Bangladesh's Yearly Flooding

A family walks through a river to get into town, on 25 July 2008 in the port city of Chittagong, Bangladesh. Bangladesh, is considered the most crowded nation on earth, experiences significant yearly flooding due to the geography of the nation.

Bangladesh sits at the confluence of the Ganges, Brahmaputra and Meghna Rivers and most of its land is less than 40 feet above sea level.

According to numerous environmental agency reports, if sea waters were to rise three feet in the next 50 years, one third of Bangladesh's coastline could be flooded displacing 20 million Bangladeshis.

Bangladeshi’s Muhammad Yunus Receives Doctorate in Rome

Bangladeshi banker and 2006 Nobel peace prize laureate Muhammad Yunus poses with a giant diploma after receiving a Doctor Honorius Causa title from Sapienza University in Rome on 8 July 2008.

Developing Nations Open Summit in Malaysia

6 July 2008

Kuala Lumpur-The 11th meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Eight Islamic Developing Countries (D-8) started its work on Sunday.

The meeting was inaugurated by Malaysian Foreign Minister Rais Yatim who stressed the need for further cooperation among the D-8 member states.

The D-8 compromises Iran, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.

It was set up in 1997 as an economic alliance with the objective of improving the position of Muslim developing countries in the global world economy through the diversification of their economies by creating new opportunities via increased trade relations.

The ministerial meeting would be followed up by the sixth Summit of the D-8 heads of states due to be held on July 7-8.

The theme of the Summit is "Meeting Challenges Through Innovative Cooperation."

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran is expected to leave Tehran for Kuala Lumpur Sunday evening to attend the D-8 Summit.

This is the first time that Malaysia is hosting the D-8 Summit.

The last summit was hosted by Indonesia, the current chairman of D-8, in Bali, Indonesia on 13th of May 2006.

Meeting of the D-8 states' senior officials known as the 25th Session of the Commission of D-8, was held between July 4-5 in Kuala Lumpur.

The opening session of the 6th Summit of D-8 would be held on July 8 with a speech by Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah bin Ahmad Badawi.

More in the inaugural ceremony, the D-8 presidency would be handed over to Malaysia by the group's current chairman President of Indonesia Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

Malaysia would be the D-8's president for two years.

The 2008 Summit is expected to adopt the decision on the setting up of the D-8 Permanent Secretariat and D-8 Roadmap for Economic Cooperation in the Second Decade of Cooperation.

Monsoon Floods Displace 19 Million

Bangladeshi flood victims row a boat to a safer area in Sirajgonj

4 August 2007

Video

LUCKNOW, India (AP) -- Havoc from monsoon rains killed another 12 people in India, including two children swept away by floods and a man attacked by a rhinoceros forced out of its inundated habitat, officials said Saturday.

Helicopters dropped food to hundreds of thousands of frightened villagers perched on rooftops.

Vital to farmers, the annual rains are a blessing and a curse for the subcontinent. At least 198 people have been killed in India and neighboring Bangladesh and 19 million driven from their homes in recent days, according to government figures.

The South Asian monsoon season runs from June to September as the rains work their way across the subcontinent. It's always dangerous -- last year more than 1,000 people died, most from drowning, landslides or house collapses.

This year, estimates of total deaths vary wildly from a few hundred to well over 1,000.

Two villagers were killed in a house collapse and two children were swept away by flood waters in several districts of India's northern Uttar Pradesh state. Another person died from a snake bite on a flooded road, said Surender Shrivastav, a state official.

Helicopters dropped food to nearly 2 million people in 2,200 villages cut off by flood waters in the worst-hit eastern parts of Uttar Pradesh, said Umesh Sinha, the state relief commissioner, adding that nearly 279,223 acres of paddy rice crops have been destroyed in the region.

On Friday, six people drowned in northeastern Assam state. One-horned rhinos straying from the state's Kaziranga National Park killed one person and injured two others, said state Revenue Minister Bhumidhar Barman.

Jehir Ali, 28, was riding a bicycle near the village of Gendheli when a rhino charged at him, said Dhiren Gogoi, a wildlife official.

"Ali fell down and was badly mauled by the adult rhino. He was shifted to a hospital where he died," Gogoi told The Associated Press.

Seventy percent of Kaziranga Park has been flooded by the Brahmaputra River, forcing out several rhinos.

"Two rhinos have entered villages in the area resulting in panic among the population," Diganta Barbaruah, another wildlife official, said.

With hundreds of villages submerged across the fertile plains that stretch along the southern edge of the Himalayas, people were taking refuge wherever they could.

