Marty Logan
KATHMANDU, Feb 6 2006 (IPS) – The best way to prevent water-borne diseases is to provide people with clean water-that seems obvious. So when Dr. Sharad Onta saw United States researchers arrive in Nepal to test a vaccine for hepatitis E on local people, he started asking why the money was not being spent on that simple solution.
Now, a decade later, the company licensed to market a hepatitis-E vaccine (HEV) developed by the U.S. military, says the Nepal clinical trials were successful and it is close to marketing it. That has revived a debate over whether Nepali citizens had been used as guinea pigs for the research.
Did the people being tested clearly understand what their bodies were being used for? Will they, and other Nepalis, benefit? And, Onta s conc…
Clive Freeman
BERLIN, Mar 10 2006 (IPS) – The mood at this year s 40th International Tourism Board travel fair, now at the halfway stage in Berlin, is remarkably buoyant despite avian bird flu scares and continuing terrorist threats in some parts of the world.
Of the more than 10,500 exhibitors from 181 countries at the show, most are predicting worldwide growth in 2006. A tourism boom is expected particularly in Spain, Greece, India, China, and some Middle East and Latin American countries.
While optimism prevails for the most part, the outlook is less positive for Turkey. Top European tour operators report a double-digit percentage drop in bookings, with operators blaming media coverage of the avian flu outbreak and other negative headlines for the slump.
No…
Mario de Queiroz
LISBON, Apr 12 2006 (IPS) – In a verdict that shocked human rights and child advocacy organisations, the bar association and the country s leading analysts, Portugal s Supreme Court ruled that corporal punishment of children with mental disabilities in a children s institution is not illegal.
The first to raise his voice was Humberto Santos, the president of the Portuguese Association of Disabled Persons (APD), who told the press Wednesday that he found the Supreme Court s defence of physical punishment disturbing and outrageous.
Physical punishment is unacceptable in and of itself, but is much more alarming and deeply repugnant when it is defended by a court of law, said Santos.
Late last year, a juvenile court in Setúbal, 40 km south of Li…
Wilson Johwa
JOHANNESBURG, May 10 2006 (IPS) – Silas Masindi was not entirely surprised by his HIV test results. The dapper garment trader, who discovered earlier this year that he was infected with the AIDS virus, admits to using condoms somewhat erratically before he remarried three years ago.
Silas Masindi* was not entirely surprised by his HIV test results. The dapper garment trader, who discovered earlier this year that he was infected with the AIDS virus, admits to using condoms somewhat erratically before he remarried three years ago.
I would meet a girl, use a condom, but after four months stop using them, he says.
But surprisingly his second wife, Grace, does not have the virus. The pair has joined other couples which have a mismatched HIV status, so…
Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 15 2006 (IPS) – The National Rifle Assocation, one of the most influential pro-gun lobbies in the United States, has philosophically argued that guns don t kill people, only people kill people .
But Oxfam, the international relief organisation based in London, raises that argument to a more realistic level: it s bullets that kill people. The bullet trade is out of control, says Oxfam, and it is fuelling conflict and human rights abuses worldwide.
Oxfam Director Barbara Stocking points out that in June 2003, during the height of the civil war in Liberia, one of the warring factions ran out of bullets and was forced to retreat.
But once a new shipment arrived, they attacked again, this time ferociously, killing many innocent peo…
Vesna Peric Zimonjic
BELGRADE, Jul 26 2006 (IPS) – It was only after a sharp rise in the number of patients with the same symptoms in southern Serbian town Leskovac that doctors began to look for the cause.
More than 200 patients said they had eaten tomatoes sold at a tenth of the usual price. The tomatoes were sent for examination, and initial lab results showed that patients had suffered poisoning, most probably from the excessive doses of pesticides.
After that, the question is getting louder in Serbia: What do we really eat?
This is destroying the myth of Serbia being a home for healthily grown food, leading agriculture analyst Zaharije Trnavcevic told IPS. Re-integration into European trends and greed for quick profits, plus the lack of adequate control…
Nityanand Jayaraman
BHOPAL, Sep 1 2006 (IPS) – After an appellate court in the United States rejected claims by Bhopal city residents, seeking compensation from Union Carbide for environmental contamination around the site of the world s worst industrial disaster, plans are afoot to have the case transferred to India.
Every setback presents us with new opportunities and only strengthens our resolve, Satinath Sarangi, of the Bhopal Group for Information and Action (BGIA), one of several activist groups working with the survivors of a runaway reaction in Union Carbide s pesticides plant in this central Indian city in December 1984, that left an estimated 3,500-7,500 people dead and many more maimed.
Without ruling on whether or not Union Carbide ought to remediate the …
ท่ามกลางกระแสของการรีเมคและรีมาสเตอร์ที่กำลังมาแรงจนทำให้ทางผู้จัดงาน The Game Awards เองก็ยังแอบมีเอนเอียงอยากจะทำหมวดเสนอรายชื่อเกมใหม่ ต้องบอกเลยว่ามีเกมที่ถูกเพ่งเล็งว่าจะได้รับการนำมาปัดฝุ่นใหม่อยู่บ่อยมากอีกเกมก็คือ Final Fantasy Tactics ที่มาพร้อมเกมเพลย์แหวกแนวทั้งยังมีโทนเรื่องที่ให้…
ในตอนนี้ทุกคนคงทราบกันแล้วว่าก่อนหน้าที่จะมีการประกาศรางวัล Player’s Voice ภายในงาน The Game Awards 2022 ก็มีดราม่าเกิดขึ้นเมื่อแฟนเกม Sonic ได้บอกว่า Genshin Impact ติดสินบนผู้เล่นให้มาโหวตด้วยการแจก Primogems ฟรี ในขณะที่นักเดินทางแห่งแต้แว้ดเองก็บอกว่า มันคือการขอบคุณผู้เล่นปกติ ไม่ได้มีอะไรมากไปกว่านั้น
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Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO, Sep 22 2006 (IPS) – Activists fighting for the decriminalisation of therapeutic abortion in Chile have long faced a depressing scenario: zero political will, stiff opposition from the Catholic Church and limited public support. Today, though, they are encouraged by positive signals on contraception from the government of Michelle Bachelet.
On Sep. 28, which has been designated the Day for the Decriminalisation and Legalisation of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean, about a hundred women belonging to several different women s organisations will march through the streets of Valparaíso, 120 kilometres west of Santiago.
The women will visit Congress, located in that port city, to deliver a petition with a long list of signatures, asking…