Road Traffic Accidents Increase Dramatically Worldwide

(March 2006) Road traffic accidents—the leading cause of death by injury and the tenth-leading cause of all deaths globally—now make up a surprisingly significant portion of the worldwide burden of ill-health. An estimated 1.2 million people are killed in road crashes each year, and as many as 50 million are injured, occupying 30 percent to 70 percent of orthopedic beds in developing countries hospitals.¹And if present trends continue, road traffic injuries are predicted to be the third-leading contributor to the global burden of disease and injury by 2020.²

Developing countries bear a large share of the burden, accounting for 85 percent of annual deaths and 90 percent of the disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) lost because of road traffic injury.³ And since road traffic injuries affect mainly males (73 percent of deaths) and those between 15 and 44 years old, this burden is creating enormous economic hardship due to the loss of family breadwinners (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1 Road Traffic Deaths Worldwide by Sex and Age Group, 2002

Source: WHO Global Burden of Disease Project, Version 1 (2002).

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Road traffic injuries are predictable and preventable, but good data are important to understand the ways in which road safety interventions and technology can be successfully transferred from developed countries where they have proven effective. Awareness of the consequences of road traffic injuries is lagging among policymakers and the general public. What's needed is incorporation of comprehensive road safety programs into national planning in developing countries.

Profile of the Problem

In developed countries, road traffic death rates have decreased since the 1960s because of successful interventions such as seat belt safety laws, enforcement of speed limits, warnings about the dangers of mixing alcohol consumption with driving, and safer design and use of roads and vehicles. For example, road traffic fatalities declined by 27 percent in the United States and by 63 percent in Canada from 1975 to 1988. But traffic fatalities increased in developing countries during the same period—by 44 percent in Malaysia and 243 percent in China, for instance.⁴

More than one-half of all road traffic deaths globally occur among people ages 15 to 44—their most productive earning years. Moreover, the disability burden for this age group accounts for 60 percent of all DALYs lost because of road traffic accidents.⁵ The costs and consequences of these losses are significant. Three-quarters of all poor families who lost a member to road traffic death reported a decrease in their standard of living, and 61 percent reported they had to borrow money to cover expenses following their loss.⁶ The World Bank estimates that road traffic injuries cost 1 percent to 2 percent of the gross national product (GNP) of developing countries, or twice the total amount of development aid received worldwide by developing countries.⁷

As in developed countries, driver impairment is an important component of road traffic accidents in developing countries. Driving at excess speeds, while under the influence of alcohol or drugs, while sleepy or tired, when visibility is compromised, or without protective gear for all vehicle occupants are major factors in crashes, deaths, and serious injuries.

In general, pedestrians, cyclists, and moped and motorcycle riders are the most vulnerable road users as well as the heaviest users of roads in poor countries. Most people who use public transportation, bicycles, or mopeds and motorcycles or who habitually walk are poor, illuminating the higher risk borne by those from less privilege.⁸ In Asia, for instance, motorized two- and three-wheelers (such as motorized rickshaws) will make up the anticipated growth in numbers of motor vehicles.⁹ Figure 2 shows the higher proportion of deaths among these groups in developing countries.¹⁰

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Figure 2
Proportion of Road Users Killed in Various Modes of Transport As A Percent of All Fatalities, Selected Countries

Country	Pedestrians	Bicyclists	Motorized vehicles		Others
			Two-wheeled	Four-wheeled
Thailand	47	6	36	12	--
Malaysia	15	6	57	19	3
United States	13	2	5	79	1

*Note: Dates for above data vary according to city and country: Thailand, 1987; Malaysia, 1994; and United States, 1995. 
Source: Dinish Mohan, "Traffic Safety and Health in Indian Cities," in Journal of Transport and Infrastructure no. 9 (2002).

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Nato bolsters Eastern Europe against Russia

Nato's wider actions - it also plans to open a training centre in Georgia and support for the reform of Ukraine's military - all ring alarm bells in Moscow.
Tensions could get worse still if the US or other Nato allies move to arm the Ukrainian military.
This is not a Nato issue as such but something for national governments, and everyone is watching the course of the evolving debate within the Obama administration.

More than 5,000 people have been killed in eastern Ukraine and clashes have worsened in recent weeks

Mr Stoltenberg said it will be the biggest reinforcement of its collective defence since the end of the Cold War.
Meanwhile French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have visited the Ukrainian capital Kiev to present a new peace initiative. They are due to travel to Moscow on Friday.
US Secretary of State John Kerry is also in Kiev, and said President Obama was still "reviewing all options", including the possibility of providing "defensive weapons" to Ukraine.
The US has so far only provided "non-lethal" assistance to Ukraine.
Mr Stoltenberg said it was "up to different allies to decide" whether to arm Ukraine.
Fighting has intensified in recent weeks and the frequency of indiscriminate shelling in civilian areas has increased, according to the OSCE monitoring group.

