... 2007 (today), the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women begins its 38th session, which will run through June 1 in New York. The 23-member Committee monitors compliance with the similarly named 1979 Convention, which has 185 states parties (the United States not among them). This session's agenda includes consideration of periodic reports from Mauritania, Mozambique, Niger, Pakistan, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Syria, and Vanuatu. ... 1847 (160 years ago today), a ship filled with Irish immigrants reached the quarantine station at Grosse-Île, Québec, Canada. The arrival marked the start of a sailing season in which more than 100,000 women, children, and men -- fleeing An Gorta Mór, the Great Hunger that decimated Ireland in the mid-1840s -- would arrive. Many were emaciated or ill, and thousands died at sea or on arrival. In less than a decade the famine would claim 1 million people (1/8 Ireland's population) dead; another 2 million emigrated.
