Briefly

United Nations

Report says racism on the rise worldwide

Attacks on Jewish synagogues and racial profiling of Arabs are signs of a resurgence of racism worldwide, a U.N. report issued Wednesday said.

The rise of nationalist parties, the Sept. 11 attacks and rising tensions in the Middle East appear to have contributed to new discrimination, the report said.

Much of the problem involved the stigmatization of Muslims and Arabs and closer scrutiny of people traveling to Western countries, the report said. Attacks against Jewish synagogues and anti-Semitic graffiti coincided with the Israeli-Palestinian fighting now in its 23rd month.

The report also noted increased calls for reducing immigration by nationalist parties. It was prepared by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in July and made public Wednesday.

Florida

U.S. hopes new rocket will boost launch business

A powerful new version of the rocket that carried John Glenn into orbit blasted off Wednesday on a flight intended to revolutionize and revitalize the nation’s launch business.

Lockheed Martin Corp.’s Atlas V rose from its seaside pad at Cape Canaveral with a European broadcasting satellite.

The Atlas V a descendant of America’s first intercontinental ballistic missile and the Mercury-Atlas booster that propelled Glenn in 1962 is the biggest and most powerful model in this 45-year-old rocket line. It stands 191 feet and packs 860,000 pounds of thrust with its Russian-built engine.

New York City

Martha Stewart faces new insider trading charge

Martha Stewart is involved in a new insider stock trading controversy.

A lawsuit charges Stewart quietly sold off $45 million of stock in her own media company early this year because she knew in advance that bad publicity about ImClone insider trading loomed on the horizon.

Stewart dumped 3 million shares of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia stock Jan. 8, the same day ImClone first learned it was the subject of an insider trading probe, the suit says.

It claims other top Omnimedia executives then began dumping their company stock in a “torrent of their own insider trading” during the weeks before Stewart’s link to the ImClone scandal exploded in the headlines.

By doing so, they “avoided suffering the financial effects of this dramatic decline in the price of MSLO shares,” the suit says.

San Diego

U.S.-born panda turns 3

The birthday cake was made of vegetables. The celebration was bittersweet.

Hua Mei, the giant panda who became the only U.S.-born panda to survive beyond a few days, turned 3 Wednesday in a celebration that likely will be her last birthday in America.

Under the loan agreement that brought her parents to The San Diego Zoo in 1996, any offspring are to be given to China upon turning 3. Hua Mei is expected to head to the Wolong Giant Panda Protection Research Center in Sichuan province sometime this fall and enter its acclaimed breeding program.