Haiti's president handed out medals to celebrities, aid-group directors and politicians for post-earthquake work

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti’s president handed out medals to celebrities, aid-group directors and politicians for post-earthquake work Monday in a ceremony designed to beat back criticism of an uneven recovery that has left 1.6 million people homeless and destitute six months to the day since the disaster.Just out of sight, baking in the oppressive noonday sun, were the fraying tarps of tens of thousands of homeless who live on the Champ de Mars, once a grassy promenade surrounding the government complex.

“That is just a way to put the people to sleep. But the people are suffering,” Edouard James, a 32-year-old vendor said when he was told of the ceremony. Unable to find a job with his degree in diplomacy, he sells pirated DVDs in a tarp-covered booth.”We are tired of the NGOs … saying we will have a better life and better conditions, and then nothing happens,” he said.Twenty-three honorees – including actor Sean Penn, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper and the head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission – crossed a podium in front of the crushed, unrepaired national palace to steady applause. Some smiling, some solemn, each received medals and certificates deeming them Knights of the National Order of Honor and Merit.

President Rene Preval, whose successor is to be elected in November, defended the response to the quake. He said in two speeches during the ceremony that hard-to-see successes – like the avoidance of massive disease outbreaks and violence – obviates the perception that not enough has been done.”There are people who did not see all the big efforts that were deployed during the emergency stage: distributing tents, water, food, installing latrines, providing health care during the six months that have just gone by,” Preval said. “It is a major, major task.”The ceremony was resolutely upbeat. The focus was on successes past and plans going forward, with little talk of the 230,000 to 300,000 people killed in the magnitude-7 temblor.

The president and prime minister, Jean-Max Bellerive, both used the occasion to announce that a six-month emergency phase has ended and that reconstruction has begun.The distinction was lost on some Haitians.”I don’t know if I’m mad or happy,” Anne Bernard, a 24-year-old mother of two living in a metal shack a few hundred yards from the national palace. “All I know is they haven’t done anything.”

The most visible early-emergency programs like massive food distributions have stopped, and there still are few tangible effects of $3.1 billion in humanitarian aid for all but a handful of those left homeless by the quake, who rely on plastic tarps for shelter.Tarp-and-tent camps are growing instead of shrinking. Just 5,657 transitional shelters have been built of a promised 125,000, which even if completed would not be nearly enough for everyone.When building materials finally get through customs, there is nowhere to put them. Fights over land rights, customs delays and systemically slow coordination between aid groups and the government have hampered nearly everything. The Associated Press reported Sunday that the location of the largest of two relocation camps provided by the government was the result of an inside deal.Shortly after the ceremony ended, that camp flooded in a sudden summer squal, with 94 deluxe tents collapsing in the wind and rain.Compounding the problem in the city is that almost no rubble has been cleared. Preval said Monday it would take $1.5 billion to remove all of it.

Meanwhile donors have met 10 percent of a promised $5.3 billion in reconstruction aid – separate from the humanitarian aid – mostly by forgiving debts, not providing cash.Clinton, who also received a medal, said it will be his mission in coming weeks to make sure donors meet their pledges. He acknowledged that more could have been done, but that recovery has so far been faster than the rebuilding of coastal Indonesia following the 2004 tsunami.”To those who say we have not done enough, I think all of us who are working in this area agree this is a harder job (than the tsunami),” Clinton said. “Viewed comparatively I think the Haitian government and the people who are working here have done well in the last six months.”

CNN’s Cooper, who spent parts of January and February in Haiti following the quake and had not returned since, said he found out about the award while getting ready to board his plane to Haiti on Sunday.”I thought a long time about not accepting it. We finally came to the opinion that it was recognition by the country for all journalists,” he told resident reporters after the ceremony. “I don’t think this in any way impacts the desire or willingness to be critical of the government.”(AP)

