France Votes To Be Less Nuclear-Reliant

Former Governor of California and founding chair of the R20 initiative, Arnold Schwarzenegger, right, jokes with French President Francois Hollande prior to a meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, Friday, Oct. 10, 2014. The R20 is a coalition of partners led by regional governments that work to promote and implement projects that are designed to produce local economic and environmental benefits in the form of reduced energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, strong local economies, improved public health, and new green jobs.

PARIS (AP) — French lawmakers have voted to make their country a little less heavily dependent on nuclear energy.

The lower house of parliament adopted a measure Friday to reduce the share of nuclear energy in the electricity supply from 75 percent currently to 50 percent in 2025. The nuclear share in the United States, in comparison, is about 19 percent.

France invested heavily in nuclear energy in the 1960s and 1970s and has pioneered waste reprocessing and other nuclear technologies. But many plants are aging and pressure has mounted to invest in renewable energy. President Francois Hollande has pledged to reduce France's reliance on nuclear reactors.
Hollande is meeting Friday with actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is hosting a conference in Paris on protecting the environment and reducing climate change.

Hong Kong Protesters Petition Chinese President Xi

Pro-democracy protesters sleep in a main road in the occupied areas in Hong Kong's Mong Kok district Saturday, Oct. 11, 2014. Thousands of people are pouring into a main road in Hong Kong last night to show support for a pro-democracy protest after the government called off talks with student leaders.

HONG KONG (AP) — Students leading pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong issued an open letter Saturday to Chinese President Xi Jinping, urging him to consider political reforms in the city and blaming the city's unpopular leader for the demonstrations.

The letter, issued by two student groups leading the protests, said Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying was responsible for a civil disobedience campaign that has seen tens of thousands of people throng the semiautonomous city's key thoroughfares over the past two weeks.

Thousands of demonstrators showed up in the main protest zone on Saturday, two days after Hong Kong's government called off scheduled negotiations with students who are demanding voters have a greater say in choosing the city's leader in 2017 elections.

The protesters have vowed to keep up the demonstrations until the government responds to their demands. "Students walked out of classes and are occupying different places now because Leung and others have repeatedly ignored what the people want," the letter read. "If the central government is confident, it should not be afraid to let Hong Kong people elect their own chief executive."

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang said Friday that he was confident Hong Kong's government can preserve "social stability." He did not directly mention the protests, but stressed that Beijing won't change its "one country, two systems" approach to running Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, a Chinese state-run newspaper blamed the United States for being behind the protests — a claim the U.S. State Department strongly rejected. In a commentary published on the front page of the Communist Party-run People's Daily's overseas edition Friday, the newspaper said the National Endowment for Democracy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit group, became involved in the Hong Kong protests as part of a U.S. strategy to undermine foreign governments in the name of promoting democracy.

Citing unidentified media reports, the commentary claimed that Louisa Greve, a director at NED, met with Hong Kong protest leaders months ago to discuss the movement. The group did not immediately reply to an email requesting comment Saturday. According to its website, the organization is devoted to "the growth and strengthening of democratic institutions around the world," and is funded largely by the U.S. Congress.

When asked about the U.S. State Department's role in the protests, department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Friday that U.S. officials "categorically reject accusations that we are manipulating the activities of any person, group or political party in Hong Kong."

"What is happening there is about the people of Hong Kong, and any assertion otherwise is an attempt to distract from the issue at hand, which is the people expressing their desire for universal suffrage in an election that provides a meaningful choice of candidates representative of their own voters' will," Harf said.

Associated Press writer Lara Jakes in Washington contributed to this report.

US Deal With Equatorial Guinea Missed Chance

Provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), agents inspect a Ferrari at the Malibu, Calif., mansion of the son of Equitorial Guinea's president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, during the execution of a search warrant. Mangue must sell the $30 million Malibu mansion, the Ferrari and Michael Jackson memorabilia and then give the proceeds to the citizens of his impoverished country, under a settlement announced Friday, Oct. 10, 2014 by U.S. authorities who said he bought the lavish items with money stolen from the African nation. Mangue, who is also Equatorial Guinea's second vice president, agreed to turn over $20 million from the sale of these assets to a charitable organization to be used to benefit the people of his country, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Another $10.3 million will be forfeited to the U.S. government.

