Brussels, Belgium (AHN) – Unemployment increased to 10.3 percent during October in the eurozone, up from 10.2 percent in September, according to revised figures from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistical office.

The number of jobless people in the 17-nation zone rose by 126,000 to 16.3 million.

Spain had the highest rate of unemployment at 22.8 percent, up from 22.5 percent, with youth unemployment rising to 48.9 percent. Italy’s unemployment rate rose to 8.5 percent.

However, Germany saw its unemployment rate fall to 5.5 percent from 5.7 percent.

In a separate report, Eurostat said that eurozone annual inflation remained unchanged in November at 3 percent.

Although the rate has remained constant for the past three months, it still represents the highest rate in three years. The goal is to get the inflation rate down to around 2 percent.

October unemployment in the 27-nation European Union was 9.8 percent in October 2011, compared with 9.7 percent in September.

There were 23.554 million people unemployed in the EU, of whom 16.294 million were in the eurozone.

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Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Rob L. Wagner / The Media – The scene was chilling to watch: Three young girls, clad in their black abayas, dropping one by one from the third-floor window shrouded in billowing black smoke as their school went up in flames.

The fierce fire that burned Baraim Al-Watan Girls’ School in the Al-Safa District on Nov. 19 left three teachers dead and 56 students and school personnel injured. It was reminiscent of the 2002 Makkah Intermediate School No. 31 fire that killed 15 girls after members of the Commission for Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice forced the victims back into the burning building to retrieve their abayas, the long black cloak that covers women from head to toe.

Killed in the Jeddah blaze were teachers Souzan Al-Khaledi, Reem Al-Nahari and Ghadeer Katoua. Al-Khaledi was fatally injured after jumping from a third-floor window. Al-Nahari and Katoua died from smoke inhalation. Katoua was also deputy director of the primary school. Civil Defense investigators determined that five students playing with matches started the fire in the school’s basement.

This time the commission didn’t interfere in evacuating the building, but the issue of school safety, first raised after the 2002 Makkah blaze, remains today. It also points up the significant difference between the resources allocated to boys’ and girls’ education even as the kingdom has promised to improve the status of women. Two years ago, King Abdullah opened the first co-educational university and appointed Nora bint Abdullah Al-Fayez as deputy education minister, the first women to ever hold such a post.

According to teachers employed at Saudi girls schools, little has changed in nine years.

Like the Makkah School, Baraim Al-Watan Girls’ School was in an aging rented building not designed to accommodate school students, that crowded some 750 students inside. The two schools lacked safety equipment and adequate emergency exits, and its ground floor windows were barred, according to Civil Defense officials.

A teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she is not authorized to speak for the Ministry of Education, said there are significant differences in safety features between boys and girls schools.

“Most of the boys schools are specifically designed to be schools,” the 40-year-old teacher told The Media Line. “Boys schools are not rented, and are all equipped with big yards for sports to play football and basketball. They are surrounded by huge open areas.”

She added that classroom doors are usually left open and classes are often held outdoors.

Privacy concerns by the Ministry of Education require a different environment for female students, the teacher says.

“Girls schools are usually rented and redesigned for privacy,” the teacher said. “Though they say there is a rule against it, the windows usually have bars. The girls don’t have allocated spaces for sports, so the yards are very small. It’s like a prison.”

A defining feature of virtually all Saudi public schools for girls is the tightly controlled access to school grounds. Fathers routinely drop off their children at the front gate, but rarely enter school grounds. Mothers have greater access, but still must pass muster from the guard at the gate to enter. Many Saudi girls schools feature high walls surrounding the building with no other entries or exits other than the main gate. Likewise, female colleges and universities have strict rules that prohibit students from leaving campus without authorization.

Hannan Al-Harthy, a former student at Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah, told The Media Line that it is policy at virtually all female universities to lock students in their dormitories for the weekend unless they have permission to leave the university. Guards padlock all exits and only male guardians pre-approved by the university can retrieve the student to leave campus for a social visit.

