health: Lincoln Tribune

الاثنين، 30 يناير 2012

Lincoln Tribune

Afghan man chokes wife to death for giving birth to baby girl
Strong earthquake strikes central Peru, injuring more than 70
Thai government welcomes Twitter censorship announcement
Washington Celebrates Chinese New Year With Parade
Police Arrests 200 ‘Occupy’ Protesters in Oakland

Afghan man chokes wife to death for giving birth to baby girl

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 02:37 AM PST

KUNDUZ, AFGHANISTAN (BNO NEWS) -- Police in northern Afghanistan are looking for a man who allegedly choked his wife to death after she gave birth to a baby girl for the third time, according to media reports on Monday.

A police spokesman told the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) news agency that 30-year-old Storay had been choked to death by her husband and mother-in-law after she gave birth to the couple's third girl late last year. "She was told by her husband that if she delivered another baby girl, he would kill her," the spokesman said.

The murder took place in a remote village in Khanabad district of Kunduz province, which is located in northern Afghanistan. Storay's mother-in-law has been arrested but her husband has fled, the police spokesman was quoted as saying by dpa. The report did not say when Storay was killed.

Despite the fall of the Taliban more than a decade ago, violence and abuse of women continues to be a serious problem in Afghanistan. Human rights activists have criticized Afghan authorities for their failure to protect women, and the issue was highlighted again by two recent cases.

In late December, police in northern Afghanistan rescued a 15-year-old girl who had been locked up in a toilet for about half a year and was frequently beaten for refusing to have sex with men brought home by her parents-in-law. The young victim had earlier married a 30-year-old man, a common practice in a country where some girls are being married as young as nine-years-old.

Prior to that, the Afghan government received a storm of criticism when a 21-year-old woman, identified only as Gulnaz, was arrested on charges of adultery when she reported that she had been raped by her cousin's husband in 2009. She initially did not report the sexual assault but was forced to do so after showing signs of pregnancy.

Refusing to marry her alleged attacker to have the case dropped, Gulnaz was sentenced to two years in prison on the charge of having sex outside of marriage because prosecutors argued they could not determine whether they had sex voluntarily outside of marriage or if she raped.

The initial sentence was later increased to twelve years in prison when Gulnaz appealed her conviction. Another appeal saw her sentence being reduced to three years imprisonment, but she received a pardon from President Hamid Karzai when the issue gained international attention.

The case of Gulnaz, who was released last month, drew international attention to the plight of many Afghan women after the European Union blocked a documentary which featured her story. The documentary, which shows cases of Afghan women jailed for so-called 'moral crimes', was blocked because of concerns for the safety of the women portrayed.

Human rights groups say hundreds of women in Afghan jails are victims of rape or domestic violence.

Strong earthquake strikes central Peru, injuring more than 70

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 01:52 AM PST

ICA, PERU (BNO NEWS) -- A strong earthquake struck near the Peruvian city of Ica on early Monday morning, causing damage and injuring more than 70 people, officials said. Thousands of people were forced to spend the night on the street.

The 6.2-magnitude earthquake at 12:11 a.m. local time (0511 GMT) was centered about 47 kilometers (29 miles) southwest of Ica, the capital of the region which carries the same name. It struck about 48 kilometers (29.8 miles) deep, making it a shallow earthquake, according to the Geophysical Institute of Peru (IGP).

The earthquake, which was felt across central Peru and struck as most people were sleeping, caused damage to an unknown number of houses and other buildings. Some telephone lines collapsed and power outages were reported in Ica and the surrounding area, local media reported.

The United States Geological Survey (USGS), which measured the strength of the earthquake at 6.3 on the regional moment magnitude scale, estimated that approximately 345,000 people may have felt strong shaking. Nearly one million others may have felt light to moderate shaking.

In the hours after the earthquake, approximately 70 people were treated at hospitals and health centers for various injuries, city officials said, although none of them were believed to be seriously injured. Most of the injuries were described as cuts and bruises, although several people suffered broken bones.

In Ica, a city with a population of about 220,000, many thousands of people spend the night on the street in fear of aftershocks.

Peru is on the so-called 'Pacific Ring of Fire', an arc of fault lines circling the Pacific Basin that is prone to frequent and large earthquakes. Volcanic eruptions also occur frequently in the region.

In October 2011, at least 83 people were injured and more than 130 houses were destroyed when a 6.7-magnitude earthquake struck about 51 kilometers (32 miles) south-southwest of Ica. It came just two months after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck northeastern Peru, injuring several people.

And in August 2007, at least 514 people were killed and more than 1,000 others were injured when a massive 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck the central coast of Peru, generating a small tsunami which flooded some areas. Large parts of Ica were devastated by the earthquake.

Peru's most catastrophic earthquake on record happened in May 1970 when a powerful 7.9-magnitude earthquake struck about 36 kilometers (22 miles) off the coast of northwestern Peru, killing at least 66,794 people. More than 50,000 others were injured.

