Burundi News Blog @newzblogz.com

BUJUMBURA, Burundi - If we need any more proof that life is unfair, it is that subsistence villagers here in Africa will pay with their lives for our refusal to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

When we think of climate change, we tend to focus on Alaskan villages or New Orleans hurricanes. But the people who will suffer the worst will be those living in countries like this, even though they don't contribute at all to global warming.

My win-a-trip journey with a student and teacher has taken us to Burundi, which the World Bank's latest report shows to be the poorest country in the world. People in Burundi have an annual average income of $100, nearly one child in five dies before the age of 5, and life expectancy is 45.

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BUJUMBURA, Burundi — If we need any more proof that life is unfair, it is that subsistence villagers here in Africa will pay with their lives for our refusal to curb greenhouse gas emissions.

When we think of climate change, we tend to focus on Alaskan villages or New Orleans hurricanes. But the people who will suffer the worst will be those living in countries like this, even though they don’t contribute at all to global warming.

My win-a-trip journey with a student and teacher has taken us to Burundi, which the World Bank’s latest report shows to be the poorest country in the world. People in Burundi have an annual average income of $100, nearly one child in five dies before the age of five, and life expectancy is 45.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - War, refugee crises and large-scale rape of women in sub-Saharan African nations have not spawned higher HIV infection rates in this region hard hit by AIDS, according to a study contradicting a common belief.

Writing in the Lancet medical journal on Thursday, researchers said they tracked HIV infection rates in seven sub-Saharan nations beset by conflict -- Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda.

Of the 40 million people worldwide infected with the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS, about 25 million are in the poor African countries south of the Sahara.

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) Declaring that Somalia is at "a critical crossroads," Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi on Thursday urged U.N. peacekeepers to take over from a small African Union force in the country's capital to help restore security and deal with terrorism.

But key U.N. Security Council countries said there must be a peace to keep before the world body sends troops to Somalia.

Gedi blamed the international community for failing to supply funds and logistics so that the bulk of an 8,000-strong African Union force authorized in January could deploy to Somalia.

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How much would you pay to enjoy six hours away from your fellow humans, in a chair that reclines? Fifteen hundred dollars an hour -- or even more? And if someone invited you to spend $9,000 to pass a long afternoon in a fairly cramped lounge, would you accept? I often think that the airline executive who came up with the idea of business class should get his name on an endowed chair at the Harvard Business School -- and his face on a most-wanted poster.These seats somewhere toward the middle of ...

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