Hundreds of children are still being born with birth defects as a result of the world’s worst industrial disaster 23 years ago in the central Indian town of Bhopal, say campaigners. They are demanding that the Indian government provide immediate medical care and research the ”hidden” health impacts.
The exploitation of the private lives of celebrities, even dead ones, by the United States entertainment industry is again under the spotlight after a Los Angeles company released a 45-minute video purporting to show a sexual encounter with Jimi Hendrix.
Psychologists experienced in helping the victims of sexual abuse and prolonged isolation say that great care will need to be used in trying to bring some normality to the lives of Elisabeth Fritzl and her children. Elisabeth ”may have been compliant because she had her children to protect,” said Lesley Perman-Kerr, who is in private practice in St Albans, Hertfordshire.
South African stocks were weaker at noon on Wednesday with miners under pressure on retreating metal prices, but the session was quiet as most traders are still away on a long weekend break. At noon, the JSE’s broader all-share index was down 0,46%, with the gold and platinum mining indices down 1,47% and 1,65% respectively.
Zimbabwe’s tobacco selling season was called off for the second time in as many weeks on Wednesday after farmers withdrew their crop from the auctions citing low prices. The auction floors in Harare, ranked among the continent’s largest, were supposed to open at 7.30am, but after around 80 bales went under the hammer, farmers started ripping off the price tags in protest.
”Astonishing” and ”moving”, were the words used by psychiatrists on Tuesday to describe the scene as Elisabeth Fritzl and five of her children were reunited for the first time. The meeting followed years of separation after three of the children fathered through incest by Josef Fritzl were ”chosen” to live above ground.
Readers respond to our call to expose government bling. One writes that at a housing lekgotla held last year October at the Vista campus of the University of the Free State, participants were categorised as delegates, VIPs and VVIPs (very very important persons). While the VIPs had to share the parking lot with the plebeians, the double-vee-i-pees were allocated their own reserved parking area near the entrance of the conference centre.
After building its economy on semiconductors, ships and steel, South Korea is touting its surgeons’ skills in the beauty business to carve out a new niche. Helped by active government support, a boom in cosmetic surgery and a pool of experienced surgeons, the country wants to surpass Singapore, Thailand and India to become Asia’s new medical-tourism hub.
For a nation whose past 50 years or so have been shaped by its intimate love affair with the gun, it is truly amazing how one junior minister’s call to use guns for what they were created can cause such a fuss. There are still those whose intention is to preserve civilisation as we know it.
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