Guidelines Push Back Age for Cervical Cancer Tests
By DENISE GRADY
Published: November 20, 2009
New guidelines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first Pap test until age 21, and be screened less often than recommended in the past.
The advice, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, is meant to decrease unnecessary testing and potentially harmful treatment, particularly in teenagers and young women. The group’s previous guidelines had recommended yearly testing for young women, starting within three years of their first sexual intercourse, but no later than age 21.Arriving on the heels of hotly disputed guidelines calling for less use of mammography, the new recommendations might seem like part of a larger plan to slash cancer screening for women.
Behind Asia’s nice manners, tough lessons for Obama
Frustrating tour of Asia has left America with much to think about
By Rupert Cornwell in Washington Friday, 20 November 2009
Barack Obama’s first trip to Asia, which ended yesterday, has underscored two related truths about America and its 44th president. In his foreign dealings Mr Obama is long on charm and reason but – thus far at least – short on concrete results. And people don’t listen to the United States like they used to.To be fair, spectacular results were never expected from his eight-day visit that took in Japan, an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Singapore, China and South Korea. Mr Obama, who was born in Hawaii and spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, has described himself as “America’s first Pacific president”. But the reality is that relations between the US and the two largest Asian pacific powers are in a state of flux.
USA
Angry Congress lashes out at Obama
ECONOMIC WOES TAKING A TOLL
House Republicans call on Geithner to resign
By Brady Dennis, Zachary A. Goldfarb and Neil Irwin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 20, 2009
Growing discontent over the economy and frustration with efforts to speed its recovery boiled over Thursday on Capitol Hill in a wave of criticism and outright anger directed at the Obama administration.Episodes in both houses of Congress exposed the raw nerves of lawmakers flooded with stories of unemployment and economic hardship back home. They also underscored the stiff headwinds that the administration faces as it pushes to enact sweeping changes to the financial regulatory system while also trying to create jobs for ordinary Americans.
Effects of judge’s Katrina ruling could be huge
The finding that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is liable for much of the New Orleans flooding could change how levees are designed nationwide
By Richard Fausset and Ralph Vartabedian
November 20, 2009
Reporting from Los Angeles and New Orleans – The harshly worded legal ruling that held the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers responsible for much of the flooding during Hurricane Katrina could have a far-reaching effect on national flood-control policies and on the federal government’s long-standing refusal to take responsibility for its errors.U.S. District Judge Stanwood R. Duval Jr. issued the stinging rebuke to the corps late Wednesday for its failure to properly manage a navigation channel and levees, which he ruled were directly responsible for much of the flooding that devastated New Orleans’ Lower 9th Ward and St. Bernard Parish.
Europe
The 26-year-old victim of the First World War
An encounter with an unexploded RAF bomb changed Maité Roël’s life for ever. Robert Fisk finds out what the Great War means to her
Friday, 20 November 2009
Maité Roël is just 26 and she is the youngest victim of the First World War. And when she walks to meet me past the old churchyard in her village of Bovekerke, she limps, ever so slightly, on her left leg, the living ghost of all those mutilated, long-dead men whose memory the world honoured on Armistice Day earlier this month. She even holds a First World War veteran’s card – “mutilée dans la guerre” – and when she shows it to the local railway ticket inspectors for reduced fare train trips, they suspect her – with awful inevitability – of stealing it from dead grandfather or great-grandfather.But it’s all true. After shaking off – so far – a 10-year addiction to the morphine which Belgian doctors gave her during 29 excruciatingly painful operations on her leg, Maité is now a young mother with a year and a half old baby and, incredibly, a total disinterest in the war that almost killed her.
French PM to Irish leader: keep out of Thierry Henry scandal
From The Times
November 20, 2009
David Sharrock and Charles Bremner
Ireland’s anger at being denied a place at the World Cup finals by a blatant French handball threatened to provoke a diplomatic row yesterday when the prime ministers of both countries became involved.François Fillon warned Brian Cowen to keep out of the football scandal after the Taoiseach said that he would discuss his call for the Ireland-France match to be replayed with President Sarkozy. Mr Fillon said that neither government should interfere in the decisions of Fifa, world football’s governing body.
Asia
Karzai inaugurated – but where were the crowds?
