Government goes ahead with drug tests for kids

The Swedish government has ignored the advice of Sweden's Council on Legislation (Lagrådet) and proposed the introduction of drug tests on children below the age of 15.

"Early intervention against young abusers is absolutely crucial," said Beatrice Ask, Sweden's justice minister.

In a previous ruling, the council weighed the invasion of personal integrity occasioned by the supervised collection of a urine sample against the benefits of a child getting help to counter their drug use, and concluded that the invasion of personal integrity was disproportionate.

Ask argued however for the importance of timely intervention regarding drug use and underlined that several of the bodies in the referral process supported the government's stance.

The government's legislative proposal also provides for the tests to be conducted without the consent of the children's parents.

"It is not always that straightforward to find the parents or to gain their permission and I think that it is important to be able to check if there is misuse."

As an example, Ask said the forced test measure could be used if a child were to be found in a dope den.

The Council on Legislation also warned that a forced urine test could be used by police as a form of punishment. This criticism is rejected by Ask who argues that the police have better things to do than to harass youngsters.

TT

The Local | Sweden

Mexico violence factors in spring break plans

By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN

Associated Press Writer

SOUTH PADRE ISLAND, Texas (AP) - Marquette University senior Kelly Magennis wasn't even up prepping for the start of the biggest spring break week on Texas' South Padre Island when the first text message arrived from her mom forbidding her from crossing into Mexico.

"I said, 'don't worry, I didn't even bring my passport,'" Magennis said, surrounded by several thousand like-minded spring breakers on the beach Monday.

Whether it was grisly murders of three people with ties to the U.S. consulate in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, over the weekend or months of reports about the bloody drug war south of the border, students said they were avoiding Mexico. For many, parents' admonitions short circuited spring break plans before they began.

"Parents should not allow their children to visit these Mexican (border) cities because their safety cannot be guaranteed," Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steve McCraw said in a warning issued March 4.

The alert applied specifically to border towns and did not include other popular Mexican destinations such as Cancun and Puerto Vallarta, but University of NorthTexas student Katie-Ross Ward said the strong warning closed the deal for her parents.

"My parents wouldn't let me go (to Mexico) because I have blonde hair and blue eyes," said Ward, 18. "They said I'd get kidnapped".

The U.S. State Department issued its own warning Sunday, a day after an American consulate employee, her husband and the husband of a Mexican employee were gunned down in separate incidents in Juarez. Suspected drug gangsters chased down and opened fire on two SUVs carrying the families from a children's party, killing the adults and injuring two children.

"Drug cartels and associated criminal elements have retaliated violently against individuals who speak out against them or whom they otherwise view as a threat to their organizations," the government warning said. Families of U.S. government employees in several northern Mexico cities were authorized to leave the country until April 12.

Dan Quandt, executive director of the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Bureau, saidTexas week—the biggest week of the collegiate vacation season on the island—was packed and he couldn't tell if the violence in Mexico was impacting the island's business one way or another.

Once advertised heavily as the home of the "Two Nation Vacation," South Padre Island has worked in recent years to offer everything students want on the island so they don't feel the need to take the short drive to Mexico.

Still, Quandt said it's sad that students now are less likely to get even that brief taste of another culture. While some were just seeking a lower drinking age, some from other parts of the country sought out a new experience. "A lot of it is just to say you did it (went to Mexico)," he said.

But this year, students appear to have received the message about the risks of cross-border travel, Quandt said. "It's just not happening".

Breitbart

Stop evicting illegal families, Holland told

The Netherlands is continuing to break EU conventions by leaving families with children whose requests for asylum have been rejected to fend for themselves on the streets, the Volkskrant reports on Monday.

At the end of last month, the European Committee on Social Rights said the Netherlands must stop evicting families with young children from asylum seekers centres because this conflicted with the European social charter and other human rights legislation.

The charter guarantees the rights of children to protection and a roof over their heads, whatever their legal status. The complaint against the Netherlands was brought by the Defence for Children lobby group in 2008.

