The bodies of five people working for a female candidate in Afghanistan's parliamentary election have been found in western Herat province.

They were among a group of 10 people kidnapped by armed men on Wednesday. Five were later released, say reports.

The Taliban later said they carried out the abductions. No group has said it carried out the killings.

Taliban insurgents opposed to the elections in general - and female candidates in particular - have been blamed for the murder of a number of candidates.

On Saturday, candidate Haji Abdul Manan was shot and killed as he was leaving a mosque on the back of a motorcycle.

The Taliban have also been blamed for the kidnap of four women working at a drug treatment centre in northern Faryab province. Officials were reported to be negotiating to secure the women's release.

A record number of women are running in Afghanistan's critical parliamentary elections next month despite many being inundated with threatening phone calls, including death threats from insurgents.

Amid ever-rising violence, which some people fear could foster a repeat of last year's catastrophic presidential election, women are struggling to campaign at all outside a few areas, poll monitors say.

Even in Kabul, the capital, where the Guardian has interviewed a number of female candidates, women say they are facing daily obstruction from conservative hardliners.

With voting billed for 18 September, Kabul's streets have been plastered in posters and billboards, many of which show the faces of would-be female MPs in the capital, the number of whom has more than doubled since 2005. However, many of the posters do not stay up long, or get defaced with slashes of bright red ink.

Despite the dangers the number of women seeking representation in parliament has risen sharply, from 328 in 2005 to 406 across Afghanistan, according to an international election monitor in Kabul. They are running for at least 64 of the 249 seats reserved for women.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/24/record-women-candidates-afghan-election?CMP=twt_gu

Ci sono personaggi famosi che continuano a far calare coltri di silenzio sulla propria vita privata inviando cosi' il messaggio che essere gay o lesbica sia innaturale, sbagliato a quaolcosa di cui vergognarsi. E ci sono coloro, come David Yost, che invece scelgono di uscire allo scoperto e di non nascondersi più. Per essere un esempio ed un modello di riferimento.

 David Yost, who from 1993 to 1996 starred as the blue Power Ranger in more than 200 episodes of the children’s television phenomenon Mighty Morphin Power Rangers,talks about the taunting and teasing he endured on the set of the show, and the years of ups and downs that have finally made him able to say the words, “I’m gay.”

Yost says he’s coming out now because he’s “tired of hearing stories about teenagers still taking their lives and committing suicide because of who they are and not understanding that there are resources for them to get help.”

http://www.advocate.com/News/Daily_News/2010/08/26/Power_Ranger_David_Yost_Im_Gay/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0949128/

Katrina’s Jewish Voices is an online collection project to collect, preserve, and present the American Jewish community’s experiences of Hurricane Katrina and their recollections of the Jewish communities of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The Jewish Women’s Archive organized the project, in collaboration with the Center for History and New Media, with generous funding from foundations and individual donors.

Katrina’s Jewish Voices welcomes members of the Jewish community—women and men alike—to tell their own stories of how the storm affected them, and to share their memories of these historic Jewish communities. The project is collecting digital artifacts in a variety of forms, including photos, blog postings, podcasts, emails, essays and other first-hand accounts, from American Jews nationwide.

These collections serve as a vital resource for future historians of the American Jewish experience, as well as for those interested in exploring how individuals and different faith communities responded to this vast humanitarian crisis.

Sharing our stories is also a way to create powerful connections in the present. We hope that those who contribute to this online collection and those who immerse themselves in the stories and images they find here come away moved and inspired by these varied Jewish voices of Katrina.

http://katrina.jwa.org/about/#supporters

According to the RHRC (Reproductive Health Response in Crises Consortium), 85 percent of persons displaced by the flood are women and children. As the floodwaters rise, they are at acute risk from starvation, exposure, sexual assault and water-borne diseases. However, providing them with assistance is more difficult than these basic facts suggest. In traditional Pakistani society, it is taboo for women to receive aid or medical care from male relief workers, preventing many of them from seeking such aid in the first place.

This particularly applies to pregnant women surprised by the flood. Pakistan already had a high maternal morality rate before the flood, with 320 women dying per 100,000 live births. This rate has undoubtedly increased due to the disaster. While the Pakistani government and NGOs have sent female aid workers into the affected areas, their numbers are not always sufficient to meet the crushing demand for help. In addition, women are increasingly cut off from a supply of birth control pills and condoms (before the flood, 30 percent of fertile women were using some form of contraception). A wave of unwanted pregnancies, with all the complications that will bring, is certain.

In any case, as government and Western aid takes its time in arriving, Islamist groups more in tune with local proprieties have been filling the gap, clearly jockeying for a more visible role in the reconstruction. British-Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid believes that the destruction of crops and infrastructure will lead to food riots. He believes that "joblessness and helplessness will lead to more young men joining the militants, who are propagating the idea that the floods are God's wrath against the government ... All of this will dramatically loosen the state's control over outlying areas, in particular those bordering Afghanistan, which could be captured quickly by local Taliban," leaving Pakistan as "a failed state with nuclear weapons."

