Uruguay beats Spain in extra time for U20 WC semis

July 06, 2013

ISTANBUL (AP) — Substitute Felipe Avenatti scored in extra time to give Uruguay a 1-0 win over Spain in the quarterfinals of the Under-20 World Cup on Saturday.

Avenatti had been on for five minutes when the 1.96-meter tall striker scored with a fierce header at the near post from Giorgian De Arrascaeta's corner in the 103rd. It's the fourth time Uruguay has reached the last four in the competition. It will play Iraq or South Korea for a place in the final.

Earlier Saturday, France beat Uzbekistan 4-0 to set up a semifinal against Ghana or Chile. The remaining quarterfinals are scheduled for Sunday. Spain was the only team in the quarterfinals to have won all matches and was widely regarded as a favorite for the title.

In a high-paced first half, Spain dominated possession with its typical short passing in midfield. Winger Gerard Deulofeu's curling corner kick hit the crossbar in the 19th and midfielder Suso forced Uruguay keeper Guillermo De Amores into a diving safe in the last minute of the first half.

Leonardo Pais and Giorgian De Arrascaeta came close for Uruguay but they both sent their headers just off target. The match slowed down in the second half, causing booing from the stands. In the last 20 minutes, Spain stepped up a gear again after coach Julen Lopetegui brought Paco Alacacer. The central striker immediately created danger but directed his header over the crossbar.

In the second minute of injury time, Spain goalkeeper Daniel Sotres just managed to push the ball away from the goalline following a backward header from Uruguay substitute Diego Rolan. Sotres hit his head against the goalpost and was replaced by Ruben Yanez for extra time.

Spain created few chances to score the equalizer, though Israel Puerto came close when he was left unmarked in the area but sent his header wide. Earlier, France outplayed Uzbekistan to cement its status as one of the tournament favorites.

Yaya Sanogo scored in the 31st minute, and Paul Pogba and Florian Thauvin both added goals from the penalty spot to give France a 3-0 halftime lead. A diving header from defender Kurt Zouma in the 64th made it 4-0 for France, which beat host Turkey 4-1 in the previous round.

France will at least match its best previous result in the competition — finishing fourth two years ago in Colombia. France dominated the match from the start but missed several clear chances. Sanogo hit the post in the second minute, and Thauvin did the same in the 17th, before left winger Jean Christophe Baheback helped France break the deadlock.

Bahebeck first set up Sanogo for an easy tap-in, giving the team's top scorer his fourth goal. Four minutes later Baheback earned France's first penalty when he was brought down by Uzbekistan right back Tohirjon Shamshitdinov, who was later sent off for a second yellow card in the 65th.

Two minutes before halftime, Diyorjon Turapov handled the ball, enabling Thauvin to give France a comfortable lead. France lowered the pace of play in the second half and put less pressure on Uzbekistan, which received five yellow cards for rough play.

Zouma added the fourth as he converted a corner from Thauvin. Substitute Alexy Bosetti missed four clear chances to make it 5-0, which would have matched France's defeat of Iran in 2001, its best ever win in the competition.

Reaching the quarterfinals was Uzbekistan's best achievement. It had never won a match at an Under-20 World Cup before at two previous attempts.

South American leaders demand apology in plane row

July 05, 2013

COCHABAMBA, Bolivia (AP) — South America's leftist leaders rallied to support Bolivian President Evo Morales after his plane was rerouted amid suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board and they demanded an apology from France, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

Spain's foreign minister insisted Friday that no apology was needed, insisting that Spanish airspace was never closed to Morales. The presidents of Argentina, Ecuador, Suriname, Venezuela and Uruguay joined Morales in the Bolivian city of Cochabamba late Thursday to denounce the treatment of Morales, who warned that he would close the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia if necessary.

Morales again blamed Washington for pressuring European countries to refuse to allow his plane to fly through their airspace on Tuesday, forcing it to land in Vienna, Austria, in what he called a violation of international law. He had been returning from a summit in Russia during which he had suggested he would be willing to consider a request from Snowden for asylum.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said Friday that his nation and other European countries were told Snowden was aboard the Bolivian presidential plane. He did not say who supplied the information and declined to say whether he had been in contact with the United States.

Garcia-Margallo insisted, however, that Spain did not prevent Morales' plane from landing in its territory. He said Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca gave him written assurances that Snowden was not on the plane.

"Spain does not have to make any apology," he told public Television Espanola. "The airspace was never closed." Latin American leaders were outraged by the incident, calling it a violation of national sovereignty and a slap in the face for a region that has suffered through humiliations by Europe and several U.S.-backed military coups.

"United we will defeat American imperialism. We met with the leaders of my party and they asked us for several measures and if necessary, we will close the embassy of the United States," Morales said in the city where he started his political career as a leader of coca leaf farmers. "We do not need the embassy of the United States."

Morales' government has had a conflictive relationship with Washington. It expelled the U.S. ambassador and agents of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in 2008 for allegedly inciting the opposition. The Andean nation restored full diplomatic ties with the U.S. in 2011. But relations soured again amid mutual distrust on drug war politics and hit an especially low point after Secretary of State John Kerry referred to the Western Hemisphere as Washington's "backyard" in April 2013.

Morales expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development in May for allegedly seeking to undermine his government. In a joint statement read after the summit, the presidents also said they would back Bolivia's official complaint with the U.N. Human Rights Commission

Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said that he and other leaders were offering full support to Morales following the rerouting of the plane, calling it an aggression against the Americas. "We're not going to accept that in the 21st century there's first, second and third rate countries," Correa said.

"The leaders and authorities in Europe have to take a lesson in history and understand that we're not 500 years behind. This Latin America of the 21st century is independent, dignified and sovereign."

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro protested alleged attempts by Spanish officials to search the Bolivian presidential plane and accused the CIA of encouraging several European countries to deny the presidential plane their airspace.

"A minster of one of those European governments told me personally that it was the CIA who gave the order to the aeronautical authorities, the one who gave the alert that Snowden was on the plane," he said at a rally at a sports arena ahead of the summit. "The CIA is more powerful that governments."

Maduro also said that the U.S. was applying strong pressure to countries in the region to avoid asylum for Snowden. He said Kerry himself had called Venezuela's foreign ministry to block what Maduro described as "humanitarian aid for this youth of 29 years who has made incredible revelations."

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez said Latin Americans treasured freedom after fighting for their independence from Europe in the 19th century and then surviving Washington's 20th-century history of backing repressive regimes in the Americas.

She then demanded an apology for the plane ordeal. "I'm asking those who violated the law in calm but serious manner, to take responsibility for the errors made, it's the least they can do," Fernandez said. "To apologize for once in their life, to say they're sorry for what they've done."

Morales has said that while the plane was parked in Vienna, the Spanish ambassador to Austria arrived with two embassy personnel and they asked to search the plane. He said he denied them permission. Morales received a hero's welcome in an airport in the Bolivian capital of La Paz late Wednesday night. His return followed the dramatic, unplanned 14-hour layover in Vienna.

Ahead of the meeting, Morales said that his ordeal was part of a plot by the U.S. to intimidate him and other Latin American leaders and urged European nations to "free themselves" from the U.S. France sent an apology to the Bolivian government. But Morales said "apologies are not enough because the stance is that international treaties must be respected."

Amid the tensions, the U.S. embassy in La Paz cancelled Independence Day celebrations scheduled for Thursday. In the eastern city of Santa Cruz, Bolivian government sympathizers painted protest slogans on the doors of the American consulate.

