My grand pa used to tell us...common public is like the 3rd baby of a goat (what do we call it in english, lamb?) apparently the goat has two breast to feed the kids and if there's three kids one will always be jumping around the other two who are being breast feed....

Common Public got no sense of its own, no opinion making understanding, no decision making power, no eyes to see the truth no ears to listen the sensible....

we are only supposed to jump around the smart bunch of guys who are being fed

world trade organisation

The United States today accused the European Union of deadlocking the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong with its position on farm subsidies.

As South Korean farmers clashed for a second day with police protecting the summit venue, the US trade representative, Rob Portman, told reporters that if the EU did not allow the developing world greater access to its markets, "I don't see anyone else moving".

The Hong Kong meeting was intended to wrap up the WTO's Doha round of talks on increasing developing countries' trade with richer nations. Without a deal from the US and EU to cut subsidies to their farmers, a global free trade agreement to conclude the round is now not expected until the end of 2006

The EU trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson, today maintained that Europe had made an ambitious offer on cutting its agricultural import tariffs and farm subsidies. He said the 149 WTO members also needed to address manufacturing and services to bring the Doha round to a successful conclusion.

"We will not succeed, in Hong Kong or after, if we continue to focus on only one part of the round," he told delegates at a morning session. "We cannot afford to wait again. When the finishing line is in sight, it is the time to quicken our pace."

With a breakthrough unlikely during the six-day summit, Mr Portman pressed delegates not to leave Hong Kong without setting a date for another meeting early next year to nail down a clear outline for a final treaty.

"Although we may not achieve all we had hoped for this week, let us set another deadline to keep the pressure on," he said.

The South Korean farmers, the most prominent anti-WTO protesters in Hong Kong, today staged a second day of demonstrations against the Doha round. They claim that an agreement cutting import barriers will flood their domestic market with cheap imports and wipe out their livelihoods.

"The WTO will make all poor farmers in the world starve to death and in that case we'd rather be beaten to death," said South Korean farmer Seo Jung-eui, who promised that the protests would run through to Sunday.

In another dose of bad news for the meeting, Mr Mandelson said a proposal to promote trade among the world's least-developed nations - one of the few areas ministers seemed to be able to agree on - appeared to run into trouble.

He told reporters that some WTO members had reservations about the proposal to grant 32 countries with a per capita income of $750 (£424), most of which were African, duty-free and quota-free access to their markets. He was not more specific.

Deepak Patel, Zambia's trade minister, said the measure would be a boost to his country's economy, but that the US and Japan had raised objections.

"We are full of good intentions, but incapable of implementation," Mr Patel said.

The US trade representative's office denied the US was opposed to the package.

Shoichi Nakagawa, the Japanese agriculture minister, said that, while Japan was not rejecting the overall package, it did draw the line at rice.

"In agriculture, there are things we must protect and those are sensitive products," he said. "Rice is of course included among sensitive products for Japan."

Amid the stalemate and protests, the WTO director general, Pascal Lamy, said the WTO had a credibility problem.

"The international trading system which we all know has a problem of credibility," he said. "We have also a problem of credibility."

The US today announced it would give $2.7bn (£1.53bn) in "aid-for-trade" grants to developing countries by 2010 to help them build trade infrastructure and other services to better compete in world markets. The deal is dependent on cutting trade barriers

Feminism

When sex got boring
Now that every kind of sexual behaviour is on display all the time, explicitness in the arts fails to thrill

Natasha Walter
Wednesday March 9, 2005
The Guardian

'Let's talk about sex,' is the slogan for the new film about Alfred Kinsey, and in his time that was a pretty heroic thing to do. The man who helped to convince the western world that masturbation is not unnatural and homosexuality not a sin had to struggle against forces of conservatism and intolerance every day of his life; his determination to take them on was what made him something of a hero. But the film also reminds us that his times are not our times.

