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University of California officials are proposing to include "anti-Zionism" as a form of discrimination that is unacceptable on campus, according to a long-awaited draft statement on intolerance released Tuesday. The inclusion immediately drew sharply divergent reactions, with pro-Israel groups hailing it as a needed step to protect Jewish students from hostility and those supporting Palestinian rights criticizing it as a naked attempt to suppress criticism of the Jewish state. Scholars were similarly divided over whether a statement meant to express the UC regents' principles against intolerance should include Zionism -- historically an international movement to establish a Jewish homeland and...

The official U.S. Visa Service for foreign citizens website, to help them travel to the United States, is surprisingly not part of a government Internet domain. Apparently this service has been outsourced by the US government to another firm, possible Computer Sciences Corporation. It really is the official US visa site, though, and a number of US embassy and consulate webpages point there. This one says explicitly that it is "the ONLY authorized website for the payment of visa fees." The reason this is interesting is the page from this official visa site that offers individuals to choose which country...

New review of Palestinian Authority textbooks finds systematic incitement against Jews, erasure of Israel continues. A review of dozens of Palestinian Authority educational books for the 2015-2016 school year found that the PA education system continues to encourage terror against Jews and completely ignores the Holocaust in history books discussing World War II. In addition, this year's textbooks continue to systematically erase the State of Israel from maps and texts. Gal Berger, a journalist focusing on Palestinian affairs with Reshet B, carried out a comprehensive investigation of about 70 textbooks for first through twelfth grades on the subjects of civics,...

Senators urge president to enforce provisions 'as enacted and intended' Leading Democrats are taking aim at the Obama administration for its opposition to newly passed legislation that aims to bolster the U.S.-Israel economic relationship and combat boycotts of Israel, according to a statement issued this week. The Obama administration announced that it opposes portions of a bipartisan trade bill that would strengthen economic ties between the U.S. and Israel and force trade partners to sever ties with backers of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, an anti-Israel movement that seeks to economically isolate the Jewish state. President Barack Obama...

"The supersonic boom is a tool whose aim is to deceive, creating disinformation and confusion in combat with terrorists," said a response from the Israeli government to a Supreme Court petition against IAF aircraft breaking the sound barrier above PA-controlled Gaza. The left-wing activist group Doctors Without Borders had claimed that the sonic booms were a form of abuse, as they frightened citizens, who assume that a bomb has been detonated near their home. "This tool is aimed at disrupting the activities of terrorists in a way that creates a fear within the terrorists' ranks that they have been identified,...

Médecins Sans Frontières in West Africa “2015 was a very busy year for emerging infectious diseases.” - Steven Hatfill, MD Dedicating his lecture to Médecins Sans Frontières, for their heroic actions in West Africa, Dr. Hatfill spoke to a captivated audience at the 33rd Annual Conference of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness in California about the 43 newly emerging infectious diseases that jumped to a larger geographic area from their wild animal hosts to human populations in the past 30 years.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Nine local staffers for Doctors Without Borders were killed and 30 were missing after an explosion near their hospital in the northern Afghan city of Kunduz that may have been caused by a U.S. airstrike.

Three doctors of a Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) hospital were killed as an air strike targeted the MSF medical facility in Afghanistan's northern Kunduz city on Saturday, the MSF said in a statement. "Three MSF staff are confirmed dead and more than 30 are unaccounted after (MSF) trauma center in Kunduz was hit at 2:10 a. m. local time on Saturday (2140 GMT Friday) several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged," the statement said. The medical team was working around the clock to do everything possible for the safety of patients and hospital staff, the statement said....

KABUL, Afghanistan — A United States airstrike appeared to have badly damaged a hospital run by Doctors Without Borders in the Afghan city of Kunduz early Saturday, killing at least nine hospital staff members and wounding dozens, including patients and staff. The United States military, in a statement, confirmed the 2:15 a.m. airstrike, saying that it had been targeting individuals “who were threatening the force” and that “there may have been collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” Accounts differed as to whether there had been fighting around the hospital that might have precipitated the strike. Two hospital employees, an...

PARIS (Reuters) - The medical aid group Medecins Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders) urged donors Tuesday to stop sending it money for Asian tsunami victims, saying it had collected enough funds to manage its relief effort there. In an unusual step, the group's branches in France and Germany said they had 40 million and $27 million respectively, enough to finance emergency medical aid projects they were supporting in Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Their decision surprised other aid groups and drew criticism that it could undercut an unprecedented wave of private giving to provide relief to the region devastated by the...

