To have a better understanding and empathy for those Palestinians, this Zmag article talks about the situation around a few small former Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Around the former settlements of Ganim and Kadim (population: 300) lie the Palestinian city of Jenin and many smaller satellite villages.
As the article says: "According to a map made by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, there are currently five major trenches, three fixed checkpoints, two earthen mounds, and three roadblocks in the area – all barring Palestinian freedom of movement between villages as well as the city of Jenin, all purportedly to protect of the tiny settlements of Ganim and Kadim. "

What this means essentially is that tiny Israeli settlements exist at the expense of larger Palestinian towns around them as everything is geared towards the luxury and protection of the Israeli settlers while larger numbers of neighboring Palestinians are made to suffer from isolation and poverty due to lack of access to surrounding areas including fertile land, long waits through checkpoints for travel, poor infrastructure, barren land and general poor economic and physical conditions.

This is a long, extensive article on the Darfur crisis in Sudan and the sinister role of oil.

The Darfurian genocide has resulted in deaths of hundreds of thousands and the forced migration of millions to refugee camps across the border in Chad.
The author states that oil is the main reason for inactivity by the US who do not want to risk losing access to precious oil in Sudan, which they would if they imposed sanctions on it.
As well, the long-running civil war between the government and the oppressed South has only recently been ended with a tense peace agreement so the US is now eager to move in as have oil companies from other countries.

Millions in slavery today

Forced labour - a global problem as this BBC newsreport says.
Actually forced labour is too restrained and vague a term to describe what is essentially modern-day slavery and human trafficking.
From kidnapped teen prostitutes to sex slaves to child soldiers and labourers, the range of "forced labourers" is wide and happens all over the world, especially in South Asia, Latin America and West Africa.
12.3 million indeed.

The BBC has this in-depth section on modern-day slavery here. News reports, photos, videos, and statistics on this disturbing issue are presented.

Terrorism experts? Hardly.

A fine article on American media coverage and hyping up of "terrorists" and the terrorist threat. Many times, so-called terrorism experts never get into the real reasons why terorrists happen, such as political tensions and general rage against American foreign policies etc.

The Nation's Daily Outrage todayfeatures 5 ideas
on solutions addressing major issues. Regarding the world, eliminating poverty and curbing America's militarism sure look like good ideas, you can only wish that those in power get it, if ever.

The Gaza withdrawal has been seen in diferent lights by different people on different sides in the Middle East. Some see it as a cover for the Israelis to hold on to their settlements in the more precious land of the West Bank whilst seeming cooperative towards the Palestinians getting their own state but really just throwing a bone to the Palestinians in the form of barren Gaza, others see it as a great victory for the Palestinians. So one opinion is an Israeli victory while the other is a Palestinian victory. This spiked-online.com article says, it is neither.

From the troubles the Israeli army has been enduring in forcing out the settlers and dealing with anti-withdrawal protestors plus the heat that Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon has been receiving from politicians and some of his people, it's clear this is not an easy or desirable measure in pulling out from Gaza.
At the same time, the Palestinians seem to be unclear in who exactly will be running things, whether it's the PA, the official authority, or those other organisations like Hamas for instance.

Gwynne Dyer writes of how
basically the Israelis had to withdraw for their own safety.

Certainly when looking at scenes of the Israeli withdrawal, one sees and hears so much of the pain and anguish of many of the settlers and yes, one understands that they are losing their homes, yet compared to the suffering their Palestinian neighbors endure, the settlers' sadness seem like nothing. I mean, those settlers did get compensated by their government, plus they will move into new homes, they will not be homeless.
Here's a good article from the Guardian. The writer contrasts the circumstances of the settlers withdrawal with that of the Palestinians in Rafah when their homes were demolished by Israelis for "security reasons".

Ariel Sharon's speech on the Gaza pullout, something honest and surprising from a politican for a change.
He seemed to have compassion in acknowledging the Palestinians' sad plight:
"They are crowded into especially densely populated refugee camps, in poverty and suffering, in hothouses of increasingly rising hatred, without any horizon of hope."

