Category: People

{{Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s approval rating fell for the first time since her term began in January 2011 as concern about inflation and sluggish economic growth grew, the Datafolha polling agency said on Saturday.}}

Brazilians rating Rousseff’s presidency as “good” or “excellent” fell to 57 percent from 65% in the previous poll. The Datafolha survey was published in the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper.

The decline was seen in all age and income groups and in all regions of Brazil, Datafolha said.

While Rousseff, a member of Brazil’s Workers’ Party, remains the favorite to win presidential elections in October 2014, Datafolha said her weakening popularity reflects Brazilians’ dissatisfaction with the performance of their economy and rising concern that consumer prices and unemployment will rise.

The percentage of Brazilians who expect the inflation rate to rise from current levels rose to 51 percent from 45 percent, the poll said.

Inflation rose to 6.5 percent in the 12 months ended May 30, Brazil’s IBGE statistics agency said on Friday. It is now at the top of the government’s own inflation targeting range of 4.5 percent plus or minus two percentage points.

Economic growth in the first quarter came in below expectations, with gross domestic product rising only 0.6 percent compared with the fourth quarter. Annual GDP growth in 2012 was 1.4 percent.

The risk of inflation limits the ability of Rousseff to promote the expansionist economic policies that have won her many supporters. It also prompted the central bank to raise interest rates to 8 percent from 7.5 percent last week, a move that could hurt already sluggish growth.

On Thursday, Standard & Poor’s downgraded its outlook for Brazil’s foreign currency debt rating to “negative” from “stable”. S&P said deteriorating budget fundamentals and slow growth under Rousseff’s left-leaning government, could undermine the country’s ability to pay its debt and jeopardize its BBB long-term rating.

Economic difficulties and policy doubts come as Rousseff also faces growing resentment from members of her ruling coalition in Congress.

Despite a strong coalition majority in both houses of Congress, legislators have overridden Rousseff’s line item vetoes of a controversial royalty provisions in a major oil law and resisted voting in favor of high-profile legislation written by the executive aimed at improving the country’s clogged and inefficient ports.

Despite the declines in popularity, Datafolha said Rousseff remains the favorite among the most likely candidates in an October 2014 presidential election.

According to the Datafolha, she is the favorite of 51 percent of those polled, followed by Marina Silva, a former Brazilian environment minister with 16 percent, and Aecio Neves, a former governor of Minas Gerais state with 14 percent. Neves is the leader of Brazil’s main opposition party, the PSDB.

The Datafolha poll was conducted on June 6 and 7 and surveyed 3,758 people. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

Later this month, the Ibope public opinion research group plans to release another poll measuring Rousseff’s popularity. The Ibope poll is commissioned by National Industrial Confederation, or CNI, Brazil’s largest industrial lobby group.

{reuters}

{{Three European women went on trial in Tunis on Wednesday for holding a topless anti-Islamist protest, and their French lawyer said he was confident about the outcome, despite the risk of jail sentences.}}

They were protesting the arrest of a Tunisian woman for protesting against hardline Islamists and awaiting trial for illegally possessing pepper spray

Pauline Hillier and Marguerite Stern from France and Josephine Markmann from Germany arrived in court around 0930 GMT wearing the traditional Tunisian veil, or safsari. A few dozen people had gathered outside the courthouse and shouted abuse at one of the women’s Tunisian lawyers.

“How can you defend those women?” one of the people shouted. “You are not Tunisian; you are not Muslim; you don’t have a wife or daughter.”

Patrick Klugman, who came to Tunis to represent the activists from the radical women’s group Femen, said the prosecution had decided on a charge of debauchery rather than an attack on public morals.

Klugman said Femen is accused of having committed an act of debauchery, but that there are no material facts or evidence of intent to back up the charge.

“Their bodies were not exhibited to seduce but to convey a political message… which is different than debauchery,” he told media.

{A jacket is thrown towards one of three topless activists from the Femen feminist group, as they demonstrate in front of the justice Palace in Tunis, on May 29, 2013. The women, two French and the other German, shouted: “Free Amina,” in reference to the young Tunisian woman imprisoned for protesting against hardline Islamists and awaiting trial for illegally possessing pepper spray}.

AFP

{{A 66-year-old who lived his whole life as a man was given a surprising diagnosis after visiting the doctor in Hong Kong with a swollen abdomen – he was a woman.}}

Doctors realised the patient was female after they found the swelling came from a large cyst on an ovary, the Hong Kong Medical Journal reported.

The condition was the result of two rare genetic disorders.

The subject had Turner syndrome, which affects girls and women and results from a problem with the chromosomes, with characteristics including infertility and short stature.

But he also had congenital adrenal hyperplasia, increasing male hormones and making the patient, who had a beard and a “micropenis”, appear like a man.

“Were it not due to the huge ovarian cyst, his intriguing medical condition might never have been exposed,” seven doctors from two of the city’s hospitals wrote in the study published on Monday.

The 1.37 meters (4.5 feet) tall patient, who grew up as an orphan, was found to have no testes, a history of urinary leakage since childhood, and stopped growing after puberty at the age of 10.