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A U.S. deal forcing the son of Equatorial Guinea's leader to turn over $31.3 million in ill-gotten gains misses an opportunity to expose the workings of corruption in the oil-rich nation, human rights activists said.

The Open Society Justice Initiative said putting Teodorin Nguema Obiang Mangue on trial would have brought "revelations that ... could have been of inestimable value to expose the nature of the corruption system in Equatorial Guinea as well as the role of lawyers, bankers and other professionals who grease the wheels of abuse." Obiang is also the country's vice president.

Still, the New York-based organization welcomed the first U.S. legal action of its kind to target the family of a sitting head of state, according to a statement late Friday by Ken Hurwitz, head of the organization's anti-corruption work.
In the first case under the Department of Justice's Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative, Obiang must sell a Malibu mansion, a Ferrari and Michael Jackson memorabilia to raise $20 million to go to a charity working for the people of his country and $10.3 million to the U.S. also to be used to benefit the people of the West African coastal nation.
He also must pay $1 million to cover the value of Michael Jackson memorabilia already removed from the U.S., including a "Thriller" jacket and crystal-covered glove, Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said Friday.
The U.S. had in 2011 filed claims against Obiang's U.S.-based assets worth more than $70 million, alleging they were the proceeds of corruption. It said Obiang's annual salary at the time was less than $100,000.
Hurwitz said the case significantly "breaks with the more common pattern of waiting until a corrupt family's rule has ended before tracking down their assets: in contrast, Teodorin's family is still very much in control in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, most of whose oil and gas is pumped by U.S. companies."
Despite wealth that has raised Equatorial Guinea's per capita income above that of former colonizer Spain, most of the 750,000 people live in poverty. U.S. authorities say Obiang other officials have amassed vast wealth through extortion, embezzlement and other corruption.
Obiang said in a statement that he was pleased to end the proceedings, even though his property "was acquired with funds earned in accordance with the laws of my country." He said he hoped the settlement would improve relations, adding "For the good of my country, it was important to resolve this matter and put the relationship back on firm footing."
Obiang still is the subject of lawsuits in France and Spain. French financial prosecutors in March filed preliminary charges of alleged money-laundering connected to real estate, luxury cars, art and other property in France. It is part of a larger suit involving properties owned by leaders of Equatorial Guinea, Gabon and Republic of Congo.
In Spain, prosecutors in 2009 opened an official investigation into alleged money-laundering by Equatorial Guinea's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, and his family into bank transfers and the purchase of luxury properties in Madrid, Gijon and the Canary Islands.

Provided by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shows the exterior of the Malibu, Calif., mansion of the son of Equitorial Guinea's president, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, during the execution of a search warrant. Mangue must sell the $30 million Malibu mansion, a Ferrari and Michael Jackson memorabilia and then give the proceeds to the citizens of his impoverished country, under a settlement announced Friday, Oct. 10, 2014 by U.S. authorities who said he bought the lavish items with money stolen from the African nation. Mangue, who is also Equatorial Guinea's second vice president, agreed to turn over $20 million from the sale of these assets to a charitable organization to be used to benefit the people of his country, the U.S. Department of Justice said. Another $10.3 million will be forfeited to the U.S. government.

Iraqi Yazidi Girl Tells Of Captivity In IS Group

Photo: AP --A 15-year-old Yazidi girl captured by the Islamic State group and forcibly married to a militant in Syria sits on the floor of a one-room house she now shares with her family after escaping in early August, while speaking in an interview with The Associated Press in Maqluba, a hamlet near the Kurdish city of Dahuk, 260 miles (430 kilometers) northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. The girl was among hundreds of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority captured by Islamic State fighters in early August when the militants overran their hometown of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq. Hundreds were killed in the attack, and tens of thousands fled for their lives, most to Kurdish-held parts of the north.

