Egyptian men sentenced for gay sex
Associated Press
CAIRO, Egypt - Egyptian men wept and screamed inside a crammed courtroom cage yesterday as a judge sentenced 23 of them to jail terms of one to five years for gay sex in a trial denounced by human rights groups as being a persecution of homosexuals.
Another 29 men were acquitted, prompting cries of joy from relatives who had denied the charges and accused the Egyptian media during the four-month trial of sensationalism and destroying the young men's reputations.
Crammed into a courtroom cage, the 52 defendants in white prison uniforms wept and screamed as the presiding judge read out the sentences. Most of them could not hear what sentence they received.
The presiding judge, Mohammed Abdel Karim, read his verdicts and sentences quickly, ignoring the defendants' shouts and chants from some relatives.
"We will appeal to God! He is our defender!" several relatives shouted.
Civil rights agreement will channel millions to Virginia universities
Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. - Virginia will give $10 million to two historically black universities as part of a settlement to end a 30-year desegregation battle with the federal government.
Under the agreement with the U.S. Department of Education announced yesterday, the money will be used to improve buildings and finance six new academic degrees each at Norfolk State University and Virginia State University.
Both schools are to get the money by Sept. 30, 2004.
The settlement comes 32 years after the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights informed Virginia it was operating a public system of higher education segregated by race. In response, Virginia developed a plan to dismantle the system and attract black students to predominantly white colleges.
In the settlement, the department acknowledged that a three-year review of Virginia's system found "no lingering vestiges of historical discrimination."
University of California systems looking at more than grades
Associated Press
SAN FRANCISCO - In what some branded as backdoor affirmative action, a University of California regents committee yesterday approved a new admissions policy that would take into account any hardships a student had to overcome.
The move to look at more than applicants' grades and test scores comes six years after the university system eliminated race-based affirmative action.
The proposed new policy, known as comprehensive review, involves looking at grades and test scores plus such things as whether a student overcame poverty or has special talents or did well in a bad school.
It has been criticized as a covert way of reviving race-based admissions, now banned by state law.
"There is concern because when subjective factors are involved, the temptation is too great to use proxies for race within the process," said Kevin Nguyen, executive director of the American Civil Rights Institute.
Supporters of the new policy, however, maintain it is race-neutral. And the regents added an amendment saying the policy would not be used to inject race into the admissions process.
