The morning after Zita, a young Gypsy mother, gave birth to her second child at age 17, a nurse shoved a piece of paper in front of her. Zita, who is illiterate, says she marked three crosses on the paper, and thus unwittingly agreed to be sterilized.

"I don't know what was there," Zita said. "I can't read. I don't care what was on it, because I was in pain."

[...]

According to a team of foreign and Slovak investigators for the New York-based Center for Reproductive Rights, which published a report last month, doctors in eastern Slovakia have sterilized at least 110 young Gypsy women against their will since the fall of Communism in 1989.

The most recent case they documented in visiting only 40 of Slovakia's 600 Gypsy communities was last fall, and the investigators suggest that despite strenuous denials from doctors, the practice continues.

"If we confirm this information," said Mr. Csaky's spokesman, Peter Miklosi, "we will expand our charges to the report's authors, that they knew about a crime for a year and did not report it to a prosecutor. And if we prove it is not true, they will be charged with spreading false information and damaging the good name of Slovakia."

Here, as in small towns everywhere, it is not so much the politics that count as the ability to deliver the roads, the hospitals and the education the population needs.

"I will vote for a man who is influential and has the power to fulfill his promises," said Ali Mirzai, a 42-year-old local grocer who has enthusiastically turned his store into a campaign headquarters for Mr. Fashami, who in the storekeeper's view "has the brains, the power and the will to change this region."

[...]

The nearest hospital is in northern Tehran, some 21 miles to the south. There are no movie theaters or cultural centers here; one of the big selling points of Mr. Fashami the ex-military man has been his effort to bring in a branch of the semi-private Free University.

For Roya Abbassi, 31, who was picking through oranges at the grocery, that is a convincing point. "Society's patriarchal view towards women has to change somehow, and the best way is through education," she said. Her friend, Sara Jaffari, nodded enthusiastic agreement.

The election campaign of different political parties are still continuing but without any enthusiasm. And everyone seems not to even think about it. As I read somewhere, some opinion polls & some predictions shows that about 60% or more of the ones who can vote will not do it...Although streets are full of commercial papers & billboards & posters on the walls, but it seems that they are frozen & people don't even see these things...yeah, sometimes It's better not to see....

The launch is next April, and the project slogan is, "Bringing Islamic Civilisation to the World". Ongoing preparations include a complete overhaul of the floor given over to the project and the installation of a world-class security system to ensure safety and proper management of the project. Not to mention the clutter of high-tech hardware. According to Ma'en Mekki, azharonline project manager, "Equipment like this is not to be found anywhere else in the Arab world. Of course, money needs to talk to make such a project work. To date, $5,000,000 of the overall budget -- an undisclosed sum -- has been spent on equipment and renovations.

The Web site will enable Islamic scholars from countries as far away as Indonesia to access information without having to make the long trip to Cairo to perform onsite research. As of April they will be able to access the information they need at the touch of a computer button.

the Hebrew National company, a well-known purveyor of kosher hot dogs and other kosher food, has long marketed its goods with the slogan, "[w]e answer to a higher authority." In New York, the principal authority to which it answers is the State's Department of Agriculture and Markets.

The purpose of the statute, manifestly, is to prevent and punish fraud in the sale of meats or meat preparation, and it only operates on those who knowingly violate its provisions, for it is expressly provided that there must be both an intent to defraud and a false representation. Counsel for the appellant argues that the word 'kosher' is an adjective, the definition and meaning of which involves a consideration of the Jewish orthodox religious requirements, which are not precise and definite, and concerning which, according to one witness, thousands of volumes have been written. It needs no argument to show that it is competent for the Legislature within its general police power to enact legislation to prevent and punish fraud and imposition.

The specific complaint is that the word 'kosher' and the phrase 'orthodox Hebrew religious requirements' are so indefinite and uncertain as to cause the statutes to be unconstitutional for want of any ascertainable standard of guilt. It is in support of this assumption that appellants allege they are unable to determine with any degree of certainty whether a particular meat product is kosher, and, when called upon, at their peril, to make a determination and label the product accordingly, they have decided and will continue to decide that all of the products sold by them are nonkosher. But obviously the statutes put no such burden upon them, since they expressly require that any representation that a product is kosher must not only be false but made with intent to defraud.

[O]ne provision of the challenged laws, section 201-f(1)(b), represents an extraordinary entanglement of government and religion. Section 201-f requires that meat represented as "having been prepared in accordance with orthodox Hebrew religious requirements," but not immediately soaked and salted after slaughtering, must be properly washed "by a duly ordained orthodox rabbi or by a person authorized by him..." That provision, therefore, compels a kosher food vendor to employ a rabbi of a particular branch of Judaism in certain circumstances.

