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Oxfam health promoter Helen Hawkings was working in Port-au-Prince when the devastating earthquake struck. As the relief and recovery effort unfolds, she describes the situation on the ground.

12 January: It had been an average day in the office: conference calls, report writing, fighting off the mosquitoes that plague us here. My clock showed just 10 minutes until it was time to leave for the day, when without any warning the ground made slight movements, which rapidly became violent. The earth shook harder than I have ever felt before, I ran to the door but could not get out. I hid under my desk, my hand pressed up against the surface protecting my head, hoping it would hold up to the pressure of two storeys falling on it. If I were buried under a tonne of debris, would I ever get rescued? Was this the end for me?

As quickly as the earthquake started, the violent tremor stopped, everything became still again. Covered in dust, I scrambled shaking over the rubble by the office and made it out to the safety of the street outside. People were coming out stunned, some crying, some injured, some silent. A count of heads to check everyone was present showed one member of the team was missing, stuck under the rubble. Companions brought him out and they carried him unconscious on a piece of the gate on their shoulders to the nearest hospital where he later died. Several of the hospitals had already collapsed. Home, schools, offices – the buildings we spend our lives in become our greatest danger.

Cars were left abandoned in the street, roads were impassable covered by collapsed walls, buildings, telegraph poles and crushed vehicles. We walked the long way home not saying much, amongst people praying, crying, hysterical. It was surreal. We made a large detour around the petrol station that had exploded but was still making uncomfortable noises. A couple of people were wailing outside a collapsed building, the broken sign on the wall showed it had been a university.

Communication in emergency situations is often not easy. The phone networks were either down or overloaded so it is impossible to find out if our friends were ok. I had no way of letting my family know that I had survived and just hoped that they wouldn’t hear about the earthquake until tomorrow. We have no idea where was worst hit or how the rest of the country is doing.

People wander the streets in front of the remains of a boarding school in the downtown area of Port-au-Prince on 13 January 2010. [Photo credit: Frederic Dupoux/Getty Images]

13 January – City in shock: Last night we walked home in the dark, slept, or tried to sleep in the space in the garden least likely to have a wall or building fall on it should the aftershocks cause more damage. I lay feeling the aftershocks through the night under a beautiful sky heavy with stars, kept awake by the loud singing, clapping and shouting at what must be a local church and by our local confused cockerel who spent the night letting us know he was still alive!

Today we walk back to the office in the stark light of day. We pass the collapsed hospital at the end of our street. We pass a man carrying his dead child, repeating out loud that he has his beloved dead child in his arms, not knowing where to go. We pass people being carried on all kind of makeshift stretchers, doors, blankets or whatever they can get their hands on to carry their loved ones to medical facilities for help.

We went up and down the main road six times today, each time more corpses appeared, some covered in sheets some just lying contorted and stiff and coated in the dust that covers the city. I wonder if their families know where they are? It is impossible to make even a wild estimate at the number of people who have died, are missing or affected by this earthquake, which measured 7.3 on the Richter scale.

In Canape Vert Park, hundreds of people are sitting on the street, in the small open space. The smell of urine and excreta is strong. As the days pass the corpses and waste will become increasingly pungent.

Supermarkets have either collapsed, been looted or are closed for fear of trapping people in collapses from the aftershocks. The only food we find for sale is some unappetising fruit that a group of women are selling on the side of the road. The cost of water has already gone up. Food and drinking water are scarce. I wonder how long we can last on the food we have at home, maybe two or three days. People are currently searching for family members or are in shock. I am concerned about the possibility of unrest related to the lack of food available in the coming days. Haiti is not exactly the breadbasket of the region.

We attend an Oxfam staff meeting, we are a small organisation yet seven people had their homes destroyed and several other homes were damaged. Haitians are heeding the advice that it is dangerous to sleep in their beds because of the aftershocks. Most people are sleeping on the street.

Teams are organised to go to different coordination meetings and collect information about the situation here in Haiti. We suggest that those members who are not coming into work this week help dig out people still alive trapped in the rubble.

