Dozens of trucks carrying aid for 40,000 people on Monday entered the besieged rebel-held Eastern Ghouta area near Damascus, where residents and relief groups have warned a humanitarian crisis is escalating.
Shocking images from the region earlier this month showed severely underweight children, and doctors reported two infants had died of malnutrition and related complications.
The United Nations and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent said a joint aid convoy had entered Eastern Ghouta on Monday, carrying food and medical supplies.
"We entered Eastern Ghouta … we are planning on delivering aid to Kafr Batna and Saqba today for 40,000 [people]," said Linda Tom, spokeswoman for the UN's humanitarian coordination agency, OCHA.
The joint UN-Syrian Arab Red Crescent convoy included 49 trucks carrying "eight thousand food parcels and a similar number of bags of flour, medicine, medical supplies, and other nutritional materials," Red Crescent spokeswoman Mona Kurdi said.
The aid will be distributed across several districts including Hamouria, Ain Tarma, Kafr Batna and Saqba, the Red Crescent said.
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Eastern Ghouta was once a prime agricultural region famed for its orchards.
But the rebel stronghold has been under a tight government siege since 2013, causing shortages of food and medicine.
That pushed up prices for whatever supplies could be produced locally or smuggled in.
The region has been devastated by years of fighting, with government air strikes and shelling bringing down multi-storey buildings and rendering whole streets uninhabitable.
Basic services for the region's estimated 400,000 residents are virtually non-existent, with electricity produced only by generators and the available water often dirty and a vector for disease.
Aid has entered the area only sporadically, and convoys have generally only been able to deliver food and medical supplies that fall far short of the region's needs.
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
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The BIO:
He became the first Emirati to climb Mount Everest in 2011, from the south section in Nepal
He ascended Mount Everest the next year from the more treacherous north Tibetan side
By 2015, he had completed the Explorers Grand Slam
Last year, he conquered K2, the world’s second-highest mountain located on the Pakistan-Chinese border
He carries dried camel meat, dried dates and a wheat mixture for the final summit push
His new goal is to climb 14 peaks that are more than 8,000 metres above sea level
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Stars: Lee Jung-jae, Wi Ha-joon and Lee Byung-hun
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The more serious side of specialty coffee
While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.
The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.
Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”
One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.
Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms.
