International court issues warrants for 5 Ugandans

International court issueswarrants for 5 Ugandans
UNITED NATIONS -- The International Criminal Court has issued its first arrest warrants, for five members of Uganda's notoriously cruel Lord's Resistance Army, the top U.N. envoy for Congo said Thursday. The International Criminal Court, the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal, was founded in 2002 and had said for some time it was investigating the LRA, infamous for abducting more than 30,000 children, forcing them to become fighters, porters or concubines. The group has killed thousands of civilians and forced more than a million to flee their homes. "I know they've issued arrest warrants for five people, and these notifications went out last week," William Lacy Swing, who is Secretary-General Kofi Annan's special representative for Congo, told a news conference. U.N. and Ugandan officials announced last month that a leading LRA deputy, Vincent Otti, had fled a base in southern Sudan with a band of fighters and crossed into Congo, where he was seeking political asylum. Swing said they had settled into the border town of Aba. Congo's President Joseph Kabila was sending some 2,000 troops to the region, and the U.N. mission had airlifted about 1,000 of its own troops to Aba, Swing said. If the arrest warrants have in fact been issued, it's likely that Otti and the rebels' leader, Joseph Kony, would be among those named. Officials in The Hague, Netherlands, where the court is based, could not confirm the arrest warrants. It's possible that the warrants were sealed, which means they wouldn't be announced until the arrests are actually made.
Air Force Academy pushesChristianity, lawsuit says
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- A Jewish father of two Air Force Academy cadets sued the Air Force on Thursday, claiming senior officers and cadets illegally imposed Christianity on others at the school. The lawsuit was filed in federal court by Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and outspoken critic of the school's handling of religion. Over the past decade or more, the lawsuit claims, academy leaders have fostered an environment of religious intolerance at the Colorado school, in violation of the First Amendment. Weinstein has one son who graduated from the academy last year and another who is a junior there. Both were subjected to anti-Semitic slurs from evangelical Christian cadets, he said. Weinstein, who lives in Albuquerque, claims that evangelical Christians at the school have coerced attendance at religious services and prayers at official events, among other things. "It's a shocking disgrace that I had to file this thing," he told The Associated Press. An Air Force spokesman in Washington, Lt. Col. Frank Smolinsky, declined to discuss specifics of the suit but said the Air Force "is committed to defending the rights of all our men and women, whatever their beliefs." Members of the Air Force Academy's Board of Visitors declined to comment. Cadets, watchdog groups and a former chaplain at the academy have alleged that religious intolerance is widespread at the school. On Aug. 29, the Air Force issued guidelines discouraging public prayer at official functions and urging commanders to be sensitive about personal expressions of religious faith.
Inventor of Neuticleswins Ig Nobel Prize
BOSTON -- Gregg Miller mortgaged his home and maxed out his credit cards to mass produce his invention -- prosthetic testicles for neutered dogs. What started 10 years ago with an experiment on an unwitting Rottweiler named Max has turned into a thriving mail-order business. And on Thursday night, Miller's efforts earned him a dubious yet strangely coveted honor: the Ig Nobel Prize for medicine. "Considering my parents thought I was an idiot when I was a kid, this is a great honor," he said. "I wish they were alive to see it." The Ig Nobels, given at Harvard University by Annals of Improbable Research magazine, celebrate the humorous, creative and odd side of science. Miller has sold more than 150,000 of his Neuticles, more than doubling his $500,000 investment. The silicone implants come in different sizes, shapes, weights and degrees of firmness. The product's Web site says Neuticles allow a pet "to retain his natural look" and "self-esteem." Although the Ig Nobels are not exactly prestigious, many recipients are, like Miller, happy to win. "Most scientists -- no matter what they're doing, good or bad -- never get any attention at all," said Marc Abrahams, editor of the Annals of Improbable Research. Some, like Benjamin Smith of the University of Adelaide in Australia, who won the biology prize, actually nominated their own work. "I've been a fan of the Ig Nobels for a while," he said. Smith's team studied and catalogued different scents emitted by more than 100 species of frogs under stress. Some smelled like cashews, while others smelled like licorice, mint or rotting fish. This year's other Ig Nobel prizes were in physics, peace, chemistry and literature.
Associated Press