World Population Day observed today

To increase people’s awareness on various population issues such is the importance of family planning, gender equality, poverty, maternal health, and elderly care, World Population Day is observed by the international community on July 11. The event is an opportunity to focus on ways and means to affirm the importance of the human right to plan for a family and responsible parenthood, and to encourage activities and information to help make this right a reality throughout the world. The world’s current population is estimated at 6.8 billion. At the beginning of 2005, the United Nations Population Division released revisions to its World Population Prospects publication with a scenario placing the world’s population at a little more than nine billion in 2050. A month ago, however, the 2010 Revision of World Population Prospects projected world population to reach seven billion in October, 2011. Most of the population growth would occur in the developing world. The rapid increase in the world’s population has several causes, notably the revolution in medical care and technology over the past century, with advances in medicine and public health contributing to the growing life expectancy and elderly longevity. The annual rate of population growth has been much higher than the forecast rates in the last 40 years. The projections underscore the urgent need to provide safe and effective family planning and investing in resources to enable men and women to have means to exercise their human right to determine the number and spacing of their children. Increased population growth generally represents problems for a country. It means increased need for food, infrastructure, and services. Reducing the inequalities and finding ways to ensure the well being of people today as well as the generations that follow will require new ways of thinking and extraordinary global cooperation. A world of seven billion people is both a challenge and an opportunity. Experience shows that the involvement and participation of nations on the issue of the world population can make all the difference in promoting the dignity and improving the quality of life for all people. world  people are very conscious about population day.we know that Bangladesh is the 7th place in the total world population. at present people 40 percent conscious family plaining etc  in this country.

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Syria — Protests (2011)

Syria's harsh and stagnant dictatorship at first seemed immune to the wave of unrest that swept through most of the Arab world after the revolution in Tunisia in January 2011. But in mid-March, demonstrations broke out in several cities, and grew rapidly after security forces fired on protesters.

The country's president is Bashar al-Assad, the son of Hafez al-Assad, who ruled with an iron hand for three decades before his death in 2000. The Assads belonged to the Allawite sect, a minority that came to hold most of the top positions in the government and military. Under Hafez al-Assad, Syria was reviled in the West for its support of terrorist groups and generally isolated even from more moderate Arab countries. Bashar al-Assad from time to time made gestures toward greater openness. But it remained one of the region's most repressive regimes.

In February 2011, after the fall of Egypt's strongman, Hosni Mubarak, a handful of demonstrations were called in Syria. But the demonstrators were always outnumbered by the police, and were quickly arrested or dispersed. Large protests began in March in the southern town of Dara’a, where citizens were outraged by the arrest of more than a dozen schoolchildren for writing graffiti. More protests followed, in Dara'a and other parts of the country, although they never emerged at any size in the country's two largest cities, Damascus and Aleppo.

In Syria, Mr. Assad at first seemed to veer between offers of concessions and force. On April 16, he pledged to meet one of the demonstrators’ main demands by lifting the emergency law. But just days later, he launched what became a withering crackdown: security forces fired on demonstrators across the country, killing dozens, the army sent tanks into Dara'a and hundreds of government opponents were arrested or were reported to have disappeared. By May 31, human rights groups said that more than 1,000 had been killed and as many as 10,000 people were reported to be in custody or missing.

By early May, government officials spoke of gaining the upper hand, but demonstrations continued, if on a smaller scale, as the unrest settled into a bloody standoff of protest and reprisal. The protests seemed reinvigorated in early June by a video that showed the body of a 13-year-old boy from Dara'a who had been tortured and killed.

Even if it fails, the uprising has demonstrated the weakness of a dictatorial government that once sought to draw legitimacy from a notion of Arab nationalism, a sprawling public sector that created the semblance of a middle class and services that delivered electricity to the smallest towns. The government of Mr. Assad, though, is far different than that of his father, who seized power in 1970. A beleaguered state, shorn of ideology, can no longer deliver essential services or basic livelihood. Mr. Makhlouf’s warnings of instability and sectarian strife like Iraq’s have emerged as the government’s rallying cry, as it deals with a degree of dissent that its officials admit caught them by surprise.

Protest Timeline

June 6 Syria’s state news agency reported that “armed gangs” had killed 120 police and security personnel in multiple attacks on security forces in a northwestern town. The state broadcaster showed no images from the town, despite scrolling text on Syrian television that spoke of a “massacre” of security forces. Protesters could not be immediately reached in the area, but opposition activists repudiated any suggestion that antigovernment protesters had mounted such an attack.

June 5 Syrian military forces were reported to have killed 38 people in the northern province of Idlib over the weekend, demonstrators and rights activists said, as security forces appeared to redeploy from other towns to join the latest front in the harsh crackdown on a three-month-old popular uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

June 3 Syrians poured into the streets in some of the largest antigovernment protests yet despite the shutdown of much of the country’s Internet network. At least 40 protesters were killed in Hama, according to local activists. That report could not be immediately confirmed. The demonstrations were fueled in part by escalating anger over the torture and killing of a 13-year-old boy from the southern region of Dara’a.

June 1 Syrian military forces killed 42 people, including a 10-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl, in raids on a string of towns around the central city of Homs.

May 31 President Bashar al-Assad issued a general amnesty. Syrian state media reported that the amnesty would be broad and would include members of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, but details issued late in the day by the government indicated that it amounted to little more than sentence reductions for certain crimes.

May 30 A video of the mutilated body of a 13-year-old boy seized, tortured and killed by government forces has injected new life into the uprising.

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