Because Kinsey lived in an age that could be straightforwardly optimistic about the rewards offered by sexual frankness. He believed that there was no sexual problem that could not be solved by more and more and more information. His mammoth work, resting on interviews with thousands of individuals, epitomised the idea that frank talk is infinitely valuable when it comes to sex. And not just talk - his vast archive of information also contained explicit pictures and film of people having sex and masturbating. Pictures and film that his friends and colleagues were sometimes bullied into providing, for the sake of breaking through the intolerance and prudishness of his era by showing, for instance, whether men squirted or dribbled when they ejaculated.

What Kinsey could not have foreseen is how, once society had changed, the joyful urgency of that movement towards greater explicitness would dissipate. The recent shift in the way that people feel about the pure value of sexual display is not just evidence of a new moral conservatism. In a culture where every kind of sexual behav iour is on view all the time - if not in your newspaper or on your television channel, then a click of a mouse button away - even liberals of the sort who would once have flocked to give their testimony to Kinsey and listen to the testimony of others are tired of feeling like voyeurs.

This is not because we want any return to the old ways of shame and intolerance, but because explicitness has become such a dead end. Every kind of sexual behaviour is so excessively documented and, rather than opening out the possibility of new worlds, that reduces the excitement of discovery. We live in a completely changed world from the 1940s, and now the decision to spend one's life documenting other people's sex histories would not be heroic but utterly banal. For the first time in human history, it is easy for people to watch strangers having sex, to hear strangers talking about sex, to discuss their own sexual behaviour with strangers.

When artists today put their faith in the power of pure explicitness to convey the flavour of desire, they end up with something altogether underwhelming. Nine Songs, which is released this Friday, is the most explicit British film ever to be shown in mainstream cinema. It is Kinsey-esque in its unsmiling celebration of "sex reduced to its physiological functions" (as Liam Neeson puts it in the Kinsey movie).

The director of Nine Songs, Michael Winterbottom, seems to believe that he is making a moral point by allowing us to watch people engaged in real sex on screen. As Winterbottom has said: "Part of the point of making the film was to say, 'What's wrong with showing sex?'"

He laments the coyness of other cinematic treatments of sex. "Cinema has been extremely conservative and prudish," he says. Perhaps Winterbottom has never noticed the growth of the internet and the porn video. The reality is that Nine Songs, with its terribly serious desire to show us everything and turn away from nothing, is not going to usher in an era of more explicit treatment of sexuality in mainstream cinema. Although there is this small genre of film-making - Nine Songs belongs to a category inhabited by a few other films, such as Intimacy, Romance and Baise-Moi - whose unique selling point is showing real sex, it has become a collection of curiosities rather than part of a mainstream movement.

Now that we live in a time where display is so inescapable and everything is out there, artists who really want to get the viewer to taste and feel the power of fictional desire are usually choosing to show very little. Rather than falling into the blandness of a purely physical take on sex - and for all its explicitness Nine Songs is infinitely forgettable and under-characterised - the unexpected truth about the art of this new century is that the cinematic depictions of sexual desire that are most intriguing and memorable are not at all explicit.

Although intimate sex scenes still pop up in mainstream cinema, they are usually there for comic rather than sensual effect: in Sideways, for example, it is the creep's relationship that gets pictured with heaving buttocks and groans, and the hero's one where the camera only goes as far as the bedroom door. In recent years films as different as Closer, Before Sunset, Lost in Translation or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind have powerfully explored desire through conversation, reminiscence and suggestion rather than thrust and counterthrust. When everything has been said and everything has been shown, being explicit is simply too easy; being sexy is the difficult thing.

As I read more about the Chagos/Diego Garcia displacement issue I realise there is so little that I know about so much. Such a short life and so much to do, read, write, understand, propogate.....

Found out there is this whole lot of people who are advocating and fighting for the rights of chagosians. The matter challenging the Queens Order is being heard in the High Court and every body is waiting for the verdict.

Read this article on "The Hindu" by Natasha Walter, Author New Feminism

The article emphasizes the need of Judges Training on Gender Issues. The article highlights the importance of training the judges and prosecutors on Gender issues particularly those related to better handling of Rape Cases. The age old myth that a women is to be partly blamed for being Raped is still prevalent amongst the Judges in UK. Such fact is evident from a recent rape case where the Judge has been heard saying “a drunken consent is still a consent” which is clearly against the UK’s Sexual Offence Act 2003. The conviction rate in rape cases in UK is 1 to 20.

