Topic: NEWS english - on September 7, 2004 at 9:13:00 AM CEST
Sony Pictures vice president of legal affairs convicted of slavery
A Filipina who won $825,000 (U.S.) in a lawsuit claiming a Hollywood executive and his wife enslaved her called yesterday for an end to human trafficking.
“Slavery still exists, and I want to tell victims they should not tolerate it and should not be afraid to seek help,” Nena Ruiz said at a news conference.
Ruiz, 60 is a former schoolteacher from the Philippines who worked as a domestic servant for James Jackson and his wife, Elizabeth.
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Topic: COMPUTER - on September 7, 2004 at 9:12:00 AM CEST
China Threatens Internet Porn Merchants with Life
China has intensified its battle against Internet and mobile phone pornography by threatening distributors with life in prison, Xinhua news agency said.
"Depending on the seriousness of the cases, the sentences range from living under compulsory surveillance, detainment, taking into custody by the police, to various terms of imprisonment and life imprisonment," Xinhua said.
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Topic: SCIENCE - on September 7, 2004 at 9:11:00 AM CEST
Did the First Americans Come From, Er, Australia?
Anthropologists stepped into a hornets' nest on Monday, revealing research that suggests the original inhabitants of America may in fact have come from what is now known as Australia. The claim will be extremely unwelcome to today's native Americans who came overland from Siberia and say they were there first.
But Silvia Gonzalez from John Moores University in Liverpool said skeletal evidence pointed strongly to this unpalatable truth and hinted that recovered DNA would corroborate it.
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Topic: NEWS english - on September 7, 2004 at 9:07:00 AM CEST
Ice from airplane toilet crashes into garden in Austria
It was an inelegant intruder on a sunny afternoon: a chunk of ice from a jetliner toilet that broke free and slammed into an Austrian family's garden.
No one was injured when the ice tumbled from the sky Sunday afternoon in Graz, about 120 miles south of Vienna, authorities said. The fragment bore deep into the soil in the garden, where the unidentified family was enjoying a lazy summer afternoon.
Police said the 6-inch ice ball almost certainly came from an airliner toilet, judging from its blue color and its odor. They did not elaborate.
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Topic: NEWS english - on September 7, 2004 at 9:05:00 AM CEST
Cat naps at work can help boost productivity: British study
British companies should help employees doze off by installing beds in the workplace in a bid to increase productivity, a study published in The Guardian daily showed. While only 10 percent of the 1,000 people surveyed said they came up with new ideas at their desk, more than 30 percent said it was when they were drifting off to sleep that literally dreamed up their best ideas.
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