Thai government welcomes Twitter censorship announcement

Posted: 30 Jan 2012 12:47 AM PST

BANGKOK (BNO NEWS) -- The Thai government on Monday welcomed an announcement from the social networking website Twitter that it will start censoring controversial content on a country-specific level, local media reported.

Jeerawan Boonperm, the permanent secretary at the Information and Communication Technology Ministry in Thailand, said last week's announcement is a "welcome development." She said the Ministry will contact Twitter to discuss how they might be able to collaborate, according to the Bangkok Post.

Twitter received a storm of criticism last week when it announced that it will block tweets and user profiles in some countries if they are found to violate local laws. The new policy allows Twitter to block, for example, pro-Nazi content in France and Germany where this is illegal.

Previously, Twitter was not able to block content on a local level and was instead forced to remove the content globally. "Starting today, we give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country - while keeping it available in the rest of the world," the U.S.-based company said in a blog post last week. It said it would communicate to users when and for what reason content is withheld.

Jeerawan said the Thai government already receives "good cooperation" from companies such as Google and Facebook and that it would work with Twitter, where its users post some 250 million messages a day, to ensure tweets disseminated in Thailand are in compliance with local laws.

The Thai government has blocked thousands of websites in recent years, mainly for violating lese-majesty or pornography laws.

Washington Celebrates Chinese New Year With Parade

Posted: 29 Jan 2012 06:52 PM PST

The capitol city of the United States has been celebrating the Chinese New Year for the past half century or so with a parade in Washington DC's Chinatown section. This year was no exception. The parade did take place, but its organizers have some big changes in store for the future.

There was a dragon dance, a lion dance, kung fu demonstrations and the lighting of a giant firecracker, all mainstays of the city's annual celebration.

Washington's Chinese-American community, while substantial, is nowhere near as large as those in some other U.S. cities, like San Francisco and New York. But its Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Society wants its annual New Year parade to be as big.

Video prepared for VOA by Shivan Sarna

The organizations leader, Waymond Lee, said, "you know we have been organizing this parade for over fifty years. It has been the mainstay for the DC area. But you know, it's mostly limited to the local Chinatown community. But I think it's a cultural event that should belong to the general DC area. So in order to make it that way, we have to make it bigger."

This year's parade had an American component as well, with Washington DC high school marching bands, walking politicians and a float by Washington's team in the National Basketball Association, The Washington Wizards. They play at an arena called the Verizon Center, located in the middle of Chinatown

"Being located right here at the Verizon Center in the middle of Chinatown, we're located in close proximity to many of the businesses around here, and one of our main goals is to form a stronger relationship with many of the businesses around here. So we're hoping to accomplish that. Last year was the first year we did a kind of outreach into the community with the Asian Heritage night, and this year, we're actually taking part in the parade, something we're very excited about, said Nick Creech, a spokesman for the Wizards. He says there are other reasons for the team's, and the NBA's support of the Chinese community

"It started with Yao Ming came over. It really did open the gate for many Chinese players. Yao really paved the way and "E" came next. The NBA is huge in China. You're seeing more and more players signing shoe deals in China. In fact our own player, JaVale Magee, has a show deal with Peak, the Chinese shoe company. They'are really making big inroads in the country," he said.

There is an overriding theme in the parade said organizer Ed Chow, who is also the director of veteran's affairs for the neighboring U.S. state of Maryland.

"I think demonstrations like this parade, demonstrations of our various cultures to our larger community shows that we are part of our world, we are part of America and we would like to be here to contribute just like anybody else. My grandfather came here in 1880 , and because of that immigration pattern, I'm here today to participate in the greatest country in the world," he said.

The hoped for changes that would make the parade much larger are in the planning stages for as soon as next year.

Police Arrests 200 ‘Occupy’ Protesters in Oakland

Posted: 29 Jan 2012 11:14 AM PST

Police in Oakland, California, arrested some 200 anti-Wall Street protesters who attempted to occupy a vacant building.

The clashes began Saturday when activists torched an American flag in front of City Hall before breaking into the historic building and damaging art exhibits inside. The protesters later marched to an empty convention center they wanted to convert into a social center and tore down fencing.

Police say the protesters threw rocks, bottles and other objects at officers who responded by firing tear gas and bean bag rounds (less lethal shotgun ammunition). Officials say three police officers and one protester were injured.

During a press conference Saturday, Mayor Jean Quan called on Occupy protesters to stop "using Oakland as its playground." She blamed the destruction on a violent splinter group within the Occupy Oakland demonstration.

An estimated 1,000 people attended Saturday's march.

The national Occupy Wall Street movement began in New York in September. It says it represents the "99 percent" - those outside the top 1 percent of wealth holders.

Meanwhile, authorities in Washington, D.C., are planning to evict Occupy protesters from two parks where they have been camping since October.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

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الاثنين، 30 يناير 2012

Lincoln Tribune

Lincoln Tribune

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