Daily Headlines: May 17, 2013

* Mexico: The author of the Blog del Narco website, which offered an unflinching look of Mexico's drug war, reportedly fled to Spain while the fate of her partner is unknown.

* El Salvador: The country’s Supreme Court began hearing arguments regarding the case of “Beatriz”, an ill and pregnant woman with a deformed fetus who is seeking permission for an abortion.

* Brazil: Will a planned 10,000 mile “virtual border fence” help control drug smuggling and undocumented immigrants of will it be a $13 billion boondoggle?

* Costa Rica: Communications Minister Francisco Chacon resigned over the growing scandal regarding President Laura Chinchilla using a plane owned by a shady Colombian businessman.

Video Source – YouTube via user McClatchyDC
 
Online Sources- The Guardian; The Latin Americanistl ABC News; NPR Parallels; GlobalPost

Daily Headlines: December 20, 2011

* Puerto Rico: Though the murder rate this year will top a record 1100 homicides, the local government rejected a newspaper report claiming that Puerto Rico shows signs of being a ”narco-state.”

* Brazil: A judge ordered Joe Sharkey, the New York Times' business-travel columnist, to pay a fine of over $26,000 regarding a blog post he wrote on a 2006 plane crash.

* Honduras: The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a letter to Honduran President Porfirio Lobo expressing “deep concern” over violence against members of the media.

* South America: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is expected to attend the Mercosur summit today in Uruguay and back his country’s full membership in the bloc.

Image Source – Flickr via Jason Sturner 72 (Torn poster in San Juan, Puerto Rico reading “Violence – coming to a corner near you.”)

Online Sources- The Committee to Protect Journalists, Fox News Latin, Brazzil Magazine, Mercopress

Attacked Brazilian blogger continues slow recovery

A Brazilian blogger seriously injured in a possibly politically motivated attack continues to recover in a Rio de Janeiro hospital.

Ricardo Gama after was shot as he was walking in the Copacabana area on March 23rd. The blogger, who was best known for his posts critical of government and police corruption, left the intensive care unit but was still convalescing in hospital. His condition has slowly improved after two surgeries and using a machine to help him breathe during several days.

In remarks to the local press on Thursday, Gama said that he was targeted in “an attack against freedom of expression.” He vowed that he “will not stop” working on his blog and he also thanked the growing support he has received from supporters such as followers on Twitter.

The incident against Gama has caught the attention of several international journalism NGOs. "Reporters in Brazil must be able to report on official corruption without fear of physical retribution" said Carlos Lauría, Committee to Protect Journalists’ senior program coordinator for the Americas. Reporters Without Borders warned of the increased risk to media covering “often controversial attempts to restore law and order in the favelas before the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympics.”

Rio police have reportedly identified the type of car used by the shooter and a local prosecutor allegedly claimed that this would make it easier to identify the unknown gunman. In the meantime, the below video report from R7 news shows that at least two policemen are guarding Gama’s room as he undergoes his slow recuperation:

Video Source – noticiasR7.com
Online Sources- Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, Folha.com, Jornal do Brasil, Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas

Obama backs Cuban dissidents, protesters

U.S. President Barack Obama urged Cuba’s government to enact “meaningful actions” in order to expand the freedom of residents on the island.

In remarks made yesterday during his visit to Chile, Obama claimed that the Cuban people “deserve” the same freedoms “as everyone else in this hemisphere.” He acknowledged the efforts of Cuba’s opposition movement including the Ladies in White who have faced constant harassment by pro-government supporters.

Additionally, Obama emphasized relaxing travel and remittance restrictions as examples of the U.S. trying to improve ties with Cuba. Relations between both countries have been strained over the past several weeks, especially with the conviction of aid worker Alan Gross for allegedly aiding Cuban dissidents. Obama did not mention the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba, a decades-long measure that served as a sore point between the U.S. and Cuban governments.

The Cuban government has yet to respond to Obama’s words though state television aired a film critical of the island’s dissidents. The documentary accused the U.S. of launching a “new kind of counterrevolution” against Cuba by using “cyber-mercenary” bloggers such as Yoani Sanchez. Sanchez replied by posting a video on her blog of a symposium with other anti-Castro activists. According to AFP:

In a blog video in response to the latest charges, Sanchez and five other opponents accuse the government of "demonizing" the Internet after revolutions led by online activists brought down longstanding regimes in Egypt and Tunisia.

"It is nervous because social networks like Twitter and Facebook can play the same role in Cuba they did in Egypt and Tunisia," it said.

