Foreskin cells up close

A study conducted in three African countries has shown that circumcision can considerably reduce the chances of HIV infection. The risk of infection was reduced by 53%, 48% and 60% in the countries tested, implying that male circumcision could potentially avert about six million HIV infections and three million deaths in sub-Saharan Africa as a whole.

This may lead circumcised men to think they are protected, however. They're not. According to Dr. Kevin De Cock (yes, that's his real name), director of the HIV/AIDS department of the World Health Organization:

This is an intervention that must be embedded with all the other interventions and precautions we have. Men must not consider themselves protected. It's a very important intervention to add to our prevention armamentarium.

According to a UNDP-sponsored study released last week, gender inequality is a "barrier to progress and prosperity in Arab societies as a whole." This final Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), compiled by Arab experts and academics, is part of a four-part series that began after September 11th.

This AHDR report denies that Islam is responsible for male dominance, and instead cites cultural and political factors, as well as wars, occupation and terrorism as obstacles to equality. The first AHDR, released in 2002, identified that female disempowerment was "one of three critical deficits crippling Arab nations in their quest to return to the first rank of world leaders of commerce, learning and culture."

Four years later, turning this condition around has become a top "precondition for development."

The news is not all grim. "Most Arab countries now have a parliament, a cabinet or a local council, where at least one woman participates effectively," says the AHDR. Still, many of these developments are merely cosmetic, and "[i]n all cases... real decisions in the Arab world are, at all levels, in the hands of men." There is a broad desire for gender equality in the region, as a public opinion poll commissioned by the report shows. Women's issues are also "increasingly permeating intellectual and cultural discourse."

Meanwhile, a UNICEF report published this week reinforces the crucial need for gender equality. According to the State of the World's Children 2007 Report,

Eliminating gender discrimination and empowering women will have a profound and positive impact on the survival and well-being of children. Gender equality produces the “double dividend” of benefiting both women and children and is pivotal to the health and development of families, communities and nations.

In related news, violence against women is on the rise in Afghanistan and suicide rates among Afghan women continue at a disturbing rate,

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan says that Kandahar's only hospital for women, which has 40 beds, received 29 cases of suicide in the space of two months. Twenty of those women had set themselves alight. 

Kandahar has the highest rates of self-immolation, compared to the rest of the country. Afghanistan's Independent Human Rights Commission is working with German NGO Medica Mondiale towards overcoming cultural obstacles to female empowerment. Afghanistan has also recently passed a law which banned the marriage of women under 18 years. Another is in the pipeline which would require the consent of both the man and the woman in order for a marriage to be legal. Now that would be progress.

Most guests at Iran's highly controversial Holocaust conference were what one would expect: infamous Holocaust deniers, "revisionist" academics and former KKK members. But surprisingly enough, the attendees also included a group of Orthodox Jews. Members of the Neturei Karta sect believe that the state of Israel goes against their religion, because human force was used in its creation. And that's forbidden by the Talmud.

Addressing the conference, Rabbi Aharon Cohen justified the Holocaust as a divine will, and said that,

 ... the underlying cause of strife and bloodshed in the Middle East, namely the state known as Israel, [should] be totally and peacefully dissolved... [It is] a terrible affront to the memory of those who perished to belittle the guilt of the crime in any way... The Zionists, with their secular pompous approach behave in complete opposition to this philosophy and dare to say 'Never Again'.

Neturei Karta is considered an extreme fringe movement by other Orthodox Jews, and is only a few thousand strong.

China has stopped following Deng Xiaoping's advice that it "hide its ambitions and disguise its claws," and is now encouraging its people to talk about its "peaceful rise." Naturally, most Chinese are pretty excited about the country's incredible growth and rapid maturation as a world power. 

But if the Chinese are looking for universal acceptance around the Pacific, they're in for a rude shock. A Pew Global Attitudes survey released recently revealed that "[t]here is a good deal of dislike, if not outright hostility, in how the publics of major Asian countries view their neighbors," and China doesn't get a free pass.

The survey, which was conducted in China, Japan, India, Pakistan, Russia and the United States, shows great hostility and distrust among the publics of Asian powers. The Chinese and Japanese hold a mutually unfavourable view of each other, as do India and Pakistan (see table at right). A majority of Indians believe that China will replace the U.S. as the world's superpower, while only a minority held the same belief in China, Japan and Russia. There was however, an overwhelming consistency when asked about the rise of China's military power. A large majority in Japan, Russia and India respond to it as a "bad thing," while the Chinese almost unanimously believe it is a "good thing".

The Pew Global Attitudes Project compiles a variety of other reports on international issues, including Muslim-Western relations and the image of the U.S.

Apparently humans are not the only ones who have different lifestyles in the city and country. Birds have had to adapt to urban lifestyle, too. According to the BBC,

Dutch researchers found that urban species of birds sing short, fast songs rather than the slower melodies of countryside birds. City birds also sing at a higher pitch and will try out different song types. [...]

The research focused on great tits in ten major European cities, including London, Paris, Amsterdam and Prague, and compared them to forest-dwellers.

The urbanites sing faster and louder in order to assert their territory and attract mates above the sound of city noise. Or as Science Now puts it,

A bird that sang like Barry White in the forest sounded more like Michael Jackson in the big city. 

Marine scientists from the University of Plymouth in the U.K. have been researching the effects of plastic waste in the world's seas and oceans. Much of this plastic rubbish is not biodegradable, so it breaks down into small pellets called "mermaids' tears" — and can linger in that form for hundreds of years.

The Plymouth team had first discovered mermaids' tears in European waters in 2002, and they have now come across them on four other continents: the Americas, Australia, Africa and Antarctica. Besides the fact that the tiny pellets are impossible to clean up, the scientists have found that sea creatures at the bottom of the food chain—such as barnacles, lugworms and amphipods—are consuming these plastics on the seabed. According to Dr. Richard Thompson, who is leading the research:

These creatures are eaten by others along the food chain. It seems an inevitable consequence that [the plastic] will pass along the food chain. There is the possibility that chemicals could be transferred from plastics to marine organisms.

And guess who eats those other "marine organisms?" You!

The seriousness of the plastic threat to marine life, and consequently to human consumption, however, remains for other researchers to investigate. But whatever the outcome may be, it seems that plastics in our waters are here to stay.

CHRIS YOUNG/AFP/Getty Images

The tornado is the latest to hit Britain in recent months, sparking warning that such weather events are likely to increase in frequency because of global warming.

The past few days have generated great speculation about the fate of the Latin American "socialist revolution." Castro's absence from his long-belated 80th birthday party and the celebration of the revolution's anniversary on Saturday, heightened suspicion that the leader is on his last lap of life. Meanwhile, Castro did manage to send a letter of congratulations to his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez, for his success in the presidential elections. It's no secret that the two are extremely close, and that Chavez seems to be preoccupied with securing a Castroesque legacy of his own. But with the end of one revolutionary and the apparent revival of another, it's unclear just where the social justice revolution is going. Will Chavez be able to finish off his Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela with a dose of Cuban-style socialism and a hefty wad of petrodollars? And will Chavez attempt to assert influence in Cuba after Castro's death in order to keep the revolution humming? While we can only watch this space, FP has some great articles to fuel your speculations. Check out Javier Corrales's look at the many "lefts" in Latin America, and his article on the Venezuelan chavista himself.