Daily Headlines: October 28, 2016

* Brazil: Brazilian authorities warned that a recent outbreak of prison violence between the PCC and Comando Vermelho criminal groups could spill on to the streets.

* Panama: The Panamanian government took a big step in its push to remove the stigma from the Panama Papers leak by signing a multilateral treaty to combat tax evasion.

* Cuba: The United Sates Food and Drug Administration has purportedly given the green light for the clinical trial of a Cuban lung cancer medicine known as CIMAvax.

* Haiti: Spain’s soccer federation has been ordered to return around $240,000 in public funds that were misappropriated instead of being spent on a project in Haiti.

YouTube Source – AFP 

Online Sources – InSight Crime, ESPN FC, Reuters, The Latin Americanist, CBC

Daily Headlines: August 3, 2016

* Haiti: Observers from the Organization of American States will monitor Haiti’s upcoming elections but warned that more than a dozen reforms are needed for the much maligned and delayed electoral process.

* Latin America: At least six people are dead and four others are missing in the Dominican Republic following Tropical Storm Earl, which is advancing towards the Gulf coast of Mexico and Honduras.

* Guatemala: The daughter of the fifth Guatemalan journalist murdered this year was herself shot and killed though it’s unknown if the motives behind both deaths are linked.

* Venezuela: Jamaica will pay back some of its oil debt under the Petrocaribe alliance with food and medicine to a Venezuelan state mired in an economic crisis.

YouTube Source – AFP (Haiti’s presidential election was initially held nearly ten months ago but the election will be rerun this October amid deep political tension and accusations of voter fraud).

Online Sources – The Miami Herald, The Weather Channel, Bloomberg, Yahoo7 News, The Independent

Daily Headlines: June 16, 2016

* Honduras: Approximately 500 people rallied in Tegucigalpa and urged for an international investigation into the murder approximately three months ago of indigenous rights activist Berta Caceres.

* Venezuela: At least four people including a sixteen-year-old teen have died in recent days amid growing protests over food and medicine shortages.

* U.S.: A poll released this week found that a whopping 89% of Latinos view presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump unfavorably.

* Mexico: The new special prosecutor appointed to the case of 43 Ayotzinapa students missing since September 2014 has come under fire for purportedly attending the wedding of Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán in 2007.

YouTube Source – ODN (From March 2016: “Thousands of mourners turned out for the funeral of slain Honduran indigenous leader Berta Caceres.”)

Online Sources – Rappler, Al Jazeera English, ABC News, Business Insider

Daily Headlines: May 20, 2016

* Brazil: Jose Dirceu, a former aid to ex-President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, was among ten people sentenced to prison for their role in the “Lava Jato” corruption scandal.

* Colombia: Will drug maker Novartis accede to a Colombian government request to lower the price of imatinib in order to keep its monopoly on the cancer medication in the South American country?

* Chile: Chile’s Supreme Court urged that the U.S. extradite three former security agents believed to have been involved in the 1976 kidnapping, torture and murder of a U.N. official.

* Argentina: Argentina’s opposition-led legislature handed President Mauricio Macri a defeat by approving a proposal to prevent mass layoffs.

YouTube Source – France 24 (Then-President Dilma Rousseff last March failed in her attempt to install her predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as her chief of staff.)
 
Online Sources – Deutsche Welle, Vice News, Reuters, Nasdaq

Daily Headlines: May 30, 2013

* Brazil: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden continued his official trip to Brazil and urged the country to to further open its economy by encouraging free trade and ties to U.S. businesses.

* U.S.: Two former coaches filed a lawsuit against Major League Soccer team Chivas USA alleging that they were fired for not being Latino.

* Argentina: An Argentine prosecutor investigating the 1994 AMIA bombing claimed that Iran has “infiltrated” numerous Latin American countries with the purpose of carrying out “terrorist activities.”

* Mexico: A Mexican man became the first person in Latin America to successfully undergo a permanent implantation of an artificial heart.

Video Source – YouTube via user telesurenglish
 
Online Sources- Reuters; CNN; LAHT; BBC News

Daily Headlines: September 25, 2012

* Cuba: The Ladies in White opposition group accused Cuban authorities of “repression” by preventing them from holding a vigil in Havana for political prisoners.

* U.S.: The Food and Drug Administration urged consumers to avoid using an over-the-counter medicine manufactured in El Salvador known as Intestinomicina.

* Ecuador: The foreign ministers of Ecuador and Britain might meet this week in order to discuss the fate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
 
* Mexico: The Mexican government will reportedly review a labor union's complaint against Alabama's crackdown on undocumented immigrants. 

