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d1e7da5f71a0d92d2dac7b0c114a888d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-feb-11-la-fg-wn-north-korea-nuclear-test-20130211-story.html | North Korea appears to conduct nuclear test, defying world powers | North Korea appears to conduct nuclear test, defying world powers
BEIJING -- North Korea appeared to conduct a nuclear test Tuesday in defiance of world powers, South Korean officials said, following through on the provocative step after weeks of threats.
South Korea said it had detected a man-made seismic event across its northern border.
“South Korean National Weather Service confirmed an artificial earthquake of 4.9 magnitude,” said Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry.
Kim said the blast was measured at 6 to 7 kilotons.
If confirmed, it would mark the third nuclear test for North Korea. It comes on the heels of its launch in mid-December of a multistage rocket that put a small satellite into orbit. The technology for a satellite launch is similar to that of an intercontinental ballistic missile, with the main difference being the type of payload it carries.
Experts believe North Korea is still far from making a nuclear weapon that can reach Alaska (or any other part of the United States) but that it is making strides quickly. Their satellite launch in December surprised observers with the accuracy of the orbit it achieved, although the transmission system carried by the satellite apparently failed.
From a technical standpoint, North Korea’s next challenge is to make a nuclear warhead small enough to be mounted on a missile.
The North Koreans have said their nuclear and missile programs are directed against the United States, the “archenemy of the Korean people,’’ as they put it in a recent pronouncement. They said the current test was necessitated by the expanded sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council at the urging of the U.S.
“It is a lame excuse,’’ said Daniel Pinkston of the International Crisis Group in Seoul. “Nuclear capability is something they want, something they feel they need. It fits into their entire doctrine.”
Tibor Toth, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna, said his organization had “picked up evidence of an unusual seismic event” in North Korea.
“The event shows explosion-like characteristics and its location is roughly congruent with the 2006 and 2009 . . . nuclear tests. For now, further data and analysis are necessary to establish what kind of event this is,” Toth said.
“If confirmed as a nuclear test, this act would constitute a clear threat to international peace and security, and challenges efforts made to strengthen global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation, in particular by ending nuclear testing.”
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported that North Korea on Monday notified China and the U.S. about its planned test.
The tremor occurred deep in the mountains of North Hamgyong province, near the village of Punggye-ri about 80 miles from the Chinese border, according Yonhap.
It could be some days before scientists know how large or what type of nuclear device was detonated. The last two North Korean nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009, used plutonium from the now-closed nuclear reactor at Yongbyon, but the country also has a program to make highly enriched uranium.
If in fact North Korea has mastered the production of highly enriched uranium -- which is made with centrifuges -- it could have access to a much larger reserve of fissile material than previously thought. Highly enriched uranium programs are also easier to conceal in underground tunnels or caves, out of sight of weapons inspectors and spy satellites.
Experts believe North Korea has from 24 to 42 kilograms of plutonium, which would be enough to make four to eight bombs like the one dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, in World War II.
The North Korea nuclear test is another irritant in unsettling times in Northeast Asia, where China is sparring with neighbors over islands and Japan is debating whether to revise its pacifist post-World War II constitution.
China’s admonishments against the North Korean weapons program have been more assertive than in the past. A test now, during Chinese New Year celebrations, is likely to be considered particularly provocative by Beijing. There was no immediate comment from China.
“If North Korea engages in further nuclear tests, China will not hesitate to reduce its assistance to North Korea,’’ warned the Global Times, a newspaper affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party, in a recent editorial.
In the international community, there has been much disappointment that North Korea’s new leader, 30-year-old Kim Jong Un, is following the same course as his father, the late Kim Jong Il, who made the weapons program the centerpiece of his regime.
“Although there has been talk of change within North Korea society with this young leader, through the last year there has been no sign -- no change in the way the budgets are spent, the laws or education -- to back it up,’’ said Park Syung-je, a North Korea analyst with the Seoul-based Asia Strategy Institute. “Nothing has changed.’’
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Special correspondent Jung-yoon Choi in Seoul contributed to this report.
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4cf86bd4f422b16dd09781ba4956c747 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-feb-14-la-fg-wn-pistorius-remains-in-jail-facing-murder-charge-20130214-story.html | Oscar Pistorius remains in jail facing murder charge | Oscar Pistorius remains in jail facing murder charge
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- South African athlete Oscar Pistorius, who made history last year as the first double amputee runner to compete in the Olympics using prosthetic blades, will spend the night in jail Thursday after he was charged with murder in the death of his girlfriend at his house, prosecutors said.
The National Prosecuting Authority said Pistorius would remain in custody until his hearing Friday, when police intend to oppose bail.
Reeva Steenkamp, a 30-year-old model, died after being shot several times in the head and arm in Pistorius’ house in an upscale suburb in Pretoria.
PHOTOS: Pistorius in the London Olympics
Pistorius was ushered from the home by police Thursday morning with a gray hoodie covering his head and obscuring most of his face.
South Africans were in shock about the accusation against Pistorius, who became a hero during his long battle for the right to compete in the Olympics. After a controversy on whether the blades he uses to walk and run gave him an advantage in races, Pistorius was granted the right to compete in the London 2012 Olympic Games.
South Africa has one of the world’s highest rates of murder and violent crime, and many South Africans keep guns at home to guard against intruders.
The Afrikaans-language newspaper Beeld suggested that Pistorius mistook his girlfriend for a burglar and killed her accidentally.
However, a police spokeswoman, Brig. Denise Beukes, said police were “surprised” at reports the killing was accidental, adding that that version hadn’t come from police, according to the South African Press Assn.
“I confirm there had been previous incidents of a domestic nature at his place,” said Beukes, adding that police couldn’t comment on the decision to oppose bail.
Beukes said police had interviewed neighbors who heard sounds at Pistorius’ home earlier in the evening, and also at the time the incident reportedly took place.
Pistorius’ father, Henke Pistorius, said his son was sad. But the older Pistorius said he didn’t know the facts.
“I don’t know nothing. It will be extremely obnoxious and rude to speculate,” he said in a radio interview. “If anyone makes a statement, it will have to be Oscar.”
An advertisement for Nike, one of Pistorius’ major sponsors, was removed from his official website Thursday. It had shown the athlete in a green lycra athletic suit and the slogan, “I am the bullet in the chamber.”
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68bf9c6199222cb02c529762f1f052e5 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-feb-15-la-fg-pope-italian-20130216-story.html | Italians hoping for a homegrown pope | Italians hoping for a homegrown pope
VATICAN CITY — He’s God’s own man, but Italians think he should be theirs too.
Now, after a 35-year hiccup, they have a good shot at making that true again. As the derby begins to replace Pope Benedict XVI, who stunned the world this week by announcing his intention to retire at the end of the month, Italy is aiming to resume the line of homegrown pontiffs who reigned for more than 450 years until John Paul II, a Pole, came along in 1978.
Italians figure high on the list of likely successors to the German-born Benedict and, by a wide margin, form the single largest national bloc — though far from a majority — among the cardinals who will choose the next occupant of St. Peter’s throne.
But chances of a glorious restoration are tempered by strong candidates from other regions, missteps by senior Italians in the Vatican and the reality that the center of gravity of the global church has shifted, perhaps permanently, away from Europe. Many Roman Catholics believe that in the 21st century their leadership would be better off a little less Roman and a lot more catholic.
“Personally I think it’d be cool to have a North American or African pope, even if they are conservative,” said Carla Mazzone, 20, an American exchange student who lined up outside St. Peter’s Basilica to attend Benedict’s last public Mass on Ash Wednesday. “It would make things more global, kind of like when Obama became president.”
Vatican-watchers have identified some serious contenders from outside Europe to be the 266th pontiff, including prelates from Canada, Ghana and Argentina (though the last was born to Italian parents).
Yet the still-speculative list of top papabili, or wannabe popes, shows Italy to be hugely overrepresented compared to the proportion with Italian Catholics in the worldwide church.
At least three Italians are being touted now as potential pontiffs: Foremost is 71-year-old Angelo Scola, the well-respected and fiercely intellectual archbishop of Milan, who enjoys a global profile among the devout. Other possibilities are Angelo Bagnasco, the archbishop of Genoa, who can be outspoken in several languages; and Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, a skillful communicator who blogs, tweets and recently quoted singer Amy Winehouse (“Love is a losing game”).
The elevation of any of those men, experts say, would signal a determination to keep the church going in the conservative direction set by John Paul and Benedict, toward orthodoxy and core values and away from bold or liberal reforms.
The Italians’ prospects could be boosted by the fact that 28 of the 117 cardinals eligible to vote for the next pope hail from Italy. That’s nearly a quarter of the total, and exceeds the number from Africa, Asia and Australia combined. The United States has 11.
“The match will be played … between Italian cardinals and the others,” wrote Marco Ansaldo, Vatican correspondent for the newspaper La Repubblica. “A lot of the faithful expect the return of an Italian pope.”
Besides the cardinals, the “princes” of the church, Italians occupy crucial positions within the Curia, the Vatican administration. The No. 2 in the hierarchy is Tarcisio Bertone, who will manage the Holy See during the interregnum; his newly appointed legal advisor, another key post, is a countryman.
Fellow Italians will also run the cardinals’ group discussions before the conclave to choose the pope — sessions during which would-be candidates subtly, or not so subtly, try to impress their mitered peers — and then the all-important conclave itself, which opens in mid-March.
But wielding so much influence is a double-edged sword. Some of the Italians in senior posts have been blamed for embarrassing blunders such as insensitive remarks about clerical sex-abuse allegations and the scandal over leaked papal documents that suggest power struggles and corruption at the highest levels of the Vatican.
In November, Benedict’s appointment of six new cardinals, none of them from Europe, was interpreted as a rebuke over the missteps, as well as a redressing of the imbalance of having named seven Italians as cardinals the previous February.
More important in picking a pope, experts say, is finding a firm leader not afraid to shake up an ancient and, in many ways, dysfunctional institution resistant to change.
“You need a strong man,” said Roberto Regoli, a church historian at Gregorian University in Rome. “His country of origin is not significant. You need some who’s totally prepared and with the ability to govern.”
Many Italians insist that one of their own would be best-placed to do that. Although the Vatican has become more international in personnel and outlook in recent years, it remains an institution steeped in Italian culture and intrigue, which can be difficult for outsiders to navigate.
Under the German Benedict, ironically, the Italian influence has become even more pronounced through his high-ranking appointments. Benedict owes his own elevation as pope in 2005 partly to an Italian — the then-vicar of Rome, who rallied support behind him, said Matthew Bunson, editor of the Catholic Almanac.
“There is very much an Italian flavor to the Curia,” Bunson said. “Italian is the lingua franca of the Vatican and remains so; no official can arrive without knowing or learning very quickly Italian, to varying degrees. ... And when you move down in the ranks, it’s still very Italian, the members of the bureaucracy.”
But there’s no guarantee that the Italian cardinals will line up behind one of their members as the next pope simply out of national solidarity, Bunson said. Factionalism in the Vatican crosses borders.
In the end, the outcome will depend on a complicated constellation of factors — geographical, theological, personal — and so remains unpredictable.
“We’ve had two non-Italians” in a row, Bunson said. “Historically, we could be looking at an effort to return to Italians, but I think that in a way, it always comes down to the person.”
henry.chu@latimes.com
Times news assistant Janet Stobart in London contributed to this report.
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e1f3f7697cfc98e59855aabdcd527f28 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-feb-17-la-fg-wn-pope-blesses-thousands-20130217-story.html | Pope blesses thousands at Vatican as details of ailments emerge | Pope blesses thousands at Vatican as details of ailments emerge
VATICAN CITY -- A week after Pope Benedict announced his resignation, more than 50,000 supporters jammed into St. Peter’s Square on Sunday for his next-to-last weekly blessing, as it emerged the aging pontiff may have gone blind in one eye.
Addressing the cheering crowd, which was larger than usual for the Sunday Angelus, Benedict appeared to criticize the infighting that has plagued the Vatican during his reign.
“The church, which is mother and teacher, calls on all its members to renew their spirit, turn back firmly toward God and ignore pride and egoism to live in love,” he said, before asking in Spanish for prayers to be said for the next pope.
PHOTOS: The cardinals who might be pope
Benedict, 85, shocked the Vatican and the world Feb. 11 by announcing that he would step down at the end of the month due to failing health, although Vatican insiders have also cited a toll taken on the pope by power struggles behind the Vatican walls.
New evidence is emerging of Benedict’s declining physical condition. Peter Seewald, a German journalist who has interviewed Benedict on numerous occasions, said that when he last saw the pope 10 weeks ago, his hearing had deteriorated and he appeared to have gone blind in his left eye.
“His body had become so thin that the tailors had difficulty in keeping up with newly fitted clothes. ... I’d never seen him so exhausted-looking, so worn down,” he told Focus, a German magazine, on Saturday.
Seewald quoted the pope as saying: “I’m an old man and the strength is ebbing. I think what I’ve done is enough.” Asked if he was considering retiring, Benedict replied, “That depends on how much my physical strength will force me to that.”
PHOTOS: Throngs turn out for Benedict’s blessing
Supporters turning out to hear Benedict speak Sunday said the pope had come to recognize he was no longer able to carry out his duties. “It’s a human decision and I am here to pay my respects and say goodbye,” said Michaela Priori, 35, a Rome office worker.
Benedict will hold his last blessing in St. Peter’s next Sunday. That will be followed by a final general audience in the piazza Feb. 27, a day before he is flown by helicopter from the Vatican to the papal summer residence outside Rome to start his retirement. Two months later he is due to move into a former monastery in the Vatican’s large gardens when it has been refurbished.
The conclave at which cardinals elect the next pope is due 15 to 20 days after a pope dies, and an article in the apostolic constitution governing conclaves says that interval is also required if the pope resigns.
However, officials are now studying whether the date can be brought forward since no time is required for a papal funeral and the 117 cardinals due at the conclave are already making plans to travel to Rome. A speedier conclave would allow the next pope to be named before Easter.
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35c3d9b502d82585d6ff7720fbc6d8ba | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-feb-19-la-fg-wn-retirement-home-pope-20130219-story.html | Four floors, city views, garden: A retirement home fit for a pope | Four floors, city views, garden: A retirement home fit for a pope
VATICAN CITY -- Spectacular views of Rome, stands of palm and magnolia trees, the Sistine Chapel close by -- these are the amenities awaiting the first pope to step down in more than 600 years after he moves into his retirement home this spring.
A week after Pope Benedict XVI shocked the world by announcing his resignation, hard-hatted construction workers were rushing Tuesday to ready his intended residence amid the perfectly trimmed lawns of Vatican City.
Chutes attached to windows of the four-story building were prepared to unload rubble as workers appeared to gut the building and perform a complete redecoration before Benedict starts a secluded life of prayer there.
On Feb. 28, his last day on the job, the pontiff will be flown by helicopter to Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence south of Rome. But when the builders are finished at the Vatican, probably by the end of April, he will take up residence in his new home, which once housed the Vatican’s head gardener.
The home is connected to a structure built on the orders of Pope John Paul II in the 1990s to house cloistered nuns.
Benedict, the lay nuns who assist him and his secretary, Archbishop Georg Ganswein, will take over the two buildings, which sit on rising ground toward the rear of the Vatican’s huge gardens, out of sight of the thousands of tourists and pilgrims visiting the Sistine Chapel.
The house’s roof terrace affords spectacular views of the garden’s pines, palms and magnolias to the cupola of St. Peter’s Basilica. Beyond, the city of Rome was framed on Tuesday by a backdrop of snowcapped Apennine peaks.
Gardeners were at work around the house trimming the large cactus plants that proliferate in the garden and that line the curving road down to the imposing offices of Vatican City’s administrators, which once accommodated visiting royalty.
Further down, toward the back of St. Peter’s and a gate leading out into the streets of Rome, is the Casa Santa Marta, a modern building that will house the 117 cardinals due to attend the conclave to elect Benedict’s successor.
“The cardinals used to stay in the Apostolic Palace here, but they were 10 to a bathroom and things got very difficult during the hot summer conclave of 1978,” said Benedikt Steinschulte, an official at the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communication.
During the conclave, vehicular traffic will be banned within the Vatican whenever the cardinals are on the move -- going to the Sistine Chapel to cast their ballots for a new pope or trooping back to the Casa Santa Marta for lunch.
The aim is to prevent cardinals from discussing the voting with outsiders. Tweeting has also been forbidden and electronic jammers will prevent them from using their mobile phones until Benedict’s successor is elected.
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afdb4a3785436afefa38c9fbacd6d5f3 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-feb-20-la-fg-wn-mexico-human-rights-report-20130220-story.html | Mexican forces involved in kidnappings, disappearances, report charges | Mexican forces involved in kidnappings, disappearances, report charges
MEXICO CITY -- State security forces in Mexico have participated in the kidnappings and disappearances of a large number of missing citizens, and the government’s failure to investigate most cases only compounds the atrocity, a new human rights report alleged Wednesday.
The comprehensive report by the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch presents a scathing indictment of the administration of former President Felipe Calderon, who left office Dec. 1. However, it also poses urgent challenges for his successor, Enrique Peña Nieto.
Against the backdrop of a military-led offensive on powerful drug-trafficking cartels, an estimated 70,000 people were killed during Calderon’s six-year term, according to authorities and media reports. Thousands more -- possibly as many as 20,000 -- disappeared, never to be heard from again.
The missing represent what Human Rights Watch called a festering unknown that causes enduring anguish for the families.
Many were kidnapped by drug gangs, but all state security branches, including the military and federal and local police, are also accused of “enforced disappearances” of many victims, Human Rights Watch said. The government ignored the problem, failed to take steps to stop it and often blamed the victims, the report said.
“The result was the most severe crisis of enforced disappearances in Latin America in decades,” Human Rights Watch said.
The 176-page report corroborates reporting by the Los Angeles Times and stacks of complaints filed by families of the missing in almost every state of the republic.
There was no immediate comment on the report from officials with the current or former government.
“What sets these crimes apart is that, for as long as the fate of the victim remains unknown, they are ongoing,” the report said. “Each day that passes is another that authorities have failed to find victims, and another day that families continue to suffer the anguish of not knowing what happened to a loved one.”
Human Rights Watch focused on 249 cases of men and women who had gone missing since 2006. In slightly more than half, or 149 cases, state security forces were responsible for the disappearance by participating “directly in the crime, or indirectly through support or acquiescence,” the report said.
The findings were based on interviews with witnesses, families and authorities as well as documents and other material.
In several particularly chilling examples, authorities kidnapped the victims and then turned them over to drug gangs or other criminal networks, the report said.
Human Rights Watch said the cases examined were a small sample and that “there is no question that there are thousands more.”
Atty. Gen. Jesus Murillo Karam said late last year that there were “thousands” of people who disappeared on Calderon’s watch. A list compiled by the attorney general’s office during the Calderon administration, based on reports filed across the country, gave a total of around 20,000 missing people.
The list was never released to the public but was made available to The Times last year.
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804523291949f9fa7de6fc3b8885c9bd | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-feb-21-la-na-ofa-action-20130222-story.html | Obama advocacy group plans Day of Action | Obama advocacy group plans Day of Action
WASHINGTON — The nonprofit advocacy group that inherited President Obama’s grass-roots campaign infrastructure faces the first real test of its political might Friday, when it holds a series of volunteer-driven events in support of the president’s gun violence reduction plan.
With the so-called Day of Action, its first national mobilization since launching in January, Organizing for Action is adopting a tactic from Obama’s reelection bid, which used such events to engage its 2.2 million volunteers.
The group’s supporters plan more than 100 activities, including rallies, phone banks and candlelight vigils in 80 congressional districts, hoping to prove that an organization built to elect a candidate can be effectively refocused on legislative goals.
But there are already signs of challenges in activating supporters around a policy fight — especially one that is still wending its way through Congress.
Organizing for Action said Friday’s events are aimed at boosting support to close background-check loopholes and pressure holdouts in Congress. The group will run Web ads targeting more than a dozen legislators.
Of all the planks in Obama’s plan, which includes an assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines, background checks enjoy the highest level of public approval, with support surpassing 90% in some surveys.
But Organizing for Action’s efforts come before a background check bill has even been introduced in the Senate, where gun control measures have the best chance. Two Democrats — Sens. Charles E. Schumer of New York and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia — are working to craft the bill with Republican Sens. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Mark Kirk of Illinois. Negotiations have been painstaking, snagged by logistical questions of how to perform checks and maintain sales records for private transfers.
The White House was not expecting a bill to be ready at this point, according to an administration official, but was hoping the pressure would keep the process moving.
Without a Senate bill, many Organizing for Action supporters are using Friday’s events to push a House bill on background checks with dim prospects for passage.
“That’s the bill that’s the farthest along,” said Kim Hurdman, organizer of a chapter in Morris County, N.J., that plans to deliver petitions to the district office of Republican Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen urging him to back the measure, written by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.).
Others are using the Day of Action to draw attention to local gun control efforts rather than the administration’s agenda. Volunteers in several Maryland communities will be holding phone banks urging people to attend a March 1 rally in Annapolis to support an ambitious gun control package championed by Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat.
“Our representatives are already on board, so we just felt that focusing on a state action on this topic would be the best thing to do,” said Carlotta Joyner, who is setting up a chapter in Frederick County, Md.
Organizing for Action spokeswoman Katie Hogan said most of Friday’s events would be about background checks, but other activities would still bolster Obama’s agenda.
“We strongly believe that our supporters will continue to be more engaged if we allow them to engage on the specific issues they care about,” she said. “It isn’t one-size-fits-all.”
Similar Days of Action may be held as often once a month, said Hogan, who declined to comment on how OFA would measure the success of such events.
Neeta Datt, who served as a regional volunteer leader for the Obama campaign in 2012 and is leading the Organizing for Action chapter in Silver Spring, Md., said making the transition to issue advocacy had been an adjustment.
“It’s a little more open-ended, and not everybody is supporting every issue,” said Datt, whose chapter is organizing supporters for the March 1 rally in Annapolis.
“But the energy is still there,” she added. “People still want to be involved.”
Sustaining the passion of 2012 is essential for Organizing for Action to avoid the fate of its predecessor, Organizing for America, an offshoot of Obama’s 2008 campaign. That group lay low in the initial months of Obama’s presidency, then drew criticism for what some viewed as tentative engagement in the fight over healthcare legislation.
There are already signs that the new Organizing for Action aims to have a more robust presence, effectively serving as the president’s outside political arm. Its staff now runs Obama’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, and its leaders have been courting top campaign fundraisers to bundle money as part of a national finance committee.
After last week’s State of the Union, Obama called in to 1,200 Organizing for Action-organized house parties to urge supporters to keep up the fight.
“I hope what I said tonight resonated with you, but remember that me saying it doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “To get it passed, to get it signed, to get it implemented, to get it done — that’s going to require a big push from you guys.”
Still, some supporters said it would take a sustained effort to keep volunteers engaged in legislative issues.
“It’s going to be a little bit of a push, because we’re not used to it,” said Adrienne Halpert, an art gallery owner in Patagonia, Ariz., who is hosting an open house in her shop Friday for Organizing for Action volunteers. “It’s got to be in consumable bits, things that we can see a result.”
Hampering the efforts of the fledging chapters is the fact that supporters have not yet been given access to the voter and volunteer databases key to their efforts during the campaign. Officials have said the tools will be available to chapters that raise a certain amount of money.
“Boy, do we miss it,” said Joyner, whose group organized Friday’s phone bank using a file of volunteer contacts they had compiled during the campaign. “We’re just not waiting. We’re just figuring things out and inventing ways to do all this. Then if we get tools and staff, great.”
matea.gold@latimes.com
melanie.mason@latimes.com
Kathleen Hennessey in the Washington bureau contributed to this report.
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f4d523952216d0c6d72b44350a2bbffc | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-feb-26-la-fg-wn-dennis-rodman-basketball-north-korea-20130226-story.html | Dennis Rodman tests out ‘basketball diplomacy’ in North Korea | Dennis Rodman tests out ‘basketball diplomacy’ in North Korea
It’s a story so strange it could have been cobbled together through Mad Libs: Flamboyant basketball star Dennis Rodman and some of the showy Harlem Globetrotters arrived Tuesday in the isolated country of North Korea, in a filmed trip billed as “basketball diplomacy.”
Bringing the pierced and provocative Rodman into regimented North Korea is aimed at “finding common ground on the basketball court,” said Shane Smith, the founder of a Brooklyn-based media company, Vice, which is filming the unusual delegation for an upcoming HBO special.
“These channels of cultural communication might appear untraditional, and perhaps they are, but we think it’s important just to keep the lines open,” Smith said in a statement Tuesday. “And if Washington isn’t going to send their Generals then we’ll send our Globetrotters.”
Fans will recognize that as a double-entendre, since the Washington Generals are the opposing team who exist solely to get defeated by the Globetrotters night after night.
The towering “basketball diplomats” plan to stop by national monuments, visit an animation studio and run a basketball camp for North Korean children, according to Vice.
The company said it coordinated the weeklong trip with “DPRK representatives” (referring to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and hinted that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might even attend a scrimmage. The U.S. State Department had not been contacted about the trip, a senior administration official told the Associated Press.
Rodman and his fellow basketball stars are the latest American figures to make a foray into the impoverished and repressive country known as the Hermit Kingdom, following in the footsteps of former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson and Google executive Eric Schmidt.
Whether such trips are a good idea is sharply debated. The State Department warned Schmidt and Robinson that their January visit would be “unhelpful,” sending the wrong signal to the country after a provocative December missile launch. Some feared the visit could be misunderstood as an official gesture by the United States.
The Globetrotters’ trip comes at an even tenser time, weeks after North Korea defied world powers and triggered tightened sanctions by setting off its third nuclear test. The country continues to be excoriated over its grim human rights record of gulags and torture, and some experts question whether tourism merely legitimizes the regime.
Yet other scholars said the trip could be helpful at best and probably harmless at worst, allowing at least some North Koreans another rare glimpse of the outside world. Though even the most enthusiastic proponents say the filmed trip is unlikely to spur any immediate change, it could plant the seed for more communication and exchange in the future.
“Purely a stick with no carrot is not a productive policy. It’s important to send both messages -– that the U.S. is not pleased with North Korea’s latest actions, but to leave the door open,” said Charles K. Armstrong, director of the Center for Korean Research at Columbia University.
“It also helps expose North Koreans to an image of the U.S. that is not the relentless negative one you see in official propaganda, showing them Americans are normal human beings -- although perhaps ‘normal human being’ doesn’t quite apply to Dennis Rodman,” he added.
For North Korea, in turn, the “basketball diplomats” give it another chance to boast that Western celebrities see Pyongyang as an important place. “This is a calibrated message to the outside world that if diplomats don’t want to come to us, industry leaders will,” said Jae H. Ku, director of the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
Feeding into that kind of North Korean propaganda and visiting its monuments helps “reinforce the personality cult,” North Korea scholar B.R. Myers wrote to the Washington Post, arguing that chances for real exchange are crimped by the fact that “all the tourists are talking to the same tiny bunch of hardened cadres, guides and spies.”
“It is even worse when Americans succumb, as far too many do, to their guides’ pressure to bow to a monument or lay plastic flowers at one. To the groups of schoolchildren standing around this is a manifestation of American tribute or penance,” Myers told the Post.
Curious as the Globetrotters trip might seem, basketball is a rare shared pastime between Pyongyang and Washington, with late leader Kim Jong Il known to be an NBA fan.
Rodman once played alongside Michael Jordan, a famous figure even in the cloistered country: A basketball signed by Jordan holds a prized place in a North Korean display of gifts from foreign leaders, proffered by then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright more than a decade ago. An astronomically tall North Korean basketball player, the 7-foot-9 Ri Myong Hun, reportedly dubbed himself “Michael” after the famed Chicago Bulls star.
An informal poll of North Koreans shows that the notoriously colorful and controversial Rodman is not as well known, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. Rodman appeared to be shelving his “bad boy” persona for the trip, showing up in sweatpants as he arrived Tuesday in Pyongyang and telling the news agency he didn’t want to stir up trouble.
The real test of whether such trips make a difference is if more North Koreans venture outside the country as well, said Leon Sigal, director of the Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project at the Social Science Research Council. But Ku said there was probably little effect either way.
“This is not a regime that’s going to behave because we prevent CEOs or sports stars or actors from going,” Ku said. On the other hand, “if one hopes that somehow these exchanges will somehow foster better relations -- perhaps. But that will take decades.”
