Meet the poorest president on earth- Jose Mujica

 

 

 

 

 

Meet the poorest president on earth- Jose Mujica of Uruguay since 2010.
He has no bank account, his only asset is a Volkswagen beetle, He donates 90% of his s
alary to charity. What a lesson to learn from dis man.
 it's a common grumble that politicians' lifestyles are far removed from those of their electorate. Not so in Uruguay.

Meet the president - who lives on a ramshackle farm and gives away most of his pay.
 Laundry is strung outside the house. The water comes from a well in a yard, overgrown with weeds. Only two police officers and Manuela, a three-legged dog, keep watch outside.

This is the residence of the president of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, whose lifestyle clearly differs sharply from that of most other world leaders.

President Mujica has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife's farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo

The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.

This austere lifestyle - and the fact that Mujica donates about 90% of his monthly salary, equivalent to $12,000 (£7,500), to charity - has led him to be labelled the poorest president in the world.

I've lived like this most of my life," he says, sitting on an old chair in his garden, using a cushion favoured by Manuela the dog.

"I can live well with what I have."

His charitable donations - which benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs - mean his salary is roughly in line with the average Uruguayan income of $775 (£485) a month.

In 2010, his annual personal wealth declaration - mandatory for officials in Uruguay - was $1,800 (£1,100), the value of his 1987 Volkswagen Beetle.

This year, he added half of his wife's assets - land, tractors and a house - reaching $215,000 (£135,000).

That's still only about two-thirds of Vice-President Danilo Astori's declared wealth, and a third of the figure declared by Mujica's predecessor as president, Tabare Vasquez.

Elected in 2009, Mujica spent the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Uruguayan guerrilla Tupamaros, a leftist armed group inspired by the Cuban revolution.

He was shot six times and spent 14 years in jail. Most of his detention was spent in harsh conditions and isolation, until he was freed in 1985 when Uruguay returned to democracy.

Those years in jail, Mujica says, helped shape his outlook on life.
[b]"I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more," he says.

"This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself," he says.

"I may appear to be an eccentric old man... But this is a free choice."

The Uruguayan leader made a similar point when he addressed the Rio+20 summit in June this year: "We've been talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of poverty.

"But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left?

In contrast, his vice president Danilo Astori's declared wealth of £173,000 includes a house and car worth nearly 10 times Mr Mujica's Beetle.

The leftist leader, who shuns formal suits and ties, was jailed for more than a decade for his guerrilla activities during the 1960s and 1970s.

US Hospital Gives 17-Year-Old Nigerian Amputee New Limbs For Free

US Hospital Gives 17-Year-Old Nigerian Amputee New Limbs For Free

A story that will surely blow your mind

“After a madman hacked off both her hands two years ago, 17-year-old Ruth Idowu prayed to Jesus for new ones.

The faith of the shy Nigerian teenager and the kindness of strangers – who are now dear friends — have prevailed.

Today, the people at Johnson’s Orthopedic Appliances in Riverside are making Ruth two new appendages free of charge to restore the limbs and the independence she’d so brutally lost in her native country.

The journey was set in motion by Ruth’s sponsors and hosts, Tunde and Titi Akinremi – a married couple with residences in both Colton and Nigeria. Tunde, 57, a paraplegic, founded a support group decades ago in their African homeland for the disabled. Learning about Ruth’s plight, he quickly notified friends he knew through a special-needs family camp in Southern California who had connections to Johnson’s Orthopedic.

The camp had inspired Tunde to launch a similar one in Nigeria in 1995. Called Tunde And Friends Foundation, the organization is funded by donations to provide health-care screening and equipment such as canes and wheelchairs. With airfare and other expenses paid through this nonprofit, Ruth Idowu and a friend from her hometown are staying on six-month visas with the Akinremis at their Colton home.

Since October, Mike Openshaw, 35, the head prosthetist at the clinic, located at 7254 Magnolia Avenue, has been fitting Ruth with temporary mechanical limbs, readying her for the finished products in a couple of weeks.

