Monthly Archives: May 2017
Source close to Comey says there were 2 reasons the FBI director was fired – CNNPolitics.com
Protecting Girls from Child Marriage
Nepal | The Lost Girls: One woman’s battle to end child marriage
NEPAL — Each year, 15 million girls are married before the age of 18. That’s 28 girls every minute, and one girl every two seconds. In Nepal, one in three girls under the age of 18 are married. One in 10 girls under the age of 15 are married.
The culture of child marriage is accepted in this country. In some cases it’s forced, but in others it’s consensual. The act of child marriage, which is punishable by jail time, has been illegal in Nepal since 1963.
CBSN’s Reena Ninan traveled to a rural village to witness an illegal wedding firsthand.
“How do you feel?,” Ninan asked the young girl. “Do you feel nervous? Do you think you should have waited a little bit longer to get married?”
“Yes,” the 17-year-old girl replied.
In 2014, Nepal pledged to end child marriage by 2020. But just two years later, it pushed back its goal to 2030.
Importance of education
According to the U.N., child marriage only perpetuates the cycle of poverty. When parents force their daughters to marry young, they drop out of school, face domestic violence and are more likely to die from pregnancy complications.
Rachana Sunar, 22, lives in a village in Western Nepal. Her mission is to stop the age-old practice of child marriage, which is no easy feat.
In another life, she would have been forced into marriage by now. She’d have a few kids and would be silenced at home. But she begged, pleaded and managed to get a scholarship to study abroad, which in turn changed her fate for the better.
Now, Rachana is going door-to-door to spread her message to prevent child marriage. She’s phased by little and willingly resorts to extreme measures like going to the police to report and forcibly stop marriages, sometimes right on the wedding day. To locals, those actions are seen as provocative. Many people believe she should quiet down and lower her profile, including her own mother.
“She’s in the limelight now, but that makes me worry,” her mother said. “She has enemies. A lot of the villagers don’t like her. I fear that she may be raped, or that someone might knock her off the road.”
During Ninan’s stay, Rachana stopped a wedding by calling the police. And overnight, her mother’s worst fear came true — an angry mob confronted Rachana at her home. But she didn’t let the incident prevent her from losing sight of her main goal.
“If a girl hears my story, and how I started my journey, at least I’m giving hope to them,” she added. “There are some people who don’t like the work I am doing. If I die for this reason, I know my sisters will be inspired and they will carry on.”
“If I lose hope, if I give up, nobody will dare to take this issue ahead,” she continued. “I’m happy to put my life at risk.”
Shortly after filming, Rachana stopped another three weddings. Her work has spurred a movement to end child marriage in her home district of Surkhet by 2020, ahead of the government’s 2030 target to wipe out the practice nationally.
She recently started an NGO called Sambad, which means “dialogue” in Nepalese, to help boys and girls alike discover their self-worth. She’s been fighting to empower the youth to focus on the importance of education. But in this conservative society, change isn’t easy. For some, this is the only education they will ever receive. For others, it’s the only place they’ll ever feel loved.

82 More of Our Girls are Free
82 Freed Chibok Schoolgirls Arrive in Nigeria’s Capital 3 Years After Abduction
(ABUJA, Nigeria) — The 82 freed Chibok schoolgirls arrived in Nigeria’s capital on Sunday to meet President Muhammadu Buhari as anxious families awaited an official list of names and looked forward to reuniting three years after the mass abduction.
The newly released girls arrived at the Abuja airport and were met by the Buhari’s chief of staff, presidential adviser Femi Adesina said. The president was expected to meet with the schoolgirls at 4 p.m. local time.
The 82 girls were freed Saturday in exchange for an unspecified number of detained suspected Boko Haram extremists, Buhari’s office said in a statement.
This is the largest negotiated release so far of the nearly 300 girls whose abduction in 2014 highlighted the threat of Nigeria’s homegrown extremists who are linked to the Islamic State group. Before Saturday’s release, 195 of the girls had been captive. Now 113 of the girls remain unaccounted for.
