MANILA, PHILIPPINES - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is providing a $25.5 million supplementary financing to an existing emergency assistance loan to Viet Nam for the rehabilitation of rural infrastructure severely damaged by typhoons and storms in 2005.

The project was initially approved in 2006 by ADB with a loan of $50.97 million. However, high inflation has increased the cost of civil works, materials, and labor. Additional damage to rural infrastructure caused by typhoons in 2006 and 2007 has contributed to significant cost overruns. The government initially tried to address

Hanoi_(dpa) _ Flooding from heavy rains over the past two weeks has severely damaged 15,000 hectares of rice paddies in far northern Vietnam, the Vietnamese press reported Monday.

The Agriculture Ministry had sent an urgent message Sunday to farmers in northern provinces to transplant seedlings to rescue their autumn rice crop if floodwaters recede before August 25, the website VietnamNet.vn reported.

If the fields remain flooded past that date, farmers would have to wait for the winter crop in October, and the government has promised food aid.

"People in the mountain areas of

This report covers the period of 1 January 2006 to 31 December 2007 of a two-year planning and appeal process.

In brief

Programme summary: The regional office made consistent efforts throughout 2006-2007 to understand the needs of Southeast Asian national societies and provide tailor-made support at country level. It consolidated regional network capacities and partnership relations, both within and outside the Movement, to this end. Examples of this included: an independent regional review of national society work; regional health mapping; four 'retreats' (Philippines, Timor-Leste, Lao

This report covers the period 1/7/2007 to 30/11/2007 of the 2006-07 appeal.

In a world of global challenges, continued poverty, inequity, and increasing vulnerability to disasters and disease, the International Federation with its global network, works to accomplish its Global Agenda, partnering with local community and civil society to prevent and alleviate human suffering from disasters, diseases and public health emergencies.

In brief

Programme Summary: The annual leadership together with the secretaries-general meeting in Phnom Penh

This appeal seeks CHF 2,019,827 (USD 1.8 million or EUR 1.22 million) to fund the planned programmes to be implemented in 2008-2009. Click here for budget summary.

This amount will be supplemented by CHF 8.2 million from the core budget to give an overall budget of CHF 10,219,826 (USD 9.14 million or EUR 6.19 million). This appeal document briefly covers the main outcomes the programmes seek to achieve over the next two years. More detailed information is provided in the 2008- 2009 Plan and Summary Matrix.

In a world of global challenges, continued

This appeal seeks CHF 6,811,539 (USD 6.09 million or EUR 4.13 million) to fund the planned programmes that are to be implemented in 2008-2009. The overall budget is CHF 8,923,817 (USD 7.98 million or EUR 5.4 million).

This appeal document briefly covers the main outcomes the programmes seek to achieve over the next two years. More detailed information is provided in the 2008-2009 Plan and Summary Matrix.

In a world of global challenges, continued poverty, inequity, and increasing vulnerability to disasters and disease,

Cologne. With financial support from the Federal Foreign Office of Germany, Malteser International is handing out food items and blankets to the population of the provinces Quang-Nam and Danang in Central Vietnam most hit by the floods. Malteser International is also providing iron sheets for the construction of temporary shelters to 1,250 families. To prevent the outbreak of malaria, the organisation is distributing mosquito nets. The families also get additional washing agents and hygiene articles to ameliorate the hygiene situation and to prevent the outbreak of infectious diseases.

HANOI, Dec 5, 2007 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Natural disasters, mainly floods, whirlwinds and flood-tides, killed 117 people, left nine missing, and injured 88 in Vietnam in November, local newspaper Vietnam Economic Times reported Wednesday.

The disasters, mainly in the central region, also damaged over 400,000 houses, and many hectares of subsidiary crops and irrigation works, causing total property losses of over 3.4 trillion Vietnamese dong (VND) (212.5 million U.S. dollars) last month, the paper quoted a report of the country's General Statistics Office.

HANOI, Nov 21, 2007 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- Vietnam has detected 78 fatalities due to dengue fever since the beginning of this year, increasing over 55 percent compare with the same period of last year, local newspaper Vietnam Agriculture reported Wednesday.

In the period, the number of dengue fever cases stood at 90,749, a year-on-year rise of 50 percent. Most of the cases have been found in the southern Mekong Delta region, whose weather conditions and local people's habit of storing water in containers at their houses favor the breeding of mosquitoes, the disease's transmitter.