Monday, January 08, 2007

PAX GAEA WORLD POST HUMAN RIGHTS HEADLINES MONDAY, JANUARY 8, 2007



TOPICS
  • Climate change a possible reason for outbreak of deadly fever in Kenya
  • Women in Latin America defying church, seeking out 'morning after' pill
  • Brain drain from Iraq as the nation's most educated flee war, sectarian fighting
  • Orangutans one more victim of globalization, deforestation
  • More Palestinian women speaking up in male dominated Gaza
  • Death toll of children mimicking Saddam hanging rises to seven
  • 300 Bangladeshi protesters injured in confrontations with police, run up to elections
  • UK's Orkney Islands sparks ban for "homophobic" ban on civil unions
  • "Anti-terror" raid by Chinese nets 18 dead
  • Storms hinder arrival of Canadian cops to investigate triple slaying in indigenous far north territory

An Outbreak of Rift Valley Fever Kills Dozens in Kenya

By DENISE GRADY

A growing outbreak of Rift Valley fever has killed at least 62 people in northeastern Kenya since last month, and health officials fear that it could become much more widespread.The disease primarily infects livestock, but humans can catch the virus that causes it from mosquito bites or exposure to blood, raw milk or other fluids from infected animals. Most people do not get very sick, but some develop a brain infection or a hemorrhagic fever, which causes shock and bleeding and can be rapidly fatal. In people, the death rate is usually about 1 percent. Although that is a relatively low mortality rate, the deaths are so horrible that the disease generates great fear, said Dr. Rob Breiman, who works in Nairobi as director of the international emerging infections program, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the United States. “When it occurs in its severest manifestations, it’s very, very frightening,” he said. “There’s a rapid onset of illness, multi-organ failure, bleeding from multiple sites and death — usually in young, healthy people. They can be healthy one day and near death the next.” So far, 165 human cases have been reported in Kenya, but the real number is thought to be much higher, because mild cases probably go unreported and because the region is vast, with hard-to-reach areas inhabited by nomadic livestock herders. The cause of the outbreak is unusually heavy rains, which have created ponds and lakes where mosquitoes can breed, in an area that is normally dry.New York Times (1/8)

Morning-after pill gaining in Latam despite church

By Hilary Burke

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - Florencia Scocchera, a sassy 22-year-old waitress and trapeze artist, didn't have time for a baby. So when the condom that she and her lover used broke, she quickly took the morning-after pill. In Buenos Aires, public hospitals offer the emergency contraception for free, no questions asked. Argentine lawmakers are pushing to extend this service nationwide. "I'd rather go through a bad patch now than have a baby and be in a bad way for the rest of my life," said Scocchera, a pale, thin woman fond of piercings. Despite stiff resistance from the Roman Catholic Church, governments are moving to make emergency contraception widely available in much of Latin America, which is home to half of the world's Catholics. The morning-after pill, which blocks the release or fertilization of an egg, may prevent pregnancy when taken within 72 hours of sex. Some research suggests it may also keep a fertilized egg from attaching to the womb. The Catholic Church, which preaches abstinence before marriage and opposes contraception and abortion, considers the pill a chemically induced abortion. But the morning-after pill is gaining acceptance in Latin America as people increasingly ignore traditional church teachings on sexuality. Reuters (1/8)

IRAQ: The exodus of academics has lowered educational standards

[This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

BAGHDAD, 7 Jan 2007 (IRIN) - "You are on the list of the teachers who are going to be killed this month for not obeying our demands to leave Iraq," said a hand-written letter which was left at Dr Hamida Bakri's door. Now the 41-year old professor of gynaecology at the college of medicine at the University of Baghdad, is ready to leave the country with her family before death threats become reality. She said two of her colleagues had already been killed. "My friend, who was a pharmacist and doing his doctorate in toxicology, was killed a week ago just because he was a doctor and nothing else. He was one of the good remaining professionals in Iraq and we have lost dozens who have been killed in recent years," she added. Until she leaves the country, two bodyguards accompany Bakri to the college and clinic. Two months ago, she escaped an attempt on her life but one of her bodyguards was killed. "There are no good professionals in Iraq anymore. The good teachers have fled or were killed...leaving the country without hope of a better education system," Bakri said as she hugged her 10-year-old daughter. IRIN News (1/8)