Rejoicing is in short supply in the Afghan capital as the President’s second term begins
By Kim Sengupta in Kabul Friday, 20 November 2009
There were no overt celebrations and the general public were excluded from the ceremony. As Hamid Karzai was inaugurated for his second term as Afghan President – three months after a fraud-riddled election – the capital was in a state of siege. Helicopter gunships clattered overhead and rings of armed checkpoints choked Kabul, the only sign of life on empty streets.It was a far cry from his first inauguration five years ago. Much of the city was decorated in 2004, with streams of coloured lights, the red, green and black of the Afghan flag, and portraits of Mr Karzai hanging from buildings and street lamps.
Hong Kong hands over Tiananmen dissident Zhou Yongjun for trial
From The Times
November 20, 2009
Jane Macartney in Beijing
A student leader of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests has been put on trial and faces another prison term in China after he was handed over by the authorities in Hong Kong.Activists and pro-democracy legislators in Hong Kong have demanded an explanation as to why Zhou Yongjun was handed over to the Chinese police after trying to enter the territory on a false Malaysian passport.
Mr Zhou, 42, who has lived in the United States since seeking asylum there in 1992, was put on trial on charges of fraud a day after President Obama ended a state visit to China.
Africa
A healing in Mozambique
In a country where brutal civil war raged just two decades ago, surprisingly little anger remains today
Jonathan Steele
The Guardian, Friday 20 November 2009
It’s hard to imagine a more tranquil place than Gaza: farmers taking their produce to market, women and children standing patiently at bus stops, towns crowded with shoppers, and along the almost empty sandy beaches no sound to disturb the stillness except the thunder of surf.This is the “other Gaza”, the province of Mozambique that stretches north of the capital Maputo and was once the seat of an ancient African kingdom that resisted Portuguese colonial rule until 1897. In spite of today’s calm, the area knew horror not long ago, as the occasional sight of ruined schools and burnt-out health clinics along the main north-south road makes clear. Until a nationwide peace deal was reached in 1992, Gaza was racked by a civil war that ravaged most of the country’s small towns and villages.
Ethiopia convicts military men of coup plot
Twenty-six Ethiopians have been found guilty of plotting a coup and trying to assassinate government officials, after a trial criticised by rights groups.
The BBC
The authorities said they found weapons including land mines at the men’s homes when they were arrested in April.
Prosecutors say the plotters were part of the Ginbot 7 (15 May) group led by Berhanu Nega, a US-based dissident.
But a number of the defendants, most of whom have army backgrounds, say they were tortured into confessing.
Relatives of the men say they were badly beaten while in custody.
But Judge Adem Ibrahim said the court had not been convinced of the torture allegations.
Middle East
Palestinians accuse Israel settlements of diverting water
Israel settlements use more than four times as much water as Palestinians and the absence of a peace agreement is stalling negotiations to improve the situation.
By Joshua Mitnick | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 19, 2009 edition
AUJA, WEST BANK – The Hmoud family once prospered in this arid Palestinian farm village by cultivating banana and eggplant crops, earning enough to send a son abroad for medical school and to build a house with a showy staircase and a two-story window.But drought has decimated the spring that is Auja’s only agricultural water source, and fields once filled with palm trees are now empty. Village residents have been forced to find work in the greenhouses near Jewish settlements that are hooked up to Israeli water mains.
“This before you is barren land,” says Mahmoud Hmoud, standing in parched field littered with plastic sheeting. “Ten years go it was blooming.”
Long a hot-button in the parched Middle East, the need for a water-rights compromise here has become more acute after years of dry winters, as Palestinians struggle with what they say are insufficient quotas and Israel mulls steep tax hikes on home and garden usage. Both sides blame each other for failing to honor the 1995 interim agreement still in effect. Though potential solutions exist, little progress can be made until the peace process – stalled for nearly a year – is restarted.
Latin America
Venezuela blows up border bridges with Colombia
Tensions raised between two countries as troops dynamite rural walkways Venezuela claims are used by smugglers and militia
Rory Carroll in Caracas
guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 November 2009 08.20 GMT
Venezuela has blown up two pedestrian bridges on its border with Colombia in the latest sign of deteriorating relations between the Andean neighbours.Soldiers destroyed the walkways because they were being used by illegal militia and drug traffickers, said Eusebio Aguero, an army general based in the border state of Táchira.
“They are two foot bridges that paramilitary fighters used, where gasoline and drug precursors were smuggled, subversive groups entered. They are not considered in any international treaty.”