From Playboy Playmate to savior of orphans

Written on 7:44 PM by yahoo

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Glassy-eyed and so thin his bones protrude through his skin, a newborn infant named only Rony stares up at a dirty ceiling hour after hour, frozen in his crib because of a softball-sized tumor on the back of his neck.

Then an hourglass-shaped, platinum-haired woman flashing a megawatt smile and wearing diamond earrings and designer blue jeans leans over his crib in the steamy hospital ward, locks her long arms around the child and gently pulls him toward her.

"They don't hold the children much here," says Susie Scott Krabacher, a former Playboy centerfold who over the last 15 years has become an unlikely patron savior for scores of abandoned Haitian babies.

Krabacher, 43, founded the Mercy and Sharing Foundation, an Aspen, Colorado-based charity that has provided shelter, schooling and health care to thousands of children from the poorest slums of this troubled Caribbean nation. The charity, funded mostly through private donors, runs six schools, three orphanages, an abandoned-baby ward and a cervical cancer screening center.

"If it wasn't for her, all of those kids would be dead today," said Bob Lataillade, who runs Mercy and Sharing's main orphanage in Port-au-Prince.

Krabacher chronicles her unusual journey -- from partying in Hugh Hefner's mansion to setting up Haiti's first hospital ward for abandoned babies -- in a memoir to be released in October called "Angels of a Lower Flight" (Simon & Schuster).

The book, which is expected to be made into a Hollywood film, details Krabacher's childhood growing up poor in Alabama and her wilder days at Playboy, where she had a 10-year career, including a May 1983 centerfold spread.

With her long blonde locks and statuesque figure, Krabacher cuts an odd figure in the streets of Haiti's gritty capital. She has been known to waltz into the most dangerous slums wearing platform boots and flowing skirts to ask tattooed gang leaders to allow her charity work to proceed without being robbed.

On her first visit to the country in 1994, Krabacher visited Port-au-Prince's bleak General Hospital and was shocked to find scores of unwanted babies left abandoned and without food in their cribs, including one who had died without anyone noticing.

"There were rats the size of Chihuahuas. They would run all over the place and bite the children. It was horrible," Krabacher, who lives in Aspen but visits Haiti several times a year, told The Associated Press during a recent trip here.

Krabacher eventually persuaded hospital officials to allow her and her husband, Joe, to pay to fix up the ward, which today cares for about 20 children.

Like little Rony, many were left outside the hospital entrance, often frail and barely clinging to life.

"He's going to suffer his entire life. But at least we can give him some humanity so he doesn't have to die in utter misery," Krabacher says, gently swaying Rony in her arms.

A couple of weeks later, Rony died. He was three months old.

Krabacher has had to overcome setbacks in her mission to help Haiti's neediest.

When the abandoned baby ward first opened, people stole the ceiling fans, the refrigerator and baby mattresses.

After rebels forced President Jean-Bertrand Aristide from power in 2004, Krabacher flew into the chaotic capital and found that looters had broken into a food warehouse and stolen the orphanage's supply of rice, beans and milk.

For her work, Krabacher was made an honorary Haitian citizen and in 2004 was invited to Buckingham Palace to receive the Rose Award, presented by the foundation established to further Princess Diana's commitment to the poor.

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Iraqis flooding Jordan get free schooling

Written on 4:18 AM by yahoo

AMMAN, Jordan (CNN) -- In the sunbathed schoolyard of the Shmisani Institute for Girls in Amman, Jordan, principal Sanaa Abu Harb makes an announcement over the speaker system.

"All Iraqi girls come outside now. All Iraqi girls. Iraqi girls only!" she repeats several times, making sure the message is clear and waving away Jordanian pupils attracted by the commotion.

Dozens of girls in green apron-like uniforms pour out into the courtyard and cluster on the top level of a stone staircase overlooking a concrete playground.

