Most students opting to study in Australia being cheated: Ravi

Claiming that most students opting to pursue studies in Australia have been cheated, Union Minister Vayalar Ravi said here today that they should realise that the vocational courses offered down under were "far behind" the ITIs in India.

Police should take steps to check fake agencies duping students on the pretext of sending them abroad for education, the Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs told reporters here.

Most students opting to pursue studies in Australia have fallen victim to cheating. The number of students going for higher education to that country had increased from 10,000 three years back to more than 96,000 at present, he said.

Most of these students, who wish to pursue vocational courses, "do not understand that the course standard is far behind our ITIs," Ravi said.

He said India would take necessary steps to bring back Keralites stranded in Tripoli in Libya without jobs after being cheated by agencies here.

Efforts were on to get details of these persons from the Indian embassy in Libya, he said, adding that his ministry has taken a serious view of it.

N95 masks only for those who risk direct infection

The N95 masks should be used only by those who are at risk of being directly infected by the deadly swine flu virus - like those collecting samples from suspected patients and doctors treating them.

Even the doctors and paramedics attending to the passengers at airports are prescribed to use the three- layered surgical masks, which are cheaper and easily available.

Fearing a shortage, Vineet Chaudhry, joint secretary in the health ministry, said: "The N95 masks are not for public use. The person who is recommending their public use is doing a great disservice to the nation."

However, the three-layered surgical mask is more recommended for public use. Using the mask incorrectly may actually increase the risk of transmission, rather than reduce it. Many individuals wish to wear such masks at home or in their neighbourhood. Using the mask enables the person to cover his nose and mouth, and helps contain respiratory droplets, a measure that is part of cough etiquette. It should be tied carefully to minimise any gaps between the face and the mask. It is essential to dispose of the surgical masks the correct way. Proper disposal ensures lesser risk of transmission.

Hands should be washed immediately after removal of the mask.

Chaudhry also warned people against hoarding the masks and other items related to the disease. "Hoarding and black marketeering will not be tolerated and would be dealt with firmly," he added.

The issue was discussed at a meeting with drug controller generals of states across the country. The state drug controllers have been asked to maintain a better vigil against unauthorised sale of Tamiflu. The drug is not allowed to be sold in chemists shops. Concerns over whether the drug being sold at the counter was spurious and its high prices were taken up at the meeting.

The government also held discussions with pharmaceutical companies on increasing the Tamiflu stockpile by two crores. Chaudhry said 7.2 million capsules were already stockpiled with the companies in a banking arrangement while 1.2 crore capsules with a shelf life of four to five years will be provided at a short notice.

The Tamiflu stockpile is expected to be increased to 30 million soon. Representatives from companies such as Hetero, Roche, Cipla, Ranbaxy, Strides and Natco Pharma attended the meeting on increasing the Tamiflu stockpile.

Meanwhile, an advertisement, to rope in private labs for the testing of samples, will appear on Thursday. The guidelines have already been finalised.

Private labs will approach the state governments if they have the capability for testing the swine flu samples.

With more people rushing to the prescribed health facilities, the Union health ministry asked the Delhi government to educate authorities in the hospitals dealing with the treatment. There was chaos at the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital on Tuesday as about 700 people had lined up for checkup.

The government is also considering involving private hospitals for treating the patients.

7 women shot dead in sauna

MOSCOW - SEVEN women were shot dead in a sauna in Dagestan and, in separate attacks, eight policemen and two separatists were also killed in Russia's northern Caucasus region late on Thursday, police and media said on Friday.

Growing lawlessness and Islamist violence in Dagestan, Chechnya and neighbouring Ingushetia are undermining the Kremlin's control of its southern flank.

The attacks are the latest in a sharp upswing in violence against civilians across the region, where a local minister was shot dead in his office earlier this week.

The seven women were shot by rebels at around the same time as separatists attacked and killed four policemen manning a nearby checkpoint in Buinaksk, a town 41 km (25 miles) from local capital Makhachkala.

'At least four died when they attacked the traffic police. Around the same time they entered the sauna and shot seven women,' a spokesman for local police said on Friday. He gave no further details.

Separately, four policemen and two separatists died in a shootout in Chechnya, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.

The Chechen deaths occurred in an abandoned house near the capital Grozny, RIA news agency said.

Five other security force officers were also injured in a separate clash in the republic on Thursday, Interfax reported.

On Wednesday, Ingushetia's construction minister was shot at close range in his heavily guarded office.

In Chechnya three human rights activists have been shot and killed in the past month, two earlier this week and one in July. -- REUTERS

Henan official executed for raping 24 underage girls

A former political advisor of Zhenping county, Nanyang city, in Central China's Henan province was executed by lethal injection Thursday afternoon, chinanews.com.cn reported yesterday.

