Tomato soup 'boosts fertility'
28 Jul 2007, 2039 hrs IST,PTI
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Tomato_soup_boosts_fertility/articleshow/2241090.cms
LONDON: Craving for something sweet and sour at the same time? Don't think twice. Just have a bowl of spicy and creamy tomato soup to satisfy your desire.
Yes, a bowl of hot tomato soup every day can boost fertility among men, according to scientists. Researchers at the UK-based University of Portsmouth have discovered that lycopene, which gives tomatoes their bright red colouring, can turn sperm into super-sperm, sources reported. The conclusion came after the researchers studied the effect of lycopene in the diet on a group of six healthy men, all in their early forties.
They were asked to consume tomato soup every day for two weeks. During these two weeks, scientists claimed that levels of lycopene in the men's semen rose between seven and 12 per cent, which was "significant". The researchers have plans to carry out further studies to discover whether the same boost would be seen in infertile men who generally have lower levels of lycopene in their sperm, the daily quoted a report from the British Journal of Urology.
Though it is not yet known what part lycopene actually plays in fertility, the study suggests that higher levels of the antioxidant may pop up harmful free radicals in the body which increases fertility. Tomato products have beneficial health properties because of the presence of lycopene, but this is the first time they have been shown to boost fertility among men. Other fruits and vegetables that are high in lycopene include watermelon, grapefruit, guava and papaya.
Monday 30 July 2007
Sunday 29 July 2007
The gateway that bridges India's past and present
The gateway that bridges India's past and present
http://indiainteracts.com/columnist/2007/07/30/The-gateway-that-bridges-Indias-past-and-present/
Built by the British in memory of those who died fighting for the British Army in World War I, the India Gate monument in the heart of the national capital now holds an eternal flame to salute Indian soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for the country -- in every way a gate that is a bridge between the colonial past and the patriotic present.
The majestic 1931 monument, designed by Edwin Lutyens who planned what is the core of New Delhi, is the centrepiece of India's National Day celebrations every Jan 26 - the day when the country became a republic in 1950, about two and a half years after its independence on Aug 15, 1947.
The prime minister lays a wreath at the Amar Jawan Jyoti - literally the eternal soldier flame commemorating all the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the country - before the grand Republic Day parade begins.
The times have changed but the sentiment is still perhaps the same as in 1921 when the foundation stone was laid by the Duke of Connaught and in 1931 when it was dedicated to the nation by the then viceroy Lord Irwin.
It was to salute the 90,000 Indian soldiers who were killed fighting for the British Army during World War I. The memorial, strikingly similar to the Arc de Triomphe archway in Paris, bears the names of more than 13,516 British and Indian soldiers killed in the Afghan war of 1919.
The Amar Jawan Jyoti was added much later. The eternal flame burns day and night under the arch to remind the nation of soldiers who laid down their lives in the India-Pakistan war of 1971.
But India Gate has come to mean more than a memorial to the dead soldier. It has also become a powerful platform for common people to voice their opinion. Candlelight vigils are often organised around the imposing monument to highlight various issues by civil society groups - be it the cause of justice for slain model Jessica Lal last year or HIV-AIDS victims this year.
Many peaceful protests have been organised by the public at India Gate to bring issues to the forefront and give it the necessary attention.
The entire arch of the India Gate stands on a low base of red Bharatpur stone and rises in stages to a huge moulding. The cornice is inscribed with the Imperial suns while both sides of the arch have 'India', flanked by the dates MCMXIV (1914 left) and MCMXIX (1919 right).
The shallow domed bowl at the top was intended to be filled with burning oil on anniversaries but this is rarely done.
The lawns around the place are a place for fun. The elderly stroll lazily, kids frolic on the lush lawns and couples snatch a private moment or two. Framed between the Rashtrapati Bhavan at one end and the India Gate at the other, the vast expanse of green space in the heart of Lutyen's Delhi is where people flock to when the weather is good. Or bad.
When the sun shines down warmly on a cold winter day, or when a soothing breeze wafts through on a hot summer, or just when it is stiflingly hot and some fresh air is all you need, the area around the colonial gate is where people come to.
On most evenings, the complex and its vast lawns resemble a mini carnival with large crowds, ice cream vendors doing brisk business and balloon sellers colouring the lawns.
Hopping off a screeching bus near India Gate, Manohar Joshi was one of the many who decided to spend an evening outdoors. Holding his wife's hand and carrying their son in his arms, he walked towards the stately memorial bustling with people.
"We generally come here on weekends. It is like a fair with hundreds of people talking, laughing and basically having a good time. Then there are vendors selling ice cream and other food items, balloons... it's like a picnic," said Joshi.
Families come by hordes to avoid the maddening rush at shopping malls and multiplexes.
Lots of people spread sheets on the lawns and sit there till late evening, chatting and munching on the goodies they brought in their picnic baskets or bought from hawkers.
Some also get photographs clicked by the professional photographers who roam around.
Several enthusiastic women get their hands and feet decorated with 'henna' by 'professionals' who look out for prospective customers with their henna tubes and a book full of designs.
As evening sets in, people hover around India Gate, soaking in its grandeur and the soft lighting.
"I come for a drive around India Gate every now and then. Although it's flocked by people, it is still such a breather from the overcrowded coffee shops or shopping malls," said Asmita Jain, who works in a public relations firm.
The India Gate stands tall in the heart of Delhi and is a must-see for the thousands of tourists, both domestic as well as international, who flock the capital every year.
http://indiainteracts.com/columnist/2007/07/30/The-gateway-that-bridges-Indias-past-and-present/
Built by the British in memory of those who died fighting for the British Army in World War I, the India Gate monument in the heart of the national capital now holds an eternal flame to salute Indian soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for the country -- in every way a gate that is a bridge between the colonial past and the patriotic present.
The majestic 1931 monument, designed by Edwin Lutyens who planned what is the core of New Delhi, is the centrepiece of India's National Day celebrations every Jan 26 - the day when the country became a republic in 1950, about two and a half years after its independence on Aug 15, 1947.
The prime minister lays a wreath at the Amar Jawan Jyoti - literally the eternal soldier flame commemorating all the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for the country - before the grand Republic Day parade begins.
The times have changed but the sentiment is still perhaps the same as in 1921 when the foundation stone was laid by the Duke of Connaught and in 1931 when it was dedicated to the nation by the then viceroy Lord Irwin.
It was to salute the 90,000 Indian soldiers who were killed fighting for the British Army during World War I. The memorial, strikingly similar to the Arc de Triomphe archway in Paris, bears the names of more than 13,516 British and Indian soldiers killed in the Afghan war of 1919.
The Amar Jawan Jyoti was added much later. The eternal flame burns day and night under the arch to remind the nation of soldiers who laid down their lives in the India-Pakistan war of 1971.
But India Gate has come to mean more than a memorial to the dead soldier. It has also become a powerful platform for common people to voice their opinion. Candlelight vigils are often organised around the imposing monument to highlight various issues by civil society groups - be it the cause of justice for slain model Jessica Lal last year or HIV-AIDS victims this year.
Many peaceful protests have been organised by the public at India Gate to bring issues to the forefront and give it the necessary attention.
The entire arch of the India Gate stands on a low base of red Bharatpur stone and rises in stages to a huge moulding. The cornice is inscribed with the Imperial suns while both sides of the arch have 'India', flanked by the dates MCMXIV (1914 left) and MCMXIX (1919 right).
The shallow domed bowl at the top was intended to be filled with burning oil on anniversaries but this is rarely done.
The lawns around the place are a place for fun. The elderly stroll lazily, kids frolic on the lush lawns and couples snatch a private moment or two. Framed between the Rashtrapati Bhavan at one end and the India Gate at the other, the vast expanse of green space in the heart of Lutyen's Delhi is where people flock to when the weather is good. Or bad.
When the sun shines down warmly on a cold winter day, or when a soothing breeze wafts through on a hot summer, or just when it is stiflingly hot and some fresh air is all you need, the area around the colonial gate is where people come to.
On most evenings, the complex and its vast lawns resemble a mini carnival with large crowds, ice cream vendors doing brisk business and balloon sellers colouring the lawns.
Hopping off a screeching bus near India Gate, Manohar Joshi was one of the many who decided to spend an evening outdoors. Holding his wife's hand and carrying their son in his arms, he walked towards the stately memorial bustling with people.
"We generally come here on weekends. It is like a fair with hundreds of people talking, laughing and basically having a good time. Then there are vendors selling ice cream and other food items, balloons... it's like a picnic," said Joshi.
Families come by hordes to avoid the maddening rush at shopping malls and multiplexes.
Lots of people spread sheets on the lawns and sit there till late evening, chatting and munching on the goodies they brought in their picnic baskets or bought from hawkers.
Some also get photographs clicked by the professional photographers who roam around.
Several enthusiastic women get their hands and feet decorated with 'henna' by 'professionals' who look out for prospective customers with their henna tubes and a book full of designs.
As evening sets in, people hover around India Gate, soaking in its grandeur and the soft lighting.
"I come for a drive around India Gate every now and then. Although it's flocked by people, it is still such a breather from the overcrowded coffee shops or shopping malls," said Asmita Jain, who works in a public relations firm.
The India Gate stands tall in the heart of Delhi and is a must-see for the thousands of tourists, both domestic as well as international, who flock the capital every year.
China bans AIDS activists meeting
China bans AIDS activists meeting
http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0729/china.html
Sunday, 29 July 2007 09:57
China has banned a meeting by AIDS activists on the rights of people with the disease.
The conference would have brought together 50 Chinese and foreign experts and activists to discuss how to press the legal rights of people with HIV/AIDS.
But Chinese government authorities told the Asian Catalyst group to cancel the meeting planned for early August in Guangzhou near Hong Kong.
China had 203,527 officially registered cases of HIV/AIDS by the end of April, up from 183,733 at the end of October 2006. Of the latest figure, 52,480 had progressed to full-blown AIDS.
But the UN estimates the true number of HIV/AIDS cases in the country to be around 650,000.
Beijing now backs campaigns to educate citizens on avoiding infection, and victims infected through reckless commercial blood collection in rural Henan province have been given free medicines.
But officials in the one-party state remain wary of local activists and foreign groups pressing legal claims of infected citizens or raising official complicity in the spread of the disease.
Henan has informally blocked patients from suing officials over tainted blood.
The meeting co-organised with China Orchid AIDS Project had invited several experts from South Africa, India, the US, Canada and Thailand.
Planned topics included discrimination, blood safety and setting up a legal aid center for people with HIV/AIDS.
In May, China barred a prominent AIDS and environmental activist couple from leaving the country, accusing them of endangering national security.
Earlier in the year, Henan officials tried to stop a doctor who helped expose the rural AIDS epidemic there from going to Washington to collect a human rights award. They let her go after an international outcry.
http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0729/china.html
Sunday, 29 July 2007 09:57
China has banned a meeting by AIDS activists on the rights of people with the disease.
The conference would have brought together 50 Chinese and foreign experts and activists to discuss how to press the legal rights of people with HIV/AIDS.
But Chinese government authorities told the Asian Catalyst group to cancel the meeting planned for early August in Guangzhou near Hong Kong.
China had 203,527 officially registered cases of HIV/AIDS by the end of April, up from 183,733 at the end of October 2006. Of the latest figure, 52,480 had progressed to full-blown AIDS.
But the UN estimates the true number of HIV/AIDS cases in the country to be around 650,000.
Beijing now backs campaigns to educate citizens on avoiding infection, and victims infected through reckless commercial blood collection in rural Henan province have been given free medicines.
But officials in the one-party state remain wary of local activists and foreign groups pressing legal claims of infected citizens or raising official complicity in the spread of the disease.
Henan has informally blocked patients from suing officials over tainted blood.
The meeting co-organised with China Orchid AIDS Project had invited several experts from South Africa, India, the US, Canada and Thailand.
Planned topics included discrimination, blood safety and setting up a legal aid center for people with HIV/AIDS.
In May, China barred a prominent AIDS and environmental activist couple from leaving the country, accusing them of endangering national security.
Earlier in the year, Henan officials tried to stop a doctor who helped expose the rural AIDS epidemic there from going to Washington to collect a human rights award. They let her go after an international outcry.
Sex education: the good , bad and ugly
Sex education: the good , bad and ugly
http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=7adf29eb-ece2-491f-87b8-f41f5f8a1b1b&ParentID=cadd1409-8d45-4f3e-b114-bc6e8d143135&MatchID1=4501&TeamID1=2&TeamID2=6&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1122&PrimaryID=4501&Headline=Sex+education%3a+the+good+%2c+bad+and+ugly
Renuka Bisht, Hindustan Times
Email Author
July 30, 2007
In a society in which innuendo and allusion are the preferred modes of communicating sexual desire even for the adults, the notion that adolescents are also sexual beings predictably makes us squirm. Whether it is as parents or as teachers, as aunts or uncles, many of us would rather push this possibility underground into our secretive subconscious.
It’s no wonder then, that the human resource development ministry’s Adolescent Education Programme (AEP) has run into hot water, because its safe sex message forces us to face the reality of sex being on the adolescent agenda. Nine states have already banned the programme; some teachers have been warned that they will be jailed if they take sex into the classrooms while some others have been burning the AEP manual.
A conspiracy of silence
The 2006 Behavioural Surveillance Survey (BSS) found that 8.4 per cent of Indian young people are sexually active. Meanwhile the Madhya Pradesh chief minister has demanded that the AEP curriculum be replaced by classes on Indian culture. With 1.5 crores of our youngsters having sex, can cultural empowerment substitute for safety, for teaching our children how to protect their bodies? Especially when unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are not the only byproducts of the silence surrounding sex.
One of the most shocking stories to hit the capital last week concerned a 10-year-old boy who was being sodomised in his own school by no less than three people, including a teacher. This child was tortured for months before he found the wherewithal to make a public complaint, but his is not an isolated case. A 2007 Ministry of Women and Child Development’s study adds that over 50 per cent of our children are sexually abused. In half of these cases, the abuse is perpetrated by persons in positions of trust and a majority of the children do not report it.
Sex education can overturn this ritual silence, supply our young people with the tools to report and resist abusive behaviors, provide them with a forum for negotiating their fears and feelings honestly, openly. And teachers can adapt the AEP manual to establish communication channels that best suit local conditions, putting their students at ease with subjects – such as the bodily changes induced by puberty – that they are otherwise too squeamish to discuss.
And a ticking time bomb
Two decades after the first AIDS cases were reported, it has become the fourth largest killer in the world, with five young people contracting HIV every minute – that’s 7,200 every day. In India, where 15 per cent of the HIV/AIDS patients are actually children under 15 years old, the educational system still exists in a state of denial.Much worse, many schools continue to expel or segregate children because they or their parents are HIV positive.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that sex education can save India’s young people from the AIDS epidemic. According to UNESCO, a good illustration of how responsibly the young behave when they are properly informed is that 60 per cent of them now use condoms the first time they have sex in Western Europe – a six-fold increase since the early nineties.
There is also plenty of evidence to suggest that information about contraception is effective in both delaying the first sexual intercourse and ensuring that adolescents play it safe when they do become sexually active. So it’s time we overcame our timidity about confronting our adolescents’ sexuality, and the story below shows that we have plenty of models to choose from as we make our journey out of silence.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=7adf29eb-ece2-491f-87b8-f41f5f8a1b1b&ParentID=cadd1409-8d45-4f3e-b114-bc6e8d143135&MatchID1=4501&TeamID1=2&TeamID2=6&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1122&PrimaryID=4501&Headline=Sex+education%3a+the+good+%2c+bad+and+ugly
Renuka Bisht, Hindustan Times
Email Author
July 30, 2007
In a society in which innuendo and allusion are the preferred modes of communicating sexual desire even for the adults, the notion that adolescents are also sexual beings predictably makes us squirm. Whether it is as parents or as teachers, as aunts or uncles, many of us would rather push this possibility underground into our secretive subconscious.
It’s no wonder then, that the human resource development ministry’s Adolescent Education Programme (AEP) has run into hot water, because its safe sex message forces us to face the reality of sex being on the adolescent agenda. Nine states have already banned the programme; some teachers have been warned that they will be jailed if they take sex into the classrooms while some others have been burning the AEP manual.
A conspiracy of silence
The 2006 Behavioural Surveillance Survey (BSS) found that 8.4 per cent of Indian young people are sexually active. Meanwhile the Madhya Pradesh chief minister has demanded that the AEP curriculum be replaced by classes on Indian culture. With 1.5 crores of our youngsters having sex, can cultural empowerment substitute for safety, for teaching our children how to protect their bodies? Especially when unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases are not the only byproducts of the silence surrounding sex.
One of the most shocking stories to hit the capital last week concerned a 10-year-old boy who was being sodomised in his own school by no less than three people, including a teacher. This child was tortured for months before he found the wherewithal to make a public complaint, but his is not an isolated case. A 2007 Ministry of Women and Child Development’s study adds that over 50 per cent of our children are sexually abused. In half of these cases, the abuse is perpetrated by persons in positions of trust and a majority of the children do not report it.
Sex education can overturn this ritual silence, supply our young people with the tools to report and resist abusive behaviors, provide them with a forum for negotiating their fears and feelings honestly, openly. And teachers can adapt the AEP manual to establish communication channels that best suit local conditions, putting their students at ease with subjects – such as the bodily changes induced by puberty – that they are otherwise too squeamish to discuss.
And a ticking time bomb
Two decades after the first AIDS cases were reported, it has become the fourth largest killer in the world, with five young people contracting HIV every minute – that’s 7,200 every day. In India, where 15 per cent of the HIV/AIDS patients are actually children under 15 years old, the educational system still exists in a state of denial.Much worse, many schools continue to expel or segregate children because they or their parents are HIV positive.