Harb wants the CNN crew to see how many Iraqi refugee girls her school is accommodating. This school year, she says, 145 students are Iraqi -- roughly 20 percent of the students at this state-funded institution -- with another 40 Iraqi children on a waiting list.

The reason behind the jump in the number of Iraqis at the school is a new government policy: For the first time since the start of the Iraq war, Jordan is allowing all Iraqi children -- regardless of refugee status -- to enroll in state-funded schools.

Simply, this means that even illegal refugees with no paperwork can send their kids to school with no questions asked.

The move is cementing a massive population shift in the Middle East. More than 2.2 million Iraqis have fled the violence in their homeland, most of them seeking refuge in neighboring Jordan and Syria, according to humanitarian officials.

Jordanian Minister of Education Khalid Touqan says he expects Jordan to accommodate 40,000 to 50,000 Iraqi students this year. That's more than double the number of Iraqi children enrolled in public school two years ago.

Harb, on the front line of the phenomenon, says the influx is putting a strain on her school. Even with some U.N. and U.S. aid to Jordan, there's still not enough money.

"We need more teachers here, more resources, more buildings, more chairs for all Iraqi students and our students," she says.

In a nearby neighborhood, in the study room of the Ahmed Toukan School for Boys, a handful of Iraqi kids talk of their experience living far from home. Seated at a rectangular table covered with a red and white tablecloth, the boys tell stories of horror and displacement.

Eighteen-year-old Qutaiba lost five immediate family members before moving to Jordan to try to live a normal life. Matter-of-factly and with a straight-ahead stare, he repeats the number: "Five members."

Most of the boys and young men from Iraq have missed several years of school -- up to a four-year educational gap that will delay not only their high school graduation, but also their entry into the workforce.

All say, though, that they feel lucky to have gotten out, even if the violence in their country means always having to be on the move, ready to live far from home and away from loved ones.

"It's not strange for me to be in the middle of people I don't know," says eleventh grader Ziad Tarek Al Shamsi. "I had friends in Iraq when I was small, I left them. In America, I left them. I came here, I left them."

He pauses: "But you have to miss your country."

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees estimates up to 250,000 school-age Iraqi children are in Jordan.

Many of them are enrolled in private institutions. But as families run out of money they had when they left Iraq, they turn to public schools.

Even so, more than a month into the new academic year, fewer Iraqi families than first anticipated enrolled their kids in schools this year. According to the charity Save the Children, 21,000 Iraqi children have so far enrolled in Jordanian classrooms.

As a result, the government extended the deadline for student applications and cut down on the required paperwork for Iraqi families.

The lower registration numbers were attributed in part to illegal refugees' fears of being identified through their children's school records.

Regardless of what the final number will be this year, the population shift in the Middle East is, according to UNHCR head Antonio Guterres, the largest urban refugee situation in the world.

Iraqi families are changing the social fabric of Jordanian society. About 10 percent of Jordan's population is now made up of Iraqi refugees -- the estimates range from 500,000 to 750,000 of them.

form cnn

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Armenian Martyrs' Day

Written on 11:59 PM by yahoo

April 24th is the day we remember the victims of a forgotten genocide.

On April 24, 1915, turkish soldiers arrested 250 Armenians in the first of hundreds of raids designed to wipe out the Armenian population of turkey.

Armenian villages were rousted one by one, and the men ordered to leave at once and serve the turkish army. Boys as young as 9 or 10, and men as old as 70. Many never made that far, as turkish soldiers often took these "new recruits" not to the army camps but out to the woods, where they were summarily executed. The women and girls, thus undefended, were easy prey for the turkish soldiers.


Those who remained behind were forced from their lands, homes, and belongings, and force-marched to "settlement camps" in remote areas. Many died along the way from exhaustion, starvation, and exposure to the elements. According to French scholars Joel Kotek and Pierre Rigoulot, there were up to 25 such camps.


