Read All About It In the Sunday Papers: Post-Fireworks Edition

Lead Story-The (UK) Independent: The Harrowing Tale of A Forced Marriage

Thankfully, the Independent isn’t just reporting on the story and its aftermath, but employed its reporters and resources to play a key role in exposing this story and helping to gain the freedom of the victim.

In an exclusive interview with the IoS, Dr Abedin told of the moment she was abducted: “My face was covered with a piece of cloth by men who told me they were policemen, before they carried me out into an ambulance which was parked outside the house. They held my arms and legs, carried me like a prisoner, while my parents stood in the background.” 

For the next three months, every morning and every night, she was forced to swallow dangerously high doses of powerful tranquillisers used to treat people with psychoses. She was kept locked in the hospital, constantly told she was a disgrace by staff and relatives, and denied contact with the outside world. But she could make it stop, so her parents and psychiatrist told her, if she agreed to give up her life in England, marry the man her family had chosen for her and stay in Bangladesh. She refused.

This story is both horrifying and inspirational. And here is the vital context:

Last December, Dr Abedin was dramatically freed after frantic efforts – highlighted by the IoS – by lawyers in the UK and Dhaka, together with Ask, a human rights NGO, led to her release. The majority of victims are not so lucky; hundreds of missing schoolchildren each year are feared to have been married off abroad by their families.

When you picture a victim of forced marriage, whom do you see? Probably an uneducated, young Asian girl, from a deeply traditional and authoritarian family. But research published last week suggests there could be 8,000 forced marriage cases in England each year, affecting African, European and Middle Eastern communities as well. Victims in 14 per cent of cases are male; 14 per cent are under 16. A worrying proportion involves people with learning disabilities who may not have the capacity to consent.

Essential reporting on an issue that will remain shrouded in the shadows only as long as people don’t get involved. 

The (UK) Guardian: Who Needs Bush When There’s Berlusconi?

Schedules G-8 Summit in earthquake-prone town. May now have to move it at last minute due to…earthquakes:

Diplomatic eyebrows were raised when Berlusconi decided to move the conference from Sardinia – where work building a G8 conference centre was way over budget – to the site of April’s earthquake, which left 300 dead and 53,000 people still homeless. Much was made of how leaders would stay in a “barracks” at L’Aquila, a police college, setting a suitably austere tone to discussions on climate change and economic disaster. Even the beds in which delegates slept would later be donated to the homeless.

Guido Bertolaso, the civil protection chief, said the compound could withstand an earthquake stronger than April’s 5.8 magnitude, but aftershocks this weekend are reported to have sent crockery crashing to the ground.

The Italian green group Legambiente said the decision was always madness. “It’s a good idea to talk about the suffering of the earthquake victims, but you don’t actually have to go there to do it,” said spokesman Maurizio Gubbiotti. “The homeless are already having a miserable time and this G8 will restrict their movements even more. Is it wise to get over 3,000 people up there to the conference while aftershocks rumble on?”

Al Jazeera: Reports from the Afghan Front

You almost certainly missed it with all the breathless MJ/Palin/Sanford coverage in what passes for the American press, but United States and Afghan troops have launched a ‘major military operation’ in Afghanistan. The Beast Who Slumbers has tried in vain to find any American reporting placing this in context, which leaves it to foreign outlets to cover the story:

Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr, reporting from the provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, said: “There has been little resistance in this US offensive in the south of Helmand but the Taliban can move from one village to another and most of them are a part of the civilian population so it is very difficult.

“They [Taliban] do not engage coalition and Afghan forces in direct combat. Their tactics are suicide bombings, creating insecurity, ambushes, roadside bombs,” she said.

The biggest concern is the sweltering heat:

“Even in the tents it is extremely hot, and there’s no where to go to escape the nature of the heat. The troops in villages like Nawa have it much worse because they’re suppose to carry all the food and water they need so they don’t have to be resupplied for up to six days,” he said.