There is plenty of evidence to suggest that sex education can save India’s young people from the AIDS epidemic. According to UNESCO, a good illustration of how responsibly the young behave when they are properly informed is that 60 per cent of them now use condoms the first time they have sex in Western Europe – a six-fold increase since the early nineties.
There is also plenty of evidence to suggest that information about contraception is effective in both delaying the first sexual intercourse and ensuring that adolescents play it safe when they do become sexually active. So it’s time we overcame our timidity about confronting our adolescents’ sexuality, and the story below shows that we have plenty of models to choose from as we make our journey out of silence.
Cultural factors crucial in Aids prevention efforts
Cultural factors crucial in Aids prevention efforts
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=163605&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26
Published: Sunday, 29 July, 2007, 02:28 AM Doha Time
By Cesar Chelala
NEW YORK: Dr Anthony Fauci, one of the world’s leading Aids scientists, has warned at an international conference on Aids in Sydney, Australia, recently that the world is losing the battle against the virus. He indicated that, to improve the situation, increased emphasis should be placed into prevention efforts, particularly into the social and cultural circumstances that affect the rate in which the pandemic is growing.
One of the cultural factors that have proven to be significant is cross-generational relationships — that is relationships where there are at least a 10-year difference between partners. Unless this problem is properly addressed, it will have significant social and demographic consequences in the regions most affected by it - in Sub-Saharan countries, the Caribbean and the Middle East, among others.
This ‘sugar daddy’ phenomenon , as it is also termed, accounts a much greater prevalence of the HIV infection among teenage girls than among boys. In several African countries, young girls have up to six times the rates of HIV-infection as do boys of similar ages.
In Uganda, according to a government report, 10.3% of women aged 15 to 24 had HIV/Aids, compared with 2.8% of men in the same age bracket.Women, particularly adolescents and young women, are more vulnerable than men to becoming infected with sexually transmitted diseases. One of the reasons is that their reproductive tract tissues are not yet fully developed and therefore are more susceptible to tearing and becoming infected.
What explains the high prevalence of this kind of uneven age relationships between older men and younger women? For one, older men believe that younger women can better satisfy their sexual needs than can older women; and, too, it is a sign of status among their friends to have one or more young girlfriends. In addition, older men believe that younger women are virgins and therefore less likely to be infected.
For young women, taking older men as sexual partners is also a sign of prestige among their peers and a way of paying for luxuries that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford, such as mobile phones, clothes and fancy jewelry. In other cases, these relationships provide young women with funds to finance their education.
Many poor families encourage young girls to enter into this kind of relationships in the belief that they will improve their and their family’s economic situations.
This phenomenon clearly illustrates the powerful link between women’s health and women’ empowerment, since young women are frequently unable to negotiate safe sexual relationship with older, more powerful men.
For example, in traditional African societies, because of the respect due to their elders, it is difficult for young women to reject advances by older men. This also places young women at a disadvantage in terms of demanding that their partners use condoms.
The reluctance by men, both young and old, to use condoms is one of the main reasons that fuel the HIV/Aids epidemic. It has been demonstrated that the older the man is with regard to his female companion and the more money it gives her, the less likely he is to use condom. Studies have also shown that the greater the age difference between partners, the more frequent is the practice of unsafe sexual behaviours.
There are many activities now being conducted across Africa to deal with this phenomenon, some of them with the collaboration of the clergy — a critical ally in the fight against HIV/Aids. There are mass communication campaigns to help create a stigma against this kind of relationship. There are also a wide range of education activities aimed at empowering young women by providing them with life skills, micro-credit loans and vocational training.These initiatives should be reinforced through outreach activities with NGOs working in the field to train local health workers to recognise this issue and help address it within their communities. At the same time, there should be increased co-operation between the ministries of health and education to improve the health curricula in schools and to sensitise members of parliament to pass legislation in those countries that have no laws addressing the seduction of minors.
Although many countries have such legislation, it is seldom enforced. Prevention of cross generational sex should be an important part of Aids prevention efforts. Because of its devastating effects on young women, sugar daddy relationships have proven to be anything but sweet.
* Cesar Chelala, an international public health consultant, is the author of Aids: A Modern Epidemic, a publication of the Pan American Health Organisation.
http://www.gulf-times.com/site/topics/article.asp?cu_no=2&item_no=163605&version=1&template_id=46&parent_id=26
Published: Sunday, 29 July, 2007, 02:28 AM Doha Time
By Cesar Chelala
NEW YORK: Dr Anthony Fauci, one of the world’s leading Aids scientists, has warned at an international conference on Aids in Sydney, Australia, recently that the world is losing the battle against the virus. He indicated that, to improve the situation, increased emphasis should be placed into prevention efforts, particularly into the social and cultural circumstances that affect the rate in which the pandemic is growing.
One of the cultural factors that have proven to be significant is cross-generational relationships — that is relationships where there are at least a 10-year difference between partners. Unless this problem is properly addressed, it will have significant social and demographic consequences in the regions most affected by it - in Sub-Saharan countries, the Caribbean and the Middle East, among others.
This ‘sugar daddy’ phenomenon , as it is also termed, accounts a much greater prevalence of the HIV infection among teenage girls than among boys. In several African countries, young girls have up to six times the rates of HIV-infection as do boys of similar ages.
In Uganda, according to a government report, 10.3% of women aged 15 to 24 had HIV/Aids, compared with 2.8% of men in the same age bracket.Women, particularly adolescents and young women, are more vulnerable than men to becoming infected with sexually transmitted diseases. One of the reasons is that their reproductive tract tissues are not yet fully developed and therefore are more susceptible to tearing and becoming infected.
What explains the high prevalence of this kind of uneven age relationships between older men and younger women? For one, older men believe that younger women can better satisfy their sexual needs than can older women; and, too, it is a sign of status among their friends to have one or more young girlfriends. In addition, older men believe that younger women are virgins and therefore less likely to be infected.
For young women, taking older men as sexual partners is also a sign of prestige among their peers and a way of paying for luxuries that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to afford, such as mobile phones, clothes and fancy jewelry. In other cases, these relationships provide young women with funds to finance their education.
Many poor families encourage young girls to enter into this kind of relationships in the belief that they will improve their and their family’s economic situations.
This phenomenon clearly illustrates the powerful link between women’s health and women’ empowerment, since young women are frequently unable to negotiate safe sexual relationship with older, more powerful men.
For example, in traditional African societies, because of the respect due to their elders, it is difficult for young women to reject advances by older men. This also places young women at a disadvantage in terms of demanding that their partners use condoms.
The reluctance by men, both young and old, to use condoms is one of the main reasons that fuel the HIV/Aids epidemic. It has been demonstrated that the older the man is with regard to his female companion and the more money it gives her, the less likely he is to use condom. Studies have also shown that the greater the age difference between partners, the more frequent is the practice of unsafe sexual behaviours.
There are many activities now being conducted across Africa to deal with this phenomenon, some of them with the collaboration of the clergy — a critical ally in the fight against HIV/Aids. There are mass communication campaigns to help create a stigma against this kind of relationship. There are also a wide range of education activities aimed at empowering young women by providing them with life skills, micro-credit loans and vocational training.These initiatives should be reinforced through outreach activities with NGOs working in the field to train local health workers to recognise this issue and help address it within their communities. At the same time, there should be increased co-operation between the ministries of health and education to improve the health curricula in schools and to sensitise members of parliament to pass legislation in those countries that have no laws addressing the seduction of minors.
Although many countries have such legislation, it is seldom enforced. Prevention of cross generational sex should be an important part of Aids prevention efforts. Because of its devastating effects on young women, sugar daddy relationships have proven to be anything but sweet.
* Cesar Chelala, an international public health consultant, is the author of Aids: A Modern Epidemic, a publication of the Pan American Health Organisation.
Ads and Condoms and Pigs
Ads and Condoms and Pigs
by L. Brent Bozell IIIJuly 13, 2007
http://www.mrc.org/BozellColumns/entertainmentcolumn/2007/col20070713.asp
The condom makers at Trojan have come up with a new ad. It shows a bar full of human-sized pigs attempting to gain women’s attention. The women look bored. Only when one pig wanders into the bathroom, buys a condom, and – voila! – is transformed into a human male hunk, are the women suddenly attracted. “Evolve” is the word on screen at the ad’s end.
Trojan sought to buy airtime for this commercial on CBS and Fox, both of which have accepted Trojan ads in the past, but this time – voila! – the unexpected happened. The broadcasters rejected the ad, citing their broadcast decency standards – when it comes to commercials. The New York Times reported that in a letter to Trojan, CBS wrote, “While we understand and appreciate the humor of this creative [sic], we do not find it appropriate for our network even with late-night-only restrictions.” In its written response, Fox said that it had rejected the spot since “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”
Are congratulations in order here? Perhaps we should commend the networks for demonstrating some sense of right and wrong on this decision: a sexually-charged predatory bar scene over the public airwaves, is just not appropriate. So call it a small victory for reticence in an era of endless sexual logorrhea. But why apply that sense of morality just to these commercials? CBS made a moral argument in its letter, while Fox tried to suggest the ad wasn’t medical enough. But in each case the network also managed to open itself to the charge of galloping hypocrisy.
In a letter to the Times, Vanessa Cullins, the vice president for medical affairs at the Planned Parenthood lobby, protested. “Fox and CBS have been taking sex to the bank with shows like ‘Temptation Island’ and ‘The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.’ To reject these condoms ads is the height of hypocrisy and irresponsible programming.” While no one would categorize Planned Parenthood as a lobby against sexually explicit TV, they’re right that the hypocrisy is obvious. CBS and Fox entertainment programming has been far more sexually explicit than these commercials. Fox had an entire series (“Skin”) based on the pornography industry. CBS is not only infamous for its breast-exposing Super Bowl halftime show, but for following that up with an teen-orgy scene on “Without a Trace,” which show was formally cited as “indecent” (ya think?) by the FCC, and which show was re-aired and aired yet again in reruns with the CBS middle finger flying in the face of that agency.
CBS also looks hypocritical given that in 2003, when it was still owned by Viacom, along with its sister network UPN it ran a series of condom-promoting scenes within its sitcoms as part of an AIDS-education initiative with the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Kaiser Foundation folks apparently believe that sex scenes on broadcast television during prime-time are acceptable -- as long as the condom-education message is present.
There are dozens of raunchy sex scenes on these networks’ programming every week that on the offensiveness meter surpass what was presented by the Trojan ads. And what about all those other sex ads these networks do carry? TV watchers of all stripes complain about sexual-product ads on TV, especially the Viagra/Cialis ads that seem omnipresent to sports fans. (“Daddy, what’s a penile erectile dysfunction?”) Yet Fox hasn’t rejected those for not being health-related enough. It’s possible that two networks rejected this ad not because it was too sexual, but it’s too sexist – against men. Can you imagine the makers of female contraception casting women as farm animals because they haven’t gone on The Pill?
Viacom stations no longer aligned with CBS, like MTV and Comedy Central, are naturally running these Trojan ads. So, too, are ABC and NBC. Perhaps for this reason alone CBS and Fox should be commended. But they cannot escape the charge of hypocrisy until they do more to demonstrate to both advertisers, as well as their programming assembly lines, that there is a moral line somewhere in TV Land that should not be crossed. There is some border, some frontier where sexual manipulation of the audience goes too far. This time, the pigs didn’t win.
by L. Brent Bozell IIIJuly 13, 2007
http://www.mrc.org/BozellColumns/entertainmentcolumn/2007/col20070713.asp
The condom makers at Trojan have come up with a new ad. It shows a bar full of human-sized pigs attempting to gain women’s attention. The women look bored. Only when one pig wanders into the bathroom, buys a condom, and – voila! – is transformed into a human male hunk, are the women suddenly attracted. “Evolve” is the word on screen at the ad’s end.
Trojan sought to buy airtime for this commercial on CBS and Fox, both of which have accepted Trojan ads in the past, but this time – voila! – the unexpected happened. The broadcasters rejected the ad, citing their broadcast decency standards – when it comes to commercials. The New York Times reported that in a letter to Trojan, CBS wrote, “While we understand and appreciate the humor of this creative [sic], we do not find it appropriate for our network even with late-night-only restrictions.” In its written response, Fox said that it had rejected the spot since “Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”
Are congratulations in order here? Perhaps we should commend the networks for demonstrating some sense of right and wrong on this decision: a sexually-charged predatory bar scene over the public airwaves, is just not appropriate. So call it a small victory for reticence in an era of endless sexual logorrhea. But why apply that sense of morality just to these commercials? CBS made a moral argument in its letter, while Fox tried to suggest the ad wasn’t medical enough. But in each case the network also managed to open itself to the charge of galloping hypocrisy.
In a letter to the Times, Vanessa Cullins, the vice president for medical affairs at the Planned Parenthood lobby, protested. “Fox and CBS have been taking sex to the bank with shows like ‘Temptation Island’ and ‘The Victoria's Secret Fashion Show.’ To reject these condoms ads is the height of hypocrisy and irresponsible programming.” While no one would categorize Planned Parenthood as a lobby against sexually explicit TV, they’re right that the hypocrisy is obvious. CBS and Fox entertainment programming has been far more sexually explicit than these commercials. Fox had an entire series (“Skin”) based on the pornography industry. CBS is not only infamous for its breast-exposing Super Bowl halftime show, but for following that up with an teen-orgy scene on “Without a Trace,” which show was formally cited as “indecent” (ya think?) by the FCC, and which show was re-aired and aired yet again in reruns with the CBS middle finger flying in the face of that agency.
CBS also looks hypocritical given that in 2003, when it was still owned by Viacom, along with its sister network UPN it ran a series of condom-promoting scenes within its sitcoms as part of an AIDS-education initiative with the Kaiser Family Foundation. The Kaiser Foundation folks apparently believe that sex scenes on broadcast television during prime-time are acceptable -- as long as the condom-education message is present.
There are dozens of raunchy sex scenes on these networks’ programming every week that on the offensiveness meter surpass what was presented by the Trojan ads. And what about all those other sex ads these networks do carry? TV watchers of all stripes complain about sexual-product ads on TV, especially the Viagra/Cialis ads that seem omnipresent to sports fans. (“Daddy, what’s a penile erectile dysfunction?”) Yet Fox hasn’t rejected those for not being health-related enough. It’s possible that two networks rejected this ad not because it was too sexual, but it’s too sexist – against men. Can you imagine the makers of female contraception casting women as farm animals because they haven’t gone on The Pill?
Viacom stations no longer aligned with CBS, like MTV and Comedy Central, are naturally running these Trojan ads. So, too, are ABC and NBC. Perhaps for this reason alone CBS and Fox should be commended. But they cannot escape the charge of hypocrisy until they do more to demonstrate to both advertisers, as well as their programming assembly lines, that there is a moral line somewhere in TV Land that should not be crossed. There is some border, some frontier where sexual manipulation of the audience goes too far. This time, the pigs didn’t win.
Condom-inium
Condom-inium!
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=c735651e-02a6-4acb-bc4c-c5e90053d2fc&MatchID1=4501&TeamID1=2&TeamID2=6&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1122&PrimaryID=4501&Headline=Condom-inium!
Sushmita Bose and Amitava Sanyal, Hindustan TimesEmail AuthorNew Delhi, July 29, 2007
If you ask Ashok Row Kavi, gay rights activist and resource person of National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), about the biggest stumbling block on the road to condom usage, he says: “Men.” Explanation: “All they are bothered about is pleasure; condoms, they feel, reduce pleasure, so they don’t want to use them.”
The way out is “condoms being married to pleasure”. Enter, ribbed, flavoured, long-lasting, vibrating variants. Take this case in point. An organisation funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is test-marketing paan-flavoured condoms in Mumbai (the condoms are manufactured by the public-sector Hindustan Latex). “It’s a very clever shift towards oral sex, using a flavour Indians are familiar with,” says Kavi, who claims that the condom is a “big hit” in Mumbai.
What about the controversy that Hindustan Latex’s Crezendo brand stirred up in Madhya Pradesh? Gopi Gopalakrishnan, country director (Vietnam) of DKT International, which works on the social marketing of condoms in 12 countries including India, says, “It is good to have such controversies. It’s word-of-mouth publicity, which is the cheapest and often the most credible form of communication.” In other words, as long as the Kailash Vijayavargiyas (the Madhya Pradesh PWD & IT minister who set off the vibrations with a letter to the Prime Minister) and the Sushma Swarajs of the country keep their ‘thought condoms’ on, the real condom campaigns stand to gain. True to the thought, Hindustan Latex chairman and managing director M Ayyappan says: “The publicity over Crezendo only helped us — not only did we exhaust our stock, but are now in the process of procuring three lakh units more. This is the third time we are having a supply shortage in three months.”
Condoms and their sociology have indeed come a long way in India. But their, ahem, penetration has not really gone far into rural India, where they are distributed mostly through the State AIDS Control Societies (SACS) and social marketing channels. A lot of it is wasted due to the lack of proper distribution. Many of these pieces eventually find their way to making chappals, lining hut roofs, or oiling loom shuttles (with the non-staining lubricant). Bad distribution also leads to the problem of having outdated products in circulation. Vivek Anand, CEO of Humsafar Trust, says it’s silly to expect condom users to look at “user instructions and expiry dates in the dead of the night” when you have only one thing on your mind.
Manoj Gopalakrishna, CEO of Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust, says, “Some 10-40 per cent of the condoms marked for free distribution are wasted between the district and blocks levels in various states. NACO is working on IT-enabling the SACS networks and bringing the wastage down to 4-5 per cent in a couple of years.” For now, it seems that mostly urban, middle-class India is getting to ‘cap it’.
