1 of 6. Police stand near a crime scene in the Swiss village of Daillon near Sion January 3, 2013.

DAILLON, Switzerland | Thu Jan 3, 2013 7:28am EST

DAILLON, Switzerland (Reuters) - Three women were killed and two men were wounded late on Wednesday when a gunman opened fire in the Swiss village of Daillon, Swiss police and prosecutors said on Thursday.

The 33-year-old gunman, who has not been named, threatened police when they tried to arrest him and was shot in the chest before being arrested and taken to hospital, police in the Swiss canton of Valais said. No police officers were wounded.

Gun ownership is widespread in Switzerland and voters rejected a proposal in February 2011 to tighten the country's liberal fire arms laws.

The women killed in Daillon were aged 32, 54 and 79. They were all shot at least twice, in the head and chest. The youngest was married to one of the injured men and they had young children together, regional public prosecutor Catherine Seppey told a news conference.

The injured men were aged 33 and 63.

The gunman was a local resident who had been in psychiatric care in 2005 and was unemployed and living on welfare benefits, police said. His only previous conviction was for marijuana use.

He used at least two firearms - an old Swiss army carbine and a rifle capable of firing lead shot - even though his weapons had been seized and destroyed in 2005, and he was not currently listed as having any guns.

He began firing from his apartment, shooting at people in the street and in neighboring buildings, but later came out into the street, police said, adding that he appeared to have fired more than 20 shots.

Swiss website 20minutes.ch quoted villagers as saying the gunman had been drinking heavily. It also said he was armed with an assault rifle, but the public prosecutor did not confirm that information.

The village is close to the town of Sion, the capital of the canton - or region - of Valais.

A shooting in the regional parliament in the canton of Zug in 2001 stirred debate over gun control in Switzerland, where - according to some estimates - at least one in every three of its 8 million inhabitants holds a gun.

Many are stored in people's attics, a legacy of Switzerland's policy of creating a citizen army that can be mobilized quickly to defend its neutrality.

(Writing by Tom Miles; Additional reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by Mohammad Zargham/Ruth Pitchford)

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Of 102 native groups living in Colombia, officials say a third face extinction in the face of continued combat.

Friday, August 10

Nicole Karsin

Offering a pacifist definition of "warrior" in a land where the threat of violence defines everything, Nicole Karsin's We Women Warriors observes women in three corners of Colombia to show the extent of problems faced by indigenous communities there. Well conceived and unmanipulative, it will play well with auds attuned to its social-justice themes.

Karsin introduces us to three of the country's 102 official aboriginal groups, dozens of which face extinction simply for living on rural lands Columbia's assorted armed groups seek to control. The country's army, revolutionaries, and paramilitary groups (established to protect wealthy interests) are used to viewing anyone who isn't with them as against them, and the male populations in these communities have been devastated by attacks that made little attempt to spare neutral civilians.

In each of these three villages Karsin finds a woman who has stepped into a leadership role, whether doing so was a family tradition, as it is for Doris Puchana, or was a choice made by outside forces -- as with Ludis Rodriguez, a widow thrown in jail for a year after being falsely labeled a rebel.

The women lead in different ways, from pursuing the United Nations' attention to organizing a weaving collective. Flor Ilva Trochez, the first female governor in her tribe's 300-year history, gets the most dramatic moment here: After insisting the army end its occupation of her small town when soldiers kill an 11 year-old boy, she and other residents mobilize 15,000 people to peacefully evict them, calmly dismantling barracks sandbag by sandbag as rifle-wielding men watch in astonishment.

Though Karsin has no shortage of tragedies and outrages to recount, the film avoids sensationalism. Its articulate heroines have problems in common, but are just different enough in situation and personality to convey the breadth of difficulties faced in a nation that has been at war with itself for almost half a century.

