Global Quickies: Antivaxxer Has to Pay, Armored Protest, and Forced Reincarnations

GERMANY
“A German biologist who offered €100,000 (£71,350; $106,300) to anyone who could prove that measles is a virus has been ordered by a court to pay up.”

INDIA
“Indian news network NDTV (New Delhi Television) took itself off the air Sunday from 9-10 p.m. local time in protest against the Indian government’s ban of India’s Daughter, British filmmaker Leslee Udwin’s documentary about the 2012 gang rape of a young woman on a Delhi bus.”

CHINA
Several feminist activists who had planned to publicly rally against sexual harassment on buses in Beijing and Guangzhou for International Women’s Day were taken into police custody or put under house arrest two days before the event on charges of “creating disturbance”.

GERMANY (from Blakut)
“A German professor is apologetic about an email she sent a male Indian student seeking an internship in her lab, in which she cited India’s “rape problem” as the reason why she was rejecting his candidature.”

INDIA
The government under Modi revives and promotes alternative medicine with the recently created ministry of AAYUSH (Department of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy).

TANZANIA (from cerberus40)
“Tanzanian police have arrested 32 witchdoctors in the north-western Geita region as part of efforts to halt the killings of albinos.”

INDONESIA
Indonesian clothing manufacturer, Salvo Sports, caused outrage in social media for printing in the washing instructions “Give this jersey to your woman. It’s her job.”

AFGHANISTAN
An Afghan artist has been forced into hiding after receiving death threats for dressing in an armor with exaggerated breasts and buttocks to highlight the problems of sexual harassment faced by women.

ARAB WORLD
The video of a Lebanese TV presenter cutting short an interview with Islamist scholar has gone viral, but this article argues that if you think seeing an Arab female TV presenter tell-off irritating male guests is a unique event, you clearly have never watched Arab television news.

CHINA
“Chinese Communist Party leaders are afraid that the Dalai Lama will not have an afterlife. Worried enough that this week, officials repeatedly warned that he must reincarnate, and on their terms.”

IRAN
“Women in Iran could face significant restrictions on their use of contraceptives and be further excluded from the labour market unless they have had a child, if two proposed laws are approved.”

NIGERIA
President Goodluck Jonathan accuses the opposition candidate of agreeing to support legislation to allow same sex marriage and repeal anti-gay laws in return for moral and financial support for his campaign from some European countries.

GUATEMALA
This 15-year-old girl from rural Guatemala went from asking the mayor of her town to help girls stay in school and having him shut her up to speaking in the United Nations in the “Every Woman Every Child”.

MEXICO
Pope Francis said that the devil is punishing Mexico with criminal violence. This just a few weeks after the Mexican government complained that the pope had warned about the “Mexicanization” of gang violence in Argentina.

Featured image: Lebanese TV Host Rima Karaki.