Minister's suggestion of a mandatory rest day for all domestic workers reignites a long-running debate over workers' rights
If you're a domestic maid in Singapore, there's no such thing as the weekend. Since employers are not legally bound to grant…
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--Man given synthetic trachea created by growing his own stem cells on artificial 'scaffold'
Surgeons have performed the first transplant operation using an organ wholly grown in a laboratory to give a man a new windpipe.
The 36-year-old is…
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--The most common metal found in the human body, calcium ions acts as intracellular signals that regulate a suite of important biological events
Would you be surprised to learn that the above image is elemental calcium? It sure doesn't look like the…
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--In the art world, people habitually conflate artistic conservatism with political conservatism, and - flipping the terms - artistic originality with political progressivism.
It's an understandable impulse, since no-one can deny that the fields of…
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--Daniel Craig has admitted that he was so shocked seeing violent scenes in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that it made his jaw drop.
The star - who recently stunned friends by secretly marrying Rachel Weisz - insists movie fans are in for a shock…
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--Britain's biggest-selling Sunday newspaper The News Of The World will close after a final edition this weekend, it was sensationally announced today.
Beleaguered News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks was in tears as she told staff that there was no choice in the wake of the phone hacking scandal which has engulfed the whole company.
But as she clung on despite huge pressure to quit, NoW staff reacted with fury.
There were reports of Ms Brooks being verbally attacked after she had made the announcement.
A source told Sky News there was 'mass anger in the newsroom, much of it directed at Rebekah Brooks'.
The revelation that the accuser at the center of the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case lied on her application for political asylum has been met with outrage, treated as proof that she is wholly without credibility, and even used as evidence that her accusation against the former head of the International Monetary Fund is just one part of an elaborate con. But this is far from the first time an asylum-seeker has made false claims. This isn’t even the first time a Guinean living in New York who was suddenly at the center of a case that involved prickly questions about race, power and violence—one that drew international media attention—was revealed to have lied on the same application.
Just over a dozen years ago, Amadou Diallo was shot at 41 times by police officers who mistook his wallet for a gun. A month later, his lawyer announced that he had lied on his application for political asylum, (he said he was from Mauritania, and that soldiers had murdered his parents and imprisoned him and his uncle, none which was true). But Diallo was already dead, and his word wasn’t in question. Instead, the revelation that he had lied was merely an addendum to an incident that had sent a shock through New York City. The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is different. And where a week ago it seemed ironclad, with the revelation that prosecutors doubted the credibility of the accuser, every aspect of her story—every lie she may have told—has been seized upon and analyzed, sometimes splashed across the pages of tabloids as evidence of some larger guilt.
That she lied on her claim for asylum has been covered with particular zeal. But experts and those familiar with such claims say that dishonesty is common when it comes to refugees—not because they’re intentionally trying to scam the system, but because the way such claims are processed and determined puts asylum-seekers in a position where they may feel they have no other choice.
“It’s hard for those of us who haven’t gone through those experiences to imagine what it would be like to continually relive something that caused you to flee your country,” says Emily Arnold-Fernandez, of Asylum Access. “When the issue of potentially falsifying testimony comes up, it tends to paint all asylum claimants in black and white. Either you tell the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, 100 percent of the time, or you’re not telling the truth and you have some sort of nefarious purpose. I don’t think that the reality is that stark.”
Those who, like Diallo and the woman at the center of the case against Strauss-Kahn, apply for asylum after entering the United States represent just one-tenth of 1 percent of the world’s refugees, and for them, according to Arnold-Fernandez, it’s been, on average, 17 years since they left their home countries. Legal representation is scant, and language is often an issue. But most notably: judges are given tremendous leeway. Approval rates swing wildly from courtroom to courtroom. One court officer can approve 90 percent of the cases that come before the bench, and just down the hall another might decline nine of the 10 that come before him. It’s a discretionary system—a “refugee roulette”—that has contributed to myth-making within immigrant communities, where the stories that “worked,” are passed around like lucky charms.