A first group of 21 girls were released in October as Nigeria announced it had begun negotiations with the extremist group. At the time, the government denied making an exchange for Boko Haram suspects or paying ransom.
The girls released in October have been reported to be in government care in Abuja for medical attention, trauma counseling and rehabilitation, according to the government. Human rights groups have criticized the decision to keep the girls in custody in Abuja, nearly 900 kilometers (560 miles) from Chibok.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which along with the Swiss government mediated months of negotiations between Nigeria’s government and Boko Haram, said the newly released girls soon would meet with their families.
The ICRC also tweeted what might be the first public image of the freed schoolgirls on Sunday, showing a line of young women wearing shirts with the ICRC logo waiting to board a helicopter.
The ICRC said it had acted as a neutral intermediary to transport the freed girls into Nigerian government custody.
Long-suffering family members said they were eagerly awaiting a list of names and their “hopes and expectations are high.”
The Bring Back Our Girls campaign said Sunday it was happy that Nigeria’s government had committed to rescuing the 113 remaining schoolgirls. “We urge the president and his government to earnestly pursue the release of all our Chibok girls and other abducted citizens of Nigeria,” the group said in a statement.
The 276 schoolgirls kidnapped from Chibok in 2014 are among thousands of people abducted by Boko Haram over the years.
The mass abduction brought the extremist group’s rampage in northern Nigeria to world attention and began years of heartbreak for the families of the missing schoolgirls.
Some relatives did not live to see their daughters released. Many of the captive girls, most of them Christians, were forced to marry their captors and give birth to children in remote forest hideouts without knowing if they would see their parents again. It is feared that other girls were strapped with explosives and sent on missions as suicide bombers.
A Nigerian military official with direct knowledge of the rescue operation said the freed girls were found near the town of Banki in Borno state near Cameroon.
Boko Haram remains active in that area. On Friday, the United States and Britain issued warnings that the extremist group was actively planning to kidnap foreigners in an area of Borno state “along the Kumshe-Banki axis.”
Buhari late last year announced Boko Haram had been “crushed,” but the group continues to carry out attacks in northern Nigeria and neighboring countries. Its insurgency has killed more than 20,000 people and driven 2.6 million from their homes, with millions facing starvation.

It’s been a long time since these girls were taken from their homes and their village. I am sure it seems much, much longer to them. I don’t know exactly what tragedies they have survived, but I know that they have survived because they are courageous, and because they love life. I honor them and their survival and now I ask for prayers for their continued healing, that they are able to make whole lives for themselves, and to move on from this terrible experience they have lived through.
It is my solemn hope that this kind of experience will never happen to a group of young girls ever again. That they will not be kidnapped, taken from their homes, lives and families; that their lives will not be reduced to be owned and controlled by terrorists or warriors again.
History must never be allowed to repeated itself.
Trumpcare opposed by the healthcare industry, including insurance companies
The new Republican Healthcare Bill has passed the House of Representatives. Next, it goes to the Senate.
But the Resistance continues. It must, because it is clear that the Republicans on the Hill and in the White House are prioritizing removing former President Obama from the history books as much as possible, instead of prioritizing the health, well-being and safety of their constituents.
With this new bill rape and domestic violence can be considered pre-existing conditions. So can pregnancy. Worse, there is a provision to allow states to remove protections for pre-existing conditions. The Republicans in Congress voted for this, against everything that morally right and decent.
A note I saw on Facebook yesterday puts it best: With this new law, the mentally ill will not have access to healthcare, but will still have access to guns.
Think about that.
Doctors, Hospitals and even the Insurance companies find this to be a bad bill. It will increase healthcare costs and lower the level of coverage for thousands, if not millions, of people. Many small businesses dislike this, as well, as it makes it more difficult for them to provide decent healthcare to their employees.
There were many things wrong with the Affordable Care Act, it must be admitted.
This bill fixes none of them and makes much of it worse.
Call your Senator, and hold your Representative accountable for their vote. Go to Town Hall meetings, mail postcards, keep the pressure up.
This must not pass the Senate, and we CAN make a difference. We did the first time they tried this horrible bill, we must do so again.
Namaste,
Barbara