But the Armenian's plight was nowhere near as unknown, even in that day, as it is now. Despite the lack of internet, video cameras, and TV screens, in 1915 the plight of the Armenians was a worldwide topic of discussion. US Consular officials, as early as July of 1915, were concerned enough to beg the US government to step in.

No less than Winston Churchill, then Britain's First Lord of the Admiralty noted, "the clearance of race from Asia Minor was about as complete as such an act could be...There is no reason to doubt that that this crime was planned and executed for political reasons. The opportunity presented itself for clearing Turkish soil of a Christian race opposed to all Turkish ambitions." And he was then in the midst of the "war to end all wars" against Germany!


During 1915, the New York Times paper published 145 articles about the mass murder of the Armenian people, describing the massacre as "systematic, "authorized" and "organized by the government." In 1918, Theodore Roosevelt called it "the greatest crime of the war."

But today, no one even knows it happened

Denialists of all stripes, from US and EU officials who find turkey's past "annoying", to the turks themselves who believe such raids were justified to "pick up deserters" (yeah, little old men, deserters. right.) have managed to decrease the general public's awareness of these atrocities. But they happened. There was no Photoshop in 1915. All of the horrible pictures you see here are real.


Despite missions from the US and UK, Austria, France, and others, the plight of the Armenians faded off the radar screen as war in Europe intensified.

Looks a lot like Germany around 1942, huh?

In fact, Adolf Hitler said of the Armenian Genocide: "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"as his justification for the atrocities carried out on the Jews and others during the Nazi's reign over Germany.

We did not forget. We do not forget. We will always remember.

My previous remembrances here. This stays on top all day.
Posted by caltechgirl at April 24, 2007 09:50 AM | TrackBack

I'd never heard of it until I was in college. In 1975 I spent the weekend with a good friend of mine, Armenian. His family showed me the photo albums of all his relatives, perished. Only his maternal grandparents escaped to America. They were quite passionate about the subject, naturally.

by velociman

Posted in Armenia, latest news, news, paradise philippines, Turkish | Comment Now!

US bill on Armenia moves forward

Written on 8:29 PM by yahoo

A bill recognising the killing of Armenians in Ottoman times as genocide has cleared its first hurdle in the US Congress despite Turkish warnings.

It passed through the House Foreign Affairs Committee by 27 votes to 21 - the first step towards holding a vote in the House of Representatives.

Turkish President Abdullah Gul reacted swiftly to the result, saying the move was "unacceptable" and had no validity.

President George W Bush had urged the committee not to approve the bill.

"Its passage would do great harm to our relations with a key ally in Nato and in the global war on terror," the US president said.

Turkey is a regional operational hub for the US military, and some suggest access to Incirlik airbase, or other supply lines crucial to US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan, could be cut in response.

'Invalid'

After the vote, the US Undersecretary of State, Nicholas Burns, told the BBC that the Bush administration was "deeply disappointed".

"The United States recognizes the immense suffering of the Armenian people due to mass killings and forced deportations at the end of the Ottoman Empire," he said.

This unacceptable decision of the committee, like similar ones in the past, is not regarded by the Turkish people as valid or of any value Turkish President Abdullah Gul Q&A: Armenian 'genocide'

"We support a full and fair accounting of the atrocities that befell as many as 1.5m Armenians during World War I, which House Resolution 106 does not do."

The Turkish president also attacked the measure, saying some politicians had "closed their ears to calls to be reasonable and once again sought to sacrifice big problems for small domestic political games".

"This unacceptable decision of the committee, like similar ones in the past, is not regarded by the Turkish people as valid or of any value," Mr Gul said, according to the Anatolian news agency.

The BBC's Sarah Rainsford in Istanbul says it is very unusual to hear such high-level political reaction so late at night from the Turkish government - a sign of how seriously it takes this.

This resolution is largely symbolic and is non-binding, but that will make little difference to most Turks, our correspondent says.

Turkish politicians will now focus on trying to keep the resolution from a final vote on the House floor, she adds.

