China is grappling with another tainted milk scandal that has killed three children, though this appears to be a case of intentional poisoning: Investigators discovered that nitrite, an industrial salt, was added to milk from two dairies last week, according to state media. A suspect has been taken into custody,…
Continue reading …In Newsweek , Dennis Quaid recalls his “greatest mistake”: the cocaine-fueled days of his youth. “It was very casual at first. That’s what people were doing when they were at parties,” he writes of the ’70s and ’80s. “Cocaine was even in the budgets of movies, thinly disguised. It was petty…
Continue reading …Last month’s devastating earthquake in Japan has created an unexpected problem—there’s cash everywhere. Many people in Japan, especially the elderly, stash their money at home, and hundreds, if not thousands, of safes filled with valuables that were washed away in the massive tsunami are turning up. But identifying the…
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Muslims take to the streets of Paris in protest at new French law banning the wearing of niqabs and burqas in public Kenza Drider stood defiantly outside Notre Dame, adjusting her niqab to reveal only a glimpse of her eyes. Scores of police with a riot van and several lorries stood by as she and another woman in a niqab staged a peaceful protest for the right “to dress as they please”. On the first day of France’s ban on full Islamic face-coverings, this was the first test. “I’m not here to provoke, but to defend my civil liberties as a French citizen,” said Drider, a 32-year-old mother-of-four from Avignon, accompanied by around 10 supporters. Japanese tourists and Spanish schoolchildren fought their way through TV crews to get a picture of the spectacle. Then police swooped. Drider had not been stopped on her train journey into Paris. But as she spoke to journalists at Notre Dame, she was led off by plainclothes police and driven away along with two protest organisers. Next a woman in a niqab in her 40s from a Paris suburb was grabbed by a plain clothes officer, who gripped her tightly and frog-marchedher to another police bus. Officers said the women were not detained for their niqabs but because their protest had not been authorised. Under the law promoted by Nicolas Sarkozy, any Muslim woman wearing a face veil is now banned from all public places in France, including when walking down the street, taking a train, going to hospital or collecting her children from school. Women in niqabs will be effectively under house arrest, allowed only inside a place of worship or a private car, although they risk being stopped by traffic police if they drive. But several French police unions yesterday warned that the law was almost impossible to enforce and that they would not make it a priority to stop women in full veils walking down the street. Halima, a 53-year-old mother from Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, who wears a normal headscarf, was detained by police for standing silently with the niqab-wearers at Notre Dame. She said: “This is the first time I’ve ever protested over anything. I’m not in favour of the niqab, I don’t wear it myself. But it’s wrong for the government to ban women from dressing how they want. Islamophobia is on the rise in France. First it’s the niqab, then they’ll ban the jilbab, then it will be plain headscarves outlawed.” Rachid Nekkaz, aproperty developer and rights campaigner from the Paris suburbs, was detained outside the Elysée palace with a woman in a niqab. Nekkaz, who organised the Notre Dame protest, had offered to pay niqab wearers’ fines for breaking the law. He said police had not wanted to formally caution the woman for wearing a niqab. Women in face veils risk a €150 (£132) fine or citizenship lessons. Police cannot forcibly remove face coverings in the street but can order women to a police station to check their identity. The government estimates between 350 and 2,000 women cover their faces in France, out of a total Muslim population between four and six million. Some niqab-wearers – many of them French converts – vowed to continue going out and to take their cases to the European court of human rights if stopped by police. Others have moved abroad, while just one woman told French papers she had permanently removed her face covering. Another niqab wearer said women she knew would wear bird-flu-style medical face masks and say they were ill in order to get round the law against covering your face. Shop-owners said luxury fashion boutiques near the Champs Elysées were unlikely to call the police to detain female tourists in niqabs from the Gulf. This would create a two-tier system between rich tourists and poor French people, one trader complained. Emmanuel Roux from the police union, Syndicat des Commissaires de la Police Nationale, said the law would be “infinitely difficult to apply” and “infinitely little applied”. Sarkozy, whose polls are at record lows with next year’s presidential election looming, has been accused of stigmatising Muslims to boost his support among far-right voters. Since he declared in 2009 that the burqa was “not welcome in France”, women in all forms of veils and head coverings said verbal abuse against them had increased. Recently the interior minister, Claude Gueant, suggested the growing number of Muslims in France was a problem. Religious groups have likened current Islamophobia in France to anti-Jewish feeling before the second world war. France has a strict separation of church and state and banned headscarves and all religious symbols in schools in 2004. Samy Debah, head of the French Collective against Islamophobia, said: “The niqab law is a pretext to reduce the visibility of Muslims in public spaces. It exposes an old French colonial reflex, that “Arabs and blacks” only understand force and you can’t talk to them.” French burqa and niqab ban France Islam Europe Religion Women Angelique Chrisafis guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …The US has, as one doctor says, a “huge organ shortage”—but there is one way we could make 500 to 600 more livers and kidneys available each year: lift the ban on HIV-positive donors. A controversial move, yes, but some federal health officials and other experts think it’s a…