Production Companies: Ida, Todos Los Pueblos Productions
Director-Producer: Nicole Karsin
Directors of photography: Diego Barajas, Daniel Valencia
Music: Jesus Quinones, Richard Cordoba
Editors: Cristina Malavenda, Gabriel Baudet
No rating/ rating, 82 minutes

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The speaker's podium with the logo of Societe Generale bank is pictured during a news conference to present the bank's 2011 annual results in La Defense near Paris February 16, 2012.

PARIS | Thu Aug 9, 2012 7:08am EDT

PARIS (Reuters) - What does every woman want? One French bank thinks it knows the answer: Handbag insurance and a handyman hotline.

The pink-and-gold-colored "Pour Elle" bank card, part of a cut-price summer offer by Paris-based lender Societe Generale, promises to "simplify" women's lives with up to 200 euros ($250) of handbag theft insurance and a dedicated hotline for up to two electrician, locksmith or other handyman callouts per year.

As useful as these products might be, not all women are happy to be singled out by their bank as needing special help.

"It's a little cheeky to promote both at the same time as 'female crises' that could arise," said Lys-Aelia Hart, a 24-year-old assistant art buyer living in Paris. "In my eyes, many men don't know how to deal with a serious electrical issue - on the contrary, they'd probably get killed."

A spokeswoman for SocGen said the cards had been a "great success" and said the bank did not view them as sexist. "We don't think it's a discriminatory approach," she said. "Those who choose these cards are those who wish to adhere to their femininity."

Even men aren't shy about signing up for the card, added the spokeswoman. "Five percent of cardholders are men," she said.

Despite the noble intentions, the card still looks to some like a misguided attempt to cater to women's needs. "I don't need my bank to dictate what kind of services I need, but it's kind of them to offer," said Hart.

(Reporting by Lionel Laurent, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Anyone looking for stories of outrages committed against women in India this month doesn’t need to look far. Just after an attack on a woman in the northeast city of Guwahati, and a plea by an Islamist group in Jammu & Kashmir for female tourists to dress more conservatively, a group of village elders in Baghpat district of Uttar Pradesh has released some new rules to ensure that women stay safe. The only loss they’ll suffer is individual freedom:

- Women cannot use mobile phones in public

- Women under the age of 40 cannot go outside without a male relative to accompany them.

- Women should cover their heads in public.

- Village boys cannot play songs or music on their mobile phones in public.

The village elders, known as a khap panchayat, took the actions, they said, to prevent sexual harassment. The result, of course, is to punish women pre-emptively by restricting their liberties in the name of protecting them from men who cannot be trusted to restrain themselves.

The Uttar Pradesh government said that the panchayat has no legal authority to enforce such rules, and that people should report attempts to do so. When the police tried to step in, a crowd of people beat them up.

On the same day, a row over attending classes in hijab (headscarf) sprung up in Mangalore when some female students belonging to the Muslim community boycotted classes in Sri Ramkunjeshwara First Grade College, Ramkunja. They were protesting the management’s decision to ban the hijab as a part of their dress code.

The management argued that the institution does not permit students to dress according to their faith. The college administration said it told parents and students about the dress code when they applied, so they should know about the rules already.

Countries that have taken similar action, such as France and the Netherlands, have argued that veils and other kinds of primarily Islamic clothing are repressive for women. But wouldn’t a progressive government allow people to choose what they want to wear? In India, this seems like a priority, given the country’s promise of equal rights to citizens regardless of their religion.

People who assign themselves the protectors of other people’s morality seem to always find a way to enforce their will on women. The idea is that you must:

- restrict their movements so they don’t harm themselves

- restrict their freedom to be equal to men lest they arouse the passions that men are powerless to control

The conclusion is always the same: it’s the woman’s fault. Look at the Guwahati incident, at the claims that surfaced here and there that if the victim weren’t drinking in a bar and doing other morally suspect things, this wouldn’t have happened.

Nobody in India, or many other countries for that matter, would have said this about a man. Where does that leave a country like ours? How do you change the thinking of millions of people? The most common methods so far — legislation, shouting about it online, protests — don’t seem to have much effect. Now what, India?

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