And I thought things were bad in India and other third world countries. Found out another interesting article (the following) by Natasha Walter
Must biology punish those women who dare to be free?

There is always bad news for women, but rarely so bad as in the past few weeks. If you ever dreamed that in the modern world you could avail yourself of freedoms unknown to women in previous generations, the warnings are now being posted on every door. You meddle with nature at your peril, girl.

What, did you think that you could go play with the boys and not get hurt? Recent research has shown that women who drink are far more vulnerable to assault and rape than you would imagine. More than one in three young women say that they have been sexually assaulted after getting drunk. In a report on the research in the Guardian, Professor Robin Touquet, a consultant in accident and emergency medicine, said: "Women must not put themselves in vulnerable positions."

Or did you think you could be like the men in another way, beavering away in an office instead of concentrating on your ovaries? Recent research has shown that women in their 30s are being overconfident about their fertility, so dooming themselves to probable disappointment. The authors of that report, Melanie Davies and Susan Bewley, said that women were "defying nature and risking heartbreak".

And if you have managed to get pregnant, did you think you could be like the child's father, and still keep a foothold in the workplace? New research purports to show that mothers who leave their babies to go out to work are doing their children a disservice. Penelope Leach said that if children are cared for by people other than their mothers, their development is "definitely less good".

Listening to these voices of doom, women may feel that despite all the attempts at changing society made by women, we have now come up against the biological imperatives that will always lock us out of the freedom and equality we desire. We cannot just wish away women's vulnerability to attack by men, women's shorter fertility span or the neediness of young children.

"The more woman aims for personal identity and autonomy ... the fiercer will be her struggle with nature - that is, with the intractable physical laws of her own body. And the more nature will punish her: 'Do not dare to be free! For your body does not belong to you.' " So spoke Camille Paglia 15 years ago, so speak all the media now. More and more, when feminists talk about change, the voices of the backlash talk about the impossibility of going against nature. Biology, in the western world, acts almost like the Qur'an in the eastern world - it is the ultimate excuse for why things for women cannot and will not change. In a secular world you are told that inequality rests on nature; and in a religious world you are told that it rests on God's word.

I'm not saying that these researchers have dark intentions towards women. But if we were not living in such a fatalistic age, their studies would never have been reported and received as they have been. In the reception given to all of them there has been a marked interest in the punishment of women - they will be raped, they will be infertile, they must give up the pursuit of autonomy - and a marked lack of interest in how those situations could be changed.

Because whatever kernel of biological truth lies at the heart of these findings, the truth is that biology is not some immutable reality for women or for men. We live in complicated societies in which women need not succumb to the darkest rhythms of nature. Take the finding that women are assaulted more than men when they get drunk. As well as saying that young women should take account of male violence, and curtail their own lives because of the danger around them, we must go on demanding that men take responsibility for this violent society.

Earlier feminists made this point repeatedly, but recently the impetus has gone out of this demand (despite a laudable campaign started by Glamour magazine). Those real, concrete reforms that women have for decades been asking for, such as specially trained prosecutors in rape cases, are still being ignored. Is it really time to give up and impress upon young women only the risks that they are taking? Or should we say that it is really time for men to take responsibility for the violence that they commit?

In the debate about child-bearing and child-rearing a similar deafening silence on the role of men is being observed. If women are facing miserable disappointment because they do not take the time out of work early enough in their lives to have children, the reason does not just lie with their own misguided attempts to defy nature. There are real reasons why young, middle-class women are holding back from child-bearing - and one is that they know that having children penalises them in the workplace far more than it penalises men.

This debate is not, then, just about the cruelty of nature, but about the cruel expectations of workplaces that are built around the working practices of men who sidestep their family responsibilities. When you are seen as slacking because you're not available to the boss 18 hours a day, how can you find the time to listen to your ovaries rather than to your BlackBerry?