Where do Pakistani women fit into this view of the future? Let's look at their past first. While they are better off than many in the Muslim world and have benefited from progressive gender policies over recent decades, they still have at best a 36 percent literacy rate. The International Labor Force Survey of 1991-92 reported that only about 16 percent of women age 10 form part of the official workforce, a figure that may have doubled since then. In rural areas, it is estimated that around 80 percent of women are engaged in farming. Twenty-four percent of the population lives below the poverty level, including the majority of families headed by women.

The B.C. government asked the province's Supreme Court last year to decide if the section of the Criminal Code prohibiting polygamy also contravenes the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The province launched the constitutional question after polygamy charges were dropped against two Bountiful, B.C., religious leaders.

A formal start date for the hearings has not yet been determined, but several affidavits for the case have been sworn in recent weeks.

One of them is from Mohammad Fadel, Canada research chair in Islamic law at the University of Toronto. Fadel was asked by the B.C. attorney general to address the relationship between polygamy and Islam.

But Alia Hogben, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, said in her affidavit she occasionally receives telephone calls from women that pertain to polygamy.

She said some of the Muslim women have refused to leave their "oppressive marital relationships" because they fear social stigma from other members of the community.

Hogben said some women have been warned that if they shame their husbands in any way, the Qur'an states the man may take disciplinary action, including causing bodily harm.

"Based on what I have learned through my experience as a social worker and front-line contact for Muslim women in crisis, and through my education as a Muslim, I believe that some men employ the authority of Islam to marry (polygamously) in order to suit their own sexual preferences," she said.

Hogben added not very much is known about the practice or incidents of multiple wives in Canada's Muslim communities.

The provincial government has said the constitutionality of the Criminal Code section that prohibits polygamy is of interest beyond Bountiful. It has said the practice of polygamy is accepted in other cultures, some of which have substantial and growing immigrant populations in Canada.

"The (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) and these communities are perfect examples about what we're trying to prove (that polygamy is harmful)," government lawyer Craig Jones said in March.

"I still expect the majority of evidence to be outside Bountiful."

Residents of Bountiful are members of the FLDS, a breakaway group from the mainstream Mormon church. The Mormon church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.

Trois jours après, c'est une jeune femme de confession juive qui portait plainte après avoir été agressée dans une grande surface de Toulouse. La victime affirme avoir été prise à partie par deux adolescents qui lui reprochaient d'acheter de la nourriture pendant le jeûne. La jeune femme aurait alors fait valoir qu'elle était de confession juive, ce qui n'aurait fait que redoubler la colère de ses agresseurs, lesquels, après l'avoir traitée de "sale juive", l'auraient frappée à la tête, la faisant lourdement chuter. Un vigile a assisté à la scène sans intervenir. Interrogé par les enquêteurs sur les raisons de sa passivité, l'homme a expliqué qu'il respectait le ramadan et qu'il était donc pressé de partir pour pouvoir s'alimenter, dès le coucher du soleil.

http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/agresse-parce-qu-il-n-a-pas-respecte-le-ramadan-23-08-2010-1227824_23.php

Four men from the Arab village of Tamra were arrested on Tuesday night on suspicion of kidnapping a 19-year-old gay relative because of his sexual orientation.

The kidnap victim left his home and moved to Tel Aviv in an attempt to flee threatening relatives, but police say the family members caught up with him after harassing and threatening him.

Police said the kidnappers armed themselves with pepper spray and waited for their relative outside his south Tel Aviv neighborhood.

After identifying him walking down the street with a friend, the suspects allegedly assaulted the men, sprayed them with pepper spray, and made off with their target. The kidnap victim's friend alerted police.

As police put up road blocks and attempted to intercept the suspects, the car carrying the youth drove northwards, and the kidnap victim was repeatedly beaten, police said. He was held for approximately 12 hours before the kidnappers planned to move him to a hideout. At that stage, police caught up with the suspects, arresting them and freeing the captive.

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=185942

Dozens of Kabul schoolgirls were admitted to hospital on Wednesday after a suspected poison gas attack on their school, officials said.

"Today at around 9.30am (0500 GMT, 1500 AEST) around 55 people, including nine teachers and 46 students at the Totya Girls' High School, following an apparent poisoning incident, were taken to hospital," education ministry spokesman Mohammed Asef Nang said.

"They are in stable condition," he said, adding that some had become dizzy and others lapsed into unconsciousness.

"This is not an accident. Similar incidents have happened in girls' schools before. We think there are groups who do not tolerate development and progress - their aim is to prevent girls from going to school," said Nang.

Fifteen-year-old Ruqia, who was hospitalised after the incident, said: "I smelled something very, very foul as I was sitting in my classroom. I saw my classmates falling down, my vision got blurred and I heard everyone screaming before I became unconscious."

http://news.smh.com.au/breaking-news-world/afghan-girls-in-suspected-gas-attack-20100825-13scc.html

The latest incident, this one at a high school, is the ninth such case involving the poisoning of schoolgirls, said Asif Nang, spokesman for the nation's education ministry.

Dr. Kabir Amiri said 59 students and 14 teachers were brought to the hospital, and were faring better.

"We don't have good equipment to verify the kind of gas that they were poisoned with, but we have taken their blood tests to send to Turkmenistan for verifying the type of gas" that was used, Amiri said.