We tend to forget that this is the country that started the world’s first social marketing programme with the Nirodh campaign in the mid-1960s. The government procured condoms from various companies and coerced large-network FMCG and durables companies such as ITC, Union Carbide (till the Bhopal gas tragedy), Hindustan Lever and Voltas to distribute them. When the winds of liberalisation started blowing in the early 1990s, specialised social marketing agencies like PSI, Marie Stopes, Family Planning Association of India and DKT International entered the scene, and the private sector companies kept to their own domains.
As for the products, the paradigm shift since the pre-liberalisation days, of course, has been the fun, wacky element. Like the Bindaas Bol campaign that USAID’s project Private Sector Partnerships-One (PSP-One) ran in India for a few years. Despite the long campaigns, even now there are huge cultural and social landmines in India vis-à-vis condoms, stemming from the perception that condom equals sex — and sex is, of course, taboo in this post-Victorian land of the Kamasutra.
“The toughest part is to maintain the fine line between appearing to promote promiscuity and being regressive,” says Anand Sinha, country director of PSP-One. GVL Narasimha Rao, managing director of Development & Research Services, an agency that recently conducted usage studies in UP and MP for the UK government’s DFID, says, “In UP, the second largest market in the country after Punjab, condoms are seen as a tool for preventing pregnancies. Most people regard HIV/AIDS as an urban phenomenon.”
The market is looking up — but only just
“Things are a bit better because everyone in the business is being proactive about marketing,” says PSP-One’s Sinha. Last year the market’s volume grew 15 per cent. The National Family Health Survey III (2006) showed a usage of 7.1 per cent among the ‘eligible couples’ of the country; NFHS II (1998) had reported the same at 5.3 per cent. And how do you make men learn the ropes of putting on a condom? Organise a condom-wearing contest, which is what organisations like Humsafar Trust does. Or promote condom art and other non-sexual uses of the product to remove the stigma that is attached to it, as does Dr Akash Gulalia’s Condom Project. NACO is putting together a team of social marketers to suggest ways of reaching the farthest corners of the country. Necessity, too, is mothering other inventions. Giving in to gay rights groups’ demand for thicker-walled, better-lubricated condoms, NACO is trying to procure and distribute some.
“We know people are having sex,” says Kavi, “We are not judging them; only asking them to be careful — because if they aren’t, they may end up dead.
With inputs from Aditya Ghosh
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=c735651e-02a6-4acb-bc4c-c5e90053d2fc&MatchID1=4501&TeamID1=2&TeamID2=6&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1122&PrimaryID=4501&Headline=Condom-inium!
Sushmita Bose and Amitava Sanyal, Hindustan TimesEmail AuthorNew Delhi, July 29, 2007
If you ask Ashok Row Kavi, gay rights activist and resource person of National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), about the biggest stumbling block on the road to condom usage, he says: “Men.” Explanation: “All they are bothered about is pleasure; condoms, they feel, reduce pleasure, so they don’t want to use them.”
The way out is “condoms being married to pleasure”. Enter, ribbed, flavoured, long-lasting, vibrating variants. Take this case in point. An organisation funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is test-marketing paan-flavoured condoms in Mumbai (the condoms are manufactured by the public-sector Hindustan Latex). “It’s a very clever shift towards oral sex, using a flavour Indians are familiar with,” says Kavi, who claims that the condom is a “big hit” in Mumbai.
What about the controversy that Hindustan Latex’s Crezendo brand stirred up in Madhya Pradesh? Gopi Gopalakrishnan, country director (Vietnam) of DKT International, which works on the social marketing of condoms in 12 countries including India, says, “It is good to have such controversies. It’s word-of-mouth publicity, which is the cheapest and often the most credible form of communication.” In other words, as long as the Kailash Vijayavargiyas (the Madhya Pradesh PWD & IT minister who set off the vibrations with a letter to the Prime Minister) and the Sushma Swarajs of the country keep their ‘thought condoms’ on, the real condom campaigns stand to gain. True to the thought, Hindustan Latex chairman and managing director M Ayyappan says: “The publicity over Crezendo only helped us — not only did we exhaust our stock, but are now in the process of procuring three lakh units more. This is the third time we are having a supply shortage in three months.”
Condoms and their sociology have indeed come a long way in India. But their, ahem, penetration has not really gone far into rural India, where they are distributed mostly through the State AIDS Control Societies (SACS) and social marketing channels. A lot of it is wasted due to the lack of proper distribution. Many of these pieces eventually find their way to making chappals, lining hut roofs, or oiling loom shuttles (with the non-staining lubricant). Bad distribution also leads to the problem of having outdated products in circulation. Vivek Anand, CEO of Humsafar Trust, says it’s silly to expect condom users to look at “user instructions and expiry dates in the dead of the night” when you have only one thing on your mind.
Manoj Gopalakrishna, CEO of Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust, says, “Some 10-40 per cent of the condoms marked for free distribution are wasted between the district and blocks levels in various states. NACO is working on IT-enabling the SACS networks and bringing the wastage down to 4-5 per cent in a couple of years.” For now, it seems that mostly urban, middle-class India is getting to ‘cap it’.
We tend to forget that this is the country that started the world’s first social marketing programme with the Nirodh campaign in the mid-1960s. The government procured condoms from various companies and coerced large-network FMCG and durables companies such as ITC, Union Carbide (till the Bhopal gas tragedy), Hindustan Lever and Voltas to distribute them. When the winds of liberalisation started blowing in the early 1990s, specialised social marketing agencies like PSI, Marie Stopes, Family Planning Association of India and DKT International entered the scene, and the private sector companies kept to their own domains.
As for the products, the paradigm shift since the pre-liberalisation days, of course, has been the fun, wacky element. Like the Bindaas Bol campaign that USAID’s project Private Sector Partnerships-One (PSP-One) ran in India for a few years. Despite the long campaigns, even now there are huge cultural and social landmines in India vis-à-vis condoms, stemming from the perception that condom equals sex — and sex is, of course, taboo in this post-Victorian land of the Kamasutra.
“The toughest part is to maintain the fine line between appearing to promote promiscuity and being regressive,” says Anand Sinha, country director of PSP-One. GVL Narasimha Rao, managing director of Development & Research Services, an agency that recently conducted usage studies in UP and MP for the UK government’s DFID, says, “In UP, the second largest market in the country after Punjab, condoms are seen as a tool for preventing pregnancies. Most people regard HIV/AIDS as an urban phenomenon.”
The market is looking up — but only just
“Things are a bit better because everyone in the business is being proactive about marketing,” says PSP-One’s Sinha. Last year the market’s volume grew 15 per cent. The National Family Health Survey III (2006) showed a usage of 7.1 per cent among the ‘eligible couples’ of the country; NFHS II (1998) had reported the same at 5.3 per cent. And how do you make men learn the ropes of putting on a condom? Organise a condom-wearing contest, which is what organisations like Humsafar Trust does. Or promote condom art and other non-sexual uses of the product to remove the stigma that is attached to it, as does Dr Akash Gulalia’s Condom Project. NACO is putting together a team of social marketers to suggest ways of reaching the farthest corners of the country. Necessity, too, is mothering other inventions. Giving in to gay rights groups’ demand for thicker-walled, better-lubricated condoms, NACO is trying to procure and distribute some.
“We know people are having sex,” says Kavi, “We are not judging them; only asking them to be careful — because if they aren’t, they may end up dead.
With inputs from Aditya Ghosh
Treat transgendered with dignity, Chidambaram urges people
Treat transgendered with dignity, Chidambaram urges people http://www.hindu.com/2007/07/29/stories/2007072960470600.htm
CHENNAI: Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Saturday appealed to the people to treat the marginalised sections, including the transgendered, with dignity, as they were also citizens of the country.
Launching a health insurance scheme for marginalised women and transgendered here, he stressed the need for understanding their aspirations and creating awareness among these sections of their rights. Steering clear of all attempts to isolate them, the marginalised sections should become part of the mainstream. They should shed their inferiority complex and lead a dignified life.
Mr. Chidambaram commended the efforts of the Voluntary Health Services (VHS) and the Tamil Nadu AIDS Initiative (TAI) for implementing an HIV/AIDS prevention programme in 14 districts as part of the efforts to motivate the marginalised communities to empower themselves through better health.
He also appreciated the multi-pronged strategy adopted by the TAI to ensure the welfare of the transgendered.
He referred to the yeoman service rendered by VimoSEWA, a Gujarat-based non-governmen tal organisation.
He released a short film on the initiatives of the TAI.
V.K. Subburaj, Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, who handed over the contract letter for training and manufacture of sanitary health kit, highlighted the AIDS control measures taken by the State.
The number of people affected by the disease had been brought to less than 0.5 per cent of the population from 1.13 per cent in 2001. The number of testing centres had also gone up from 280 a couple of years ago to 760 now.
TAI Project Director R. Lakshmibai said the organisation had initiated a pilot health insurance scheme for 1,000 marginalised women, including 350 transgender, in Salem district.
The insurance cover would be for a year starting from July 1. A total of Rs.2.95 lakh had been collected from the beneficiaries as premium at the rate of Rs.281 for adults and Rs.132 for children.
They would be provided insurance coverage to the tune of Rs.5,000 by ICICI Lombard.
CHENNAI: Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on Saturday appealed to the people to treat the marginalised sections, including the transgendered, with dignity, as they were also citizens of the country.
Launching a health insurance scheme for marginalised women and transgendered here, he stressed the need for understanding their aspirations and creating awareness among these sections of their rights. Steering clear of all attempts to isolate them, the marginalised sections should become part of the mainstream. They should shed their inferiority complex and lead a dignified life.
Mr. Chidambaram commended the efforts of the Voluntary Health Services (VHS) and the Tamil Nadu AIDS Initiative (TAI) for implementing an HIV/AIDS prevention programme in 14 districts as part of the efforts to motivate the marginalised communities to empower themselves through better health.
He also appreciated the multi-pronged strategy adopted by the TAI to ensure the welfare of the transgendered.
He referred to the yeoman service rendered by VimoSEWA, a Gujarat-based non-governmen tal organisation.
He released a short film on the initiatives of the TAI.
V.K. Subburaj, Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, who handed over the contract letter for training and manufacture of sanitary health kit, highlighted the AIDS control measures taken by the State.
The number of people affected by the disease had been brought to less than 0.5 per cent of the population from 1.13 per cent in 2001. The number of testing centres had also gone up from 280 a couple of years ago to 760 now.
TAI Project Director R. Lakshmibai said the organisation had initiated a pilot health insurance scheme for 1,000 marginalised women, including 350 transgender, in Salem district.
The insurance cover would be for a year starting from July 1. A total of Rs.2.95 lakh had been collected from the beneficiaries as premium at the rate of Rs.281 for adults and Rs.132 for children.
They would be provided insurance coverage to the tune of Rs.5,000 by ICICI Lombard.
Can the First Woman President Close the Gender Gap in India?
Can the First Woman President Close the Gender Gap in India?
By Sawraj Singh, MD F.I.C.S.
http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=072607110618
The election of Pratibha Patil as the first woman president of India is not only a big victory for the Congress party because she who with the two-thirds majority, but it has also weakened the BJP in a big way because of the rift with its biggest partner. The Shiv Sena crossed ranks and voted for Pratibha Patil because she is a Maharashtrian. This rift has sown the seeds for a future widening gap between the BJP and Shiv Sena and may weaken the two party system and create favorable conditions for the emergence of a third front.
For the first time, India has a woman president. However, the question remains: can a woman president close the gender gap in India? Women are the most oppressed section of the society. There is a very big gap between the women from the elite classes compared to the women from the poor and lower middle classes. The rich and upper middle class women are getting thoroughly westernized. This segment of society is being promoted by Bollywood as the newly liberated women. However, the vast majority of the Indian women do not fit into this Bollywood version of the Indian woman. The women from the lower classes suffer dual oppression, economic and gender. These women have to work to generate income to run their families. They are also expected to take care of the household and take abuse from the abusive husbands. Some of these abusive husbands are addicts and some have sex with prostitutes who have AIDS, and then force AIDS on their wives.
Female feticide is another very big problem, particularly in Northern India. It is because of this problem that Punjab now has the lowest female to male ratio in the country. Killing the unborn females is the most cruel form of oppression of the women. It is even worse than the dowry deaths because many times there is no feeling of guilt associated with female feticide. Moreover, the dowry deaths are generally confined to the poor and the lower middle classes, whereas female feticide can involve all segments of society.
The growing gap between the male and female population in Punjab and the other Northern Indian states can destabilize the society and create many future problems. Already, some bad effects are becoming apparent. There is a marked increase in the number of cases of rape in the North. There have been scandals in Punjab where women from the other states have been sold in Punjab. This medieval practice of slavery may be revived in the twenty-first century.
The Bollywood version of women’s liberation has not helped with the cause of the women. This is seen more as obscenity, vulgarity, and commercialized exploitation of women rather than true emancipation. The women of India do not need to be westernized in order to be liberated. They have to find their own path that is compatible with the Indian culture and value system. Education and participation in the productive work are the key to women’s liberation. Having a woman as the head of state can help the cause of women if it acts as an impetus to focus on the women’s issues.
By Sawraj Singh, MD F.I.C.S.
http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?id=072607110618
The election of Pratibha Patil as the first woman president of India is not only a big victory for the Congress party because she who with the two-thirds majority, but it has also weakened the BJP in a big way because of the rift with its biggest partner. The Shiv Sena crossed ranks and voted for Pratibha Patil because she is a Maharashtrian. This rift has sown the seeds for a future widening gap between the BJP and Shiv Sena and may weaken the two party system and create favorable conditions for the emergence of a third front.
For the first time, India has a woman president. However, the question remains: can a woman president close the gender gap in India? Women are the most oppressed section of the society. There is a very big gap between the women from the elite classes compared to the women from the poor and lower middle classes. The rich and upper middle class women are getting thoroughly westernized. This segment of society is being promoted by Bollywood as the newly liberated women. However, the vast majority of the Indian women do not fit into this Bollywood version of the Indian woman. The women from the lower classes suffer dual oppression, economic and gender. These women have to work to generate income to run their families. They are also expected to take care of the household and take abuse from the abusive husbands. Some of these abusive husbands are addicts and some have sex with prostitutes who have AIDS, and then force AIDS on their wives.
Female feticide is another very big problem, particularly in Northern India. It is because of this problem that Punjab now has the lowest female to male ratio in the country. Killing the unborn females is the most cruel form of oppression of the women. It is even worse than the dowry deaths because many times there is no feeling of guilt associated with female feticide. Moreover, the dowry deaths are generally confined to the poor and the lower middle classes, whereas female feticide can involve all segments of society.
The growing gap between the male and female population in Punjab and the other Northern Indian states can destabilize the society and create many future problems. Already, some bad effects are becoming apparent. There is a marked increase in the number of cases of rape in the North. There have been scandals in Punjab where women from the other states have been sold in Punjab. This medieval practice of slavery may be revived in the twenty-first century.
The Bollywood version of women’s liberation has not helped with the cause of the women. This is seen more as obscenity, vulgarity, and commercialized exploitation of women rather than true emancipation. The women of India do not need to be westernized in order to be liberated. They have to find their own path that is compatible with the Indian culture and value system. Education and participation in the productive work are the key to women’s liberation. Having a woman as the head of state can help the cause of women if it acts as an impetus to focus on the women’s issues.
Saturday 28 July 2007
Namibia: Activist Slams HIV/Aids Policy
Namibia: Activist Slams HIV/Aids Policy
http://allafrica.com/stories/200707270628.html
New Era (Windhoek)
27 July 2007
Surihe GaomasWindhoek
An HIV/AIDS National Policy is meaningless without the involvement of people living positively with HIV.
This was said by HIV and AIDS activist Nelao Martin on Tuesday. She called on all people living with HIV to become more actively involved in policies and decision-making that would impact on them.
"Policy-makers tend to pretend to know and understand our needs and therefore develop policies without our involvement, but such policies do not meet our needs and demands," said 24-year-old Martin, who has been living positively with the virus for eight years.
Speaking at the official launch of the National Policy on HIV/AIDS by President Hifikepunye Pohamba in Windhoek this week, Martin expressed concern over the fact that most decisions did not reflect the realities of what was happening on the ground for Namibians living with HIV, as many were left out of normal day-to-day activities.
Statistics show that there are 230 000 Namibians infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, but many live a life of discrimination due to the stigma attached to being HIV-positive, it being considered a "shameful condition".
"The majority of people living with HIV are still not accessing treatment, care and support services because of ignorance, fear, illiteracy and poverty.
Professionals are reluctant to give us full attention and this leads to little or no information regarding our diagnosis and treatment.
"I believe HIV is a condition I am living in, in that I have accepted to live with it. It's in my blood and not in my brain. I am not mentally disturbed. I still have morals and values, nothing should be taken away from me without my consent," said Martin.
Another major issue of discrimination facing people living with HIV/AIDS is that many still face difficulty in accessing life-policy insurance and housing loans from banks.
She found out about her positive status when she fell pregnant during her last year at secondary school. Both her newborn son and herself were HIV-positive.
"The HIV test which eight years ago proved that my son and I are HIV-positive shattered my dreams. I never had the chance to enjoy being young, as I had to take the responsibility of changing nappies and being on treatment with my son," said Martin.
She also expressed disappointment that two weeks ago she invited more than 20 parliamentarians for a HIV/AIDS discussion, but no one turned up.
Relevant Links Southern Africa HIV-Aids and STDs Health and Medicine Namibia
With so many HIV/AIDS organisations now cropping up in the country, it turns out that HIV/AIDS has become a business, which does not reflect or show empathy towards those infected with the virus.
On discrimination and stigma, Martin said that this was especially more evident if one entered a hospital ward for patients with full-blown AIDS.