The Volkskrant says several hundred families with children are evicted from refugee centres every year.

However, the Netherlands is not planning to amend its rules until it has discussed the issue with the Council of Europe, but that meeting will not take place for several months, the paper says.

Defence for Children lawyer Carla van Os told the paper the Netherlands is dragging its feet unnecessarily. 'The conclusion is very clear. You cannot dump children on the street. The ruling is binding and the rest of the Council of Europe has nothing to say about the matter,' Van Os said.

The justice ministry says it cannot change the current situation immediately for 'procedural reasons', and lawyers are now working to establish jurisprudence, the paper says.

For example, lawyer Pim Fischer is currently dealing with two families left on Emmen station and told to find their way home.

Junior justice minister Nebahat Albayrak has also ordered local councils to close their emergency accommodation for failed asylum seeker families.

Dutch News

Secret Document Calls Wikileaks ‘Threat’ to U.S. Army

By David Kravets

Wikileaks presents a “threat to the U.S. Army” and publishes “potentially actionable information” for targeting military personnel, according to a classified intelligence report posted Monday on the whistleblowing site.

The 32-page report entitled Wikileaks.org – An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents, or Terrorist Groups? (.pdf) indicates the government’s concern that “current employees or moles” within the Defense Department or the U.S. government “are providing sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks”. To stop this, the 2008 report had suggested a campaign to expose and punish those who leak to the site, which was founded in 2007 by Chinese dissidents, journalists and mathematicians.

“Wikileaks.org uses trust as a center of gravity by assuring insiders, leakers, and whistleblowers who pass information to Wikileaks.org personnel or who post information to the website that they will remain anonymous,” according to the report. “The identification, exposure, or termination of employment of or legal actions against current or former insiders, leakers, or whistleblowers could damage or destroy this center of gravity and deter others from using Wikileaks.org to make such information public”.

The document is classified Secret,  and was produced by the Army Counterintelligence Center, under the Department of Defense Intelligence Analysis Program. It appears to underscore the military’s alarm that Wikileaks might be used to reveal United States military secrets, or broadcast disinformation harmful to the U.S.

Neither Wikileaks editor Julian Assange nor the Defense Department immediately responded for comment.

The report, which could not be independently verified, said Wikileaks “could be of value to foreign intelligence and security services (FISS), foreign military forces, foreign insurgents, and foreign terrorist groups for collecting information or for planning attacks against U.S. forces, both within the United State and abroad”.

The report added that the site “could be used to post fabricated information; to post misinformation, disinformation, and propaganda; or to conduct perception management and influence operations designed to convey a negative message to those who view or retrieve information from the website”.

Run by Sunshine Press, Wikileaks has received awards from Amnesty International and has been praised by media groups and others for giving whistleblowers and political dissidents a forum to expose corruption and foster transparency.

Notable leaks include the 238-page U.S. military manual detailing operations of the Defense Department’s Guantánamo Bay detention facility, and a Central Intelligence Agency manual for operating the CIA’s rendition flights, which involved undocumented detainees who were kidnapped in various locations and flown to countries outside the United States for interrogation and torture.

Wired

Sex not specified: Australia leads the way with legal document

EXCLUSIVE: 8 March 2010: The NSW government in Australia has issued what is believed to be the world’s first ‘Sex Not Specified’ Recognised Details Certificate in place of a birth certificate, writes Katrina Fox.

Norrie, a member of Sex and Gender Education (SAGE), a lobby group campaigning for the rights of all sex and gender diverse people has been issued with what is understood to be the world’s first ‘Sex Not Specified’ Recognised Details Certificate in place of a birth certificate.

This means that Norrie (also known as norrie mAy-Welby) – a resident of Sydney, NSW – is legally recognised as neither male nor female according to the Australian government.

Originally Norrie, 48, was born in Scotland and registered as male at birth. At age 23 Norrie commenced sex and gender conversion to female through hormone and construction of a vagina and was then issued with a gender recognition certificate as female in Australia.