“She’s doing wonderfully, better than I expected,” he said. “When she came she said, ‘Get my hands back’.”

Idowu had never heard of or seen artificial limbs. Openshaw explained that he could only make her arms functional again, not restore her hands.

As she awaited a recent appointment, Idowu, now 19, licked mango ice cream on a stick clasped between the aluminum pincers attached to a plastic device on her right arm. “I can eat,” she marveled with a big grin, relishing a simple pleasure long denied her. She talked about learning to drive, using a computer and studying accounting when she returns home early next year.

“She loves to boil water in our kitchen,” Titi Akinremi, 58, said with a laugh. “She used to do a lot of cooking in her parents’ restaurant.”

Titi’s husband Tunde, a math teacher in Pomona, said that Ruth picked up the phone when he called her from work. Her occupational therapist, Cathy Armitage, who is volunteering her services, rewarded Idowu’s progress with a battery-operated toothbrush. When asked what tasks had become impossible, she replied in halting English: “Everything.”

Ruth Idowu’s life changed forever on Oct. 2, 2010, transforming her from a carefree high school graduate to a helpless amputee. She was clearing tables in the tiny café her parentsown in Oja Odan, a city of 7,000 in Southwest Nigeria. A drug-crazed man with a knife burst in and began slashing at Ruth from behind. When she raised both hands to protect her neck, the attacker chopped off her right hand at the wrist and severed her left arm at the elbow.

Jungle justice ensued, said Tunde Akinremi, interpreting for Ruth. A gang of young men chased the assailant, doused him with petrol, set him afire and watched him burn to death.

But there was no justice for the maimed Ruth, who spent eight months recovering in a Nigerian hospital. “There are limitations to health care in Nigeria,” said Titi Akinremi, a pathologist. “She couldn’t get this,” she said, gesturing as Openshaw fitted Ruth with left arm prosthesis.

“At best she would get a wooden stump,” her husband Tunde Akinremi said. “She would be dependent all her life. There would be no opportunities for that girl.”

He met Ruth for the first time last year. She and her pastor traveled three hours to Abeokuta, the Akinremis’ hometown, to plead for help from the Tunde And Friends Foundation. One of its biggest supporters is Center Point Church in Colton where the Akinremis worship.

Tunde Akinremi immediately accepted the challenge. It would take more than a year to network with his American friends and unscramble the red tape to bring Ruth to Riverside.

For the past 30 years, he’s been in a wheelchair since a car accident in Nigeria, the impetus for his involvement with special-needs people. In 1998, he became close friends with Robyn Souder, whom he met at a retreat for families of disabled loved ones in Agoura Hills. For 26 years, orthotists at Johnson Orthopedic Appliances have been making braces for her son, Joshua, who has cerebral palsy. Clinic owner Bill Kearney agreed to treat Ruth for free.

Lisa Dreher, Johnson’s billing manager and friend of Souder’s, tackled the calls and paperwork, ultimately contacting U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein. The Department of Homeland Security initially turned Ruth down. “They wanted thumbprints,” Dreher exclaimed. “Thumbprints!”

Souder, 53, persuaded retired rehabilitation specialist Armitage to come on board. “At first Ruth was extremely shy,” Armitage said. The breakthrough came when she showed Ruth a video of an amputee like herself with two artificial arms: Ruth understood.

“She’s full of joy,” Armitage said. “She will be totally independent.”

Souder, who’s thrown dinners and parties for Ruth and her friend Dorcas in her Lake Mathews home, describes their spontaneous eruptions of singing and dancing.

Every Tuesday and Thursday the Akinremis bring the women to the clinic. Prosthetist Openshaw recently fitted Ruth with her temporary left arm, demonstrating its seven positions, operated through rubber bands and bicycle cables. The customized finished products for both arms will be made of laminated, flesh-toned carbon fiber, each weighing less than 2 pounds and lasting two to three years.

“Considering the progress she’s made in four weeks, I’d say she’s doing awesome,” Openshaw said.”

