Today is national Human Trafficking Awareness Day, the annual calendar date meant to bring attention to the fact that human trafficking remains a serious problem both in the United States and abroad.
According to Change.org, "Slavery is more affordable, more widespread and more entrenched in 2011 than it was in ancient Rome or the antebellum South of America. Modern-day slaves, also called human trafficking victims, can be male or female, from any country or representing any ethnicity."
In the United States, human trafficking victims are forced to work in the sex trade, as domestic servants, on farms and in factories.
It's difficult to say how many people are victims of human trafficking, and estimates vary widely. What's known for sure is that human trafficking is a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide.
The U.N. Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking puts the number of victims at a shocking 2.5 million. According to U.N. GIFT, human trafficking affects "every continent and every type of economy."
The U.S. State Department estimates an even higher number -- about 12.3 million adults and children "in forced labor, bonded labor and forced prostitution around the world."
The worst rates of the problem are in Asia, where the U.N. Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking estimates that more than 50 percent of slavery victims are found. The State Department says that in Asia, there are three human trafficking victims for every 1,000 people -- three times the rates elsewhere.
A petition, organized by a coalition of anti-human-trafficking organizations, has called on President Barack Obama and Congress to make fighting modern-day slavery a priority. And here's a video from Not for Sale describing the horrifying statistics of modern-day slavery.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Arizona U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is 'holding her own'
Tucson, Arizona (CNN) -- U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords remained in critical condition Tuesday after she was shot in the head on Saturday at the rampage at her meet-and-greet event, but she is breathing on her own and doctors have backed off on some sedation.
"I'm happy to say she's holding her own," said Dr. Michael Lemole Jr., chief of neurosurgery at University Medical Center. "Her status is the same as it was yesterday. She's still following simple commands."
Lemole said she's generating her own breaths.
"The only reason we keep that breathing tube in is to protect her airway so that she doesn't have complications like pneumonia," he told reporters.
Lemole said he's encouraged by the fact that she's "done so well" with an injury where survival and recovery are "abysmal."
"This is where we constantly say it's week to week, month to month. I know everyone wants new results every day but as long as we don't backslide and as long as she holds her own, that's good. That keeps us hopeful."
"We have to play this according to her timeline, not ours," he said.
Lemole said "she has no right to look this good and she does."
"We're hopeful, but I do want to underscore the seriousness of this injury and the fact that we all have to be extremely patient."
Six of the victims in the Saturday shooting remain at University Medical Center, Chief of Emergency Medicine Peter Rhee said. Along with Giffords, three people are in serious condition and two are in fair condition.
Jared Lee Loughner, 22, who authorities say shot up a gathering held by Giffords outside a supermarket, has been anecdotally regarded as very troubled and perhaps mentally unbalanced because of his ramblings spotted on the internet and the way he has been described by acquaintances.
The shooting has sparked horror across the United States and generated much partisan talk about vitriolic political discourse in American life and what Loughner's motivations are.
U.S. District Judge Raner C. Collins has ruled that all magistrate and district judges in the District of Arizona's Tucson Division must recuse themselves.
The ruling, dated Monday, cited the need to "avoid the appearance of impropriety, and because a judge has a duty to disqualify him or herself if his or her impartiality could be reasonably questioned, whethLoughner parener or not such impartiality exists."
'Instant Tsunami' Batters Aussie Town
10 Dead, 78 Missing in Australian Flash Floods
BRISBANE, Australia -- Greg Kowald was driving through the center of Toowoomba when a terrifying, tsunami-like wall of water roared through the streets of the northeast Australian city.
Office windows exploded, cars careened into trees and bobbed in the churning brown water like corks. The deluge washed away bridges and sidewalks; people desperately clung to power poles to survive. Before it was over, the flash flood left at least 10 dead and 78 missing.
"The water was literally leaping, six or 10 feet into the air, through creeks and over bridges and into parks," Kowald, a 53-year-old musician, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "There was nowhere to escape, even if there had been warnings. There was just a sea of water about a kilometer (half a mile) wide."
The violent surge in Toowoomba brought the overall death toll from weeks of flooding in Queensland state to 20, a sudden acceleration in a crisis that had been unfolding gradually with swollen rivers overflowing their banks and inundating towns while moving toward the ocean. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said there were "grave fears" for at least 18 of those missing.
The high waters headed next to Australia's third-largest city, Brisbane, where up to 9,000 homes were expected to be swamped. The Brisbane River overflowed its banks Tuesday and officials warned that dozens of low-lying neighborhoods and parts of downtown could be inundated in coming days.
Drenching rain in Australia that started before Christmas has flooded an area the size of France and Germany combined.
But nothing downstream was expected to be as fierce as the flash flood that struck Toowoomba on Monday. It was sparked by a freak storm -- up to 6 inches fell in half an hour.
"There was water coming down everywhere in biblical proportions," Toowoomba council member Joe Ramia told the AP.
