From the Times Online:According to human rights groups, tens of thousands of young women like Zavidova have been sterilised without their consent in the authoritarian former Soviet state of Uzbekistan.
Uzbek sources say the measure was ordered by Islam Karimov, the president, who has ruled with an iron fist for 20 years. The policy is aimed at keeping down the country’s poor population — with 28m people, it is Central Asia’s most densely populated state.
Activists say mass sterilisation began in 2003, but was eased after two years following an outcry. It is said to have restarted in February this year, when the health ministry ordered doctors to recommend sterilisation as an “effective contraceptive”. Critics claim every doctor was told to persuade “at least two women” a month to have the procedure. Doctors who failed faced reprisals and fines.
From the Scotsman:AS Shelia Rowbotham points out towards the end of this excellent account of the contributions made by working-class and middle-class women, radicals and anarchists, mothers and singletons in Britain and America, much of the rights women take for granted today were won by those "who were not at the centre of power, nor were they engaged in heroic acts or glitzed with glamour". As a consequence, most of them have been forgotten.
When Rowbotham writes that, by the 1930s, there seemed to be a "hostility among young women to 'feminism'"; that feminist reformers struggled over how to balance careers with being mothers; that they complained of unequal pay for equal work, we are reminded that there are still so many rights to be fought for, still so many issues to be debated. It is thanks to women like Margaret Macmillan, who fought for school clinics and meals for schoolchildren, or Dora Russell, who campaigned for sex education, or Clementina Black, who spent her life campaigning for the rights of women workers, and who was active on the Women's Industrial Council, that my generation of women can lead the kinds of lives we do. We are not reminded of that fact nearly often enough. Rowbotham's book is that nudge in the ribs we all need.
From the Wall Street Journal:The list comes at a time when women-owned firms have grown in number but still lag behind male counterparts in terms of revenue. The number of female-owned companies grew 125% between 1982 and 2002, and women currently own 10.1 million firms or about 40% of all private companies in the U.S., according to the Center for Women's Business Research. Only 3% of all women-owned firms have revenues of $1 million or more, compared with 6% of men-owned firms, the center estimates.
Female entrepreneurs may not grow companies to as high a level as men because of an inability to access funding, especially venture capital; a lack of female role models; and, possibly, persistent stereotypes that they lack financial know-how or business expertise, the center and other groups have theorized.
The List @ Wall Street Journal
From
BBC News:
Young Arab women wait in an upmarket medical clinic for an operation that will not only change their lives, but quite possibly save it. Yet the operation is a matter of choice and not necessity. It costs about 2,000 euros (£1,700) and carries very little risk.
The clinic is not in Dubai or Cairo, but in Paris. And the surgery they are waiting for is to restore their virginity.
Whether in Asia or the Arab world, an unknown number of women face an agonising problem having broken a deep taboo. They've had sex outside marriage and if found out, risk being ostracised by their communities, or even murdered.
Now more and more of them are undergoing surgery to re-connect their hymens and hide the any sign of past sexual activity. They want to ensure that blood is spilled on their wedding night sheets.
The social pressure is so great that some women have even taken their own lives.
From the Times of India:A third of women dream about chocolate during the day, compared with only 18 per cent who think about sex, says a new British survey.
Around 2.3 million British women admitted that they have the sweet treat at least three times a day, reports The Daily Express.
On the other hand, six in 10 men have sex on their minds for most of the day and 11 per cent think about chocolate, the study found.
According to the study of 2,000 women, which was carried out by cereal bar firm Fibre Plus, more than one in five women say they would kiss goodbye to their sex lives before chocolate.
What’s more, a quarter would rather give up chardonnay and Chanel.
From BBC News:Outpourings of volcanic ash from Iceland in the 17th Century contributed to a period of famine and hardship in Scotland, according to experts.
A major eruption in 1695 saw large parts of the country affected by a "sulphurous fog".
Prof Alastair Dawson, writing in the latest Scottish Environment Protection Agency magazine, said it came at a time of climatic change.
Dust in the atmosphere dimmed sunlight causing crops to fail.
Prof Dawson, of the University of Aberdeen, writes in Sepa View: "We cannot be sure what the precise effect of this eruption was on Scotland's climate but we do know that the years between AD 1693-1700 were characterised by widespread famine.
"They later became known as the 'King William's Dear Years'.
"A contemporary account of this time describes how it was common for people to bring in the crops in the frosts and snow between November and February."
From CNN:Pakistan's military-led former government failed to protect former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto before her 2007 assassination and intelligence agencies hindered the subsequent investigation, a U.N. commission concluded in a report released Thursday.
The three-member investigative panel issued a scathing report Thursday afternoon, concluding that the suicide bombing that killed Bhutto "could have been prevented" and that police deliberately failed to pursue an effective investigation into the killings.
Bhutto had returned from a self-imposed, eight-year exile to run in the country's general elections two months before her assassination and already had escaped one attempt on her life. She was killed in December 2007 by a 15-year-old suicide bomber while campaigning in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, the seat of the country's military.
"No one believes that this boy acted alone," the report states. "A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms. Bhutto, and second to investigate with vigor all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack, but also in its conception, planning and financing."
A spokesman for then-President Pervez Musharraf said Friday the government offered adequate protection for Bhutto.
"I believe the government at the time did whatever they thought was reasonable," said Muhammad Ali Saif, a spokesman and adviser to the former president.
From Digital Goa:Home Minister Ravi Naik today asked the Director of Fire Services Ashok Menon to place proposal before state government to induct women fire fighters. He was speaking on the occasion of 'National Fire Service Day' in the city today morning.
"We have only male fire fighters which needs to be revised. During any mishap when male rescuers save women, there may be issues that she is been manhandled. Women fighters should therefore be trained to handle situations and conduct rescue operations," he said at the gathering.
Each fire station, the minister said will have minimum 10 women fire fighters who will be trained in the Regional Training Centre in the St Inez head quarters.
Goa had 14 fire stations across the state with a proposal to set up new fire stations at Pilerne and Cuncolim. While, upgradation of Curchorem fire station, Menon said, will begin in two month with land already acquired y the government.
The department in the last five years has attended to 17,946 fire and emergency calls, saved lives of 866 humans and 826 animals and saved property to the tune of rupees 431.47 crores.
The director said they were intending to procure thermal cameras to locate victims in the difficult incident spots.
Menon had earlier admitted they were finding difficult to get a land to set up a fire station or fire outpost in the coastal belt of Goa.
The minister termed Fire Department as the most disciplined and the leading government department in Goa.
From the Christian Science Monitor:Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi, a Saudi cleric in the holy city of Mecca, recently declared that nothing in Islam bars men and women mingling in public places like schools and offices. For the first time in decades, religious scholars are debating the previously untouchable hallmark of gender segregation.
That was the case when Sheikh Ahmed al-Ghamdi recently declared that nothing in Islam bans men and women from mixing in public places like schools and offices.
Supporters of the status quo responded harshly. Anyone who permits men and women to work or study together is an apostate and should be put to death unless he repents, said Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Barrak.
Does Sheikh Barrak mean that King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz should be executed? Because it is the monarch who launched the country's first coeducational university.