MAQLUBA, IRAQ (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — The young Yazidi girl rocked apprehensively as she described the ordeal that took her from her family, snatched from her home by militants in Iraq, then sold as a slave in Syria before finally escaping to Turkey.

The 15-year-old is now with what is left of her family — two of her brothers and some more distant relatives — living in a makeshift roadside shelter in this tiny village in northern Iraq, along with other families shattered by the onslaught from the Islamic State militant group.


Her two sisters remain in the militants' hands, and her father, other brothers and other male relatives have vanished, their fates unknown. The girl was among hundreds of women and girls from the Yazidi religious minority captured by Islamic State fighters in early August when the militants overran her hometown of Sinjar in northwestern Iraq. Hundreds were killed in the attack, and tens of thousands fled for their lives, most to the Kurdish-held parts of northern Iraq.

Iraq's Human Rights Ministry said at the time that hundreds of women were abducted by the militants, who consider the Yazidis a heretical sect. The Associated Press spoke to the girl and several other young women who escaped captivity by the Islamic State group. While specifics of their stories could not be independently confirmed, they reflected circumstances reported by the United Nations last month.

They each independently painted a similar picture of how the militants scattered them around the broad swath of territory controlled by the Islamic State group in Syria and Iraq and sold the girls to the group's foreign fighters or other supporters for "marriage."

For weeks after being snatched from Sinjar, the 15-year-old girl and two of her sisters were shifted from one place to another, she said. The AP does not identify victims of abuse, and the girl also did not want to be named for fear of reprisals against her relatives still being held by the militants.
As she told her story, the girl rubbed her hands and avoided eye contact. But she spoke decisively and clearly, never hesitating when asked questions. She asked her relatives to leave the room, saying she was more comfortable speaking alone.

First, she said, she and other girls were taken to the nearby town of Tal Afar, where she was kept in the Badosh Prison. When U.S. airstrikes began around the town, the militants took her and many other girls with them to the Islamic State group's biggest stronghold, Mosul, in northern Iraq.

From the city of Mosul, she and her sisters were taken to the militants' de facto capital, the Syrian city of Raqqa. There they were held in a house with other abducted girls. "They took girls to Syria to sell them," she said, her body shyly hunched over as she spoke. "I was sold in Syria. I stayed about five days with my two sisters, then one of my sisters was sold and taken (back) to Mosul, and I remained in Syria."

In Raqqa, she said, she was first married off to a Palestinian man. She claims she shot him, saying the Palestinian's Iraqi housekeeper who was in a dispute with the man helped her by giving her a gun. She fled, but she had nowhere to run. So she went to the only place she knew, she said — the house where she was first held with the other girls in Raqqa.

There, the militants did not recognize her and sold her off again — for $1,000 to a Saudi fighter, she said. The Saudi militant took her to a house where he lived with other fighters. "He told me, 'I'm going to change your name to Abeer, so your mother doesn't recognize you,'" she said. "You'll become Muslim, then I will marry you. But I refused to become a Muslim and that's why I fled."
She said she saw the fighters at time taking a powdered drug. So she poured it into tea she served to the Saudi and the other men, causing them to fall asleep. Then she fled the house. She found a man who would drive her to Turkey to meet her brother. Her brother then borrowed $2,000 from friends to pay a smuggler to get them both back to Iraq. They ended up in Maqluba, a tiny roadside hamlet just outside the Kurdish city of Dahuk, where several other Yazidi families are staying.

The other women who spoke to The AP described difficult conditions, where the militant fighters would deprive them of enough food, water or even a place to sit. They all reported having seen dozens of other Yazidi women and children as young as 5-years old in captivity, and they all said that they have relatives who are still missing.