He understood that life "without any horizon of hope" is a proven prescription for turning human beings into walking bombs.
That anger caused by this disparity would build up into rage and terror which would erupt into more fighting between Israeli military and Palestinian militants.

And the majority of Israelis seem to support Sharon's withdrawal plan from Gaza as this article says, and the withdrawal is going ahead of schedule.

Remember that shooting of some Brazilian illegal immigrant who was acting suspiciously in the London subway? And he was dressed suspiciously too. The police shot him dead then realised it was a big mistake.
Well the thing is, it turns out he was neither running through the subway or dressed in a bulky jacket. Footage shows his death was practically, done in cold blood.

The question must be, why did the police kill that man?? All their excuses have been proven dead wrong and false.

Here's a look at Afghanistan via a roundup of the state of affairs there by Reuter's Alertnet.
It has become Asia's poorest nation, and while the devastating conflicts and wars are well-known, it's also suffered terrible natural disasters including famine and flooding.

Lawlessness in rural areas, the presence of millions of mines and unexploded ordnance strewn throughout the countryside, and health crises including tuberculosis and cholera all blight the country though things seem to be improving in the main cities.

This article describes how hypocritical the cosy relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia is, especially given the US reasons to invade Iraq such as alleged involvement in 911 which we all know were fraudulent and for which the Saudis were more at fault. Yet, all is good for the Saudis given they're the number one supplier of oil in the world. In spite of their harsh, authoritarian, not to mention bigoted, regime, where the state religion happens to be the most fundamental extremist version (Wahhabism) of their faith, executions are carried out publicly and women are not allowed to drive, Saudi Arabia receives far less condemnation from the US and other western nations than Iraq, Iran and Cuba for instance.

In Gaza,an update on the exit of the settlers to make way for the Palestinians to their own land. Not surprisingly lots of violence, drama and threats from those settlers.

A short excerpt: "One policeman had burning acid thrown into his face and several people had bloody faces. Four officers were injured, police said. "

Sri Lanka peace at risk
following the assassination of Foreign Minister Kadirgama last Friday which has led to increased tension and fears of heavy violence to erupt in the country.

This island nation is currently under a state of an ongoing ceasefire to a long, brutal civil war between the Sinhalese and minority Tamils, many of which live in Toronto. The Tamils have long fought for a separate homeland on the island because of blatant discrimination by Sinhalese though their organisation, the LTTE, popularly called the Tamil Tigers is considered a terrorist group by many. The Tigers are suspected in the death of the Foreign Minister because of his outspokenness against them, though there's no real evidence.

Gaza pullout begins

Israel begins its much-anticipated and bitter withdrawal from the Gaza strip. 8,500 settlers are supposed to be moved out so that the land can be given back to the Palestinians to fully control which Israel has occupied since the Six day war of 1967. The Gaza land, however is only one piece of land owed to the Palestinians but settled by Israelis. The West bank is the other piece and is larger with 2.4 million Palestinians but still settled by Israel and there's fears that Israel is withdrawing from Gaza in order to consolidate their hold, both politically and militarily on the West bank.

Over the last few weeks, there's been some desperate tactics by settlers and anti-pullout Jewish radicals/extremists who strongly resist ceding any land to the Palestinians, including sending activists to the settlements to obstruct police and an emotional campaign to change Ariel Sharon's mind.

With this kind of mindset, it's hard to think who's worse, the Israeli government or the Israelis themselves. Mind you, I don't think all Israelis are like this, but certainly these activists and settlers represent a major part of Israeli society. In addition, many in Sharon's own right-wing party have fiercely criticsed his plan including former PM Benjamin Netahyahu who resigned from the cabinet in protest of the Gaza pullout.

These stories from Reuters Alertnet talk about the "forgotten" humanitarian crises, those that are largely unknown and unreported by most media.