To find out more about Tunde And Friends Foundation (TAFF), visitwww.tundeandfriends.org

.Story by Laurie Lucas was originally published as “Nigerian Teen getting new arms after attack” at Press-enterprise.com, based in Riverside California, USA

Many smokers light up with kids in car –Study

November 15, 2012 by New York Times News Service

Only one-quarter of smoking parents adopt a strict smoke-free car policy, and nearly half who don’t enforce such a ban light up while driving with their children, a new study indicates.

Interviewing nearly 800 smoking parents, researchers also found that two out of three parents with strict smoke-free home policies don’t match that stance in their cars. Nearly three-quarters of smoking parents admitted that someone had smoked in their car in the last three months — suggesting parents don’t recognise the dangers of exposing their kids to tobacco residue in such a confined space.

“We’ve seen that a high number of parents don’t smoke in their homes and expected the same kind of [behaviour] in cars, so we were shocked and surprised,” said study author Dr. Emara Nabi-Burza, a senior clinical research coordinator at the Center for Child and Adolescent Health Research and Policy at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston.

“For some reason, the car isn’t considered an environment where children can be exposed to tobacco smoke,” she added. “Parents think putting down the windows is fine. They don’t think of it as an indoor exposure for children, which is where we need to step in and make people aware.”

The study is published online Nov. 12 in the journal Paediatrics in advance of publication in the December print issue.

No safe level of tobacco smoke exposure exists, according to the United States Surgeon General, and research has shown that it contributes to a worsening of asthma symptoms in children and greater odds of respiratory infections, sudden infant death syndrome and ear infections. In children aged 18 months or younger, exposure to so-called secondhand smoke is responsible for up to 15,000 hospitalisations in the United States each year, the study said.

Nabi-Burza and her colleagues, interviewing parent smokers as they exited paediatricians’ offices in eight states, learned that 48 per cent of those without a strictly enforced smoke-free car policy smoked while driving with their children. College-educated parents of children under one year were more likely to enforce such a policy, as were those who smoked 10 or fewer cigarettes per day.

Only 12 per cent said they had been advised by their children’s doctors to have a smoke-free car.

“Mostly we see when paediatricians talk to parents, it’s about smoke-free homes,” Nabi-Burza said. “Even bars are smoke-free, but cars have been kind of forgotten. Now that we know the extent of the problem, paediatricians should talk to parents about how smoking in cars is not good for children.”

Danny McGoldrick, vice president of research at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids in Washington, D.C., noted that even tobacco smoke residue so-called “thirdhand smoke” in cars can be harmful to children, increasing the importance of smoke-free car policies even if youngsters aren’t present while a parent smokes.

“Fabrics obviously absorb a lot of these toxic components. Just because no one’s in there smoking doesn’t mean all the harmful [components] disappear,” McGoldrick said. “The best thing to do as a smoking parent is to quit smoking. If they’re not ready to quit yet or not able to succeed, then adopt smoke-free policies for your home and car.”

New York Times News Service.

Fear grips family of guard shot by policemen

November 15, 2012 

Family members of a security guard who was allegedly shot by men of the Lagos State Police Command on Saturday at Ikota, Lagos, have expressed fear over the safety of their relative.

The guard, Joshua Musa, and a banker, Femi Badejo, were shot on their premises by policemen who were invited to foil a robbery operation.

Musa’s uncle, Mr. Adamu Askira, a retired assistant superintendent of police, told our correspondent on the phone on Wednesday, that although Musa was responding to treatment at the Lagos State University Teaching Hospital, Ikeja, his life might not be safe.

He said, “I am aware that the police thought he was dead. Musa may be in danger now because they are aware he is alive.

“He (Musa) only began to eat today (Wednesday) since the day of the shooting. His health is improving but we are conscious of his security.”

Askira said two of Musa’s brothers would keep vigil over him at all times and no stranger would be allowed to see him without his (Askira’s) permission.

Askira, who said he had incurred debt over his nephew’s treatment, added that he would have preferred to move the victim out of Lagos.

He said, “We want to move him to another hospital to keep him safe but we are currently facing a financial constraint. I am even willing to move him out of the state.

