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New storm head toward cyclone-devastated Myanmar

AP, Yangon

Another powerful storm headed toward Myanmar's cyclone-devastated delta, where so little aid has reached that the U.N. warned on Wednesday of a "second wave of deaths" among an estimated 2 million survivors.

The Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center said there is a good chance that "a significant tropical cyclone" will form within the next 24 hours and head across the Irrawaddy delta area.

The area was pulverized by Cyclone Nargis on May 3, leaving at least 34,273 dead and 27,838 missing, according to the government. The U.N. says the death toll could exceed 100,000. An estimated 2 million survivors of the storm are still in need of emergency aid. But U.N. agencies and other groups have been able to reach only 270,000 people so far.

Bottlenecks, poor logistics, limited infrastructure and the military government's refusal to allow foreign aid workers have left most of the survivors living in miserable conditions without food or clean water. The government's efforts have been criticized as woefully slow. "The government has a responsibility to assist their people in the event of a natural disaster," said Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for Humanitarian Affairs.

"We are here to do what we can and facilitate their efforts and scale up their response. It is clearly inadequate and we do not want to see a second wave of death as a result of that not being scaled up," she said. The news of a second cyclone was not broadcast by Myanmar's state-controlled media. But Yangon residents picked up the news on foreign broadcasts and on the Internet.

"I prayed to the Lord Buddha, 'please save us from another cyclone. Not just me but all of Myanmar,'" said Min Min, a rickshaw driver, whose house was destroyed in Cyclone Nargis. Min Min, his wife and three children now live on their wrecked premises under plastic sheets. "Another cyclone will be a disaster because our relief center is already overcrowded. I am very worried," said Tun Zaw, 68, another Yangon resident who is living in a government relief center. Prof. Johnny Chan, a tropical cyclone expert with City University of Hong Kong, said the new cyclone would likely not be as severe as Nargis because it is already close to land, and cyclones need to be over sea to gain full strength.

"There will be a lot of rain but the winds will not be as strong," he told The Associated Press. Soldiers have barred foreign aid workers from reaching cyclone survivors in the hardest-hit areas, but gave access to an International Red Cross representative who returned to Yangon on Tuesday.

Bridget Gardner, the agency's country head, described tremendous devastation but also selflessness, as survivors joined in the rescue efforts.

"People who have come here having lost their homes in rural areas have volunteered to work as first aiders. They are humanitarian heroes," said Gardner.

Gardner's team visited five locations in the Irrawaddy delta. In one of them, they saw 10,000 people living without shelter as rain tumbled from the sky. "The town of Labutta is unrecognizable. I have been here before and now with the extent of the damage and the crowds of displaced people, it's a different place," Gardner was quoted as saying in a statement by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

In Labutta and elsewhere she said volunteers were giving medical aid to hundreds of people a day even though "they have no homes to go back to when they finish."

Some survivors of Cyclone Nargis were reportedly getting spoiled or poor-quality food, rather than nutrition-rich biscuits sent by international donors, adding to suspicions that the junta may be misappropriating foreign aid.

The military, which has ruled since 1962, has taken control of most supplies sent by other countries, including the United States, which began its third day of aid delivery Wednesday, with one of five scheduled flights taking off from Thailand to Yangon. Thailand's Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej was to fly into Yangon to try to persuade the junta to grant visas to international disaster experts. On Tuesday night, King Bhumibol Adulyadej warned that hardship would prevail if assistance isn't accepted, though he did not mention Myanmar by name.

Joining other individual and institutional donors around the world, Hollywood stars have donated $250,000 for survivors through Save the Children. The global aid agency said Not On Our Watch, a nonprofit group founded by actors George Clooney, Matt Damon, Brad Pitt and others, has also pledged more donations over a one-year period.

Getting to the worst-affected areas was getting more and more difficult, and the impending storm was expected to compound the misery of the survivors.

"They are already weak," said Pitt, the U.N. spokeswoman. A new storm will impact "people's ability to survive and cope with what happened to them t this is terrible."

U.N. spokeswoman Michele Montas said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had expressed concern that aid was being diverted to non-cyclone victims, but so far there was no evidence.

CARE Australia's country director in Myanmar, Brian Agland, said members of his local staff brought back some of the rotting rice being distributed in the devastated Irrawaddy delta.