We go to the WASH cluster meeting with a group of organisations who work in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene to coordinate the WASH response. In an emergency many organisations come to help so we need to work together and organise who does what and where.

Streams of people with suitcases are leaving the city to stay with friends and family in other parts of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The earth moves almost constantly this evening. I feel queasy. This evening is colder. Not like England in January cold, but chilly. Just before midnight a large noisy trail of people pass our house, they are worried by the rumour that a tsunami is coming and are seeking refuge higher up in the hills. Itis raining a little. Tonight Port-au-Prince is spending its second night sleeping under the stars.

A man carries an injured person along a destroyed area of Port-au-Prince on 14 January 2010. [Photo credit: REUTERS/Jorge Silva, courtesy of www.alertnet.org]

14 January 2010 – Day 3: Haiti is not known for having a good security record. We hear that all the inmates from the huge local penitentiary who were not killed by the earthquake have escaped.

Today we do a rapid appraisal of the communes where we have recently trained teams in emergency WASH (Water, sanitation and Hygiene) response. Visiting the open areas where displaced people are sleeping, the main needs we are told, not surprisingly are drinking water, food, medicines and latrines.

The WASH coordination meeting does not go as planned but in a good way. Several private water companies are offering their services to provide water to key locations in the city, which is wonderful news. These organisations will provide 80 trucks full of water. The international organisations including Oxfam need to organise storage and management of the water, which is an enormous task.

Unfortunately we also find out that our emergency stock, (the materials that we keep stored so that we came respond quickly when there´s an emergency) have become inaccessible following the quake. This is a huge setback as tomorrow we want to start distributing water. People are hungry and people are thirsty.

The most disturbing sights of today were not the piles of debris that just 2 days ago were homes and local schools. The sights that made me draw breath were the bodies. A neat row of 16 bodies carefully wrapped in sheets, the group of 20 at the Canape Vert roundabout some identified with ripped cardboard name tags, a pile with no sheet covering them, just thrown one on top of the other and the two bodies on the corner of a street, an adult motionless under a small dead child.

Today lots of people are covering their faces with scarves and face masks, they believe this will protect them from diseases spread by dead bodies. Red scarves are particularly popular. Red is believed to be the strongest colour and helps ward off disease. . It is true that dead bodies from cholera victims can spread disease, but just walking past the bodies of the ordinary healthy people that the quake has taken does not. But it is a link that people often make probably because of how traumatic it is to see the bodies.

We are told that a plane is sending emergency materials for us and it should arrive tomorrow! This is great news.

Oxfam staff set up a water bladder to distribute over 10,000 litres of water to those worst affected by the earthquake. [Photo credit: Oxfam]

15 January – Day 4: Today was spent preparing to distribute water. I visited a golf course, currently home to about 10, 000 people. There are a lot of sick and injured people sleeping out here. I was looking for an appropriate place to mount a portable water storage container (a bladder).

I am really curious about why people are walking around with thick white cream smeared under their noses. I imagine it must be something sweet smelling to counter the bad smells here. In fact it is toothpaste put there supposedly to stop them getting ill!

We are still sleeping outside and will continue to do so for a few days to come. I am not sure what I miss more, sleeping in my bed or eating cooked meals! Tomorrow we have a long but hopefully really productive day ahead of us. We will start installing the water points and distributing drinking water.

16 January – Day 5: Today we were back at the golf course, previously an exclusive area for the rich of Port au Prince, it is now home to an estimated 10 – 15, 000 people during the day and 50, 000 at night. Our mission for the day is to start distributing water.

People staying in the camps have organised committees to manage the site. There seem to be more committees than are absolutely necessary and they do not always agree on how things should be done. Unfortunately when the water distribution started there was a disagreement regarding which committee was in charge and the situation became rather heated.

Every day many people approach me asking me what can I give, what am I doing here, why am I only working in this camp when there are so many people still staying in the communities near their homes who need help? I am not God, I tell them that today we are starting with providing water here. There is a colossal amount of aid pouring into the country so I tell them that we are starting in areas with the biggest concentrations of people so that we can reach lots of people in a short space of time but that we have not forgotten them and that we are doing as much as we can.

This evening the team of Oxfam staff that we have been working with in Cap Haitien in the north of Haiti arrived at our door. We have been training them and working closely with them in emergency preparedness so that when disaster strikes they are ready to immediately respond. This was a wonderful end to the day.

While I would like to believe that the loud bangs that rang out near our house just before midnight last night were fireworks, I think that would be slightly naïve of me. Reports of pillaging are rife. This afternoon we passed 2 bodies on the road, which were left there uncared for. We were told that locals killed them as they were looting and stealing. An unofficial curfew of 10pm has been proposed

17 January – Day 6: Something that you can be sure about here is that your day will not go as you expect it to. After all the complications that we were dealing with yesterday, today we had planned a problem free day. It was an important day for us. We wanted to have the two bladders that we installed yesterday and the three that the teams prepared today full of water so that we could distribute 100, 000 litres of drinking water to people who really need it.

I arrived at the golf course at midday. The truck containing 5, 000 litres of water was filling the water storage container that we had constructed. After a quick final leak fix things were looking good, and we were ready to go. Our first recipient was a young boy looking slightly overwhelmed clutching a small white water container, which he quickly filled. Soon the people who had waited patiently in the queue were receiving fresh drinking water. It feels great when we can see our work is making an impact. I had ordered 10 more lorry loads of water to go to the sites we were working in. Our national WASH team had set up committees to manage each water point. We waited and waited for the trucks to come with the water. No one came. Drinking water is not the only scarce liquid in high demand. There is also an acute shortage of petrol. The water company was unable to come and distribute the water, of which they had plenty, because their lorries did not have enough petrol. I had to relay this hugely disappointing information to the committees and to the people waiting to receive water who took the news well considering the situation.

The number of people staying with us has risen from just the four of us on Tuesday night, to a respectable 21. Today Oxfam staff arrived from the Dominican Republic, England and Mexico. Together we will be able to achieve great things. In the meantime we have to cope with not having a functioning flushing toilet, no cooking facilities and a limited water supply. This makes entertaining at home a more creative challenge!

Tomorrow is a new day that I hope will be problem free and full of 100, 000 litres of fresh drinking water!

Donate now and find out more about Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake response

Google’s announcement that it may close down operations in China if it can’t start running an uncensored search engine in the country has had reverberations in all sorts of places and provoked responses from other companies and officials alike. One company that spoke out on the matter was Yahoo and its statement was seen as su… (read more)

Ford debuted the new S-MAX and Galaxy at the 2010 Brussels Show, two models that will go on sale in European markets in the upcoming months. Since the only things we got were a couple of pictures showing the two models, here is a recent photo gallery rolled out by Ford showing both cars interacting with the real world.

"S-MAX and Galaxy are the first European Ford models to benefit from our global EcoBoost family of direct-injection, turbocharged, petrol engines delivering more power and… (read more)

Now that Apple’s tablet debut date is officially, officially confirmed (old news for All Things Digital readers), we can move on to the next round of speculation. For instance, which media partners will Steve Jobs be working with when this thing launches?

There are lots of media companies who are anticipating the tablet — the entire magazine industry, for instance — and Apple (AAPL) will eventually want all of them on board. The wondertablet is supposed to be a showcase for media, after all.

But very few media companies seem to have any kind of real information about the device. And only a small number will have new stuff to show off at next week’s unveiling.