'Sobering'

Correspondents say Wednesday's result means that only a change of heart by the opposition Democrats, who control Congress, can now stop a full vote on the bill.

A German soldier took photos of Armenian deportees at the time

Divisions within the Foreign Affairs Committee crossed party lines with eight Democrats voting against the measure and eight Republicans voting for it.

Tom Lantos, the committee's chairman, had opened the debate by admitting the resolution posed a "sobering" choice.

"We have to weigh the desire to express our solidarity with the Armenian people... against the risk that it could cause young men and women in the uniform of the United States armed services to pay an even heavier price than they are currently paying," he said.

Mr Lantos, himself a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust, said he would introduce a resolution praising US-Turkish friendship next week, according to AFP news agency.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee is expected to take up their version of the resolution in the future.

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Rochdale lawyer describes moment when former Pakistan PM was deported

Written on 9:01 PM by yahoo

Rochdale lawyer describes moment when former Pakistan PM was deported

Shelina Begum
3/10/2007

Former Pakistan Prime Minister's UK lawyer has described the shocking moment when Nawaz Sharif was forcefully deported to Saudi Arabia after he landed at Islamabad airport.

Immigration expert Amjad Malik from Rochdale accompanied the former deposed PM when he flew back to the Pakistan capital to restart an election campaign and over throw Musharraf and his administration.

Instead Mr Sharif was taken away by Pakistan's security officials and put on a plane to Saudi Arabia.

Mr Malik says the former PM's forced deportation out of Pakistan was illegal as they had permission from the Supreme Court of Pakistan for Mr Sharif to enter the country.

Mr Malik says he was also unable to represent his client after being hurled away from him by a group of security men and was not given any information about Mr Sharif's whereabouts and opnly found out later that evening after switching on the news in his hotel room.

Said Mr Malik: "The exiled premier of Pakistan returned after seven years of exile on a symbolic PIA flight from Heathrow to Islamabad. However he was shocked along with his fellow travellers that the so called mightiest and the most powerful man in Pakistan (Musharraf) refused his entryto the country and his forced deportation vanished all the hopes of reviving democracy and the possible exit of the military from current political system.

"I was one of the unfortunate lawyers who was asked to assist Mr Sharif on that plane as well as at the airport lounge to make sure he entered the country peacefully.

"To me this historic flight carried its passengers by luck like a lottery ticket as no one knew which plane Mr Sharif was catching.

"But all our efforts were unfruitful when this peaceful visit was halted by a quick army style operation."

Mr Malik said as soon as the plane landed at Islamabad, immigration officials made their way into the plane where they questioned Mr Sharif and asked him to hand over his passport.

Mr Malik told them that they would only show their passports at the immigration desk in the airport.

When they left the plane and proceeded into the airport lounge, security officials and the Pakistan media surrounded Mr Sharif and his team.

Said Mr Malik: "It was chaotic. The officials at the airport would not tell us what they wanted to do. Before we set off we thought the worst case scenario would be that Mr Sharif would be arrested. We were prepared for that and had our paperwork ready to represent Mr Sharif at the Supreme Court if it came to that.

"We waited in the lounge for three hours not knowing what was happening.

"In the end we were rushed by security officials who took Mr Sharif without telling us anything.

"When I tried to intervene I was grabbed and pushed away.

"Me and the rest of his team had no choice but to leave the airport and go to our hotels.

"I started arrangments for my flight back as soon as I could as I did not feel safe being in the country.

"I was also trying to get information about my client but was not able to do so as people were very not co-operative.

"Instead I learned on the news that evening that he had been deported back to Saudi Arabia.

"This trip has left me with no faith in Pakistan’s law and order. This man was twice PM and he was treated like a common thief. People forget that Mr Sharif made Pakistan the seventh state that possesses nuclear arsenal and is one of the most popular leaders in Pakistan.

"We had a court order that stated Mr Sharif should be allowed back into the country.

"But the court order was violated as General Musharraf's regime knows no concept of rule of law and totally disregarded this by deporting him and not even allowing him to enter the country."