“When you’re going into a legal proceeding that hasn’t been explained to you and you don’t have adequate or ethical legal counsel and you know that your life or death may hinge on what you say, the temptation to use a story that worked for someone else is incredibly high,” Arnold-Fernandez says. “We have had clients whose real circumstances are more compelling than the stories they have been advised by others to use. But there’s such a lack of adequate legal advice…. And in the absence of accurate information and legal assistance, refugee communities may end up filling in the gaps with inaccurate information.” The temptation is so great, she says, that some asylum seekers have been exploited by people charging $100 a pop for stories that “work.”
“Within immigrant communities, asylum stories that ‘worked,’ are passed around like lucky charms.”
Regina Germain, a professor of asylum law at the University of Denver, and a former counsel to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, says that proving asylum claims has only gotten harder in the 20-plus years she’s been practicing. Where 50 pages of legal documentation once were required, it now takes 500, plus a medical expert if there are injuries, a country expert to attest to larger circumstances, and a psychiatric evaluation to support the applicant’s mental or emotional distress. Germain and others worry that in the wake of high-profile cases such as the DSK one, claims might get even more difficult to make. “I’m sure everybody is kind of cringing now,” she says. “Especially the person who granted [her asylum.]”
But despite speculation that the accuser could be deported as a result of her dishonesty, Germain thinks it could have just the opposite effect. She cites a 1997 case, where a man calling himself Edwin Mataru Bulus applied for political asylum based on the fact that his older brother was the leader of an attempted coup in his home country, Nigeria. His claim was denied, and Bulus made his case public, telling his story to newspapers across New York. When it turned out that he was not, in fact, a relative of the man behind the coup, representatives of the Nigerian government visited him in his detention center, and accused him of portraying Nigeria in a negative light. “They threatened him, which actually gave him a legitimate claim,” Germain says. “That could possibly happen in this case too. She is so high-profile now that she might be in danger if she goes back.”
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Jesse Ellison is a writer and editor for Newsweek, covering society, culture, business, and health. She also co-authors the Equality Myth and can be found on Tumblr.
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With Casey Anthony sentenced to four years in prison for lying to investigators, but acquitted of murdering her two-year-old daughter Caylee, has the outcome reinforced or undermined your faith in the jury trial system?
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--Its opponents have made it out to be a bogeyman, but secularism is the best guarantee of freedom of religion
The question: What is secularism?
Human rights treaties commit nations to freedom of religion or belief (including freedom of nonbelief and…
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Thailand's landslide election result underlines the enduring influence of fugitive, populist ex-leader Thaksin Shinawatra, but also confirms that the rural majority he awakened can never again be dismissed.
As his allies prepare to take power, with a strong mandate from Thailand's countryside and his sister Yingluck Shinawatra as prime minister-elect, they must tread lightly to restore equilibrium to a polarized nation and avoid any turbulent backlash from the military-backed elite in Bangkok that they have challenged.
"Winning an election in Thailand ... is very different from actually governing a divided society in which powerful interests are loath to give up their privileges," said anthropologist Charles Keyes of the University of Washington.
Much will depend on Thaksin himself, who was ousted in a 2006 coup and now lives in self-imposed exile to avoid a two-year prison term for conflict of interest. The billionaire businessman wants to return — and perhaps get back some of the ($1.53 billion) of his assets seized by the government.
Yingluck could ease the way, but the merest hint of rehabilitating the former leader sends his opponents into a rage.
Yingluck, 44, who jumped into politics this year from her brother's business empire, has so far ducked talking about specific plans for Thaksin's return, and has said her priority will be "how to lead the country to unity and reconciliation."
Thaksin's ouster, by a military that accused him of corruption and disrespect for the monarchy, sparked several years of sometimes-violent struggle between supporters seeking to restore his political legacy, and opponents contending he was a corrupt scoundrel intent on autocratic rule.
