Daily Headlines: May 19, 2016

* Puerto Rico: Relief may finally arrive for Puerto Rico after House Republicans and the Obam administration agreed to a proposal that would help restructure the commonwealth’s $70 billion debt.

* Argentina: The revelations from the Panama Papers leak may have been an embarrassment for Panama and Argentine President Mauricio Macri but it could help alleviate the South American country’s financial woes.

* U.S.: A Government Accountability Office study released last Tuesday found that U.S. public schools have become more racially segregated including an increase in the percentage of Latino children enrolled in “impoverished K-12 public schools.”

* Mexico: Mexican authorities rescued 271 people, including 112 minors, of an overcrowded drug rehab clinic where patients were reportedly tortured and grossly mistreated.

YouTube Source – PBS NewsHour
 
Online Sources – NBC News, UPI, Reuters, The Latin Americanist, Bloomberg

Daily Headlines: December 1, 2015

* Guatemala: Gang violence was blamed for the deaths of at least sixteen inmates at a Guatemalan prison that is at approximately 500% overcapacity.

* Brazil: Brazil’s recession worsened in the third trimester of 2015 and posted a 1.7% quarterly drop along with a worrying 4.5% annual decline.

* El Salvador: San Salvador Archbishop Bishop Jesus Delgado apologized to victims of sexual abuse by clergy amid a crackdown by the archdiocese against suspected pedophiles.

* Venezuela: Authorities arrested three suspects in the murder of Venezuelan opposition politician Luis Diaz during a recent campaign event to rally support prior to Sunday’s legislative elections.

YouTube Source – Associated Press

Online Sources – iTV News, Reuters, UPI, Yahoo News

Daily Headlines: August 7, 2015

Note: The below video is Not Safe for Work.


* Guatemala: Five Guatemalan soldiers were detained and accused of abusing their authority and mistreatment of minors after a viral video showed them brutally assaulting two teens.

* U.S.: According to the Labor Department the Latino unemployment rate last month is 6.8%, which represents a 0.2% increase from June but is a 1.1% drop compared to July 2014.

* Puerto Rico: Two major investors in Puerto Rico, OppenheimerFunds and Franklin Advisors, called on the commonwealth to make all of a $58 million debt-service payment that was due on August 3rd.

* El Salvador: Authorities believe that gang members were behind the deaths of four people riding a bus near San Salvador.

YouTube Source – user Criptograma MX

Online Sources – SunHerald.com, Reuters, Labor Department, Bloomberg

Daily Headlines: June 15, 2015

* Dominican Republic: The Vatican officially indicted Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the former papal nuncio for the Dominican Republic, on sexual child abuse charges and will stand trail starting in July.

* Brazil: In a bad sign for the Brazilian economy, car sales in the world's fourth-largest auto market is expected to fall by 18% this year.

* Venezuela: A study found that 27% of Venezuelans between 15 and 29-years-old are considering emigrating mainly due to the weakened economy and a perceived lack of opportunity.

* Mexico: “As the purpose of matrimony is not procreation, there is no justified reason that the matrimonial union be heterosexual, nor that it be stated as between only a man and only a woman,” according to a landmark Mexican Supreme Court decree issued earlier this month.

YouTube Source – euronews (Video uploaded in September 2014).

Online Sources – CNN, NBC News, Fox News Latino, UPI

Colombia to Investigate U.S. Military Sex Abuse Allegations

The Colombian government pledged on Tuesday to thoroughly investigate allegations into fifty-four suspected cases of child sex abuse by U.S. military personnel and defense contractors.

“We request through diplomatic channels and bilateral cooperation that U.S. authorities report on the progress of their investigation,” according to a statement from Jorge Armando Otalora of the Ombudsman’s office.  Otalora condemned the rumors that sex acts with minors was videotaped and distributed as pornography.

“Since child pornography is a transnational crime, there exists mechanisms to guarantee justice and prevent impunity regardless of the diplomat immunity of the accused,” emphasized Otalora.