Mr Malik who has now returned to Rochdale is still working to bring Mr Sharif back to Pakistan.

He said: "This is not over. I am still in contact with Mr Sharif and his brother and we will work something out."

from asian news

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Burning chilli sparks terror fear

Written on 9:00 PM by yahoo

The dish uses extra-hot chillies which are deliberately burnt

A pot of burning chilli sparked fears of a biological terror attack in central London.

Firefighters wearing protective breathing apparatus were called to D'Arblay Street, Soho, after reports of noxious smoke filling the air.

Police closed off three roads and evacuated homes following the alert.

Specialist crews broke down the door to the Thai Cottage restaurant at 1900 BST on Monday where they discovered the source - a 9lb pot of chillies.

Nam Prik Pao recipe Heat garlic and shallots in oil and remove to a bowl Place red chillies in the pan with some oil and fry until they go dark in colour. Then set aside Mix shrimp paste with the rest of the ingredients and pound in a mortar and pestle Return the mixture to the heat until it becomes a thick dark coloured paste

The restaurant had been preparing Nam Prik Pao, a red-hot Thai dip which uses extra-hot chillies which are deliberately burnt.

But the smell prompted several members of the public to call the emergency services.

Alpaslan Duven, a Turkish journalist based in the restaurant's building, said: "I was sitting in the office when me and my chief start coughing and I said this was something really dodgy.

"I looked out of the window and saw people rushing and then we heard the sirens."

Supranee Yodmuang, the restaurant supervisor, was above the restaurant when she received a phone call from her boss.

"It was about 4pm when I saw the police who were closing off the roads but I didn't know why.

"My boss rang me and said I had to get out of the building because of a chemical attack."

She added: "Because we're Thai, we're used to the smell of chillies."

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "The street was closed off for three hours while we were trying to discover the source of the odour."

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Police: Black student marked with 'KKK' at deaf school

Written on 8:56 PM by yahoo

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A weekend incident with racial overtones at a high school for deaf students could result in criminal charges with "enhanced penalties for a hate crime," Metro Police Chief Cathy Lanier said Wednesday.

A black student was held against his will and then released with "KKK" and swastikas drawn on him in marker at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf on Sunday, she said.

No charges have been filed, and no names have been released, Lanier said.

The incident began when a group of black students and a group of white students were in a dorm. "My understanding is the two groups engaged in friendly horseplay," she said.

But, she said, the groups got "angry with each other."

The two groups separated, she said, but later, six white students and one black student -- all between the ages of 15 and 19 -- took one of the black students into a dorm room and "held him there against his will."

"They used markers to write 'KKK' and draw swastikas on the student," Lanier said.

The student was released after about 45 minutes. He notified dorm and school authorities, who called police.

Lanier said police have identified and interviewed the students involved and the "investigation is ongoing."

"The support we've received from the campus and from the school employees has been tremendous," Lanier said. "And I think they're supporting us in making a very strong statement that this investigation may lead to charges that could have enhanced penalties for a hate crime."

The school is a residential high school on the campus of Gallaudet University, a higher education facility for deaf and hard of hearing people. The high school is administered as a division of the university's Laurent Clerc National Deaf Education Center.

Dean of Clerc Center Katherine A. Jankowski said the seven students who participated in the incident were sent home.

Gallaudet provost Stephen Weiner said the school does "not tolerate any action, behavior of this type."

"We are taking action," he said. "We are looking at programs to help students understand we are a school with a diverse population."

"This incident is intolerable," he said. "That's why the Metro police are involved. That's how serious we are about this incident."

Jankowski said the school has also hired a consultant to work with the school and its students on diversity issues.

On Monday, teachers and staff hosted a school-wide assembly with students related to the incident, said Jankowski. Individual and group counseling services were also available to students, teachers and staff.

"We are committed to ensuring MSSD is a safe and supportive learning environment," she said.

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