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A National Police Officer gives a wool blanket to a child during a humanitarian blanket drive at the Kamaliyah orphanage in New Baghdad, Jan. 3, 2009. Photo by Thomas Ribas, 82nd Airborne Division Public Affairs. BAGHDAD — Iraqi National Police Officers donated more than 400 blankets to an orphanage in the Kamaliyah neighborhood of New Baghdad, Jan. 3. The donation drive was led by the 4th Brigade, 1st Iraqi National Police Division along with neighborhood leaders and the orphanage headmaster. The donation was to help children and widows battle the chilly weather this winter where average temperatures can dip down...

9-11 affected many people in many different ways. Heart for Africa is one way one person dealt with that fateful day. Her name is Janine Maxwell and her story is "Its Not Okay With Me". Her story is gut wrenching and mind boggling. My story that follows is a happy, travel adventure for your reading pleasure. I hope you will read both stories, mine for entertainment and her's as a call to action. I hope you visit the website www.heartforafrica.org and make a difference. We are so lucky, so fortunate, to live in the USA. Please don't take that for...

Roseanne said, "do you not know that the African daughter you hold in every picture had parents who suffered and died because of the Republican party's worldwide economic assault on Africa over the last few decades since Reagan?"

You want to build anything in Silicon Valley - a company, a career, a reputation - it's all about networking. Eagle Scout project? Yep. Networking. You need your venture capitalist, your Fortune 1000 company founder and some good-hearted friends and neighbors. Ask Tad Malone, a Homestead High School junior, who took on a project that, looking back, seems slightly insane even to him. "Kids needed help," he says, "so I thought I'd help." Kids in Africa. Orphan kids that Tad met on a family trip in 2005 to a place called Children's Town in Zambia. The 300 children had people...

On a bare patch of ground outside the entrance to Sadr general hospital, 15 women clad from head to foot in black squatted in a sandstorm, wailing and waiting for their dead. Lightning flashed, thunder rolled and the women’s robes were spattered with mud falling from a sky filled with rain and sand, but they did not notice. “Ya’mma, Ya’ba” (“Oh mother, oh father”), cried Amira Zaydan, a 45-year-old spinster, slapping her face and chest as she grieved for her parents Jaleel, 65, and Hanounah, 60, whose house had exploded after apparently being hit by an American rocket. “Where are...

In the village of Sanhe, Hubei province, the police interrupted the Christmas festivities of a little orphanage run by a famous Christian leader, who has been arrested 12 times for his leading role in the life of China's unauthorised domestic churches. Sanhe (AsiaNews) - Police in the central province of Hubei arrested, on Christmas Eve, a group of orphans and Christian volunteers who were preparing to celebrate the holiday with them. The agents confined the children to a hotel, and "convinced" the owner of the land that the orphanage stands on to evict the renters. This is the charge of...

BAGRAM AIR BASE, Afghanistan, Jan. 4, 2008 – Afghan national security forces and coalition forces delivered more than a ton of food, clothes and toys to the nearly 380 children of Shahid Ali Ahad Khan Karzi Orphanage and school in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, Dec. 30. A coalition forces soldier greets a group of Afghan boys at the Sahid Ali Ahad Khan Karzi Orphanage and school in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province, Dec. 30, 2007. U.S. Army photo   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The children, ranging in age from 6 to 13, received clothes and shoes to help them endure...

BAGHDAD: The shocking pictures of neglect that emerged from a grisly state-run Baghdad orphanage this week revealed the Iraqi government's inability to care for some of its most vulnerable citizens. With four years of war having cannibalized much of the Iraqi government, volunteers have begun providing vital social services at their own expense, relying on the generosity of friends and neighbors. The images of the inside of the Al-Hanan orphanage were disquieting even by Iraqi standards: two dozen emaciated children, some tied to cribs, others writhing in their own waste and some appearing, at first glance, to be dead. US...

CBS's Lara Logan Follows Up on U.S. Soldier Orphanage Rescue Posted by Justin McCarthy on June 21, 2007 - 13:23. After reporting on the compassionate U.S. soldier rescue of abused Iraqi orphans, CBS’s Lara Logan ran a follow up story on the June 21 edition of "The Early Show." To her credit, Logan continued to defend the soldiers. She noted that an Army captain went "back to check on the 24 boys he and his soldiers rescued" and "thanks to these soldiers...the boys’ lives were saved."Upon reporting that the Iraqi labor and social affairs minister accused Lara Logan of reporting...

India urges Britain to adopt its orphans NEW DELHI, April 8 (UPI) -- India is struggling with a surplus of abandoned and unwanted children and is urging people in Britain and other Western countries to adopt its orphans. The Sunday Times of London says India is renewing its efforts to save its children from a life of poverty and deprivation by finding homes for them in Europe and the United States. India is estimated to have more than 11 million abandoned children, and the Times reported that the number of newborn babies abandoned at adoption facilities is continuing to rise....

