Tag Archives: careers
Malala celebrates birthday with UN address
Malala celebrates birthday with UN address (Reuters) / 12 July 2013 In her first speech since the Taleban in Pakistan tried to kill her for advocating education for girls, Malala Yousafzai celebrated her 16th birthday on Friday at the United Nations, appealing for compulsory free schooling for all children. Wearing a pink head scarf, Yousafzai told U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and nearly 1,000 students from around the world attending a Youth Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York that education was the only way to improve lives. “Let us pick up our books and pens. They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution,” she said. Yousafzai was shot in the head at close range by gunmen in October as she left school in Pakistan’s Swat Valley, northwest of the country’s capital Islamabad, after campaigning against the Islamist Taleban efforts to deny women education. She presented Ban with a petition signed by nearly 4 million people in support of 57 million children who are not able to go to school and demanding that world leaders fund new teachers, schools and books and end child labor, marriage and trafficking. U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education, former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said Friday’s event was not just a celebration of Malala’s birthday and her recovery, but of her vision. “Her dream that nothing, no political indifference, no government inaction, no intimidation, no threats, no assassin’s bullets should ever deny the right of every single child … to be able to go to school,” said Brown. Pakistan has 5 million children out of school, a number only surpassed by Nigeria, which has more than 10 million children out of school, according to U.N. cultural agency UNESCO. Most of those are girls. Islamist gunmen killed 27 students and a teacher on Saturday in a boarding school in northeast Nigeria. It was the deadliest of at least three attacks on schools in Nigeria since the military launched an offensive in May to try to crush Islamist insurgent group Boko Haram, whose nickname translates as “Western education is sinful” in the northern Hausa language. The Taleban claimed responsibility for the assassination attempt on Yousafzai, calling her efforts pro-Western. Two of her classmates were also wounded. Yousafzai was treated in Britain, where doctors mended parts of her skull with a titanium plate. Unable to safely return to Pakistan, she started at a school in Birmingham in March. Tehreek-e-Taleban Pakistan (TTP), formed in 2007, is an umbrella group uniting various militant factions operating in Pakistan’s volatile northwestern tribal areas along the porous border with Afghanistan. Under Taleban rule in neighboring Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, women were forced to cover up and were banned from voting, most work and leaving their homes unless accompanied by a husband or male relative. Continue reading
India rape verdict to be given July 25
India rape verdict to be given July 25 (AP) / 11 July 2013 An Indian juvenile court will hand down a verdict later this month in the fatal December gang rape of a young woman on a New Delhi bus, a defence lawyer said Thursday. The verdict would be the first handed down in the rape case, which led to furious street protests in India and sparked major reforms to the nation’s antiquated sexual assault laws. Lawyer Rajesh Tiwari told reporters outside the court that his client would learn his fate July 25. The defendant was 17 at the time of the attack and is being tried as a minor on charges including murder and rape. He faces a maximum sentence of three years at a reform centre. Court rules forbid the publication of his name even though he has since turned 18. The defendant was one of six people accused of tricking a young woman and her male companion into boarding an off-duty bus Dec. 16. Police say the men then raped and brutalized the woman and savagely beat the man before dumping them on the roadside. The woman died from her injuries two weeks later in a Singapore hospital. Four of the other defendants are being tried in a special fast-track court in New Delhi and face the death penalty. The sixth accused was found dead in his jail cell in March. The attack set off furious protests across India about the treatment of women in the country and led to a swift overhaul of sexual assault laws. Continue reading
Nearly six million die from smoking every year: WHO
Nearly six million die from smoking every year: WHO (AFP) / 11 July 2013 Despite public health campaigns, smoking remains the leading avoidable cause of death worldwide, killing almost six million people a year, mostly in low- and middle-income countries, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. If current trends hold, the number of deaths blamed on tobacco use will rise to eight million a year in 2030, the WHO said in a briefing unveiled at a conference in Panama. About 80 percent of tobacco-related deaths forecast for 2030 are expected in low- and middle-income countries, the report added. “If we do not close ranks and ban tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship, adolescents and young adults will continue to be lured into tobacco consumption by an ever-more aggressive tobacco industry,” said WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan. “Every country has the responsibility to protect its population from tobacco-related illness, disability and death.” Among the dead this year, five million were tobacco users or former users, while more than 600,000 died from second-hand smoke, according to the WHO. Tobacco use is believed to have caused the deaths of 100 million people in the 20 th century. Barring dramatic change, the tally for this century could soar to one billion people, the WHO warned. “We know that only complete bans on tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship are effective,” Dr. Douglas Bettcher, the Director of the WHO’s Prevention of Noncommunicable Diseases department, told the Panama conference. “Countries that introduced complete bans together with other tobacco control measures have been able to cut tobacco use significantly within only a few years,” he said. The report noted that 2.3 billion people from 92 countries benefit from some form of smoking restrictions, more than double the number who did five years ago. However, that figure still represents just a third of the world’s population, it said. Continue reading
