The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Singapore introduces robot dog to keep seniors fit Posted: 02 Feb 2013 07:34 AM PST  A therapeutic robot baby seal called 'Paro'. – AFP pic Eric, short for Elderly Rehabilitative Interactive Companion, aims to help take the boredom out of monotonous therapy exercises while also providing seniors some companionship, reports The Straits Times. According to the report, the robot's developers at Singapore Polytechnic launched a yearlong pilot programme last February at Ling Kwang Home for Senior Citizens. "I am more motivated to do the exercises now because it is such a marvel to see something inanimate react to us," said Lim Kok Leong, 92, who has lived in the home for more than two decades, writes The Strait Times. Japanese researchers have also developed a teddybear robot designed to comfort the country's growing aging population by reading facial expressions and actions and responding to them. Another cuddly Japanese invention is the high-tech baby seal Paro, which coos and flaps its flippers to ease loneliness among the elderly and prevent depression and even dementia, according to its developers. – AFP/Relaxnews |
| Brazil hotline, soap opera help bust Spain prostitution ring Posted: 01 Feb 2013 03:31 PM PST  A poster drawing attention to sex-trafficking is seen in Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in Dallas, Texas, January 31, 2011. — Reuters pic So she called a sexual abuse hotline set up by Brazil's Ministry of Women's Affairs, prompting an international police operation that led authorities to break up a prostitution ring in the Spanish university town of Salamanca last week. Spanish police raided a nightclub in Salamanca and freed the Brazilian and five other women who were forced to have sex with customers for US$20 (RM60), Brazilian authorities said yesterday. Tipped off by a call to the Brazilian hotline last June, Spanish police raided a brothel in Ibiza and discovered 28 women of different nationalities who were forced to provide sexual services 24 hours a day. They lived confined to overcrowded rooms and were monitored with television cameras. The raids highlight the plight of foreign women who are duped by promises of work and better living in Europe only to end up being forced into prostitution to pay off endless debts. "They are mostly young, pretty and poor women who are promised work in Europe by traffickers who break their dreams," Brazilian Minister of Women's Affairs Eleonora Menicucci said at a news conference. When they arrive in Europe, their documents are taken away and they are told they have to pay off large debts, she said. "It is absolutely inhuman what they are doing to our young adolescents," Menicucci said. The Brazilian government has made the sexual abuse hotline an international service that can be called free of charge from Spain, Portugal and Italy, the countries to which trafficked Brazilian women are mostly taken. Justice Minister Eduardo Cardozo said human trafficking was a difficult crime to detect because victims were reluctant to tell what had happened to them. He urged them to come forward. Human trafficking is such an "underground" crime that the government has no data to determine its dimensions, he said. A soap opera now airing on television in Brazil has brought home the drama of human trafficking for Brazilians. The show, "Salve Jorge," is based on the real-life story of a Brazilian woman who was led to Israel and forced into prostitution. — Reuters |
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