Amsha Ali, a 19-year-old, said she was taken from Sinjar to Mosul. Ali was around six months pregnant at the time. The last she saw of her husband and other men in her family as she was being dragged off, was the scene of the militants forcing them to lie on the ground, apparently to shoot them. Ali agreed to be identified, saying she wanted the ordeals of the women to be known.

In Mosul, she said, she and other women were taken to a house full of Islamic State fighters to be married off. "Each of them took one of us for themselves," she said. She too was given to a fighter. She said she was never raped by the man — likely because of her pregnancy, she said — but she witnessed other girls being raped.

After several weeks, she was able to slip out of a bathroom window at night and escape. A Mosul resident who found her in the streets helped her get out of the city to nearby Kurdish territory on Aug. 28, she said. She said she tried to convince other women to flee with her, but they were too afraid. "Because they were so terrified, they are left there and now I know nothing about them," she said.

Now Ali is with her father and a surviving sister living in an unfinished building in the town of Sharia, where some 5,000 Yazidi refugees live, also near Dahuk. "The killing was not the hardest thing for me," she said of seeing fellow Yazidis slain in the assault on Sinjar. "Even though they forced my husband, brother-in-law and father-in-law on the ground to be murdered — it was painful — but marrying (the militant) was the worst. It was hardest thing for me."

Documents Show How White House Defended Clinton

Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, right, smiles as she talks with supporters at a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Chicago, Wednesday, Oct. 8, 2014. Clinton visited Chicago for two appearances, including a speech to a business group, and to stump for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn in his bid for re-election.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House made a public push to defend President Bill Clinton during a series of investigations related to the Whitewater real estate deal to his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, according to thousands of pages of documents released by the National Archives.

The documents, part of 10,000 pages of records from the Clinton administration released Friday, did not appear to reveal any new information that might affect a potential Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign. But the papers focused on a number of painful chapters in the former first lady's time in the White House and described how the president's aides sought to defend her husband against impeachment.

Many records involving Lewinsky are redacted, but one document sheds light on her job: Lewinsky sent an official request to hang a picture of Clinton, signing a telecommunications bill, in a White House legislative affairs office.

Behind the scenes, Clinton officials were adamant that they were not trying to discredit Lewinsky. "There is no evidence whatsoever that the White House was directing or involved in any campaign against her," Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal wrote in a January 1999 memo.

In another email, Blumenthal derides Linda Tripp, a former White House aide who secretly recorded Lewinsky discussing the president. But the case caused political tensions. An aide notes in one document that then-Maryland Gov. Parris Glendening, a Democrat, explained "why he felt he needed to distance himself" from Clinton.

The papers touch on the 1993 death of deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, the Whitewater investigation into Bill and Hillary Clinton's land dealings in Arkansas, and pardons Bill Clinton granted in his final hours as president.

With these documents the National Archives will have released about 30,000 pages of papers since February. Both the Obama White House and the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, signed off on their release.

The papers show that the Republican-led investigation into Foster's suicide infuriated the White House, which tried to recruit bestselling author William Styron to write a piece critical of the probe. It is unclear if the piece was ever published.

Elena Kagan, now a Supreme Court justice, makes a cameo appearance. As a White House counsel, Kagan defended Bill Clinton in the lawsuit brought by ex-Arkansas state employee Paula Jones. Clinton's testimony for the Jones lawsuit, in which he denied a sexual relationship with Lewinsky, led to his impeachment in 1998. The House approved two articles of impeachment against Clinton, but he was acquitted by the Senate.

In a 1996 memo to then-White House counsel Jack Quinn, Kagan says, "I realize now that I may have really (messed) up" in not passing on word of a conversation in connection with an upcoming appearance related to the Jones case on the CNN show "Crossfire." Kagan used another verb in the memo, one that's more profane. "God, do I feel like an idiot," she added.

Hillary Clinton's influence in the White House is also explored, from her role in Clinton's unsuccessful health care overhaul plan to her 2000 Senate campaign in New York. Bill Clinton left office in January 2001.

