China Grave Robbers Sold Dead Brides

Four people have been jailed in China for digging up corpses to sell as brides for traditional “ghost marriages”--where dead single men are buried with a wife for the afterlife, it has been reported.
Marriage is an important part of Chinese society and, while the practice is increasingly rare, it is still kept up by some families whose young adult sons pass away before having a chance to wed, AFP reported.
Normally it is agreed between the families of the dead, but the Xian Evening News said on Saturday that the group “stole female corpses and after cleaning them, fabricated medical files for the deceased and sold them for a high price”.
A court in the northern province of Shaanxi had in recent days sentenced the four to terms between 28 and 32 months, it said, adding they “took advantage” of the “bad tradition” of ghost marriages in parts of Shaanxi and neighboring Shanxi province.
The deceased couples are typically buried side by side after a wedding ceremony of sorts.
Citing the court, the report said the gang made a total of 240,000 yuan (£26,000) from the sales of 10 corpses.

Peru, UN Create Anti-Drug Center

Peru and the UN office on drugs agreed on Monday to jointly establish a center to stem the production and trade of illegal drugs in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Center of Excellence is aimed at boosting the government’s ability to control the distribution of chemical substances by training officials to identify the methods used to funnel drugs and their base components toward illegal production, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crimes, Xinhua reported.
“The Center of Excellence is to promote research and technical knowledge to prevent and control the misuse of drugs and chemical precursors that are used in the production of illicit drugs,” Peru’s National Committee for Development and a Drug-Free Life (Devida) said in a statement.
“This effort joins other measures taken by the government,” Devida’s Executive President Carmen Masias said.
Peru has been plagued by drugs. According to official figures, the country is home to 61,200 hectares of coca plantations, 90 percent of which end up in the hands of drug traffickers. Last year, more than 1,900 tons of banned substances were seized, the largest amount confiscated yearly in the past decade.
Drug traffickers annually produce about 325 tons of cocaine, only 10 percent of which can be seized by police.

UN Demands Action to End Violence Against Women

Society Desk

The head of the UN women’s agency said on Monday it’s unacceptable that an average of 40 percent of women globally are likely to be beaten, raped, abused or mutilated in their lifetimes and demanded action to end the violence.
Speaking at the opening of a two-week meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, focused on combating violence against women, Michelle Bachelet also said that the conference provided a unique opportunity for all countries to address ‘this most pervasive violation of human rights and dignity”.
“This pandemic strikes the life of millions of women, fractures families and communities, and impedes development, costing countries billions of dollars each year in healthcare costs and lost productivity,” Bachelet told a news conference.
She said that data from the World Health Organization and other research shows that an average of 40 percent--and up to 70 percent of women in some countries--face violence in their lifetimes.
Bachelet expressed hope that this year’s meeting would produce a final document that will be “an important tool for improving and progressing on the struggle against violence against women.”
When the Commission on the Status of Women took up violence against women a decade ago, governments were unable to reach agreement on a final document because of differences over sex education, a woman’s right to reproductive health and demands for an exception for traditional, cultural and religious practices.
Bachelet also called for strengthened implementation of laws to prevent and respond to violence against women, more focus on prevention, and better data and research.
On March 5, nearly 187 countries have ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the UN Security Council now recognizes sexual violence as a tactic of war, but Bachelet said there are still over 600 million women living in countries where domestic violence is not considered a crime.
Bachelet said it’s time for action when “intimate partner violence” is responsible for between 40 and 70 percent of female murder victims in Australia, Canada, Israel, South Africa and the United States.
In these countries, one in three girls in developing countries is likely to be a child bride, millions of women and girls are trafficked in modern-day slavery and rape is used as a tactic of war.
Bachelet called the meeting uniting 6,000 representatives of civil society attending along with ministers and ambassadors from the 193 UN member-states “the largest international meeting ever on ending violence against women.”