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882d16ebd810caffbd688e90385b02b2 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-01-la-fg-wn-indian-rape-death-fallout-20121231-story.html | Death of Indian rape victim spurs reflection, calls for reform | Death of Indian rape victim spurs reflection, calls for reform
The gang rape that took the life of a 23-year-old Indian medical student has catapulted the young woman into martyrdom and galvanized an outraged nation to demand better protection of its women.
In place of New Year’s Eve revelry, Indians gathered in solemn candlelight vigils Monday night, appealing for tougher laws and a change of the national mind-set that has long tolerated sexual assaults as an unavoidable evil in India’s teeming urban centers.
Politicians and human rights advocates have a long road ahead to reform antiquated laws that only vaguely define sexual assaults as criminal behavior and to compel law enforcement and medical workers to cease subjecting victims to “virginity tests” and other humiliations.
Such insensitive handling probably explains the low incidence of reporting rape in India despite women’s insistence that it is so pervasive as to chase them from city streets after dark.
National Crime Records Bureau statistics show 24,200 rapes reported in 2011, or fewer than two cases per 100,000 population. That compares, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, with 27 per 100,000 in the United States, 50-plus per 100,000 in many Caribbean countries and more than 60 per 100,000 in Scandinavia, where crimes are reliably prosecuted, encouraging victims to pursue their attackers.
Even in the emotional aftermath of the woman’s death Saturday, some officials have continued to blame the victims. An opposition lawmaker, Banwari Lal Singhal of Rajasthan, proposed banning skirts for schoolgirls and making them wear trousers to avoid provoking unwanted advances. Meanwhile, the lawmaker’s party, Bharatiya Janata, called for punishing rapists with chemical castration and for imposing the death penalty for the most heinous sexual crimes.
In the Dec. 16 attack that cost the medical student her life, five men and a teenage boy lured her and her boyfriend into a bus that appeared to be a public commuter vehicle. Inside, the men beat the couple with metal rods and raped the woman with the blunt instruments, inflicting irreparable organ damage.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has named a former Supreme Court judge to head an investigation of the attack and to propose legal reforms. Both the ruling Congress Party and Bharatiya Janata have called for laws that would require more responsive treatment of sexual assault victims and fast-tracking of criminal cases that currently take as long as a decade to make their way through backlogged courts.
“Today we pledge that she will get justice, that her fight will not have been in vain,” Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi said Monday in a national broadcast. She called for “swift and fitting punishment for the perpetrators” and collective national resolve to eradicate sexual violence.
The Times of India reported a surge in demands by women for handgun permits, as well as soaring registrations for self-defense classes. But in testimony to the pervasiveness of violence against women, another fatal gang rape was reported in West Bengal state.
“It cannot be business as usual anymore,” insisted an editorial in the Hindustan Times. The Hindu Business Line website said the student’s tragic death “jolted our collective consciousness to stop brushing under the carpet the harsh and brutal reality of how 21st Century India treats its women.”
India lacks uniform guidelines for medical treatment and examination of sexual assault victims, often exposing the traumatized women to degrading procedures, said Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch director for South Asia. She pointed to a 2010 report by her group that documented rampant incidents of medical personnel making “unscientific” manual evaluations of whether rape victims were “habituated to sexual intercourse.”
A New York-based human rights group, Sikhs for Justice, expressed condolences over the New Delhi rape victim’s death and appealed to the Indian government to break its 28-year silence on the sexual assaults on Sikh women after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. In retaliation for the killing by two Sikh bodyguards, a weeklong rampage left 3,000 dead, untold numbers of Sikh women raped and Sikh-owned businesses looted and burned.
The top U.N. human rights official called for “urgent and rational debate” on legislative changes and reform of a misogynistic national mind-set.
“What is needed is a new public consciousness and more effective and sensitive enforcement of the law in the interests of women,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.
She reiterated a plea from the office’s affiliated Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women for India to amend its legal definition of rape from the vague allusion to “offending the modesty of women” to more specifically outlaw physical assault. The group has also urged officials to recognize marital rape as a criminal offense.
“This is a national problem, affecting women of all classes and castes, and will require national solutions,” said Navi, a South African of Indian descent. “Let us hope that 2013 will be the year the tide is turned on violence against women in India and all women can walk free without fear.”
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A foreign correspondent for 25 years, Carol J. Williams traveled to and reported from more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
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b0426bc55b0f728bd20b4e79e0e71f85 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-01-la-fg-wn-ivory-coast-stampede-20130101-story.html | At least 60 dead in Ivory Coast stampede | At least 60 dead in Ivory Coast stampede
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — At least 60 people died and about 200 were injured Tuesday in a stampede that followed a fireworks display at a football stadium in the Ivory Coast capital, Abidjan, according to emergency officials.
Most of the dead and injured were children and teenagers.
The stampede happened in the early hours of the morning as crowds were leaving the Felix Houphouet Boigny Stadium after a New Year’s Eve fireworks display ended about 2 a.m. It is not known what triggered the stampede, officials said.
Local television RTI reported that the crowd panicked after the fireworks ended, triggering the massing of people in the Plateau neighborhood, the downtown area of Abidjan.
“In the crush, people were walked over and suffocated by the crowd,” Issa Sako, head of the military rescue effort, told RTI. Distraught parents combed hospitals and morgues searching for their children.
“I saw all the bodies, but I cannot find my son. I don’t know what to do,” said one parent, Mamadou Sanogo, of her 9-year-old boy, according to local French-language news website L’infodrome.
Local hospital staff said the death toll was likely to rise due to serious injuries and the lack of blood for transfusions, according to news agencies. Government officials said the cause of the crush was being investigated.
There were blood stains and lost shoes scattered about the scene after dawn, Reuters news service reported.
“My two children came here yesterday. I told them not to come but they didn’t listen. They came when I was sleeping. What will I do?” Assetou Toure, a cleaner, told Reuters. She did not know if her children survived.
One woman who narrowly escaped being crushed told Agence France-Presse she went to fireworks display with her two children.
“I don’t know what happened but I found myself lying on the ground with people stepping on me, pulling my hair or tearing my clothes,” said the woman, who gave her name only as Zeinab. She said she “hurt all over.”
She found her small son in a hospital bed looking dazed. The fate of the other child was not clear.
Tuesday’s catastrophe was much worse than an Abidjan soccer stadium stampede in 2009 that killed 19, when sporting officials sold too many seats to a qualifying match for the soccer World Cup.
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a4b0ad90c78d18f8339287ed695f6672 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-01-la-pn-house-republicans-fiscal-cliff-deal-20130101-story.html | House Republicans sharply divided on ‘fiscal cliff’ deal | House Republicans sharply divided on ‘fiscal cliff’ deal
WASHINGTON -- A sharply divided House Republican leadership struggled to reach agreement on a measure to avoid part of the so-called “fiscal cliff,” as key members said they could not support the compromise approved early Tuesday by the Senate.
In a closed-door meeting of Republican House members, Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 Republican in the chamber, said he could not support the Senate-passed bill, according to two GOP lawmakers. Other Republicans said the bill would have to be amended and returned to the Senate.
Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.), chairman of the Financial Services Committee, emerged from the meeting saying he would “shocked” if House doesn’t amend the bill this afternoon and send it back to Senate.
“We’re building a consensus that we have to address spending,” he said. “The president won his election; I also won my election.”
Such a plan would likely stall the bill for an indefinite period, as the Senate has gone into recess. The new Congress convenes on Thursday at noon. Further delays would be necessary if legislative action is not completed by then.
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Under existing law, tax rates on nearly all Americans went up on Tuesday. The impact of those new tax rates won’t be felt for a few days, but if Congress does not act to roll them back, economists have projected that the higher rates, coupled with spending cuts that also have taken effect, might be enough to tip the economy back into recession.
The Senate bill dealt only with the tax aspects of the year-end fiscal deadline. It rolled back income tax increases on all but the wealthiest Americans, limiting the hikes to individuals with incomes over $400,000 and couples with incomes over $450,000. But the bill deliberately did not address the spending side of the ledger, leaving that to a further debate over the next couple of months. That was one of several aspects of the bill causing problems among House Republicans.
“The lack of spending cuts in the Senate bill was a universal concern amongst members,” said Brendan Buck, spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio. “Conversations with members will continue throughout the afternoon on the path forward.”
Conservatives in the House objected to several parts of the bill that were key to gaining support of Democrats in the Senate, including the renewal of tax breaks for low-income Americans that were a top priority of President Obama.
Influential outside groups sent Republicans mixed signals. Grover Norquist, author of the pledge against tax increases that most Republican members of Congress have signed, recommending that the GOP fall in line and vote for the bill, while various tea party groups and the Heritage Foundation called for opposition.
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The official cost estimate by the Congressional Budget Office was also adding to the challenge of mustering Republican votes. The tax increases and spending cuts in the “fiscal cliff” would sharply reduce the deficit – too sharply in the eyes of most economists. By comparison with those measures, the Senate-passed legislation would make the deficit worse by nearly $330 billion for the 2013 fiscal year, and just shy of $4 trillion over the course of the next decade.
The main items that add to the deficit – at least in comparison with existing law – are the decisions to keep taxes low on 98% of American households and a permanent adjustment of the Alternative Minimum Tax to keep it from affecting millions of additional taxpayers.
Earlier in the day, Vice President Joe Biden held a closed-door session with Democratic members in which he called for party members to support the Senate bill despite their own concerns over elements of the bill.
Many liberal Democrats think the threshold the bill set for tax increases was too high. But House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) categorized the bill as “gigantic progress,” and called for Republicans to give it an up-or-down vote.
“Up until now, our speaker has said when the Senate acts, we will have a vote in the House,” Pelosi said.
Staff writer Michael A. Memoli contributed to this report
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694ff9dac5122600b128c4708b1898b0 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-02-la-fi-mo-airline-fines-20130102-story.html | Feds levied record fines against airlines in 2012 | Feds levied record fines against airlines in 2012
On the final day of the year, the U.S. Department of Transportation levied fines against two airlines that kept passengers stranded on delayed flights, pushing the number of violations issued against airlines in 2012 to a record.
The federal agency recorded 49 violations in 2012, totaling $3.6 million in fines, with the final two coming against Copa Airlines of Panama and California-based Virgin America. The previous high number of fines came in 2011, when the agency levied 47 violations, totaling about $3.3 million.
The agency issued a fine of $150,000 against Copa Airlines for leaving passengers stranded on a plane at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport for five hours and 34 minutes in June on a flight bound for Panama. The agency said passengers were not offered food until more than four hours into the delay, in violation of federal rules.
Virgin America was fined $55,000 for keeping passengers on a flight in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport for more than two hours without notifying them that they had the option of returning to the terminal, also a violation of federal rules.
In a statement, Virgin America said, “We do take this isolated incident seriously – and we’ve used this opportunity to reconfirm our established notification policy for aircraft delays at the gate.”
New rules establishing fines for keeping passengers stuck on domestic flights delayed on a tarmac took effect in April 2010. Rules for international flights took effect in 2011.
Four of the 49 fines issued last year were violations of the so-called tarmac delay rules, said Transportation Department spokesman Bill Mosley.
The other two airlines fined last year for tarmac delay violations in 2012 were Pakistan Airlines and JetBlue, he said.
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4bf7743ec87873412024de76e4c05e72 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-02-la-pn-chris-christie-sandy-aid-congress-20130102-story.html | Enraged Chris Christie blasts Boehner, House GOP over Sandy aid | Enraged Chris Christie blasts Boehner, House GOP over Sandy aid
WASHINGTON – Enraged over Congress’ failure to approve disaster relief for victims of Superstorm Sandy, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey unloaded Wednesday on House Speaker John A. Boehner and Republican lawmakers in Washington for putting “palace intrigue” ahead of their official responsibilities.
Washington politicians “will say whatever they have to say to get through the day,” Christie said, adding that, as a governor, he had “actual responsibilities” -- “unlike people in Congress.”
Christie, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, reserved his most blistering words for the Republican House speaker. He described Boehner, variously, as selfish, duplicitous and gutless for reversing course at the last minute on Tuesday night and refusing to allow a vote on a $60-billion aid package before the current Congress adjourned.
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Christie said that as a result of “the speaker’s irresponsible action,” there will be further delay in federal disaster aid to New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and other areas hit by the October storm. He pointed out that it had been 66 days since the storm hit and that areas struck by other hurricanes in recent years had received relief packages in far less time.
However, as outrage continued to pour in from elected officials in the affected area, Boehner agreed to hold a vote Friday to direct needed resources to the National Flood Insurance Program. And on Jan. 15, the first full legislative day of the 113th Congress, the House will consider the remaining supplemental request for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.
But that came after Christie dished out his cold outrage on members of his own party.
“Shame on you. Shame on Congress,” Christie said at a news conference in Trenton, the state capital. “It’s absolutely disgraceful, and I have to tell you, this used to be something that was not political. Disaster relief was something you didn’t play games with.” But “in this current atmosphere, [it’s] a potential piece of bait for the political game. It is why the American people hate Congress.”
At another point, he said of Republicans in Congress: “We’ve got people down there who use the citizens of this country like pawns on a chessboard.”
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“My party was responsible for this,” Christie said, charging “one set of Republicans was trying to prove something to another set,” and that Boehner was trying to “prove something. I hope he accomplished it.”
Christie, whose disaster-relief-themed efforts to reach across partisan lines to President Obama in the days leading up to the election angered many Republicans, said he did not think that was a factor in Boehner’s decision.
But the governor, who delivered the keynote address at last summer’s Republican National Convention and has helped raise money in recent years for fellow members of the party, did not rule out retaliating against his enemies in Washington.
“We’ll see. Primaries are an ugly thing,” he said.
[For the Record, 1:46 p.m. PST Jan. 2: This post has been updated to include the House’s new plan to vote on Sandy aid.]
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e707ce7deab2882fa68816a0e84dd786 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-02-la-pn-obama-illegal-immigration-residency-20130102-story.html | White House eases path to residency for some illegal immigrants | White House eases path to residency for some illegal immigrants
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration eased the way Wednesday for illegal immigrants who are immediate relatives of American citizens to apply for permanent residency, a change that could affect as many as 1 million of the estimated 11 million immigrants unlawfully in the U.S.
A new rule issued by the Department of Homeland Security aims to reduce the time illegal immigrants are separated from their American families while seeking legal status, immigration officials said.
Beginning March 4, when the changes go into effect, illegal immigrants who can demonstrate that time apart from an American spouse, child or parent would create “extreme hardship,” can start the application process for a legal visa without leaving the U.S.
Once approved, applicants would be required to leave the U.S. briefly in order to return to their native country and pick up their visa.
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The change is the latest move by the administration to use its executive powers to revise immigration procedures without Congress passing a law. In August, the Obama administration launched a program to halt the deportation of young people brought to the U.S. unlawfully as children.
The new procedures could reduce a family’s time apart to one week in some cases, officials said. In recent years a few relatives of U.S. citizens have been killed in foreign countries while waiting for their applications to be resolved.
“The law is designed to avoid extreme hardship to U.S. citizens, which is precisely what this rule achieves,” said Alejandro Mayorkas, director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, in a statement. “The change will have a significant impact on American families by greatly reducing the time family members are separated from those they rely upon,” he said.
Until now, many immigrants who might seek legal status do not pursue it out of fear they will not receive a “hardship waiver” of strict U.S. immigration laws: An illegal immigrant who has overstayed a visa for more than six months is barred from reentering the U.S. for three years; those who overstay more than a year are barred for 10 years.
The new rule allows those relatives to apply for the waiver without first leaving the U.S.
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f8c3b7427e6ace77f05d6927d3150127 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-07-la-na-oswald-apartment-20130108-story.html | Dallas razing apartments where Kennedy assassin Oswald lived | Dallas razing apartments where Kennedy assassin Oswald lived
This week, Dallas city officials began razing an apartment complex once home to President Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.
The site does not have any official historic designation, according to the owner and city documents. But the decision has still caused a stir in a city where sites related to the assassination have proved a major draw, including Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was shot, and the Texas School Book Depository, where Oswald lay in wait. Dealey Plaza is now a national historic district and the book depository houses the Sixth Floor Museum, which sees 325,000 visitors a year.
Apartment building owner Jane Bryant said she was shocked when a reporter notified her that the city was taking action Monday. She said she had been trying to salvage valuable pine and white oak from the building, as well as fixtures from the apartment where Oswald stayed, and thought she still had two weeks before the city intervened.
“The city of Dallas told me if I was making progress on the building, they would stop it,” she said of the demolition, choking up. “They agreed to give me more time.”
Bryant said that she was trying to contact her lawyer Monday to file a restraining order to halt the demolition, and that police on site refused to let her into the building.
“I’ve been out there all day battling with them, trying to salvage historic items. It is historical — it’s in the Warren Commission,” she said, referring to the report produced by the federal commission that investigated Kennedy’s slaying.
She has already removed and sold some items from the apartment where Oswald lived, including the bathtub and toilet.
She worried Monday that scavengers might make off with what’s left. The building is full of 1925 yellow heart pine and white oak, she said.
“People are going to be in there tonight stealing,” she said.
The decision to demolish the apartment comes at an odd moment. Dallas is gearing up to officially mark the assassination for the first time on Nov. 22, the 50th anniversary.
Oswald shared Apartment 2 at 600 Elsbeth St. with his wife, Marina, from November 1962 to March 1963. It was one of three places Oswald lived in the Dallas neighborhood of Oak Cliff.
He and his family moved from Elsbeth Street to an apartment at 214 W. Neely St. in March 1963. By November of that year, Oswald was renting a room at 1026 N. Beckley Ave., but on the night of Nov. 21, he slept at the home of his wife’s friend, Ruth Paine, in nearby Irving, storing his rifle in the garage.
“It’s hard for people to let go of what they think of as meaningful scenes. We don’t want to lose anything that might be evidence,” said Debra Conway, president of JFK Lancer, a group that sponsors a conference on the assassination in Dallas each November. “People hate to lose any of the landmarks in this case, but we have to live with it.”
During the most recent conference, attendees took a tour of Oswald’s former residences. They drove by the apartment on Elsbeth, which was “falling down” and “clearly unsafe,” Conway said.
Though the building has historic value, she said, it’s less significant than Oswald’s other former homes, such as the rooming house where he had been staying at the time of the assassination or the apartment on Neely Street where Marina Oswald took the notorious “backyard photos” of her husband posing with a rifle.
The city of Irving, a Dallas suburb, is turning Paine’s former 1950s tract home into a museum. The city recently completed a $30,000 restoration of the home and plans to open it for tours this summer, according to Casey Tate, Irving’s capital improvement program director.
Unlike those buildings, Conway said, the apartments on Elsbeth “have no real story about it. You hate to lose it, but it’s not at the same level as these other places.”
The 88-year-old two-story brick apartment complex has fallen on hard times since Oswald lived there. Its walls are crumbling, windows are patched with plywood, and it is surrounded by a chain-link fence. Bryant, who lives in Dallas and teaches business at a community college, bought the building six years ago planning to move in and run an apparel business on the first floor.
Two years ago, a judge ordered the building demolished. The city had sued in March 2008 to have the roughly 8,700-square-foot structure repaired or taken down.
Bryant initially fought the demolition but eventually agreed to have it done. After she failed to meet city deadlines, Dallas officials announced plans to raze the building starting Monday.
molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com
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ca907141e83348f3cc1eb1947c54b958 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-08-la-na-noaa-hottest-20130109-story.html | 2012 was hottest year on record for Lower 48 states | 2012 was hottest year on record for Lower 48 states
Last year was the hottest year on record for the contiguous 48 states, marked by near-record numbers of extreme weather events such as drought, wildfire, tornadoes and storms, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In its annual report, State of the Climate, NOAA reported that the average annual temperature was 55.3 degrees — 3.3 degrees greater than the average temperature for the 20th century. It was also a full degree higher than the previous record-high temperature, set in 1998 — the biggest margin between two record-high temperatures to date.
The report confirmed what many Americans may have suspected over the last year: that extreme weather events are becoming more common. The only year when there were more extreme weather events was 1998, largely because a greater number of tropical cyclones made landfall, NOAA researchers said.
In 2012, the Upper Midwest was hit with floods, the mid-Atlantic with sudden summertime storms, the West with wildfire and the Northeast with Hurricane Sandy, among many other events. Most of the country even now remains in the grip of drought.
For years, climatologists have been reluctant to draw a line from climate change to specific weather events, and the NOAA authors of the report were cautious about making links. But a growing body of research has begun to indicate that climate change creates conditions for the kinds of temperatures and events the United States experienced last year.
“We expect to see a continued trend of big heat events, we expect to see big rain events, and with slightly less confidence, we expect to see continued trend in drought,” said Deke Arndt, chief of the climate monitoring branch, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “This is consistent with what we would expect in a warming world.”
The NOAA report arrives amid demands from environmentalists and allies of President Obama that he take significant steps to address climate change. Although in his first term his administration increased vehicle fuel economy standards and drew up rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from new power plants, Obama’s long silence on climate change rankled many backers.
“The facts speak for themselves — whether it is NOAA’s announcement today that 2012 was the hottest year on record or the devastation caused by Superstorm Sandy,” said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Last year follows a decade that was the hottest since temperature recording began 133 years ago, NOAA said. Since 1895, as industrialization spread and the world began to burn more carbon-based fuels, the average temperature of the Lower 48 states has risen 0.13 of a degree each decade.
NOAA’s report on average global temperatures, which is expected soon, is likely to show that 2012 was the eighth-hottest year on record around the world.
Last year’s data showed that there were 356 record-high temperatures recorded around the country, and only four record lows, all in Hawaii. Three or four decades ago, the numbers of record highs and record lows were far more similar, said Richard Rood, professor of atmospheric, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan and a writer for the blog Weather Underground.
neela.banerjee@latimes.com
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16092f010d3e219bec5bddd1557f5c0c | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-10-la-na-nn-oregon-bus-crash-black-ice-20130110-story.html | Oregon bus crash involved ‘black ice’ conditions, lawyer alleges | Oregon bus crash involved ‘black ice’ conditions, lawyer alleges
An attorney for the company involved in last month’s bus plunge in east Oregon said “it is believed black ice was a significant factor” in the accident that killed nine people and injured 38.
In addition, bus driver Haeng Kyu Hwang was rested at the time of the Dec. 30 crash, according to Mark P. Scheer, an attorney representing Mi Joo Tour & Travel.
“Mr. Hwang had approximately 7½ hours of sleep,” Scheer said in a statement Wednesday night, and “had been on the road for approximately 2½ hours ... with a rest stop during that time. Mr. Hwang was in good health and he does not use alcohol or tobacco. There is no evidence to suggest that drugs or alcohol played any role in this accident.”
The accident remains under investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Oregon State Police.
The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration this week ordered Mi Joo Tour & Travel to halt all U.S. passenger service, alleging the Canadian-based company failed to ensure its drivers had sufficient rest and scheduled them in violation of federal regulations limiting hours worked.
Hwang had been on duty for 92 hours over an eight-day period, officials said. The federal limit is 70 hours.
“The safety of all travelers on our highways and roads remains our highest priority,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement. “We will move quickly to shut down bus companies that do not operate safely.”
In its order shutting down Mi Joo’s U.S. operations, the agency said it found “noncompliance with drug and alcohol testing requirements, including no post-accident drug or alcohol test on a driver involved in a fatal crash .... ”
The accident occurred around the beginning of a seven-mile downgrade on Interstate 84 that sees “some of the most changeable and severe weather conditions in the Northwest,” the Oregon Department of Transportation said in a publication warning drivers about the dangers of Emigrant Hill.
According to Scheer, “It is believed that black ice was a significant factor in the cause of the accident. It appears that the area in question, unfortunately, has a history of traffic incidents and there were other accidents in that area involving black ice on Dec. 30, 2012.”
The Transportation Department’s action this week was not its first against Mi Joo. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration cited the company in 2011 for failing to meet drug and alcohol testing requirements. A year earlier, it fined the company “for separate violations involving drug and alcohol testing of its drivers,” the agency said.
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a4e95df6dc28edbd2e33996c3618a7fc | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-11-la-fg-wn-berlusconi-tv-interview-20130111-story.html | Italy’s Berlusconi squares off against TV host | Italy’s Berlusconi squares off against TV host
ROME -- In a highly anticipated and occasionally furious TV interview watched by nearly 9 million of his compatriots, former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi acknowledged misleading voters about the cause of his country’s financial crisis, but doggedly attacked the current government’s austerity cuts and fought back when mocked.
Berlusconi’s showdown Thursday night with talk-show host Michele Santoro, whom he booted from state TV in 2002, was a ratings record for the private La7 channel and electrified Italy’s election campaign ahead of balloting next month. The faceoff also shone a light on the media magnate’s 20-year influence on Italian politics as he was needled over long-standing accusations of tax evasion and mafia collusion.
Berlusconi, 76, deployed all his talents as a showman, which have won over Italians for years, by playing to the audience, grinning broadly and dredging up old claims of fighting “communist tyranny” in Italy.
But he was forced to admit that he was wrong to blame Italy’s economic crisis -- and his own political downfall in November 2011 -- partly on the German central bank’s decision to unload Italian bonds. Berlusconi’s admission came after one of Santoro’s colleagues read out a note from the Bundesbank stating that it had not in fact sold off Italian bonds.
Santoro also ridiculed Berlusconi’s recent criticism of the austerity cuts introduced by Mario Monti, the technocrat appointed to replace him as prime minister. Berlusconi has accused Monti of ruining the economy, but Santoro pointed out that Berlusconi had initially given his successor his firm backing.
Polls suggest that Berlusconi will not win the election in February. But he is acutely aware of the value of TV appearances, and his poll ratings have soared from 15% to 26% since he began daily interviews on TV and radio shows before Christmas.
He scored some points of his own against Santoro, appearing delighted when he provoked the host’s fury by reading out a list of libel rulings against Marco Travaglio, a journalist who teams up with Santoro and has frequently criticized Berlusconi. After a shouting match typical of talk shows featuring Berlusconi’s supporters, the billionaire politician walked to a seat previously used by Travaglio and wiped it clean with a handkerchief before sitting on it.
Berlusconi’s fractious relationship with Santoro dates back to 2002, when he slammed the journalist for making “criminal use” of TV and ensured that Santoro was kept off state television for four years.
While in power for much of the last decade, Berlusconi used his control of state channels and his ownership of private TV channels to promote his administration. In 2009, he claimed it was “unacceptable” for state TV to criticize the government.
Since launching his latest election campaign, Berlusconi has faced down a variety of TV hosts, threatening to walk off shows if challenged. During Thursday’s program, Santoro proved feistier, while Travaglio read out a long list of Berlusconi’s political allies who have fallen afoul of the law.
“Among 100 priests it is impossible to find 100 saints,” Berlusconi shot back.
When quizzed about Marcello Dell’Utri, Berlusconi’s close ally who has been accused of colluding with the Sicilian Mafia, an allegation he denies, Berlusconi said: “Dell’Utri is a very good person, very [Roman] Catholic and has one defect: He was born in Palermo.”
Berlusconi then sought to even the score by reading out the legal sanctions Travaglio had incurred for libel, to which Travaglio replied: “If I was a habitual delinquent you would have appointed me head of the Senate.”
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3e8c2ffcd88daa8ef7e766dfe2ff7585 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-11-la-fg-wn-jimmy-savile-sex-abuse-scandal-20130111-story.html | Jimmy Savile sex-abuse scandal stretches across decades, report says | Jimmy Savile sex-abuse scandal stretches across decades, report says
LONDON -- The late entertainer Jimmy Savile sexually abused children on an unprecedented scale in Britain over half a century, using his fame and charitable work to deflect accusations of misconduct and to find vulnerable victims, particularly youngsters in hospitals, police said Friday.
A report by Scotland Yard after weeks of investigation painted a sickening portrait of a pedophile who molested hundreds of young people across the country between 1955 and 2009, a period during which he rose to national prominence and received various awards, including from Queen Elizabeth II, for his charity work.
Since launching their investigation late last year, police have identified 214 alleged criminal offenses by Savile, including 34 possible cases of rape. The alleged assaults occurred in hospitals, schools and the studios of the BBC, where Savile was the popular host of a children’s show called “Jim’ll Fix It” and of a pop-music program.
