This hasn't gotten too much coverage in the blogosphere, but I just want to note her that at her doctor's request, actress Mia Farrow has just ended a 12-day fast undertaken to draw attention to the plight of Darfur.

She's right, what's happening in Darfur is so massively horrendous, and the response of the Western world so inadequate, it seems to call for some sort of large gesture. I'm only sorry people seem so very disinterested:

UNITED NATIONS, May 8 (Reuters) - Actress Mia Farrow, ailing after almost two weeks on a hunger strike, announced on Friday that British billionaire Richard Branson would take over her protest in solidarity with people in Sudan's Darfur region.

A Farrow spokesman said her health had deteriorated in the past few days and her doctor requested that she end the liquids-only fast she began 12 days ago to protest at Khartoum's expulsion of more than a dozen aid agencies from Darfur.

Farrow asked Branson to take over the fast, her statement said, adding that the British entrepreneur had accepted and would begin a three-day hunger strike on Friday.

"I'm honoured to be taking over the fast for the next three days," the founder of the Virgin Group said in a statement on his blog.

"We cannot stand and watch as 1 million people suffer. We all need to stand up and demand that international aid is restored and that the people of Darfur are protected and given the chance to live in peace."

Farrow's spokesman said last month that her doctor expected the slightly built actress could not fast for more than three weeks.

Farrow, who was appointed Goodwill Ambassador for the U.N. children's agency UNICEF in 2000, has been campaigning for years to raise funds for children in conflict zones such as Darfur, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Chad and Nigeria.

The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir in March, charging him with masterminding mass killings and deportations in Darfur in western Sudan.

Since then, Sudan has expelled 13 foreign and three domestic humanitarian aid agencies, accusing them of collaborating with the Hague-based ICC.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in his latest report on the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, known as UNAMID, that the expulsions had put "over 1 million people at life-threatening risk" in Darfur.

VetVoice:

While U.S. hostile fire fatalities in Iraq last month dropped to their lowest level since December, the news has been far grimmer coming out of Afghanistan. In terms of enemy fire, May 2008 was the second deadliest month of the war since hostilities began in Afghanistan shortly after 9/11. This also marked the end of the deadliest 12-month period for U.S. troops in combat in Afghanistan since the war began nearly seven years ago.

14 Americans were killed by hostile fire in Afghanistan last month (equal to the same number killed in June 2006). The deadliest month of combat in Afghanistan for U.S. troops was in June 2005 when 25 died--16 in a single helicopter shoot-down.

While 14 hostile fire fatalities may not seem significant when compared to the fighting in Iraq, there are two facts that we must take into consideration:

1. We have just experienced the deadliest 12-month period of the war in Afghanistan in terms of hostile fire--by far.

99 Americans have been killed in action since 1 June 2007. The previous 12-month high was 70--between 1 June 2005 and 31 May 2006.

2. The hostile fire death rate for American troops in Afghanistan last month was four times that of Iraq.

One out of every 2,500 (.04 percent) Americans in Afghanistan died last month at the hands of the enemy. This is much higher than in Iraq, in which one out of every 10,000 (.01 percent) American troops died.

While hostile fire casualty rates in Iraq have been higher than .04 percent in about half of all months since the invasion, this shows us one fact that cannot be overlooked: The violence in Afghanistan only seems minimal to Americans because there are a mere 33,000 troops there. But the rate of violence there is clearly comparable to that in Iraq--where 155,000 troops are now serving. For those 33,000 troops in Afghanistan, for the first time now, life has become more dangerous than in Iraq.

In a related news story, Mia Farrow's brother, Patrick, penned a scathing letter to the editor over the mysterious non-combat death of their nephew Sgt. Jason Dene, as described in Editor & Publisher:

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