Even as Africa Hungers, Policy Slows Delivery of U.S. Food Aid

April 7, 2007

MULONDO, Zambia — Traveling to school in wobbly dugout canoes, Munalula Muhau and her three cousins, 7- and 8-year-olds whose parents had died from AIDS, held onto just one possession: battered tin bowls to receive their daily ration of gruel.

Within weeks, those rations, provided by the United Nations World Food Program, are at risk of running out for them and 500,000 other paupers, including thousands of people wasted by AIDS who are being treated with American-financed drugs that make them hungrier as they grow healthy.

“Not to put too fine a point on it,” said Jeffrey Stringer, an American doctor who runs a nonprofit group treating more than 50,000 Zambians with AIDS, “but it will result in the death of some patients.”

By CELIA W. DUGGER

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Libya sentences foreign health workers to death

Associated Press
Tuesday December 19, 2006
Guardian Unlimited


Bulgarian medics Nasia Nenova (r), Snezana Dimitrova (c) and Palestinian doctor Ashraf Hajjuj, behind bars during their retrial in Libya. Photograph: Mahmud Turkia/AFP/Getty Images

A Libyan court today condemned to death five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor after finding them guilty of deliberately infecting 400 children with the HIV virus.

The presiding judge, Mahmoud Hawissa, read out the verdict in a seven-minute hearing in a Tripoli court at the end of the defendants' second trial.

The six defendants, detained for nearly seven years, had previously been convicted and condemned to death, but Libyan judges granted them a retrial after international protests over the fairness of the proceedings. Bulgaria contends the children were infected by unhygienic practices at their Libyan hospital.

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The accused now have the right to appeal to the Libyan supreme court.

The long trial of the six foreign medical workers has become a bone of contention in Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy's efforts to rebuild ties with the west. The European Union and the United States have called for their release, indicating that future relations with Libya would be affected by the verdict.

But Libyans strongly supported a conviction. Relatives of the infected children - about 50 of whom have already died of Aids - waited outside the court early today, holding poster-sized pictures of their children and bearing placards that read "Death for the children killers" and "HIV made in Bulgaria".

When the supreme court ordered a retrial in December 2005, friends and relatives rioted in Benghazi - the Libyan city where the children were infected in a state hospital.

Bulgarians will be extremely disappointed by Tuesday's verdict. Hundreds of people staged peaceful protests in support of the five nurses yesterday in Bulgaria. The EU, the US and international rights groups have accused Libya of prosecuting the six foreign staff as scapegoats.

Luc Montagnier - the French doctor who was a co-discoverer of HIV - testified in the first trial that the deadly virus was active in the hospital before the Bulgarian nurses began their contracts there in 1998.

The Good Daughter, in a Brothel: NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF & Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy: FRANK RICH

THE COMPLETE ARTICLES
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Good Daughter, in a Brothel
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 17, 2006

In poor countries where sex trafficking and globalization have fostered new forms of slavery, stories like Yan Kosal’s are still wrenchingly common.

BATTAMBANG, Cambodia

One of the oldest social dichotomies is the one dividing good girls from bad, the madonna from the whore. But in poor countries where sex trafficking and globalization have fostered new forms of slavery, it is the saintly ones — those who risk leaving their villages to help their families — who often end up as whores.

Yan Kosal is a 26-year-old woman here in northwestern Cambodia who was devoted to her aging parents and desperately concerned with providing for them. Her mother is blind, her father is frail, and they depend on her — the only surviving child — for food.

Kosal earned only $30 a month as a peddler, barely enough to scrape by. So when a woman acquaintance told her that she could earn $90 a month selling snacks in Thailand, Kosal leapt at the opportunity.

"I thought I should do this to feed my parents," Kosal said, particularly because her acquaintance offered to escort her to Bangkok. Kosal borrowed $15 to pay her travel expenses, and they set out in September. But once they were in Thailand, where Kosal couldn't speak the language, the trafficker sold her to a brothel.

"First, I cried," Kosal said. But the brothel manager beat Kosal until she capitulated. "If the men wanted to go to the room," Kosal said numbly, "the girl had to go." The women were paid nothing, except for tips — but the sad ones who wept and were uncooperative didn't get tips.