‘Bulo recommends the story not just for itself, but for the accompanying links that can be found in the box labeled “In Depth”.

In depth? What a journalistic concept. 

Sunday News-Journal(!): ‘From Delaware to San Marcos’

While El Somnambulo generally steers clear of local coverage b/c he figures that those stories can be addressed in individual threads, he found Summer Harlow‘s story on how Guatemalan migrant workers in Georgetown fueled a building boom in Guatemala fascinating:

Ten years ago, none of those buildings were there. Ten years ago, three- or four-floored houses would have been unheard-of; shacks made of adobe and bamboo walls and sheet metal roofs were the norm. Back then, there were few businesses, and even fewer paved roads.

 Because 10 years ago, immigration from this mountain city to Georgetown, Del., was just beginning to hit its stride and remittances, the money migrants living abroad send home, were just starting to trickle back to Tacaná.

 “Tacaná is so different now than it was when I left,” said Santizo, 31, who lived in Delaware from 1999 to 2004, earning $8.50 an hour working at Perdue. “My life is so much better now. I have a house, a car, possibilities. If I hadn’t gone to the United States, I never would have been able to own my own business. I’d be working in a corn or bean field, maybe earning enough to eat, but nothing else, with no way to better myself or my children.”

This is not simply a feel-good story. It addresses how the economic downturn in the US is impacting migrant workers. And, tomorrow, in the second of this two-part series, Harlow will address the issue of undocumented immigrants in Georgetown. ‘Bulo will be reading.

McClatchy Papers: Fighting to Save a Complex Eco-System

How the fates of salmon and Orca whales are intertwined along a 700-mile stretch from northern California to the Puget Sound, and how it might impact the farming-rich California Central Valley.

Nobody said it would be easy, but it’s at least nice to know that the Feds are finally acknowledging the complexity of the situation, and trying to fashion a pro-active solution:

WASHINGTON — A plan to restore salmon runs on California’s Sacramento River also could help revive killer whale populations 700 miles to the north in Puget Sound, as federal scientists struggle to protect endangered species in a complex ecosystem that stretches along the Pacific coast from California to Alaska.

Without wild salmon from the Sacramento and American rivers as part of their diet, the killer whales might face extinction, scientists concluded in a biological opinion that could result in even more severe water restrictions for farmers in the drought-stricken, 400-mile-long Central Valley of California. The valley is the nation’s most productive farm region.

The plan has faced heated criticism from agricultural interests and politicians in California, but environmentalists said it represented a welcome departure by the Obama administration from its predecessor in dealing with Endangered Species Act issues.

This is one of many issues that intrigues El Somnambulo, not least b/c he knows so little about it. But he knows that UI and several DL readers are much better grounded in the sciences. He encourages their input.

Dallas Sunday News: Privatized Toll Roads-Yet Another Bad Idea From Texas

Just as Texas led the mindless headlong rush into privatized correctional facilities, Texas has led the nation in privatizing toll roads. So here’s a cautionary note to ‘Fast’ Eddie Rendell, and other fat-cat governors looking for the easy way out: Turns out it ain’t all that it was cracked up to be.  In fact, Texas has called a ‘time-out’:

Lawmakers quit the Capitol on Thursday after refusing Gov. Rick Perry’s pleas to extend the state’s authority to enter long-term contracts with private toll-road developers beyond this summer.

 The decision won’t kill all private toll roads in Texas – not yet. But it signals a significant halt to one of Perry’s signature initiatives, and a pause for a policy that not only helped launch a powerful trend in statehouses across the U.S., but also sparked an explosion of toll roads in Texas, nowhere more extensively than in Dallas.

The situation is more complicated than the mere issue of privatization. After all, money for new roads and infrastructure improvement have to come from somewhere. The Dallas News article does a good job of describing the advantages and disadvantages of the policy.

Well worth reading. Especially when you’re sitting bumper-to-bumper on the way home from the beach.