| More bosses demanding sick notes
PATIENTS are asking time-pressured GPs to write twice as many medical certificates as a decade ago to meet employers' demands, a survey has found. The demand for sick notes is so great that employees will soon be able to get them from their local chemist.A major study of the way GPs use their time has found patients made 800,000 more requests for "administration procedures" – most often medical certificates – in 2006-07 compared with 1998-99. About one in 60 patients visited their doctor primarily to get a certificate, compared with about one in 120 nine years ago, the report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found. "Employers are not allowing a day's grace for someone to be sick without needing a certificate," Australian Medical Association president Dr Rosanna Capolingua said.
Asia prospects, free downloads stir MIDEM music mart
Levy's upbeat statement was music to the ears of the 9,000 movers and shakers of the music and digital technology worlds crowded into this chic Riviera seaside resort for the five-day trade show. The mood at this year's MIDEM had been expected to be gloomy, with most recording labels struggling to survive and find new ways to make money. Widespread illegal downloading continues to hit their traditional CD market. But the tone was distinctly more upbeat than expected as participants heard how many record majors were starting to embrace the fledgling advertising-funded music systems and other new commercial music channels. The promise of new markets opening up, and China, which is this year's MIDEM's Country of Honour, is causing quite a stir. China's vice culture minister Meng Xiaosi, who heads up the largest ever official Chinese delegation, is joining French Culture Minister Christine Albanel, to officially open the music festival.
Playing Henry's Cat and Danger Mouse
I am fed up with the big front-page colour banner advertising free DVDs if we pick up our copies at W H Smith. They’re not free to us regular readers. We have to collect six tokens and send a cheque for £4.99 to get our copy." And James Tolson, of Sussex, is concerned about the effect on village shops: "I live in a small village where we struggle to keep our local shop open. It is of little help when The Times decides to make the free DVDs available only at branches of W H Smith. Buying a daily paper is often the trigger that takes people into the village shop where they may then make other purchases. When they are lured away to W H Smith in neighbouring towns, it is inevitable that rural facilities will suffer." Every month I receive a trickle of complaints from readers who cannot reach a W H Smith to take advantage of our offers, and this is the response from our marketing department: "We have tried over the years many routes by which to redeem our offers.
Suharto 'was Indonesia's Pol Pot'
I don't want to lash out at a dead man but I cannot forgive Suharto," said Japanese-born Ratna Sari Dewi Sukarno, Sukarno's third wife. "He was Indonesia's Pol Pot," she said, referring to the late leader of Cambodia's genocidal Khmer Rouge. Ms Dewi, a former bar hostess born as Naoko Nemoto, married Sukarno at age 19 in 1962 after he was charmed by her on a state visit to Tokyo. After Sukarno died under house arrest in 1970, she returned to Japan where she has become a television personality and runs a jewellery and cosmetics business. Despite Indonesia's economic progress under Suharto, his tenure was marked by repression, from the killings of at least half a million communists and their sympathisers from 1966 to invading East Timor and quelling separatist movements in Aceh and Papua.
Iowa prosecutor blocks release of files in sex-assault investigation
IOWA CITY, Iowa — A county prosecutor investigating a reported sexual assault on the University of Iowa campus is blocking the release of documents about the probe. Johnson County Attorney Janet Lyness says she has instructed Iowa officials to ignore a public-records request for copies of subpoenas served on the university related to a sexual-assault investigation that involves members of the Hawkeye football team. Lyness also acknowledges that there is no case law to support what effectively amounts to a gag order imposed on administrators, faculty and staff at the 30,000-student university. She says she is treating her investigation “like grand jury proceedings." Two open-records advocates questioned her actions, and one Iowa newspaper has sued the university over records that apparently fall under Lyness' gag order.
January 2008 - Posts
Over the last few weeks we've been trying to calculate the candidates' expiration dates in our Death Watch series . Tonight, two candidates are in jeopardy. We pay our pre-mortem respects to Mr. Giuliani below. See Mike Huckabee's Death Watch here . It Read More... .
Scotland must shape up or face mediocrity, warns Hunter
If Scotland was really a dictatorship, this chat board would be quickly shut down and the contributors traced and punished. So we have one thing in our favour, Scotland is not (so far) a dictatorship despite fears about the nanny state. Oddly there are no articulate comments in favour of the the McConnell position. And yet the opinion polls show that McConnell is running a strong second to the SNP. Are the Labour supporters afraid to say anything here, even under the cloak of anonymity? Or are they just too inarticulate to express themselves? Or are they under orders from Joke not to provoke the opposition? Or are they not in the habit of reading the Scotsman publications? Perhaps a combination of all four. .
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