Humanitarian Crisis

WASHINGTON - The House resoundingly approved President Bush's plan for a new global campaign against AIDS yesterday, authorizing $15 billion to help fight a rampaging epidemic that has killed or infected tens of millions and threatens political stability in some of the world's poorest countries. The legislation, which passed 375-41 despite the misgivings of some influential conservatives, breaks new ground for a Republican-led Congress often skeptical of foreign aid. Its commitment of $15 billion over five years to fight AIDS and two other diseases - tuberculosis and malaria - that often afflict people with AIDS would dwarf the $1.6 billion the United States now spends annually on the international health crisis.

IN A MONTH'S time, the U.N. Security Council expects the marauding Arab militias of western Sudan to be disarmed. An unrealistic expectation it may be, but the U.N. deadline put Sudan on notice last week that consequences will follow its failure to stem the violence against African Muslims in the Darfur region. The Security Council resolution reflects a growing reluctance to let Sudan deal with this humanitarian crisis in its own sweet time. There are ample reasons to press Khartoum to act now. The ethnic violence in Darfur has claimed as many as 30,000 lives and displaced 1.2 million Sudanese since fighting broke out between black African rebels and government-backed militias in January 2003.

THE NEXT wave of death is approaching. That's the very real fear of aid workers tending to 1.2 million Sudanese who have fled a campaign of ethnic violence in their native villages. If food, clean water and medicine don't reach the displaced refugees struggling in vast areas of Darfur province, aid groups say, a public health crisis is inevitable. Already, there are signs of it: An outbreak of infectious hepatitis E has hit west Darfur, according to a report last week from the World Health Organization.

JOHN C. Danforth says he is both awed and a little annoyed by American idealism. As U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and during his earlier career as a U.S. senator, Mr. Danforth said he's been frequently approached by countrymen who were appalled at whatever humanitarian crisis was under way and demanded we move swiftly to fix it. Such encounters are especially frequent now as the violence, horror and death in Darfur mount daily. "Some have said if the U.S. really cared, if we really cared enough, we'd stop it. ... We'd put an end to this atrocity," Ambassador Danforth related in a speech at Georgetown University last week.

Renaissance Festival Web site launched The Annapolis-based Web development company Vansant Creations has designed and launched a Web site for the Maryland Renaissance Festival that opens Saturday in Crownsville. The new site, www.renn fest.com, organizes all the information available on the festival and is more easily updated. Information: 410-266-0888. Coast Guard Auxiliary holds boating safety course The U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary will hold a Boating Safety and Seamanship course from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays starting Sept.

JERUSALEM -- Israel said yesterday that it would accept a decision by international mediators to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, provided the funds do not fall into the hands of the Hamas-led government. The so-called Quartet, consisting of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia, agreed a day earlier on a temporary mechanism for helping the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority to pay for urgently needed humanitarian needs such as medical supplies and other goods and services.

The International Committee of the Red Cross warns that conditions for ordinary Iraqis are bad, and getting worse. Pierre Kraehenbuehl, director of operations for the ICRC, says there is no evidence that the security crackdown in Baghdad has done anything to improve security or living conditions for its residents. In just the year following the February 2006 bombing of the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra, which may have been the definitive moment in the turn toward sectarian warfare, 106,000 families have been displaced from their homes, notes a Red Cross report released last week.

JERUSALEM -- Israel declared the Hamas-run Gaza Strip to be "hostile territory" yesterday, setting the stage for possible cutoffs of fuel and electricity, and overshadowing a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to prepare for a November peace conference. Israel did not say when it might cut the flow of power or fuel to the impoverished coastal enclave. A statement from the office of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said his government would study the legal ramifications before imposing such sanctions and seek to avoid a humanitarian crisis.

Oprah show highlights bill targeting child predators CHICAGO: A few weeks after cheering presidential candidate Barack Obama at the Democratic National Convention, Oprah Winfrey will take up a different kind of political activism. Today's episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show will be dedicated to a Senate bill targeting child predators, according to a release issued Friday by Chicago-based Harpo Productions. During the show, which will detail the "extent and pervasiveness of child pornography trafficking in America," Winfrey will ask viewers to contact their senators about U.S. Senate Bill 1738, the Protect Our Children Act, Harpo said.

Series ignores success in effort to rebuild Iraq The Baltimore Sun's recent coverage of the Iraq war borders on treasonous ("Sun special report: Exodus from Iraq," Dec. 28-Dec. 30). In three related articles, reporter Matthew Hay Brown chronicles what he determines to be a "humanitarian crisis." Unfortunately for Mr. Brown, the definition of the term "crisis" requires the situation to be in the direst of straights, when in fact the situation in Iraq is improving daily. In his highly questionable understanding of the region, Mr. Brown neglects the countless humanitarian relief efforts and reconstruction projects that are helping to improve the lives of ordinary Iraqis every day. Most notably, while constantly assailing the U.S. war effort and the subsequent rebuilding operations by focusing on negative information and ignoring the unprecedented amount of positive news coming out of Iraq on a daily basis, Mr. Brown neglects to include any interviews with U.S. service members and commanders on the ground.