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CAIRO ? The United States and other Western governments must accept the new reality that Islamists have emerged to fill the power vacuum in the Arab world after a wave of popular uprisings, Human Rights Watch said in its annual report Sunday.
The New York-based group also urged Islamist parties, which have emerged as the biggest winners in recent elections in Tunisia and Egypt and are expected to fare well in Libya, to respect the rights of women and religious minorities, saying they cannot "pick and choose" when it comes to human rights.
Islamist parties are "genuinely popular" in the Arab world, said HRW's executive director, Kenneth Roth, warning that "ignoring that popularity would violate democratic principles."
"Being a political Islamic government should not be a reason to turn a government into a pariah," Roth told reporters in Cairo, where the group released its annual report.
The Arab Spring revolts began in Tunisia in late 2010 and quickly spread to Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain, deposing or challenging authoritarian rulers as citizens who long seemed incapable or unwilling to rise against decades of repression took to the streets in a stunning awakening.
Since the collapse of the regimes in Egypt and Tunisia a year ago, Islamist groups once largely confined to the political sidelines, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, have formed parties and contested parliamentary polls, winning the greatest share of seats.
Even the ultraconservative Salafis, who abstained from politics under Egypt's ousted President Hosni Mubarak, have fared well, winning more than 20 percent of the vote in the country's first post-uprising ballot.
Roth was cautious when asked about concerns about potential human rights violations under Islamist rule. He said that so far, Islamists have said "a lot of right things," but said the true test will be how they deal with the full sweep of human rights once in power.
"These are the big questions," he said.
The Muslim Brotherhood, for example, has been most interested in political freedoms, but Roth noted that "it is very difficult to secure political freedom if you are not respecting religious and women rights."
In some ways, the unexpected Arab uprisings have amounted to a slap to the United States and other Western governments, which had supported autocratic regimes that served as bulwarks against Islamists hostile to the West and appeared to offer stability in a volatile region.
"The West backed an array of autocrats as long as they, in turn, supported Western interests," Roth said. "The West is still adjusting to this historic transformation."
He added that the wave of uprisings "show that the forced silence of people living under autocrats should never have been mistaken for popular complacency."
Roth acknowledged Western governments were re-evaluating their policies as new governments emerge in the region.
Western nations have been accused of being selective in supporting the protesters, with NATO airstrikes proving key to the ouster of slain Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi. Meanwhile, the West has stood largely on the sidelines amid continued crackdowns in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria.
"The people driving the Arab Spring deserve strong international support to realize their rights and to build genuine democracies," Roth said in the group's annual report, which covers some 90 countries. He added that the Arab world is in a "transformative moment," and it will not be an easy one.
Human Rights Watch pointed to five main issues that dominated the relationship between Western governments and their Arab autocratic friends: the threat of political Islam, the fight against terrorism, support for Israel, protection of the oil flow and cooperation in stemming immigration.
Even after the leaders of Egypt, Libya and Tunisia were toppled, Western governments remained hesitant to lean too hard on other shaky authoritarian leaders, the group said. China and Russia acted "obstructionist," using their veto power at the U.N. security council to halt pressure on Syria to stop killings of protesters.
The popular uprisings also have alarmed other repressive regimes such as China, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Uzbekistan, where rulers were worried about facing similar fates.
"The worst response to the Arab Spring is the dictatorial world who are living in fear of the precedents set in this region," Roth said. "China greatly deepened its repression in an effort to avoid jasmine rallies."
Saudi Arabia also continues to discriminate against its citizens and workers, according to HRW, which said 9 million women, 8 million foreign workers and 2 million Shiite citizens are either suppressed or lacking rights in the country.
Outside the Arab world, the last year did not witness significant progress in countries with poor human rights records, including China and North Korea, according to the report.
Corruption, poverty and repression still prevail in Equatorial Guinea, the tiny, oil-rich nation off the western coast of Africa, which has been ruled by Africa's longest-serving ruler, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the group said.
Eritrea continues to be governed by "one of the world's most repressive governments," and its citizens are subjected to torture, detentions and restrictions on freedom of speech, HRW said.
It also cited Colombia, saying armed conflict in the South American country has displaced millions while paramilitary groups with ties to the security apparatus are on the rise.
Cuba, HRW said, remains "the only country in Latin America that represses virtually all forms of political dissent."
The group also claimed that even member states of the European Union have violated human rights through restrictive asylum and migration policies.
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President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign event, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign event, Thursday, Jan. 19, 2012, at the Apollo Theatre in the Harlem neighborhood of New York. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama says his State of the Union address will be a blueprint for an economy that's "built to last" for the middle class.
He says he'll frame Tuesday's night national address to Congress around at least four themes. They are manufacturing, energy, education and what he calls "a return to American values."
The president briefly previewed elements of the speech in a video released by his re-election campaign Saturday to millions of Obama supporters.
Obama is seeking re-election in an atmosphere dominated by economic concerns, and his speech will amount to his vision for a second presidential term.
He says in the video that the nation must build an economy "that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few."
Central themes of the speech will be fairness, opportunity and rewards for hard work.
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By NBC New York
An early-morning fire at a house near Marist College Saturday has left at three dead and four others with smoke inhalation, authorities said.
In a press conference held Saturday afternoon, Poughkeepsie Police confirmed that two female students from nearby Marist College and a male in his 20s died in the fire. Police said that the male victim was not a student.?
Four others escaped from the house with smoke inhalation, and were treated and released from the hospital.?
The fire began sometime after 1 a.m at 112 Fairview Avenue, officials said. The fire chief believes the fire may have started in the back of the house. ?
In a statement, Marist College said that school security and other officials are "working closely with the emergency responders to gather more information about the incident." ?
