multi-drug-resistant tuberculosis this year. But he was one of the lucky ones, moving to one of the few hospitals in the region to get specialist care. But even those who do get treatment have to rely on a highly toxic and expensive cocktail of drugs that often trigger violent side-effects and has to be taken for two years. Amazingly, there have been no major advances in treatment of the disease since the 1960s, and the most commonly used test to diagnose TB was developed at the end of the 19th century and detects only half the cases. An estimated $900m is needed every year for research and development but only $206m has been made available.