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Major Overhaul in
Blood Money Policy
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Blood money for women, men, Muslims and non-Muslims will henceforth be equal.
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Judiciary Spokesman Alireza Jamshidi said on Tuesday blood money for women, men, Muslims and non-Muslims in road accidents will henceforth be equal.
According to IRNA, Jamshidi added that the issue has been outlined in a draft prepared by the Central Insurance Company, Blood Money Headquarters, Justice Department and Traffic Police Department.
“We hope that to witness the privileges of the draft upon the final ratification of the Guardians Council,“ he said.
Stressing the religious basis of paying equal blood money, the spokesman said, “Since the yardstick for payment of blood money in road accidents is the contract concluded between the insurance company and the insured, payment of blood money does not contradict Islamic teachings. Furthermore, since women and men both pay the same premium, they must have equal rights in terms of coverage.“
Jamshidi also said that on the basis of the draft, compensation for losses or damages inflicted on people in road accidents must be paid within a maximum 15 days.
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Video Games Can Enhance Creativity
Video games that energize players and induce a positive mood could also enhance creativity, according to media researchers. However, the study also finds that players who were not highly energized and had a negative mood, registered the highest creativity.
“You need defocused attention for being creative,“ said S. Shyam Sundar, professor of film, video and media studies at Penn State. “When you have low arousal and are negative, you tend to focus on detail and become more analytical“, Physorg reported
Sundar and Elizabeth Hutton, a Penn State graduate student, are trying to understand the value of video games as a vehicle for sparking positive social traits, such as creativity. Fun and games aside, video games are viewed as a serious communication technology. Schools, corporations and even the government are increasingly employing it as a tool in enhancing learning and decision-making.
“Video games are not just for entertainment alone,“ says Sundar. “We are trying to figure out how they can aid in education as well.“
In the study, conducted as part of Hutton’s graduate thesis, 98 undergraduate and graduate students were asked to play a popular video game, at various levels of complexity. The students took a standard creativity test after playing. The researchers also took readings of the players’ skin conductance and asked players if they were feeling either positive or negative after the game.
“We looked at two emotional variables: arousal and valence,“ said Hutton. “Arousal is the degree of physical excitation--as measured through skin conductance--and valence, which is the range of positive or negative feeling.“
When the researchers ran a statistical analysis of the two emotional variables and the students’ creativity scores, they found two totally different groups with high scores.
Players with a high degree of arousal and positive mood were most likely to have new ideas for problem solving. The statistical tests also revealed that creativity scores were highest for players with low arousal and a negative mood.
In real-life terms, the study appears to indicate that after playing the game, happy or sad people are most creative, while angry or relaxed people are not.
The findings suggest that either high or low arousal is key to creativity. In other words, medium amounts of arousal are not conducive to creativity.
“When you are highly aroused, the energy itself acts as a catalyst, and the happy mood acts as an encouragement. It is like being in a zone where you cannot be thrown off your game,“ explained Sundar. A negative mood, especially when there is low arousal, brings a different kind of energy that makes a person more analytical, which is crucial to creativity as well, he added.
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US Wartime PTSD Cases Climb 50%
The number of troops with new cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) jumped by roughly 50 percent in 2007 amid the military buildup in Iraq and increased violence there and in Afghanistan.
Records show roughly 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with the illness, also known as PTSD, since 2003. Officials believe that many more are likely keeping their illness a secret, AP reported.
“I don’t think right now we ... have good numbers,“ Army Surgeon General Eric Schoomaker said Tuesday.
Defense officials had not previously disclosed the number of PTSD cases from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Army statistics showed there were nearly 14,000 newly diagnosed cases across the services in 2007 compared with more than 9,500 new cases the previous year and 1,632 in 2003.
The accounting of diagnosed cases released Tuesday shows those hardest hit last year were Marines and Army personnel, the two ground forces bearing the brunt of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Pentagon had previously only given a percentage of troops believed affected by depression, anxiety, stress and so on --saying up to 20 percent return home with symptoms of mental health problems. A recent private study estimated that could mean up to 300,000 of those who’ve served have symptoms.
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Fish Gain
Three-year-olds whose mothers ate more fish while pregnant with them score better on several tests of cognitive function than their peers whose mothers avoided seafood.
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China Ready to Ban Plastic Bags
China is about to try to kick a 3 billion-a-day plastic bag habit. But breaking the addiction, in a bid to save energy and protect the environment, will be easier said than done.
The world’s most populous nation on Sunday will join a growing list of countries, from Ireland to Bangladesh, that are aiming to change shoppers’ habits when a ban on the production of plastic bags under 0.025 millimeters thick comes into force, Reuters reported.
Ultra-thin bags are the principal target of the crackdown because they are typically used once and then discarded, adding to waste in a country that is increasingly conscious of the air and water pollution caused by its breakneck economic growth.
Shopkeepers will also be barred from handing out free plastic carrier bags except for fresh and cooked foods. Those breaking the law face fines and could have their goods confiscated.
China consumes 37 million barrels of what is now very expensive crude oil each year to churn out the 3 billion plastic bags that its 1.3 billion people use on average each day, according to official figures.
60,000 Australian Children Abused
Almost 60,000 Australian children are abused or neglected or at risk of being so--a dramatic jump of 45 percent over the past few years, the government said.
Families Minister Jenny Macklin said the government was launching a discussion paper on a national child protection framework “because the figures on child abuse and neglect in Australia are so bad.“
“There’s now just under 60,000 children either being abused or neglected, and the numbers just keep growing,“ she told the Nine Network.
“They’ve grown by about 45 percent over the last few years, so it is a national issue.“
The discussion paper found that the number of occasions when a child was found to be or found likely to be harmed, abused or neglected increased from 40,416 in 2002/03 to 58,563 by 2006/07.
Macklin said there were no clear reasons why the rates had increased so sharply but said it was associated with alcohol and drug abuse, mental illness and poverty.
WWII Mine Kills 4 Egyptians
Four people were killed, including a child, and 13 wounded when an old mine exploded in a scrap metal shop in the Egyptian Mediterranean port of Alexandria on Tuesday, a security official said.
The mine, thought to date from World War II, exploded as workers in the shop tried to take it apart not realizing that it was explosive, Alalam reported.
Three people were killed in the shop, including the shop owner’s son, as well as a 10-year-old boy who was passing by on the street.
Three of the injured were in a serious condition, the official said.
One of the bodies was unidentifiable because of the force of the blast which caused the roof to collapse and also damaged three parked cars.
Egypt is one of the most heavily-mined countries in the world, with millions of Egyptian and Israeli landmines in the Sinai adding to millions more laid in the Western Desert, near Alexandria, during World War II.
Learning English With a Kick
Learning a foreign language often involves a lot of boring memorization and verb conjugation, except in South Korea where flying punches and killer kicks are part of the curriculum.
More than 40 academies nationwide teach what is known as “Taeglish,“ where Korean children are trained in Taekwondo by English-speaking instructors who say the martial art gives the students confidence in the language, Reuters reported.
South Koreans spend billions of dollars a year on English instruction for their children. The language is seen as a must for entry into a good university and a good job.
“After English is combined with Taekwondo practice, children can have fun learning the language and do it in high spirits,“ said Kim Sung-han, the founder of Taeglish.
Taeglish, a combination of the words Taekwondo and English, was introduced in March 2007 as an activity offered by a department store for children. In about a year, academies had spread throughout the country.
Taeglish students are far more energetic in the classroom than their peers who study through traditional methods but their language skills are often not as good as their peers.
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