"It's that the plate of food is just dropped at the bedside table with flies on it, and the poor patient can't get up and no family or friend is around to help spoon-feed him or her. In most cases, this is because the cleaner or nurse does not personally know how it feels to be HIV-positive On behalf of people living with HIV, I would like to say: nothing for us without us," said Martin.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200707270628.html
New Era (Windhoek)
27 July 2007
Surihe GaomasWindhoek
An HIV/AIDS National Policy is meaningless without the involvement of people living positively with HIV.
This was said by HIV and AIDS activist Nelao Martin on Tuesday. She called on all people living with HIV to become more actively involved in policies and decision-making that would impact on them.
"Policy-makers tend to pretend to know and understand our needs and therefore develop policies without our involvement, but such policies do not meet our needs and demands," said 24-year-old Martin, who has been living positively with the virus for eight years.
Speaking at the official launch of the National Policy on HIV/AIDS by President Hifikepunye Pohamba in Windhoek this week, Martin expressed concern over the fact that most decisions did not reflect the realities of what was happening on the ground for Namibians living with HIV, as many were left out of normal day-to-day activities.
Statistics show that there are 230 000 Namibians infected with the HIV virus that causes AIDS, but many live a life of discrimination due to the stigma attached to being HIV-positive, it being considered a "shameful condition".
"The majority of people living with HIV are still not accessing treatment, care and support services because of ignorance, fear, illiteracy and poverty.
Professionals are reluctant to give us full attention and this leads to little or no information regarding our diagnosis and treatment.
"I believe HIV is a condition I am living in, in that I have accepted to live with it. It's in my blood and not in my brain. I am not mentally disturbed. I still have morals and values, nothing should be taken away from me without my consent," said Martin.
Another major issue of discrimination facing people living with HIV/AIDS is that many still face difficulty in accessing life-policy insurance and housing loans from banks.
She found out about her positive status when she fell pregnant during her last year at secondary school. Both her newborn son and herself were HIV-positive.
"The HIV test which eight years ago proved that my son and I are HIV-positive shattered my dreams. I never had the chance to enjoy being young, as I had to take the responsibility of changing nappies and being on treatment with my son," said Martin.
She also expressed disappointment that two weeks ago she invited more than 20 parliamentarians for a HIV/AIDS discussion, but no one turned up.
Relevant Links Southern Africa HIV-Aids and STDs Health and Medicine Namibia
With so many HIV/AIDS organisations now cropping up in the country, it turns out that HIV/AIDS has become a business, which does not reflect or show empathy towards those infected with the virus.
On discrimination and stigma, Martin said that this was especially more evident if one entered a hospital ward for patients with full-blown AIDS.
"It's that the plate of food is just dropped at the bedside table with flies on it, and the poor patient can't get up and no family or friend is around to help spoon-feed him or her. In most cases, this is because the cleaner or nurse does not personally know how it feels to be HIV-positive On behalf of people living with HIV, I would like to say: nothing for us without us," said Martin.
Sex is not just intercourse
Sex is not just intercourse
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main33.asp?filename=op040807sex_is.asp
Sex education cannot be limited to biological descriptions in textbooks. We must talk of its pleasures and pains, or the repression in our minds will hurt everyone
A few months ago, I heard of a 15-year-old who had knotted two ends of a rope, tied one to a stair rail and slipped the other around her neck, and jumped over the banister. A student at one of the teaching shops that churns out a full load of 90+ percenters every year, she had heard that the results for her batch were very poor. When the results were actually announced, she had topped at that school of over-achievers. I mentioned this incident, in the carefully careless way one uses when one wishes to make a point without seeming to interfere obviously, to a friend. He has perfectionist tendencies himself, and high expectations of his daughter, due to appear for the ICSE. “Are you referring to so-and-so?” he responded. “I heard that they found out later that the real reason was that she was pregnant.” “That’s just as bad,” I exploded. “We fail our children by not giving them information and skills to protect themselves; by not creating a support structure so that they feel there isn’t even one adult who will understand and assist them, and the only option is to kill themselves.” My friend did not respond.
The implication was that in the hierarchy of reasons for committing suicide, pregnancy was a more justifiable one. A similar limited mindset causes governments like those of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, etc to ban sex education. Renuka Chowdhury was spot on last week when she called us a nation of hypocrites — a population of one billion that still likes to pretend that sex is some base Western practice, permissible between married Indians for the sole purpose of procreation, but for the most part, unmentionable even then.
At the many sexual health training workshops that I have carried out for NGO activists working with vulnerable children, the sheepish recognition of the obvious inconsistency between the size of our population and our prudish rejection of sex is the thin end of the wedge that works to get these respectable, largely lower-middle class and middle-class men and women to begin to look more objectively at the issue of sex. When they come into the workshop, their tight smiles and stiff body language indicate their discomfort at being there. When they share their concerns and fears at the beginning of the workshop, invariably several say, “What is there to talk about or work on sex for three whole days?” To the question, then, of what is sex, the answer, without fail, is sexual intercourse.
Over the next three days, however, through games and collaborative exercises, participants begin to recognise the number of complex emotional, mental, behavioural and social elements at work within the concepts of sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights — affection, fantasy, relationship, communication, conversation, respect, sexual behaviours and rituals, societal rules and expectations, joy and pleasure, as well as the more obviously negative elements like manipulation, blackmail, violence and abuse. By the end of the workshops, the participants invariably feel personally empowered at having received a space and the licence in which to explore, with courage, sensitivity and without judgement, this integral aspect of being human. One woman told the group, “I wish I had attended a workshop like this 30 years ago, it might have saved my marriage.” Another participant said, “This evening, I am going to go home and talk to my wife about sex.” He had been married for three years and had had sex regularly but never asked her about how she felt, what gave her pleasure or joy, or what she feared. Likewise, participants are convinced that we need to empower children and young people in a similar fashion. In all the workshops I have facilitated, only one person has ever rejected this premise, an Italian religious, a volunteer at a street children’s organisation, who steadfastly maintained that “our children are not like that”, against the strenuous assertions of the other activists, who provided support services to these children on a daily basis, that many children were initiated into sex early and were sexually active, often with multiple partners. The rest, at the end, complained that the three-day workshop had been too short, and asked when we would have a follow-up!
If sex education is only going to be about the plumbing of sex or what goes where, then perhaps we should continue with the trend wherein 75 percent Indians learn about sex from friends and porn films And it is not as if sex education is relevant only to particularly vulnerable groups like street and working children, or to the adults who work with them. Contrary to the assertions of many middle-class parents that their young people have no interest in sex (though they may be watching significantly sexually stimulating Bollywood and Western music video-based material on tv several hours a week), many surveys, including those carried out by India Today and ac Nielsen, show that this is not the case. 17 percent of Indian teenagers and 33 percent of college-going youngsters surveyed had engaged in premarital sex. 46 percent of young single men had had sex, and 49 percent of young men had had sex with a sex worker. Nearly 40 percent of Indian women had not heard of aids, though 25 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 30 in eleven cities had had premarital sex. And contrary to politicians’ fears that sex education will promote lax morals in young people, several studies by the who show that good sex education raises the age of first sexual intercourse and first pregnancy, and lowers the rate of teenage pregnancy.
The issue, of course, is not only one of “whether sex education” but what and how. If sex education is only going to be about what one of my professors called “the plumbing of sex, or, what goes where”, then perhaps we should leave and continue with the trend by which 75 percent of Indians learn of sex from friends and porn films. Likewise, if the assumption is that even among those states that have not banned sex education the person best qualified to teach the subject is the high school biology teacher, never mind that he or she might be the most prudish and rigid person on campus, incapable of establishing a rapport with the children, the exercise will be quite futile. The chapter will be skipped, or so boring that children will go back to the tried and tested sources of the lore of friends and pornography.
Every minute of every day, six young people between the ages of 15 and 24 become hiv positive, according to unicef. Surely it is possible to care for the lives of our children by finding some viable medium between prurience and obscenity, on the one hand, and a clinical, distant “sex education” that they are unable to relate to their own lives, on the other. Surely it is possible to train caring and competent educators who can help children and young people acquire essential knowledge and skills related to positive sexuality, including negotiation skills, the ability to handle peer pressure, the skill and strength to say “no” when a sexual relationship is inappropriate, to protect themselves from violence and abuse, and seek out support when they need it.
What are our politicians truly worried about? If the issue is fear, let us confront it. Let’s acknowledge that sex is one of the most highly charged aspects of human life, and encourage our young people to handle it well. If the issue is morality, let us teach our children to appreciate their sexuality and not desecrate it or misuse sexual energy, but to work with it skillfully. If we are pragmatic and respectful of their lives, perhaps we can support them to make wise choices. To embrace sex as one of the great potential joys in the universe when it does not hurt oneself or others, and to turn away from it when it is marked by negativity and the diminution of self and others.
Pillai is an education policy expert and an independent consultant to NGOs
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main33.asp?filename=op040807sex_is.asp
Sex education cannot be limited to biological descriptions in textbooks. We must talk of its pleasures and pains, or the repression in our minds will hurt everyone
A few months ago, I heard of a 15-year-old who had knotted two ends of a rope, tied one to a stair rail and slipped the other around her neck, and jumped over the banister. A student at one of the teaching shops that churns out a full load of 90+ percenters every year, she had heard that the results for her batch were very poor. When the results were actually announced, she had topped at that school of over-achievers. I mentioned this incident, in the carefully careless way one uses when one wishes to make a point without seeming to interfere obviously, to a friend. He has perfectionist tendencies himself, and high expectations of his daughter, due to appear for the ICSE. “Are you referring to so-and-so?” he responded. “I heard that they found out later that the real reason was that she was pregnant.” “That’s just as bad,” I exploded. “We fail our children by not giving them information and skills to protect themselves; by not creating a support structure so that they feel there isn’t even one adult who will understand and assist them, and the only option is to kill themselves.” My friend did not respond.
The implication was that in the hierarchy of reasons for committing suicide, pregnancy was a more justifiable one. A similar limited mindset causes governments like those of Maharashtra, Karnataka, Gujarat, etc to ban sex education. Renuka Chowdhury was spot on last week when she called us a nation of hypocrites — a population of one billion that still likes to pretend that sex is some base Western practice, permissible between married Indians for the sole purpose of procreation, but for the most part, unmentionable even then.
At the many sexual health training workshops that I have carried out for NGO activists working with vulnerable children, the sheepish recognition of the obvious inconsistency between the size of our population and our prudish rejection of sex is the thin end of the wedge that works to get these respectable, largely lower-middle class and middle-class men and women to begin to look more objectively at the issue of sex. When they come into the workshop, their tight smiles and stiff body language indicate their discomfort at being there. When they share their concerns and fears at the beginning of the workshop, invariably several say, “What is there to talk about or work on sex for three whole days?” To the question, then, of what is sex, the answer, without fail, is sexual intercourse.
Over the next three days, however, through games and collaborative exercises, participants begin to recognise the number of complex emotional, mental, behavioural and social elements at work within the concepts of sexuality, sexual health and sexual rights — affection, fantasy, relationship, communication, conversation, respect, sexual behaviours and rituals, societal rules and expectations, joy and pleasure, as well as the more obviously negative elements like manipulation, blackmail, violence and abuse. By the end of the workshops, the participants invariably feel personally empowered at having received a space and the licence in which to explore, with courage, sensitivity and without judgement, this integral aspect of being human. One woman told the group, “I wish I had attended a workshop like this 30 years ago, it might have saved my marriage.” Another participant said, “This evening, I am going to go home and talk to my wife about sex.” He had been married for three years and had had sex regularly but never asked her about how she felt, what gave her pleasure or joy, or what she feared. Likewise, participants are convinced that we need to empower children and young people in a similar fashion. In all the workshops I have facilitated, only one person has ever rejected this premise, an Italian religious, a volunteer at a street children’s organisation, who steadfastly maintained that “our children are not like that”, against the strenuous assertions of the other activists, who provided support services to these children on a daily basis, that many children were initiated into sex early and were sexually active, often with multiple partners. The rest, at the end, complained that the three-day workshop had been too short, and asked when we would have a follow-up!
If sex education is only going to be about the plumbing of sex or what goes where, then perhaps we should continue with the trend wherein 75 percent Indians learn about sex from friends and porn films And it is not as if sex education is relevant only to particularly vulnerable groups like street and working children, or to the adults who work with them. Contrary to the assertions of many middle-class parents that their young people have no interest in sex (though they may be watching significantly sexually stimulating Bollywood and Western music video-based material on tv several hours a week), many surveys, including those carried out by India Today and ac Nielsen, show that this is not the case. 17 percent of Indian teenagers and 33 percent of college-going youngsters surveyed had engaged in premarital sex. 46 percent of young single men had had sex, and 49 percent of young men had had sex with a sex worker. Nearly 40 percent of Indian women had not heard of aids, though 25 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 30 in eleven cities had had premarital sex. And contrary to politicians’ fears that sex education will promote lax morals in young people, several studies by the who show that good sex education raises the age of first sexual intercourse and first pregnancy, and lowers the rate of teenage pregnancy.
The issue, of course, is not only one of “whether sex education” but what and how. If sex education is only going to be about what one of my professors called “the plumbing of sex, or, what goes where”, then perhaps we should leave and continue with the trend by which 75 percent of Indians learn of sex from friends and porn films. Likewise, if the assumption is that even among those states that have not banned sex education the person best qualified to teach the subject is the high school biology teacher, never mind that he or she might be the most prudish and rigid person on campus, incapable of establishing a rapport with the children, the exercise will be quite futile. The chapter will be skipped, or so boring that children will go back to the tried and tested sources of the lore of friends and pornography.
Every minute of every day, six young people between the ages of 15 and 24 become hiv positive, according to unicef. Surely it is possible to care for the lives of our children by finding some viable medium between prurience and obscenity, on the one hand, and a clinical, distant “sex education” that they are unable to relate to their own lives, on the other. Surely it is possible to train caring and competent educators who can help children and young people acquire essential knowledge and skills related to positive sexuality, including negotiation skills, the ability to handle peer pressure, the skill and strength to say “no” when a sexual relationship is inappropriate, to protect themselves from violence and abuse, and seek out support when they need it.
What are our politicians truly worried about? If the issue is fear, let us confront it. Let’s acknowledge that sex is one of the most highly charged aspects of human life, and encourage our young people to handle it well. If the issue is morality, let us teach our children to appreciate their sexuality and not desecrate it or misuse sexual energy, but to work with it skillfully. If we are pragmatic and respectful of their lives, perhaps we can support them to make wise choices. To embrace sex as one of the great potential joys in the universe when it does not hurt oneself or others, and to turn away from it when it is marked by negativity and the diminution of self and others.
Pillai is an education policy expert and an independent consultant to NGOs
Pollution-cholesterol link to heart disease seen
Pollution-cholesterol link to heart disease seen
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-heart26jul26,0,2928424.story?coll=la-home-center
The combination activates genes that can cause clogged arteries, UCLA researchers say. By Marla Cone, Times Staff WriterJuly 26, 2007
Strengthening the link between air pollution and cardiovascular disease, new research suggests that people with high cholesterol are especially vulnerable to heart disease when they are exposed to diesel exhaust and other ultra-fine particles that are common pollutants in urban air.
Microscopic particles in diesel exhaust combine with cholesterol to activate genes that trigger hardening of the arteries, according to a study by UCLA scientists to be published today.
"Their combination creates a dangerous synergy that wreaks cardiovascular havoc far beyond what's caused by the diesel or cholesterol alone," said Dr. André Nel, chief of nanomedicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a researcher at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute. He led a team of 10 scientists who conducted the study, published in an online version of the journal Genome Biology.
Although diet, smoking and other factors contribute to the risk of cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in the Western world — scientists have long believed that air pollution, particularly tiny pieces of soot from trucks and factories, plays a major role, too.
For years, scientists around the world have reported that on days when fine-particle pollution increases, deaths from lung diseases, heart attacks and strokes rise substantially. Riverside County and the San Gabriel Valley have among the worst fine-particle pollution in the nation.
The scientists say their study, conducted on human cells as well as on mice, is the first to explain how particulates in the air activate genes that can cause heart attacks or strokes.
The researchers exposed human blood cells to a combination of diesel particles and oxidized fats, then extracted their DNA. Working together, the particles and fats switched on genes that cause inflammation of blood vessels, which leads to clogged arteries, or atherosclerosis.
The team then duplicated the findings in living animals by exposing mice to a high-fat diet and freeway exhaust in downtown Los Angeles. The same artery-clogging gene groups were activated in the mice.
The scientists reported that diesel particles may enter the body's circulatory system from the lungs, and then react with fats in the arteries to alter how genes are activated, triggering inflammation that causes heart disease.
Other research has shown similar inflammatory damage in lungs exposed to fine particles. Diesel exhaust has also been linked to lung cancer, asthma attacks and DNA damage.
"Our results emphasize the importance of controlling air pollution as another tool for preventing cardiovascular disease," said Ke Wei Gong, a UCLA cardiology researcher who was one of the study's authors.
In many urban areas, including the Los Angeles region, ultra-fine particles are the most concentrated near freeways, mostly from diesel exhaust, which is spewed by trucks, buses, off-road vehicles and other vehicle engines.
For decades, California and local air-quality regulators have been ratcheting down particulate emissions from trucks and other sources, but the airborne levels in most of the Los Angeles region still frequently exceed federal health standards.
"There are a few hot spots throughout the country that compete with Los Angeles from time to time, but in general, we tend to have the highest levels here," Nel said.
Exposed in a mobile laboratory moving down the freeway, the mice breathed a concentration of fine particles, 362 micrograms per cubic meter of air. That was five times higher than the peak that people in the San Gabriel Valley were exposed to last year.
However, humans breathe polluted air every day for decades, whereas the mice in the study were exposed five hours per day, three days per week, for eight weeks.
"The levels were high, but they came from real freeway exhaust so they were not artificially high," Nel said. "It was almost within the realm of what we are exposed to."
