PAX GAEA WORLD POST HUMAN RIGHTS HEADLINES (12/14)
TOPICS:
HIV Risk cut in half through circumcision
U.S. backed Ethiopia troops stir jihad in Somalia
Feds subpoena ACLU for anonymous e-mail
Jimmy Carter's "Apartheid" book stirs Israeli ire
Australian aborigines angered over no charges in custody death
No Saudi intervention plan in Iraq U.S. says
AIDS to make 53 million African orphans by 2010
Judge rules for Botswana Bushman tribal lands against government
UK plane terror fears may have overblown
Circumcision Halves H.I.V. Risk, U.S. Agency Finds
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
Circumcision appears to reduce a man’s risk of contracting AIDS from heterosexual sex by half, United States government health officials said yesterday, and the directors of the two largest funds for fighting the disease said they would consider paying for circumcisions in high-risk countries. The announcement was made by officials of the National Institutes of Health as they halted two clinical trials, in Kenya and Uganda, on the ground that not offering circumcision to all the men taking part would be unethical. The success of the trials confirmed a study done last year in South Africa. New York Times (12/14)
Somalia’s Islamists and Ethiopia Gird for a War
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN and MARK MAZZETTI
MOGADISHU, Somalia, Dec. 9 — The stadium was packed, the guns were cocked and even the drenching rain could not douse the jihadist fire. Thousands of Somalis, from fully veiled, machine-gun-toting women to little boys in baggy fatigues, gathered Friday to rally against what they called foreign aggression. As a squall blew in, they punched wet fists into the air and yelled, “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great.” “I am ready to die,” said Osama Abdi Rahim, dressed head to toe in camouflage and marching around with a loaded rifle. He is 7 years old. New York Times (12/14)
U.S. Subpoena Is Seen as Bid to Stop Leaks
By ADAM LIPTAK
Federal prosecutors are trying to force the American Civil Liberties Union to turn over copies of a classified document it received from a source, using what legal experts called a new extension of the Bush administration’s efforts to protect national-security secrets. The novelty in the government’s approach is in its broad use of a grand jury subpoena, which is typically a way to gather evidence, rather than to confiscate all traces of it. But the subpoena issued to the A.C.L.U. seeks “any and all copies” of a document e-mailed to it unsolicited in October, indicating that the government also wants to prevent further dissemination of the information in the document. New York Times (12/14)
Carter Book Stirs Furor With Its View of Israelis’ ‘Apartheid’
By JULIE BOSMAN
On Tuesday night in Phoenix, after signings and interviews to promote his new book, “Palestine Peace Not Apartheid,” President Jimmy Carter made a hastily arranged visit: an hour long gathering with a group of rabbis. “We ended up holding hands and circled in prayer,” Mr. Carter said in a telephone interview from Phoenix, adding that the rabbis requested the meeting to discuss his book. It was an unusual interruption during an unusually controversial book tour, which began with a few faint complaints last month and has escalated to a full-scale furor, with Mr. Carter being trailed by protesters at book signings, criticized on newspaper op-ed pages and, on the normally sedate “Book TV” program on C-Span2, being called a racist and an anti-Semite by an indignant caller. New York Times (12/14)
Anger at custody death ruling
Jamie Pandaram
The Aboriginal community is outraged that a police officer will not be charged over the death in custody of a Palm Island man, with a senior figure describing it as ``a day of shame for all Australians'' and the dead man's sister heartbroken. With fears rising over possible violence in protest to the news, Queensland Premier Peter Beattie has called for calm and said he hoped people would allow for the decision to be properly explained before reacting.Deputy state coroner Christine Clements had ruled in September that Queensland police officer Chris Hurley struck Mulrunji Doomadgee, 36, and caused his fatal injuries on November 19, 2004 at the Palm Island police station. Sydney Morning Herald (12/14)
U.S. denies report of Saudis' plan to intervene in Iraq
The White House denied on Wednesday a New York Times report that Saudi Arabia had warned that it would support Iraq's Sunni minority in sectarian strife against the Shiite majority if the United States withdraws its forces. "That's not Saudi government policy," White House spokesman Tony Snow told a new briefing. Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq's Shiites if Washington pulls its troops out of Iraq, the New York Times reported Wednesday. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Cheney's whirlwind visit to Riyadh, unidentified senior officials were quoted as saying. People's Daily Online/Xinhua (China (12/14)
AFRICA: A Continent of Orphans
Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Dec 13 (IPS) - War, AIDS, malaria, cholera and famine have gradually turned Africa into a continent full of orphaned children and teenagers. According to the latest statistics released by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), there are 48.3 million orphans south of the Sahara desert, one-quarter of whom have lost their parents to AIDS. Between 1990 and 2000, the number of orphans in Africa rose from 30.9 million to 41.5 million, and those orphaned by AIDS increased from 330,000 to seven million. Projections by the two U.N. agencies suggest that by 2010, there will be 53.1 million children under 18 bereft of their parents, 15.7 million of whom will have had parents who died of AIDS, caused by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In response to these stark figures, Portuguese authorities have indicated that their country maintains strong historic links with Africa, and Interior Minister Antonio Santos da Costa has called on the Portuguese Refugee Council (CPR) to create a reception centre exclusively for African children arriving in Portugal unaccompanied by an adult. The minister's challenge was immediately taken up by CPR's chairwoman, Maria Teresa Tito de Morais, in spite of the fact that because of a lack of funds, "few unaccompanied children have arrived in Portugal" so far, as she explained to IPS. Inter Press Service News Agency (12/14)
Bushmen win rights over ancestral lands
David Beresford in Lobatse
The Bushmen of Botswana yesterday appeared to have won a famous legal victory in their long-running battle to hang on to ancestral lands in the giant Central Kalahari game reserve. The Botswana high court ruled that the Bushmen, whom the government had tried to evict by cutting off their water supplies and other services, lawfully occupied the land. Three judges found that they had been deprived of possession of the land "forcibly, wrongly and without their consent". The court also found that the government's refusal to issue the Bushmen with special permits allowing them to be in the reserve was unconstitutional, while its failure to give them special hunting licences was unlawful and unconstitutional. The Guardian (United Kingdom) (12/14)
Doubts over UK terror plot to blow up airline flights
It was big news in August this year. British police uncovered a massive plot by terrorists to blow up planes over the Atlantic.Widespread arrests were made and details of the plot made public, as airports in Britain and elsewhere in the world where British flights transited, went on high alert, and security checks were expanded to include liquid materials. Pakistan co-operated with British police in "foiling the plot." This week, four months later, one of the ringleaders, British national Rashid Rauf, whose detention in Pakistan triggered the arrests in London and the "discovery of the plot," faced court in Pakistan. However Rauf's court appearance this week was brief. The judge threw out the charges saying there was insufficient evidence for him to be convicted. Argentina Star (12/14)
posted by Dave Carroll @ 12/14/2006 02:52:00 PM
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