UN-Funded

The UN is issuing urgent pleas as it's attempts to provide earthquake relief appear to be headed for disaster:

Reserves of supplies for the victims of the Pakistan earthquake are dwindling dangerously low as winter closes in and donations are slow, officials said yesterday.

The United Nations said last Wednesday that it needed $550m (?312m) to get emergency aid to people stranded by landslides in the mountainous area of northern Pakistan.
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The UN's World Food Programme has only enough money ? $10m (?5.6m) ? to rent one-third of the helicopters it needs for a round-the-clock operation into the winter, said spokesman Simon Pluess. "If we don't get the money, there's a danger that in about two weeks we'll have to ground these helicopters."

Byrs said other agencies had similar shortfalls: the World Health Organisation has received 35% of its appeal, UNICEF 27% and the International Organisation for Migration 12.7%.

In other earthquake relief news this week

U.S. HELICOPTER RELIEF FLIGHTS TOP 1000 IN PAKISTAN

Disaster Assistance Center Pakistan ? U.S. military helicopter crews delivering relief aid to earthquake survivors in Pakistan?s remote mountain ranges have flown more than 1000 trips since beginning flight operations here Oct 11.

When helicopter flight operations ended for the day on Nov. 3, U.S. military pilots had flown 1,056 missions into Pakistan?s Kashmir and Northwest Frontier Provinces, a rugged mountainous region.

There are 24 U.S. military helicopters supporting Pakistani-led relief efforts. The U.S. Army has 17 CH-47 Chinooks and three UH-60 Blackhawks providing aid, while the U.S. Navy has two MH-53 Sea Stallions and two MH-60 Knighthawks.

More than 3,200 injured Pakistanis have been evacuated to medical facilities aboard U.S. military helicopters in the past 25 days. In addition, the amount of relief supplies delivered by U.S. military helicopters totaled more than 4 million pounds.

In other UN news this week:

An auditing board sponsored by the United Nations recommended yesterday that the United States repay as much as $208 million to the Iraqi government for contracting work in 2003 and 2004 assigned to Kellogg, Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary.

The work was paid for with Iraqi oil proceeds, but the board said it was either carried out at inflated prices or done poorly. The board did not, however, give examples of poor work.

In other Iraq funding news this week, the Brookings Institute's newly updated Iraq Index reveals that of 13.6 billion in aid to Iraq pledged from non-US sources, two billion has been disbursed. My own projections based on their graph indicate the goals should be met within one to three thousand years.