Henan official executed for raping 24 underage girls

Wu Tianxi, former vice chairman of the Zhenping County People's Political and Consultative Conference, is seen here before he is executed by leathal injection by the Nanyang Intermediate People's Court in Nanyang city, Central China's Henan province, August 13, 2009.

Sixty-two-year-old Wu Tianxi, the former vice chairman of the Zhenping County People's Political and Consultative Conference, had been sentenced to death by the Nanyang Intermediate People's Court in December 2007 for raping 24 underage girls in less than two years.

Wu was also found guilty of committing six other crimes, including illegally transferring and selling land-use rights, illegally taking savings of the public, extortion, creating public disturbances, and organizing and running a crime syndicate.

Wu reportedly ordered three women to kidnap the girls, aged from 12 to 16, and take them to his office or hotels, where he raped them.

He appealed to Henan Higher People's Court but the court dismissed his appeal in July 2008. The Chinese Supreme People's Court then approved Wu's death penalty verdict.

Husband 'caught burying dead wife in wall'

By Andree Withey

House at Springfield Lakes where a man allegedly tried to hide a body in wall

Police allege the man was in the process of trying to hide the body in a wall when he was discovered. (ABC News)

A man has been charged with murder after he was allegedly caught trying to bury his dead wife in the wall of a house, south of Brisbane.

Chinese-born Jiagen Pan, 43, did not appear in the Ipswich Magistrates Court today when the murder charge was mentioned and has been remanded in custody.

Queensland police allege they found Pan with his wife's body in a house in North Street at Woodridge yesterday afternoon.

They claim he was in the process of trying to hide the body in a wall when he was discovered.

The police charge sheet says 32-year-old Linjin Cui died sometime between August 10 and 13.

Police say the couple had been in the middle of a divorce and were living in separate houses.

She had been reported missing early yesterday morning.

Her home at Springfield Lakes, west of Brisbane, was guarded overnight and has been declared a crime scene.

Police are trying to contact the dead woman's family in China.

Police remain at the scene of the Woodridge unit block where the man allegedly tried to conceal his estranged wife's body in the wall of his unit.

Neighbours, who did not want to be identified, say he was new to the area.

The matter is due before the courts again in September.

Prostitution laws 'failing sex workers'

By Jonathon Hall


A study has found only 10 per cent of Queensland's prostitution industry is regulated. (Getty Images: Sean Garnsworthy, file photo)

Queensland's prostitution laws are failing to protect sex workers, and are forcing them into illegal brothels, a team of Brisbane academics has found.

Former premier Peter Beattie introduced the Prostitution Act in December 1999 which allowed boutique brothels with up to five rooms.

At the time he said if such rules had been in place there never would have been a Fitzgerald Inquiry, which had detailed the link between illegal prostitution and organised crime.

The new law established the Prostitution Licensing Authority to oversee the sex industry.

But almost 10 years since the Prostitution Act was passed, a major study has found the laws are failing.

Researchers from the University of Queensland spent a year examining the industry and found only 10 per cent of the industry is regulated.

"We have in Queensland currently 25 legal brothels that operate throughout the state," said Associate Professor Andreas Schloenhardt.

"They are tightly controlled through the Prostitution Act and we have the Prostitution Licensing Authority monitoring their every move.

"We know pretty well what's going on in those brothels.

"They are operated very safely, but the main criticism that has emerged over the past 10 years is that only a very small slice of prostitution actually takes place in those legal brothels."

Professor Schloenhardt says the Crime and Misconduct Commission has suggested about 90 per cent of prostitution offered in Queensland takes place outside the legal brothels.

He said the laws are only effective at protecting workers in licensed brothels.

"You can hear a pin drop in any of those brothels and the police and Prostitution Licensing Authority are very well aware of what's going on in there," he said.

"But we know very little about the rest of the industry, much of which is still illegal."

Professor Schloenhardt says illegal street prostitution is continuing and the escort industry is flourishing.

"It's a completely unregulated industry. It happens very frequently, but again we offer no protection, no safeguards for this and we really don't know much about the sort of risks associated with that."

He said the laws make it too expensive for operators to run a legal brothel.

"The licensing fees alone amount to more than $30,000 each year and on top of that there is a lot of expenses for maintenance, security and hygiene in those places - and of course the salaries of the sex workers involved, which makes it very expensive."

The government cap of five rooms for boutique brothels also makes legal brothels less attractive.

"They of course aren't busy 24 hours a day, so it means the brothels are quite limited in the sort of money that they can make," Professor Schloenhardt said.

