Slow ride in Atlanta, big pain in Mogadishu

A yellow taxi sits idle at Hartsfield International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, leaving its Somali immigrant driver visibly frustrated. [...] Amid a financial crunch that has many of Hagi's customers feeling the pinch, fewer fares and mounting bills have not stopped him from sending a big chunk of his paycheck home to his family. [...] Hagi and his family are not alone. Figures from the United Nations put nearly half of Somalia's population in need of humanitarian assistance, according to a report released in September. One in six Somali children under the age of 5 are acutely malnourished, the report found, and food is getting more costly. [...] Pitched battles between an Islamic insurgency and Ethiopian-backed transitional government forces have left thousands dead and rendered what many have called a "failed state" now teetering on the brink of its worst humanitarian crisis in over a decade, according to a World Food Program report. The United Nations says "all information indicates that the key factors driving this humanitarian crisis will continue to worsen over the coming months."

ZIMBABWE: Tsvangirai appeals for aid ahead of talks

Morgan Tsvangirai, embattled leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe's main opposition party, has urged humanitarian agencies to continue aid to the country, and announced plans to reopen negotiations with President Robert Mugabe. [...] The World Food Programme has predicted that 5.5 million people - half the population - will need food aid in the first quarter of 2009.

The people crunch

Workers waiting at airports: some flying off to seek modest fortunes, others returning to poor homelands whose main export is people. These images of the global labour market in the early 21st century are starting to fade as economic times get harder, both in countries that take in migrants and (partly as a result) in countries that send them out. [...] As economies turn, migrants suffer. Many industries where they predominate (tourism in Ireland, financial services in Britain, construction in America and Spain) have shed jobs fast. Spanish unemployment is already 12%; many thousands of migrants are said to be claiming benefits. [...] The past few years have shown how important remittances have become in alleviating poverty and spurring investment in poor countries. In some cases they account for bigger flows of capital than aid or foreign investment. They spread wealth from rich to poor countries, but now remittances are being squeezed.

IDF to step up flow of humanitarian aid

The IDF plans to open more crossing points into Gaza starting on Wednesday, in an effort to vastly increase aid to the civilian population. Until now, food, medical supplies and animal feed have mostly gone in through Kerem Shalom, which was designed as a minor crossing point. The IDF now hopes to open the grain chute at the Karni crossing, a major passage way for goods, to allow for the transport of items such as corn, wheat and animal feed. [...] Separately, the European Union's aid chief blasted Israel's military action in Gaza. "It is evident that Israel does not respect international humanitarian law," EUaid commissioner Louis Michel said. Michel said his remark was based on expert accounts, the number of civilian casualties and the difficulty of getting humanitarian aid to the needy. He told Belgium's La Libre newspaper that Israel's actions were all the more difficult to accept because they come from a democracy. But as he stood at the Kerem Shalom crossing on Tuesday morning, Daly Belgasmi, who heads the regional bureau of the UN's World Food Program that provides assistance to 265,000 Gazans, had more positive things to say about Israel and the Kerem Shalom operation. Behind him, a line of trucks waited at the gate to Kerem Shalom to unload their cargo. "This is a life-line operation for us," Belgasmi said.