"People who are kosher are very careful about purchasing products and they will look to see who is the overseeing authority," Potasnik said. "They usually know whose credentials they trust ... "

[The state's] interest in protecting against fraud in the kosher food market extends to the general public. Indeed, Jewish consumers reportedly now make up less than thirty percent of the consumers of kosher food. The remainder are Muslims and others with similar religious requirements, persons with special dietary restrictions, and those who simply prefer food bearing the kosher label as a symbol of purity.

... the Board's purpose -- to advise the Department regarding the requirements of Orthodox Jewish dietary laws -- and the fact that, of the six rabbis on the Board, all are Orthodox, convince us that New York's delegation of authority to the Board was made on the basis of religion and not "on principles neutral to religion, to individuals whose religious identities are incidental to their receipt of civic authority."

The bill would also establish a new advisory board, consisting of kosher consumers, producers, distributors and other persons interested in maintaining the integrity of kosher trade standards." The nine-member board, appointed by the Commissioner, would advise the Department on matters relating to kosher trade standards and consumer expectations regarding products labeled as kosher.

prepared under and maintained in strict compliance with the laws and customs of the Islamic religion including but not limited to those laws and customs of zabiha/zabeeha (slaughtered according to appropriate Islamic code), and as expressed by reliable recognized Islamic entities and scholars

Have you ever heard of Tristan Jones? Spent nearly his whole adult life at sea, often sailing single-handed.

In the 1970s he decided to try to set the altitude record for sailing. That is, he would sail both the Dead Sea and Lake Titicaca - which he eventually did, as recounted in a marvelous book, The Incredible Voyage.

He got to Lake Titicaca through Peru; but to get through Peru he had to steal his sailboat from the customs yard at Callao. So he went over to Bolivia, where he was greeted by the massed brass band of the Bolivian Navy!

(His was the first salt-water vessel to reach Bolivia since the War of 1870.)

What is so great about America, anyhow? What makes it such a wonderful place? What would you tell a foreigner about your home state? Pick a state, provide links. Leave it in the comments and I'll add your contribution to the list as I go along. And then I'm going to send it to every single foreign newspaper that had some idiotic article detailing how little there is to like about America.

The Botswana government has undertaken a campaign to provide ARVs to all of its HIV-positive citizens who need them. Since its inception in January 2002, only four percent of the estimated 110,000 people currently eligible for ARVs have enrolled in "Masa" - the national ARV therapy programme. Stigma and denial have prevented many from participating in the treatment campaign.

The answer, I think, is that, until the 20th century, social contact in Poland between Christians and Jews was probably most intensive among criminals. This is not really so surprising. Jews and Christians in Poland traditionally led separate lives, even if they met in the streets, shops, and marketplaces. Upper-class Poles did not socialize with rich Jews; middle-class Poles did not socialize with middle-class Jews, and lower-class Poles certainly did not socialize with poor Jews. The taboos on Christian-Jewish socialization broke down most in those circles where numerous others taboos were ignored, too — that is, in the world of crime. Jewish and Polish thieves, burglars, pickpockets, fences, pimps, prostitutes, bootleggers and swindlers had no compunction about working closely with each other because they had no compunction about disobeying social norms in general. And since law-breakers in all societies tend to develop thieves' argots, that is, private languages that help hide their activities from the outside world, it was entirely natural for Polish criminals to borrow Hebrew/Yiddish vocabulary from Jews that other Poles would not understand.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), which is part of the World Bank, recently financed Kalahari Diamonds Limited to the tune of US $2 million.

Kalahari Diamonds Limited has a licence to explore for diamonds in Botswana, including the CKGR.

[...]

Survival International alleges that "most of the reserve has since been parcelled out in diamond exploration concessions" and links these to the government's eviction of the indigenous people in the CKGR.

Even during the war itself, there were people in the resistance who proposed denying the right of parenthood to parents who had given their children over to be hidden. They agreed that children would be returned only to people who were declared `fit,' after they had passed suitable tests. And thus, a short time after the war had ended, the law was passed very quickly with only slight changes."

Verheij displays posters and advertisements that were publicly distributed and called upon adoptive parents not to report the addresses and original names of the children (many of whose names had been changed to Christian ones), not to allow parents to visit their children, and even not to bring them together with other children who were relatives of theirs, in order not to harm their Christian education.

"It must be noted," she stresses, "that most of the adoptive parents did not obey these instructions and returned the children to parents who returned from the camps." But the law, which backed those who wanted to take advantage of the opportunity - especially childless couples who had adopted babies - and the fact that some of the children were indeed orphans, created what Verheij calls "the tragic and dramatic struggle that went on from 1945 to 1949."