The number of people killed or injured in explosions of land mines and other leftover munitions fell in 2006, but the ranks of survivors, many badly maimed, neared half a million or more, Handicap International said.
The Brussels-based group said in an annual report that land mines and similar explosives killed or wounded 5,751 people in 68 countries--most of them civilians, many of them children, AP reported.
It called government assistance for victims often insufficient. While the 2006 casualty toll was down 16 percent from 2005--and less than half of the 2002 toll of 11,700--“many more casualties go unreported“ and 92 percent occur in places with no or limited mine data collection, Handicap International said.
Land mines, which explode from proximity or contact with a person, are still used by governments in Russia and Myanmar and rebel groups in at least eight countries, said Handicap International.
“The near total halt of the use and trade of anti-personnel mines, as well as the destruction of millions of stockpiled mines and the increased de-mining efforts, clearly show the Mine Ban Treaty is successful,“ said Marc Joolen, a Handicap International executive.
The 1997 treaty aims to rid the world of mines, and deals with mine use, production and trade, victim assistance, clearance and stockpile destruction. Forty nations still remain outside of the treaty, including China, Egypt, Finland, India, Israel, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia and the United States.
Although the treaty addresses victim assistance, few governments have solid programs, said Handicap International.
It put the number of survivors to date of what it calls “explosive remnants of war“ at 473,000 but cautioned that was “likely an underestimate as many survivors are not officially registered“ with governments or aid groups. Victims of mine explosions often lose limbs and typically require new prostheses every three years.
“Progress toward meeting the needs and rights of survivors is insufficient,“ said Stan Brabant, a spokesman for Handicap International.
“States, the European Union and the international community should increase support for individuals, families and communities, affected by mines, cluster munitions or other explosives remnants of war.“
Handicap International estimates the 40 nations that remain outside the land mine treaty possess 160 million land mines and that 13 still produce, or claim the right to produce, such weapons, including the United States and China.

Some 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day.

More American military veterans have been committing suicide than US soldiers have been dying in Iraq, it was claimed.
At least 6,256 US veterans took their lives in 2005, at an average of 17 a day, according to figures broadcast. Former servicemen are more than twice as likely than the rest of the population to commit suicide.
Such statistics compare to the total of 3,863 American military deaths in Iraq since the invasion in 2003--an average of 2.4 a day, according to the website ICasualties.org.
The rate of suicides among veterans prompted claims that the US was suffering from a “mental health epidemic“--often linked to post-traumatic stress.
CBS News claimed that the figures represented the first attempt to conduct a nationwide count of veteran suicides. The tally was reached by collating suicide data from individual states for both veterans and the general population from 1995.
The suicide rate among Americans as a whole was 8.9 per 100,000, but the level among veterans was at least 18.7. That figure rose to a minimum of 22.9 among veterans aged 20 to 24--almost four times the nonveteran average for people of the same age. There are 25 million veterans in the United States, 1.6 million of whom served in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Not everyone comes home from the war wounded, but the bottom line is nobody comes home unchanged,“ said Paul Rieckhoff, a former Marine and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America.
CBS quoted the father of a 23-year-old soldier who shot himself in 2005 as suggesting that the military was covering up the scale of the problem. “Nobody wants to tally it up in the form of a government total,“ Mike Bowman said. “They don’t want the true numbers of casualties to really be known.“
A separate study published last week shows that US military veterans make up one in four homeless people in America, even though they represent just 11 percent of the general adult population, and younger soldiers are already trickling into shelters and soup kitchens after completing tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Igbo-Ora, a sleepy farming community in southwest Nigeria, welcome visitors with a sign proclaiming “The Land of Twins.“
“There is hardly a family here without a set of twins,“ said community leader Olayide Akinyemi, a 71-year-old father of 12, as he settled a dispute between two neighbors.“ “My father had 10 sets, while I had three sets. But only one set, a male and a female, survived,“ he said. The town’s high incidence of twins has baffled fertility experts--underscoring a more regional twin trend and an array of elaborate African rituals around them, reported AFP.
The rate of identical twins is pretty steady throughout the world at about 0.5 percent of all births, according to a 1995 study by Belgian researcher Fernand Leroy, who has worked extensively on twins.
But West Africa bucks that trend, particularly with a much higher incidence of fraternal or non-identical twins than in Europe or Japan. That is especially true, experts say, amongst Nigeria’s Yoruba community which is largely concentrated in the southwestern part of the country where Igbo-Ora is located.
Overall, almost 5 percent of all Yoruba births produce twins, the Belgian study said, compared with just around 1.2 percent for Western Europe and 0.8 percent for Japan--although fertility drugs in the developed world are changing those figures.
Yam consumption may be one explanation for Africa’s largesse, some West Africans and Western experts believe. Yams contain a natural hormone phytoestrogen which may stimulate the ovaries to produce an egg from each side.
For their part, Igbo-Ora’s residents appear nonplussed about their twin phenomenon.
Some like Akinyemi support the yam theory--and point specifically to the reputedly high estrogen content of agida, the local name for yam tubers.
“We eat a lot of okro leaf or Ilasa soup. We also consume a lot of agida. This diet influences multiple births,“ he said.
“The real cause of the phenomenon has not been medically found,“ said Akin Odukogbe, a senior consultant gynecologist with the University Teaching Hospital (UCH) in Ibadan, the nearest big town.
“But people attribute the development to diet,“ he continued, adding that studies have shown that yam can make women produce more than one egg which can be fertilized.
Chief nursing officer at the hospital Muyibi Yomi, who records a monthly average of five twins for every 100 births, puts it all down to genetics.