“I never thought about the safety implications then, but in retrospect we were locked in a big box cooking food, lighting candles – basically playing with fire, if you will – without thinking of the consequences,” Al-Harthy said.

An estimated 4.6 million Saudi children attend public primary through secondary schools. About 2.2 million are girls, a jump from 33 percent of the student population in 1975 to about 48 percent in 2009. Girls schools accounted for about 48 percent of the Ministry of Education’s schools budge of 122 billion Saudi riyals ($32.5 billion). Although the education ministry has spent considerable money on infrastructure improvements, many girls schools still lack the larger modern campuses and more comfortable environment boys enjoy.

However, Arwah Aal Al-Asheikh, owner of Baraim Al-Watan, told the Arabic-language daily newspaper Al-Madinah that her school had up-to-date safety equipment and features, including emergency exits, fire hoses and sensors. She said the building meets the standards of an educational facility.

Yet Civil Defense fire investigators reported the emergency exits were not used to evacuate teachers and students. They said safety training appeared inadequate because the children panicked when they attempted to board a rescue helicopter hovering over the roof of the building.

Taif Saeed Al-Qahtani, 12, who jumped from Baraim Al-Watan’s third-floor window, told the Saudi newspaper Al-Arabiya that she remembers nothing after her leap to safety. Her father, Saeed Al-Qahtani, said he learned from his daughter that school officials had no proper crisis-management plan in place to allow school staff to organize an “orderly and safe” evacuation of the building.

Perhaps most evident in skirting safety guidelines were bars placed on all first floor windows.

An investigation is underway to address the school’s safety issues. Prince Khaled Al-Fasial, emir of the Makkah Governorate, appointed a five-member panel consisting of representatives from the Saudi General Investigation Department, the Makkah Governorate, Criminal Investigations, the Saudi Electricity Company and Civil Defense to conduct a probe of the causes of the fire and the events leading to the deaths.

Meanwhile, Abdullah Alami, an economist and women’s rights activist based in the Eastern Province city of Dhahran, and Saudi journalist Jamal Banoon in Jeddah launched the National Safety Campaign to address commercial and educational building safety issues.

“School officials claim their facilities have all safety measures, including emergency exits, in place as specified by the Civil Defense,” Alami said. “Our task is to review defects related to electricity, roads leading to the school buildings, emergency exits, fans, lighting and wirings. We intended to look at distribution panels, iron fences on windows, gates, gas cylinders, air conditions and refrigerators in school.”

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St. Paul, MN, United States (KaiserHealth) – A loophole in the federal health care overhaul could allow employers to game the system by getting their sicker employees to opt into buying coverage on the health insurance exchanges, according to two University of Minnesota law professors.

They say the loophole could have dire consequences for the financial health of the exchanges, which are a key part of President Barack Obama’s health care law. The online marketplaces are intended to make it easier to comparison shop for health plans and also to expand access to coverage for the uninsured.

One of the key questions in the health care overhaul is whether this new option for securing health coverage will convince employers to stop offering insurance altogether, knowing employees can resort to the exchanges.

“We didn’t think it would be as simple as that,” said Amy Monahan, a U of M expert on health law.

Monahan and her colleague Dan Schwarcz, an expert on insurance regulation, tried to anticipate how companies would respond to the law given the harsh economic environment and soaring health insurance costs.

They discovered the law gives many large employers an opportunity to squeeze the most expensive workers out of their health plans. The loophole applies to companies that self-insure; that is, design and cover the cost of their own plans. Those companies account for six in ten workers who get insurance through work.

Monahan doubts that many large companies would stop insuring their employees entirely because they’d face a penalty under the health care law.

But self-insured employers “can exclude things and essentially structure their plans to be attractive to low-risk, healthy employees and not attractive to people who are going to have significant health needs,” Monahan said.

She said self-insured employers could design coverage that would discourage sicker workers from remaining on the company plan and make it more attractive for them to seek coverage through the public insurance exchange.