This deafening silence on the responsibilities of men is all the more true for the final piece of bludgeoning research that women have had to deal with in the past few weeks. No one yet knows how accurate or compelling the Families, Children and Childcare study really is, since all that we have to go on are the remarks of Penelope Leach to journalists and conference-goers. When I managed to talk to one of her coauthors, Professor Alan Stein, he said that it was still an "ongoing analysis" and that the "results have not yet been published". Yet this unpublished, ongoing study has already been seized on as conclusive evidence for the biological truth that children need their mothers. Absolutely no account has been taken of the possibility that fathers could and should fill the parenting role just as well as mothers, and that children looked after equally by both parents would develop just as well as, if not better than, children who rely only on their hard-pressed mother for attention.

It's time to move beyond these neanderthal posturings that pass for debate on the battle of the sexes. Or do we really want women to feel that they have no choice but to live a circumscribed life decided by red-toothed nature, while men are free to roam, and rule, the world?

n.walter@btinternet.com

International Law

The following article shows how human rights of innocent people having no relation whatsoever with US or UK politics are being violated for the cause of US 's war against terrorism. In order to use it as a military base to bomb Iraq an entire Island evacuated and now the an islanders her homeless refugees fighting legal batter to get back some land in the vicinity of their previous home.

It all started in 1971
--------------------------------------------

Islanders launch High Court bid

Islanders who were evacuated from a British territory in the Indian Ocean in the 1970s have begun a High Court bid to win the right to return home.

Residents of Diego Garcia in the Chagos archipelago were moved to Mauritius in 1971, when Britain leased the island to the US to use as a military base.

A court in 2000 ruled the expulsions were illegal, but last year their return was stopped by government order.

Lawyers for the islanders say their human rights were violated.

The lawyers have asked the High Court to declare the government order "invalid and of no effect".

The legal action has been brought by Louis Bancoult, who was evacuated from the islands as a boy.

UK passports

Most of the islanders went to Mauritius, but over the years families found it hard to settle and became impoverished - so much so that a number of individuals have committed suicide. The refugees have been campaigning to return ever since their expulsion.

The Chagosians are UK passport holders who are entitled to reside in Britain and, over the years, about 800 of them have taken up that option in search of a better life.

I've no doubt it is quite inconvenient to provide for the return of a population to their homeland, but that really doesn't square with concepts of morality Richard Gifford

However, many islanders want the government to fulfil a promise they say was made by Robin Cook, while foreign secretary, that they would be allowed to return to outlying islands in the Chagos group.

They claim the promise was made after the treatment they received was condemned in a High Court judgement five years ago.

On Tuesday, Sir Sydney Kentridge QC told the High Court how in November 2000 the Chagosians were jubilant when Mr Bancoult won a High Court victory quashing earlier government orders excluding them from the islands.

Sir Sydney, acting for Mr Bancoult, said: "They thought they had finally succeeded in establishing their right to return - but that was not to be."

He told the court that on 10 June 2004, "the right they thought they had, and believed they had, was removed from them".

He said it was removed: "not by Parliament, but by Her Majesty the Queen acting through Orders in Council on advice from the Secretary of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office."

The Orders, which were issued through the Privy Council, restored the government ban quashed by the High Court.

The islanders have accepted that they cannot live on Diego Garcia because of its use as a military base.

Its facilities were used in the bombing of Iraq and Afghanistan.

And the base was recently at the centre of allegations that it is one of the locations being used to house secret detainees in the US' so-called war on terror.

'Concepts of morality'

Richard Gifford, one of the lawyers who is representing the islanders, has said the government has a moral duty to return them to their homeland.

He said: "I've no doubt it is quite inconvenient to provide for the return of a population to their homeland, but that really doesn't square with concepts of morality, justice or anything else in this day and age.

"It's the sort of thing they might have done in the 17th or 18th Century."

Of the 2,000 people moved off the hundreds of tiny coral atolls, 1,500 were taken to Mauritius and the remainder to the Seychelles.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/uk/4502788.stm

Published: 2005/12/06 14:25:33 GMT

© BBC MMV

Violence Against Women - Development Gateaway

The Punishment of Death by Stoning for the Offence of Zina (Adultery); Sharia in Nigeria and its Impact on Muslim Women

Abstract:
Stoning women to death for sexual relationships outside marriage is a barbaric and medieval practice.

