Daily Archives: June 22, 2011

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Brazil convict remains jailed in nun’s murder

By JULIANA BARBASSA

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP)

A rancher convicted of masterminding the murder of a U.S. nun who was also an environmental activist will have to stay in jail while his case is appealed, Brazil’s top court ruled.  The Supreme Court denied a request for release from Vitalmiro Moura, one of the men found guilty of ordering the murder of 73-year-old Dorothy Stang in 2005. The court issued the ruling June 14, but the decision was not announced in a news release until Monday.  Stang was shot down in the Amazonian state of Para after working for 30 years to protect the rain forest and defend poor settlers’ land rights.  Moura is the only person currently in prison for ordering the killing of an activist anywhere in the Amazon and was sentenced to 30 years in 2007. Another rancher also convicted of ordering Stang’s murder, Regivaldo Galvao, is free pending an appeal. Continue reading →

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New Phone App to Help Refugees Track Kin

News from Africa

By Eric Sande

Through this service, a very vulnerable segment of our society now has a real chance of being re-united with their loved ones.

NAIROBI—As  the world marked the World Refugee Day Monday, Safaricom, Kenya’s leading mobile operator in collaboration with Ericsson and Refugees United have come together to make it easier for refugees to be united with their loved ones. This is in support of the hundreds of thousands of people who have fled from conflict and disaster areas. Continue reading →

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Refugees Find Easier Reception, For Now

By Matt Carr

The UN High Commissioner Antonio Guterres visited the island, accompanied by UNHCR goodwill ambassador Angelina Jolie, and appealed for Italy and Europe to show more solidarity towards the refugees coming to the island.

Refugees land at Lampedusa island in Italy. / Credit:Illaria Vechi/IPS.

LAMPEDUSA, Italy, Jun 21, 2011 (IPS) – It’s 4.30 in the morning and the full moon is low in the sky above Lampedusa harbour as the Guardia di Finanza patrol boat escorts a fishing boat containing 19 Tunisian migrants into the closed military port. They include six women, one child and – to the amusement of the Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) team – one sheep. The migrants are driven away in a coach to one of the two holding centres, some of them wrapped in silver emergency blankets. But the sheep remains in the port.  Tunisians are something of a rarity amongst the migrants who now come here on an almost daily basis, most of whom are sub-Saharan Africans fleeing the Libyan war. Just over a week ago on Saturday 1,500 migrants arrived in seven boats at the commercial harbour. Continue reading →