Judi Lynn
Judi Lynn's JournalParaguay fears dictatorship as president moves to amend constitution
Paraguay fears dictatorship as president moves to amend constitution
After months of behind-the-scenes preparations, a senator steamrolled through the changes that could allow Horacio Cartes to be re-elected in 2018
Laurence Blair in Asunción
Thursday 30 March 2017 05.30 EDT
After months of behind-the-scenes preparations, Paraguay’s president, Horacio Cartes, has moved to amend the constitution to allow him to be re-elected in 2018, prompting warnings that the country where Alfredo Stroessner ruled for more than 30 years is once again sliding towards dictatorship.
Members of the governing rightwing Colorado party – which has held power for all but four of the past 70 years – joined with several opposition legislators to propose changes to the senate’s procedural rules, a precursor to introducing a re-election bill after a similar attempt was narrowly defeated in August.
“Paraguayans have to go out on to the streets to defend democracy, which is under attack,” Rafael Filizzola, a senator with the leftwing Democratic Progressive Party, told reporters.
On Tuesday, riot police and elite troops sealed off the small South American country’s congress. Inside, legislators traded punches and fierce insults, and – after the speaker of the house delayed a vote until Thursday – a pro-Cartes senator seized a microphone, proclaimed himself senate president, and steam-rolled through the changes with a show of hands. A vote on re-election itself is expected to be passed in the coming days.
More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/30/paraguay-reelection-amend-constitution-horacio-cartes
The narco shadows that follow Colombias new vice president
written by Jamie Vaughan Johnson March 30, 2017
Colombia’s new vice-president is the decorated golden boy of Colombia’s police force. He has, however, also been accused of links to both drug cartels and paramilitary forces.
Oscar Naranjo, retired general and former National Police Chief, was named an honorary special agent by the DEA in 2010, the same year he was heralded as the World’s Best Policeman.
However, he has in the past been called out by former paramilitary leaders, drug traffickers and retired officials for allegedly receiving bribes and providing protection to drug traffickers.
A former CIA agent, Baruch Vega, raised a red flag over Naranjo in 2006 in an interview with news website Narco News.
More:
http://colombiareports.com/narco-shadows-follow-colombias-new-vice-president/
1,000-Year-Old Toy Viking Boat Unearthed in Norway
1,000-Year-Old Toy Viking Boat Unearthed in Norway
By Mindy Weisberger, Senior Writer | March 29, 2017 01:44pm ET
A wooden toy discovered during an excavation of an Iron Age site in central Norway hints that 1,000 years ago, a child may have imagined ferocious Viking battles by playing with a carved replica of a ship.
Found buried in a dry well at a small farm in the town of Ørland on the coastal tundra, the boat is whittled in a style resembling Viking vessels, with an uplifted prow and a hole in the center that likely held a mast for a sail.
The Viking Age, dating from around A.D. 800 to 1066, marked a time when Scandinavian sailors and explorers voyaged to Europe's coastal regions and as far as Bahdad, and their distinctive sailing vessels were well-known — apparently, even by inland farmers, who carved replicas of their boats for children. [Fierce Fighters: 7 Secrets of Viking Culture]
"This toy boat says something about the people who lived here," Ulf Fransson, a field leader for the dig and an archaeologist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) University Museum, said in a statement.
More:
http://www.livescience.com/58456-1000-year-old-toy-viking-boat.html
Colonia Dignidad: The torturers' cult
Colonia Dignidad: The torturers' cult
For 36 years, Colonia Dignidad in Chile was the scene of shocking crimes. To the outside world, it looked like a model German settlement. But behind closed doors people were being tortured, murdered and abused. The cover-up continued for years.
