When Federal Information Minister Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said on Saturday that sports and healthy activities was the path to ending terrorism, did she mean her daily habits and appearance was an indication that she may in fact be a full and proper terrorist and extremist? Where does she get these correlations from, Narnia? If [...]

Did Dr. Firdous Awan call herself a terrorist? is a post from: PakMediaBlog All Rights Reserved.

Photo: AMREF UK

In December’s post, Expectant American Mothers Help Raise Funds for Mothers in Developing Nations,  the Imagine Me & You contest finalists had been announced.  The Million Moms Challenge has now chosen a winner from its photo contest, in which hundreds of expectant mothers from across the United States submitted images with original messages, written on their “baby bumps,” stating their wishes and dreams for their children.  In partnership with ABC News and the United Nations Foundation, the contest was aimed at engaging a million Americans with millions of mothers in developing countries around issues that impact pregnancy, child birth, and children’s health.  The contest is part of ABC News’ year-long global health series, “Be the Change: Save a Life,” sponsored in part by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and focused on health conditions endured by those in poor developing countries.

The winning photo and message was submitted by Allison Dearstyne, a ninth grade history teacher from Maryland, and was selected by Anne Geddes from among the 12 finalists.  Dearstyne’s winning ”baby bump” message read: “May You Stay Forever Young,” a lyric from a favorite Bob Dylan song and a dream that all mother’s across the globe hold in their hearts for their children. “I’m moved by how many mothers have come together through this contest,” said Geddes. “The Million Moms Challenge designed this contest to celebrate the dream of mothers everywhere for healthy, happy babies who will grow to reach their full potential. I’m looking forward to meeting the Dearstyne family and continuing to be part of this strong community of mothers helping mothers.” (UN Dispatch).

Photo: Million Mom's Challenge

While the contest and it’s winning photos leave most full of fuzzy warm feelings as they ooh and aah at the creative and cute “baby bumps” and their messages of love and hope, the real motivation behind the contest runs much deeper.  While the mothers, and their expectant bundles of joy, are privileged enough to have access to adequate medical care and nutrition, for expectant mothers in developing nations the story of pregnancy and childbirth is often haunted by fear, as every 90 seconds a woman dies during pregnancy or childbirth. That’s 1,000 girls and women a day, more than half a million women every year.  Additionally, for every woman who dies, 20 or more experience serious complications, and 1 million babies are stillborn each year because their mothers could not access the proper medical care. Additionally, some 8 million children will die this year before they are 5 years old, that’s almost 21,000 children each day.  More than 80 percent of these deaths could have easily been prevented.

Working for the survival of mothers and children is a crucial international development priority that must remain on the global agenda. Both the International Conference on Population and Development and Millennium Development Goals have set a goal to reduce maternal mortality between 1990 and 2015 by 75 percent.  The simple yet imperative strategic goals include, ensuring that all women have access to contraception to avoid unintended pregnancies and reduce unsafe abortions (see the recent post, Unsafe abortions on the rise),  provide all pregnant women with access to adequate medical care at the time of birth, and see that mothers with complications have timely access to quality emergency obstetric care.

Therefore, the message behind the Million Mom’s Challenge is simple and clear.  By educating communities and bringing awareness to the plight of mothers and children in developing nations we can save millions of lives.  The solutions for saving mothers and their babies are simple and not far from our grasp.  For less than a dollar a day, we can provide mothers and their babies with proper nutrition, proper training for midwives, vaccinations for children, and simple technologies to deliver crucial health information to women and health workers in remote areas.  To be part of the message and the solution, join the Million Mom’s Challenge here to see how you can save the lives of women and children around the world.

The Roosevelt Institute recently celebrated the anniversary of the birth of President Franklin Roosevelt. In this post on the Institute’s website, Senior Fellow David Woolner reviews some of FDR’s accomplishments for a generation that may be more familiar with Facebook than fireside chats. Most of the essay has to do with the domestic economic institutions created during the New Deal but he also notes those international institutions created to preserve the peace of the post-war order under U.S. leadership:

Finally, we should remember that prior to World War II the United States had turned inward and refused to play a leading role in world affairs. Convinced that the Second World War had come about in part from the global economic depravity that helped give rise to fascism in Europe and Asia, FDR used the war as a catalyst for the construction of a new political, strategic, and economic order. It was based in large part on the extension of American moral and military power through the United Nations and the extension of American economic power through the creation of the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and a new multilateral economic system that would open up the world’s markets and natural resources to freer trade. Taken together, these measures resulted in a permanent restructuring of the world’s social, economic, and strategic makeup. They formed the basis of the new world order that has given rise to the globalization of the world’s economy and the American-led multilateral security system that the United States has played a leading role in since 1945.

