JOHANNESBURG — Five Southern African countries are encouraging more men to be circumcised after a study showed the procedure can help reduce HIV infection. The appeal came after a three-year study involving 3,274 South African men aged 18-24 showed that circumcision reduced the risk of contracting HIV by up to 60 percent. So conclusive were the results that UNAIDS recently launched two similar studies in Uganda and Kenya, involving nearly 8,000 men, to establish the use of the procedure in preventing HIV infection. Agence France Presse has reported that Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland, Tanzania and Zambia were seeking assistance to make circumcision more accessible to their male populations.

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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas says he will call a referendum on statehood, after Palestinian factions failed to agree on a proposal to set their final borders with Israel. Hamas now heads the Palestinian Government and has always refused to recognise Israel. Dr Abbas backs a Palestinian state based on Israel’s 1967 borders. After 10 days of talks, the main Palestinian factions have failed to make any headway on the issue and Dr Abbas will now carry through with his threat to put the matter to a referendum. Hamas argues a referendum would be illegal and any result not binding. An adviser to Mr Abbas, Saeb Erekat says Palestinians have to resolve the issue. ‘It’s either a two-state solution, negotiated settlement, or we go on the path we’re going on now where we have one authority with two policies,’ he said. ‘We’re isolated from the international community, the street fighting in Gaza is really escalating and deteriorating and the international community suspended its aid to us, and we have chaos.’ The referendum, expected in July, will be seen as a confidence vote in the two-month-old government and its policy of refusing to recognise […]

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GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The Palestinian standoff intensified Sunday after Hamas rejected an ultimatum from President Mahmoud Abbas to endorse a plan implicitly recognizing Israel, and a pregnant woman was killed during a clash between the rivals’ forces in Gaza. In a rare dose of good news, some Palestinian public workers began withdrawing money from their banks, the first time they have been paid in three months because of a Western aid cutoff. Also, Israel’s premier talked to Egypt’s president about resuming peace talks with the Palestinians. Abbas will order a referendum on a plan drawn up by top Palestinian prisoners in an Israeli jail calling for a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem alongside Israel, a Fatah official said Sunday. Abbas set a Tuesday deadline for Hamas agreement. ‘If Hamas doesn’t give a positive answer, Abbas will issue a presidential decree calling for a referendum,’ Fatah official Azam al-Ahmad said at a news conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where the unsuccessful talks have been taking place. An Abbas-Hamas struggle over control of security forces has ignited several violent incidents. Hamas formed its own militia last month, […]

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — A meteor’s roaring crash into Antarctica – larger and earlier than the impact that killed the dinosaurs – caused the biggest mass extinction in Earth’s history and more than likely spawned the Australian continent. Ohio State University scientists said the 483km wide crater is now hidden more than 1.6km beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. ‘Gravity measurements that reveal its existence suggest it could date back about 250 million years – the time of the Permian-Triassic extinction, when almost all animal life on Earth died out,’ said the scientists. ‘Its size and location – in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia – also suggest it could have begun the break-up of the Gondwana super-continent by creating the tectonic rift that pushed Australia northward.’ Scientists believe the Permian-Triassic extinction paved the way for the dinosaurs to rise to prominence. Wilkes Land meteor was 48.3km wide The Wilkes Land crater is more than twice the size of the Chicxulub crater in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, which marks the impact that may have killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. The Chicxulub meteor is thought to have been 9.6km wide. […]

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SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – More Guantanamo Bay detainees have joined a hunger strike, raising the total to 89, and six of them were being force-fed, the U.S. military said Thursday. The strike - which last weekend jumped from three participants to 75 - is now the biggest of the year at the U.S. prison on Cuba, where about 460 men are being held on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban. The U.S. military said the detainees were trying to pressure the United States to release them, but a human rights attorney described the strike as a desperate appeal for justice. Six hunger strikers were being force-fed, said Navy Cmdr. Robert Durand - two more than last weekend. ‘All are being closely monitored by the … medical staff and being counseled on the health effects of long-term hunger striking,’ Durand said in a statement from Guantanamo Bay. Military officials said the hunger strikers are an attempt to gain public sympathy to pressure the United States to release them. Ben Wizner, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who has been to Guantanamo Bay, said the growing hunger strike appears more like a call […]

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