Morales said he never saw Snowden when he was in Russia, and that Bolivia had not received a formal request for asylum for him. Bolivia has said that it will summon the French and Italian ambassadors and the Portuguese consul to demand explanations.

Despite the complaints, there were no signs that Latin America leaders were moving to bring Snowden to the region that had been seen as the most likely to grant him asylum. Although Latin American presidents sympathized with Morales and condemned his ordeal, several key regional leaders missed the summit.

Brazil was represented at the meeting by President Dilma Rousseff's top international adviser but Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota missed the summit because he is attending meetings in Europe. The presidents of Colombia, Chile and Peru, who have strong ties to the U.S., did not attend.

It's still unclear whether European countries did block the plane and, if so, why. French, Spanish and Portuguese officials have all said the plane was allowed to cross their territory. The emergency stop in Austria may have been caused by a row over where the plane could refuel and whether European authorities could inspect it for signs of Snowden.

The U.S. has declined to comment on whether it was involved in any decision to close European airspace, saying only that "US officials have been in touch with a broad range of countries over the course of the last 10 days," about the Snowden case.

"The message has been communicated both publicly and privately," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday. "He should be returned to the United States." Snowden remains out of public view, believed to be stuck in a Moscow airport transit area, seeking asylum from one of more than a dozen countries.

__ Associated Press writers Carlos Valdez and Paola Flores in La Paz, Bolivia, Vivian Sequera in Bogota, Colombia, Marco Sibaja in Brasilia, Brazil, Bradley Brooks in Sao Paulo, Brazil and Luis Andres Henao in Santiago, Chile contributed to this report.

Olympic flag arrives in Rio, marking race to 2016

August 13, 2012

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — The Olympic flag touched down on Brazilian soil on Monday, marking the start of four years of preparations ahead of the 2016 games in Rio de Janeiro.

Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes waved the five-ringed flag as he and other top officials disembarked from the flight that brought them back from London, where they attended the games' closing ceremony on Sunday.

Speaking at a packed news conference at Rio's Tom Jobim international airport, Paes called it an "important moment" for Rio and for Brazil at large. He pledged the games will leave a vast legacy for Rio, the beachside metropolis that suffered from decades of neglect after it lost national capital status to Brasilia in 1960.

"I see the arrival of this Olympic flag as not the start, but the consolidation of an important process of transformation for the city of Rio de Janeiro," he said. "Rio is a city that spent the lion's share of its history, much more time than it should have, looking toward the past. I'm sure that this process of transformation, this turning toward the future, has been consolidated here."

He added the most important effects of the Olympics "are sometimes, many times, the intangible transformations, the impalpable ones related to the brand of a country, the brand of a city, with the self-esteem of a country."

A handful of demonstrators gathered outside the airport to protest against expulsions connected with Olympic projects and others tied to the 2014 soccer World Cup, which Brazil is also hosting. The Popular Committee for the World Cup and Olympics, which organized the protest, says as many as 170,000 people risk being removed from their homes, or already have been removed, due to projects related to the two mega-events.

The group says some 4,000 people living in the so-called Vila Autodromo, where the Olympic Park is to be constructed, are facing expulsion. Activists have complained of a lack of consultation between the government and the affected communities and also of low compensation paid out to those kicked out of their homes.

Asked about the government's plan was for the residents of Vila Autodromo, Paes responded that nothing would be done without extensive consultations. "No one is going to throw anyone out of anywhere ... without there being an alternative," he said. "The people will only leave there with lots of consultations, with lots of discussion, with lots of respect."

He added that some of those opposed to the evictions were people "who are always railing against the government. That's why things were paralyzed for so long. They don't want anything to happen here."

The Olympic flag, made out of silk for the 1988 games in Seoul, South Korea, will be temporarily housed in the City Hall and will be open to viewings by visitors.

Chile students resume protests pushing reforms

Fri, Sep 23, 2011

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Tens of thousands of demonstrators have marched in Chile's capital, resuming street protests to demand that the government increase spending on public education and improve its quality.

Small groups of activists skirmished with police at the end of Thursday's 30-block march, and some people have been arrested.

The demonstration comes after negotiations failed to get the government to accept the demands of student groups.

Months of demonstrations and strikes by university and high school student groups have paralyzed classes at many schools.

The dispute has eroded the popularity of Chilean President Sebastian Pinera. But a government spokesman says the administration will stand firm despite the resumption of protests.

Peru upgrades navy, air defenses

Lima (UPI)
Sep 21, 2011

Peru is upgrading its key naval assets and acquiring new components for its air defenses as the country grapples with unrest among coca growers in the Amazon, suspected to be part of the cocaine trail to North America and other destinations for the drug.

The government has been unveiling plans over the past few weeks that include substantial investments in upgrades to the military equipment.

Top of the list are upgrades to Peruvian naval assets and the country's air defenses.

Italian-built Lupo class frigates form the high-end of Peru's naval defenses, with eight of the 3,000t Carvajal class ships said to be in service with varying stages of operational efficiency.

Four of the vessels were built under license from 1984-87, while the second batch of four frigates was decommissioned by the Italian navy and sold to Peru in 2004-06, the defenseindustrydaily.com Web site said.

Most of the upgrades are likely to affect the second batch of the ships, which includes the fourth ship bearing the name BAP Bolognesi, named in honor of Peruvian military hero Francisco Bolognesi. The first ship, Almirante Grau class cruiser BAP Coronel Bolognesi, was commissioned in 1907.

The naval upgrade is part of an overall strategy to build defenses against increasingly sophisticated and heavily armed drug gangs. Peru is the world's largest producer of coca, which is used to produce cocaine.

The upgrades to the BAP Bolognesi (FM-57), commissioned in 2006, will add new electronics, radar and decoy countermeasures to ship's arsenal. Some reports said Peru might also replace the old Italian Otomat anti-ship missiles on board the frigates with French Exocet MM40 Block III missiles.

Last month the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Peru asked to buy four NATO Sea Sparrow MK57 MOD 10 that will replace its existing MOD 2 systems mounted above the helicopter hangar on the four ex-Italian ships from the second batch. The vessels include FM 55-58: BAP Aguirre, BAP Palacios, BAP Quinones besides BAP Bolognesi.

The agency, in its notification to Congress, said the possible sale would be worth about $50 million.

"The proposed sale will improve Peru's capability to meet current and future threats of enemy anti-ship weapons," the agency said. "Peru will use the enhanced capability of the MK57 MOD 10 NSSMS on its four Lupo class frigates purchased from Italy in 2004."

The frigates have MK57 MOD 2 NATO Seasparrow Systems modified to fire the Aspide air defense missile. The systems retain the ability to fire the RIM-7 Seasparrow missile and Peru intends to move from the Aspide missile to the RIM-7 Seasparrow in a future purchase.

Peru already has MK 57 Missile Systems and will have no difficulty absorbing the additional systems into its inventory, the agency said.

The prime contractors would be Raytheon Technical Service Co. and Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems.

Peruvian President Ollanta Humala has declared a state of emergency in parts of the Amazon where coca growers have been protesting.

Humala called the emergency measure after farmers began an indefinite strike Sept. 11, blocking a major highway that connects the Ucayali department with the rest of the country, El Comercio reported.

The strike is a response to the government's policy of forced eradication of coca leaves, the main ingredient in cocaine.

Humala's government temporarily suspended the eradication of coca in August as a drug-control strategy.

The declaration will last 60 days and gives police more power to make arrests and suspends some constitutional rights.

Source: Space War.
Link: http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Peru_upgrades_navy_air_defenses_999.html.

