Locked out: The 12 million people without a country, and their need to become a citizen
The victims of shifting borders, politics, or the happenstance of birthplace, the world’s 12 million stateless people and their need to become a citizen are rising on the international human rights agenda.
By Stephanie Hanes, Correspondent / July 4, 2010
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic
Until she graduated from high school, Sonia Camilise never had reason to question her nationality. She was born here in the Dominican Republic and grew up speaking Spanish, dancing merengue, and watching the boys play baseball in the grassy lot outside her family’s small house.
“I am Dominican,” she says. “Of course.”But two years ago, when she went to get a certified copy of her birth certificate – a necessary part of the college application process here – she discovered that her government had a different perspective.
The civil registry officers told her that she was not Dominican, but Haitian. Their reasoning: Ms. Camilise did not have the papers to show that her father, a Haitian immigrant, had legal residency here when she was born.
The science of lying: Why the truth really can hurt
Lying causes humans emotional stress – yet psychologists say we are primed to deceive. Studies show there are clear biological benefits to dishonesty, writes Alice-Azania Jarvis
Monday, 5 July 2010
How do you know if someone is lying to you? What, exactly, are you supposed to look for?A suddenly distended nose, possibly – if your name is Geppetto and your son a wooden puppet with a taste for hyperbole. Shifty eyes, more commonly. A wavering gaze. An inability to meet the stare of the inquisitor when asked to “look at me straight and tell me you mean it”. Or, perhaps, a sudden divergence from the graphic norm when the speaker’s vitals are being tracked by polygraph.
Whichever option you go for, whatever result it happens to yield, it wouldn’t, ultimately, matter. The odds are that it was wrong. In fact, statistically speaking, it was even more likely to be wrong than if you had simply guessed at random, or had flipped a coin.
USA
Companies Find Ways to Bypass Ban on Earmarks
By ERIC LIPTON and RON NIXON
Published: July 4, 2010TOLEDO, Ohio – Just one day after leaders of the House of Representatives announced a ban on earmarks to profit-making companies, Victoria Kurtz, the vice president for marketing of a small Ohio defense contracting firm, hit on a creative way around it.
To keep the taxpayer money flowing, Ms. Kurtz incorporated what she called the Great Lakes Research Center, a nonprofit organization that just happened to specialize in the same kind of work performed by her own company – and at the same address.
Determining oil spill’s environmental damage is difficult
By David A. Fahrenthold
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 5, 2010
How dead is the Gulf of Mexico?It is perhaps the most important question of the BP oil spill — but scientists don’t appear close to answering it despite a historically vast effort.
In the 2 1/2 months since the spill began, the gulf has been examined by an armada of researchers — from federal agencies, universities and nonprofit groups. They have brought back vivid snapshots of a sea under stress: sharks and other deep-water fish suddenly appearing near shore, oil-soaked marshes turning deathly brown, clouds of oil swirling in deep water.
Europe
Polish presidential election: Komorowski holds off Kaczynski
Interim leader stays ahead despite last-minute surge in support for late Polish president’s twin brother, exit polls show
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 July 2010 08.31 BST
Poland’s interim leader, Bronislaw Komorowski, appears to have held off a last-minute surge of voter support for the twin brother of the late president, whose death in a plane crash forced yesterday’s early election.Exit polls showed Komorowski with a slight edge over Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who essentially conceded defeat in the presidential run-off by declaring before supporters: “I congratulate the winner.”
A poll released yesterday by the TNS OBOP institute predicted Komorowski winning 53.1% of the vote, and Kaczynski winning 46.9%. A separate poll, by Millward Brown SMG/KRC, showed Komorowski with nearly 52% and Kaczynski with just over 48%.
French junior ministers resign over perks scandals
Two French junior ministers have resigned over spending scandals, as the government attempts to regain political credibility following a series of setbacks.
CORRUPTION | 05.07.2010
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has accepted the resignation of two of his junior ministers after separate spending scandals.The resignations from Alain Joyandet, state secretary for overseas development, and Christian Blanc, state secretary for the Greater Paris region, followed disclosures that both politicians had abused their office perks.
Joyandet came under fire following press reports that he hired a private jet costing 116,500 euros to fly on official business to the Caribbean, when he could have taken a regular scheduled flight. He was also criticized last month over claims he was granted a permit illegally to build an extension to his house in Saint Tropez.
Middle East
Diplomats suspend protests for PM’s visi
By Catrina Stewart in Jerusalem Monday, 5 July 2010
Israel’s powerful trade union has stepped in at the 11th hour to prevent a Foreign Ministry wage dispute from overshadowing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States that begins today.Disgruntled ministry workers – who say they receive half the pay of their peers at Defence but do the same amount of work, often in countries where their security is at greater risk – have been stepping up their protests, ditching their suits for jeans, and shirking diplomatic duties.
Israel-Palestinian leaders to meet
MONDAY, JULY 05, 2010
Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, is due to hold talks with Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, in their first meeting since February.Few details of Monday’s talks have been released, but Israeli public radio said the two would be discussing the peace process ahead of a trip by Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to the United States.
A Palestinian official said the meeting was expected to take place on around 1:30pm (10:30GMT) at an undisclosed location.
Barak told reporters last week that the two would be meeting to discuss “the situation on the ground, about security co-ordination”.
Asia
Xinjiang riots: one year on, Uighur and Han fears still run deep
Security forces boost in China’s north-west region as economic stress divides ethnic groups
Tania Branigan in Beijing
The Guardian, Monday 5 July 2010
At one point, Ilham Tohti estimated with a chuckle, he was the richest Uighur in Beijing. But he did not believe money solved every problem. “In Uighur society you could say the main issues are one – poverty and unemployment. Second, we are a people who believe in Islam and still have our own history and culture as well as language.”Surveillance and harassment have dogged China’s leading Uighur intellectual for years, thanks to his analysis of the situation in Xinjiang. But sensitivity around the issue has been greater since inter-ethnic violence in the north-west region, a year ago today, left 200 mostly Han Chinese dead and 1,700 others injured
Arrested for bibles, North Korean dies in prison
by HYUNG-JIN KIM
SEOUL, South Korea – Like most North Koreans, Son Jong Nam knew next to nothing about Christianity when he fled to neighboring China in 1998.
Eleven years later, he died back in North Korea in prison, reportedly tortured to death for trying to spread the Gospel in his native land, armed with 20 bibles and 10 cassette tapes of hymns. He was 50.
His story, pieced together by his younger brother, a defector who lives in South Korea, sheds light on a little-discussed practice: the sending back of North Korean converts to evangelize in their home country – a risky move, but one of the few ways to penetrate a country that bars most citizens from outside TV or radio and the Internet.
Latin America
Mexican president’s allies lead in key elections
by ALEXANDRA OLSON, OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
CIUDAD VICTORIA, Mexico – Mexican President Felipe Calderon’s party appeared headed to a triumph Sunday in a longtime stronghold of the former ruling party and was in a tight race for the governorship of another key state, according to exit polls and preliminary official results.
A victory in the southern state of Oaxaca would be a much-needed boost for Calderon after a campaign for local elections in more than a dozen states that was besieged by assassinations and scandals that displayed the power of drug cartels and faced his government with its most serious political challenge.