“But we still owe a lot of money on his treatment. The hospital has been giving him treatment on the basis of my credibility.”

Askira said he was set to lodge complaints at the human rights commission’s office.

He also berated the Commissioner of Police, Mr. Umar Manko, for ordering a reporter of The Mr. Kunle Falayi, out of the command’s headquarters on account of the story.

Lagos arraigns two fake LASTMA officials

November 15, 2012 

The office of the Attorney-General of Lagos State on Wednesday arraigned two men, Bolaji Adigun (37) and Hakeem Adebesin (42), before an Ikeja Magistrate’s Court for allegedly parading themselves as officials of the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority.

Principal State Counsel, Tunde Sunmonu, prosecuting the case on behalf of the AG’s office told the court that Adigun and Adebesin impersonated as LASTMA Traffic Inspectors on Tuesday at the Mile 12 area of the state and extorted money from motorists.

The accused were said to have taken positions at the Mile 12 under bridge on Tuesday and apprehended road users before they were arrested by a LASTMA task force team led by the agency’s General Manager, Mr. Babatunde Edu.

They also allegedly used forged traffic tickets purportedly issued by the Traffic Section of LASTMA to illegally demand and collect money from motorists.

The charge sheet states, “That you Adigun and Adebesin did conspire together to commit felony to wit impersonation by falsely representing yourselves as LASTMA Traffic Inspectors.

“That both of you did by way of criminal extortion, illegally demanded and collected money from motorists on November 13 at Mile 12 by using forged traffic tickets.”

They were arraigned on four counts of conspiracy, impersonation, forgery and criminal extortion punishable under sections 411 (1), 78(b), 363(1) of the Criminal Laws of Lagos State 2011 and Section 2 of the Illegal Collection of Dues in Public Place (Prohibition) Law 2003.

The accused persons who chose summary trial in the court pleaded not guilty to the charges preferred against them.

Their lawyer, Ayo Odekunle, made an oral bail application for them and urged the court to grant it on liberal terms.

Sunmonu, who did not oppose the bail application, asked the court to give a short date for trial.

Magistrate A.O. Isaacs admitted the two accused persons to bail in the sum of N200,000 with two responsible sureties each in like sum.

The sureties, according to him, must be residents of the state who must furnish the court with evidence of tax payment to the state government as well as means of livelihood.

He added that the sureties should also deposit the sum of N20, 000 as security for bail with the court.

He thereafter fixed November 21 for trial.

MASSOB chief sues Army, police for N25m

November 15, 2012

A leader of the Movement for the Actualization of Sovereign State of Biafra, Chief Arinze Igbani, has sued the Nigeria Army and the Police for violating his fundamental human rights.

In the suit before Justice V.N Umeh of the Otuocha High Court, Igbani is claiming N25m damages from the Army and the police, who he said, forced him out of a hospital where he was receiving treatment for his fractured bones.

Igbani, who is the MASSOB Administrator for Onitsha Region 4, specifically dragged the Commander of the 302 Artillery Regiment, Onitsha, Col. Taritimiye Gagariga; the Adjutant of the Regiment, the General Officer Commanding 82 Division of the Nigerian Army, Enugu and the Chief of Army Staff before the court for allegedly breaching his fundamental rights as guaranteed in the Constitution.

Joined as co-respondents are the Commissioner of Police, Anambra State and the Inspector-General of Police.

In his statement of claims, Igbani, through his counsel, Mr. Charles Ugo, is seeking a declaration that the respondents violated and are still violating his fundamental rights.

He is also praying the court to restrain the respondents, their servants, agents, privies or subordinates from further arresting, detaining intimidating, harassing and threatening his life.

The applicant therefore sought N10m as damages against the first, second, third and fourth respondents jointly and severally for an unwarranted infringement of his fundamental rights, as well as another N15m as damages for his medical treatment.

He also sought an order directing the respondents to jointly and or severally tender an unreserved apology in writing to him for an unwarranted infringement of his fundamental rights, and for the Army to sponsor his medical treatment abroad, as recommended by a medical expert who is currently treating his fractured leg.