Video Source – YouTube via AFP (Video uploaded in May 2012).

Online Sources- LAHT, VOXXI, MSNBC, Marketwatch

World Watch: Long arm of the law

* Libya: While unrest continues in Libya International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo said that he will investigate possible crimes against humanity perpetrated by the government.

* Japan: Designer John Galliano’s career may be over due to anti-Semitic remarks but it remains to be seen what repercussions await a Japanese boy band that appeared on TV wearing Nazi-like uniforms.

* Yemen: President Ali Abdullah Saleh is reportedly negotiating stepping down later this year amid pressure from the opposition and swelling protests against him.

* U.S.: According to researchers regular use of the painkiller ibuprofen could reduce the risk of getting Parkinson’s by over one-third.

Image – “Sean Smith for the Guardian” via The Guardian (“An injured Libyan rebel is treated at a clinic in Bregga, after pro-Gaddafi fighters attacked the town on Wednesday.”)
Online Sources- The Guardian, MSNBC, BBC News, Voice of America, CBC News

World Watch: Pill pushers

* U.S.: A report from Consumer Reports, NPR Radio and ProPublica concluded that over 17,000 physicians have drawn payments from major drug firms.

* Chechnya: “Islamist underground” militants have been blamed for storming the Chechnya parliament building and killing three people.

* Uganda: A local paper has come under intense criticism after publishing a blacklist of supposedly gay Ugandans.

* Europe: Will every E.U. nation agree with the idea of a region-wide tax in order to raise revenue?

Image – wired.com
Online Sources- The Guardian, MSNBC, NPR, BBC News

Daily Headlines: August 25, 2009

* Latin America: Brazil and Bolivia confirmed their close economic ties as presidents of both nations cordially met in the province of Cochabamba.

* Chile: While tensions are still high between the Chilean government and the Mapuche, prosecutors are seeking ten years in jail for the policeman accused in the fatal shooting of an indigenous protestor last year.

* Guatemala: Activists have accused the Obama administration of preventing access to more affordable drugs in developing countries including Guatemala where supplies of AIDS drugs have diminished.

* Mexico: Students in the state of Chiapas will have to wait a little longer to return to school due to the swine flu.

Image- New York Times (“From left, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina and President Evo Morales of Bolivia at a meeting” in February 2008.)
Online Sources- Mercopress, LAHT, The Latin Americanist, Los Angeles Times, CNN

China defends meds sold in LatAm

Back in 2006, at least 100 Panamanians died after being inadvertently poisoned by products from China such as toothpaste and medicine. Chinese officials blamed Panamanian manufacturers for altering the labels on products while China was accused of having weak safety regulations for items being exported. As recently as a year ago, Chinese suppliers were blamed for tainted doses of the blood thinner heparin which were then used in the U.S.

On Tuesday a senior member of China’s food and drug agency pointed fingers at the foreign media for sensationalism:

(…) Bian Zhenjia, deputy head of the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA), said China was being unfairly blamed for the problem, especially by foreign media which claim the country is a major exporter of fake drugs.

"I do not agree with what the foreign media say. The Chinese government has always paid a lot of attention to cracking down on fake drugs," Bian told a news conference.

The problem was that sometimes overseas companies ignored Chinese regulations and did business with unregistered firms, he said.

"We hope that we can work hard together with the rest of the world and crack down on fake drugs, not hype up the problem and launch attacks," he said, adding some reports on fake drugs from China were simply false.

"If the international community can give us information on fake drugs, we will resolutely investigate. There is no ambiguity about this," Bian added.

In the situation involving Panama three years ago, both Chinese distributors and middlemen in Spain and Panama were to blame for the needles deaths of so many people. Bian’s remarks are irresponsible in pointing the finger at others while his country’s government has been asleep at the switch. It will take more than executing the former head of the SFDA to fix such a serious problem.

Image- New York Times (“Tianqi is one of three brands of Chinese toothpaste that were discovered (in 2007) to contain small amounts of a chemical found in antifreeze.”)
Online Sources- ConsumerAffairs.com, Reuters, AFP, New York Times, MSNBC

A New Reason To Panic

Move over Bird Flu, here comes Swine Flu. As if it were written by disaster movie writers in Hollywood, I woke up this morning with a new thing to fear in life. A few years back there was a panic over bird flu, and there was even a movie called "Bird Flu Disaster" at one point. The media flooded our homes with any instance of a death related, or closely related to bird flu and the world was in a panic.