The vanishing man of the forest: Orangutans

Birute Mary Galdikas

Once again, I am driving, under the blazing equatorial sun, down an uncomfortable, rutty relic of a road into the interior of central Borneo. With me are two uniformed police men, one armed with a machine gun. The landscape is bleak, no trees, no shade as far as the eye can see. Our mission is to confiscate orangutan orphans whose mothers have been killed as a result of the sweeping forest clearance taking place throughout Borneo. Many years ago, Louis Leakey, the great paleo-anthropologist whose work at Olduvai Gorge and other sites in East Africa revolutionized our knowledge of human origins, encouraged me to study wild orangutans — just as he had encouraged Jane Goodall to study chimpanzees and Dian Fossey to study gorillas. Later, he laughingly called us the "trimates," or the three primates.Orangutans are not as well known as chimpanzees and gorillas. But like their African cousins, orangutans are great apes, our closest living relatives in the animal kingdom, and the most intelligent animals, with the exception of humans, to have evolved on land. Orangutans are reclusive, semi-solitary, quiet, highly arboreal and red, facts that come as a surprise to some people. Their name is derived from the Malay words "orang hutan," which literally mean "person of the forest." And it is the orangutan's profound connection to the forest that is driving it to extinction.Without forests, orangutans cannot survive. They spend more than 95 percent of their time in the trees, which, along with vines and termites, provide more than 99 percent of their food. Two forests form their only habitat, and they are the tropical rain forests of Borneo and Sumatra. International Herald Tribune (1/8)

Female Activists a Force in Male-Dominated Gaza

by Eric Westervelt

Amid ongoing violence in Gaza, Palestinian women are increasingly moving to the forefront of activism and, in some cases, taking part in the fighting. Long kept in the social, political and military background in male-dominated Palestinian society, women's increased participation marks a significant change. The activism also takes starkly different forms: Secular women have led protests against lawlessness in Gaza, while the first suicide bombing in months by the Islamist group Hamas was carried out by a 72-year-old Gaza grandmother. Fed up with the specter of factional gunfire when walking to the store or taking their children to school, a group of angry and largely secular women in central Gaza City recently marched in the streets, demanding change. "Where's the safety? Where's the security? Where's the law?" the women chanted. National Public Radio (1/8)

Seven children dead in execution re-enactments

From correspondences in Dubai

AT least seven children worldwide have died in re-enactments of the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Television pictures of Saddam's hanging in Baghdad on December 30 were broadcast globally, and a more graphic and grisly bootleg video of his execution, shot using a mobile phone, spread like wildfire on the internet. The latest victim was a boy of 12, who hanged himself in north-east Saudi Arabia on Sunday, the daily Al-Hayat reported today. He stood on a chair and wrapped wire round his neck before attaching it to the door of the family home at Hafr al-Batin, the paper said. The boy had seen Saddam's execution on television. After the Baghdad hanging in which Saddam was executed for the killings of 148 Shiite villagers in the 1980s, Al-Iraqiya public television was the first to broadcast footage of the fallen tyrant's final moments. By December 31 a pirate video of the hanging was already available on the internet, extracts from which were also transmitted by TV channels. In Yemen bordering Saudi Arabia, police said two 13-year-old boys met the same fate as the former Iraqi president. Herald Sun (Australia) (1/8)

