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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – China added 27.7 million Internet users, putting their grand at 485 million users nationwide in the first six months of 2011. While a staggering sum, that figure is only a minority of the country’s 1.3 billion person population. User growth in China is slowing after large gains in previous years.

Internet user growth in China has slowed dramatically over time. For the January-June six-month period, growth was 6.1 percent, far less than the 9.4 percent growth last year. The figure was even far less than the Chinese Internet population increase of 20.5 percent in 2008, the same year China’s total Internet population overtook the United States’.

In short, these figures mean that 815 million people in China remain unconnected to the Internet. According to the China Internet Network Information Center, Internet usage is at 36.2 percent in China, compared to 78.2 percent in the U.S. or 90.2 percent in Greenland.

Brazil has similar Internet penetration, which helps explains the significance of these new statistics. While both Brazil and China have booming middle classes thanks to strong economic growth, two thirds of their populations remain disconnected from the Internet age. In both China and Brazil, there are large concentrations of rural, poor, elderly and otherwise marginalized people not participating in the online economy, unable to access the wealth of information available digitally.

There is evidence in China those with Internet access are becoming increasingly reliant on online sources for their news and communication. There are now 318 mobile internet users in China, although growth in that sector is also slowing.

More dramatically, users of microblog sites in China have more than doubled since the end of 2010, with 195 million users blasting short thoughts out into the Web. In light of the Arab Spring, in which information passed through microblogs too quickly for governments to keep up with, this growth in a country with censored Internet is highly intriguing.

© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – Somali refugees are flooding camps in Ethiopia and Kenya at a rate of more than 3,000 new arrivals per day. Several seasons of drought has killed livestock and dried up crops in Somalia.

“There are many seasoned relief professionals who would tell you we haven’t seen a crisis this bad in a generation,” Reuben Brigety, the deputy assistant secretary says. Brigety is responsible for state department assistance to refugees and conflict victims in Africa. “We anticipate that this crisis will get worse before it gets better.”

The U.S. is looking into how much more it can give in addition to already promised $5 million to help Somali refugees, in addition to a previously budgeted $63 million, Brigety said.

Brigety says that the Levels of malnutrition among refugees arriving at the camps are very high. In addition, he added that the overall mortality rate at the camps in Ethiopia is seven people out of 10,000 per day, when a normal crisis rate is two per day.

Germany says it is donating an additional $7 million in humanitarian aid. Dirk Niebel, the German development minister, declared that “the famine and the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa are a cause of great worry.”

Duncan Harvey, the acting country director for Save the Children in Ethiopia, said that “in terms of the sheer numbers of people affected, this is one of the worst droughts the world has seen in a long time.”

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said it had sent by air emergency nutrition supplies and water equipment into Somalia.

A senior United Nations official also warned this past weekend that the plight of millions of people left hungry will only get worse, with the next rains expected in October and harvests months away.

“We are possibly seeing a perfect storm in the coming months . We are going to do everything we can to ameliorate it,” Anthony Lake, the UNICEF director told reporters.

“We are scaling up in every way we can . It is very bad now. There will be no major harvests until some time next year. The next six months are going to be very tough.”

© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – One horror story involving a local girl involved her enduring the tortuous practice every morning before going to school at the age of nine. She told CNN reporters that one day the pestle was so hot, it burned her, leaving a mark and traumatized her for life.

Her mother denied the incident but proudly demonstrated the method she used on her daughter for several weeks. Some mothers use hot stones or coconut shells to flatten their daughters’ breasts. A recent study has found that one in four girls in Cameroon have been affected by the practice.

Ironically, the practice has seen resurgence due to improved diets that have resulted in young Cameroonian girls going through puberty early.

Even more ironic is the fact that young Cameroonian girls are still becoming pregnant at an early age, breast ironing or not. The girl who related the story to reporters said that she still became pregnant at the age of 15, her child dying at birth.

She told reporters that breast ironing doesn’t work. She hates the practice and wishes her mother had instead talked to her about sex and preventing pregnancy.

The girl’s mother argues that if it weren’t for the breast ironing, her daughter would have become pregnant at an even younger age.

