Guantanamo Bay Mohammed Al-Qahtani

A 2005 military investigation concluded Mohammed Al-Qahtani had been subject to abuse — which included sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, intimidation by dogs, prolonged isolation and extremes of cold that, at one point, caused his pulse to drop to 35 beats per minute, requiring immediate hospitalization. No one was ever punished for having ordered the abuse or carrying it out. “The dismissal of charges clearly indicates the government’s awareness that any and all statements obtained from Mohammad Qahtani were extracted by torture or the threat of torture,” Gitanjali Guitierrez, his lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told TIME.

In a sign of more disarray in the U.S. prosecution of Guantanamo inmates, a military judge last week barred Brig. Gen. Tom Hartmann, top legal adviser to the Convening Authority, from involvement in a prominent case at the prison. Hartmann had been described by one U.S. military witness as demanding “sexy” cases to try, “with blood on them.”

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1779611,00.html

Madrid Spain Air Tree

 The city of Madrid soon plans to add a striking new structure -Air Tree pavilion- that will “climatically transform” its urban architecture.  It also produces oxygen like a tree, hence the name. The Air Tree pavilion is to be built from recycled materials and will be 100% energy self-sufficient. Using photovoltaic cells, the Air Tree produces a substantial amount of energy, which is then sold back to the local electric companies, and, of course oxygen - hence the name Air Tree.

http://www.reuters.com/article/blogBurst/environment?type=environmentNews&w1=B7ovpm21IaDoL40ZFnNfGe&w2=B8dTgJxsl2aP4igJ50LB7l1&src=blogBurst_environmentNews&bbPostId=B4Hj78ZQkrFHCz48ED92G5hvRCz7RmtHsuvIGfCz5guqVXo8UoP&bbParentWidgetId=B8dTgJxsl2aP4igJ50LB7l1

Mexico Domestic Violence

Every day thousands of Mexican women suffer physical and psychological abuse at the hands of their spouses, despite a federal law passed over a year ago to protect them. Nearly one-third of the country’s 31 states still haven’t adopted the law, which requires Mexican law enforcement to punish acts of violence against women. Even where the law has been adopted, it’s not being applied, legislators and activists say.

That’s because, despite an official push to move beyond the cliche image of macho, Mexico is still very much a man’s world when it comes to violence against women.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/535626.html

Texas T Boone Pickens Wind

Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has placed an the largest ever order for wind turbines: he ordered 667 wind turbines from GE, each costing $3 million dollars, making the total order $2 billion. Picken plans to develop the world’s largest wind farm in the panhandle of Texas.

The $2 billion order is just one quarter of the total amount he plans to purchase. Once built, the wind farm would have the capacity to supply power to over 1,200,000 homes in North Texas.

Mesa Power has leased sparsely populated land in the Texas panhandle, where the wind often blows during daylight hours when energy needs are highest. Texas’ Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) transmission lines will deliver what Pickens hopes will be “cost effective and reliable electricity generated by renewable energy power projects.”

http://www.enn.com/business/article/36422

Oil Industry Conspiracy

In her book, Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that Will Recharge America, published in February 2007, Sherry Boschert argues that large-format NiMH batteries are commercially viable but that Cobasys refuses to sell or license them to small companies or individuals. Boschert reveals that Cobasys accepts only very large orders for these batteries.  Since no other companies were willing to make large orders, Cobasys was not manufacturing nor licensing any large format NiMH battery technology for automotive purposes.

Boschert concludes that “it’s possible that Cobasys (Chevron) is squelching all access to large NiMH batteries through its control of patent licenses in order to remove a competitor to gasoline. Or it’s possible that Cobasys simply wants the market for itself and is waiting for a major automaker to start producing plug-in hybrids or electric vehicles.”^[110]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug_in_hybrid

California Gay Marriage

The California Supreme Court’s ruling today striking down state law that limits marriage to opposite-sex couples is a victory for equality that should set a national and international example, Human Rights Watch said today.

Opponents of marriage equality in California have been collecting signatures for a further ballot measure this year, which would amend the Constitution to enshrine a discriminatory definition of marriage as restricted to a man and a woman. State authorities will determine next month whether advocates have collected enough signatures to force the measure onto the ballot, which would also invalidate any marriages performed under the court’s decision. 

http://www.humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2008/05/15/usdom18854.htm

Nepal Tibet Arrests

Nepalese police arrested more than 500 Tibetan women who were protesting outside the Chinese Embassy on Saturday for a free Tibet. The women protesters included Buddhist nuns, according to CNN.

VOA Newsreports that the protest was the first all-women demonstration against China by Tibetan exiles. There are about 20,000 Tibetan refugees living in Nepal.

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=11023

Shaikh Mohammed Dubai Rights

His Highness Shaikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, has instructed the authorities concerned to allocate a plot of land for the UAE Human Rights Association’s building so that it assumes its aspired humanitarian role.

