President Mugabe: homosexuality will ?lead to extinction?

President Robert Mugabe has spoken out once more against homosexuality, saying it will kill off the human race, and does not belong in Zimbabwe.

Speaking at a women?s HIV/AIDS and gender rights conference in Harare yesterday, he said the ?gay world? goes against nature, and male homosexuality takes away women?s traditional rights to be a mother.

?When God created Adam ? if Adam had desired a person like him it would not have made him any happier,? he said.

?When a man says he wants to get married to another man, we in Zimbabwe don?t accept it. We can?t talk of women?s rights at all if we go in that direction. It will lead to extinction.?

Yesterday?s women?s rights meeting coincided with Amnesty International?s annual global rights report, which cited concerns over ?worsening discrimination in Africa over people?s sexual orientation or gender identity.?

In October, two allegedly gay men were arrested in Harare after being attacked by a mob. After a court cleared them of engaging in homosexual acts, Mugabe?s party militants then repeatedly threatened violence against the men?s lawyers.

Navanethem Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, arrived in Zimbabwe last Sunday to assess human rights in the country. She said that decisive leadership was needed to create fairer laws concerning property rights for widows, sexual violence, marital rape, sex work, and homosexuality.

Homosexuality is currently illegal in Zimbabwe ? laws passed in 2006 made it illegal for two people of the same sex to hold hands, hug, or kiss. The Censorship and Entertainments Control Act also stops citizens from importing, printing, publishing, distributing, or selling any publication which is ?indecent or obscene or is offensive or harmful to public morals or is likely to be contrary to public health?.

Mugabe, who has previously described same-sex partners as ?worse than pigs and dogs,? has vowed not to allow gay rights to be included in a new constitution being?drafted.

Discuss this story:

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Satellite images help doctors count people from space

For the first time, the population of an entire city has been estimated from space through a pioneering project to speed up medical and disaster relief efforts. By analysing satellite images of disaster zones and famine, war or disease-hit areas where census data is unreliable, or cities unreachable, researchers hope to make rapid and more accurate estimates of how many people might need help.

"Population numbers are crucial to everything we do," says Ruby Siddiqui of the global charity, Medicins Sans Fronti?res, a collaborator in the project to evaluate the satellite counting technique. "We need to plan the size, scale and mode of interventions, and without population numbers we can't do this," she says.

At present, groups like MSF rely on the "quadrat" method to estimate population size. Surveyors visit a sample of individual households to find out how many people live in each type of dwelling. From this, they estimate the population of the entire town or refugee camp. But the method is slow, it demands teams of up to a dozen samplers, and requires careful data analysis afterwards. Also, such operations can be hazardous or impossible to carry out in conflict zones such as Syria.

To overcome some of these obstacles, Chris Grundy of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has led a project to estimate the population of Am Timan in Chad using satellite images.

The entire population is to receive meningitis vaccinations, and MSF wants to know how many doses to order.

Preliminary results presented last week in London at the annual research meeting of MSF revealed that the satellite method matched the quadrat method for accuracy. Also, it took about half the time to deliver an answer, although Grundy says that with refinement it has the potential to be much faster.

Surveyors, including Siddiqui, still had to visit households in Am Timan to estimate how many people typically lived in each kind of building, but they could then make a city-wide estimate by counting the total number of each type of dwelling in the satellite image, either through a computer automated analysis or by manual counting.

The quadrat method, which required sampling visits to 1160 dwellings, gave a population of 49,722. The satellite technique, which required sampling visits to only 348 dwellings, gave estimates of 46,625 for the manual and 45,400 for the automated method.

"These results are very good, and there's no doubt they'd be good enough for what MSF wants to do," says Grundy. But the team hopes to make it faster still, potentially eliminating the need to sample dwellings first.

Grundy's team is also evaluating the counting method in 11 refugee camps around the world, including in earthquake-hit Haiti. "We now know it works, that MSF can do it. The next step is to simplify it," he says.

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Myanmar protests an opportunity to show more reform

YANGON (Reuters) - Five days of street protests over chronic power shortages present Myanmar's reformist government with a headache and an opportunity.

Police forcibly dispersed protesters in the central Myanmar town of Pyi on Thursday, a heavy-handed response reminiscent of the previous military junta that could fuel grievances among an impoverished and long-neglected people.

But state television also announced emergency measures on Wednesday to boost electricity supplies, suggesting a government that realizes how popular discontent could derail its reform process and irk the United States and Europe, which recently suspended sanctions on this once-isolated country.

The danger is that these protests spark similar anger over other bread-and-butter issues bedeviling the people -- high food and fuel prices and jobs for instance.

"If they want us to stop protesting, they will have to give 24-hour electricity and more human rights," said K Lwin, a 20-year-old student who joined about 100 others on Thursday for a third night of protests in Yangon, the country's largest city.

"I hate the previous government. The new government is better ... but they can improve."

The protests are the latest challenge for reformist President Thein Sein who has freed hundreds of political prisoners, started peace talks with ethnic minority rebel groups and held historic by-elections that catapulted Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party into parliament.

Western governments have begun unwinding decades of sanctions slapped on the previously isolated nation because of the fast-paced and historic reforms.

