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Week In Review: 13 January 2018

Ne News
13 January 2018

This week, there was the Golden Globes and former talk show host Oprah Winfrey announced plans to run for the US Presidency in 2020. Craig McLachlin has been caught up in the sexual harassment scandal that has already claimed Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey in Hollywood and Don Burke in Australia. While these were major stories, there has been some stories that has flown under the collective radar this week, some have already been reported on Ne News, while others has even gone under the Ne News radar. Readers are advised that the following article does provide links to PDF files, so if you want to view some of the links, check out Sumatra (http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/) or if you don't have Windows, then check out other Open Source alternatives at https://www.osalt.com/sumatra-pdf.

Trump Moves Towards Requiring Medicaid Recipients to Work
This is a relatively recent story in which US President Donald Trump has made moves towards requiring recipients of Medicaid to work (https://www.globalresearch.ca/trump-moves-toward-requiring-medicaid-recipients-to-work/5625815). Medicaid is similar to Medicare here in Australia and the NHS in the United Kingdom; and while both Australia and the United Kingdom (and almost all developed nations with one exception) has universal healthcare, these are being dismantled in favour of private health insurance. In Australia, if you are over 30 years of age and don't have private health insurance, you will be penalized with a Lifetime Health Cover Loading of 2 percent a year for every year you are over 30. This was introduced by former Prime Minister John Howard, and has remained no matter who is in power (both Liberal and Labor). Even the former leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party Nigel Farage has been caught saying that he wanted the NHS replaced by private health insurance (http://www.caef.org.uk/d-pdf/d143web.pdf). The United States of America is the only developed country that doesn't have any form of universal healthcare (even developing countries have universal health care).

Of course, this is not unique to health care, as throughout the world, governments are forcing welfare recipients to do remedial work as highlighted in yesterday's editorial (http://nenews2016.blogspot.com.au/2018/01/editorial-simple-solutions-to-complex.html), which is often dangerous and can kill people, such as the death of Josh Park-Fing at a Work for the Dole site in Toowoomba in 2016. Work for the Dole participants are paid on 5 DOLLARS A DAY, and now the PaTH "internship" program is in effect, paying just 4 DOLLARS A DAY. And in 2017, there was the RoboDebt scandal in which people on Centrelink payments received a letter stating that they owed Centrelink money, and in most cases, there were no debt being owed. And despite claiming to be the "Champion of the Aussie Battlers", One Nation leader Pauline Hanson voted for the RoboDebts.

Talks Between North Korea and South Korea
In a couple of weeks, the world will descend onto Pyeongchang for the 2018 Winter Olympics and Paralympics. And it looks like that North Korea will be competing at the Winter Olympics. And in addition, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will arrange for a meeting between the two Koreas on January 20 at the IOC headquarters Lausanne, Switzerland to discuss North Korea's participation (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/opinion/2018/01/202_242373.html). There is even a possibility that the two Koreas may march into the Opening Ceremony under the same flag (this first occurred at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia), an event that saw a standing ovation at Stadium Australia on 15 September 2000.

In addition, in a Realmeter poll, 54.4 percent of participants want the South Korean government to cover the expenses for North Korean athletes and supports if they (North Korea) want to compete at the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang with 41.4 percent opposed and 4.2 percent were "not sure" (http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2018/01/103_242096.html)

It is worth noting that the regime in Washington is the one who is opposed to peaceful reunification of the Korean Peninsula, and it is in the opinion of Ne News as well as a lot of people around the world that the reunification of the Korean Peninsula should be decided by the Korean people and not outsiders (and in particular Washington should not get involved in Korea) (https://www.globalresearch.ca/working-for-peace-on-the-korean-peninsula-information-pickets-and-petition/5625863).

That is it for the Week in Review. Stay connected with Ne News for more news over the next week, and you can contact Ne News at nenews2016@gmail.com

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