His loyalists won a 2007 election, but the Bangkok elite dismissed the outcome as bogus democracy, saying Thaksin's political machinery won by purchasing votes or duping uninformed farmers in the provinces.
But rural and poor Thais have continued to embrace Thaksin as the first leader to take their interests to heart, with programs such as subsidized housing and health care after he first won office in 2001.
The pro-Thaksin forces, this time under the banner of the Pheu Thai Party, came back even stronger for the second election held since he was deposed. In Sunday's vote, they won 265 seats in the 500-seat lower house of parliament, as compared with their nearest rival, the ruling Democrats, who won just 159.
"The lesson is that the persons who believe they make the best decisions for Thailand — the unelected at the head of the military and in other institutions that have long had a hand in political decision-making — are not with most voting Thais," said Kevin Hewison, a Thai scholar at the University of North Carolina.
"Even with a third-string team, the people have chosen (Pheu Thai) in what for Thailand is a landslide. That's an emphatic statement about the wrongs that have been done since the 2006 coup. It remains to be seen if the 'unelected bosses' are listening."
The military, which has launched 18 successful or attempted military coups since the 1930s, has insisted it will not intervene this time.
The huge electoral mandate handed to Pheu Thai would make that awkward — but not impossible — and the messy aftermath of the last coup already has left it discredited among many Thais.
Coups in Thailand used to be cut-and-dried affairs, with the losers skulking off to quiet retirement.
Thaksin, with a surfeit of pride and money, broke with tradition by challenging his ouster, even though he was demonized by his usurpers, banned from politics for five years along with key lieutenants and forced to fight from abroad.
Against those odds, his loyalists won the 2007 election, only to be unseated a year later by a combination of judicial rulings, military pressure and parliamentary maneuvering that brought the Democrats to power.
Thaksin's supporters blamed it all on a conspiracy by Thailand's traditional ruling elite — the military and royalists — determined not to lose privilege and power to an uppity businessman. Thaksin's foes castigated rural voters as uneducated fools for backing Thaksin and his allies.
The conflict turned into something akin to a class war.
Thaksin's supporters coalesced into the "Red Shirt" movement, staging protests last year in Bangkok that were crushed by the military and ended with more than 90 dead and 1,800 wounded.
Thaksin's supporters were outgunned in the streets, but prevailed by force of numbers in the polling booths last weekend.
The Shinawatra brand still shines in much of the country, burnished by campaign promises — A credit card for every farmer! A tablet computer for every schoolchild!
Some question whether a Pheu Thai government can afford to keep its promises. "In our view, there is downside risk on the government's fiscal position" if it implements many of its announced policies, the credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's said this week.
"In all likelihood, the immediate aftermath of the election is going to be more about Thaksin," said Hewison. "The group who designate themselves 'the people who hate Thaksin' are going to be hard at work.
"For Pheu Thai, much now depends on Thaksin being less aggressive and headstrong than he has been in the past. Has he learned to be more patient?"
Leaks to press about woman's background 'came from DA's office' but show risk of prosecuting former IMF boss
Relations between the maid in the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case and the New York district attorney's office appear to have irreparably broken…
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--Denial that former president has died unlikely to quell online and overseas speculation
Reports of the death of the former president Jiang Zemin have been greatly exaggerated, the Chinese state media has insisted, amid a frenzy of speculation online…
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--The Venezuelan president's use of religious imagery in his post-operative speech is telling
It was a less ebullient Hugo Chávez than usual who addressed his compatriots from Havana, where he was recovering from a second major operation to remove a…
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A Namibian web-footed gecko licks dew off his eyes that has accumulated when mist forms over the desert in the early morning
This Gecko licks his eye off to have a drink :)
When we say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we may be wrong by an inch or so.
According to scientists, the secret of what we admire in fact lies in the medial orbito-frontal cortex – an area of the brain just behind the eyes.
