BRITAIN

BRITAIN
Daily Telegraph, London, July 6: Of all the people we should ensure are properly treated, those with special needs must come first. ... adults with mental disabilities endure the most shocking treatment in the NHS. And today, it appears that children with special educational needs also suffer at the hands of the system.
Since the 1970s, the catch-phrase of educationalists has been "inclusion" -- the principle that all children, of whatever capacity, should be educated together. New Labor enthusiastically endorsed this orthodoxy: the 1997 Green Paper called for more children with special educational needs to be in mainstream schools, a principle furthered by the 2001 Special Needs and Disability Act. The result has been that 90 special needs schools have closed since 1997.
Great distress
This is not an altogether popular development, as ministers with special needs schools in their constituencies have found. And so, as the House of Commons education select committee reports, the Government has quietly steered policy away from inclusion. The effect has been confusion and great distress for many thousands of parents and children.
The clash of ideology and political pragmatism has hit those we need to care for most. New Labor talks a lot about choice: it should practise what it preaches. It is absurd for central government to decide that one size of education fits all pupils. Each child's individual needs are different. Parents should have far greater choice; they know their children best. If they could choose where to send their children to school and resources followed the child -- with more money allocated to those pupils with greater need -- the right choices could be made on a child-by-child basis. And schools could fund extra requirements, in mainstream or specialist institutions.
We have a moral duty to do our best for those least able to look out for themselves. Confused policies hurt the most vulnerable in our society. Decentralising education by making money follow pupils would put an end to a muddle that is damaging thousands of lives.
ITALY
Corriere della Sera, Milan, July 10: France, perhaps even more than Italy, needed a victory to brush away the period of depression and mistrust that the country is living. After the dramatic explosion of violence in the suburbs last autumn, the French wanted to revive the dream of 1998 (when they won the World Cup.)
In the outskirts of Paris ... which is where half the French team was born, the disappointment is even more burning. The young idols, from Lilian Thuram to Thierry Henry, are symbols of redemption.
Political bet
There was also the inevitable political bet on the victory for the "Bleues," in particular for President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
The cup should have been raised to the sky and under the nose of those who foresee the decline of the country.
For Chirac, close to the end of his term, it would have been his last speech in an atmosphere of glory. He would have raised the cup to raise consensus again, which is now dramatically falling.
JAPAN
Yomiuri Shimbun, Tokyo, July 11: Defense Agency Director General Fukushiro Nukaga said Japan should consider acquiring the capability to attack enemy missile bases. Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe expressed a similar view.
Their comments were based on the idea that if it became clear Japan was the target of a missile attacks, the threat would have to be eliminated by attacking the missiles' bases.
For Japan, the threat posed by North Korea's missiles has grown more serious.
In response, the government plans to introduce a missile defense system to defend the nation from ballistic missile attacks. However, if several missiles are launched from separate bases within a short interval of time, the missile defense system cannot deal with them.
Self-defense
Attacking missile bases to counter a missile attack against Japan is an exercise of the right to self-defense allowed in the Constitution.
The government should not fail to study which types of weapons Japan should have to provide the nation with the capability to counterattack enemy bases.
There is a difference between possessing the capability and actually using it in an attack. If Japan does not possess the capability we will "self-destructively sit and wait."
Can the situation in which "we have the right, but we do not have capability" continue any longer? Debates should be deepened to cope with the changing national security environment.