by Frank Jordans

GENEVA (AP) — The U.S. stood accused Nov. 5 of human rights violations ranging from racial discrimination to prison overcrowding and abuses by its troops, as friends and foes lined up to chide Washington in a U.N. forum the U.S. has pledged to be an equal member of rather than shun, as the past administration did.

LISTENING—United States’ Michael Posner, right, Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy Human Rights and Labor, and United States’ Esther Brimmer, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organizations Affairs, listen to question during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Nov. 5. (AP Photo/Keystone, Salvatore Di Nolfi)

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Esther Brimmer said Washington was proud of its record but prepared to engage critics during the country’s first comprehensive review before the U.N. Human Rights Council.

(NNPA)—Zimbabwe teen and songbird Gamu Nhengu, who gave a standout performance for the British “X Factor” reality show, is bearing up under trying times.  After getting cut by one vote by the Factor’s panel of four White judges, she is now threatened with deportation by order of the United Kingdom Border Agency.

GAMU NHENGU

After her recent showstopping performance on X Factor, judge Cheryl Cole gushed: “I thought you were adorable, I got you.  I love your style of song and how you perform.”

“But I’m sorry Gamu,” the judge told the 18-year Zimbabwean student who lives in Scotland before delivering the bad news.

LAGOS, Nigeria (AP)—More than 200,000 people could lose their homes and livelihoods if an oil-rich Nigerian state proceeds with a mass eviction of its waterfront slums, a report released Thursday by Amnesty International warned.

OPPOSITION—Wole Soyinka, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, the first African honored with the award, is shown after launching a newly formed political party in Lagos, Nigeria, to challenge apathetic voters in the oil-rich nation to overcome a government he called cynical and brutal. (AP Photo/Sunday Alamba)

The threatened evictions come as Rivers state looks to build an amusement park and other attractions where informal settlements now stand along the waters of oil city Port Harcourt. Already, a forced eviction carried out in 2009 left at least 12 people seriously wounded, Amnesty International said, with locals telling the organization they saw dead bodies carried away in the back of police pickup trucks.

by Godfrey Olukya

KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) —The front-page newspaper story featured a list of Uganda’s 100 “top” homosexuals, with a bright yellow banner across it that read: “Hang Them.” Alongside their photos were the men’s names and addresses.

UNDER SEIGE—A Ugandan man reads the headline of the Ugandan newspaper “Rolling Stone” in Kampala, Uganda, Oct. 19, in which the papers reveals the identity of allegedly gay members of Ugandan society and calls for public punishment against those individuals. (AP Photo)

In the days since it was published, at least four gay Ugandans on the list have been attacked and many others are in hiding, according to rights activist Julian Onziema. One person named in the story had stones thrown at his house by neighbors.