8 theSun | MONDAY OCTOBER 26 2009

news without borders

Female journalist to be
flogged over TV show
RIYADH: A Saudi female
journalist said on Saturday
that a court has ordered her to
receive 60 lashes for working
at a television network that
aired the sexual confessions
of a man.
Rozana al-Yami said a
judge in the Red Sea town of
Jeddah dropped all charges
that she had been directly
involved with the episode of a
programme on LBC, a Saudi-
owned Lebanese network, in
July.
However, Yami said the
judge sentenced her to 60
lashes for having been a
part-time employee for LBC’s
Saudi operations. The judge
mentioned LBC had lacked
the appropriate operating
licence, she said without
elaborating.
“It’s a punishment for all
journalists through me,” said
Yami by telephone.
“They just said the chan-
nel was illegal. But the Saudi
minister of information him-
self appeared on LBC a couple
of weeks ago,” she said.
Saudi judges base their
rulings on strict Islamic
syariah law, but it was not
immediately clear how the
judge in this case reached
the verdict.
Yami, 22, until recently
a reporter for the Arabic
women’s magazine Roaa,
said she did not know when
her sentence would be car-
ried out. She does not plan an
appeal, saying she feared she
could end up with a harsher
sentence.
Her sentencing comes
after Saudi airline sales
clerk Mazen Abdul Jawad
was convicted of offensive
behaviour and sentenced to
five years in jail and 1,000
lashes on Oct 7 for his ap-
pearance on the LBC show
Bold Red Line, in which he
talked about picking up girls
and having sex with them.
Three friends who ap-
peared on the show with him
were given two-year terms
and 300 lashes each, while a
cameraman who helped film
the episode was sentenced to
two months in jail.
Abdul Jawad’s lawyer Su-
laiman al-Jimaie expressed
shock at Yami’s sentence
because she had nothing to
do with him or the episode of
the programme he appeared
in. – AFP

that El Nino will soon dominate East African

weather and possibly unleash disastrous
EARTHREPORT
Week Ending Oct 23
flooding across a region where millions of
people are still going hungry.

Still evolving Euro fireball

HUMANS are continuing to evolve despite advanc-
es in medicine that some believed were sheltering
the species from the forces of natural selection,
according to a new study. Research sponsored
by the National Evolutionary Synthesis Centre in
Durham, North Carolina, examined data taken
during a 60-year study of more than 2,000 North
American women. They analysed traits important
to human health and the effects these traits had on
their children over the participants’ life spans. Writ-
ing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences, the team says it was able to estimate
the strength of those traits in natural selection, and
predict how each might evolve in the future.
Disaster shift
THE Kenyan Meteorological Society an-
nounced that the season of “short rains” has
arrived, finally ending a protracted drought.
But the country’s chief meteorologist warned
THE twilight sky in parts of northern Europe was
illuminated for a few brief seconds on Oct 13 by
an exploding fireball. The disintegrating meteor
created a sonic boom followed by low rumbles
that rattled windows across the region. Amateur
photographer Robert Mikaelyan had the presence
of mind to capture a few remarkable images of the
meteor as it broke into pieces.
South Seas rumblings
GEOLOGISTS in the South Pacific island na-
tion of Vanuatu raised the alert status for the
volcano on Gaua due to a surge in activity over
the past two weeks. Some living near Mount
Garat report ash has been falling on their crops
and the smell of sulfur is strong in the air. Gaua
residents have been warned that rivers flow-
ing down the flanks of the volcano that there
is a potential for mudslides. – Universal Press
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