Monahan and Schwarcz said there are several approaches companies could use to encourage higher-cost workers to voluntarily leave the employer’s plan:

Limit the number of specialists in a provider network. The exchange could be more attractive to someone who needs a specialist for an expensive chronic condition.

Couple high premiums with discounts for participating in wellness programs. Employees who are not in the best of health may not want or be able to participate in wellness discounts, such as going to the gym three days a week.

Raise deductibles and co-pays. Substantial co-pays or deductibles are unattractive for someone who frequently sees a doctor for a chronic condition. High co-pays don’t matter as much for those who see a doctor infrequently.

Carolyn Pare, president of the Minnesota Buyers Health Care Action Group, doubts that large employers would engage in what the professors termed “target dumping” of their sicker workers.

Pare represents about 40 businesses; about half are large employers based in the Twin Cities, such as 3M, General Mills, and Medtronic.

She said companies must balance their financial bottom lines against the cost of harming their reputations. And from a public relations perspective, dumping workers is a bad idea.

“I don’t see the financial benefit to just dumping your sicker patients into a public program or a health insurance exchange,” Pare said. “And I really don’t see the savings as great enough to incent them to do that.”

But one benefits consultant does. Dave Delahanty at Towers Watson in Chicago said businesses have watched their health care costs soar year after year. Employers might pursue such strategies because it’s so important to reign in health care costs, he said.

“Employers would prefer to think of it as ‘maximizing their health care spend,’ not trying to dump their bad risks on the market,” Delahanty said. “But they are trying to take their health care dollars and spend them as wisely as they possibly can.”

Health law expert Amy Monahan said there are several solutions — the simplest among them is to follow the lead of Massachusetts, where workers who have access to employer insurance are not eligible for policies on the state exchange.

– Provided by Kaiser Health News.

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Seattle, WA, United States (AHN) – For those prone to suicide, thoughts of killing themself likely begin at a younger age than previously thought, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Washington said that about one in nine youths attempt suicide by the time they graduate from high school, but about 40 percent of young adults who said they’ve tried to kill themselves said they made their first attempt before entering high school.

The researchers surveyed 883 young adults aged 18 or 19 about their history of suicide attempts. About 9 percent, or 78 of the respondents, said that they had tried suicide at some point in their lives. The researchers found a sharp increase in suicide attempts at around sixth grade, with rates peaking around eighth or ninth grade.

Thirty nine participants reported multiple attempts. Their first try – as early as age 9 — was significantly earlier than those making only one attempt.

A full report on the study is published in the November issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

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NY, NY, United States (AHN Sports) – The NBA and its players have reportedly reached a deal to end the labor strife between the sides that has already cost the league several games.

A 66 game schedule has been proposed with games to start on Christmas day between the Knicks-Celtics, Heat-Mavs and Lakers-Bulls.

Sources indicate the tentative deal is for 10 years, though either side can opt out after six.

Basketball related income split is reportedly between 39 and 51 percent, while owners must spend 85 percent of salary cap on team payroll in the opening two years of the deal and 90 percent from then on.

The pact must still be ratified by owners and players and more on this story will follow.

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Cairo, Egypt (AHN) – Three American college students arrested on suspicion of throwing Molotov cocktails during a protest in Cairo against Egypt’s ruling military council were freed Thursday.

The students were taken to a physician for medical examinations and then to the police station for paperwork to be processed.

Their arrests came amid violent clashes in Cairo’s Tahrir Square that had resulted in dozens of deaths by late Wednesday. According to Egypt’s Health Ministry, some 3,250 people have been wounded.

The trio were attending American University in Cairo on a semester-long study abroad program. They are from three different colleges

Derrick Sweeney, 19, is a Georgetown University student from Jefferson City, MO; Gregory Power, 19, from Glenside, PA, attends Drexel University in Pennsylvania; and Luke Gate, 21, of Bloomington, IN, goes to Indiana University.

The three students maintain they did nothing wrong. They deny a bag filled with empty bottles, a bottle of gasoline, a towel and a camera authorities claim was found with them was theirs.