Bush kicks off ME tour amid regional turmoil

AFP, Jerusalem

US President George W. Bush flies into Israel on Wednesday where he hopes to push ahead with Middle East peace efforts while marking the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state.

But renewed turmoil in the region bodes ill for the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks that have produced little tangible progress since they were revived at a conference hosted by Bush in November following a seven-year hiatus.

His Middle East trip takes place against a backdrop of deadly sectarian fighting in Lebanon that Bush has blamed on Syria and Iran, and defiance from Hamas over conditions for a truce in the embattled and besieged Gaza Strip. The US president will also visit Saudi Arabia to mark 75 years of US relations with the oil-rich kingdom, and hold talks in Egypt with regional leaders, including Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

He will not visit the Palestinian territories during his trip, which comes as Palestinians commemorate the exodus of hundreds of thousands of Arabs who lost their homes and their land when Israel was created in May 1948.

But the US president told the BBC Arabic service he had a message for the Palestinians: "I say to them that I care deeply about the Palestinian people and their future."

Israeli President Shimon Peres, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and a myriad of other dignitaries will welcome Bush to the sound of trumpets when his plane touches down at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv.

The visit is Bush's second since January -- after seven years in which he did not set foot in either Israel or the Palestinian territories.

His trip is anchored around the 60th anniversary of the creation of Israel but he also hopes to give new impetus to peace talks before his term ends in January.

The US president hopes a peace deal will shore up his legacy and has expressed confidence this could be done in the eight months left in his term.

"The vision of a (Palestinian) state is such a powerful notion and such an important notion for Israel's very existence, that I do believe that we have a chance to get something defined," Bush told reporters on the eve of the trip.

Olmert said on Tuesday "real progress" had been made in talks with the Palestinians and "understandings and agreements have been reached on very important matters."

"The discussions we are conducting with the Palestinian Authority are serious and very significant," Olmert said, without elaborating.

Curfew in Jaipur after killing 80 by series bomb blasts

Reuters, Jaipur

Authorities imposed a dawn to-dusk curfew in parts of India's historic western city of Jaipur on Wednesday, a day after eight bombs ripped through bustling streets, killing around 60 people and injuring 150.

The blasts within minutes of each other brought fears that Pakistani or Bangladeshi Islamist militant groups were trying to undermine a fragile peace process between India and Pakistan. But police have not yet blamed any particular group.

Bombs, many strapped to bicycles, exploded by a main temple and markets inside the pink-walled city. Slippers, broken pieces of glass and bits of clothes now litter the main market place. The bustling walled city's main courtyard was mostly deserted with a few people coming back to take personal belongings out of damaged cars and motorbikes left behind after the bombs.

Hundreds of policemen looked for unclaimed objects in the rubble, while many people in Jaipur preferred to stay indoors.

"It was very scary and most of us just ran as there was smoke and cries for help in every direction," said Anil Saxena, a businessman at a popular jewellery market.

Authorities cleaned a blood-splattered street in front of Hawa Mahal, or the "palace of wind," a five-storied sandstone building built by a Hindu king for his queen in 1799 AD.

Many Hindus offer prayers in temples on Tuesdays and officials say that was probably what attackers were looking for.

"There were hundreds of people there like me to offer prayers. I wonder what would have happened had the blast taken place inside the temple," Vikram Singh, an injured college student, said from his hospital bed.

India's junior home minister Sriprakash Jaiswal was quoted by local media as saying there "might be the involvement of some foreign hand in the blasts" - a phrase often used in India to refer to Pakistan.

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee is due to visit Islamabad in a week's time to review a four-year-old peace process between the two nations.

Only in the last week, Indian soldiers came under heavy cross-border fire trying to stop armed men from sneaking into its part of Kashmir. Later eight people were killed in clashes in a Kashmir village. It was some of the worse violence in Kashmir this year.

But police in Jaipur said they did not know who was behind Tuesday's bombings.

"It is too early to name one particular group and we are analyzing the material used to cause the blast to determine what it exactly contained," A.S. Gill, Rajasthan's police chief said.

Food prices hike increase malnutrition risk in South Asia: UNICEF

AFP, New Delhi

Children in South Asia are bearing the brunt of spiralling food prices as malnutrition is on the rise with millions at risk, the UN children's fund said Tuesday.