MEDICAL RESPONSE WASHINGTON, Dec. 27 - The World Health Organization, Doctors Without Borders and other international agencies have begun rushing medical teams, generators and other equipment to provide safe drinking water and sanitation and reduce threats of infectious-disease outbreaks in the Asian countries hit by the earthquake and tsunamis on Sunday. Immediate health threats include wounds from stepping on nails and broken glass; dehydration and heat stroke from exposure in hot muggy weather; the possibility of electrocution from downed wires; and diarrheal and respiratory diseases caused by various bacteria and viruses that can spread rapidly because of poor sanitation and...

KABUL, Afghanistan — The relief agency Medecins Sans Frontieres said Wednesday it is pulling out of Afghanistan, discouraged about a fruitless investigation into the slayings of five of its workers and fearful of new attacks. The Nobel prize-winning group's decision to withdraw was the most dramatic example yet of how deteriorating security has crippled the delivery of badly needed aid and reconstruction in Afghanistan since the Taliban regime was ousted in 2002. MSF had already suspended most of its work after the June killings and recalled all foreign staff to Kabul, the capital. "Today's context is rendering independent humanitarian aid...

MÉDECINS sans Frontières [Doctors Without Borders]yesterday launched a stinging verbal attack on US forces in Afghanistan as it announced it was pulling out of the country after 24 years because of the deteriorating security situation. The aid group, which prides itself on tackling the toughest of humanitarian emergencies, said the US military was using aid work as part of a "heart and minds" campaign to garner support from Afghans sceptical of their intentions. Speaking on a day in which two people were killed by a blast in a mosque where Afghans were registering to vote yesterday, the MSF secretary general,...

Arjan Erkel, center, talking to reporters outside the Dutch Embassy on Sunday. Former security service officer Valentin Velichko, far left, assisted in Erkel's release in Dagestan. Kidnapped Dutch aid worker Arjan Erkel was released in Dagestan on Sunday after 20 months of captivity and flown to Moscow. Erkel, a worker for Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Doctors Without Borders, was freed early Sunday morning in what Dagestani authorities described as a special operation. There was some indication that an agreement had been struck with the kidnappers, whose identities have not been revealed. MSF officials in Moscow said no ransom had been...

NEW YORK (AP) - A medical aid group said Friday that the American news media last year provided too little coverage of some world trouble spots, including the conflicts in Colombia, Chechnya and Congo. In its annual list of "underreported humanitarian stories," Medecins Sans Frontieres also cited a lack of media attention to the high death toll worldwide from malaria, the crises in North Korea and Somalia and the limited access of poor people to anti-AIDS medicines. "It's clearly a valid criticism when applied most broadly to the American media, but some of those conflicts such as the Congo and...

<p>Passive Saboteurs Ideological prejudice leads relief agencies to cut and run from Iraq.</p> <p>The world is now witnessing an exodus from Iraq. But it is not an exodus of refugees, whom critics of the war told us would flood in panic across the borders into neighboring states. These simply didn't materialize--and it tells us much that is good about the postwar realities of the country that they didn't.</p>

MONROVIA - Liberia's president appears to be backing away from a promise to leave his war-battered country and take up asylum in Nigeria. Charles Taylor agreed to quit his post next Monday in a bid to end fighting between government forces and rebel groups. But on Tuesday, a Nigerian official said Taylor is now demanding that a war crimes court in neighbouring Sierra Leone drop charges against him before he leaves the country. Taylor's latest demand comes just a day after the first contingent of West African troops arrived in Liberia to oversee his departure. Nigerian soldiers arrived by...

In the Liberian town of Redemption last week the bodies of the dead littered the main street. Aid workers with Médecins Sans Frontières described a smell of death hanging over the town. 'People have come from camps where the last food distribution was months ago,' said Alain Kassa. 'They have again been fleeing for six days with nothing to eat. Here in the city they won't even find the bits and pieces of food that they can gather in the bush.' Kassa was describing Liberia, but his words could just have easily been applied to the Democratic Republic of Congo,...

MSF's International President, Dr Morten Rostrup, was the medical coordinator in Baghdad and has just returned to Europe when the team was rotated. At a briefing for international journalists today in Brussels, he described what MSF sees as the challenges in Iraq. This a is summary of his remarks. MSF has been working in Iraq for five weeks now, only interrupted by the imprisonment of two volunteers by the Iraqi authorities during the height of the fighting. Much of that work has been in hospitals, directly with patients and trying to identify the most critical needs of the health system,...

Freed aid workers tell of prison torture By Kim Sengupta 13 April 2003 Two members of Médecins Sans Frontières have returned to Baghdad after being arrested and held for eight days by Iraqi secret police, accused of being spies. François Callas and Ibrahim Younous were kept in some of the regime's most notorious prisons before being dumped on the streets in the city of Ramadi, in western Iraq, on Friday evening. The two men were among dozens of foreigners who were picked up by the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, in the dying days of Saddam Hussein's regime and then...