An Indian human rights organisation is appealing for help for 46,000 people uprooted by a Maoist rebellion in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh. Politicians and police have prodded tribesmen to forsake their villages for crude refugee camps and join a new campaign against guerrillas who have added misery and terror to their crushing poverty.

The Forum for Fact-finding Documentation and Advocacy (FFDA) says the Adivasi villagers from 644 villages in Dantewada district are living as internally displaced people in 27 camps. A new report by the Asian Center for Human Rights describes conditions as "deplorable" and "sub-human" and says villagers remain vulnerable to the threat of Maoist attack.

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A day after we highlighted a Russian TV report that raised the alarm on a brewing humanitarian crisis in Moldova's breakaway Dnestr region, Russian news network RIA Novosti quotes a senior EU mission official as saying there's no ground for such an emergency.

Earlier this month, Moldova asked neighbouring Ukraine to introduce new customs regulations requiring all Ukraine-bound exports from Dnestr to have a Moldovan stamp - a move some Russian politicians have said amounts to an economic blockade of the unrecognised republic, with consequences for the flow of goods into Dnestr as well. Critics said Dnestr faced shortages of vital supplies of food, fuel and medicine as a result.

But RIA Novosti quotes Ferenz Banfi, chief of the EU's mission on the Moldova-Ukraine border, as saying supplies were flowing freely into Dnestr, including some 1,800 tonnes of poultry in the past few days.

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At a Thursday discussion evening in London, medical charity M