Mission & Justice

Roni Singer-Heruti; 15/5/08

Two years have passed since indictments were filed against Salame Abu Ghanem and Mohammed Abu Ghanem for murdering their 19-year-old sister, Reem, and the end of the trial is nowhere in sight - even though the two confessed to the crime during the investigation. Legal foot-dragging has prevented the Tel Aviv District Court from even setting dates for the trial sessions. For a year and a half, the court has not conducted sessions on the matter, other than to set new dates. Now the police fear the same legal delays may bring about the Lod brothers’ release. In a Supreme Court session last week, Justice Esther Hayut was asked to extend the remand of the two for the seventh time.

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Badea Abu Al-Naja; 14/5/08

The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice arrested two Nigerian nationals on charges of practicing sorcery in the Mansura district of Makkah yesterday. Zainab, 37, and Nufa, 16, confessed that they claimed to have the power to break up relationships and make people impotent, Ahmad Al-Ghamdi, the commission’s director in Makkah, told Arab News. Nuha is the youngest witch to be caught ever by the commission in the Kingdom. After receiving several complaints, the commission on Saturday sent a woman to the two Nigerians to request their help to foil her husband’s plan to marry a second time. The duo demanded SR,3000 in remuneration from the woman, who paid an advance of SR1,000.

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Mariam Al Hakeem; 12/5/08

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz has vehemently denied allegations by some international human rights organisations that Saudi women are deprived of many of their basic rights, saying “these are utter lies and full of exaggerations.” He asserted that Saudi Arabia gives women, who make up nearly half of the population, honour and respect. Prince Nayef was speaking to reporters after opening a symposium on Saudi Family and Contemporary Changes organised by the Saudi Scientific Society for Meeting and Social Service at the Imam Mohammad Bin Saud Islamic University on Sunday evening

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Barney Zwartz; 14/5/08

Australia’s Catholic bishops have disowned retired Sydney bishop Geoffrey Robinson, accusing him of failing to understand fundamental church teachings. The country’s bishops have released a public statement suggesting that Bishop Robinson — as a bishop, a man chosen by the Pope to guard the teaching of Catholics — is wrong about the authority of Christ and the authority of the church to “teach the truth”. The statement was the first official response to Bishop Robinson’s controversial book published last August, in which he said the church needed to reverse 2000 years of teaching on sex and power as part of radical reforms from the Pope down.

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Paul Toohey; 14/5/08

Killings of Aboriginal women in remote parts of central Australia have jumped sharply in the past year, reaffirming the Red Centre’s unwanted title as the nation’s homicide capital. On average, 1.3 out of 100,000 Australians die each year as a result of murder or manslaughter. But if you were an Aboriginal woman living in the Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjatjara and Yankunytjatjara lands, you would take no comfort from those figures. One in 1200 people were killed in the NPY area last year. There are only 6000 people living in the 350,000sqkm region that covers parts of South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.

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Mariam Al Hakeem; 12/5/08

Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdul Aziz has vehemently denied allegations by some international human rights organisations that Saudi women are deprived of many of their basic rights, saying “these are utter lies and full of exaggerations.” He asserted that Saudi Arabia gives women, who make up nearly half of the population, honour and respect. Prince Nayef was speaking to reporters after opening a symposium on Saudi Family and Contemporary Changes organised by the Saudi Scientific Society for Meeting and Social Service at the Imam Mohammad Bin Saud Islamic University on Sunday evening.

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11/5/08
… As Treasurer of the Papua New Guinea Midwifery Society, Ms. Bagoi recently traveled to Uganda for the first Global Forum on Human Resources for Health convened by the Global Health Alliance. According to the alliance, a total of 4.25 million health workers are needed in 57 critical countries to meet dire staffing shortages,of midwives, nurses and doctors. “I’m part of this forum, because I want the midwives’ voices to be heard,” says Ms. Bagoi. The island nation of Papua New Guinea is situated east of Indonesia, between the Coral Sea and the South Pacific Ocean. The situation there is similar to that of many developing countries, Bagoi says, with health workers migrating from rural to urban centres for better working conditions…

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Najah Alosaimi, 12/5/08

Several months after the government’s decision to allow women to stay in hotels without guardians, businesswomen and other travelers started taking advantage of this new freedom. But many say that they sometimes feel discriminated against by hotel regulations. Nada, 29, works for a media corporation. She told Arab News that the new regulation has made her life easier, especially since she frequently travels on work-related business. But she added that she often notices people looking at her with an eye of mistrust when she introduces herself as a single woman wanting to book a room. “People don’t look at me with respect because there is no man accompanying me,” she said.

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Jeremy Roberts & John Wiseman; 12/5/08

Former federal indigenous affairs minister Mal Brough was warned two years ago not to deal with certain prominent Aboriginal figures in South Australia’s remote northwest because they were being investigated for sex crimes, he has revealed. Mr Brough - who lost his federal seat of Longman in Queensland at the last election - said the confidential advice to steer clear of several high profile indigenous people came from South Australia’s Aboriginal Affairs Minister Jay Weatherill. Mr Brough said he was breaking his silence out of frustration at the Rann Government’s failure to move decisively against sexual predators in the state’s northern desert lands, in spite of evidence reaching as far as Mr Weatherill.

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11/5/08

A woman and a child were among four killed during a US military operation targeting Al Qaida in northern Iraq, the military said on Sunday. The two civilians were killed along with two armed men. The military said it regretted the death of the civilians. The military said US forces fired on a car carrying suspected militants that refused to stop near the northern city of Mosul on Saturday.

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