WORLD
OAXACA, Mexico – Some of the barricades torn down by federal police went back up Tuesday as protesters regrouped, and at least one federal official acknowledged that this city besieged by striking teachers and anarchists remained outside government control.
Federal police held the central square, or Zocalo, but schools and most businesses remained closed, and residents tired of five months of paralyzing strikes looked on in dismay as protesters used debris, stones and sand bags to block recently cleared streets.
Demonstrators who flocked to the capital city of 275,000 are demanding the resignation of Gov. Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of oppressing dissent and rigging the 2004 elections. Many residents, including several thousand who marched in protest Tuesday, just want to return to life as it was before the strikes began in May.
Mexico’s Congress has joined the calls for Ruiz to step down, passing a nonbinding resolution Monday to that effect. The governor has refused and is protesting the congressional action in federal court, saying it violates his state’s sovereignty.
Although striking teachers had promised to go back to work on Monday, only about 4,000 of the state’s 13,000 schools had opened as of Tuesday, none in the capital, Mexican news media reported. More than 1 million children have missed classes since the protests began.
On Monday, the U.S. Embassy released a statement advising Americans against all travel to one of Mexico’s top tourist destinations “due to this increase in violence.”
NATION
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. – An Ethiopian immigrant was convicted Wednesday of the genital mutilation of his 2-year-old daughter and was sentenced to 10 years in prison in what was believed to be the first such criminal case in the United States.
Khalid Adem, 30, was found guilty of aggravated battery and cruelty to children. Prosecutors said he used scissors to remove his daughter’s clitoris in his family’s Atlanta-area apartment in 2001. The child’s mother, Fortunate Adem, said she did not discover it until more than a year later.
The practice crosses ethnic and cultural lines and is not tied to a particular religion. Activists say it is intended to deny women sexual pleasure. In its most extreme form, the clitoris and parts of the labia are removed and the labia that remain are stitched together.
Since 2001, the State Department estimates that up to 130 million women worldwide have undergone circumcision.
STATE & LOCAL
RICHMOND – Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jim Webb spoke during professor Eve Bink’s Political Science 103 class Wednesday. Webb addressed issues such as marriage, corporations, the war in Iraq and the presidency during the lecture in Hibbs Hall. Mayor Douglas L. Wilder repeated his endorsement of Webb for Senate.
Student Shiva Farnoushfar said the class’s questions focused around the ratio of CEO income to ordinary workers and the expansion of executive power under the Bush administration.
“The reason why [Webb] wanted to run in the Senate was because of everything that’s happened in the war in Iraq and Katrina, and he wants to make a difference,” Farnoushfar said.
Adam Uddin, a senior political science and public relations double major, had a lot to say about the lecture, especially Webb’s take on the sometimes emotional issue of the marriage referendum. Webb said that he can be a Christian and oppose the amendment.
Uddin also expressed concern that the proposed amendment would deny rights to heterosexual couples living together.He said Webb described such a couple that could be harmed if the amendment passes.
Webb will be campaigning today with Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. at a 12:30 p.m. event at Virginia Union University. The midterm election is Tuesday, Nov. 7.
–Tyler Bass