Most of the alleged victims never came forward while Savile was alive; some who did found that their accusations went nowhere. His fame allowed him to “hide in plain sight,” police said, until his death in October 2011.
“Savile’s offending footprint was vast, predatory and opportunistic,” Cmdr. Peter Spindler said in a statement. “He cannot face justice today but we hope this report gives some comfort to his hundreds of victims.”
The wide-ranging investigation was triggered by a television program last year that featured accounts from people who said they were abused by Savile. The program caused an uproar in Britain and a major crisis at the BBC, which had shelved its own investigation into Savile, sparking accusations of a coverup. The broadcaster’s director-general was forced to resign.
The eccentric, floppy-haired Savile, who died a bachelor at the age of 84, has since gone from being one of Britain’s most loved figures to one of its most reviled. He lies buried in an unmarked grave in North Yorkshire, after his family removed his huge tombstone “out of respect for public opinion.”
The 38-page report released Friday said Savile abused children as young as 8 and adults as old as 47, in locations that included a mental hospital and a hospice for the terminally ill. Most of his alleged victims were adolescent girls, and the peak period of the reported offenses was from 1966 to 1976.
His charity work at various hospitals now appears as little more than a way for him to gain access to vulnerable people to kiss, grope and force himself on. At one school, Savile offered girls cigarettes and rides in his car in exchange for sex, the report said.
Most of his alleged victims did not speak out, for fear of not being taken seriously. Those who did found their accounts scoffed at by authority figures such as parents or caregivers.
In a few cases, prosecution might have been possible if officials had not treated the accusations so cautiously or skeptically or if investigators had told alleged victims that other complaints had been lodged against Savile, which could have emboldened them to testify in court, according to a separate report issued Friday by the Crown Prosecution Service.
Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions for England and Wales, called for a new approach to sexual molestation allegations that balanced sensitivity toward possible victims with the need to establish the allegations’ credibility.
“Taking a cautious approach to all complainants, on the ground that some might be making a false allegation of a sexual offense, can have the consequence that a prosecution for a true complaint may not take place,” Starmer said.
The report by Scotland Yard noted that during the time that Savile was allegedly most active in abusing children, “police investigation of such crimes was more basic and lacked the specialist skills, knowledge and the collaborative approach of later years.”
The report also said there was no evidence that Savile was part of a larger pedophile ring, as some have alleged.
But what Savile is now believed to have done on his own “simply beggars belief,” said Peter Watt of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. “He is without doubt one of the most prolific sex offenders we have ever come across, and every number represents a victim that will never get justice now he is dead.”
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4666546d38ccdd3dd3f6dc433c845644 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-11-la-na-nn-guns-school-20130111-story.html | Mom carries loaded gun in diaper bag into Philadelphia school, police say | Mom carries loaded gun in diaper bag into Philadelphia school, police say
A young mother carried her baby, along with a loaded gun in a diaper bag, into a Philadelphia school where she had gone to sign up for classes, police said, one of two gun-in-school incidents reported in the city as the national debate on gun control raged in the wake of the Newtown, Conn., massacre.
In the second incident Thursday, a high school student hid a gun in his shoe, but it was found when he walked through a metal detector. His gun was not loaded.
But the weapon carried by 21-year-old Kelly Jones in the bottom of her pink-and-white diaper bag was fully loaded, police say, and Jones -- who was accompanied by her aunt and her baby when she was caught with it -- now faces criminal charges.
“She is claiming that she was not aware that the loaded .40-caliber Smith & Wesson semi-automatic handgun was in the diaper bag,” said police Capt. Laurence Nodiff. He said Jones did not have a permit to carry the weapon, whose serial number had been scratched off.
Jones arrived at South Philadelphia High School during class hours on Thursday to sign up for evening courses. School guards checking her diaper bag found the weapon inside and confiscated it, police said. “School police officers did their job and stopped the threat right at the front door,” said Nodiff.
Jones was arrested and faces charges that include carrying a weapon onto school grounds and illegal possession of a weapon with an obliterated serial number.
Later Thursday, a ninth-grader was stopped when he tried to enter a nearby high school with an unloaded, inoperable handgun in his shoe.
Stiff penalties for people who bring weapons into schools are among the proposals being aired by officials in the wake of the December massacre at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., where 20 first-graders and six educators were shot to death. The shooter, Adam Lanza, also killed his mother and shot himself to death.
On Thursday, there was another shooting at a school, this time in Taft, Calif., where a high school student shot and critically injured a classmate before a teacher talked him into putting down his weapon. The victim was in critical but stable condition; the 16-year-old shooter who used a 12-gauge shotgun was under arrest.
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c7f8c62df5dba5092b13620a04baba70 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-12-la-fg-france-mali-fighting-20130113-story.html | France airstrikes in Mali repel Al Qaeda-linked militants | France airstrikes in Mali repel Al Qaeda-linked militants
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — French airstrikes in Mali turned back Al Qaeda-linked militants who recently began moving south after seizing a vast northern desert region of the West African nation last year, French officials said Saturday.
French forces drove the Ansar Dine militia from the city of Konna after deploying warplanes and hundreds of troops on Friday to Mali, its former colony, the officials said. A French helicopter was downed in the operation and its pilot, Danien Boiteux, was killed.
An alliance of West African nations, which had spent months planning a long-delayed operation to fight Ansar Dine, responded to the French intervention by promising Saturday to immediately deploy troops to Mali.
The U.N. Security Council last year agreed to the intervention by the alliance, known as ECOWAS. But months dragged on with no action, as Ansar Dine tightened its grip in the north and Western nations grew increasingly alarmed at the prospect of a terrorist haven at Europe’s back door.
The French intervention followed a request from the Malian government to help its ill-equipped forces fighting the militants, who were advancing toward Mopti, a major town where government troops are based, and potentially threatening the capital, Bamako.
“Already, thanks to the courage of our soldiers, a quick stop and heavy losses have been inflicted on our adversaries,” French President Francois Hollande said Saturday in Paris. “But our mission is not at an end. I have made sure that the military presence in Bamako has been reinforced to protect our citizens.”
“The threat is a terrorist state at the doorstep of France and Europe,” French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters.
French warplanes and helicopters attacked the militias, dropping bombs and launching rockets in an operation that French military officials said also wiped out a major Ansar Dine base near Konna.
Hollande announced a tightening of French domestic security and said the Mali operation would last as long as necessary. He said brutal terrorist groups, drug traffickers and extremists threatened everyone.
Mali, long seen as a stable democracy in a volatile region, was split in two last year when Tuareg rebels who had fled Libya after the fall of Moammar Kadafi seized the major northern towns of Gao, Kidal and Timbuktu.
The Tuareg fighters were swiftly outflanked by Al Qaeda-linked militants who imposed a severe form of Islamic law in the north, amputating convicted thieves’ limbs, stoning those accused of adultery and destroying ancient World Heritage monuments such as mausoleums in Timbuktu.
France has been playing a more interventionist role in Africa, declaring that it would fight terrorism anywhere on the continent. On Saturday, French forces also launched a raid in Somalia to rescue a French secret service agent held by Islamist militants since 2009; the agent and a French soldier died in the rescue attempt, as did at least 17 militants.
France has about 6,000 citizens in Mali, and numerous French have been kidnapped with the rise of militant groups in the Sahel region, including Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. Eight French are still being held hostage.
France sees Mali as a particular concern because human traffickers and drug smugglers have been able to cross the region’s porous borders and get to Europe without difficulty. The fear is that terrorists based in northern Mali could use the same routes to cross into Europe and launch devastating attacks.
Kadre Desire Ouedraogo, chairman of the ECOWAS commission, said Saturday that the regional group had decided to swiftly send troops into Mali because of the urgency of the situation. However, the alliance did not confirm how many troops would be sent or when they would arrive.
Ansar Dine threatened to target French citizens in retaliation for the French military operation.
“There are consequences, not only for French hostages, but also for all French citizens wherever they find themselves in the Muslim world,” said Ansar Dine spokesman Sanda Ould Boumama, according to Reuters news service. “We are going to continue resisting and defend ourselves. We are ready to die fighting.”
Malian military spokesman Diarran Kone said the army was combing Konna to ensure no militants remained, the Associated Press reported.
“We are doing sweeps of the city to find any hidden Islamist extremist elements,” Kone said. “The full recovery of the city is too early to determine as we do not yet control the city, and we remain vigilant.”
robyn.dixon@latimes.com
Special correspondent Kim Willsher in Paris contributed to this report.
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982e53f45344360a05adde620943920e | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-12-la-fg-wn-haiti-quake-remembered-20130112-story.html | Somber, subdued ceremonies mark Haitian quake anniversary | Somber, subdued ceremonies mark Haitian quake anniversary
MEXICO CITY -- Three years after a ferocious earthquake devastated Haiti and killed more than a quarter of a million people, the impoverished nation remains a broken picture of halting recovery and persistent misery.
In simple ceremonies Saturday in and around the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, President Michel Martelly laid a wreath at a mass grave and, earlier, called on his countrymen and women to remember, persevere and move on. He was joined by former U.S. President Clinton, a U.N. special envoy to Haiti.
“Haitian people, hand in hand, we remember what has gone,” Martelly said against a backdrop of a Haitian flag at half-staff and Cabinet members dressed in mourning black, according to the Associated Press.
Clinton told the Reuters news agency that though some progress has been made, particularly in rebuilding airports and roads, “we still need a lot more infrastructure work.”
“From my point of view, keeping the investment coming in, dealing with the housing and unlocking the education, those are the things I’d like to see real progress on this year,” Clinton said.
The outpouring of international sympathy and pledges of support for Haitian victims was enormous in the weeks after the 7.0-magnitude quake, which on Jan 12, 2010, flattened buildings throughout Port-au-Prince and other parts of Haiti. But today, questions swirl about how much money actually arrived and how it was spent in a nation that is largely dysfunctional and riddled with corruption at the best of times.
The Haitian government in power when the quake hit put the death toll at more than 300,000, with 1.5 million displaced. The cold reality is that no one really knows how many people were killed. Today, many Haitians have returned to old neighborhoods, found new housing and dismantled the squalid tent cities that sprang up in the disaster’s aftermath. But nearly 360,000 remain in displacement camps.
Despite tangible progress, “major challenges remain to rebuild Haiti after the earthquake and overturn decades of collective neglect and weak governance,” Oxfam’s country director in Haiti, Andrew Pugh, said in a statement. “Basically, it’s three steps forward and two steps back.”
Most of the tons and tons of rubble have been cleared and, according to reports from the island, corpses of quake victims are rarely discovered anymore.
But the aftermath included a deadly cholera outbreak, purportedly caused by U.N. troops dispatched to help Haitians and exacerbated by vulnerable displaced populations living in unsanitary conditions, and a wave of sexual violence targeting women and children in precarious situations.
The international community pledged more than $13 billion to help the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation, but by some counts only half has actually been spent.
“The numbers are an indictment of how the international community has once again failed Haiti, in this case in its time of greatest need,” Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, said in a statement. “The housing effort has been abysmal, people are facing a food crisis.”
In the Haiti Times, a U.S. newspaper by and for the Haitian diaspora, an editorial Saturday lamented the spotty nature of international focus on the island nation. It said Haitians, from artists to intellectuals to community activists and farmers, will somehow get by.
“Her culture endures,” the paper said of Haiti. “It is what the Haitian people hold on to, in remembrance of a painful chapter in their history. It is what fuels them to look toward a future in which they can rebuild their homeland. It is what the foreigners’ narratives cannot strip away from collective memory, and the earthquake could not shake away from existence.
“Three years later, Haiti endures.”
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ab545e2ecd7cb2305c2de7890889ebf6 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-12-la-na-latinos-susana-martinez-20130113-story.html | New Mexico’s Latina Gov. Susana Martinez makes waves in the GOP | New Mexico’s Latina Gov. Susana Martinez makes waves in the GOP
SANTA FE, N.M. — In 2010, New Mexico’s Susana Martinez made history, being elected the nation’s first Latina governor. Since November, she’s made waves, criticizing Mitt Romney for the harsh rhetoric of his presidential campaign and chiding fellow Republicans for actions that, she says, have needlessly estranged Latinos from the GOP.
“We have to make sure that as Republicans we don’t just visit Latinos during election time, but that we make them part of the solution,” Martinez said in an interview. “It’s extremely important that we elect people that look like the population they serve.”
Martinez is a strong favorite for reelection in 2014. Beyond that, the former prosecutor and Democrat-turned-Republican is touted as a potential U.S. attorney general or even vice president in a future GOP administration.
INTERACTIVE: Speeches of RNC 2012
But here at home, some question Martinez’s ability to advise her party, much less serve as a role model for Republicans grappling with their poor image among Latinos.
The doubts point to the highly charged politics surrounding immigration and related issues and underscore the challenge Republicans face as they try reaching out to Latinos without antagonizing the party’s conservative base, as well as supporters who resist any easing of the GOP’s hard-line stance.
Martinez has advantages other Republicans can’t easily match, including a charismatic personality, a compelling up-by-the-bootstraps history and the benefit of running in a majority-minority state where Latinos have been an integral part of the power structure for decades.
“She can go into rural Hispanic areas and tell [her] story and impress a lot of people,” said Brian Sanderoff, New Mexico’s leading independent pollster. “It’s a lot easier for a female Hispanic Republican to pull off than a middle-aged white guy, frankly.”
But Martinez has also been a surprisingly divisive figure. Though she enjoys strong public approval ratings, she has a contentious relationship with Democrats in Santa Fe, the state capital, as well as with many Latino activists, who accuse her of scapegoating Latino newcomers and exploiting anti-immigrant sentiments for political gain.
“It’s one thing to talk about changing tone and rhetoric,” said Marcela Diaz, head of Somos Un Pueblo Unido, a group that has waged protests against Martinez and opposes her efforts to repeal the state law allowing illegal immigrants to get driver’s licenses. “We’d like to see a change in tone and rhetoric, accompanied by action.”
Martinez, speaking by phone from her Capitol office, cited polls that showed an overwhelming majority of New Mexicans — including most Latinos — favored repeal of the driver’s license privilege, passed in 2003 under her Democratic predecessor, Bill Richardson. (Another poll, putting the question differently, found a that substantial majority of New Mexico Latinos favored reforming the law, rather than repealing it.)
“It’s not a controversial issue,” Martinez said. “The only ones who seem to call it a controversial issue are the people from the media.”
Martinez won a tough primary by accusing her main rival of favoring “amnesty” for backing legislation, proposed by President George W. Bush, that aimed to stiffen border enforcement, create a guest worker program and establish a path to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. Any comprehensive bill that passes Congress would probably contain those same elements.
Asked whether the attack on her opponent, a former state GOP chairman, had been a mistake, the governor quickly replied, “No.”
“There are many solutions to people who are here illegally that are between amnesty and deporting 12 million people,” she said.
“I’m very pleased that Mrs. Martinez has come around to my position,” the former chairman, Allen Weh, said dryly.
Martinez, 53, grew up in a bilingual household in El Paso. As a teenager she worked in her father’s security business, toting a .357 Magnum — “That gun weighed more than I did!” — while patrolling the parking lot at church bingos, something she recounted in a well-received speech at last summer’s Republican National Convention.
After college and law school, Martinez crossed the state line into New Mexico, switched parties and was elected district attorney in Dona Ana County, in the far south of the state, where she served four terms as chief prosecutor. She was a distinct underdog in the gubernatorial primary but surged to victory thanks in good part to her tough-on-immigration stance.
Martinez largely abandoned the issue in the general election, but she took a firm stand opposing the driver’s license law — a position shared by the Democrat she beat.
Since taking office, Martinez has made its repeal a centerpiece of her agenda, to the consternation of Latino activists and the puzzlement of Democrats and others who ask why she has invested so much effort, given the state’s struggling economy and troubled schools.
“When did this become the be-all and end-all?” asked Joe Monahan, who writes a widely read nonpartisan blog on New Mexico politics. “Is this what the Latino population of America is focused on and wants to hear from Republicans? I don’t think that’s an olive branch.”
Martinez said the driver’s license issue is just one of several priorities, along with job creation and ending so-called social promotion, the practice of moving students to the next grade regardless of performance. But she said repeal is vital, suggesting that fraud is rampant and the state has become a magnet for criminals.
The issue has been fiercely debated across the country, including California, where a law that took effect Jan. 1 allows some illegal immigrants to obtain licenses.
For many, the matter is cut and dried. Illegal is illegal, opponents say, so why would a state provide official recognition to people who shouldn’t be there? Proponents say it is absurd to ignore people on the roads, legal or not, and cite humanitarian and practical reasons to license drivers.
“You take away licenses, you take away a tool from our families to provide for their children,” said Diaz, the immigrant advocate. “You make the state poorer, and it’s not creating one job.”
Using the issue as a bludgeon, Martinez and her allies spent unprecedented millions in a November attempt to win control of the state House and dislodge the Senate’s Democratic leadership. The effort fell short — the GOP lost House seats — but Republicans managed to oust the No. 2 Senate Democrat.
Martinez has indicated she will try a fourth time to pass repeal legislation when the Legislature convenes Tuesday. Democrats, who have offered a proposal tightening restrictions and toughening enforcement, said the governor should accept the deal or move on.
For some lawmakers, the matter has become personal. For Martinez, it’s a political test.
Asked whether Republicans outside New Mexico might learn from watching the governor, Democratic House Speaker Ken Martinez (no relation to her) said it remained to be seen. “She’s finished two years of a four-year term,” said the speaker, who enjoys relatively good relations with the governor. “What happens in the next two years?”
mark.barabak@latimes.com
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3272fda16cf36fa2f340cef2ea8fc15a | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-13-la-fg-wn-afghan-violence-20130113-story.html | Afghan civilians killed in mosque blast after deadly night raid | Afghan civilians killed in mosque blast after deadly night raid
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An explosion Sunday in a restive province west of Kabul killed at least seven civilians as they tried to pull bodies from the rubble of a mosque after a night raid by Afghan and NATO special forces, Afghan officials said.
It was not immediately clear what caused the blast in the Sayed Abad district of Wardak province.Shahidullah Shahid, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said Taliban militants had opened fire on the joint force from inside the mosque in Hasan Khail after an insurgent was detained at another location.
During the exchange of fire, he said, suicide vests worn by the militants detonated, killing four of them. The later explosion that killed the villagers, including a woman, took place about 90 minutes after the operation ended, he said.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization command confirmed that the joint force killed four insurgents after coming under attack, but said they died from small arms fire.
An Afghan soldier was also killed, according to a statement from the NATO-lead International Security Assistance Force. There were no arrests, an ISAF spokesman said.
“ISAF is aware of reports that Afghan civilians were killed and injured after the operation,” said U.S. Army Col. Thomas Collins, another ISAF spokesman. “We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously and in coordination with Afghan officials will determine the facts of what happened.”
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a statement emailed to reporters, accused the international force of killing 12 civilians and injuring two others in two air strikes against the mosque.
Some villagers reported seeing helicopters and hearing explosions, said Shirshah Bazoon, who is from Sayed Abad district and heads the provincial council. But he said government officials believe the explosions were the result of suicide vests worn by the insurgents.
Collins said munitions were not dropped by coalition aircraft.
“After the engagement, the security force discovered a cache of weapons and explosives and destroyed it on site before withdrawing from the area,” the ISAF statement said.
Night raids by special forces and civilian casualties have been major points of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his Western allies. According to NATO figures, insurgents were responsible for 84% of civilian casualties last year, injuring or killing 3,500 Afghans.
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6349f6c6b752664ad499f4f70da2c56d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-14-la-sp-sn-lance-armstrong-apologizes-20130114-story.html | Report: Lance Armstrong apologizes but does not confess to doping | Report: Lance Armstrong apologizes but does not confess to doping
Lance Armstrong apologized to the staff at his Livestrong cancer foundation -- but did not make a direct confession to using banned drugs -- before heading to his scheduled interview with Oprah Winfrey on Monday, a person with direct knowledge of the meeting told Associated Press.
The source said the disgraced cyclist said “I’m sorry” for letting the organization down and putting it at risk, adding that he intended to restore the foundation’s reputation and urged the employees to move forward in helping cancer patients and their families.
Armstrong reportedly choked up during the meeting and several staff members cried.
Still, the rider who was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles stopped short of confessing to the use of performance enhancing drugs. He is expected to make a limited confession to Winfrey about his alleged role leading a scheme to dominate the Tour with the aid of banned drugs, AP is reporting.
That interview, scheduled to be recorded Monday, was originally going to take place at Armstrong’s home but was apparently switched to a nearby hotel. Local and international news crews had staked out positions outside the Spanish-style villa before dawn and even accompanied the cyclist on part of a morning run.
Armstrong, who always has strongly denied having anything to do with performance enhancing drugs, has been portrayed in a U.S. Anti-Doping Agency report as a ruthless competitor, with agency chief Travis Tygart saying Armstrong once led “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”
The interview with Winfrey is scheduled to run on “Oprah’s Next Chapter” Thursday at 9 p.m. EST/PST on the Oprah Winfrey Network.
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8716219745a11d387637e8d79a556f53 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-15-la-fg-india-mercy-killings-20130116-story.html | In southern India, relatives sometimes quietly kill their elders | In southern India, relatives sometimes quietly kill their elders
INNAMREDIYARPATTI, India — Michael headed for work at a textile mill, leaving his wife, children and infirm mother at home in this impoverished part of southern India. When he returned a few hours later, his mother’s body was propped up in a chair surrounded by villagers and decorated with flowers, poisoned by his wife with a potion in a local form of mercy killing known as thalaikoothal.
Three decades later, he harbors no ill will toward his wife. “My mother had been sick and in pain for 20 days and wasn’t eating properly,” said Michael, 62, who like many southern Indians uses one name. “I was thinking of doing it myself. It was time, and there wasn’t enough food to go around.”
Even as India debates the morality and legality of euthanasia, three districts in the southern state of Tamil Nadu have been quietly carrying out a homegrown version for decades, or centuries, depending on whom you ask.
The practice in one small corner of India has declined under the spotlight after a high-profile 2010 case and growing opposition from elderly rights groups, but dozens, even hundreds, of cases of thalaikoothal, or “head pouring,” occur quietly each year, people say.
“Some call it euthanasia,” said Rajeshwar Devarakonda, social protection head at HelpAge India, a civic group focused on elderly care. “Others call it homicide.”
Although it can take various forms, a common approach is that once an elderly relative becomes seriously ill and the family can’t afford to care for the person, a date is set. Often relatives are called to say goodbye or even participate. The victim is given an oil bath, a head massage perhaps involving cold water and an exceedingly large amount of green coconut milk, leading to death.
Reducing a sick or frail person’s body temperature can bring on heart failure, said Dr. Raja Natrajan, a geriatrician, while drinking excessive liquids can induce renal failure.
In a variation, victims are force-fed cow’s milk and their noses pinched shut — an act called “milk therapy” — resulting in “breathing problems,” said S. Gurusamy, a sociology professor at the Gandhigram Rural Institute.
Thalaikoothal — traditionally for those 50 and older who become incapacitated, although younger people who become very ill are also targeted — is as natural as a birthday or wedding, some say. “It’s just the cycle of life,” said Kalimuthu, 60, a Peraiyur village farmer with a white, receding hairline and a wispy mustache.
Despite community claims that it’s used only in terminal cases, social acceptability has resulted in abuses, care experts said, as impatient family members “hurry things along” to gain control of the estate, sometimes with the help of compliant doctors or quacks who substitute poison-laced alcohol or pills for coconut milk.
“Nowadays, because of their assets, young people sometimes want thalaikoothal done even if it’s just a cold or minor sickness,” said Elango Rajarathinam, Virudhunagar-based director of Elders for Elders Foundation. “Old people are definitely scared of this practice. You can see the stress on their faces.”
Occasionally, those targeted get wind of it and flee.
Others just accept their fate, experts said, even requesting thalaikoothal, less because they’re ready to die than because society makes them feel worthless.
Ponnusamy, 67, a pipe fitter in a green shirt and purple dhoti, a type of sarong, recently suffered two heart attacks, leaving him worried about more than his ticker.
“I trust my wife wouldn’t think like that,” he said, gazing over the infertile landscape at two bullocks with decoratively painted blue horns. “If my family tried thalaikoothal on me, I’d ask why. If they didn’t answer, I might resign myself to it.”
The history of thalaikoothal is hazy, but some say it started before the British Empire when a prince helped his ailing mother-in-law die peacefully. Others suspect it began as recently as the 1950s, a response to a rising population and poor local economy.
“India’s very good at making up stories,” said Devarakonda.
Underpinning thalaikoothal is a society that’s seen extended families gradually replaced by nuclear families, placing less social value on the elderly.
Although women’s status in India is often low, men are more frequently the victims of thalaikoothal, experts said, in part because assets are generally in their names, providing an incentive. Also, daughters-in-law who provide most elder care are reluctant to assist men, given social taboos. In addition, some perceive men’s housekeeping skills as limited in male-dominated India, leaving them seemingly dependent.
“An old man can’t even make his own tea or take care of the grandchildren, while older women remain useful,” said Devarakonda.
Many people feel they’re just relieving someone’s suffering, added Gurusamy, who sees thalaikoothal as more a family decision than a moral concern.
“You can try anything, but it won’t stop thalaikoothal,” said Dhanushkoti, 63, a retiree in Innamrediyarpatti. “In our culture, if there’s a problem in the house, the family, not the government, handles it.”
Rather than fighting entrenched culture directly, activists said, they’re trying to improve underlying social and economic conditions through education and calls for improved palliative care. Elders’ health often deteriorates for very basic reasons, they said, including untreated bedsores that lead to severe infection and, ultimately, thalaikoothal.
The gradual spread of pensions, however modest, is also helping. “If you’re dead, you can’t bring a pension in,” said Rajarathinam. “Now families have an interest in keeping you alive.”
Activists have created about 500 elder-empowerment groups to confront neighbors suspected of planning thalaikoothal and are teaching children to act as community watchdogs, although these measures aren’t always effective.
As several men in their 70s gather in the Innamrediyarpatti community hall for a self-help meeting, most acknowledge that they’ve never prevented thalaikoothal and would be reluctant to do so.
“If I try and stop someone, they’ll just say, ‘Then you take care of the old man yourself,’ ” said Kalimuthu, a group member. “What can I say? I can’t afford to keep him.”
Euthanasia is illegal in India, but right-to-die groups have conducted seminars, launched media campaigns and petitioned courts for changes.
The Supreme Court in a landmark case two years ago — in which a woman remained in a vegetative state for nearly four decades after being raped and asphyxiated — paved the way for families or direct caregivers to withdraw life support.
Police and officials in Tamil Nadu have largely turned a blind eye to thalaikoothal. In 2010, however, the practice hit the headlines when a 60-year-old man died suddenly and his nephew Asokan accused a hospital janitor of offering injections, using skills she’d picked up watching doctors. She was suspected of being involved in several similar cases. Officials ultimately released her, saying there was no evidence because the bodies had been cremated or buried.
“It’s a police coverup to hide this disturbing practice,” said Asokan, a trade union official. “Elderly need better care, and this hideous practice should end.”
As some people justify thalaikoothal on cultural grounds, others are outraged.
“Who has the right to take a life?” said Kannan, 45, a betel nut seller rolling leaves at a small stand. “We don’t need to kill them. This is murder.”
mark.magnier@latimes.com
Tanvi Sharma of The Times’ New Delhi bureau contributed to this report.
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1b748a4b577873ef5bcfd9ecadcbcb6d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-17-la-sp-lance-armstrong-20130117-story.html | Some around Lance Armstrong view TV confession with skepticism | Some around Lance Armstrong view TV confession with skepticism
If Lance Armstrong’s mea culpa to Oprah Winfrey is being done as a bid for forgiveness, Kathy LeMond will be watching with deaf ears.
“There is no limit to what he would do to protect his secret,” said LeMond, the wife of three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond, “and not one word could come out of his mouth that would convince me to change his opinion of who he really is.
“I can’t describe to you the level of fear he brings to a family, other than to liken it to a drunken, alcoholic, abusive spouse who gets out of jail with a bouquet of roses for his bloodied spouse, saying, ‘Here, I’m sorry I did that.’”
PHOTOS: Lance Armstrong through the years
Armstrong’s interview with Winfrey, which will air Thursday and Friday evenings on the Oprah Winfrey Network, will mark a long-delayed admission of using performance-enhancing methods to win seven Tour de France titles.
