Research & Rescue

Centipedes - yecch

Hat tip Kottke.org. If you live in the desert Southwest, you know centipedes. We have learned to make a quick dash for the kitchen tongs to toss the offending beasts outside, since squishing them usually doesn't work - and it's simply disgusting. As far as I am concerned, these are aggressive mean-spirited beings that serve no purpose except to harass unwitting mammalian residents. I have actually had them run back toward me when I've flung them out the door. All that said, our centipedes are no more than about 7 inches long - usually shorter. So this video makes me think I NEVER want to go to South America, even if it was in my list of places I'd like to go.

Bore hole for Chilean miners

Have you wondered how the trapped Chilean miners are managing to survive down there? With the help of a 3" bore hole. Everything they need has to be able to pass through that hole. How's that for an engineering project?

via flowingdata.com

Colombia: Uribe Lashes Out at Sentence for Senior Officer

BOGOTA, Jun 11, 2010 (IPS) - Surrounded by a protective phalanx of stern generals and police chiefs, Colombian President Álvaro Uribe assailed a court ruling that sentenced a senior army officer for human rights crimes committed nearly 25 years ago.

In his Thursday night televised message, the right-wing president also announced "new legislation," among other measures, to provide the military with legal protection. Earlier, he had stated that "human rights cannot be invoked to commit abuses against the security forces."

On Wednesday, retired colonel Alfonso Plazas was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the disappearance of 11 people in November 1985, when he led a military assault on the Palace of Justice after it was occupied by the leftist April 19 Movement (M-19) guerrilla group.

Retired military officers slammed the conviction of Plazas as "legal and political warfare" driven by "national and international terrorism."

They also demanded that all cases in which members of the military are implicated fall under the jurisdiction of the military courts.

In 1997, the Constitutional Court ruled that cases involving members of the security forces accused of human rights abuses were to be investigated by the civilian justice system.

Read the rest at www.ipsnews.net

Colombia found to be dangerous for steelworker unions

Colombia topped the list in union killings in the world, it was reported by the International Trade Union Confederation after revealing its annual findings regarding global anti-union violence.

According to the press release, 48 of the 101 trade unionists assassinated worldwide were Colombians last year. According to the International Trade Union Confederation’s reports, 22 of the Colombian unionists killed were "senior union leaders." Five were women.

via www.latinobusinessreview.com

Guatemala's multiple tragedies

In just the past seven days, residents of Guatemala and parts of neighboring Honduras and El Salvador have had to cope with a volcanic eruption and ash fall, a powerful tropical storm, the resulting floods and landslides, and a frightening sinkhole in Guatemala City that swallowed up a small building and an intersection. Pacaya volcano started erupting lava and rocks on May 27th, blanketing Guatemala City with ash, closing the airport, and killing one television reporter who was near the eruption. Two days later, as Guatemalans worked to clear the ash, Tropical Storm Agatha made landfall bringing heavy rains that washed away bridges, filled some villages with mud, and somehow triggered the giant sinkhole - the exact cause is still being studied. (34 photos total)

More pictures at www.boston.com

Paraguay president given emergency powers

According to The Latin Americanist, the president of Paraguay has been given emergency powers to crack down on leftist rebels there.

The new law suspends public gatherings and the right to due process in five northern provinces during a span of thirty days. "We want to make clear that this measure does not alter the democratic norm in our country," Lugo said after signing the law yesterday.

via ourlatinamerica.blogspot.com

The concept of taking away civil rights in the name of fighting terrorism or supposed insurgency seems to have become the norm. Saying that the revoked rights still exist doesn't make it so. There are bad people in the world but there is also such a thing as due process. What supporters of these sorts of laws fail to understand is that the rights don't come back to them with a change of powers. Due process is in place to protect *everyone*. I recall with sadness a conversation I had with a friend about wiretapping in the days closely following the 9/11 attacks. I pointed out to him that if the government could tap our phones then, what was to stop them when the Democrats were in office. His response? "I don't care - it's my party that's in power now."

Freedom is something we should cherish and protect.

