(WOMENSENEWS)--

Cheers

The first Saudi Arabian citizen to work for NASA in the United States is a woman, reported the Kuwaiti paper Alseyassah July 18. Machael el-Shamemre, 22, just graduated from Florida Institute for Technology in Melbourne, Fla., with a degree in astronomical engineering. Shamemre will work in a team producing a rare and precise weather satellite for meteorological information.

"I will do my best in order to show the world that the Saudi Arabian woman is capable of doing a great job in different fields of work for her strong will and her ambition," Shamemre said. "I want the girls of my country to know that nothing can stand in front of their success as long as they want to prove themselves within their traditions and their religion."

More News to Cheer This Week:

• Ms. magazine launched a campaign July 20 in which women will come out publicly about their abortions. Signed petitions reading "I have had an abortion" will be sent to Congress and state legislators to pressure politicians to fight abortion bans and to support safe, legal and accessible abortion and birth control. The campaign recalls the first issue of Ms. in 1972 when 54 prominent U.S. women declared publicly they had abortions before they were legal, among them Ms. founder Gloria Steinem; singer Judy Collins; writers Nora Ephron, Anais Nin, Lillian Helman and Grace Paley; actress Lee Grant; and popular historian Barbara W. Tuchman. More than 47 million women have received legal abortions since the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, according to the New York-based Guttmacher Institute.

• El Diario-La Prensa, the Spanish-language daily newspaper in New York, broke the media silence on the problems facing Latina girls who, according to the series, attempt suicide more than any group of people in the United States. Teen pregnancy, drug abuse and pressures related to being first-generation children in the U.S. result in the high level of emotional difficulties among female teens from all Latino backgrounds, the series reported. In addition, about 25 percent of Latinas drop out of high school.

• The Women's National Basketball Association has received an A grade for the third year in a row from the Orlando-based Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, according to its annual racial and gender report card released July 20. This makes the WNBA the only professional U.S. sports league that has met the institute's standards of diversity and fair hiring practices. The WNBA has the highest percentage of female assistant coaches--65 percent--and the sports world's only female league president.

Jeers

Muslim women in the heart of Asia are suffering new setbacks. Afghanistan's cabinet has approved the reestablishment of the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, New York-based Human Rights Watch reported July 18. During the Taliban period from the mid 1980s to 2001, the Vice and Virtue Department was a symbol of arbitrary abuses. Women were beaten publicly for such transgressions as not wearing adequately opaque socks; showing their wrists, hands or ankles; and not being accompanied outside by a close male relative.

In neighboring Pakistan, authorities said they expect 1,300 women accused of crimes such as exposing their wrists, hands or ankles to be eligible for pretrial release under President Pervez Musharraf's directive, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported July 18. The women will continue to face criminal charges, but will no longer be held indefinitely before trials.

In Iran, a Kurdish woman, Malak Ghorbany, who was charged with adultery last month, faces a penalty of death by stoning. In Iran, any unmarried man or woman who engages in sexual activity is guilty of adultery. Protesters and legal rights activists around the world have launched a petition drive and mass e-mail campaign to urge that Ghorbany be spared.

More News to Jeer This Week:

• Counselors at some federally funded pregnancy resource centers misinform women about abortion-related health risks, saying that abortions increase the risk of mental illness, breast cancer and infertility, a July 17 report by California Rep. Henry A. Waxman indicated. Such centers have received about $30 million in federal funding since 2001, including payments from the Compassion Capital Fund, which aids projects under President Bush's faith-based initiative. Of 23 centers the study examined, 87 percent provided false or misleading information about abortion to investigators pretending to be 17-year-old women seeking abortions.

• About 300 anti-choice protestors led by the Dallas-based Operation Save America are threatening to close down Mississippi's only abortion clinic in Jackson, causing disturbances for employees and patients, USA Today reported July 17. Fourteen anti-choice protesters have been arrested since July 16.

• The number of murdered women in Guatemala is rising and the government is unable to investigate most of the cases that involve torture, dismemberment and rape, Reuters reported July 19. A new report from the London-based human rights group Amnesty International said 665 women were killed in Guatemala last year; in 2002, 163 women were murdered there. Only two arrests were made last year. A possible cause of increased violence against women is the prevalence of gangs with female members, government officials said, but Human Rights Watch said domestic violence is the more probable culprit.

• At least 47 women in the wake of Hurricane Katrina were sexually assaulted or raped between November and May in Louisiana and at evacuation camps in Texas, according to a preliminary study spearheaded by the National Sexual Violence Resource Center in Enola, Pa. Spokesperson Cathy Nardo said the anecdotal accounts of rape and sexual assault during this time far exceed the cases reported by different advocates and service providers. While the cases keep coming in, the preliminary study indicates that sexual crimes are more likely to occur in disaster environments, she said. Of the reported rapes, 30 percent occurred in evacuation centers or other shelters.

Noted:

Georgia voters failed to take an opportunity to put a woman in the gubernatorial mansion Tuesday when they voted for Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor over Secretary of State Cathy Cox in the state's July 18 primary race. Also in Georgia, Democratic incumbent Rep. Cynthia McKinney drew less than 50 percent of the vote in her reelection bid and now enters an Aug. 8 run-off election against her closest rival, Democrat Hank Johnson. If she wins the 4th congressional district race, she will face Republican Catherine Davis in the November midterm elections. Meanwhile, Deborah Travis Honeycutt, a Georgia Republican, won the right to take on Democrat David Scott this fall in the state's 13th district.

Malena Amusa, from St. Louis Mo., is an editorial intern with Women's eNews. Nouhad Moawad, from Beirut, Lebanon, is the Arabic site intern. Allison Stevens is Washington bureau chief.

Women's eNews welcomes your comments. E-mail us at editors@womensenews.org.

For more information:

Ms. magazine petition
http://www.msmagazine.com/donations/ms/womenspetition.asp

"Guatemala Pressed to Investigate Surge in Killings"
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2776/context/archive

Committee on Government Reform Pregnancy Resource Center report
http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1080

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