Betsy Andreu, the wife of Armstrong’s former teammate Frankie Andreu, has long said she already heard Armstrong’s confession of such transgressions back in 1996 at an Indiana hospital while Armstrong confided to cancer doctors about his use of steroids.
“They act like it’s new that he’s admitting things when I’ve been saying he already admitted that,” Andreu said. “It’s just that no one would believe me, because he successfully painted me as an ugly, unhinged nut job — bitter, vindictive, obsessed — with his journalists, the arbiters of the truth, buying in.”
PHOTOS: Sports scandals, present and past
The LeMonds and Andreus were not alone in feeling the wrath of Armstrong’s dedicated cover-up.
In a 1,000-plus-page report released by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in October, Chief Executive Travis Tygart said Armstrong ran “the most sophisticated, professionalized and successful doping program that sport has ever seen.”
Armstrong’s attorney, Tim Herman, said then that the report was crafted by “ax-grinders” and “serial perjurers,” citing the hundreds of clean drug tests Armstrong produced in his career.
The report quoted teammates, including Frankie Andreu and Christian Vande Velde, saying they were pressured to dope to remain on the team.
An opposing rider said in the USADA report that Armstrong tracked him down and threatened him once on the Tour for making a disparaging comment about the cyclist’s drug links.
And the wife of ex-teammate Levi Leipheimer said she received a harassing text message from Armstrong, “Run, don’t walk,” after accidentally sitting in the same restaurant as Armstrong after her husband testified to a federal grand jury investigating the culture of doping in the sport.
Others, like former Oakley representative Stephanie McIlvain, have hinted at the pressure not to stray from Armstrong’s deceit even if they overheard or saw incriminating events.
Armstrong’s former masseuse, Emma O’Reilly, said she transported doping supplies across borders for Armstrong and trashed drugs and syringes to skirt doping authorities while giving substances to riders when needed.
Ultimately, O’Reilly after she was quoted in a book about Armstrong and doping, was taken to court by Armstrong’s attorneys. She said the cyclist portrayed her as a prostitute and heavy drinker and told the New York Times he made her life “a living hell.”
In Frankie Andreu’s case, his wife’s resistance to keeping quiet deprived him of a Tour de France race bonus he estimated at $20,000 and led to him being ousted from the Armstrong team after the 2000 race, Betsy Andreu said.
She said absorbing more than a decade of Armstrong’s attacks was exhausting.
“Imagine the energy it takes to defend your integrity day in and day out, to be lied about and not believed by most, week after week, year after year,” she said. “It was terrible. I had friends telling me to stop being involved.
“You have to be committed to tell the truth.”
Andreu said she witnessed a culture where “silence was complicity,” noting she refuses even to listen to music from Armstrong’s ex-girlfriend Sheryl Crow.
“That bubble he created. … He played on his cancer and the foundation he created as another shield,” she said of Livestrong. “He had political connections, from the president of France trying to shut down a drug lab, to the head of the criminal division of the Department of Justice, to those in the California legislature who wanted to review USADA’s funding after the report.
“His corporate sponsors always said they had to see the hand in the cookie jar before they’d separate from him. The cycling body swept things under the rug. He had a complicit media. Cycling is such a niche sport that if you question Lance, you cut yourself off from the story of cancer boy trying to win the world’s most grueling race.”
Kathy LeMond detailed how Armstrong had major cycling business executives pressure her husband to back off a comment in 2000 that Greg LeMond was “terribly disappointed” about Armstrong’s attachment to alleged steroid doctor Michele Ferrari. LeMond had previously been told of Armstrong’s doping from a mechanic the cyclists shared, Julien Devriese.
Kathy LeMond claimed an executive at Trek bicycles ultimately told her husband he was “between a rock and a hard place” and said he needed LeMond to retract the criticism of Armstrong. LeMond did not retract any statements; he lost his contract with Trek in 2008, three years before its scheduled expiration date.
“Lance chose to get into a terrible situation, and then he went so far beyond decency in defending it,” Kathy LeMond said. “We spent more than 10 years living with it.
“So no matter what he says to Oprah, be skeptical. It is easy to say you want to forgive someone. But in this case, it’s dangerous.”
lance.pugmire@latimes.com
Twitter: @latimespugmire
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03bfc482a6c8cb8f867236ce67c1b757 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-18-la-fg-wn-global-focus-resilient-al-qaeda-20130117-story.html | In Africa, resilient Al Qaeda flaunts power to terrorize | In Africa, resilient Al Qaeda flaunts power to terrorize
A deadly hostage-taking at an Algerian gas complex and an armed international confrontation in Mali herald the opening of another front in the global war on terrorism and serve as stark reminders that Al Qaeda retains the power to inflict death and disorder despite the loss of its leader.
Battered but unbroken, the militant Islamist network founded by Osama bin Laden has mutated into regional factions since his 2011 killing and earlier setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan that forced extremist remnants to migrate to countries like Yemen, Syria and Mali. There, in the ungovernable mountains, desert and war zones, they have established new bases and conscripted local foot soldiers to their radical cause.
This week’s seizure of the Algerian gas facility and dozens of foreign workers, including Americans, is described by counter-terrorism experts as an elaborately scripted operation that speaks to a resilient and adaptive Al Qaeda. They dispute claims that the hostage-taking was in retaliation for French intervention against Al Qaeda-aligned forces in Mali, arguing that the mission had to have been in the works for months.
Mali government soldiers were driven from the northern half of that country 10 months ago, after Islamic extremists fleeing Libya took refuge in the area long racked by insurrection among minority Tuareg nomads. Flush with heavy weaponry carried off from the fight against Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi, the foreign militants helped the Tuaregs prevail over weak Mali government troops, then hijacked the revolution and imposed a radical practice of Islamic law that has included beheadings, amputations and stonings.
“Mali was going to be another Afghanistan within a matter of days if the French didn’t intervene. I see what France did as courageous, and they should be thanked for it,” said Larry Diamond, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and veteran advisor on post-conflict recovery to the World Bank, the United Nations and the State Department.
The militants’ threat of overrunning Mali and their allies’ success in seizing the Algerian gas works “underscores that we are dealing with a diffuse, resilient and extremely dangerous regional threat capable of spreading and taking over whole countries,” Diamond said.
The Northwest African region known as the Maghreb has become a prized target for Al Qaeda because it offers the prospects of regrouping and establishing new bases of operations, Diamond said.
“We cannot be passive in the face of this and say ‘It’s Africa, it doesn’t concern us,’ ” he said. “What we’ve learned over the years is that the least effective response to this kind of terror and intimidation would be to withdraw.”
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland alluded to the risk of further attacks on U.S. interests in Africa and the Middle East and called on diplomatic missions and American companies in the region to review and intensify security.
Middle East and African security experts defended the Mali intervention as essential to disrupting a new Al Qaeda stronghold beyond the reach of Western counter-terrorism forces.
Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, warned of the risk of the militants seizing Bamako, the Malian capital, before a U.N.-authorized contingent of West African troops can be trained and deployed to help restore legitimate rule.
At the request of the Malian government, France has waged airstrikes and deployed ground troops in an effort to rescue Mali’s traditionally moderate Muslims from draconian Islamic law and prevent the group Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb from establishing a permanent haven, Patrick said.
In his 2011 book, “Weak Links: Fragile States, Global Threats and International Security,” Patrick details the gunrunning, drug trafficking and kidnapping for ransom that Al Qaeda conducts through allied groups in dysfunctional states like Mali.
Few in Mali share the extreme ideology of Al Qaeda, but they are nevertheless vulnerable to the militants’ warnings that “infidel” Western troops have aggressive aims in their country, noted Seth Jones, associate director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at Rand Corp. and a former advisor to the U.S. Special Forces Command in Afghanistan.
Jones sees the Algerian gas complex attack as a complicated operation that had to have involved extensive planning, intelligence-gathering and reconnaissance, not as a knee-jerk strike to demand that France retreat from Mali.
He said he expects pressure to mount on Washington to support the French and West African troops in the newest front of the global war on terrorism. But he said the U.S. contribution is likely to be limited to intelligence-sharing and logistics rather than combat troops. He said a direct U.S. military presence in Mali would probably occur only if the militants appeared to use their Mali foothold to organize attacks against U.S. territory, as other Al Qaeda militants have done since seizing remote areas of Yemen.
“Capturing some American civilians in Algeria raises the stakes a little bit, but I don’t see Al Qaeda in the [Islamic] Maghreb in Mali or Algeria or Libya targeting the homeland right now,” he said.
Yet the inroads Al Qaeda has made in the hinterlands of Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Jones said, expose the misjudgment in intelligence estimates that have been “a bit too forward-leaning in describing Al Qaeda as on the verge of strategic defeat.”
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A foreign correspondent for 25 years, Carol J. Williams traveled to and reported from more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
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b51ac01f0c8b530648d6c0373a0d4e26 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-22-la-fi-tn-microsoft-dell-buyout-20130122-story.html | Microsoft reportedly in talks to invest in Dell buyout [Updated] | Microsoft reportedly in talks to invest in Dell buyout [Updated]
Microsoft Corp. is reportedly in discussions to help finance a buyout of struggling computer maker Dell Inc.
According to the Wall Street Journal, which cited a person familiar with the talks, Microsoft’s investment “would likely be in the range of a couple of billion dollars.” CNBC reported a range of $1 billion to $3 billion, citing sources close to the matter.
Last week, rumors began swirling that Dell was considering a leveraged buyout and was in talks with private equity firms, with a deal that could be completed by the end of February. Michael Dell, the company’s founder and chief executive, has reportedly been negotiating with Silver Lake Partners, which has been seeking banks and other co-investors to help fund the deal, the Journal said.
Microsoft’s entry into the talks was unexpected. Still, Dell is one of the largest companies to make computers running Microsoft’s software.
[Updated at 12:30 p.m. Pacific time: In an email, a Microsoft spokesperson said the company did not “comment on rumors or speculation.”]
Shares of Dell were up 34 cents, or 2.7%, to $13.18 at 11:30 a.m. Pacific time. They have fallen 24% in the last year.
Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee, said although going private “makes sense in taking the company out of the limelight and public scrutiny, we’re not sure it improves the company’s fundamental position.”
“Recent press reports point to a potential buyout by PE firms and founder Michael Dell for $13-$14 per share,” Wu wrote in a note to investors Tuesday. “While we believe a deal in that price range is possible, we believe a materially higher price is less likely. The reason is that attractive returns could prove difficult.”
CNBC reported that if Microsoft gets involved, its investment would be in the form of preferred security.
Dell has for years tried to transform itself as it runs into increased competition from Lenovo, Apple, Google, Acer, IBM, Samsung and HP. Currently about 45% to 50% of its revenue is estimated to come from desktop and notebook PCs, Wu said.
The company has $11.3 billion in cash and $5.3 billion in long-term debt.
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c4b0001eb5c4824b182b234beb2382d9 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-23-la-fg-wn-yemen-drone-strike-20130123-story.html | Drone strikes in Yemen escalating, officials report | Drone strikes in Yemen escalating, officials report
A U.S. drone strike targeting militants on motorbikes killed five in central Yemen on Wednesday, a senior Yemeni official said. It was the fourth strike in five days, marking what the official called a significant escalation in the U.S.-Yemeni campaign against that country’s Al Qaeda affiliate.
The U.S. carried out 42 targeted drone missile strikes in Yemen last year and 10 the previous year, according to the Long War Journal website that tracks strikes through the news media.
“The campaign has intensified,” the Yemeni official said, adding that the government has been repositioning troops targeting Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.
The CIA and Obama administration officials declined to comment on the strikes.
Al Qaeda militants in Yemen are part of a larger insurgency, many of whose members do not have international terrorist aspirations. An administration official said the U.S. targets militants in Yemen only when they pose a threat to American interests, such as the embassy or the ambassador. The official declined to say whether the strikes in the last week, in different parts of the country, stemmed from a specific plot.
It was also unclear whether any of the militants killed were leadership figures. The family of the deputy leader of the Al Qaeda affiliate, Said Shihri, has reported him killed, the Yemeni official said, “but so far we don’t have any chatter or intelligence that supports that.”
The flurry of strikes in Yemen comes as the administration is considering codifying a set of procedures and policies governing how targeted killings are carried out -- how militants are added to kill lists, who reviews the evidence and which government agencies get a say. The so-called counter-terrorism playbook is not yet complete, an official said this week.
On Tuesday, Yemeni Human Rights Minister Hooria Mashhour criticized the drone strikes, saying, “I am in favor of changing the anti-terrorism strategy. I think there are more effective strategies.”
Yemeni President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, however, praised the operations when he visited Washington in September.
“They pinpoint the target and have zero margin of error, if you know what target you’re aiming at,” Hadi said at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
There have been no allegations that women or children were killed in the strikes of the last five days. It is impossible to verify whether all those killed were Al Qaeda militants, as some news reports from the region have suggested.
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aab538e24361313d23c06d538474897b | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-24-la-fg-wn-india-gang-rape-trial-20130124-story.html | Trial in Indian gang-rape case begins | Trial in Indian gang-rape case begins
NEW DELHI -- Minutes after the suspects were whisked past reporters into a closed court, the high-profile trial of five men accused of the rape and murder of a 23-year old physiotherapy student opened Thursday.
The woman and her 28-year-old male friend, both officially unnamed, were attacked last month after they watched the film “Life of Pi” in a glitzy shopping mall and boarded what they assumed was an ordinary commuter bus heading home.
The curtains were then reportedly drawn and the two victims were beaten with metal rods. She was then raped so brutally that she suffered severe internal injuries. The two were dumped naked along the road and she died in a Singapore hospital two weeks later.
The case, being tried in a special fast-track court, has sparked massive protests, high-level government panels, accusations, calls for reform and widespread soul-searching on the treatment of women in the world’s largest democracy.
The content of opening arguments Thursday was not immediately known after Judge Yogesh Khanna denied a defense motion to make the proceedings public. Attorneys for the defendants had argued that secrecy wasn’t required because the victim was dead.
Prosecutor Dayan Krishnan reportedly warned defense attorneys this week that any of them who spoke to journalists would be slapped with a contempt-of-court notice.
Friday is a public holiday in India, so the next hearing in the case is scheduled for Monday, when the defense is expected to present its opening arguments.
A sixth suspect in the case is arguing that he is a juvenile. There’s still some question over his exact age in a nation where records are sometimes inexact and contradictory, but his case is likely to be heard in juvenile court.
Police Thursday were on alert around the courthouse and in hallways leading to the courtroom to prevent a legion of journalists from catching wind of the proceedings, in keeping with restrictions routinely applied in rape cases.
The trial’s opening follows Wednesday’s release of recommendations by a government panel on sexual crimes and women’s safety, which reviewed approximately 80,000 suggestions from human rights and women’s groups and the general public, an indication of the public passion in the case.
The commission, headed by J.S. Verma, a former chief justice, identified a “failure of governance” as the root cause of sexual crime.
Included in its suggestions: the streamlining of rape trials, changes in British-era regulations governing crimes against women (including doing away with humiliating physical exams of rape victims), and better enforcement of assault laws.
Although the commission didn’t recommend the death penalty for rapists, it called for tougher jail sentences -- up to and including “the rest of the convict’s natural life” in extreme cases.
Criminal justice officials said they would study the recommendations. “Procedural inadequacies that lead to inordinate delays need to be addressed,” Law Minister Ashwani Kumar told reporters.
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mark.magnier@latimes.com
Tanvi Sharma in the New Delhi bureau contributed to this report.
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36ebef55d9466b38042d07712897244e | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-24-la-fi-mo-burger-king-horse-meat-20130124-story.html | Burger King ditches Irish beef supplier linked to horse meat | Burger King ditches Irish beef supplier linked to horse meat
Burger King is cutting ties with a supplier under investigation for selling beef products potentially tainted with horse meat.
The chain said it would no longer use products from ABP Food Group’s Irish subsidiary, Silvercrest, to supply its locations in Britain and Ireland. This past weekend, the fast food giant replaced all Silvercrest meat with deliveries from another supplier as a “voluntary and precautionary measure,” it said.
Burger King, which is based in Miami, said it launched an independent and ongoing probe upon learning that Irish regulators had discovered equine DNA in meat from Silvercrest’s facilities.
As a result, some Burger King menu items are “temporarily unavailable,” the chain said, apologizing to its patrons for the inconvenience.
“We are working diligently to identify suppliers that can produce 100% pure Irish and British beef products that meet our high quality standards,” the company said in a statement.
The potential presence of horse meat in beef “is not a food safety issue,” the company said, citing the Food Safety Authority of Ireland.
“Food quality and safety are a top priority for Burger King restaurants globally,” the company said. “We have stringent and overlapping controls to ensure that the products we sell our customers meet our strict quality standards.”
On the chain’s Facebook profile, customers were furious.
“May I have my money back,” wrote user Stephanie Victoria Prior. “I remember paying for a BEEF burger, not a HORSE burger!!!”
Several other major food retailers reportedly bought meat from Silvercrest.
Last week, supermarket behemoth Tesco apologized to customers after learning that some of its beef products may have been contaminated with horse meat. The chain said it withdrew the items from sale and offered a full refund.
Around the same time, Silvercrest also apologized in a statement for “the understandable concern this issue has caused.”
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c846dea3957d13875a0b5026c056da5c | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-24-la-na-pn-filibuster-senate-change-20130124-story.html | Senate approves limits on the filibuster rule to speed debate | Senate approves limits on the filibuster rule to speed debate
WASHINGTON – The Senate approved rules changes Thursday that will limit the use of the filibuster as a weapon in the partisan obstruction that has ground action in the chamber to a near standstill.
The deal, between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), fell short of the sweeping reforms sought largely by liberal senators and their allies.
Excluded from the deal was a key component that would have required any senator wishing to conduct a filibuster to remain talking on the Senate floor in the style James Stewart made famous in the film “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
Instead, the top Senate leaders crafted a more modest agreement that will allow legislation to be brought up for debate more quickly, and limit debate over certain nominations from the White House, including for judges on the circuit courts and positions of sub-Cabinet members.
The changes were overwhelmingly approved, 78-16 and 86-9, with dissent mainly from conservative Republicans.
The last few years have seen record numbers of filibusters, largely led by Republicans seeking to block President Obama’s agenda in the Senate in what has become an escalating procedural arms race. A filibuster can tie the chamber in knots because it only comes to an end with a 60-vote supermajority.
Even when the supermajority is reached, procedures still require at least three days for each filibuster to be overcome. Democrats also sought to obstruct then-President George W. Bush with the filibuster.
“The incremental ‘reforms’ in the agreement do not go nearly far enough to deliver meaningful change,” said a statement from Fix the Senate Now, a coalition of legal scholars and liberal activists that has pushed the issue. The group said the Senate “missed an opportunity to restore accountability and deliberation to the Senate, while not raising the costs of obstruction.”
To be sure, the agreement forged between Reid and McConnell will help usher legislation along more swiftly in the slow-moving chamber.
Senators give up their ability to filibuster – or hold endless debate – on the procedural step that is required to proceed to a piece of legislation. In exchange for giving up the right to filibuster on the motion to proceed, both sides are guaranteed the opportunity to offer two amendments to the bill – a particularly important provision for the minority Republicans, who have long complained they are forced to filibuster because Reid blocks them from trying to amend bills with votes on provisions Democrats dislike.
Even though senators can still filibuster the actual bill, eliminating the filibuster on the procedural step will cut days off the debate time.
Over the years, senators have reached a gentlemen’s agreement not to press the requirement that they remain on the floor talking for any filibuster, as was the case in the classic Frank Capra movie.
One aspect of the “talking filibuster” will be put in place: Once the Senate achieves the 60 votes needed to end a filibuster and vote on a bill, senators will need to remain speaking on the floor if they refuse to waive the 30 hours of final debate time that is allowed.
Once the vote threshold is reached to end a filibuster on White House nominees to district court, debate time will be reduced from 30 hours to two; for sub-Cabinet positions, it will be limited to eight hours.
“It’s not everything I wanted, and what we filed and advocated for, but I think this is progress in terms of making the institution work better,” said Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), who had led efforts with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) to change the filibuster rules.
The ability to filibuster has been part of Senate history. Cutting off debate with a supermajority was allowed only after a rule change in 1917, when then-President Woodrow Wilson sought to overcome Senate reservations about entering the post-World War I Treaty of Versailles. Decades later, then-Sen. Strom Thurmond’s record 24-hour filibuster stalled civil rights legislation.
The result has gummed up the Senate, a chamber the forefathers designed to move slower than the fiery House – but perhaps not as slow as this. But veteran senators have been hesitant to change the rules of the Senate, often considered the more deliberative of the two chambers.
lisa.mascaro@latimes.com
Twitter: @lisamascaroinDC
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37f3b3083f99b17fcde38f33c7b98cd4 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-25-la-na-texas-water-20130126-story.html | Texas, New Mexico tangle over water | Texas, New Mexico tangle over water
ALBUQUERQUE — The muddy Rio Grande isn’t much to look at as it meanders through southern New Mexico to the Texas border, but its waters are a high-stakes prize in a new legal row unfolding between the neighboring states.
This month, Texas asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its complaint that New Mexico has been diverting water it is obligated to send downstream under the 75-year-old Rio Grande Compact.
By allowing its residents to sink nearby wells and pump water from the river, “New Mexico has changed the conditions that existed in 1938 when the compact was executed,” the Texas complaint charges.
The dispute centers on the Rio Grande Project, a system of dams and canals that impounds water at the Elephant Butte and Caballo reservoirs in New Mexico and delivers it to farmers in southern New Mexico and West Texas. The compact among Colorado, New Mexico and Texas settled years of litigation by establishing a formula for allocating the river’s water to various users.
“All we’re trying to do is protect the project and its users,” says Pat Gordon, Texas’ representative on the Rio Grande Compact Commission. “There’s been a lot of tension for a lot of years. It seems that it’s gotten progressively worse.”
For one thing, he says, more than 2,500 wells have been drilled below Elephant Butte since the compact was signed. The wells cause water to flow from the river into the adjoining underground aquifer, he says, reducing the amount of water available for the irrigation network.
Meanwhile, Gordon says, New Mexico has “taken a very aggressive stance regarding what water would belong to the project” in a federal lawsuit it brought against the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the project.
That stance has “greatly affected the state of Texas and had an impact on the action Texas had to take,” he says.
Sarah Bond, an assistant New Mexico attorney general, denied that her state had changed its interpretation of the accounting and delivery of water under the compact.
“We are in compact compliance,” Bond said in emailed comments. Referring to Texas’ request pending before the high court, she added, “We would not speculate on any ‘true motives’ for the Supreme Court action. It would appear they want more water delivered to them than their compact entitlement.”
Southern New Mexico farmers have long turned to pumping groundwater under drought conditions, as has the nearby city of El Paso and others in Texas, Bond said. Those drawing water from the river have been found to have water rights that predate the Rio Grande Project, she said.
“None of the actions of New Mexico farmers or river pumpers have been in violation of the compact,” she said.
Charles DuMars, a prominent water law specialist and former University of New Mexico law professor, says the dispute “has been brewing for a long time.” For years, New Mexico did not regulate groundwater pumping below Elephant Butte and only stopped issuing new well permits in 1980, he says.
Though the wells may be depleting the river’s flow, the compact only requires that New Mexico deliver a set amount of water into Elephant Butte Reservoir, DuMars says. As to what happens to the river between there and Texas, New Mexico’s water law probably applies, not the compact, he says.
But Carlos Rubinstein, a member of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, contends that the Supreme Court should handle the dispute because the compact “is an agreement between states and it was approved by Congress.”
Should the high court decide to step in, it would probably appoint a special master to take evidence, he says. Texas has prevailed in similar actions against New Mexico involving the Canadian and Pecos rivers, Rubinstein notes.
Water issues are taking on added urgency as hotter, drier conditions afflict Western states with their burgeoning urban populations. The Supreme Court agreed this month to hear another lawsuit from Texas over water — by a water district against Oklahoma. At issue is whether the Tarrant Regional Water District in northeastern Texas can use water supplies in Oklahoma.
In New Mexico, years of drought have left Elephant Butte water levels perilously low, and the mountains in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado are seeing lower-than-normal snowpack. Flow in the Rio Grande near Santa Fe this spring is projected to be just 47% of the 1981-2010 average.
DuMars predicts the case will drag on for years. Meanwhile, he says, “it’s really up to Mother Nature. If there is adequate snowpack for two or three years in a row and they can fill Elephant Butte, then it’s OK. But all the injunctions in the Supreme Court are not going to create snow.”
nation@latimes.com
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419e1581a2621ec65cd5a8002fe7b513 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-26-la-me-pot-colorado-20130127-story.html | Colorado’s new growth industry: pot | Colorado’s new growth industry: pot
DENVER — Two hedge-fund partners — monogrammed shirts, taut Windsor knots, cuff links — step into a hipster cafe called Sputnik on an unorthodox mission.
They are meeting a business consultant to discuss a way to boost share prices at one of their portfolio companies, which sells indoor garden kits for tomatoes, herbs, flowers and salad greens. Their idea is to tap into a new market, one they need to be discreet about for fear of blemishing the publicly traded company’s reputation:
Marijuana.
PHOTOS: Marijuana entrepreneurs rushing to Colorado
Similar meetings have been taking place across Colorado in the two months since state voters approved a constitutional amendment allowing the adult use of recreational weed. The state has become a nucleus of the rapidly evolving marijuana industry, offering a glimpse at what life might be like if weed is legalized nationwide, with companies, entrepreneurs and investors maneuvering for a piece of the expected boom.
Dispensaries are handing out glossy prospectuses to lure investors. Luxury cannabis leisure magazines in the vein of Cigar Aficionado are promoting the industry and cannabis tourism. Companies are jostling for various sectors of the market, from grow lights to point-of-sale systems. And marijuana growers are shedding the pothead vibe to sell their services to MBAs, who may have the capital to get started but not the arcane knowledge required to produce good weed.
The hedge-fund partners from Lazarus Management Co. are among the new breed. They have come to Sputnik to talk to Ean Seeb, a consultant specializing in marijuana.
“In the past you had a bunch of marijuana enthusiasts with little or no business acumen looking to get into this industry,” said Seeb, 37, co-founder of Denver Relief Consulting. “Now we’re seeing a complete role reversal. A bunch of businessmen with a lot of money who recognize this opportunity, and they have no clue what they’re doing as far as cultivation.”
The state already boasts a regulated for-profit market of medicinal marijuana. It’s much more regimented than California’s industry, which operates under murky, ever-changing rules that vary from place to place.
In Colorado, sellers of medical marijuana must go through a background check, pay between $15,000 and $20,000 a year in licensing fees and submit to regular inspections by the state. Every plant is tagged and numbered, from seed to sale. No such system exists in California.
Seeb and his partners have run a dispensary for medical pot since 2009, and they know the key players in Colorado and how to get licensed. They tapped that expertise to start consulting in 2011. Their first client was a 97-year-old Denver institution, Central Bag and Burlap, which wanted to provide packaging for pot shops and marijuana edible products.
“We helped them create their name, their logo, their product line, the initial marketing,” Seeb said. “They are now the premier packaging supplier for the industry in Colorado.”
Other businesses are hoping the new law will spur even more growth. Toni Fox, owner of 3-D Denver’s Discreet Dispensary, is seeking investors. She printed a company prospectus the moment Amendment 64 passed.
With $500,000, Fox could build grow rooms in a warehouse next door and buy another dispensary in the mountain town of Buena Vista. She expects to produce 75 pounds of marijuana a month, worth well over $300,000 by 2014, when businesses will get the first licenses to sell recreational pot.
It hasn’t been easy to get this far. Banks don’t give loans to dispensaries because they are illegal under federal law, so Fox and her husband sold the assets of their commercial landscaping business — as well their boat, a motor home, her Mercedes-Benz and his Hummer — and invested it all in the dispensary. They spent $300,000 in construction costs before she could even get her certificate of occupancy and state license.
Last year, their net income was $17,040. But they see a big boost coming, with a rise in volume and price. She has a big advantage because existing dispensaries will get first dibs on the retail licenses, which are expected to be limited in number. Their prospectus predicts net income jumping from $338,190 this year to $5,888,990 in 2014 and $6,770,990 by 2015.
Expecting to draw tourists, they decorated the waiting room like a Rocky Mountain cabin and installed an 80-foot “viewing corridor,” with windows so customers can see the marijuana plants being grown.
“I am the closest dispensary to the airport,” she said.
