No relief materials reached many remote areas in the south and south-west left battered by tidal surges whipped up by cyclone Aila even three days after the inundation in which thousands of people were marooned without food and drinking water.
The unofficial death toll rose to 178. The disaster management ministry on Thursday confirmed the death of 147 people.

The global economic downturn has aggravated human rights violations and distracted attention from abuses, Amnesty International said on Thursday.

The world faced a grave danger that "rising poverty and desperate economic and social conditions could lead to political instability and mass violence," the rights group's secretary-general, Irene Khan, wrote in its annual report.

Nearly 200 people have been killed by a cyclone that ripped through Bangladesh and eastern India, while millions remained marooned by floodwater or forced to live in shelters.

Zimbabwe is on the brink of having 100,000 infections of cholera, a preventable disease that has already killed 4,283 people there and remains a serious threat, the Zimbabwean Red Cross and its partners said on Tuesday.

Swelled rivers that have flooded homes to their rooftops and forced more than 260,000 people from their homes in northeastern Brazil will probably take a few more weeks to recede, Brazilian authorities said over the weekend.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has donated $15 million (Rs 1.7 billion) worth of vital food aid for Sri Lanka to the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The food, consisting of wheat, lentils and vegetable oil, will be distributed to a large number of displaced and conflict-affected people in the northern and eastern parts of Sri Lanka.

In this latest study, ESCAP examines food crisis in Asia-Pacific and its relations to economic stability. Identifies 25 countries as hotspots in the region with the worst problems existing in South, Southwest as well as in Southeast Asia and details regional framework of action to improve food security.

Traditional approaches to supplying food are an inefficient 'band aid', says Pedro A. Sanchez. New evidence shows that helping farmers to help themselves is more effective and would be six times cheaper.

World Food Programme report says India tops world hunger chart

This study investigates the observed discrepancy between real and perceived commercial risks associated with the use of genetically modified (GM) products in developing countries.

It focus particularly on the effects of GM-free private standards set up by food companies in Europe and other countries on biotechnology and biosafety policy decisions in food-exporting developing countries.

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