Diesel particles contain free radicals, which damage tissues, and so do the fatty acids in cholesterol.
The study aimed to find out what happened when these two sources of oxidation came in contact.
In the cells exposed to just the cholesterol or just the diesel, the effects on the genes were much less pronounced. More than 1,500 genes were turned on, and 759 were turned off, when diesel particles were combined with the fats.
"Now that we see this genetic footprint, we have a better understanding of how the injury occurs due to air pollution particles," Nel said.
The UCLA scientists hope to transform the gene changes to a biomarker, which experts can then use to predict which people are most susceptible to heart disease from air pollution.
The smaller the particle, the more harm it can cause. More artery-clogging genes were activated in mice exposed to the ultra-fine particles in diesel exhaust than in those exposed to larger particles in the air. Smaller particles generally come from sources of combustion — mostly vehicles.
--marla.cone@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-me-heart26jul26,0,2928424.story?coll=la-home-center
The combination activates genes that can cause clogged arteries, UCLA researchers say. By Marla Cone, Times Staff WriterJuly 26, 2007
Strengthening the link between air pollution and cardiovascular disease, new research suggests that people with high cholesterol are especially vulnerable to heart disease when they are exposed to diesel exhaust and other ultra-fine particles that are common pollutants in urban air.
Microscopic particles in diesel exhaust combine with cholesterol to activate genes that trigger hardening of the arteries, according to a study by UCLA scientists to be published today.
"Their combination creates a dangerous synergy that wreaks cardiovascular havoc far beyond what's caused by the diesel or cholesterol alone," said Dr. André Nel, chief of nanomedicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a researcher at UCLA's California NanoSystems Institute. He led a team of 10 scientists who conducted the study, published in an online version of the journal Genome Biology.
Although diet, smoking and other factors contribute to the risk of cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death in the Western world — scientists have long believed that air pollution, particularly tiny pieces of soot from trucks and factories, plays a major role, too.
For years, scientists around the world have reported that on days when fine-particle pollution increases, deaths from lung diseases, heart attacks and strokes rise substantially. Riverside County and the San Gabriel Valley have among the worst fine-particle pollution in the nation.
The scientists say their study, conducted on human cells as well as on mice, is the first to explain how particulates in the air activate genes that can cause heart attacks or strokes.
The researchers exposed human blood cells to a combination of diesel particles and oxidized fats, then extracted their DNA. Working together, the particles and fats switched on genes that cause inflammation of blood vessels, which leads to clogged arteries, or atherosclerosis.
The team then duplicated the findings in living animals by exposing mice to a high-fat diet and freeway exhaust in downtown Los Angeles. The same artery-clogging gene groups were activated in the mice.
The scientists reported that diesel particles may enter the body's circulatory system from the lungs, and then react with fats in the arteries to alter how genes are activated, triggering inflammation that causes heart disease.
Other research has shown similar inflammatory damage in lungs exposed to fine particles. Diesel exhaust has also been linked to lung cancer, asthma attacks and DNA damage.
"Our results emphasize the importance of controlling air pollution as another tool for preventing cardiovascular disease," said Ke Wei Gong, a UCLA cardiology researcher who was one of the study's authors.
In many urban areas, including the Los Angeles region, ultra-fine particles are the most concentrated near freeways, mostly from diesel exhaust, which is spewed by trucks, buses, off-road vehicles and other vehicle engines.
For decades, California and local air-quality regulators have been ratcheting down particulate emissions from trucks and other sources, but the airborne levels in most of the Los Angeles region still frequently exceed federal health standards.
"There are a few hot spots throughout the country that compete with Los Angeles from time to time, but in general, we tend to have the highest levels here," Nel said.
Exposed in a mobile laboratory moving down the freeway, the mice breathed a concentration of fine particles, 362 micrograms per cubic meter of air. That was five times higher than the peak that people in the San Gabriel Valley were exposed to last year.
However, humans breathe polluted air every day for decades, whereas the mice in the study were exposed five hours per day, three days per week, for eight weeks.
"The levels were high, but they came from real freeway exhaust so they were not artificially high," Nel said. "It was almost within the realm of what we are exposed to."
Diesel particles contain free radicals, which damage tissues, and so do the fatty acids in cholesterol.
The study aimed to find out what happened when these two sources of oxidation came in contact.
In the cells exposed to just the cholesterol or just the diesel, the effects on the genes were much less pronounced. More than 1,500 genes were turned on, and 759 were turned off, when diesel particles were combined with the fats.
"Now that we see this genetic footprint, we have a better understanding of how the injury occurs due to air pollution particles," Nel said.
The UCLA scientists hope to transform the gene changes to a biomarker, which experts can then use to predict which people are most susceptible to heart disease from air pollution.
The smaller the particle, the more harm it can cause. More artery-clogging genes were activated in mice exposed to the ultra-fine particles in diesel exhaust than in those exposed to larger particles in the air. Smaller particles generally come from sources of combustion — mostly vehicles.
--marla.cone@latimes.com
Fat friends make you fat
Fat friends make you fathttp://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/s/1012/1012134_fat_friends_make_you_fat.html
HAVING a fat friend hugely increases the chance of you going the same way, a new study says.
Obesity is 'socially contagious', spreading from person to person in a social network, say researchers.
The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, says that when a person becomes obese, the chances that a friend of theirs will also become obese increases by 57 per cent.
Researchers from Harvard and the University of California found that a fat person's siblings have a 40 per cent increased risk, and their spouse a 37 per cent increased risk.
The researchers analysed data over 32 years for 12,067 adults who underwent repeated medical assessments as part of a heart study.
They were able to map the interconnected social network using information that listed participants' family changes and contact information for their closest friends.
A research spokesman said: "What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size.
"People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads."
HAVING a fat friend hugely increases the chance of you going the same way, a new study says.
Obesity is 'socially contagious', spreading from person to person in a social network, say researchers.
The study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, says that when a person becomes obese, the chances that a friend of theirs will also become obese increases by 57 per cent.
Researchers from Harvard and the University of California found that a fat person's siblings have a 40 per cent increased risk, and their spouse a 37 per cent increased risk.
The researchers analysed data over 32 years for 12,067 adults who underwent repeated medical assessments as part of a heart study.
They were able to map the interconnected social network using information that listed participants' family changes and contact information for their closest friends.
A research spokesman said: "What appears to be happening is that a person becoming obese most likely causes a change of norms about what counts as an appropriate body size.
"People come to think that it is okay to be bigger since those around them are bigger, and this sensibility spreads."
The Real Bharath Ratna..................DASHRATH MANJHI FROM BIHAR
The Real Bharath Ratna..................DASHRATH MANJHI FROM BIHARhttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/nehrubalsangh/message/1604
Name - DASHRATH MANJHI Occupation - Farmer
Over four decades ago, a frail, landless farmer got hold of a chisel and a hammer and decided to change the face of his village nestled in the rocky hills of Gaya. Dashrath Manjhi tore open a 300-feet-high hill to create a one-km passage.
Manjhi knew it would he easier to move a mountain than an apathetic government. He knew writing to the powers-that- be would only leave the hill tied in red tape. Instead, Manjhi, then in his early 20s, took up a chisel and hammered at the rocks for 22 years.
This feat, part of local folklore now, stemmed from Manjhi’s love for his wife. For, when she slipped off the rocks while getting food for him as he worked in a field beyond the hill and broke her ankle, it became a burning passion to tame the formidable hills that virtually cut his village off from civilisation.
And he completed the Herculean task — creating a short-cut which reduced a long and arduous journey from his village Gahlor Ghati to Wazirganj to a walkable distance.
Manjhi hasn’t forgotten the public ridicule when he began hammering at the hill. “They called me a pagal but that steeled my resolve,” he says.
Even his wife and parents were against this “adventure,” especially when he sold his goats to buy a chisel, a hammer and rope. But, by then, Manjhi was a man possessed. He shifted his hut close to the hill so he could work all day and night, chipping away, little by little. “I did not even bother to eat,” he says.
With most of the cultivable land and shops across the hill, villagers had to cross it many times a day, braving dangers.
It was after 10 years that people began to notice a change in the shape of the hill. Instead of a defiant rockface, the hill seemed to have a depression in the middle. Climbing it became a little easier. “All those who had called me mad began to quietly watch me work. Some even chipped in,” he recollects.
In 1982, twenty-two years after he had started out, Manjhi walked through a clear flat passage - about 16-feet wide - to the other side of the hill. But his victory was tinged with sadness. His wife, who inspired him to take on this task, was not by his side. “She died of illness. We could not take her to a hospital on time,” says Manjhi.
But, the villagers were there. They got him sweets, fruits and all that they could afford. Says Ram Avatar Yadav of Bhitra village: “We grew up hearing stories of the man who wants to move a mountain. Today, it’s a reality and a boon for me.”
But, his family members are sore. “He hasn't done anything for us. We are still struggling to make ends meet,” says his daughter Laongi Devi. But, Manjhi wouldn’t agree. “My hard work should benefit thousands,” he says.
This hand-carved passage through the hill remains the only sustainable change the village has ever chanced upon. Tubewells were installed, but they ran dry. Electric poles were put up, but the cables never came. And a five-acre plot given by former CM Lalu Prasad to Manjhi for a hospital still lies barren.
Septuagenarian Manjhi hasn’t given up. “I met CM Nitish Kumar recently. He has promised to develop the passage so that even a car can pass and will connect my village to Gaya. And, he told me that I will lay the foundation stone,” he says.
Name - DASHRATH MANJHI Occupation - Farmer
Over four decades ago, a frail, landless farmer got hold of a chisel and a hammer and decided to change the face of his village nestled in the rocky hills of Gaya. Dashrath Manjhi tore open a 300-feet-high hill to create a one-km passage.
Manjhi knew it would he easier to move a mountain than an apathetic government. He knew writing to the powers-that- be would only leave the hill tied in red tape. Instead, Manjhi, then in his early 20s, took up a chisel and hammered at the rocks for 22 years.
This feat, part of local folklore now, stemmed from Manjhi’s love for his wife. For, when she slipped off the rocks while getting food for him as he worked in a field beyond the hill and broke her ankle, it became a burning passion to tame the formidable hills that virtually cut his village off from civilisation.
And he completed the Herculean task — creating a short-cut which reduced a long and arduous journey from his village Gahlor Ghati to Wazirganj to a walkable distance.
Manjhi hasn’t forgotten the public ridicule when he began hammering at the hill. “They called me a pagal but that steeled my resolve,” he says.
Even his wife and parents were against this “adventure,” especially when he sold his goats to buy a chisel, a hammer and rope. But, by then, Manjhi was a man possessed. He shifted his hut close to the hill so he could work all day and night, chipping away, little by little. “I did not even bother to eat,” he says.
With most of the cultivable land and shops across the hill, villagers had to cross it many times a day, braving dangers.
It was after 10 years that people began to notice a change in the shape of the hill. Instead of a defiant rockface, the hill seemed to have a depression in the middle. Climbing it became a little easier. “All those who had called me mad began to quietly watch me work. Some even chipped in,” he recollects.
In 1982, twenty-two years after he had started out, Manjhi walked through a clear flat passage - about 16-feet wide - to the other side of the hill. But his victory was tinged with sadness. His wife, who inspired him to take on this task, was not by his side. “She died of illness. We could not take her to a hospital on time,” says Manjhi.
But, the villagers were there. They got him sweets, fruits and all that they could afford. Says Ram Avatar Yadav of Bhitra village: “We grew up hearing stories of the man who wants to move a mountain. Today, it’s a reality and a boon for me.”
But, his family members are sore. “He hasn't done anything for us. We are still struggling to make ends meet,” says his daughter Laongi Devi. But, Manjhi wouldn’t agree. “My hard work should benefit thousands,” he says.
This hand-carved passage through the hill remains the only sustainable change the village has ever chanced upon. Tubewells were installed, but they ran dry. Electric poles were put up, but the cables never came. And a five-acre plot given by former CM Lalu Prasad to Manjhi for a hospital still lies barren.
Septuagenarian Manjhi hasn’t given up. “I met CM Nitish Kumar recently. He has promised to develop the passage so that even a car can pass and will connect my village to Gaya. And, he told me that I will lay the foundation stone,” he says.
UK: Extended Pre-charge Detention Violates Rights
UK: Extended Pre-charge Detention Violates Rights
Likely to damage 'battle for hearts and minds'
http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=europe&c=uk
(London, July 26, 2007) – The UK government's proposals to extend from 28 days to almost two months the time suspects can be detained without charge will violate the right to liberty, Human Rights Watch said today. It is also likely to be deeply counterproductive in the fight against terrorism.
"Locking up suspects without charge for months at a time denies thebasic right to liberty," said Ben Ward, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The British government's plan to extend pre-charge detention is a recipe for alienating communitiesvital to defeating terrorism."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons on July 25, 2007 that the government is considering several options to extend pre-charge detention beyond the current 28-day period – already the longest in the European Union.
Although the government has said that the powers will be used sparingly, there is a real danger that British Muslims will be detained for extended periods on suspicion of terrorism, but then released without charge due to a lack of evidence. The government's figures for arrests since 2001 under the Terrorism Act 2000 indicate that more than half of those arrested on terrorism offenses under the law are eventually released without charge.
The proposals evoke the experience of internment in Northern Ireland, which is widely accepted to have alienated communities and undermined the legitimacy of the British authorities in the province.
"If the Prime Minister is serious about winning hearts and minds, heneeds to shelve this plan," said Ward. "Internment was deeplycounterproductive in the fight against terrorism in Northern Ireland, and these proposals carry similar risks."
The proposals include reliance on civil emergencies legislation toallow for an additional 30 days' detention (a total of 58 days), or ajudicially-supervised extension allowing for up to 56 days pre-charge detention, with notification to the Director of Public Prosecutions and Parliament. Pre-charge detention is already subject to judicial supervision, and parliamentary scrutiny in individual cases adds little more, HumanRights Watch said. The most effective way to protect against arbitrarydetention is to stick to strict, and short, detention time limits.
The government has said the extension is needed to gather and processthe complex evidence in terrorism investigations. But it has yet todemonstrate that the current detention time-limit is a serious impediment to those investigations.
Moreover, the government has not explained why the complexity of investigations cannot be adequately addressed through other means, in particular by allowing the police to question suspects after they havebeen charged, subject to adequate safeguards against self-incrimination, Human Rights Watch said. That change, which has been proposed by the government, is widely supported in Parliament.
For more of Human Rights Watch's work on United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, please visit: http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=europe&c=uk
Likely to damage 'battle for hearts and minds'
http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=europe&c=uk
(London, July 26, 2007) – The UK government's proposals to extend from 28 days to almost two months the time suspects can be detained without charge will violate the right to liberty, Human Rights Watch said today. It is also likely to be deeply counterproductive in the fight against terrorism.
"Locking up suspects without charge for months at a time denies thebasic right to liberty," said Ben Ward, associate Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "The British government's plan to extend pre-charge detention is a recipe for alienating communitiesvital to defeating terrorism."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the House of Commons on July 25, 2007 that the government is considering several options to extend pre-charge detention beyond the current 28-day period – already the longest in the European Union.
Although the government has said that the powers will be used sparingly, there is a real danger that British Muslims will be detained for extended periods on suspicion of terrorism, but then released without charge due to a lack of evidence. The government's figures for arrests since 2001 under the Terrorism Act 2000 indicate that more than half of those arrested on terrorism offenses under the law are eventually released without charge.
The proposals evoke the experience of internment in Northern Ireland, which is widely accepted to have alienated communities and undermined the legitimacy of the British authorities in the province.
"If the Prime Minister is serious about winning hearts and minds, heneeds to shelve this plan," said Ward. "Internment was deeplycounterproductive in the fight against terrorism in Northern Ireland, and these proposals carry similar risks."
The proposals include reliance on civil emergencies legislation toallow for an additional 30 days' detention (a total of 58 days), or ajudicially-supervised extension allowing for up to 56 days pre-charge detention, with notification to the Director of Public Prosecutions and Parliament. Pre-charge detention is already subject to judicial supervision, and parliamentary scrutiny in individual cases adds little more, HumanRights Watch said. The most effective way to protect against arbitrarydetention is to stick to strict, and short, detention time limits.
The government has said the extension is needed to gather and processthe complex evidence in terrorism investigations. But it has yet todemonstrate that the current detention time-limit is a serious impediment to those investigations.
Moreover, the government has not explained why the complexity of investigations cannot be adequately addressed through other means, in particular by allowing the police to question suspects after they havebeen charged, subject to adequate safeguards against self-incrimination, Human Rights Watch said. That change, which has been proposed by the government, is widely supported in Parliament.
For more of Human Rights Watch's work on United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, please visit: http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=europe&c=uk
Spain: Migrant Children at Risk in Government Facilities
Spain: Migrant Children at Risk in Government Facilities
Close Canary Islands Emergency Centers and Provide Adequate Care
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/spain0707/
(Madrid, July 26, 2007) – Hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children from Africa held in government facilities in the Canary Islands are atrisk of violence and ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
In the past year, more than 900 unaccompanied migrant children have arrived in the Canary Islands after dangerous and often traumaticjourneys in makeshift boats. In response to this unprecedented number of migrant children arriving on its shores, the Canary Islands regional authorities one year ago opened four emergency centers to house 400-500 migrant children, who are mainly boys from Senegal and Morocco.
The 115-page report, "Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain's Failure to Protect the Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Canary Islands," documents how children stay in these centers for indefinite periods, in often overcrowded and poor conditions. The children told Human Rights Watch that they have been subjected to beatings by staff, and left unprotected from violence by their peers. They do not enjoy access to public education, they have limited opportunity forrecreation and leisure, and they are unduly restricted in their freedom of movement.