But this did not work out for Norrie as zie (gender-neutral pronoun) did not feel comfortable living solely as a female so zie ceased lifelong hormone treatment and took up a neuter identity which is neither male nor female, resisting any further female or male normalisation.

In January 2010 doctors declared that they were unable to determine Norrie as either male or female as zie has no gonads, the hormonal system was atypically male or female, and Norrie’s psychological identity was neuter.

NSW Births Deaths and Marriages then issued the ‘Sex Not Specified’ Details Recognition Certificate in accordance with recommendations made by the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2009 report on the legal rights of sex and gender diverse people proposing a greater scope of legal recognition be used beyond male and female for certain individuals.

“This decision now has fundamental ramifications for neuter and intersex identified individuals in that they no longer have to be forced to live as male or female,” said Tracie O’Keefe, spokesperson for SAGE.

“Furthermore it is an enormous legal breakthrough for the rights of intersex children whose doctors and parents are confused about their sex at births and that they could be registered as ‘Sex Not Specified’ until they decide what sex would be right for them,” O’Keefe continued.

“Many intersex children have been forced into male and female identities, when not medically necessary, which they later felt were incorrect, including unnecessary brutal surgery to give them stereotypical looking genitalia, often leaving them without sensation or function”.

The Scavenger

Promoter behind 'Ibiza Rocks' hopes to repeat its success in Mallorca

By Jerome Taylor

For years it was known as the “Gomorrah of the Med” – a paradise island of unparalleled hedonism where clubbers could behave as badly as they liked on the streets of San Antonio.

But Ibiza’s reputation rapidly improved when indie music invaded, bringing an altogether more calm clientele to the sun-kissed shores of the White Island. Now the promoter who helped cement Ibiza’s reputation as one of the summer’s best live music venues with “Ibiza Rocks” is hoping to do the same for nearby Mallorca.

Andy McKay, an Ibiza mainstay who has pioneered guitar music in his venues over the past five years, is currently putting the finishing touches to a major “Mallorca Rocks” hotel complex in Magaluf which will host many of the indie bands playing in Ibiza this year.

Speaking to The Independent today he said: “We invaded Ibiza with a guitar and we hope to do the same with Mallorca. As a tourist destination Mallorca is much more representative of UK youth culture than Ibiza which, because it was such a clubbing mecca, was initially quite difficult to break into. It’s a logical step to try and bring the Ibiza Rocks label to Mallorca”.

The opening of the hotel now means that bands and artists such as The Kooks, Calvin Harris, Dizzee Rascal and Pendulum will play sets in both Ibiza and Mallorca this summer. Other acts that have also been confirmed for Ibiza include The Prodigy, who were announced yesterday as the headline act, and Florence and the Machine.

Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke will also play his first ever live solo set in Ibiza this summer after the group split to follow their own individual projects.

Whether the 18-25 crowd heading to Mallorca this summer will be as enamoured of indie music as Ibiza’s regulars remains to be seen, but McKay is confident that guitar music will catch on.

“The tickets for Mallorca Rocks have only been on sale for a month and they’ve already overtaken Ibiza,” he said. “And Ibiza’s up 59 per cent on last year so far”.

McKay also hopes that an influx of indie fans will help provide Magaluf with a balance to the more drunken revellers that often crowd into the resort bars each summer.

“Magaluf has a lot of the problems that San Antonio had a few years back,” he said. “Ibiza Rocks has helped to change the nature of youth culture out there. Perhaps the same could happen in Mallorca?”

Ibiza Rocks first took off in 2005 when McKay invited guitar bands such as Dirty Pretty Things and Kasabian to play live sets in Manumission, an iconic club night that was founded by McKay and his brother. Manumission, which was famous for its live sex shows, topless dancers and high wire acrobats, stopped running last year. The Ibiza Rocks brand has continued to go from strength to strength.

