Briefly Noted

• The Chicago City Council passed an ordinance in August that will require genetically engineered foods and food products to bear the words, "This food is genetically engineered." An alderman who supported the proposal stated, "People have the right to know what they're buying."

   

• Young Lutherans from across Europe issued a statement rejecting the possibility of a "just war." The statement said, "We fear that the theological classification between 'justified' and 'unjustified' war will lead to an inflation of 'justified' wars."

   
• A two-year campaign to focus attention on human rights violations in the United States will be launched December 10-12 in Pine Ridge, South Dakota, and Birmingham, Alabama. Organizers, who said that "Americans think of human rights as a problem elsewhere," seek to evaluate U.S. treatment of ethnic minorities from the perspective of international human rights standards.

   

• An international convocation of women meeting in Switzerland this summer demanded a separate article in the Geneva Convention declaring rape a war crime. The 100 women from 15 countries also demanded that a majority of the tribunal on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia be women. Appointments thus far are all men.

   

• An evangelical broadcasting network, Trans World Radio, announced plans to introduce solar cooking to the whole population of Kenya by the year 2000, in response to the deforestation caused by use of wood stoves. TWR said it was their Christian duty to offer ecologically sound solutions.

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners. Jill Lafferty assisted with research.