Brad and Angelina donate $1 mln to Iraqi kids

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have donated one million dollars to support the education of 8,000 children in Iraq and the United States affected by the war, a charity said Wednesday.

The iconic Hollywood couple made the donation to the Education Partnership for Children of Conflict via their charity, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

A statement from the Education Partnership said the money would be split evenly between U.S. and Iraq non-profit groups.
Money will pay for basic necessities, including books and supplies to help send Iraqi children to school.

Aid will also go to refugee kids, and to school rehabilitation programs. The foundation will also help children in the United States who have a military parent killed in Iraq, or who are separated from a parent stationed in the country.

"These educational support programs for children of conflict are the best way to help them heal," Jolie, who has visited Iraq twice in the past year, said in a statement.Pitt added: "We hope to encourage others to give to these great organizations."Pitt, 44, and Jolie, 33, have donated millions of dollars to charity over the years. Jolie has long been an advocate for refugees and is a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

Iraqi dad says US forces killed son in cold blood

Iraqi teenager Abbas Khadum died in his father's arms; one of 25 men locals say were shot dead in a single day by U.S.

troops in a crackdown on Shiite militiamen in east Baghdad.His mother fought back tears while his father held a picture of the 19-year-old, his hair slicked back and dressed in a smart shirt buttoned up to his chin, as he gave his version of how U.S. troops had killed his son.

"In the middle of the night, the Americans positioned themselves on a roof of a nearby building site which overlooks the wall," Khadum's father, Abu Abbas, said, his bespectacled face framed in a traditional red keffiyeh scarf.

"At dawn, I stepped out of my house to go to prayers, and I found a bloodied body on my doorstep.

It was a laborer who had come to work on a building site close to the wall."Neighbors telephoned me to say I shouldn't go out because the Americans were shooting anything that moved.
"A little later, Said Saad, a man who sold drinks, who everyone in the district knew, was also killed.

Then one of my neighbors, Sabah Mahdi, had his head blown off by a bullet," Khadum's father said, as his wife wept.

"About 11 am, my son was due to go to university with his friends.

With all the shooting, he told them not to come and meet him at the house, but to wait a few streets away.

"He left and then a few minutes later, I was called and told he had been wounded.

I raced to him.

He had been shot in the back, at shoulder level. He was still breathing. He died in my arms as we took him to hospital," he said.That evening, a US soldier went to photograph the body at the mortuary and told Abu Abbas that the teenager was shot after attempting to bring down the wall.Khadum had not been in trouble before and "was not involved in politics," his family and friends said.

"It is true that people used to try and knock down the wall, but they came from other districts," his father added.Responding to claims his son was placing roadside bombs, Abu Abbas said Shiite militiamen "don't plant bombs on main streets in Baghdad in broad daylight."
Roadside bombs
U.S. forces, for their part, said Khadum was one of 11 "special group" criminals

-- a term used to describe fighters armed, funded and trained by Iranians

-- attempting to plant roadside bombs. His parents say he was just walking to university.

Khadum's family live in the heart of the Shiite-dominated Al-Obeidi neighborhood, where many followers of firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are rumored to have sought refuge after being driven out of nearby Sadr City.

The neighborhood has been a regular scene of bloody battles between U.S. soldiers and Sadr's Mahdi Army fighters after Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki ordered a crackdown on militias.

Mahdi army militiamen fought deadly street battles with U.S.

forces in the Shiite slum Sadr City for seven weeks until a truce was agreed, which took effect on May 10.Khadum's family home, an anonymous rectangular building with an iron gate, is around a dozen meters (yards) from a wide main road, part-hidden by a large concrete wall erected in mid May by U.S. f

orces to disrupt militia activities.U.S. forces built concrete barriers throughout Baghdad in a bid to prevent insurgents launching roadside bomb attacks on military convoys and to block militia movements.

People angry at the presence of the ugly grey barrier protested and launched regular attacks against it, to bring it crashing down.

But, according to Abu Abbas, American forces hit back. That same day, May 21, saw a total of 25 people, all men, killed by American gunfire close to the Al-Obeidi wall, according to the district's residents.

Cameraman Wissam Ali Ouda, who worked for private Iraqi television station Afaq, was among those killed; shot dead returning home after work.

Palestinian tale of kindness plays in West Bank

For the first time, a documentary about a Palestinian boy whose tragic death saved the lives of five Israeli children

– thanks to his father – has been screened in the West Bank.

The documentary -- "The Heart of Jenin"

– tells the story of 12-year-old Palestinian boy, Ahmad al-Khatib, who was shot dead by Israeli troops when they mistook his toy gun for a real weapon.The shooting happened in the West Bank town of Jenin on Nov. 2, 2005.

At the time, Israeli soldiers had orders to "shoot anything that moved," one soldier said in the documentary.

The shot to Ahmad's head proved fatal, killing the boy from Jenin refugee camp. Ahmad's father Ismael al-Khatib later decided to donate his boy's organs to patients at the Haifa hospital where his son was pronounced dead."If I can't help my son to recover, then may be I can help other kids," he says in the documentary.

Five Israeli children received Ahmad's life-saving organs. The feature length documentary – directed by Marcus Vetter and Lior Geller –was screened at the German-French Cultural Center in Ramallah on March 27, the first time the film was shown in the Palestinian territories for a general audience.Palestinian cinemas refused the film because Geller is Israeli, said Farid Maajari, director of the cultural center.