Last year, in what was one of the first signs of Myanmar's new era, Thein Sein bowed to public pressure and cancelled the Myitsone dam being built on the Irrawaddy River by the Chinese. Power generated from the $3.6 billion project would have gone to neighboring China.

The power protests have produced what could be another Myitsone moment: a chance for the government to prove it knows how to listen.

It has vowed to rush in six 2-megawatt generators bought from U.S. company Caterpillar Inc and two 25-megawatt gas turbines from U.S. conglomerate General Electric Co..

With broken-down power stations and a dilapidated national grid, Myanmar will need more than a few generators and turbines to make up its power shortfall. Its plants have been generating about 1,340 megawatts during a recent drought, state media said, while power demand has been as high as 1,850 megawatts.

Protesters have accused the former military government of enriching itself at public expense by selling natural gas to China while Myanmar, among Asia's poorest countries, faces frequent power outages.

"There is so much electricity on the other side in China. There's almost nothing here," read a sign held by one Yangon protester.

That message seems to have reached Beijing, where Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters on Thursday that Chinese companies had "respect for relevant Myanmar laws and rules".

"What we understand is that during these protests the vast majority of people are clearly aware where the problem is when it comes to the present lack of power in certain parts of Myanmar," said Hong, adding that protesters' anger was directed at Myanmar's overstretched power grid rather than China's energy imports.

THE RIGHT DIRECTION

The demonstrations are the biggest since a 2007 monk-led uprising in which dozens were killed and hundreds arrested.

"They should continue until they achieve their goal of 24-hour electricity," said Su Mingalu, a 28-year-old monk, who on Thursday watched the evening march at Sule Pagoda, a rallying point for the 2007 protests sparked by rising fuel prices.

"Now we have more freedoms than before. We can talk freely. The government has moved forward the right way but they are not totally perfect but that's why this protest is important."

Myanmar's newspapers have taken full advantage of a relaxation of media controls to report widely on the demonstrations, where protesters have been mobbed by local journalists and photographers.

"Most weekly papers are printing photos and stories about the protests, so they could get bigger," said Thiha Saw, editor of business monthly Myanma Dana.

"This problem can't be solved in a day or a week. It'll take some time to come up with a plan."

Social networking sites have also been instrumental in spreading the word. Facebook users are circulating a photograph of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, taken before the current protests began, holding a candle, a symbol of the current protests.

On April 1, Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won 43 seats in Myanmar's fledgling parliament and the power shortages were a regular theme during campaigning.

Editor Thiha Saw believes the protests will subside when the rainy season arrives in the next two weeks or so and the hydroelectric dams fill up. But the worry is that the protests dovetail with other long-simmering causes of discontent.

Thousands of workers have been striking for better pay and conditions at factories on Yangon's outskirts.

"Because there is not enough electricity, the workers from the garment industry will lose their jobs," said protest organizer Han Win Aung.

Power consumption in Myanmar, where only 25 percent of the population has access to the national grid, is one of the world's lowest, averaging 104 kilowatts an hour per person, rivaling the Democratic Republic of Congo and Nepal, according to the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

(Additional reporting by Thu Rein Hlaing; Editing by Alan Raybould and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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Democrats test negative portrayal of Romney as hostage to GOP?s far right wing

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Brad Pitt Says Violence In 'Killing Them Softly' Is 'Important'

Actor also tells reporters at Cannes Film Festival that he and Angelina Jolie have yet to set a wedding date.
By Kara Warner

Brad Pitt at the premiere of "Killing Them Softly" at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival
Photo: Anne-Christine Poujoulat/ Getty Images

When it comes to the comings and goings of Brad Pitt, nearly everything the A-list actor says or does makes international news. That's why, when Pitt participated in a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday (May 22), he found himself faced with several questions not entirely related to his upcoming flick "Killing Them Softly."

And according New York magazine's Vulture, Pitt was more than happy to answer all of them.

He was asked about the heavy violence in "Killing Them Softly" and whether, as a dad, he had any reservations about playing a killer. In the gritty crime drama, he portrays a hitman who is hired by a crime boss (Ray Liotta) to find and kill a pair of overzealous upstarts who attempt to stake their claim by robbing a high-profile card game staged by Liotta's character. But according to Pitt, the role didn't disturb him at all.

"Not in any way, because murder is an accepted possibility when you're dealing in crime," he told reporters. "I would have a much harder time playing a racist or something along those lines. That would be much more unsettling for me than a guy who shoots another guy in the face." Pitt went on to say that the violence in the film is realistic in that it's not glorified for the sake of entertainment.

"We live in such a violent world. I certainly grew up hunting, which is a very violent act," he said when asked if the film was in any way influenced by the popularity of graphic video games that involve gangsters and hired killers. "Have you ever had a hamburger? Have you seen how they butcher cows? It's barbaric, it's horrendous, it's very violent. This is the world we live in, so I see it as absolutely important to film."

The Oscar-nominated actor even happily answered a quandary about whether or not his upcoming marriage to longtime love Angelina Jolie would affect his work schedule.

"We have no date. We actually really, truly have no date," he said. "It's something that makes sense to us ... and we're still hoping we figure out marriage equality in the States before then, before that date."

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