HAITI EARTQUAKE, FOUR YEARS ON AND HOUSING STILL.NEEDED.

               Families still living in tents and makeshift accommodation,                                               Many families on the island of Haiti are still subjected to living in atrocious conditions despite prime minister Laurent Lamothe claiming headway following the devastating earthquake four years ago,                                                       With senior officials at his side PM Lamothe delivered a progress report on the eve of the anniversary, "i think ( the rebuilding effort ) has gone very well, enormously well, considering the enormous challenges and the enormous lack of resources that we had when we started" Lamothe told The Associated Press following his talk.   Many foreign governments and humanitarian groups promised billions in aid much of which has not materialised mainly because of infighting and government corruption but also in the global climate many are unwilling to give more.                                                                                                                                        Looking forward to new building projects there are around 10,000 groups that are non registered and no one seems to know what schedules they have and whether many of these groups are duplicated. Lamothe said his government has drafted legislation to require non-government groups to register and report their spending plans.                                                                                                                                                 Four years later after the 7.0 magnitude quake that toppled around 190,000 buildings and killed about 300,000 people, no one knows the exact figure, construction practices in the caribbean country have improved overall, with better materials being used for larger projects. A building code now exists and many big, well funded projects including more than a dozen hotels, supermarkets and schools are being built to international seismic standards.  But construction of smaller commercial buildings and homes is more haphazard, in large part because most people in the impoverished nation dont have the money to do things by the book. As much as 90 percent of Haiti’s construction is done without an architect or engineer, and much of it on unstable soil, according to a study last year by the Canadian Journal of Civil Engineering. “Seismic hazards maps are now available for the design of new buildings,” it said. “Unfortunately, few engineers in Haiti are very familiar with seismic design principles and dynamics of structures.” Neighbourhoods in the capital of 3million are filled with precariously rebuilt one- and two-story homes no more secure than the ones they replaced.                                                                             Of the families that were placed in new homes many were afforded free rent for a year but once the year was gone with little money many returned to the tents and makeshift buildings, there are an estimated 200,000 people living in slums.  Some 150,000 earthquake victims still live in about 300 camps and another 50,000 live in the new sprawling slums Canaan, Onaville and Jerusalem. Half of the camps have no sanitation services and only 8% are supplied with water, according to an October 2013 report from the UCLBP and the Camp Coordination and Camp Management (CCCM)/                                                            Haiti is a fragile, largely forgotten country. It’s possible that some natural or man-made crisis this year could push it back into the headlines. But sustained attention, with the kind of support from outside that Haiti still needs to rebuild and become more self-sufficient, is mostly gone.

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BEING ANNOYING COULD GET YOU A PRISON SENTENCE. U.K

YES, THATS RIGHT YOU COULD GO TO JAIL FOR BEING A LITTLE NUISANCE.                                                                                                                                            On Wednesday the Antisocial Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill reaches its report stage (close to the end of the process) in the House of Lords. It is remarkable how little fuss has been made about it, and how little we know of what is about to hit us.
The bill would permit injunctions against anyone of 10 or older who "has engaged or threatens to engage in conduct capable of causing nuisance or annoyance to any person". It would replace asbos with ipnas (injunctions to prevent nuisance and annoyance), which would not only forbid certain forms of behaviour, but also force the recipient to discharge positive obligations. In other words, they can impose a kind of community service order on people who have committed no crime, which could, the law proposes, remain in force for the rest of their lives.                                                                                                                         This also means that if the police "think" your behaviour  "might" cause offence, not that it has caused offence you could be arrested and hauled before the courts and sentenced.  The law at present, the  1998 Crime and Disorder Act, antisocial  behaviour orders (asbos) has meant that thousands of people, mostly young and poor, have been labeled as criminals already but the next step is to be able to remove anyone from public places, protestors,buskers,football fans singing on there way to the trains could be arrested at the polices behance.
The bill also introduces public space protection orders, which can prevent either everybody or particular kinds of people from doing certain things in certain places. It creates new dispersal powers, which can be used by the police to exclude people from an area (there is no size limit), whether or not they have done anything wrong.
While, as a result of a successful legal challenge, asbos can be granted only if a court is satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that antisocial behaviour took place, ipnas can be granted on the balance of probabilities. Breaching them will not be classed as a criminal offence, but can still carry a custodial sentence: without committing a crime, you can be imprisoned for up to two years. Children, who cannot currently be detained for contempt of court, will be subject to an inspiring new range of punishments for breaking an ipna, including three months in a young offenders' centre.                                                                                                   If you are young, poor, mentally ill,homeless,eccentric or by any chance, god-forbid doing any thing remotely enjoyable/annoying in a rather posh neighborhood of town or city center, be aware you could just be on your way to a prison sentence, of course if you are rich you will have nothing to fear.   
                                                                                                                     