The association’s chairman Abdul Ghafar Hussein paid rich tributes to Shaikh Mohammed for the kind gesture which shows his concern and care for freedom and dignity of the human being.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?section=theuae&xfile=data/theuae/2008/may/theuae_may523.xml

Greenhouse Gas Increase

Greenhouse gases are at higher levels in the atmosphere than at any time in at least 800,000 years, according to a study of Antarctic ice on Wednesday that extends evidence that mankind is disrupting the climate.

“The driving forces now are very much different from the driving forces in the past when there was only natural variation,” Stocker told Reuters of the study in the journal Nature by scientists in Switzerland, France and Germany.

http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/36292

Nitrogen Environment Danger

“The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the world’s peoples without harming the global environment a tremendous challenge,” University of Virginia environmental sciences professor James Galloway said in a statement.

While nitrogen alone is inert and harmless, reactive nitrogen compounds — such as ammonia — have been released by its use in nitrogen-based fertilizers and the large-scale burning of fossil fuels.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/space/sns-ap-nitrogen,0,4451985.story

Russia Yuri Samodoruv

Yuri Samodurov is director of the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Human Rights Center, the venue of “Forbidden Art-2006,” an exhibit that opened in March 2007 and showed provocative artwork that had been banned from several art galleries in Russia. Following an investigation opened in June, Samodurov was charged yesterday with “inciting religious hatred” for providing a venue for the show. According to the prosecutor’s office, the exhibited works contain images that are denigrating and offensive to practitioners of Christianity. 

“Russian authorities have used anti-extremism legislation to silence political speech. Now they’re using it to stifle artistic expression and prosecute a prominent human rights defender at the same time,” said Holly Cartner, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “This puts a huge question mark over basic freedom of expression in Russia.”

http://www.humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2008/05/13/russia18824.htm

Polar Bears Endangered

The Interior Department declared the polar bear a threatened species Wednesday, saying it must be protected because of the decline in Arctic sea ice from global warming.

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne cited dramatic declines in sea ice over the last three decades and projections of continued losses. These declines, he told a news conference, mean the polar bear is a species likely to be in danger of extinction in the near future.

Kempthorne also said, though, that it would be “inappropriate” to use the protection of the bear to reduce greenhouse gases, or to broadly address climate change.

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1779545,00.html

Stella Rotaru Sex Slaves

Every year, hundreds of thousands of girls and young women are lured abroad by offers of waitress or secretary jobs — and then are trapped into lives as prostitutes. A few of these women manage to escape, but for some, the only way out is to recruit another young woman as a replacement.

Stella Rotaru is a countertrafficker in Moldova, working with the International Organization for Migration to rescue women ensnared in the global sex trade. William Finnegan, a staff writer for The New Yorker, profiled Rotaru in his article The Countertraffickers.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90404253

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trafficking_in_human_beings

Saudi Arabia Ra’if Badawi

The prosecution service had detained Badawi in March 2008 for one day to interrogate him about his website, which he uses to detail abuses by the Saudi religious police and to question the predominant interpretation of Islam. After being threatened with arrest for his online activities and receiving personal threats of physical harm, Badawi fled Saudi Arabia two weeks ago.

On May 5, the prosecution service in Jeddah charged Ra’if Badawi with “setting up an electronic site that insults Islam,” and referred the case to court, asking for a five-year prison sentence and a 3 million riyal (US$800,000) fine. Unknown persons have hacked Badawi’s website multiple times, and have published his phone numbers, work address, and a threat on the hacked site: “Oh you retard, you are in the land of Muhammad, peace be upon him. Underline ‘Muhammad’ with a thousand lines before a thousand swords are put above your neck!” Prosecutors have not investigated the hackers or the death threats against Badawi.

http://www.humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2008/05/13/saudia18816.htm

Irena Sendler Children Saved

Irena Sendler, who smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, died at age 98 in a hospital in Warsaw on Monday. Sendler was honored by the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem in 1965 for her efforts to save children in the Warsaw ghetto.

During the war, Sendler was a social worker and used her position to go into the ghetto and smuggle out children. Because the Nazis feared disease, she went into the ghetto under the pretext of trying to contain an outbreak of typhoid. According to the New York Times she and her team of volunteers, most of whom were women, rescued children through underground corridors, by smuggling them in coffins or under the floorboards in ambulances, or by paper forgeries in the Catholic church near the ghetto.

http://www.feminist.org/news/newsbyte/uswirestory.asp?id=11008

Solar Power Jobs

California’s fascination with solar power has created thousands of jobs in the state and will probably add thousands more, according to a new survey of the industry.

