Soraya Bahgat said she founded the group using online social media after seeing television footage last November of a mob of men attacking a woman and tearing off her clothes. She had been on the way to a demonstration at Tahrir herself, but instead stayed in, gripped with fear.
Egyptian volunteers of Tahrir Bodyguard, an anti-harassment group, work at a rally in Tahrir Square. AP
“It was sickening. They were dragging her through the street,” said the 29-year-old, who works as a human resources manager. “I couldn’t imagine something so horrific, and something that fundamentally would keep women from exercising their right to assembly like anyone else. No one should be prevented from demonstrating.”
Such is the concern that the United Nations on Thursday demanded authorities to act to bring perpetrators to justice, saying it had reports of 25 sexual assaults on women in Tahrir rallies over the past week. Another Egyptian organization that also patrols the square, Operation Anti-Sexual Harassment/Assault, reported 19 incidents on one day alone. It was January 25th — the second anniversary of the start of the uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak.
Beijing office workers wear 'gas masks' at their desks as hazardous smog
envelops city
Office workers in Beijing have resorted to wearing gas-mask style protective
headgear at their desks as residents across northern China battled through
choking pollution.
A woman wearing a mask for
protection from pollution walks through the haze in Beijing on Jan 29, 2013.
Photo: REUTERS/Jason
Lee
7:59AM GMT 29 Jan 2013
Air quality levels rose above index limits in Beijing amid warnings that the
smog may not clear until Thursday.
Visibility was reduced to around 200 metres in the centre of the capital,
where mask-wearing pedestrians made their way through a murky haze, despite
warnings from authorities to stay indoors unless absolutely necessary.
In a Beijing city office visited by news agency Agence France-Presse, up to
20 workers wore the protective headgear at their desks, and the cloud of
pollution shrouded large swathes of the country for the second consecutive day.
State broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) showed vehicles using full
headlights in mid-morning to light a way through the smog, mainly in the badly
affected central province of Henan.
A total of 109 flights were cancelled at Zhengzhou Airport in Henan, said
CCTV, adding that the haze would last until Thursday.
Chinese blogger jailed for 'disrupting traffic' fails to have sentence
overturned
A female Chinese blogger who was jailed for nine months for "disrupting the
traffic" has failed to get her sentence overturned on appeal, highlighting
rising Chinese government fears over the power of online activism.
Wang Lihong was arrested last
April as China's government mounted a clampdown on activists, lawyers and
bloggers in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisingsPhoto: AP
Wang Lihong, 55, was a previously little-known activist who in recent years
had attracted a sizeable online following for her work publicising injustices,
land grabs and corruption by local government officials.
She was arrested last April as China's government mounted a
clampdown on activists, lawyers and bloggers in the wake of the Arab Spring
uprisings. In September she was jailed for nine months after what her lawyers
said was a peremptory hearing.
Her supporters say the charges of "disrupting the traffic" were trumped up
after she attended a peaceful protest outside a court in the southern city of
Fuzhou where three women whom she had supported were being tried for
'slandering' a government official.
Analysts say her case – which was brought to wider attention by the artist Ai
Weiwei, who was himself detained without charge for 81 days earlier this year –
hints at growing nervousness among China's security apparatus at the power of
the internet to magnify dissent.
Over the last two years China's online landscape has been transformed by the
explosion of interest in Sina Corporation's Weibo tool, a Twitter-like
microblogging service that has garnered 200m users in just two years.
A 56-year-old Ohio man has died while diving the Benwood wreck site offshore from Key Largo.
The Monroe County Sheriff's Office says Ronald Dye of Grove City, Ohio, and his dive buddy entered the water at 9:15 a.m. Wednesday from the commercial dive vessel Tropical Adventures. The captain told police the dive buddy surfaced about 25 minutes later and signaled for assistance.
A mate on board entered the water with a rescue buoy and helped both men back aboard the boat. Dye was unresponsive and the mate began cardiopulmonary resuscitation as the vessel started back to shore.
Dye's dive buddy told police that Dye ran low on air, so they surfaced. Dye was taken to Mariners Hospital in Tavernier. An autopsy will be done to determine the cause of death.
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/24/3198691/diver-dies-while-exploring-key.html#storylink=cpy
A terrified coyote found wandering San Francisco’s Mission District is recovering at a Silicon Valley wildlife center, rescuers said Friday.
The coyote might have inadvertently hitched a ride into the big city in a car, moving truck or shipping container, said Rebecca Dmytryk, director of the group WildRescue, a nonprofit that helped the animal.
City animal control officers found the female coyote, known as No. 57, hungry and delirious near the corner of Capp and 18th streets on Jan. 18. “She was petrified, disoriented,” Dmytryk said. “She was at the end of the dead-end alley, facing away from people, hiding her head in the corner. She’d given up.”
Rescuers corralled the coyote and found she was emaciated, dehydrated and covered in fleas and ticks.
“Coyotes are really, really smart, and they just don’t usually act that way,” Dmytryk said. “If she were in her own neighborhood and she knew her way, she would have taken off.”
The dog is gaining weight and strength at the Wildlife Center of Silicon Valley, said Ashley Kinney, the wildlife rehabilitation supervisor who has been treating No. 57.
“She is actually doing really well; she is definitely improving,” Kinney said. “We hope to move her into our coyote pen with the other coyotes soon.”
Eventually, No. 57 will be released back into the wild, Kinney said.
Anyone who might have seen the coyote stumbling around the Mission should call the wildlife center at (408) 929-9453, rescuers said.
“Did they see an animal jump out of a car or a delivery truck?” Dmytryk asked. “If so, they should call.”
New Delhi: A man has been sentenced by a fast track court here to 10 years in jail for illegally confining and raping a minor girl in his house.
Rejecting a plea for leniency on the ground that the convict had a wife and two children to support, Additional Sessions Judge Virender Bhat, who heads the fast track court at Dwarka, handed down rigorous imprisonment to 27-year-old Mohammed Arif saying he took advantage of a “defenseless” minor girl to commit rape which “is the most hated crime in the society”.
Protests against Delhi gangrape. AP
The court said taking too sympathetic view for such crime would be counter productive in the long run and against social interest.
“The victim was a minor as well as defenseless girl and the convict (Arif) took advantage of her such state and committed the ghastly act of rape on her while confining her in a room of the house in which he was residing,” the judge said and also imposed a cost of Rs 35,000 on the convict.
The prosecution had said that on December 16, 2011 evening, Arif had pulled the girl into his house in West Delhi while she was on her way home and had raped her.
She was returning from the nearby market where she had gone to buy eatables, the prosecution had said.
It also said that Arif had threatened to kill her if she revealed the incident to anyone.
The counsel for the accused had pleaded for a lesser punishment saying he has two minor children and wife and he is the sole earner in the family. The court, however, rejected the counsel’s submission saying, “The social impact of the crime, when it relates to the sexual assault upon a woman, which has a great impact upon the social order and public interest, cannot lost sight of while sentencing a convict.
“These kind of crimes require exemplary treatment and any liberal attitude shown by imposing meagre sentence and taking too sympathetic view would be counter productive in the long run and against the social interest which needs to be cared for and strengthened by adopting a deterrent sentencing policy,” the court said.