The giant caveat hanging over this new marketplace is how the Justice Department will react.
President Obama signaled early in his first administration that prosecutors would not go after medical marijuana users, which all but launched an industry in California and, to a lesser extent, other states. Then in 2011, U.S. attorneys around the country began a campaign of raids, civil suits and prosecutions to rein it all back in.
After marijuana legalization measures passed here and in Washington state in November, Obama said in a television interview that it “would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined it’s legal.”
This comforted some, but users have generally not been the targets of the crackdowns. The sellers have been.
Even without a full crackdown, Colorado is affected, stuck in a kind of half-Prohibition. Purveyors of marijuana can’t get bank accounts, loans or institutional investors. They have to file tax returns under a provision targeting drug traffickers, which prohibits them from deducting routine expenses such as payroll.
When Wanda James founded her company Simply Pure, producing high-end marijuana-infused foods, she thought she could avoid the gray areas. She was a well-connected political consultant who was on Obama’s national finance committee in 2008 and also a restaurateur with her husband, a chef.
In 2010, Simply Pure began producing high-quality soft candies, olive oil, banana bread, marinara sauce, mango salsa. Over 120 dispensaries sold the products on a regular basis.
But last July her bank closed her accounts. She could have lied about what the company sold, but she didn’t want to.
She’s not giving up. Gov. John Hickenlooper appointed her to a task force to sort out regulations for the new recreational weed industry. Finding a solution to the banking problem is among her objectives.
“We would love some day to be able to work with Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s to produce a line of cannabis products that people can rely on, that taste great and are good for you,” she said. “You might not be able to imagine your mom taking a hit from a bong, but you might see her taking a bite of a peppermint cup.”
Back at Sputnik, Seeb listens to the hedge-fund partners. Leery about the stigma of marijuana, they ask to withhold their portfolio company’s name from this article.
Managing partner Justin Borus asks Seeb if he sees a market for the indoor grow kits. “And if there is a market for this, where should these things be sold? Should they be sold at Bed Bath & Beyond? Should they be sold at dispensaries?”
Borus and his partner wonder if someone like Seeb might want to join in as a sister marijuana company — getting the word out that these devices work for pot, selling the seed kits and giving online training that customers might want.
Borus’ partner, who did not want to give his name, said the company would probably not want to market directly for marijuana use. “But there are probably some fun ways to do it with a wink and a nod,” he said. “They say, ‘Marijuana? We have nothing to do with marijuana. But you might go online and check out this company that might just have seed kits that fit perfectly into our device.’”
Seeb was on board. Last week, he and his partners went to the company’s headquarters for their first meetings.
joe.mozingo@latimes.com
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264c8a30e539b9ec5a5af737aad53c0d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jan-31-la-fi-mo-china-canned-air-smog-20130131-story.html | Canned air for sale to combat smog in China | Canned air for sale to combat smog in China
If there’s a need, a Chinese entrepreneur will find a way.
The foul smog swallowing much of China has inspired one such man to launch a humorous campaign to focus on environmental issues -- by selling canned fresh air.
Known for his showman flair, millionaire Chen Guangbiao stood on a Beijing sidewalk on Wednesday handing out cans filled with what he said was air procured from remote areas of the country untainted by air pollution, according to Reuters.
“I want to tell majors, county chiefs and heads of big companies -- don’t just chase GDP growth,” Chen implored passersby. “Don’t chase the biggest profits at the expense of our children and grandchildren and at the cost of sacrificing our ecological environment.”
Never one to pass up a chance to promote himself, Chen stuck his own mug on the soda can-sized containers, along with the phrase “Chen Guangbiao is a good man,” Reuters said.
The entrepreneur made much of his money from recycling materials from torn-down buildings and is widely known for his philanthropic pursuits.
Chen acknowledged to Reuters that his portable fresh air was a “tongue-in-cheek” effort to spotlight the heavy air pollution that’s causing health and economic problems in China. But that doesn’t mean the cans are a joke: Each one costs 5 yuan, or approximately 80 cents, with the money to be donated to charity.
Reports indicate that there are multiple “flavors,” including “post-industrial Taiwan” and “pristine Tibet.”
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twitter.com/@ShanLi
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fe7880d2d800e6cf6058701e7f2c9a6c | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jul-01-la-fg-wn-france-germany-us-spying-reports-20130701-story.html | European leaders angered by U.S. spying reports | European leaders angered by U.S. spying reports
LONDON — Europe turned up the pressure on the Obama administration Monday to respond to new allegations that the U.S. bugged the embassies of some of its long-standing allies and eavesdropped on European Union diplomats around the world.
Leaders and officials of EU countries said that, if true, the reports of American spying on friendly nations were unacceptable and potentially damaging to relations across the Atlantic and to joint endeavors such as upcoming talks on a U.S.-EU free trade pact.
“We cannot accept this kind of behavior from partners and allies,” French President Francois Hollande said on television Monday.
A spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel was equally blunt, saying, “We’re not in the Cold War anymore.”
The allegations appeared in Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, both of which said the eavesdropping operation was revealed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, the fugitive American believed to be in diplomatic limbo at a Moscow airport.
The Guardian said that one document listed 38 foreign diplomatic missions as targets for electronic espionage, including such U.S. allies as Japan, Mexico, France and Italy. One operation, code-named Dropmire, allegedly involved planting a bug in an encrypted fax machine used by the EU’s mission in Washington.
Citing secret documents it had “partly seen,” Der Spiegel said that the U.S. National Security Agency also tapped European Union offices at the United Nations and in Brussels, where summits of EU leaders are regularly held.
The new allegations add to the concern that many European leaders have already expressed over the alleged collection of mountains of data on the emails and phone calls of millions of their citizens by American intelligence agencies. Privacy laws are generally more stringent in Europe than in the U.S. Germany in particular, where bitter memories of widespread informing and spying in the former East Germany are still fresh, has responded to allegations of U.S. surveillance with outrage.
“Clarity and transparency is what we expect from partners and allies, and this is what we expect from the U.S.,” the European Commission said in a statement Monday.
Some analysts dismiss such indignation as hypocritical, saying that all governments, including those professing shock over the latest accusations, routinely spy on both friends and enemies to protect their interests.
“I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders,” President Obama said at a news conference shortly after arriving in Tanzania on Monday. “That’s how intelligence services operate.”
It is unclear how much harm will truly be done to transatlantic relations, even if the allegations prove true. Although France has signaled that the revelations could negatively affect talks on free trade, which Paris is tepid about anyway, other countries such as Britain and Germany are eager to move forward on such an accord.
The first round of negotiations is to take place in Washington this month.
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e38433911ce20c10b360eaf5f99de636 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jul-03-la-fg-snowden-20130704-story.html | Snowden still seeks asylum offer; U.S. ‘ready to take him back’ | Snowden still seeks asylum offer; U.S. ‘ready to take him back’
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration appeared increasingly confident Wednesday that Edward Snowden’s next plane trip will be a return flight to the United States, as U.S. diplomats stepped up pressure on other countries to deny political asylum to the fugitive former National Security Agency contractor.
State Department officials said they had urged other governments not to assist Snowden, who faces espionage charges for leaking highly classified documents about U.S. intelligence surveillance systems around the globe, spurring an international debate over the reach of U.S. spying.
“Officials have been in touch with a broad range of countries,” Jennifer Psaki, a State Department spokeswoman, said Wednesday. “We’ve been crystal-clear on what we want to happen.”
Snowden has asked 21 countries for asylum to avoid U.S. prosecution, but none has offered him permanent refuge.
At the Justice Department, a senior official said the FBI and federal prosecutors were banking on Russian officials to break the stalemate and force Snowden to leave the international transit zone at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, where he apparently has holed up for the last 10 days.
“There are laws for how long someone can stay there,” the official said, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the case.
But a Russian Foreign Ministry official in Moscow said the law was not nearly so clear, and that Snowden had not technically entered Russia.
“As far as we know, Snowden can stay in the transit zone indefinitely or as long as he wishes before he gets a legitimate set of traveling papers and chooses to fly somewhere else,” said the official, who also spoke on condition of anonymity. “The fact that some countries are reluctant in offering or granting him asylum has nothing to do with terms of his stay at the Sheremetyevo transit zone.”
The State Department revoked Snowden’s passport when he fled Hong Kong for Moscow last month, but U.S. officials said Wednesday that won’t keep him from returning home.
“He’s not marooned,” said Nanda Chitre, the top spokesperson at the Justice Department. “He’s not stateless. He’s a U.S. citizen. No one has revoked his citizenship. His country is ready to take him back and issue a travel document so he can return to this country.”
Snowden’s fate thus remained in limbo a day after a passenger jet flying Bolivian President Evo Morales home from a conference in Moscow was blocked from entering French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian airspace, ostensibly because of suspicion that Snowden was aboard.
The plane made an unscheduled landing Tuesday night in Vienna, and Austrian officials who boarded and inspected the aircraft said Snowden was not a passenger.
On Wednesday, French, Spanish and Portuguese officials denied Morales’ angry charges that they had buckled to U.S. pressure to force down the Bolivian leader despite diplomatic protocols. An Austrian official said the inspection of Morales’ plane on the tarmac was “voluntary,” adding that “this did not happen by request of the United States.”
French President Francois Hollande said his government received contradictory information suggesting that Snowden might be on one of several aircraft that might fly over France, and that he didn’t realize that the Bolivian president was aboard the flight forced to Vienna.
“As soon as I knew that it was the plane of Bolivia’s president, I immediately gave my authorization for the overflight,” Hollande said. Officials said the French minister of foreign affairs telephoned his Bolivian counterpart to apologize.
Portuguese authorities said they granted Morales’ plane permission to fly over their country, but denied him permission to land for unspecified technical reasons.
A former U.S. official said an American request for allies to prevent the flight of a fugitive would be viewed as routine and probably would not require special political pressure from Washington.
“The international system depends on countries cooperating on things like this.… Nobody wants to be seen as aiding a fugitive,” said the official, who also declined to be identified.
The explanations didn’t stop a torrent of outrage from Latin American leaders, who portrayed the treatment of Morales as an affront and a violation of international courtesies, if not law.
“This is EXTREMELY serious,” Rafael Correa, the president of Ecuador, wrote on his Twitter account.
Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner called for an urgent meeting of South American presidents to lodge a protest. “Be calm,” she wrote in a post late Tuesday. “They will not [be allowed to] do this.”
Morales, Correa, Kirchner and several others form a bloc of pro-left Latin American presidents who often challenge U.S. positions. But the more conservative leadership of the Organization of American States, the hemisphere’s principal political body to which the U.S. belongs, also protested.
“Nothing justifies an act of such lack of respect for the highest authority of a country,” OAS Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza said in a statement. “The countries involved must give an explanation of the reasons why they took this decision, in particular as it endangered the life of the leader of a member country of the OAS.”
richard.serrano@latimes.com
paul.richter@latimes.com
Times staff writers Tracy Wilkinson in Mexico City, Sergei L. Loiko in Moscow and Shashank Bengali in Washington contributed to this report.
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c5663924ad360eb661f2977f8f4480d7 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jul-04-la-fg-wn-mandela-family-feud-20130704-story.html | Mandela family dirty linen aired as brother accuses brother | Mandela family dirty linen aired as brother accuses brother
JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — As a boy, Mandla Mandela wanted nothing more than to be a disc jockey in the city. But his grandfather, former South African President Nelson Mandela, picked him to live in the rolling hills of Eastern Cape as leader of the family and chief of its clan.
It’s a family now engulfed by an acrimonious feud, even as the elder statesman lies critically ill in a hospital.
The bitterness spilled out Thursday as Mandla Mandela accused a half-brother, Mbuso, of impregnating Mandla’s wife, called another brother, Nbada, illegitimate and said Nelson Mandela’s oldest daughter, Makaziwe, was sowing “divisions and destruction” in the family.
His assertions followed accusations earlier in the week by Ndaba Mandela that Mandla was illegitimate, in an apparent effort to topple him as chief as the family battles over the future of the famous Mandela name – and the money it might generate.
“I do not want to hang out our dirty linen as a family in public,” Mandla Mandela said at a news conference, before he proceeded to do just that. “But he [Ndaba] knows very well that my father impregnated a married woman, of which he is the result of that act. So he should be very careful when he wants to throw insults, particularly to my mother who still sits by my side and ensures that I am able to wake up every day to serve my community.”
Mandla Mandela, chief of the AbaThembu clan, lost a court battle Wednesday to other family members, forcing him to surrender the bones of his father and his father’s siblings -- Nelson Mandela’s three dead children. Makaziwe Mandela-Amuah and other family members accused the chief of stealing the bones from the former president’s home village of Qunu and reburying them at his homestead at Mvezo to ensure that Nelson Mandela eventually would be buried there.
Mandla Mandela’s allegations came as the office of South African President Jacob Zuma announced that Nelson Mandela remained in a critical but stable condition in a Pretoria hospital where he was admitted June 8 with a lung infection.
The family has offered contradictory accounts of the former president’s condition. His wife, Graca Machel, described him Thursday as generally fine. “Madiba is sometimes uncomfortable. Sometimes he is in pain. But he is fine,” she said, referring to him by his clan name.
However, a news report surfaced Thursday that the Mandela family had been advised by doctors to switch off his respirator.
This formed part of a submission by Makaziwe Mandela-Amuah and other family members in their court battle against Mandla Mandela over the return of family bones, according to the report
“The family has been advised by the medical practitioners that his life support machine should be switched off. Rather than prolonging his suffering, the Mandela family is exploring this option as a very real probability,” the family’s court affidavit said, according to the report.
The report, however, was dated June 26. The following day, family members and Zuma’s office reported the former president’s health had improved.
Under traditional African law, which is protected by South Africa’s constitution, Mandla Mandela is supposed to reign supreme in his family, responsible for such matters as marriages, land issues and burials. But South Africa’s Western-based legal system and traditional African law are often at odds.
So he was confused and angry to be dragged to High Court on Friday by family members who under customary law should answer to him. When his lawyers tried to argue his rights under customary law, the judge dismissed the arguments as irrelevant.
On Thursday, Mandla Mandela denied he had taken the bones illegally, insisting he had adhered to African cultural practice. “I took the remains and temporarily kept them ... in Mvezo until we gain knowledge of what my grandfather’s wishes are or that of his spouse,” he told the news conference.
The bones were reburied Thursday in Qunu, paving the way for the former president to be buried there in future.
Phatekile Holomisa, head of the Council of Traditional Leaders of South Africa, said that if there was no clear instruction in Nelson Mandela’s will on where he should be buried, and there was a feud in the family, it was up to all family elders to meet and resolve the issue.
On major decisions, Mandla “has to consult people like his aunt Makaziwe, the leader of all the girls in the community, before he can implement his decisions. They ought to listen to each other,” Holomisa said. “But ultimately the final word rests with Mandla.”
Holomisa was critical of Makaziwe Mandela-Amuah and other family members for rushing to the High Court: “On the face of it, she has undermined the elders in her family. Those are Western courts. They don’t understand our customs.”
In a pitch that appealed to South Africa’s many traditionalists, Mandla Mandela presented himself Thursday as a reluctant chief who gave up his dreams to be a deejay -- and a successful business -- on his grandfather’s instructions that he reluctantly become leader of the family.
“I recall the final moment when he invited me for lunch after I’d tried many times to put up my case that I was very independent and very successful as a businessman,” he said. “He felt it necessary to usher me back home because he had realized that the life I led in Johannesburg was that of an individual and not that of service to our people.”
He charged that some people involved in the court actions over the family bones and a previous attempt to get control over several family trust funds were not even Mandelas, he said.
“Everyone wants to be a Mandela. Individuals have abandoned their own families and heritage and decided to jump on the Mandela wagon,” he said. “We need to be clear who are members of this family. We need to be clear when we convene family meetings who sits in these family meetings.”
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05e80660a84d7d4c5fb13affaf396f53 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jul-07-la-fg-wn-egypt-cairo-attack-20130707-story.html | Egyptian army, Muslim Brotherhood in bloody clash | Egyptian army, Muslim Brotherhood in bloody clash
CAIRO — A night of largely peaceful protests in Cairo ended early Monday in a bloody clash between Muslim Brotherhood supporters and Egyptian soldiers, according to Muslim Brotherhood officials and Egyptian media.
Muslim Brotherhood officials, who are supporting ousted Islamist President Mohamed Morsi, said security forces raided their encampment outside the Republican Guard compound with tear gas and gunfire about 4 a.m. Supporters of Morsi have been camped there for days demanding the release of the ousted leader, who has been under arrest since a military coup last week.
The Muslim Brotherhood said 34 people had been killed and 500 wounded; those figures could not be confirmed. The Associated Press quoted an army official as saying that five had been killed by gunmen.
Egyptian television showed chaotic scenes of bloodied, unconscious protesters lying in makeshift triage facilities. They also showed images of more than a dozen bodies lying under sheets and Egyptian flags.
The Brotherhood called upon their supporters to donate blood and rush to the Nasr district of Cairo to assist the victims.
“Bloodbath!” tweeted Muslim Brotherhood spokesman Gehad Haddad.
In an interview with Al Jazeera television, Haddad said Egypt had returned to a “full-fledged police state in just five days” and warned that the attack might provoke more violence.
“This kind of incitement and violence is pushing people to the brink and I don’t think the people can take it anymore,’’ he said. “We are still the critical mass in Egypt.”
[Updated, 10:50 p.m. July 7: This post has been updated with death toll estimates.]
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66501e5bb15d59f7fbb12f965f5215db | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jul-08-la-fg-china-air-pollution-20130709-story.html | Pollution cuts life spans by 5.5 years in north China, study says | Pollution cuts life spans by 5.5 years in north China, study says
BEIJING — Life expectancy is 5.5 years lower in northern China than in the south because of heavy air pollution, a new study examining 20 years of data has determined.
The research, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by four economists in China, the U.S. and Israel, examined air quality readings collected in 90 Chinese cities from 1981 to 2000 and compared those with mortality data collected at 145 locations across the country from 1991 to 2000.
Other studies have established strong correlations between air pollution and poor health and attempted to quantify the loss of life in China due to air pollution. But the specificity of the study published Monday may provide a jolt to policymakers and the public as debate intensifies over how much China has sacrificed to achieve rapid economic growth.
The researchers found that a seemingly arbitrary Mao-era economic policy on coal-fired boilers for winter heating created dramatic differences in air quality within China. North of the Huai River, the government provided free coal, while to the south, people were essentially denied central heat. In effect, this policy created two experimental groups that could be compared with each other, and the impact of burning coal on air quality — and on health — could be isolated and quantified.
“We will never, thank goodness, have a randomized, controlled trial where we expose some people to more pollution and other people to less pollution over the course of their lifetimes,” said MIT’s Michael Greenstone, one of the authors. “It’s not that the Chinese government set out to cause [a negative effect on health]. This was the unintended consequence” of the policy at the time.
Greenstone and his coauthors found that north of the river, total suspended particulates, or TSPs, were over 500 micrograms per cubic meter, or 55% higher than levels in the south. Life expectancy in the north was 5.5 years lower — almost entirely because of higher incidences of cardiorespiratory deaths.
Based on their modeling, the researchers estimated that the 500 million residents of northern China in the 1990s collectively lost 2.5 billion years from their lives.
“It’s a huge loss. Air pollution in China is really damaging people’s health much more seriously than the findings in previous literature” would suggest, said Yuyu Chen of Peking University, another author. “After this study, there should be no argument over whether we should take the air pollution issue seriously.... We need a comprehensive clean air act in China.”
The study in the U.S. journal was peer-reviewed, but the reviewers did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Dirty air remains a grave concern in China. In January, a combination of windless weather, rising temperatures and emissions from coal heating brought on a prolonged spell of some of Beijing’s worst air pollution on record, widely dubbed the “Airpocalypse.”
From the capital to Guiyang, 1,100 miles to the southwest, the pollution closed highways, forced the cancellations of airline flights and outdoor activities, and sent countless people to hospitals.
Another spell of terrible air besieged the capital in late June. The episodes have raised debate about whether China is sacrificing too much of its citizens’ health for economic growth. In recent years, environmental degradation has sparked numerous protests across the nation, and Communist Party officials are well aware that the issue could become a political crisis.
“It has proven that environmental crises can stir controversy and greatly undermine social stability,” the state-run New China News Agency said last month in a commentary.
During the Airpocalypse, China’s government experimented with various emergency measures, curtailing the use of official cars and ordering factories and construction sites to close. In June, China’s State Council, or Cabinet, announced a package of 10 anti-pollution measures, including forcing heavy industries such as steel manufacturing to replace outdated technologies and publish data on pollutants.
Heavy polluters are being asked to reduce their emissions for each unit of economic output by 30% by the end of 2017. But critics say that if economic growth continues to exceed 7% annually, total decreases in pollution will be small.
Chen noted that based on other studies of how much economic growth Chinese citizens would be willing to give up to prolong their lives, he can conclude that the public would be willing to forgo up to 2 percentage points of economic growth to reduce particulates by 100 micrograms per cubic meter.
Numerous Chinese cities have average particulate readings of 200 to 300 micrograms, Chen noted, while in the U.S. the average is 20 to 30. Long-term exposure to each additional 100 micrograms cuts life expectancy by three years, Chen and his team concluded.
Chen’s study looked at TSP levels measured in the 1980s and ‘90s. That standard has been replaced by one called PM 10, which measures particulates 10 micrometers in diameter or less. That’s one-seventh the width of a human hair.
In recent years, scientists have been focusing on even smaller particles, known as PM 2.5. Those small particles are considered more damaging than PM 10, because they can penetrate the lungs and embed deeply in tissue.
In January, PM 2.5 measurements reached more than 1,000 micrograms per cubic meter in some parts of northeastern China. A daily reading above 300 is considered “hazardous” and the index stops at 500. By comparison, the U.S. has seen readings of 1,000 only in areas downwind of forest fires. The U.S. national air quality standard for daily PM 2.5 exposure is 35, and most areas in the U.S. are easily below that threshold.
A study released in December by Greenpeace and Peking University researchers that examined particulate pollution in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Xian estimated that PM 2.5 pollution caused 8,572 premature deaths in those cities alone in 2012, and led to more than $1 billion in economic losses that year. Other research published this spring estimated that air pollution contributed to 1.2 million premature deaths in China in 2010, nearly 40% of the global total.
“We need to raise standards for factories, for gasoline and for heating,” said Hongbin Li of Tsinghua University, another author of the study published Monday. “This will be costly and sacrifice growth, but it will save lives and cut medical expenses too.”
julie.makinen@latimes.com
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f77b21015bd894f0ff115d6a2665a46d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jul-12-la-fg-wn-snowden-asylum-russia-20130712-story.html | Edward Snowden seeking asylum in Russia, report says | Edward Snowden seeking asylum in Russia, report says
MOSCOW -- Edward Snowden, the fugitive leaker who revealed the secret U.S. effort to track phone and Internet communications, told Russian human rights activists and lawyers on Friday that he will seek political asylum in Russia, the state-owned RIA Novosti news service reported.
Activist Tanya Lokshina, who attended the meeting with Snowden at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport, told the news service that the former contract worker for the National Security Agency wanted their help petitioning the U.S. and European states not to interfere with his asylum process.
[Updated at 7:40 a.m. July 12: Snowden said asylum in Russia, at least for now, is the only option he sees that would provide for his security, said Lokshina, director of the Human Rights Watch Moscow office.
“Basically he asked us to help him on two issues: first to petition for his request for asylum to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, at least until he could travel to Latin America,” Lokshina told The Times. “Secondly he would like us to appeal to the governments of the United States and countries of European Union not to interfere with his asylum-seeking process.”
Snowden said that it would be easy for him to comply with Putin’s earlier demand “not to do harm” to the United States, Lokshina said. “I didn’t do any damage to the United States,” Lokshina quoted Snowden as saying.
“Our organization will discuss his request, but I think that Snowden deserves to be rendered assistance he asked us for,” she added.]
Snowden last month revealed that he was the source of leaks to journalists that revealed the extent to which the U.S. tracks communications around the globe. He first fled to Hong Kong and hid in the Chinese city for several weeks while U.S. officials pressed for his extradition. He arrived in Moscow on June 23 on a flight from Hong Kong and has since applied to numerous countries for asylum.
U.S. officials have vowed to pursue and extradite Snowden, who was charged by federal prosecutors last month with two violations of the Espionage Act and theft of government property.
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Snowden’s request for a meeting was sent to Russian representatives of Amnesty International, Transparency International, Human Rights Watch, a Polish civil rights group and a U.N. representative in Russia. Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin was also invited, the Interfax report said.
In a letter to the human rights organizations, the text of which was provided to The Times, Snowden thanked the “brave countries around the world” that have offered him asylum.
“By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world,” Snowden said in the letter.
“Unfortunately, in recent weeks we have witnessed an unlawful campaign by officials in the U.S. Government to deny my right to seek and enjoy this asylum under Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” Snowden said.
He was referring in part to the July 3 flight out of Moscow that had Bolivian President Evo Morales on board. The flight was forced to land in Vienna in connection with suspicions the plane might be carrying Snowden to a welcoming Central American or South American country.
“Never before in history have states conspired to force to the ground a sovereign president’s plane to effect a search for a political refugee,” Snowden said of the incident.
Snowden said the purported attempts by the U.S. to extradite him represented “a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America or my own personal security, but to the basic right shared by every living person to live free from persecution.”
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41c61980fcb28ea0c1a3948d50604aab | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jul-27-la-fg-brazil-pope-20130728-story.html | Pope Francis criticizes Brazil’s church for ‘exodus’ of followers | Pope Francis criticizes Brazil’s church for ‘exodus’ of followers
RIO DE JANEIRO — Pope Francis on Saturday issued what the Vatican said was one of the most important speeches of his papacy, taking to task the Roman Catholic Church in Brazil for hemorrhaging droves of followers to other faiths or to apathy.
Speaking in frank terms to bishops from around the country, Francis laid blame for the “exodus” on a long list of failings by the church and leaders sometimes caught up by intellectualism or overly rigid rules — a church “too distant … too cold.”
“Are we still a church capable of warming hearts?” the pope said. “We need a church capable of walking at people’s side, of doing more than simply listening to them,” he said.
The Catholic Church in Brazil has lost several million followers, especially to Protestant evangelical churches that provide services in jails and slums, known as favelas, and often attract new followers with folksy promises of prosperity and other benefits.
The pope’s speech over lunch repeated a theme he addressed earlier in the day, and several times during his week in Brazil: Priests and Catholic leaders must “shake up” their institutions and “get out into the streets” to build the church.
“It is not enough simply to open the door in welcome, but we must go out through that door to seek and meet the people,” he said. “Let us courageously look to pastoral needs, beginning on the outskirts, with those who are farthest away, with those who do not usually go to church. They too are invited to the table of the Lord.”
Earlier Saturday, the pope seemed to endorse the message of Brazilian demonstrators who have filled the streets here in recent weeks, urging government leaders to work to redress severe social inequities. But he also told young protesters to steer away from violence and toward “dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.”
“The outcry, the call for justice, continues to be heard even today,” the pope told a gathering of senior Brazilian officials in the ornate Municipal Theater in Rio de Janeiro.
Leadership and responsibility mean finding “the way to go to the heart of the evils of a society and to overcome them, also with the boldness of courageous and free actions,” Francis said.
His message to members of Brazil’s elite leadership repeated themes of social justice and of reaching out to the poor, which have been the hallmark of his weeklong pilgrimage to the world’s largest Roman Catholic country.
But, he suggested, sympathy for their causes did not give demonstrators carte blanche. On several occasions, police have used tear gas to break up demonstrations that did not target the pope specifically but did distract from his appearances.
“Between selfish indifference and violent protest there is always another possible option, that of dialogue,” the pope said. “Dialogue between generations, dialogue with the people, the capacity to give and receive, while remaining open to the truth. A country grows when constructive dialogue occurs.”
He chastised the “interplay of vested interests” that hold back democracy, an allusion to the old-style, deeply entrenched economic powers that continue to dominate Brazil, and much of Latin America, sometimes from behind the scenes.
“When leaders in various fields ask me for advice, my response is always the same: dialogue, dialogue, dialogue,” he said.
The pope was beaming as he left the theater, surrounded by young girls who gave him flowers and an indigenous tribesman who offered him his feathered headdress, which Francis briefly donned, mugging for the cameras.
The tribesman and others who accompanied him said they were part of a group caught in a long struggle with ranchers over protecting their land from illegal timbering.
Francis gave another boost to disaffected young people during Friday night’s Stations of the Cross, the symbolic reenactment of the crucifixion of Christ, held on Rio’s wild Copacabana beach. The show was part Las Vegas, part Catholic avant-garde.
He said Jesus’ journey to his death on the cross showed his determination to assume the burdens and suffering of victims of violence, hunger and persecution based on skin color.
“Jesus is united with so many young people who have lost faith in political institutions, because they see in them only selfishness and corruption,” the pope said. “He unites himself with those young people who have lost faith in the church, or even in God, because of the counter-witness of Christians and ministers of the Gospel.”
Some analysts interpreted the last as a reference to the victims of clergy sexual abuse.
Francis, who had been speaking primarily in Portuguese in public appearances since arriving in Rio de Janeiro, spoke more Spanish on Saturday. He said it was to better express what was in his heart, but it could also reflect weariness in what has been an inordinately grueling schedule for the 76-year-old pontiff, the first from the Americas.
wilkinson@latimes.com
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3cb8291c2bd2b7d4a0c7d534d1031f17 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jun-11-la-fg-wn-syrian-youth-killing-20130611-story.html | Killing of Syrian youth for ‘blasphemy’ fuels tension in Aleppo | Killing of Syrian youth for ‘blasphemy’ fuels tension in Aleppo
This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details.
Protesters in the embattled city of Aleppo called for justice in the killing of a 14-year-old boy accused of blasphemy, blaming armed opposition groups for the youth’s death.
The killers have not been identified, but some in the city are pointing a finger at armed Islamist groups, an accusation that could ignite tensions among residents, activists and Islamic rebels in the city, about half of which is under opposition control.
Although the Islamist rebels are admired for their fighting ability against government forces, they are also feared for being heavy-handed, even brutal, in implementing their form of justice.
The Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al Sham, a unified group of Al Qaeda in Iraq and Syrian fighters, denied any part in the teen’s death.
Mohammad Qataa was beaten and later shot three times Sunday by three assailants. Witnesses said Qataa was operating his coffee stand when a man asked to buy coffee on credit, according to the Aleppo Media Center.
Qataa reportedly said that “even if Muhammad came down from heaven, I would not give you this coffee on credit.”
Armed men in a black vehicle heard Qataa’s words and took him away and beat him. After he was returned to his neighborhood a short time later, he made another statement deemed blasphemous and was shot and killed in front of witnesses, according to the center.
His parents, at home in a nearby apartment, had been told that their son had been taken and heard the gunshots.
“A kid, 14 years old, why would you kill him? Why?” his mother said in an interview posted online. “We are a religious family, we pray, we fast, everyone knows us. We keep to ourselves, we’re not with this side and we’re not with that side.”
The killing is being investigated by two opposition legal authorities, the Unified Judicial Council and the Sharia Authority.
The Local Coordination Committees, a network of activists throughout Syria, condemned the killing, as well as those who justified it based on what Qataa said. “The ugliness of this crime … is refused by all religions, ethics and international laws,” according to the group’s statement.
For the record, 6:20 p.m. June 11: A previous version of this post said the youth had been killed on Saturday. He was killed on Sunday.
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bd78a82addef2e1c768fca33dc6f85ac | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jun-15-la-fg-wn-police-storm-istanbul-park-20130615-story.html | Police attack Istanbul park protesters with water cannons, tear gas | Police attack Istanbul park protesters with water cannons, tear gas
ISTANBUL, Turkey – Hundreds of riot police surrounded a park in central Istanbul on Saturday, firing tear gas and water cannons in a renewed push by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to restore order after two weeks of demonstrations that have exasperated his government and exposed the country’s deepening political divide.
Police forces surrounded Gezi Park shortly before nightfall. They moved beneath sycamore trees toward tents and crowds of hundreds of protesters. Some demonstrators reportedly threw rocks but the dissidents appeared to be overwhelmed by security forces, whose lines spread into adjoining Taksim Square.
Ambulances arrived outside the park as tear gas enveloped the trees. Turkey’s NTV television reported that police shouted at protesters: “This is an illegal act, this is our last warning to you — evacuate.”
Earlier in the day, Erdogan, angry that protesters did not leave the park after negotiations with him to end the stand-off Friday, told his supporters: “I say it clearly: Taksim Square must be evacuated, otherwise this country’s security forces know how to evacuate it.”
The protesters had vowed during the day to continue their occupation of the park, spurning government calls for them to pack up and end two weeks of demonstrations.
“The government has ignored clear and rightful demands since the beginning of the resistance. They tried to divide, provoke and damage our legitimacy,” the Taksim Solidarity, a leading protest group, said in a statement. “This is just the beginning, resistance will continue.”
The fresh clashes came despite negotiations between protesters and Erdogan late Thursday and early Friday that yielded an agreement to freeze a development planned for the park pending resolution of outstanding legal issues and a referendum on the project.
Throughout Friday and Saturday, there was little suggestion that protesters would leave Gezi Park. They number in the hundreds, drinking, dancing and eating. Government officials had hoped that by freezing construction, they could convince protesters to disperse.
Erdogan had surrounded the park with busloads of police on Thursday, raising prospects of the fresh police raid to come. The Turkish Medical Assn. said four people have been killed with more than 5,000 injured since protests began two weeks ago.
The demonstrators distrust Erdogan, whom they believe should adopt a more inclusive approach to decision-making, while fearing his increasingly conservative policies are part of an attack on Turkey’s secular identity.
“We are going through a period in which the rights of people, including right to life, are trodden,” Taksim Solidarity said.
Taksim Solidarity again called for the government to investigate accusations of police brutality during the protests.
“We repeat that no serious legal action has yet been taken against those who perpetrated and oversaw the actions that lead to the killing of our friends, and … we will make sure those who are responsible for the violence are brought to justice.”
Government officials had repeatedly called on demonstrators to leave the park. The protests have cast international attention on Turkey – during Erdogan’s decade in power, viewed as a model of sound Islamic-inspired governance – scaring tourists away and causing jitters on the stock market.
In Ankara, Erdogan had attended a rally of AKP party faithful earlier Saturday and had called the protests part of a conspiracy of foreigners and shady underground organizations seeking to destabilize the country, the Today’s Zaman newspaper reported.
“You saw the plot that was being carried out, the trap being set,” local media reported Erdogan as saying. “You are here, and you are spoiling the treacherous plot, the treacherous attack!”
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9da6f2e98000ab8a4efb1758ae1a11df | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jun-15-la-fg-wn-rowhani-iran-election-20130615-story.html | Rowhani appears headed to landslide win in Iran elections | Rowhani appears headed to landslide win in Iran elections
TEHRAN — Hassan Rowhani, a cleric embraced by reformists and moderates as an alternative to the nation’s hard-line leadership, appeared headed toward a landslide victory Saturday in elections to succeed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Rowhani, 64, a bespectacled, bearded jurist who has long been a member of the inner power circle of the Islamic Republic, was winning about 51% of the popular vote with slightly more than half of the projected ballots counted, the Interior Ministry reported Saturday. The count from Friday’s elections continued into Saturday afternoon.
As officials tallied the results, it was still not clear if Rowhani would maintain his commanding lead and avoid a runoff election next week against the second-place finisher. Under Iranian election law, a candidate needs a simple majority to avoid a runoff.
Running a distant second was a conservative office seeker, Tehran Mayor Mohammed Baqer Qalibaf, a former Revolutionary Guard commander and police chief who was garnering about 15% of the vote.
Rowhani’s apparent margin of victory was a huge surprise, reflecting several factors, including a tactically adept campaign and a fractured alliance among his hard-line opponents. Many observers had assumed that one of his conservative rivals would likely emerge victorious, or at least make it into a runoff election. But instead the conservative vote was split, analysts said, opening the way for Rowhani to pull away from the pack.
Only a week ago, Rowhani had been considered a long shot to make it into a runoff election. But he received the endorsement of a pair of former presidents, and a potential rival for reformist votes dropped out of the race, consolidating his prospective support.
Even Rowhani’s inner circle did not predict an outright victory, though his campaign had been polling well in recent days and advisers noted a sense of momentum. Enthusiasm was especially strong among the young, women and middle-class urban voters disillusioned with the nation’s conservative leadership and the stalled economy. Rowhani also did well in voting from the seminary city of Qom, the nation’s religious hub, results showed.
Though long regarded as a conservative-leaning cleric, Rowhani emerged in the last week of the campaignas a charismatic champion of reformist ideals, including enhanced personal freedoms, gender equality and artistic liberty. He also backed using foreign policy as a means to improve the nation’s free-falling economy, battered by Western-led sanctions tied to the nation’s controversial nuclear program.
Improving the moribund economy was the major theme of all six candidates.
Results were trickling out slowly on Saturday, stretching out the anticipated drama for tens of millions of Iranians who came out in force to vote on Friday, election day. But several hundred youths were said to be gathered outside Rowhani’s campaign headquarters in the capital. There was some speculation thatauthorities were seeking to hold off mass street celebrations.
The six candidates had issued a joint statement asking their supporters to refrain from celebration until after the official results were announced.
The official media reported that turnout in Friday’s vote may have topped 80%, exceeding projections that 60% of the 50 million eligible voters would cast ballots.
Long lines at balloting places prompted election authorities to extend voting hours by five hours in Tehran, until 11 p.m. on Friday.
Supporters of Rowhani had expressed confidence that he would post a strong showing, though never predicting a landslide triumph. Rowhani has gone from a dark-horse hopeful to a possible finalist and unexpected standard-bearer of the long-disillusioned reformist camp.
“If he can bring a bit more freedom of speech, more freedom of the press and more space to criticize officials, that’s enough,” said one Rowhani backer, Ali, a physician who would not give his last name.
Among the first to cast a ballot early Friday was the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who urged all Iranians to exercise their right to vote. He also told Washington “to hell with you” after some U.S. officials questioned the transparency of the election.
Khamenei has the last say on matters of state in Iran’s theocratic system. But Rowhani has long had close relations with Khamenei, observers said.
The government here views elections as key to its international credibility and had urged a large turnout as a rebuff to Iran’s enemies, principally the United States and its allies. Tehran has accused Washington of seeking to deflate voter participation, a charge denied by the State Department.
Along with choosing a president, Iranians voted for representatives for thousands of city and village council slots. State news media called the election the largest in Iran’s history.
Friday’s presidential elections were the first since the disputed vote in 2009, which was marred by allegations of vote rigging that triggered mass protests and a forceful police crackdown. Critics contended that reformist candidates were robbed of victory in 2009. Ahmadinejad won a second and final term; he was barred by term limits from seeking a third mandate this year, however.
There were three pro-government “principalist” hard-liners on the presidential ballot: Saeed Jalili, the nation’s longtime international nuclear negotiator; former Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Velayati; and Qalibaf. Early returns showed Jalili, viewed as the favored candidate of the nation’s security and clerical establishment, as running fourth, a surprisingly poor showing for someone who was once the presumed front-runner.
Rounding out the slate were two independent conservative candidates: Mohsen Rezai, a former Revolutionary Guard commander, and Mohammad Gharazi, a former oil minister and telecommunications chief.
Mostaghim is a special correspondent. Special correspondent Alexandra Sandels and Times staffwriter McDonnell contributed from Beirut.
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b6a7e8d5fcbcdccc4e8ec9dbce1912af | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jun-18-la-fg-wn-afghan-bombing-nato-security-transfer-20130618-story.html | Bombing mars final NATO transfer of Afghan security duties | Bombing mars final NATO transfer of Afghan security duties
KABUL, Afghanistan -- An hour before NATO transferred formal responsibility for the nation’s security to Afghan forces, a large bomb targeting a minority lawmaker exploded in western Kabul on Tuesday morning, killing three civilians and wounding more than a dozen others, police said.
The intended target, Mohammad Mohaqiq, a prominent lawmaker and former Cabinet member from the minority Hazara community, survived the attack but at least four bodyguards in his convoy were wounded, said Gen. Mohammad Daud Amin, Kabul’s deputy police chief.
No group claimed immediate responsibility but the blast, a roadside bomb detonated by remote control, was specifically designed to disrupt Tuesday’s security transition, said Gen. Mohammad Zahir, head of Kabul’s crime and investigation unit.
The assault in the western Pul-e Surkh area of Kabul, near the headquarters of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, was the fifth high-profile strike in six weeks on the heavily guarded capital. The Taliban said it would target foreign troops, U.N. officials and Afghans working with international forces at the start of its spring offensive, a time when warmer weather generally brings more intense fighting.
Tuesday’s attack came minutes before a ceremony attended by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen marking the formal hand-off of security responsibility to the Afghan National Security Forces.
The transition is a major milestone in the 12-year-old war. In practice, however, about 100,000 international combat troops will continue to provide intelligence, training, air power and ground forces as needed for the foreseeable future.
The U.S.-led coalition insists that after years of training Afghan forces are strong enough to take the lead in fighting the Taliban.
Critics counter that the 350,000-strong Afghan national security forces suffer from inadequate training and morale and aren’t ready, but are nevertheless being pushed into a commanding role by NATO members keen to withdraw their combat troops by late 2014 and end the high cost and body count of a protracted conflict.
At least 2,100 members of the U.S. military have died in Afghanistan, including over 1,740 killed in conflict situations, since the U.S.-led invasion in late 2001, according to the Associated Press.
Tuesday’s ceremony at the Afghan National Security University in Kabul’s Qargha district, which featured several Afghan flags and an oversized photo of Karzai, saw the transfer of 95 remaining districts. This is the fifth and final stage of a two-year transition to build up the confidence and capability of Afghan forces. It started with areas, such as Bamiyan, deemed relatively safe.
Included in the transfer of security duties were 13 areas in Kandahar province -- the spiritual home of the Taliban -- and 12 areas each in Nangarhar, Khost and Paktika, all hotbeds of insurgent activity near Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan.
Mohaqiq, leader of the People’s Islamic Unity Party of Afghanistan, is a member of the National Front representing members of the former Northern Alliance that battled the Taliban before the U.S. invaded in 2001.
Mohaqiq said in a telephone interview that he was on his way to parliament when the bomb exploded, wounding as many as 22 people including nine bodyguards. “I think the Afghan security forces are not in a position to provide security nationwide and need more training,” he said.
The Taliban, predominantly made up of ethnic Pashtuns, persecuted the Hazara minority during their five-year rule. The Taliban sought to impose a radical interpretation of Islamic law. The Hazara face ongoing attacks and discrimination.
After months of relative calm in Kabul, the Taliban has since early May shown its ability to strike with relative ease at the heart of the Karzai government just as the country prepares for 2014 presidential elections.
Among recent attacks on Kabul include a suicide car bomb last week that killed at least 15 civilians outside the Supreme Court, an attack at the airport a day earlier, and a strike on an international aid group’s compound last month that led to a seven-hour gun battle.
[For the Record, 12:23 p.m. PDT June 18: An earlier version of this post said the Afghan national army is 350,000-strong. That number includes other Afghan security forces.]
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Special correspondent Baktash reported from Kabul and Magnier reported from New Delhi.
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139356412b527760883fd71fe4768525 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jun-20-la-fg-china-escape-20130620-story.html | As Beijing air pollution worsens, some American expats clear out | As Beijing air pollution worsens, some American expats clear out
BEIJING — After nearly two decades in Beijing, David Wolf knew it was time for a change when his 11-year-old son, Aaron, somberly asked him, “Dad, when you were growing up, did you ever have PE outdoors?”
Wolf had grown up in smog-choked Los Angeles in the 1970s, but even that wasn’t nearly as bad as Beijing today. His son, like many young students in the city, has been kept inside for months, with the luckier children getting the chance to exercise under huge air-filtered domes that their international schools have built.
Later this month, when school lets out, Aaron and his mother will move to Southern California for good, and Wolf begins a new way of doing his consulting work, splitting his time between Beijing and their new home at Channel Islands Harbor.
“I want them to leave before they hate this place,” Wolf, 49, said on a recent morning as he checked Beijing’s air quality on a smartphone app, something that many people here, expats and locals alike, routinely do several times a day.
After a brutal winter, when Beijing and some other cities in northern China logged their worst air pollution readings on record, and a somewhat better but still unacceptably unhealthful spring, some people are starting to escape from Beijing.
Although Beijing officials have said sulfur dioxide counts have dropped in recent years, other major air quality measures and the soupy haze that often blankets the city tell a different story. China’s rapid economic growth and urbanization have brought many more pollution-spewing vehicles to the city, and Beijing also has the misfortune of being surrounded by mountains that trap the soot-filled air from neighboring provinces that churn out huge amounts of steel, cement and other products for the domestic market.
No one knows how many have fled or made concrete plans to leave, but expats who have been in China’s capital a while seem to know at least a person or two who are getting out, and many more who are talking about it.
So far it has been a trickle rather than an exodus. With China’s economy still growing much faster than other major economies — and Beijing in many ways at the center of it all — it isn’t easy for people, especially executives, to walk away from the opportunities here.
Residents of China “know there are issues of food quality, air quality, even water and rice quality. This is a given,” said Simon Wan, the global head of Cornerstone International Group, a major executive search firm based in Shanghai. “They are taking all kinds of protection,” such as wearing surgical masks and buying air filtration equipment.
As for potential new arrivals to China, Wan said, “this is not a deal breaker.... The reality is that in the U.S. and Europe, the job scope and size are not as interesting.”
Still, China’s poor air is becoming an increasing economic concern, with sickness and stay-indoors alerts cutting into productivity and profits. Given a choice, senior managers are asking to work in Shanghai rather than Beijing, in part because of the difference in air quality.
The American Chamber of Commerce’s membership keeps growing in Shanghai while flat-lining in Beijing. Hardship pay for being based in China, a thing of the past, is starting to come back, says Christian Murck, the chamber’s president in Beijing.
Groups like the American and European chambers here have raised public concerns, and with many Chinese citizens increasingly vocal about pollution and health worries, China’s political leaders have pledged to take tougher action. Saying that the country will not sacrifice the environment for short-term economic gains, President Xi Jinping has vowed to punish officials who approve projects that cause serious pollution.
Last week, the State Council, China’s equivalent of a Cabinet, adopted a set of measures to reduce air pollution, including an order that heavy-polluting industries such as steel and petrochemicals release environmental data to the public and gradually comply with international emission limits.
In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, factories around the city were ordered to curtail production, and use of cars, which have been multiplying, was restricted as well. But policies that would make more-lasting reductions in emissions of burning coal and fuel, through new technologies and standards, have been blocked by China’s petrochemical, steel and other heavy industry groups.
“We are not talking about companies that can be easily pushed around,” said Murck, referring to giant state-owned enterprises that dominate the economy and are politically well connected.
Murck, 70, himself is leaving Beijing this summer, returning to New York after 17 years in mainland China. He says it wasn’t because of the pollution, although he recalled one winter day when the fine particulate matter in the air in central Beijing — the so-called PM 2.5 measure — surpassed 700 micrograms per cubic meter, far into the hazardous zone. That same day, he said, the PM 2.5 reading was 19 in New York City.
“I thought to myself, ‘Well, one more reason to go to New York,’” he said.
As recently as late May, Beijing’s air quality measure almost reached 300, according to the American Embassy in Beijing. A reading above 300 is considered hazardous, although the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said last year that the average fine particle pollution count at 16 airport smokers’ lounges was 166.6.
(The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in December set a new national standard for PM 2.5 at 12, down from 15, established in 1997.)
Calvin Tchiang of the Bay Area and his wife, Melody, who was raised in Taiwan and Los Angeles, moved to Beijing several years ago. Fluent in Chinese, the couple seemed to have everything going for their budding careers. Calvin worked for an investment company developing Chinese partners interested in biotech; Melody had a job as a translator.
But life in Beijing began to change about a year ago when they had a baby, Xavier, and the pollution became intolerable. The Tchiangs put three air purifiers in their apartment, one for each room. The machines whirred 24 hours a day. When the PM 2.5 dropped under triple digits, which was rare, they opened the windows and took their baby outside.
When they went out, though, the couple wore similar Darth Vader-like respirators, Calvin in black and Melody in red. Melody found herself checking the PM 2.5 reading several times a day. Whenever it hit 300, she would not go out at all.
“There were instances when I became a recluse,” Melody said.
The Tchiangs returned to the U.S. in April, settling near Cincinnati. Calvin is still with the same firm but doing more investment work that can be undertaken from the U.S. Melody is content for now to be a stay-at-home mom.
They say it hasn’t been easy readjusting culturally. But one thing they don’t worry about is taking their 11-month-old outside.
“I was just out today walking in the park with a few moms,” Melody said on a recent evening. Calvin added, “We appreciate just walking to the local supermarket.”
don.lee@latimes.com
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8acafb389567edc2263cfb044997422c | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-jun-26-la-fg-wn-russia-snowden-human-rights-20130626-story.html | Russian lawmakers suggest U.S. is violating Snowden’s human rights | Russian lawmakers suggest U.S. is violating Snowden’s human rights
MOSCOW -- The upper house of Russia’s parliament decided Wednesday to create a special group to investigate whether the United States is violating the human rights of leaker Edward Snowden by pursuing him on espionage charges.
The former contract worker for the National Security Agency is believed to be in the transit section of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, where he arrived Sunday on a flight from Hong Kong. He is being sought by U.S. officials under a felony warrant for revealing details of the NSA’s widespread tracking of telephone communications.
“Snowden is driven into the corner now,” said Russian lawmaker Ruslan Gattarov, who initiated the motion to investigate the American’s case. He said the Federation Council, or upper house, had already requested information on the case from the U.S. authorities but that “we have simply been ignored.”
House speaker Valentina Matviyenko said the panel would investigate whether Snowden’s human rights had been violated by the U.S. and “if there is interference in [his] private life.”
Another prominent lawmaker called Snowden a dissident and linked him to Julian Assange, whose WikiLeaks website published secret U.S. State Department cables, and U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, currently being court-martialed for giving classified documents to the website.
“Assange, Manning and Snowden were not spies, and they gave away secret information not for money but out of convictions,” Alexei Pushkov, chairman of the foreign relations committee of the lower house of parliament, wrote Wednesday on Twitter. “They are new dissidents, fighters against the system.”
But one Russian analyst said Snowden could not be called a dissident in the true sense of the word. Andrei Piontkovsky, senior researcher with the System Analysis Institute, called the house actions a farce.
“If Pushkov dares to draw a parallel between Snowden and Soviet dissidents, I must respond that none of them had anything to do with Soviet special services and none of them pledged not to betray state and departmental secrets,” Piontkovsky said in an interview. “All this talk today about his human rights sounds like a campaign to prepare the public for Snowden indefinitely -- if not forever -- remaining in Russia.”
Piontkovsky said he believed Snowden had ample chances to fly to Ecuador or Venezuela to seek asylum but he is staying in Russia because he no longer can control his movements.
“I am sure the Russian special services must have decided that they need much more time with Snowden than just a couple of days in transit to make him spill all the information he carries,” Piontkovsky said.
Dmitry Peskov, a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin, told the Los Angeles Times on Sunday that Russia was ready to consider any request for asylum submitted by Snowden. “We have special procedures for such cases,” he said.
On Wednesday, Peskov said he would no longer comment “on anything connected with Snowden.”
Snowden remains in a special secure area rather than at the hotel provided for those staying in the Sheremetyevo airport’s transit zone, a Russian Foreign Ministry representative told The Times on condition of anonymity. The former NSA worker is kept “out of sight of prying journalists who buy flight tickets only to get in the transit zone.”
“Snowden is advised to keep a low profile and not to stick his head out for his own good,” he said.
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8f451288cdacde09bfc4491d1e355718 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-01-la-fg-wn-china-airs-drug-traffickers-20130301-story.html | China airs drug traffickers’ moments before execution | China airs drug traffickers’ moments before execution
BEIJING -- It was reality television in the extreme.
Chinese state television Friday broadcast nearly one hour of live images of the last moments of four foreign drug traffickers about to be executed for the 2011 killing of 13 Chinese fishermen on the Mekong River. Although the cameras pulled away before the final lethal injection, the unprecedented pre-execution coverage unleashed a storm of criticism and debate about the death penalty.
Psychologists decried the live coverage as distressing to children, while lawyers complained that it violated a clause in the criminal code against parading the condemned before execution.
“This carnival on CCTV was a violation not only of ethics, but of the criminal code regulations that the death penalty not be carried out in public,” wrote human rights lawyer Liu Xiaoyuan on a microblog. Many on the microblogs, however, applauded the execution of the four drug traffickers.
China executes about 4,000 people each year, more than all other countries in the world combined, although the numbers and the crimes carrying the death penalty are gradually being reduced.
“I don’t know of any other country, not Iran, Afghanistan or North Korea, that has nationally broadcast in this way the last moments of an executed prisoner,” said Nicholas Bequelin, Hong Kong-based researcher for Human Rights Watch. “It is a step backward at a time we thought China was making progress with the death penalty.”
In the past, public executions were common in China, but nowadays, there is usually no more than a brief news report and video of the condemned before an execution.
Although many Chinese were shocked by the live coverage, they applauded the death sentences as just retribution for a particularly violent crime. The 13 Chinese fishermen were ambushed, then shot to death while tied up with rope, their bodies dumped in the river.
The outraged Chinese government considered a drone attack to kill the drug traffickers, but in the end launched an international manhunt that resulted in their capture and extradition from Laos.
The kingpin executed was Naw Kham, 44, a Burmese national who allegedly commanded a militia of 100 men in the Gold Triangle region. Two others executed Friday were from Laos and one was Thai.
The live coverage showed the men being taken from their prison cells in southwestern Yunnan Province with their hands trussed behind their backs with ropes. A doctor in a white coat prepared the lethal injections.
The television commentator went on at some length about how well the men had been treated in prison.
“From the appearance of these criminals, you can clearly tell our prison has carried out humanitarian spirit, these criminals clearly look healthier, whiter, with better skin complexion than when they were arrested,” the commentator said.
At one point, the television broadcast cut away to show a gala-style award ceremony complete with patriotic music and small children carrying bouquets for the investigators who had worked on capturing the drug traffickers.
Chinese television also broadcast a chilling interview with Naw Kham taped earlier this week in which he said, “I am afraid of death. I want to live. I don’t want to die. I have children. I am afraid.”
The Yunnan Province Public Security Bureau sent out a message at 2:55 p.m. Friday that Naw Kham and his accomplices were dead.
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John Hannon and Nicole Liu of the Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
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9de3c4b24482c8f4aa357cb409a5652f | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-01-la-fg-wn-israel-settlements-controversy-20130228-story.html | Israel undermining own security with settlements, allies warn | Israel undermining own security with settlements, allies warn
As Israel pursues an expanded settlement agenda in Palestinian territory, even its friends are beginning to sound like its adversaries.
The European Union issued a damning report this week, calling the Israeli government’s construct-and-control strategy “the biggest single threat to the two-state solution” aimed at bringing peace to one of the Middle East’s most violence-prone regions. And for the first time in its annual evaluation of Israeli settlement policy, the 27-nation bloc that is Jerusalem’s most important trading partner hinted at a possible boycott of goods produced on illegally occupied land.
The criticism isn’t expected to have much influence with the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he is forced to negotiate with more moderate Israeli political leaders to build a new coalition after the fractured Jan. 22 election.
But the EU report could provide a supportive backdrop during President Obama’s visit to Israel this month if the White House wants to use the occasion to urge an end to provocative actions that could scuttle prospects for a lasting peace.
In their 15-page report, the European envoys pointed to three building projects in East Jerusalem -- Har Homa, Gilo and Givat Hamatos -- and plans to build more than 3,400 housing units in territory east of Jerusalem known as E1 as “most significant and problematic” in preventing the Palestinians from securing a contiguous state.
The expansion and new construction projects are “part of a political strategy aimed at making it impossible for Jerusalem to become the capital of two states,” the report concluded.
The EU report recommended sanctions against illegal settlements to “prevent, discourage and raise awareness” about goods produced by the settlers for sale on international markets. The EU provides more than a third of Israeli imports, and more than a quarter of Israeli exports go to the Continent, according to EU trade figures.
Israeli government officials have dismissed the European criticism as biased and unhelpful.
“We are disappointed by this report because rather than building bridges between parties, as diplomats should, the European Union consuls once again have issued a one-sided report that only serves to inflame the situation,” said David Siegel, Israeli consul general in Los Angeles.
Siegel declined to discuss any potential impact from the EU report on Obama’s visit to Israel except to say that all issues would be on the table and that Israel’s stated policy is “that we should resolve these issues in direct negotiations with the Palestinians without preconditions.”
The EU’s implied threat to boycott goods made in settlements would be tough to implement, said Sara Hirschhorn, a scholar at Brandeis University’s Schusterman Center for Israeli Studies.
The European report “seems to cross a line not crossed before” in warning of economic consequences, Hirschhorn said. “But it also shows a lack of understanding on the part of the Europeans that the economies of Israel and the occupied territories are so embedded that it is really hard to distinguish between one and the other. The Palestinian and Israeli economies are also tied together, so [sanctions] could damage the Palestinians as well.”
Hirschhorn sees a danger of Israel’s settlement-building creating a fait accompli of Jews living in territory expected to be part of a future Palestinian state.
As unrealistic as it may be to have Palestinians governing Jewish settlements, she said, “the idea is gaining in currency because there is such disillusionment about Israel being able to carry out the kind of withdrawals and disengagement that would be necessary” to return to the pre-1967 borders as Arabs demand as a condition for resuming dormant peace talks.
“But it has become popular among settlers who really don’t want to leave,” said Hirschhorn, and that is strengthening the notion that the settlements have reached a critical mass and become too populous for Israel to remove.
Alon Ben-Meir, a professor of Middle East studies and conflict resolution at New York University’s Center for Global Affairs, warns that Israel’s attempts to wall itself off from the Palestinians and Arab neighbors are undermining, rather than enhancing, its national security.
“Building a garrison state is isolating by its very nature,” he said of the settlements and the military deployments to protect them. “Israel needs to think how long this can be sustained. Can Israelis live another 50 years behind barbed wire and walls?”
Jewish settlers now number more than 550,000, Ben-Meir said, and each new incursion into the West Bank erects a new obstacle to returning to negotiations that could lead to a lasting peace.
“My concern is that if the Palestinians feel there is no movement, the relative quiet that exists today may not last,” Ben-Meir said, pointing out fears that a third Palestinian uprising is brewing. “Young men and women are dying in Syria by the tens of thousands, and many died in Egypt for freedom. If Palestinians lose all faith in the peace process, they would have no reason to accept subordination and occupation when their brothers and sisters are dying in rebellion against the same.”
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A foreign correspondent for 25 years, Carol J. Williams traveled to and reported from more than 80 countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
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3284b761407b0d994114fcb87b7f8661 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-04-la-fg-wn-somali-court-clears-woman-alleged-rape-20130304-story.html | Somali court clears woman who alleged rape by security forces | Somali court clears woman who alleged rape by security forces
In Somalia, a court has cleared a woman who had been jailed after she alleged she was raped by state security forces but it has kept the journalist who interviewed her in prison.
The Mogadishu appeals court found the woman not guilty, reversing an earlier conviction for defaming the government, according to news reports. However, it ruled that journalist Abdiaziz Abdinur Ibrahim must spend six months behind bars.
The January arrests of the woman and the reporter appalled human rights groups, which said the charges would discourage people from coming forward to report sexual assault, especially at the hands of government forces.
Activists said the woman was questioned for days by police before being “paraded” before the media, where she publicly disavowed her earlier claims. She later said the rape had indeed happened, according to Human Rights Watch. Media freedom groups say the Somali journalist never published anything from his interview.
The arrests occurred shortly after Al Jazeera published an article online that described alleged rapes in Somalia, including an alleged assault by soldiers, but the writer of that article said she had never met the two defendants.
“My report merely shone a light onto one woman’s horrific experience,” the Al Jazeera contributor, Laila Ali, wrote in a commentary for the Guardian. “Reporting rape, be it from government forces or others, should never be viewed as a subversive effort to undermine the Somali state, rather it should be viewed as a call to action.”
Both defendants received one-year sentences in February; the woman was allowed to delay her jail time to care for her baby. The Sunday decision dropped charges against the woman and cut the sentence for the journalist in half, but rights groups insisted he should be freed immediately.
The National Union of Somali Journalists said it was “shocked” by the decision and unsure how the court had decided that the jailed reporter had not followed “journalism ethics.”
If the woman was not guilty, “then how is the person who merely reported her story still incarcerated?” freelance journalist Abdiqani Farah asked on Garowe Online, a news website linked to a radio station in northeastern Somalia.
Prime Minister Abdi Farah Shirdon said the decision came “a step closer to justice being done,” but told the Associated Press on Sunday that he had hoped for a different outcome for the reporter. “I do not believe journalists should be sent to prison for doing their job,” he said.
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a67844edb93b2b859d017ef8d6039ddf | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-07-la-fg-pakistan-sectarian-20130308-story.html | Amid Pakistan sectarian violence, Sunnis saved Shiites | Amid Pakistan sectarian violence, Sunnis saved Shiites
ASTORE, Pakistan — The caravan pulled away, leaving behind 19 bullet-riddled bodies in a muddy ditch. Inside the three buses, those spared quietly wept.
The remaining Shiite Muslims had just survived a massacre by Sunni Muslim militants. And the Sunnis aboard had just helped save as many of the Shiites as they could.
Akhtar Hussain, a 37-year-old Shiite survivor, said he turned to the Sunni passengers when he finally disembarked in this tiny mountain hamlet. “I told them, ‘I am grateful to you. If you would have said I was Shiite, I wouldn’t be here right now. May God be with you.’”
What happened on the remote mountain road in August didn’t follow the script. In a country riven by sectarian violence, with automatic rifles pointed at their faces, the Sunni passengers defiantly refused orders from Sunni gunmen to identify Shiites for slaughter.
One Sunni, college student Ghulam Mustafa, 19, confronted the militants, saying that killing Shiites was wrong. He was shot dead, the gunmen pumping seven bullets into his back, chest and head.
“What the Sunni passengers from Astore did should be part of history.” Hussain said. “It was heroic.”
These days, mass killings of Shiites take place with mind-numbing regularity in Pakistan, where intolerance thrives in the midst of government indifference to the plight of minorities.
On Feb. 16, a bomb hidden in a tractor-pulled water tank killed 89 Shiites outside a bustling bazaar in the southwestern city of Quetta. Five weeks earlier, in the same city, twin suicide bomb blasts at a billiards hall in a Shiite neighborhood resulted in more than 90 deaths. And on Sunday, a massive bomb blast ripped through a Shiite neighborhood in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city, killing 48 people.
The Sunni extremist group that claimed responsibility for the Quetta attacks, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, has operated in Pakistan since the mid-1990s and has become the nation’s largest, deadliest sectarian extremist organization. The majority of Pakistani Muslims belong to the Sunni sect, and Sunni extremist groups do not view the country’s Shiite minority, about 20% of Pakistan’s population of 180 million, as true Muslims.
The persecution of Shiites reflects a mind-set of intolerance that has seeped into virtually every corner of Pakistani society. Shiites are frequent targets, but so are Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadis, members of a Muslim sect whom many Pakistanis view as heretics.
Recently, the Shiite community has become the most targeted for reasons that are unclear. However, human rights groups say provincial government leaders balk at clamping down on Sunni radicals because they wield strong political clout.
Sunnis and Shiites coexist peacefully in many parts of Pakistan, including the cities of Karachi and Gilgit. But even in such places, radical Sunni clerics stoke hatred among some of their followers by preaching the doctrine of Shiite extermination.
Sunni sectarian groups ratcheted up attacks on Shiites last year, killing more than 400 people, human rights organizations say. Many of those killed came from Baluchistan, home to Hazara Shiites, an ethnic group that migrated from Afghanistan more than a century ago. Also hard hit was the Shiite community in Gilgit, in a far northern region hemmed in by three of the world’s most majestic mountain ranges, the Himalaya, the Karakoram and the Hindu Kush.
Shiites on Gilgit-bound buses were targeted three times last year. In the first attack, on Feb. 28, 10 gunmen from a Pakistani Taliban faction stopped a convoy headed from the garrison city of Rawalpindi to Astore and the mountain city of Skardu, executing 16 Shiite passengers.
The second attack was carried out by a mob of enraged Sunnis who set fire to buses with Shiite passengers traveling through the town of Chilas. The April 3 incident, in which 10 Shiites were killed, took place after local Sunni clerics exaggerated the magnitude of a grenade attack on a Sunni rally earlier that day, said Gilgit Home Secretary Faisal Zahoor. The grenade, flung by an unknown assailant, killed two people, but the clerics falsely claimed on mosque loudspeakers that hundreds of Sunnis had died.
The third attack, on the three-bus caravan, occurred Aug. 16. A band of 40 heavily armed men waited until the vehicles, heading from Rawalpindi to Astore, slowed down for a sharp bend on a treacherous mountain road just outside the Gilgit region. The men, dressed in camouflage, were armed with AK-47 rifles, pistols and grenades.
After culling out old men, women and children, the assailants checked national identity cards to single out those with common Shiite names, such as Hussain and Ali. Passengers believed to be Shiite were ordered to one side of the road, Sunnis to the other.
Sunni passengers were then asked to point out people they thought were Shiites. Many could have done so because they came from the same villages. Yet they refused to cooperate, which survivors say saved at least 10 people.
Mustafa, the college student, openly defied the gunmen.
“He said, ‘Why are you doing this? Why do you want to kill these people? Islam doesn’t allow the killing of innocent people,’” said the victim’s brother, Mohammed Iqbal, stating the account given to him by passengers. For speaking up, Mustafa was put on the side of the road with Shiite passengers and later executed.
Hussain, insisting that he was Sunni, may have been saved by the Sunni driver of the bus, Muhammad Zaman, who cried out to one of the gunmen, “Akhtar is my cousin!”
Hussain and Zaman know each other but are not related.
At first, it appeared that Zaman’s bid had no effect. The gunmen ordered the men on the Shiite side of the road, including Hussain, to march toward a ditch. But moments before the group reached the ditch, one of the gunmen pulled Hussain from the line.
After again insisting that he was a Sunni, Hussain was allowed to “race over to where the Sunnis were.”
Moments later, bursts of gunfire rang out. Seventeen Shiites and two Sunnis had been shot. Hussain saw dust billow as the militants fired into the crowd.
When the firing stopped, one of the gunmen approached the other passengers.
“He said, do you know why we killed these people? We killed them because they are deceiving us. They are not Muslims. They say they are Muslims, but they are infidels,” Hussain recalled.
The gunmen allowed the passengers to return to their buses and continue on.
No arrests have been made.
“Among the survivors were both Sunnis and Shiites,” Zaman said, “and the main reason why the Shiites survived was that the Sunnis on the buses refused to cooperate.”
alex.rodriguez@latimes.com
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c1b297bc729ec0f001e270bbbccb3584 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-08-la-fg-wn-sean-penn-venezuela-hugo-chavez-20130308-story.html | Sean Penn in Venezuela to mourn ‘friend’ Hugo Chavez | Sean Penn in Venezuela to mourn ‘friend’ Hugo Chavez
The mourners lamenting the death of late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez included the presidents of Iran and Cuba, a Spanish prince and a man that Chavez himself once floated as a possible American ambassador to Venezuela: Hollywood actor Sean Penn.
Penn flew to Caracas for the Friday funeral, where he was filmed among the mourning crowd. Earlier this week, he called Chavez “a great hero to the majority of his people.”
“Today the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion,” Penn wrote in a statement sent to the Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday.
The two first met in 2007 when Penn traveled to Venezuela, where Chavez called him “one of the greatest opponents of the Iraq invasion.” The actor, in turn, praised Chavez for providing aid to earthquake victims in Haiti and rejected “defamation” of the leftist leader, calling him in the Huffington Post two years ago “a president elected by the impoverished.”
His warm words for Chavez have been deeply controversial in the U.S. in light of the criticism that human rights activists levied against the Venezuelan leader. Penn also came under fire for suggesting in a televised interview with Bill Maher that when media outlets dub the elected Chavez a dictator, “there should be a bar by which one goes to prison for these kind of lies.”
The late leader himself once suggested Penn would be an acceptable U.S. ambassador to Venezuela after rejecting the diplomat chosen by President Obama.
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8d6219261d2cbfb4089f76559b3395ab | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-10-la-fg-wn-kenya-election-20130310-story.html | Kenya election over, dispute over outcome heads to Supreme Court | Kenya election over, dispute over outcome heads to Supreme Court
NAIROBI, Kenya -- As Kenya faced another disputed election Sunday, the country passed an important test: Despite outrage among many Kenyans over a result they saw as flawed, there was no major outbreak of violence. A massive deployment of security forces dispersed the few protests, earlier banned by Kenyan authorities.
Kenyans were determined to break with the past, after tribal violence broke out in the wake of the disputed 2007 election, killing more than 1,000 people and tainting the country’s reputation as an emerging democracy.
But in the drive to avoid dissent and violence, the country brushed aside what some activists called a failed election, caused by the repeated blunders and technical problems of the Independent Election and Boundaries Commission.
After a divisive and tense election, Kenya now faces an equally tense Supreme Court hearing on its outcome, with cases to be brought not just by the losing side, but by a group of independent anti-corruption activists, the African Center for Open Governance.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga refused to concede defeat to challenger Uhuru Kenyatta, saying it was impossible to know who won the election because every instrument of the election commission had failed. The election commission declared Kenyatta the winner.
Citing “rampant illegality,” Odinga said he was challenging the result in the court to defend Kenyan democracy.
He said the complaints of his party’s agents had been ignored and they had been shut out by the election commission, which refused to countenance a recount, despite the extremely narrow margin by which Kenyatta surpassed the 50% threshold to avoid a runoff.
The narrow margin and repeated failures of the election commission raise the possibility that the Supreme Court could call for an audit of the election result, analysts said.
Kenyatta got 50.07% of the vote, crossing the line with a margin of some 8,000 votes out of more than 12 million cast.
Despite the failures, Kenya’s news media were muted in their reportage of the commission problems. Even international observers have tip-toed around the subject.
However, respected Kenyan anti-corruption crusader John Githongo called the election a failure Sunday. Githongo, an election monitor, said for months a group of community organizations had tried in vain to warn the election commission of problems in its systems and approach.
“In my personal opinion, it’s a failed election,” Githongo said in an interview with The Times. “I think the IEBC performance was catastrophic. I was part of a group of organizations that repeatedly warned them that these problems were there and on the way.”
Commission Chairman Issack Hassan denied the problems and failed to turn up for meetings with the organizations, according to Githongo.
Githongo said Kenyans were so keen to avoid a repeat of the violence that followed the disputed 2007 poll that many, especially in the Kenyan media, kept silent about the obvious problems in the election commission.
“We all saw the IEBC as a boat in which all the Kenyan people were sailing. We could all see lots of holes and we thought we could plug the holes lest the whole boat sink. No one wanted to say that the captain of the ship didn’t know what he was doing,” he said.
Githongo’s criticisms come after reports that Safaricom, the mobile phone provider involved in the electronic system that was supposed to transmit results to the central tallying point, also warned the commission of looming failures in the weeks before the election, and was also ignored.
Patrick Smith, editor of the journal Africa Confidential, said Western officials privately condemned the commission’s appalling performance but said nothing publicly “for fear of being seen as interfering in the election”.
The losing candidate, Odinga, “has a very low bar to reach” in the court case, according to Smith. “All that he’s got to do is to prove beyond doubt that there are real questions about that margin. The fact is, even the votes they have announced don’t add up as a total, which suggests there are some real mathematical problems as well as logistical and technological problems,” Smith said.
Despite the lack of violence so far, things could get very tense once the Supreme Court made a decision on the challenge, Smith said.
“The trouble could come if the court says, ‘We want an audit.’ If after an audit it’s found the results of the election are not safe and is not legitimate, then I think you are into a new game,” Smith said.
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9580efb5434ae8a7be75876681b6ef20 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-12-la-fg-china-hacking-20130313-story.html | China hacker’s angst opens a window onto cyber-espionage | China hacker’s angst opens a window onto cyber-espionage
BEIJING — For a 25-year-old computer whiz enlisted in a People’s Liberation Army hacking unit, life was all about low pay, drudgery and social isolation.
Nothing at all like the unkempt hackers of popular imagination, the young man wore a military uniform at work in Shanghai. He lived in a dorm where meals often consisted of instant ramen noodles. The workday ran from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., although hackers were often required to work late into the evening.
With no money and little free time, he found solace on the Internet. He shopped, chatted with friends and courted a girlfriend. He watched movie and television shows. He drew particular inspiration from the Fox series “Prison Break,” and borrowed its name for his blog.
The blog provides a rare peek into the secretive hacking establishment of the Chinese military, which employs thousands of people in what is believed to be by far the world’s largest institutionalized hacking operation.
Concern about computer security has risen sharply in recent weeks. Top U.S. intelligence officials said Tuesday that attacks and espionage now pose a greater potential danger than Al Qaeda and other militant organizations. The computers of more than 30 journalists and executives of Western news organizations in China, including the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, have been hacked.
Mandiant Corp., a U.S. computer security firm based in Alexandria, Va., said in a report last month that it had traced an epidemic of attacks on dozens of U.S. and Canadian companies to an office building in Shanghai occupied by an espionage unit of the People’s Liberation Army.
Richard Bejtlich, Mandiant’s security chief, said posts written by the blogger, who called himself “Rocy Bird,” provided the most detailed first-person account known to date of life inside the hacking establishment. Although the blog was discontinued four years ago, the techniques described in it remain the same. “It is relevant,” said Bejtlich. “Things have not changed that much.”
The hacker, whose real family name is Wang, posted some 625 entries between 2006 and 2009. “Fate has made me feel that I am imprisoned,” he wrote in his first entry on Sina.com. “I want to escape.”
Los Angeles Times reporters tracked down Wang and his blog through an email address that was listed on a published 2006 paper about hacking. A coauthor of the paper was Mei Qiang, identified by Mandiant as a key hacker who operated under the alias “Super Hard” in Unit 61398.
One of many Chinese military units linked to hacking, Unit 61398 falls under the People’s Liberation Army’s General Staff 3rd Department, 2nd Bureau, which is roughly equivalent to the U.S. National Security Agency.
The PLA recruits computer scientists, mathematicians and linguists from China’s top universities for its Internet espionage programs. Not unlike in the U.S., students can continue their education for free in return for their enlistment in military service.
Wang earned his master’s degree in Internet security at age 25 at the Information Engineering University, run by the PLA in Zhengzhou, Henan province.
Immediately after graduating in 2006, he was enlisted in a hacking operation in Shanghai.
In the blog, Wang did not disclose which unit he worked for, but he made it clear that he was wearing a uniform and carrying a military badge. He described his building as being far from the Shanghai city center, one of his many complaints.
“What I can’t understand is why all the work units are located in the most remote areas of the city,” Wang wrote in an entry in 2007. “I really don’t get what those old guys are thinking in the beginning. They should at least take us young people into consideration. How can passionate young people like us handle a prison-like environment like this?”
One of his first tasks was to improve on a Trojan virus known as Back Orifice 2000, which is designed to remotely hijack a computer system to steal information.
In July 2007, he boasted that his virus had successfully escaped detection by three leading detection programs made by McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro, but that it didn’t get past a fourth, Kaspersky. He also described another assignment: write a virus that would detect any USB storage device attached to a computer and copy its files. The virus was a success and Wang’s boss was pleased.
“If we’re lucky enough, we might be able to complete this year’s target and earn a year-end bonus for everyone,” Wang wrote with enthusiasm.
Otherwise, Wang poured out his unhappiness. The hackers were required to speak English, the international language of technology, as well as an essential for phishing attacks on mostly U.S. targets. But when Wang tried to hone his English skills by reading magazines such as the Economist and Harvard Business Review, his boss rebuked him for reading too much foreign press.
“The boss doesn’t understand. I’ll have to be more careful,” he complained. Wang was also unhappy that supervisors refused to reimburse him for a $1 bus ticket to attend a business conference, while his boss claimed more than $100 for a bottle of liquor.
A high school reunion left Wang feeling discouraged about his paycheck and prospects.
“They all have a bright future. Some of them became lawyers; some went into property business or finance; some wrote programs for a commercial software company. Compared with their handsome monthly income, I even felt ashamed to say hello to them,” Wang wrote.
Wang never reflected on the pros and cons of hacking for the Chinese government, but he clearly regretted having enlisted. “My only mistake was that I sold myself out to the country for some minor benefits and put myself in this embarrassing situation,” he wrote. With the help of his family, he managed to get out in 2008. He stopped writing the blog a year later.
Wang is believed to be living in Chengdu. One of his last online traces was a comment posted on Dianping, a popular restaurant review site, about an ice cream parlor in that city.
Wang did not return several emails and instant messages requesting comment.
The period covered in Wang’s blog coincides with an upsurge in hacking detected by Mandiant. In a report issued last month, the company said hackers had systematically stolen hundreds of terabytes from 141 organizations, most of them American.
Industries targeted included chemicals, technology, financial services, mining, energy, healthcare, media and international organizations. The data included blueprints, pricing strategies and emails, which are suspected of being given to Chinese state-owned enterprises for competitive advantage.
The Chinese government has repeatedly denied hacking and has said it has been the victim of attacks originating from the United States.
“Cyberspace needs rules and cooperation, not war. China is willing to have constructive dialogue and cooperation with the global community, including the United States,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a briefing Tuesday.
Last month’s report by Mandiant marked the first time individual hackers were identified by name. More information has trickled out since.
Investigators have unearthed birthdays, photographs, profiles on Kaixin (a Chinese version of Facebook), shopping and dining preferences. One hacker’s user name appeared in a forum for flower-arranging enthusiasts.
They logged on to personal email or social networking sites from work, or used their real phone numbers to register Gmail or Hotmail accounts later used for phishing attacks. Mei Qiang, Wang’s research partner, posted a note on a software developer’s message board looking for extra work.
“I’m good at writing hacking tools, such as Trojan viruses,” read the advertisement posted in 2005. It was taken down last month after it was discovered by an investigator based in India who runs a blog called Cyb3rSleuth.
“These were not elite uber-hackers,” said Richard Mogull, an Internet security consultant and head of the Phoenix-based Securosis. “Some people want to demonize these guys, but they are just frontline soldiers doing their job for their country — not evil people.”
Wang probably never imagined his blog would catch the focus of journalists or Internet security experts, Bejtlich said. “This is really an anguished person who didn’t enjoy his situation, and this is probably just an outlet for him to share his story,” he said.
Because the hackers were operating under military protection, they probably weren’t as intent on concealing their identities as criminals who would face punishment if caught. Bejtlich compared them to members of the U.S. military who inadvertently make disclosures on Facebook or on blogs. “They will get better. That’s how they will learn.”
barbara.demick@latimes.com
Tommy Yang of The Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
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16cd22b2c6d171e4b7cf3ef899e953b3 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-21-la-fg-wn-obama-speech-israel-palestine-20130321-story.html | Obama urges Israelis to take risks for peace with Palestinians | Obama urges Israelis to take risks for peace with Palestinians
JERUSALEM -- President Obama urged Israelis to see the world through the eyes of Palestinians and to “create the change” they want, in order to bring about peace in the region.
In a 45-minute address to a hall packed with university students, Obama challenged the crowd to take risks to resolve the conflict with Palestinians.
“It is not fair that a Palestinian child cannot grow up in a state of her own, and lives with the presence of a foreign army that controls the movements of her parents every single day,” he said. “It is not just when settler violence against Palestinians goes unpunished.”
Some in the audience sat quietly as Obama argued the case for restarting the peace process, and working toward an independent Palestinian state and Israel living side by side. One heckler briefly disrupted the president’s remarks, shouting angrily in Hebrew, before security officials led him away. After the speech, several students said they disagree with the president on his main point.
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The speech had the feeling of an Obama campaign event, with a crowd specially built of young people open to the president’s message. There were several ovations and applause when Obama drew allusions to the American civil rights movement.
He appealed to the audience with many of the same rhetorical devices he uses back home.
“Speaking as a politician, I can promise you this: Political leaders will not take risks if the people do not demand that they do,” he said. “You must create the change that you want to see.”
As they left, many students said they appreciated Obama’s message, but were skeptical it would lead to a breakthrough in the long-stalled peace process.
“It was good to hear of his support for Israel. That means a lot,” said Yocheved Loewenstern, 22, a neuroscience student. “But if you ask any kid in Israel, they’ll say they want peace. The problem is, it’s hard to make peace with a country that doesn’t recognize your rights to be here.”
Engineering student Dor Shallev said he is skeptical of the path that Obama described.
“I don’t think President Obama knows what it’s like to live in a settlement,” said Shallev, who lived in the West Bank for schooling. “Every child in the Palestinian Authority is educated to violence, to hate . . . Before you can take further action toward peace, you have to deal with these points.”
Earlier, Obama’s aides emerged from meetings at the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah saying they saw signs of hope for renewed peace talks. Obama raised the idea of moving toward talks without imposing some of the pre-conditions the two sides have demanded in the past, aides said.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not appear to rule out new talks during a joint news conference afterward.
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4215c809c9b28ff9fba921fac2a8708b | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-27-la-fg-wn-russian-ngo-inspections-20130327-story.html | ‘Massive’ wave of Russian state inspections of NGOs continues | ‘Massive’ wave of Russian state inspections of NGOs continues
Russian officials pressed ahead Wednesday with a sweeping wave of inspections on nonprofit foundations, human rights groups and other NGOs that has troubled activists in Russia and abroad. In the latest round, state inspectors showed up at the offices of Human Rights Watch and Transparency International.
Four government officials -- two from the Moscow prosecutor’s office, one from the Ministry of Justice and one involved in tax inspection -- arrived at Transparency International with a letter seeking office policies, financial documents and other papers, director Elena Panfilova said Wednesday.
“The funny thing is, we underwent a planned inspection from the Ministry of Justice in February, and received a report that we were all clean and fine,” Panfilova said. When the officials came Wednesday, she said, “they asked for the same documents that we submitted to the ministry in February.”
Panfilova said her staff was merely puzzled by the repeated inspections, not alarmed, but the increased government attention to such groups has stoked concerns of intimidation among others. Human Rights Watch, which also was inspected Wednesday, has complained that the investigations feed into a “menacing atmosphere.”
The two groups are only the latest in a long list to face state scrutiny in recent weeks.
“This is a very disturbing development designed to send a chill through civil society,” said Freedom House President David Kramer, whose group doesn’t have offices in Russia. “They’re on a witch hunt, looking for any documents they can use to distort” what NGOs do.
Last year Russia ushered in new rules requiring many nongovernmental organizations that receive foreign funding to register as “foreign agents” or risk fines, restrictions on public protest and imprisonment. Russian leaders also passed a law to allow the suspension of Russian groups with U.S. funding that engage in “political activities.”
Activists suspect a February speech triggered the recent tide of inspections. Addressing its federal security service, President Vladimir Putin said foreign interference in Russian internal affairs was unacceptable.
“We have a set of rules and regulations for NGOs in Russia, including rules and regulations about foreign funding. These laws, naturally, should be enforced,” Putin said.
As many as 2,000 groups have been searched in the past month, presidential human rights council member Pavel Chikov told the Associated Press. His legal defense group, Agora, was reportedly among those inspected Wednesday. Chikov himself will face questioning by a state prosecutor next week, the Russian Legal Information Agency reported.
“This is the most massive wave of inspections I’ve ever seen in 21 years working at Human Rights Watch on Russia,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of its Europe and Central Asia division.
Human rights group Amnesty International, which said it was inspected Monday along with three prominent Russian organizations, expressed concern that such visits were “carried out in such a way as to deliberately stigmatize and discredit NGOs in the eyes of the public.” Some of the unannounced inspections have been accompanied by state television crews, according to rights groups.
“The bigger fear is that this is just round one, and that, after the smearing, the forced closures will come,” Amnesty International’s Europe and Central Asia director, John Dalhuisen, said in a statement Friday as inspections ramped up.
The German Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, which is affiliated with the political party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said inspectors who arrived Tuesday confiscated computers, saying they needed to check software licenses. Its chairman, Hans-Gert Pöttering, called the visit “worrying.”
Russian backers of the law have defended the increased attention to NGOs as needed and valid. The author of the “foreign agent” law denied it would smear government critics.
“I think the idea that ‘foreign agent’ means ‘spy’ is more of a hangover from the Soviet period in which our parents grew up,” Alexander Sidyakin told the Russian state news agency last year. “I believe there is nothing insulting in this term.”