The mother of four girls, she used the procedure on the first two. The third avoided it because her breasts are growing at an acceptable rate, and the fourth girl is still too young.

Mothers who want their children to finish school before becoming parents have resorted to this drastic measure, and many see nothing wrong with it.

The U.S. State Department cited news reports and said breast ironing “victimized numerous girls in the country” and in some cases “resulted in burns, deformities, and psychological problems.”

Dr Sinou Tchana, a gynecologist in Cameroon, has seen breast glands that were destroyed. She also saw one case of cancer, though she says it couldn’t be established whether the ironing caused or only exacerbated the cancer.

“One mother came with secondary burns because the stone she was using to do this breast ironing burned her,” Tchana says.

© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – The nation of Venezuela says it leads the world with the greatest oil reserves after certifying 297 billion barrels, thanks to the heavy crude in the Orinoco Belt. In 2009, confirmed discoveries in the region increased by 20 percent worldwide, while the increase in Latin America and the Caribbean was 40 percent.

According to figures presented by the Latin American Energy Organization, or OLADE at a recent seminar, Venezuela possesses 85 percent of the region’s crude reserves. Latin America has the second largest oil reserves in the world after the Middle East, which has 55 percent of the global total.

Information presented at the seminar in cooperation with Ecuador’s Non-Renewable Natural Resources Ministry, indicates that the region has at least 345 billion barrels of oil available for extraction.

“I’m not sure whether we have 85 percent, but the increase in our proven reserves means our country will continue to be one of the four or five top global players in the oil and gas market for many decades to come,” Nelson Martínez, head of PDVSA America, a division of the Venezuelan state oil company said.

In addition, Brazil recently made large undersea oil discoveries in the waters off its Atlantic coast, such as the Tupí oilfield in 2007 with possible reserves of 33 billion barrels, and the Jupiter oilfield in 2008, with 12 billion barrels, raising the country’s share to five percent of Latin America’s reserves.

Mexico ranks third in Latin American oil reserves. In spite of seeing its proved reserves decline over the last 15 years, Mexico still possesses four percent of the region’s reserves thanks to quantifying over 137 billion barrels of crude underground in the Paleocanal Chicontepec oilfield, in 2009.

Ecuador is fourth, with three percent of the region’s proved crude reserves. Its reserves grew 63 percent in 2008 compared with 2007 figures.

The remaining countries in the region currently hold the remaining three percent of oil reserves, but they are constantly seeking new deposits.

Argentina has launched an Exploratory and Productive Development Program for 2010-2014, run by the Spanish-Argentine company Repsol YPF.

According to OLADE, in 2009 Argentina had oil reserves that – without additional discoveries – would last for 11 years, Brazil for 18 years, Colombia for eight, Ecuador for 34, Mexico for 11 and Venezuela for 201. Uruguay is also prospecting for oil both underground and in its exclusive economic zone in the Atlantic, with encouraging early reports.

© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – The project is currently under the auspices of the Palestinian Department of Antiquities. The project has a twofold plan to introduce the displaced Palestinians of Nablus, who have been beset for much of the past decade by bloodshed and isolation, to the wealth of antiquities in the middle of their city.

“The local population has started very well to understand the value of the site, not only the historical value, but also the value for their own identity,” Gerrit van der Kooij of Leiden University in the Netherlands says.

“The local people have to feel responsible for the archaeological heritage in their neighborhood,” he said. The digging season wrapped recently at the site, known locally as Tel Balata.

Shekhem is positioned in a pass between the mountains of Gerizim and Eibal and was an important regional center more than 3,500 years ago. As the ruins attest to, the city lay within fortifications of massive stones, was entered through monumental gates and centered on a temple with walls five yards  thick.

Labaya, the king of Shekhem is mentioned in the cuneiform tablets of the Pharaonic archive found at Tel al-Amarna in Egypt, dated to the 14th century B.C.

The city also appears often in the biblical narrative. The patriarch Abraham, for example, was passing near Shekhem when God promised to give the land of Canaan to his descendants in the Book of Genesis. Abraham’s grandson Jacob was later camped outside the walls when a local Canaanite prince raped his daughter, Dinah. Jacob’s sons sacked the city in vengeance. The body of Jacob’s son Joseph was brought from Egypt hundreds of years later by the fleeing Israelites and buried at Shekhem.