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Eaves Housing accuses ministers of ‘ideological decision’ that ‘will reduce funding by 60% per victim’ A charity that pioneered specialist services for victims of sexual trafficking, providing refuge and therapeutic support for hundreds of abused and exploited women, faces an uncertain future after ministers withdrew its funding. Eaves Housing has accused ministers of taking an “ideological decision” after they awarded a £6m contract to run the Poppy Project services it has developed and provided over the past eight years to the Salvation Army. It said the decision marked a change in the way government supports care for victims of trafficking: “They were after a bare minimum service, not a specialist service.” The move came as it was announced that a woman who was a repeated victim of sex trafficking is to be paid substantial damages by the Home Office after it returned her to Moldova, despite the fact that she faced grave dangers there. The ‘”groundbreaking settlement was reached on the eve of a high court hearing for her claim against the Home Office for failing to take steps to protect her and for sending her back to Moldova despite substantial grounds to believe she was at risk from her traffickers. The woman was identified as a victim of sex trafficking by the Poppy Project after years of ill treatment. Abigail Stepnitz, national co-ordinator for the Poppy Project for Eaves Housing, said that, according to their calculations, the new contract would reduce funding by 60% per victim. This meant it would be impossible to offer anything more than a limited service to victims, many of whom need intensive psychological support, she said. “We are concerned for the women in our care. We really do not know how we are going to be able to offer appropriate care for these women.” A spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice said Eaves Housing “had done a very good job” in recent years, but the Salvation Army had put in a stronger bid for the contract, which has been widened to provide support for trafficked men as well as women. “Eaves are upset and it’s not great for them, but it’s much better for victims of trafficking,” said the spokesperson. The MoJ said the Salvation Army – which will “gatekeep” the contract, handing out subcontracts to a range of partner organisations – would be able to offer a wider geographical spread of services. The Salvation Army, which states that one of its main charitable aims is “to reach people with the Christian gospel through evangelism”, said its religious underpinning was not a factor. “We are a faith-based organisation and we are motivated by our faith, but it’s really important that we provide holistic care for all those who come under the auspices of our care.” Eaves had pitched for the contract, worth £2m a year over three years, with a number of other organisations, including the Helen Bamber Foundation, which works with victims of torture. Denise Marshall, the chief executive of Eaves, sent back her MBE earlier this year in protest at government cuts to services, which she says will leave charities unable to provide adequate services for vulnerable women. The Home Office will pay “substantial damages” to the Moldovan woman, who cannot be named because she and her family are still at risk of retribution from her traffickers. She was kidnapped at the age of 14 and then continually trafficked and re-trafficked for forced prostitution in Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Israel and Britain until she was 21. She was arrested by police and immigration officers in a brothel in London in 2003, who charged her with possessing false documents, which had been provided by her traffickers. She was imprisoned for three months before being sent back to Moldova through a fast-track immigration process. Her trafficker was neither investigated nor arrested but was allowed to visit her in Holloway prison and Oakington detention centre, where he posed as her boyfriend, in order to intimidate her. The woman was found by her trafficker when she returned to Moldova and was forced back into prostitution. In 2007 she was arrested again in Britain and held at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre, but was eventually referred to the Poppy Project. She has since been granted refugee status. Mrs Justice Cox, who approved the confidential settlement, said the woman had been the repeated victim of sex trafficking over a long period of time, during which she had suffered severe sexual degradation resulting in psychiatric injury. She remained at significant risk of serious harm because the police had not been able to catch her traffickers. Poppy Project supports women who have been trafficked from places including Eastern Europe, Africa and Thailand to work in prostitution, and provides them with a range of intensive support services, including a safe house, a subsistence allowance, clothing, health checks, counselling and English lessons. It also provides outreach advice services to women who do not qualify for refuge care. Studies have shown that trafficked women have frequently been subjected to physical and sexual assault, forced into sex acts, and kept in captivity by traffickers. Research carried out in 2006 by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine found that over half the trafficked women they interviewed within two weeks of arrival at a support project had experienced physical symptoms such as weight loss, and gynaelogical infections, while over 70% reported problems with longer term mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal feelings. The Poppy Project was held up as an exemplary project in a study by the analysts New Philanthropy Capital in a 2008 report. It said: “Many of the experts that NPC consulted felt it was important that trafficked women be given support from specialist, women-only organisations with a track record in working with victims of extreme sexual violence and therefore have a deep understanding of what women need.” Charities Communities Voluntary sector Sexual health Health Human trafficking UK criminal justice Feminism Moldova Women Patrick Butler Alan Travis guardian.co.uk
