III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
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CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Doctors try new word: Sorry. Admitting mistakes not just right thing to do, medical community finds it
may prevent malpractice suits by Judith Graham
August 19, 2007
The doctor walked into the hospital room with a discomforting mission. He was there to admit a medical mistake and
apologize to his patient, a woman with breast cancer.
The staff had given her the same injection twice by accident, causing her white cell count to soar, said Dr. Divyesh
Mehta, chief of oncology at the University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. He recommended she stay in the
hospital an extra day or two.
"This is our responsibility, and we are very sorry for it," Mehta said, recalling the conversation.
Not long ago, this encounter would have been almost unthinkable. Medical foul-ups were rarely discussed among
physicians and almost never acknowledged to patients. Doctors were too proud, too afraid of malpractice lawsuits,
too worried about losing face.
But the culture of secrecy in medicine is beginning to change, as leading patient safety organizations call for fuller
disclosure of medical errors and some trend-setting hospitals decide an "honesty is best" policy will improve care.
Advocates say acknowledging medical errors can advance healing by defusing patients' anger and easing physicians'
guilt, especially when accompanied by an apology. Some also contend the practice can cut back on malpractice
lawsuits and payouts, though with the movement in its infancy it's too soon to know for sure.
Supporters include influential industry groups such as the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare
Organizations and the National Quality Forum, which now recommend all hospitals disclose serious "unanticipated
outcomes" in medical care -- bad things that shouldn't have happened.
The Veterans Administration and hospitals affiliated with Harvard Medical School have gone further, urging staff to
tell patients about errors, apologize and explain how they plan to prevent similar mistakes.
Chicago has become something of a center for the emerging "fess up" movement. The UIC Medical Center is
nationally known for its comprehensive error disclosure program, and the university's medical school has created a
curriculum to train future doctors how to recognize and deal with mistakes.
"The goal is to maintain patients' trust," said Dr. Tim MacDonald, UIC's associate chief medical officer for patient
safety.
But significant barriers to saying "I'm sorry" remain. Many hospitals say they support disclosing errors but haven't
instituted comprehensive policies, O'Leary said.
And although virtually all doctors say they want to be honest, fewer than half actually reveal serious errors in
practice, according to an August 2006 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "These are folks who were No. 1 in
kindergarten," said MacDonald. "They're not used to admitting they did something wrong."
When doctors operate as a team it may be especially difficult for one to step forward.
Dr. David Mayer, an anesthesiologist and assistant dean for curriculum at UIC's medical school, tells of an
experience in the mid-1980s at a Chicago teaching hospital. A young man had come in for a hernia repair, and a
surgical resident made the initial incision on the wrong side. The error was discovered quickly and corrected.
When Mayer visited the patient later, the man mentioned the doctors had told him they saw something suspicious on
that side, went in to check and found nothing wrong. "I'm lucky," Mayer recalls the patient saying.
Mayer was surprised but just nodded his head. "No one had ever talked to me about what to do when things don't go
as planned," he said.
One of the biggest obstacles to disclosure is the fear of lawsuits. More than 30 states, including Illinois, have passed
"apology laws" that prevent expressions of regret from being used against physicians in court. But most lawyers are
skeptical and insurance companies typically still insist that doctors break off all communication with patients or
families after medical snafus occur.
The fear, of course, is that any admission of wrongdoing could make it easier for patients to advance lawsuits.
The reverse argument is that patients will be less inclined to sue if doctors are forthright and hospitals offer
reasonable compensation for injuries. In fact, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.)
have proposed national legislation that promotes disclosure of errors as a way of easing the malpractice crisis.
Some anecdotal evidence supports that view. Since 2001, when the University of Michigan Health System started
acknowledging medical mistakes and offering prompt settlements to injured patients, the number of pending
malpractice claims has decreased by almost two-thirds, according to chief risk officer Richard Boothman.
But in a study published earlier this year, Harvard University researchers predicted that claims will proliferate as
more patients become aware of errors. "Disclosure is the right thing to do," the researchers wrote in the journal
Health Affairs, but its spread is "likely to amplify malpractice litigation."
Dr. Steven Kraman, who helped launch one of the first disclosure programs at the VA Medical Center in Lexington,
Ky., is among those who believe the value of institutions learning from their mistakes outweighs the potential costs.
Kraman recalls the case of a middle-aged woman whose family was unaware that she had died from a medication
error. "Our team asked, 'Would we want to know the truth if this was our mother?' and the answer was obvious," he
said.
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
The physician advised the daughters to bring an attorney to a meeting. "Your mother was quite sick; in trying to help
her we gave her far too much medication," Kraman recalls telling them. "No one did this intentionally, but we've
caused you a loss and we feel we owe you an explanation and compensation."
As the attorney's jaw dropped, the daughters expressed gratitude at being told the truth. A financial settlement was
negotiated, and the hospital made several changes to prevent similar errors.
UIC is committed to teaching the next generation of physicians how to deal with these situations; its medical school
last fall became the first in the U.S. to incorporate patient safety instruction in all four years of training. The
curriculum culminates in a two-week course on medical errors.
As part of the training, students watch videos of an instructor interacting with an actor playing a distraught woman
whose sister has died of cancer that went undiagnosed for months. In one video, the instructor responds coldly,
refusing to answer questions directly. In another, the instructor volunteers information and expresses empathy.
Students go through similar exercises in person.
At UIC's medical center, a wide-ranging disclosure program began about a year ago and is now considered a national
model by many experts.
When a patient suffers harm, a team of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and social workers is expected to investigate
within 48 hours. If the team finds an error, doctors are to meet with the patient, explain what happened and apologize.
Offering financial assistance is part of the bargain. "The best way to approach this is to own up to the fact that an
incident happened and ask what can we do to fix it and make the situation better," said John DeNardo, UIC's chief
executive officer.
In the first year, the hospital acknowledged 40 errors, and only one resulted in a malpractice claim, officials report.
One of those patients was Pamela Cephas, who had a mastectomy in October after cancer recurred in her left breast.
At UIC earlier this year, Cephas was supposed to have an injection of neulasta, a medication designed to keep her
white blood cell count up, after beginning a new round of chemotherapy with tamoxifen.
Things went wrong when Cephas received the injection at UIC's oncology clinic, then went to the hospital because of
severe pain chemotherapy was causing in her hands and feet. Cephas' medical chart showed no record of the neulasta,
and without discussing the matter with Cephas a resident ordered another shot.
Mehta, the head of oncology, learned of the double injection the next day, when someone from the hospital contacted
the clinic. Before talking to Cephas, "I checked all the facts and I put myself in the shoes of the patient and asked
myself what her concerns might be, so I could prepare truthful answers," he said.
Cephas' white blood cell count had soared, but the implications were unclear. While blood-cancer patients with high
white-cell counts have experienced ruptured spleens, Mehta could find no research applicable to breast cancer.
Cephas, 49, a patient of Mehta's for seven months, recalls being shocked. Then she wanted to know more. "I was like,
how could you make a mistake like that? And am I going to be all right?"
But she wasn't angry, Cephas said. "He admitted it, and you know that isn't easy," she said. "I'm glad he did it."
So is Mehta, who credits UIC for providing leadership and support to doctors who want to do the right thing. "When
something like this happens, you feel guilty, you feel angry, you feel terrible. So it's a tremendous relief to be able to
share the truth," he said. "I don't want a deception to come between me and my patient."
Story so poignant med classes weep
When Helen Haskell tells the story of her 15-year-old son to medical students at the University of Illinois Chicago
campus, they weep.
Her son, Lewis Blackman, bled to death, in excruciating pain, of a perforated ulcer that doctors at a South Carolina
hospital failed to diagnose. The ulcer is a known complication of Toradol, a painkilling medication they were
administering after an elective surgery.
Haskell repeatedly called for help, but hospital staff told her Lewis was constipated and had gas pains because of the
painkillers he was taking. The residents -- physicians in training -- who saw the boy didn't order a routine blood test
that could have flagged the bleeding. Haskell's urgent requests to have a senior physician examine her son were
ignored.
When hospital staff couldn't get a blood pressure reading, they assumed the monitor was malfunctioning and spent
more than two hours repeating the test.
After Lewis' death from cardiac arrest, his physician -- who was not the senior doctor on call that weekend -- told
Haskell and her husband "this is our fault" and cried when he heard what had happened.
Their reaction? "We felt better. He was an honest man," said Haskell.
Since her son's death, Haskell has founded Mothers Against Medical Error and the Medical University of South
Carolina has dedicated a chair in patient safety to her son.
"Helen inspires me and reminds me of what can happen when we don't listen to the alarms raised by patients and their
families," said Dr. John Shaefer, the anesthesiologist who currently holds that post.
Without disclosure of medical errors, "there's no learning from mistakes in institutions and the same things happen
over and over again," Haskell said.
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Agata Adamska
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
2
THE WASHINGTON POST
Board at the Beach . It may not be Waikiki, but you can learn to surf in Rehoboth, too. by Cindy Loose
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
You've seen them riding seaward on the waves, paddling hard over the breaker line. At just the right moment
they stand, sun glinting off their hair as their beautifully toned and bronzed bodies glide along the cresting mass
of water, the power of the ocean beneath their feet. Who hasn't wondered: Could I trade in my little boogie
board and become a surfer?
Peter Zabowski says you can. Zabowski, founder of Rehoboth Beach's Boarding School, teaches surfing in the
Delaware beach town from June through mid-October. Then he takes his skills to Puerto Rico for the winter,
teaching and, for fun, riding 12- to 20-foot swells.
People are always surprised to hear about a surfing school on the East Coast. But actually, the 3- to 6-foot
swells in Rehoboth and up and down the coast are "ideal for teaching," says Zabowski, 45. "All you need to
learn the basics is a knee-high wave."
Granted, waves in California, Hawaii and Polynesia, where surfing was born, are bigger and more consistent,
says Zabowski. East Coast surfers tend to have a harder time becoming champions because for every decent
wave they catch, a West Coast surfer will have caught three or four. To surf the East Coast, Zabowski says, you
have to be patient, waiting out a good set of waves on a normal day and living for the times when storms kick
up massive swells. And it is hurricane season now.
But trust me, if you're a beginner, you don't want really big waves, and you don't want them coming at you
constantly.
How long does it take to learn? It varies tremendously, Zabowski says, but he adds that he has never failed to
get a student onto his or her feet at least once during an initial two-hour lesson. His students range in age from 8
to mid-fifties, which unfortunately puts me toward the upper limit of those who've decided to try the sport. I'm
gratified to hear that for some reason, females initially catch on quicker than males.
"Most sports are tilted in favor of the guys," says Zabowski. "But if you bring a brother and a sister who are
equally motivated, I guarantee you the girl will get on her feet first. The boys get really mad."
Lessons start on the beach, where you put on a wetsuit provided by Zabowski and learn simple but important
things, such as which leg gets attached to the strap that keeps the surfboard from catapulting out of your reach.
Zabowski, who is from Dover, Del., says he began teaching himself to surf when he was 15 and wasted a lot of
time being pulled off the board because he had the strap on the wrong leg.
From the safety of the sand we lie on our boards and practice responding to the commands "paddle hard,"
"ready," "pop up." My pop up is clearly going to be a problem. From a completely prone position you must leap
to your feet, without first going onto your knees. Muscles in numerous parts of the body are very useful for this
exercise, while flab merely gets in the way of the pop-up.
The tide and wave conditions at the end of the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk haven't satisfied Zabowski on this
day, so he has taken my daughter and me a couple of miles away to the wide, empty ocean beaches of the oddly
named Gordon's Pond Wildlife Area, which is within Cape Henlopen State Park. I'm happy we've deserted the
crowded boardwalk area, where hordes of sunburned tourists would likely be rushing from beneath their
umbrellas to watch. In fact, the only spectators of my travails are a family of Brits who've just completed their
lesson for the day. The family, including two children, discovered the school the first year it opened, four
summers ago, and have returned every year since on their annual visit to family in Washington.
Even so, I would rather there be no witnesses and am glad the family gets bored seeing the gawky popping of a
middle-aged body squeezed into what is basically a black girdle stretching neck to toe.
I'd suggest you practice popping up in the privacy of your own home for a few days before testing that ability in
public and on the open sea, when the little bit of fiberglass floor beneath your feet is moving every which way.
I enjoy the paddling out part, bobbing over the waves. Really, my first time out I'd just be happy to paddle and
bob. But Zabowski is waiting, chest-deep in water. The ratio of students to teacher is 2-to-1, and it's my turn.
(I've let my 11-year-old go first. Since she has survived, I'm ready.) The three challenges of surfing are picking
the right wave, perfectly timing the moment to take it and popping up. For beginners, Zabowski takes care of
the first two. While you lie on the board and face the beach, he holds the end of the board until the right wave
comes. When it does, he shouts "paddle hard." By the time you've taken about two strokes he shouts "ready," at
which point you tense and grab the sides of the board. Then comes the "pop up" command.
The first few times I mean to pop. In my mind I'm popping, but my body remains stiff and prone. After a few
more tries, I make it to my knees. I enjoy the knee ride so immensely I'd be satisfied with that.
But Zabowski clearly believes I can do this, and as all wonderful teachers do, he makes me believe it. Endlessly
patient, he figures out that while I'm properly gripping the sides of the board during the ready phase, I fail to let
go when it's time to pop. You can test this at home: It's hard to stand if you keep your hands nailed to the floor.
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Agata Adamska
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
He adjusts the technique so that on the split-second ready phase, I place my hands flat on the top of the board,
instead of gripping its sides.
This is not a magic solution, but a big help. I try again and again, and soon understand why surfers have such
great bodies. Battling the waves with an eight-foot board is no easy task, to say nothing of the constant popping
and falling.
"People think a two-hour lesson is no time at all, until they get out here," says Zabowski. "After two hours,
though, they're exhausted."
Working out in a gym doesn't prepare you for surfing, he says. Swimming helps, but doesn't work all the
muscles you use to surf. "You just have to get out here and do it."
If students have never surfed, he suggests that they sign up for just one two-hour lesson. Once they've tried it
and decided they like it, he advises signing up for three more. By the end of four or five lessons, most students
are consistently getting on their feet and riding the waves, and are ready to begin the lifelong practice of judging
and timing the waves for themselves.
In the midst of my two-hour lesson, I actually manage to get to my feet -- but if you'd been watching and had
blinked, you'd have missed it. Zabowski remains patient as I try, try again. Each time, I'm standing for longer
milliseconds. So long that a camera with a fast lens could catch my triumph for posterity.
Surfing, I find, takes much more physical endurance than I had expected: Great surfers make it look so
effortless. The good news is that it takes less athletic ability than I'd thought; not that it's easy by any means, but
it's within the realm of possibility for just about anyone.
Of course it will take longer than a day to get the surfer body. But a mere two hours introduced me to the thrill,
and the satisfying knowledge that with time enough, I, too, could be a surfer.
3
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
Government takes over Islamic school
by Stuart Dye
29.06.05
The country's only co-educational Islamic school has been put under direct Government control amid concerns
that its cultural environment is clashing with its education obligations.
Al-Madinah School in Mangere, Manukau City, has been under fire for several years for prioritising religion at
the expense of the curriculum and segregating staff and students according to gender.
Successive Education Review Office reports have drawn attention to problems of "governance and segregation",
and a limited statutory manager was installed in 2002.
But the Ministry of Education has now drafted in Dennis Finn - the man who took over at troubled Cambridge
High School last year - to haul the 360-student school into line.
Melissa O'Carroll, the acting northern region manager for schools, said Mr Finn's appointment as commissioner
was "to support the school and enable it to strengthen educational outcomes for all its students".
The school has made concessions to the review office. It reversed a 2003 decision to cease education for girls
beyond Year 8 and last year extended the length of the school day to accommodate prayer and lessons.
But a new ERO report has sparked the overhaul, with Education Minister Trevor Mallard dissolving the board
of trustees after seeing the report.
Some parents are angry the report has not been made public. Syed Iqbl Nabi, who has a 6-year-old son at AlMadinah, said either the Government or the school should have told everyone what was happening.
He said it was a good school which offered a good education combined with appropriate discipline.
However, other Muslim parents had concerns about the school.
Dr Saad Al-Harran took his son out of Al-Madinah after just two weeks. He said the school had a "narrow
interpretation" of the Islamic faith. Communication and management were very poor.
Another father said the problems were caused by divided cultures within the Islamic faith. There was distinct
and growing animosity between "normal" Muslims and Wahabis (a puritanical sect) within the school, he said.
Mr Finn said the special character of the school had to be considered, but it was integrated into the New Zealand
system "and needs to meet the education requirements".
Principal Asin Ali remains at the Year one to 13 school, where 45 per cent of students are Fijian Indians, 16 per
cent Somali and 14 per cent Indian.
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
4
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
Art-house Clooney
29.06.05
Art-house Clooney Hollywood has feted George Clooney with a career retrospective, shifting the spotlight from
his swaggering star persona to his longtime support of emerging film-makers and art house cinema.
Among those cheering him at the Los Angeles Film Festival were Ocean's Eleven co-star Don Cheadle, Oscar
nominees Virginia Madsen and Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Emmy winner Allison Janney.
While Clooney is best known for his work on TV's ER and in such big-budget films as The Perfect Storm, the
gathering honoured the 44-year-old actor's role in the world of independent cinema. He was a producer of the
Oscar-nominated Far From Heaven and directed Confessions of a Dangerous Mind as well as the coming
McCarthy-era drama Goodnight, and Good Luck.
Clooney said his career had always been a battle between art and commerce. "You try to do a little bit to make it
that you can afford to do the things you are most passionate about," he said. "It's a trade-off."
5
THE SUNDAY MORNING HERALD
Becks enjoys his first bite of the Big Apple. Sign of the times: LA Galaxy's star signing David Beckham is
mobbed by fans at a youth soccer clinic in Harlem, New York.
by Matthew Hall
August 19, 2007
DAVID Beckham's travelling circus has arrived in New York and the early signs are his crusade to interest
Americans in soccer might ultimately be successful.
Beckham, in New York for Los Angeles Galaxy's game today against New York Red Bulls, revealed his move
to the United States was not all about sport.
"I didn't come to America just to be a soccer player," Beckham said. "I came to try and take this sport to a
different level in this country.
"I want to achieve something that's definitely possible. I'm not silly enough to sit here and say soccer will be
bigger than baseball, basketball, American football, and ice hockey but, so far, we've succeeded because the
attention we've had on the Galaxy, and on the MLS, has been great."
Certainly, the photographers crowding the Galaxy team's hotel in midtown Manhattan were more used to
snapping movie stars. After an opportunity with Beckham, several were heading across town to grab pictures of
Madonna, who was filming a video clip nearby.
"The attention has surprised me to a certain extent," Beckham said. "But I'm not complaining about it. It's part
of my life and part of my family's life and it's something I have to deal with, hopefully in the right manner. I
was brought up to be polite."
The United States, especially New York, has fallen in love with soccer before Beckham. In the 1970s, New
York Cosmos signed Pele and German legend Franz Beckenbauer. But the league crashed and burned and the
city, and the country, moved on. Beckham, and Major League Soccer, are not planning for a repeat.
"I hope this attention will have staying power," Beckham said.
"The attention we've got is not just from the sports world and it's not a bad thing to have the celebrity side of
things. It gives it a bit of glamour.
"But it needs to carry on. It can't be just one game and forget about it. But the games that we have played have
been [in front of] sellout crowds and that hasn't happened in a number of years in the MLS."
The Galaxy team left their charter jet in Los Angeles and took a commercial flight to New York on Thursday.
On Friday, Beckham drove uptown to a park on 137th Street in Harlem for an MLS-sponsored coaching clinic
with young players from Harlem FC, a local youth team.
Beckham took part in games, and posed for photos with kids and their mothers until the script was interrupted
by a group of locals that had gathered on the edge of the park, locked out of their usual hangout by Beckham's
arrival.
"Yo, David!" yelled a ringleader, leaning over a metal barrier.
"They shut down the park for you - show some respect for the 'hood."
In a flash of spontaneity, Beckham pushed past his MLS minders and approached the group to be greeted by the
gang with cheers and mock jeers.
"Baseball - it's No.1!" yelled one. "David - we're Dominican! It's all about baseball!"
Even for David Beckham, winning over the US won't be easy.
Source: The Sun-Herald
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Agata Adamska
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
6
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
Before and After: Balancing a Living Room
August 2007
When furniture is clustered to one side of a room, the whole space seems to lean. Here's how to fix the problem.
The Challenge: To remedy the listing-ship feeling that results from clustering a chunky chair, ottoman, and sofa
in one corner of the room. Placed parallel to the walls, the seating doesn't relate well to the focal point of the
room, an entertainment center that's on an adjacent wall. The only piece of artwork hangs too high to connect to
the furniture and seems small in proportion to the wall.
The Solution: Place the sofa on the diagonal across the corner and replace the heavy chair and ottoman with
lighter-weight canvas chairs. This arrangement brings the room into balance.
The Specifics:
Angle the rug and coffee table, paralleling the sofa. This creates a room-within-a-room and sets up a dynamic,
active feeling. To balance that energy, arrange the furniture within the newly defined space symmetrically,
placing like objects on opposite sides of an imaginary centerline. The butterfly chairs balance each other on each
end of the coffee table, and the torchere balances the plant on a tall stand in front of the window.
Go for impact with the artwork by choosing a larger framed print; hang it lower, so it connects visually to the
sofa. Use art and accessories to lead the eye around the room, following a path of peaks and valleys. To create
an interesting path, arrange items in overlapping triangles. The arrangement behind the sofa, for example, leads
the eye from the high point of the lamp down to the silver platter and a pair of framed photos, defining a right
triangle; the silver platter and photos make a skinny base for another triangle that includes the pair of stacked
framed prints on the wall.
Use contrasts for interest. Verticals, such as the torchere, table lamp, and plant stand, balance the horizontals of
the coffee table and sofa. Round shapes -- such as the silver platter, the vase of bear grass, and the smiling
curves of the butterfly chairs -- echo the rolled arms of the sofa and add a softening counterpoint to the squares
and rectangles of furniture and framed pieces.
Rely on the power of color to keep things in balance. The airy construction of the butterfly chairs makes them
visual lightweights, but the bold, solid-color fabric allows them to stand up to the sofa's mass.
Suggest depth by placing a tall plant stand beyond the sofa and in front of the windows. This draws the eye
through the seating area toward the window. The raised plant also balances the tall torchere.
7
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
Live and let live is out for actress' angry neighbours
by Arifa Akbar
5:00AM Saturday August 18, 2007
Jane Seymour in the 2004 movie ‘Wedding Crashers’. Neighbours feel she has crashed their rural idyll.
Jane Seymour in the 2004 movie Wedding Crashers. Neighbours feel she has crashed their rural idyll.
She is a Hollywood icon best remembered for her seductive role as Solitaire in the Bond film Live and Let Die.
But now actress Jane Seymour has been branded a "neighbour from hell" by people living near her country mansion.
Seymour, 56, who famously starred in the 1973 Bond film as a fortune-telling virgin, has upset residents by being
granted a 24-hour alcohol and entertainment licence at her home, St Catherine's Court, near Bath.
Seymour originally bought the mansion in 1984. She has since spent millions renovating it with her producer
husband, James Keach. They reportedly live there for three months a year and rent out the property for private
functions.
Neighbours claim that the grade-one historic place is unsuitable for hosting large corporate gatherings and accuse
revellers of disturbing their tranquillity.
Concerns over delivery vans and lorries clogging a single track-lane near the mansion since the licence was granted
in June and worries over the safety and legality of Seymour's business have been voiced.
Such is the level of local chagrin that homeowners in St Catherine's Valley, a hamlet in the heart of the Cotswolds,
have announced a plan to march on her home tomorrow. They are also set to hand over a petition of hundreds of
signatures - opposing the licence and highlighting theresentment her move has generated.
The population of St Catherine's is around 50 but 200 people - many from neighbouring communities - signed an
original petition, which was presented to Bath and North East Somerset Council.
Jane Jones, 53, who lives near Seymour's mansion, said people were fed up with being ignored by the actress.
"If Jane had spoken to people and explained what her intentions were, how many events she was planning to host,
then maybe we could have lived with that. But she just ignores our letters and doesn't answer the door. People are
very angry. They are the absent neighbours from hell."
Seymour is already facing a fight to hold on to the late licence after the local parish council appealed to have the
decision overturned by a court. A full hearing is expected to take place at Bath Magistrates' Court in November.
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8
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
'Phone-in' heart treatment hailed
by Sarah Price
August 19, 2007
MOBILE-PHONE technology being used to help treat heart-attack victims and dramatically cut death rates at
two Sydney hospitals, is receiving international recognition.
The program allows information about a patient's condition to be instantly transmitted from an ambulance on
the way to Royal North Shore and Westmead hospitals, giving doctors a head start on treatment.
Research on the program has been published in the European Heart Journal. Greg Nelson, the head of the
Interventional Cardiology Group at RNS, said it saved an average of 100minutes, which is critical in reducing
the size of the heart attack and the likelihood of death.
Using the method, cardiac mortality rates at RNS dropped from 8per cent to 2per cent. As part of the emergency
triage acute myocardial infarction (ETAMI) program, the results of an electro-cardiogram on patients with a
suspected heart attack are transmitted by ambulance officers at the scene, using the same technology as making
a mobile-phone call, to the emergency department where it is examined by doctors. If it shows the patient is
having a heart attack, a surgical team is assembled ready for the patient's arrival.
"It's getting that artery opened sooner that's going to make a big difference," Dr Nelson said.
"From symptom onset to opening the artery using the old strategy the average time is 246 minutes.
"What we've shown with this method of diagnosis is that time is reduced, on average, to 150 minutes.
"We have confirmed that the level of muscle damage is less in people treated this way than people treated in the
conventional way."
Diagnosis in a heartbeat
GRAHAME Hawkins had just returned home after finishing the Balmoral Swim for the Children's Cancer
Institute in March last year when he began to feel unwell. He called an ambulance.
Ambulance officers suspected he was having a heart attack, attached him to an ECG and that information was
transmitted to the emergency department at Royal North Shore Hospital.
By the time he arrived at hospital, doctors knew he was having a heart attack and were ready to treat him.
"They were all prepared," Mr Hawkins said. "Everyone was waiting, everyone knew what to do. Within half an
hour I was cured."
He said follow-up treatment found that he had sustained no other damage.
Source: The Sun-Herald
9
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Last resort for Wills and Kate
August 19, 2007
PRINCE William and Kate Middleton are holidaying at an Indian Ocean resort in a bid to rekindle their
relationship, it has been reported.
London's Daily Mail said the couple were spending a week in an opulent yet discreet resort, which it chose not
to name for security reasons.
Friends of the Prince and Ms Middleton, both 25, said the holiday was a long-awaited chance for them to be
alone and talk about their future.
Ms Middleton was hotly tipped as the Prince's bride before it emerged in April that their four-year relationship
had ended.
At the time, the couple said they had "grown apart". But Prince William was reported to be the instigator, telling
friends that he wasn't sure if he loved her enough to marry.
Last month it emerged that the couple had been on a series of tentative dates. Ms Middleton was spotted driving
into Clarence House late one evening, and she agreed to join William in the royal box at Wembley for his
mother's memorial concert.
The newspaper said friends of the couple recently had a "major" row after Ms Middleton joined, then pulled out
of, a dragon boat race across the English Channel.
The Prince was said to be "livid" that sources close to her blamed the withdrawal on pressure from Clarence
House.
"William was incandescent that the blame was being put on him and his advisers for her decision to pull out," a
friend was quoted as saying.
"He was himself on a dragon boat team while at Eton and thought it was a brilliant idea. But he did feel that
Kate was giving out the wrong message, posing for photographs with her team one minute then complaining
about attention from the paparazzi the next.
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Catholic schools too expensive, says bishop
by Sarah Price
August 19, 2007
CATHOLIC schools are overly expensive and the church has become too middle-class, losing touch with its
parishioners, a Catholic leader has warned.
Half of Catholic students attended public schools, Parramatta Bishop Kevin Manning said, mainly because
Catholic education was too dear for many families.
"The poorer classes are not frequenting our schools, they are going to state schools. One of the main problems is
the high cost of [Catholic] education," the bishop said.
His comments followed the release of a pastoral letter by 17 bishops in NSW and the ACT in which they
warned that Catholic education was at a crossroads because of falling enrolments of Catholic students.
Bishop Manning also said the Catholic clergy was too focused on theology at the expense of engaging with
people.
"We have lost touch with our people; that's why the numbers are dropping off," he said, adding that the church
should enable children from poorer families to get a Catholic education.
"Traditionally, in Australia, that's why Catholic schools started - to give Catholic children a good religious
education," he said.
Bishop Manning said that while clergy needed to study and know theology, "there's not much good knowing
theology and preaching into a vacuum. We need people.
"We are not as pastoral in our attitude toward the average Catholic as we were years ago. Then, we were in
touch with our people; we were close to our people."
Bishop Manning said priests and bishops were too tied down with administration. He said that in his first
appointment in 1962, his sole job was to visit people.
"That was my whole job as a priest," he said. "Priests and clergy need to visit people more."
Bishop David Walker, the chairman of the Catholic Education Commission of NSW, said while the church
would like its school fees to be less, it was impossible.
"We can't run the schools without money," Bishop Walker said. "The fact is that we only receive, from the
Government, probably 80 per cent of what it costs to run the school system.
"We do try to keep [fees] down as much as we can, but inevitability there are people who can't afford that."
British author and philosopher Stephen Law is the guest lecturer at the University of Sydney's "Sydney Ideas"
lecture at the Seymour Centre on Tuesday night, when he will talk about whether religious schools produce
good children.
He argues that rather than fostering positive values, traditional schools stifle emotional and intellectual growth
and do not encourage children to take responsibility for their own actions.
Source: The Sun-Herald
11
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Grey power taking over
August 19, 2007
THE worldwide army of senior citizens will swell in the first half of the 21st century, tripling by 2050, the
United Nations said yesterday.
A UN report on world population says there will be 2 billion people over the age of 60 by the middle of the
century. For the first time, from 2047, there will be more seniors than children.
The Earth population median age will increase to 38 years, from the current 28 years, demographers said in the
report.
Uganda currently has the youngest population, with a median age of 15. By contrast, Japan has the oldest, with a
median of 43.
In 2050 Uganda and Burundi will have the world's youngest populations, with median ages of 20.
The oldest populations by that time will be in Macau and South Korea, with median ages of 54 years.
Source: The Sun-Herald
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
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THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
Super-size NZ
by Julie Jacobson
5:00AM Sunday August 19, 2007
New Zealanders are getting bigger than ever before and everything from hospitals to grave-diggers are being
forced to adapt to super-size bodies.
New Zealanders' expanding waistlines are fuelling a demand for plus-size goods and services.
With half of the adult population now either overweight or obese, what used to be considered "normal" has
suddenly become a whole lot bigger.
Hospitals, airlines, retailers and even grave diggers are finding they have to move with the times. And sales of
'he bras' - support garments for men with plus-size chests - are on the rise.
In Wellington, funeral directors now have the option of booking "purpose dug" burial sites - graves specially
tailored to larger clients. A new area being developed at the city's Makara cemetery has been designed to cope
with increasing numbers of "bigger and wider" coffins, a city council spokesman said.
The crematorium at Karori Cemetery was regularly used by out-of-towners because it had a roomier furnace
than others in the region, he added, and the average width of caskets was now 53.5cm, more than 10 cm wider
than the average two decades ago.
With 60 per cent of men and 40 per cent of women now overweight, the obesity epidemic is affecting both sexes
in similar ways.
Craig Smith of Smarta Fashions told the Herald on Sunday that "man boobs", the bane of the larger bloke, have
had an impact on his business.
Sales of the company's male support vest - known in Australia as the "he bra" had increased noticeably. The
vests, which come in sizes up to XL or chest size 135cm with either velcro or hook and eye front closure, were a
cheaper and more practical option than liposuction, Smith said.
Bendon has also introduced a J cup women's bra after surveys showed the average breast size had increased by
several centimetres in just six years.
Obesity is estimated to contribute to more than 3200 deaths (10 times the number of people who die in car
crashes) a year, and our expanding girth has also been a factor in Capital and Coast District Health Board's
decision to replace its beds.
The three-year programme is expected to include funding for several more bariatric (extra large) beds used in
the treatment of people with obesity-related health problems. Currently the hospital has only two such beds,
which cost between $10,500 and $11,000 (four times the cost of a standard hospital bed), and has to hire others
if they are needed.
And it's not just adults who are getting bigger. Twenty-one per cent of school-aged children are now considered
overweight, with another 10 per cent defined as obese.
School uniform manufacturers now make girls' blouses up to a size 24 (the average dress size is 14), and boys'
shorts with 120cm waists. A sobering report from Australia last week noted one in five preschoolers in that
country was overweight.
Cinemas are putting in wider seating. The Paramount cinema in Wellington's Courtenay Place said it is
refurbishing with bigger seats for "comfort" reasons.
And those of wider girth will finally be able to use the little room in comfort after the launch in Australia of the
Big John toilet seat.
The ergonomically designed seat, which fits standard toilets, is 49 centimetres wide compared with the normal
40cm and withstands weights up to 500kg.
However, airlines are one industry that so far do not appear to be accommodating bigger people. Debate rages
over whether travellers who spill over into their seatmate's space should be forced to buy an extra seat or travel
business or first class, or whether airlines should put in bigger seating.
But airlines argue that in their battle to provide cost-efficient travel, reconfiguring fleets would be prohibitively
expensive and result in higher fares for all passengers.
Loser's new zeal for life
To call John Barnes a zealot is putting it mildly. The larger-than-life 29-year-old wants to spread the word, and
spread it wide.
"If I can do it, shit, anyone can," Barnes says.
Two years ago, the former McDonald's worker - "they were the only place that would give me a job"- weighed a
whopping 258kg. He was the guy everyone pointed at, the "mummy", the "fat c...".
He cracked toilet seats, ate a dozen pieces of fried chicken in a sitting, drank Coke like it was going out of
fashion, couldn't put his shoes and socks on or go to the movies, crushed a seat in his best mate's car and needed
two extendable lap belts on the rare occasion he flew in a plane.
"I was a bloody mess basically. Everything was up the creek."
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
Barnes has been big since he was kid. A broken hip put him in a full body cast when he was 13. Originally
misdiagnosed, he was passed from doctor to specialist and back.
"I had no friends, I didn't go to school and I suffered from depression. Food became my vice."
After what he reckons was "about 50" job interviews - "I was always too fat or I smelled, or got asked: was I
serious?"- he scored a job at McDonalds. He was 18 and he was still eating. And eating plenty; as many Big
Macs and fries with those as he liked.
There was self doubt, there were snide comments, there was no shopping for clothes in a "normal" store, the
shower became the toilet, his legs became ulcerated.
But there was also sup-port. Barnes met his best friend at McDonald's. Another manager became a surrogate
dad. And in March 2005 they were still there when Barnes, now a service manager at Placemakers in New
Lynn, decided he'd had enough and booked a stomach-stapling operation.
His doctor told him to go away, lose 15 kilos and "come back in three months".
Six weeks later Barnes had lost double that. He was set another target, and lost another 13 kilos over the
following six weeks.
He had the operation in August that year.
Now 109kg with a goal weight of 97kg and "very comfortable" in what had become an extremely thick skin,
he's become a passionate advocate of educating people on the true nature of obesity.
"It's an addiction. You are hotwired to eat. It's like being an alcoholic or a drug addict. You can't help yourself.
"And unless I can get that through to people then I'll always feel as though I've wasted my time."
He says he feels like a different person.
"I went white water rafting for my birthday, I can go and buy normal clothes, take my shirt off at the swimming
pool and go to the beach.
"I've got the confidence to live life. There's a lot of people out there who are eating their way to death. I never
thought I could do it, but if they see that John can do it, then hopefully they'll be able to see that they can too."
Florence Magpie
A nurse has told of having to "sneak" equipment from Middlemore Hospital to keep some of her patients alive.
Diana Hart says she has had to "plead on bended knees" to get oxygen concentrator machines for several of the
129 South Auckland outpatients she manages for the Counties-Manukau District Health Board.
The ventilators make breathing easier for obese and morbidly obese patients but because of strict qualifying
criteria were not available to dozens of people who needed them, Hart said.
"Health boards don't recognise obesity as being a problem as far as respiratory problems go but it is a major
issue. Basically the lungs get squashed so the patient doesn't get oxygen and there's major organ failure. It's a
huge problem given the large number of obese people we're now seeing."
Although the machines were expensive at $4000 each, the long-term benefits outweighed the initial cost.
"If these machines can keep people out of hospital, give them a good quality of life and perhaps even get them
back to work, then they can be active members of society again ... So that initial spending can well and truly be
justified," Hart said. While gastric bypasses were an option earlier on, many of Hart's patients were too large for
surgery, so were dependent on the machines, she said.
Her heaviest patient runs an importing business from a chair at her home. "While there's nothing wrong with her
brain, her body is literally not working. For most of them getting down to a weight where they can have a
bypass is impossible."
Hart cares for 40 people on ventilators but believes they are "just the tip of the iceberg".
Meanwhile UK anaesthetists have just been issued with a new set of guidelines for dealing with obese patients,
amid concerns about the risks hospital staff and patients face because of rising obesity levels.
Anaesthetists in New Zealand have raised similar concerns. Anaesthetists Society spokeswoman Philippa
Bascand said they were seeing "more obese people more often".
They posed particular challenges for anaesthetists, with obesity the second most common risk factor during
surgery after smoking, "and patients we're seeing now are likely to have associated serious health problems".
These included heart disease, diabetes, sleep apnoea and respiratory problems, all of which had major
implications when providing anaesthesia.
Of 21 health districts only five currently had the surgical facilities to manage obese patients, and several of
those were private.
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
13
THE PRAVDA
Russians have psychotronic weapon to zombie people
14.08.2007
Major-general of the reserve of the Russian Federal Custodial Service Boris Ratnikov tells that Russia and other
countries work on making special devices that turn humans into zombies.
It was already twenty years ago that mass media first mentioned the strange word combination ‘psychotronic
weapon’. All information about such weapons arrived from military men transferred to the reserve and from
researchers that were not officially recognized by the Russian Academy of Sciences. They usually told about
some generators that could make people muddleheaded even when they were distanced at hundreds of
kilometers.
Such devices were said to be able to control people’s behavior, seriously impair psyche and even drive people to
death. As soon as information of the kind was published some people immediately claimed themselves as
victims of impact of such psychotronic weapons. They stormed editorial offices of newspapers and magazines
that reported about the psychotronic weapons and complained that some strange voices dictated orders to them.
Journalists in their turn recommended such people visiting psychiatrists.
By the year of 2000 the amount of publications about psychotronic weapons reduced to nothing and the impact
of psychotronic weapons was no longer mentioned. These days, the issue of psychotronic weapons seems to be
reviving.
Boris Ratnikov says that Russia has been working on the psychotronic impact upon humans since the 1920s.
Until the mid-1980s secret centers for investigation of psychic impact upon humans were working in large cities
of the country under the KGB’s patronage. Thousands of brilliant researchers were working on the problem in
the twenty secret centers. After the break-up of the USSR the centers were closed and the researchers either left
abroad or currently work in various parts of Russia.
Now that new technologies and the Internet are widely spreading people must realize that the menace of psychic
impact upon humans is really immense. At the same time, the official science still insists that psychotronic is
mere charlatanry. Boris Ratnikov is sure however that in less than ten years psychotronic weapons will grow
more dangerous than nuclear and atomic weapons.
It is known that several researchers are still investigating the problem in Russia. Academician Viktor Kandyba
and his son continue the researches in St.Petersburg, academician Vlail Kaznacheyev works on the problem in
Novosibirsk. And it is highly likely that the magic of human brain is still the issue of great interest for
Academician Natalya Bekhtereva whose father was working on the problem in the past century.
In the USA researchers work on psychotronic effect and employ oriental psychophysical systems, hypnosis,
neurolinguistic programming, computer psychotechnologies and bio-resonance stimulation in their studies.
They seek every opportunity of manipulating human behavior. Israeli researchers conduct similar studies to help
people reveal their new potential through self-regulation, changing their consciousness and improving the
psychical body potential for athletes. What is more, they also make secret technologies for programming human
behavior that are based on mathematical simulation of the Kabbala symbolism.
The Academy of National Self-Defense Forces in Japan studies the use of parapsychological phenomena that
may be employed by the intelligence. The Institute of Religious Psychology is also working on the problem
there.
In North Korea, the Service for Security and Control of Foreign Policy conducts experiments with special
oscillators that can modify functions of human organs.
In Pakistan, special services can use a special device that can cause dysfunctions of human organs and
physiological systems and even cause people’s death.
The Spanish intelligence finances studies of the effect of physical factors on human organs and human brain
with the view of making devices to cause dysfunctions of organs and mental transformations.
Main goal of all these studies is to find new methods and forms of impact upon human psyche, to manipulate
large groups of people and to enlarge the resources of human consciousness, Boris Ratnikov says. Many
countries posses information about secret use of a distance impact upon individuals and large groups of people.
And these are not at all mere experiments but also practical application of technologies for various political and
military purposes. Such technologies grow more perfect thanks to scientific and technological innovations.
Boris Ratnikov says that he once saw a KGB’s classified document about potential threats and a psychotronic
generator. The document said that the mechanism of a psychotronic generator is based upon the resonance of
response functions of human organs, the heart, liver, kidneys and brain. Every human organ has its individual
frequency response. When this frequency is used to affect the organ with E-field radiation this may cause acute
cardiac decompensation, renal failure or inadequate behavior. Such attacks are usually targeted at unhealthy
organs and may in some cases be lethal. It is said that the KGB spent millions of rubles during the Soviet era to
conduct studies on a distanced medical and biological action of special radiation on troops and population.
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However, today the Internet provides a wide range of publications that deny the very existence of such a
psychotronic weapon. Boris Ratnikov says that he has never had a chance to hold such a weapon and has no
idea how it may look at all. But he supposes that modern technical resources allow making this weapon these
days as all theoretic materials necessary for the production have been completely developed.
How did people first estimate that human brain can be affected from outside? In 1853, famous chemist
Alexander Butlerov was the first in the world to originate a scientific hypothesis to explain the phenomenon of
hypnosis. Butlerov assumed that human brain and nervous system are emitting sources and that movements of
nervous currents in the organism are identical to the interaction of the electric current in conductors. The
scientist said that the electroinduction effect explained how signals going from the brain of one person to other
man’s brain emerged.
Physiologist Ivan Sechenov also supported Butlerov’s hypothesis. He added that emotions and close relations
between people, especially between twins, intensified the effect of mental force interaction.
Academician Vladimir Bekhterev set up the world’s first Institute of Brain and Mental Activity. In the late 19thearly 20th centuries Bekhterev conducted experiments on electromagnetic justification of hypnosis applied to
animals and humans. In his works Bekhterev wrote that he discovered a mental mechanism of super-sensitive
contact that emerges on special terms between a human and an animal and allows to mentally operate the
animal’s behavior with the help of movements and emotions.
In 1924, chairman of the academician council of the Animal Psychology Laboratory, brilliant animal trainer
Vladimir Durov wrote a book on animal training and told about his experiments on hypnosis applied to animals
In 1932, the Bekhterev Institute of Brain named after the scientist was officially charged to conduct experiments
on distant interaction.
In 1965-1968, the Institute of Automatics and Electroenergetics based in Novosibirsk studied mental
communication between humans and animals. The materials of the study were classified and were never
published officially.
14
THE PRAVDA
Giant red star found with comet-like tail powerful to form planets
16.08.2007
Astronomers discovered the tail by looking at ultraviolet images from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer telescope,
orbiting the Earth. The pictures show the red giant star known as Mira, which has the same mass as our sun but
is 400 times as large, dragging a comet-like collection of glowing dust that goes back 13 light-years.
Scientists yesterday described Mira as a kind of "Johnny Appleseed of the Cosmos," skipping through the Milky
Way at 80 miles per second while strewing atoms of carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen -- elements that are the
building blocks of new solar systems.
"All of the carbon in our muscles and all of the oxygen that we breathe every time we take a breath comes from
red giant stars," Michael Shara, a professor of astronomy at Columbia University, said in a teleconference
discussing the finding. "So this is the source of some of the material that's essential for life, and we're seeing it
implanted across the galaxy right now."
Stars often swell and cool as they age, becoming red giants before exploding or collapsing, reports Boston
Globe.
"I was shocked when I first saw this completely unexpected, humongous tail trailing behind a well-known star,''
said Christopher Martin of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California.
"The process basically plants the seeds for new solar systems to form,'' said Mr Martin, the Galaxy Evolution
Explorer's principal investigator.
Scientists said Mira's tail shed substances such as carbon, oxygen and other important elements needed for new
stars and planets and even life to form, reports Melbourne Herald Sun.
The researchers suggest that because the star is moving at a relatively quick pace of 130 kilometers per second
(or three times a bullet's speed) relative to the galaxy, it has compressed and heated the interstellar gas in front
of it. This hot gas excited the cool, five-kilometer-per-second breeze of hydrogen molecules and heavier
elements emanating from Mira, causing it to glow in the ultraviolet.
The team estimates that Mira A loses one millionth of the sun's mass a year, out of its total bulk of perhaps 1.5
solar masses.
Martin says ultraviolet tails may be quite common despite going unnoticed until now. The red giant phase
awaits many smaller stars, including our own sun in four billion to five billion years, Scientific American
reports.
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru».
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
15
THE PRAVDA
Antioxidants, such as vitamin C cut no heart disease rate in high-risk women
14.08.2007
According to a new study, women who are at a high risk of heart disease are unlikely to realise any benefit from
taking antioxidant vitamins C, E or beta carotene - but nor are they likely to suffer any harm.
Vitamins C, E and beta carotene - which the body converts into vitamin A - have no effect on lowering the
chances of heart disease or death in high-risk women, scientists said last night.
Some previous studies have linked all three to a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease.
The new study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, involved examining data for 8,171 women over
the age of 40 who took part in the women's antioxidant cardiovascular study in the US , starting in 1995 or 1996
and ending in 2005.
The women all had a history of cardiovascular disease or had three or more risk factors for developing it, such
as high blood pressure, diabetes or high cholesterol.
They were randomly split into groups and given either 500 milligrams of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) every day,
600 units of vitamin E every other day or 50 milligrams of beta carotene every other day, reports Scotsman.
However this new study may not have a major impact on the supplements category if it is bourn in mind that it
was conducted on women who had already had a history of heart disease or who suffered from three or more
risk factors (self reported hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes mellitus, parental history of heart attack
before the age of 60, obesity, and current cigarette smoking).
This means that caution should be applied in extrapolating the results to a wider demographic.
The researchers initiated the study since they said randomized trials have largely failed to support an effect of
antioxidant vitamins on the risk of cardiovascular disease - even though diets with a high intake of fruit and
vegetables have been linked to reduced rates of coronary heart disease and stroke, NutraIngredients.com
informs
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru»
16
THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
Hunt for Saddam's daughter
LESS than a year after her father was sent to the gallows, Saddam Hussein's daughter is facing charges that could
lead to her execution.
Raghad Hussein, 38, has been charged with financing the insurgents who have bedevilled Iraq since just after her
father's regime was toppled in 2003, an Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman said.
Miss Hussein is believed to be living in Amman, Jordan, as a guest of King Abdullah. The spokesman, Abdul
Kereem Khalaf, said the Iraqi Judicial Authority issued an arrest warrant for Miss Hussein a year ago but that it was
only being made public now after Interpol issued a global notice that Iraq was seeking her.
"We have a whole file of evidence against her," Mr Khalaf said. "It is with the court. If you have the right
connections you can see it. But basically she is accused of mass killings of Iraqis by funding terroristgroups."
He wouldn't specify which terrorist groups she is accused of funding, nor would he say what charges other than
financing terrorism she might be facing.
Miss Hussein, like her father, is a Sunni Muslim.
Source: The Sun-Herald
2007
17
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
Matt Damon tells Clooney to 'suck it' over box office poll
2:32PM Saturday August 18, 2007
Matt Damon told George Clooney to "suck it, sexy boy" when he was named most bankable star by Forbes.
The 36-year-old actor immediately contacted his Ocean's Thirteen co-star - who has twice been named People
magazine's Sexiest Man Alive - to boast that he had finally trumped him in a poll.
When asked if he had revelled in his 'victory', Matt - who has made a fortune playing former CIA assassin Jason
Bourne in the 'Bourne' trilogy - told BANG Showbiz: "Oh yeah! The email that went out to George said, 'Suck
it, sexy boy!' and I attached the article.
"And he wrote back, 'Yeah, that's great, I had that read to me by one of my servants at my villa!' "
According to the poll, Matt - whose first two Bourne movies banked US$500 million, while the third instalment
The Bourne Ultimatum topped the US box office in its opening week - makes the studio $29 for every dollar he
is paid.
Brad Pitt came second on the Ultimate Star Payback list, making $24 for every dollar, while Vince Vaughn was
in joint third place with Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp.
Former Friends actress Jennifer Aniston was the highest-ranked female at number five.
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
18
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
How Kate Moss became a muse to contemporary British art
by Philip Hensher
1:18PM Friday August 17, 2007
One of the most photographed women in the world should not, on the face of it, present much of a temptation to
artists.
The so-familiar image cannot be escaped from. An artist can only add to a colossal number of frozen
photographic images whose end is gossip, celebrity, or the presentation of an idealised, unrealistic, sometimes
digitally improved beauty.
None of those ends have much to do with the purposes of art.And yet Kate Moss, who is nothing more than a
commercial model, is turning into one of the great subjects of modern British art, what Lizzie Siddall was to the
pre-Raphaelites. She has been depicted by Lucian Freud, Alex Katz, Gary Hume,Julian Opie, Stella Vine,
Juergen Teller and many others, not even beginning to think of those fashion photographers, like Mario Testino,
with pretensions to high art.
And now she has been put into the park at Chatsworth, three metres high and in painted bronze, in an
extraordinary sculpture by Marc Quinn.
Her limbs are entwined self-adoringly and yet agonisingly in an impossible yoga embrace; the imperturbable
face peers out between curtains of hair, poised, surely deliberately, over what Courbet called The origin of the
world, straining against the leotard.
Private and public parts of the body are confused and exposed, pushed at us and left blank under our obsessed
gaze.
It's called Myth (Sphinx). The title is a clue, not just to Quinn's intentions, but to those of almost every artist
who has engaged with her.
What, actually, is there behind the face and the reputation? Is there any "there" there at all?
The great psychologist of modern art, Lucian Freud, registered a rare failure with his portrait of her.
He succeeded in cracking the Queen; upstairs at Chatsworth are some remarkably frank images of the
Devonshires. ("That's my wife," Andrew Devonshire is supposed to have said to a tourist of one of these. "Well,
thank God it isn't mine," was the reply).
But Moss was almost unrecognisable in his portrait, and became almost anonymous in his attempt to humanise
her.
The audience knows almost nothing about Kate Moss. She rarely speaks in public; she presents "looks", and
provides material for ongoing red-top narratives which could, really, be about anyone at all.
The best images of her are those which recognise that quality of useful blankness.
There is one in Julian Opie's reductive manner; or the brilliant and pioneering Gary Hume, in which she is just a
shape in polished metal.
Quinn, like all these artists, has had to try to escape from a woman in Stalinist control of her own image.
He has done this by presenting an image of exactly that control.
There are a number of impossibilities in his image, from the scale of it, to the perfect balance of its physiology,
to the empty and slightly repulsive model's professional smile on a body at the extremity of distortion.
"Sphinx" is apt; but these days, like many artists, we are more readily going to think of Kate Moss as Wilde's
"sphinx without a secret" than of Oedipus's, the keeper of the answers to life's riddles.
She has done nothing so very wonderful, but look; she can put her feet behind her head, and smile.
- INDEPENDENT
19
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
Nicole Richie's boyfriend admits proposal imminent
11:15AM Saturday August 18, 2007
Joel Madden has revealed he is set to propose to girlfriend Nicole Richie after letting slip his plans on US TV.
The Good Charlotte frontman let slip his plans to pop the question during an interview on US TV show Live! when host
Regis Philbin questioned him about his love life.
Regis said: "I hear you're going to present Nicole with a little engagement ring or something?"
Joel, who was on stage with his band ready to perform, replied: "Well I had been hoping it would be a surprise but I guess
it's not now."
Nicole is four months pregnant with the couple's first baby, and Joel says he has been reading guidebooks to help him
prepare to be a good dad. He said: "I've been looking at books to help prepare me for when the baby comes. So far, I've
read What to Expect When You're Expecting, The Expectant Father and Baby Signs."
Last week, Nicole said she was "desperate to be someone my child will look up to".
Joel and Nicole, who is set to begin her four-day prison sentence for DUI (driving under the influence) on September 28,
have been an item for more than six months.
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Agata Adamska
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
TIME
Trying to Save the Coral Reefs
by Krista Mahr
Friday, Aug. 17, 2007
Near the close of the 1960s, a squadron of young scuba divers headed out into the warm waters of the South
Pacific, tanks of air strapped to their backs and syringes at the ready. Their mission, one lethal injection at a
time, was to put a stop to an outbreak of crown-of-thorns starfish, a voracious predator of fragile tropical coral
reefs. Those early efforts — along with a big printing of "Save the Barrier Reef" bumper stickers — helped
establish what has since been considered one of the world's best-protected coral reefs.
More than 30 years later, some of those dive bums have grown up to become full-fledged coral ecologists, and
what they are seeing today is probably making them long for the halcyon days of the '60s. Rising ocean
temperatures, compounded by other man-made factors, like pollution and overfishing, have been catastrophic
for the earth's coral. "I grew up diving and snorkeling all over the world," says Gregor Hodgson, executive
director of the coral monitoring organization Reef Check Foundation. "Those reefs are all gone."
On August 7, researchers at the University of North Carolina released the world's first comprehensive study on
coral in the Indo-Pacific region, which stretches from Japan to Australia and east to Hawaii, and is home to 75%
of the world's coral reefs. The outlook is grim. Between 1968 and 2003, more than 600 sq. mi. of reef
disappeared in the region — that's 1% a year, twice the pace of rainforest decline — and the losses are hitting
well-protected areas like the Great Barrier Reef just as hard as the stressed, overfished reefs that surround
crowded countries like the Philippines. "People thought the Pacific was in much better shape," says John Bruno,
lead author of the study, which was published online by the Public Library of Science. Scientists assumed that
far-flung reefs in the vast waters of the Pacific would be safely isolated from negative human impact. They were
wrong. "There is no such thing as an isolated reef from the perspective of climate change," says Bruno.
The UNC report coincides with separate accounts of another widespread scourge: in July, coral reefs in the
South China Sea and around the Florida Keys and Caribbean started to bleach — a result of warming waters.
Healthy reefs live symbiotically with algae, which takes shelter inside the coral and, in return, passes nutrients
to its host. When waters reach an uncomfortably high temperature, coral gets stressed and kicks the algae out,
which turns the coral white and essentially starves it to death. Local reef watchers have contacted the U.S.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) from the northern Philippines to southern Japan, some
warning that their coral is bleaching nearly as much as it did in 1998, when El Ni�o–heated waters killed 15%
of the world's reefs.
Like the busily receding glaciers in the Arctic, coral reefs are a canary in the global warming coal mine. "They
are a sensitive species that are affected first," says C. Mark Eakin, coordinator of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch
program, which warns scientists when their part of the world is at risk for bleaching. And though climate change
awareness is up, and embattled reefs do get moments of compassion, the public has a short attention span when
it comes to ecosystems it can't see. So do policy makers. Bruno says more coral data is being gathered today by
non-governmental organizations than universities or government programs, particularly in developing nations
where the focus is more on building hospitals and roads than on marine science. But even in the U.S., NOAA's
satellite data program, alert system and monitoring are second to the larger network of local groups and
governments keeping watch over the U.S. reefs. "Nobody wants to pay for monitoring because it's boring," says
Hodgson.
That's why he founded Reef Check. Realizing that one man's chore might be another's hobby, Hodgson decided
to fill the information gap by enlisting people who were naturally interested: divers. In 1997 he created a global
network of volunteer snorkelers and divers, specially trained by scientists to monitor reefs using a standardized
checklist. Over the last 10 years, Reef Check's volunteers have amassed a bounty of data on the world's coral.
"In the beginning, people were looking down on us, saying 'Oh, you guys are just volunteers,'" Hodgson recalls.
Now, Reef Check has become one of the primary sources of scientific information about coral health.
Why the need to monitor coral so closely? Coral reefs constitute a complex and vast global ecosystem, home to
millions of species of plants and fish that people depend on for food and tourist revenue; in some areas, healthy
reefs help protect the shore from potentially destructive waves. But arguments about the preservation of
biodiversity make eyes glaze over, so Hodgson, who's trying to get coral on the World Conservation Union's red
and endangered species lists, likes to point out that several anticancer drugs are derived from reef species.
"Maybe one day a coral will save your life," Hodgson tells skeptics. "That gets to people."
Perhaps the single best advocate for the preservation of coral reefs is the reefs themselves. In many parts of the
world, conservationists are letting the natural beauty and allure of the reefs — which generate about $1.6 billion
annually in tourist dollars — do the talking for them. In one area of the Philippines, for instance, local leaders
asked fishermen who had been making a living by blast-fishing, which destroys reefs, to trade in their trawlers
for dive boats. They did, the fish came back to the reefs, the local economy flourished and everybody —
tourists, residents, and coral ecologists alike — was happy. In cases like these, one hand washes the other, says
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NOAA's Eakin. "If healthy coral reefs are your bread and butter, you're going to make sure they're in good
shape."
It remains to be seen whether local solutions, like ecotourism or the establishment of marine parks, will create
lasting changes. No one knows when the warm waters causing the current bleaching epidemic will recede, and
once coral starts dying in warm currents, there isn't a lot that scientists can do but sit back and watch. Some
reefs may recover, but others won't, and researchers are still trying to figure out why. "I don't think there's any
way you can manage for a global effect locally," says Bruno, the author of the UNC report. He thinks the root
cause of disappearing coral is, in the end, climate change, which can be addressed only by a worldwide effort to
cap fossil-fuel use and pass stringent climate change legislation. "If we only manage locally, [we] will be totally
overwhelmed over the next century."
21
THE NEW ZEALAND HERALD
Blog: Party etiquette
by Joanna Hunkin
7:59AM Friday August 17, 2007
"Blonde, I have a question," said a workmate the other day.
Uh-oh. This is never good.
"Last night, I went to the pub for a mate's birthday. He was already drunk when I got there."
Right, sounds fairly par for the course. It was his birthday after all.
"He was so drunk he didn't really acknowledge I was there. Didn't even say hello."
Well, these things do happen . . .
"I tried to find him to say goodbye, but he was nowhere to be found.
"I went to go to the loo before I left, and was stood outside the door waiting when the barman passed.
"He told me to give up, saying Jim had gone in there with some bird and they weren't likely to emerge for a
while."
Ha! Dirty toilet tango, eh? Nasty.
"Don't you think that's a bit rude though? I mean everyone was there to see him, and he was off locked in the
bathroom."
Well, yes, it is rather rude to invite people to celebrate your birthday and then ignore them.
But I rather think you're missing the point.
I mean *retch* public toilets! I won't even sit on a public loo seat let alone have sex on one.
As for touching the walls, (which let's be honest, is unavoidable when having a confined space rendezvous particularly when drunk) who knows what types of disgusting lurgies linger there.
Just think of the number of unsanitary hands that have swiped that wall as drunk bar patrons struggle to balance.
Ugh . . . I shudder to think.
I'm all for adventurism but really, there is a line. And skody pub toilets sit firmly on the unacceptable side of it.
Even Flicker, who has claimed conquests in parks, boardrooms, stationery cupboards, post offices and on bars
(yes that is on not in) across the country, draws the line at loos.
So, returning to the original question, yes your mate could perhaps brush up on his party etiquette. But I'd say
that's the least of his problems . . .
Dan (Auckland)Sez - I think bearhunter got a box of sarcasm for Christmas... ;)
AuckSez and Gadget I think you missed the joke. SationAry means to stand still, StationEry means pens, paper
etc!
Chill out!reading this from overseas i wonder if kiwis are not the slightest but uptight and frigid? c`mon! a bit of
sex in a toilet ... so what? and why do the readers seem to be suggesting the girl is slutty, filthy or that this is
something she should be ashamed of? blah! live a little! and as only one reader said ... don`t knock it till you try
it.
AEveryone's missing the point, it sounds like too many people are jealous because someone is getting some,
good on them for that, what irks me is that there is nowhere for anyone to go empty a bladder that they have
spent so much good money on filling.
SezBearhunter - she means stationary as in what you have in an office not a stand still cuboard!
and that is just plain ew!
Chris (Auckland)What the hell? What's wrong with a public toilet? You're always going on about the spur of the
moment and being swept away, so why not? It's only a toilet I mean for gods sake, he probably thought it would
be ruder to go home and not come back, best get it out of the way close by and come back to socialise later. Plus
it's always more fun when it's risky.
LeahHannah - there is a lot wrong with having sex in public toilets. It's the ultimate easy score for a guy - he
doesn't even have to leave the pub! And if you are so desperate for it that you'd do it in the toilets - ugh, where's
your self respect?
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Agata Adamska
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Personally, I would never be able to get over the embarassment of having been some guys cheap pub toilet
shag...
GadgetBearhunter... are you serious? stationary cupboard as in where.. wait for it...stationary is held!.
Nubs (Wellington)I'm sure shenanigans in a toilet are *just* as exciting as sex in any other awkward location.
And as for hygiene, when you're in the zone it's not usually the top priority anyway and I'm pretty sure that
you'd be more likely to roll into a big pile of poo doing it in a field than you would be to get a disease from a
pub toilet (depends on the establishment I guess though :p)
As for etiquette; Pffft, it's their party anyway so as long as they have a good time then sweet as. You've only lost
a small part of your night, and they obviously had something memorable (maybe!). It's not like you can really
hold it against them.
Well, it's my 21st this weekend so I guess I felt the need to say this to make myself feel better in case I do
something similar, hahaha!
Jess mee (Auckland)How tragic. Maybe his willing participant is newly single and cannot believe how
opportunities are coming (no pun intended)her way now? Yes it's rude. And yes it's slutty. And downright
disgusting. Hope they used protection or he might have got more than a shag for his birthday. Eewww.
Sir hunky bumble (Masterton)What's wrong with sex in public toilets?
If it's good enough for George Michael...
Then again, wasn't it Rod Stewart who had sex in an airport broom cupboard and ended up with a paternity suit
on his hands?
Nah, come to think of it, if I'm gonna risk a paternity suit, it's gonna be in a much more upper class place than a
toilet or broom cupboard.
Bearhunter"stationary cupboards"? As opposed to ones that were moving, I presume?
Mother (Wellington)Bugs in the bathroom aren't what you should be worried about here - it's bugs on the other
"hard surface" that pose the major risk - STIs, unintended pregnancy or HIV/AIDS. I understand it's meant to be
a light-hearted column but really a reality check is needed here. Casual and unprotected sex, particularly with
alcohol as a "lubricant" has potential to be far more than the breach of etiquette you seem concerned about.
Chris (Welly)That's a toughie...I mean, yes it was his party - but isn't the idea of your party supposed to be
whatever "floats your boat" so to speak? It is on the rude side...in saying that, if that's what made his party
special - there has to be some understanding there.
Now, in saying that - a TOILET? Oh gawsh...how..um...unpleasant.
Hannah (Aucks)what's wrong with pub loos? you're drunk any way so you don't care. get off your snooty tooty
butt and try it before you knock it
TynoYeah it is so disgusting, there's a lot of things you wouldn't do in a toilet so why have sex in one? why not
just pop outside or something i think it would be less noticable too. And as for ignoring party guests it's so not
cool!
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THE PRAVDA
African fossils challenge old evolution theory
09.08.2007
A discovery in Africa has shaken up the argument of one direct line of human evolution. The old theory ran that Homo
habilis evolved into Homo erectus. Which evolved into us. The homo sapiens. But the new study found remains of the first
two links in the same place and time, informs WDEF. Surprising research based on two African fossils suggests our family
tree is more like a wayward bush with stubby branches, challenging what had been common thinking on how early humans
evolved. The discovery by Meave Leakey, a member of a famous family of paleontologists, shows that two species of early
human ancestors lived at the same time in Kenya. That pokes holes in the chief theory of man's early evolution - that one of
those species evolved from the other. And it further discredits that iconic illustration of human evolution that begins with a
knuckle-dragging ape and ends with a briefcase-carrying man. The old theory is that the first and oldest species in our
family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became human, Homo sapiens. But Leakey's find
suggests those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million
years. She and her research colleagues report the discovery in a paper published in Thursday's journal Nature, The
Jerusalem Post reports. The Koobi Fora Research Project group, led by the famous mother and daughter team of Meave and
Louise Leakey, discovered the two fossils in 2000. One is an upper jaw bone of Homo habilis, which dates from 1.44
million years ago, and the other is "an exquisitely preserved" skull of Homo erectus, dated to about 1.55 million years ago,
the paper's lead author, Fred Spoor, said.
"What is truly striking about this fossil is its size," Spoor, a professor of evolutionary anatomy at University College
London, said in a statement.
"It is the smallest Homo erectus found thus far anywhere in the world," Australian Life Scientist reports.
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THE PRAVDA
Malnutrition kills 6 million children annually
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Agata Adamska
17
III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
16.08.2007
Nearly 6 million children die because of malnutrition every year, mainly in developing countries, though there
exists the availability of relatively cheap solutions that could improve global nutrition.
While low- and middle-income countries bear the brunt of the problem, malnutrition affects some rich countries
as well, said the report by the Population Reference Bureau, a Washington policy research group.
The bureau's "2007 World Population Data Sheet" and two companion reports provide up-to-date demographic,
health and environmental data for all the countries and major regions of the world.
The report said poor nutrition during the mother's pregnancy and the baby's early years causes severe and
irreversible mental and physical damage.
Bill Butz, president of the Population Reference Bureau, said the public often does not consider the deadly toll
of malnutrition among children "because it does not kill young children directly, as does pneumonia or diarrhea.
"Many of these deaths could be averted through nutrition measures that are known to be effective, often at low
cost," Butz said.
"Malnutrition often increases susceptibility to disease, while ill health exacerbates poor nutrition," the report
said. "For countries ravaged by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, malnutrition appears to increase vulnerability to
infection and render retroviral treatments less effective."
Despite some important progress, the report said, about 30 percent of children in low- and middle-income
countries are underweight. The largest problems are in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
For example, almost half the children are underweight in some Indian states.
To improve nutrition In the short term, the report said, countries should begin monitoring and promoting
growth, changing nutritional behavior, improving communication with people at risk of malnutrition and
introducing iodized salt.
Later they could establish community-based nutrition programs that target young children, adolescent girls and
pregnant women.
Other highlights in the report:
-World population growth will continue. It is projected to rise to 9.3 billion by 2050 from 6.6 billion in 2007.
-Fertility rates may be rising again in some European countries where they have been on the wane. The number
of children women are having is increasing in Italy, Spain and Sweden, among others.
-The prevalence of HIV/AIDS probably is lower than earlier estimated but remains an international crisis. More
than 4 million people were newly infected in 2006.
-The international refugee population increased during 2006 to 9.9 million from 8.7 million. It attributed the
increase in large part to Iraqis leaving for other countries, particularly to neighboring Syria and Jordan.
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru».
24
THE PRAVDA
Codeine can cause side effects in nursing mothers and their children
17.08.2007
Codeine can cause increased sleepiness or other signs of overdose in infants.
The Food and Drug Administration warning of the rare but serious side effect was prompted by a 2006 report of
the death of a nursing infant whose mother was given codeine for episiotomy pain.
Genetic testing later showed the woman's body converted the codeine to morphine more rapidly and completely
than in other people. That led to higher-than-expected morphine levels in her breast milk.
While the rapid conversion of codeine to morphine is a very rare side effect in some mothers, it can result in
high and unsafe levels of the latter drug in the blood and breast milk, the FDA said in an alert.
Given the risk of that genetic predisposition, doctors should prescribe nursing mothers the smallest dose of
codeine for the shortest period of time, the FDA recommended. Doctors also should closely monitor both
mother and child.
In children, signs of morphine overdose, beyond increased sleepiness, include difficulty breast-feeding or
breathing and limpness. Nursing mothers may also experience overdose symptoms, such as extreme sleepiness,
confusion, shallow breathing or severe constipation, the FDA said.
Codeine is an ingredient in many prescription pain relievers and some cough syrups. The FDA has asked drug
companies that make those products to include information about the potential risks to nursing mothers who are
ultra-rapid metabolizers of codeine.
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru»
25
TIME
When Sadness Is a Good Thing
by John Cloud
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Agata Adamska
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007
In the 1960s, the pharmaceutical company Sandoz marketed its new tranquilizer Serentil with ads in medical
journals suggesting the drug be prescribed to "the newcomer in town who can't make friends ... The woman who
can't get along with her new daughter-in-law. The executive who can't accept retirement." But the FDA stopped
the ads. Drugs are supposed to treat illnesses, the agency said, not the vicissitudes of living.
Isn't that a quaint idea? The FDA was worried back then about an overmedicated society; in 1956, 5% of
Americans were on tranquilizers. But today 7% of Americans are on antidepressants (many more have tried
them), and ads have touted the drugs for ordinary problems like fatigue, loneliness and sadness. Still, drug
companies aren't the (sole) villain in this story. As Allan Horwitz and Jerome Wakefield point out in their
incisive new book The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder
(Oxford; 287 pages), we now have a "legal drug culture" built around the widely accepted idea that feeling blue
is an illness. Horwitz, dean of social and behavioral sciences at Rutgers, and Wakefield, an expert on mentalillness diagnosis at New York University, agree that depression can have biological roots. But they persuasively
argue that many instances of normal sadness--the kind that descends after you lose a job or get dumped--are
now misdiagnosed as depressive disorder. They also point out that the human capacity to feel sad is an
evolutionarily selected trait that we might not want to drug away. They raise a great question: What if sadness is
good for you?
We've been living in an age of melancholy for at least two decades. Outpatient treatment of depression rose
300% between 1987 and 1997. But while it's tempting to blame our culture--fear of terrorists, too much
caffeine, living by BlackBerry--there's a more straightforward explanation for the boom in dejection. In 1980
the American Psychiatric Association published a new definition of depression in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders--usually shortened to DSM--the compendium used by mental-health professionals
to make diagnoses. The new definition was a radical departure from the old one, which had described
"depressive neurosis" as "an excessive reaction of depression due to an internal conflict or to an identifiable
event such as the loss of a love object." The much longer 1980 definition (which is still used, with slight
modifications) omitted the requirement that symptoms be "excessive" in proportion to cause. In fact, the revised
manual said nothing about causes and listed symptoms instead. To be diagnosed with major depressive disorder
today, you need have only five symptoms for two weeks, which can include such common problems as
depressed mood, weight gain, insomnia, fatigue and indecisiveness. The DSM does make an exception for
bereavement: if you recently lost a loved one, such symptoms are not considered disordered. But the manual
doesn't make exceptions for other things that make us sad--divorce, financial stress, a life-threatening illness.
Isn't it safer to have a broad definition so that no truly ill person slips through? Yes and no. Untreated mental
illness can be serious, but misdiagnosis can also be harmful: a healthy individual might take unneeded drugs
that have side effects, for instance. Also, a psychiatric diagnosis can be used against you in a divorce proceeding
or disqualify you from, say, a cancer-drug trial.
Still, is there anything wrong with medicating normal sadness if you don't mind side effects? Horwitz and
Wakefield take no position on this. They point out that women giving birth take painkillers even though pain is
a normal part of the process. But the authors also note that "loss responses are part of our biological heritage."
Nonhuman primates separated from sexual partners or peers have physiological responses that correlate with
sadness, including higher levels of certain hormones. Human infants express despair to evoke sympathy from
others. These sadness responses suggest sorrow is genetic and that it is useful for attracting social support,
protecting us from aggressors and teaching us that whatever prompted the sadness--say, getting fired because
you were always late to work--is behavior to be avoided. This is a brutal economic approach to the mind, but it
makes sense: we are sometimes meant to suffer emotional pain so that we will make better choices.
We might want to return to a simple definition of mental illness offered by Aristotle: "If fear or sadness lasts for
a long time, it is melancholia." In that case, see a doctor. But if your boyfriend just left you and you can barely
get out of bed, don't assume you're ill. Your brain is probably doing exactly what it was designed to do.
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BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
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Agata Adamska
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
11 Tips to Get Perfect Posture
by Sari Harrar
When you carry yourself well, you'll not only look your best but you'll feel a whole lot better too. Here's your
guide to the right kind of stance.
Good posture makes you look taller, slimmer, and more confident. And it has health benefits, preventing back,
neck, hip, and knee pain and giving your diaphragm and rib cage more room to expand when you breathe. But
good posture can be elusive. "If you make little changes throughout the day that involve your pelvis, legs, and
feet, you can create a foundation for better posture," says Mary Bond, author of The New Rules of Posture: How
to Sit, Stand, and Move in the Modern World.
Sitting
We sit virtually all day long with only an occasional stroll from house to car, desk to cafeteria, sofa to bed. "We
were built to move, not stay in one position all day," says Dr. Stacy Shoemaker, a rehabilitation specialist at
SpineCare Medical Group in Daly City, California. "And we weren't built to sit upright in a chair all day."
Because it's pretty much impossible to avoid chairs, the next best thing is to sit using good posture principles.
* Start by uncrossing your legs and planting your feet on the floor, says occupational therapist Deborah Read,
president of ErgoFit Consulting Inc., in Seattle.
* Then adjust your chair height so your hips are slightly higher than your knees. This will create a slight
downward slope of your thighs. "If you're doing it properly, your weight will be evenly distributed in the chair
between your feet, thighs, hips, and low back," says Read.
* Your shoulders should be relaxed and open. Your abdominal muscles should be firm but not too tight.
* Your head and neck should be in line with your spine.
* Maintaining this position is much easier when your keyboard and computer monitor are in the right
positions. "Both should be right in front of you, not off to the side," advises Shoemaker. "Your screen should be
at eye level, so you don't have to bend your neck up or down."
* Too many people use laptops and have to hunch over to see the screens. If you do data entry, put the work
you're copying from on a clip at eye level so you don't have to bend your neck to see it."
Check It
"Every once in a while, place one hand behind the small of your back to see if there's still a curve there," Read
says. If there isn't, consider using a lumbar support cushion. Every half hour or so, take a break from sitting. Get
up and walk around for a minute or two. This keeps your hamstrings and lower back from tightening up and
pulling your spine out of alignment.
Feel It
You'll notice your thighs more now that you're not crossing your legs. No, they haven't grown, it's just that
you're more aware of them. That's natural, so don't let it bother you.
Standing
"A healthy spine has an inward curve in the lower back, an outward curve at the shoulder blades, and another
inner curve at the neck," says Shoemaker.
* To achieve this alignment, plant your bare feet on the floor a few inches apart.
* Distribute your weight evenly between your feet. "Most people put their weight on their heels. Bring your
body weight forward enough so you feel your weight evenly distributed through all of each foot," says author
Mary Bond. "You'll feel your chest and abdomen move forward a bit when you do this."
* Keep knees slightly bent. "When you lock your knees, you tip your pelvis forward and squeeze the discs in
the lower lumbar region of the back," says Read.
* "Gently pull your belly button toward your spine. This forms a foundation of stability." Your shoulders
should be relaxed, not hunched or rounded.
* Keep your head and neck in line with your shoulders, your chin parallel to the floor.
Check It
Roll up a small bath towel, then stand against a wall using good posture. "Put the rolled towel into the curve of
your lower back," says Shoemaker. "It should just fit. This exercise will help you get the feeling for that curve."
Feel It
You may feel taller and lighter -- and a bit awkward if you're accustomed to slouching. "You may also feel very
conscious of your breasts, which may feel more prominent now," says Bond.
27
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
THE PRAVDA
Millions of dollars to be raised to save 189 endangered bird species
16.08.2007
An international group started a plan Thursday to raise millions of dollars to save 189 endangered bird species
during the forthcoming five years. The list includes 17 birds that are on the brink of extinction in the USA.
U.K.-based BirdLife International is calling on environmental groups, corporations and individuals to contribute
the US$37.8 million (EUR 28.4 million) needed for what it is dubbing the Species Champions initiative. The
money will be used to protect habitats, raise awareness and reduce invasive species that often eat bird eggs and
compete for food.
The campaign comes as the numbers of extinct birds is on the rise, mostly due to poaching, habitat loss and
overdevelopment. In the last three decades, 21 species have been lost, including the Hawaiian honeycreeper
Poo-uli, Hawaiian Crow or alala and the Spixs Macaw from Brazil, BirdLife said.
"Critically endangered birds can be saved from extinction through this innovative approach," the group's Chief
Executive Mike Rands said in a statement. "This is an enormous challenge, but one we are fully committed to
achieving in our efforts to save the world's birds from extinction."
The first bird species to benefit will be the Bengal Florican in Cambodia, the Belding's Yellowthroat in Mexico,
Djibouti Francolin in Djibouti and Restinga Antwren from Brazil. All have seen their numbers drop from a few
thousand to a few hundred and their ranges limited to a few isolated locations.
The initiative includes creating a conservation plan in Mexico, regenerating forests in Djibouti, establishing a
protected area in Brazil and restoring grasslands in Cambodia where less than a thousand of the Bengal Florican
are found.
"Critically endangered birds represent a very vulnerable part of global biodiversity, and all need urgent action,"
Mark Gately, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Cambodia program which is working to protect
the Bengal Florican.
"Through conserving them, many sites and habitats important for other species will also be conserved," he said.
"The funds raised will directly support that work, and also conserve grassland areas that are used by nearby
villages to sustain their livelihoods."
All the birds targeted in the campaign are on the World Conservation Union's Red List of Threatened Species,
which are defined as those on the brink of extinction.
Among them are the Black Stilt, a New Zealand shorebird whose numbers have been reduced to a handful, the
Ivory-Billed Woodpecker rediscovered recently in Arkansas and the California Condor which is just now being
slowly reintroduced into the wild.
Many like Taita Thrush in Kenya are confined to diminishing fragments of their former habitat. Others like the
Red-headed Vulture are still widespread in Asia and still have populations measurable in thousands, but are in
dramatic decline, having lost over 80 percent of their numbers in just three generations.
Of the 17 birds in the United States, 12 are from Hawaii and their numbers have been reduced to the point
where some are believed to be extinct, BirdLife said. Facing threats from food shortages, hurricanes and feral
goats, birds like the Maui Parrotbill and Oloma'o have not been seen for years.
"We all have a negative impact on the environment, and we all have a little bit of blood on our hands when a
species goes extinct," said Stuart Butchart, BirdLife's Global Species Program Coordinator. "The Species
Champions initiative provides everyone with a personal opportunity to play their part in mitigating these
impacts and in saving species from extinction."
BirdLife officials said the funding will also go to implementing environmental awareness programs, helping
developing government conservation policies, creating protected area networks and carrying out surveys to
better understand, assess and fight the threats facing the birds. Programs will also be aimed at removing invasive
species, especially those that threaten island nesting species.
"The initiative is about raising funds to direct at the key people and organizations on the ground who can make a
difference for these species on the brink of extinction," Butchart said. "It is the first time this approach has been
taken in such a globally comprehensive and coordinated way for an entire class of organisms."
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru».
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TIME
Explaining Déjà Vu
by MICHAEL D. LEMONICK
Thursday, Aug. 09, 2007
It's an eerie experience that just about everyone has had more than once: you walk into a room or find yourself
in a conversation, and suddenly you have the overwhelming sense--even though you know it's impossible--that
you've been here before. Psychologists call it déjà vu--"already seen," in French--but despite the phenomenon's
universal familiarity, no one has offered a convincing explanation for why it happens.
But the mystery may have been solved, by a team of neuroscientists at MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and
Memory. Researcher Thomas McHugh and several colleagues have uncovered a specific memory circuit in the
brains of mice that is probably the cause of this weird sensation, which turns out to be a sort of memory-based
analogue of an optical illusion. Although neuroscientists have realized for some time that memory is made up of
many different components--long and short term, episodic (that is to say, memories of events) and fact based,
and that it takes place in different parts of the brain--McHugh's research, first reported in the online edition of
Science, adds another intriguing clue to the phenomenon.
McHugh and his team were trying to untangle the neurological circuitry of the hippocampus, a region of the
brain where new memories are formed. Neuroscientists know memories are actually groups of brain cells linked
by especially strong chemical connections; recalling a memory involves finding and activating a specific group.
It's important for the brain to know some memories are similar to each other--the pleasure of eating raspberries
is much like that of eating strawberries, for example. But it's also important to be able to distinguish memories
that are similar but not identical--eating another kind of red berry could make you sick. This ability is known as
pattern separation.
McHugh's senior colleague Susumu Tonegawa, a Nobel laureate for his work on the genetics of immunity, had
uncovered a related mechanism, called pattern completion, several years ago. That enables you to retrieve
complete memories based on just a single cue--for example, the question "Did we go to school together?" He
and McHugh suspected, based on this earlier work, that they could identify the specific gene that regulated
pattern separation.
So they used genetic engineering to create a mouse without this crucial gene and devised an experiment to test
the hypothesis. The mice were guided into a box where they would get a mild foot shock; they would react by
freezing. Then they were guided into a very similar box with no shock. The altered mice would freeze in the
safe box as well, and it took them a long time to figure out the difference. Normal mice figured it out pretty
quickly.
It's also this circuit, the scientists are convinced, that explains déjà vu. Every so often, they believe, the patternseparation circuit misfires, and a new experience that's merely similar to an older one seems identical. "It doesn't
happen very often to most people," Tonegawa says. Intriguingly, some people with epilepsy have this
experience all the time. "Epileptic seizures involve random firing of neurons in the temporal lobes, which
include the hippocampus," he says, and that could scramble the circuit.
But people with epilepsy-induced déjà vu usually don't experience the same disturbing eeriness that's so
common in others. And that difference supports McHugh and Tonegawa's theory as well. "We suspect that the
strange feeling comes from a conflict between two parts of the brain," Tonegawa says. "The neocortex is aware
of the fact that you've never been in a situation before. The hippocampus is telling you that, yes, you have."
As basic research scientists, Tonegawa and McHugh don't claim that their work will lead to a drug or therapy-not yet. And if it does, nobody is likely to focus on déjà vu, a mere side effect of memory. But a fuller
understanding of how the hippocampus works could lead to the creation of a drug that strengthens the patternrecognition circuit, which could help people overcome fearful memories that are triggered by associations with a
familiar-seeming place (like a dentist's office). Of course, if you strengthen the circuitry too much, you might
get the opposite illusion: jamais vu, in which you get the eerie feeling that you've never been in a situation
before even though you know otherwise.
29
THE GUARDIAN
Ł600,000 compensation for priest abuse victim
Thursday June 30, 2005
A man who was sexually abused by a Catholic priest during his childhood was today awarded more than
£600,000 in compensation.
The man, now aged 35, was abused between the ages of seven and 18 by Father Christopher Clonan, who was a
priest at Christ the King church in Coventry.
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The abuse victim, known as A, now suffers from schizophrenia and post-traumatic stress disorder. The high
court, sitting in Manchester, awarded him £635,684 for the abuse he suffered.
He had been abused between 1977 and 1988, the court heard, but did not realise anything was wrong until 1992,
when "his life fell apart".
The defendants in the action - the archbishop of Birmingham and the trustees of the Birmingham archdiocese of
the Roman Catholic church - admitted legal liability "for failing to prevent these activities".
Fr Clonan is believed to have abused many boys in the Coventry parish over a 20-year period. Today's judgment
could be followed by further compensation claims totalling millions of pounds.
The priest - who was never prosecuted - fled from police and went on the run to Australia. In 1988, his family
said he was dead, and he was said to have suffered a brain haemorrhage.
At first, detectives suspected that he could have faked his own death, but West Midlands police later said they
were satisfied he had died after taking DNA evidence from a crematorium in May 2004.
In his judgment today, Mr Justice Christopher Clarke said: "The abuse was regular - between one and three
times a week - and progressive. It began with Fr Clonan putting his hands in A's pockets and fondling [him]."
The judge said the abuse later took the form of mutual masturbation and, by the time A was aged around 12 or
13, he was being used for penetrative sex and was obliged to perform oral sex.
He said the abuse had gone undetected for so long because A had not initially comprehended what was
happening. Latterly, he was too afraid to speak out because he thought - as Fr Clonan had told him - that he
would not be believed.
The court heard A's family were devout Roman Catholics, and that he was their second youngest child. The
family were parishioners of the church in Westhill Road, Coundon, and his parents attended services each day.
Fr Clonan came to the church as assistant priest in 1972, and also became a governor of the Cardinal Newman
secondary school. "He came from a wealthy background, had property in Ireland, and appeared to be a breath of
fresh air," Mr Justice Clarke said.
"He was a regular visitor to the home and officiated at weddings and christenings. He was trusted and admired.
The abuse was the grossest breach of the trust that A and his family placed in him."
After A told of the abuse in 1992, Fr Clonan fled to Ireland, and then to Australia. A's parents moved to Ireland
because of the deterioration of the local community atmosphere in Coventry after he had spoken out about Fr
Clonan. Since 2000, A has lived in a home for people with psychiatric problems.
Mr Justice Clarke said: "[After the abuse] ... he has never been the same again, and has never regained the same
enthusiasm for life that he once had.
"He became seriously ill in mind, and has since then been receiving treatment for his mental illness. The
revelation of the abuse had severe consequences for his family."
Peter Jennings, a spokesman for the archdiocese of Birmingham, said there was deep regret that a "priest should
have totally misused his position of trust in such a way" and that the archdiocese "apologises again to those who
have been abused and offended".
He said the damage was "deep and lasting", but the church hoped the settlement would bring an end to the
"distress and anguish" the victim had suffered.
"Over the years since these tragic circumstances came to light, the archdiocese of Birmingham has been in
contact with the claimant and his family, and first provided practical help in 1992," Mr Jennings said.
"However, the substantial issues have had to be resolved in the formal matter of a court hearing, not least
because of the responsibilities of the archdiocese to its insurers.
"The court has now come to a decision on the amount to be paid in compensation, in the light not only of the
claim made but also of the evidence presented to it. The archdiocese accepts the judgments of the court and
notes that it relates substantially to loss of earnings."
Mr Jennings added that Fr Clonan would "have to answer for his behaviour before the throne of God".
In a statement released after the decision, representatives for A said: "We consider that the size of the judge's
award reflects the magnitude of the consequences of the archbishop's breach of his duty of care to A.
"We very much hope that the church will now offer realistic compensation to all those who have been sexually
abused by Catholic priests."
Complaints about abuse by priests have surfaced across the western world, forcing the resignation of senior
clergy and severely undermining the church's reputation.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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30
THE GUARDIAN
Condom burning in Africa fuels debate
by Owen Bowcott
Thursday June 16, 2005
The failure of so many African nation states is not an argument for promoting the power of religion, a public
debate at the British Museum heard last night.
In a clash between faith and secular politics, the phenomenon of condom burning in Uganda was raised as a
symbol of the crisis on the continent.
"We should not seek solace in the dubious embrace of religion," Ebenezer Obadare, a Nigerian visiting fellow at
the London School of Economics, told an audience at the debate sponsored by the Guardian.
Imagining that religion had a special role in Africa "comes from the dubious history of African exceptionality",
he said.
"I used to teach in the Nigerian University and 90% of my students ended up as Evangelists or pastors. Who is
going into industry? Who will do the thinking?"
But Joseph Osei-Bonsu, a bishop from the Konongo-Mampong Catholic Diocese in Ghana, said that Christian
groups were not seeking to usurp the authority of the state.
"The nation state is not doing well and religion has something to offer," he said.
"We are seeking to contribute to the state, not to replace it. Our clinics in remote places are for everybody."
The debate, Currencies of Trust: God and Mammon, was held in the run-up to the meeting of the G8
industrialised countries in Scotland next month, which is due to consider increasing aid to Africa.
The role of American-funded fundamentalist Christian groups was raised by one aid worker, who told of
sessions in Uganda where condoms had been burnt in public. The group advocated sexual abstinence as the only
way to combat the HIV epidemic.
"We know that religion is increasing its presence for better or worse," said Ian Linden, a lecturer at the School
of Oriental and African Studies. "Does that spawn diversity and change or does it create restricting preferences
which narrow and block human development?"
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
31
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
Why Allergies Pack a Punch. Find out why you're sneezing more than ever.
Allergies happen when your immune system -- which normally protects your body against invading agents -overreacts to a minor annoyance. When an allergic person inhales pollen, the immune system falsely identifies
these particles as a threat and mobilizes to attack by producing large amounts of antibodies.
The antibodies signal the body to unleash protective chemicals, including histamine. Within 30 minutes, small
blood vessels in your nose widen and engorge tissues, causing a stuffy nose. Glands start to produce mucus,
resulting in the sniffles.
Molly Ferris, a chronic allergy sufferer who lives in Omaha, Nebraska, says the Midwest in spring can be
"torturous." "I have three kids and it's impossible not to be outside, but I'm miserable even taking my
prescription medicine. I'm the only one looking forward to the middle of summer, but at least then I might get
some relief."
Prescription medicines, such as Claritin, Alegra, and Zyrtec provide the best relief. Over-the-counter
antihistamines and decongestants can also help. There are several proactive things allergy sufferers can do to
minimize symptoms.
* Keep your windows closed at home and in the car, especially in the morning when pollen levels are highest.
When driving, put the air conditioner on recirculate mode so air doesn't come in from the outside.
*Wash your hands every time you come in from outside.
*Don't hang laundry outdoors. Pollen flying through the air will settle on it.
*If pets spend time outdoors, restrict their movement to certain rooms in the house and never let them in the
bedroom.
* Vacuum often.
*Wear a mask while mowing the lawn. And mow often -- before grass gets high enough to bloom and release
pollen. A regular dust mask won't do much because it doesn't block the tiny offensive particles. Most experts
recommend finding a mask that excludes particles from size 12 to 25 microns.
*Check the weather report for the pollen count. If it is high, try to avoid outside activity.
Don't worry; tree pollen should only be around for a few more weeks at most. But then it's time for grass pollen
to explode and many cities already are recording high to moderate readings. -- Martha Miller
© Copyright 2007 Meredith Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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32
BETTER HOMES AND GARDENS
The Truth Behind Your Gut Feelings
by Kathleen McAuliffe
"Gut feeling" isn't just an expression: A network of nerves in your belly is in constant communication with your
brain. Here's how researchers are using this link to treat chronic stomach woes.
Your Second Brain
Kevin Olden, MD, a professor of medicine and psychiatry at the University of South Alabama School of
Medicine in Mobile, has studied the mind/body aspects of digestive diseases for nearly two decades, focusing
on the relationship between gut function and stress. MORE asked him to tell us what he's learned about the socalled "brain in the gut."
Q. Let me get this straight: There's a brain in my stomach?
A. "People are surprised when they learn about the belly brain, but everyday expressions such as "go with your
gut" or being "sick to your stomach" reflect an awareness that the gut has its own emotions and views.
"I suspect so-called gut intuition is most finely developed in people who say the GI system is the first place they
experience stress. While the gut may be their weakness, it may also give such people an advantage by providing
an early warning about the things they need to change in their lives. Gut feelings are a very definite form of
information."
Q. What exactly is this belly brain?
A. "Its technical name is the enteric nervous system, but it is often referred to as the 'little brain.' Only it's not so
little: This dense connection of nerves runs the entire length of the digestive system, from your esophagus and
stomach to the small and large intestine. It's estimated that the enteric system contains over 100 million neurons.
That's more than make up the spinal cord."
Q. Why do we need a second brain?
A. "A brain in the gut is critical, or it would not have survived all these years of evolution. The gut is one of the
most ancient, primitive parts of the body. Even worms have guts. While it's a very basic organ, digestion -- even
in simple organisms -- is complicated.
"Evidently, a brain in the gut was required to oversee the process, because it evolved early on. The enteric
nervous system can mostly function alone, without instructions from the brain. For all we know, the need to
regulate the absorption of nutrients may even precede thinking. And just as the big brain became more complex
over time, so too did the little brain.
"The big and little brains maintain intimate communication thanks to nerve pathways that run from the GI tract
to the head. The two brains also share many of the same neurotransmitters and chemical-receptor sites, which
may explain why their responses frequently seem to parallel each other. Shared receptors may also explain why
drugs that act on the brain are prone to triggering side effects in the stomach. Some opiate painkillers and
antidepressants in the tricyclic family, for example, can cause constipation."
Listening to Your Stomach
Q. In the past, stomach troubles were often dismissed as psychosomatic. Is this changing with greater
knowledge of the role of the enteric nervous system?
A. "It is. Two very common gastric disturbances that fit this category are chronic indigestion, or what doctors
call dyspepsia [a feeling of nausea or discomfort in the upper stomach recurring for at least three months] and
irritable bowel syndrome [IBS], which is characterized by chronic cramping, bloating, diarrhea, or constipation.
These are not trivial complaints. Jointly, these conditions account for more than half the workload of
gastroenterologists: About one-quarter of the population is affected by chronic indigestion, and IBS is believed
to affect another 20 percent.
"The fact that it's hard to trace these disorders to any physical cause and that they are often hard to treat has led
to speculation that stress or some other psychological problem may contribute to them. That's particularly true
of IBS, which predominantly affects midlife women and often goes hand in hand with anxiety, depression, or
trauma -- studies have suggested a high rate of IBS among women who had been sexually abused.
"But there's a danger in assuming that this kind of gastric disorder is all in the head. It could be that we just
haven't figured out the physical abnormality to blame. For example, very new research suggests IBS may be
caused by altered activity of the neurotransmitter serotonin in the gut.
"Of course, this does not rule out the possibility that feelings may adversely affect digestion or the gut. The
bottom line is, stress exacerbates virtually all illnesses, and we don't know if it plays a bigger role in gastric
woes than other disorders. My thinking is that psychological problems influence the severity of both chronic
indigestion and IBS, but don't cause either condition."
Q. Are women more affected by these stomach ills? Is it connected to our greater vulnerability to depression?
A. "Chronic indigestion does not dramatically affect one sex more than another. IBS, on the other hand,
disproportionately affects women -- by a factor of at least two to one. Similarly, depression is that much more
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common in women. Depression may not cause IBS, but rather the reverse: Being in gastric pain all the time
may, understandably, make you vulnerable to depression."
Q. Could better understanding of the brain in the gut improve the treatment of obesity?
A. "Possibly. What comes to mind is the stomach pacemaker -- a device similar to a cardiac pacemaker, only it's
implanted in the stomach. The device is an electrical-pulse generator that is attached to the stomach wall by
wires. When it's turned on, you usually don't feel anything. It seems to dampen appetite by somehow altering
messages between the little brain and the brain up top.
"There have been anecdotal accounts of obese patients losing significant amounts of weight using the device. In
my experience, the stomach pacemaker can be useful for people with diabetes-induced nerve damage to the
stomach -- a not uncommon condition that can cause chronic vomiting and severe weight loss. I've used it on
such patients, many of whom had failed all other treatments, and found that the electrical stimulation can
promote more normal gut contractions, enabling them to hold down food. But it won't work for everyone, and
trial studies are still ongoing."
Treatments for Your Stomach Troubles
The brain/belly link has opened up new avenues for therapies to improve gastric and digestive disorders. How
could you spell relief? Perhaps with:
Serotonin Blockers
You may know serotonin as the feel-good brain chemical that Prozac and other selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitors (SSRI) antidepressants elevate, but about 95 percent of the serotonin made by the body is actually
found in the gut, where it helps the intestine contract to propel food along. Serotonin is also involved in the
perception of pain. Based on that finding, alosetron (Lotronex) was developed to treat IBS.
This drug represents a major advance in treating the kind of IBS with the main symptoms of diarrhea and
cramping. [Lotronex was withdrawn from the market in 2000 because it was associated with some deaths. It has
since been returned to the market on a more restricted basis.] A newer drug, tegaserod (Zelnorm), helps increase
gut activity, and is very helpful in treating the kind of IBS characterized by constipation and bloating. Studies
show that 60 percent of IBS sufferers get better on these compounds.
Another drug, cilansetron, may be coming to market soon. It is designed to be especially effective in cases of
IBS with diarrhea. These compounds represent a major treatment advance over antispasmatics, stool softeners,
and other medicines long relied on to treat IBS.
Antidepressants
At very low doses, both the older tricyclics and SSRIs, such as Prozac, alleviate symptoms in about 30 percent
of IBS sufferers. Sufferers of chronic indigestion may also find relief with antidepressants. The standard
treatment is acid blockers such as Prilosec (a so-called proton-pump inhibitor), but they don't work for
everyone. Now, Zelnorm is also being studied in people troubled by chronic indigestion; preliminary results
look promising.
Hypnosis
According to studies by Peter James Whorwell, MD, of the University of Manchester, U.K., hypnosis as a tool
to induce a deep sense of relaxation consistently performs better than drugs or placebo treatments, in which
patients receive attention and emotional support without hypnosis. Hypnotherapy patients typically show a 50
percent reduction in IBS severity and a dramatic reduction in depression and anxiety.
Whorwell's team has also recently demonstrated that hypnotherapy is helpful for chronic indigestion. Results of
hypnotherapy persist: When followed anywhere from 10 months to several years later, the group that received a
single course of hypnotherapy still has far fewer symptoms and requires less medication and visits to the doctor
than the other groups.
To find a licensed practitioner, check out www.asch.net. Hypnotherapy costs about $100 per session and usually
requires 7-12 visits to help resolve these stomach conditions.
Cognitive Therapy
Talk therapy produces results roughly equivalent to hypnotherapy for the treatment of chronic gastric
disturbances, such as IBS or indigestion. Patients with these problems often feel hopeless and helpless, adding
to their stress and making their symptoms worse. In therapy, patients are taught how to replace catastrophic
thoughts with a more reasonable interpretation.
Most patients can expect to experience improvement in 12-20 sessions. Cognitive therapy costs about $125 per
visit. To find a cognitive therapist near you, call the American Psychological Association at 800-964-2000.
Originally published in MORE magazine, February 2005.Copyright 2007 Meredith Corporation. All Rights
Reserved.
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33
THE PRAVDA
Study finds Pacific coral reefs dying faster than expected
08.08.2007
Coral reefs in much of the Pacific Ocean are dying faster than previously thought, according to a study released
Wednesday, with the decline driven by climate change, disease and coastal development.
Researchers from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill found that coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific an area stretching from Indonesia's Sumatra island to French Polynesia - declined 20 percent in the past two
decades.
About 600 square miles (966 square kilometers) of reefs have disappeared since the 1960s, the study found, and
the losses were just as bad in Australia's well-protected Great Barrier Reef as they were in poorly managed
marine reserves in the Philippines.
"We found the loss of reef building corals was much more widespread and severe than previously thought," said
John Bruno, who conducted the study along with Elizabeth Selig. "Even the best managed reefs in the IndoPacific suffered significant coral loss over the past 20 years."
The study found the declines date much further back than earlier estimated and mirror global trends. The United
Nations has found close to a third of the world's corals have disappeared, and 60 percent are expected to be lost
by 2030.
The Indo-Pacific contains 75 percent of the world's coral reefs and provide a home for a wide range of marine
plants and animals. They also provide shelter for island communities and are key source of income with some
valued as high as US$270,000 (euro195,694) per square kilometer (0.4 square mile) of reef, mostly from the
benefits of fishing and tourism.
"Indo-Pacific reefs have played an important economic and cultural role in the region for hundreds of years and
their continued decline could mean the loss of millions of dollars in fisheries and tourism," Selig said in a
statement. "It's like when everything in the forest is gone except for little twigs."
While the study didn't examine the cause of the decline, Bruno said he believed it was driven by a range of
factors including warming waters due to climate change. He also blamed storm damage, runoff from agriculture
and industry, predators like fast-spreading crown-of-thorn starfish and diseases like White syndrome.
Bruno said the study showed the need to better manage reefs and prevent threats such as overfishing. But he
acknowledged that local measures will mean little unless the world comes together to reduce greenhouse gases.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in April, for example, concluded that rising sea temperatures
from global warming could result in the Great Barrier Reef bleaching on an annual basis and facing extinction
by 2030.
"It is just one more example of the striking, far reaching effects of climate change and our behavior," Bruno said
of the link between climate change and reef destruction. "It is the folks in North Carolina driving their SUVs. It
is their behavior that is having an effect way out in the Indo-Pacific."
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Center for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland in Australia,
said the study should put to rest any suggestion that reefs like the Great Barrier Reef are untouched by "human
pressures."
"This is a solid study that produces mounds of evidence that suggests reefs are changing counter to the untested
and ungrounded claims that it isn't happening," Hoegh-Guldberg, who was not involved in the study, said in an
e-mail interview. "The latter, unfortunately, amount to simple wishful thinking. One has only to look at this
paper to appreciate how slim these counter-arguments are by comparison."
Bruno and Selig analyzed 6,000 surveys between 1968 and 2004 of more than 2,600 Indo-Pacific coral reefs for
their study which appeared in the August issue of the peer-reviewed journal PLoS ONE.
The surveys tallied coral cover, a measure of the ocean floor area covered by living corals.
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru».
34
THE GURADIAN
430,000 illegal immigrants in UK
Thursday June 30, 2005
The UK is home to around 430,000 illegal immigrants, and possibly up to 570,000, according to a new
government estimate published today.
The Home Office issued figures estimating the size of the unauthorised migrant population for the first time,
putting the figure at between 310,000 and 570,000.
The figure does not include asylum seekers whose applications are being processed, or who are appealing
against a refusal - a group put at between 716,000 and 772,000.
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The figures relate to data gathered in April 2001. The new estimates were calculated by a complex equation
used in the United States.
The Home Office said the central estimate for the number of illegal immigrants was 430,000, or 0.7% of the
total UK population.
It includes those who have entered the UK clandestinely or on forged documents, plus those who have
overstayed their visas and failed asylum seekers who have not left the UK.
The immigration minister, Tony McNulty, warned that the number was "only an estimate and should not be seen
as a definite figure".
"No government has ever been able to produce an accurate figure for the number of people who may be in the
country illegally.
"By its very nature, it is impossible to quantify accurately, and that remains the case."
He said of the 430,000 estimate: "It is a useful contribution to the debate and it underlines the need for a robust
ID card scheme which will, among other benefits, help tackle illegal working and immigration."
The highest estimate of 570,000 would mean that one in 100 of the UK population is an illegal immigrant.
The shadow home secretary, David Davis, called it a "shocking indictment of the total shambles that is Labour's
immigration and asylum policy".
"This report shows unequivocally that the prime minister was wrong when he claimed it was impossible to
know how many failed illegal immigrants there are in Britain."
The Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, called on the government to "grasp the nettle"
and "look seriously at an amnesty for long-term illegal residents in exchange for much tougher border controls
in the future".
"The resources don't exist to deport half a million people, and many of these individuals will have been here for
years and have children." The research was based on data from the 2001 census. But the immigration figures
had been updated in a bid to account for errors in the census which "undercounted" various groups, particularly
transient populations in inner cities.
Meanwhile, nearly 3,700 failed asylum seekers went home voluntarily under a scheme funded by the
government in 2003, a report showed today.
The Home Office said there were 2,640 applications representing 3,685 individuals during the year, up 95% on
the previous 12 months.
The estimated average cost was Ł815 for each failed asylum seeker.
In comparison, forcibly returning each person costs Ł1,890, or up to nearly Ł13,000 if they have been detained
before being flown home.
Returns to Albania made up the largest group at 27%, followed by the Czech Republic (13%), Sri Lanka and
Iran (both 8%), and Iraq (6%).
Just over four out of 10 who were returned also applied for extra cash to help them reintegrate at home,
including funding from the government to help them set up businesses, or enter training or education. However,
only 345 of those applications were successful.
Today's evaluation of the scheme, which is still in operation, suggested that a more transparent way of allocating
reintegration grants should be developed, with greater consistency. It also said job-seeking help could be
offered.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
35
THE PRAVDA
Green tea fights psoriasis and dandruff, new study says
08.08.2007
Green tea is already touted for its cancer-fighting properties. A new study finds that it may also hold promise in treating
inflammatory skin conditions such dandruff, lupus-induced lesions and psoriasis.
In skin diseases like psoriasis, skin cells multiply out of control, causing the skin to be thicker and to flake off. Immune
cells in the body are also activated, causing inflammation to set in, reports CBC News.
Dr. Stephen Hsu, lead investigator on the study, said that the traditional treatment of ultraviolet light and medication can
control the lesions of the skin, but may cause squamous cell carcinoma -- the second most common form of skin cancer,
after long-term use. Green tea, which is plant-derived, may be an alternative, he says. But researchers must work to
overcome some barriers with the treatment and further study is needed to determine the full effects.
The chemicals in green tea are so active that they are oxidized too quickly when mixed with other ingredients. They also
dissolve in water, which cannot penetrate the skin's barrier.
Researchers are looking for a balanced formula that can dissolve in fats, which can permeate the skin, Dr. Hsu said,
according to Xinhua.
© 1999-2006. «PRAVDA.Ru».
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36
THE PRAGUE POST
Court: Insulting celebrities OK. Can most popular female singer avoid her communist past? By Dinah
A. Spritzer
June 22, 2005
Czechoslovak communist President Gustáv Husák greets Helena Vondráčková in 1986 at Prague Castle.
One of the stranger episodes in Czech pop culture involving a music critic taking a verbal jab at the country's
longest-reigning female diva came to a close earlier this month when the Supreme Court made it official:
Having an opinion is legal.
Grumpy culture critic Jan Rejžek does not have to apologize to 57-year-old music legend Helena Vondráčková
for saying in an interview with Lidové noviny that she owed her success to communist-era "mafiosi," according
to a June 14 ruling by the Supreme Court.
The ruling was a reversal of its earlier anti-Rejžek decision, overturned by the Constitutional Court in March.
Unfortunately the Supreme Court decision came a bit late for Rejžek, who had already been forced by an earlier
ruling to write an apology in two newspapers. Rejžek, true to his smart-aleck reputation, made the apology and
then spent a half page sarcastically begging forgiveness from all the "comrades" in the former communist
countries where Vondráčková performed in regime-sponsored singalongs.
Timeline
2000 Jan Rejžek links current success of singer Helena Vondráčková to the "mafiosi" who helped her career
during communism
2000 Vondráčková sues Rejžek for an apology
2002 Prague Municipal Court rules against Vondráčková; she appeals to High Court
2002 High Court judge rules for Vondráčková, saying "mafiosi" is generally understood as something that
involves illegal activity; Rejžek appeals
2003 Supreme Court confirms High Court ruling and requires Rejžek to apologize in Lidové noviny, where his
comments first appeared, as well as in the leading newspaper, Mladá fronta Dnes; Rejžek complies, tongue-incheek, and appeals to Constitutional Court
2005 Constitutional Court says Rejžek has a right to free speech and that as a media star, Vondráčková should
be prepared for a fair amount of criticism since she also has more access to the media than the average person.
The Supreme Court strikes down its earlier verdict
Nonetheless, Rejžek said the Supreme Court ruling would benefit journalists.
"If I wrote she had three abortions, that is something else," he said, referring to one of several lawsuits
Vondráčková has filed over the years against tabloids, one of which said she could not have children because of
an abortion. "I agree people should be punished for lies, but not for speculation, because then people would be
afraid to talk about celebrities and politicians."
Five years after Rejžek first impugned Vondráčková's reputation, some say the resolution of the case indicates
that freedom of speech is solidly entrenched in Czech society, despite continued attempts by politicians and
celebrities to squelch their critics.
"The case is really important because it raises the questions of what words you can and cannot use," said Michal
Horáček, lyricist and host of Česko hledá SuperStar, a hit television talent-search show. "I think it's better to err
on the side of free speech and I am grateful for this case because it is high time we think about it."
Rejžek was asked in 2000 by a Lidové noviny reporter what he thought of the nine most famous female
vocalists, most of whom were on the scene before 1989. Regarding the best-known singer, Vondráčková, he
remarked, "Apparently she managed not to lose contact with the mafiosi who pushed her into radio, television
and onto records in the '70s and '80s."
What followed in the newspaper was a letter-writing duel between the critic and the star, who has been the topselling female vocalist in the country since the mid-1960s and has a strong following in Eastern Europe and
Germany. Originally identified with the trend-setting 1960s rock group the Golden Kids, she later branched out
into show tunes and jazz and had a record-breaking disco hit in 2001 called "A Long Night." Her style is a mix
of Britney Spears and Dionne Warwick. Vondráčková has sold nearly 5 million records, more than any other
female singer in Czech or Czechoslovak history.
Vondráčková sued Rejžek, saying she was never associated with any mafia.
Rejžek in turn said he was using the term "mafiosi" figuratively, and he even referred to Václav Havel in his
defense, who had early in his presidency lamented the rise of "mafia capitalism" in Eastern Europe.
"Mafiosi don't have to be Sicilian thugs in sunglasses but can be normal people who have ties that are not
transparent to the outside world," he said.
Jaroslav Plesl, deputy editor-in-chief of Lidové noviny, was surprised the case had to pass through four courts.
"How can anyone sue you for what you think? And if someone does, how can a decent judge sentence you for
what you think?"
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Price of fame
The mafiosi case reminds fans and foes of communist-era pop that the fame of the country's two biggest and
oldest international stars, Vondráčková and waxen-faced crooner Karel Gott, came with a high moral price tag.
"I agree people should be punished for lies, but not for speculation."
Jan Rejžek, culture critic
Gott himself was labeled a "zombie" by another fierce anti-communist culture critic in 2000 who was outraged
that the singer was chosen to represent the Czech Republic at the World Expo in Hanover, Germany.
Gott admits to signing the Anti-Charter, a document concocted by the regime to combat the Charter 77 human
rights manifesto. But Vondráčková has denied signing the document, although the official Communist party
newspaper, Rudé právo, cited her as being a signatory.
"We had a totalitarian regime. Helena and people like that, to be successful, took part in regime festivals like the
Soviet Songs of Ostrava, where you had to sing one of these quasi-regime songs. It is harmless maybe, but that
was a line I have refused to cross," said SuperStar host Horáček, who has written lyrics for Vondráčková.
In addition, singers like Vondráčková were beholden to a corrupt system of promotion controlled by a handful
of men close to the communist party who could make or break your career.
As Rejžek puts it, "You had to be on good terms with the state-owned concert promoter, which was controlled
by the party. They allowed you to go to the West and tour," he said. "In return, bribes were usually paid to
them."
Vondráčková has repeatedly denied being a toady for the regime, although one prevalent rumor that persists to
this day casts her as the lover of former Communist Prime Minister Lubomír Štrougal.
In a phone interview with The Prague Post, she replied several times, "I do not understand," when asked if it
were possible that a group of people who controlled performers before 1989 could be viewed as a mafia. "Look,
it was a different system then," she added. "I refuse to be linked with any sort of mafia because of that."
The enduring popularity of Vondráčková and Gott, fresh from their second Carnegie Hall tour in New York
City this month, has defied all expectations. Most critics, like Rejžek, assumed it would be out with the old and
in with the new after the Velvet Revolution.
But Vondráčková has released some 46 albums, the best-selling ones pressed after 1989. Both singers have won
the Golden Nightingale award, the coveted best-singer title, year after year for decades.
Despite their pasts, Gott and Vondráčková sang at the official farewell-from-office tribute to former President
Havel, a long time anti-communist. "There is great nostalgia for these singers," said Horáček. "We Czechs took
part in mass collaboration; we went to the terrible parades and waved at the oppressors. When we look at Gott
and Vondráčková, we see ourselves."
- Dan Macek contributed to this report.
Dinah A. Spritzer can be reached at dspritzer@praguepost.com
37
TIME
World's Oldest Person Dies at Age 114
by AP/CARL FREIRE
Monday, Aug. 13, 2007
(TOKYO) — Yone Minagawa, who became the world's oldest person earlier this year, has died at a nursing
home in southwestern Japan, an official said Tuesday. She was 114.
Minagawa, who raised four sons and a daughter on her own by peddling flowers and vegetables, died of old age
Monday, said Toshiro Tachibana, an official at the nursing home in Fukuchi, 520 miles southwest of Tokyo.
"Her appetite had been declining recently and her energy fading," Tachibana said. "The death was not sudden."
Born on Jan. 4, 1893, Minagawa was named the world's oldest person by the Guinness Book of World Records
in January following the death of Emma Faust Tillman, also 114, in the United States.
Minagawa outlived all of her children except one daughter, and had seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren
and two great-great-grandchildren, according to the nursing home.
Japan has one of the world's longest average life spans — a factor often attributed to a healthy diet rich in fish
and rice.
In 2006, Japanese women set a new record for life expectancy at 85.81 years, while men live an average of
about 79 years.
The number of Japanese living beyond 100 has almost quadrupled in the past 10 years and is soon expected to
surpass 28,000, the government announced last September.
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38
THE GUARDIAN
Doctors' leaders drop opposition to euthanasia
by Debbie Andalo
Thursday June 30, 2005
The British Medical Association (BMA) today dropped its opposition to doctors being allowed to help
terminally ill patients to die in what was described as a "historic" decision.
Its new position now puts increasing pressure on MPs and peers to decide whether to back changes to the law in
relation to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
A new bill, assisted dying for the terminally ill, which was brought by Lord Joffe last year, is due to return to
the House of Lords later this year as part of its parliamentary process.
After the BMA vote today Liberal Democrat MP Evan Harris, who has been campaigning for a change in the
law, said: "This is an historic change of policy. This is a massive boost for Lord Joffe's bill.
"The BMA had always opposed any change in the law but has now joined the Royal Colleges in thinking that
this is now a matter for parliament to decide and that the role of the medical professions is to press for the
necessary safeguards, not to oppose an overdue move towards recognising the need for patients to have more
autonomy at the end of their lives."
Until today the BMA has always opposed physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.
But the doctors' body has now decided to drop its opposition to the law being changed. Instead doctors believe
now that the issue of the law around assisted dying is "primarily a matter for society and parliament."
The BMA backed a motion which said doctors should not oppose any change in the law but should "press for
robust safeguards both for patients and for doctors who not wish to be involved in such procedures."
The decision means that the BMA has moved to a neutral position - neither opposing nor campaigning for
assisted dying.
GP John Chisholm, who supported this neutral position, said: "We need to ensure that vulnerable patients are
protected, they have quality palliative care and pain relief is available."
He said the rights of patients needed to be respected so they had more control over the dying process but at the
same time there had to be safeguards to protect both doctors and patients who do not wish to be involved in
assisted dying.
However John Garner wanted the BMA to go further. He said doctors should support an "open and transparent"
system which allowed patients to request an assisted death.
He said: "I have no compunction about saying that if I was dying from a terminal illness, and life had become
completely joyless and I was in pain, I would want to consider assisted suicide." But Ian Bailey called for
delegates to support the BMA's stance of opposing physician-assisted suicide. He said: "It is not a doctor's role
to be involved. We should not be involved in intentional killing."
After the vote the BMA's head of science and ethics, Vivienne Nathanson, said doctors wanted to make sure that
any future change in the law would include a "conscientious objection clause" so that doctors not wanting to
become involved in assisted suicide would find it was part of their contract.
Dr Nathanson said: "Not everyone will like it. There will be people who say we shouldn't have changed, and
there will be people who say we should have gone further."
She said that the safeguards also needed to reflect fears that the elderly may feel coerced into assisted suicide
because they did not want to be a burden.
SocietyGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
39
THE PRAGUE POST
Word from the wise. Where to go and whom to call for health concerns in Prague by Kathleen Kralowec
May 2nd, 2007
It’s a pain, but everyone gets sick. If you happen to have a health emergency while in a foreign country, you
might feel as though you are stepping into scary, unfamiliar territory. Few things are more unnerving than
wondering if you’ll be understood when you’re trying to get medical help, or not being sure you’ll understand
the answers to your questions or instructions you receive. It doesn’t have to be that way, though.
While many generally agree that healthcare services in the Czech Republic are of good quality, confusion can
arise in terms of where to go to get help from English-speaking doctors and nurses. As it turns out, there are
quite a lot of options available to the city’s expat community. It’s just a matter of doing a little research
beforehand.
There are, however, some pitfalls in the Czech healthcare system you should heed. According to a least a few
local physicians, the country’s medical emergency services are almost nonexistent. In its place is something
called Urgent Care, which experts warn falls alarmingly below standards.
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“The training of emergency staff is woefully negligent when it comes to managing emergency cases. At the
same time, there are very qualified people, but these are few and far between,” Dr. Martin Stranský, founder and
director of Polyclinic at Narodní, a centrally located emergency medical service center that caters to the U.S.
and British embassies.
Stranský, who is board-certified in the United States and has duel Czech and U.S. citizenship, adds that there are
simply no emergency rooms in the Czech Republic. “There are only designated spots in hospitals, and they vary
widely, based on the experience, needs and perspective of the hospital,” he says.
Dr. Milan Šašek, also a physician at Polyclinic at Narodní, explains there are other stark differences between the
Czech healthcare system and facilities in Western countries.
“Medical care here is extremely compartmentalized,” Šašek says. “In the case of a heart attack, your high blood
pressure won’t be monitored in an orthopedic ward, because the staff simply isn’t geared to do that. The team
approach to patient care isn’t as common.”
Šašek, a U.S. board-certified doctor with more than eight years of experience, says the best thing visitors and
expats can do in the case of an emergency is first call any of the 24-hour hotlines of healthcare providers that are
listed in travel brochures, as they will act as a mediator between you and the emergency personnel, few of
whom speak English.
It’s important to also note that many clinics, especially dental offices, only accept direct payment, which means
that no matter what type of health insurance you have, you must front the entire estimated cost of the service.
Clinics say they will help visiting patients fill out the mound of paperwork that often comes with seeking
medical assistance in a foreign country. Those with Czech health insurance can receive reimbursements for
dental services only in case of an emergency, as Czech health insurance generally covers only basic treatments.
Now that that is all cleared up, here are some tips for seeking out the best medical assistance in Prague.
General health care
There are many health centers in Prague that come equipped not only with friendly English-speaking staff but
also offer a number of different medical services and treatments under one roof.
One option is the Canadian Medical Care, an outpatient clinic that does pretty much everything from dental care
to major surgery, for both adults and children. Expats constitute about 70 percent of its clientele, and the venue
also accommodates clients who require transport and home visits. Clinic spokeswoman Kamila Votrubová
suggests expats get to know the city’s medical landscape while they are healthy.
“It is advisable to choose a private outpatient medical clinic immediately upon arrival in Prague, get acquainted
with the services and one’s treating physician,” she says.
Dental services
More and more dental clinics in Prague are tailoring their services to fit expat needs.
Esthesia, for instance, offers a full range of dental services and accepts both credit cards and travelers’ checks.
The entire staff there also speaks English. Executive Manager Lenka Bodnarová admits that finding Englishspeaking dental care in Prague is not difficult. “There are more and more foreign clients, and wherever you go,
you can always find clinics that offer services in foreign languages,” she says.
Another clinic familiar with serving the needs of foreigners is Dentaktiv, where doctors not only speak English,
but all have experience working or studying abroad. Office Manager Tereza Kaštáková says this makes a
significant difference in the type of health care a clinic can offer.
“It definitely helps with communication, and not only on the language side. There are many dentists who are
very good in their field but don’t have a client approach, and that’s something we look for,” she says.
Those looking for a high-class dentist’s visit can hop over to the European Dental Center. The international staff
of the center includes dentists from Italy and Portugal, an orthopedic specialist from France and an
implantologist from France. Their luxurious office is located in the center of Prague, with parking and a young,
English-speaking staff.
The European Dental Center stays open late and on weekends at the request of patients. Their 24-hour line
operates 365 days a year, and if you have a late-night emergency requiring immediate help, a doctor can be
summoned to the office just for you.
Mental health
It’s one thing when you have to explain a broken leg to a doctor in another language. But what if the problem
goes deeper?
Behar Center provides psychological and mental health services in English, Czech, German and Hebrew, with
foreigners making up about 95 percent of their client base. The center’s Dr. Lior Behar says this high percentage
of foreigners wasn’t planned. “It just happened like that, probably because I can speak English.” Originally from
Israel, Behar says the main problem expats face in Prague is adjusting to their surroundings. “But there are
many other problems as well. We see the whole spectrum,” he says.
The center provides help for eating disorders, addictions, depression, anxiety and other psychological issues.
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Another place you can go for multilingual counseling is Terapie.info, which has a team of psychiatrists and
psychotherapists who can speak English, French, Spanish, Russian and Czech. Dr. Thomas Rektor, who heads
the center, says he believes that finding psychotherapists in Prague who speak English may actually be easier
than finding specialists in other medical fields.
Prenatal services
For new and expectant mothers and fathers, Stephanie Kay’s Babymoon Prenatal provides individual and group
classes in English that can take place at her home or yours. Her clients include many multinational couples.
Kay’s group courses cover a wide variety of topics, according to the needs and desires of the students. “People
like it,” she says. “It’s very interactive. There’s a lot of group work."
There is also a lot of give and take.
“People tend to talk to other people, and tell others about their experience with different pediatricians,” Kay
explains. “In one of my classes two different couples had a bad experience with the same pediatrician, and they
were able to tell the group. So that’s how it works, its not just me telling people where to go, but it’s people
telling each other, and letting their fellow new parents know what’s available.”
Kay says new expat parents needn’t worry about finding quality health services in Prague. “It can be daunting
when you’re in a foreign country,” she says, “But the medical services in the Czech Republic are quite good.”
40
THE GUARDIAN
Row over care home funding for elderly man
Friday August 17, 2007
A 78-year-old man is facing eviction from a nursing home after being told he is not frail enough to qualify for
free nursing care, despite suffering three heart attacks.
Retired farmer Edwin Coglan, 78, from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, paid more than £40,000 from the sale of
his house for care at the Summer Lane home in the town.
But that money has now run out and North Somerset council refused to pay his £500-a-month fees. He was
offered a third-floor flat instead, but the housing association which owns the flat said the accommodation was
unsuitable for a man in such poor health.
After an outcry from Mr Coglan's family and charities, the council said it would reassess the case, but would not
be paying for him to stay in the home.
A spokesman said two assessments by social workers concluded he did not need nursing home care. "Mr Coglan
and his family have now challenged the accuracy of these assessments," he said. "A further review of Mr
Coglan's needs is therefore taking place. This includes a reassessment by the primary care trust of his nursing
needs."
Mr Coglan's son, Andrew, said his father could not look after himself because of his failing health and mild
dementia. "They offered him a flat on the third floor but he can hardly walk, and he's breathless because of his
three heart attacks," he said. "All he wanted was a peaceful retirement and now he faces being evicted."
He cannot look after his father because he spends all his time caring for his terminally ill wife, Helen, and their
three children.
A spokeswoman for Nightingale Premier Healthcare, which owns Summer Lane, said the firm was losing
money because of the stand-off.
The Local Government Association blamed a lack of central funding for Mr Coglan's plight.
David Rogers, the chairman of the association's community wellbeing board, said: "Councils want to provide
the services older people need but are increasingly unable to do so because central government funding has not
kept pace with the demands of an ageing population.
"Ministers must turn with urgency to the long-term overhaul of the future funding and focus of elderly care
services. It is unjust that people have to wait until their life is threatened before they receive care. If we are to
meet the needs and aspirations of an ageing population and change the services people use for the better, the
social care system needs root and branch reform."
Kate Jopling, head of public affairs at Help the Aged, said Mr Coglan's case highlighted how difficult it was for
elderly people to claim free nursing care.
"It just beggars belief that he doesn't meet the eligibility criteria," she said. "The bar gets higher each year and
the threshold is now so high, few people qualify for free residential care.
"What they fail to take into account is this care home has become his home. The council can't just apply cold,
hard economics. The need to consider the circumstances in his case."
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41
THE CAIRO TIMES
Ministry denies torture reports
by Hanaan Sarhan
Anti-torture group responds to Ministry of Interior’s letter
A report issued by the Egyptian Association against Torture (EAAT) on 21 June provides evidence of abuse in
prisons nationwide. The report followed an unprecedented letter from the Ministry of the Interior to members of
the New York-based Human Rights Watch, denying accusations that 38 incidents of torture and seven deaths
occurred at the hands of state security intelligence officers.
In the letter, issued 29 February, the ministry claimed that all seven deaths could be attributed to suicide or
infighting among prisoners, and that 19 of the 38 alleged cases of torture “did not happen.” Investigations are
pending in the remaining cases.
When EAAT announced its findings, the group accused the government of operating solely to defend its
reputation abroad.
“With Egypt’s public image at stake, the ministry’s reaction is a form of damage control,” said EAAT founder
and president, Aida Seif Al Dawla. “As a result, not a single police officer or prison guard has ever been
prosecuted for the mistreatment of prisoners and detainees.”
The denial by the Interior Ministry came despite a collection of photographs, interview transcripts and forensic
reports, detailed in the report. The organization also said it felt threatened by the ministry’s letter, which referred
to its activities as a “suspect organized campaign against the country in the field of human rights.”
Positioning itselves as part of a public campaign, EAAT officials said its research is particularly important after
the torture scandal in Iraq.
“What America is doing, Egypt is doing. If Rumsfeld and Bush apologized, where is our apology?” said Seif Al
Dawla.
The EAAT’s most recent accusation came on 9 June, when 40-year-old Akram Al Zoheiry, a Muslim
Brotherhood member, died in police custody. Al Zoheiri and 53 other Brothers were arrested for allegedly
conducting military training .
Though many incidents in the report involved members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the EAAT stressed the
cases it investigated involved a variety of detainees, including women.
“These acts often occur without any kind of provocation,” said EAAT legal spokesman, Taher Abou Al Nasr.
“It may just be a matter of a guard not liking the way a prisoner looks.”
“The mistreatment of prisoners is a conscious choice,” Seif Al Dawla added, “You don’t put a cigarette out on
someone’s chest just because they don’t cooperate during an interrogation.”
Though the EAAT was denied official NGO status last August, the group announced last week it would join
with 12 other organizations to form the Egyptian Human Rights Organizations Collective. Representatives hope
that the merger will put added pressure on the government to reform penal legislation and abandon its policy of
using emergency laws to prosecute political prisoners.
42
THE ADBUSTERS
São Paulo: A City Without Ads
August 3, 2007
In 2007, the world’s fourth-largest metropolis and Brazil’s most important city, São Paulo, became the first city
outside of the communist world to put into effect a radical, near-complete ban on outdoor advertising. Known on one
hand for being the country’s slick commercial capital and on the other for its extreme gang violence and crushing
poverty, São Paulo’s “Lei Cidade Limpa” or Clean City Law was an unexpected success, owing largely to the
singular determination of the city’s conservative mayor, Gilberto Kassab.
Tony de MarcoAs the driving force behind the measure, mayor Kassab quelled the rebellion from the advertising
industry with the help of key allies amongst the city’s elite. On many occasions, Kassab made the point that he has
nothing against advertising in and of itself, but rather with its excess. He explained,
“The Clean City Law came from a necessity to combat pollution . . . pollution of water, sound, air, and the visual. We
decided that we should start combating pollution with the most conspicuous sector – visual pollution.”
Since then, billboards, outdoor video screens and ads on buses have been eliminated at breakneck speed. Even
pamphleteering in public spaces has been made illegal, and strict new regulations have drastically reduced the
allowable size of storefront signage. Nearly $8 million in fines were issued to cleanse São Paulo of the blight on its
landscape.
One sore loser in the battle was Clear Channel Communications. Having recently entered the Brazilian market, the
corporation was purchasing a Brazilian subsidiary as well as the rights to a large share of the city’s billboard market.
Weeks before the ban took effect, Clear Channel launched a counter-campaign in support of outdoor ads, with
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desperate slogans that failed to resonate with the masses: “There’s a new movie on all the billboards – what
billboards? Outdoor media is culture.”
Although legal challenges from businesses have left a handful of billboards standing, the city, now stripped of its
15,000 billboards, resembles a battlefield strewn with blank marquees, partially torn-down frames and hastily
painted-over storefront facades. While it’s unclear whether this cleanup can be replicated in other cities around the
world, it has so far been a success in São Paulo: surveys indicate that the measure is extremely popular with the city’s
residents, with more than 70 percent approval.
Though materialism and consumerism, along with gang violence will continue to pollute the city of São Paulo, these
human dramas may at least begin to unfold against a more pleasant visual backdrop.
On The Media’s Bob Garfield interviewed Vinicius Galvao, a reporter for Folha de São Paulo, Brazil’s largest
newspaper, about São Paulo’s ban on visual pollution.
Tony de MarcoBob Garfield: I’ve seen photos of the city, and it’s amazing to see this sprawling metropolis
completely devoid of signage, completely devoid of logos and bright lights and so forth. What did São Paulo look
like up until the ban took place?
Vinicius Galvao: São Paulo’s a very vertical city. That makes it very frenetic. You couldn’t even realize the
architecture of the old buildings, because all the buildings, all the houses were just covered with billboards and logos
and propaganda. And there was no criteria.
And now it’s amazing. They uncovered a lot of problems the city had that we never realized. For example, there are
some favelas, which are the shantytowns. I wrote a big story in my newspaper today that in a lot of parts of the city
we never realized there was a big shantytown. People were shocked because they never saw that before, just because
there were a lot of billboards covering the area.
BG: No writer could have [laughing] come up with a more vivid metaphor. What else has been discovered as the
scales have fallen off of the city’s eyes?
VG: São Paulo’s just like New York. It’s a very international city. We have the Japanese neighborhood, we have the
Korean neighborhood, we have the Italian neighborhood and in the Korean neighborhood, they have a lot of small
manufacturers, these Korean businessmen. They hire illegal labor from Bolivian immigrants.
And there was a lot of billboards in front of these manufacturers’ shops.And when they uncovered, we could see
through the window a lot of Bolivian people like sleeping and working at the same place. They earn money, just
enough for food. So it’s a lot of social problem that was uncovered where the city was shocked at this news.
Tony de MarcoBG: I want to ask you about the cultural life of the city, because, like them or not, billboards and logos
and bright lights create some of the vibrancy that a city has to offer. Isn’t it weird walking through the streets with all
of those images just absent?
VG: No. It’s weird, because you get lost, so you don’t have any references any more. That’s what I realized as a
citizen. My reference was a big Panasonic billboard. But now my reference is art deco building that was covered
through this Panasonic. So you start getting new references in the city. The city’s got now new language, a new
identity.
BG: Well, cleaning up the city’s all well and good, but how do businesses announce to the public that they’re open
for business?
VG: That was the first response the shop owners found for this law, because the law bans billboards and also even the
windows should be clean. Big banks, like Citibank, and big stores, like Dolce & Gabbana, they started painting
themselves with very strong colors, like yellow, red, deep blue, and creating like visual patterns to associate the brand
to that pattern or to that color.
For example, Citibank’s color is blue. They’re painting the building in very strong blue so people can see that from
far away and they can make an association with that deep blue and Citibank.
Tony de MarcoBG: Now, the city has said, having undertaken this effort, it will eventually create zones where some
outdoor advertising will be permitted. Do you expect São Paulo eventually to just revert to its previous clutter?
VG: Not to revert to previous clutter, but I think like very specific zones, I think they’re going to isolate the electronic
billboards in those areas, in the financial center. I don’t think they should put those in residential areas as we had
before.
BG: Now, the advertising industry is obviously not happy about this. They’re complaining that they’re deprived of
free speech and that it’s costing them jobs and revenue. But is there anyone else in São Paulo who’s unhappy about
this? Tell me about the public at large. What’s their view?
VG: It’s amazing, because people on the streets are strongly supporting that. The owner of the buildings, even if they
have to renovate a building, they’re strongly supporting that. It’s a massive campaign to improve the city. The
advertisers, they complain, but they’re agreeing with the ban. What they say is that we should have created criteria
for that to organize the chaos.
BG: Vinicius, thank you very much for joining us.
VG: Thank you so much.
BG: Vinicius Galvao is a reporter for Folha de São Paulo.
Excerpted from “NPR’s On the Media” from WNYC Radio.
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630 CHEDDAM BRITISH COLUMBIA FREE PRESS
Graceland anoints first king of Elvis pretenders; Canadian fan impressed
by WOODY BAIRD
at 15:04 on August 18, 2007, EST.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) - Managers of Elvis Presley's Graceland have anointed their first "Ultimate Elvis
Tribute Artist," ending a worldwide search for a Presley pretender to wear their official crown.
The new make-believe King is Shawn Klush, a 38-year-old Elvis impersonator from Pittston, Pa..
"It's unbelievable," he said of the victory. "It's an overwhelming experience, and it couldn't be in a better place."
Klush was chosen at a concert hall Friday in downtown Memphis in the championship round of a series of
tribute contests held around the world.
Click here to find out more!
He won US$5,000 in cash, a $5,000 shopping trip to Graceland's souvenir shops, $3,000 toward a new Elvis
jumpsuit and other prizes.
The biggest prize, though, was the "Ultimate Elvis" title, a first in the world of Elvis impersonators.
Klush, who wore a white bespangled jumpsuit and sang "My Way," "Bridge Over Troubled Water" and "You
Gave Me A Mountain," praised the other contestants and the Elvis fans who filled the 2,000-seat hall at the
Cook Convention Centre beside the Mississippi River.
Presley died at Graceland, his Memphis residence, on Aug. 16, 1977, and the finals of the tribute artist contest
were part of a week-long string of concerts, dances and memorials focused on the 30th anniversary of his death.
The contest was a big change for Graceland managers who have had little to do with Elvis impersonators over
the years, generally regarding them with a mixture of resigned bemusement and outright disgust.
That attitude changed this year, and a string of preliminary contests, begun in March, were held around the
United States and abroad to send 24 finalists to Memphis. A qualifying round in Memphis last Sunday cut the
list of finalists to 10.
Only a first-place winner was chosen, but Klush and two other contestants, Trent Carlini, 37, of Henderson,
Nev., and Donny Edwards, 32, of Las Vegas, were called back by the judges to perform a third song each, while
the others were limited to two.
The contestants were backed by a nine-piece band and performed before a huge display of red blinking lights
spelling out ELVIS, similar to the backdrop for Presley's 1968 TV concert called the "Comeback Special."
Carol Daley, 57, a Canadian fan from Ontario, said she was happy Graceland was finally embracing Elvis
tribute artists.
"These guys are fantastic," said Daley, who attended the finals with four female friends from Canada, all decked
out in matching Elvis T-shirts. "Everything about them is so good. You're talking about the looks, the sound, the
moves. It's the whole package."
Elvis Presley Enterprises, which runs the $40-million-a-year worldwide business in all things Elvis, opened
Presley's Graceland to public tours in 1982 and the famous white-columned house now draws almost 600,000
visitors a year.
44
THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE PARIS
Report: Harry Potter author working on Scottish crime novel
Saturday, August 18, 2007
LONDON: Pen and notebook in hand in Edinburgh cafes, author J.K. Rowling has been spotted working on her latest
work: a detective novel, a British newspaper reported Saturday.
The British author, who famously wrote initial drafts of her boy wizard story in the Scottish city's coffee houses, is
turning her hand to crime fiction, the Sunday Times newspaper reported.
It said that Ian Rankin, a fellow author and neighbor of Rowling, told a reporter at an Edinburgh literary festival that
the writer had recently been seen at work in local cafes.
"My wife spotted her writing her Edinburgh criminal detective novel," the newspaper, which was available late
Saturday, quoted Rankin as saying.
Rankin, famous for his own police novels set in the historic Scottish city, said he had not discussed the project with
Rowling personally, and declined to reveal how he had learned about her plans.
"It is great that she has not abandoned writing or Edinburgh cafes," Rankin said.
When Rowling created Harry Potter, she was a struggling single mother who wrote in cafes to save on the heating bill
at home. Now Britain's richest woman — worth US$1 billion (€720 million), according to Forbes magazine — her
seven Potter books have sold more than 335 million copies worldwide.
In an interview with The Associated Press last month, Rowling said she believed she was unlikely to repeat the
success of the series, but confirmed she planned to work on new books.
"I'll do exactly what I did with Harry — I'll write what I really want to write," Rowling said.
The office of Rowling's literary agent Christopher Little was not immediately available to comment late Saturday.
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THE GUARDIAN
We can be winners. The Homeless World Cup is achieving its goal of giving people in difficulty something to
celebrate. John Ives reports
Tuesday July 24, 2007
Too often people associate sport with professional players behaving like spoilt children, says the social entrepreneur
Mel Young. "Sport is so much more, and we're showing to governments and other agencies that this is something that
works."
This is the Homeless World Cup, which Young co-founded; an annual five-a-side football tournament contested this
year by 48 countries from around the world, each of them represented by men and women living in temporary
accommodation or on the streets.
The tournament, which begins on Sunday in Copenhagen, Denmark, aims to bring together homeless people from
around the world to share their experiences, learn valuable life skills and boost their self-esteem.
And it does work. In a survey of participants in last year's event in Cape Town, South Africa, 73% reported that their
lives had changed for the better six months later. Many had improved their housing situation, secured regular
employment, were pursuing education and/or had tackled a drug problem.
David Duke, 27, has just bought a house in Glasgow with his partner. A few years ago he was living in a hostel, cut
off from friends and family, with no qualifications to his name and an alcohol problem. Then he saw an advert in the
Big Issue seeking players for the Scottish Homeless World Cup 2004 team.
He attended trials, got picked for the squad and traveled, all expenses paid, to Gothenburg, Sweden, where they
reached the semi-finals. "It was great, a real eye-opener," he says.
How does the event change lives? "It opened my eyes to what I could achieve", says Duke. "Because of the
confidence I gained, I realised if I wanted something, I could get it."
As a teenager, he wasn't interested in school. But after the tournament he stuck at a full-time college course for a
year, while doing voluntary work in his spare time. He gained a higher national certificate in community development
and now works full-time for the Big Issue magazine, where part of his job is organising this year's Scotland team.
"The change that's going on is a psychological one," Young says. "People are standing and applauding. The players
get medals, they come back and they will all talk about how they are changed people."
The participants learn lessons about teamwork, winning and losing, and that there are other people in the same
situation as them - or worse. Mixing with the players from Europe and the US are others from Kenya, Rwanda and
Afghanistan.
"We know we don't win all the time," Young says, but homeless people feel they lose all the time. It's about learning
how you can lose and you can win, and that's what life's like for all of us."
In each participating country, the Homeless World Cup selects one lead partner to organise and help fund the squads.
Big Issue Scotland supports the Scottish team's costs, although Duke has been drumming up additional sponsorship.
Duke says each member of his squad gets a development plan covering the period from two months before the
tournament to four months after, setting out what they want to do and how they might go about it. One of the players
on this year's squad, for example, has come off methadone while in training and is now drug-free.
Part of the event's success is that it reaches people that other parts of the system can't reach. Young men in particular
can be reluctant to accept help, but football and the idea of representing one's country is a powerful attraction.
"It's not the answer for everybody," says Young, "but it works for a lot of people."
Paul Smith says he sought no help after getting kicked out of his home by his parents as a tearaway teenager. He slept
rough in London or would break into empty houses for shelter. "It's not nice to talk about now," he says. "Hard
times."
Smith, now 26 and living with his girlfriend, was part of the England squad at last year's tournament in Cape Town.
"The experience was unbelievable," he says. "All the teams ate together, we got on well with most of the people who
could speak English. We made a lot of friends.
"I think it changes the way you see yourself. To see the way South Africa was, how other people were. It's going to
change a lot of lives."
Young hopes the event can grow in the future and has dreams of getting 100,000 people involved by the end of the
decade. He has also set up a grant-giving trust, alongside the social enterprise that runs the tournament, to fund yearround projects for homeless people, particularly in Africa.
"We're very ambitious, because it works," he says. "What we're proving is that sport, and football in particular, can be
used as a tool in the world of development."
· This year's Homeless World Cup kicks off on Sunday. For more details, watch the promotional video or visit the
website.
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46
THE PRAGUE POST
Taking the alternative route. Prague's full of different ways to relax your body
by Kimberly
Ashton
May 2nd, 2007
Acupuncture and other alternative therapies have been popular in the West for years. Only recently, however,
have they begun to make a splash on the Czech scene. But, if you search, you can find a budding array of
alternative treatments in Prague to melt your stress, get your chakras in order and realign your tired body.
Acupressure, for instance, has become extremely popular. The treatment is similar to acupuncture in that both
work on pressure points along the body’s meridians, or energy pathways. These points are stimulated to help the
flow of Qi (pronounced “Chee”), or vital energy, that courses just underneath the surface of the skin. The theory
is that bodily, and even mental, ailments are the result of a blockage of Qi.
Acupressure can be practiced by someone who isn’t a doctor. But, unlike in Western Europe and the United
States, here, in the Czech Republic, only medical doctors can legally practice acupuncture using needles —
which involves inserting hair-thin needles a couple of millimeters into the skin, along these pressure points, to
release energy.
While this regulation may seem to raise the quality of care, it actually often decreases it, according to Ludmila
Bendová, an acupuncturist and medical doctor who works at The Center of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
“According to me it’s a stupid law,” she says.
In Germany, the United Kingdom and France, acupuncturists are required to be licensed, which means they are
extensively trained in the practice. Bendová says she thinks the Czech Republic should have a similar licensing
system since it takes years to properly learn the practice, and doctors are only required to take a six-week
course. Oftentimes, there is no telling what you’re going to get, or how well-trained the practitioner is, Bendová
says.
“You know, it’s a pity, because I have had lots of patients who have tried acupuncture and it hasn’t helped,”
Bendová says.
There is a cultural gap, too, when it comes to alternative therapies. Many Czechs unquestionably believe that the
doctor knows best and are skeptical about nonstandard medicine, alternative-medicine advocates agree.
In the United States and Western Europe, consumers are more likely to take charge of their own health care,
seeking out alternative therapy and questioning doctors as to the best course of action to treat a problem.
Furthermore, Western medical doctors also seem more aware of the benefits of acupuncture and more accepting
of it as a legitimate therapy, experts say.
A typical acupuncture session will cost about 600 Kč ($30) and last from 30 minutes to one hour. It is usually
not covered by health insurance unless it is administered as part of other medical care. You should see some
benefits within five sessions or you are probably headed down the wrong course of treatment, experts say.
If acupuncture really isn’t your style, you might want to try having a Thai massage.
One of the most well-known therapies here, a tourist in Prague can’t look up from under his visor without
seeing a massage ad.
Traditional Thai massage is a dry massage — without oil — and based on the practice of acupressure. In
Prague, however, while masseurs stick to the principles of acupressure, they toss in a little oil, too, because
people here like it, according to the manager of the Sabai Thai Massage Center on Na Příkope 22.
Unlike traditional Western massages, such as Swedish massage, Thai massage is not a passive message.
Although the client lies down, relaxing, the masseur stretches the body, “like yoga with an assistant,” says the
manager, who identified herself only as Nicole.
A full-body session, which takes an hour, costs 990 Kč at Sabai, which has five salons in the Czech Republic. A
half-hour session, which just focuses on the head, neck and shoulders, is 590 Kč.
Although massage and acupuncture tend to dominate the alternative-therapy field, many other forms of therapy
are available in Prague, including Reiki, which focuses on positive energy, Alexander Technique, which focuses
on posture and movement, herbal therapy and other healing methods.
Alexander Technique, long practiced in the West, is just beginning to make its way into the Czech Republic.
Šarka Provazniková, who practices in Holešovice, says she is the only Czech practitioner in Prague. She studied
the technique for three years during college.
Sagarpriya Jarka Halašová is a practitioner of re-balancing, or bodywork, which raises body awareness.
“Rebalancing is based on knowing yourself, feeling yourself and your body, to be more aware about how you
feel and how everything is connected,” she says.
It treats problems that range from back pain to a lack of motivation. It came to the country around 1999 to 2000,
according to Halašová. One session, which last for an hour and a half, costs 500 Kč.
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THE CAIRO TIMES
Sax, drums and rock’n’roll
by Rachel Aspden and Matthew Hall
Cairo’s own music festival rocks the riverside
On 21 June, Cairo’s 11th Fête de la Musique gathered singers, percussionists, a jazz band and a Frenchman with
an upright bass for a night of music beside the Nile. The event was part of the international Fête de la Musique,
which started in Paris in 1982 and quickly spread to over 120 countries around the world.
Intended to “democratize” access to live music by providing free outdoor concerts, the Fête takes place
simultaneously across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Asia and South America on the evening of 21 June—the
summer solstice.
Cairo’s Fête is run by the city’s French cultural center, the CFCC. Vincent Martigny, a charming, energetic
Parisian, has worked on the event for the past three years. Organizing Cairo’s own Woodstock or Glastonbury
has its own difficulties, he explains. “Egyptian audiences aren’t used to the idea of outdoor festivals.”
Despite this, Cairenes have been quick to embrace the festival. The 2004 event attracted a 3,000-strong
audience, a third bigger than last year’s.
Originally held at the CFCC, the Fête transferred to the Cairo Opera House before finding its present niche in
Zamalek’s Ryadi Gardens. “There’s a psychological barrier associated with the Opera House,” Martigny says.
“People think that if you’re too baladi, they won’t let you in. We want to make this an event for everyone.”
Sloping down to the Nile near the southern tip of Zamalek, the Ryadi Gardens are usually gated securely against
the unwashed masses. For the Fête, however, they were thrown open in fine democratic style. As the sun dipped
towards the water, the gardens steadily filled with Cairenes ready to celebrate the longest day of the year. The
program switched between two facing stages, eliminating set-up time between acts as the crowd moved happily
from one to the other.
At 6:30pm, Egyptian chanteuse Donia took to the southern stage. A professional singer only since 2001, Donia
Massoud has traveled the Delta, Suez and Upper Egypt gathering traditional songs unfamiliar to a Cairene
audience. In the difficult opening slot, she performed a sophisticated set including a soulful tribute to film icon
Soad Hosni, the “Cinderella” of Egyptian cinema, who died three years ago to the day of the concert.
The highlight of the show’s first section came with Gafaar Harkal, a 15-man ensemble of Sudanese origin,
performing traditional Nubian folk songs. Pausing in Cairo before departing on tour to Nairobi, the 10-year-old
group has also played across Europe, in India and most recently in Japan, which the eponymous Harkal
describes as “very, very nice.”
“We play very old—ancient, in fact—Nubian songs,” Harkal explains. “They’ve never been written down—
they are preserved only through musicians’ singing and playing.” With complex, repetitive drum lines and
hypnotic snatches of vocal, the ensemble’s music brought a distinctively African flavor to the festival. The
songs are intricately layered, with cross-rhythms that build and fade beneath spare lyrical sketches of loss or
celebration.
Building on the recent success of Nubian rhythms in international world music circles, Harkal is intent on taking
his ancient songs to the widest possible audience. His group is currently working on its first studio album.
Watch out for this ensemble—they are highly recommended.
Following Harkal, the program moved north from Nubia to Upper Egypt with Saïdi, a stage-crowding outfit
playing traditional music from the region. They were swiftly followed by Sagattes, a percussion team of
virtuosos on the eponymous sagat, or cymbals.
As the night wore on, television crews mingled with the crowd, interviewing excited groups of teenagers and
seizing on musicians as they came offstage. Press photographers crowded the fronts of the stages and backstage
tents offered tantalizing glimpses of stars sipping cool drinks. In other words, there was something of a buzz in
the air.
Much of this was due to the next act. The godfather of Egyptian jazz, Fathy Salama hails from the so-called
“Harlem of Cairo,” Shoubra. Celebrating the critical success of his latest album, a collaboration with Senegalese
singer Youssou N’Dour, Salama was returning to a home crowd during a hectic summer tour of Morocco,
Sweden, France and Italy. He attracted a devoted crowd used to following their idol around Cairo’s live music
venues. “I love jazz, and I’m from Shoubra too,” said Tariq Sherif, a bright-eyed 18-year-old who’d come with
his four friends to see Salama’s set. “We go to see him every time he plays in the city.”
Joined onstage by Karima Nayt, an Algerian singer who fuses Rai with Western styles, Salama delivered an
eclectic jazz set spiced with superb accordion playing. Things, however, did not run entirely as planned. After
the final chords died away, Salama apologized to the crowd for the sound quality. “I hope it’ll be better for M,”
he added charitably.
Headlining the festival was a bona fide French rock star—the laconically-named and extravagantly-coiffed M.
The CFCC invited M to play the festival three years ago, but the birth of the singer’s daughter kept him in
France. This year’s Zamalek appearance, however, was a kind of homecoming.
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Grandson of poet Andrée Chédid and singer Louis Chédid, both born in Cairo, M is famous for the oft-quoted
lines “Du Nil dans mes veines, dans mes artères coule la Seine” (The Nile [flows] in my veins, the Seine flows
in my arteries) and the cryptic remark “du Sphinx dans mon rimeur,” which loosely translates as “some Sphinx
in my rhyme-machine.”
Whatever M’s physiological peculiarities, his heart is certainly in the right place. Accompanied by a besuited
upright-bass player and a towering bald drummer dressed in a feathered red vest and fez, M played goodnatured rock with a few epic guitar solos and plenty of stagemanship thrown in. Nodding his twin-peaked head
to the music (his hair is carefully crafted into a giant letter “M”), M pulled the keenest audience members
onstage to dance with him while a breakdancer threw shapes in front of the drumkit. The audience went home
happy.
Satisfied with the record audience for this year’s show, the CFCC has great plans for the Fête’s future. “We’d
like to make it a truly international festival. Yes, the Fête started in France, but now it’s moved far beyond that,”
Martigny says. In coming years, the CFCC hopes to invite artists from all over Europe and Africa to play with
Egypt’s best musicians. “We want all Cairo’s people to open their minds to new music.”
48
THE GUARDIAN
Depression is over-diagnosed, psychiatrist claims
by David Batty and agencies
Friday August 17, 2007
Too many people are being diagnosed with depression when they are merely unhappy, a senior psychiatrist said today.
Normal emotions are sometimes being treated as mental illness because the threshold for clinical depression is too low,
according to Professor Gordon Parker.
Prof Parker said depression had become a "catch-all" diagnosis, driven by clever marketing from pharmaceutical
companies and leading to the burgeoning prescription of antidepressant drugs.
Writing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), he said the drugs were being marketed beyond their "true utility" in cases in
which people were unhappy rather than clinically depressed.
The psychiatrist, of the University of New South Wales, Australia, said the "over-diagnosis" of depression began in the
early 80s, when the diagnostic threshold for minor mood disorders was lowered.
His 15-year study of 242 teachers found that more than three-quarters met the current criteria for depression.
Qualifying symptoms included "feeling sad, blue or down in the dumps" for two weeks, or appetite change, sleep
disturbance, drop in libido and tiredness.
The psychiatrist said these symptoms were so common that most people would have them at some point in their lives.
Under the current diagnosis guidelines, around one in five adults is thought to suffer depression during their lifetime.
The worldwide boom in the prescription of antidepressants in the past decade has led to criticism of drug companies'
marketing campaigns.
In the late 90s, drug companies in Japan prompted recognition of "mild depression" as a condition that required medication.
GlaxoSmithKline ran an awareness campaign in the country about mild depression, which said: "Depression is a disease
that anyone can get. It can be cured by medicine. Early detection is important."
Between 1998 and 2003, sales of antidepressants in Japan increase fivefold, according to the pharmaceutical industry
analysts IMS Health. GlaxoSmithKline saw sales of its drug Paxil rise from $108m (£54,510,500) to $298m between 2001
and 2003.
However, mental health charities today rejected Prof Parker's assertion that depression was over-diagnosed.
Marjorie Wallace, the chief executive of SANE, said: "It is better to risk over-diagnosis than to leave depression untreated.
One in 10 people with severe depression may take their own life."
Her view was supported by another study in the BMJ by Professor Ian Hickie, of Sydney University, who said the suicide
rate had been reduced thanks to increased diagnosis of depression.
Ms Wallace added that depression could range from "feeling low to being so disabled that the person may be unable to get
out of bed in the morning, sustain relationships or work".
However, she acknowledged that doctors were being forced to over-prescribe antidepressants for low level depression
because not enough money was being put into psychological therapies such as counselling.
Dr Andrew McCulloch, the chief executive of the Mental Health Foundation said it was "very unlikely" that depression
was over-diagnosed in the UK. He said it was more the case that many people did not seek help because they did not
recognise the symptoms of depression.
However, he also agreed that doctors were too readily providing medication when alternative treatments could be more
effective.
"Medication is relied upon heavily in the UK by GPs and patients, and is often prescribed when an alternative might have
been more suitable," he said.
The World Health Organisation predicts that, by 2020, depression will be the second most serious disease globally after
chronic heart disease.
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THE BRITISH COLUMBIA REPORT
Sovereignty under siege. Delgamuukw's time bombs detonate as B.C. Indians begin to seize crown land
by KELLY JANE TORRANCE
TODD DUNCAN
Confrontations with angry Indian leaders are nothing new for Indian Affairs ministers. September 29 will be
noted as the first time one has been confronted by an angry mob of non-Indians. The first, but almost certainly
not the last: time bombs set by the Supreme Court of Canada's 1997 Delgamuukw decision continue to detonate,
leaving some dazed British Columbians wondering whether their province still exists.
As Indian Affairs Minister Robert Nault met in Vancouver with Musqueam leaseholder Kerry-Lynne Findlay,
about 100 leaseholders and their supporters demonstrated outside, chanting, "It's your fault, Robert Nault." Mr.
Nault fled out a side door, avoiding those who vow to be dragged from their homes rather than accede to the
eviction orders he has signed.
Vancouver's Musqueam reserve has about 200 leaseholders living in 75 homes. The tenants signed 99-year
leases with the Department of Indian Affairs in 1965. They paid little at first, about $400 per year. In 1980 land
management of the reserve was transferred secretly to the Musqueam; this was followed in 1991 by the transfer
of property taxation authority. Meanwhile, the Musqueam were seeking big rent increases.
The Federal Court of Appeal in December 1998 set the annual rent at $22,000. Leaseholders owe between
$62,000 to $112,000 in rent and taxes on their now worthless homes. On September 25 Indian Affairs gave
them 30 days to pay in full. After his meeting with Ms. Findlay the minister declared, "Nothing has changed";
he insists he is merely enforcing the law.
Musqueam lawyer Lewis Harvey agrees, arguing that the leaseholders have for years benefited from a legal
agreement that cheated the Indians. "The band would never have accepted such a lease that tied them to fixed
rents for 30 years, with no chance of getting a market return," he says. "I didn't hear a single person taking up
the band's complaints when the band was watching other people growing wealthy off their land, and they were
getting crumbs for rent."
Gordon Gibson, Fraser Institute senior fellow and former B.C. Liberal Party leader, responds, "Musqueam has
already caused a backlash against the whole treaty process." He explains, "The Musqueam tenants thought they
had signed a lease with the Queen. They thought taxation was going to be done by the City of Vancouver. These
are two authorities well known to people in our political process: authorities where people have a vote...To say
this is a matter of contract is [Ottawa] trying to get out from its responsibility."
While Ottawa acts as the Musqueam enforcer, it refuses to defend the property rights of the Province of British
Columbia. On September 7 Kelowna's Westbank Indian band began logging crown land illegally. The province
obtained a stop-work order, but on September 27 the B.C. Supreme Court ruled the band could continue logging
until constitutional issues could be heard. Mr. Nault said only that he would attempt to broker a compromise.
Chief Ron Derrickson claims that Delgamuukw, which established that native title in B.C. had never been
extinguished, has made the crown land Indian land. "We've been negotiating with the province for the last 10
months to try to get some basic amount of timber so we can get our people to work," he says. "The government
is so selfish."
A treaty negotiation meeting was scheduled for September 30, but the province withdrew. "The government
position has always been we wouldn't negotiate while illegal activities were taking place or threats of illegal
activities or unauthorized harvesting activities," says Ministry of Forests spokesman Dave Hall. The band's
lawyer sent a letter saying the band had stopped logging temporarily, as the court had requested. But the
Westbank also demanded the province stop granting and renewing timber licences in the area; it refused.
Victoria has appealed. "We have a legal responsibility to manage forests on behalf of all British Columbians,"
Mr. Hall declares.
Mr. Derrickson calls the province's conditions intolerable: "They say there is very little timber left available to
us, yet they want to issue licences." The band also wants to skid and deck the logs to preserve the wood, but the
province considers this an escalation. Mr. Derrickson is planning his own escalation. He says the Interior
Alliance of bands will go to the UN and the World Trade Organization and have all B.C. wood declared "hot,
stolen from First Nations." Several other B.C. bands have joined the illegal logging, with more to come. "The
bands have just run out of patience," Mr. Derrickson warns. "Some of the young warriors in the new society are
threatening to burn it all, if we can't have our share, burn it all. I don't want to see violence happen."
Meanwhile, B.C. bands are paying close attention to a September 17 Supreme Court of Canada decision that
gave Nova Scotia Indians the right to hunt and fish year round and sell their catches. Non-Indian fishermen
estimate that 100,000 pounds of lobster have since been taken, and they have threatened to destroy traps if the
government does not act. Ottawa has announced it will not intervene unless stocks are threatened with
depletion. If B.C. Indians imitate their Maritime brethren, the reaction of B.C. fishermen, who complain already
they are being squeezed out, can only be imagined.
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Greg Hollingsworth, president of the B.C. Foundation for Individual Rights and Equality, says of Delgamuukw,
"Perhaps Westbank is a chance for the provincial and federal governments to straighten this out. It involves a lot
more than a few logs they're taking out." He cautions, however, "From the viewpoint of an average citizen, I
think the government better stand up and defend the province...We're losing the whole concept of equality."
Mr. Gibson concludes that Delgamuukw has left "an enormous vacuum of uncertainty." Is B.C. still sovereign
over its territory? "The short answer is nobody knows," he says. "The Supreme Court of Canada has said that
there is an aboriginal title over some B.C. lands. It has declined to say where title exists or how much there is."
(Mr. Derrickson's band, for instance, has existed only since the 1960s.) He concludes, "It seems to me the very
first thing you have to say is you're going to find out what it means. Governments are disinclined to do that.
What they're finding is the public is worried about this on the one hand, and the demands of aboriginals postDelgamuukw are far larger than they imagined on the other. The gap is becoming unbridgeable." BCR
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THE INTERNATIONAL HERALD TRIBUNE PARIS
People: Bruce Springsteen, Paris Hilton, Beyoncé
Friday, August 17, 2007
On Oct. 2 Bruce Springsteen will release "Magic," an album on which he reunites with the E Street Band for the
first time since the 2002 album "The Rising," The Associated Press reported this week. The album, which is
billed as Springsteen's return to rock 'n' roll, was recorded with the producer Brendan O'Brien in Atlanta and
includes the guitarists Steve Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren, the bassist Garry Tallent, the drummer Max
Weinberg, the keyboardists Danny Federici and Roy Bittan, the saxophonist Clarence Clemons, the violinist
Soozie Tyrell and the vocalist Patti Scialfa.
The police and city workers were called in to handle the crowd and a lane of traffic was closed as Paris
Hilton unveiled her clothing line at Kitson, a trendy Los Angeles boutique known for its celebrity clientele. Clad
in a gold sequin mini-dress, the reality-TV star, who was recently released from jail for violation of her
probation in an alcohol-related reckless-driving case, said: "It's just Paris style: fun, bright and flashy." The
collection, which Hilton, 26, described as "really comfortable" and "really affordable," includes shoes, T-shirts
and jeans.
Jay-Z wins all around, says Forbes.com. He's got Beyoncé on his arm - and more millions than 50 Cent
and Diddy. The rap star, whose real name is Shawn Carter, is No. 1 on the site's list of "Hip-Hop Cash Kings,"
based solely on his 2006 income, which was an estimated $34 million. Jay-Z, 37, the president and CEO of Def
Jam Recordings, has endorsement deals with Budweiser, Hewlett-Packard and General Motors. Curtis (50 Cent)
Jackson ranks second with an estimated $32 million; and Diddy (real name: Sean Combs) placed third with an
estimated $28 million.
Foxy Brown has been charged with felony assault, misdemeanor assault and criminal possession of a
weapon, The Associated Press has reported. Brown, the 27-year-old rapper, whose real name is Inga Marchand,
was released on $50,000 bail after being arraigned Tuesday. The authorities allege that she hit a neighbor; her
manager, Chaz Williams, said the charges were false. She was charged with assaulting Arlene Raymond, 25,
who lives near Brown in Brooklyn, on July 30. The police said Raymond had complained to Brown about the
volume of her car stereo. A few days later, Raymond alleged, Brown hurled a BlackBerry at her, cutting her lip
and knocking a tooth loose. Brown is on probation after pleading guilty to assault in a 2004 dispute over
payment for a manicure. The latest arrest could lead to revocation of her probation, the police said.
Former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain, who stepped down in June, plans to write a book, The
Associated Press has reported, citing a Blair representative who would not speak on the record because no deal
has been made. The representative said that the book, probably a memoir, hasn't been started and is at least a
few years from publication. There have been no negotiations with publishers, the representative said, but Blair
has retained Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer who has acted as book agent for Bill Clinton and Alan
Greenspan. A spokesman for Blair declined to comment.
Paintings and drawings by the poet Sylvia Plath, many never seen before, will be published in Britain
this October by Oxford University Press to mark the 75th anniversary of her birth, The Guardian newspaper in
Britain reported. The book "Eye Rhymes: Sylvia Plath's Art of the Visual," edited by Kathleen Connors and
Sally Bayley, includes illustrated childhood letters, found in the Plath family attic in 1996, that Plath wrote
when she was 7. There are also schoolbook sketches, portraits, photographs and paintings, including a selfportrait, that Plath made while an art student at Smith College. The works were all completed by the time she
was 20, when she decided to concentrate on writing.
After canceling two concerts this week, the British soul singer Amy Winehouse has decided to cancel
the rest of her scheduled August concerts for health reasons, a spokeswoman said. Winehouse, 23, was
hospitalized last week for "severe exhaustion." She is scheduled to begin a North American tour in September.
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III Liceum Ogólnokształcące im. J. Kochanowskiego w Krakowie
Most useful Reading: INTERMEDIATE 4
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