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/ 23 January 2008

Avoid the great payslip slip-up

Public- and private-sector employers are unwittingly facilitating identity theft by giving detailed personal and financial product information on payslips. An urgent review of payslip practice is necessary at large employers, says life assurer Liberty Life. The "great payslip slip-up" has worried anti-fraud experts for some time.

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/ 23 January 2008

Putin deploys new weapon — his judo master

He has been accused of bullying the neighbours, turning off Europe’s gas supply and — as one diplomat appalled by Russia’s treatment of the British Council put it — ”punching a librarian”. But now Putin, apparently fed up with Russia’s poor image abroad, has decided to do something about it: he has sent for his old judo master.

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/ 23 January 2008

Kenya strife keeps world’s oldest pupil from school

Kimani Nganga sat in a classroom for the first time when he was 84. Four years later, the world’s oldest person to date to start school is stranded in one of Kenya’s camps for the displaced, with no classes to go to. Surrounded by about 300 other people displaced by post-election violence Nganga lives in a large tent packed with mattresses, white metal basins teeming with ants and bundles of clothes.

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/ 23 January 2008

Reforming the DRC’s security forces

Five years after its war officially ended, insecurity and rights violations remain widespread in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Part of the problem lies with the army and police, which are undergoing major reform. Ernest Harsch examines the overhaul of both the police and army institutions.

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/ 23 January 2008

How to reduce maternal deaths in Africa

In 2002, the World Health Organisation warned that if nothing was done to improve access to maternal care in Africa, 2,5-million women would die before the end of the decade, and 49-million would be living with disabilities. While progress has been made since then, much remains to be done.

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/ 22 January 2008

Freedom at whose cost?

Some of my colleagues have thought me rather odd because I do not buy into absolute right to freedom of expression. Apparently there is some code that requires that those who make a living by making views and events known in the media should believe they occupy a special place in the hierarchy of rights.