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"World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan says she is disappointed a deal on climate change was not struck in Copenhagen. But she says important steps were taken that, she believes, will ultimately result in an agreement to stop or retard climate change. She says the relationship between climate change and health is obvious. For example, she says millions of people will suffer from either too much water or too little water under climate change. Chan says extensive flooding may lead to loss of life from drowning and disease. She says contaminated floodwaters can cause fatal illnesses, such as diarrhea and cholera. On the other hand, she says some areas will have too little water and prolonged drought will affect the kind of crops people normally grow. "The prediction is that in the next 20 years to 30 years, if the situation continues to get worse, the productivity from the agricultural sector and from subsistence farming in Africa, the production would reduce by as much as 50 percent," she said. "If there is any truth to that, can you imagine the impact on hunger, on acute and chronic malnutrition?" Scientists say the warming of the planet will be gradual, but that extreme weather events will increase in frequency and intensity. They say the effects of more storms, floods, droughts and heat waves will be abrupt and profound. The World Health Organization says the effects of so-called climate-sensitive diseases already are killing millions of people. WHO reports more than three-and-a-half million people die every year from malnutrition-related causes. It says diarrhea-related diseases kill nearly two million people and almost one million die from malaria."

"PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Prayers of thanksgiving and cries for help rose from a roofless cathedral and the huddled homeless Sunday, the sixth day of an epic humanitarian crisis that was straining the world's ability to respond and igniting flare-ups of violence amid the rubble. A leading aid group echoed complaints about the supply bottleneck and skewed priorities at the U.S.-controlled airport. The general in charge said the U.S. military was "working aggressively" to speed up deliveries. In the ruins of the Port-Au-Prince cathedral, gathered beneath shattered stained glass for their first Sunday Mass since Tuesday's earthquake, survivors were told by their priest, "We are in the hands of God now." But anger mounted hourly that other helping hands were slow in getting food and water to millions in need. "The government is a joke. The U.N. is a joke," Jacqueline Thermiti, 71, said as she lay in the dust with dozens of dying elderly outside their collapsed nursing home near the airport. "We're a kilometer (half a mile) from the airport and we're going to die of hunger." Water was delivered to more people around the capital, where an estimated 300,000 were living in the streets, but food and medicine were still scarce. Pregnant women gave birth in the streets. The injured arrived in wheelbarrows and on people's backs at hurriedly erected field hospitals. Authorities warned of looting and violence. In downtown Port-au-Prince, where people set bonfires to burn uncollected bodies, gunfire rang out and bands of machete-wielding young men, their faces covered with bandanas, roamed the streets."

"PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Troops, doctors and aid workers flowed into Haiti on Monday even while victims of the quake that killed an estimated 200,000 people still struggled to find a cup of water or a handful of food. European nations pledged more than a half-billion dollars in emergency and long-term aid, on top of at least $100 million promised earlier by the U.S. But help was still not reaching many victims of Tuesday's quake - choked back by transportation bottlenecks, bureaucratic confusion, fear of attacks on aid convoys, the collapse of local authority and the sheer scale of the need. Looting spread to more parts of downtown Port-au-Prince as hundreds of young men and boys clambered up broken walls to break into shops and take whatever they can find. Especially prized was toothpaste, which people smear under their noses to fend off the stench of decaying bodies. At a collapsed and burning shop in the market area, youths used broken bottles, machetes and razors to battle for bottles of rum and police fired shots to break up the crowd. "I am drinking as much as I can. It gives courage," said Jean-Pierre Junior, wielding a broken wooden plank with nails to protect his bottle of rum. Even so, the U.S. Army's on-the-ground commander, Lt. Gen. Ken Keen, said the city is seeing less violence than before the earthquake. "Is there gang violence? Yes. Was there gang violence before the earthquake? Absolutely."' Keen said some 2,000 Marines were set to join 1,000 U.S. troops on the ground and U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced Monday he wants 1,500 more U.N. police and 2,000 more troops to join the existing 7,000 military peacekeepers and 2,100 international police in Haiti."