Bits and Bites from Around the World > Norway conscripts must return underwear; Death Row inmates sue for firing squad; Pres Candidates hair-raising solution

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Recycling underwear?

Norway tells conscripts to return underwear after service

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Conscripts in Norway have been ordered to return their underwear, bras and socks after the end of their military service so that the next group of recruits can use them.

The Norwegian military said Monday that it is struggling with dwindling supplies, in part due to the pandemic.

The Norwegian Defense Logistics Organization said because of “a challenging stockpile situation, this move is necessary as it provides the Armed Forces with greater garment volumes available for new soldiers starting their initial service.”

Its press spokesman Hans Meisingset said that with “proper checks and cleaning, the reuse of garments is considered an adequate and sound practice.”

Until recently, the roughly 8,000 young men and women who every year do their military service returned their outer clothing but were allowed to leave barracks with the underwear and socks they were issued.

Military service is mandatory for both men and women in Norway and lasts between 12 and 19 months.

Meisingset said the pandemic was not the only reason why the stock of garments is low for some items. It also depends on finance, contracts and other issues.

NATO-member Norway’s national defense magazine, Forsvarets Forum, reported that it was not the first time that the Armed Forces had struggled with such shortcomings, with a union spokesman saying it “has been a recurring problem” for years. In June 2020, a third of the soldiers’ clothing and equipment was missing.

“A year ago, we looked at exactly the same shortcomings in close-fitting clothing that we see now, and earlier this autumn, the largest and smallest sizes of footwear were missing,” Eirik Sjoehelle Eiksund was quoted as saying. adding that he believed it was due to errors in the system around ordering and delivery.

Death row inmates sue to be killed by firing squad

A trial is scheduled to take place to determine the constitutionality

of the current form of killing by lethal injection

This Oct. 9, 2014 photo shows the gurney in the the execution chamber at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma © AP / Sue Ogrocki

Two death row inmates in the US state of Oklahoma are petitioning a judge to allow a firing squad as an alternative to lethal injection, arguing it would be quicker and have less room for error than the current mode of execution.

Donald Anthony Grant, who murdered two people during a 2001 robbery, and Gilbert Ray Postelle, who murdered four people in a 2005 shooting while high on methamphetamine, have appealed to US District Judge Stephen Friot to delay their executions until a trial can determine whether lethal injection is a constitutional form of killing death row inmates.

According to AP, a trial on the matter is set to take place on February 28. However, Grant and Postelle are due to be executed weeks before on January 27 and February 17 respectively.

Both men were denied clemency last year.

Attorney Jim Stronski told the judge that while a firing squad “may be gruesome to look at, we all agree it will be quicker.” Though Judge Friot said there was “a lot” for him to get his “mind around,” he suggested that a decision would be made by the end of the week.

Experts involved with the appeal have claimed that death by firing squad would be either completely or almost painless and have less room for error than lethal injection, which has led to several cases of excruciating executions.

John Marion Grant, another Oklahoma death row inmate who was executed last year, “began convulsing about two dozen times” during his execution by lethal injection and vomited on his own face before he was eventually pronounced dead around 21 minutes after the first injection.

In 2014, Amherst College Professor Austin Sarat revealed that the rate of botched lethal injections was 7% higher than other forms of execution.

Similar cases have been used to argue in favor of alternative methods of execution, such as the firing squad, which was widely used in the US before lethal injection became the default option in all 27 states that still use capital punishment. A moratorium on executions has been in effect in California, Oregon, and Pennsylvania.

South Korean presidential candidate gets to the root of the problem

Presidential candidate makes free hair loss treatment his campaign pledge

One in five South Koreans suffer from balding, according to

the country’s Democratic Party

© AP / Business Wire

The South Korean ruling party’s presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung is trying to win the hearts and heads of voters going into the March election by promising to include hair loss treatment in the national health insurance plan.

Helping those “suffering from hair loss” is going to be among his priorities if he becomes president, Lee announced in a Facebook post on Friday.

“I will expand the national insurance plan’s coverage of hair loss treatment drugs and actively look into including hair transplants for the treatment of serious cases of hair loss as well,” he vowed.

The Democratic Party politician insisted that his plan will allow the creation of a stable market for hair loss medication in South Korea, promoting the development of new drugs to tackle the problem and lowering the price of the existing ones.

Lee’s camp floated the idea of expanding national health insurance to cover hair loss treatment last week. The candidate even held a meeting with a group of voters who were affected by the problem.

The Democratic Party said that around 10 million of the country’s population of over 51 million have been suffering from hair loss. Those people have been forced to buy expensive drugs from abroad or resort to prostate medication as a cheaper substitute.

While many Koreans were enthusiastic about Lee’s initiative, there were some who accused him of pursuing a populist policy that is only going to put the country’s health insurance service under more financial pressure.

The 57-year-old responded to the critics in his post, arguing that “the anxiety, social phobia and severed relationships that people with hair loss suffer from are directly connected to the quality of life, and with the discriminatory attention they receive in everyday life, [hair loss] can’t be regarded as a personal matter.”