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Taiwan TransAsia plane crashes

Dramatic video footage emerged showing the TransAsia Airways plane clipping a bridge as it came down shortly after take-off from a Taipei airport.
The plane, carrying 58 people, broke up as it plunged into Taipei's Keelung River. The fuselage was later salvaged by crane.
There were 15 survivors pulled from the wreckage but 12 people remain missing.

John Sudworth reports: "This is no longer a rescue mission, but a recovery operation"

Television footage showed some passengers wading clear of the sunken wreckage and a toddler being pulled out alive by rescuers.
Emergency teams cut open the plane while it was in the water but were unable to reach the passengers trapped in the front section of the fuselage.
As night fell, a crane was used to lift the wreckage on to the bank. The death toll was expected to rise as rescue teams searched the fuselage and the river for the 12 missing passengers.
"At the moment, things don't look too optimistic," Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei fire department official coordinating the rescue effort told reporters.

 

 

The ATR-72 turbo-prop plane had just taken off from Taipei Songshan Airport and was heading to the Kinmen islands, just off the coast of the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen.
It is the second TransAsia ATR-72 to crash in seven months, following an accident last July which killed 48 people and injured 15.
The final communication from the pilots to air traffic control was "Mayday, mayday, engine flame out", according to a recording played on local media. The recording was not immediately verified by aviation officials.

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Islamic State Releases Video Showing Jordanian Pilot

The brutal video is both one of its most violent and most slickly produced. Filled with wire-frame drawings and digitized cuts that dissolve its subjects in a flicker of pixels, the video uses Kasasbeh to attack the U.S.-led military campaign against the Islamic State.
Prior to his execution in the video, Kasasbeh delivers a ringing condemnation of the West and his country, urging the mothers of Jordanian pilots from preventing their sons from going to war against the Islamic State.
With a black eye clearly visible on the left side of his face, Kasasbeh explains in detail the military coalition arrayed against the Islamic State and the contributions made by each country in the fight, placing special emphasis on the contributions of Arab states. Kasasbeh also details the bases out of which missions against the Islamic State are flown.
“The message that I direct to the Jordanian people: Know that your government is an agent of the Zionists,” Kasasbeh says in the video.
Kasasbeh was captured in December when his jet was downed over Syria.
The video was released by al-Furqan, the media arm of the Islamic State, and according to Jordanian state television, the execution was filmed on Jan. 3. The video’s release coincided with the Tuesday visit to Washington by Jordan King Abdullah, who abruptly canceled that trip and returned to his country.
President Barack Obama called the video “one more indication of the viciousness and barbarity of this organization” and said it will serve to “redouble the vigilance and determination on the part of the global coalition to make sure that they are degraded and ultimately defeated.”
Bernadette Meehan, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a statement that the U.S. intelligence community is working to authenticate the video.
In recent weeks, the Jordanian government has been engaged in highly public negotiations with the Islamic State, which proposed to swap Kenji Goto, a kidnapped journalist, for Sajida al-Rishawi, who is imprisoned in Jordan for her involvement in a 2005 terrorist attack in Amman.
Last week, the Jordanian government agreed in principle to a swap but demanded their pilot’s release if Rishawi was to walk free. Those negotiations fell apart when the Islamic State refused to provide proof of life for Kasasbeh. It is now clear, according to Jordanian state television, that Kasasbeh had already been killed — even as negotiations were ongoing.
The video presents his execution as retaliation for civilian casualties inflicted by the U.S.-led air campaign in Syria. It opens with a narrator describing Jordan’s role in that coalition and its willingness as a U.S. ally to support military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
After describing how the United States and its allies coordinate their aerial missions in Syria, the video cuts to a shot of a wire-frame drawing of an F-16, the plane Kasasbeh once flew, moving through a dark space filled with images of destruction, including a burning bus, a demolished building. The plane’s targeting reticule centers on a crying infant wearing an oxygen mask on what appears to be a hospital bed.
The video then shows an image of an AGM-65 laser-guided bomb, a widely used American-made munition. It cuts to a series of images showing children suffering various degrees of burn wounds. With each image, the wounds get progressively more severe. At the bottom of the screen a temperature steadily increases toward “max.”

The video then cuts to a scene of Kasasbeh walking through an area strewn with rubble. In a series of jump cuts, the video flashes to news footage of bodies being dug out of rubble. The implication is that Kasasbeh is being confronted with his crimes. He is shown on camera looking at a destroyed building with an expression of horror. All around him, masked fighters view him impassively.

He is then placed in a cage and burned to death.

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ISIS releases new video appearing to show Jihadi John beheading second Japanese hostage

Terror group Islamic State has released a new video which seems to show Japanese hostage Kenji Goto being beheaded by the militant fighter known as Jihadi John.

The 1 minute and 7 second clip shows Mr Goto, 47, kneeling in a rocky gorge while the masked murderer delivers a scripted message to the camera. 

The killer then lowers his knife and the footage goes black, as is common in ISIS propaganda films. When the footage begins again Mr Goto's body is shown lying on the desert floor.

