Daily Headlines: February 4, 2016

* Ecuador: British authorities threatened with arresting Wikileaks founder Julian Assange if he decides to leave the Ecuador’s embassy in London where he has been given refuge since June 2012.

* Chile: A Chilean judge ordered the remains of the late Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda to be returned to his tomb nearly three years after they were uncovered.

* Cuba: Cuba’s foreign minister claimed that relations between his country and the U.S. would not be fully normalized until the trade embargo against the island is eliminated.

* Panama: Software giant SAP will pay a $3.9 million settlement in relation to a bribery scandal involving former Panamanian government officials including ex-president Ricardo Martinelli.

YouTube Source – Reuters (“The founder of whistleblower website, Wikileaks, returns to the spotlight ahead of a U.N. panel decision that could determine whether he has been ‘arbitrarily detained’ in London”.)

Online Sources – euronews, The Register, Reuters, Fox News Latino

Daily Headlines: October 23, 2015 (Updated)

* Mexico: A state of emergency has been declared in three Mexican states in anticipation of the expected landfall today of the category five Hurricane Patricia.

Update (October 24th, 12:30 AM): The storm was downgraded to a category four hurricane hours after it reached Mexico's Pacific coast on Friday night. As of this update, some material damage was reported but no fatalities.  Civil defense chief Luis Felipe Puente nevertheless warned that Patricia could still cause flash floods, landslides and infrastructural damage to states like Colima and Jalisco. (Link in Spanish).


Update (October 24th, 5:15 PM): 

So far, there are no reports of major damage from #Patricia. Our gratitude to all for your thoughts, prayers and actions #PrayForMexico.

— Enrique Peña Nieto (@EPN) October 24, 2015

Nevertheless, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto traveled to Colima to oversee the aftermath of Patricia, which was downgraded to a tropical storm and is now drenching the northern border state of Nuevo Leon. (Link in Spanish).

* Paraguay: Former Paraguayan President Federico Franco could become the latest Latin American leader to be investigated for alleged corruption during his rule.

* Cuba: Will the U.S. reverse its historic vote in the U.N. General Assembly next week and opt to condemn the decades-long trade embargo against Cuba?

* Ecuador: Scientists have discovered a new species of giant tortoise on the Galapagos Islands and named them after the longtime caretaker of the late emblematic tortoise George.

YouTube Source – Reuters
 
Online Sources including Updates – BBC News, Xinhua, The Guardian, InSight Crime, Milenio.com, Twitter, El Economista

Daily Headlines: May 20, 2014

* Mexico: Scientists will reportedly attempt to extract the skeletal remains of a girl who died around 13,000 years ago in Mexico and whose discovery has strengthened “the long-held theory that humans arrived in the Americas by way of a land bridge from Asia”.

* Latin America: The Israeli government approved a foreign aid package "to strengthen its economic ties with at least five Latin American countries," and days after Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas signed an oil deal with Venezuela.

* Cuba: Ex-Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, former NATO commander Admiral James Stavridis and several former senior State Department officials were among the over forty signatories to an open letter using the White House to drop the trade embargo on Cuba.

* Colombia: “We couldn't do anything but hold our heads and watch the children burn,” said one of the eyewitnesses of a tragic bus fire that claimed the lives of at least 33 minors in northern Colombia.

Video Source –YouTube user NewsyScience

Online Sources – CBC News; BBC News; The Jerusalem Post; Jewish Telegraphic Agency; Miami Herald

Pope to Obama: Drop the Cuban embargo

In his Nobel Peace Prize Award acceptance speech, U.S. President Barack Obama said that the “moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct” led him to order the closure of the jail at Guantanamo. Earlier today, Pope Benedict XVI had his own message on Cuba for Obama:

In addition to calling for improved U.S.-Cuba relations and an end to the embargo against the island, the Pope also called for expanding religious freedoms. The Pope emphasized that he did not wish for the Church to meddle into Cuban politics though he does want to “continue to nourish the ‘extraordinary spiritual and moral heritage that contributed in a decisive way to forging the Cuban soul’."

The pontiff also criticized abortion by calling on Cubans to respect life from conception to its “natural end.” (Most forms of abortions are legal in Cuba except in pregnancies after twelve weeks and for minors without parental consent).

Online Sources- YouTube, AP, Spero News, CNA, IPS, El Espectador

Daily Headlines: October 8, 2009

* Venezuela: Latin America’s economies have been hit hard this year and Venezuela has been no exception.

* Mexico: Mexican police nabbed one of the FBI’s most wanted fugitives – a man accused of killing his girlfriend and her two young sons in Idaho.

* Cuba: Cuban officials claimed that the U.S. trade embargo cost the island $149 million annually in agricultural exports.

* Latin America: Brazil's Petrobras said that they would not cut off gas imports from Bolivia despite increased domestic production.

Image- Voice of America
Online Sources- LAHT, MSNBC, Reuters

Cuba: Bloggers keep speaking out vs. gov’t

Last week’s news of several Congressional Black Congress members meeting with Fidel Castro may’ve been a key step in the thawing of frosty relations between the U.S. and Cuba. For that meeting to be a step in the right direction, however, major changes need to be enacted in both countries even if it causes heavy debate.

As we’ve mentioned before, the Castro administration and Cuban bloggers have had a fractious relationship. The government has severely restricted access to the internet and affording a personal computer is out of the reach of the common person. The police have also harassed some bloggers and warned that their activities “run afoul of the law”.

During last month’s Havana Biennial art show, artist Tania Bruguera set up a particular installation. Residents were granted the chance to go speak for one minute at a podium with a microphone. Well-known anti-Castro blogger Yoani Sanchez took her opportunity to speak against the government:


Bruguera’s installation was approved by the government who ran the art show. A government communiqué shortly after Sanchez’ performance implied that she is a "professional dissident" employed by the U.S.

Sanchez remained defiant in an entry written to the Huffington Post earlier this month:

I confess to you that I do not want them to allow me to travel as if it were a gift. I have a feeling that I will travel from Cuba when everyone can do it freely, but in the meantime, I will continue besieging them with my demands, my posts and my questions.

The Cold War may’ve been over for years yet the U.S. and Cuba have permitted such a farcical political and economic rift to continue. While the U.S. can relax travel restrictions and possibly drop the decades-old trade embargo, Cuba needs to relax its restrictions on personal freedoms. The end of the government’s ongoing conflict with the island’s bloggers would be a very welcome step.

Online Sources- Huffington Post, AP, The Latin Americanist, Reuters, miamiherald.com