The World in Brief (3/02/06)

Egyptian students find peaceful way to protest Muhammad cartoons

By Hannah Allam,… Egyptian students find peaceful way to protest Muhammad cartoons

By Hannah Allam, Knight Ridder Newspapers

CAIRO, Egypt – Students at Cairo University chose their weapons carefully as they prepared to vent anger Tuesday over the now-notorious Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.

After weeks of watching the violent – even deadly – reactions of Muslims across the globe, the Egyptian students were determined that their protest would be different. They assembled an arsenal of black markers, skinny red pens and packs of colored pencils. Then, with broad strokes and dainty curlicues, they filled reams of paper with the fury, sadness and disgust they felt over the lampooning of Islam’s messenger.

The result was a somber campus display of political cartoons.

One showed a Danish strongman struggling to balance weights labeled “freedom of speech” and “respect for religion.” Another showed a man wrapped in a Danish flag cowering before a giant made up of stick-figure Muslims carrying one another. The slogan: “We might look little, but if we unite, we can do something.”

One of the biggest handwritten messages said, “If we talk about Jews, it’s anti-Semitism. If we talk about blacks, it’s racism. But if they insult Muhammad, it’s freedom of expression. This is terrorism!”

No government manipulated the tiny, peaceful protest in Cairo. No religious zealots capitalized on the outrage. It was just raw emotion expressed through ink on paper, the same medium as the controversial Danish cartoonists.

“As Muslims, it is important for us to know how the West views us so we know how to respond,” said Mustafa Mohammed, a 21-year-old law student. “As the prophet, peace be upon him, said: ‘He who wants to be safe from a people knows their language.'”

Blocking system for cell phones, pagers being developed

By Jon Van, Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO – The intrusion of cellular phone rings into theaters, schools and nearly every other nook and cranny of modern life may soon hit a wall.

Playing to the backlash against ubiquitous communication, a company called NaturalNano is developing a special high-tech paint that relies on the wizardry of nanotechnology to create a system that locks out unwanted cell phone signals on demand.

The paint represents a dream to those who seek a distraction-free movie or concert experience and a nightmare to those who compulsively monitor their BlackBerries.

“You could use this in a concert hall, allowing cell phones to work before the concert and during breaks, but shutting them down during the performance,” said Michael Riedlinger, president of NaturalNano of Rochester, N.Y.

His firm has found a way to use nanotechnology to blend particles of copper into paint that can be brushed onto walls and effectively deflect radio signals.

The copper is inserted into nanotubes, which are ultratiny tubes that occur naturally in halloysite clay mined in Utah. The nanotubes are about 20,000 times thinner than a piece of paper, too small to be seen with even a conventional microscope. At this size, which is near the molecular scale, materials have different physical properties than they normally do.

By filling these tubes with nanoparticles of copper, the company can create a medium to suspend the signal-blocking metal throughout a can of paint without significantly changing the way the paint adheres to a surface.

NaturalNano will combine this signal-blocking paint scheme with a radio-filtering device that collects phone signals from outside a shielded space, allowing certain transmissions to proceed while blocking others.

Even the thought of such a thing upsets the wireless phone industry.

“We oppose any kind of blocking technology,” said Joe Farren, spokesman for The Wireless Association, the leading cell phone trade group. “What about the young parents whose babysitter is trying to call them, or the brain surgeon who needs notification of emergency surgery? These calls need to get through.”

Abortion rights group ranks states on access to contraception

By Iris Kuo, Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON – Abortions are not falling as fast as they might because sex counseling and contraception are hard to get in some states, a leading national abortion rights group said on Tuesday.

As a result, although teen pregnancy and abortion rates have declined sharply, the overall U.S. abortion rate dropped just 1 percent a year in 2001 and 2002, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which prepared the state-by-state analysis of contraception availability.

Guttmacher’s president and CEO, Sharon Camp, warned that obstacles to contraception at the state level could derail efforts, dating from the Clinton administration, to cut the rate of unintended pregnancies by 40 percent by 2010.

California came in first in Guttmacher’s rankings, which are based on ease of access to contraception, state funding for sex counseling and support from state legislatures. Alaska came in second in the Guttmacher review of 50 states and the District of Columbia; South Carolina was third.

“We need to be making contraception easy for women, but in many states we’re actually making it harder,” said Camp. “When effective contraceptive use rises, abortion rates go down.”

Of 6 million U.S. pregnancies each year, about 3 million are unplanned, according to the group, and half of those end in abortions. According to Guttmacher, the U.S. unintended pregnancy and abortion rates are the highest among industrialized nations.

Anti-abortion and abortion rights groups sometimes find common ground when they advocate reductions in abortion, and they often agree that making contraceptives available helps to achieve that goal. At least one anti-abortion group balked Tuesday, however, at Guttmacher’s linkage between the availability of contraception and unintended pregnancies.

“Handing out birth control and giving out tax dollars to (family planning) programs have not resulted in fewer abortions and fewer unintended pregnancies,” said Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America. Rather, she said, promoting contraception encourages sex outside of marriage.