While Otalora called on the prosecution of those behind the suspected abuse, the head of Colombia’s child welfare agency, Cristina Plazas, urged potential victims to come forward.

Furthermore, Plazas also suggested the establishment of special commissions in the Cundinamarca and Tolima provinces where the supposed abuse took place in order to “actively seek girls and teens that were victims of abuse at the hands of soldiers.”

A truth commission seeking details on the decades-long armed conflict in Colombia authorized the “Historic Commission of Conflict and its Victims” study. The section by Renan Vega, a history professor of the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional de Bogotá, describes the fifty-four cases of alleged abuse committed between 2003 and 2007 in a small part of the 809-page study.

“There is abundant evidence of sexual violence and total impunity, thanks to bilateral agreements and diplomatic immunity of U.S. officials…(It is) part of sexist and discriminatory behavior known as ‘sexual imperialism’ similar to what happens in other places where U.S. military forces are stationed,” wrote Vega.

Spokespeople for the U.S. military and defense contractors claimed that there is insufficient evidence to prove Vega’s claims, while an investigation by the Fusion television network concluded that his allegations were “unsubstantiated.” Yet evidence appears to exist of the 2007 case of a 12-year-old girl purportedly raped by a U.S. sergeant and defense contractor:

Daily Headlines: April 28, 2015

* Uruguay: Six former Guantanamo detainees could have their public assistance withdrawn as a result of a rift between them and the Uruguayan government.

* Peru: A recent report found that more than five million international tourists traveled to the Peruvian capital of Lima in 2014 and this made it the most visited Latin American city last year.

* Colombia: The alleged recruitment of underage girls for the fugitive leader of the Urabeños criminal organization has highlighted the “ongoing child sexual exploitation in Colombia's gang culture.”
 
* Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico’s debt woes continue to worsen, which increases the odds of a government default in a few months time.

YouTube Source – AFP

Online Sources – ABC News, Reuters, Peru this Week, Bloomberg

Daily Headlines: March 20, 2015

* Colombia: “Look at the irony of life, all my life I spent in the military fighting terrorism…and now in a place totally remote from Colombia it takes my wife and son,” said a retired Colombian army general whose relatives were killed in a museum attack in Tunisia.

* South America: At least ten people were killed in a plane crash in Uruguay while Argentine officials earlier this week identified the remains of a deadly helicopter collision on March 9th.

* Dominican Republic: A Catholic priest identified only as Wojciech G. offered to serve seven years in prison over charges of sexually abusing minors in Poland and the Dominican Republic.

* Ecuador: Thousands of Ecuadorans took to the streets on Thursday in order to march in opposition to a plan that would end term limits for the presidency including current leader Rafael Correa.

Video Source – YouTube via Zip News
 
Online Sources – ABC Online; Deutsche Welle; ABC News; SBS; NBC News

Daily Headlines: September 22, 2014

* Cuba: Officials in Cuba announced that approximately 9000 state-run restaurants have permission to be privatized though the government will still own the land under these establishments.

* Mexico: At least 42 children were freed from a pair of Mexican drug treatment facilities where abuses may have taken place in a scandal that occurred over two months after some 600 people were rescued from suffering mistreatment in another shelter. 

* Venezuela: Ivan Simonovis, an ex-Venezuelan police commander the opposition claims is a political prisoner, was granted a “humanitarian” house arrest “so he can be cured of his illnesses and can receive medical treatment.”

* Argentina: Argentine President Cristina Fernandez alleged that she receive threats from the Islamic State extremist militants due to her friendship with compatriot Pope Francis.

Video Source – NTN24 News via YouTube (Video uploaded in 2011).

Online Sources – CNN; The Latin Americanist; LAHT; Fox News Latino; Reuters

Daily Headlines: August 27, 2014

* Argentina: Angel Di Maria of Argentina broke the British transfer record when he officially signed for Manchester United on Tuesday as part of a $95 million deal.