"These children should be protected by the Spanish authorities, notleft to suffer beatings and abuse," said Simone Troller, Europe children's rights researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The Canary Islands government should close these centers and arrange better care for the children."
The Canary Islands regional authorities and the Spanish government to date have no solution for children who remain in these centers. The transfer of 500 children to better care on the Spanish mainland, underan agreement negotiated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, had only limited impact in easing the pressure on the Canary Islands child protection services. Furthermore, the implementation of the agreement was discriminatory against Moroccan children, who were not chosen for transfers.
Regardless of whether these children have the right to remain in the country, while they are on Spanish territory they are entitled to thefull provisions spelled out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Spain ratified in 1990. The government must identify a durable solution as soon as possible after their arrival, and children must be enabled to apply for asylum. The government may proceed with family reunification only after a careful assessment of whether such a decision is in the child's best interest and without risk to his or her well-being. If the return of a child is not possible on either legal or factual grounds, the Spanish government must provide these children with real opportunities for local integration and with a secure legal status.
"I am not happy here; if I could I would leave this center. We don'treceive any good food," said a 17-year-old Senegalese boy at La Esperanza emergency center in Tenerife. "When we tell them that we are hungry they tell us that we were starving in Senegal and should be happy to be given food at all."
Children told Human Rights Watch about numerous instances of ill-treatment and lack of protection from violence. Another 17-year-old boy at La Esperanza told us that "one boy got into trouble with [a staff member]. That day the [staff member] took him to the shower and beat him up. There was blood in the boy's mouth and his clothes were full of blood – his shirt could not be used anymore." A 13-year-old boy at Arinaga emergency center said that "the [staff members] consciously look away when [other children] are beating up another child."
Human Rights Watch called upon the Canary Islands government and the Spanish government to immediately devise and implement a plan to close emergency centers and transfer children to alternative carearrangements, either in the Canary Islands or mainland Spain. These arrangements must be conducive to the children's well-being and development, and the fulfillment of their rights under national and international law must be guaranteed.
The authorities need to investigate reports of abuses and ill-treatment of children and hold all perpetrators fully accountable. They also must provide children with full information on their rights in a language they understand, with particular emphasis on their rights to documentation, legal residence, work permits, education and health.
"Unaccompanied migrant children continue to arrive on the shores of the Canary Islands," said Troller. "Spanish authorities should immediately implement a lasting solution that fully respects the rights of these children."
To read the report, "Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain's Failure to Protect the Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Canary Islands," please visit: http://hrw.org/reports/2007/spain0707/
Close Canary Islands Emergency Centers and Provide Adequate Care
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/spain0707/
(Madrid, July 26, 2007) – Hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children from Africa held in government facilities in the Canary Islands are atrisk of violence and ill-treatment, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.
In the past year, more than 900 unaccompanied migrant children have arrived in the Canary Islands after dangerous and often traumaticjourneys in makeshift boats. In response to this unprecedented number of migrant children arriving on its shores, the Canary Islands regional authorities one year ago opened four emergency centers to house 400-500 migrant children, who are mainly boys from Senegal and Morocco.
The 115-page report, "Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain's Failure to Protect the Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Canary Islands," documents how children stay in these centers for indefinite periods, in often overcrowded and poor conditions. The children told Human Rights Watch that they have been subjected to beatings by staff, and left unprotected from violence by their peers. They do not enjoy access to public education, they have limited opportunity forrecreation and leisure, and they are unduly restricted in their freedom of movement.
"These children should be protected by the Spanish authorities, notleft to suffer beatings and abuse," said Simone Troller, Europe children's rights researcher for Human Rights Watch. "The Canary Islands government should close these centers and arrange better care for the children."
The Canary Islands regional authorities and the Spanish government to date have no solution for children who remain in these centers. The transfer of 500 children to better care on the Spanish mainland, underan agreement negotiated by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, had only limited impact in easing the pressure on the Canary Islands child protection services. Furthermore, the implementation of the agreement was discriminatory against Moroccan children, who were not chosen for transfers.
Regardless of whether these children have the right to remain in the country, while they are on Spanish territory they are entitled to thefull provisions spelled out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Spain ratified in 1990. The government must identify a durable solution as soon as possible after their arrival, and children must be enabled to apply for asylum. The government may proceed with family reunification only after a careful assessment of whether such a decision is in the child's best interest and without risk to his or her well-being. If the return of a child is not possible on either legal or factual grounds, the Spanish government must provide these children with real opportunities for local integration and with a secure legal status.
"I am not happy here; if I could I would leave this center. We don'treceive any good food," said a 17-year-old Senegalese boy at La Esperanza emergency center in Tenerife. "When we tell them that we are hungry they tell us that we were starving in Senegal and should be happy to be given food at all."
Children told Human Rights Watch about numerous instances of ill-treatment and lack of protection from violence. Another 17-year-old boy at La Esperanza told us that "one boy got into trouble with [a staff member]. That day the [staff member] took him to the shower and beat him up. There was blood in the boy's mouth and his clothes were full of blood – his shirt could not be used anymore." A 13-year-old boy at Arinaga emergency center said that "the [staff members] consciously look away when [other children] are beating up another child."
Human Rights Watch called upon the Canary Islands government and the Spanish government to immediately devise and implement a plan to close emergency centers and transfer children to alternative carearrangements, either in the Canary Islands or mainland Spain. These arrangements must be conducive to the children's well-being and development, and the fulfillment of their rights under national and international law must be guaranteed.
The authorities need to investigate reports of abuses and ill-treatment of children and hold all perpetrators fully accountable. They also must provide children with full information on their rights in a language they understand, with particular emphasis on their rights to documentation, legal residence, work permits, education and health.
"Unaccompanied migrant children continue to arrive on the shores of the Canary Islands," said Troller. "Spanish authorities should immediately implement a lasting solution that fully respects the rights of these children."
To read the report, "Unwelcome Responsibilities: Spain's Failure to Protect the Rights of Unaccompanied Migrant Children in the Canary Islands," please visit: http://hrw.org/reports/2007/spain0707/
Shaheed Bhagat Singh Biography
Shaheed Bhagat Singh Biography
Born: September 27, 1907
Died: March 23, 1931
Achievements: Gave a new direction to revolutionary terrorist movement in India, formed 'Naujavan Bharat Sabha' to spread the message of revolution in Punjab, formed 'Hindustan Samajvadi Prajatantra Sangha' along with Chandrasekhar Azad to establish a republic in India, Killed police official Sanders to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, dropped bomb in Central Legislative Assembly along with Batukeshwar Dutt.
Bhagat Singh was one of the most prominent faces of Indian freedom struggle. He was a revolutionary ahead of his times. By Revolution he meant that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice must change. Bhagat Singh studied the European revolutionary movement and was greatly attracted towards socialism. He realised that the overthrow of British rule should be accompanied by the socialist reconstruction of Indian society and for this political power must be seized by the workers.
Though portrayed as a terrorist, Sardar Bhagat Singh was critical of the individual terrorism which was prevalent among the revolutionary youth of his time and called for mass mobilization. Bhagat Singh gave a new direction to the revolutionary terrorist tradition in India. He differed from his predecessors on two counts. Firstly, he accepted the logic of atheism and publicly proclaimed it. Secondly, until then revolutionaries had no conception of post-independence society. Their immediate goal was destruction of the British Empire and they had no inclination to work out a political alternative. Bhagat Singh, because of his interest in studying and his keen sense of history gave revolutionary movement a goal beyond the elimination of the British. A clarity of vision and determination of purpose distinguished Bhagat Singh from other leaders of the National Movement. He emerged as the only alternative to Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, especially for the youth.
Bhagat Singh was born in a Sikh family in village Banga in Layalpur district of Punjab (now in Pakistan). He was the third son of Sardar Kishan Singh and Vidyavati. Bhagat Singh's family was actively involved in freedom struggle. His father Kishan Singh and uncle Ajit Singh were members of Ghadr Party founded in the U.S to oust British rule from India. Family atmosphere had a great effect on the mind of young Bhagat Singh and patriotism flowed in his veins from childhood.
While studying at the local D.A.V. School in Lahore, in 1916, young Bhagat Singh came into contact with some well-known political leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai and Ras Bihari Bose. Punjab was politically very charged in those days. In 1919, when Jalianwala Bagh massacre took place, Bhagat Singh was only 12 years old. The massacre deeply disturbed him. On the next day of massacre Bhagat Singh went to Jalianwala Bagh and collected soil from the spot and kept it as a memento for the rest of his life. The massacre strengthened his resolve to drive British out from India.
In response to Mahatma Gandhi's call for non-cooperation against British rule in 1921, Bhagat Singh left his school and actively participated in the movement. In 1922, when Mahatma Gandhi suspended Non-cooperation movement against violence at Chauri-chaura in Gorakhpur, Bhagat was greatly disappointed. His faith in non violence weakened and he came to the conclusion that armed revolution was the only practical way of winning freedom. To continue his studies, Bhagat Singh joined the National College in Lahore, founded by Lala Lajpat Rai. At this college, which was a centre of revolutionary activities, he came into contact with revolutionaries such as Bhagwati Charan, Sukhdev and others.
To avoid early marriage, Bhagat Singh ran away from home and went to Kanpur. Here, he came into contact with a revolutionary by the name, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, and learnt his first lessons as revolutionary. On hearing that his grandmother was ill, Bhagat Singh returned home. He continued his revolutionary activities from his village. He went to Lahore and formed a union of revolutionaries by name 'Naujavan Bharat Sabha'. He started spreading the message of revolution in Punjab. In 1928 he attended a meeting of revolutionaries in Delhi and came into contact with Chandrasekhar Azad. The two formed 'Hindustan Samajvadi Prajatantra Sangha'. Its aim was to establish a republic in India by means of an armed revolution.
In February 1928, a committee from England, called Simon Commission visited India. The purpose of its visit was to decide how much freedom and responsibility could be given to the people of India. But there was no Indian on the committee. This angered Indians and they decided to boycott Simon Commission. While protesting against Simon Commission in Lahore, Lala Lajpat Rai was brutally Lathicharged and later on succumbed to injuries. Bhagat Singh determined to avenge Lajpat Rai's death by shooting the British official responsible for the killing, Deputy Inspector General Scott. He shot down Assistant Superintendent Saunders instead, mistaking him for Scott. Bhagat Singh had to flee from Lahore to escape death punishment.
Instead of finding the root cause of discontent of Indians, the British government took to more repressive measures. Under the Defense of India Act, it gave more power to the police to arrest persons to stop processions with suspicious movements and actions. The Act brought in the Central Legislative Assembly was defeated by one vote. Even then it was to be passed in the form of an ordinance in the "interest of the public." Bhagat Singh who was in hiding all this while, volunteered to throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly where the meeting to pass the ordinance was being held. It was a carefully laid out plot, not to cause death or injury but to draw the attention of the government, that the modes of its suppression could no more be tolerated. It was decided that Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt would court arrest after throwing the bomb.
On April 8, 1929 Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs in the Central Assembly Hall while the Assembly was in session. The bombs did not hurt anyone. After throwing the bombs, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, deliberately courted arrest by refusing to run away from the scene. Meanwhile the killers of Sanders were identified by the treachery of Bhagat Singh's friends who became "Approvers". During his trial, Bhagat Singh refused to employ any defence counsel. In jail, he went on hunger strike to protest the inhuman treatment of fellow-political prisoners by jail authorities. On October 7, 1930 Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and Raj Guru were awarded death sentence by a special tribunal for terrorist activities. Despite great popular pressure and numerous appeals by political leaders of India, Bhagat Singh and his associates were hanged in the early hours of March 23, 1931.
Born: September 27, 1907
Died: March 23, 1931
Achievements: Gave a new direction to revolutionary terrorist movement in India, formed 'Naujavan Bharat Sabha' to spread the message of revolution in Punjab, formed 'Hindustan Samajvadi Prajatantra Sangha' along with Chandrasekhar Azad to establish a republic in India, Killed police official Sanders to avenge the death of Lala Lajpat Rai, dropped bomb in Central Legislative Assembly along with Batukeshwar Dutt.
Bhagat Singh was one of the most prominent faces of Indian freedom struggle. He was a revolutionary ahead of his times. By Revolution he meant that the present order of things, which is based on manifest injustice must change. Bhagat Singh studied the European revolutionary movement and was greatly attracted towards socialism. He realised that the overthrow of British rule should be accompanied by the socialist reconstruction of Indian society and for this political power must be seized by the workers.
Though portrayed as a terrorist, Sardar Bhagat Singh was critical of the individual terrorism which was prevalent among the revolutionary youth of his time and called for mass mobilization. Bhagat Singh gave a new direction to the revolutionary terrorist tradition in India. He differed from his predecessors on two counts. Firstly, he accepted the logic of atheism and publicly proclaimed it. Secondly, until then revolutionaries had no conception of post-independence society. Their immediate goal was destruction of the British Empire and they had no inclination to work out a political alternative. Bhagat Singh, because of his interest in studying and his keen sense of history gave revolutionary movement a goal beyond the elimination of the British. A clarity of vision and determination of purpose distinguished Bhagat Singh from other leaders of the National Movement. He emerged as the only alternative to Gandhi and the Indian National Congress, especially for the youth.
Bhagat Singh was born in a Sikh family in village Banga in Layalpur district of Punjab (now in Pakistan). He was the third son of Sardar Kishan Singh and Vidyavati. Bhagat Singh's family was actively involved in freedom struggle. His father Kishan Singh and uncle Ajit Singh were members of Ghadr Party founded in the U.S to oust British rule from India. Family atmosphere had a great effect on the mind of young Bhagat Singh and patriotism flowed in his veins from childhood.
While studying at the local D.A.V. School in Lahore, in 1916, young Bhagat Singh came into contact with some well-known political leaders like Lala Lajpat Rai and Ras Bihari Bose. Punjab was politically very charged in those days. In 1919, when Jalianwala Bagh massacre took place, Bhagat Singh was only 12 years old. The massacre deeply disturbed him. On the next day of massacre Bhagat Singh went to Jalianwala Bagh and collected soil from the spot and kept it as a memento for the rest of his life. The massacre strengthened his resolve to drive British out from India.
In response to Mahatma Gandhi's call for non-cooperation against British rule in 1921, Bhagat Singh left his school and actively participated in the movement. In 1922, when Mahatma Gandhi suspended Non-cooperation movement against violence at Chauri-chaura in Gorakhpur, Bhagat was greatly disappointed. His faith in non violence weakened and he came to the conclusion that armed revolution was the only practical way of winning freedom. To continue his studies, Bhagat Singh joined the National College in Lahore, founded by Lala Lajpat Rai. At this college, which was a centre of revolutionary activities, he came into contact with revolutionaries such as Bhagwati Charan, Sukhdev and others.
To avoid early marriage, Bhagat Singh ran away from home and went to Kanpur. Here, he came into contact with a revolutionary by the name, Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi, and learnt his first lessons as revolutionary. On hearing that his grandmother was ill, Bhagat Singh returned home. He continued his revolutionary activities from his village. He went to Lahore and formed a union of revolutionaries by name 'Naujavan Bharat Sabha'. He started spreading the message of revolution in Punjab. In 1928 he attended a meeting of revolutionaries in Delhi and came into contact with Chandrasekhar Azad. The two formed 'Hindustan Samajvadi Prajatantra Sangha'. Its aim was to establish a republic in India by means of an armed revolution.
In February 1928, a committee from England, called Simon Commission visited India. The purpose of its visit was to decide how much freedom and responsibility could be given to the people of India. But there was no Indian on the committee. This angered Indians and they decided to boycott Simon Commission. While protesting against Simon Commission in Lahore, Lala Lajpat Rai was brutally Lathicharged and later on succumbed to injuries. Bhagat Singh determined to avenge Lajpat Rai's death by shooting the British official responsible for the killing, Deputy Inspector General Scott. He shot down Assistant Superintendent Saunders instead, mistaking him for Scott. Bhagat Singh had to flee from Lahore to escape death punishment.
Instead of finding the root cause of discontent of Indians, the British government took to more repressive measures. Under the Defense of India Act, it gave more power to the police to arrest persons to stop processions with suspicious movements and actions. The Act brought in the Central Legislative Assembly was defeated by one vote. Even then it was to be passed in the form of an ordinance in the "interest of the public." Bhagat Singh who was in hiding all this while, volunteered to throw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly where the meeting to pass the ordinance was being held. It was a carefully laid out plot, not to cause death or injury but to draw the attention of the government, that the modes of its suppression could no more be tolerated. It was decided that Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt would court arrest after throwing the bomb.
On April 8, 1929 Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt threw bombs in the Central Assembly Hall while the Assembly was in session. The bombs did not hurt anyone. After throwing the bombs, Bhagat Singh and Batukeshwar Dutt, deliberately courted arrest by refusing to run away from the scene. Meanwhile the killers of Sanders were identified by the treachery of Bhagat Singh's friends who became "Approvers". During his trial, Bhagat Singh refused to employ any defence counsel. In jail, he went on hunger strike to protest the inhuman treatment of fellow-political prisoners by jail authorities. On October 7, 1930 Bhagat Singh, Sukh Dev and Raj Guru were awarded death sentence by a special tribunal for terrorist activities. Despite great popular pressure and numerous appeals by political leaders of India, Bhagat Singh and his associates were hanged in the early hours of March 23, 1931.
Friday 27 July 2007
Telephone counselling may help alcoholics
Telephone counselling may help alcoholics
Reuters Thursday, July 26, 2007
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1111875
NEW YORK: A few phone conversations with a counsellor might help patients who abuse or who are dependent on alcohol cut back on their drinking, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that after just six telephone sessions with a counsellor, men and women with alcohol problems were able to reduce their drinking.
All of the study participants had their drinking problems identified through screening during a routine visit to the doctor’s office. None had been seeking treatment for alcohol abuse. The findings, say the study authors, suggest that screening and phone-based counselling might help people who otherwise wouldn’t have their problem drinking addressed.