Venezuela Nationalizes Gold

By Jack Phillips
September 20, 2011

New law says mining companies must sell all gold to government

A law that forces mining companies to sell all gold extracted in Venezuela to the government went into effect on Monday, according to media reports.

The law, signed by President Hugo Chavez last month, will allow private companies to mine in the country with the government owning over a 55 percent stake in their ventures. Under the new law, companies will have to turn over 13 percent of their profits to the state.

The law was recorded in the state’s Official Gazette, Friday. “The gold found on national land belongs to the Republic, and is public domain,” the law said.

Also private companies cannot export gold outside Venezuela and must contact the government and agree to the joint venture within the next three months, according to The Associated Press.

For any legal problems, the law states that companies, international or domestic, must settle them in Venezuela and cannot seek international arbitration, said the report.

Chavez said that under the law, Venezuela will be able to acquire around $11 billion for Venezuela’s gold reserves.

Venezuela only mines around six tons worth of gold per year but there are large gold deposits under the jungles near the Orinoco River.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/venezuela-nationalizes-gold-61834.html.

Paraguay suspended from Mercosur, no sanctions

June 30, 2012

MENDOZA, Argentina (AP) — The Mercosur trade bloc suspended Paraguay's membership on Friday for having impeached and ousted its president but will not slap economic sanctions on the poor, landlocked country.

The South American group also announced that Venezuela will become a full member starting July 31, a move that will link the region's most powerful agricultural and energy markets. Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo was impeached by the country's Congress a week ago in a fast-track trial triggered by a land eviction that killed 17 people in clashes between police and landless peasants.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez told other heads of state at a Mercosur summit Friday that the "democratic order was broken" in Paraguay because it carried out a two-hour trial where Lugo was not allowed a proper defense. It will be suspended from Mercosur until it holds presidential elections next year.

But Fernandez said Paraguay would not be slapped with economic sanctions because "they never hurt governments. They always hurt the people." Paraguay is among South America's poorest nations and any economic sanction by the bloc would have been disastrous since half its trade is with fellow Mercosur founding members, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay.

Mercosur barred Lugo's replacement, former Vice President Federico Franco, from attending the summit. Franco says the transition of power in Paraguay was carried out according to the law. Lugo said at first that he would attend the meeting in order to plead his case with regional leaders but later changed his mind. He then spoke out against retaliatory economic sanctions, which he said would only hurt ordinary Paraguayans.

The landlocked country is highly dependent on beef and soybean exports and is already suffering from a recent drought that parched soy fields and an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease last year that forced the slaughter of hundreds of cattle heads to prevent the spread of the contagious disease.

Paraguay has a long history of dictatorships and fragile democracies. The removal of Lugo, a former Roman Catholic bishop whose presidency was eclipsed by a cancer diagnosis and several paternity scandals, plunged the country into a political crisis and became a top priority for regional leaders. Several governments called back their ambassadors and some called his ouster a coup.

The Union of South American Nations, or UNASUR, also suspended Paraguay during an emergency meeting Friday and handed the pro-tempore presidency to Peru for 12 months. The regional grouping said Fernando Lugo was not allowed a proper defense.

Retaliation for Lugo's ouster came from Venezuela's state-run oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), which earlier canceled a bilateral deal to supply Paraguay with diesel oil. Sergio Escobar, who heads Paraguay's national oil company, announced Friday that Petroleos de Venezuela had instructed an intermediary firm not to deliver 150,000 cubic meters, expected over the coming months.

At the Mercosur summit, Argentina's Fernandez also announced that Venezuela will become a full member of the trade bloc during a ceremony in Rio de Janeiro on July 31. The union links the region's top agricultural and energy suppliers.

Venezuela, an associate member, had been trying to get full status for years. Lugo supported the full-membership because he said its oil could help smaller members of the grouping, but the move had been blocked by Paraguayan lawmakers.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hailed the decision, calling it "a day for the history of integration." Chavez reiterated his belief that Lugo's ouster was essentially a coup. He spoke by telephone on the Caracas-based television channel Telesur.

"I have no doubt that behind that group of senators and deputees, that behind them is the hand of the empire," Chavez said, using his term for the U.S. government. He didn't offer any evidence to support that claim.

Chavez dismissed accusations against his government that have emerged since Lugo's ouster, including claims by Paraguay's new government that Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro had tried to convince military leaders to support Lugo.

"I'm not going to answer them. An eagle doesn't hunt a fly," Chavez said. Some observers pointed out that if a diplomat from another country had come to Venezuela and tried to meet with military officers, it would have provoked a scandal, especially given Chavez's personal history of surviving a failed coup in 2002.

"The president never would tolerate it," said Margarita Lopez Maya, a history researcher at Venezuela's Central University who has studied Chavez's presidency. "There the foreign minister goes to a country and talks with military officers. It's completely hypocritical."

Maduro on Thursday night similarly dismissed the claim by Paraguay's defense minister, though he didn't deny meeting with military officials. "These things being said by this person from an illegitimate government that's emerged from a coup d'etat, they simply tell you the political and moral appearance of people who have just carried out a coup d'etat and they try to accuse others of trying to make coups against coups. It has no basis in reality," Maduro told Venezuelan state television.

"We did our work to seek to talk and dialogue with all sectors of Paraguayan society."

Associated Press writers Luis Andres Henao reported from Mendoza, Argentina. Almudena Calatrava and Debora Rey in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Jenny Birchfield in Rio de Janeiro and Ian James in Caracas, Venezuela contributed to this report.

Brazilians vent anger over corruption

Sept. 8, 2011

BRASILIA, Brazil, Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Brazilians' anger over corruption in government departments and the legislature spilled into the streets in an ironic twist to a campaign spearheaded by President Dilma Rousseff and increasingly seen to be spinning out of her control.

Protesters dressed as clowns marched through the capital and other cities across the country as government-led ceremonies marked Brazil's independence from Portugal in 1822. Organizers chose the occasion to point to the huge challenge posed by endemic corruption that they said threatens to tarnish Brazil's image as a vibrant, emergent regional power.

Political corruption has bedeviled successive democratic regimes since the end of the 1964-85 military rule but, until Rousseff launched a clean-up, it was tolerated by legislators, politicians and the media as part of the scene. With all sides harboring sensitive, often incriminating, information about each other it was difficult for any anti-corruption drive to make headway.

Rousseff set out to change that through internal investigations and disciplinary measures that originally began as discreet acts. The country's popular press latched on to the story with great gusto and soon one embarrassing revelation led to the next, forcing high-profile resignations in the government and congress.

Four government ministers and several members of the National Congress have left over corruption allegations since Rousseff took office in January.

Dozens of government officials have also lost their jobs or been arrested on various charges of malfeasance, while media revelations continue to target other key officials, including several other ministers. All have all denied wrongdoing.

The mood in the protests was mixed. Many of the demonstrators chanted slogans in support of Rousseff's anti-corruption program while others showed their frustration over continuing social problems seen behind corruption. In Brasilia, protesters said they had no political affiliation, countering suggestions the marches could be part of an opposition plan to disorient the president in her first year in office.

The drive against corruption has left many of those affected, their friends and relatives angry with Rousseff. Critics said the campaign was at risk of becoming a witch-hunt that could take the innocent or those wrongly accused in its populist sweep.

"Corruption in our country is a pandemic that threatens the credibility of institutions and the entire democratic system," a statement jointly issued by the College of Lawyers, the Brazilian Press Association and the National Bishops' Conference said.

