Between 2008-09 there was a very violent civil war in Sri Lanka as the government battled a separatist movement. The Tamils are a minority group in Sri Lanka which is dominated by the majority Sinhalese population. The civil war had simmered for many years, and matters came to a head in 2009 when the government made a sustained push to isolate and destroy the Tamil militants. The estimated dead in this military operation ranged between 40-70,000, and the last push in the very northern part of the island was particularly brutal. A team of international lawyers has just charged the government with war crimes associated with the operation, and the US has indicated that it would support a proposal to investigate the war crimes charges.
A new strain of influenza has been discovered in China. The international community has grown increasingly sensitive to the emergence of new diseases, as disease mutations can have devastating effects on the human population. The so-called “Spanish” flu in 1918 actually killed more people than were killed in World War I. One of the consequences of globalization is that the transmission vectors for new diseases have become significantly more numerous and rapid. When new strains of the flu emerge, disease control centers all across the globe become quite vigilant.
The Afghanistan Parliament has passed a law which would have the effect of vitiating any legal protections of women who suffer domestic abuse. The law would ban relatives of those accused of domestic crimes from testifying in any criminal proceeding. In Afghan society, the only witnesses to domestic abuse would most likely be members of the husband’s family. If President Karzai signs the bill into law, it will unravel much of the progress that has been made in recent years to create legal protections for women.
World Politics News 
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