Friday, February 29, 2008

NO COMMENT



The video, which surfaced Tuesday, showed four white students putting five black female housekeepers at their university dormitory in Bloemfontein through a series of "competitions" in the style of the program "Fear Factor."

It sparked an immediate uproar on the campus and among human rights groups in South Africa.

The university denounced the video as a gross violation of human dignity and said Thursday it has officially reported the matter to the director of public prosecution, a statement on its Web site said.

The video, which a university statement said showed "black employees ... having to undergo a mock integration ceremony," was a reaction to the school's efforts to integrate its residences, school officials said. Eighteen years after the official end of apartheid, they were still separated into white and black dormitories.

"Once upon a time the Boers [Afrikaans-speaking white farmers] lived happily here on Reitz island until the day the less-advantaged discovered the word 'integration' in the dictionary," one of the students says on the video. It is not clear which of the four students named by the university made that comment.

One of the scenes shows the women drinking stew that in a previous scene appeared to have been laced with urine.

Naude said the students did not urinate in the food served to the housekeepers, but the video was edited to make it appear they had done so.

In the statement from the two students Thursday, the men insisted there was no urine in the food.

"Although, as was intended at the time, it appears to viewers as if one of the persons urinated in the traditional brew which was prepared, it most certainly did not take place and a close study of the particular insert will confirm that the -- totally harmless -- liquid was squirted from a bottle," the statement read.

The men said the video, which was taped in September, was a "satirical slant on a topic which was then prevalent and controversial."

They also said the employees who participated in the video did so voluntarily, "knew the purpose for which it was made" and "as is evident ... clearly enjoyed it."

The women were also informed the food was not contaminated, they said.

An attorney representing the employees shown in the video told reporters Thursday his clients were tricked into participating.

Malherbe and Van der Merwe said they had no intention of humiliating the black employees and were in fact friends with the employees until the video became public, their statement said.

Earlier, Naude said his clients had "not done anything criminal."

But the National Prosecuting Authority said it is considering charging the men with assault and crimen injuria -- a count specific to South Africa in which someone deliberately injures another person's dignity with racial slurs or obscenities.

In the homemade video, four white students at the Reitz Residence hostel are seen encouraging five black female housekeepers to participate in what the students call the "Reitz Fear Factor," an apparent reference to a television show in which contestants eat live worms or compete in other feats.

In one scene, a student mixes what looks like a beef stew in a plastic bowl and adds garlic and other items. Then he tells the camera he will add the "special ingredient."

The student then appears to urinate into the mixture, which he later stirs and puts in a microwave. Other students can be heard laughing on the tape.

The next scene shows a different student urging at least three housekeepers to drink cups of the stew, saying, "This is our dorm's 'Fear Factor.' We want to see who has the best 'Fear Factor.' "

On the video, the student does not say anything about urine in the mixture.

The women, on their knees, spit the stew into buckets after tasting it. Some appeared to vomit, but the women also laughed during the incident, as the student urged them on.

Next, the women struggle to run in what appears to be a race. The video is put in slow-motion as the theme from "Chariots of Fire" plays.

The women also are seen playing rugby with the men, which is a sport usually associated with the white Afrikaans-speaking community.

Throughout the tape, the women can be heard calling the white students "baas," meaning boss or master, which was a term blacks were forced to use during apartheid when addressing whites.

Finally, one of the students awards a large bottle of whiskey to one of the women, telling her she has won the "Fear Factor."

At the end of the video, a message appears on the screen in Afrikaans saying, "That, at the end of the day, is what we think of integration."

Naude said the video that surfaced Tuesday is actually made of outtakes of a montage that won a contest at the dorm last year.

A spokesman for the university said Thursday it was not a school-sanctioned event but appeared to be a contest organized by the students in the Reitz Residence in which different sections of the dorm competed against each other to make a video.

The South African newspaper The Times reported Thursday that the outtakes had been stored on the computer of one student, whose girlfriend released them to the media when they broke up.

UFS Rector Frederick Fourie met with the women in the video Wednesday and apologized to them, a statement from the university said. Counseling is being provided for the workers, it added.

The ruling ANC said Thursday the video is reminiscent of the most perverse forms of racism that were committed against South Africa's black majority during apartheid and it is also urging that strong action be taken against those responsible.

Protests broke out on campus Wednesday over the content of the video, and five people were arrested, authorities said.

Demonstrators, both black and white, marched to Reitz Residence and demanded it be shut down.

This is one of several racial incidents that have recently plagued South Africa. Last month, an 18-year-old white man allegedly fired on a black informal settlement, killing four black people and wounding six.