Storyline

The Heart of Jenin follows Ahmad's father Ismael on his journey through Israel, visiting the children who found life through his son's death.Ahmad's kidneys went to the daughter of a Jewish settler in Occupied Jerusalem and a Bedouin boy from the Negev Desert region. His heart went to a Druze family in northern Israel. Two other beneficiaries chose not to participate in the documentary.

The extraordinary donation was approved not only by the boy's grief-stricken mother and father, but religious and political scholars too.

In the movie, Jenin's mufti approves organ donations. The opinion is backed by the Jenin commander of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

"We have no problem with Jews as Jews.

There's no problem as long as this will save lives," says Zakaria Zubeidi.In the movie, the father of the Jewish girl said he did not want to meet the donor family and would have preferred if they were Jewish.

He said Arabs only want to kill Israelis, apparently oblivious to the actions of Ahmad's father who donated his son's kidney to save the settler girl.After the screening in Ramallah, German director Vetter told the audience the film was banned from the Tel Aviv film festival allegedly for technical reasons.

"Some people said the film is biased towards the Palestinians because it tackles the death of the child and focuses on checkpoints, collective punishment, and the destruction of Jenin refugee camp," Vetter said.

Ismail al-Khatib now runs a music school for children in Jenin.

"Without peace, only killing will remain. Children from Palestine and Israel and all the world will die," Khatib said.

Saudi kids become world's youngest couple

A 12-year old boy married his 11-year old cousin in the southwestern Saudi province of Jizan, becoming the youngest married couple in the world.

The elementary school couple tied the knot in a big wedding, with hundreds of family members and friends blessing the union. Folklore dances were performed to highlight the joy, Saudi newspaper Al-Riyadh reported.

In a related incident, an 82-year old Saudi man passed premarital medical tests, paving the way to marry a 25-year old girl to be his third wife.

The wedding party will be held next summer.

In other marriage news, two marriage registrars (mazioun) were suspended for not seeking the bride's approval before proceeding with the marriage contract, violating a major condition for marriage in Islam.

Over 40 other registrars were penalized - by suspension, warning, or license revocation - for the same reason as well as for advertising for themselves on billboards.

the smallest mam in the world ? only in egypt !!!

There are in Egypt more than 3 million children Street? What is the solution

this vedio shows the novel tells how a child was raped and shows us a child whose existence

When we will say no to war ? QANA 2006

Some people use these photos to be evidence of the brutality of war

Some used these images so as not to forget

Some used these images proof against Israel

We use these images to tell the world that the victims of war are always children and women

Child labor rampant in Lebanon

It is early morning and eight-year-old Ibrahim Khodar Arja is already hard at work, his face and hands covered with dirt as he repairs a car at the mechanics shop where he works six days a week, 10 hours a day.Ibrahim should be at primary school but his job leaves him no time for that.Like thousands of children across Lebanon he has joined a growing force of child laborers whose fate is as much dictated by their family's dire economic situation as by the country's turbulent politics.

Officials estimate that at least 100,000 children -- one in 10 -- up to 18 years of age work in Lebanon, mainly in the agriculture sector or as mechanics as well as in jewelry workshops and sweatshops.

"The 10 to 15 age group is the most affected," Nabil Watfa of the International Labor Organization office in Beirut told AFP.

"But children as young as eight have also been noted to work."These kids, the majority of them boys, work handling chemicals, in garages, in metal-welding shops, carpentry, marble cutting and in farms where they are exposed to pesticides."Most of the child laborers hail from the northern regions of Akkar and Tripoli, where many families live below the poverty line.

Others work in the eastern Bekaa Valley and in the south of the country, where poverty is also endemic and the main industry is agriculture, including tobacco plantations.In Bab al-Tebbene, a rough neighborhood in the northern city of Tripoli, a majority of the mechanics or scrap metal shops that line the streets employ children, including Ibrahim.

The kids can be seen welding, using dangerous machinery, or handling toxic chemicals, all with no protective gear.

More than a dozen children interviewed between the ages of eight and 16 seem resigned to the fact that theirs is a future of hard work rather than play.

Their tough gaze betrays a lost childhood.Mustafa Yassin, 13, entered the work force last year as an apprentice mechanic. He earns 10 dollars a week, working 10 hours a day, six days a week.

"School was not for me and I prefer to learn a trade so that I can help my family and maybe one day open my own garage," he said shyly.

Social workers say many of the children drop out of school and seek work as they come from needy families, often of 10 children or more.They also point to appalling conditions in state schools where standards are poor and where children are often left to fend for themselves.

"We are placed in these schools which are like prisons and many of the kids are dismissed or drop out because no one looks at them," said Rabih Saifeddin Danash, 25, who began working at age 15 at his father's garage.Watfa said that although Lebanon in 2001 signed on to the ILO convention on child labor, it has been unable to efficiently implement it for lack of resources.

Nationwide there are a mere 91 inspectors tasked with enforcing labor laws in general, said Naha Shallita, head of the child labor unit at the labor ministry.

She added that no money has been allocated in the state budget to specifically combat child labor.Social workers warn that if the state fails to seriously take on the issue, many children could fall prey to extremist groups known to recruit in poor areas of Lebanon.

They also cautioned that prostitution and drug use was prevalent among working children.

"These kids are being denied their most basic rights," said Fatma Odaymat, of the Rene Moawad Foundation, a non-governmental organization.

"We are finding that sexual and physical abuse have become a major issue.

"She said although there are success stories and efforts to provide children with vocational training, the country was far off from overcoming the scourge of child labor.

"The success stories are a drop in the bucket," Odaymat said.

"When you go down to these communities and see the situation, you realize we have a long way to go