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/ 14 January 2008

Sri Lankan man spends 50 years on remand

A Sri Lankan man has been released from prison after spending 50 years on remand, his lawyer said on Monday. DP James, now 80, was arrested in August 1958 for attacking and wounding his father with a knife. He was sent to jail, then moved to a psychiatric hospital, and then discharged back to jail — where he was forgotten about.

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/ 14 January 2008

Not ethnic cleansing, but class war

One of the most irritating things about the violence that recently rocked Kenya, as every middle- and upper-class Nairobian will tell you, was the fact that many maids, guards and nannies did not show up for work for a whole week. This was not because they were protesting against their inhuman working conditions or low salaries.

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/ 14 January 2008

Healthcare by numbers

Thousands of South African nurses are doing it for themselves when it comes to extending their skills and training — with the aid of locally developed distance learning courses. The Perinatal Education Programme was set up in 1989 by Professor Dave Woods, then at the University of Cape Town, and colleagues who wanted to improve the skills of healthcare workers caring for pregnant women.

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/ 14 January 2008

Life behind closed curtains

The scenes of boisterous revelry would not have been out of place in a crowded nightclub. In time to a throbbing beat, men and women of varying ages danced with a sensuality and abandon at odds with their surroundings. For this frivolity was taking place not on a dance floor, but in the passageway of an Iranian bus on a seemingly humdrum cultural excursion from Tehran to the western city of Hamedan.

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/ 14 January 2008

A ‘third force’ for peace in Kenya

Things are calmer in much of Kenya after a week of national hell. In Kibera, Kangemi, Dandora and all the burning slums, people are trying to get back to work and to find food. The roads in and out of Eldoret are open now — although it is there, and in other parts of the Rift Valley, where things remain volatile.