Clashes between police and protestors leave 300 people injured in Bangladesh

At least 300 people were wounded as riot police fired tear gas shells and rubber bullets in Bangladesh 's capital Dhaka Monday to disperse former opposition activists protesting what they called a stage-managed parliamentary election on January 22. Witnesses said the police swung into actions when slogan- chanting protestors held demonstrations in the capital and its outskirts on the second day of 72-hour transport blockade across the country. Troops mounting machine guns on open jeeps patrolled the streets but remained calm. Besides, some 12,000 riot police were deployed to maintain order. A grand alliance led by former main opposition Awami League president Sheikh Hasina enforced the blockade from Sunday to press for scrapping the January 22 polls and preparing a flawless electoral roll in a bid to ensure free and fair elections. The alliance is also demanding President Professor Iajuddin Ahmed resign from the office of the Chief Advisor of the interim caretaker government for being biased to former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's 4-party alliance. The blockade disrupted normal life and commercial activities. The capital remained cut off from the rest of the country as highway and train communications were severely disrupted. The witnesses said grand alliance activists and police fought pitched battles at different places in Dhaka and its outskirts. To control the situation police used batons, tear gas and rubber bullets. The injured people were rushed to hospitals and clinics. People's Daily Online/Xinhua (China) (1/8)

'Homophobic' Orkney under attack for ban on civil partnership

By Andrew Johnson

Gay rights campaigners have called for a tourist boycott of Orkney after one of the world's leading composers was banned from forming a civil partnership with his lover on the remote island of Sanday. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, who is master of the Queen's Music, and Colin Parkinson, 52, planned to hold their ceremony next month on Sanday, where they have lived for the past nine years. Sir Peter, 72, had even composed a piece of music for the event, which was to be attended by stars from the classical and pop music worlds. But their plans were put on hold after officials at Orkney Islands Council unexpectedly said the registrar, a friend of the couple, was not authorised to preside over the civil partnership. Instead, they would have to travel to Kirkwall on Orkney mainland for the ceremony. Matters became further confused yesterday when it was reported that Orkney officials had also cited fears of a media circus and "unsuitable music" on Sanday as reasons to move the ceremony. A furious Sir Peter condemned the ban as "downright discrimination" and pointed the finger at "religious fundamentalists". He said: "Everybody can get married where they live except me, it seems. Ever since the law on civil partnerships was brought in, we thought that finally there was an opportunity to get married and to have a little celebration. Independent (United Kingdom) (1/8)

China 'anti-terror' raid kills 18

Chinese police have killed 18 people in a raid on an alleged militant training camp in the western autonomous region of Xinjiang, officials say. One policeman was killed and another injured in the raid, which took place on Friday, a police spokesman said. China is waging a campaign against what it calls separatist activities of Xinjiang's Uighur Muslim minority. The announcement came as a Chinese official denounced Nobel Peace Prize nominee Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer. Ba Yan of the Xinjiang Public Security Department said that the training camp was located on the Pamirs plateau, close to the Afghan and Pakistani borders. Mr Bas said the camps was run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (Etim), a group labelled a terrorist organisation by the United Nations. "The police captured 17 terrorists and are pursuing a number of others," China's Xinhua news agency quoted Ba as saying. Police seized 22 hand grenades and over 1,500 that were still being made, Ba said. Xinjiang is home to eight million Muslim Uighurs, who are ethnic Turks. Many Uighurs resent the large-scale influx into the region of Han Chinese settlers, and some groups are fighting to establish an independent Islamic nation, leading to periodic violence in the region. Beijing accuses some groups of links to al-Qaeda, but human rights groups say the Chinese authorities are using the fight against terrorism as a way of cracking down on the independence movement and suppressing religious freedom. BBC (1/8)

Investigators head to Nunavut for triple-slaying probe

Canadian Press

Cambridge Bay, Nunavut — Major crimes investigators from Edmonton and Iqaluit were set to touch down in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, today to examine a weekend triple homicide. A blizzard had delayed the RCMP investigators from reaching the remote community 800 kilometres northeast of Edmonton. Dean Costa of Edmonton along with Keith Atatahak and Kevin Kamasuit of Cambridge Bay were shot and killed outside a duplex in the early morning hours Saturday. RCMP have seized a semi-automatic rifle and have a suspect in custody, but won't release his name as he has not been charged. Corporal Randy Slawson is not releasing details of the crime except to say the shooting was not a random act, that the people involved all knew each other and that the three appeared to have been shot outside the home of the accused. Relatives and friends say the gunplay was the culmination of a series of a confrontations between two groups that began with a fistfight on New Year's Day. Toronto Globe & ail (1/8)

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