Blocking Medicine to Iran

By Siamak Namazi

Patients in Iran are dying of treatable diseases because of shortages in life-saving medicines. The past year has been nothing short of catastrophic for the Iranian healthcare sector: Imports from American and European drug-makers in 2012 were down by an estimated 30 percent since 2011, and they continue to fall.
Over the past three months, I led a group of independent business consultants with expertise in Iran to evaluate the problem. After conducting extensive interviews in Tehran and Dubai with Iranian importers and manufacturers of pharmaceuticals and medical equipment and their Western counterparts, we concluded that even though in theory the sanctions regime imposed on Iran by the United States and the European Union is supposed to allow humanitarian trade, in reality it impairs the delivery of drugs and medical equipment to Iran.
The main culprit are the US and European sanctions that regulate financial transactions with Iran.

Irrational System
The system is irrational: There is a blanket waiver to the sanctions to facilitate humanitarian trade, but other laws restricting financial transactions with Iran make it impossible to implement that exception. So the trade of medical supplies is legal in theory and virtually impossible in practice because Iran cannot pay for the Western medicine it needs.
One problem is that when sanctions were tightened in 2012, Iran’s ability to sell oil was further limited and its main source of hard currency restricted. Another problem is that Iran’s main banking infrastructure--including the Central Bank of Iran and Bank Tejarat, Iran’s main trading bank--is blacklisted by Washington.
Sanctions have also choked off Iranian banks from the global financial arena by putting draconian restrictions on international banks that deal with Iran, including by cutting them off from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. Penalties for violating US sanctions are so stern as to discourage most international banks, which are generally risk-averse anyway, from engaging in humanitarian trade.
A senior representative from a reputable Iranian pharmaceutical company told our study group that when he presented a French bank in Paris with documentation showing that a deal to ship vaccines to Iran was fully legal, he was told, “Even if you bring a letter from the French president himself saying it is OK to do so, we will not risk this.” Today, only one international bank--in Turkey--is willing to take the chance.
In simple terms, even when Iran can get its hands on dollars or euros to buy medical supplies, it cannot find a banking avenue to clear the trade. A senior representative at one American pharmaceutical company told me about a $60 million order for an anti-rejection drug for liver-transplant patients that fell through even though the sale was fully legal, all the needed licensing from the US Treasury was in place, and Iran had allocated the needed hard currency. No bank would perform the transaction.
To compensate, Iran has been importing more drugs or the active ingredients for them from China and India. But these products are usually of inferior quality and more limited effectiveness than the equivalent from American and European manufacturers. And in the highly patented world of pharmaceuticals, substitution often isn’t an option at all, particularly when it comes to advanced medicines used to treat complex diseases like cancer and multiple sclerosis.

Solutions
There are solutions. With fewer than 100 American and European companies holding patents to the most advanced medicines needed, it should be possible to craft narrow exemptions authorizing Iranian and international banks to do business with those companies for the exclusive purpose of providing medication to Iranian patients without undermining the sanctions regime overall.
This would mean carving out special exceptions for at least some of the 20 or so Iranian banks that the US government currently blacklists wholesale, at least for the narrow purpose of purchasing medical drugs and supplies.
Washington must also reassure international financial institutions by clarifying existing regulations and stating unambiguously that no sanctions will be imposed on international banks that facilitate licensed or exempted humanitarian trade with Iran.
Another solution would be to narrowly adjust the terms of the exemptions allowing foreign countries and companies to purchase Iranian crude oil.
Despite existing restrictions, Iran currently sells around one million barrels of oil annually. But the terms of these special sales translate into a complex bartering system that ultimately leaves Tehran short of US dollars and euros. For example, Iran’s oil sales to China are bought in renminbi, which it must keep in Chinese banks and can only use to pay Chinese companies for imports into Iran.
Iran should be allowed to convert some of its current holdings in Chinese, Indian and other banks around the world into hard currencies for the exclusive purpose of buying medical supplies. European states could also be authorized to buy small quantities of Iranian oil and hold the funds in escrow for Iran to use solely to that end.
The West must relax and rationalize the terms of its sanctions regime against Iran to allow more medical goods into the country. If it doesn’t, more Iranian men, women and children will suffer needlessly.
Source: NewYorkTimes