The U.S. consul general in Egypt said it wouldn’t be safe for the three to remain in the country as their pictures have been plastered all over the media.

The latest clashes between protestors and police erupted Saturday near Tahrir Square, the center of the movement that led to former President Hosni Mubarak’s ouster in February.

Demonstrators are calling for the country’s interim military rulers to immediately step down.

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Atlanta, GA, United States (AHN) – Blood thinners, aspirin, insulin and oral diabetes drugs account for nearly 100,000 hospitalizations of older Americans every year.

These four types of medications account for two-thirds of drug-related emergency hospitalizations for seniors.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “Of the thousands of medications available to older patients, a small group of blood thinners and diabetes medications caused a high proportion of emergency hospitalizations for adverse drug events among elderly Americans.”

Medications previously designated as “high-risk” were implicated in only 1.2 percent of hospitalizations.

Nearly half of the hospitalizations occurred among adults 80 and up, according to the study. Nearly two-thirds (60 percent) were the result of unintentional overdoses. The four medications most often cited included the blood thinner warfarin, insulin, aspirin and oral hypoglycemic agents, diabetes medication taken orally.

The study, published Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine, highlights a couple of key issues doctors and patients need to be acutely aware of. The first is adverse reactions to medication, and the second is unintentional overdoses.

Among U.S. adults aged 65 and up, 40 percent take five to nine medications. Eighteen percent take 10 or more. Prior research shows that older adults are more apt to have an adverse drug event that causes hospitalization. One reason is that as people age, their organs change the way they function.

Older patients in particular need to be monitored while on any medication. Catching side effects and tracking dosage can save not just problems, but lives.

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Albany, NY, United States (AHN) – The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court has ruled in favor of the state labor department in a case about constitutional rights and the limits of government authority.

In a 3-2 decision on Wednesday, the court said the Department of Labor did not violate the rights of Michael Cunningham when it secretly used a Global Positoning System device to monitor his movements for a month. It said the agency’s actions were “reasonable” due to suspicions of workplace misconduct.

According to Cunningham’s lawsuit, the department’s use of a GPS tracker without a warrant violated Article 1, Section 12 of the New York State Constitution, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

The suit cited a 2009 decision from the New York Court of Appeals declaring unconstitutional any evidence from a GPS device installed by police without a warrant to track a suspected criminal.

Cunningham is expected to seek a ruling on his case from the Court of Appeals.

He was removed from his job as director for staff and organization development at the department in August last year after he was found to have submitted false time sheets. Evidence from the GPS tracker was used as grounds for his dismissal.

The device was attached to his personal car in June 2008 as part of a misconduct probe by the state Office of Inspector General at the request of the Department of Labor. The GPS provided investigators with details about his whereabouts, including during nights, weekends and a family vacation in Massachusetts while he was on annual leave.

Cunningham, a labor department employee for three decades who served as director since 1988, sued shortly after his dismissal with the help of the New York Civil Liberties Union. He is seeking re-instatement on the argument that unconstitutional evidence was used during the administartive proceedings that ended with his removal.

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New Delhi, India (IRIN) – Thousands of ethnic Bengalis living near the Bangladesh-India border have for decades found themselves citizens of one nation but bound within the sovereign territory of another. In recent months they have escalated their campaign for a land swap that will align their citizenship with cartography.

After independence from Britain in 1947, the territory was divided along religious lines, with Hindu communities going to India’s West Bengal State and Muslim pockets joining what is now Bangladesh.

But the division was not clean, resulting in 162 land parcels that became part of one country while remaining within the borders of the other. Today they form a mostly destitute patchwork of 120 square kilometers of villages whose inhabitants are largely neglected by both governments, say locals.

There are no roads, only dirt trails in Dashiar Chara, one of 111 communities nominally governed by Indian law, but enveloped by Bangladesh’s northern Rangpur division.

It is a village without electricity, only the occasional kerosene lamp. In the marketplace, a few store owners have managed to procure solar panels with the cooperation of neighboring non-enclave Bangladeshis.

