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Play the office politics gameBy Cynthia Broderick • Bankrate.com Let's play Office Politics! All you need are two people and the game begins.Playing the game of office politics is inevitable. Oh, perhaps you believe that you're above such foolishness, but that's really just one more way to play the game. Office politics is simply human nature in the workplace. If you work with humans -- even if they only resemble humans -- then you are dealing with politics. "If there's more than one person, you've got office politics," explains Rob Sarmiento, a Houston psychologist, also known as the CyberPsychologist....

Ex-NASA Worker Sentenced in Debris Theft Tuesday November 11, 2003 2:31 AM ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - A former NASA employee was sentenced Monday to a year of probation and fined $2,000 for stealing a 3-inch piece of shuttle debris while helping to recover parts of Columbia in Texas. Michael Pankiewicz pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft. His attorney, Paul Byron, said Pankiewicz exercised ``uncharacteristic bad judgment.'' ``He has demonstrated true remorse,'' Byron said. A quality-assurance specialist at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, Pankiewicz has since left the agency. He was among hundreds of NASA employee sent to Texas and Louisiana...

<p>BEIJING — A laid-off Chinese worker set himself on fire in Tiananmen Square (search) in central Beijing early Wednesday on China's National Day and was hospitalized with injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency (search) said. The report said his motive was unknown.</p>

A factory worker found an added ingredient lurking next to his ham roll in his lunch box - a poisonous spider. Jonathon Sanger found the tarantula when he opened his packed lunch made for him by his mother. Mr Sanger, 34, who is not afraid of spiders, told her he was "surprised" to find the venomous spider hiding next to a banana. Customs and Excise spokesman Bob Gaiger said the eight-legged creature was identified as an exotic pink-toed tarantula. It is thought it had been hiding inside a bunch of bananas bought at a Co-op supermarket in Cross Hands, South...

Spy mystery at Guantanamo Bay as Syria denies link to accused US air force worker By Rupert Cornwell in Washington 25 September 2003 Syria has flatly denied having links with the US Air Force translator at the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp, who has been charged with trying to hand secret information about the base to the Damascus government. In the first public comment of the case, Ahmad al-Hassan, the Syrian Information Minister, called the reports "baseless and illogical" yesterday, adding: "Would the CIA fail to find a translator it trusts and had previously trained for a job of such...

Canada health worker dies of Sars A 54-year-old health care worker has died of Sars, the 44th victim of the pneumonia-like illness in Canada. Eight people remain in hospital with severe acute respiratory syndrome in Toronto, where almost 250 cases were recorded in two outbreaks earlier this year. Ontario health officials identified the latest victim as a male health care worker. Sars emerged in November in Guangdong province in China. It killed more than 800 people worldwide, most of them in Asia, before subsiding last month. Toronto had the biggest outbreak outside Asia. © Associated Press

RIYADH, 4 August 2003 — A court in Jeddah sentenced a businessman to three years in prison for the torture inflicted by his wife on their Indonesian maid, a newspaper reported yesterday. According to Al-Madinah newspaper, Judge Muhammed Amin Mordad said the wife tortured the Indonesian maid “by inserting a heated screwdriver into her genitals.” The paper said that the maid fled this “continuos ill-treatment” and “became hysterical”. The maid sought refuge in the Indonesian Consulate in Jeddah. The businessman husband, who did not know about his wife’s torture of the maid, took responsibility for her actions, and was also...

ELKHART -- A 26-year-old social worker was charged this week, accused of seducing a child whose welfare she was supposed to supervise for the LaGrange County Department of Family and Children. Tammy Ross, of Goshen, was charged Monday with felony child seduction in an incident that happened in mid-April in LaGrange County. Child seduction occurs when someone of authority engages in sexual conduct with a person who is at least 16 years old but younger than 18. A 17-year-old boy told a sheriff's deputy in May that he had been sexually involved with Ross, who was his case worker, according...

A foreign worker driving a truck was fatally shot in the head in an ambush in the northern West Bank on Monday afternoon, military sources said. The attack occurred shortly after 1 p.m. on the Yabed bypass road near the Jewish communities of Rehan, Hermesh and Shaked, at the northern edge of the West Bank. The victim sustained a gunshot wound in the head and died shortly afterwards. The shooting came despite a three-month truce in terror attacks declared Sunday evening by the Al Aksa Brigades, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack.

The seventeenth fatality from this month's deadly Jerusalem bus bombing was identified Wednesday as a 56 year-old foreign worker from Eritrea, Haile Abraha Hawki, police said. His body has been sent to his family in Eritrea for burial. 17 people were killed and over a hundred other injured in the June 11 evening rush-hour bombing on the city's bus 14A in downtown Jerusalem. The Hamas bomber had bordered the bus disguised as a haredi Jew.

ROUND ROCK -- Officials with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have launched an investigation into the death of a food plant worker caught in a meat-processing machine, authorities said. Daniel Cruz Romero, 34, was killed Friday after being caught in a meat-processing machine at Michael Angelo's Gourmet Foods, a frozen food manufacturer in northern Travis County. Romero had complained to a former co-worker he was having trouble with the machine, the Austin American-Statesman reported Saturday. Romero's entire body went through the machine, police said. "He came to us in fragments," said Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, deputy medical examiner in Travis...

REDEMPTORIS CUSTOS (Guardian Of The Redeemer) Pope John Paul II Apostolic Exhortation of the Supreme Pontiff On 15 August 1989.To Bishops, To Priests and Deacons, To Men and Women Religious, and to all the Lay Faithful1. "Joseph did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took his wife" (cf. Mt 1:24).Inspired by the Gospel, the Fathers of the Church from the earliest centuries stressed that just as St. Joseph took loving care of Mary and gladly dedicated himself to Jesus Christ's upbringing,[1] he likewise watches over and protects Christ's Mystical Body, that is, the Church, of which...

Youth worker charged over 'child toe-sucking attacks' The head of a US youth recreation programme is facing allegations he has sucked the toes of over 40 children. The police were alerted after a co-worker claimed to have seen Trenton Veches sucking one of the children's toes while working at Newport Beach in California. Detectives launched an investigation and now allege the 31-year-old sucked the toes of more than 40 children, videotaping many of the incidents. Veches is being held at the Orange County Jail on $500,000 bail and is facing multiple charges of child molestation. He has pleaded not guilty...

Short Teenage Boys Earn Less Than Tall Teenage Boys When They Each Grow Up April 18, 2002 PHILADELPHIA -- "Not fitting in" has negative, long-term, economic consequences for short, teenage boys. Decades later, they are far more likely to earn less money than their taller peers. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have found that a boy's height at age 16 is a significant determinant of his salary as an adult. Penn economics professors Nicola Persico and Andrew Postlewaite and Penn graduate student Dan Silverman are co-authors of the report, "The Effect of Adolescent Experience on Labor Market Outcomes: The...