50 Cent's want to remove the tattoos

50 Cent’s many tattoos have always been a part of the rapper’s image. He’s displayed them prominently on album covers and in magazines throughout his career. But the ink that made him stand out in the music world isn’t serving him so well now that 50 Cent the rapper is becoming 50 Cent the rapper-actor. So Curtis Jackson (his real name) has begun the process of removing many of them with costly laser procedures.People reports that Jackson removed some of his iconic arm tattoos, saying that not only were they limiting the roles he could play, but that having them covered up for films was getting to be a pain.”[Laser removal] cuts down on the amount of time I have to spend in makeup covering them up,” says the actor. Jackson has roles in several upcoming films, including Twelve with Chace Crawford (out later this year), 2011’s Things Fall Apart, and The Dance, a boxing film costarring Nicolas Cage.Last November, Jackson made it clear that he values sleep over body art, saying that covering the ink in the makeup chair often required him to show up on set four hours before the other actors. And even when the ink is covered up, some rigorous roles won’t withstand the industry’s heaviest makeup. Jackson said of his role in The Dance, which is now in development, “When you’re a fighter, you’re sweating, [and] with a whole bunch of make-up on and stuff like that, it doesn’t look real to me.”

But fans of 50 Cent’s most unique tattoo – the giant “50 Cent” on his back – shouldn’t fret: That one is here to stay. “I can’t take that off,” he says. (Lucky for him, a back tattoo is usually pretty easy to hide under clothing.)Meanwhile, another famously tattooed celebrity is still using her body as a canvas, makeup-chair hours notwithstanding. On the cover of the latest Entertainment Weekly, Angelina Jolie displays what appears to be a new tattoo – the underlining of text on the back of her neck. (The text, which is not new, reads: “know your rights”.)

Like 50 Cent, Jolie (who is currently promoting her new movie, Salt) is no stranger to changing her mind about supposedly permanent body ink. Jolie altered an upper-arm tribute to her ex-husband Billy Bob Thornton after the two split up. Jolie’s arm now displays the map coordinates of where each of her six children were born.

ANGELINA Jolie’s father thinks she and Brad Pitt are “the most amazing, loving parents”

ANGELINA Jolie’s father thinks she and Brad Pitt are “the most amazing, loving parents”.Jon Voight who reconciled with his daughter earlier this week after several years estrangement   has praised the actress for the tender way she and her partner raise their children and has claimed they are very settled in their relationship.“Angelina and Brad are so happy together and they are the most amazing, loving parents I’ve ever seen,” said Voight.“It truly moved me to see how Angie is as a mom, I am so proud of her she has so much love to give and to share with the children and with Brad.”

The 71-year-old actor was thrilled to meet up with the couple and their “special” children  adopted tots Maddox, eight, five-year-old Zahara and Pax, six, and three biological children, Shiloh, three, and 19-month-old twins Knox and Vivienne in Venice, Italy on Sunday.“It was just wonderful to spend time with Angelina and Brad and the children,” he said.“I’ve been waiting so long to hug my grandchildren and it was amazing, they are the most beautiful, loving kids you could imagine and I’m not just saying that because I’m their grandfather, they really are something special.

Although Angelina and Jon’s meeting came as a shock to many, the pair has been working on the reconciliation for a while.“Angie and I have been in contact on the phone and by email for some time now,” he said.“We’ve been working towards a full reconciliation for a while. Angie had to feel it was the right time to bring me into the lives of her and the kids and after some work she decided the moment had arrived.“I hope I get to see them again soon. I want to spend as much time with them as possible.”

EMILY Blunt loved working with Benicio del Toro because despite is image as a Hollywood hardman

EMILY Blunt loved working with Benicio del Toro  because despite is image as a Hollywood hardman, the actor’s actually a big softie!The British actress stars opposite del Toro in new movie The Wolfman, and insists his reputation as a tough guy is just an act.“Benicio is awesome to work with,” said Blunt. “He’s a great guy. We had a laugh on the movie. He’s a lot of fun.“He’s a big teddy bear. People don’t know that. He doesn’t like people knowing that.”Emily recently revealed how Benicio pulled down her skirt while they filmed a scene for the movie.

“During the scene where the Wolfman jumps on me and Hugo Weaving and I have to get up, he actually yanked my entire skirt down as I was trying to get up. It was embarrassing,” she said earlier this month.“That was probably the hardest kind of stuff we had to do. I think it’s a combination of that and all the physical parts of those costumes and how restricted they are that is hard.”