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MIGRANTS TO BE CHARGED FOR NHS EMERGENCY SERVICES

English: NHS logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

             Ministers keen to clamp down on Medical tourism.   Migrants and overseas visitors are to face new charges for some NHS services in England, ministers say.                                                                                                                                                        Fees included will be extended prescription charges, higher charges for optical and dental treatment and the introduction of charges for some emergency treatment,
Health Minister Lord Howe said: "Having a universal health service free at the point of use rightly makes us the envy of the world, but we must make sure the system is fair to the hardworking British taxpayers who fund it.
"We know that we need to make changes across the NHS to better identify and charge visitors and migrants. Introducing charging at primary care is the first step to achieving this.

"We are already looking at taking action and next year we will set out our detailed plans to clamp down on the abuse of our NHS."                                                                                                                         
 WHO GETS WHAT.    
  Free NHS care is offered to anyone living in the UK who has temporary or permanent permission to do so.
   Asylum seekers, non-European Economic Area nationals who do not have permission to live in the UK, British expats, and visitors usually have to pay for treatment.                                      
 The UK has reciprocal agreements with most European nations and 28 other countries, and under these visitors are given free NHS care.
 The NHS should claim these costs back from the relevant governments - but research suggests just £73m a year is recouped out of more than £460m at present

However
Medical tourism is a lucrative source of income for the NHS, according to a major new study that contradicts many of the assumptions behind the government's announcement that it will clamp down on foreigners abusing the health service.
Eighteen hospitals – those deemed most likely to be making money from overseas patients – earned £42m in 2010, according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and York University. Medical tourists spent an estimated £219m on hotels, restaurants, shopping and transport in the UK.   the lead author of the new study, Johanna Hanefeld, from the faculty of public health and policy at the LSHTM, said the government-commissioned research published on Tuesday was "much more across the government immigration agenda than anything to do with health"       
 Their work, published in the open access journal Public Library of Science (PLoS) One, looks at incoming and outgoing medical tourists. Those flying in to the UK include expat Britons living in countries such as Spain which have tightened up their own rules on access to healthcare, they say.
Some NHS hospitals earn substantial sums of money from medical tourists and others could join them in doing so, say Hanefeld and colleagues
 This post contains excerpts from http://bbc.in/19D1lPN  and http://bit.ly/19D1p24

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SELL OFF BRITAIN, EUROSTAR UP FOR GRABS.

A Eurostar train at Vauxhall shortly after departing from the old terminus: London Waterloo International (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

4O% STAKE ON OFFER, IN THE REGION OF 10bn.                                                                                                                          The privatisation of britains  stake in Eurostar is about to be sold off according to Danny alexander,. the chief secretary to the Treasury.           The  announcement on Wednesday will mean he has doubled the coalition's target for the disposal of state assets to £20bn over the next six years, just weeks after the government was criticised for undervaluing Royal Mail during its controversial flotation.                                                                                                              This comes at a time when Eurostar and Keolis, both firms  majority-owned by French SNCF announce plans for a joint bid for East Coast Railway line franchise currently run by the UKgovernment company, Directly Operated Railways (DOR). It was brought in to operate the line as East Coast after National Express defaulted on the London-Edinburgh franchise in 2009, when the transport group admitted it could not afford the £1.4bn in payments due over the life of the contract. By contrast, East Coast has paid more than £600m in premiums to the government over the past two years. The question arises of the building of HS2  Planned estimated cost is £43 billion (by the Department for Transport), at least £80 billion(independent study by the Institute of Economic Affairs). On English soil comparable development is HS1, which was initially expected to cost £1 billion, with final bill around £11 billion. Why does'nt the UK government ask the french to build HS2 thus giving up all of the planned infrastucture develpement to french owned companys.                                                           David Cameron is going cap in hand to China for investment in the UK whilst selling off our infrastructure to the french,     Once again this government has failed the people of this country.  lets just hope that the governments advisors or should i say complimentary money grabbers get a fair price for the railways. Why do i think that that will not happen, sold short once again.   shameful and shameless.                   

