WASHINGTON, Jan 23: Child car seats would for the first time have to protect children from death and injury in side-impact crashes under regulations the US government has proposed.
The yesterday’s proposal by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration would upgrade standards for child seats for children weighing up to 18 kgs to include a new test that simulates a side crash. The agency estimates the standards will prevent the deaths of about five children and injuries to 64 others each year.
“Car seats are an essential tool for keeping young children safe in vehicles, and they have a proven track record of saving lives,” NHTSA Acting Administrator David Friedman told a gathering of automotive engineers.
Under the proposal, the new tests will simulate a “T-bone” crash, where the front of a vehicle traveling 50 kph strikes the side of a small passenger vehicle traveling at 25 kph.
The tests will position the car seat on a sled, with another sled ramming the side of the sled with the seat, rather than using actual vehicles since the aim isn’t to test the crash worthiness of specific vehicles, NHTSA officials said.
Research shows that many child deaths and injuries in side-impact crashes involve a car carrying children that is stopped at an intersection, usually at a light or stop sign, officials said. When the car begins to accelerate to go through the intersection, it is struck in the side by a vehicle traveling at a higher rate of speed on the cross street.
The side-impact test, the first of its kind, simulates both the acceleration of the struck vehicle and the vehicle’s door crushing inward toward the car seat.
Besides using a 12-month-old child dummy already approved under NHTSA standards, the proposed test will also utilize a to-be-developed side-impact dummy representing a 3-year-old child.
The proposal includes giving car seat manufacturers three years to make any adjustments to meet the new requirements. That window doesn’t begin until the regulations are made final. (AGENCIES)

WASHINGTON, Jan 23:  The US military has eased restrictions on religious tattoos, hairstyles or apparel that troops can display while in uniform, as long as it does not jeopardize “unit cohesion.”
The Pentagon yesterday said the rules it unveiled marked the first time the agency has laid out a general policy on the issue.
“The new policy states that military departments will accommodate religious requests of service members unless they have an adverse effect on military readiness, mission accomplishment, unit cohesion, and good order and discipline,” spokesman Lieutenant Commander Nate Christensen said in a statement.
As long as a unit’s mission is not put at risk or safety jeopardized, the regulations would allow an exception to standard “clean-cut” grooming standards on religious grounds, including facial hair or other hairstyles, tattoos and piercings that reflect a soldier’s spiritual faith.
However, certain apparel or other expressions of religious faith would not be permitted if it “interferes with the wear or proper function of special or protective clothing or equipment,” such as helmets, flak jackets or flight suits, Christensen said.
The new rules will help commanders maintain order and discipline and are designed to “reduce both the instances and perception of discrimination among those whose religious expressions are less familiar to the command,” he said.
Requests to waive rules on grooming and appearance will be handled on a “case-by-case” basis, he added.
The revised rules follow a case in which Sikh service member asked that the military permit fellow Sikh troops to wear a turban or maintain a beard. (AGENCIES)

SHREVEPORT, Jan 23: The American Civil Liberties Union is suing a Louisiana school board, alleging officials at one of its public schools harassed a sixth-grader because of his Buddhist faith and that the district routinely endorses and encourages such unconstitutional practises.
The lawsuit was filed yesterday in US District Court in Shreveport on behalf of Scott and Sharon Lane and their three children.
According to the complaint, the Lanes enrolled their son in Negreet High School and he quickly became the target of harassment by school staff. Their son is a lifelong Buddhist of Thai descent.
Superintendent Sara Ebarb was unavailable yesterday for comment. She also was named in the lawsuit.
The ACLU and ACLU of Louisiana also asked the US Department of Education and US Department of Justice to investigate the school system. (AGENCIES)

UNITED NATIONS, Jan 23:  The UN chief’s special adviser on genocide prevention is warning of a “high risk of crimes against humanity and of genocide” in the Central African Republic.
Adama Dieng and other UN officials briefed the Security Council yesterday on the continuing and unprecedented violence between Christians and Muslims in one of the world’s poorest countries.
They spoke of children being beheaded, entire villages burned and a complete breakdown of law and order, and they urged the deployment of more peacekeepers as soon as possible.
But they expressed hope at this week’s election of an interim president who is the first female leader in the country’s history, and at the USD 496 million in humanitarian assistance newly pledged by international donors.
An untold number of people have been killed since a March 2013 coup by Muslim rebels, and the previous peace between Muslims and Christians in the largely rural, landlocked country has been shattered.
“The level of hatred between these communities shocked me,” Dieng said, listing widespread reports of summary executions, mutilation and sexual violence among the “widespread and massive” human rights violations.
Restoring peace will be difficult “without addressing the current culture of impunity,” he added.
He and the other officials spoke after a visit last month as violence spiralled. Among the numbers they shared:
Nearly a million people displaced, about half of them children. As many as 6,000 children possibly associated with armed groups. About 100,000 people sleeping in the open at the airport at the capital, Bangui. Thousands of others hiding out in the forest. About 246,000 refugees.
Overall, more than half of the country’s population has been affected by the violence, said Kyung-wha Kang, the U.N.’s deputy emergency relief coordinator.
The officials said humanitarian aid is badly needed in the provinces.
They also welcomed the approval by European Union foreign ministers this week of a potential joint military force of about 500 troops to assist the roughly 1,600 French troops and about 4,600 African troops trying to restore order. (AGENCIES)
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MOSCOW, Jan 23:Russian officials say a methane gas explosion has ripped through a coal mine and killed two miners.
A total of 105 miners were in the Dzerzhinsky mine in the Kemerovo region of Siberia when the gas exploded just before 9:30 p.M. Yesterday.
The regional administration said in a statement that two of the miners died, but the rest had made it out alive.
The cause of the blast was unknown. The regional administration said an investigation was underway. (AGENCIES)

