The News Review:

- Senegal: Media Gets a Taste of Taser
- Activists Express Concern ver Sentencing of Gay Men in Senegal
- Clean Water Project Improves Lives in Senegal
- A slow train through Senegal
- Senegal’s Fashion Victims
- Arab League Fractured over Israel-Gaza
- SENEGAL: Seeking legal social tools against sexual violence

Senegal: Media Gets a Taste of Taser
AllAfrica.com Washington 
At least twice during 2008 Senegalese reporters complained that they were attacked by police clutching tasers — electronic devices that can immobilise the person at whom they are aimed. GA_googleFillSlot( “AllAfrica_Story_Inset” );Although their manufacturers claim they are non-lethal the human rights group Amnesty International published a report last month stating that 334 people died after being struck with them in the U. between 2001 and August 2008.

Activists Express Concern ver Sentencing of Gay Men in Senegal
Voice of America 
The nine men were each sentenced to eight years in prison last week. Joel Nana of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in Cape Town says the ruling was a big step backwards in the fight for gay rights in Africa. “It was a surprise to me because Senegal is a country that is very progressive among African countries and actually the first country in Africa to address HIV in communities of men who have sex with men” said Nana. “This is a country where we thought there were some achievements but having such a judgment brings us backward.

Clean Water Project Improves Lives in Senegal
Voice of America 
manufacturer of plastic pipe. The project is having a big impact on the lives of women and children who used to spend hours carrying water from wells far from home. Gaile Ndiaye remembers well waking before dawn in search of fresh water.

A slow train through Senegal
Financial Times UK 
getElementsByTagName(“p”)[0]);}}}}The joy of long train trips is that they leave lots of time for gazing and thinking. My journey from Dakar in Senegal to Bamako in Mali which was supposed to take 35 hours would surely provide much food for thought. I started out by booking a first-class ticket at Dakar’s main railway station which proved relatively easy. I was told however that the train would depart from “gare de Hann”. I had had directions through TransRail the train operator but even my taxi driver needed further pointers along the way and the station turned out to be a nondescript junction. Here a tatty train that looked fit only for cargo shuffled past me at 1.

Senegal’s Fashion Victims
ABC News 
In richer countries people are increasingly comfortable and successful regardless of their natural skin color but in many African countries like Senegal trying to change one’s skin color is still seen as a way to get ahead. “Some Senegalese women” Emilie a student at Dakar University told ABC News “are trying to look like the white girls they see on television. From ads on highway billboards to little stands in marketplaces skin bleaching products are almost everywhere. They sell well despite what public health officials say are grave risks of using them including cancer.

Arab League Fractured over Israel-Gaza
pEdNews PA 
Nations represented at the Doha Qatar summit include Algeria Comoros Iran Iraq Libya Lebanon Mauritania Sudan Syria Turkey and Senegal. The presence of Senegal's President Abdoulaye Wade is. Noticeably absent from the Doha summit were Egypt and Saudi Arabia. Instead they met on Friday with Arab leaders in Kuwait to finalize the agenda for a long-planned first-ever summit on economic social and development issues in the Arab world scheduled for Monday and Tuesday of next week.
Related from Greenjolly: Israeli-Arab Eurovision singer urged to step down over Gaza

SENEGAL: Seeking legal social tools against sexual violence
IRINnews.org NY 
?It is not enough to put rapists in prison and change the laws” Adama Sow of the Senegalese NG Action Group Against Child Rape (GRAVE) told IRIN. ?That is needed of course.