“The study shows that we shouldn’t just give up on those alcohol-dependent patients who cannot or choose not to get treatment,” lead study author Dr. Richard L Brown said.
“If we can identify these folks and provide telephone counselling, we can start to help many of these patients,” he said.
Brown and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison report the findings in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
The study involved 900 adults with an alcohol disorder. They had telephone sessions with a counsellor to talk about ways to cut back on alcohol. Each call was followed by a letter from the counsellor that summarised the conversation.
Reuters Thursday, July 26, 2007
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?NewsID=1111875
NEW YORK: A few phone conversations with a counsellor might help patients who abuse or who are dependent on alcohol cut back on their drinking, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that after just six telephone sessions with a counsellor, men and women with alcohol problems were able to reduce their drinking.
All of the study participants had their drinking problems identified through screening during a routine visit to the doctor’s office. None had been seeking treatment for alcohol abuse. The findings, say the study authors, suggest that screening and phone-based counselling might help people who otherwise wouldn’t have their problem drinking addressed.
“The study shows that we shouldn’t just give up on those alcohol-dependent patients who cannot or choose not to get treatment,” lead study author Dr. Richard L Brown said.
“If we can identify these folks and provide telephone counselling, we can start to help many of these patients,” he said.
Brown and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin in Madison report the findings in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.
The study involved 900 adults with an alcohol disorder. They had telephone sessions with a counsellor to talk about ways to cut back on alcohol. Each call was followed by a letter from the counsellor that summarised the conversation.
Sex education begins at home
Sex education begins at home
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=13798d51-71f8-4e50-84ac-6f669b7ffc16&&Headline=Sex+education+begins+at+home
Nandita Sengupta, Hindustan Times
In December 2004, two teenagers showed us why introducing sex education in Indian schools is asking for trouble. The ‘MMS kids’ from Delhi must now be in college getting on with their lives. But recall how India responded to the 16-year-olds recording and distributing their infamous clip. All, barring none, turned away. The school suspended them, mobile phones were banned in the school and the eBay CEO was arrested. Remarkable responses that would be repeated today to the last detail in a similar situation, as we don’t know any better. The ‘sex’ and the MMSes, of course, continue. The only purpose served was to hush the whole thing up, and if youngsters wanted to scream ‘what the hell’, they were simply not allowed to.
In the ongoing debate about sex education in schools, we’re still fighting over what to teach, when to teach, how to teach and who will teach. Both opponents and those for sex education have been bandying about such skewed arguments that there’s hardly place for a sensible conclusion to be reached. Sadly, the arguments for sex education are even more hackneyed than those against it — the opponents at least known for their dogmatic approach.
The ‘progressive’ reasoning behind talking about sex is to make minors aware of Aids so that they can be cautious about their sexual behaviour. It is an unfortunate generation for which sex and talking about sex will be associated with a disease and its entailing burden. A teenager’s sexual behaviour is a result of his or her beliefs, which is a mix of individual values, family systems and the ability to engage with the media blitzkrieg and peer pressure. It is not a stand-alone raging war of hormones.
The onus of sex education lies solely with the parents. Until they can get over their squeamishness about talking sex, there’s little ground that will be covered to ensure responsible behaviour. And that is exactly what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meant when he said on December 1, 2005, that people should shed their inhibitions and openly address issues of sex, in order to ensure safe-sex practices. He’s talking about ‘us’, the parents, and not just ‘they’, the teachers.
Why does the responsibility lie at home and not with the school? For starters, every child starts asking questions at a different age. There’s no single age at which all them can be bundled into a class where a psychologist will brandish the fear of HIV in the hope that kids will rush to wear chastity belts. Parents, more than anyone else, can help youngsters appreciate the emotional paradigm of sex, and the cost of early experimentation to their health and well-being.
The point is that parents don’t even have to pre-empt the ‘talking about sex’ — the queries start on their own. It’s been said ad nauseam that the important bit is to answer truthfully. When the child encounters a blank wall at home is when he takes his curiosity elsewhere. So don’t blame him for learning about sex from P. Diddy because his daddy was lost for words. Parents are also the best people to talk to their children about judging what’s in the media and handling peer expectations.
Ideally, NCERT publications on sex education should be sold in bookstores across the country and read by the parents of five-year-olds so they can ‘talk’ about the basics. The other reason that sex education must start at home is that teenage sexual behaviour is not driven only by ‘science’ or by fear of disease. When we debate the importance of sex education, we really mean guiding children to make choices, the consequences of which they believe that they can deal with. A morality compass is essential — it’s not just about health or society but also about a sense of worth. Home is where children make their value judgments and form their personality. And finally, whatever happened to love and heartbreak? In all the talk about parents being friends to their children, far too often parents end up being neither guardians nor pals ,guardians have to face some truths themselves.
Grown-ups refuse to acknowledge that when they grimace over Rakhi Sawant’s pelvic fury, kids do not necessarily love it either. But they are watching the adults squirm as much as they are watching her. It’s a good time to talk about sexuality. Why are you uncomfortable? Why don’t we let her do her thing? Different families, different standards. No book can help on this one.
The school has its own role to play. It has the right environment to talk about Aids, sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, impact of early experimentation, etc. — and more so because the sex educator is usually a psychologist or a counsellor. ‘Regular’ teachers are ill-equipped to take on the additional role. Moreover, teachers also need help. Ask any senior school teacher: flirtatious students are a growing problem. They scare teachers. Young men who open the door with a flourish are at once “cute and threatening”. No teacher has been trained to handle that.
In school, ‘sex education’ with all its overwhelming relevance is best left alone. The school is nothing but a ground for experimentation. It is at home that it must begin. The same way that teaching youngsters about religion does not lead to fundamentalism, telling them about sex does not lead to irresponsible behaviour. Not helping them to dispel myths, however, can only confuse them further.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=13798d51-71f8-4e50-84ac-6f669b7ffc16&&Headline=Sex+education+begins+at+home
Nandita Sengupta, Hindustan Times
In December 2004, two teenagers showed us why introducing sex education in Indian schools is asking for trouble. The ‘MMS kids’ from Delhi must now be in college getting on with their lives. But recall how India responded to the 16-year-olds recording and distributing their infamous clip. All, barring none, turned away. The school suspended them, mobile phones were banned in the school and the eBay CEO was arrested. Remarkable responses that would be repeated today to the last detail in a similar situation, as we don’t know any better. The ‘sex’ and the MMSes, of course, continue. The only purpose served was to hush the whole thing up, and if youngsters wanted to scream ‘what the hell’, they were simply not allowed to.
In the ongoing debate about sex education in schools, we’re still fighting over what to teach, when to teach, how to teach and who will teach. Both opponents and those for sex education have been bandying about such skewed arguments that there’s hardly place for a sensible conclusion to be reached. Sadly, the arguments for sex education are even more hackneyed than those against it — the opponents at least known for their dogmatic approach.
The ‘progressive’ reasoning behind talking about sex is to make minors aware of Aids so that they can be cautious about their sexual behaviour. It is an unfortunate generation for which sex and talking about sex will be associated with a disease and its entailing burden. A teenager’s sexual behaviour is a result of his or her beliefs, which is a mix of individual values, family systems and the ability to engage with the media blitzkrieg and peer pressure. It is not a stand-alone raging war of hormones.
The onus of sex education lies solely with the parents. Until they can get over their squeamishness about talking sex, there’s little ground that will be covered to ensure responsible behaviour. And that is exactly what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meant when he said on December 1, 2005, that people should shed their inhibitions and openly address issues of sex, in order to ensure safe-sex practices. He’s talking about ‘us’, the parents, and not just ‘they’, the teachers.
Why does the responsibility lie at home and not with the school? For starters, every child starts asking questions at a different age. There’s no single age at which all them can be bundled into a class where a psychologist will brandish the fear of HIV in the hope that kids will rush to wear chastity belts. Parents, more than anyone else, can help youngsters appreciate the emotional paradigm of sex, and the cost of early experimentation to their health and well-being.
The point is that parents don’t even have to pre-empt the ‘talking about sex’ — the queries start on their own. It’s been said ad nauseam that the important bit is to answer truthfully. When the child encounters a blank wall at home is when he takes his curiosity elsewhere. So don’t blame him for learning about sex from P. Diddy because his daddy was lost for words. Parents are also the best people to talk to their children about judging what’s in the media and handling peer expectations.
Ideally, NCERT publications on sex education should be sold in bookstores across the country and read by the parents of five-year-olds so they can ‘talk’ about the basics. The other reason that sex education must start at home is that teenage sexual behaviour is not driven only by ‘science’ or by fear of disease. When we debate the importance of sex education, we really mean guiding children to make choices, the consequences of which they believe that they can deal with. A morality compass is essential — it’s not just about health or society but also about a sense of worth. Home is where children make their value judgments and form their personality. And finally, whatever happened to love and heartbreak? In all the talk about parents being friends to their children, far too often parents end up being neither guardians nor pals ,guardians have to face some truths themselves.
Grown-ups refuse to acknowledge that when they grimace over Rakhi Sawant’s pelvic fury, kids do not necessarily love it either. But they are watching the adults squirm as much as they are watching her. It’s a good time to talk about sexuality. Why are you uncomfortable? Why don’t we let her do her thing? Different families, different standards. No book can help on this one.
The school has its own role to play. It has the right environment to talk about Aids, sexually transmitted diseases, contraception, impact of early experimentation, etc. — and more so because the sex educator is usually a psychologist or a counsellor. ‘Regular’ teachers are ill-equipped to take on the additional role. Moreover, teachers also need help. Ask any senior school teacher: flirtatious students are a growing problem. They scare teachers. Young men who open the door with a flourish are at once “cute and threatening”. No teacher has been trained to handle that.
In school, ‘sex education’ with all its overwhelming relevance is best left alone. The school is nothing but a ground for experimentation. It is at home that it must begin. The same way that teaching youngsters about religion does not lead to fundamentalism, telling them about sex does not lead to irresponsible behaviour. Not helping them to dispel myths, however, can only confuse them further.
Thursday 26 July 2007
Publication: Horizons Report Population Council
Publication: Horizons Report Population Council http://www.popcouncil.org/horizons/newsletter/horizons(14).html
Results of clinical trials in low resource settings which showed thatgiving a short course of antiretroviral therapy could prevent thetransmission of HIV from mother to child were hailed as an enormousbreakthrough in the fight against pediatric HIV infection. But soon after the establishment of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programs, research conducted by Horizons and others revealed a multitude of service delivery and sociocultural barriers that limit the number of women who successfully access PMTCT programs and follow PMTCT recommendations. On the supply side, the limited capacity of health systems in many countries has resulted in weak links to HIV-related services and gaps in service provision and follow-up of HIV-positive mothers and their babies. The latest issue of the Horizons Report, PMTCT, examines strategies to strengthen PMTCT programs, which include training HIV-positive women to provide psychosocial support to mothers; reaching women with information, support, and referrals through community-based activities; and creating stronger linkages during the postnatal period between mothers and treatment and care.
In this issue:
Strengthening PMTCT Programs Studies explore strategies to promote adherence and follow-up care From Mother to Mother A peer mentor program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in South Africa offers much needed support Closer to Home Community-based activities complement PMTCT programs in Kenya Repositioning Postnatal Care Baseline results from Swaziland, a high HIV prevalence environment
Studies in Brief:
India: Are PPTCT programs an entry point to other HIV and reproductivehealth services?
Newsletter:http://www.popcouncil.org/horizons/newsletter/horizons(14).html
Related Publications: Key Findings from an Evaluation of themothers2mothers Program in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africahttp://www.popcouncil.org/m2m
FinalReport Horizons is a global operations research initiativedesigned to:
1) identify and test strategies to improve HIV/AIDS prevention,treatment, and care programs; and
2) disseminate research findings and promote their utilization with the aim of replicating and scaling up successful interventions.
Horizons is implemented by the Population Council in partnership withthe International Center for Research on Women, the InternationalHIV/AIDS Alliance, PATH, Tulane University, Family Health International, and Johns Hopkins University.
These studies and articles are made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The contents are theresponsibility of the Horizons Program and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
Email: shutchinson@popcouncil.org
Results of clinical trials in low resource settings which showed thatgiving a short course of antiretroviral therapy could prevent thetransmission of HIV from mother to child were hailed as an enormousbreakthrough in the fight against pediatric HIV infection. But soon after the establishment of prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programs, research conducted by Horizons and others revealed a multitude of service delivery and sociocultural barriers that limit the number of women who successfully access PMTCT programs and follow PMTCT recommendations. On the supply side, the limited capacity of health systems in many countries has resulted in weak links to HIV-related services and gaps in service provision and follow-up of HIV-positive mothers and their babies. The latest issue of the Horizons Report, PMTCT, examines strategies to strengthen PMTCT programs, which include training HIV-positive women to provide psychosocial support to mothers; reaching women with information, support, and referrals through community-based activities; and creating stronger linkages during the postnatal period between mothers and treatment and care.
In this issue:
Strengthening PMTCT Programs Studies explore strategies to promote adherence and follow-up care From Mother to Mother A peer mentor program to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV in South Africa offers much needed support Closer to Home Community-based activities complement PMTCT programs in Kenya Repositioning Postnatal Care Baseline results from Swaziland, a high HIV prevalence environment
Studies in Brief:
India: Are PPTCT programs an entry point to other HIV and reproductivehealth services?
Newsletter:http://www.popcouncil.org/horizons/newsletter/horizons(14).html
Related Publications: Key Findings from an Evaluation of themothers2mothers Program in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africahttp://www.popcouncil.org/m2m
FinalReport Horizons is a global operations research initiativedesigned to:
1) identify and test strategies to improve HIV/AIDS prevention,treatment, and care programs; and
2) disseminate research findings and promote their utilization with the aim of replicating and scaling up successful interventions.
Horizons is implemented by the Population Council in partnership withthe International Center for Research on Women, the InternationalHIV/AIDS Alliance, PATH, Tulane University, Family Health International, and Johns Hopkins University.
These studies and articles are made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the President's
Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The contents are theresponsibility of the Horizons Program and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
Email: shutchinson@popcouncil.org
Andhra Pradesh: new law to ban non-Hindus from many cities
Andhra Pradesh: new law to ban non-Hindus from many cities
by Nirmala Carvalho
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=9918&size=A
A new state law bans non-Hindus from propagating their religion in cities with holy Hindu temples. In many areas violence and threats are proffered for the mere physical presence of Christians. The archbishop of Hyderabad warns that there is a real possibility that the faithful may be chased out of these cities.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – The Andhra Pradesh State Assembly adopted a bill on Monday banning religious propaganda near sacred Hindu shrines. Endowment J Ratnakar Rao explained the new law is designed to ensure that feelings of the Hindu religious group were not offended and that public order was maintained. But State legislator Christine Lazarus (Nom) expressed fears that the Bill will be used as a “weapon against non-Hindus”.
The Bill was opposed by the Communist Marxist Party (CMP), the Communist Party of India (Marxists) and the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) which tried to have the issue referred to a select committee. However the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the Baharitya Janata Party (BJP), and Congress Party supported the bill.
Protesting against the bill, CMP leader M A Gafoor said on Monday that the bill could send a wrong message since it contained some ‘dangerous’ clauses. Similarly, MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi protested that “this is not a bill of a secular-minded government.”
Mgr Marampudi Joji, archbishop of Hyderabad, told AsiaNews that “the Christian Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy submitted to the will of Hindu extremist groups who have taken advantage of his Christian identity to blackmail him. He has buckled under the pressure of the [Hindu nationalist] Sangh Parivar. His government is engaged in the appeasement of the Hindu majority to ward off false accusations that it is favourable to minorities. Yet, it is only a minuscule minority in the Hindu community which is supportive of such unconstitutional communal demands while the majority is secular, pluralistic and open to other faiths.”
“This bill goes against many of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution and discriminates against non-Hindus,” the prelate said. “Under the Indian constitution, can a state government set up a body to propagate a particular religion?” he wondered.
“Not only their religious freedom, but also the right of movement, right to life and livelihood are denied to non-Hindus, especially to the Christians who are already targeted in these areas. We will challenge this bill.”
Fr Anthoniraj Thumma, executive secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Federation of Churches, criticised the state government for caving in to the “irrational and unconstitutional demands of the Sangh Parivar” and adopting a law that is anti-secular and “violates the freedom of non-Hindus.”
The ban covers the Tirumala Divya Kshetram, all the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, temples in Tirupati City, and 19 other major temples located across Andhra Pradesh.
Even before the latest bill was adopted, extremist Sangh Parivar groups had claimed exclusive rights and attacked Christians in these and other areas
Last year for example, the Sisters of Mother Teresa (Missionaries of Charity) were harassed in Tirupati where they cared for the HIV/AIDS patients in a public hospital.
Not long ago, a Protestant minister was beaten black and blue as he crossed Simhachalam Devasthanam Hill on his way home and then paraded in front of the media half naked.
“Ultimately this law violates Article 30 of the constitution, which recognises the right to practice one’s faith, and denies non-Hindus their mobility rights and the right to conduct their activities in the indicated areas,” Anthoniraj Thumma explained.
“Andhra Pradesh’s BJP leader Sri Bandaru Dattattreya is already claiming victory, and demanding that all non-Hindu officials be removed from the designated areas even though most non-Hindus are neither involved in religious propaganda nor employed by Hindu temples.”
“I hope,” he said, that “none of them are actually forced to choose between wearing Hindu clothes and symbols” and expulsion.
by Nirmala Carvalho
http://www.asianews.it/index.php?l=en&art=9918&size=A
A new state law bans non-Hindus from propagating their religion in cities with holy Hindu temples. In many areas violence and threats are proffered for the mere physical presence of Christians. The archbishop of Hyderabad warns that there is a real possibility that the faithful may be chased out of these cities.