* Venezuela: The governments of U.S. and Venezuela usually don’t see eye-to-eye but nearly two out of three Venezuelans view the U.S. favorably according to a Pew Research Center survey.

* Dominican Republic: Ex-Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski could be extradited to the Dominican Republic where he’s accused of child sexual abuse.

* Latin America: A United Nations study found that roughly 200 million residents of Latin America and the Caribbean are “vulnerable” to falling into poverty even though poverty rates in the region decreased between 2000 and 2012.

Video Source – YouTube user ScoutNationHD

Online Sources – BBC Sport; The Latin Americanist; UPI; BBC News; Pew Research Center

Daily Headlines: July 29, 2014

* Brazil: “I don't think it's genocide, but I think it's a massacre,” said Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff regarding the conflict in Gaza and days after an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman deemed the South American country as a “diplomatic dwarf.”

* Dominican Republic: Dominican authorities destroyed some 2000 confiscated firearms for use as part of a planned peace memorial.

* Venezuela: Representatives of the International Air Transport Association want to meet with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in order to free up over $4 billion owed to several air carriers.

* Uruguay: A Uruguayan church reportedly dismissed Fr. Carlos Urrutigoity, an Argentine priest who has been accused of sexually abusing young men in the U.S.

Video Source – Reuters via YouTube (Argentine-born “Pope Francis makes an impromptu emotional plea for peace, during his weekly Sunday Angelus prayer at the Vatican.”)

Online Sources – Miami Herald; The Washington Post; ABC News; Reuters; GlobalPost

Weekend Headlines: July 26-27, 2014 (Updated)

* Venezuela: Former Venezuelan military intelligence chief Gen. Hugo Carvajal was arrested in Aruba could soon be extradited to the U.S. where he’s charged with drug trafficking and collaborating with Colombian rebels.

Update: Much to the disappointment of the U.S. State Department, Cavajal was released Sunday and returned to a "hero's welcome" in Caracas.

* Mexico: Rosa del Carmen Verduzco, the owner of a Mexican shelter recently raided by the authorities, denied allegations of sexual abuse against hundreds of residents but admitted to hitting children as a means of “correcting” them.

* Peru: The executive board of state-owned oil company Petroperu was reshuffled after it was revealed that children were employed to clean an oil spill.

* Brazil: Brazil's National Indian Foundation claimed that they made contact with an isolated indigenous group near the border with Peru that has been hurt by disease and violent attacks.

Video Source – CNN en Español via YouTube (The Venezuelan government has accused the U.S. of orchestrating the “kidnapping” of Hugo Carvajal, the head of military intelligence from 2004-2008 during late president Hugo Chavez' rule).
 
Online Sources including Update – Fox News Latino; Los Angeles Times; The Latin Americanist; VOXXI; Reuters; ABC News

Mexico: Families Denounced Shelter Abuses for Years

Mexican officials this week raided a shelter in Michoacán and rescued nearly 600 people including 458 children who received all sorts of abuse, resided in squalid conditions and were obligated to eat spoiled food.  For families of some of the residents of the “La Gran Famila” (“The Great Family”), the liberation of their loved ones couldn’t have come soon enough.

In the case of twenty-eight-year-old Veronica Gamiña, she claimed that she left her nine-year-old child at the residence four years ago but her subsequent attempts to reclaim her child were made nearly impossible by shelter founder Rosa del Carmen Verduzco.

“First they told me that I had to fill out documents explaining why I wanted to take my child back then they asked me to pay 37,000 pesos (roughly $2800).  I only earn 800 pesos a week and I cannot save enough money,” said the restaurant worker to the press outside of the raided shelter on Wednesday.

Another parent alleged that she gave birth to two kids while she was at the shelter that had been functioning for forty years.  She was permitted by to leave the compound but forced to leave her children behind where “Mama Rosa” claimed the minors as her own according to Tomas Zeron, federal chief of criminal investigations.

