Watercooler Stories

Al-Jazeera: Iraqi militants kill hostages

BAGHDAD, July 28 (UPI) -- An Iraqi militant group has claimed to have killed two Pakistanis hostage it was holding, the Arabic al-Jazeera television reported Wednesday.

A videotape from a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq reportedly showed the men's bodies, but al-Jazeera did not air the footage.

The militants had threatened to execute the men, an engineer and a driver, unless their Kuwaiti employers left Iraq. Pakistan denounced the killings as a crime against humanity and Islam.

The men were reported missing in Iraq last Friday.

Another militant group in Iraq is holding seven foreign truck drivers, three of them Indian. The BBC reported although a number of foreign hostages have been killed by various groups in Iraq, this is the first incident in which citizens from a Muslim country have been executed by their kidnappers.

After the announcement of the death of the two, Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Masood Khan said his country and the hostages' families were devastated by the news.

Cameras could make nursing homes safer

CHAMPAIGN, Ill., July 28 (UPI) -- "Granny cams" -- as cameras installed in nursing homes are called -- could help eliminate abuse and document substandard care, U.S. researchers said Wednesday.

In an article in the Elder Law Journal published by the University of Illinois College of Law, researcher Selkert Nicole Cottle said nursing home cameras would improve care, but nursing-home owners oppose cameras because they say they would invade privacy and worsen care by impeding staff recruitment and retention.

Half of Americans currently 65 or older will be admitted to a nursing home at least once, and 30 percent of the nation's 17,000 nursing homes have been sanctioned for harmful deficiencies, Cottle noted.

One in 20 nursing home residents suffers from abuse, according to the Florida Agency of Health Care Administration.

Web cameras, which are connected to the Internet, would give family members real-time views of the condition of their elder relative, and nursing homes could use the cameras as well to improve efficiency, Cottle said.

About a dozen state legislatures are considering laws requiring granny-cams, Cottle said.

British minister gets worst award

LONDON, July 28 (UPI) -- The Privacy International's Big Brother award for worst public servant has gone to Margaret Hodge, Britain's minister for children, the BBC reports.

Hodge was nominated for supporting controversial legislation allowing authorities to share detailed information on children, the report said.

The awards -- designed to expose governmental and business threats to privacy -- were first presented in 1998, and now are awarded annually in 17 nations.

The Children Bill, currently being debated in Parliament's upper house, would allow schools, physicians and social service officials to share information concerning children. Personal information concerning each of Britain's 11 million children would be entered onto a database and given a unique identification number.

The government believes the system will prevent children becoming victims of abuse.

The Lifetime Menace award went to the new U.S. immigration law requiring the fingerprinting of all visitors to the United States beginning in September.

Cincinnati voters to decide anti-gay law

CINCINNATI, July 28 (UPI) -- Organizers of a campaign to repeal Cincinnati's infamous anti-gay law reportedly have secured enough signatures to put the issue on the November ballot.

Opponents of Article XII filed petitions containing more than 14,000 signatures with the clerk of city council to get the charter amendment repealed in November, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

The city ordinance gained worldwide attention when it was approved by 62 percent of Cincinnati's voters 11 years ago.

Gary Wright, co-chairman of the repeal campaign, calls Article XII "an outdated law that makes it perfectly legal to fire someone ... just because they're gay."

Phil Burress, a conservative activist who's leading another petition drive for a state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage is also leading the campaign to preserve Cincinnati's anti-gay ordinance.

Burress told the Enquirer the ordinance, which prohibits Cincinnati City Council from granting any anti-discrimination protection involving sexual orientation, is really about eliminating special rights for homosexuals.

Rapes of high school girls rise in Japan

TOKYO, July 28 (UPI) -- A survey by the Asian Women's Fund says one in every 20 high school girls in Japan has been a victim of rape or attempted rape.

Over 60 percent of the girls who claimed to be the victim of a forced sex attack said they were victims of date rape by friends or boyfriends, the Mainichi Shimbun reported Wednesday.

"We need thorough guidance at places of learning and significant media coverage to make sure we prevent date rape from happening," said Yuko Nosaka, a representative of the fund.

The survey of 2,346 Tokyo and Kyushu high school students found 13 percent of the girls and 3 percent of the boys said they had been the victims of an attempted rape. Five percent of the girls said they had been actually raped.

The survey said it was not known how many of the cases were reported to police.