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	Resegregation Now by The New York Times USA   June 2007   The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation"s schools to integrate. Yesterday, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.   Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation"s driving force for integration.   Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn"t always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously.   Yesterday, the court"s new conservative majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated.   Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the majority"s fifth vote, reined in the ruling somewhat by signing only part of the majority opinion and writing separately to underscore that some limited programs that take race into account are still acceptable. But it is unclear how much room his analysis will leave, in practice, for school districts to promote integration. His unwillingness to uphold Seattle"s and Louisville"s relatively modest plans is certainly a discouraging sign.   In an eloquent dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer explained just how sharp a break the decision is with history. The Supreme Court has often ordered schools to use race-conscious remedies, and it has unanimously held that deciding to make assignments based on race "to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society" is "within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities."   Chief Justice Roberts, who assured the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he respected precedent, and Brown in particular, eagerly set these precedents aside. The right wing of the court also tossed aside two other principles they claim to hold dear. Their campaign for "federalism," or scaling back federal power so states and localities have more authority, argued for upholding the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., programs. So did their supposed opposition to "judicial activism." This decision is the height of activism: federal judges relying on the Constitution to tell elected local officials what to do.   The nation is getting more diverse, but by many measures public schools are becoming more segregated. More than one in six black children now attend schools that are 99 to 100 percent minority. This resegregation is likely to get appreciably worse as a result of the court"s ruling.   There should be no mistaking just how radical this decision is. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said it was his "firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today"s decision." He also noted the "cruel irony" of the court relying on Brown v. Board of Education while robbing that landmark ruling of much of its force and spirit. The citizens of Louisville and Seattle, and the rest of the nation, can ponder the majority"s kind words about Brown as they get to work today making their schools, and their cities, more segregated.   June 2007   When is enough Enough?, by Bob Herbert. (NYT)   On Thursday a malevolent majority on the U.S. Supreme Court threw a brick through the window of voluntary school integration efforts.   There comes a time when people are supposed to get angry. The rights and interests of black people in the U.S. have been under assault for the longest time, and in the absence of an effective counterforce, that assault has only grown more brutal.   Have you looked at the public schools lately? Have you looked at the prisons? Have you looked at the legions of unemployed blacks roaming the neighborhoods of big cities across the country? These jobless African-Americans, so many of them men, are so marginal in the view of the wider society, so insignificant, so invisible, they aren"t even counted in the government"s official jobless statistics.   And now this new majority on the Supreme Court seems committed to a legal trajectory that would hurl blacks back to the bad old days of the Jim Crow era.   Where"s the outcry? Where"s the line in the sand that the prejudiced portion of the population is not allowed to cross?   It"s discouraging that some of the biggest issues confronting blacks - the spread of AIDS, chronic joblessness and racial discrimination, for example - are not considered mainstream issues.   Senator John Edwards offered a disturbingly bleak but accurate picture of the lives of many young blacks: "When you have young African-American men who are completely convinced that they"re either going to die or go to prison and see absolutely no hope in their lives; when they live in an environment where the people around them don"t earn a decent wage; when they go to schools that are second-class schools compared to the wealthy suburban areas - they don"t see anything getting better."
	Corrupt doctors infect 100 Kazakh children with HIV by Emma Griffiths News agencies Kazakhstan   June, 2007   A corrupt trade in human blood has been blamed for infecting more than 100 children with the AIDS virus in the central Asian nation of Kazakhstan.   So far 10 children have died, and after a lengthy court case, 16 medical workers have been sent to prison over the outbreak, which has become a national scandal.   The night before the verdict was announced, the crime claimed another victim: a two-year-old boy. He was the tenth child to die. Like the others, he had received a blood transfusion at the local hospital, and later tested positive for HIV.   The outbreak was discovered last year, and so far it has been confirmed that 119 babies and toddlers have been infected. But the number of cases could still rise. They were given blood transfusions with tainted blood in hospitals in the southern city of Shymkent.   Twenty-one doctors, nurses and officials have been found guilty of medical negligence. Some have been given suspended sentences; others, prison terms of several years.   The judge blamed a system of corruption and an illegal blood trade flourishing in Kazakhstan"s hospitals. Blood transfusions have become a money-spinner for medical staff.   Patients are charged about $A30 extra for the blood, and prosecutors allege that in this case the profits were split between the doctors and the local blood bank.   In many cases, the children did not even have conditions that required the blood transfusion. No parental consent was given and the staff used unsterilised equipment.   The local infectious diseases hospital now has more than 100 new patients, and the staff there worry that the families involved simply will not cope.   Discrimination   The children and their families are already battling discrimination. There are reports that some of the children"s fathers have left, unable to deal with the stigma. AIDS campaigners hope that this case will eventually lead to greater acceptance of HIV in central Asia. "Now there"s a group of kids who are innocent and are HIV-positive, so this is really an opportunity to look at how society treats HIV and treats people living with HIV."   The Health Minister has been fired over the scandal, and the Kazakh Government has promised to build a new paediatric AIDS facility in the region. But campaigners say the former Soviet state is doing too little to raise medical standards, and they fear that the number of infections will continue to rise, through negligence and corruption.
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