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There is only one country in Europe without debt: Liechtenstein
This deplorable bill would not only violate the rights of Ugandans to life, to non-discrimination, to equality before the law, and to privacy, but would sanction hatred, violence and the persecution of a group of people based on whom they love alone
Michelle Kagari, Deputy Africa Programme Director at Amnesty International, about the anti-gay bill that would make the death sentence mandatory for gays who are “repeat offenders”. It brings in the death penalty for anyone caught engaging in homosexual acts for the second time as well as for gay sex where one partner is a minor or has HIV. It also proposes to criminalise public discussion of homosexuality and would penalise an individual who knowingly rents property to a homosexual. Homosexuality is taboo in many African nations. It is illegal in 37 countries on the continent and the bill has given Uganda a reputation as the “world’s homophobia capital”.
Source: aljazeera.com
The Somali militant group Al-Shabaab says it has banned the International Committee of the Red Cross from operating in the regions it controls, accusing the organization of distributing expired food.
Earlier this month the ICRC announced that it was suspending aid intended for up to 1.1 million people in central and southern Somalia because it was being hindered by local authorities.
Jean-Yves Clemenzo, a spokesman for the ICRC, said it had not changed its earlier stance but was trying to find a solution.
“We want to find a way to get aid to those who need it,” said Clemenzo.
The Al-Shabaab press office said on Twitter Monday that the “ICRC betrayed the trust conferred on it by local population.”
Al-Shabaab is linked to al Qaeda and is considered a terrorist group by the United States.
Source: CNN
Chinese Embassy pressures Italy to protect immigrants after killings
January 9, 2012
Zhou Zheng, 31, and his 9-month-old daughter were killed Wednesday, according to Italy’s ANSA news agency. Two thieves demanded 5,000 euros (about $6,360) from his business’s earnings as he was returning home with his family, according to the report.
A bullet passed through the baby’s head and struck Zhou in the heart, autopsy results said, according to ANSA.
The Chinese Embassy in Rome issued a statement saying it was “shocked and alarmed for the tragedy in Rome, and it firmly condemns the killers for their atrocity and inhumane violence.”
The killings come amid a wave of unrelated slayings in Rome, ANSA reported.
“Rome’s patience and that of her citizens is finished,” Mayor Gianni Alemanno said, according to the news agency. “There are criminal beasts that are operating in our city that must be stopped at all costs.”
About 130 new police officers were to arrive in Rome in Friday, authorities told ANSA. By the end of January, a contingent of 400 officers is to be in place.
Source: CNN
U.N. refugee chief: ‘Stand by South Sudan’
January 8, 2012
South Sudan is facing a “huge humanitarian crisis” that requires support from the international community, the United Nations’ refugee chief said Sunday.
Nearly 80,000 refugees have entered the nation from neighboring Sudan, where fighting has flared in the states of Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said. And ethnic conflicts in South Sudan have displaced thousands, he said.
“My appeal is for the international community to stand by South Sudan and to support this country that became a sovereign state just six months ago to be able to cope with the challenges,” Guterres told CNN in an interview via Skype from South Sudan.
Last weekend, some 6,000 armed men from the Lou Nuer tribe marched on an area of South Sudan’s Jonglei state, which is home to the rival Murle tribe, attacking the town of Pibor.
Beyond ethnic tensions, deficient health and education systems and a lack of infrastructure are significant obstacles for the nascent nation, he said.
“This is a baby that needs to be nurtured. And the international community, which made such good efforts in order to make sure the baby was born, now needs to go on with those efforts in order to make sure that the baby grows up and becomes an adult partner of the international community,” Guterres said.
Decades of civil war between the north and south, costing as many as 2 million lives, ended with a U.S.-brokered peace treaty in 2005.
The United Nations estimates that more than 1,100 people died and 63,000 were displaced last year by inter-communal violence in Jonglei, not taking into account the latest clashes.
U.N. flights have delivered thousands of tents, kitchen sets, blankets, jerry cans, plastic sheets, sleeping mats, mosquito nets and other essential items to refugee camps in South Sudan in the past two and a half weeks.
Source: CNN
African rhino poaching hits record on Asian demand
By Jon Herskovitz - JOHANNESBURG | Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:41am EST
(Reuters) - A record number of rhinos were poached this year in South Africa, home to the greatest number of the animals. At least 443 rhinos have been killed in South Africa in 2011, up from 333 last year, the national park service and conservationists said. The street value of rhinoceros horns has soared to about $65,000 a kilogram, making it more expensive than gold, platinum and in many cases cocaine.
South Africa, home to more than 20,000 rhinos, was losing about 15 animals a year a decade ago. But poaching increased dramatically from about 2007 as a growing affluent class in places such as Vietnam and Thailand began spending more on rhino horn for traditional medicine.
About half of poaching takes place in Kruger National Park, the country’s flagship park covering an area about the size of Israel, where soldiers and surveillance aircraft have been deployed in recent months to slow the carnage. The park has been the focal point of an arms race as gangs of poachers sponsored by international crime syndicates have used high-powered weaponry, night vision goggles and helicopters to hunt the animals, investigators said.
South Africa, home to over 90 percent of the rhinos in Africa, grants licenses for legal hunts, with a growing number of the horns then mounted as trophies, shipped to Asia and sold on the black market, according to police and customs officials. Many poachers were trained by Mozambique’s military or police and are now living in squalor in the border region next to Kruger, South African investigators said.
Rhino horn has been used for centuries in Chinese medicine, where it was ground into a powder and often mixed with hot water to treat a variety of maladies including rheumatism, gout, high fever and even devil possession. In recent years, it has also taken on a reputation for being an aphrodisiac and cancer cure.
Source: reuters.com
Was it really necessary?
WHO “deeply concerned” by mutated birdflu research By Kate Kelland - LONDON | Fri Dec 30, 2011 4:43pm EST
The World Health Organization issued a stern warning on Friday to scientists who have engineered a highly pathogenic form of the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus, saying their work carries significant risks and must be tightly controlled.
The United Nations health body said it was “deeply concerned about the potential negative consequences” of work by two leading flu research teams who this month said they had found ways to make H5N1 into a easily transmissible form capable of causing lethal human pandemics.
The work by the teams, one in The Netherlands and one in the United States, has already prompted an unprecedented censorship call from U.S. security advisers who fear that publishing details of the research could give potential attackers the know-how to make a bioterror weapon.
H5N1 bird flu is extremely deadly in people who are directly exposed to it from infected birds. Since the virus was first detected in 1997, about 600 people have contracted it and more than half of them have died.
But so far it has not yet naturally mutated into a form that can pass easily from person to person, although many scientists fear this kind of mutation is likely to happen at some point and will constitute a major health threat if it does.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health funded the two research teams to carry out research into how the virus could become more transmissible in humans, with the aim of gaining insight on how to react if the mutation occurred naturally.
WHO also said it was vital that new rules on the sharing of viruses and scientific know-how were enforced to ensure those countries at most immediate risk from H5N1, mainly developing countries in Asia such as Indonesia, Vietnam and others, would benefit from advances in research.
AWESOME!!! GREAT NEWS!!! And BTW, what’s the point again?
Source: reuters.com
Mr Putin, my civil rights are not your property.
Russian Protesters. “Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday of stirring up protests against his 12-year rule and said foreign countries were spending hundreds of millions of dollars to influence Russian elections.” Reuters. Dec 8, 201