The memos offer only a narrow look at her Senate race — discussion among lawyers and staff over paying for political travel. But some are devoted to one of the Clintons' longest-running political roller coasters: the Whitewater real estate saga. As the case threatened to mushroom into a scandal, the president, first lady and their circle of advisers hatched a strategy to convince the public the Clintons had done nothing wrong — and had nothing to hide.

Some advocates, suggesting the Clintons step before the cameras to make their case, provided a point-by-point primer. "In this situation, the Clintons' attitude is their message. They must be relaxed, open and forthcoming. Any sense of bitterness, anger or righteous indignation will not work," said a March 11, 1994, memo written by Clinton adviser Paul Begala. "No matter how justified some of our feelings on this may be, this will be the first time most Americans will hear directly from the president and first lady."

"Discussion of plots, pain and personal injustice could strike some viewers as self-serving or just plain weird," he continued. "The most important point to stress is that we have nothing to hide, we are fully complying with an independent investigation."

The Clintons were never implicated in the Whitewater case, but their real estate partners, Jim and Susan McDougal, were convicted in a trial that also resulted in the conviction of then-Arkansas Gov. Jim Guy Tucker.

The documents touch on financier Marc Rich, who was indicted on fraud and other charges in 1983. He fled to Switzerland and was later pardoned on Clinton's last day in office. Quinn, who had left the White House by then, suggests in a handwritten note that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak discussed a pardon directly with Clinton.

Past installments of the documents have offered an unvarnished look at Clinton's two terms, detailing his unsuccessful attempt to change the health care system, Republicans' sweeping victories in the 1994 midterm elections and the shaping of his wife's public image.

Hillary Clinton, who went on to serve as a senator from New York and as President Barack Obama's secretary of state, now is a powerful advocate for Democrats in the midterm elections and the leading Democratic prospect for president in 2016.

The possibility of a presidential campaign has heightened interest in the documents by media organizations, political opposition researchers and historians.

Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Donna Cassata, Calvin Woodward, Charles Babington, Steve Peoples, Ronnie Greene and Stephen Braun in Washington; Jill Colvin in Toronto; Nicholas Riccardi in Denver; Bill Barrow in Atlanta; and Kelly Kissel in Little Rock, Arkansas, contributed to this report.

Stepped-Up Ebola Screening Starts At NYC Airport

Graphic explains the non-contact thermometers; 2c x 4 inches; 96.3 mm x 101 mm;

NEW YORK (AP) — Customs and health officials began taking the temperatures of passengers arriving at New York's Kennedy International Airport from three West African countries on Saturday in a stepped-up screening effort meant to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus.

Federal health officials said the entry screenings, which will expand to four additional U.S. airports in the next week, add another layer of protection to halt the spread of a disease that has killed more than 4,000 people.

"Already there are 100 percent of the travelers leaving the three infected countries are being screened on exit. Sometimes multiple times temperatures are checked along that process," Dr. Martin Cetron, director of the Division of Global Migration and Quarantine for the federal Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, said at a briefing at Kennedy.

Cetron added, "No matter how many procedures are put into place, we can't get the risk to zero." The screening will be expanded over the next week to four other airports: New Jersey's Newark Liberty, Washington Dulles, Chicago O'Hare and Hartsfield-Jackson in Atlanta.

Customs officials say about 150 people travel daily from or through Liberia, Sierra Leone or Guinea to the United States, and nearly 95 percent of them land first at one of the five airports. Public health workers use no-touch thermometers to take the temperatures of the travelers from the three Ebola-ravaged countries; those who have a fever will be interviewed to determine whether they may have had contact with someone infected with Ebola. There are quarantine areas at each of the five airports that can be used if necessary.

There are no direct flights to the U.S. from the three countries, but Homeland Security officials said last week they can track passengers back to where their trips began, even if they make several stops. Airlines from Morocco, France and Belgium are still flying in and out of West Africa.