Image- Reuters via BBC News (The Ladies in White where confronted by government supporters in this photo taken last month).
Online Sources- CNN, AP, AFP, Generation Y, The Latin Americanist, Sydney Morning Herald

The upcoming return of The Latin Americanist

As you may have noticed there has been an unfortunate absence of posting on this blog for the past three weeks. I made the terrible miscalculation of assuming that I would have regular access to the Internet during my family vacation to Colombia. Yet for a number reasons (which I won't get into) today is the first time since mid-December since I've been more than a few minutes online! Worse was my absent-minded decision not to seek a guest blogger for my time abroad.

ln short, I screwed up big time and I want to fully apologize to you, our readers, for my mistakes.

I'll return with "Daily Headlines", "Today's Video" and our usual mix of posts next Tuesday, January 11th. Don't forget that you can still vote in the top news stories of 2010 poll, which will close on Monday the 10th.

Thanks for your time, feedback, and loyalty since this blog was founded over five years ago.

Happy New Year everyone!

Posting resumes on Wednesday

As you might have noticed, posting was very light on Tuesday. We deeply and sincerely apologize for the inconvenience. The rodent that powers this blog- Hector el Hamster- decided to take the day off without asking.

As punishment we've replaced the water in Hector's bottle with Red Bull. Therefore, regular posting will resume on Wednesday and will be extended into this weekend.

Again, sorry for the off-day. See you later.

Image- Wonkette

Bloggers of the World Unite Against Associated Press

Cross-posted at VivirLatino

Political bloggers of all sizes and political leanings are organizing to boycott AP after AP decided to attack a mid-size blog claiming that publishing fragments of their syndicated news articles and reports violates copyright. Bloggers are saying that using snippets and links to stories falls under Fair Use but AP apparently feels otherwise.

From Culture Kitchen:

Here's one of the six disputed blog entries:

Clinton Expects Race to End Next Week

Hillary Rodham Clinton says she expects her marathon Democratic race against Barack Obama to be resolved next week, as superdelegates decide who is the stronger candidate in the fall. "I think that after the final primaries, people are going to start making up their minds," she said. "I think that is the natural progression that one would expect."

If you follow the link, you'll see that the blog entry reproduces 18 words from the story and a 32-word quote by Hillary Clinton under a user-written headline. The blog entry drew 108 comments in the ensuing discussion.

I have all the expertise in intellectual property law of somebody who's never been sued, so standard disclaimers apply. But I have difficulty seeing how it violates copyright law for a blogger to link to a news story with a short snippet of the story in furtherance of public discussion.

AP feels otherwise. In a June 3 letter, AP's Intellectual Property Governance Coordinator Irene Keselman told me:

... you purport that the Drudge Retort's users reproduce and display AP headlines and leads under a fair use defense. Please note that contrary to your assertion, AP considers that the Drudge Retort users' use of AP content does not fall within the parameters of fair use. The use is not fair use simply because the work copied happened to be a news article and that the use is of the headline and the first few sentences only. This is a misunderstanding of the doctrine of "fair use." AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights, and additionally constitutes "hot news" misappropriation.

Keselman reverses the definition of fair use and claims in the take down that citizens only have the right to fair use if they pay for it : AP considers taking the headline and lede of a story without a proper license to be an infringement of its copyrights.

Read details of the accusations here.

Jeff Jarvis of Buzz Machine reminds us that AP doesn't always follow what they preach in terms of attribution:

This complaint comes from an organization that leaches off original reporting and kills links and credit to the source of that journalism. Yes, it has a right to reproduce reporting from member news organizations. But as I point out here, the AP is hurting original reporting by not crediting and linking to the journalism at its source. We should be operating under an ethic of the link to original reporting; this is an ethic that the AP systematically violates.

Hmm why does this remind me of the whole Amanda Marcotte thing. Seems like some bloggers and AP have the same problem.

To sign onto the boycott visit the Unassociated Press

Meet our newest contributor!

Before we start our usual slate of posts this week, we want to welcome our newest contributor: Michael Lisman. He wrote a trio of posts for our blog two weeks ago and now he’ll do so on a permanent basis.

According to part of his bio from Inter-American Dialogue:

Michael C. Lisman is an associate with the education program, and coordinates activities in Central America for the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL). He has worked at LASPAU: Academic and Professional Programs for the Americas, as well at the Harvard Initiative for Global Health, where he coordinated a large-scale evaluation of social security programs in Mexico.

Welcome Michael and good luck!

Sources- Inter-American Dialogue, The Latin Americanist