Last week, an organization that calls itself the Forum of Black Journalists kicked white reporters out of a lunch meeting with the president of the country's ruling party, Jacob Zuma, saying the event was reserved for non-whites. CNN's Nkepile Mabuse attended the meeting.

Dr. Zonke Majodina, deputy chairwoman of the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC), said the country has been in denial and it will take years before racist mindsets are altered.

"We've taken for granted that just scrapping the old apartheid laws is going to make things work better in our vision for a nonracial South Africa, but in fact it's not going to happen overnight," Majodina said.

But in The Times, SAHRC chairman Jody Kollapen blamed the racial tensions that led to such violations on the Nelson Mandela era, saying the internationally celebrated freedom fighter reached too far when he was president, putting undue focus on reconciliation instead of transformation

Thursday, February 14, 2008

HAPPY VALENTINE


A gunman dressed in black stepped from behind a curtain at the front of a large lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday and shot 21 people, five of them fatally, then shot and killed himself, said university president John Peters.
Four died at the scene, including the shooter, and two later died at the hospital, he said.
At least 22 people, including a graduate student who was teaching an ocean sciences class, were shot, Peters said.
Seventeen victims were taken to Kishwaukee Community Hospital, its Web site said.
Of those, six were in critical condition and were flown to other hospitals. One fatality, a male, was confirmed -- but was not the gunman, the hospital said. Two were admitted, and three others were discharged. The other five were not addressed on the Web site.
Four of the fatalities were female, said Peters.
Most of the injuries are head and chest gunshot wounds, a hospital spokeswoman told CNN.
The gunman started shooting from a stage in the room shortly after 3 p.m. (4 p.m. ET) in Cole Hall, officials said.
Police Chief Donald Grady said authorities do not yet know of a motive.
They know the identity of the gunman but have not released his name, Grady added.
The shooter was a graduate student at NIU in the spring of 2007. Currently he was not enrolled there but, Grady said, "He may have been a student elsewhere."
Kevin McEnery said he was in the classroom when the gunman, dressed in a black shirt, dark pants and black hat, burst in carrying a shotgun.
"He just kicked the door open, just started shooting," said McEnery, who was in the class at the time. "All I really heard was just people screaming, yelling 'get out.' ... Close to 30 shots were fired."

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

DEEP IMPACT


The U.S. military may try within days to shoot down a failed satellite using a missile launched from a Navy ship, officials announced Thursday.

Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at the Pentagon that the window to accomplish the mission could begin in three to four days, and remain open for seven to eight.
While much space trash and debris have safely crashed to Earth after burning up in the atmosphere on re-entry, authorities said what makes this 5,000-pound satellite different is the approximately 1,000 pounds of frozen toxic hydrazine propellant it carries.
Without any intervention, officials believe the satellite would come down on its own in early March.
If it came down in one piece, nearly half the spacecraft would survive re-entry and the hydrazine -- heated to a gas -- could spread a toxic cloud roughly the size of two football fields, Cartwright said.
Hydrazine is similar to chlorine or ammonia in that it affects the lungs and breathing tissue, the general said.
The option of striking the satellite with a missile launched from an Aegis cruiser was decided upon by President Bush after consultation with several government and military officials and aerospace experts, said Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey.

"After further review of this option and, in particular, consideration of the question of saving or reducing injury to human life, the president, on the recommendation of his national and homeland teams, directed the Department of Defense to carry out the intercept," Jeffrey said.
The goal is to hit the satellite just before it enters Earth's atmosphere and blast it apart so that the hydrazine tank explodes. The smaller debris would be more likely to burn up in the atmosphere.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said there's nothing the military can do to make the outcome worse.
"If we miss, nothing changes. If we shoot and barely touch it, the satellite is just barely in orbit" and would still burn up somewhat in the atmosphere, Griffin said.
"If we shoot and get a direct hit, that's a clean kill and we're in good shape," he added.
Experts said that with three-quarters of Earth covered in water, there's a 25 percent chance the satellite's remnants will hit land -- and a 1 percent chance they will hit a populated area.
There will be three Navy ships involved in the operation. The USS Lake Erie, an Aegis cruiser, will fire the missile, while trajectory information comes from a second ship. The third ship will be used as a backup, U.S. Navy officials said.
The Lake Erie has long been used as the platform for the sea-based missile defense program.
Cartwright said the satellite stopped working within hours of its launch in December and has not responded to attempts to communicate with it. He brushed off blog theories that the military wants to shoot down the satellite with a missile to destroy any classified data it may have accumulated in its short life, or to prevent other countries from acquiring the technology.
In January 2007, China used a land-based missile to destroy a 2,200-pound satellite that was orbiting 528 miles above Earth.
But the impact left more than 150,000 pieces of debris floating above Earth, NASA estimates. The space agency characterizes nearly 2,600 pieces as "large," meaning greater than 4 inches across, which pose a potential threat to satellites and spacecraft.