President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the new screening measures are "really just belt and suspenders" to support protections already in place. Border Patrol agents already look for people who are obviously ill, as do flight crews.

Health officials expect false alarms from travelers who have fever from other illnesses. Ebola isn't contagious until symptoms begin, and it spreads through direct contact with the bodily fluids of patients.

Cetron said more than 36,000 travelers leaving West Africa have been screened for Ebola in the last two months and none was infected with Ebola. The extra screening at U.S. airports probably wouldn't have identified Thomas Eric Duncan when he arrived from Liberia last month because he had no symptoms while traveling. Duncan, the first person to be diagnosed with Ebola in the U.S., died Wednesday in Dallas.

Experts say the federal government has broad authority to screen passengers and quarantine them if necessary. The CDC cited as legal authority the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, under which the government regulates trade with foreign countries. The 1944 Public Health Service Act also allows the federal government to take action to prevent communicable diseases, which include viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola, from spreading into the country.

Activist's Nobel Highlights Child Labor In India

Children rescued by the workers of the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan or Save Childhood Movement, run by Kailash Satyarthi, watch the news of Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai on television at the Mukti Ashram.

PATNA, INDIA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — When the Nobel Committee announced that Indian children's rights activist Kailash Satyarthi had won the Peace Prize, a skinny 13-year-old boy was running around serving cups of milky tea to customers at a tiny tea stall in eastern India.

By law, Raja Manjhi should not be working at all. But, like millions of other children across India, he has been forced out of school and into a job to help his impoverished family. Despite the country's rapid economic growth, child labor remains widespread in India, where an estimated 13 million children work, with laws meant to keep kids in school and out of the workplace routinely flouted.

Satyarthi, 60, who won the Peace Prize on Friday along with 17-year-old Pakistani Malala Yousafzai, accepts that "a lot of work still remains" before children like Raja no longer have to work. Raja dropped out of school in second grade, when he was handed over to the owner of a tea stall in the eastern city of Patna to pay off his father's 5,000 rupee ($80) debt. The money was needed because Raja's mother was sick.

He has no idea what a Nobel Prize means. And he has no idea when his father's debt will be repaid so he can go back to his village. Across India, children — some as young as 5 or 6 — end up working in all sorts of jobs. Many, like Raja, are in bonded labor, bound to their employers in exchange for a loan and unable to leave while in debt, which can last forever.

Others, like 13-year-old Srabani Das, need money so their impoverished families can eat. Srabani, still a child herself, is a baby sitter for a middle-class family's 1-year-old girl in the eastern city of Kolkata.

It's a job she has had for a year and which pays only about 800 rupees ($13) a month, which she sends home to her family of poor farm laborers. Srabani lives with her employers, and has no fixed work days or time off.

Srabani has heard of the Nobel Prize, thanks to receiving a bit more of an education than Raja after studying up to the sixth grade. She was happy that an Indian had won the award, but added, "It won't change my life."

For more than three decades, Satyarthi and the organization that he founded, Bachpan Bachao Andolan, or Save the Children Movement, has worked to rescue children like Raja and create awareness to keep others like Srabani in school.

In 2006, India banned the hiring of children under 14 as servants in homes or as full-time workers in restaurants, tea shops, hotels or spas, mandating that they must remain in school. But such laws can be nearly impossible to enforce.

It's not unusual to find girls as young as Srabani, and sometimes even younger, taking care of an infant for a middle-class family. Across the country, they are found in upscale shopping malls and fancy restaurants, entertaining children while the parents shop or dine.

In return, they earn a pittance, as well as food and a place to sleep, which is usually in the family's living room or on the kitchen floor. For the children themselves, the issue is not as clear-cut as many outside India would think. They come from bitterly poor families, and in many cases are their families' sole breadwinners.

Rohit Kumar came to the northern Indian city of Lucknow two years ago, when he was only 11. His father worked at a construction site, while he worked at roadside food stalls. His father went back to their village last year, but Rohit stayed behind to work at a tea stall, where he works up to 15 hours a day washing utensils and serving customers.