Two thousand years ago, the Romans abandoned the original site and built a new city to the west, calling it Flavius Neapolis. The Greek name Neapolis, or “new city,” later became enshrined in Arabic as Nablus. In Hebrew, the city is still called Shekhem.

Ancient Shekhem is currently surrounded by Palestinian homes and car garages near the city’s eastern outskirts.

Visitors can walk through the gate, passing through two chambers before emerging inside the city. From there it is a short walk to the remains of the city’s temple, with a stone stele on an outdoor platform overlooking the houses below.

© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM

LOS ANGELES, (Catholic Online) – Attorney General’s office spokesman Arturo Sandoval says July 12 was one of the bloodiest days of 2011. It was one of the worst days reported there since at least 20 homicides reported there on February 18. More than 3,100 people were killed in all of 2010 in the sprawling city.

Among the victims were three hospital parking lot attendants who were shot to death at midday by unidentified gunmen.

Gunmen later opened fire on a youth soccer game, killing five people and leaving four others in critical condition. The victims were all between the ages of 17 and 22 and were attacked at a sports field close to a state hospital.

Later that afternoon, gunmen ambushed a man at a car repair shop. At least four attackers got out of two compact cars and began shooting at the young people, the paper said. According to newspaper reports, the mechanic’s 12-year-old assistant tried to hide in a nearby restaurant but was followed and killed, the newspaper reported.

Almost simultaneously, an “adolescent” was assassinated in another part of the city, according to newspaper reports.

It is not immediately clear if the killings are related.

In related news, Mexican soldiers accused of rights abuses in the army-backed fight against drug cartels can face civil trials instead of closed-door military tribunals, the nation’s highest court ruled.

Human rights groups say some Mexican soldiers battling traffickers have arbitrarily detained suspects, subjected them to beatings or torture and even mistakenly shot innocent civilians.

Military courts handle the cases in a process activists say limits transparency, but Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision could change that.

“If a civilian’s rights have been violated by the armed forces, the jurisdiction will be in civil courts not military courts,” Supreme Court Justice Arturo Zaldivar said.

President Felipe Calderon deployed tens of thousands of troops to the streets to take on powerful traffickers shortly after taking office in late 2006. Violence has spiraled since then, with more than 40,000 people killed across Mexico.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) – It’s a very clever fake, this retail front, the blogger writes. It manages to get the major details just right.

“They looked like Apple products. It looked like an Apple store. It had the classic Apple store winding staircase and weird upstairs sitting area. The employees were even wearing those blue t-shirts with the chunky Apple name tags around their necks,” writes the blogger, who goes under the psuedonym “BirdAbroad,” short for “a bird – abroad.”

The blogger declares it a “beautiful rip-off – a brilliant one – the best rip-off store we had ever seen (and we see them every day).” It’s the little things that tripped up this clever copy. “But some things were just not right: the stairs were poorly made. The walls hadn’t been painted properly. Apple never writes ‘Apple Store’ on its signs – it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit.”

The real cincher on the faux retail outlet was the fact that the staff of the store appeared to believe they really were working for Apple.

China is a highly lucrative market for Apple. Chinese Apple stores clocks on average the highest traffic and highest revenue.

The Cupertino-based company posted record quarterly earnings this week, with China sales leaping a record 250 percent since last year, comprising a third of all Apple sales.

While Macs are popular with the trendy and design-oriented set in Beijing and Shanghai, the iPhone and iPad have become ubiquitous among well-heeled youth and business types in all major Chinese cities.

The practice of buying iPads and iPhones outside China to bring back into the mainland – for resale or for personal use – is so widespread that Chinese customs agents began imposing a 20 percent import tax on any travelers found with such items in their possession.

During Apple’s earnings call on Tuesday, Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook said China was “very key” to the company’s results. He was also quoted as saying Apple hadn’t “learned to play perfectly” in the China market.

It now seems that some enterprising Chinese know very well how to play in the Apple market.

© 2011, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM