Wednesday, May 04, 2016

Indian maid who lost arm in Saudi Arabia becomes face of human trafficking...

When Kasthuri Munirathinam crawled out of the window of a second floor apartment in Riyadh, she was scared for her life.

The 55-year-old Indian housemaid from the southern state of Tamil Nadu was determined to escape from her employer's apartment where she worked as a domestic help.

She had been in Saudi Arabia for just two months, one of thousands of Indians heading to the Gulf states every year for work, but was terrified she would never see her family again.

"I thought they would kill me. I had to escape. I wasn't given enough to eat. They had my wages, my passport, my phone," Munirathinam told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview in her home in Vellore, 150 km (90 miles) from Chennai.

Munirathinam's desperate bid to escape last September hit international headlines after the housemaid said her employer had chopped her hand off in the affray, with the injury resulting in an operation to amputate her arm. Full story...

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It's not a crime if hungry poor steal food, Italy says...

Italy's highest court has acquitted a homeless man of stealing cheese and sausages, ruling that the theft of small amounts of food by the hungry poor is not a crime.

Ukranian Roman Ostriakov was caught in 2011 pocketing €4.07 ($4.72) worth of food in a supermarket in Genoa, after a customer spotted him and reported him to a member of staff, Italian media reported on Tuesday.

He was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay a €100 fine.

But the verdict was appealed on grounds that Ostriakov had been stopped before he had actually left the supermarket, and at a second appeal, Italy's court of cassation acquitted him.

It was clear the defendant "could not live without feeding himself, so acted out of necessity," the court said.

 The Corriere della Sera daily was quick to point out the irony of a legal system in Italy which saw the theft of goods worth fewer than €5 go through three costly rounds of justice - first instance, appeal and cassation - before being thrown out. Source...

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Leicester City: Thailand celebrates karma-driven triumph of ‘Siamese Foxes’

Pirom Methaveerapong went to sleep in Bangkok a confident man, but still set his alarm for 4am this morning so that he would be among the first in Thailand to hear the news.

Mr Pirom duly checked the result of the Tottenham-Chelsea game online, grinned broadly and went back to sleep for a few hours.

Leicester City’s remarkable underdog story has been embraced by football fans around the world.

But nowhere is this truer than in Thailand as this year’s heroics of the Thai-owned club have attracted new legions of followers in a county where loyalties have traditionally been with Liverpool and Manchester United.

“I had no doubts,” the businessman and football fan told The Telegraph after waking up for a second time. “I always expected that Leicester would be the champions because I believe in Phra Prommangkalachan.” Full story...

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Tuesday, May 03, 2016

Catholic priest in Australia who preyed on kids gets 18 years in jail...

A depraved former priest was able to carry out a decade-long reign of abuse against three girls and nine boys because he was protected by the Catholic Church, a Sydney judge says.

Loud applause broke out in court on Monday as John Joseph Farrell was led from the dock after being sentenced to 29 years behind bars for his crimes in Moree and Tamworth, in country NSW.

Victims and their loved ones packed into the courtroom at Sydney's Downing Centre District Court to watch the 62-year-old face sentencing for dozens of historical sexual crimes committed against children between 1979 and 1988.

The disgraced ex-priest sat with his eyes closed as Judge Peter Zahra told how he preyed on his victims, grooming the children, cultivating the trust of their parents and exploiting his powerful position as a priest.

"This allowed him to offend whenever and wherever he chose," Judge Zahra said. Full story...

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Monday, May 02, 2016

McDonald’s oldest employee is 92 and works in Singapore...

Most people would like to think they’ll be retired and off their feet by the time they reach their 90s. But not one Singaporean great-grandmother, who continues to labor over a hot fryer at one of the city state’s McDonald’s outlets — at the age of 92.

Goh Gwek Eng is the U.S.-based global burger chain’s oldest employee, the Straits Times newspaper reports. Having lived through the occupation of Singapore by Japanese forces in the 1940s, she now has 10 grandchildren and 20 great-grandchildren.

“Now that most of them are working or have their own families, the house is very quiet,” Goh said of her decision to keep working.

Goh has been working at the Bedok Interchange McDonald’s since 1998. And by all accounts, she is still lovin’ it. Her only complaint is that she gets a little hot standing near the oil where fries are made. “I plan to keep working for as long as I am healthy,” she told the Straits Times. Source + photo...

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Poet Walt Whitman health tips unearthed...

A trove of journalism by the great US poet Walt Whitman is being published online after lying in obscurity more than 150 years.

The 13-part series, Manly Health and Training, was written under a pseudonym for a New York newspaper in 1858.

It contains a multitude of tips on topics such as diet, sex, and hygiene.

The 47,000-word series, which survived only in a few libraries, was discovered in a digitised newspaper database by a graduate student last year.

It is now being published by the online journal The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review.

US commentators point out that some of Whitman's health advice sounds surprisingly modern. Full story...

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Leicester City's 'good karma': the Buddhist monks behind the Foxes' divine play...

