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The killing of Marwa el-Sherbini provoked outrage among Muslims for its sheer brutality and brazenness. According to witnesses, the pregnant mother was stabbed to death in front of a courtroom full of people in Germany by a man with an apparently deep-seated hatred of Muslims. Thousands marched in Egypt, Iran and other Muslim countries against what they perceived as a disturbing rise of Islamophobia and racism in Germany as well as the scant attention the attack received in the German media.

Now, four months later, the trial of el-Sherbini’s alleged killer is being closely watched by Muslims across the world — not to mention Germany’s 4 million–strong Muslim community — amid fears that anything but a severe punishment for the defendant, an unemployed Russian émigré identified only as Alex W., could spark more unrest. In Egypt, where el-Sherbini has been dubbed by the media as the “headscarf martyr,” people are expecting “justice to be administered in a swift way,” Ramzy Ezzeldin Ramzy, Egypt’s ambassador to Germany, told al-Jazeera.

The trial began on Oct. 26 in the same courthouse in Dresden where the killing took place. The 28-year-old defendant wore a cap, a dark blue hooded top and sunglasses to conceal his face as he was led into the courtroom, flanked by police officers, and seated behind a screen of bulletproof glass. Prosecutors then described how el-Sherbini, 31, was attacked. The pharmacist had appeared in court on July 1 to testify in a hearing against Alex W., who was appealing an earlier conviction for defaming el-Sherbini by calling her an “Islamist” and a “terrorist” on a playground. Prosecutors say that after el-Sherbini’s testimony, Alex W. lunged at her with a 7-in. kitchen knife he had smuggled into court and stabbed her at least 16 times. Her husband, Elwy Okaz, 32, was also repeatedly stabbed before being shot by a police officer who mistook him for el-Sherbini’s attacker. El-Sherbini, who was three months pregnant at the time, bled to death in front of the couple’s 3-year-old son. More…

Author: Tristana Moore / Berlin
Photo Credit: Ralf Hirschberger / Reuters

Geneva – Nearly 5,000 people have reportedly died from swine flu since it emerged this year and developed into a global epidemic, the World Health Organization said Friday.

Since most countries have stopped counting individual swine flu cases, the figure is considered an underestimate. WHO said there were 4,999 total deaths through Oct. 18, most of them in the Western Hemisphere. The figure was up 264 from a week earlier.

Iceland had its first swine flu death this week, and WHO said Sudan and Trinidad and Tobago also reported deaths from the virus for the first time this week. In the United States, swine flu caused at least 95 children’s deaths since April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday.

Forty-six states now have widespread flu activity, the CDC said, adding that only Connecticut, Hawaii, New Jersey and South Carolina are without widespread flu. In London, drug maker GlaxoSmithKline PLC said children may only need one shot of its swine flu vaccine to be protected.

In its statement Friday, Glaxo said one dose was enough to boost children’s immune systems to fight the virus, based on data from a trial in Spain in 200 children aged six months to 3 years.

Glaxo’s finding comes after experts said they expected children would need two doses, since their immune systems are weaker than those of adults. Last week, rival vaccine maker Sanofi Aventis said children would likely need two doses of vaccine against swine flu, or H1N1.

GlaxoSmithKline’s Pandemrix vaccine contains an adjuvant, a chemical compound that stretches a vaccine’s active ingredient and increases the human body’s immune response. While European flu vaccines commonly use adjuvants, there is limited data on how safe they are in groups including children and pregnant women. The adjuvant in Glaxo’s swine flu vaccine has been used in more than 41,000 people in bird flu, swine flu and regular flu vaccines. See the top 5 swine flu don’ts.

Swine flu vaccines in the U.S. do not have adjuvants. Some countries have ordered special stocks of vaccines without adjuvants for their at-risk populations. More…

Author: AP
Photo Credit: alvi2047

More forum discussion HERE.