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The explosion, which took place in the centre of the capital as commuters travelled home from work, injured up to 100 people A powerful blast has ripped through a metro station in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, killing at least 11 people and injuring up to 100. The explosion took place at the Oktyabrskaya station in the centre of the city just before 6pm on Monday as commuters travelled home from work. Video shot by witnesses on mobile phones showed survivors reeling across a smoke-filled platform where a woman with a damaged leg sat propped against a wall. In other images, a tide of frightened people rushed out through exit doors into an underpass as men with stretchers descended into the station. At street level, on Minsk’s Independence Avenue, emergency workers tended to more than a dozen seriously injured victims in shredded clothes, lying in pools of blood. Some had severed limbs. A young woman wailed “Mum, I’m alive! I’m alive!” into her telephone, while at least two corpses lay under a sheet of plastic. The Oktyabrskaya station is situated close to the residence of Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus. Lukashenko, a Soviet-style dictator, sent security forces to violently crush an opposition rally after disputed presidential elections in December. Several opposition candidates were arrested and are awaiting trial on charges of “organising mass public disturbances”. There is likely to be speculation that the blast will play into the hands of the hardline regime, who may use it as an excuse to crack down on the opposition. News agencies said that President Lukashenko visited the scene and laid flowers. “I can’t exclude that this gift was brought to us from outside, but we need to look at ourselves,” he told his defence minister, Yury Zhadobin, at an emergency government meeting.”You must check all the warehouses to see if ammunition and explosives are in place.” Lukashenko said the explosion could be connected to an unsolved incident in July 2008 when a bomb exploded in a park in Minsk, injuring about 50 people. “Maybe it’s a link in the same chain,” he said. Security sources said it was most likely a terrorist attack, but it was unclear who might have detonated the blast, which happened at rush hour at one of the city’s busiest transport hubs. There appeared to be no suicide bomber and Belarus has no history of confrontation with Islamists, like its larger neighbour, Russia. Witnesses described a scene of horror in the moments after the device went off. “It happened between the second and third carriages of the train on the Moscow line,” one man told reporters. “There were a lot of people covered in blood. I carried six young people out of there. I think there are fatalities.” Another man told Interfax: “I heard a muffled sound, like someone opening a champagne bottle, then the wave from the blast blew out the windows in the carriage. There was a great deal of smoke; we even became afraid that we might choke to death.” Some witnesses spoke of a crater on the platform, not far from an escalator. Belarus Global terrorism Europe Tom Parfitt guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …A day after UN and French helicopters began attacking Laurent Gbagbo’s compound , the Ivory Coast strongman has been detained and delivered to opposition leaders. Reuters talks to a Gbagbo adviser in France who says that French special forces forced their tanks into Gbagbo’s residence and arrested him. AP , citing an…
Continue reading …Moammar Gadhafi’s Ukrainian nurse Oksana Balinskaya is still talking about her infamous former employer. This time, she tells Newsweek about how Gadhafi liked to listen to Arab music on an old cassette player, would throw money and candy out of his car window while traveling through poor African countries, and…
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Prisoners are more likely to be granted parole early in the day or after a break such as lunch, according to researchers The adage that justice depends on what the judge ate for breakfast may not be far from the truth, according to a study of more than a thousand court decisions. The research, which examined judicial rulings by Israeli judges who presided over parole hearings in criminal cases, found that judges gave more lenient decisions at the start of the day and immediately after a scheduled break in court proceedings such as lunch. Jonathan Levav, associate professor of business at Columbia University , who co-authored the paper, said: “You are anywhere between two and six times as likely to be released if you’re one of the first three prisoners considered versus the last three prisoners considered.” The authors of the peer-reviewed paper looked at more than 1,000 rulings made in 2009 by eight judges. They found that the likelihood of a favourable ruling peaked at the beginning of the day, steadily declining over time from a probability of about 65% to nearly zero, before spiking back up to about 65% after a break for a meal or snack. Levav said the paper had implications for British judgments. He said: “What we’re finding here is a basic psychological effect, and there’s nothing different between the psychological effect on a British judge and an Israeli one.” The only other variables that influenced a judge’s ruling were the number of times a prisoner had been to jail and the presence of a rehabilitation programme. Other factors, such as the severity of the prisoner’s crime, prison time, sex and ethnicity tended not to exert an effect on the rulings, according to the paper, which is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science . The exact reason for the shift from parole approval to a “default” outcome of denial is not clear, but the paper speculates that breaks may replenish mental resources by providing “rest, improving mood or by increasing glucose levels in the body”. Levav said: “I don’t measure the judge’s mood. I don’t measure the judge’s glucose level. It’s just a very consistent empirical regularity. “It’s a quite robust effect, and it really doesn’t matter how you cut the data you get to reproduce it,” he added. UK criminal justice Israel Middle East guardian.co.uk
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