A meeting of of the Humanitarian Aid High Committee, chaired by the First Vice - President of the Republic, Ali Osman Mohamed Taha, has assured of stability of the humanitarian situations and provision of humanitarian assistance to the affected people in the coming six months.
The Humanitarian Aid General Commissioner, Dr. Suleiman Abdul-Rahman Suleiman, said in a press statement , following the meeting of the Committee at the Council of Ministers Monday said that the humanitarian situations is under control and that stocks are sufficient to meet the humanitarian needs till the end of rainy season
He pointed to the importance of providing assistance for the affected women, children and old people .
Dr. Suleiman said that the meeting gave a directive for conducting a study on the possibility of transforming displaced camps in Darfur into planned housing plots .

The First Vice President of the Republic, Ali Osman Taha, stressed the need to establish security and stability and achieve peace and patching the rift in the social fabric and to maintain the rule of law in South Darfur State
This came when he met yesterday at the Republican Palace the governor of South Darfur State, Maj. Gen.( Rtd ) Adam Mahmoud Jaral-Nabi, who explained in a press statement that he will exert all his efforts to achieve security and stability and to address issues of citizens' living in addition to securing the borders with the state of South Sudan and application of matrix of Cooperation Agreements with the state of South Sudan State.

Six-year-old Misbah sits at the back of a motorbike, his thin arms wrapped firmly around his father. Behind Misbah, his brother Omer, 9 , clutches the edges of the seat.
The motorbike roars off and weaves between the heavy morning traffic, cars, vans and lorries belching smoke from their exhausts.
The boys’ father, Ali Osman, 42, drives for 10 kms through the crowded roads of Fitihab in Omdurman, as his children – both without safety helmets - hold on for their lives.
Ali knows that this is not the safest way to take his children to school to school, but he feels he has no choice. He used to pay 140 Sudanese pounds for his sons to take the school bus. But the price of petrol rose from 6 to 12.5 pounds per gallon after the split with South Sudan in July 2011.
The school raised its price for the school bus by 150 pounds a month, while Ali’s petrol bill for his motorbike rose from 72 to 106 pounds a month.
That meant a total monthly increase of 182 pounds. “I just can’t afford it,” Ali said.
Ali’s story is a typical of thousands of motorcyclists and other drivers who have suffered from the impact of high petrol prices on their daily lives. On the streets of Khartoum the sight of motorbikes carrying one or two passengers in an attempt to cut transport costs is a common one. Everywhere there are husbands giving their wives a lift to the market or to work, brothers ferrying their sisters to school, university or work, and fathers taking children to school on a scale that has not been seen before the oil stopped flowing from South Sudan.
The problem has affected bikers and motorists in other ways. The fall of the Sudanese pound against the US dollar has pushed up the price of engine oil from 40 to 200 pounds a month and spare parts imported from abroad, they say.
Khamis Koko, 57, a taxi driver, had to buy a tyre for his car last month and it cost him 350 pounds - a huge rise on the 90 pounds he paid last year.
“Everything is going up,” he said. “I can afford one meal a day for my family and I have had to stop my weekly visits to my relatives."
Other drivers say business has slumped since they were forced to put up their prices because of rising costs. One minivan driver, Salah AbdAllah, 34, said his income has fallen so much that he had been forced to postpone his wedding.”I used to earn 100 pounds a day, but now I make only 70 pounds a day,” he said. “I can’t afford to pay for a dowry or even for the wedding."
AbdAllah feels that the only solution could be to leave Sudan and try to find work as a driver in one of the Gulf states.
Some van drivers said they had stopped going out socially except to visit close family. Others said they had even had to give up taking their families out for picnics.
The government announcement that a deal had been reached with South Sudan and that the oil would be flowing again within two weeks has raised hopes that the suffering caused by higher prices may soon be eased.
But similar agreements have been announced before and the two-week deadline has already been put back. Ali hopes the deal will stick this time, but he says he will believe it only when the oil from South Sudan reaches Port Sudan once again.

Written by: Raja Migdad

Vice President of the Republic, Dr. Al-Haj Adam, has given directives to the government of Khartoum State in the field of housing including the expansion in vertical style of housing to achieve optimal utilization of the land and to enact legislations give advantage to the citizens who are seeking housing and less advantages to those who are seeking to get more than one house or a land plot
This came during in his address to the meeting of the Council of Ministers of Khartoum State, in the presence of the Minister of Decentralized Government, Hassabu Mohamed Abdul-Rahman.
Dr. Al-Haj Adam gave a number of directives in the domains of health, hygiene, housing and security
The Vice President called for imposition of fees on unbuilt housing land plot within the residential blocks as well as allocation of large areas of lands to meet the future developments.
For his part, the governor of Khartoum State Dr. Abdal-Rahman Al-Khadir asserted that the state would work for the implementation of the directives of the Vice President of the Republic who has been following consistently the stages of implementation of the plans, projects and programs of the state, giving directives to the state ministries, localities and concerned organs to take the necessary measures to accomplish the Vice President's instructions.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation in Spain has welcomed the matrix of the cooperation agreement signed between Sudan and South Sudan, which will allow demilitarized zone between the two countries a matter that creates a joint mechanism as the agreement will open the way for the application of the rest of the deals
The Ambassador of Sudan to Madrid, Aida Abdul-Majeed Al-Sheikh, said in a press statement , that the statement issued by the Spanish Foreign Ministry included a call of the Spanish government to the concerned parties to go forward in addressing all outstanding issues in order to enhance the relations between the two countries.
The ambassador revealed that the statement included Spain appreciation of the good mediation efforts undertaken by Ethiopia, the African Union and the United Nations in this regard.