President Barack Obama will know by Friday whether he got the deal on Iranian nuclear material on which he has staked his engagement strategy. A third day of talks in Vienna ended inconclusively on Wednesday, with the Iranian delegation requiring consultations with its government back in Tehran before signing off on a detailed plan to ship three-quarters of its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia for conversion into harmless reactor fuel. The parties to the deal have been given until Friday to report back, although reports from Vienna suggested that Tehran was pushing back against some of the terms being set for the deal by the U.S. and its partners — specifically over the timetable and scale of Iran’s uranium delivery to Russia.

The points of contention not only highlight the differing objectives of the two sides in making a deal, but also serve as a reminder that as significant a confidence-building mechanism as the Vienna deal may be, it doesn’t actually begin to address the deadlock between Iran and the West over whether the Islamic Republic will continue to enrich uranium. (See pictures of the world’s worst nuclear disasters.)

The deal under discussion in Vienna was hatched when Iran approached the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) earlier this year for help in acquiring fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran, which is not suspected of being part of any covert weapons program. U.S. officials took the opportunity to address the “ticking clock” concern that Iran had already amassed enough low-enriched uranium (LEU) that — if Iran expelled inspectors and reprocessed the material to weapons grade — it could be fashioned into a single atomic bomb. So Washington proposed that Iran use its stockpile of LEU as the basis for the reactor fuel, which would require shipping it to Russia and France for further enrichment and conversion into fuel rods that would be extremely difficult for Iran to weaponize. The deal obviously appealed to the West as a way to limit Iran’s ability to potentially create a bomb, but the Iranians aren’t viewing it as a concession. They see the deal as a tacit recognition that uranium enrichment in Iran is an intractable reality, despite Western hopes of coaxing and cajoling Iran into abandoning it altogether in exchange for a package of political and economic incentives. (After all, the uranium that Russia and France would reprocess for Iran under the proposed deal was enriched in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.)

In Italy, a cleaning woman is often called “Filippina,” says an article in the October 1 issue of Time magazine, an indication of Italian society’s backwardness when it comes to the issue of race, the writer says.

The article was actually an update about Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s gaffe November last year, when he quipped that the next United States president “was young, handsome and had a good tan.” Berlusconi has refused to apologize for the gaffe, even calling his critics “embeciles.”

Written by Jeff Israely, the article “What Berlusconi’s Tan Obama ‘Jokes’ Say About Italy” relates that “in many ways mainstream Italian society is several generations behind the rest of the West when it comes to race.”

There are more than 80,000 Filipino migrants in Italy working mainly as domestic helpers, according to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration.

Actually, domestic work is also done by many Ukrainian and Moldavian migrants. Along with Filipinos, they do house cleaning, baby sitting, and taking care of the aged, reports La Repubblica, the Rome-based Socialist newspaper.

The newspaper also notes that the Filipino domestics, aside from helping a lot of families back home with their remittances, have boosted the dwindling population of Catholic church-goers in Rome, especially the church of San Silvestre. More…

Author: Frankie Llaguno

(SEOUL, South Korea) —North Korea’s leader is offering to return to multinational disarmament talks in a renewed effort to draw Washington into one-on-one talks that the United States has yet to fully embrace.

Kim Jong Il’s offer, reported Tuesday by North Korean state media, reflects Pyongyang’s desire for direct engagement with Washington. The administration of President Barack Obama has said that might be possible but any talks should be part of the six-nation process aimed at ending the North’s nuclear programs.

Kim told Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday that the North “is willing to attend multilateral talks, including the six-party talks, depending on the progress in its talks with the United States,” China’s Xinhua News Agency reported.

“Kim Jong Il wants to show through bilateral talks with the U.S. that his country is an equal partner of the United States, and this will strengthen his position before returning to the six-way talks,” said analyst Lee Sang-hyun of the Sejong Institute, a South Korean security think tank. More…

Author: AP / JAE-SOON CHANG
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