"Victim No. 4 said she had been held in the group home against her will since she was 18," said Zeron about another supposed case of abuse at “La Gran Famila”. "She was sexually abused by one of the administrators, and got pregnant as a result of the abuse. The same person beat her to cause an abortion, beating her in the stomach on several occasions."

Michoacán Gov. Salvador Jara told the press that he was in the dark about the supposed horrors in the shelter until he became governor last month.  Yet that cannot excuse the apparent incompetence of local and federal authorities that may have been aware of the problems for years.  As reported in SDPnoticias.com, an August 2010 investigation by one of Mexico’s most important newspapers described the abuses at the shelter and possibly why “Mama Rosa” may have gotten away with her actions for decades:

Daily Headlines: July 7, 2014

* Bolivia: President Evo Morales is expected to sign into law a bill that would legalize child labor for kids as young as ten-years-old even though it may be against international treaties Bolivia has agreed to.

* Argentina: Some Argentine victims of sexual abuse by priests are “pained” that Pope Francis will meet with six European victims of abuse but not with any from his country of birth.

* Cuba: A Cuban opposition group claimed that nearly one thousand arrests were made “for political reasons” on the island in June including weekly detentions of Guillermo Fariñas and “physical aggression” against the Ladies in White.

* Honduras: Officials believe that the odds of survival for eight miners trapped in a collapse gold mine in Honduras are slim and “only a miracle would let us rescue them alive.”

Video Source – Vice News via YouTube

Online Sources – NBC News; Huffington Post; GlobalPost; SBS

Daily Headlines: June 10, 2014

* Brazil: Sao Paulo subway workers suspended their strike though protests are expected to take place in Brazil prior to the start of the World Cup on Thursday.

* Argentina: Vice President Amado Boudou was questioned for several hours by investigators over his possible involvement in a major corruption case that has shaken up the presidency of Cristina Fernandez.
 
* Cuba: Authorities arrested eight people and accused them of being behind a university entrance exam cheating scandal.

* Paraguay: How is Father Carlos Urrutigoity in a “position of power” in Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este despite facing multiple accusations of child sexual abuse in the U.S.?

Video Source – euronews via YouTube

Online Sources – MercoPress; GlobalPost; Los Angeles Times; ABC News

Daily Headlines: April 17, 2014

* Cuba: As part of Cuba’s new labor law, the government officially declared Good Friday as a national holiday for the first time since prior to the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
 
* Brazil: Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff continues to handily lead in the latest presidential polls though she could face a serious challenge from ex-governor Eduardo Campos who this week teamed up with respected environmental activist Marina Silva.
  
* Colombia: The offices of the Sintraemcali union were firebombed days after a Colombian court ordered the state to apologize for alleging that union members were allied to the FARC guerillas.
 
* Argentina: Police in Argentina rescued a fifteen-year-old girl who was severely malnourished and abused by her adoptive parents who left her imprisoned for nine years in a garage.
 
Video Source– AFP via YouTube (Cuban officials recognized Good Friday as a holiday in 2012 following Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the island but did not celebrate Good Friday as its own holiday last year).

Online Sources – CBS Local; The Guardian; Bloomberg; Fox News Latino; RTE

Daily Headlines: September 11, 2013

* Venezuela: Venezuela's annual inflation rate hit a five-year high of 45.3% in August despite a slower increase in consumer prices.

* Dominican Republic: Authorities confirmed that the parents of at least seven children have formally accused the ex-Vatican envoy to the Dominican Republic of sexual abuse.

* Brazil: According to new preliminary government data the rate of deforestation in the Amazon may have increased by 35% over the past year.

* Mexico: Mexico’s All the Rights of Everybody coalition received the King of Spain Human Rights Prize yesterday.

Video Source – YouTube via AFP
 
Online Sources- LAHT; Reuters; GlobalPost

Daily Headlines: September 4, 2013

* Mexico: Press group Reporters Without Borders called for the immediate release of four journalists who were recently arrested while covering protests against the Mexican government’s plans for educational reform.