Rousseff's chief of staff Antonio Palocci was among those who resigned after media reports in June questioned his wealth, seen to be disproportionate to his means. After Palocci's departure the ministers of defense, agriculture and transport also quit following media allegations, though all of them denied wrongdoing.

The campaign, while widely welcomed, has had the unexpected outcome of threatening Rousseff's fragile coalition with other political parties that lost their ministers in the cabinet. Rousseff belongs to the Workers Party, like her predecessor Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula's huge public approval ratings helped him survive several corruption scandals during his presidency from 2003-10.

The anti-corruption campaign has eclipsed the government's other major endeavor, to clear Brazilian cities of sprawling shanty towns. The favelas are hotbeds of organized crime gangs. The largest of them, the Alemao Complex in Rio do Janeiro, fell back under the control of criminal gangs within days of its "pacification" by military forces.

Brazil is keen to brush up its urban image before it hosts the 2014 FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/09/08/Brazilians-vent-anger-over-corruption/UPI-42871315513080/.

WikiLeaks founder seeks asylum at Ecuador embassy

June 20, 2012

LONDON (AP) — WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has made a run for the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, seeking asylum in a long shot move that, if successful, would place him in a small, friendly South American country rather than in Sweden facing questioning about alleged sex crimes.

Tuesday's unexpected caper has added a new and bizarre twist to Assange's increasingly desperate bid to avoid extradition to Scandinavia. Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said the leftist government of President Rafael Correa — an administration often at odds with Washington — was weighing the request, although he did not indicate when a decision might be made.

Assange said in a brief statement that he was grateful "to the Ecuadorean ambassador and the government of Ecuador for considering my application." Assange's legal options in the U.K. had almost completely run out. Less than a week ago Britain's Supreme Court re-endorsed its decision to allow the 40-year-old's extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted over sex crimes allegations. The accusations — which stem from Assange's trip to the country in mid-2010 — have cast a cloud over his online organization's spectacular leaks of U.S. military, diplomatic, and intelligence material.

Ecuador — where less than one in three people have access to the Web — may seem an unlikely place for the former computer hacker to seek refuge, but in many ways it's an obvious choice. "It's one of the few countries that has given a great opening to Assange's entire cause," said Grace Jaramillo, an international relations professor at Ecuador's FLACSO university.

"Correa sees Assange as a critic of the status quo," he said. "He has been challenging the United States and Correa likes that." Assange argues that extradition to Sweden is a first step in efforts to remove him to the United States, where he claims to have been secretly indicted over his disclosure of 250,000 State Department cables. He has spent the better part of two years fighting the move through the British courts.

But legal experts said Assange's flight to the Ecuadorean embassy was a desperate one. U.K. extradition specialist Karen Todner said she couldn't make sense of the move, while Michael Scharf, based at the Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, Ohio, said he didn't believe Assange could be given asylum status.

"I think they are going to end up asking him to leave the premises," said Scharf. Ecuador's mission in London said in a statement that Assange would "remain at the embassy, under the protection of the Ecuadorean government," while his application was considered. Britain's foreign ministry said it was working with Ecuadorean authorities to resolve the situation, but gave few other details.

Aside from Assange's brief statement, WikiLeaks did not elaborate on its leader's plans. Nearly a dozen calls, texts and emails seeking further comment from WikiLeaks and its staff weren't returned. Patino, speaking at a news conference in Quito, the Ecuadorean capital, gave the fullest account of Assange's reasoning, saying he had personally written to Correa to ask for asylum.

Assange, who is Australian, had argued that "the authorities in his country will not defend his minimum guarantees before any government or ignore the obligation to protect a politically persecuted citizen." Patino said. That may be a reference to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who last month said that her country could not protect Assange from other countries' justice systems.

Ecuador has made friendly noises about Assange in the past. In the November 2010, at the height of the media storm over WikiLeaks' disclosures, its government appeared to offer him sanctuary, and on Assange's newly-launched television talk show — which interviewed Correa via videolink earlier this year — the pair swapped jokes and messages of encouragement.

It was during the interview that Assange received an offer of asylum, according to a woman who was present during the shows and familiar with the offer. She spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak to the media.

It was not immediately clear if the offer came directly from the president himself, although at one point Correa saluted WikiLeaks and told Assange to take courage. "Welcome to the club of those who are persecuted!" said Correa, whose government has been assailed by human rights and press freedom activists for using Ecuador's criminal libel law in sympathetic courts against journalists from the country's biggest newspaper, El Universo.

Assange and his allies had been in discussions over a possible attempt to seek sanctuary in Ecuador since last weekend, according to a person familiar with the matter. "His concern was that once he arrived in Sweden he would be held in custody and would not have a chance to seek sanctuary again," the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

The person claimed that Assange had explained his reasons for seeking sanctuary to those who put up bail, but Jemima Khan, a celebrity journalist who supports Assange, said she was caught off guard by the news.

"I had expected him to face the allegations," she said in a message posted to Twitter. "I am as surprised as anyone by this." It wasn't immediately clear whether the escape to the Ecuadorean Embassy would invalidate Assange's strict bail conditions, or whether the 200,000 pounds (roughly $315,000) put up by his supporters would be forfeited.

British officials declined to say whether Assange had skipped bail or whether they were now seeking his arrest. Assange will be free from U.K. authorities so long as he remains at the Ecuadorean Embassy, but it's unclear how he could hope to get from the mission, based in London's wealthy Knightsbridge neighborhood, to Ecuador itself.

The embassy's buzzer rang unanswered Tuesday, although several times an unidentified figure peeked out from behind the curtain to look at reporters clustered around the building's entrance. At one point two men emerged from the building; neither addressed the assembled media, but one bore a folio entitled "Diplomatic Law."

Claes Borgstrom, the lawyer representing the two Swedish women with claims against Assange, told Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter late Tuesday that Assange's latest move was a delaying tactic. "It's tragic for the two clients that I represent," he was quoted as saying. "I can't imagine that this will lead anywhere."

Solano reported from Quito, Ecuador. Associated Press writers Frank Bajak in Lima, Peru, Paisley Dodds in London, and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm, Sweden, contributed to this report.

New monkey species found in Amazon

Sat Aug 27, 2011

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) researchers have discovered a new species of monkey during their expeditions in an unexplored part of the Amazon in mid-western Brazil.

The newly found monkey, which is a type of Callicebus, or titi, was discovered between the Guariba River and the Roosevelt River in northwestern part of Mato Grosso, a state of Brazil known as a center of Amazon destruction.

"This primate has features on its head and tail that have never been observed before in other titi monkey species found in the same area," said biologist Julio Dalpone who discovered the monkey during the WWF's Nature-backed expedition.

The discovered species was taken to the Emilio Goeldi Museum of Para State to be studied and formally described, MSNBC reported.

"This incredible discovery shows just how much we still have to learn from the Amazon,” said director of WWF's Amazon Program Meg Symington.

“WWF has been working with the government of Brazil to increase protection and improve management for the Amazon so that species like this, and thousands of others, don't disappear before we even know about them," he added.

The 26-member team traveled the region for 20 days, gathering 48 species of mammals, including armadillos, anteaters, deer and monkeys, as well as 313 species of birds that were previously seen in other South American countries.

They also uncovered two possible new fish species; a catfish and a tetra as well as threatened species, including a giant anteater, giant armadillo, giant otter, jaguar and ocelot.

According to WWF, the area is exposed to environmental and social problems, including illegal deforestation and forest degradation, poaching, expansion of agriculture, lack of health or education services and electricity and illegal fishing.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/196068.html.

