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Global Quickies: Ice Cream, Birth Control, and Teapots

AFGHANISTAN (From Mary)
Associated Press photographer Anja Niedringhaus was shot to death by an Afghan policeman while covering the national election. She covered conflicts for more than 20 years, and earned a Pulitzer Prize in 2005.

RWANDA (From Mary)
How Rwanda’s Only Ice Cream Shop Challenges Cultural Taboos: in a culture where it’s highly unseemly to eat anything in the street, eating ice cream in public might bring Rwandans in touch with their inner selves.

EGYPT
A court sentenced four men to up to eight years in prison on Monday for practicing homosexuality. Prosecutors had accused the men of holding “deviant parties” and dressing in women’s clothes.

PHILIPPINES
The Supreme Court in The Philippines has approved a birth control law, in a defeat for the Catholic Church. The law requires government health centers to distribute free condoms and contraceptive pills.

SAUDI ARABIA
A move to introduce physical education for girls to Saudi Arabian public schools has been condemned by conservative clerics, reports the Wall Street Journal, who say allowing girls to take gym classes will only end in adultery and prostitution.

SPAIN
For the fourth year in a row, the city government has banned an atheist rally on Easter week in Madrid. As dozens of Catholic processions take saints for a stroll around the neighborhood, atheists are forbidden from doing the same with a teapot (Russell’s teapot, to be precise).

Featured image: AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus. An Afghan girl reacts as she arrives with her mother for treatment in the local hospital of Feyzabad, on September 28, 2008.

Daniela

Born and raised in Mexico City, Daniela has finally decided to abdicate her post as an armchair skeptic and start doing some skeptical activism. She is currently living in Spain after having lived in the US, Brazil and Italy. You can also find her blogging in Spanish at esceptica.org.

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