Women's Rights Protection and Advancement Alternative (WRAPA), a Nigerian NGO successfully represented Amina Lawal in 2003 and prevented her death by stoning. Amina Lawal was a divorced woman sentenced to death by stoning by a Nigerian Sharia Court for her alleged commission of zina, a capital crime under the recently adopted Shari'a penal code of Katsina State in Northern Nigeria. Since women are not allowed to argue in Sharia Courts, WRAPA contracted with Barrister Aliyu Musa Yawuri, to represent Amina Lawal in her appeals.

WRAPA and its Nigerian collaborators were pleased that the outcome vindicated their position that the provisions of the Shari'a legal system can safeguard justice based on its own principles, procedures and precedents from the life of the Prophet. WRAPA maintains that the judgment will have a far reaching, positive impact on the protection of women from arbitrary arrests and convictions. Two new stoning cases, concerning two women, Hajara Ibrahim and Daso Adamu, represented by BAOBOB, Nigeria, now exist in Nigeria. Those working to defend the accused will rely on the Amina Lawal precedent. WRAPA believed that going to the Sharia court and winning the appeal there was the best way to advance Islamic jurisprudence, and protect other Muslim women from similar ordeals. The strategy was also aimed to encourage Muslims to be less powerless in the face of the religious right by proving that abuses perpetrated by the unscrupulous in the name of Islam can be challenged in a way that the Islamic court system can be relied on to issue a judgment comporting with true Islamic principles. Remaining in the Sharia system permitted WRAPA to contest Sharia's interpretation by the lower courts, and criticize its implementation. Understandably, Muslim lawyers or lawyers living under Muslim laws may not wish to challenge Sharia. Arguing for equality between men and women, a principle some argue is not recognized in Sharia, could target them as westernized betrayers of their culture and religion. But the problem with failing to address that Sharia discriminates against women and permits violence against them, is that Sharia reform is thwarted.

WRAPA's and the other Nigerian NGOs' attempt to facilitate the progressive interpretation of Sharia law is commendable, but the decision to work within the Sharia framework drew some criticism. The cases that have been won in the Sharia courts are not helpful in diminishing violence against women as a group inasmuch as the cases are overturned on technicalities with limited application to preventing other unfair prosecutions. The strategy was also criticized for failing to publicly acknowledge that some provisions of the new Sharia penal codes, subjecting all Muslim women in northern Nigeria to live under an imminent death sentence, clearly violates the Nigerian Constitution and international human rights law. This discussion paper deals with developing and presenting possible grounds of appeal in stoning cases under the Nigerian Constitution and international human rights law that would go beyond Sharia Courts in the event of an adverse decision for the current cases.

Source
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Interesting Article on Rule of Law in Afghanistan
http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr117.html

Violence Against Women

UNIFEM Around the World

Involving Military and Police Forces in Ending Violence Against Women
From 7 May to 1 June 2005, UNIFEM and the UN High Commission for Human Rights (UNHCHR) conducted an extensive multimedia campaign in four provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in an effort to raise awareness about sexual violence committed against women and children. The campaign, with its theme "Break the Silence, Awake Your Conscience and Say No to Violence," was targeted at military and police personnel in an attempt to reach out to men as partners in combating violence.

More than 300 soldiers and policemen from Mbandaka, Bukavu, Kisangani and Kivu participated. To stimulate dialogue, the campaign used short plays by theatre groups in various local languages to highlight the main issues. These were followed by information exchange sessions to discuss the causes of sexual violence and ways to stop it from happening. The factors fuelling violence put forward included drug and alcohol abuse, poor living standards of military and police personnel, impunity, and the general precariousness of the social situation in the country. The men also suggested possible solutions to curb the spread of violence — from reinforcing the role of the family, forming "moral" police units or creating surveillance committees within police and army units that focus on sexual violence crimes, establishing mixed patrols, enforcing stricter criteria for recruitment and stricter penalties for drug and alcohol abuse, to involving the police and army in national efforts to promote and defend human rights.