Chilean student protests snowballing into political revolt

SANTIAGO, Chile, Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Chilean student protests are snowballing into a political storm with President Sebastian Pinera finding himself right at the center of it and not liking it.

The millionaire president, who retains vast business interests but swears by arrangements aimed at avoiding conflicts of interests, faced widening revolt this week after increasing numbers of labor union members and teachers threw their support behind students.

Protesters' representatives said their calls for general strikes across the country received greater attention than anticipated. As the protests grow, the lists of reforms demanded by those taking part in street marches and work stoppages are multiplying.

Rather than relent, Pinera said he was pained to see "those working so hard to paralyze Chile."

A central union of workers added to general calls for education reforms a longer list of changes, which includes a redrafting of the constitution and statutes to remove what critics see as vestiges of the past military dictatorial regimes, notably the highly controversial rule of Gen. Augusto Pinochet from 1973-90.

Pinera came to power in March 2010 after a democratic election that displaced hugely popular Michelle Bachelet. He pledged sweeping modernization and promised to bring Chileans into the 21st century with economic liberalization, state investment in gigantic development projects and transformation of a society bedeviled by sharp economic disparities.

Pinera saw his plans founder when an 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck the country in February 2010, causing tens of millions of dollars of damage and destruction. Pinera led a swift economic and social regeneration but the work used up cash reserves he hoped to use for the promised march to progress.

Critics question Pinera's style of government and claim he lacks communication skills necessary to engage with all strata of Chilean society.

The Unitary Central for Workers called for a nationwide strike for the second consecutive day Thursday and invited other unions to join the protest action.

Thousands of protesters barricaded roads and burned tires and debris as the strike went into full swing. Officials put the law enforcement agencies on alert to prevent a repetition of protests earlier in August that deteriorated into violent clashes between police and demonstrators.

Student protests against high tuition fees began about two months ago and focused on private academic institutions operating with impunity, alleged corruption and favoritism in the education system.

Both the Interior Ministry and law enforcement commanders faced angry charges that unarmed protesters received beatings, summary detentions and abusive treatment in police custody.

Protest leaders said they hoped to make the rallies "the biggest national strike of the last decade." It is the first 48-hour national strike since the Pinochet dictatorship.

Government spokesman Andres Chadwick said police defused some protests and claimed the situation was normal beyond traffic disruptions.

Finance Minister Felipe Larrain called the protest illegal and warned of a damaging impact on Chile's economic and social fabric.

The Chilean economy may be losing up to $200 million a day, officials said.

Analysts said Pinera's decision to fill his Cabinet with technocrats and business experts might be well-intentioned but the lack of public savvy political negotiators appears to be alienating many Chileans. A Cabinet reshuffle in July, the second since Pinera assumed office last year, failed to defuse tensions.

The outcome of the protests is likely to hinder the president's move to push through sweeping economic reforms, including plans to integrate Chile more comprehensively with the global markets.

Chile was badly hit by the 2008 economic crisis. Critics blamed the country's connectivity with international markets for the problems faced after the economic downturn.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/Special/2011/08/25/Chilean-student-protests-snowballing-into-political-revolt/UPI-86511314298000/.

Chile in 2-day national strike as labor unions join student protests

SANTIAGO (BNO NEWS) — The Workers United Center of Chile (CUT) has organized a 48-hour nationwide strike in support of student education protests among other social and economic issues, local newspapers reported on Wednesday.

The national strike started on Tuesday night with a demonstration in which saucepans were banged as a sign of protest. The strike was continued on Wednesday and will also take place on Thursday.

During the first hours of the general strike, the government reported that 35 people had been arrested and 11 were injured as a result of clashes between police officers and demonstrators.

Deputy Interior Minister Rodrigo Ubilla described the strike as a “great failure” since it said only 5.3 percent of public employees have joined the strike, according to government figures.

Meanwhile, the CUT informed through a press statement that 82 social and labor union organizations have joined the strike. The CUT further stated that they had received reports of closed avenues and streets, barricades, protests and labor strikes in several cities across the country.

In Puente Alto, an estimated 3,000 people engaged in a demonstration and around 1,000 participated in a similar event in Maipú while the National Airport stopped its operations for an hour, according to the CUT.

In the southern port city of Puerto Montt, 20,000 people participated in a massive march which was accompanied by an unprecedented demonstration of 70 vessels, El Ciudadano newspaper reported.

Despite government’s efforts to downgrade the figures of the national strike, images of several places in the capital city of Santiago indicate that a great percentage of Chileans are participating, whether they are demonstrating in the streets or staying in their houses, absent from their jobs, El Ciudadano newspaper reported.

According to Arturo Martínez, president of the labor union CUT, the general strike is being held to express the demands from various social sectors, to demand respect for social and citizen rights and to reiterate the need to have a country with a new economic model, a new constitution and a new work code. The rally’s resolution also calls for an immediate referendum on education.

Government spokesperson Andrés Chadwick condemned the strike but said the series of demands issued by the CUT were already being analyzed by the government.

Chilean students, along with teachers and other education workers, have been protesting for the past several weeks for a fundamental change in the educational system, demanding an end to privatized education and asking for a government which can guarantee full access, quality and funding of public education at all its levels.

Wednesday, August 24th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/19656/chile-in-2-day-national-strike-as-labor-unions-join-student-protests/.

President Chavez plans to nationalize Venezuela's gold industry

CARACAS (BNO NEWS) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced on Wednesday that he will approve a new law to nationalize the country’s gold industry, the El Nacional newspaper reported.

“Soon I will propose a law to start taking the gold zone and I count with you, because there’s anarchy, mafia and smuggling in that zone,” Chavez said.

Chavez further stated that he has the laws which allow him to nationalize the gold industry in Venezuela, which includes exploration and exploitation of the metal as well as other related activities.

The president urged the minister of Planning and Finance, Jorge Giordani, and the president of the Venezuelan Central Bank (BCV), Nelson Merentes, to speed up the process of transferring the Venezuelan gold reserves.

Giordani explained that the government’s decision to nationalize the gold reserves seeks to diversify the resources and enable them for the national economy’s development. “We are going to nationalize the gold and we are going to turn it into an international reserve, because its value keeps increasing,” he said.

Venezuela has around $12 billion in gold reserves, Chavez said. “We cannot allow them to keep taking it away.”

Chavez returned to Venezuela on Saturday after having completed a second round of chemotherapy in the Cuban capital of Havana. The left wing president has been in office since 1999 and plans to run for re-election in late 2012 despite his disease.

Wednesday, August 17th, 2011

Source: WireUpdate.
Link: http://wireupdate.com/wires/19527/president-chavez-plans-to-nationalize-venezuelas-gold-industry/.

Brazil increases funding to UNRWA

Friday 16/12/2011

RAMALLAH (Ma'an) -- Brazil announced a pledge of $7.5 million to UNRWA on Friday, in a move described as an unprecedented contribution from the Latin American country, Palestinian Authority media reported.

The official news agency in Ramallah, Wafa, reported that the announcement was delivered at a ceremony in Gaza between the Brazilian representative to the PA, Ligia Maria Scherer, and UNRWA chief Filippo Grandi.

"These important contributions will make Brazil one of UNRWA’s most significant donors and will help the Agency meet the rising needs of the refugee population it serves," Wafa reported, quoting a statement.

Scherer also expressed Brazil's concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza, Wafa said.

"We believe in this connection that UNRWA's mission is essential in addressing the needs of Palestinian refugees, due to its presence on the ground and specific mandate within the UN system.

