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I first heard about this while at Uppsala last year and thought it was a done deal…apparently not.
Last year Karl Helge Hampus Svensson, a medical student at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, was expelled on a technicality once it came into light that he falsifited his records and was a convicted murder. However Svensson is now enrolled in yet another medical school (Uppsala). I think it’s great that Sweden (and Swedes) firmly believe and practice giving second chances but I personally think this is a bit much. Esp. since someone else could have taken his place at Uppsala (and for that at Karolinska).
Wed Mar 11, 2009 7:54pm EDT
Mexico’s most wanted man Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, blamed for thousands of deaths in a drug war, has made it onto the Forbes Magazine list of the world’s richest people with an estimated $1 billion fortune.
Guzman, who is just 5 feet tall, escaped from prison in 2001 to set off a wave of killings across Mexico in an attempt to dominate the country’s highly lucrative drug trade into the United States. “He is not available for interviews,” Luisa Kroll, senior editor of Forbes, said Wednesday. “But his financial situation is doing quite well.”
Forbes placed Guzman at 701 on its list, tied with dozens of others worldwide with riches of some $1 billion. Guzman, 51, who officials believe changes his cell phone every day to avoid being tracked, is often compared to the late Colombian kingpin Pablo Escobar, whom Forbes has said amassed a fortune of $3 billion before he was killed by police in 1993.
The Mexican smuggler is “basically one of the biggest providers of cocaine to the United States,” Kroll said. The magazine based its tally of his fortune on estimates from drug-trade analysts and U.S. government data. Guzman’s prison escape and ability to elude capture for eight years are an embarrassment to the Mexican government. He has outwitted four major government drives to find him between 2002 and 2007. His escapades are the stuff of legend in the areas he controls and in popular “narcocorrido” songs that glorify drug traffickers.
Mexico’s attorney general, Eduardo Medina Mora, told Reuters last week that defeating Guzman’s cartel of traffickers from the Pacific state of Sinaloa was a priority in President Felipe Calderon’s army-backed drug fight. Some 7,000 people have been killed in drug violence across Mexico since the start of last year as rival gangs fight each other and Mexican security forces. Guzman’s enforcers from the Sinaloa cartel are among the most vicious hitmen.
Forbes said Mexican and Colombian traffickers laundered between $18 billion and $39 billion in proceeds from wholesale drugs shipments to the United States in 2008. Guzman and his operation likely grossed 20 percent of that — enough for him to have pocketed $1 billion over his career and earn a spot on the billionaire’s list for the first time.
About 90 percent of all cocaine consumed in the United States comes through Mexico. It also is a major source of heroin, methamphetamines and marijuana in the United States.
http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE52A7QM20090311?rpc=60
From
February 17, 2009
Japan’s Finance Minister has said that he will resign later this year amid a spiralling furor over what appeared to be drunken behaviour at last weekend’s G7 summit in Rome.
Shoichi Nakagawa’s resignation could not come at a more fragile time for the government of Prime Minister Taro Aso – a leader who is fast becoming Japan’s most unpopular ever, and who stands accused by the public of dithering on solving the country’s rapidly deteriorating economic problems.
Mr Nakagawa’s decision to step down came ahead of an opposition-led censure motion against him, which he will almost certainly lose tomorrow.
Mr Nakagawa, who was sticking today with his excuse that a combination of jetlag and cough mixture got the better of him, said that he would stay on in the Cabinet until parliament gave the green light to a supplementary budget aimed at steering Japan out of the sharpest recessionary plunge in its history.
A number of politicians have come forward today with annecdotal evidence of Mr Nakagawa’s odd behaviour – he has, for example, been spotted bumping into the doorframes along the corridors of power.
Kenji Yamaoka, head of the parliamentary affairs committee of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, said yesterday that there was “nobody in the Diet [parliament] who did not know” about Mr Nakagawa’s fondness for a tipple.
Video footage has also surfaced of an incident in parliament in 2006 when Mr Nakagawa stopped speaking during a speech and stood silent and virtually motionless for about half a minute before sitting down. At the time, he blamed medicine he was taking for back pain.
Monday’s quarterly GDP figures showed Japan’s exports – the engine of national growth – sliding at record pace. Tokyo stocks tumbled on the combined miseries of an economy in distress and the lack of a steady rudder in government.
In addition to the growing financial turmoil gripping Japan, over the past three years the leadership of the country has changed three times, with countless cabinet reshuffles and resignations in between.
No names have been suggested as a replacement for Mr Nakagawa, whose departure will leave a “talent void” in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, analysts say.
In a hastily convened press conference today, Mr Nakagawa apologised “for causing such a big fuss”. But in what appeared to be confirmation of public and parliamentary suspicions that he was indeed drunk during his Rome press conference, he hinted that may soon hospitalise himself to “prevent myself doing any further damage”.
Rumours regarding Mr Nakagawa’s fondness for alcohol have been swirling in political circles for many years. The former prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, said yesterday that he was aware of the Finance Minister’s fondness for a drink and had previously warned him not to overdo things.
Although Mr Aso said today that he had no plans to sack his close confidant and ally, Mr Nakagawa’s performance in Rome has already drawn heavy criticism from other members of the Cabinet.
“The TV footage was shocking,” Seiko Noda, the Consumer Minister, said. “A Cabinet minister must be fit and he needs more self control.”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5749967.ece
http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/Social_Health_Insurance_an3.pdf
Executive Summary
The health status of people in Indonesia has improved very slowly over the last two decades. Many factors are responsible for the low improvement of health status in Indonesia, such as low education, low income, difficult geographical access, cultural problems and health care financing. Lessons learned from the World Health Report 2000, despite criticisms over the rank, clearly suggest that health care financing is the most important element in the achievement of health improvement. The level of health care financing affects the availability of human resources, medical supplies, distribution of health care facilities, quality of health services, and other important processes. The main hypothesis of this study is that health care financing is the key component to sustainable and significant health improvement.
The main research question for this study is how health care financing has progressed in Indonesia in the last two decades. The objectives of this study are: (1) to identify health care financing from various sources in the last two decades; (2) to identify gaps in health care financing in relation to health care needs; (3) to assess philosophy and regulations that may affect health care financing, and (4) to identify various feasible options to improve equity in health care financing.
In order to attain the objectives, the team reviewed various documents related with health care financing, both in Indonesia and other countries. National and international journals were reviewed to study the progress of health improvement and health care financing in Indonesia. In addition, the team also compared basic assumptions and philosophies that may distinguish health care in Indonesia with health care in other countries. The team also collected health expenditure data from the government budget. In addition, the team also discussed with prominent health economists to obtain their views about health care finacing in Indonesia.