"I like this job," he says, adding that it fetches him two meals a day and about 800 rupees ($13) a month, more money than he has ever had in his life. But Rohit does not go to school and gets sad when he watches other children play cricket on the streets or in playgrounds.

"I want to play cricket," Rohit says. "I have seen how children play this game, but I do not have enough time." And what of the law that makes his job illegal? "I serve tea at the local police station. All the cops know me," he says. "So who will enforce the law?"

Naqvi reported from New Delhi. Associated Press writers Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, and Manik Banerjee in Kolkata, India, contributed to this report.

"Love is a Crime" By Nina Fabunmi

If love is a crime then sue me
For I am guilty of all that it asked of me
It was the hunter and I, the hunted
I fell prey to its strength
Let go and let it consume me
And like a drunken man
I have been intoxicated by it

 

If love is unconditional, how can it be wrong
Two people in love, that's all that matters

A passion ignited
Desires that must be fueled
A touch, a kiss and sweet love making
And all the feelings that come with it

 

If love is selfless why hold back
I chose not to love, it chose me
I tried to fight it but to no avail
I tried to hide it but it glowed like a flame
Finally I gave up and let it take me
I am in love so sue me

 

If love is of God, how can it be wrong
Love is not a crime
For it demands not a dine
Love may have flaws
But love can break laws
And for this, love is a crime

 

Nina Fabunmi

 

"Heat" By Andy Warhol

Set of "Heat": Sylvia Miles and Joe Dallesandro by Andy Warhol Date: ca 1972. Image: The Andy Warhol Foundation.

"Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus" By Georges Pierre

Set of "Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus"
British actress and singer Jane Birkin and her partner, French director, singer and songwriter Serge Gainsbourg on the set of Gainsbourg's film "Je T'Aime, Moi Non Plus" (I Love You, I Don't). Date: October 01, 1975. Location: France. Image: Georges Pierre/Sygma.

Malala's Improbable Journey To Nobel Peace Prize

Malala Yousafzai poses with a bouquet after speaking during a media conference at the Library of Birmingham, in Birmingham, England, Friday, Oct. 10, 2014, after she was named as winner of The Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Peace Prize 2014, is awarded jointly to Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Kailash Satyarthi of India, for risking their lives to fight for children’s rights. Malala was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman two-years ago in Pakistan for insisting that girls have the right to an education.

BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — Malala Yousafzai celebrated her Nobel Peace Prize where she always wished to be: in school.

The 17-year-old Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban for daring to want an education learned she had become the youngest Nobel laureate ever Friday while attending classes at Edgbaston High School for girls in Birmingham, the city in central England that she now calls home.

The teenager had traveled to Birmingham for medical treatment after being targeted by the Taliban for standing up to the group's hard-line interpretation of Islam that limits girls' access to education. She was shot while returning home from school in Pakistan's volatile Swat Valley two years ago, almost to the day.

"This award is for all those children who are voiceless, whose voices need to be heard. I speak for them and I stand up with them," she said at a news conference Friday at Birmingham Library. "They have rights. They have the right to receive a quality education. They have the right not to suffer from child labor, not to suffer from child trafficking. They have the right to live a happy life."

She said it was an honor to share the prize with Kailash Satyarthi of India, 60, who has spent a lifetime standing up against child slavery and exploitation. And she invited the prime ministers of their two rival nations, India and Pakistan, to attend the Nobel awards ceremony.

Malala's case won worldwide recognition, and the teen became a symbol for the struggle for women's rights in Pakistan. In an indication of her reach, she spoke before the United Nations and made the shortlist for Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2012.

But the journey was simply improbable. On Oct. 9, 2012, Malala, then 15, climbed into the back of a pick-up truck used to transport Swat Valley children home from school. They laughed and talked as the truck rumbled over roads lined with pot holes.