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LEE RIGBY MURDER TRIAL BEGINS.IN MEDIA BLACKOUT

The Lee Rigby murder trial jury signed in.                                                                            The two men accused of the murder of army Drummer Lee Rigby, an Afghan veteran, in the streets near Woolwich barracks last May with machetes, hacking him to death in broad daylight in front of astonished passers-by are also accused of conspiracy to murder a police officer and attempted murder of a police officer.

       Michael Adebolajo, 28, and Michael Adebowale, 22, are charged with murdering the Fusilier as he walked back to Woolwich Barracks in south-east London on May 22.   The attack was especially savage and amplified by the fact one of the killers allowed a member of the public to film him, hands bloodied, make a declaration alleging anti-Muslim prejudice and calling for an end to British military involvement in Afghanistan. The attack and video shocked Britain and led to an upswing in anti-Muslim prejudice.                                                                                                                                                                       The possibility of a news blackout seems to becoming a reality with almost no coverage in the mainstream UK media, Strange you might say with calls from British goverment for more transperancy. Maybe the authorities would say that a media blackout was needed as the trial might cause protests by far right movements in the UK as seems the case when a group of about a dozen men calling themselves "Veterans Against the Islamification of the UK", stood outside The Old Baily criminal court, London with black banners and images of the hangman's noose, demanding the restoration of the death penalty for soldier Lee Rigby's alleged killers.But should,nt the UK public have the right to know what is going on in this trial.as surely it is in the public interest to hear the truth rather than have trial by "social media" or does the conservative party government once again treat us with contempt that we are not intelligent enough to cope with what was a vicious and cowardly attack reported in the general media,? Are they possibly frightened that there will be a backlash against islamic communities? if so does that give them the right to pull all media reporting? i think not. whilst goverments spy on people in there own countries the blackout does nothing but give the impression that they have something to hide.  Our rights have been infringed upon and some one should be brave enough to ask questions in parliament as to who and why there has been this black out.                                                      MR CAMERON you should be ashamed of yourself.

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60 YEARS ON, 2 JAPANESE SOLDIERS EMERGE FROM THE JUNGLE,

Mindanao Map (Photo credit: esambale)

prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi dispatches diplomats.                                   Two men in their eighties emerged from dense jungle on the Phillipine island of Mindanao which is 600 miles from Manila claiming they had been in hiding since before the end of the second world war.                             The Kyodo news agency identified them as Yoshio Yamakawa, 87, and Tsuzuki Nakauchi, 85, and said they were former members of a division whose ranks were devastated in fierce battles with US forces towards the end of the war.   Japanese prime minister , Mr Koizumi immediately sent a team of diplomats to verify the stories. He told reporters that if found to be true every effort would be made to repatriate them if that was what they wanted.                                                                                                                                                                                 The drama began on Thursday when a Japanese mediator for a veteran's group who was on Mindanao searching for the remains of former soldiers told the Japanese embassy in Manila that he had been contacted by the men and would be able to deliver them to the island's capital, General Santos, yesterday afternoon,  but hopes were dashed when the two men vanished . A mediator for a japanese veterans agency said the men were possibly scared off by the media attention.                                                  "There has been nothing concrete at all today; nothing has happened," an embassy spokesman, Shuhei Ogawa, reported from the hotel where the Japanese delegation was waiting. Every one was hopeful and would be staying at least until today. The story barely had a mention in the japanese media sceptical that the men could exist 60 years after leaving home to fight for the emperor.                                                                                                                                                "If they come, we will ask them if they can speak Japanese and if they want to return to Japan," said Shinichi Ogawa, the Japanese consul for Davao, the main city on Mindanao.                            When Emperor Hirohito surrendered in august 1945 there were an estimated 3 million soldiers operating over seas many going into hiding holding onto their weapons and ammunition.                                                                                                    "We always have rumours about war veterans turning up alive in remote parts of the Philippines," Mr Ogawa said. "But this time the story seemed more credible. We had someone who promised us concrete information, a meeting on a certain day. So we took it more seriously."                       

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