Monday, February 11, 2008

CONDANNED


The United States will seek the death penalty against six Guantanamo Bay detainees who are suspects in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, an Air Force general said Monday.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one of six Guantanamo detainees to be charged, a general says.

The government will submit criminal charges against the detainees, who include alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Brig Gen. Thomas Hartmann said during a Pentagon news conference. The government hopes to try the men together, he said.
All six have been charged with conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and material support of terrorism, said the general who is serving as legal adviser to the military commissions trying the detainees. Four of the suspects will also be charged with hijacking, he said.
The 169 charges allege a "long-term, highly sophisticated plan by al Qaeda to attack the United States of America," Hartmann said. Watch Hartmann outline the charges »
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"There will be no secret trials," Hartmann said. "We will make every effort to make everything open."
The exception will be when classified information is presented that could compromise national security, he said.
"I've been advised by the prosecutors that relatively little amounts of evidence will be classified, but it's still a possibility, and we have rules and procedures and rules of evidence in place to deal with that," Hartmann said.
All six suspects are accused of helping plan the September 11 attacks in which hijackers flew two jets into the World Trade Center in New York and another jet into the Pentagon in Washington. Another hijacked plane crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Bob Hughes, whose 30-year-old son died in the World Trade Center, said he was disappointed with the slow legal process, but he applauded the government's efforts to impose the death penalty on any conspirators.
"Anyone involved that helped these people get to America to do what they did, they definitely deserve the death penalty," he said.
According to the 9/11 Commission Report, 2,974 people were killed in the attacks, not including the 19 hijackers.
Charged along with Mohammed are:

Mohammed al-Qahtani, the so-called 20th hijacker in the 9/11 attacks;
Ramzi bin al-Shibh, accused of being an intermediary between the hijackers and al Qaeda leaders and finding flight schools for the hijackers;
Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, alleged to have sent approximately $127,000 to hijackers and arranging travel for nine of them;
Mustafa Ahmed al-Hawsawi, accused of providing the hijackers with money, clothes and credit cards;
Walid bin Attash, who is accused of training two of the 9/11 hijackers and assisting in the hijacking plan.
Mohammed, bin Attash, al-Shibh and Ali will be additionally charged with the offense of hijacking or hazarding an aircraft, Hartmann said.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

OVERDOSE


American and Italian authorities arrested dozens of people Thursday in a takedown of what they called a trans-Atlantic drug trafficking operation run by the Mafia.
The operation, code-named "Old Bridge," was centered on New York and the Sicilian capital of Palermo, targeting Mafia figures who were strengthening contacts between mob groups in Italy and the United States.
A federal grand jury in New York also accused 62 people of ties to the Gambino crime family and offenses including murders, drug trafficking, robberies, extortion, and other crimes dating back to the 1970s.
"Today we are able to bring closure to crimes from the past," U.S. Attorney Benton Campbell said in Brooklyn. "Today we seek justice for those men and their families and we make clear that those crimes and those victims are not forgotten."
The sprawling indictment covers gangland killings from the days when the crime family was run by Paul Castellano, who was assassinated in 1985. Some of the charges allege more recent crimes including credit fraud conspiracies and theft of union benefits.
In the 170-page indictment, authorities allege that associates of the crime family extorted people in the construction industry, embezzled from labor unions, engaged in loansharking and bookmaking. The massive investigation also includes charges brought in state court by the Queens district attorney.
"Organized crime still exists in the city and the state of New York," said New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said. "We like to think that it's a vestige of the past. It's not."
As of Thursday morning, the FBI had arrested 54 people in New York City and its northern suburbs, New Jersey and Long Island. Police in Palermo said they hoped to bring in 25 to 30 suspects.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