Honduras: Truth Commission Under Fire from All Sides

TEGUCIGALPA, Apr 19, 2010 (IPS) - The Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up to investigate the June 2009 coup that ousted Honduran president Manuel Zelaya will begin its work in May under the sceptical watch of a wide range of observers, from human rights organisations to right-wing political sectors.

The coordinator of the Commission will be former Guatemalan vice president Eduardo Stein (2004-2008), who will be accompanied by two other international experts, two national experts and a support team, with technical and administrative assistance provided by the Organisation of American States (OAS), according to a recent announcement by the Honduran government.

President Porfirio Lobo announced that the Commission will begin its work on May 4. He stressed the independence of the Commission, whose mandate is to provide an "objective and impartial" report on the events leading up to and following the Jun. 28, 2009 coup.

However, Stein has already revealed that not all of the facts uncovered will be made public, because "there will be sensitive information that will be classified, especially confidential testimony provided by certain individuals during the investigation process."

This information will be declassified and released to the public after a period of ten years, he noted.

Read the rest at www.ipsnews.net

FARC Calls for Prisoner Swap After Releasing Moncayo

BOGOTÁ, Mar 30, 2010 (IPS) - Hopes that a humanitarian prisoner-for-hostage swap may be negotiated in Colombia before August added to the emotion over the release of Sergeant Pablo Emilio Moncayo by the FARC guerrillas Tuesday and his reunion with his family after more than 12 years in captivity in the jungle.

After a helicopter flight delayed by bad weather, the 31-year-old Moncayo finally embraced his family and friends at the airport in Florencia, the capital of the southern province of Caquetá.

The sergeant was the last of 14 hostages freed in unilateral goodwill release operations by the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) since 2006, the rebels announced in a statement made public by Senator Piedad Córdoba of the opposition Liberal Party.

Read the rest at www.ipsnews.net

URUGUAY: Improving Conditions for Waste Pickers

MONTEVIDEO, Mar 26, 2010 (IPS) - "The time will come when 80 percent of the raw material used by industry in Uruguay will be recycled waste products," Marcelo Conde, a 40-year-old garbage sorter who has been digging through trash for recyclables "for as long as I can remember," says with some pride.

Conde, vice president of the Union of Urban Solid Waste Sorters (UCRUS), works at the Felipe Cardozo Cooperative (COFECA), the biggest of the waste picker cooperatives that operate in the Felipe Cardozo recycling plant, the largest of its kind in the capital of this small South American country between Argentina and Brazil.

At the plant, the members of some 60 cooperatives sort through the rubbish dumped by around 30 trucks, of the 540 that dispose of 2,000 tons of urban waste a day in dumps around the capital, Montevideo.

An estimated 800 tons of household waste are processed daily by about 5,000 families in the capital, according to the latest official count in 2008.

But authorities say the real number is up to twice that, if non-registered waste pickers are included, while a similar number of informal garbage collectors work in the rest of the country, classifying and selling recyclables. (Montevideo is home to roughly half of the population of 3.3 million.)

Efforts to overcome the stigma of working as informal garbage sorters are a recent phenomenon in Uruguay, as in other countries around the world.

Read the rest at www.ipsnews.net

BRAZIL: Fewer Slum Dwellers Thanks to Upgrading

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 22, 2010 (IPS) - A United Nations report published ahead of the Fifth World Urban Forum in Brazil says the proportion of the population of this country living in "favelas" or shantytowns was reduced 16 percent between 2000 and 2010.

The U.N. Habitat report, presented before the five-day Fifth World Urban Forum - The Right to the City: Bridging the Urban Divide, which opened Monday in Rio de Janeiro, also says 227 million people around the world have moved out of slum conditions since 2000.

The U.N. Habitat (U.N. Human Settlements Programme) report, "State of the World's Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide", says that most of the 22 million people in developing countries that have escaped slum conditions annually over the last decade did so as a result of slum upgrading.

The same thing has occurred in this Latin American country of 192 million people.

Read the rest of original at www.ipsnews.net