Culture

Earthquake Survivors Blame Corruption (Turkey)

Monday, 06 September 1999 06:15 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 06:54 Written by The Editor

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Earthquake survivors are turning their anger not at nature, but at corrupt bureaucrats and the builders of high-rise death traps. As of this date more than 11,000 are known to be dead.

Terror Measured in Severed Limbs (Sierra Leone)

Monday, 06 September 1999 06:13 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 07:01 Written by The Editor

FREETOWN, Sierra Leone -- After the rebels had fled into the surrounding hills, Lamine Jusu Jarka was carried to the main hospital here one morning in January. A young man named Mr. Junior, wearing a shirt that declared "C.O. Cut Hands," had chopped off his arms with an ax.

Do More in Duma: And Get Away With It (Russia)

Sunday, 05 September 1999 14:15 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 07:02 Written by The Editor

When Communist legislators in the lower house of the Russian Parliament threatened last week to try to impeach President Boris N. Yeltsin -- bedridden with double pneumonia -- on charges of absenteeism, even some of their own party members blushed. After all, the legislators themselves, Communist and otherwise, often don't bother to show up for important business. In fact, there have been key votes when the speaker of the Duma and all six of his deputies were absent, leaving Anatoly Lukyanov, the hard-line Communist who supported the 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, in charge.

North Korea's Famine: Socialism & Nature at Work

Sunday, 05 September 1999 14:11 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 08:26 Written by The Editor

UNITED NATIONS -- North Korea appears to be emerging from a prolonged severe famine with the help of international food aid, but four terrible years of hunger from 1995 through 1998 may have cost the country 2 million to 3 million lives, according to accumulating evidence gathered by a range of experts. Many of the dead were old people and children, or urban dwellers of any age with no way to forage off the land.

Fearful of Genital Mutilation, Woman Wins Asylum in United States (Ghana)

Sunday, 05 September 1999 13:56 Last Updated on Thursday, 08 March 2007 08:57 Written by The Editor

Twenty-nine year old Ms. Abankwah requested asylum more than two years ago, when arriving at Kennedy International Airport. Instead of asylum, she quickly found herself under arrest for trying to enter the country with false immigration papers. Finally, on July 19 [1999], the Board of Immigration Appeals granted her her appeal on the petition for political asylum, on the ground that she feared being subjected to genital cutting if she returned to Ghana, her homeland. She is only the second woman granted asylum in the United States because of genital cutting, which millions of African women undergo each year.