-World's forgotten crises scream for attention
-Congo war tops AlertNet poll of 'forgotten' crises

The Congo war/conflict which has caused the most bloodshed of any war since WW2, the West Africa conflicts, the HIV/AIDS epidemic, the Colombian civil war, were all cited by experts as crises that are going on, little noticed, but still causing death,displacement and suffering.
Most telling is the fact that so much attention was paid to the tsunami and its high death toll that happened at the beginning of 2005, while several crises including the ones mentioned above have death tolls that dwarf the tsunami total, especially the Congo war which since the late 90s has resulted in the deaths of over 2 million.

Everyone knows about AIDS and that it affects so much people. For those in North America, AIDS hasn't reached a point where society is becoming devastated by it, but elsewhere it's a different story.
In Africa, there're some countries where at least a third of adult professionals including teachers, police and other workers are infected, and in Botswana, upwards of 40 percent of the total population is infected. In fact, deaths actually outnumber births in several Southern African countries.
Elsewhere AIDS is rising rapidly in India, China, SE Asia, the Caribbean and Russia.
AIDS in increasingly becoming a global tragedy as this article states.

Education, lifestyle changes, condoms and improved health care including cheaper drugs, these are all methods to combat AIDS.

A site with close-up photos, some graphic and sad, of crisis sites around the world. The site is amazing, and describes itself as the "web's ONLY daily magazine of uncensored news pictures online". Visit here and see.
They have a page on Niger, see here ,where there's a severe food shortage now.

However this is bizarre, the Niger president says there's no food shortage. In the very likely situation he's wrong, I say this kind of nonsense he says really reflects badly on African leaders, as it undermines their integrity. I mean, why are you denying there's a food crisis going on when hundreds of thousands of your people are starving?

Debt relief, trade justice and more aid were requests of NGOs and poor countries to the G8 at their summit this past July. While some debt relief and more aid were promised, trade justice in the form of removal of trade barriers and subsidies by developed countries was not achieved at all.
This article makes the case for an end to subsidies which rich countries such as US provide to their own farmers so giving them an huge advantage over farmers from poor countries on the world market.
This results in farmers of poor countries struggling to survive as they're overwhelmed by competition from richer countries and low prices. Also these farmers tend their farms manually, while those from rich countries often use mechanised methods. For example, there are about 25,000 American cotton farmers while Western African has over 5 million people who owe their living to cotton.

Blood and gravy- how (official) corruption goes on in Iraq with Halliburton. Besides Halliburton's extortion against competitors, its selfish and abominable behavior extends to its own employees, food servers who hail from poorer countries like Turkey and Phillipines. And just to show its evenhandedness, Halliburton treats American soldiers shabbily too, reserving low-quality, spoiled food for them. This other article also highlights the shabby treatment meted out to workers and soldiers as well, just scroll to the middle.
An excerpt:
"In videotaped testimony, Rory Mayberry told the hearing that instead of preparing meals for 600 Turkish and Filipino workers that were appropriate for their cultural practices and religious beliefs, KBR fed them "leftover food in garbage bags and boxes" after US troops had finished eating.
Mayberry said that on some occasions KBR also served "outdated or expired" food to soldiers, and that company bosses told employees not to follow time consuming sanitation rules issued by the military."

KBR is Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton.

Why is Africa so poor?
Because the white man exploited it so much?
Because those Africans can't stop being so barbaric towards each other?
Why??
This is a great and quite lengthy article about the factors of Africa's poverty.
http://globalpolitician.com/articledes.asp?ID=966&cid=8&sid=59
I recently came across it after seeing it linked on a forum.
The site is full of good articles dealing with politics, news and world events so it's worth taking a long look at.

The writer of that article makes a great point, that Africa's poverty cannot be to any one specific reason but to a combination of factors involving both the Europeans and Africans. These factors include the horrendousness of colonialism, the kleptocratic and tyrannic native regimes and leaders, and neo-colonialism.

There's a terrible famine crisis occuring in Niger and it's no surprise who are among the main culprits to blame. Though the article doesn't give much details on how the IMF and EU through their economic programmes forced staple food prices high, I strongly believe that reasoning.
Given the huge focus given to the recent Live8 concerts and G8 meetings with their spotlight on ending African poverty, the world's richest countries must certainly react quickly and strongly to end or alleviate this crisis.