"The international acknowledgement and the local appreciation of the Agency’s work bear witness to its vital role. Strengthening UNRWA is critical to help the Palestinian people," Scherer said.

Source: Ma'an News Agency.
Link: http://www.maannews.net/eng/ViewDetails.aspx?ID=445476.

Protesters throw fruit at Chile's rescued miners

August 06, 2011 — COPIAPO, Chile (AP) — It has been a bittersweet anniversary for Chile's rescued miners, who were honored as heroes in their hometown only to come under attack by anti-government protesters who threw fruit and small stones at them, accusing them of being ungrateful, greedy sellouts.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera and his ministers joined most of the 33 miners Friday at a Catholic Mass and then the inauguration of a regional museum exhibit recognizing their remarkable survival story.

But the events were marred by scuffles between riot police and students, teachers, environmentalists and other miners, all trying to make Pinera bow to their pressure on issues from reforming public education and increasing miners' pay to stopping controversial dams and power plants.

Some of the activists threw oranges and apples at the miners, accusing them of getting too cozy with Pinera's government and trying to cash in on their fame. The treatment shocked rescued miner Omar Reygadas into silence. His son told The Associated Press in an interview that his father was deeply hurt to be accused of selling out to the government. Other activists shouted that the miners were trying to get rich with their $17 million lawsuit accusing Chile's mine regulator of failing to enforce safety requirements.

"My father was saddened, deeply saddened. He doesn't understand how people could act this way," said his son, also named Omar Reygadas. "When I got home I found him sitting alone, very sad. I asked him what happened and at first he wouldn't say anything, but gradually he let on what happened."

Some Chilean newspapers called the attack a low blow, especially considering how many of the miners still suffer from psychological problems after being stuck for 69 days underground. "They aren't heroes ... they're victims who are simply trying to recover from their tragedy," El Diario de Atacama, Copiapo's hometown newspaper, printed Saturday under a picture showing riot police with a confiscated box of oranges and apples activists had thrown at the honorees.

"We have become accustomed to judging the 33 of Atacama, forgetting that they've only been victims of the terrible circumstances that confront hundreds of Chileans every day." Psychologist Alberto Iturra, who was part of the medical team that participated in the mine rescue, criticized the incident, saying the attack on the miners was "irrational, crazy."

He said the incident is "part of a process of alienation — which implies not distinguishing spaces, people or anything, not being conscious of what they're doing — that the students suffer from." The miners were clearly grateful for Pinera's leadership of the rescue mission, which succeeded in bringing them all out alive more than two months after the Aug. 5, 2010 collapse. "I wouldn't be here talking with you today" if Pinera hadn't become personally involved, miner Jose Fuentes told the AP. "We were down there praying that he would do it."

But Pinera's ministers also are defending the government against the miners' suit, saying that they have to protect the Chilean taxpayers. Pinera's popularity has plunged to 26 percent, the lowest of any president since Chile recovered its democracy in 1990, as protests have roiled the country. Environmentalists hope to block hydroelectric dams in southern Patagonia and a huge coal-fired energy plant in northern Chile. Unionized miners have briefly paralyzed the nation's largest copper mines, costing companies millions of dollars in lost production. Mapuche Indians have occupied ancestral lands, setting off violent confrontations with police and landowners. Striking high school and university students have taken over their schools and stopped classes for more than two months.

At the museum on Friday, Pinera appealed for an end to the unrest. "The time of the protests, the strikes, the takeovers, the violence has passed. Now has come the time to construct and not keep destroying, the time of dialogue and not of intransigence; the time of solutions and not of confrontation, the time of unity and not of division," Pinera said.

Small-Scale Land Speculators Contribute to Amazon Deforestation

By Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Jul 28, 2011 (Tierramérica) - Many migrants from southern Brazil who clear forests in Brazil’s state of Amazonas are making their living as small-scale land speculators and not as farmers or as cattle ranchers, new research has found.

This on-the-ground reality and the proposed changes to Brazil's Forest Code are likely to ramp up deforestation rates again, despite the country's commitment to reduce deforestation 80 percent by 2020, experts say.

The Forest Code (Law 4771) was adopted in 1965 and has undergone numerous reforms, the most recent in 2001. This past May 24, an overwhelming majority in the Chamber of Deputies voted in favor of a bill to relax its requirements with regard to forest conservation. The bill is currently under study in the Senate.

A detailed study conducted in the municipality of Apuí along the Transamazon Highway in Amazonas found that many families in the region earned little income from cattle.

Instead, they were clearing the land in order to claim land titles to sell the land to large corporate ranchers, according to the study "Forest Clearing Dynamics and the Expansion of Landholdings in Apuí, a Deforestation Hotspot on Brazil’s Transamazon Highway", published in the journal Ecology and Society in June.

From the early 1990s the population of Apuí has tripled, and the municipality has had some of the highest rates of deforestation in all of the state of Amazonas. Approximately 90 per cent of the area has been converted into pasture, the study found.

"These families are always moving into new forest areas to deforest so they can claim land title. And after a few years they sell it for a much higher price," said study co-author Gabriel Carrero of the Institute for Conservation and Sustainable Development of Amazonas (IDESAM).

Carrero's co-author is noted tropical forest expert Philip Fearnside of the National Institute for Research in Amazonia (INPA).

Under Brazilian law, land title can be given to those who "improve" unclaimed lands. Those families clearing forests in Apuí are "just trying to make a better life for themselves," Carrero told Tierramérica from Manaus in Amazonas.

They do have cattle, but it is more of a hobby that can raise some cash, he said, based on detailed interviews with 83 households who owned more than 300 properties in the region.

"The real incentive is to sell their property to large farmers who have sold their lands in southern Brazil or Paraguay and are looking to buy large consolidated tracts of land," said Carrero.

Then the families move away from the frontier, go up the road into untouched forest and do it again, he explained. "This is just their way of life."

Access to the unclaimed forest land follows roads. When roads and other infrastructure improve, land values jump, facilitating speculation, he said.

"Our study proves that roads are the most important driver of deforestation," he added.

Globally, deforestation puts an astonishing 2.9 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year, according to the first detailed calculation published 15 July in the journal Science.

For comparison, total yearly emissions from all fossil fuels (coal, gas, oil) plus production of cement are just under 8 billion tons.

There is a "huge influx of carbon from deforestation and it is much larger than previously thought," said Pep Canadell, executive director of the Global Carbon Project in Canberra, Australia and co-author of the study published in Science.

The potential benefits of the Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) carbon credit scheme – which would pay communities and countries to conserve forests – could be even more important than anyone thought, Canadell told Tierramérica in an interview.

"I'm much more familiar with Indonesian forests, and REDD has had no effect on deforestation so far," he said. However, large donations from Norway, Australia and the United States totaling close to 1.5 billion dollars are having an impact on the ground in that country.

The U.N.-backed REDD is likely years away from putting cash in the hands of families in Amazonas or Indonesia or anywhere else, Canadell said.

"Families struggling to make a living aren't going to wait years to see if the international community gets its act together on REDD," he commented.

No one in Apuí is making money from carbon credit programs like REDD, said Carrero. "Land speculation is more profitable," he added.

Deforestation and land sales will be even more profitable with proposed changes to Brazil's Forest Code, Carrero warned.

Those changes will allow landholders with less than 400 hectares to deforest all of their land in the "legal" Amazon region, as well as granting an amnesty for the many who have violated the conservation requirements now in force.

The Code currently allows the clearing of only 20 percent of the forest on landholdings in the "legal" Amazon, a geographic division that includes all states partially or totally covered by the Amazon rainforest biome.