MADRID, Jan 23: Coca-Cola is looking to close four of its 11 bottling plants in Spain in a move that would affect 1,250 jobs, the company and the UGT union said.
The company’s Spanish subsidiary, Coca-Cola Iberian Partners, plans to shutter its plants in the northwestern Asturias region, the Balearic Islands, near Madrid and in southeastern Alicante, the union said in a statement.
UGT said it was seeking to negotiate with Coca-Cola to head off the closures, and would launch strikes and demonstrations to press its position.
The company, in a statement published in Spanish media, said it would try to place 500 of the affected workers in other positions, and offer the rest early retirement or attractive termination packages.
“The restructuring aims to gain efficiency and competitiveness, and to avoid duplication that could compromise the future viability of the company,” it said.
Coca-Cola Iberian Partners, which currently has 4,000 employees on its books, was founded last year by merging the seven bottling companies in Spain owned by the US brand. (AGENCIES)

RABAT, Jan 23:  Morocco has scrapped a highly controversial law allowing a child rapist to evade punishment if he marries his victim, as rights activists pressed the government to legislate to protect women from violence.
The amendment to Article 475 of the penal code, first proposed by the country’s Islamist-led government a year ago, was adopted unanimously by lawmakers, parliamentary sources said yesterday.
The offending article made international headlines in March 2012 when Amina Filali, 16, killed herself after being forced to marry the man who had raped her, and who remained free.
Right activists hailed the amendment, while stressing that much more remained to be done to promote gender equality and protect women from violence in the North African country.
“It’s a very important step. But it’s not enough… We are campaigning for a complete overhaul of the penal code for women,” Fatima Maghnaoui, who heads a group supporting women victims of violence said.
Global advocacy group Avaaz said it had handed a petition signed by more than a million people to Morocco’s parliament demanding that the government adopt promised legislation to combat violence against women.
Amnesty International said yesterday’s amendment was a step in the right direction but “long overdue,” and urged a comprehensive strategy to protect women and girls from violence in Morocco.
“It took 16-year-old Amina Filali’s suicide and nearly two years for the parliament to close the loophole that allowed rapists to avoid accountability.
“It’s time to have laws that protect survivors of sexual abuse,” the group’s deputy regional director Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui said.
As in numerous other Arab countries, sexual harassment of women is commonplace in Morocco, despite the adoption of a new constitution in 2011 that enshrines gender equality and urges the state to promote it.
An official study published last month said nearly nine percent of Moroccan women have been physically subjected to sexual violence at least once, while the proportion of women subjected to conjugal violence is much higher.
A bill proposed by the Islamist-led government, threatening prison sentences of up to 25 years for perpetrators of violence against women, is still in the drafting stage. (AGENCIES)

JERUSALEM, Jan 23:  Israel has claimed to have busted a terror cell run by al Qaeda that was planning to attack the US embassy in Tel Aviv.
Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet yesterday said the agency has arrested three Palestinians, two of them residents of East Jerusalem with Israeli identification cards, for an alleged involvement in an al Qaeda plot to carry out terror attacks.
The group had planned attacks at the International Convention Center here and the United States embassy in Tel Aviv, it said.
The three men were allegedly arrested on December 25 but the agency’s announcement followed the lifting of a gag order on the case by Jerusalem Magistrate’s Court.
About four months ago, a Gaza operator, who works under the Salafist alias Arib al-Sham, enlisted the three men, Iyad Abu Sa’ara, 24, of East Jerusalem’s Ras al-Khamis neighbourhood, Roubeen al-Najma, 31, of Abu Tor in East Jerusalem and Alaa Ranem, 22, of Al-Aqaba, a village near Jenin, the agency claimed.
Arib al-Sham allegedly told the three recruits that he worked for Ayman al-Zawahiri, who took over the leadership of al Qaeda after the Americans killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
The security agency believes that their enlistment and deployment was conducted via internet without anyone of the three knowing about the other’s existence or their orders.
Abu Sa’ara is said to have admitted during interrogation that he received instructions to carry out a large-scale terror attack and that he had also begun learning the tenets of Salafism.
His father had apparently noticed his new-found interest in radical Islam and had tried to dissuade him, it said.
Meanwhile, US State Department officials are said to have acknowledged reports of the al Qaeda plot targeting the US embassy in Tel Aviv saying Washington is “closely following the situation” and has been in touch with the Israeli government.
“The US embassy routinely employs a range of measures to safeguard US citizens and all of our employees and their dependents,” the State Department official told the Jerusalem Post.
“We have a high degree of confidence in our own security staff and in the Israeli security forces,” the newspaper quoted the official.
The Shin Bet has claimed that “the phenomena of international jihad and al Qaeda is now in its infancy in the West Bank, after having already garnered hundreds of operatives in Gaza”.
“Together with the Palestinian Authority we can stop it” from spreading in the West Bank, the agency said. (PTI)

EAST PALO ALTO, Jan 23: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife are donating USD 5 million to help expand a community health centre in Silicon Valley.
The gift announced yesterday will cover part of the USD 29 million cost for adding another facility to the Ravenswood Family Health Centre in East Palo Alto, Calif.
The new building is expected to be complete next year. The 29-year-old Zuckerberg has become one of the world’s richest people since he started Facebook’s online social network at Harvard University nearly a decade ago. Forbes magazine estimates his wealth at USD 19 billion.
Zuckerberg has been funneling some of fortune into philanthropy. Last year, he and his wife, Priscilla Chan, donated Facebook stock valued at USD 900 million to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. (AGENCIES)
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