Delhi gang-rape victim dies in hospital in Singapore

A female student gang-raped on a bus in India's capital Delhi has died at a Singapore hospital, doctors say.

"The patient passed away peacefully at 4:45am on 29 Dec 2012," a statement from the hospital said. The patient's family had been by her side, it added.

The 23-year-old had arrived in Singapore on Thursday after undergoing three operations in a Delhi hospital.

The attack earlier this month triggered violent public protests in India that left one police officer dead.

Six men have been arrested and two police officers have been suspended following the 16 December attack.

"The patient had remained in an extremely critical condition since admission to Mount Elizabeth Hospital," a statement from hospital chief executive Kelvin Loh said.

"She had suffered from severe organ failure following serious injuries to her body and brain. She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome," the statement went on.

"We are humbled by the privilege of being tasked to care for her in her final struggle," Mr Loh said.

A team of eight specialists had tried to keep the patient stable, but her condition continued to deteriorate over the two days she was at Mount Elizabeth Hospital, he added.

Officials from the High Commission of India had also been present when the patient passed away. The Indian home minister said the government had decided to send the victim overseas on the recommendation of her doctors.

Arrangements are being made to take her body back to India, Indian high commissioner to Singapore TCA Raghavan told reporters, according to the Associated Press.

Rising anger

The victim and her friend had been to see a film when they boarded the bus in the Munirka area of Delhi, intending to travel to Dwarka in the south-west of the city.

Police said she was raped for nearly an hour, and both she and her companion were beaten with iron bars and thrown out of the moving bus and into the street.

On arrival at the hospital in Singapore, doctors said that as well as a "prior cardiac arrest, she also had infection of her lungs and abdomen, as well as significant brain injury".

The government has tried to halt rising public anger by announcing a series of measures intended to make Delhi safer for women.

These include more police night patrols, checks on bus drivers and their assistants, and the banning of buses with tinted windows or curtains.

The government has also said that it will post the photos, names and addresses of convicted rapists on official websites to shame them.

It has set up two committees - one looking into speeding up trials of cases involving sexual assaults on women, and the other to examine the lapses that might have led to the incident in Delhi.

But the protesters say the government's pledge to seek life sentences for the attackers is not enough - many are calling for the death penalty.

Since the Delhi incident, several cases have been highlighted of authorities failing to respond to reported rapes.

On Wednesday, a woman committed suicide in the state of Punjab, after having tried to report to police an rape which allegedly took place last month, local media reports said.

At least one police officer involved in the case has been sacked, according to local officials.

Source: BBC
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Wole Soyinka: Gays, lesbians and legislative zealotry

LET us go back a little, nearly a year ago, to that earlier attempt to interfere in, and legislate on sexual conduct between consenting adults. Profiting from that experience, I would like to caution – yet again – that it is high time we learnt to ignore what we conveniently designate and react to as ‘foreign interference’.  By now, we should be able to restrict ourselves to the a priori  position that, as rational beings, we make pronouncements on choices of ethical directions from our own collective and/or majority will, independent of what is described as ‘external dictation’. The noisome emissions that surged from a handful of foreign governments last year should not be permitted to obscure the fundamental issue of the right to private choices of the free, adult citizen in any land – Asian, African, European etc. Those external responses were of such a nature – hysterical, hypocritical and disproportionate – that, speaking for myself at least, I could only wonder if they had not been generated by a desperate need for distraction away from the economic crisis that confronted, at that very time, those parts of the world.

The forgotten girls: By 2020, there will be 50m child brides under the age of 15

This week's international 'Day of the Girl' offers governments, the UN, and charities an opportunity to address a shocking - and growing - trend
When 12-year-old Nargis was woken up, one morning in Bangladesh, by two women she did not know, she was confused. She did not understand when they told her she would be marrying their brother in just a few weeks, or that she would be leaving her parents' home. When she became a mother two years later, losing her son after only 16 days, the pangs of fear were familiar. Now, with a
frail child to bring up, she is much more resolute: "I don't think girls should marry before they're 18 years old." Today, days before the first internationally recognised

John Mahama declared Winner of Ghana’s Presidential Election

Ghana's electoral commission has
announced President John Mahama as the winner of presidential election.
The announcement came hours after the opposition accused the governing party of conspiring with commission staff to fix Friday's poll. The electoral commission said that Mr Mahama had won 50.7% against his NPP rival Nana Akufo-Addo on 47.74%.
"Ladies and gentlemen, based on the results given, I declare John Dramani Mahama president-elect," electoral commission chief Kwadwo Afari-Gyan told journalists.
Ghana, one of the world's fastest growing economies, is regarded as one of Africa's most stable democracies.
Source: CP Africa
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Get Yourself Cracked Up

This is the funniest video I have come across so far. On the other hand I feel sorry for this little child because this shows how bad the Nigerian educational system is. But for now get cracked up!!!

Click to watch

http://m.youtube.com/#/
watch?v=nJpzw8i7XzY

@taiofishizzle
Sent from my BlackBerry® Smartphone, from Etisalat. Enjoy high speed internet service with Etisalat easy net, available at all our experience centres

Get Yourself Cracked Up

This is the funniest video I have come across so far. On the other hand I feel sorry for this little child because this shows how bad the Nigerian educational system is. But for now get cracked up!!!

@taiofishizzle
Sent from my BlackBerry® Smartphone, from Etisalat. Enjoy high speed internet service with Etisalat easy net, available at all our experience centres

The Alake and Paramount Ruler of Egbaland, Oba Adedotun Gbadebo, has tasked the National Association of Seadogs, popularly called Pyrates Confraternity, to
adopt more practical means of checking the worsening problems of cultism in the nation's higher institutions of learning. Oba Gbadebo said it had become imperative for the
Pyrates Confraternity to urgently arrest the current trend where various amorphous groups now terrorise students on campuses. The paramount ruler of Egbaland stated this on Thursday when the Chairman of the Abeokuta Branch of the Pyrates Confraternity, Mr. Yemi Akintunde, led other members including the Ogun State Commissioner for Health, Dr. Olaokun Soyinka, on a visit to his Ake Palace
on the seventh anniversary of his coronation.
The Alake, who recalled that he joined the Pyrates Confraternity in October 1965 as a student at the University of Ibadan, stated that because of the lofty humanitarian ideals and discipline exhibited by all the members then, the group was the most liked of all clubs on the campus by both students and staff. He said, "I joined the Pyrates Confraternity in October 1965 at the University of Ibadan. Many of us were
interviewed then at Kuti Hall but very few of us eventually made it. I'm happy that the problem of illegal initiation is being tackled by the current leadership but you have to
do more. "I'm happy something is being done to separate the wheat from the chaff but you still need to do more to make it different from all these cult groups and you also
need to find better means of combating this problem on our campuses."
Chairman of NAS in Abeokuta, Mr. Yemi Akintunde, told the traditional ruler that the Pyrates Confraternity, which pulled out from the campuses of the various higher
institutions of learning across the country since the 1980s, had written to the authorities of the various schools informing them about the illegal activities of
some students parading themselves as members of NAS. Meanwhile, President, National Congress of Nigerian Students, Mr. Abdulfatah Abdulsalam, has urged the
Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to beam its searchlight on the management of resources in Nigeria's
tertiary institutions.

Source: Punch
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