Salamander

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6379511.stm

Anger over HIV scandal's child victims
By Natalia Antelava
BBC News, Shymkent, Kazakhstan

The hum of radio sets and the murmur of conversation, the odour of sewage and cooking rice all seeped through the thin walls of the dilapidated hallway.

An ageing Kazakh woman in a colourful headscarf put a finger to her wrinkled mouth, signalling us to be quiet, as she led us up stairs to her biggest secret.

The secret was a baby boy, fast asleep on a cheap mattress in a shabby room.

His chubby face looked healthy, peaceful and happily oblivious to the poverty and tragedy around him.

Algerian children hang 12-year-old after watching Saddam execution

Compiled by Daily Star staff
Tuesday, January 09, 2007

A group of Algerian schoolchildren hanged a 12-year-old classmate in a game imitating the execution of Saddam Hussein, a newspaper reported Monday, in the latest of a series of copycat hangings. The Algerian boy died two days after the ousted Iraqi leader was hanged on December 30, in the village of Oued Rihou in western Algeria, l'Authentique newspaper reported.

"Oued Rihou is in shock," the newspaper said, without giving details of the hanging.

"US policy in Iraq has made an innocent victim in Algeria," public radio commented.

On January 3, a woman in the western Algerian coast town of Oran committed suicide by hurling herself from a window in her parents' third-floor apartment because she was "traumatized by images of the hanging," a member of her family said.