28.03.2017
Video follows, 42:29
http://www.dw.com/en/colonia-dignidad-the-torturers-cult/av-38157943
Arkansas Governor Signs First of Its Kind Measure Forcing Doctors Who Provide Abortion Care to Inves
Source: Center for Reproductive Rights
Arkansas Governor Signs First of Its Kind Measure Forcing Doctors Who Provide Abortion Care to Investigate Their Patients
Measure would ban abortion based on womans personal, private reason for ending her pregnancy-- Fourth measure signed by Governor Hutchinson restricting access to abortion this session
03.29.17 -
(PRESS RELEASE) Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) today signed a measure forcing health care providers to investigate their patients before they are able to receive a safe, legal abortion. HB 1434--which is the first measure of its kind--would force a health care provider to gather medical records related to a womans entire pregnancy history before she is able to receive constitutionally protected health care servicesostensibly to investigate the womans motives for ending her pregnancy. The bill would ban abortion until the physician has spent an undefined amount of time and effort obtaining her complete medical records, potentially causing an indefinite waiting period. These new measures are an effort to force doctors to police the reasons a patient is seeking abortion care, as the bill also criminalizes health care providers who knowingly perform an abortion sought on the basis of the sex of the fetus.
Governor Hutchinson has already signed three other measures restricting a womans access to safe, legal abortion this legislative session, including a ban on a safe, proven method of ending a pregnancy in the second trimester.
Health care providers should never be forced to investigate patients for the reasons behind their personal, private decisions, said Lourdes Rivera, Senior Vice President, U.S. Programs at the Center for Reproductive Rights. When a woman has made the decision to end a pregnancy, she needs high-quality health care, not an interrogation.
Measures of this kind are fueled by harmful and racist stereotypes about women of color. The Center for Reproductive Rights has serious concerns about an abortion ban that will discourage women from getting the health care they need and unfairly targets communities of color. We vow to stand with Arkansas women until their rights are fully respected and protected.
Read more: https://www.reproductiverights.org/press-room/arkansas-governor-signs-first-of-its-kind-measure-forcing-doctors-who-provide-abortion-ca
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Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R)
E.P.A. Chief, Rejecting Agencys Science, Chooses Not to Ban Insecticide
Source: New York Times
E.P.A. Chief, Rejecting Agency’s Science, Chooses Not to Ban Insecticide
By ERIC LIPTON MARCH 29, 2017
WASHINGTON — Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, moved late on Wednesday to reject the scientific conclusion of the agency’s own chemical safety experts who under the Obama administration recommended that one of the nation’s most widely used insecticides be permanently banned at farms nationwide because of the harm it potentially causes children and farm workers.
The ruling by Mr. Pruitt, in one of his first formal actions as the nation’s top environmental official, rejected a petition filed a decade ago by two environmental groups that had asked that the agency ban all uses of chlorpyrifos. The chemical was banned in 2000 for use in most household settings, but still today is used at about 40,000 farms on about 50 different types of crops, ranging from almonds to apples.
Late last year, and based in part on research conducted at Columbia University, E.P.A. scientists concluded that exposure to the chemical that has been in use since 1965 was potentially causing significant health consequences. They included learning and memory declines, particularly among farm workers and young children who may be exposed through drinking water and other sources.
But Dow Chemical, which makes the product, along with farm groups that use it, had argued that the science demonstrating that chlorpyrifos caused such harm is inconclusive — especially when properly used to kill crop-spoiling insects.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/us/politics/epa-insecticide-chlorpyrifos.html?_r=0
How to save money on your trip to Cuba
How to save money on your trip to Cuba
- click for image -
http://www.trbimg.com/img-58d44dd2/turbine/la-1490308648-xz7ljsvll3-snap-photo/750/750x422
A group of tourists walk through the Historical Center in Havana, Cuba. (Alejandro Ernesto / EPA)
March 27, 2017 6:30 am
I've always been one to abide by important rules. I carry car insurance. I don’t cheat on my taxes, and when my family decided to visit Cuba, I wanted to comply with the U.S. government regulations for travel to the Communist-run island.
That would have been easy had we taken an organized tour, but at $5,000 to $10,000 a week each, it was costly. Instead, I saved about $2,500 a person by planning the trip myself.
