Africa’s life expectancy to reach lowest level ever
By the year 2005, most Africans will die before their 48th birthday Lawrence Agubuzu, the Assistant Secretary - General of the Organization of African Unity, reported to the fourth general assembly of the African Population Commission. The spread of disease, war and poverty has driven down the life expectancy by 15 years in the last two decades.
Agubuzu said that of the continent’s 700 million population, women and children were the most vulnerable group.
“The high population growth, coupled with an unstable political, social and economic climate, are factors that jeopardize the socioeconomic situation of African countries and contribute to the degradation of the environment. The statistics of morbidity and mortality due to HIV/AIDS are very grim on our continent,” Agubuzu said.
He said diseases such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and related infectious diseases have become a national security risk and threat to socioeconomic development. For example, in Mali 130 children per 1,000 die before they reach the age of one year.
Prosper Poukouta, from the African Development Bank, said African is the only continent where the number of poor will rise in the next decade.
The conference is targeting HIV/ AIDS, the migration of populations, and helping address the “uncertainty and confusion” of African youth in their societies.
Czech communist officials found guilty
Three high-ranking communist officials of the former Czechoslovakia have been found guilty of intimidating dissidents. Vladimir Starek, Zdenek Wiederlechner and Zdenek Nemec each received a three-year suspended prison term by the court in Prague.
Playwright Vaclav Havel, who later became president of the Czech Republic, was one of their targets.
The dissidents were physically intimidated, threatened and harshly interrogated. About 20 members of the targeted group requested that they be sent into exile and were stripped of their citizenship.
The dissidents were targeted because they played a major role in the creation of the human rights manifesto Charter 77.
The campaign against the dissidents was code named Asanace, Czech for sanitation. Asanace lasted from 1978 - 1984.
The three defendants were employed by the interior ministry and secret police and faced a 10 year jail sentence.
Former Interior Minister Jaromir Obzina was also charged, but his case has been transferred to the Supreme Court because there are issues of parliamentary immunity that need to be decided.
Another defendant, Oldrich Mezl, was acquitted because there was no physical evidence linking him to the activities.
In a related case, two former secret police agents received a three-year jail sentence for torturing dissidents.
Bridging the digital divide no longer a budget priority
In its Fiscal Year 2003 budget, the White House removed over $100 million in public investments previously earmarked for community technology grants and IT training programs. These programs focus on rural communities, the working poor, minorities and children.
To justify these budget decisions, the administration last week released “A Nation Online,” a nationwide study on computer and Internet use in America. Once the national benchmark for measuring the digital divide, this year’s study takes the position that the digital divide is no longer an issue.
However, the Benton Foundation, which works to realize social benefits made possible by the public interest use of communications, came to a different conclusion.
The Foundation found that the data reveals gaps in technology access among citizens of different educational, income, racial, and geographic backgrounds are growing. According to “A Nation Online” only one in four of America’s poorest households were online in 2001 compared with eight in 10 homes earning over $75,000 per year. This gap expanded dramatically between 1997-2001.
Additionally, almost twice as many urban households have high-speed broadband Internet access in comparison to rural communities.