RYBINSK, RUSSIA – Children pour out of Rybinsk's orphanage No. 72, laughing and waving, when the Murziki pull up in their mud-spattered convoy of cars. The kids know many of these adults from distant Moscow by name, and they hurry to help unload the cars, stacked with boxes of toys, sports equipment, and coats - as well as cutlery and a new VCR with a selection of cartoons, needs the Murziki carefully noted on their last visit. The Murziki tell the kids that they come from the mythical country of Murlandia, a kind of cross between Neverland and Santa's Village....

Pledges to the "Grandfather Frost" campaign continue Exactly one week ago the newspaper 'Noviy Vestnik' declared the start of a New Year's charity drive. We proposed that all those who wished to feel like a real Grandfather Frost could do so by making the wishes of orphans at the Home for Handicapped Children come true. The results of the first week of the campaign has been stunning. We must admit, we did not expect such success. Our editorial staff has been visited by a dozen Grandfather Frosts. The Bogatyr food company brought in a large gift. Reader Irina Reznikova...

12/4/2006 - MEHTAR LAM, Afghanistan (AFPN) -- The Mehtar Lam Provincial Reconstruction Team paid an unexpected visit to a girl's orphan school Nov. 27 to donate three trailers full of supplies, including items to help with the approaching winter. The staff of Rosantoon Orphan Girl's School in Mehtar Lam City welcomed the team and helped coalition troops unload the winter clothing, school supplies, hygiene products, food and other items. An entire trailer of food was an important part of the delivery, said Army Capt. Bernice Logan, Mehtar Lam PRT civil affairs officer. "Some of the girls only eat one meal...

There are no orphan homes in Western Europe and the USA - there are queues for abandoned children. Will it be harder or easier for foreigners to adopt a Russian child since custody regulations in Russia have changed? The rules concerning activity of foreign organizations dealing with children adoption have recently been amended which caused a confrontation of opinions: some consider the new regulations more liberal, others claim it’s nothing but toughened demands.

Earthquake orphans 'in hands of jihadists' By Isambard Wilkinson in Muzaffarabad (Filed: 07/10/2006) Charities linked to jihadist groups have been using humanitarian aid operations to extend their influence over children orphaned by last year's earthquake in north Pakistan. Jemima Khan, a Unicef ambassador, visits a temporary school in the border region devastated by the Pakistan-Kashmir earthquake Contrary to government rules that earthquake orphans must be cared for only by the state or relatives, large numbers have been taken into care by religious charities and madrassa Islamic schools. A senior cleric, Qazi Mahmood-ul Hassan, who runs the Jamia Dar-Uloom al Islamia...

POHANG, South Korea (Aug 18, 2006) -- Marines and sailors with 1st Marine Aircraft Wing and 3rd Marine Logistics Group visited the House of Love orphanage Aug. 9 to spend time with the children and reach out to the local community during Exercise Ulchi Focus Lens 2006.The visit to the orphanage is a 1st MAW tradition that dates back to 1951.In 1951, Marines and Navy chaplains noticed an estimated 10,000 children in the Pohang area who were orphaned during the Korean War. They took the children to local orphanages, which quickly became overloaded. To assure the childrens' survival, the 1st...

The National Home is a multi-faceted facility created to care for the developmental, social and spiritual needs of the children and families of the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Services are also available for children of active duty military personnel. Our facility is not an orphanage, but a neighborhood of custom homes, service buildings and recreational land administered by a highly devoted staff and fully integrated into its surrounding community. The Veterans of Foreign Wars established the National Home in 1925 to care for the children and families of our nation’s veterans. Located on 629 acres in Eaton Rapids, Michigan, the...

Moscow SINCE my daughter Maya was born 10 months ago, I've noted that many of my Russian friends are more likely to express amazement than to share my joy. "Do you really like fussing around with kids?" asked one of them, a television journalist, with sincere incredulity. It might be that this notion of children as a burden, as an unnecessary bother, is the psychological reason for the catastrophic decline in Russian birth rates (the average woman has 1.34 children, and for every 16 Russians who died in 2004, only 10.4 babies were born). It's hard enough to get by...

Abandoned: the Mexican orphans of the rush to cross US border By James Hider in San Andreas Nicolas Bravo (Filed: 21/05/2006) When Alexis Silva Carreno was nine years old, his father left Mexico to find work 800 miles away across the US border in Houston, Texas. Alexis was devastated and begged his father not to go. It was not until his mother also headed north that the boy's entire world collapsed. "She didn't even leave any kitchen utensils, she took everything, everything. She left us to be street kids. She forgot her children," he said, sitting dejected in his classroom...

U.S. Marines assigned to the 4th Provisional Security Company, stationed with Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa in Djibouti, work together to clean and rebuild a soccer field outside Camp Lemonier. Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa photo U.S. Marines Help Rebuild Djiboutian Soccer Field The project, which involved removing trash, smoothing and marking the field and adding nets to goal posts, was time well spent, according to the Marines. By U.S. Air Force 2nd Lt. Omar Villarreal Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa CAMP LEMONIER, Djibouti, May 18, 2006 — Fifty U.S. Marines with the 4th Provisional...