Johannesburg
Running as a woman: South African track star Caster Semenya has been given the green light to return to competition, following months of wrangling with the International Association of Athletics Federations over her gender. After the muscular 19-year-old runner zoomed ahead of the field to easily win the gold in the women’s 800-meter race in Berlin last year, the IAAF asked her to take a gender test. The request caused an uproar in South Africa and sparked an international debate about hermaphrodites and sports. This week, the IAAF announced that it “accepts the conclusion of a panel of medical experts” that Semenya should compete as a woman. The details of Semenya’s medical examination were not released.
Jerusalem
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Soldier charged in killings: An Israeli soldier has been charged with manslaughter for killing two Palestinian women who were waving white flags during the offensive in Gaza last year. The indictment came at the end of an 18-month Israeli investigation into allegations of war crimes during the three-week siege. Soldiers are also to be disciplined in three other incidents, including the ordering of an airstrike on a mosque that killed at least 15 civilians. But Israeli authorities took no actions in 19 other incidents cited as war crimes in the Goldstone Report, the U.N.’s investigation into the conflict. The 22-day war killed some 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis. Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human-rights group B’Tselem said the indictments do not go far enough. “There must be an external investigation that will deal with the whole chain of command,” she said, “and chiefly with the people at the top who approved the directives.”
Beirut
Hezbollah spiritual leader dies: Tens of thousands of Lebanese this week thronged the funeral of Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, the Muslim cleric whose fiery sermons inspired suicide bombers. Fadlallah, the spiritual authority for the Shiite militant movement Hezbollah, called for attacks against Israeli troops occupying Southern Lebanon in the 1980s. The U.S. listed him as a terrorist and accused him of planning the 1983 suicide bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, which killed 241 American troops. The Iraqi-born ayatollah was also known as a champion of women’s rights, ruling that men and women were equal in Islam and banning female circumcision.
Baghdad
Biden’s plea: Vice President Joe Biden made a surprise trip to Iraq this week to urge political leaders to stop squabbling and form a government. National elections four months ago gave no single party a majority, and both incumbent Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and former premier Iyad Allawi are vying to assemble a governing coalition. Biden didn’t take sides, but he implied that one of the men would have to give in. Building a nation, he told Iraqi lawmakers, “requires great sacrifice and the willingness to subordinate your individual interest to the communal good.”
Delhi
Protests over gas prices: Cities across India were paralyzed this week as millions of people protested a rise in fuel prices. Protesters from all opposition parties shut down schools, airports, and businesses, blocking trains and clogging roads. Thousands of people were arrested in several cities as protesters clashed with police. The government said it would not back down on its plan to eliminate price controls that keep the cost of many goods—including oil and gas—artificially low. It said state control of the economy was hindering development. But opposition leader Nitin Gadkari said the government was “more worried about the financial condition of oil companies than the condition of poor people.”
Beijing
American sentenced: An American geologist convicted of industrial espionage was sentenced this week to eight years in prison. Chinese officials said Xue Feng, 45, had trafficked in state secrets by disclosing the location of more than 30,000 oil wells, most of them owned by the state oil giant PetroChina. The Chinese-born Xue had been working for a U.S. energy research firm. In his defense, Xue said the locations of oil wells are widely shared in the global energy industry, and that he had no idea they were considered secrets in China. Xue, who has been in prison in China since his 2007 arrest, has claimed that Chinese police tortured him by burning him with cigarettes. The U.S. Embassy called for his immediate return to the U.S. “We remain extremely concerned about his rights to due process under Chinese law,” said State Department spokesman Mark Toner.
Tokyo
Sumo blackout: The Japanese are getting fed up with corruption in the world of sumo wrestling. For the first time, Japan’s national television network this week refused to broadcast a sumo tournament, saying the sport had failed to address allegations of illegal gambling and links with organized crime and does not deserve to be given millions of dollars in broadcast fees. Convincing evidence of the long-held suspicion that yakuza syndicates—the Japanese mafia—are involved in bout-fixing has emerged in recent weeks. Sumo tournaments, each lasting 15 days, are held six times a year. From the dawn of Japanese television until now, every one has been broadcast live.