* U.S.: A new report from the Pew Research Center found that nine of the top ten U.S. states where the Latino population has grown the fastest are located in the South.

* Chile: Three men who claimed to have been sexually abused by “prominent priest” Fernando Karadima in the 1980s have filed a $900,000 lawsuit against him.

* Argentina: Another day, another trial for ex-Argentina president and convicted arms trafficker Carlos Menem. 

Video Source – YouTube via user panamericanavideos (“Thousands of protesters (on Monday) took to the streets of Mexico City to protest against the reforms proposed by President Enrique Peña Nieto”).

Online Sources- LAHT; Huffington Post; GlobalPost; Businsesweek

World Watch: Court-ing Kenyatta

* Kenya: African leaders called on the International Criminal Court to transfer charges of human rights abuses against Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta to that country’s legal system.

* Australia: Cardinal George Pell, Australia’s top Catholic Church official, publicly apologized for the cover up decades of sexual abuse by priests against children.

* Syria: European Union nations are reportedly undecided over whether or not to sell weapons to Syrian rebels.

* Iraq: At least fifty people were killed when a series of bombs exploded in several areas of the capital city of Baghdad.

Video Source– YouTube via Al Jazeera English 

Online Sources – ABC News; BBC News; The Guardian; Al Jazeera English

Abuse Allegations Hang Over Latin American Cardinals

One hundred fifteen cardinals started meeting on Tuesday at the Vatican in order to decide who will become the next leader of the Roman Catholic Church.  At least sixteen of these cardinals come from Latin America and several of them have been dogged by allegations of abuse.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) last week named twelve cardinals who should neither vote for a pope or be elected as the next pontiff.  Among those named on the “Dirty Dozen” blacklist are Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga of Honduras, Mexico’s Norberto Rivera and Leandro Sandri of Argentina.  

According to SNAP, Maradiaga has turned a blind eye to possible abuse done by Honduran priests.  He supposedly said that he would “prefer to go to jail before hurting any priests” even if they’ve been accused of abuse or other wrongdoing.

Maradiaga, who has not shied from providing to diplomatic support to ousted Honduran president Manuel Zapata and the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, reportedly blamed “Jewish interests” in the press for focusing so much on sex scandals in the church.

In addition the SNAP accused Rivera of covering up the abuses committed by several priests including Marcial Maciel, the late founder of the Legionnaires of Christ (LOC) who sexually abused minors and fathered three children with two women.

“(Rivera) not only ignored Mexican victims who were abused by Marcial Maciel and other priests, but he also slandered, defamed and accused them of being part of a plot against the Pope and the Church,” read part of a letter sent by SNAP to the Mexican catholic archdiocese.

Rivera replied to the SNAP’s accusations by denouncing the organization’s “propaganda” and pointing out that he has been cleared of accusations in U.S. courtrooms.  Yet a SNAP member who was abused by a priest protected by Rivera vehemently disagreed: 

Report: Major Abuses Committed at Guatemala Hospital

The International Day of Persons with Disabilities was observance this past Monday with this year’s theme calling for the “removal of barriers to create an inclusive and accessible society for all.”  Sadly many barriers continue to exist against the disabled around the world such as the recent allegations of abuse in Guatemala.

An investigation by the Human Rights Office of the Archbishop of Guatemala and Disability Rights International (DRI) concluded that abuse was rampant against patients at the Federico Mora psychiatric hospital.  The joint study claimed that approximately 300 children were kept in isolation cells, and that hospital staff and convicts of a nearby prison often abused patients. 

The report also noted that patients lack proper treatment and die from curable illnesses. As a result, there is a high risk of HIV infection and this is made worse since the hospital allegedly lacks the resources to treat those exposed to the virus.

“We found a climate of terror. Even authorities at the hospital are afraid of their own staff.  Authorities told us they cannot remove known abusers because they fear they will be killed or threatened by gang members due to the links between staff and the Mara Salvatrucha (street gang),” observed DRI attorney Sofía Galván via a statement on the organization’s website.