LEONARDO DiCaprio is trying to give up smoking but is having to do it without the help of nicotine patches!

LEONARDO DiCaprio is trying to give up smoking   but is having to do it without the help of nicotine patches!The Titanic actor  who stars in new movie Shutter Island  says his mission to ditch his beloved cigarettes is being hindered by dreams of mass murder!“When I take nicotine patches I have blood curdling nightmares of murder. Mass murders,” explains Leo. “I wake up in the middle of the night and have to take them off.“I don’t really remember my dreams that much apart from then. I don’t know what that means about me from a psychological point of view but that’s the truth.”DiCaprio, 35, recently admitted he’s a “mommy’s boy”.“She loves taking part in my life,” the actor said of his mom .”You can call me a mommy’s boy, but I think it’s cool to have her with me.”

'The Road'the film forces us to endure and what we end up receiving in return.

“The Road” is a road you’ll wish hadn’t been taken. Not because anything’s been badly done, but because there’s a serious imbalance in the complicated equation between what the film forces us to endure and what we end up receiving in return.Given that it’s based on Cormac McCarthy’s somber novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for a devastating report from the end of the world witnessed by a man who’s been there, it’s no surprise that the film is for the most part profoundly depressing.What is disappointing is that despite numerous strong areas, including fine acting by Viggo Mortensen and young Kodi Smit-McPhee as father-and-son survivors of an unnamed apocalypse, what we’ve been given is no more than a reasonable facsimile, an honorable attempt at filming an unfilmable book.

As adapted by British playwright Joe Penhall and directed by John Hillcoat, best known for the slickly violent “The Proposition,” “The Road” turns out to be good at shocking and upsetting us, but it lacks the compensating emotional heft that would make absorbing those shocks worth our while.For while Chris Kennedy’s formidable production design places us in an uncomfortably real space, absent McCarthy’s haunting language, “The Road” for the most part is not so good at transcendence, at making us feel, as the book definitely does, that there is reason for us to endure its pitiless descriptions of what Joseph Conrad described in “Heart of Darkness” as “the horror, the horror.”What Conrad was likely talking about, and what “The Road” devotes considerable time to on the screen and on the page, is the terrors that humans inflict on each other. One of the provocative questions this story asks is whether staying alive is worth the savagely inhuman actions necessary to make survival possible.

Unwilling to begin on a totally downbeat note, “The Road” opens with what turns out to be a dream flashback to a time just before the unspecified catastrophe happens, a time when Mortensen’s unnamed man is married to Charlize Theron’s unnamed woman and their first child is on the way.Ten years into the post-apocalypse, the mother is gone, the unborn child is a young boy (Australian actor Smit-McPhee) and the world has changed. It’s a blasted, blighted, ashen and slowly dying Earth, shaken by quakes, lighted by out-of-control fires and filled with dead cars, empty buildings, deserted bridges and very few people.To stay alive in this world, you have to keep moving, wearing the most utilitarian rags you can find (Margot Wilson did the excellent costume design) and pushing the shopping cart that contains all your possessions. It’s a vision of a world largely without us that completely chills the soul.

The casting of Mortensen and Smit-McPhee is one of the film’s strengths. With straggly hair and a great wild look, Mortensen is convincing as a harried survivor, and the rapport he has with the more innocent and soulful child played by Smit-McPhee is excellent.”I’ve never had a better acting partner,” Mortensen has said, “someone I knew had my back, and he knew I had his.”One of the great fears of those few survivors is cannibalism, something the strong inflict on the weak, and scenes that hint at that are among “The Road’s” hardest to take.The man’s greatest fear is that he will die before his son is old enough to protect himself, and the son’s greatest fear, paradoxically, is that he and his father will somehow lose the essence of their humanity in the drive to stay alive. “Are we still the good guys?” he asks his father plaintively. “Are we carrying the fire?”

This pair have their affecting moments, as does Robert Duvall as a kind of barely alive human lump, but absent McCarthy’s transformative prose, which has a power even images can’t improve on, what we are left with is more endurance test than anything more elevated.If it is to do more than horrify and depress us, “The Road” is in need of a finer sensibility, and that is simply not on offer.

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