General News
WO: Baroness Randerson has urged local communities to apply for £6m available to mark the First World War Centenary. Heritage Lottery Fund’s (HLF) new small grants programme First World War: then & now is making at least £1m available per year for 6 years until 2019.
If a group have a project idea to mark the Centenary of the First World War, an online application pack is available. If a group needs a grant of more than £10,000, it can apply to HLF through its open programmes.
FCO: Foreign Office Minister for consular services, Mark Simmonds has paid tribute to those who have suffered the trauma of a missing or abducted child, when recently marking International Missing Children’s Day. Almost 10 new child abduction & international custody cases a week are being dealt with by the FCO.
Monitor: Monitor and the Care Quality Commission (CQC) have signed a new Memorandum of Understanding, strengthening the way both regulators will work together & share information to protect & promote the interests of patients and build trust in the health care system.
ACE: This QRacking the Code scheme, run by Bournemouth Libraries and supported with funding through the Libraries Development Initiative, makes use of QR code technology to promote literature & libraries across Bournemouth. A QR code consists of square dots arranged in a square grid on a white background, which can be read by an imaging device, such as a smartphone, to link to further information.
Codes were used to create cultural adventure trails around libraries, galleries, museums and the local area, spreading digital skills to members of the public & library staff in the process. New technologies provide an innovative way of demonstrating the library offer, particularly to hard-to-reach audiences.
DfT: Bus passengers in England are set to benefit from cleaner, greener bus journeys thanks to the 4th round of the Green Bus Fund. The £12m funding for 213 new low carbon buses will deliver better services for passengers while also cutting carbon & delivering economic growth.
The GB Fund aims to cut greenhouse gas emission levels and encourage bus operators & local councils to make the switch to more environmentally-friendly buses. The government is paying up to half the cost difference between low carbon diesel-hybrid & biomethane gas buses and their standard diesel equivalent.
CQC: The Care Quality Commission has warned the owner of Castlefort Grange Limited they must make improvements to comply with the national standards of quality & safety. During an unannounced inspection at the home, in Castlefort Road, Walsall Wood, Walsall, the provider was found to be failing to meet all 3 of the national standards of care & safety assessed.
MoD: The sick bay of RFA Cardigan Bay was the medical hub of a major multinational 2-day mass casualty exercise in the Gulf recently. An explosion rips through the hull of a merchant vessel, critically wounding 6 members of the crew. Two are in danger of losing limbs, another can’t breathe, and a fourth has deep burns across his chest.
The casualties are flown to the nearby Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) ship Cardigan Bay, where the specialist military medics, doctors & nurses of the Joint Role 2 Medical Team (JR2MT) are waiting.
FCO: Chevening Scholarships are the UK government’s global scholarships programme. Established in 1983, these scholarships support study at UK universities – mostly 1-year Masters’ degrees – for students with the demonstrable potential to become future leaders, decision-makers & opinion formers across a wide range of fields, including politics, business, the media, civil society, religion, and academia.
Since the scheme began, over 40,000 students have held Chevening Scholarships. Many have gone on to reach positions of influence in a range of sectors. If you have the potential to be a future leader and a desire to study in the UK, sign up & find out more. Applications for 2013/14 are now closed.
LR: As of the 30 May 2013, Land Registry's data tables based on over 17m cash & mortgage sales are available as open data. The aggregated House Price Index (HPI) tables dating back to 1995 can be downloaded in CSV & Excel formats free of charge. From July 2013, they will be available in machine-readable linked data format.