Then the news about that dwindled and we moved onto food poison and random scrutiny over peanut allergies and things that seem to not have existed in my neighborhood growing up. They seemed to prevail in higher class neighborhoods, but that's neither here nor there.

The new nightmare that is growing, as of the 24th is Swine Flu. The World Health Organization (Oddly enough called WHO) stated that an outbreak of swing flu in the United States might be the end of the world! I mean, if Bird Flu was as bad as they said it was, and if African Bees were going to mop us up, surely 800 cases of Swine Flu and 60 deaths is cause enough for you to panic, right?

At first, I thought that this was just a very isolated incident. I mean, how many times did Bird Flu hit the West and take out thousands of people? Better yet, how many times have we heard of medical scares? I know in my city, there was a Measles scare, because more and more people are scared of getting vaccinated. However, this might be more than an isolated incident. This morning alone there are reports that people in 2 states have Swine Flu now, and some say 11 cases, others say 2, and you start to piece together the panic inducing media trying to pull together a way to cleverly convince you that you could be next!

So before you finish off your Pig Ear Tacos, or your Snout Burritos (my favorite) maybe you too should be concerned. I mean, there have been a dozen cases since 2005 and all of them were in farm workers with direct contact to pigs. This of course has one Country to blame, and that's what really ties up this story. The finger is squarely pointed at Mexico. So not only must we blame Mexico for our East Coast teens overdosing, we must now blame them for Swine Flu, at least that's the first Country to blame in all these news stories. I mean, surely the U.S doesn't have any questionable methods in raising, farming and slaughtering pigs.

Src - Reuters, The New York Times, AFP, CIDRAP, TNMT, Sarcasm

Mexico: Right-to-die bill passed

Mexico’s senate unanimously approved a proposal that would allow terminally ill patients the right to refuse treatment.

The right-to-die bill was modifies an existing law by allowing those “suffering incurable diseases and a life expectancy of under six months” to refuse medical treatments designed to keep them alive. Yet it cannot be classified as euthanasia since the bill doesn’t permit assisted suicide.

The proposal was unanimously backed by the Senate including members from the ruling conservative National Action Party (PAN):

“I have seen cases where the family loses all they have due to doctor’s stubbornness,” (leading PAN legislator Ernesto) Saro said. “Another problem is that hospitals don’t have enough equipment.”

Naturally, Mexico’s Roman Catholic Church is expected to oppose the measure.

Image- BBC News
Sources- The Latin Americanist, Reuters, Al Jazeera English, Bloomberg, Canadian Press

Today’s Video: Hope via stem cells

It was revealed on Wednesday that Spanish doctors successfully performed the transplant of human windpipe with the use of stem cells.

The operation, performed in June, was the first of its kind and was done on a 30-year-old woman originally from Colombia. Though the controversy around stem cell research centers on embryonic cells, doctors took adult stem cells from the bone marrow of the patient.

Al Jazeera English has more information on the pioneering medical procedure:


Sources- Catholic Online, BBC News, NPR, YouTube

Today’s Video: Brazilian botox beauties

Note: We apologize for the lack of posts today. we ’ll publish a few posts on Saturday in order to make that up.

Some stories speak for themselves:

The Brazilian Society of Esthetic Medicine is offering free Botox injections and several other beauty treatments to those earning less than $250 a month.

See for yourself:

Sources- YouTube

Study: Diabetes drug prices soar

The cost of drugs for type 2 diabetes in the U.S. has doubled between 2001 and 2007 according to the results of a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

"We found dramatic changes in the treatment patterns for diabetes during the past decade," said study author Dr. G. Caleb Alexander who observed that the cost of treating type 2 diabetes went from $6.7 billion to $12.5 billion in six years.

Why such a spike in spending? According to Alexander, the increasing number of diabetics in the U.S. coupled with taking newer, more expensive types of medicine created such high costs. Furthermore, the lack of long-term studies on diabetes makes it difficult to fully ascertain if these costly meds are significantly better than taking cheaper, generic alternatives.

Diabetes is one of the top causes of death in the U.S. and it’s an ailment that particularly hits the Latino community hard. According to the National Council of La Raza:

• Two million Latinos age 20 and older have type 1 or type 2 diabetes.
• Latinos are 1.5 times more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to have Type 2 diabetes.
• However, Mexican Americans are 1.7 times more likely and residents of Puerto Rico are 1.8 times more likely than Whites to have type 2 diabetes.
• Nearly half of Latino children born in the year 2000 are likely to develop diabetes in their lifetime.
• 25-30% of Hispanics older than 50 have diabetes.
• Latinos are the fastest-growing minority group in the country. However, they also have the lowest rates of insurance coverage, and without access to proper health care, diabetes can progress and lead to a number of health problems.

