Daily Headlines: May 27, 2014

* Dominican Republic: The president of the Dominican Republic signed into law a proposal that would grant citizenship to children of immigrants including tens of thousands of residents of Haiti descent whose status was controversially put into limbo last year.

* Brazil: The Brazilian World Cup team was jeered at by protesters in Rio de Janeiro who were demonstrating against the billions of dollars in public funds that are being spent to prepare for the tournament.

* Mexico: Zapatista guerilla leader Subcomandante Marcos made his first public appearance in over five years to announce that he would step down from the mostly indigenous rebel group.

* Vatican: Argentine-born Pope Francis is back in the Vatican following a brief Middle Eastern trip where he invited Israeli and Palestinian leaders to a “meeting of prayer.”

Video Source – Deutsche Welle via YouTube (“A change to the Dominican Republic's constitution has revoked citizenship from hundreds of thousands of people. Many were born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, and now find themselves stateless. The politics reflect a growing sense of xenophobia in the country.”)

Online Sources – GlobalPost; The Latin Americanist; Bloomberg; LAHT; Voice of America