A key conclusion that emerged from the information exchange sessions was the "power of conscience," and how using this positively could be one of the best strategies to combat violence. (Extracted from article in Uhuru newspaper, 9 June 2005.) For more information on the campaign, please contact Miranda Tabifor, miranda.tabifor@undp.org

________________________
Source

Reports I can use for My Research Paper

Raoul Wallenberg Institute's Educational Programmes in Human Rights in Ethiopia 1998-2001 An Evaluation Report Click Here
___________________________________
Annual Report on Best Practices, Lessons Learned and Success Stories Illustrations from Albania, Guatemala and Southern Africa
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A 12-Point Guide for Good Practice in the Training and Education for Human Rights of Government Officials
Source Amnesty International
_______________________________________
Evaluation of the STOP Formula Grants Under the Violence Against Women Act of 1994
Source

http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/vaw97.pdf

Vocabulary

alfresco \al-FRES-koh\, adverb:
In the open air; outdoors.

adjective:
Taking place or located in the open air; outdoor.

Turner escaped from the entangled politics of London's art world, where the Royal Academy was marooned in petty disputes, to paint alfresco on the riverbanks.
--Siri Huntoon, "Down by the Riverside," New York Times, November 7, 1993

Outdoor sitting areas all have LAN connections, so that employees can work alfresco.
--Scott Kirsner, "Digital Competition - Laurie A. Tucker," Fast Company, December 1999

wheedle \HWEE-d'l; WEE-d'l\, transitive verb:
1. To entice by soft words or flattery; to coax.
2. To gain or get by flattery or guile.

intransitive verb:
To flatter; to use soft words.

Editors who wished to carry original work rather than reprints found it necessary to wheedle contributions from readers by decrying inexperience as a reason for not taking up the pen and by offering prizes for submissions

billet-doux \bil-ay-DOO\, noun;
plural billets-doux \bil-ay-DOO(Z)\:
A love letter or note.

Perhaps she just looked first into the bouquet, to see whether there was a billet-doux hidden among the flowers; but there was no letter.
--William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair

Young lovers in Victorian England, forbidden to express their affection in public and fearful that strict parents would intercept their billets-doux, sent coded messages through the personal columns in newspapers.
--Susan Adams, "I've got a secret,"Forbes, September 20, 1999

assitude \LASS-uh-tood; LASS-uh-tyood\, noun:
Lack of vitality or energy; weariness; listlessness.

The feverish excitement . . . had given place to a dull, regretful lassitude.
--George Eliot, Romola

A long exercise of the mental powers induces a remarkable lassitude of the whole body.
--Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful

She felt aged, in deep lassitude and numb despair, and regretted not marrying Mai Dong before he left for the front.
--Ha Jin, Waiting

quidnunc \KWID-nuhngk\, noun:

One who is curious to know everything that passes; one who knows or pretends to know all that is going on; a gossip; a busybody.

What a treasure-trove to these venerable quidnuncs, could they have guessed the secret which Hepzibah and Clifford were carrying along with them!
--Nathaniel Hawthorne, The House of the Seven Gables

bivouac \BIV-wak, BIV-uh-wak\, noun:

An encampment for the night, usually under little or no shelter.

intransitive verb:
To encamp for the night, usually under little or no shelter.

maelstrom \MAYL-struhm\, noun:
1. A large, powerful, or destructive whirlpool.
2. Something resembling a maelstrom; a violent, disordered, or turbulent state of affairs.

The murk became thicker as Zachareesi fishtailed his canoe through a swirling maelstrom of currents pouring past, and over, unseen rocks.
--Farley Mowat, The Farfarers

Suddenly, the Serb cause was thrust into the maelstrom of the Napoleonic Wars.
--Misha Glenny, The Balkans

Always at the center of a maelstrom of activity and contention, he provided good columns for the press.
--Arthur Lennig, Stroheim

Vocabulary

logorrhea \law-guh-REE-uh\, noun:
Excessive talkativeness or wordiness.

By his own measure, he is a man of many contradictions, beginning with the fact that he is famous as a listener but suffers from "a touch of logorrhea."

panache \puh-NASH; -NAHSH\, noun:
1. Dash or flamboyance in manner or style.
2. A plume or bunch of feathers, esp. such a bunch worn on the helmet; any military plume, or ornamental group of feathers.

