Jim Armitage: Out of Africa - a scheme where helping refugees helps everybody
Refugees are survivors, with the drive and ambition that make fantastic entrepreneurs
Martin's dressmaking shop in Kampala is doing a brisk trade. Colourful, printed fabrics hang from the ceiling. Half-made shirts adorn hangers on walls plastered with posters showing hundreds of women dressed alluringly in the latest fashions. You like the look of that one? Martin will knock one up in no time.
A woman in the corner works on an outfit from a sky-blue cotton fabric to the hum of a single sewing machine. Martin, wearing a T-shirt and short-cropped hair in the Ugandan heat, wishes that sound was louder.
IRAN
Iran increasing uranium production capacity
Iran is set to double its uranium enrichment after completing a second underground facility, according to UN report. The move is likely to increase concern from Western nations over Iranian nuclear intentions.
The latest report from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Friday shows that Iran installed the remaining 644 centrifuge machines at its Fordo underground facility in August, increasing its capacity for uranium enrichment.
Iran has now completed the nearly 2,800 centrifuges that the Fordo site was designed for, and is set to double the number of them operating from 700 to 1,400 according to the Vienna-based IAEA.
The IAEA report also said Iran continues to block access to sites, experts and documents linked to potential nuclear weapons development.
The Irish Times - Saturday, November 17, 2012
Police silent in Greece on migrant's jail ordeal
DAMIAN Mac CON ULADH in Athens
Greek police have said they are unable to answer questions relating to the detention in a police cell for four days of an Egyptian man who was the victim of an apparently racist attack because the issue is now before the courts.
As reported in the The Irish Times on Tuesday, earlier this month, Walid Taleb (29) was abducted and tortured by the baker, for whom he worked, in an 18-hour ordeal in a stable on the Greek island of Salamina. Mr Taleb, chained during the attack, said the baker, his son and two accomplices threatened to kill him and bury him in the outhouse.
Mr Taleb, who is an undocumented migrant from Egypt, managed to escape when his tormentors left to open the bakery the following morning.
What's the role of Afro-Colombian and Colombian women in the FARC peace talks?
Colombian women have faced internal displacement, militarization, sexual violence, and the forced recruitment of their children into the conflict. Their input is vital at the negotiating table, says a WOLA blogger.
As the Colombian Government prepares to meet with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) inHavana, Cuba, later this month for the second phase of the peace talks, the role of women – and in particular Afrodescendant women – in guaranteeing a successful peace effort requires support from the international community.
Olga Amparo of Colombianos y Colombianas por la Paznoted that while it is unsurprising that [Colombian] women are not on the negotiating teams—women are neither part of the FARC nor in the armed forces’ top command structures – “it does expose Colombia’s democratic deficit” of female political participation. Though Colombia has adopted norms favoring women’s rights, in practice, the political voice of Colombian women has remained muffled, and exclusion of Afro-Colombian women is particularly problematic
Netanyahu calls Obama's bluff
By M K Bhadrakumar
As tensions mount in the coming hours and days with the Israeli troops and tanks advancing toward Gaza menacingly, United States President Barack Obama begins to realize that he has a forked tongue.
Gaza becomes the litmus test of what he can claim to be as a statesman and what he cannot be in political reality.
For Obama, there is no running away from the reality that he has been hiding his head ostrich-like from the day he left Cairo in 2009 after making a magnificent speech there on the Palestinian problem.
The events of the past week in Gaza underscore that unless he musters the political courage - and integrity as a statesman - to address the Palestinian problem, all his talk of a transformative agenda for the Middle East remains sheer baloney.
Gaza becomes the litmus test of what he can claim to be as a statesman and what he cannot be in political reality.
For Obama, there is no running away from the reality that he has been hiding his head ostrich-like from the day he left Cairo in 2009 after making a magnificent speech there on the Palestinian problem.
The events of the past week in Gaza underscore that unless he musters the political courage - and integrity as a statesman - to address the Palestinian problem, all his talk of a transformative agenda for the Middle East remains sheer baloney.
Polio fighters in Pakistan struggle against myths and realities
LAHORE — They gathered in a small room in one of this city’s worst slums, a dozen mothers sitting cross-legged with toddlers and newborns on their laps, listening to advice about polio prevention.
“Keep your children from playing in garbage cans and sewer drains,” said Saddaf Malik, a brightly dressed young woman from UNICEF.
Simple enough, but then came the questions, spiked with suspicion and indicative of why Pakistan remains one of three countries in the world where the paralyzing disease still thrives despite constant campaigns in recent years to defeat it.
Why, some mothers wondered, were the vaccination teams coming back once a month, instead of every three months like they used to? Were the repeated doses of the red drops meant to induce sterility in Muslims?
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