Democracy & Civics

Nigeria's Smoke Out

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Claims that international tobacco companies are targeting young people in Nigeria have spurred a $43 billion government lawsuit against Phillip Morris, British American Tobacco and International Tobacco. Activists told The Guardian that the companies are targeting teenagers with marketing strategies that have banned in other nations, using sponsored events, pop stars and product placements to glamorize smoking. According to the World Health Organization, one in five Nigerian teenagers smoke, and the number of women smokers there rose tenfold in the 1990s. Government lawyers cite “internal” corporate documents that identify “young and underage smokers” as a prime target — some no more than eight or nine years old. Critics of the lawsuit say that Nigeria’s lawsuit is a cynical ploy to make money off the industry, which only recently enjoyed numerous tax breaks there.

Public Health

Japan's Health Care Crisis

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It is a leader of the industrialized world, a scientific and technological powerhouse with a robust economy, a vigorous democracy and guaranteed universal health care for all its citizens. Yet Japan increasingly struggles to make good on that promise, as hospitals, many of them privately owned, have begun shutting down their emergency wards due to rising costs and staffing shortages. The Asahi Shimbun newspaper reports that 235 hospitals in Japan have stopped accepting emergency patients in the last two years, and 20 have closed their doors for good. At issue is a lack of doctors willing to work overnight shifts, and private owners who have found hospitals, especially in rural areas, to be unprofitable. –Josh Wilson/Newsdesk.org
Source:
“200 hospitals have ended emergency care over past two years”
Asahi Shimbun/Agence France-Presse, January 16, 2008

Economy

Are Boycotts Cutting into Myanmar's Gem Trade?

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[Updated Jan. 17, 2008]
The Myanmar junta’s repression of democracy protests last summer have calmed the streets, but its harsh tactics may have also robbed the state’s gem trade of its luster. Inter Press Service reports that Myanmar’s gem auctions brought in $300 million in 2006, the state’s third most profitable export after fossil fuels and timber. But according to activists, a November 2007 gem auction earned $150 million, far short of its $230 million “low end sales projection.” Now, Myanmar is staging another auction this week, prompting renewed calls for boycotts.

Democracy & Civics

Free After 20 Years on Death Row

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A Scottish man who spent 20 years on Ohio’s death row has been freed following a new plea. Kenny Richey was convicted and sentenced to death in 1987 for setting a fire that led to the death of 2-year-old Cynthia Collins. He has always claimed to be innocent, and his conviction was overturned in August. The case was often delayed by Richey’s health problems. The 43-year-old has suffered multiple heart attacks. On Monday, he was released after he pleaded no contest to charges of attempted involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment and breaking and entering, and was sentenced to time served.

Featured

Pesticide Fears Along California's Central Coast

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Activists claim that hundreds of people became sick after officials sprayed a type of pesticide along parts of California’s Central Coast. In a pair of studies released last week, a group calling itself California Alliance to Stop the Spray says that 643 residents of Monterey and Santa Cruz counties became ill last fall after state agriculture officials sprayed the area with a synthetic pheromone known as CheckMate LBAM-F. Symptoms listed include eye and throat irritation, shortness of breath, skin rashes, asthma attacks and interruptions in menstrual cycles, according to the Santa Cruz Sentinel. “The spray affected people in different ways,” said the reports’ compiler, Pacific Grove resident Mike Lynberg, according to the Sentinel. “But they all had one thing in common.

Democracy & Civics

Thailand's New Democracy as Fractious as the Old

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Thailand returned to democracy last month, with its first national elections after 15 months of military rule. But the transition is proving to be a rocky one. According to Asia Times, The People Power Party, a new version of the party once headed by ousted Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, won the largest number of seats — though not an outright majority — in parliamentary elections on Dec. 23, and party leaders began lining up partners to form a coalition government. The victory seemed a blow to military leaders, who were opposed to Thaksin’s government.

World

Muslim Extremists Target Historic Buddha Statue

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A huge, centuries-old Buddhist statue in northern Pakistan has been badly damaged after it was attacked by Muslim militants, Asia Times reports. Spurred on by a former cleric known as the Radio Mullah, who broadcasts from a pirate radio station in the region, militants detonated explosives on the statute, destroying its face. The 23-foot-tall, 7th century Buddha of Jehanabad is the last remaining of many huge statues and carvings from the Gandhara civilization, which had its capital in what is now Pakistan’s Swat Valley. The attack was reportedly carried out by members of extremist group Tehrik-e-Nifaz-e-Sharia Muhammadia, after their leader, Maulana Fazlullah, used his radio station to call for the destruction of “un-Islamic” imagery. The attack echoed the Taliban’s 2001 destruction of Afghanistan’s equally historic Bamiyan Buddhas.

Democracy & Civics

Trouble at the Roof of the World

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Water rights and free speech are the latest sparks that have inflamed protests in Tibet against the Chinese government. Hundreds of nomads — yak herders and others whose way of life seems to exist outside of politics and time — fought with police last month after a disagreement involving three teenage Tibetan monks and Chinese shopkeepers. The incident, in Baikar (in Chinese, Baiga Shang), Nagchu Prefecture (China’s Naqu Prefecture), ended with the monks being detained, and one severely beaten by police, witnesses told Radio Free Asia. Afterward, nomads gathered outside to demand the monks’ release. The mob’s numbers rose to almost 1,000 a day later, witnesses said, and soon began to grow violent, attacking government offices.

Democracy & Civics

Judge SeeksTerror Trial Jury Blackout

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A federal judge in Miami ordered jurors to be selected anonymously in the upcoming retrial of an alleged terrorist cell, citing concerns about the potential for jury tampering. The move, which is sometimes made in organized crime trials, will mean that potential jurors in the closely watched case will be referred to by number instead of by name. Jurors will also be investigated and supervised by the U.S. Marshals Service in order to guard against any outside influence or attempts at intimidation. “I do find there is a strong reason to believe that the jury needs protection,” said U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard. She cited an incident in which a defense lawyer in the case handed a complete list of names from a jury to a client’s mother, so that she could pray for a not guilty verdict.

Environment

Fur Flies in Tiger Photo Fight

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When Chinese officials declared this fall that a rare South China tiger had been photographed in the wild, it appeared at first to be a story of nature’s powers of survival. But now the officials are defending the photos against claims that they are obvious fakes. The controversy began in October, when China’s official Xinhua news agency reported that a farmer had handed in photos he took of a tiger in a forest near his house in Shaanxi province. The South China tiger is critically endangered, and has not been spotted in the wild since 1964. Experts believe that if there are any of the animals left in their natural habitat, they number fewer than 30.