Like who? Here’s a starter list of likely and unlikely suspects:

• The New York Times (NYT) is a good bet. Executive Editor Bill Keller riled up the Web with a passing reference to an “impending Apple slate” in October, but wouldn’t say more. Last week I asked him again about his paper’s Apple plans, and he stayed mum again. So did Martin Nisenholtz, the paper’s digital boss. “No comment”s don’t equal “we’re cooking something up”, of course. And I’m not convinced that an Apple demo would be directly tied to an announcement about a new pay wall strategy, as New York Magazine speculated on Sunday. But I do expect to see something next week.
• Don’t expect much from the big music labels. Jobs courted Big Music when he opened up the iTunes store in 2003. But label sources I talked to this month said the company had only recently begun briefing them about the tablet, primarily as a “courtesy”. Recall that Apple already has the labels on board with the “iTunes LP” format, which would lend itself quite nicely to a tablet. One label official told me Apple has expressed an interest in selling higher-quality audio files via iTunes, and I’m sure the labels would be happy to do so, if they could charge a premium for them. But that discussion didn’t seem to be tethered to the tablet.
• Do expect to hear about “enhanced e-books”. In the past, Jobs has been dismissive about dedicated e-readers like Amazon’s Kindle (AMZN) and reading in general — “people don’t read anymore“. He has apparently changed his mind about the latter idea: The Wall Street Journal confirmed earlier stories yesterday with a report that News Corp.’s (NWS) HarperCollins is negotiating to bring some of its titles to the platform. Presumably other publishers — all of whom are eager for viable Kindle competitors — want in, too.
• Video? Duh. But who? The most obvious suspect here for an initial launch would be Disney (DIS) and its affiliates. In part because Jobs is the company’s largest individual shareholder, and a board member. But also because Disney CEO Bob Iger has made a point of trying out new digital distribution strategies. Here’s a non-stretch: Disney is already negotiating with Microsoft (MSFT) to bring some of its programming and games to the Xbox 360. What about something similar for the tablet?

A crucial point here is that if the tablet works with the iTunes store — and it should — then it’s most likely that all of the Apple’s existing iTunes media partners will automatically be on the new device from the start, whether or not Jobs showcases them next week. That is: If you can buy “Cars” and watch it on your Mac, iPhone or iPod, then you should be able to watch it on your tablet, too.

But we’re in pre-Apple announcement mode now, and simply porting old media to a new device just won’t sate our needs! So consider this a work in progress, and a speculative one at that. I’ll be updating if and when anything new comes to light.

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	Is the Obama Administration calling the shots in Detroit? Newsweek says yes But they don’t make a convincing argument.		Toyota’s Koei Saga: “I think we will never abandon the internal-combustion engine” Well, that’s one opinion.
	Report: General Motors CEO says Volt will be in low 30s and be profitable Sounds good, but it’s a little vague for us at this point.	Other news: Not gonna let it die: Felix Kramer issues detailed response to anti-plug-in vehicle report Got cells? Battery supplier CEO warns of limited battery supply for electric vehicles Report: Bosch helping Tata develop tiny diesel engine for Nano

AutoblogGreen for 01.19.10 originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 06:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s really no better vehicle for melted butter than the craggy dips and peaks of a toasted English muffin. They’re also the perfect size to hold in one hand while reading the morning paper and sipping coffee. We had no idea they were so easy to make ourselves – take a look!

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I am pleased to announce the addition of D4L-Data as the latest feature available to subscribers of the D4L-Premium Services.

D4L-Data is an Open Office spreadsheet containing a significant amount of data on each of the dividend stocks that I track. The data is sortable and has built-in buttons and macros to make it easy to use. This spreadsheet requires Open Office, which is available for multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, Solaris, etc.) and in multiple languages. Click here to download a FREE copy of Open Office.

The D4L-Data spreadsheet has more than 20 columns of information on the 140+ companies that I track.Some of the information included is: Yield, Div Growth Rate, Buy Price, Prem./ (Disc.), Stars, Debt To Tot. Cap., FCF Payout, NPV MMA Diff., Years of Div Grow, P/E, Risk Rating, and much more.

The D4L-Data spreadsheet is perfect for the times you want to sort data differently than what is available in the D4L-Dashboard and/or you want to screen the dividend stocks based on your unique criteria.

The D4L Premium Services are designed for the serious dividend investor. If you have not yet subscribed, please see the Overview and Subscribe page for more information on the benefits of these services, sample reports, pricing and subscription information. The premium section can always be accessed via the Premium menu option on the top-left of the menu bar above.