WHITE - OR BLACK - HOUSE

The race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination remained wide open Wednesday after senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama split voters and delegates in the Super Tuesday primaries.
Latest estimates suggest Clinton may have picked up only about 20 more delegates than Obama in the Super Tuesday states -- and that the pair could be separated by less than 100 delegates in all voting so far.
But it will take time to determine the final distribution of delegates because of complicated formulae, and because New Mexico's count is not yet final.
In the Republican contest, Arizona senator John McCain admitted he was the front-runner after piling up big primary wins across the country, according to CNN projections.
He is now estimated to have about half the delegates he needs to win his party's nomination, and more than Romney and Huckabee combined.
Speaking in Phoenix, Arizona, McCain expressed pleasure and gratitude over his Super Tuesday showing Wednesday and declared: "We will unite the party behind our conservative principles and move forward and win the general election in November." He said he was "pleased at the depth and breadth of our victory last night."
CNN projected McCain to win his home state, along with California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York and Oklahoma. McCain wins big; Huckabee shines
Mitt Romney was projected to take Alaska, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota and Utah while Mike Huckabee was projected as winner in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia.
In the Democratic races, CNN projections indicated wins for Clinton in Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Arkansas, where her husband, former U.S. President Bill Clinton, was once governor, and American Samoa. Clinton takes California in tight Democratic race
Barack Obama has CNN-projected wins in his home state of Illinois, plus Alabama, Alaska, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and Utah.
More than four-fifths of the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination and more than 1,000 of the 1,191 necessary delegates on the Republican side were at stake on Tuesday.
The delegate count is key when looking at the results. Candidates need to notch up enough delegates -- rather than voter numbers -- to secure their party's nomination. See which states are the most important »
On Super Tuesday 24 states and the U.S. Pacific territory of American Samoa went to the polls -- the largest single day of voting in the nomination process.

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

RESET


The way has been cleared for early elections in Italy, after the speaker of the Italian senate was unable to raise enough support to change voting rules blamed for much of Italy's political instability.
The political crisis followed the collapse of Prime Minister Romano Prodi's center-left government last month. It is now up to the president to dissolve parliament and call early elections, likely to be held by mid-April.
While many leaders had expressed support for a change in voting rules, senate speaker Franco Marini said he could not rally "a significant majority on a precise project for an electoral reform," which would have required the forming of an interim government to push through the changes.
After days of talks with parties, conservative leader Silvio Berlusconi and his allies firmly rejected the possibility of any transitional government before a return to the polls.
Berlusconi is hoping for a new stint in power. He last served as Italy's premier from 2001-2006, and polls suggest the center-right would win an early vote.
Berlusconi said he was willing to open talks on reform with the center-left -- but after the elections.
"I think this is a truly irresponsible act, this is not what the country needed," Emma Bonino, EU affairs minister under Prodi, said, citing the risk of paralysis during the electoral campaign.
Italy's current proportional-representation system is blamed for fostering instability by giving small parties what critics say is excessive weight.
Prodi resigned Jan. 24 after a small centrist party yanked support,

Monday, February 4, 2008

THE RETURN OF TERROR


An Israeli woman has been killed in a suicide bombing in the southern town of Dimona, in the first such attack by Palestinian militants in over a year.
The attacker detonated an explosives belt at a shopping centre. Police shot dead an accomplice wounded in the blast before he could detonate his own belt.
It is unclear if the militants, from Gaza, reached Israel via Egypt.
Thousands of Gaza residents surged into Egypt last month when militants blew up the border wall.
The border was finally sealed by Egyptian forces on Sunday, but not before huge crowds of besieged Gazans crossed unchecked into Egypt where they stocked up on much-needed supplies.
Israel had warned that Gaza-based militants could take advantage of the chaos to infiltrate its territory across the long and porous desert border between Egypt's Sinai peninsula and the Negev Desert.
Meanwhile several people are reported to have been injured by gunfire following clashes between Egyptian guards and Palestinians at the Gaza-Egypt border.
The source of the gunfire is not clear but witnesses said youths were throwing stones at an Egyptian checkpoint before shooting broke out.
Hamas praise
Nine other people were wounded, one critically, in the blast in Dimona, a remote town that is home to Israel's top-secret nuclear reactor, but never before the target of a militant attack.
"It was like a war. People were running like crazy. I saw a piece of a human being right there, next to my leg," said witness Rosa Enberg.

Israel was hit by series of suicide bombings in the 1990s and 2000s, peaking after the Palestinian intifada or uprising broke out in 2000.
However, there were only two such attacks between April 2006 and now, the last being in January 2007 when a bomber blew himself up in a bakery in Eilat, killing three people.
Monday's blast is also the first since renewed efforts to come to an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal were launched with US support last November.
Hours later, Israeli aircraft assassinated the top military commander of the Popular Resistance Committees, Amer Qarmut, alias Abu Said.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told a meeting of his Kadima party that Israel was fighting a "relentless war... against anyone who tries to harm Israeli citizens".
Israel argues that restrictions it imposes on about four million Palestinians in Gaza and large parts of the occupied West Bank are crucial in preventing such attacks, though the blockades have been condemned as "collective punishment" by the UN.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

LIVING IN DARFUR


Chadian forces have used tanks and helicopter gunships to try to drive back rebels besieging the presidential palace in the capital N'Djamena.
Aid agency MSF told the BBC there were "a lot of dead bodies" in the city, and 300 people being treated in hospitals.
The rebels, who want to overthrow President Idriss Deby, seized large parts of the city on Saturday.
Correspondents say the crisis could have major implications for efforts to end the conflict in Darfur.


