CAR: Disaster looming - UN

The Central African Republic faces a growing humanitarian disaster, with the lives of a quarter of its people disrupted by civil and regional warfare, the U.N. children's agency UNICEF said on Wednesday. Although the United Nations appealed in January for richer countries to provide $11.7 million to fund basic health, schooling and water programmes in the impoverished country, only $2.5 million has been pledged so far, the agency said.