University College London researchers say it is the part of the brain that lights up when we encounter something beautiful, whatever our taste.
The medial orbito complex is just behind our eyes and lights up whenever we encounter something beautiful - no matter what our tastes
Brain expert Semir Zeki asked 21 young men and women to rate the beauty of a selection of paintings and pieces of music. Their brains were scanned as they viewed and listened to them.
The study, published in the journal PLoS One, revealed the medial orbito-frontal cortex was more active when the subjects were looking at or listening to something they really liked.
Facebook today announced a deal with Skype that will add live video chat to the social-networking site - marking the latest step-up in the battle against Google.
Founder of the social networking site, Mark Zuckerberg said it was an 'awesome' development for Skype as his company takes on the might of the internet search engine.
Google recently launched its Google+ service which also has a feature that allows video calls and the two companies are now locked in a head-to-head technological race.
A glass of milk can contain a cocktail of up to 20 painkillers, antibiotics and growth hormones, scientists have shown.
Using a highly sensitive test, they found a host of chemicals used to treat illnesses in animals and people in samples of cow, goat and human breast milk.
The doses of drugs were far too small to have an effect on anyone drinking them, but the results highlight how man-made chemicals are now found throughout the food chain.
the highest quantities of medicines were found in cow’s milk.
Researchers believe some of the drugs and growth promoters were given to the cattle, or got into milk through cattle feed or contamination on the farm.
The Spanish-Moroccan team analysed 20 samples of cow’s milk bought in Spain and Morocco, along with samples of goat and breast milk.
Their breakdown, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, revealed that cow’s milk contained traces of anti-inflammatory drugs niflumic acid, mefenamic acid and ketoprofen – commonly used as painkillers in animals and people.
t also contained the hormone 17-beta-estradiol, a form of the sex hormone oestrogen. The hormone was detected at three millionths of a gram in every kilogram of milk, while the highest dose of niflumic acid was less than one millionth of a gram per kilogram of milk.However, the scientists, led by Dr Evaristo Ballesteros, from the University of Jaen in Spain, say their technique could be used to check the safety of other types of food.
Dr Ballesteros said: ‘We believe the new methodology will help to provide a more effective way of determining the presence of these kinds of contaminants in milk or other products.
‘Food quality control laboratories could use this new tool to detect these drugs before they enter the food chain. This would raise consumers’ awareness and give them the knowledge that food is… harmless, pure, genuine, beneficial to health and free of toxic residues,’ he added.
Net result: Compounds manufactured and used by humans are showing up in all parts of the food chain
The tests also found niflumic acid in goat’s milk, while breast milk contained traces of painkillers ibuprofen and naproxen, along with the antibiotic triclosan and some hormones.
The researchers say their new 30-minute test is the most sensitive of its kind. If the findings are true for Spanish and Moroccan milk, they could equally be true for milk produced in Britain and northern Europe.
Last year Portsmouth University scientists found that fish were being contaminated with the anti-depressant Prozac.
The drug enters rivers from the sewer system and tinkers with the brain chemistry of fish, the researchers claimed.
Previous studies have shown that caffeine is released into our waterways after surviving the sewage treatment process.
The hormones from the contraceptive pill and HRT have been blamed for feminising fish, leading to male fish producing eggs.
The effects of antibiotics, blood pressure drugs and cholesterol-lowering drugs on wildlife are also being studied around the world.
China's local government debt burden may be 3.5 trillion yuan ($540 billion) larger than auditors estimated, putting banks on the hook for deeper losses that could threaten their credit ratings, Moody's said on Tuesday.
Addressing the estimate by…
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--Perhaps no one was more shocked that Florida mother Casey Anthony was found not guilty of murdering her 2-year-old daughter than Nancy Grace.
Narrating the denouement of 33-day trial, Grace said that she was more stunned by the outcome of the case…
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