The plight of overworked Japanese employees was highlighted at the weekend when it emerged that a policeman had stabbed himself in the stomach and tried to make it look like an assault so that he could take time off work. Tomoyuki Mukaide had worked for two months without a break after an earthquake that struck Ishikawa prefecture in north-west Japan.
It was Moshe Dayan, the hero of Israel’s 1967 victory, who set the tone for what was to follow: "We are waiting for a telephone call," the one-eyed general said disdainfully as the frontline Arab states — Egypt, Jordan and Syria — reeled from their crushing defeat.
Across Southern Africa today men, women and children are being deceived. Struggling to survive in situations of destitution, they are promised jobs that seem to offer life-lines, but merely mark the beginning of their exploitation. These people are victims of one of the most chilling aspects of contemporary migration — human trafficking.
Soon Parliament will enact the long awaited Sexual Offences Bill. The legislation aims to afford complainants "the maximum and least traumatising protection that the law can provide". Unfortunately, it seems the Bill has lost track of its objectives. Apart from introducing provisions that enable rape victims to receive post-exposure prophylaxis, the Bill does not do much to reduce secondary victimisation of rape complainants.
As the Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) began three days of public hearings on health services, based on a nine-province review, one of its most shocking findings is that poor patients are effectively being excluded from healthcare if they can’t afford to pay for transport.
Khaled Mashal, the influential political leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas, insists attacks on Israel will continue, despite overwhelming Israeli retaliation that has cost scores of lives in the Gaza Strip in the past two weeks. Speaking in Damascus recently he asserted it was the right of the Palestinians to resist ”Zionist aggression” regardless of whether their actions were effective.
Nine years ago, Santonino Otok fled his home in the green fields of northern Uganda for a refugee camp, fearing attack by marauding rebels. Now he is back under his old mango tree. ”My parents are buried here and my parents’ parents, so it’s a blessing to return,” said a beaming Otok (66), surveying the birthplace he thought he might never see again.
They’re called many things — ”lazy”, ”unproductive”, ”lacking in ambition” — but late risers are starting to fight back. Long the butt of demeaning office jokes, sleepyheads are officially up in arms thanks to a Danish campaign to stop ”the tyranny of early risers”.
The Bush administration’s plans to bring detainees at Guantánamo Bay to trial were thrown into chaos on Monday when military judges threw out all charges against a detainee held there since he was 15 and dismissed charges against another detainee who chauffeured Osama bin Laden.
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