Some 80,000 people have been displaced by insecurity, predominantly in the south, southwest and east of Afghanistan.

Armed conflict in Afghanistan has not only caused hundreds of civilian deaths but has also had a negative impact on many aspects of people’s lives, according to a senior UN official.
“Beyond civilian casualties, people have lost their houses, children have been deprived of education, livelihoods have been damaged, and displaced families face many problems,“ Walter Kalin, representative of the UN Secretary-General for the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs), told IRIN.
Since April, over 1,060 civilians have died in armed conflicts between Taliban insurgents and Afghan security forces backed by international troops, according to a confidential report prepared by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Interior.
The number of people dying in conflict-related violence has doubled in the last two years, the UN said.
Taliban fighters have been condemned for consistently and systematically violating international humanitarian laws in their hit-and-run insurgency, since 2002.
However, civilian deaths in military operations conducted by international forces--particularly US troops operating outside NATO writ--and their Afghan allies have roughly balanced that of the Taliban.
While many volatile areas in Afghanistan remain inaccessible to international aid organizations, the UN estimates that some 80,000 people have been displaced by insecurity, predominantly in the south, southwest and east of the country.
Kalin, the UN representative for the human rights of IDPs, who was unable to visit IDP camps in the south of Afghanistan due to insecurity, has asked the world body and the government of Afghanistan to do more to assist people displaced in the conflict.
At a three day UN-sponsored workshop on the protection of civilians in Kabul, held on 13-15 August, representatives of families affected in the war complained about the problems they face during and after displacements.
“People live in disastrous conditions at IDP camps in Helmand and Kandahar provinces,“ said Qasim Agha, adding that IDPs lack drinking water, and jobs, and face food insecurity and poor access to health and education services.
People in conflict-affected provinces have also demanded compensation for their houses and property damaged in military operations.

Members of the Computer Grannies Society make computer graphics for their e-mails at an Internet cafe for elderly people in Tokyo.

In Japan, with its love of technology and a declining birth rate, a growing number of elderly are learning to surf the Internet, finding it to be a crucial lifeline.
“I turn on my computer the first thing in the morning. It’s a pleasure to see the e-mail that came overnight,“ says a 78-year-old grandmother Kikue Kamata checking her mail with her friend.
The two women are members of the Computer Grannies Society, launched in 1997 to nurture a new breed of net-savvy elderly, wrote AFP.
The group, which accepts men as well, now has 200 members, mostly in their 70s, across the nation. The oldest member is a 97-year-old woman who lives alone in the western city of Kyoto.
The members exchange messages and photos, and show each other their creative work--paintings, novels, poems and music. They organize off-line gatherings such as tours of big electronics stores.
They also shop online. “Bookstores are becoming bigger these days and it’s hard to find a book I want. It’s quite easy online,“ Kamata says.
The group set up a temporary Internet cafe to offer computer lessons to fellow senior citizens at the end of July in Sugamo, a part of Tokyo known for its large elderly population.
Hisao Megumi was one of a handful of men who came to learn.
“I’m a novice. It’s a little bit late to start but I want to get accustomed to personal computers,“ the 84-year-old former editor said as he patiently waited in a queue for a lesson.
The absence of keyboards is a great relief for Japanese seniors who grew up in a culture that values handwriting rather than typing.
The packed one-room cafe reminds 77-year-old Kayako Okawa, who founded the group, of how things have changed over the past decade.
“Computers for old women? No way!“ was the initial reactions Okawa encountered when she was trying to launch the group.
“No companies wanted to lend me computers,“ she recalls.
But she proudly declares, “The elderly are not the socially weak.“
Armed with expertise and technology, the elderly are finding new frontiers in their lives.
“Washing machines and dishwashers give us convenience. There is no match for computers. We are now connected to the world,“ Okawa says.
According to communications ministry data, Internet use among seniors is surging, with nearly half of Japanese in their late 60s now surfing online.
The number of people between the ages of 70 and 79 who used the Internet jumped from 15.4 percent to 32.3 percent over two years until the end of 2006. The ratio rose from 6.9 percent to 16.0 percent for those aged 80 or above.
The number of new young Internet users is nearly flat in Japan, which has a declining population and where more than 90 percent of people under 40 surf online.