The survey, by two community college researchers, estimates that solar companies in California now employ between 16,500 and 17,500 people and may hire another 5,000 in the next year.

http://www.enn.com/business/article/36206

China Earthquake Aid

But for every survivor, it seemed, there were hundreds dead in the ruins of the country’s worst natural disaster in 30 years. The toll neared 29,000 and could climb as high as 50,000, the government said.

http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/news/article.cfm?id=2699

http://www.redcross.org/news/in/profiles/Intl_profile_ChinaEarthquake.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Sichuan_earthquake

ArcelorMittal Steel Environment

Steel giant ArcelorMittal will be accused of leaving a trail of environmental destruction in its wake this week when campaigners descend on Luxembourg to protest at its annual meeting.

Run and part-owned by Britain’s richest man, Lakshmi Mittal, ArcelorMittal has received more than US$500 million in taxpayer-backed loans over the past decade, from development lenders, including the London-based European Bank of Reconstruction and Development.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=39&objectid=10509672

Egypt Ahmed Ibrahim Beaten

Egyptian authorities should immediately investigate and prosecute those security officials responsible for beating Ahmed Maher Ibrahim, Human Rights Watch said today. Maher, a 27-year-old civil engineer, used the social-networking site Facebook to support calls for a general strike on May 4, 2008, President Hosni Mubarak’s 80th birthday.

Maher told Human Rights Watch that officers from the Interior Ministry’s State Security Investigations (SSI) department apprehended him on a street in the suburb of New Cairo on May 7, blindfolded him and took him to a police station where they stripped him naked, and beat him intermittently for 12 hours before releasing him without charge. 

http://www.humanrightswatch.org/english/docs/2008/05/10/egypt18800.htm

Andie MacDowell Environment

Actress Andie MacDowell has bought land in an environmentally focused mountain community in western North Carolina and plans to build an eco-friendly house.

MacDowell, 50, paid about $1 million a year ago for a vacant lot of just under two acres in the Blue Ridge Mountains, part of the Balsam Mountain Preserve, a 4,400-acre development of 3,000 acres of protected land and 354 home sites. The houses, at elevations from 3,000 to 4,700 feet, can’t be larger than 4,500 square feet and must use materials that blend into the environment, according to a design-review board.

http://www.miamiherald.com/home/story/527136.html

http://www.balsammountainpreserve.com/

Parenting Children Environment

Want to wreck the environment? Have a baby. Each bundle of joy gobbles up more of the planet’s food, clogs garbage dumps with diapers, churns through plastic toys and winds up a gas-guzzling, resource-consuming grown-up like the rest of us.

It turns out that the act of having kids triggers many to go green. An April 2008 Roper poll found that people identified having a child as their primary motivation for protecting the environment; 91% said the most important reason to recycle is the impact it will have on their children’s future.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1738629,00.html

Immigrants Health Care

The people need help because they are in the United States illegally and because they are poor. Few have health insurance, but the backbreaking nature of their work, along with the toxicity of American poverty, insure that many are ailing.

They may visit a clinic or hospital if they are severely ill. But for many illegal immigrants, particularly indigenous Mexican groups like the Mixtecs, much of their health care is provided by a parallel system of spiritual healers, home remedies and self-medication.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/us/10migrant.html

Homeless Attacks Increase

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) and the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty (NLCHP), which conducted the study, the total number of documented attacks rose 13 percent from 2006 to 2007 — 142 to 160; and the number of fatal attacks rose by 40 percent during that same period, from 20 to 28 deaths.

”Young men see the way we treat homeless people — criminalizing them, shoving them out of sight, and they get a message: These people are less than human and it is OK to attack them,” Foscarinis said.

http://www.ohio.com/news/18825054.html?page=1&c=y

Burger King Labor Spies

A Burger King executive, Stephen Grover, has been tied to blog posts and e-mails spreading misinformation about the effort to secure a pay increase for the farm workers.  The fast food giant also confirms that it has a relationship with a security firm called Diplomatic Tactical Resources, which plants spies within labor organizations for its clients.

Ms. Schaffer is the 25-year-old owner of a private security firm. Her company, Diplomatic Tactical Services, seems like the kind of security firm you’d find in one of Carl Hiaasen’s crime thrillers. Last year Ms. Schaffer was denied a private investigator’s license; she had failed to supply the Florida licensing division with proof of “lawfully gained, verifiable experience or training.”

John Chidsey, the chief executive of Burger King, knew about the use of Diplomatic Tactical Services. Mr. Chidsey should get a chance to raise his right hand and tell members of Congress why he thinks this sort of behavior is acceptable.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90268069

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/opinion/07schlosser.html

Coalition of Immokalee Workers:

http://www.ciw-online.org/index.html

Myanmar Government Genocide

The military leaders of Myanmar seized a shipment of United Nations food aid on Friday intended for victims of a devastating cyclone, declaring that they would accept donations of food and medicine but not the experienced aid workers international groups say are in equally short supply there.

The refusal of the country’s iron-fisted rulers to allow doctors and disaster relief experts to enter in large numbers contributed the growing concern that starvation and epidemic diseases could end up killing people on the same scale as the winds, waves and flooding that destroyed villages across a wide swath of coastal Myanmar nearly a week ago.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/world/asia/10myanmar.html