The footage has appeared just a day after Japan's deputy foreign minister, Yasuhide Nakayama, told journalists that negotiations for Mr Goto's release were 'in a state of deadlock'.

Tonight the Japanese government has strongly condemned the apparent killing.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said: 'I cannot help feeling strong indignation that an inhuman and despicable act of terrorism like this has been committed again.'

Japanese authorities have said the video is most likely genuine. A statement from a cabinet meeting of senior politicians said the footage 'has a high degree of credibility.'

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe added: 'I feel strong indignation at this inhumane and contemptible act of terrorism. I will never forgive these terrorists.'

'Japan will work with the international community to bring those responsible for this crime to justice,' he said, reiterating that Japan would not give in to terrorism.

Mr Goto's mother and brother have both paid tribute to the war correspondent this evening.

Mr Goto, a war correspondent with experience of reporting from Middle East conflict zones, went missing in October last year as he went to help fellow Japanese hostage Haruna Yukawa 

Mr Goto was last heard from a week ago, when an audio clip emerged claiming to be by him, saying Mr Yukawa had been killed and asking for failed suicide bomber Sajida al-Rishawi to be released

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Reportedly negotiated with militants

Government spokesman Mohammed al-Momani told The Associated Press that "we are still ready to hand over" prisoner Sajida al-Rishawi, who faces death by hanging for her role in triple hotel bombings in Jordan in 2005. Al-Rishawi has close family ties to the Iraq branch of al-Qaeda, a precursor of ISIS.
With no updates for days, al-Kaseasbeh's family appealed to the government for information on his situation. But for Goto's family and friends, the beheading shattered any hopes for his rescue.

A woman holds a picture of her son, Jordanian pilot Lt. Muath al-Kaseasbeh, who is being held by ISIS militants, in a car during a sit-in in front of the cabinet offices in Amman calling for his release on Jan. 27. (Raad Adayleh/Associated Press)

Jogo, Goto's wife, said she had received several emails from unknown people claiming to be her husband's captors. But the hostage crisis became a national issue after the militants issued a demand for $200 million in ransom, to be paid within 72 hours, on Jan. 20.
Later, the militants' demand shifted to seeking the release of al-Rishawi, who survived the 2005 attack that killed 60 people when her explosive belt failed to detonate in the worst terror attack in Jordan's history.
Jordan and Japan reportedly conducted indirect negotiations with the militants through Iraqi tribal leaders, but late on Friday the Japanese envoy sent to Amman to work on the hostage crisis reported a deadlock in those efforts.
The UN Security Council issued a statement Sunday demanding "the immediate, safe and unconditional release of all those who are kept hostage" by the Islamic State group. Council members underlined the need to bring those responsible for Goto's "heinous and cowardly murder" to justice and stressed that the Islamic State group "must be defeated and that the intolerance, violence and hatred it espouses must be stamped out."

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Bloggers given a taste of real fashion industry

None got much sleep on the concrete floor of their Cambodian host Sokty’s apartment. And now they’re off to the factory to experience first-hand the work behind their wardrobes.

A blogger’s tattoo supporting the garment workers. Photo Supplied

“You sit in the exact same position and do exactly the same all the time for eight hours,” Ottesen says, halfway through the work day. “If this was my regular work, they should have [paid] €20 per hour.”
But the young Norwegians earn a standard wage of $3 for the day’s work, undertaken as part of the five-episode documentary series Sweatshop – Deadly Fashion, filmed in Cambodia last year. Since it was posted earlier this month, the five-episode web series, funded by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, has been viewed more than 1.5 million times.
Director Joakim Kleven, 22, told Post Weekend in an online conversation that the recognition came as a surprise. “We could of course not plan for this worldwide interest that we now see,” Kleven said. “But we knew it had potential ... and then suddenly the series went viral.”
Kleven said the web was a perfect format for the series, which can be watched free. “On TV, it would have been broadcast once and then disappeared in the big black hole of yesterday’s news. But on WebTV we can work slowly step by step and adjust course and angles as time passes.”
The reality-television-style conceit helped Norwegian viewers relate to workers in garment-producing countries, Kleven added.
In the film, the bloggers shed tears as Sokty tells them of how her mother died from malnutrition; how the constant, uncomfortable work brings in barely enough to eat and pay rent; and the misery such hardship breeds.

The bloggers at work in a garment factory. Photo Supplied

“The people who use the garments, who buy the products, don’t really understand, and don’t really know what’s happening,” said Moeun Tola, head of the labour program at the Community Legal Education Center, who has seen the series.
“I believe there will be an impact, and the brands can’t stay quiet anymore, especially H&M.”
The Swedish clothing behemoth declined an on-camera interview for the series, but an H&M statement released to the producers said the fashion brand was the first to launch a concrete plan to enable a living wage through their contractors.
“This program is not representative in relation to H&M’s social responsibility,” part of the statement reads. “Comments give a wrong picture of the work we do around the working and salary conditions at our contractors.”
However, Tola pointed out that under H&M’s plan, salaries would not reach the level of a living wage in Cambodia until 2018.

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