Witnesses heard anti-tank and automatic weapons fire coming from the city centre, starting at about 0500 local time (0400 GMT) on Sunday.
French Defence Minister Herve Morin said President Deby, who is believed to be inside the palace, still had 2,000 to 3,000 men under his authority, despite rebel claims that government troops were defecting.
A spokesman for the rebels said they had also taken the eastern town of Adre, near the border with Sudan, an area where some 400,000 people displaced as a result of the conflict in Darfur are living in camps.


But the government said it had beaten back that attack, and claimed the assault had been backed by Sudanese aircraft.
Sudan has denied it is involved in any of the fighting in Chad.
Correspondents say Sudan is known to have supported rebels in Chad in the past - while Chad has backed rebels in the Sudanese province of Darfur.
Adre is in the area where a French-dominated EU peacekeeping force is due to deploy to protect displaced civilians and the aid workers supporting them.
Chadian officials have accused the rebels of seeking to stop the deployment of the EU force.

Friday, February 1, 2008

ORDINARY LIFE


Two bombs in busy Baghdad animal markets have killed at least 64 people.
The blasts, at least one of which was detonated by a female suicide bomber, came within 20 minutes of each other.
Friday morning's death toll was the city's highest since violence fell in the wake of a US troop surge in the second half of 2007.
Correspondents say a fragile sense of normality in the capital had followed significant security improvements since the troop surge.
A ceasefire announced in August by the Mehdi Army militia of Shia cleric Moqtada Sadr, as well as the emergence of local Sunni militia armed by the US military that took on al-Qaeda in Iraq, have also contributed to the sense of security.


The first device was detonated by a female suicide bomber at around 1020 local time (0720GMT) in the popular Ghazil animal market, killing at least 46 people and injuring a further 80.
A popular spectacle for Baghdadis, the animal market only opens on Fridays and regularly draws large crowds, despite having been targeted by bombers twice in 2007.
Piled into wheelbarrows
Just 20 minutes after the first explosion, a second bomb tore through another crowded market in the Jadida area of east Baghdad, killing at least 18 people and injuring 30.

Police and medical officials piled the dead and injured into wheelbarrows, cars and the back of pick-up trucks to be transported to five hospitals across the city.
An official at the capital's Kindi hospital said at least 30 bodies had been received.
"We have a disaster here," he said. "There are too many bodies to count."

IN THE NAME OF PEACE


One million dead: the result of four years of war in Iraq. This figure was produced from the research conducted by the British Institute of Opinion Research Business and its counterpart Iraqi office, the Independent Institute for Administration and Civil Society Studies. The study was conducted on the basis of interviews with 2,414 adult Iraqis. Of these, at least 20 percent have lost at least one relative in the hostilities. More specifically, there have been 1,033,000 victims taken from amongst the Iraqi people. These statistics are based upon the period beginning with the invasion of the coalition forces under the command of the United States in March of 2003 until August of 2007. The last census conducted in Iraq in 1997 registered 4,050,000 households. The NGO has come to calculate the victims using this figure as a basis. An initial calculation of the war in Iraq was undertaken by the journal Lancet in 2004: 100, 000 people were said to have been killed. Following from this report, in October 2006 the medical school of John Bloomberg Opkins University States estimated the death toll among civilians to be at 601, 027. This report was to be stamped as "not credible" by President George W. Bush. However, the margin of error in the investigation was 1.7% and the figure in reality is estimated to have been between 946,258 and 1.12 million. The research carried out was based upon the study of 15 of the 18 Iraqi provinces. Among those not included are two of the most troubled areas - Karbala and Anbar - in the northern province of Erbil, where the authorities have refused permission to conduct the investigation. Orb, a non-governmental organisation founded in 1994, conducts research for the public, private and voluntary sectors. The director of the group, Allan Hyde, said that his only goal was to register as accurately as possible the number of deaths among the Iraqi population as a result of the continuing conflict.

ENGLISH VERSION NOW OPEN


Good afternoon, we officially open the english version of ONE PER DAY blog.

Every day the main italian page will be translated in order to allow everyoneto read the articles.


Thanks for your attention.