UN peacekeepers stage great ape escape in Congo

UN peacekeepers stage great ape escape in Congo - New Scientist

Call it the great ape escape. UN peacekeepers have flown four young gorillas from a conflict zone where they were at risk of being poached.

The gorillas were taken to a rehabilitation centre 200 kilometres north of Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and will eventually be released into a nature reserve. "They are settling in very well, eating forest food and making nests," reports Katie Fawcett of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. The UN will fly in six more rescued gorillas from Rwanda in June.

They are eastern lowland gorillas, which number fewer than 5000 in the wild. In 2002, biologists warned that only 10 per cent might survive by 2030, and in March UNEP, the UN Environment Programme, said that most eastern lowland gorillas could be gone by 2020.

The problem, it says, is the region's long-running armed conflict: soldiers and refugees kill wildlife and destroy forests for money and food. And it is getting worse. "Poaching has really shot up, by militias and also the army," says Samantha Newport of Virunga National Park, which rescued the young lowland gorillas, and also shelters a third of the world's 720 remaining mountain gorillas. "It is really a very, very bad time."

Last week, soldiers attacked park staff five times, killing a ranger. UNEP wants UN peacekeepers to police border crossings, and stop the exports of charcoal, timber and minerals that finance the conflict.

UN: Yao Ming in campaign to fight HIV stigma in China

UNAIDS said Friday it had launched a campaign to address rampant discrimination against people living with HIV in China, with the help of Chinese NBA megastar Yao Ming.

The campaign, launched with China's health ministry, will see posters and videos of Yao and his fans, including some with HIV, displayed on giant screens in 12 cities across China, the United Nations agency said in a statement.

People who are HIV positive in China experience high levels of stigma and discrimination.

According to a report by UNAIDS, a quarter of medical staff and over a third of government officials and teachers developed negative and discriminatory attitudes towards people living with HIV after learning their status.

More than 12 percent of people with HIV had also been refused medical care at least once since they tested positive, UNAIDS said in their China Stigma Index report emailed to AFP.

"These results really underscore the importance of ensuring health care professionals receive appropriate training to reduce stigma and discrimination and increase their ability to provide appropriate services to people living with HIV," UNAIDS executive director Michel Sidibe said in the statement.

The report was based on a survey of more than 2,000 people living with HIV in China and is the first of its kind in the Asian nation.

It also found that more than 34 percent of those of working age had stopped working as a result of being HIV positive and over 55 percent had chosen not to attend social gatherings or had isolated themselves from family and friends.

"Building understanding and care from society as a whole for people living with HIV, together with eliminating discrimination, are key elements of the AIDS response," Huang Jiefu, China's vice minister of health, said in the statement.

The campaign will also see more than 30,000 posters distributed across China, the statement said.

China's health ministry estimates that at the end of 2009, 740,000 people were living with HIV in the country, and according to the latest data, 48,000 were infected this year, according to UNAIDS.

Climate action should boost energy access for poor: UN

Tackling climate change should also include providing low-carbon energy to the poor, UN agencies said Monday, pointing out that almost one third of the world's population remains in the dark at night.

The report, The Energy Access Situation in Developing Countries, is published by the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and World Health Organization (WHO).

It notes that 80 percent of people without access to electricity live in the world's least developed countries, led by sub-Saharan Africa. The figure is highest in Burundi, Chad and Liberia, where 97 percent have no electricity.

Minoru Takada, in charge of energy and the environment at the UNDP, said failure to gain access to reliable energy made it "particularly difficult" for such countries to attain the UN's Millennium Development Goals on reducing poverty rates by 2015.

Lack of access to cleaner, reliable sources of energy means that three billion people depend on traditional biomass and coal to cook their food or heat their homes, says the report.

The fuels are not only a significant contribution to global warming because of the partial combustion of the gases.

Particles and fumes from them are also blamed for the death of two million people each year from pneumonia, chronic lung disease and lung cancer.

Therefore, all we need to discuss and resolve now, is how to curb the growth in the population explosion and the inevitable demand for scarer resources, encroachment into wild spaces and rampant consumerism.