"I'm 100 percent certain that this will increase deforestation and result in a big increase in greenhouse gas emissions from the Amazon," Carrero said.

Brazil's agribusiness is behind the proposed changes and is pressuring politicians for more flexible laws.

"It is cheaper to deforest a hectare of land than to improve a hectare of degraded land," Carrero noted.

Ironically, it is Brazil's success in reducing deforestation rates by 70 per cent from 2004 to 2009 that is behind the big push to change the laws.

"The recent crackdown on municipalities with high deforestation rates was so successful, farming and ranching interests want to get the laws changed," Rhett Butler, writer and conservationist at the NGO Mongabay.com, told Tierramérica.

The Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation (ATBC), the world's largest scientific organization devoted to the study, protection and sustainable use of tropical ecosystems, has warned that the proposed changes to the Brazilian Forest Code will result in higher levels of deforestation.

In early July the Association issued an official resolution urging the government to do a science-based assessment of the potential ecological impacts before proceeding.

Brazil officially pledged to cut deforestation by 80 percent from historic levels by 2020 under the 2009 Copenhagen Accord.

*This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network. Tierramérica is a specialized news service produced by IPS with the backing of the United Nations Development Program, United Nations Environment Program and the World Bank.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=56666.

'Super' blueberries from South America

NEW YORK, July 14 (UPI) -- Wild blueberries native to the tropical regions of Central and South America have two to four times more antioxidants than U.S. blueberries, researchers say.

Professor Edward Kennelly, a biologist at Lehman College in New York and Paola Pedraza, a botanist at The New York Botanical Garden, examined five species of blueberries.

The two species that had the highest amounts of antioxidants are Cavendishia grandifolia and Anthopterus wardii, the researchers say.

"We consider these two species of neotropical blueberries to be extreme superfruits with great potential to benefit human health," Kennelly says in a statement.

Antioxidants found in fruits and vegetables have been associated with lower incidence of some chronic diseases and may help protect against heart disease, inflammatory ailments such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and even cancer, the researchers say.

More than 600 neotropical species are related to the "highbush" blueberries common to the U.S. market and several, including the two most promising species of Kennelly and Pedraza, are native to the high-elevation forests of the Andes Mountains -- one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world.

Although these super blueberries are wild species that are not currently commercially available, the scientists say they have the potential to become a popular food item or health supplement if their high antioxidant content becomes better known.

"I think it's just a matter of time until people start working on making them more available," Pedraza says.

Source: United Press International (UPI).
Link: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2011/07/14/Super-blueberries-from-South-America/UPI-50481310702274/.

S America species endangered: Study

Sat Jul 9, 2011

Some important animal species are in danger of extinction in 92 percent of South America's protected areas, a new study suggests.

According to the study by the Institute of Natural Resources Analysis of Argentina, over 80 percent of the 1511 protected areas in South America are being threatened by the advancement of agriculture and other land use, a Press TV correspondent reports.

One of the species deeply affected is the magnificent jaguar, the third-largest feline after the tiger and the lion, which lives in the north of Argentina.

Director of the Wild Life Foundation Diego Romero says that there are not enough protected areas to secure the jaguar population in the South American country.

"Protected areas cover a small part of Argentina. Following the advancement of land management practices, they've become sort of islands that only protect a small population," Romero said.

The study concludes that big mammals in South America must be technologically assisted to avoid their extinction, and there should be plans to create centers where the animals receive reproductive and alimentary supplements.

Romero considers the protected areas in South America as the cornerstone of biodiversity conservation.

"Protected areas are important for scientific and research purposes. They also play an important role in tourism. Sixty percent of foreign tourists come to Argentina to visit these areas," he said.

Other experts believe it is also important to protect fragile ecosystems that surround protected areas going through a process of degradation, and facing fauna and flora extinction.

"We must also protect the areas surrounding them, such as the forests in the center and the northern region that are in danger [of deforestation]," Climate and Forests Campaign Coordinator of Greenpeace Hernan Giardini said.

He added that Argentina has lost two million hectares of forests due to the spread of soybean and stockbreeding activities.

"The devastation of millions of hectares of native forests led to the loss of biodiversity and the [destruction of the] habitat of endangered species, like jaguar," he pointed out.

Experts say that pressures and lobbying from domestic and international corporations prevent Argentina and other Latin American countries from carrying out comprehensive state policies on key environmental issues affecting their economic interests.

Source: PressTV.
Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/188234.html.

Without Land There Is No Culture

By Elizabeth Roberts
Jun 2, 2011

The Mapuche nation in South America is being marginalized by rigid and ineffective government policies.

For the Mapuche people, loss of land means loss of identity and without this life is meaningless.

Land is essential for the development of Mapuche culture; the land has the graves of their ancestors and is where their religious celebrations take effect.

"We are first ground and then people, so first 'Mapu' land and then 'che' people. For us, the earth is our mother,” Mapuche lonko (chief) Juana Calfunao, explained to members of the European Parliament in Brussels last March.

The story of Juana’s town, as with so many indigenous towns in Latin America, is one of a history of territorial dispossession, genocide, and cultural devastation, which continues to ruin the lives of the natives.

The Juan Paillalef community has been the victim of systematic persecution by the Chilean government. Lonka Calfunao told the Parliament how Chilean authorities and industry executives have tried to take her land away.

"The Chilean State and the forestry companies … have burned my house four times now. ... We have no home to live in,” she said. “After they burned my house, the forest companies wanted to take my land illegally and the army came with tanks and 300 police. My son and I on foot defended the community against attack helicopters."

State Oppression

The Mapuche are native to the southern cone of South America where they were recognized as an autonomous nation by Spain in 1641 after successfully defeating the Spanish conquests on their land. In the late 1800s however, the Mapuche were victims of extermination campaigns carried out by Argentine and Chilean armies against native peoples living in the Patagonia region.

In these military campaigns, native leaders and soldiers were killed, and communities were enslaved with girls and women forced into servitude and prostitution.

The nation states took the Mapuche land, enfolding it into their developing economic structures.

Although on paper Chile has seemed ready to protect the rights of indigenous by signing the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, the OAS Charter, the American Convention on Human Rights Charter, and the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, there is still a wide disparity in practice between these rights and the protections the Mapuche actually receive.

In a 2003 report on the Mapuche, the International Federation on Human Rights said, “There is a considerable gap between the legal protection of indigenous rights during this first democratic period in Chile and the actual development of public policies regarding indigenous issues by the Chilean government.”

The Mapuch people, numbering approximately one million, are still subject to ethnic discrimination.

Fighting Multinationals

Besides institutional discrimination, the recent efforts by the Mapuche to recover their native land has brought them into conflict with transnational companies that want access to the land’s natural resources.

Mapuche scholar and director of History at Sorbonne University in Paris, Arauco Chihualaf, told the European Parliament that natural resources are the primary source of conflict between the Mapuche and multinational corporations. “The advance of the globalized economy governed by transnational companies that exploit basic resources, such as mining, agricultural and water, generates conflicts because many of these riches are found in indigenous land,” he said.

In the southern regions of Chile, Chihualaf said that the forest industry, which is linked to transnational capital groups, is fighting with the Mapuche over land resources.

In Argentine Patagonia, the Mapuche community of Santa Rosa Leleque is in conflict with the multinational clothing maker Benetton Group, which claims 500 hectares of land occupied by the Santa Rosa community. One of the largest landowners in Argentina, the Italian Benetton family, owns around a million hectares in the south of the country.

