Biafra World Health Organization of the United Nations, which led to the early and cost-effective interruption of smallpox transmission in West Africa and elsewhere. On 29 May 2000, the Lagos "Guardian" newspaper reported that the now ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo commuted to retirement of the dismissal of all military persons, soldiers and officers, who fought for the breakaway Republic of Biafra during Nigeria's 1967–1970 civil war. In a national broadcast, he said the decision was based on the belief that "justice must at all times be tempered with mercy". In July 2006 the Center for World Indigenous Studies reported that government sanctioned
Unrecognized Bedouin villages in Israel Bedouin expansion continues rapidly in all directions and occupies spaces that Israel did not know before. Between 1994 and 2007, Israel recognized 21 Arab townships with a similar illegal status until then. In the Galilee, most of the illegal villages were regulated and recognized, and from a population of 90,000 Bedouin in the north, a few hundred still live in unrecognized villages. In the south, it is estimated that about 90,000 residents live in unrecognized Bedouin villages; these Bedouin comprise 45% of the total Bedouin population. The unrecognized villages were built without official permission (this is why they are not