A final communique draft completed last month for the upcoming G8 summit states that leaders will agree on a maternal health initiative that focuses on improving access to sexual and reproductive health services, including family planning, in the developing world, the Globe and Mail reports. The draft leaves “G8 countries free to decide whether their programs on reproductive health will fund abortions” (Clark, 6/4)…

Reports are coming in that workers helping with the clean up of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico are starting to report health problems, including flu-like symptoms, nausea, headaches, dizziness and chest pains. In the past week doctors in the emergency room at West Jefferson Medical Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, have treated nearly a dozen workers who have been in the waters of the Gulf of Mexico cleaning up the oil that started spilling out of BP’s blown out well six weeks ago…

The U.S. Southern Command on Tuesday said it was ending major military relief operations in Haiti aimed at aiding the nation after the January earthquake, Reuters reports. “Spearheaded by the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, thousands of American troops were deployed in Haiti as part of Operation Unified Response. … The Pentagon has been drawing down the number of soldiers in the impoverished Caribbean country steadily in recent months,” the news service writes. Five hundred U.S…

Tropical Storm Agatha Hits Central America Tropical storm Agatha pounded Central America over the weekend, bringing heavy rain that killed at least 179 people, mostly in Guatemala, the New York Times reports. The search for survivors continues as rescue workers dig through the thousands of homes and buildings that collapsed. “We need water, diapers, food and cots, but what we need most is food; there is nothing,” Elbia Coraro, the sanitation chief for Guatemala’s national disaster agency, said…

The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) warned of growing needs in the Eastern Sahel region of West Africa, where some 10 million people are facing a challenging season of hunger before the next harvest due in September…

According to an annual ONE report, which tracks progress on aid commitments made at the 2005 G8 summit in Gleneagles, Scotland, the G7 - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the U.S. - is “on track to deliver 61 percent of their combined commitments to sub-Saharan Africa, or $13.7 billion of the $22.6 billion increase they promised,” allAfrica.com reports. The ONE report says that “there has been great progress in the past five years but …

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday is expected to mark up a bill that would “authorize $3.5 billion in reconstruction funds for Haiti over five years” and would also require USAID “to submit a long-term reconstruction plan to Congress as well as mandate the president to appoint a senior policy coordinator for Haiti,” The Hill reports (Bogardus, 5/23). “Lawmakers are attempting to balance a bipartisan consensus to invest heavily in rebuilding the earthquake-ravaged country with some members’ deep-seated doubts about the capabilities” of USAID, Congressional Quarterly writes…

A Lancet World Report article examines the decision to restore USAID’s policy department as part of broader reform efforts at the agency. USAID Administrator Rajiv “Shah said that USAID will establish the new bureau and implement budget reforms shortly. Over the summer, he also expects to institute procurement reforms, update human resource management systems, and, later, implement improvements to monitoring and evaluation of programmes,” the journal reports, noting Shah’s recent remarks outlining the changes planned for USAID…

Scientists studying the environmental impact of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans have revealed the ecological impact and human health risks from exposure to chemical contaminants. The findings, published in a special issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, demonstrate how Hurricane Katrina caused significant ecological damage by altering coastal chemistry and habitat…

TIME reports on the recent efforts of a “young Florida businessman” who started a project “to collect a million shirts and send them to poor people in Africa.” The project elicited a range of responses from people in the aid world who have been debating “the best and worst ways to deliver charity, or whether to give at all.” The magazine examines these different perspectives…