When Chile’s largest electric company Endesa, built the Ralco hydroelectric dam, upstream waters submerged Mapuche land displacing the local Mapuche population.

Chihualaf said the native people are not opposed development, which also means the creation of jobs for them, but want fair development practices. The indigenous Indians he said, reject “uneven development, the unevenness that has exacerbated poverty in the indigenous population compared to the prosperity of transnationals.”

He added that the native people reject “abusive land occupation, population displacement, damage to the environmental balance, excessive rate hikes, such as on water, threats, and abuse of their organizations and leaders.”

Institutional Violence Against Children

Mapuche youth are victims of abuse by Chilean authorities with reports of Mapuche children and adolescents who live in communities that are mobilizing to recover their ancestral lands being wounded by pellet guns and tear gas, and harassed, tortured, and illegally interrogated in schools. Mapuche youth also receive death threats and live with the fear of kidnapping and forced immersion, according to a report by Mapuche Ombudsman Claudia Molina presented in January 2010, before the Committee on the Rights of the United Nations.

The violence by the Chilean government against Mapuche children was also condemned in April this year by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in Washington, D.C.

European Involvement

Under an Association Agreement between EU and Chile, European investment is providing more than 16 million euros (US$22.9 million) to Chile for social cohesion starting in 2007 until 2013.

Catalonian Member of Parliament Oriol Junqueras, said at the Brussels conference, that as a major player in the world market, the EU has significant bargaining power with international leaders and with Chile, and that “to the extent that the EU is able to reconcile these trade agreements with peoples' rights … we will be much closer to our goal of a more just and equal opportunities.”

The program director of France-Libertés Fondation Danielle Mitterrand, Tapia Olavarria Rodrigue, said that one step the EU needs to take is to stop implementing policies that cause other countries to develop systems that unsustainably extract natural resources and threaten the environment and the livelihoods and fundamental rights of indigenous peoples.

Source: The Epoch Times.
Link: http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/mapuche-without-land-there-is-no-culture-57165.html.

Gov't Shuts Down Illegal Gold Mines

By Gonzalo Ortiz

QUITO, May 31, 2011 (IPS) - The Ecuadorian government sent in the army to shut down illegal gold mining operations in the jungles of the northwest province of Esmeraldas, where the highly polluting activity is associated with drug traffickers and protected by armed militias and hired killers.

The gold-mining activity in eight areas of the cantons of Eloy Alfaro and San Lorenzo in Esmeraldas, which is bordered by the Pacific Ocean and Colombia, was "totally illegal" and violated the country's mining, environmental and tax laws, Minister of Non-Renewable Natural Resources Wilson Pástor and Environment Minister Marcela Aguiñaga said in a press conference last week.

They also pointed to the serious damages to local populations and the environment caused by unregulated gold mining in those areas.

Aguiñaga reported that arsenic and heavy metals like mercury are found in the waters of tributary rivers that run into the Santiago River, the source of water for local residents in that area. "This will cause cancer and other diseases in the short term," she said.

"Ecuador is not a no man's land," Pástor said indignantly. "Illegal mining has to stop. We have to put a stop to exploitation of the local workforce. We have to put a stop to drug money laundering. And we're tired of the plundering of our natural resources."

Illegal mining, he said, generates economic activities that are not controlled by the state and irregularities like tax evasion, smuggling of materials used in the industry, networks of illegal services, capital flight, money laundering, and imports of unregistered machinery.

The military incursion earlier this month in the northern part of the province of Esmeraldas was reported by the government on May 23, in a nationally broadcast report that showed at least six helicopters taking part in the operation, in which a number of large, modern backhoes and other machinery like diesel generators and suction dredges were destroyed in controlled explosions.

The cost of backhoe excavators runs from 100,000 to 200,000 dollars, depending on the size of the engine.

Over the last six months, the heavy machines have opened up dozens of gold-mining pits in remote jungle areas of Esmeraldas that are only accessible by river.

"In the last six months, 130 million dollars worth of gold has been illegally extracted. And one ton of alluvial soil must be removed to obtain 30 just grams of gold," Pástor reported.

The televised footage filmed by the army showed from the air dozens of pits in at least eight different areas inland from the port of San Lorenzo, near the Colombian border.

In response to a question from IPS on the military's legal authority to destroy the machinery, Minister Aguiñaga explained that the operation had been authorized on May 19 by a judge, who ordered that it be carried out immediately.

Aguiñaga also noted that a judge in Esmeraldas had banned all mining activity in that province in December.

The military operation "was kept secret" because in December information was leaked "and the illegal miners managed to hide their machinery," Pástor said.

But some questioned the lawfulness of the operation. Former Ecuadorean president Osvaldo Hurtado (1981-1984), a political scientist, told IPS that President Rafael "Correa and his Defense Minister Javier Ponce should answer in court for the barbaric action.

"In a state with the rule of law, a judge can order the confiscation of assets, whose fate can only be decided by a trial. There is no legal justification for sending in soldiers to bomb assets, whatever their origin," Hurtado said.

"The responsibility does not belong to the armed forces, which carry out orders, but to those who gave the orders," he said.

In separate statements, Interior Minister José Serrano said "we aren't talking here about an irregular or illegal activity, but about criminal activities: tax fraud, mineral smuggling, money laundering, and labor exploitation."

Pástor said confiscation of assets was not possible in this case, as shown by the seizure of 12 backhoes in a similar operation carried out last year in the Napo River basin in the northeast of the country, where the government had "unfavorable experiences with judges or prosecutors."

The minister said that in some cases judges or prosecutors have ordered that seized machinery be returned to the owner. "Even prosecutor Gordillo (no first name was given) ordered the return of backhoes when the trial was in its initial stages," he said.

But lawyer Juan José Montero told IPS "it is a contradiction to justify the destruction with a court order, while at the same time lacking confidence in the justice system to conduct the prosecutions that should arise from these cases."

The laborers who worked at the mines will be employed "in the clean-up of the environmental damages, which are extremely serious," Minister Aguiñaga said.

Pástor announced that the eight areas in question will be granted in concession to the state-run mining company, Empresa Nacional Minera (ENM), which will be authorized to sign partnership agreements with small-scale and medium mining outfits.

The minister said he would be meeting with the associations of miners from San Lorenzo and Eloy Alfaro to explain the steps they should take in order to sign contracts with ENM, a process he said would take around six months.

Some 2,000 families depend for a living on illegal mining in the areas targeted by the army operation, Pástor said. "Some of the members of those families had been recruited by force and exploited for ridiculously low pay and under threat," he said.

The ministers said the tributaries of the Santiago River polluted by the illegal mining activities are the Bogotá, Tululví, Cachaví, Huimbí, Palaví, Zapallito and Estero María Rivers. They also provided a list of 20 affected villages in the area.

With respect to the threat of legal action by the owners of the excavators, or those who were leasing them and complain that they are now in debt, Aguiñaga said "they will first have to respond to the lawsuits we will bring against them for the severe environmental damages caused."

She said the mining activity had destroyed forest cover and the fertile top layer of soil, and polluted and altered the course of rivers and wetlands – impacts that will immediately begin to be assessed by the Environment Ministry for the purpose of launching a clean-up effort.

The divisions over the question of mining among families, organizations and even local authorities in Esmeraldas have seriously undermined social relations in the area, said the Catholic bishop of the province, Eugenio Arellano.

He also complained about the illegal activities that many local people have fallen into, and about the damages to the health of the local population. "They are poisoning my people," he said.

Source: Inter-Press Service (IPS).
Link: http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=55869.