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Instead of seeing the usual advertising, drivers in Moscow were treated recently to two minutes of porn, thanks to the handiwork of a hacker.

The explicit escapades were shown on a 27 foot billboard on one of the Russian capital’s busiest highways. The billboard operator blamed the incident on a hacker who swapped the commercial video clips for the porn.

Several motorists stopped and took photos of the billboard which are now winging their way around the internet.

Related posts:

1. YouTube Carpet Bombed with Porn Videos
2. China Pays Rewards for Finding Porn
3. Calvin Klein’s Racy New NYC Billboard

Hoy, España se ha levantado con una excelente noticia, en lo que se refiere a la Fórmula 1, Pedro De la Rosa, uno de los pilotos más queridos por la afición tiene la oportunidad que estaba buscando, se acabó el especular, Pedro De la Rosa vuelve a ser piloto oficial de la Fórmula 1. Así lo ha confirmado la escudería BMW Sauber, en un comunicado, el piloto catalán se convierte en el segundo piloto de la escudería suiza y el tercer piloto español en la parrilla de salida, si se confirma la titularidad en Toro Rosso de Jaime Alguersuari.

La experiencia de De la Rosa, es su mejor aval, tiene 71 grandes premios en su haber y sobre todo, su arduo trabajo como piloto de pruebas de McLaren, le han hecho ganar una experiencia que pocos tienen actualmente en el Paddock.

Las claves del fichaje, según Peter Sauber, ha sido su trabajo en McLaren, algo de lo que BMW Sauber se beneficiará:

Pedro ha pasado muchos años trabajando para un equipo superior al más alto nivel técnico. Nosotros, como equipo podemos beneficiarnos de su experiencia, y lo mismo sucede con Kamui.

Además Sauber, está convencido que la combinación de un piloto joven con un piloto veterano es la mejor opción:

La combinación de un piloto experimentado y uno joven se ha demostrado en repetidas ocasiones que es muy fructífera. No creo que ninguno de ellos nos decepcione en 2010. Por supuesto, también es crucial que proporcionarles un coche decente y me siento optimista acerca de nuestro progreso.

La reacción de Pedro De la Rosa no se hizo esperar:

Siempre creí firmemente que me darían otra oportunidad como piloto oficial, dado que el número pruebas se redujo radicalmente, esto era en que yo trabajaba. Estoy muy emocionado con esta oportunidad y con la nueva temporada.

Vía | Recta de Meta

Out-of-state investors buy foreclosures in Arizona while enjoying the Grand Canyon, the warm weather and other tourist attractions in the state.

According to real estate professionals, such as Scottsdale lawyer Jordan Rose, investors from other states come to Arizona to enjoy sights and laze in resorts while looking for bargain-priced foreclosures as second homes and investments. There are even some deciding to move to Arizona and make their purchases as their primary residences.

According to a report from a California-based foreclosure research firm, Arizona had 163,210 or 6.1 percent of its housing units put into the foreclosure process in 2009, an increase of nearly 40 percent from its 2008 foreclosure activity and an overwhelming 323-percent jump from its foreclosure pace in 2007. Arizona was second only to Nevada in intensity of foreclosure activity last year.

In December, foreclosures in Arizona shot up by 40 percent from November. For the entire year of 2009, Arizona and three other states – California, Florida and Illinois – accounted for more than half of the total foreclosure filings in the country, which reached 2.8 million.

It is expected then that people with cash and other sources of funding come to Arizona to buy foreclosures. They would have a lot of properties to choose from, including HUD home foreclosures. The number of HUD homes has been rising as the percentage of government-backed home loans continue to increase.

In addition to the large number of available foreclosures for sale, investors are also attracted to Arizona because of the sharp decreases in home prices. According to First American CoreLogic, the state continues to post some of the sharpest house price declines in the country. In October last year, home prices fell by more than 17 percent over a 12-month period.