The price of rice and wheat has doubled under the worldwide pinch. Poor households are consuming one less meal or substituting expensive ingredients, David Toole, regional director of UNICEF South Asia, told a press briefing.

"When food prices double we have a near perfect storm affecting children in poverty," Toole said. In South Asia, "we are seeing increasing rates of malnutrition in the past several months in mostly western and midwestern areas. These are the poor areas."

At 42 percent, South Asia has the world's highest underweight prevalence.

"Because the rates of malnutrition in South Asia are so high, it's very hard to know if this is the cause for the change," he said, referring to the spiralling food prices.

Still, a spokeswoman for UNICEF South Asia said many youth were at risk from the food crisis, particularly in India, where at least 43 percent of children are already suffering from malnutrition.

"Nearly 1.5 to 1.8 million (Indian) children could become malnourished.

That is what we fear," said Sarah Crowe, the spokeswoman.

Toole said the higher food prices will persist for years since Asian economies have shifted their focus from agriculture to manufacturing.

"This is a problem that is not going away. It is likely to continue for a couple of years, and children will take the brunt of this," he said.

At a separate press conference, the Indian government said child malnutrition was a major challenge.

M.K. Bhan, secretary of India's biotechnology department, told AFP that if malnutrition was not addressed by the age of two, children become vulnerable to diabetes and heart conditions as adults.

"When Coca-Cola can infiltrate every village of this country, I can't see why this knowledge can't get to the people," Bhan said, noting that according to their data 46 percent of Indian children were suffering from malnutrition.

International health expert Robert Black said an existing Indian health scheme was wrongly targeted at school-age children, when it is too late to fix the problem.

Baghdad fighting kills 6 says Iraqi police

Reuters, Baghdad

Clashes between security forces and Shi'ite gunmen killed six people and wounded 28 in Baghdad overnight, Iraqi police said on Wednesday.

The clashes put further strain on a weekend agreement to halt nearly two months of fighting in the capital.

Police said gunmen fought U.S. and Iraqi forces in the east Baghdad stronghold of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. Five people were killed and 22 wounded overnight, police said, without giving details on the casualties.

Fighting also erupted in western Baghdad's Shula district, another bastion of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia. On Wednesday, heavy automatic weapon fire echoed through the streets of Shula as U.S. Apache attack helicopters hovered overhead. Shops were closed and residents stayed home. Police said one person had been killed and six wounded in the Shula fighting, which began on Tuesday.

A spokesman for U.S. forces in Baghdad, Lieutenant-Colonel Steven Stover, earlier said Tuesday had been quieter in Sadr City compared to previous days. He could not be immediately reached for comment on the latest fighting.

Iraq's ruling Shi'ite alliance and Sadr's opposition movement in parliament reached an agreement on Saturday to end fighting in Sadr City that has killed hundreds of people.

A senior political aide to Sadr has urged patience with the truce, saying it might take time to filter down.

It is not clear how much control Sadr has over some of the tens of thousands of gunmen who profess allegiance to him.

Fighting flared in late March when Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown against Shi'ite militias in Baghdad and the southern city of Basra.

Chad closes border with Sudan

AFP, Ndjamena

Chad closed its border with Sudan on Monday, its government said, ramping up tensions between the volatile neighbours after Khartoum accused Ndjamena of backing a rebel assault on the Sudanese capital.

The Chadian government ordered the "airtight sealing of the frontier in order to avoid all infiltration and suspect traffic" across its porous eastern border, and froze economic and cultural ties, a government statement said. The move aims "to ensure the security of its territory and citizens and protect its economic and cultural interests" and to "guard against all surprises," said the statement, issued after a meeting of Chad's ministers.

The border between Chad's volatile east and the stricken region of Darfur was crossed earlier this year by rebels as they launched an armed coup attempt -- the second in as many years -- against Chadian President Idriss Deby Itno.

Deby accused Sudan of backing the fighters whom his forces drove back in intense fighting when they stormed the Chadian capital in February.

Relations have been tense between the two countries since 2003 when war broke out in Darfur, sending hundreds of thousands of desperate refugees fleeing across the Chadian border.