Winners and Losers at first Democratic Debate

The first debate among the five Democratic presidential candidates was pointed at times, but the tone was civil. Front runner Hillary Clinton and her leading challenger, Bernie Sanders, clashed on several issues from gun control to Wall Street. 

The first debate of the 2016 Democratic presidential primary will be defined by two moments: When the topic turned to Sen. Bernie Sanders' (I-Vt.) chief vulnerability, Hillary Clinton jumped at the opportunity to draw a sharp contrast. When the roles were reversed, Sanders threw her a lifeline.

Those two exchanges -- the first on gun control and the second on Clinton's use of a private email account as secretary of state -- exemplified not just the different political DNA of each candidate, it underscored the brewing intensity of a Democratic primary that few thought would be competitive.

Clinton's overall performance will be remembered as the more forceful one, in part because the early questions played to her strengths. A back-and-forth on why Sanders didn't consider himself a capitalist led to her defending robust regulations, with him touting Denmark.

But the truly defining segment dealt with guns, perhaps Sanders' biggest vulnerability in the Democratic primary. Clinton previewed her attack a few weeks ago when, among the series of proposals she unveiled after the Oregon mass shooting, she called for ending legal immunity for gun manufacturers -- something Sanders voted for as a congressman. And once the topic surfaced at the debate, she pounced.

"For this immunity provision, I voted against it," Clinton said. "I was in the Senate at the same time. It wasn't that complicated to me. It was pretty straightforward to me that he was going to give immunity to the only industry in America."

Fathers rape with impunity, fuelling Guatemala's teen pregnancies

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - In , most pregnancies among girls under 14 are the result of rape at the hands of fathers or other relatives, but often it is the girl who is forced to leave the family home, and few perpetrators are punished, said a leading rights campaigner.

Nearly a quarter of all births in Guatemala are among teenage mothers - one of the highest rates of teen pregnancy in Latin America.

"In the majority of cases of sexual violence against girls, some as young as 10, most are committed by family members, mainly by the girl's father or stepfather," said Mirna Montenegro, the head of Guatemala's Sexual and Reproductive Health Observatory (OSAR).

In 2012, nearly 90 percent of all pregnancies among Guatemalan girls under 14 involved relatives, including cousins and uncles, of which 30 percent were the result of rape by fathers, according to Guatemala's human rights ombudsman.

Despite new laws passed in Guatemala to better protect against sexual violence, few who commit rape against girls are punished.

"Getting justice for girls who report crimes of sexual violence is still a big challenge for us. Often it's the pregnant girl who is removed from her home and placed in a refuge and not the perpetrator of the crime," Montenegro told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview.

According to a 2009 law, sex with a child under 14 is defined as rape, but of the 2,000 reported cases of under-14s getting pregnant in 2012, only eight resulted in convictions, Montenegro said.

Guatemala's children's prosecutor, Harold Flores, said the country's high teen pregnancy rate was a "scourge", and there were few convictions for rape carried out on girls under 14.

"We want girls, who have been victims of sexual violence, to remain in their home or be under the care of a relative. In some cases in the past girls were placed in government care and the aggressor wasn't arrested," he said from Guatemala City.

"It's deplorable that many of these cases are a result of sexual violence within the nuclear family: stepfathers, uncles, fathers, and grandfathers. We're reaching more and more girls as soon as we hear about a case and we have expanded our presence across Guatemala and rural areas," Flores said.

MACHO SOCIETY

High levels of sexual violence against women and girls stem from the low status of women, especially indigenous Mayan women, in Guatemala's patriarchal and macho society.

"Machismo is about men believing a woman is their property and possession. We've heard fathers say 'She's my daughter and my property so I will do what I want with her," said Montenegro,

She said gender violence is also a legacy of Guatemala's 1960-1996 civil war when rape was used as a weapon of war.

Complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the second highest cause of death for 15 to 19 year-old girls globally, and babies born to adolescent mothers face a 'substantially higher risk' of dying than those born to women in their early 20s, according to the World Health Organization.

In Guatemala, teenage pregnancy is most common among uneducated indigenous girls, especially in poor rural areas.

"Girls in rural areas don't have or know other options in life. Their lives are limited to finding a partner, having children and looking after the home," Montenegro said.

Guatemala's high prevalence of child marriage, where girls can marry at 14 with their parent's consent, also fuels adolescent pregnancy, Montenegro said.

Guatemala's congress is considering a bill that would raise the minimum legal age for marriage to 16 for girls and 18 for boys, with the issue a debating point ahead of the country's presidential election run-off on Oct. 25.

"For this first time we've seen the issue of child marriage come up during the election campaign. The majority of presidential candidates have said they are in favor of raising the minimum age for marriage," said Montenegro, whose organization is an alliance of universities, non-governmental organizations and lawmakers.

Last year, 5,100 girls under 14 became pregnant in the Central American country, up from 4,354 in 2013, according to OSAR.

One reason for the increase is because hospitals and health providers have to report pregnancies among girls under 14 under a law passed in 2012.

Category 4 Hurricane Joaquin

Here is the latest form the National Hurricane Center on Hurricane Joaquin, which is now a dangerous Category 4 storm located near the Bahamas.

Hurricane conditions are expected to continue in portions of the central and southeastern Bahamas through Friday and a very dangerous and life-threatening storm surge will raise water levels by as much as 5 to 10 feet above normal tide levels in the central Bahamas in areas of onshore flow.

Swells generated by Joaquin will affect portions of the Bahamas during the next few days, and will begin to affect portions of the southeastern coast of the United States today and spread northward through the weekend. These swells are likely to cause life-threatening surf and rip current conditions.

Regardless of Joaquin's track, a prolonged period of elevated water levels and large waves will affect the mid-Atlantic region, causing significant beach and dune erosion with moderate coastal flooding likely. Please consult products from your local weather office.

The shocking disorder that made this woman blind herself with drain cleaner

Nine years ago, Jewel Shuping was blinded after drain cleaner was poured into her eyes. But, it wasn’t an accident.

Because Jewel, now 30, from North Carolina, suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder 

(BIID), a rare condition sometimes also referred to as amputee identity disorder, where people actually want to be disabled.

BIID more commonly manifests itself in a desire to amputate one or more healthy limbs, with sufferers saying they feel as though their limbs don’t belong to them.

Jewel’s desire to be blind was so strong she chose to take drastic action – helped by a sympathetic psychologist who poured the drain cleaner into her eyes.

It was the fulfillment of a life-long dream. As a child, she would pretend to be blind. She also wore dark glasses, used a white cane and became fluent in Braille by the age of 20.

‘

My mother would find me walking in the halls at night, when I was three or four years old,’ she explains. ‘By the time I was six I remember that thinking about being blind made me feel comfortable.’

She says: ‘I was ‘blind-simming’, which is pretending to be blind, but the idea kept coming up in my head and by the time I was 21 it was a non-stop alarm that was going off.’

She finally found a psychologist in Canada willing to help her. They first poured numbing drops into her eyes, followed by a couple of drops of drain cleaner. It was, Jewel admits ‘extremely painful’.

It is not known whether the psychologist has faced prosecution for helping her, but medics at a nearby hospital later attempted to save her sight, against her wishes.

To no avail – and to Jewel’s relief.

‘When I had my sight I didn’t feel right. I feel bad for people who’re blind and aren’t happy, but this is what I want,’ she says. ‘I really feel this is the way I was supposed to be born, that I should have been blind from birth.’

She argues: ‘This is not a choice, it’s a need based on a disorder of the brain.’