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OP-ED COLUMNIST
Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 17, 2006

Gay-baiting may do candidates who traffic in it more harm than good.

IT'S not the least of John McCain's political talents that he comes across as a paragon of straight talk even when he isn't talking straight. So it was a surprise to see him reduced to near-stammering on ABC's "This Week" two Sundays after the election. The subject that brought him low was the elephant in the elephants' room, or perhaps we should say in their closet: homosexuality.

Senator McCain is no bigot, and his only goal was to change the subject as quickly as possible. He kept repeating two safe talking points for dear life: he opposes same-sex marriage (as does every major presidential aspirant in both parties) and he is opposed to discrimination. But because he had endorsed a broadly written Arizona ballot initiative that could have been used to discriminate against unmarried domestic partners, George Stephanopoulos wouldn't let him off the hook.

"Are you against civil unions for gay couples?" he asked the senator, who replied, "No, I'm not." When Mr. Stephanopoulos reiterated the question seconds later — "So you're for civil unions?" — Mr. McCain answered, "No." In other words, he was not against civil unions before he was against them. His gaffe was reminiscent of a similar appearance on Mr. Stephanopoulos's show in 2004 by Bill Frist, a Harvard-trained doctor who refused to criticize a federal abstinence program that catered to the religious right by spreading the canard that sweat and tears could transmit AIDS.

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Reposted

The Good Daughter, in a Brothel: NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF & Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy: FRANK RICH

THE COMPLETE ARTICLES
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

The Good Daughter, in a Brothel
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: December 17, 2006

In poor countries where sex trafficking and globalization have fostered new forms of slavery, stories like Yan Kosal’s are still wrenchingly common.

BATTAMBANG, Cambodia

One of the oldest social dichotomies is the one dividing good girls from bad, the madonna from the whore. But in poor countries where sex trafficking and globalization have fostered new forms of slavery, it is the saintly ones — those who risk leaving their villages to help their families — who often end up as whores.

Yan Kosal is a 26-year-old woman here in northwestern Cambodia who was devoted to her aging parents and desperately concerned with providing for them. Her mother is blind, her father is frail, and they depend on her — the only surviving child — for food.

Kosal earned only $30 a month as a peddler, barely enough to scrape by. So when a woman acquaintance told her that she could earn $90 a month selling snacks in Thailand, Kosal leapt at the opportunity.

"I thought I should do this to feed my parents," Kosal said, particularly because her acquaintance offered to escort her to Bangkok. Kosal borrowed $15 to pay her travel expenses, and they set out in September. But once they were in Thailand, where Kosal couldn't speak the language, the trafficker sold her to a brothel.

"First, I cried," Kosal said. But the brothel manager beat Kosal until she capitulated. "If the men wanted to go to the room," Kosal said numbly, "the girl had to go." The women were paid nothing, except for tips — but the sad ones who wept and were uncooperative didn't get tips.

--MORE--

---

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Mary Cheney’s Bundle of Joy
By FRANK RICH
Published: December 17, 2006

Gay-baiting may do candidates who traffic in it more harm than good.

IT'S not the least of John McCain's political talents that he comes across as a paragon of straight talk even when he isn't talking straight. So it was a surprise to see him reduced to near-stammering on ABC's "This Week" two Sundays after the election. The subject that brought him low was the elephant in the elephants' room, or perhaps we should say in their closet: homosexuality.

Senator McCain is no bigot, and his only goal was to change the subject as quickly as possible. He kept repeating two safe talking points for dear life: he opposes same-sex marriage (as does every major presidential aspirant in both parties) and he is opposed to discrimination. But because he had endorsed a broadly written Arizona ballot initiative that could have been used to discriminate against unmarried domestic partners, George Stephanopoulos wouldn't let him off the hook.

"Are you against civil unions for gay couples?" he asked the senator, who replied, "No, I'm not." When Mr. Stephanopoulos reiterated the question seconds later — "So you're for civil unions?" — Mr. McCain answered, "No." In other words, he was not against civil unions before he was against them. His gaffe was reminiscent of a similar appearance on Mr. Stephanopoulos's show in 2004 by Bill Frist, a Harvard-trained doctor who refused to criticize a federal abstinence program that catered to the religious right by spreading the canard that sweat and tears could transmit AIDS.

--MORE--