A flamingo flies over a wetland near the Iranian city of Orumieh in west Azarbaijan province.

Official figures showed the number of divorces soared in Spain in 2006 compared to a year earlier when a new law which made the process of legally ending a marriage faster came into force.
A total of 126,952 divorces were registered last year, a 74.3 percent jump over the previous year, national statistic institute INE said in a statement, AFP reported.
The increase in divorces was especially sharp among those who had been married less than one year, jumping to 945 in 2006, a 330.6 percent rise over 2005 which INE said was linked to the change in the divorce law.
Spain adopted a new divorce law in June 2005 that eliminated a requirement that couples be physical separate for a period of time before divorce proceedings could begin.
The new law also did away with the need for couples to provide a reason, such as infidelity or alcoholism, for seeking a divorce.
The average length of marriages which were terminated last year by either divorce or separations, was 15.1 years while 45 percent of the couples who split up did not have children, the statistics office said.

China plans to relax rules that are currently barring HIV/AIDS carriers from entering the country, the health ministry said.
Ministry spokesman Mao Qun’an said the decision was based on current knowledge of the way the AIDS virus spreads, AFP reported.
He said the existing restrictions, strongly criticized by AIDS activists as discriminatory, were introduced when people were “unfamiliar“ with how the disease may spread.
Mao did not disclose when the new rules would take effect, or if the relaxation would mean a complete end to limits on HIV/AIDS carriers’ entry into China.
China had 650,000 HIV/AIDS patients according to an estimate put forward jointly by the government and United Nations health agencies in January 2006.
Mao said the government would release its latest estimate of the number of people having HIV/AIDS in China at the end of November.

Chronic diseases accounted for 60 percent of all deaths worldwide in 2005 and are projected to increase by 17 percent over the next 10 years, an official with the World Health Organization (WHO) said.
Chronic Noncommunicable Diseases (NCDs) were a global problem that required comprehensive and urgent responses, said Linda Milan, director of Building Healthy Communities and Populations, Western Pacific Regional Office of WHO, at a WHO expert meeting, Xinhua reported.
“The most important fact about the leading chronic NCDs (cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases) is that they share common risk factors,“ she said, noting that smoking, physical inactivity and unhealthy diets are key factors.
It has been shown that addressing these underlying behavioral risk factors would prevent 80 percent of premature heart disease, 80 percent of premature stroke, 80 percent of type 2 diabetes and 40 percent of cancer, Milan said.
“As many countries do not have comprehensive and integrated or individual strategies, policies or action plans to tackle the problem, more WHO technical support on these areas is essential in helping them to prevent and control chronic non-communicable diseases,“ she said.

Street racers in Australia will soon see their beloved cars being deliberately smashed by the authorities in videos posted on the Internet.
The often flashy, souped-up vehicles will be wrecked in crash tests under laboratory conditions, the New South Wales state government announced, AFP reported.
“Video footage of these once-prized possessions being turned into splintered, twisted scrap will be the clearest message yet to hoons (hooligans) that we’re serious about stamping out their behavior and saving lives in the process,“ said state police minister David Campbell.
The move follows a series of high-speed crashes involving young men racing through city streets in which innocent motorists have been killed or injured.
“Car hoons engage in potentially lethal, property destroying, anti-social behavior,“ state premier Morris Iemma said in a statement.
“We’re turning the tables. We’ll destroy their property--but do it for the right reasons.“ The destruction of the vehicles would provide valuable crash analysis while footage of the destruction would be used as a deterrent.
“The modified, loud and often illegal vehicles confiscated from car hoons will be smashed to pieces in our crash labs, the results filmed and analyzed, and the wrecks shown to other young drivers as a warning,“ Iemma said.
Offenders will have to be convicted of street racing before the vehicles can be destroyed.