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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
First Delhi gang-rape verdict deferred: prosecutor
First Delhi gang-rape verdict deferred: prosecutor (AFP) / 11 July 2013 A New Delhi court trying a teenager over a fatal gang-rape last December that shocked India deferred on Thursday announcing the first verdict in the case, lawyers said. A juveniles’ court has finished hearing the case of the youngest suspect, aged 17 at the time of the assault on a moving bus, and had been widely expected to announce a verdict on Thursday. “The court has completed the hearing. The order has been deferred to 25th of July,” public prosecutor Madhav Khurana told reporters who had massed outside the court. The crime, which saw the 23-year-old student victim die of internal injuries inflicted during the attack, generated widespread anger about endemic sex crime in India to the boil. Several weeks of sometimes violent protests pushed parliament to pass a new law toughening sentences for rapists, while a round of public soul-searching sought answers to the rising tide of violence against women. The victim’s family had called for him to be tried as an adult, alongside five men initially arrested over the assault on December 16 who face the death penalty. The trial of the adult suspects — one of whom died while in jail from a suspected suicide in March — continues in a separate court but is expected to wrap up in the next few months. The parents of the victim, whom AFP is also not naming in accordance with Indian law, were present inside the small juveniles’ court on Thursday. “We hope we get justice on July 25th,” said the mother, who has previously called for all suspects to be hanged, before entering the court. Reporters were not allowed inside the courtroom. The juvenile suspect, a runaway who reportedly left home aged 11, can be sent to a correctional facility for a maximum three-year term, which will take into account the time he has already spent in custody. The teenager, the youngest of six children according to his mother, was employed to clean the bus allegedly used for the attack and often slept rough or inside the vehicle, reports say. He has denied any involvement in the crime. The maximum sentence of three years’ detention is likely to cause further anger in India where the suspects, some of whom have been beaten up in jail, are public hate figures. Amid pressure to put the juvenile on trial in an adult court, officials conducted an investigation to determine his age and concluded he was 17. A government panel set up after the Delhi gang-rape to recommend changes to sex crime laws rejected calls to lower the age at which people can be tried as adults from 18 to 16. The panel’s report in January said India’s justice system continued to “breed more criminals including juveniles in our prison and reformatory system by ghettoing them in juvenile homes”. The report, overseen by a retired Supreme Court judge, added that it was “completely dissatisfied with the operation of children’s institutions.” Shahbaz Khan, from the “Haq: Centre for Child Rights”, told AFP that there were “no proper care plans” for institutionalised children which undermined the intention of rehabilitating wrong-doers. Ranjana Kumari, a women’s rights activist from the Centre for Social Research, said police and the courts were still too slow to respond to the victims of sex crime. “What we got was a good piece of legislation and an increase in the number of women with the confidence to report crimes against them. But so what? That’s not good enough,” she said. Kumari said the teenager’s likely punishment was too lenient, and he should have been tried as an adult. “This is a very gruesome crime and he was almost an adult at the time it was committed,” she said. Continue reading
Egypt PM struggles to form government
Egypt PM struggles to form government (AFP) / 11 July 2013 Egypt’s new leadership faced increased difficulties on Thursday in forming an interim government after it issued a warrant for the arrest of the leader of the movement backing ousted president Mohamed Mursi. Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood has spurned an offer from interim premier Hazem Al Beblawi to join the new government, and called for a mass rally on Friday against what it called “a bloody military coup.” After a year in power through Morsi, the Brotherhood is now in tatters, with much of its leadership detained, on the run or keeping a low profile following the president’s overthrow last week in a popular military coup. Police were searching for the Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide, Mohamed Badie, after a warrant was issued for his arrest on Wednesday, in connection with deadly violence in Cairo. Badie and other senior Brotherhood leaders are wanted on suspicion of inciting clashes an army building on Monday which killed 53 people, mostly Morsi partisans, judicial sources said. Mursi himself is currently being held in a “safe place, for his safety,” foreign ministry spokesman Badr Abdelatty told reporters Wednesday, adding: “He is not charged with anything up till now,” he said. Military and judicial sources have said the ousted leader may face charges eventually. His overthrow by the military last week, after nationwide protests demanding his resignation, has plunged Egypt into a vortex of violence. In the restive Sinai peninsula, gunmen opened fire on the car of a senior military commander leading to clashes between security forces and “terrorist elements” which left one girl dead, the army said in a statement. The army later withdrew the statement from its official Facebook page, without providing an explanation. Witnesses had contested its account, telling AFP the girl was killed after soldiers opened fire on the car she was in when her father refused to stop at a checkpoint. Thousands of Morsi supporters joined those camped out at the Rabaa Al Adawiya mosque in Cairo’s Nasr City, vowing to leave only when Morsi, the country’s first freely elected president, is reinstated. “We are gathering here for Morsi. I voted for him and I want to know where he is,” said protester Mohammed, 47. “We will stay here either until the president’s return or martyrdom,” he said. According to the health ministry, 53 people died and 480 were wounded in Monday’s clashes in Cairo. The Brotherhood accuses the army of “massacring” its supporters, and the army says soldiers came under attack by “terrorists” and armed protesters. The public prosecutor pressed charges on Wednesday against 200 of the 650 people it detained during the violence. The warrant for Badie’s arrest will make it harder for Beblawi to reach out as he attempts to form an interim civilian administration. The liberal former finance minister, who began talks on his cabinet line-up on Wednesday, is ready to offer the Brotherhood ministerial posts, the state-run MENA news agency quoted an aide as saying. But the Islamists spurned the overture. “We do not deal with putschists. We reject all that comes from this coup,” Brotherhood spokesman Tareq Al Mursi said. Last week Badie gave a fiery speech in which he vowed that Brotherhood activists would throng the streets in their millions until Morsi’s presidency was restored. Interim president Adly Mansour has set a timetable for elections by early next year, while appointing Beblawi as premier and Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei as vice president for foreign affairs. Opponents and supporters of Morsi alike have criticised the interim charter issued by Mansour to replace the constitution, which he suspended, and steer a transition the army has itself acknowledged will be “difficult.” An official with one of the parties in the National Salvation Front (NSF), the main coalition formerly led by ElBaradei, criticised Mansour’s 33-article declaration for according extensive powers to the interim president. Many within the coalition are wary of repeating the mistakes of the last military-led transition, between Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in 2011 and Morsi’s election in June 2012. Human rights groups condemned the use of “excessive” force against Brotherhood supporters on Monday, and called for an independent investigation. The United States, which provides $1.5 billion in mainly military aid to Egypt, said it was “cautiously encouraged” by the timetable proposed for a new presidential election. Continue reading