The house was privately owned and was not affiliated with the college.? ?
The Town of Poughkeepsie police are in charge at the scene, and continue their investigation. ?
An eyewitness told the Poughkeepsie Journal that she drove down Fairview Ave. at 1:20 a.m and saw the green house on fire. While standing on the street, she saw a female "fly through" a first floor window, breaking the glass. ?
"Apparently her boyfriend threw her out," she told the paper. The female and her boyfriend were both taken to the hospital and survived. ?
The identities of the victims have not been released at this time.
More content from msnbc.com and NBC News
Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/21/10207477-3-die-in-house-fire-near-marist-college
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In animals, manganese shows promise fighting a hemorrhagic E. coli toxin
Web edition : 12:16 pm
A simple mineral supplement ? manganese ? holds promise as the first successful treatment for hemorrhage-inducing infections caused by some food- and waterborne germs. The mineral helps detoxify Shiga toxin, which is produced by a host of bacteria, including the type of E. coli that killed scores and sickened more than 3,700 people in Europe last year.
The new work, by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, appears in the Jan. 20 Science.
Although the data are preliminary, ?it?s an exciting finding,? says microbiologist Vernon Tesh of the Texas A&M Health Science Center in Bryan, who did not participate in the new study. Manganese might soon offer a low-cost treatment that physicians could administer ?to every patient that comes into the clinic with a bloody stool,? he says.
?That would be a tremendous boon,? he adds, because although antibiotics can wipe out germs responsible for these infections, such drugs are strongly discouraged. Killing the bugs only expedites their release of Shiga toxin, increasing a patient?s risk of kidney failure, stroke and death.
The new finding ?is a classic example of serendipity in science,? says coauthor Adam Linstedt, a cell biologist at Carnegie Mellon. His team has been exploring the somewhat mysterious cellular role of a protein called GPP130. Then a colleague at the University of California, Santa Cruz reported the puzzling observation that giving cells manganese made their GPP130 disappear.
Normally, foreign materials entering a cell get tasted by an internal compartment called an endosome. Endosomes then shunt undesirable substances to another compartment, a lysosome, where they will be broken down and their raw materials discarded or recycled.
That should spell the end of Shiga toxin ? except it never reaches the lysosomes. Somewhere along the way, the poison hijacks protein-trafficking systems and forces a detour elsewhere in the cell. There the hijacker knocks out the cell?s life-sustaining machinery.
Linstedt and Somshuvra Mukhopadhyay, also of Carnegie Mellon, now show that it?s GPP130 that Shiga toxin hijacks. And manganese can defend GPP130 from that attack, allowing cells to shuttle the toxin directly to lysosomes, where it?s broken down into harmless components. In cells grown in a test tube and in mice, manganese pretreatment prevented death from the administration of pure Shiga toxin.
How clinically helpful that might be remains unclear. The toxin destroys the body?s smallest blood vessels, notes epidemiologist Dirk Werber of the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin. Vascular injury, which is the most dramatic consequence of infection with Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, ?is likely to be well under way by the time infected patients seek medical attention for diarrhea,? he says.
That?s true, Tesh acknowledges, although up to seven days can pass between the onset of bloody diarrhea and catastrophic vascular effects, as the toxin breaks out of the gut and begins circulating. So there would probably be a brief window when manganese treatment could save lives, he says.
The Carnegie Mellon researchers are now homing in on the minimum amount of manganese needed to protect animals, and hope to soon begin testing using Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli.
Source: http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/337775/title/Mineral_quashes_deadly_bacterial_poisons
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By NBC News and news services
Updated at 3:33 a.m. ET: A helicopter crash in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan killed six U.S. Marines, the NATO?military command in Kabul told NBC News early Friday.
Officials said?there were no signs of enemy activity in the area at time of the crash.
The Marines have a substantial presence in Helmand province.
"We are still in the process of gathering more information on the incident," an official told Reuters.
It is the worst crash since last August?when 30 soldiers, including 22 elite Navy SEAL commandos, died when their helicopter came down in eastern Afghanistan.
The Helmand helicopter crash occurred on the same day seven civilians were killed outside a crowded gate at Kandahar Air Field, a sprawling base for U.S. and NATO operations, after a suicide attacker set off a vehicle laden with explosives. The Taliban claimed responsibility, saying?they were targeting a NATO convoy.
On Wednesday, 13 civilians, including three Afghan policemen, were killed when a suicide attacker blew himself up in a bazaar in? Helmand province. At least 22 others were wounded in the blast in Kajaki district.
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NBC News, The Associated Press?and Reuters contributed to this report.
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LES CAYES, Haiti ? A Haitian judge convicted seven police officers Thursday on various charges for their role in a prison riot in which at least 10 prisoners were shot to death in the chaotic aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake.
Judge Ezekiel Vaval said six other police officers were innocent as he concluded a three-month trial in the southwestern town of Les Cayes that was a closely watched test of the judicial system in the impoverished country.
The 13 police officers were accused of murder, attempted murder and other crimes after they allegedly opened fire on inmates during a prison riot in Les Cayes one week after the quake.
The sentences ranged from two years to 13 years of hard labor. The defendants faced up to life in prison.
"The decision of the judge is his expression of the truth," Vaval said in the packed courtroom. "There are other versions that exist but this is mine. And that is the law."
Lawyers for the officers had argued that the police officers were trying to break up a riot under difficult circumstances and it was unclear who actually shot the prisoners, saying some may have been killed by fellow inmates.
The trial itself was a rare occurrence in Haiti, a country where the judicial system barely functions and public officials are rarely held to account. The judge told The Associated Press before the verdict that he had received threatening phone calls and feared for his life.
Twenty-one other officers who fled will be tried in absentia.
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