New Delhi (AsiaNews) – The Andhra Pradesh State Assembly adopted a bill on Monday banning religious propaganda near sacred Hindu shrines. Endowment J Ratnakar Rao explained the new law is designed to ensure that feelings of the Hindu religious group were not offended and that public order was maintained. But State legislator Christine Lazarus (Nom) expressed fears that the Bill will be used as a “weapon against non-Hindus”.
The Bill was opposed by the Communist Marxist Party (CMP), the Communist Party of India (Marxists) and the Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) which tried to have the issue referred to a select committee. However the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), the Baharitya Janata Party (BJP), and Congress Party supported the bill.
Protesting against the bill, CMP leader M A Gafoor said on Monday that the bill could send a wrong message since it contained some ‘dangerous’ clauses. Similarly, MIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi protested that “this is not a bill of a secular-minded government.”
Mgr Marampudi Joji, archbishop of Hyderabad, told AsiaNews that “the Christian Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy submitted to the will of Hindu extremist groups who have taken advantage of his Christian identity to blackmail him. He has buckled under the pressure of the [Hindu nationalist] Sangh Parivar. His government is engaged in the appeasement of the Hindu majority to ward off false accusations that it is favourable to minorities. Yet, it is only a minuscule minority in the Hindu community which is supportive of such unconstitutional communal demands while the majority is secular, pluralistic and open to other faiths.”
“This bill goes against many of the fundamental rights guaranteed by the constitution and discriminates against non-Hindus,” the prelate said. “Under the Indian constitution, can a state government set up a body to propagate a particular religion?” he wondered.
“Not only their religious freedom, but also the right of movement, right to life and livelihood are denied to non-Hindus, especially to the Christians who are already targeted in these areas. We will challenge this bill.”
Fr Anthoniraj Thumma, executive secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Federation of Churches, criticised the state government for caving in to the “irrational and unconstitutional demands of the Sangh Parivar” and adopting a law that is anti-secular and “violates the freedom of non-Hindus.”
The ban covers the Tirumala Divya Kshetram, all the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams, temples in Tirupati City, and 19 other major temples located across Andhra Pradesh.
Even before the latest bill was adopted, extremist Sangh Parivar groups had claimed exclusive rights and attacked Christians in these and other areas
Last year for example, the Sisters of Mother Teresa (Missionaries of Charity) were harassed in Tirupati where they cared for the HIV/AIDS patients in a public hospital.
Not long ago, a Protestant minister was beaten black and blue as he crossed Simhachalam Devasthanam Hill on his way home and then paraded in front of the media half naked.
“Ultimately this law violates Article 30 of the constitution, which recognises the right to practice one’s faith, and denies non-Hindus their mobility rights and the right to conduct their activities in the indicated areas,” Anthoniraj Thumma explained.
“Andhra Pradesh’s BJP leader Sri Bandaru Dattattreya is already claiming victory, and demanding that all non-Hindu officials be removed from the designated areas even though most non-Hindus are neither involved in religious propaganda nor employed by Hindu temples.”
“I hope,” he said, that “none of them are actually forced to choose between wearing Hindu clothes and symbols” and expulsion.
To clear the air: Condoms and safe sex time
To clear the air: Condoms and safe sex time Avnish Kumar Sinha 26 July 2007, Thursday http://www.merinews.com/catFull.jsp?articleID=125747
While a wide variety of condoms are being made available in the market these days to cater to different tastes, the area where the companies need to concentrate is promotion of condoms as a tool of safe sex rather than one for enjoyment।
IT IS HIGH TIME that condom makers who are out to transform people’s sexual life to a completely new level must consider promoting it as a tool for safe sex rather than only a tool for happy married life।
What are the things in this world, which you can taste? No the appropriate question would be -what is your taste? Whatever is your taste you have your places and dishes to satiate your desire। But the taste factor is not limited to dishes cooked in restaurant or at home. There are certain things, which are not cooked but still available in your favourite flavour. One such thing is condom. Well, the art of making love has become tastier and titillating with different flavours and characteristics of condoms available in the market these days. So you have a choice to suit your taste.
There were times when condoms were promoted for preventing unwanted pregnancies, then with changing times and increase in the number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases, condom became a tool for safe sex. Promotion campaigns too changed into advertising campaign featuring sexy models displaying their satisfaction in a very-very candid manner. This period was the turning point in the history of condoms, which adopted more aggressive selling approach, by being forthright in their message and innovative with the products.
A country with population of over a billion where youth forms around 40per cent of the population, the condom making companies embarked on a totally different strategy to boost their sales. In an effort to spice up the sexual life of couples condoms of different flavours- chocolate, strawberry, etc, were introduced. Many different varieties of condoms are available on the shelves of our departmental stores these days. Taste is not the only characteristic of condoms; there is another type of condom, popularly known as the vibrating condom, which is also available in the market. This vibrating condom caused ripples in the political circles with many politicians expressing their unhappiness about the product terming it as unethical.
There are simply enough varieties available to cater to everybody’s preference and if you are still missing some taste and that too of a desi type then your wait is over। Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has decided to launch paan-flavoured condoms in India. But contrary to the less popularity of paan, sooner or later this is definitely going to become a hit, of a larger magnitude, but for a totally different reason. Here you have a chance to become a paan addict that too without being caught by the public.
But the irony is that no company ever insists on promoting the product as a tool for safe sex. Every advertisement promotes the idea of enjoyable sex rather than preventive sex and that’s where the purpose of the product as a safe tool dies. According to the unofficial data there are around 5.5 million HIV/AIDS positive people in India. The official figure for the same is around 3 million. But even this figure is very huge considering a bit conservative society of India and could take form of a catastrophic figure unless dealt with a proper awareness campaign.
It is high time that companies who are out to transform people’s sexual life to a completely new level must consider promoting it as a tool for safe sex rather than only a tool for happy married life.
While a wide variety of condoms are being made available in the market these days to cater to different tastes, the area where the companies need to concentrate is promotion of condoms as a tool of safe sex rather than one for enjoyment।
IT IS HIGH TIME that condom makers who are out to transform people’s sexual life to a completely new level must consider promoting it as a tool for safe sex rather than only a tool for happy married life।
What are the things in this world, which you can taste? No the appropriate question would be -what is your taste? Whatever is your taste you have your places and dishes to satiate your desire। But the taste factor is not limited to dishes cooked in restaurant or at home. There are certain things, which are not cooked but still available in your favourite flavour. One such thing is condom. Well, the art of making love has become tastier and titillating with different flavours and characteristics of condoms available in the market these days. So you have a choice to suit your taste.
There were times when condoms were promoted for preventing unwanted pregnancies, then with changing times and increase in the number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases, condom became a tool for safe sex. Promotion campaigns too changed into advertising campaign featuring sexy models displaying their satisfaction in a very-very candid manner. This period was the turning point in the history of condoms, which adopted more aggressive selling approach, by being forthright in their message and innovative with the products.
A country with population of over a billion where youth forms around 40per cent of the population, the condom making companies embarked on a totally different strategy to boost their sales. In an effort to spice up the sexual life of couples condoms of different flavours- chocolate, strawberry, etc, were introduced. Many different varieties of condoms are available on the shelves of our departmental stores these days. Taste is not the only characteristic of condoms; there is another type of condom, popularly known as the vibrating condom, which is also available in the market. This vibrating condom caused ripples in the political circles with many politicians expressing their unhappiness about the product terming it as unethical.
There are simply enough varieties available to cater to everybody’s preference and if you are still missing some taste and that too of a desi type then your wait is over। Bill and Melinda Gates foundation has decided to launch paan-flavoured condoms in India. But contrary to the less popularity of paan, sooner or later this is definitely going to become a hit, of a larger magnitude, but for a totally different reason. Here you have a chance to become a paan addict that too without being caught by the public.
But the irony is that no company ever insists on promoting the product as a tool for safe sex. Every advertisement promotes the idea of enjoyable sex rather than preventive sex and that’s where the purpose of the product as a safe tool dies. According to the unofficial data there are around 5.5 million HIV/AIDS positive people in India. The official figure for the same is around 3 million. But even this figure is very huge considering a bit conservative society of India and could take form of a catastrophic figure unless dealt with a proper awareness campaign.
It is high time that companies who are out to transform people’s sexual life to a completely new level must consider promoting it as a tool for safe sex rather than only a tool for happy married life.
Trust man or condom?
Trust man or condom?25 Jul 2007, 0000 hrs IST,AGENCIEShttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Calcutta_Times/Trust_man_or_condom_/articleshow/2231003.cmsUnion minister Renuka Chowdhury believes the Indian male cannot betrusted with sexual fidelity. CT asks the experts if that's trueDon't trust your husbands, trust condoms. That's what childdevelopment minister Renuka Chowdhury said recently, sparking off adebate across the nation.The minister went on to say that Indian men can't be trusted in theirsexual behaviour and are fuelling the country's HIV epidemic. Sowomen, she said, should protect themselves by keeping condoms, asstraying husbands may bring the virus home.While some felt the minister should not generalise in this way,others lauded the statement, saying it cleared the web of hypocrisyand brought the focus on the twin issues of AIDs and populationexplosion.WOMEN IN DENIALMany believe the reason the minister made the statement is becauseIndian women, the urban population included, are in denial on thisissue."Even if the truth stares them in the face, they are ready to believethat their men are virtuous," says counsellor Sunitha Kanan. "Theyoverlook their husbands straying so that they can keep their familiestogether. They're on thin ice. Hypocrisy in such issues can only leadto death," she says.IRRESPONSIBLE SEXRenuka Chowdhury in her message also said, "If you believe that menwill be careful, then you can forget about protecting yourselves. Menwill not buy a condom when they come home drunk and staggering."While this evoked laughter from the audience, which included a fewmen, the fact remains that Indian men aren't really responsible whenit comes to sex. "It's to do with hypocrisy. Men will allowthemselves to believe that they are clean even while indulging inrisky behaviour. They also never carry condoms because they believethey won't stray. But they give in at the slightest opportunity,"says counsellor Jaiesh Chakravarthi.WHAT'S THE ALTERNATIVE?The female condom is a very effective tool against HIV, and thedemand is high, says Supriya Sahu, project director of the Tamil NaduState AIDS Control Society. But it should not be seen as a substitutefor male condoms, she says.
Mandatory registration?
Mandatory registration?
http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=4bc3e21b-f6d0-4d97-901b-e1fa8b44f597&ParentID=7e8ff0a0-b14e-45f2-bc60-f524a4619e63&&Headline=Mandatory+registration%3f
he government is considering mandatory marriage registration as partof a new law recognising the rights of HIV/AIDS patients in India।The Health Ministry has proposed that registration should be mandatorybut conducting an HIV test should be voluntary. The clause is aimed atensuring that women know if their prospective grooms are infected, anofficial said. The Women and Child Development Ministry had said lastweek that many women with HIV/AIDS get the disease from their husbandsand are not aware of their medical condition at the time of marriage.
http://www.hindustantimes.com/storypage/storypage.aspx?id=4bc3e21b-f6d0-4d97-901b-e1fa8b44f597&ParentID=7e8ff0a0-b14e-45f2-bc60-f524a4619e63&&Headline=Mandatory+registration%3f
he government is considering mandatory marriage registration as partof a new law recognising the rights of HIV/AIDS patients in India।The Health Ministry has proposed that registration should be mandatorybut conducting an HIV test should be voluntary. The clause is aimed atensuring that women know if their prospective grooms are infected, anofficial said. The Women and Child Development Ministry had said lastweek that many women with HIV/AIDS get the disease from their husbandsand are not aware of their medical condition at the time of marriage.
Tuesday 24 July 2007
Smoking brings on the menopause
Smoking brings on the menopause
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=27897
Women's Health News Published: Sunday, 22-Jul-2007
Norwegian researchers have discovered that women who smoke are 59 percent more likely than non-smokers to have an early menopause.The researchers say smokers are more likely to begin the menopause before the age of 45 putting themselves at an increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease.
Dr. Thea F. Mikkelsen of the University of Oslo and her colleagues found that among 2,123 women 59 to 60 years old, those who currently smoked were 59 percent more likely than non-smokers to have undergone early menopause and for the heaviest smokers, the risk of early menopause was almost double.
The researchers also found that women who were smokers, but quit at least 10 years before menopause, were substantially less likely than current smokers to have stopped menstruating before age 45.
Mikkelsen and her team say evidence already exists which shows that smoking later in life makes a woman more likely to have early menopause, while smokers who quit before middle age may not be affected.
However the researchers went one step further and investigated whether exposure to second-hand smoke might also influence the timing of menopause.
They found that almost 10 percent of the women went through menopause before age 45 and of that number around 25 percent were current smokers, 28.7 percent were ex-smokers and 35.2 percent reported current passive exposure to smoke.
The women who had quit smoking at least a decade before menopause were 87 percent less likely than their peers who currently smoked to have gone through menopause early.
When they were compared with married women, widows were also at increased risk of early menopause, as were women who were in poor health.
In general the better educated women were less likely to go into menopause early, but they were also less likely to be smokers.
A good social life also appeared to cut the early menopause risk and the researchers found no link between coffee or alcohol consumption or passive exposure to smoke and early menopause risk.
Mikkelsen and her team say the earlier a woman stops smoking the more protection she derives with respect to an early onset of menopause."
The research is published in the online journal "BMC Public Health."
http://www.news-medical.net/?id=27897
Women's Health News Published: Sunday, 22-Jul-2007
Norwegian researchers have discovered that women who smoke are 59 percent more likely than non-smokers to have an early menopause.The researchers say smokers are more likely to begin the menopause before the age of 45 putting themselves at an increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease.
Dr. Thea F. Mikkelsen of the University of Oslo and her colleagues found that among 2,123 women 59 to 60 years old, those who currently smoked were 59 percent more likely than non-smokers to have undergone early menopause and for the heaviest smokers, the risk of early menopause was almost double.
The researchers also found that women who were smokers, but quit at least 10 years before menopause, were substantially less likely than current smokers to have stopped menstruating before age 45.
Mikkelsen and her team say evidence already exists which shows that smoking later in life makes a woman more likely to have early menopause, while smokers who quit before middle age may not be affected.
However the researchers went one step further and investigated whether exposure to second-hand smoke might also influence the timing of menopause.
They found that almost 10 percent of the women went through menopause before age 45 and of that number around 25 percent were current smokers, 28.7 percent were ex-smokers and 35.2 percent reported current passive exposure to smoke.
The women who had quit smoking at least a decade before menopause were 87 percent less likely than their peers who currently smoked to have gone through menopause early.
When they were compared with married women, widows were also at increased risk of early menopause, as were women who were in poor health.
In general the better educated women were less likely to go into menopause early, but they were also less likely to be smokers.
A good social life also appeared to cut the early menopause risk and the researchers found no link between coffee or alcohol consumption or passive exposure to smoke and early menopause risk.
Mikkelsen and her team say the earlier a woman stops smoking the more protection she derives with respect to an early onset of menopause."
The research is published in the online journal "BMC Public Health."
Health :: India needs 203 bn dollar by 2012 for healthcare
Health :: India needs 203 bn dollar by 2012 for healthcarehttp://www.spiritindia.com/health-care-news-articles-11645.html
India needs to spend a whopping 203 billion dollars (Rs 912,375 crore) on health services, with a significant private partnership, if the mission of achieving 'Health for all' is to be attained by 2012, industry body FICCI has said.
With a view to improve access to healthcare services in India, which would require huge funds in the next five years, the chamber has proposed five models of public-private partnership (PPP).
The models proposed are PPP options for primary and secondary healthcare, a network of diagnostic centres, capital expenditure sharing, equity sharing and premises on lease model.
"These partnership models would have to run in tandem with attractive fiscal incentives and meaningful regulation if the government mission of 'Health for All' is to be achieved and the bed to thousand ratio has to be raised to five beds by 2012 from the current level of 1.3.
In a detailed presentation to the government, the chamber has also quantified a shortage of 4,53,785 doctors, 1,290,174 nurses and a huge number of paramedics by 2012.
To attract private sector investment in healthcare sector, FICCI has recommended tax holiday for 10 years for building new facilities and upgrading old ones, extension of exemption to companies creating training in the medical area, industrial status to the sector and soft loans from public sector banks and reduction in custom duty on identified medical equipment.
FICCI has also called for income tax relief of 15 per cent subject to review after a five-year period and enforcement of quality in government hospitals, laboratories and blood banks.
India needs to spend a whopping 203 billion dollars (Rs 912,375 crore) on health services, with a significant private partnership, if the mission of achieving 'Health for all' is to be attained by 2012, industry body FICCI has said.
With a view to improve access to healthcare services in India, which would require huge funds in the next five years, the chamber has proposed five models of public-private partnership (PPP).
The models proposed are PPP options for primary and secondary healthcare, a network of diagnostic centres, capital expenditure sharing, equity sharing and premises on lease model.
"These partnership models would have to run in tandem with attractive fiscal incentives and meaningful regulation if the government mission of 'Health for All' is to be achieved and the bed to thousand ratio has to be raised to five beds by 2012 from the current level of 1.3.
In a detailed presentation to the government, the chamber has also quantified a shortage of 4,53,785 doctors, 1,290,174 nurses and a huge number of paramedics by 2012.
To attract private sector investment in healthcare sector, FICCI has recommended tax holiday for 10 years for building new facilities and upgrading old ones, extension of exemption to companies creating training in the medical area, industrial status to the sector and soft loans from public sector banks and reduction in custom duty on identified medical equipment.
FICCI has also called for income tax relief of 15 per cent subject to review after a five-year period and enforcement of quality in government hospitals, laboratories and blood banks.
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