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Moving in circles
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Singapore
Age: 49
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Originally Posted by KiraYamatoFan
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The extent of her injuries was not widely reported, possibly to spare the family and the public from the lurid details.
Rape victim's condition worsens
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...Dr Mahesh Chandra Misra, professor and head of the department of surgical disciplines at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, who was part of the team caring for the patient in New Delhi, described her initial injuries as the worst he had seen.
The patient was "practically dead" when she was brought in to Safdarjung Hospital on the morning of Dec 17, and had to be resuscitated, he said.
Then, the doctors' immediate focus was on damage control, he said, and her small and large intestines were removed because they were gangrenous. "Her intestines were hanging out" when she arrived, Dr Misra said, adding that her injuries indicated that an iron rod had been used to attack her...
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It is horrifying beyond imagination, that people could do something like that to another human being.
In other news:
China orders children to visit elderly parents
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Beijing (Dec 28, Fri): China has passed a law requiring adult children to visit their elderly parents regularly or risk being sued.
The law does not specify how frequently such visits should occur, but warns that neglect could risk court action.
Reports suggest a growing number of elderly Chinese have been abandoned or neglected by their offspring. Chinese state media reported earlier this month that a woman in her nineties had been forced by her son to live in a pigsty for two years.
The rapid pace of development in China has damaged the traditional extended family in China. An eighth of the population of China is over the age of 60, and more than half of them live alone.
BBC
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Japan and Russia to restart peace talks
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Tokyo (Dec 28, Fri): Japan's new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe agreed with Russian President Vladimir Putin today to restart talks on a peace treaty hampered since World War II by a territorial row, an official said.
In a 20-minute telephone conversation, Mr Abe, who was formally elected to his second stint as Japan's premier on Wednesday, also agreed to visit Russia at an "appropriate" date next year, the Japanese official said.
In the conversation, Mr Abe told Mr Putin that their two countries should work hard to find a "mutually acceptable solution" to their island row, the official said.
Russia and Japan have long been at odds over the southern Kuril islands, which Soviet forces seized in the last days of World War II, driving away Japanese inhabitants. Tokyo refers to them as its "Northern Territories".
The dispute has prevented the two countries from signing a postwar peace treaty.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev provoked fury in Japan when he visited the islands earlier this year, adding to a hugely controversial visit he made while serving as president in November 2010.
AFP
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Myanmar to allow private daily newspapers again
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Yangon (Dec 28, Fri): Myanmar will allow private daily newspapers from April next year, the government announced today, a big leap forward for a country that had barely any press freedom under its decades of military dictatorship.
Before the military seized power in a 1962 coup, there were more than a dozen local private dailies in multiple languages. At present, only state-controlled newspapers, mostly considered dull, propaganda-filled mouthpieces of the government, are allowed to publish on a daily basis.
The decision comes as part of an astonishing relaxation of laws governing the media in Myanmar, among the most dramatic reforms introduced by Mr Thein Sein's quasi-civilian government since it came to power 19 months ago.
"We do welcome this news," said Mr Wai Phyo, chief editor of the Weekly Eleven journal, one of four publications owned by the Eleven Media Group. "We've been waiting for it for some time."
Despite the changes, a degree of self-censorship is expected to remain as long as Orwellian laws like the Electronic Transaction Law exist, which threatens jail terms of 15 years for revealing "state secrets". That term has been applied very loosely and at one point, it included any reference by journalists to the amount of money in circulation in Myanmar.
REUTERS
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And, lastly, a thought-provoking opinion piece:
In a crisis, humanists seem absent
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By Samuel Friedman
Dec 28
Since the Newtown massacre on Dec 14, the tableau of grief and mourning has provided a vivid lesson in the religious variety of America. An interfaith service featuring President Obama, held two days after Adam Lanza killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, included clergy members from Bahai, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim and both mainline and evangelical Protestant congregations.
This illustration of religious belief in action, of faith expressed in extremis, an example at once so heartrending and so affirming, has left behind one prickly question: Where were the humanists? At a time when the percentage of Americans without religious affiliation is growing rapidly, why did the "nones", as they are colloquially known, seem so absent?
To raise these queries is not to play gotcha, or to be judgmental in a dire time. In fact, some leaders within the humanist movement — an umbrella term for those who call themselves atheists, agnostics, secularists and freethinkers, among other terms — are ruefully and self-critically saying the same thing themselves.
"It is a failure of community, and that's where the answer for the future has to lie," said Mr Greg Epstein, 35, the humanist chaplain at Harvard and author of the book Good Without God. “What religion has to offer to people at moments like this — more than theology, more than divine presence — is community. And we need to provide an alternative form of community if we're going to matter for the increasing number of people who say they are not believers."
THE NEW YORK TIMES
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