Global briefs

INDIA: A high-profile Hindu religious leader, 
Shankaracharya Jayendra Saras-wathi, has been arrested as a 
primary suspect in the September 3 killing of one his most vocal 
critics, A Sankararaman, the manager of the Varadaraja Perumal 
temple. Jayendra Saraswathi, 70, is very close to the Bharatiya 
Janata Party (BJP) and other "hindutva" (Hindu nationalist) 
forces in India and abroad. The behaviour of the hindutva forces 
shows they want to capitalise on the arrest for narrow, partisan 
ends. They are trying to fan religious intolerance, and — 
through tactics like staging a sit-in on the steps of Parliament 
and a three-day, nationwide hunger strike — have scored some 
initial success. Jayendra Saraswathi is also infamous for his 
negative attitude towards lower-caste people who live below the 
poverty line. Left parties in India welcomed his arrest and said 
in separate statements that everyone should be equal before the 
law. The Congress Party is silent, probably because some of its 
leaders are also very close to this guru.

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SOUTHERN AFRICA: Over three-quarters of sub-Saharan young 
people between 15 and 24 living with AIDS are women, as are over 
half the adults living with the disease, according to a United 
Nations report released on November 23. The report, prepared by 
the UN Secretary-General's task force on women, girls and AIDS in 
southern Africa, attributed the increased vulnerability of women 
to sexual violence, unequal access to information, gender-power 
relations and traditions like wife inheritance, whereby a male 
relative of a deceased husband may marry his widow. The UN is 
calling for measures ensuring women have access to education, 
prevention information and treatment, and are guaranteed the 
right to own property.

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USA: Some 4300 hotel workers have returned to work 
triumphantly at 14 of San Francisco's premier hotels. Their 
victory came when area health providers announced their decision 
to extend workers' medical coverage for December and January, a 
main demand. This pulled the rug from under a weeks-long lockout 
imposed by the hotels' management. The union's call for a public 
boycott was heeded by a growing number of associations and 
corporations, who were cancelling or moving scheduled meetings, 
and guests who did check into the hotels had to run the gauntlet 
of the workers' lively picket lines.

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CHILE: The Chilean Government is to compensate 28,000 
victims of torture after a report concluded that Augusto 
Pinochet's regime in the 1970s and 1980s had organised a state 
policy of terror. A year-long commission heard testimony from 
35,000 people who had been victims of torture during the 1973-90 
dictatorship. Ninety four percent of those detained had been 
tortured the report found, and of the 3400 women who gave 
evidence almost all had been victims of sexual violence.

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BRITAIN: The Blair Govt has put forward eight more law and 
order bills, as outlined in the Queen's Speech last week, 
bringing the number of crime bills introduced since the 2001 
general election to 34 — more than one for every month that 
parliament sat.