Free Republic

The inquiry, announced by Health Secretary Andrew Lansley in June, aims to build on the work of an earlier independent investigation into the care provided by Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust between 2005 and 2009. [Snip] That inquiry [Snip] identified systemic failings at the hospital, where managers were preoccupied with cost-cutting and Government targets. [Snip] Appalling standards put patients at risk and between 400 and 1,200 more people died than would have been expected in a three-year period [Snip] the new inquiry would be held in public in order to combat "a culture of secrecy" and restore public confidence.

Chirac blamed for the failings of France by Colin Randall in Paris (Filed: 18/03/2006) As the sun begins to set on the era of Jacques Chirac, students rampage in the Latin Quarter, the unions are restless and opinion polls reveal a nation that has lost all faith in its leaders. France, in other words, is much as Mr Chirac found it when he entered the Elysée in 1995.And little more than a year before his expected departure from high office after four decades in politics, Mr Chirac has just been handed another reason to fear history's judgment. Jacques Chirac: 'In...

Huge unseasonable rainfall has triggered disastrous flooding and mudslides in several parts of Venezuela, at a cost of about 80 lives now, and rising. Tens of thousands of people remain homeless, their homes washed away by mud and rocks that thunder down from high, steep mountains sliding down oil-rich soil. The country's government has known about this hazard for years, since the gargantuan mudslides devastated Vargas province in 1999, at a cost of 30,000 lives. Supposedly the regime has spent a billion dollars in aid to reinforce the hillsides and re-channel rain-laden waterways. And as surely as nature's force, it's...

Anew report issued by the state auditor reflects terribly on Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, California's chief elections official. It concludes that "insufficient planning" and "bad management" by Shelley's office resulted in its failure to implement provisions of the federal Help America Vote Act in "a timely way." It also charges that "disregard for proper controls" by Shelley's office and "poor oversight" of staff and consultants led to "questionable uses" of the federal election funds. Shelley's failings in planning and management of the HAVA program are problematic. But they do not rise to the level requiring the secretary of state...