EPICANTHUS

Activist/artist Shepard Fairey has designed a series of screen prints that will  be sold to raise money for materials for May Day marches and immigration reform organizations.

GENEVA—The World Health Organization warned today that a global flu pandemic was imminent, raising its threat level as the swine flu virus spread and killed the first person outside of Mexico, a toddler in Texas.

“Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world,” WHO Director General Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva.

“The biggest question is this: how severe will the pandemic be, especially now at the start,” Chan said, but added the world “is better prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history.”

Chan raised the WHO alert level to Phase 5, its second highest warning that a pandemic, or global outbreak of a serious new illness, is imminent.

The new alert a signal to governments and businesses to take action, and to pharmaceutical companies to ramp up antiviral drug production and capacity, she said.

• Dr. Margaret Chan bio, WHO
• WHO Raises Alert Level, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, Al Jazeera
• “Flu Hunter:” Dr. Keiji Fukuda, epicanthus

Thanks channelapa.com

via Izismile.com

BLOOMINGTON, Indiana—Jurors didn’t need much deliberation before declaring a 24-year-old minister-in-training guilty of battery and criminal confinement in connection with a May 2007 exorcism on an autistic teenage boy.

Valedictorian of his high school graduating class and a premed graduate of the Univ. of Indiana, Eddie Uyesugi will be sentenced next month by Monroe County Circuit Judge Teresa Harper. He faces eight years in prison on each felony conviction.

After the verdicts were announced, prosecutors in the case asked that Uyesugi be taken into custody and jailed until his sentencing. Harper denied the request, reported Laura Lane, who covered the trial for the local Times-Mail newspaper.

• Japan Says Jailing of Japanese American Journalist ‘Regrettable,’ freeroxana.net
• Why Did Ahmadinejad Help Roxana Saberi? TIME

TEHRAN—An Asian American freelance journalist has been sentenced to eight years in prison for spying by an Iranian court, wire services are reporting.

Roxana Saberi, the NPR, BBC, Fox News freelancer held here since January, was convicted and sentenced just days after she was tried behind closed doors, her lawyer said Saturday, dashing any hopes for her quick release.

Saberi has been reporting from Iran since she moved there six years ago. She was originally arrested while attempting to buy a bottle of wine and was charged with working without press credentials. But earlier this month, an Iranian judge leveled a far more serious allegation, charging her with spying for the United States.

Born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, Saberi, 31, is the daughter of an Iranian American father and a Japanese American mother, both of naturalized citizens.  A graduate of Concordia College in Minnesota with a degree in communications, she also holds a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Northwestern Univ., and a second master’s degree in international relations from Cambridge Univ.

Reza Saberi said his daughter had been tricked into making incriminating statements by officials who told her they would free her if she did. Saberi told NPR his daughter denied the incriminating statements she made when she realized she had been tricked but “apparently in the case they didn’t consider her denial.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she was “deeply disappointed” by the conviction.

North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan called on the Iranian government to “show compassion” and release Saberi. “This is a shocking miscarriage of justice,” the Democrat said in a statement issued Saturday.

Clinton said in a statement the U.S. is working with Swiss diplomats in Iran to get details about the court’s decision and to ensure Saberi’s well-being. She said the U.S. will “vigorously raise our concerns” with the Iranian government.

• Iran Jails U.S. Journalist for Spying, Al Jazeera
• Iran Convicts U.S. Journalist for Spying, NPR
• Lawyer: Iran Convicts U.S. Journalist for Spying, The Associated Press
• U.S. Journalist’s Spy Trial Held Behind Closed Doors; Iran Says Saberi Confessed to Espionage (04/14/09), epicanthus

quietasiansyndrome

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Source: FunnyOrDie.com

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