Excluding short sales, bank-owned homes and government tax foreclosures from the calculations, house prices dropped by 14 percent in October.

Meanwhile, the state of Arizona was one of only six states that received six-digit funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under its Neighborhood Stabilization Program. Arizona got $117.95 million. Florida and California topped the allocation list with $348.31 million and $318.05 million, respectively.

Of the money given to Arizona, Chicanos Por La Causa Inc., an Arizona-based consortium that also operates in other states, got $35.78 million while the city of Phoenix received $60 million. The county of Pima got $22.165 million. The millions in funding are expected to revitalize neighborhoods and entice more investors to buy foreclosures in Arizona.

Odd couple Jessica Simpson and Smashing Pumpkins founder Billy Corgan have been collaborating in the recording studio since meeting through mutual friends, but they are not dating, a source close to the bubbly blonde tells FOX News’ 411 Column.

“Jessica loved spending so much time in and out of the studio with Billy,” a friend of Jessica’s spilled. “She’s in awe of his musical prowess, and it adds to her feelings for him, but they are not dating….”

The Buell saga continues and speeds up to its final chapter. A press release from the Michigan-based Liquid Asset Partners announced the sale, which is set to begin January 28 at the East Troy, Wisconsin factory. The liquidation sale will offer Buell riders and fans an opportunity to view the inside of the factory and purchase the equipment used to make the sportbikes.

"Buell had a great run as a quality American motorcycle with fans worldwide." says Bill Melvin Jr., CEO of Liquid … (read more)

The Eolic is a wind-powered foldable generator. The main idea of the project is to create an easily foldable power generator to be used in the construction at places where there is no electric service. The generator can also be used to replace the electric service in small housing. All the equipment can be stored together in one package in order to provide an easy operation.

(more…)

It’s been quite some time since we brought you anything new about the first MINI SAV (Sports Activity Vehicle), caught in with all the commotion of the Christmas holiday an such… Luckily, the folks over at MINI were hard at work setting up a Tron-like virtual world, in which the new Countryman/Crossman or whatever could be unleashed. And here we have it…

MINI’s Youtube channel released a video showing the future MINI 4×4. OK, "showing" is a bit of an overstatement, as the psyche… (read more)

Review

Women spend an extraordinary amount of money on cosmetics–$45 billion a year in the U.S. alone. Now in its fourth edition, Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me strikes fear in cosmetics-counter consultants everywhere. First off, Begoun has deconstructed ingredient lists. Ever wonder what methylparaben, propylparaben, and butylparaben are doing in your mascara? And what is diazolidinyl urea? All four are potential irritants, and the latter is a preservative that can release formaldehyde, a class A carcinogen. Buyer beware. Begoun also lists which companies are cruelty-free and which continue to conduct animal testing. The majority of the book–and that’s nearly 800 pages–is devoted to reviews of thousands of cosmetics, from cleansers, foundations, alpha-hydroxy acids, and moisturizers to lip liners, eye shadows, and concealers, all of which Begoun has personally tested. (There are no hair care products listed, as that warrants another book entirely: Don’t Go Shopping for Hair Care Products Without Me.) She’s perfectly frank and tells it like it is. (On Revlon’s ColorStay Makeup: “goes far beyond the claim of ‘It won’t come off on him.’ It won’t come off when you want it to.”) Y

View Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me: A Unique Guide to over 30,000 Products, Plus the Latest Skin-Care Research (Don’t Go to the Cosmetics Counter Without Me, 5th ed) (Paperback) Details

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We all remember the pink Fiat 500 show car birthday gift created by the Italian company last year for Barbie’s 50th anniversary. It generated a wide range of feelings and emotions. Opinions on it were mainly divided by gender. You can easily guess who loved it and who absolutely hated it.

We believe, however, that apart from the Planet’s male population, there are also a lot of women who find this car as attractive as a trip to the city dump.

Fiat will bring in 2010 the car to production,… (read more)

Sony VAIO Z brings Quad SSD drive and dynamic graphics switching to Europe in March originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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