As much as I would like to believe, with Woolner, that these institutions still form the basis of a stable world order, it’s clear that time has taken a toll on their legitimacy and credibility. Take the United Nations, for example. Just today, the Security Council failed to pass a resolution on Syria hours after an attack on the city of Hom’s by Assad’s security forces, an attack that some are calling a massacre. U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice voiced “disgust” over the veto by permanent members Russia and China that has derailed any hope of coordinated action to end the violence. The U.S. should be proud of having assembled a broad diplomatic consensus with allies in Europe and the Arab League. In the end, though, it was no match for the veto power wielded by permanent members.

The UN was born in the aftermath of a world war started by dictators and now permanent members of the Security Council are defending a dictator. What would FDR think?

Image Credit: Wikipedia

Phobos-Grunt Re-entry Map

The first major space-related event of 2012 is upon us. The failed Russian Mars probe, Phobos-Grunt, crash landed today in the Pacific Ocean – or was it the Atlantic Ocean? After months of speculation, even the experts seem to disagree about the final resting place of the doomed satellite. The Russian Ministry of Defense, and according to some accounts, U.S. Strategic Command, are reporting the satellite fell into the Pacific Ocean to the west of Chile and Argentina.

“Phobos-Grunt’s fragments were to fall into the waters of the Pacific Oceans at 21:45 Moscow time. This is according to the calculations made in the Space Control Centre,” said Aleksey Zolotukhin, a representative from the Russian Defense Ministry’s space office.

Others, including Russian scientists and leaders in Russia’s aerospace industry, are claiming Phobos-Grunt actually landed in the Atlantic Ocean, northeast of Brazil.

“The probe’s fragment fell in an area in the Atlantic Ocean, with the coordinates of 310.7 degrees east longitude and 18.2 degrees south latitude in the vicinity of the Brazilian coast,” claimed an unnamed source.

Check out #PhobosGrunt on Twitter for even more conflicting information, or click here, here, and here, to follow the conversation.

Launched in November 2011, the satellite was on a mission to explore Phobos, one of two moons orbiting Mars, but stalled in low-Earth orbit gradually falling back toward the Earth’s surface. The mission, which was supposed to last three years, was an ambitious step forward for Russia’s space agency Roscosmos. If successful, Phobos-Grunt would have been the first ever spacecraft to return to Earth with soil samples from the moon of another planet. The Planetary Society, an NGO based in California which is expected to make headlines later this year for its efforts advancing commercial space exploration, also loaded Phobos-Grunt with a variety of bacteria to test whether or not life could ever “planet-hop.” All in all, Russia spent nearly $170 million on the failed Phobos-Grunt mission.

Regardless of the exact re-entry point, what exactly do we need to do (or not do) when a satellite comes crashing down? Here’s a “beginner’s guide” to surviving a space junk re-entry event. It’s worth a quick glance given the sudden increase in falling satellites. Interestingly, the legal implications highlighted in the guide (No. 7, “Be aware of the legal situation”) state that the 1967 Outer Space Treaty and 1972 Space Liability Treaty require the launching state to pay compensation for any (physical) damage resulting from a crash. So in the event Phobos-Grunt, or future space junk crashes, cause damage here on Earth, it will be the responsibility of the launching state to pay for repairs. That said, there is not much of a chance for bodily injury, so there is no need to run out and get space insurance just yet. The chances of any one person being hit by a falling satellite are extremely rare.

More seriously, what caused this failure? After all, this was suppose to be Russia’s major Mars-related mission. With the failure of this Phobos-Grunt, NASA’s Curiosity rover, which is already well on its way to the Red Planet, will continue to give the United States the upper hand in terms of Mars exploration.

According to an interview this week, Vladimir Popovkin, head of Roscosmos, says (to the surprise of many) foul play cannot be ruled out as a factor. “We don’t want to accuse anybody, but there are very powerful devices that can influence spacecraft now,” Mr. Popovkin said. “The possibility they were used cannot be ruled out.” Slate.com provides us with another quote from the interview, which was given in Russian to the newspaper Izvestia and translated by various sources, “the frequent failure of our space launches, which occur at a time when they are flying over the part of Earth not visible from Russia, where we do not see the spacecraft and do not receive telemetric information, are not clear to us.”

Mr. Popovkin did not directly accuse the United States, or any other country, of foul play and was most likely blowing off steam after a series of failed launches this past year. In the same interview, Mr. Popovkin also acknowledged that the failure was more likely related to aging technology. “If we had not sent it to Mars in 2011, we would have had to throw it away.”

According to ABC News, “in the half century since the space age began, Russia has tried and failed 19 times to reach Mars.”

(Photo Source: Space.com)