Women and children were spotted screaming for help from treetops in Uttar Pradesh. In parts of the state, river levels rose so quickly that villagers had no time to save any belongings.

"The gush of water was so sudden we did not get the time to react," Vinod Kumar, a resident of a flooded village in Basti district, told Enadu TV.

One woman in Uttar Pradesh who identified herself only as Savitra said she had not "eaten anything for the last two days."

Health workers were fanning out across parts of Bangladesh and India to try to prevent the spread of waterborne diseases like diarrhea, typhoid and cholera.

In northwestern Bangladesh, farmer Rahmat Sheikh and his family were among 2,000 people who fled their flooded village for higher ground in the Sirajganj district.

"The floods have taken away all I had," said the 40-year-old Sheikh. "Rice paddies in the field, two cows and my house all are gone. I don't know how we will now survive."

Some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced or marooned by flooding, according to government figures. At least 144 people have died in India and 54 more in Bangladesh.

India's Meteorological Department said unusual monsoon patterns this year have led to heavier than normal rains

Thousands homeless as Asia weather misery spreads

People wade across a flooded road after heavy rains in Bihar July 25, 2007. Asia's monsoon misery has spread to Nepal, leaving thousands of people homeless, while more rain is expected to bring further chaos to China's drowned southwest, where many have already lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones. REUTERS/Krishna Murari Kishan

27 July 2007

By Guo Shipeng

BEIJING (Reuters) - Asia's monsoon misery has spread to Nepal, leaving thousands of people homeless, while more rain is expected to bring further chaos to China's drowned southwest, where many have already lost homes, livelihoods and loved ones.

Rescuers dropped relief supplies to hundreds of people in Indonesia's Sulawesi island on Friday after days of torrential rain triggered landslides and floods.

About 85 people have died and nearly 8,000 people displaced from their homes in central Sulawesi. A relief official said authorities had not been able to pull out many bodies because of a lack of heavy machinery and equipment.

In China, the toll is far higher, with more than 500 people killed across this country in floods this summer.

Meteorologists forecast more downpours for the Guangxi region and the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan where floods and related disasters have already taken a heavy toll.

"The possibility of landslides and mud and rock flows is high and preventive measures should be taken," the centre said on its Web site (www.nmc.gov.cn).

This year's monsoon has also caused widespread flooding in South Asia and Indochina, straining disaster relief agencies.

In mountainous Nepal, floods have destroyed crops and disrupted transport and electricity supplies across the country, officials and media reports said on Friday.

Around 2,500 houses have been washed away in the Himalayan nation's southern plains, forcing residents to flee to higher grounds after week-long heavy rains, local media said.

Officials said floods and landslides have killed about 40 people in Nepal since June when the annual monsoon rains began.

FLOODWATERS SPREAD

In Bangladesh, monsoon floods continued to spread, inundating vast areas in 30 of the country's 64 administrative districts, officials said on Friday.

"Thousands of people have been marooned or displaced. We have opened flood shelters at several places and are bracing for the worst," said Ibrahim Khalil, an official in Sirajgan district, one of the worst-hit areas north of the capital Dhaka.

Across the border in India, incessant rains over the past week have displaced hundreds of thousands of people in the east and northeast, destroyed crops and damaged bridges, officials said on Friday.

In Bihar, 21 people have died and hundreds of thousands of villagers have seen their houses washed away. Road and rail networks have been disrupted by heavy monsoon rains over the past three days.

Rivers in the northeast - including the Brahmaputra that also flows through Bangladesh - have burst their banks. Floodwaters have submerged paddy fields and destroyed houses.

"The situation is grim," said Bharat Chandra Narah, flood control minister for Assam.

Weeks of rain in China's mountainous southwest, home to the upper reaches of the Yangtze river, have made floods peak in Wuhan, capital of the central province of Hubei, state media said.

Authorities in Hubei had mobilised tens of thousands of people to check embankments as the Han River, a main tributary that converges with Yangtze, was also swollen.

But as parts of China battle floods and landslides, others are suffering from a heatwave and drought.

Temperatures have reached above 35 degrees Celsius (95 degrees Fahrenheit) over the past 10 days in seven southern and southeastern provinces, home to about 200 million people, the National Meteorological Centre said on Friday.

The heat is set to compound the drought in the rice-growing provinces of Jiangxi, Hunan and Fujian, where about 1 million residents faced shortages of drinking water.

(Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in Kathmandu, Mita Valina Liem and Telly Nathalia in Jakarta, Azad Majumder in Dhaka and Biswajyoti Das in Guwahati)