It took some patience and ingenuity, but it was worth the effort. We got to experience the Cuban culture and people, and we have stayed in touch with some of our new friends.
If that sounds like your type of vacation, here are some tips:
More:
http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-money-cuba-20170326-story.html
CubaOne Video Together Recreates Obamas Cuba Speech With Voices from Both Countries
MAR 28 2017, 12:07 PM ET
by NICOLE ACEVEDO
Young Cubans and Cuban Americans have come together in a video to commemorate the one-year anniversary of former President Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba in a call to continue cultivating ties between the two countries.
CubaOne released a video featuring 20 mostly young Cubans from the island and Cuban Americans in the U.S. who take turns reciting the lines from Obama's historic speech in Cuba.
"I realized that the one-year anniversary was coming up and it's such a historic occasion. His speech was very popular between Cubans in the island and in the U.S.," said Giancarlo Sopo, one of the founders of CubaOne who spearheaded the concept behind the video.
- video at link
Lissette Calveiro was one of the young Cuban Americans who met her grandmother for the first time. "It just all hit me that there's this complete different part of my culture and my roots that I had never connected with and she was one of those missing pieces," said Lissette Calveiro, one of the young Cuban Americans who connected with her grandmother for the first time.
More:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/cubaone-video-together-recreates-obama-s-cuba-speech-voices-both-n737746
Guatemala's Disappeared
Thousands of people were disappeared during the civil war. Fault Lines meets families still searching for justice.
29 Mar 2017 11:51 GMT Guatemala, Human Rights, War & Conflict
- video at link -
Across Guatemala, thousands of families have been affected by mass murder, torture, and repression dating back to the country's civil war. Up to 45,000 civilians were forcibly disappeared during the 36-year conflict; an estimated 200,000 were killed. And while peace accords were signed in 1996, the war crimes of that era have largely gone unpunished.
"They were massacred, large populations were razed, their lands were destroyed; crops, belongings, houses, clothes ... everything, leaving people in inhumane conditions. How the army could go on like that for so many years? I don't know or understand why," says Hilda Pineda, lead prosecutor on the case related to crimes that occurred at the Creompaz military base.
Now with the help of forensic evidence and the testimony of survivors, some former military leaders are facing trial for the first time.
Jason Motlagh traveled to Guatemala to meet some of the families still searching for justice and the truth about what happened to their loved ones.
http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/faultlines/2017/03/guatemala-disappeared-170328085834824.html
How Burger King's Palm Oil Addiction Is Devastating Local Communitiesand Planet Earth
By Hannah Lownsbrough
March 29, 2017
There’s nothing new about fast food corporations unleashing environmental chaos to maximize their profits. But the recent explosion of palm oil usage is a new threat. Burger King is at the front of the pack of corporations abusing human rights and the environment to satisfy its ever-growing appetite for the oil.
Burger King has always been a corporation defined by its competition. But now it is in danger of becoming the leader in a competition nobody should want to win: fueling the development of rapacious oil palm plantations. Burger King is one of a number of food and drink corporations that rely on palm oil for everything from fry oil to puddings. The recent increase in its use has been exponential: 485 percent in the last decade alone.
A brief review of the human and environmental impacts of palm oil production makes it no surprise that Burger King—like other corporations—has gone to some lengths to avoid disclosing the ways in which it sources its ingredients. Burger King certainly isn’t concealing anything of which it can be proud, and indeed has more to hide than many of its competitors.
Take the human consequences of palm oil production, experienced most acutely in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia where palm oil production is highest. An Amnesty International report has found children as young as eight working in the palm oil industry, and uncovered horrifying stories of forced labor. Other communities report land-grabbing and grossly unfair wages. Farmers responsible for producing palm oil have reporting “bullying” practices from the corporations that buy the oil they produce.
More:
http://www.alternet.org/print/environment/how-burger-kings-palm-oil-addiction-devastating-local-communities-and-planet-earth
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