Dessert included a marvelous bread pudding and a fair bananas Foster, the old-time New Orleans dish, which was prepared with great panache tableside, complete with a flambé moment.

It is... an inevitable hit, a galvanizing eruption of energy, panache and arrogantly sure-footed stagecraft that comes at a time when theatrical dance is in the doldrums.
--Terry Teachout and William Tynan, "Seamy and Steamy." Time, January 25, 1999

Although Black didn't have many friends and was not among the school's leaders, he was likeable, had panache, and his contemptuous tirades were rarely taken at face value.
--Richard Siklos, Shades of Black: Conrad Black and the World's Fastest Growing Press Empire

gaucherie \goh-shuh-REE\, noun:
1. A socially awkward or tactless act.
2. Lack of tact; boorishness; awkwardness.

If you find yourself sitting next to an obviously prosperous guest at a dinner party and your host introduces him (it will be a him) as a "successful barrister", you will be guilty of a gaucherie of the crassest kind if you exclaim: "How fascinating! If I promise not to call you Rumpole, will you tell me about your goriest murder trials?"
--Nick Cohen, "Don't leave justice to the judges," New Statesman, December 13, 1999

Here we see the insecure, unattractive woman who at long last has found someone even more insecure and unattractive than herself, calling attention to her companion's gaucherie in order to feel, for once in her life, like the belle of the ball.
--Florence King, "Out and About," National Review, November 9, 1998

chagrin \shuh-GRIN\, noun:

Acute vexation, annoyance, or embarrassment, arising from disappointment or failure.

transitive verb:
To unsettle or vex by disappointment or humiliation; to mortify.

He ran away to the recruiting office at Ottumwa, a river port where Union soldiers were transported east--how he got to the town, a good half-day journey by wagon, isn't clear--and to his chagrin, he found his father waiting there.
--Allen Barra, Inventing Wyatt Earp: His Life and Many Legends

He noted with chagrin how little hair clung to his head.
--John Marks, The Wall

Rich Moroni was earning $20,000 a year as a cook and was chagrined to discover that he couldn't keep up with the style of life and spending of his preferred reference group -- the lawyers and executives who shared his passion for squash and belonged to the same health club.
--Peter T. Kilborn, "Splurge," New York Times, June 21, 1998

Chagrined to find that her current boyfriend has become best pals with her ex-boyfriend Hank, she goes to her ex with the problem.
--Stephen J. Dubner, "Boston Rockers," New York Times, July 26, 1998

redivivus \red-uh-VY-vuhs; -VEE-\, adjective:
Living again; brought back to life; revived; restored.

Augustine redivivus, R. contends, would find in the history of the present century confirmation of his pessimistic views of human nature.
--Roland J. Teske, "Augustine: Ancient Thought Baptized," Theological Studies, June 1, 1995

She is the young Magda redivivus to the last degree, including the way she arches her eyebrow when she speaks.
--Judith Dunford, "Exit Laughing," Newsday, May 8, 1994

______________________________________
from Dictionary.com

India, S Africa's Joint Ministerial Meeting begins

The sixth Joint Ministerial Meeting between India and South Africa began on Monday to review the bilateral ties.
At the two-day meeting, the two sides will exchange instruments of Ratification of Extradition Treaty and the Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters.

Co-chaired by Minister of State for External Affairs Rao Inderjit Singh and South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad, the meeting will review the entire gamut of relations between the two countries.

The areas to be covered are political, commercial and economic matters, including science and technology, culture, education, health, energy, information and communication technology and human resource development...

Progress on other pending accords such as agreement on health and medicine, programme of co-operation in science and technology, agreement on co-operation on maritime matters, agreement on housing, bilateral co-operation in arts, culture, sports and recreation will be reviewed.

The last session of the Joint Ministerial Commission was held in Pretoria in July 2003. Since then, there has been a visit of President Thabo Mbeki to India in October 2003 and the return visit by President A P J Abdul Kalam in September last year, first ever by the Indian President.

Taken from Times of India