Ramia, 63, was driving downtown when the flash flood struck. He parked his car and dashed on foot for higher ground, keeping an eye on the carnage unfolding below: Cars transformed into scrap metal as they were flung into an elevated railway line, giant metal industrial bins tossed about as if made of paper, a man clinging desperately to a power pole as the relentless tide surged around him.
Ramia watched as a rescue official pushed through the churning water and yanked the man to safety. Others, including five children, were not as lucky, and were swept to their deaths.
"You were powerless to do a thing," said Ramia, a lifelong resident of Toowoomba. "While we can rebuild, you can't replace people. ... I've never seen anything like this."
The raging water was strong enough to rip houses off their foundations. Leroy Shephard, who lives in the town of Grantham, east of Toowoomba, was inside his home when the flood struck.
"You could feel the whole house just pop up off its stumps, turn around, and go -- for a 100 meters (330 feet) or something down my backyard," Shephard told Australian Broadcasting Corp.
He and his family spent five hours on the house's roof waiting for the waters to drop.
"It's not a good feeling having the floorboards under your feet just ripple, the whole house just ripple and crack, and watching rooms just disappear," he said.
Emergency services officers plucked more than 40 people from houses isolated overnight by the torrent that hit the Lockyer Valley, and thousands were being evacuated. In one small community in the path of the floodwaters, Forest Hill, the entire population of about 300 was being airlifted to safety in military helicopters, Bligh said.
Search and rescue efforts were hampered by more driving rain, though the bad weather was easing and Bligh said the search would get easier Wednesday.
Brisbane Mayor Campbell Newman said authorities were preparing for flooding affecting about 15,000 people in 80 suburbs.
The city is protected by a large dam built upstream after floods devastated downtown in 1974. But the reservoir was full, and officials had no choice but to release water that would cause low-level flooding in the city, Newman said. The alternative was a much worse torrent.
Steph Stewardson, a Brisbane graphic designer, said there was an exodus in a downtown area around lunchtime Tuesday when the river that goes through the city broke its banks. Stewardson, 40, hopped in her car and crossed the swollen river to collect her dog Boo from daycare while waters started covering the boardwalk stretching along its banks.
Stewardson took shelter in her house, and plans to stay there -- for now.
"I'm about 800 meters (half a mile) from the river on a hill, so I think it's going to be OK," she told the AP.
Queensland has been in the grip of its worst flooding for more than two weeks, after tropical downpours covered an area the size of France and Germany combined. Entire towns have been swamped, more than 200,000 people affected, and the coal industry and farming have virtually shut down.
"The power of nature can still be a truly frightening power and we've seen that on display in this country," Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.
Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson described the events Monday as "an inland instant tsunami."
Forecasters said more flash floods could occur through the week.
Deputy Police Commissioner Ian Stewart said rescue efforts were concentrated on towns between Toowoomba and Brisbane, including hardest-hit Murphy's Creek and Grantham, where about 30 people sought shelter in a school isolated by the floodwaters.
The floods reached a second state Tuesday, with about 4,500 people stranded by high waters in bordering New South Wales, officials said, though the situation was not yet as dire as in Queensland.
Bligh said last week the cost of the floods could be as high as $5 billion, the latest figure available.
NEWS ALERT: Sudan Christians Ask For Prayers As Independence Vote Nears
KHARTOUM/JUBA (Worthy News)-- Sudanese Christians have requested continued prayer amid an ongoing referendum on southern independence and reports that nearly two dozen people died in ethnic clashes near Sudan's north-south border.
The call for prayer, seen by Worthy News and its news partner BosNewsLife Monday, January 10, came as officials announced that at least 23 people died in clashes with Arab nomads in the contested Abyei region. The violence overshadowed the second day of a week-long referendum on southern independence.
Missionaries and analysts cite Abyei as the most likely place for north-south tensions to erupt into violence during and after the vote, the climax of a troubled peace deal that ended decades of civil war in which some two million people died.
"A referendum to determine whether the province should retain its semi-autonomous status within the north or become part of the south has been postponed," explained Christian mission group Middle East Concern (MEC), which closely monitors the area. "Sudanese Christians are concerned that instability in Abyei has the potential to provoke [new]North-South violence."
MORE PRESSURE EXPECTED
The south, mainly black and Christian or animist, is set to split apart from the north, which is predominantly Arab and Muslim. With a vote for southern independence virtually certain, there is also concern that the remaining minority Christians in the north face more pressure, MEC told Worthy News.
Churches in northern Sudan are reportedly concerned about further restrictions on their freedom of worship. MEC cited reported plans by Sudan's federal government to more strictly implement Islamic law, or Shari'a, should the south secede "potentially reducing the limited freedoms Christians, and other non-Muslims, enjoy" in northern Sudan.
Additionally, Sudanese Christians in the north "may lose some of their current residency rights," MEC said, citing local Christians.
Despite the difficulties and heat, voters in Southern Sudan's capital of Juba, many of them Christians, could be seen waiting for hours to cast ballots Monday, January 10. Voting began Sunday with jubilant celebrations in the regional capital Juba, where residents expressed hope that independence will lead to more peace and prosperity.
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