Indian Woman on 12-Year Hunger Strike Charged

Irom Sharmila has not eaten a meal in 12 years. The 40-year-old woman has been on a hunger strike--and force fed through a tube by authorities--to protest an Indian law that suspends many human rights protections in areas of conflict.
Sharmila was charged on Monday with attempted suicide in a case likely to bring major attention to her quiet protest in the tiny northeastern state of Manipur against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AP reported.
Under the law, in effect in Indian-ruled Kashmir and parts of the country’s northeast, troops have the right to shoot to kill suspected rebels without fear of possible prosecution and to arrest suspected militants without a warrant. It also gives police wide-ranging powers of search and seizure.
Dubbed “Iron Lady” by her supporters, Sharmila has become a rallying point for those demanding the law’s repeal.
Sharmila had her last voluntary meal on Nov. 4, 2000, in Imphal, the capital of Manipur, one of several northeastern states facing insurgencies. She was arrested three days later and has been force fed through a tube in her nose ever since.
Under the law, she has to be released once a year to see if she will start eating. When she doesn’t, she is taken back into custody and force fed.
The current charges stem from a 2006 protest she attended in New Delhi. Police took her from the protest venue, hospitalized her and registered a case of attempted suicide against her.
Magistrate Akash Jain charged her on Monday with attempted suicide. Appearing in court with her nose tube in place, she pleaded not guilty.
“I love life. I do not want to take my life, but I want justice and peace,” PTI quoted her as saying in court, which she attended after flying in from Manipur over the weekend.
Jain set her trial for May 22. If convicted, she faces one year in prison.
She remained unbowed as she left the courtroom.
“I will continue my fast until the special powers act is withdrawn,” she said.

African Forest Elephants Decline by 62%

Forest elephant numbers have decreased by 62 percent across Central Africa over the last 10 years, according to a study.
The analysis confirmed fears that African forest elephants (Loxodonta cyclotis) are heading for extinction, possibly within the next decade, BBC reported.
Conservationists said “effective, rapid, multi-level action is imperative” in order to save the elephants.
They are concerned the forest elephants are being killed for their ivory.
Results of the study, undertaken by researchers from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), are published in the scientific journal PLoS One.
Over 60 co-authors contributed to the study, which was led by Dr Fiona Maisels, a WCS conservation scientist from the School of Natural Sciences, University of Sterling.
“Although we were expecting to see these results, we were horrified that the decline over the period of a mere decade was over 60 percent,” Dr Maisels told BBC.
Scientists surveyed forests in Cameroon, Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon and the Republic of Congo.

Britain’s Health Falls Further Behind Europe

Britain’s health has fallen further behind other Western nations in the past 20 years as the NHS has failed to improve detection rates in major diseases or tackle poor public health, according to a major study.
Premature death rates from a host of conditions--including heart disease and breast cancer--are significantly higher in Britain than in similarly developed countries such as France, Italy and Spain, Telegraph reported.
Although our health has generally improved in the past two decades, other countries have made greater progress, leaving Britain “persistently and significantly” lagging behind the EU and other global powers, researchers said.
Our life expectancy, for example, increased by 4.2 years to 79.9 between 1990 and 2010, but still dropped from 12th to 14th on a list of 19 western nations.
Authors of the report said it should serve as a “wake-up call” on the need for Britain to improve public health by tackling problems like obesity and smoking, and to diagnose and treat health problems at an earlier stage. High blood pressure is the second highest cause of death and disability in the UK after smoking but treatment has barely improved in 20 years, with the condition still only being controlled in a third of patients.

Crowded Japanese Hospitals

A 75-year-old Japanese man died after 25 hospitals refused to admit him to their emergency rooms over two hours, citing lack of beds or doctors to treat him.