“No roads, no electricity, no hospitals or schools, nothing. It is like living in the middle of a jungle,” said Mohammad Shafiat Ali.

Enclaves

Known to cartographers as “enclaves”, there are another 51 of these border anomalies governed by Bangladesh’s government, but located in India’s southernmost Cooch Behar District, according to a joint census conducted by the Bangladeshi and Indian governments in July 2011.

Some residents are lobbying for a land swap: transfer Indian enclaves within Bangladesh for Bangladeshi pockets in India. In 1994, a group formed an enclave exchange committee with representatives from each community.

“We are campaigning for Bangladeshi citizenship,” said Mohammad Altaf Hossain, from Dashiar Chara, whose 8,000 residents are nominally Indian citizens, but in reality have few links with India.

“Both countries are claiming [their enclaves] as sovereign territory, but accessing the enclaves [for government officials] means getting permission from the other country [where the enclave is located], so there is no real access,” said Diptiman Sengupta, the joint secretary of the enclave exchange committee.

For permission to leave the enclave and enter Bangladeshi territory, a resident of an Indian enclave needs a visa and passport from mainland India – but that requires crossing Bangladeshi territory.

“We can’t go back and forth between here and India. Anyway, all our daily interactions, all our trade, are with Bangladesh,” said Hossain, describing how enclave residents live and work in a perpetual state of illegality.

Duplicity

Indian citizens in Bangladesh are often forced to provide false information to Bangladeshi officials to conduct business, send their children to school or receive medical care nearby, said Mizanur Rahman, a 34-year-old farmer from Dashiar Chara and a father of two.

Duplicity is at the core of an enclave-dweller’s existence, he said.

“The most shameful thing, the most offensive thing, is that when one of us goes to do our pilgrimage in Mecca, we have to give fake addresses for our passports. We have to lie to perform Hajj. How can we ask for Allah’s blessing for our Hajj when the first thing we do is lie?”

A neighbor, Mohammad Shafiat Ali, spoke of his constant fear of encountering police. “People are always nervous when they go outside.”

“If the police stop you for something, they ask you ‘Where’s your home?’ If you give your real address, they know you’re Indian and trespassing, and they can harass you or extort you, or even beat you.”

“What can we do?” he shrugs. “We can’t do anything to the police. If I go tomorrow with people to file a complaint, they’ll arrest us all for trespassing.”

Mizanur Rahman (not related to the farmer), chairman of the government-appointed National Human Rights Commission, said such arrests were not general practice.

“Unfortunately corruption is an ingrained part of our society, which we are trying hard to fight. But these are isolated incidents.”

Widespread or not, says Hossain, residents feel the impact. “We are captives here. We are like birds in a cage.”

Manoj Kumar Mohapatra, the First Secretary at the Indian embassy in Dhaka, told IRIN both governments were committed to finding a solution. He said a new border, a precursor to any eventual land swap, was agreed in September 2011 and would be implemented “as soon as possible”.

Agreements have been brokered in the past, but have yet to be enforced.

However, experts say both governments are now showing honest intentions towards settling the stalemate.

A solution cannot come too soon for the farmer, Rahman. “I want my little boy and girl to be able to move around, to be able to live and study like all Bangladeshis. This is my dream. Right now we are being given hope by the leaders of the two countries that they will resolve the issue by winter [January-February]. If they do, we will have a new life gifted to us.”

ms/pt/mw

– Provided by Integrated Regional Information Networks.

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San Francisco, CA, United States (AHN) – The consumption of ground and processed meat is related to the severity of aggressive prostate cancer, according to a new study.

The University of California, San Francisco researchers also said the correlation was primarily driven by meat that was grilled or barbequed. The link was especially strong then the meat was cooked well done.

The study consisted of 1,000 male participants.

The researchers said the link was because of the increased levels of carcinogens in meat when it is done on the grill or barbeque.

A full report on the study is published in the online edition of the Public Library of Science journal One.

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