Word: saying
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...addition, insurance brokers and some officials say governments themselves sometimes pay ransoms - especially on land in kidnap-heavy countries like Nigeria, Mexico and Venezuela - despite insisting that they do not. In 2001, for example, the Dutch government paid $1 million to free a doctor working for the aid organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) who had been kidnapped by Chechen rebels; the government later tried to recoup the money from MSF. "Ransoms are certainly being paid," Antonia Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna, said in an e-mail on Friday. "Of course...
...alternatives offered by the government have failed to take pressure off the system. There are sea scatterings and ash burials in public gardens, but longstanding tradition prevents most families from taking up these space-saving solutions. "My husband didn't say much," says Wong's 75-year-old mother, Oi Tak-lo. "But he did say that he didn't want a sea burial. The older generation won't agree with...
When union leader Francisco Freitas has something to say, Japan's Brazilian community listens. The 49-year old director of the Japan Metal and Information Machinery Workers called up the Brazilian Embassy in Tokyo April 14, fuming over a form being passed out at employment offices in Hamamatsu City, southwest of Tokyo. Double-sided and printed on large sheets of paper, the form enables unemployed workers of Japanese descent - and their family members - to secure government money for tickets home. It sounded like a good deal to the Brazilians for whom it was intended. The fine print in Portuguese, however...
...Freitas and other Brazilians feel since the Japanese government started the program to pay $3,000 to each jobless foreigner of Japanese descent (called Nikkei) and $2,000 to each family member to return to their country of origin. The money isn't the problem, the Brazilians say; it's the fact that they will not be allowed to return until economic and employment conditions improve - whenever that may be. "When Nikkei go back and can't return, for us that's discrimination," says Freitas, who has lived in Japan with his family for 12 years. (See pictures of Japan...
...Lenine Freitas, 23, the son of the union leader, lost his job at Asmo, a small motor manufacturer, one month ago, but says he plans to stay in Japan and work. Freitas says that there would be no problem if the Japanese government set a term of, say, three years, after which Brazilians who took the money could return. But after nine years working at Suzuki Motor Corp., he thinks that the government should continue to take responsibility for foreigners in Japan. "They have to help people to continue working in Japan," he says. "If Brazilians go home, what will...