Russian Conscripts Bullied into Signing Contracts Sending Them to Ukraine

Russia has denied it is sending arms and troops to support the separatists
in Ukraine, but dozens of soldiers have been reported killed during drills
 in the Rostov region of southern Russia

When Alexander was due to finish his year of mandatory military service in October, his commander told him he had no choice: He had to sign a contract to extend his stay in the army and head to southern Russia for troop exercises.

The 20-year-old knew that meant he might end up fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Other soldiers he talked to had been sent there.

His commanders "didn't talk about it, but other soldiers told us about it, primarily paratroopers who had been there," Alexander said in an interview with The Associated Press, which is not using his surname for his safety.

The former private first class ended his military service earlier this month. He avoided being sent to Ukraine — although not without first being threatened with prison for desertion.

Human rights complaints

Human rights groups have received dozens of complaints in the past month alone from Russian conscripts like Alexander who say they have been strong-armed or duped into signing contracts with the military to become professional soldiers, after which they were sent to participate in drills in the southern Rostov region.

"We receive messages from all over in which (soldiers) say that they're being sent again to Rostov for military exercises," said Valentina Melnikova, head of the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers, a group with a three-decade history of working to protect soldiers' rights.

"Those who have been there (to the Rostov region) before know that in actual fact it means Ukraine."

People lay candles and flowers at memorials to victims of the Maidan uprising
one year ago on Maidan square, the day before a march in which several
European  heads of state are scheduled to participate on Feb. 21, 2015, in Kyiv.

Because only contract soldiers can legally be dispatched abroad, worries are spreading among families that inexperienced young conscripts could be sent to fight in eastern Ukraine.

While Russia has denied it is sending arms and troops to support the separatists, since the summer dozens of soldiers have been reported killed by explosions during drills in the Rostov region — deaths that rights groups actually attribute to the conflict over the border in Ukraine. Weapons appear to flow freely across the frontier, and one group of Russian paratroopers was even captured in August, 50 kilometres  inside the war zone.

Russian protesters dressed as Cossacks mark one year since Yanukovich ousted

So far, the Russian government has been able to keep a tight lid on information about any soldiers in eastern Ukraine through a shroud of official denials, harassment of independent reporters who cover the deaths, and carrot-and-stick pressure on the families of those killed. But rising concerns among families with young sons could pose a risk for President Vladimir Putin.

Russia's secrecy about the soldiers' deaths has an important precedent: During the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the government released little information about those killed in the conflict. When the true numbers of casualties became known, the intervention turned unpopular.

Carnage left in the Donetsk region after last weekends fighting

No numbers on soldiers killed

More than 5,600 people have been killed since April in the fighting between Ukrainian troops and the rebels. It is unclear how many Russian soldiers have died in the conflict, as the Defence Ministry has rejected rights groups' requests on the number of soldiers killed on duty in 2014. But the rising casualty count among Russian soldiers specifically could prove decisive in Putin's thinking as he comes under pressure to prevent an expansion of the conflict that might put more Russians in the line of fire.

At least 1,500 Russian troops and military hardware entered Ukraine
over the weekend as fighting, which killed nine Ukrainian soldiers
and wounded dozens of others

"This is a conflict that reaches pretty deep into the psyche of the Russian people. It's not a foreign conflict. ... It's something very close to home," said Dmitri Trenin, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment in Moscow. "This is something that's at the back of a lot of people's minds, and in particular, people with sons of draft age are worried.

"Military conquest, in my view, would not be supported by the Russian people, and I think everyone knows it," he added.

In October, Alexander was preparing to return to his hometown of Inta, a city of 30,000 people that skirts the Arctic Circle, when he and a dozen other recruits were told to report immediately to their base outside of Moscow.

"They told us: You have to go on a trip," he said as he wolfed down a full tray of food at the local McDonald's. "At first there wasn't any talk about a contract, but later they said that in order to go on the trip we would have to sign a contract, because we can't go as conscripts."

Toilet paper rolls with the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin printed on them
stand for sale at an outdoor kiosk on Feb. 21 in Kyiv. Both the Ukrainian and
western governments accuse Putin of actively supporting the current violence
in eastern Ukraine by allowing troops and heavy weapons to pass from Russia
across the border to pro-Russian separatists

'We had to go'

Russia requires almost all young men to serve in the army for one year at age 18, although many find ways to defer or avoid it. Those who want to have careers in the army can become professional soldiers by signing contracts for two or three years.

Alexander and his best friend in the unit both have pregnant girlfriends and had no intention of extending their army service. But they were told that they had already agreed to the trip, and that they couldn't back out.

"We wanted to refuse," he said. "But they refused our refusal, and we had to go."

Adelya Kamelatdinova's 19-year-old son was serving as a recruit in the army in July when he sent her a text message saying he was being sent to military exercises in Rostov. Then in August, he disappeared for weeks — only to resurface in September and tell her had been stationed in the Ukrainian region of Luhansk, in a village about 80 kilometres from the Russian border.

When she went to the local recruitment office to complain with another mother whose son had been hospitalized with a concussion, nobody listened: "They told us that our sons were participating in exercises and there aren't any soldiers in Ukraine; that it was a fantasy we thought up."

Kamelatdinova, who asked that her son's name not be used for fear of retribution, said he had not signed a contract but that he had been forced to sign a statement in which he agreed to cross the Ukrainian border.