There are several simple tips one can take in order to reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes including regular exercise, and eating high fiber foods.

Image- ABC News
Sources- washingtonpost.com, ABC News, Guardian UK, Reuters, National Council of La Raza

Brazil opts for generic HIV meds

Brazilian health officials picked the generic form of a popular AIDS drug to be used in its public treatment program.

The patent request for a drug made by U.S. firm Gilead was rejected as government officials deemed it “lacked technological inventiveness.” The real culprit, however, may be cost; a WHO-approved generic drug from India costs $158 per person, roughly 9% as much as the $1,387 per person cost of the Gilead drug.

International medical group Doctors Without Borders praised Brazil’s decision and claimed that it will open the door for wider global access to AIDS drugs:

The decision now means that the medicine can be produced by Brazilian generic companies or imported from other generic sources from abroad. With around 31,000 people currently receiving the drug through Brazil's universal AIDS treatment programme, and an estimated 37,000 by the end of 2008, the consequences on the sustainability of Brazil's efforts to provide AIDS treatment for all will be considerable…

"This sets an important precedent for people living with HIV/AIDS in all developing countries whose lives depend on these treatments," said Leena Menghaney, MSF's Access Campaigner in India.

Brazil has previously opted for generic versions of other antiretroviral drugs and has also reached deals with foreign drug firms to provide their medicines at discounted prices.

Image- Pharmalot

Sources- The Latin Americanist, Doctors Without Borders, Reuters, News-Medical.net

Daily Headlines: August 6, 2008

* South America: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez called for a regional alliance to be made with Argentina and Brazil as the heads of state for those countries met for an “impromptu” summit on Monday.

* Latin America: Countries throughout the region must do more to prevent crime, according to this op/ed piece by a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

* Dominican Republic: Speaking of crime in the Americas, seven people were found killed execution-style on a Dominican beach.

* Caribbean: Medical schools in New York City are none too please over a contract signed between city-owned hospitals and a school on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

Image- AFP (“Presidents Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner of Argentina and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela” after their meeting on Monday.)

Sources- UPI, miamiherald.com, Reuters, Xinhua, AFP

Daily Headlines: May 3, 2008

* U.S.: “Drug czar” John Walters praised Mexico and Colombia for their respective counternarcotics efforts.

* Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez will raise the country's fixed minimum wage by 30% to $372.

* Ecuador: Could the “pursuit of sexual happiness for women” be a new amendment to the country’s constitution draft?

*South America: Peer pressure amongst doctors can help erase outdated practices, according to a study conducted in 19 Argentine and Uruguayan hospitals.

Image- Daily Mail

Sources- PR-inside.com, Reuters, International Herald Tribune, Associated Press

Daily Headlines: April 25, 2008

* Mexico: Congrats to Guillermo del Toro who was picked by Peter Jackson to direct a pair of future “Hobbit” prequels.

* Brazil: A Brazilian drug firm and nonprofit group have united to develop a new malaria treatment that is expected to be distributed throughout Latin America and Southeast Asia.

*Guatemala: “TV Maya” recently launched in Guatemala with the aim of promoting indigenous Mayan culture.

* Cuba: The island’s state-run telephone firm said that over 7400 new cell phone accounts were established in the first 10 days Cubans were allowed access to the service.

Image- Los Angeles Times (“Guillermo del Toro will take on the future "Hobbit' prequels, while Peter Jackson is still basking in the success of the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Jackson and New Line handpicked Del Toro.”)

Sources- PR.inside.com, The Latin Americanist, Reuters, Voice of America

Kidnapped aid workers released

A Somalian gang released a pair of aid workers who were kidnapped there last week. Though police claimed that the $70,000 ransom was not paid, the kidnappers freed a doctor from Spain and a nurse from Argentina who worked for Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders). The Somalia trade minister told BBC News that both women are in a hotel safe and sound.

Though the kidnapping occurred in the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland, one local official said that the Spanish branch of Doctors Without Borders has pulled its foreign staff out of southern Somalia:

"MSF Spain withdrew its foreign staff from Jawhar and Middle Shabelle province saying it could not keep them in the region as long as two of its aid workers were in captivity," Osman Haji Abdule, mayor of Jawhar district, told Reuters by telephone.

He said the charity's local staff were still at work.

Sources- the Latin Americanist, Reuters Africa, BBC News, Associated Press, AFP

Image- eitb.com