February 10, 2006
“Bring the blood to the wounded, not the other way around” was the premise of the Canadian doctor who invented the first mobile blood-transfusion unit. After cutting himself while performing an operation without gloves, he died of blood poisoning in 1939.
Cité-Soleil, in Haiti, despite its optimistic-sounding name, has borne the brunt of the violence. Port-au-Prince’s poorest suburb is a no-go zone even for the blue helmets, unless they are leading a raid to search for weapons. Last month only, 34 people were treated for gunshot wounds, 50% of them are women, children, and the elderly.
A man dies after struggling with the officers when they attempted to subdue him as he meandered drunkenly through the streets wearing only pajama pants and insulting passersby.
Danish Muslim imams or religious chiefs talk of reconciliation when speaking in Danish in Danish broadcasting networks. But in Arabic, according to press reports, when appearing on Arab radio stations they have been inciters of terrorism and religious hatred between Muslims and Christians.
In Afghanistan, the Talibans are reflecting on where to exhibit the severed head of president Karzai. In Beirut it is open season for Christians.
The government’s sudden closure of a company recently created to preserve cells from the umbilical cords of babies, days after a newspaper published the news that dozens of families are turning to foreign firms for this service, throws into relief a point of conflict between public interest and private law.
A 35-year-old unemployed single mother of three whildren who suffers from severe myopia appeals to the court after a doctor insists that she go ahead with the birth of her fourth child despite warnings from ophthalmologists that she could go blind.
A young woman with a hubba-hubba figure, a great smile, alabaster skin and dark, curly hair, died young, mysteriously and gruesomely. Photos of her corpse –torso cut in two, face slashed into a hideous mock of a grin- were suppressed, self-censored by the papers. She was known to friends as the Black Dahlia.
In the 1930s, Shanti, an Indian citizen, signs up to study dentistry in Germany and ends up joining the British troops during WWII. A Jewish woman from Berlin flees to London and there meets Shanti, who had been a boarder in her family home. They marry.
A central figure in the case of a mysterious writer comes forward to say that such writer does not exist and that the books published under that name were actually written by his ex girlfriend. She conducted telephone conversations as the writer with unwitting editors, using the voice of a young man with a West Virginia accent.
February 05, 2006
A train operator says the rush-hour journeys would be lengthened slightly after tight timetables and speeding were blamed for a derailment that killed 107 people.
A Yale professor, aviator and later senator, brokers a special dispensation with the Peruvian government to take Inca bones and ritual tomb objects out of Peru.
A nation of twelve million traumatized people, the survivors and the children of survivors of one of the past century’s most horrifying episodes of mass murder.
Four Algerian conscripts are among the soldiers under the command of a young French Army officer, who treats them with respect and trusts them. The other French soldiers refer to them by slang names for Arabs.
A charismatic rock singer is arrested on suspicion of driving erratically while on drugs. While at the police station, he is arrested again, on suspicion of assaulting a fan at a recent concert. Three hours later, wandering erratically down the street, he is arrested a third time, charged with carrying heroin in his jeans.
A stranger knocks on the door of a house and asks for shelter from the storm. Or says he has lost his way. Or claims he is expected as a guest.
A shoe designer takes the personal jewels of a screen legend from the 50s to create a one-of-a-kind pair of shoes, which will be worn by a movie star of today at this year’s Oscars.
A famous acting duo become the parents of twins, born to a surrogate mother.
China cancels the release of a movie citing concern that it could provoke public anger and rekindle anti-Japanese sentiment, reacting to a movie featuring China’s best-known actresses as geishas, which many Chinese consider to be prostitutes.
The bodies of 11 young men, some of them shot repeatedly and bearing marks of torture, are found in a minibus.
Two friends are arrested in connection with the disappearance of a young woman to whom they had given a ride. A criminal case is open into her alleged rape and murder. They are subjected to days of questioning that become increasingly violent and eventually descend into torture. But the young woman turns up alive and unharmed that same day, saying that she had gone to visit a friend without informing her family.
A former traffic police officer suffers several spinal injuries when he jumps out of the window of a police station while being tortured.
Human rights court orders Russia to pay for torture.
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