As well as hosting live gigs, McKay has built Ibiza Rocks into a full tour operator where music fans can book flights and stay in designated hotels where the gigs are played. It has also attracted the likes of celebrities such as Kate Moss landing Ibiza squarely within the A-list celebrity circuit.

The Independent

Karachi 'water mafia' leaves Pakistanis parched and broke

Corrupt politicians allow businessmen to siphon off as much as 41% of the city's water supply and turn around and sell it at exorbitant rates to residents, generating an estimated $43 million a year

By Alex Rodriguez

Reporting from Karachi, Pakistan

Name a cash cow in this sprawling city of ragged slums and glass-walled office buildings and there's sure to be an organized crime syndicate behind it.

The illegal operations, routinely referred to as mafias, are everywhere. There's a land mafia that commandeers prime real estate, a sugar mafia that conspires to control sugar prices, and even a railway mafia that forges train tickets and pilfers locomotive parts.

For those on the city's bottom rung, however, the underworld entity they revile the most is the water tanker mafia, a network of trucking firms that teams up with corrupt bureaucrats to turn water into liquid gold worth tens of millions of dollars each year.

The water tanker mafia's prey can be found in slums like Karachi's Gulshan-Sikanderabad neighborhood, where every morning people buy water from the tankers, lug the plastic jugs back to their homes on wooden carts, then come back three or four more times in the afternoon and evening to buy more.

A family that makes $100 a month can spend as much as a quarter of that on water, which, elsewhere in Pakistan, costs pennies and flows out of household taps.

Water scarcity isn't the cause. Karachi has a steady water supply, and it has the network of pipes to pump ample water into every neighborhood, rich and poor.

But Karachi is also a city of opportunists forever on the prowl for under-the-table wealth. As municipal officials look the other way, businessmen illegally tap water mains, and use the makeshift hydrants to supply fleets of tankers that then sell water to businesses, factories and neighborhoods at inflated prices. As many as 272 million gallons a day are siphoned off by the trucks.

On a recent sunbaked afternoon, along a dirt lane filled with goats munching on piles of refuse, Momin Khan seethed as he filled another blue jug with water from a cistern replenished every other day by the water tankers.

"We're poor laborers -- we can't spare this much for water," said Khan, 27, a glass factory worker. "The water supply lines come right into this neighborhood, but there's never any water. So I buy the same water that I should be getting through the pipes for free. I've got no choice".

Karachi has nine hydrant locations where water supply companies can legally buy water and fill their tanker trucks. But scattered throughout the city are at least 160 illegal hydrants, said Ashraf Sagar, manager of the Orangi Pilot Project, a private organization that researches water issues in Karachi.

The siphoning takes place around the clock, Sagar said. It's done in the dead of night, but also in broad daylight.

Along Manghopir Road, a bustling Karachi avenue lined with grease-covered car repair stalls and appliance storefronts, it's easy to find a pair of tanker drivers standing on top of their trucks, filling up with a large blue hose from an illegal hydrant inside a red-brick building. Armed guards keep outsiders from meddling.

On average, a tanker fills up six times a day, Sagar said, siphoning as much as 41% of the city's daily water supply, an amount that generates $43 million annually for tanker owners, according to Orangi.

"With this much money involved, it's clear these are very wealthy people," Sagar said. "They're powerful mafias colluding with corrupt people in the government. So there's really nothing ordinary Pakistanis can do to stop it."

Shahnawaz Jadoon, a deputy administrative chief for the Gulshan-Sikanderabad neighborhood, said it was virtually impossible to clamp down on an enterprise that combines the clout of city government and the wealth of Karachi's powerful business circles.

At times, illegal hydrants are shut down by city officials, only to be reopened a week later. Activists said they didn't know of anyone involved ever being arrested.

"The big reason why people don't get the water they're supposed to," said Jadoon, "is that if they did, this whole system, the tanker mafia and this corrupt network, would shut down".

Los Angeles Times