From supremely gifted players on the pitch to the tactical vision of the manager and coaching staff and the passionate support of the fans, it takes many people to win English football’s ultimate prize.

But if Leicester City beat Manchester United at Old Trafford to complete their fairy tale story conquest of the Premiership there will be one other, rather more unusual group of supporters to thank – a collection of Buddhist monks from Thailand.

The blessings of the monks, from the Wat Traimit Withayaram Woraviharn (Golden Buddha) Temple, in Bangkok, are being credited with adding a divine element to the team’s play.

About 10 monks from the temple are flown to Britain for most home games by the club’s Thai owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha to bless the players before the kick-off, before spending the match deep in meditation in a specially designated room at Leicester City’s King Power stadium. Full story...

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The case against TTIP...

It was the sentence, we were assured, that torpedoed the referendum debate. Asked about Britain’s chances of securing a unilateral trade deal with the United States after leaving the EU, Barack Obama declared: “The UK is going to be in the back of the queue.”

The comment was catnip to the Remain side: the Brexiters have long conjured up the image of a newly divorced Britain taking her rightful place in the “Anglosphere” without the rest of the EU dragging us down. Instead, the US president was telling us, we would be left out in the cold.

But here’s a question for you: what’s so great about a US trade deal, anyway? For the past three years, the acronym “TTIP” has been floating across my vision. I’ve always had the sense it was a Bad Thing, without ever really understanding why. So what is the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and should we be against it?

My first port of call is my nerdiest friend. “The first rule of TTIP is, anyone who thinks TTIP matters is a douche,” he tells me briskly. It’s safe to say that’s very much not the opinion of Mark Dearn, a senior trade campaigner at War on Want, who gives me a quick run-through of why the agreement has attracted such widespread protests, including a march by 150,000 people in Berlin last October. Full story...

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Why some countries are poor and others rich...

Sunday, May 01, 2016

What are the facts behind 'sell by' dates?

Every year, people in the U.K. throw away more than 93 million gallons of milk, 733,000 tons of potatoes and 473,000 tons of bread, according to U.K. supermarket chain Sainsbury’s.1 Similarly, the average U.S. family of four wastes more than 2 million calories, which equates to $1,500 worth of food, every year.2

Wilted or spoiled produce, moldy bread, or leftovers that sit too long in the fridge are common contributors to such food waste, but so are potentially good foods that get thrown away solely based on their “sell by” dates.

Labels like “use by” and “sell by” on foods aren’t actually an indicator of food safety, as many believe them to be.

A report from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Harvard even found that more than 90 percent of Americans are throwing out food prematurely because of misunderstandings of what such dates actually mean.3

The researchers concluded that food dates generally lead to good food getting thrown away and may at the same time prompt you to eat a food that’s actually spoiled because of “undue faith in date labels.” Full story...

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Remember the Golan Heights?

During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Syrian forces had surprised Israel and were fast approaching the edge of the steep Golan Heights, captured by Israel during the 1967 war. It seemed as if Syrian armor and infantry would retake Golan, then pour down into Israeli Galilee.

Soviet recon satellites observed Israel moving its nuclear-armed, 500km-range Jericho missiles out of protective caves and onto their launch pads. At the same time, Israel was seen loading nuclear bombs on their US-supplied F-4 fighter-bombers at Tel Nof airbase.

Believing Israel was about to use nuclear weapons against Syria and Egypt, Moscow put huge pressure on both to rein in their advancing forces. Damascus, already in range of Israeli artillery on Golan, ordered its armored forces on Golan to halt, allowing Israel to mount powerful counter-attacks and retake the strategic heights.

In 1981, Israel formally annexed the 580 sq. mile portion of Golan that it occupied. This illegal annexation was condemned by the United Nations, the United States and Europe’ powers. But Israel held on to Golan and implanted 50,000 there in some 41 subsidized settlements. Full story...

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Why this Indian woman is using 'blackface' as solidarity...

A young woman in southern India is painting her body black to protest against what she calls the growing intolerance in the country against the low-caste Dalit community, writes Ashraf Padanna in Kerala.

One could run into 26-year-old Jaya PS anywhere in the southern port city of Cochin - be it in a supermarket, public transport or at an art exhibition.

Ms Jaya, who holds a masters degree in art, paints her body with collyrium, a type of dark eye shadow, whenever she steps out of her home studio.

"I decided to paint my body black while appearing in public after Rohith Vemula died," she told the BBC. More + photos...

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Ken Livingstone stands by Hitler comments...

Ken Livingstone has stood by his recent comments about Hitler, saying he was "not sorry for telling the truth".

He said he "regretted" the disruption his comments had caused but "I believe what I said is true".

The former London mayor was suspended from the Labour party on Thursday after saying Hitler had supported Zionism in the 1930s.

He made the comments while defending Labour MP Naz Shah over accusations she was anti-Semitic.

During an interview on LBC, Mr Livingstone repeatedly refused to apologise for making the comments, saying he was sorry if his views had upset Jewish people but he had simply made a "statement of fact" that had also been made by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Full story...

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Will we be fooled again? Stop the TPP!