Natural disasters and calamities have often hit us without prior warning.

Expressing grave concern about the appalling proportions of the humanitarian crisis affecting the country,

As all are aware, Bangladesh itself has been relentlessly buffeted by the vagaries of nature.

Poverty, hunger and disease continue to afflict a vast proportion of women and men around the world.

In Africa, competition for natural resources is one of the main factors for the conflicts that have been plaguing the continent.

When tsunamis, hurricanes or earthquakes strike and cause destruction, we act swiftly at least in most cases.

Every financial crisis is inherently unknowable before it occurs, and as it occurs.

Failure to hold a referendum would be a setback for the entire international community and could have consequences extending even beyond the conflict between the Saharans and the Moroccan authorities.

Severe economic distress and political pressure are buffeting relationships among citizens, sovereign states, and supranational institutions such as the European Central Bank.

14. Notes with deep concern the severity of the humanitarian crisis that still affects the country and the existence of millions of Afghan internally displaced persons and refugees

With competition strong across the economy, they say that we can look forward to a generation of relatively high asset prices and relatively low real interest rates worldwide.

At the end of his account, Wild expressed the hope that the information they had brought back might prove of value in helping to solve the great natural problems that still beset us .

Uruguay is thus joining in the efforts of the United Nations in Haiti, not to impose solutions to the political problems that beset that tormented country, but, rather, to help its people and their authorities find their own solutions.

It was a remarkable speech. And it provides room for hope that, faced with the current crises in the EU and in Eastern Europe, German foreign policy may finally be finding its feet.

A third factor that weighs in the balance in analyzing what sort of government the FMLN may deliver is the economic crisis that is battering Latin America.

BUDAPEST The re run of the Greek parliamentary election on June 17 is only the latest symptom of the most serious crisis to plague Western democracies and open societies since the 1960 s.

The challenges facing the Greek economy and the ensuing intervention from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help withstand further damages from the fall out look familiar to many African bloggers.

China urgently needs to maintain an annual growth rate of over 9 as a bulwark against social disorder.

The solution of the Palestine issue will produce a positive effect of equal magnitude in the region, promoting the prospects of resolving other political, social and economic problems that afflict the region and advancing the aims of international peace and security.

Thus, he was at the forefront of the creation, in 1975, of the Economic Community of West African States, which as the Assembly is aware has set about in a remarkable way to resolve the crises and conflicts that unfortunately continue to shake the subregion.

MANAMA The fervor for change that inspired revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt is now rocking Bahrain. But the uprising in Manama differs from the mass protests that turned out longtime rulers in North Africa. Indeed, sectarian fault lines, together with the security forces complete fealty to the monarchy, seriously diminish the likelihood of peaceful regime change.

At present, we are focusing on short term job generation, microcredit schemes and other measures that provide some degree of hope, in particular for young people, to pre empt dramatic expressions of frustration.

The euro represents the dollar s strongest competitor, so long as the eurozone successfully addresses its current sovereign debt crisis through bailouts and longer term institutional reforms that safeguard the gains from a long running single market project.

And what ended up happening is that an entire emerging public health system became convinced that it was the smell that was killing everybody, that was creating these diseases that would wipe through the city every three or four years.

Many identify the African continent with idyllic postcards of safaris on its great prairies or with the much repeated images of the ills afflicting that continent, as if nothing else was worth mentioning and as if its men and women did not exist.

In replacing the Organization of African Unity with the African Union, Africa, for its part, is making a huge effort to control conflict on the continent, as well as to spread observance of human rights and pursue the struggle against poverty.

The ending of Liberia's long lasting civil war in 2003 illustrates the importance of leadership, diplomacy and institutional design as much as the successful prevention of a full scale civil war in Macedonia in 2001, or the successful ending of the conflict in Aceh in Indonesia in 2005.