As they approached a narrow bridge over a garbage-strewn stream, a masked man with a gun suddenly stopped the truck. Another man with a pistol jumped into the back. "Who is Malala?" he shouted. The girls did not answer but heads automatically swiveled toward her. The man raised his pistol. One bullet hit Malala on the top of her head. Two other students were also hit, less seriously.

Malala was transferred to a military hospital near Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, as her head swelled dangerously. Her father, Ziauddin, was certain his daughter would not survive the night. He sent a message to his brother-in-law in Swat to prepare a coffin.

Pakistani doctors removed a bullet that entered her head and traveled toward her spine before she was flown to Britain for more specialized brain trauma care. She woke up a week later at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.

She says she regained consciousness with one thought: "Thank God I'm not dead." Malala gradually regained her sight and her voice. She was reunited with her parents. Soon there were pictures and stuffed animals at her side. She sent messages to well-wishers.

Three months later she walked out of the hospital, smiling shyly as she cautiously strode down the corridor. "She is quite well and happy on returning home — as we all are," her father told The Associated Press at the time.

Pakistan made Malala's father its education attache in Birmingham, giving the family stability and Malala a safe place to go to school. She went back to school as soon as she could, confessing that math was her least favorite subject. All the while, she campaigned for the rights of children to an education — meeting President Barack Obama, attending rights conferences, becoming the keynote speaker at corporate events in London. She began rubbing elbows with people who had the power and the money to help her realize her dreams.

All along, she delighted many by simply being young, determined and most of all, herself. At a Vodafone conference celebrating women, she confided that she didn't have a cell phone. The crowd chuckled at the notion of a teenager who admitted she had no need for a phone.

With British journalist Christina Lamb, she co-authored a memoir, "I am Malala," that made clear that she was, in fact, also a regular teenager. She loves the TV show "Ugly Betty," whose main character works at a fashion magazine. She likes pop star Justin Bieber, watches the television cooking show "MasterChef."

And on Friday, the people who helped her on the journey — and those just touched by her story along the way — couldn't help but be swept up by the magic of it all. "Malala is an inspiration for the many women in Afghanistan and Pakistan who have been fighting for their rights and struggling against the misogynous policies of the Taliban and local warlords," said David Cortright, co-author of "Afghan Women Speak" and a professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.

"As we know, people learn best from personal stories. Malala's story is a powerful antidote to extremist propaganda, and the Nobel Prize reinforces its impact," he said. As news of her Nobel spread, doctors in Birmingham offered congratulations, noting her focus and dedication. And the people of the city that threw its arms out to welcome her simply nodded their heads. No surprise at this news. She's liked and well known in Birmingham, a city that Malala has embraced, proudly describing herself as a "Brummie," like other locals.

"Sure, puts a bit of pride into it," said retired aluminum worker John Mullan, 78, of the news the city's adopted daughter had won a Nobel Prize. "She's just young girl who stood up to them. Many other people wouldn't have done that."

Malala remains determined to return to Pakistan one day and enter politics. On Friday, her growing polish was clear. She spoke from the heart in three languages, offering an almost uncanny combination of a teenager with a vision and a diplomat with a platform.
She did need a box, however, so that she could be seen over the podium. She will split a $1.1 million cash award with co-winner Satyarthi. Malala said the joint prize sends a message that the people of their rival nations — and Hindus and Muslims — can work together.
"We support each other," she said. Then, standing alongside her parents and brothers, she posed for family photographs while the world's media begged them to look their way. Her normally reticent mother, who has more than once hidden when cameras emerged, stood alongside, beaming.
What everyone wanted to know was: How did she learn the news? How did a schoolgirl who has just been pulled out of a chemistry class react upon hearing she had just received the world's most prestigious prize?
"I felt really honored," she said. There was probably some jumping up and down, but she didn't mention that. Then, she said, she turned around and headed back to class. She was back in time for physics.

Associated Press writer Kathy Gannon contributed reporting from Mingora, Pakistan.