Nearly 40 percent of the Chinese undergraduates who had scored the highest marks at college entrance examinations chose to study abroad, according to a latest survey.
Most of them settled down in foreign countries after they finished studies there, said the survey tracking 130 top winners at college entrance exams from 1977 to 1998, reported Xinhua.
Dubbed as “zhuangyuan“, which literally referred to the top contestants in the imperial examinations in feudal China, these students were once lauded by the media as national heroes and as examples for their younger peers.
The survey, released by the website of the China Alumni Association, found it worrying that many of the top-notch students would not stay in China for advanced studies despite the country’s rapid development in the past decades.
Cai Yanhou, a professor with the Central South University based in Changsha, capital of central China’s Hunan Province, said the government should find better ways to attract the talented students to stay.
Statistics from the UNESCO show that Chinese students have made up 14 percent of the global international students, ranking the top in the world. The United States, Britain and Japan are their most popular destinations for higher education.
Handsome scholarships, better employment prospects and more opportunities to pursue further studies in other countries are the main attractive factors of foreign universities, experts say.
But Cai Yanhou, also leader of the survey team, also pointed out that “top in exams“ did not equal to “top in career“, as the survey found none of the top winners at college entrance exams later turned to be China’s top experts or academicians.
The entrance exam is just one of the numerous exams a person will go through in his life and can’t foretell his future achievements in other aspects, said Wang Xuming, spokesman of the Ministry of Education while criticizing the media’s hype on these “zhuangyuans“.
Some of them were just more adaptable to the testing system of examination-oriented education than their peers, experts say.
The media flood their pages with their “success“ stories to gain a wider readership, high schools proudly promote these ex-pupils to attract more new students and universities want to show their superior status by recruiting these laureates, they say.

A traditional brick kiln in Rey, southern Tehran

Overweight residents of an Italian town will be paid to lose weight, the mayor said.
Men living in the northwestern Italian town of Varallo will receive 50 euros ($70) for losing 4 kg (9 pounds) in a month, Mayor Gianluca Buonanno said. Women will get the same amount for shedding 3 kg (7 pounds).
If they can keep the weight off for 5 months, they will get another 200 euros ($280), he told Reuters.
“Lots of people are saying, “I really need to lose some weight but it’s really tough.“ “So I thought, why don’t we go on a group diet?“ said Buonanno, who said he was about 6 kg (13 pounds) overweight.
The town of 7,500 people started the campaign and some residents have already signed up, he said.
Around 35 percent of Italians are overweight or obese, according to European Union figures, with waistlines expanding as the country’s healthy Mediterranean diet has given way to processed foods rich in fat, sugar and salt.
Also according to Telegraph.co.uk, almost 700,000 people are so fat in Britain that they need drastic surgery to tackle their weight problems, the Government’s health watchdog has found.
Despite the scale of the obesity crisis, primary care trusts (PCTs), fearful that the £3 billion cost of the operations would cripple the NHS (National Health Service), are restricting surgery to the most desperate cases. Last year, fewer than 5,000 such operations were performed.
Analysis of the guidance drawn up by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) reveals that 688,000 people in England, classified as “morbidly obese“, are entitled to be fitted with gastric bands or to have stomach stapling operations to reduce the amount of food they consume.
Nice says that anyone with a body mass index (BMI) above 40 should be offered surgery if other attempts to lose weight fail after six months, and those with a BMI above 50 should go under the knife immediately.
However, obesity experts claim that PCTs are ignoring the guidelines and, because they cannot afford to pay for thousands of operations--which cost about £6,000 each--are imposing stricter restrictions of their own.
Critics said the figures were an indictment of the Government’s failure to tackle Britain’s obesity epidemic, which has seen the number of obese people soar by 40 percent in the past decade. One Briton in four is now classed as obese.

An Australian sheep farmer who sought wife over the internet was instead kidnapped and held hostage for 12 days after his African “bride“ turned out to be machete-wielding gangsters.
Des Gregor, 56, flew to Mali promising a dowry of gold and marriage to “Natacha“, reportedly a Liberian refugee in her 20s, following a whirlwind romance over the web, Telegraph.co.uk reported.
But when he stepped off the plane, men claiming to be the woman’s relatives took him to a flat in the capital, Bamako, where he was robbed, bound and threatened with having his limbs hacked off unless he arranged a £42,000 ransom.
The plot was foiled by Australian police.

Ninety two-year-old Pete Perillo still has a workday routine. He says a prayer and then heads off in uniform to guard the city courthouse.
“In the morning, I talk to St. Anthony and I come in,“ Perillo said. “I come in every day. ... These people, they keep me alive.“
Perillo works as a judicial marshal in Stamford Superior civil court division. He carries no gun, AP reported. He is one of a growing number of people for whom retirement age has lost its meaning. They’re staying on the job longer and longer past that point--some for personal satisfaction, others out of necessity.
Some are even working away into their 90s and beyond: In Maryland, Grace Wiles, 97, works about 25 hours per week at a shoe repair store. In Nebraska, 98-year-old Sally Gordon is the legislature’s assistant sergeant at arms.
They’re all younger than Waldo McBurney, a 104-year-old beekeeper from Kansas who was recently declared America’s oldest worker.
About 6.4 percent of Americans 75 or older, or slightly more than 1 million, were working last year. That’s up from 4.7 percent, or 34,000, a decade earlier, according to the US Department of Labor.
“For the first time in history, four generations are working together,“ said Melanie Holmes, vice president of corporate affairs for Manpower Inc., an employment services company.
With the first wave of Baby Boomers reaching the traditional retirement age, Manpower has urged companies to start thinking about ways to retain and recruit older workers, through flexible scheduling for example. This will help them fill positions as they labor pool shrinks.
The number of older workers is likely to continue to rise as Americans live longer and are unable to make ends meet on Social Security state pensions and savings in company-sponsored retirement plans.