"Many critics argue that this is what's pushing a lot of operators further underground, because you can simply make a lot more money doing it outside the legal sphere."

But Professor Schloenhardt has played down comparisons with the Bjelke-Petersen era and said the findings of his study are not a sign of a return to the bad old days.

"Certainly the corruption and police involvement in the sex industry that we saw 20 years ago that came out of the Fitzgerald Inquiry is something that has been very well controlled in Queensland through the creation of the CMC and the Prostitution Licensing Authority," he said.

"There's no reason to think that we are moving back into this era.

"We do, however, have a very significant clandestine prostitution industry in Queensland. There might be criminal elements involved in that."

He said the State Government is adopting a "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil" approach to regulation.

"This is an area that is not debated on the front page of the newspapers and it remains for many people a big taboo, which is why perhaps the Government doesn't see any urgency to act.

"But given the raw data that we have on how this industry is carried out in Queensland, I think it is long overdue that we revisit some of the objectives of the legislation and what it is that we want to achieve with the prostitution industry."

Human trafficking

Another murky area of Queensland's prostitution laws is the emerging issue of human trafficking and sex slavery.

Professor Schloenhardt says their study found there is no legal protection to prevent migrants being exploited or forced into prostitution against their will.

"We know of a number of cases in Victoria and New South Wales. Perhaps we are lucky that we haven't seen any in Queensland.

"Perhaps we haven't found them yet, but it's again an area that the legislation currently leaves completely unaddressed.

"The longer we turn a blind eye to these issues, the longer we tolerate a large clandestine industry, the more vulnerable we make some people to human trafficking."

Candy Forrest, who works with the Brisbane-based Crimson Coalition, an advocacy group for sex workers, says she agrees with Professor Schloenhardt that the laws must be changed to provide better protection for workers.

"A lot of people working in the industry are unhappy with the laws," she said.

"The workers who work in the licensed brothels generally feel physically safe most of the time, but we do get a lot of reports from workers in the licensed brothels where they feel like they're being coerced into working under conditions that they may not have chosen for themselves."

Options limited

Ms Forrest said the laws limit sex workers' options for working safely.

"There are really only two legal options for sex workers in Queensland: One is to work in a licensed brothel and the other is to work entirely by yourself as a private sole operator," she said.

"The problem with working by yourself is that it's very isolating and it can be unsafe in some situations."

She said one of the reasons given for allowing boutique brothels was that sex workers could open their own legal businesses but that has not happened.

"Sex workers generally don't want to commit themselves to several years working in the industry.

"They're generally just inclined to not commit to a long-term set up that's very expensive and difficult to go through."

Ms Forrest said funding should be set aside for a campaign to educate migrant sex workers on their rights.

"To ensure when they come to Australia and specifically Queensland they won't be caught up in a situation where they're having to pay a large contract debt to somebody who's bought them here illegally," she said.

Stunning staff 'bad for business'

By News Online's Sarah Collerton


Ms Price found women generally compare themselves to other women based on attractiveness.

Stores often hire beautiful young women to boost sales, but new research shows this strategy may actually be bad for business.

Research from the University of South Australia has found that regardless of the product, women are less likely to buy it if they think the saleswoman is more attractive than them.

After being intimidated while shopping, PhD researcher Bianca Price decided to investigate and her findings were recently published in the Journal of International Business and Economics.

"Attractiveness does have its benefits, hence stores hire these girls, but the problems lie with the fact that we aren't all stunners," she told ABC News Online.

"For many young women, interacting with highly attractive sales staff can actually be quite threatening to their own self image."

Focusing on women aged 18 to 26, Ms Price found women generally compare themselves to other women based on attractiveness.

With this in mind, she says it would be a good idea for retailers to employ a wider range of sales staff.

"They should consider hiring women of all shapes, sizes and ages so it does reflect the customer base," she said.

"If you do only hire the most beautiful women, it can limit your customer base."

Making a match

Ms Price, who concentrated on higher-end boutique shops in the study, found stores needed to find a fit between customers and staff to minimise intimidation.

"You want to find that match between the customer and the salesperson, but you don't want it to create a barrier for the customer," she said.

She says highly attractive sales staff will not inspire female consumers to buy.

"Some girls will just thinks it's completely unachievable and no matter how hard she tries, that dress will never look good on her," she said.

Ms Price says the roots of this idea go deep in society.

"Women are constantly being bombarded with images of how they should look and products to maintain their beauty and youth," she said.

"So in essence, that's what's brought to the market place - that women are assessed on their attractiveness.

"Whereas men are assessed more on career success, their assets, how much money their work - not necessarily the same criteria as women.

"How women look is regarded as a central component to how they will fit in with the world, but men don't necessarily become competitive with men in regards to their looks."