The doctors said there have been only six cases where both genetic disorders have been reported in medical literature. Turner Syndrome on its own affects only one in 2,500 to 3,000 females.

The Vietnam-born Chinese patient decided to continue “perceiving himself as having a male gender with the possible need of testosterone replacement,” according to the journal.

Most men have a X and a Y chromosome and most women have a pair of X chromosomes. But people with Turner Syndrome tend to have only one X chromosome or are missing part of their second X chromosome.

{AFP}

{{Turkey’s Islamic-led government is facing its biggest protests in years. Here is a look at the protests and what may be driving them:}}

Q: {{What’s going on in Turkey?}}

A: Demonstrators were camping out in Istanbul’s landmark Taksim Square to protest plans to rip out trees and redevelop the area when authorities launched a violent pre-dawn raid Friday to clear them out.

Protests against the police’s heavy-handed response quickly spread to cities across the country. Monday was the fourth day that riot police used tear gas in Istanbul and Ankara against protesters.

Q: {{Are the protests just about trees — or something more?}}

A: Demonstrators are also venting pent-up resentment against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been in office for 10 years.

Many secular Turks see him as an authoritarian figure who is trying to exert his conservative religious Islamic views on them. Erdogan rejects those accusations, insisting he respects all Turks and is a “servant” of the people.

Q: {{Who are the protesters?}}

A: Most of the tens of thousands of protesters on Turkey’s streets appear to be urban, secular Turks, frustrated by what they see as Erdogan’s close ties to development interests and his alleged attempts to force his religious outlook on them.

Erdogan says the protests have been stirred up by Turkey’s opposition and extremists who are trying to force their will on the majority who backs him.

Q: {{What has Erdogan done?}}

A: Erdogan, who has been in power since 2003 after winning three landslide elections, has been credited with boosting economic growth in Turkey and raising the country’s international profile.

But he has been a divisive figure at home, with his government cracking down on journalists, passing laws to curb the sale of alcohol and taking a strong stand against the Syrian regime — a stance that some believe has put Turkey’s security at risk.

Some Turks see him as a meddler in their personal lives, speaking out against Caesarean births, telling women they should have at least three children and even advising how TV characters should behave.

Q: {{Why are protesters angry at police?}}

A: Social media has been awash with reports and videos of police abuse during the protests. Authorities have said police excesses would be investigated, but they appeared to continue unabated.

Turkey’s Human Rights Foundation says more than 1,000 protesters were subjected “to ill-treatment and torture” by police.

Q: {{What does the president of Turkey think?}}

A: President Abdullah Gul has taken a more conciliatory line, celebrating peaceful protests as a democratic right. “Democracy does not mean elections alone,” he said Monday.

Q: {{What’s next? Is Turkey the next country to fall to an Arab Spring revolution?}}

A: Turkey will be holding a presidential election next year in which Erdogan — who will hit his term limit as prime minister — could run against Gul. Despite images that resemble the Arab Spring protests that brought down leaders across the region, Erdogan is unlikely to fall.

Turkey has a stable democracy and his backing by the silent majority still appears to be strong. “We already have a spring in Turkey,” he said Monday, alluding to the nation’s free elections.

{compiled from internet}

{{In Russia, a jailed member of the punk group Pussy Riot has ended her 11-day hunger strike Saturday after prison authorities met her demands, an activist said.}}

Maria Alekhina had complained that officials at her prison colony in the Ural Mountains attempted to turn fellow inmates against her with a security crackdown.

Inmates, who could previously enter and leave their workplace freely, had to wait for up to an hour for prison guards to escort them.

Pyotr Verzilov, the husband of Alekhina’s jailed band mate Nadezhda Tolokonnikova said that Alekhina called Saturday to say she has ended her action after prison officials restored the normal security regime.

Verzilov said authorities took Alekhina, who was hospitalized Tuesday, on a tour across the prison colony, so that she sees that all extra security measures were removed.

The extra security meant that inmates were denied prompt medical care when they sustained injuries during their work sewing uniforms.

“It looks improbable, it’s not in the tradition of the prison system here to make any concessions,” Verzilov said. “There must have been a political decision.”

Alekhina’s lawyer, Irina Khrunova, confirmed to the AP that she ended the hunger strike, but gave no further details.

Alekhina and Tolokonnikova are serving two-year sentences over an irreverent punk protest against Vladimir Putin in Moscow’s main cathedral.

The third band member convicted alongside them, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was later released on appeal.

Courts have denied parole to Alekhina and Tolokonnikova, who are serving their sentence in different prison colonies.

Alekhina earlier spent five months in solitary confinement after claiming that officials deliberately lodged her with hardened criminals, including a convicted murderer, and encouraged them to intimidate her.

In a complaint filed in January, Khrunova wrote that officials did nothing after seeing criminals threaten Alekhina with violence.

The lawyer said officials also wrote false psychiatric reports and pushed Alekhina into violating colony rules.

{Wirestory}