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498a76c5fe962405636ca0f32cc13e69 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-mar-30-la-fg-china-mother-revolution-20130331-story.html | In China, a son haunted by the Cultural Revolution | In China, a son haunted by the Cultural Revolution
GUZHEN, China — At 58, Zhang Hongbing is still tormented by the death of his mother more than four decades ago. She was a victim of China’s Cultural Revolution, executed by firing squad during Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s decadelong purge of capitalism, cultural elites and political rivals.
As a 15-year-old Red Guard, Zhang denounced her to authorities.
Today Zhang is a lawyer, and he is trying to make amends for his past. He has officially cleared his mother’s name of the charges for which she was killed, and he has reconciled with relatives. Now he is trying to win official landmark status for her grave, hidden by a lumberyard built near the spot.
“I want to use this savage, inhumane case to make all of my compatriots understand exactly what happened in our home,” Zhang said in an interview recently near Guzhen, about 600 miles south of Beijing.
Zhang said he feels that the story provides an important lesson for the country, especially after the recent political campaigns of the now-disgraced Bo Xilai, a former Red Guard and son of a Mao-era general.
Zhang, a compact man with graying hair, splits his time between Beijing and the riverside plains of Anhui province here, where he grew up. Grain fields dominate the area, but Zhang says he was raised as an “official’s kid,” not a farmer. His father, who died in 2003, headed the county health department. Zhang’s mother was a hospital administrator. Both were People’s Liberation Army veterans and Communist Party members, as is Zhang.
The circumstances of his mother’s death led Zhang to choose the legal profession, he says. And he has used his legal expertise on his mother’s behalf. Recently, he set out the facts of his family’s history on a blog. His narrative and the supporting documents drawn from local records have not been censored.
Zhang, along with his older sister, joined the Red Guard youth paramilitary movement at the outset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Zhang’s given name was Tiefu, but at 13 he was so excited about the Revolution that he changed it to Hongbing (literally, “red soldier”). “My parents agreed, and not only that, they were really happy,” he recalled.
Yet by year’s end, the Cultural Revolution had begun pulling his family apart.
Zhang’s older sister contracted meningitis in dirty travel facilities while going to Beijing to hear Mao speak at a rally. She died in December 1966 at the age of 14.
Zhang’s father, meanwhile, was subjected to “criticism and struggle sessions” by his colleagues and by the Red Guard. At that stage, Mao’s faction in Beijing encouraged Chinese youths and party members to abuse and humiliate authority figures, especially those suspected of sympathy with Mao’s rivals.
“I didn’t beat my father, but I was at the sessions,” Zhang said. “I might have been yelling, I don’t remember.”
Zhang’s mother, Fang Zhongmou, also underwent two years of criticism sessions. In an album of Cultural Revolution memorabilia stashed among his office files, Zhang keeps a tiny sepia snapshot of his mother and father, wearing dunces’ caps, on a forced march through town.
Zhang said his mother was vulnerable because her own father had been executed in 1951 as a landlord, a bandit, and a spy. The accusations were made, without proof, he said, during an anti-landlord campaign launched by the Communist Party shortly after its 1949 victory in the civil war. With a “counter-revolutionary” family background, Fang was barred from entering the Party in the early 1950s, and then became a prime target for criticism sessions years later.
Having suffered the loss of her daughter and years of violent criticism sessions, Fang Zhongmou finally snapped one evening in 1970.
“Why is Mao creating a cult of personality?” she asked her husband and son. She threatened to tear down portraits of Mao in their house, and she suggested that China should posthumously rehabilitate Liu Shaoqi, a leading politician whom Mao had imprisoned and who died in custody in 1969.
Zhang was horrified, as was his father.
“If you attack our dearest leader Mao Tse-tung, you’ll get your dog’s head crushed!” Zhang told his mother, according to testimony he filed to the military court investigating his mother, and retrieved from the Beijing National Library in 2009.
When his mother refused to take back her words, the young Zhang denounced her in a note he placed under the door of an army officer who lived nearby. Zhang’s father, meanwhile, fetched the military police unit charged with law enforcement in Guzhen during the Cultural Revolution.
In fury, Fang locked herself in a room and set fire to a portrait of Mao. Her husband ordered her out of the room and instructed his son to beat her. Zhang complied, striking her on the back with his fists.
A soldier brought in by Zhang’s father then struck her and took her away.
County records show that Zhang’s mother was found guilty of “attacking Chairman Mao Tse-tung” and executed on April 11, 1970. Zhang watched her at a mass tribunal in town that day, but did not follow her to the firing squad two hundred yards away. His father had divorced her days before the execution.
Since then, Zhang says, he has suffered from depression and has been tormented by thoughts that he violated the ancient Chinese code of filial piety.
“I abandoned my family, I stomped on them!” Zhang said. “Killing or abusing a parent in the Tang Dynasty was called ‘the heinous crime.’ You’d be killed!”
Yet as time went on, the remnants of his mother’s family slowly reconciled with Zhang and his father.
Zhang’s uncle Fang Meikai, a retired accountant, said that in 1979 he and Zhang petitioned to overturn the verdict. By then, Mao had died and the political winds had shifted. In 1980, a province-level court cleared Fang’s name, declaring the case “a miscarriage of justice.”
“Although Zhang reported his mother, it wasn’t in his control to decide his mother’s fate,” said Fang, 64. “It was the court.”
Guzhen officials have declined Zhang’s request that a memorial be set up for his mother, saying such action would be unprecedented. Zhang is seeking to have the decision overturned in a higher court.
The Cultural Revolution remains a touchy topic in China, where the government has never published estimates of the number of victims. Zhang, meanwhile, says he has received several emailed and texted death threats, one calling him “crazy” to tell his story.
But the controversy over Bo Xilai’s activities inspired him to act. Bo was Communist Party secretary in Chongqing until Beijing grew alarmed over his activities and stripped him of his post in 2012.
“Bo Xilai’s campaign to sing ‘red songs’ and crack down on organized crime seemed to me like a dress rehearsal for a second Cultural Revolution,” Zhang said. “So the Bo affair convinced me to work on my mother’s case to the end.”
Bo, who had aspirations to join the Communist Party’s ruling Standing Committee, is in detention. But, if anything, his fate confirmed the saying Zhang repeatedly uttered during the interview: “The revolution devours its children.”
Hannon is a special correspondent. Nicole Liu of The Times’ Beijing bureau contributed to this report.
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0a27b68fc9d9b675df319a2f7b1a6d97 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-may-03-la-fg-wn-google-palestine-website-change-20130503-story.html | Google gives a virtual nod to ‘Palestine’ | Google gives a virtual nod to ‘Palestine’
Google has switched the tagline on its Palestinian website, replacing the words “Palestinian territories” with “Palestine” in both English and Arabic.
Google spokesman Nathan Tyler said the company consulted “a number of sources and authorities when naming countries” and was following the lead of organizations such as the United Nations, the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers and the International Organization for Standardization.
“We’re changing the name ‘Palestinian Territories’ to ‘Palestine’ across our products,” Tyler said in a statement emailed to the Los Angeles Times.
The company began making the changes Wednesday. In addition to the tagline on the Palestinian page, the shift will also be evident in location settings on Google websites.
The decision was cheered by Palestinian leaders and activists who saw it as another sign of recognition for a Palestinian state, coming from one of the most influential companies on the globe.“This is a step in the right direction,” Dr. Sabri Saidam, advisor to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, told the BBC. The change “means putting Palestine on the virtual map as well as on the geographic maps.”
In November, the United Nations voted to upgrade the Palestinian Authority from “nonmember observer entity” to “nonmember observer state,” in a step widely seen as a boon to Palestinian hopes for statehood. Palestinian officials started issuing stamps with the name ‘State of Palestine.’
After the U.N. vote, the International Organization for Standardization soon relabeled its three-letter code for the area as “State of Palestine” instead of “Occupied Palestinian Territory.”
More than a decade earlier, ICANN — the Internet Corp. for Assigned Names and Numbers — granted the area its own suffix for web addresses. Much as French websites sign off with a .fr and South Africans tag their sites .za, Palestinians were granted the domain .ps. It is Google.ps where the new reference to ‘Palestine’ is now visible.
The U.S. and Israel opposed the U.N. decision to change its status in November, saying steps toward Palestinian statehood should come through direct negotiations with Israel.
Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor expressed concern about Google’s decision to Agence France-Presse news agency.
“This change raises questions about the reasons behind this surprising involvement of what is basically a private Internet company in international politics — and on the controversial side,” Palmor told AFP.
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7963a8aaf0d3f245ebd5a38bb32b5193 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-may-16-la-fg-mexico-general-20130517-story.html | Mexico names public security chief for Michoacan state | Mexico names public security chief for Michoacan state
MEXICO CITY — Responding to mounting concern about disorder in the Mexican state of Michoacan, officials announced Thursday that an army general would take over as its public security chief, overseeing both state and federal security forces.
The appointment of the general, Alberto Reyes Vaca, was announced by state officials but had been arranged in coordination with the federal government.
For President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration, the move is part of a promised new focus on the southwestern state, long a hotbed of drug cartel violence. It has been the scene of massacres, paralyzing labor strikes and clashes between new citizen vigilante groups and local officials.
Reyes, a career army officer, is a native of Michoacan who has, among other things, served as commander of a special forces battalion. His predecessor, Leopoldo Hernandez, had held the job for two months.
Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said Wednesday in a preview of the appointment that the public security chief would have the power to control and coordinate state and federal police, as well as federal troops deployed in Michoacan.
“There will be no public security secretary in any part of the republic who will have as much power as he has,” Osorio Chong said in a radio interview.
Peña Nieto’s team has been trying to steer attention away from Mexican security issues while emphasizing the country’s economic potential. Although violence remains a serious concern in many states, Michoacan, along with neighboring Guerrero, has been generating headlines that are particularly difficult to ignore.
In swaths of both states, dozens of “self-defense” groups, usually made up of armed masked men, have emerged, purporting to protect their rural communities from the drug cartels. But recent experiences in the troubled municipality of Buenavista Tomatlan demonstrate how complicated, murky and dangerous the situation has become in parts of Michoacan.
A Buenavista Tomatlan vigilante group formed in February and soon after detained a local police chief and a number of officers, accusing them of criminal connections. The army, in turn, arrested 35 members of the vigilante group in March, alleging they were members of a drug cartel.
This month, a reporter for the newspaper Milenio traveled to La Ruana, a city of 10,000 in the municipality, and found food, gas and medicine shortages, boarded up shops and a population terrified by the presence of a cartel called the Knights Templar. Residents complained that the cartel had stifled commerce in an effort to control the area. A month earlier, in nearby Apatzingan, armed men killed 10 lime pickers. The residents said the government was doing little to help.
On Wednesday night, according to federal prosecutors, federal troops detained 12 members of a self-defense group near the city of Uruapan, confiscating a number semiautomatic rifles.
Some grocery suppliers, including the Bimbo bread company, have said there are regions where the cartels have made it impossible to deliver food. At the same time, angry education students protesting a recently approved federal education reform have reportedly been detaining police officers and stealing trucks and buses, using them to block roads.
The governor of Michoacan, Fausto Vallejo, is a member of Peña Nieto’s Institutional Revolutionary Party. He has been ill for a number of weeks, and the state is being run by an interim governor.
This week, senators of the opposition National Action Party, concerned about the chaos in the state, began working on a proposal that would allow the Senate to replace Vallejo with a provisional governor, who would then call a new election.
richard.fausset@latimes.com
Sanchez is a news assistant in The Times’ Mexico City bureau.
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662300474adbbbf05faae06f6671270b | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-may-16-la-fg-wn-afghanistan-suicide-car-bomb-toll-20130516-story.html | Six Americans among at least 15 killed in Afghanistan bombing | Six Americans among at least 15 killed in Afghanistan bombing
KABUL, Afghanistan -- The U.S.-military contractor DynCorp International says four American employees were killed in a suicide car bombing Thursday in the Afghan capital, Kabul, bringing the number of Americans slain to six.
Nine Afghan civilians were also killed and 39 injured, including many women and children, said Dr. Kanishka Turkistani, a spokesman with the Afghan public health ministry.
The explosion, which was heard across Kabul, sent a large cloud of white smoke into the air around 8 a.m., just as many people were commuting to work. Mohammad Ayob Salangi, Kabul’s police chief, said the attack in the Shah Shahid neighborhood took place when a suicide bomber in a Toyota Corolla pulled up beside a NATO convoy.
Footage of the scene showed the road scattered with debris from torn-apart vehicles in front of several damaged or destroyed houses. Firefighters and police officers were shown combing the wreckage and tending to the injured.
A spokesman with the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed that two American troops were killed in the attack.
DynCorp International said in a statement that four of its civilian contractors were also killed and three others wounded. The DynCorp employees were in Afghanistan working on a program to train Afghan security forces. A company official said they were all Americans.
Speaking by phone from Pakistan, Zubair Sediqqi, a spokesman for the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin militant group, claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that a suicide car bomb targeted a convoy, killing more than 10 foreigners.
“Our party will increase its attacks against foreign troops in Afghanistan in the future,” he added.
Insurgent groups in Afghanistan have a history of taking questionable credit for attacks done by others and exaggerating claims.
Sediqqi added that the group was also targeting Afghans working with foreigners in Afghanistan. In September, it claimed responsibility for a suicide car bombing that killed 12 people.
Founded in 1977, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin was initially engaged in fighting the country’s Soviet occupiers. The group was forced out of Kabul by the Taliban in the mid-1990s, then found a new mission after 2001, according to the Columbia World Dictionary of Islamism, when it aligned with remnants of the Taliban and Al Qaeda to fight the government of President Hamid Karzai.
Karzai condemned Thursday’s attack, calling it “an inhumane and un-Islamic act.”
Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who commands international troops in Afghanistan, said, “The insurgents cannot offer the Afghan people a better future.”
“All they can offer is violence and oppression,” he said in a statement. “While today’s attack shows the insurgents remain dangerous, they are not a threat to the Afghan government and its forces.”
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Special correspondent Baktash reported from Kabul. Staff writer Magnier reported from New Delhi.
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8e83b52247566afaaf94f34b2ba52e5d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-nov-29-la-fg-ukraine-eu-20131130-story.html | Ukraine protesters denounce rejection of EU pact | Ukraine protesters denounce rejection of EU pact
KIEV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s president faced growing street protests at home Friday after he rejected an agreement to tie his nation’s political and economic future to the West, instead keeping intact Ukraine’s historical links with Moscow.
The news that President Viktor Yanukovich came away from the European Union summit in Lithuania empty-handed angered thousands of mostly young demonstrators who gathered in Kiev’s Independence Square, site of massive protests that triggered the Orange Revolution against pro-Russian rule nearly a decade ago, to demand that the president be impeached and the association agreement with the EU be signed.
The conflict goes to the heart of deep divisions between the country’s mostly pro-European west and its eastern industrial regions tied to Russia, which still wields great influence over Ukraine more than two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Yanukovich suggested Friday that he would sign the association agreement, which would improve trade and other ties with the EU, if measures could be worked out to aid the Ukrainian economy’s “adjustment to new conditions.”
The president maintains that the EU was offering Ukraine about $830 million to shore up its economy as it adjusted to the standards demanded by the association and that the country needed about $220 billion.
“I am sure that as a result of this work the existing contradictions will be lifted that will allow us to sign the agreement and enable the strategic movement toward European integration without serious losses for the economy of Ukraine,” Yanukovich was quoted as saying on his official website.
Other participants in the EU summit suggested that Ukraine pulled back under strong pressure from Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, with whom Yanukovich recently had three meetings. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara “in our discussions confirms that Ukraine has succumbed to severe Russian economic pressure in postponing EU agreement,” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on his Twitter account.
The EU on Friday announced new association agreements with two other former Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova.
Brandishing yellow-and-blue Ukrainian flags and the blue banner of the EU, protesters gathered Friday in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, carrying signs calling on Yanukovich to “Go to Siberia. We want to live in Europe!” They tore up and trampled leaflets with a drawing of Yanukovich’s face and the word “Sign!”
The president betrayed his people, said Natalia Pylypiv, a 20-year-old geology student from the western city of Ivano-Frankivsk, as thousands of demonstrators chanted, “Impeachment, impeachment!” around her in the square on the cold afternoon.
“I came to Kiev to help influence the signing of the agreement, but what I feel now is utter disappointment,” said Pylypiv, who had symbols of the European Union and Ukraine painted on her cheeks. “I can’t stand seeing Yanukovich tearing himself between Europe and Mr. Putin, and I hate to see Putin winning.”
Pylypiv said she and a friend hitchhiked to Kiev after police sought to prevent students in Ivano-Frankivsk from boarding buses bound for the capital, more than 300 miles away.
“We stood [at a pro-European integration rally] in Ivano-Frankivsk in cold and rain for three days before we came here,” Pylypiv said. “We will stay here to the end to make the authorities change their decision.”
Though Yanukovich told Ukrainian television that he had not “coordinated” with Russia on his decision, prominent lawmaker and billionaire chocolate maker Petro Poroshenko said it was clear that Moscow had put pressure on Ukraine before the negotiations in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital.
He said that as of summer, about 27,000 Ukrainians had been banned from entering Russia, the Russian energy giant Gazprom was threatening to impose sanctions over debts owed by Ukraine, and more than 600 of his nation’s enterprises were barred from doing business in Russia, including his own Roshen, a major producer of chocolates and other candies.
“If this is the price I personally have to pay for our integration in Europe, I don’t mind,” Poroshenko, a former minister of economics and of foreign affairs, said in an interview with The Times. “The agreement with the EU is the only chance for Ukraine to modernize its economy and conduct sweeping reforms, something Russia badly needs too. Russia continues to see its interests and influence in Ukraine in a quite distorted way.”
The refusal to sign the agreement reflected the ruling political elite’s unwillingness to make the sacrifices necessary to join Europe, said Vadim Karasyov, director of the Institute of Global Strategies, a Kiev think tank.
“For the post-Soviet kleptocratic elite, the association with Western Europe means the inevitable change of political and economic regime in conditions of more democracy and a more competitive economy,” Karasyov said. “For Yanukovich and his allies, it is a sure way of self-extermination. This is why they choose sliding back to stagnation in Putin’s company.”
Ukraine is committed by a controversial agreement signed by former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the Orange Revolution, to buy 50 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year from Russia at what critics saw as too high a price. Yanukovich narrowly defeated Tymoshenko in the 2010 presidential election, and the following year she was convicted of abuse of power for signing the agreement and sentenced to seven years in prison in a much-criticized case that further strained Ukraine’s negotiations with the EU.
One of the earlier EU conditions for signing the association agreement was the release of Tymoshenko to Germany for medical treatment, a move Yanukovich rejected as beyond his presidential powers. Tymoshenko remains in prison, where she declared a hunger strike this week.
As protesters massed in Independence Square on Friday, a pro-Yanukovich rally was held in European Square less than a mile away. Several thousand participants — predominantly middle-aged men and women, most of them municipal and industrial workers from eastern and central regions of the country — were brought to Kiev by busloads organized by local authorities, some of those gathered told The Times. Many of them were carrying blue flags of the ruling Party of Regions.
“I am glad the agreement was not signed because otherwise it would make many people lose their jobs in our area, where unemployment is already very high,” said Larisa Andriets, 52, a social worker from the central industrial city of Zhytomyr dressed in a blue Party of Regions jacket. “We must stay with Russia like back in the old days when everybody was happy.”
By nightfall the pro-government gathering had dissolved while the opposition rally in Independence Square had swelled in numbers.
Vitali Klitschko, a world heavyweight boxing champion and Ukrainian opposition lawmaker who plans to challenge Yanukovich in the 2015 presidential election, flew back to Kiev from Lithuania and issued a statement accusing the president of “high treason.”
“Today they stole our hope,” Klitschko told the crowd in Independence Square. “We must demand the current leadership go. Only new leaders can sign the association.”
After Klitschko’s speech, the protesters chanted: “Revolution! Revolution!”
sergei.loiko@latimes.com
Special correspondent Victoria Butenko contributed to this report.
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3838fce103efc3511ec74d49c709ee76 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-sep-04-la-fg-venezuela-power-20130905-story.html | Venezuela’s leader blames right-wing saboteurs for power outage | Venezuela’s leader blames right-wing saboteurs for power outage
CARACAS, Venezuela — With parts of Venezuela still dark after a mysterious blackout that left the capital and 17 states without electricity, President Nicolas Maduro laid the blame on opposition sabotage as his government scrambled to respond to the power failure.
The power shutdown began midday Tuesday after an apparent failure in high voltage transmission lines in Aragua and Guarico states, which led to total outage in several of the country’s most populous areas.
Power was restored by early Wednesday to most of metropolitan Caracas, the capital, and a dozen states, according to the government. But by midday, officials in five other states said they were still without power.
In a Twitter message Tuesday night, Maduro said the failure was due to an “electricity coup” engineered by the “extreme right.” Claiming he had authorized several new power projects to address shortages, Maduro maintained that his opponents were conspiring to “destabilize” the country.
Maduro did not offer details on how such sabotage might have been accomplished. He also blamed unnamed opposition figures for an outage in February, and last month declared a state of emergency, sending police and soldiers to occupy power installations.
Jose Aguilar, a Chicago-based international power systems consultant, said Wednesday that he suspects that the failure resulted from human error combined with the fact that the country’s largest power plant, Planta Centro, was operating at only 82% capacity in the hours before the crash.
“The knowledge that the national grid had been unstable for 48 hours leading up to the collapse invites the suspicion that there was some imprudent action taken by the government operators,” Aguilar said. He called on the government to conduct a thorough investigation to correct the problems and refrain from “frivolous” political accusations.
Aguilar and other critics say independent analyses of the grid’s problems are difficult to carry out because the government has kept power-use data secret since 2010.
Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez said members of the Sebin domestic intelligence service had been “deployed across the nation to protect the population.” Energy Minister Jesse Chacon said Tuesday that an investigation has been launched.
Venezuela’s power system is plagued by problems caused by a lack of investment and maintenance, critics have charged. But Maduro has countered that the outages are a result of a “low intensity campaign” that is leading up to a “final assault on the revolutionary base.”
Maduro took power in January as his leftist mentor, President Hugo Chavez, was suffering from cancer and near death. Maduro won election in April to fill out Chavez’s term, but has never displayed his predecessor’s charisma or enjoyed as much certainty that he can hold together the disparate groups that make up the ruling coalition.
Special correspondents Mogollon reported from Caracas and Kraul from Bogota, Colombia.
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bcd15c67811b6ad99dcf24763bfe846d | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-sep-12-la-fg-wn-bulgaria-umbrella-killing-case-closed-20130912-story.html | Case closed on 1978 poison umbrella killing of Bulgarian defector | Case closed on 1978 poison umbrella killing of Bulgarian defector
No one has ever been brought to justice for one of the most nefarious killings of the Cold War era, the 1978 poisoning of Bulgarian defector Georgy Markov with a ricin pellet jabbed into his leg with the tip of an umbrella.
But there has been little mystery about who was behind the 49-year-old dissident journalist’s slaying as he made his way to a London bus stop. For more than 20 years, former KGB officials and investigative journalists have said the operation to silence a prominent communist critic was a collaboration of Soviet and Bulgarian secret services.
Post-communist Bulgarian news media have long pointed to indications of high-level involvement in Markov’s death, including the fact that the attack occurred on Sept. 7, the birthday of Bulgarian Communist leader Todor Zhivkov.
“The murder was supposed to serve as some sort of a gift to Zhivkov,” the Sofia online news agency Novinite.com commented Thursday after the officially unsolved Markov case was closed.
Zhivkov was Eastern Europe’s longest-ruling communist when he was forced to resign after Bulgarians joined the pro-democracy revolutions that swept the region at the end of 1989. But a little-reformed Bulgarian Socialist Party succeeded the Communists in free elections in 1990, leaving Zhivkov allies in positions of authority over the secret service, with little incentive to pursue the investigation of the dissident’s slaying.
In “Kill the Wanderer,” a 2005 book recounting his yearslong investigation of the Markov case, Bulgarian journalist Hristo Hristov detailed the findings of his review of nearly 100 once-secret files of the State Security Services. He concluded that Soviet KGB agents hatched the plot to kill Markov in cooperation with a Bulgarian security agent codenamed “Piccadilly.”
Markov died in a London hospital on Sept. 11, 1978, four days after the poison pellet was stabbed into his leg. The Bulgarian investigation was closed Thursday, a day after the country’s statute of limitations on murder was reached.
“The investigation was launched 35 years ago, which is the maximum period. It cannot be extended since no concrete action -- arrest order, detention or accusations -- have been undertaken,” Rumiana Arnaudova, a spokeswoman with the Bulgarian state prosecutors’ office, told Novinite.
The news agency also said in its report that it wasn’t the umbrella found at the scene near London’s Waterloo Bridge that delivered the poison. It was fired into Markov’s thigh by an “adapted pen,” Novinite stated, and the umbrella dropped to cause a distraction.
In the years after his 1969 defection, Markov was one of the harshest and most influential critics of the communist-ruled Soviet bloc. His weekly broadcasts on Radio Free Europe and the BBC disclosed rights abuses and the harsh conditions in which most people in the communist empire lived.
Former KGB agent Oleg Kalugin said in 1992 that Bulgaria had sought the Soviet intelligence service’s help in eliminating Markov. Bulgarian news media also have reported that at least two attempts to kill the defector failed before agents succeeded in delivering the fatal ricin pellet.
The BBC and the London 24 news agency noted that the London Metropolitan Police inquiry on Markov’s death remains open, as Britain doesn’t have a statute of limitations on murder.
Bulgarian chief prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov was quoted by the Associated Press in Sofia as saying his office was ready to help British authorities with the case in the event of new evidence or developments.
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Twitter: @cjwilliamslat
carol.williams@latimes.com
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4ec54e84d18499b452f70ecd0df1ab30 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-sep-14-la-fg-wn-syria-opposition-deal-20130914-story.html | Syria opposition says chemical weapons deal is a delay tactic | Syria opposition says chemical weapons deal is a delay tactic
BEIRUT — The Western-backed Syrian armed opposition on Saturday rejected as a delaying tactic a U.S.-Russian deal to destroy chemical arms stockpiles in the possession of the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“We don’t recognize the Russian initiative and we think that the Russian and the Syrian regime are playing a game to waste time and to win time for the criminal regime in Damascus,” Gen. Selim Idriss, who heads the rebel Supreme Military Council, told reporters in Istanbul, Turkey.
“We think that our friends in the Western countries and the United States know exactly the main goal of the Russian administration,” he added. “They are trying to find a solution for the murderer regime in Damascus.”
The general, nominal leader of the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army rebel umbrella group, spoke after U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, announced the chemical disarmament agreement in Geneva. He did not directly accuse Washington of a betrayal, but that seemed to be implied in his remarks.
The Assad government views the chemical weapons hand-over as a means to avoid U.S. airstrikes that could tilt the balance of power in favor of anti-government rebels in the more than two-year civil war. Syria also agreed to become party to an international convention banning the production and use of chemical weapons.
U.S. and other Western officials have accused the government of being behind a poison gas strike outside Damascus on Aug. 21 that killed hundreds. Syrian officials have blamed armed rebels for mounting the attack in a bid to frame the government for the incident and draw international intervention.
Saturday’s accord was a bitter disappointment for armed opposition groups that had been counting on U.S. airstrikes to weaken the government defenses and allow rebel forces to retake the offensive. In recent months, pro-government loyalist forces have pushed back the fragmented rebel brigades from strategic positions throughout Syria.
Qassim Saadeddine, a rebel spokesman, told Reuters: “Let [the] Kerry-Lavrov plan go to hell. We reject it and we will not protect the inspectors or let them enter Syria.”
The U.S.-Russian plan calls for international inspectors to enter Syria, catalog the nation’s chemical armaments and eliminate the toxic arsenal by the middle of next year. The plan envisions that government and opposition forces would cooperate with the inspectors’ work. Washington and Moscow acknowledge that the plan faces considerable logistical and security challenges inside war-ravaged Syria.
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patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
Twitter: @mcdneville
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3f62c8d6a3234056fae170ac0a3481a2 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-sep-19-la-fg-mexico-storm-20130920-story.html | 68 believed buried in Mexico mudslide; storm death toll rises to 97 | 68 believed buried in Mexico mudslide; storm death toll rises to 97
MEXICO CITY — Rescue teams were searching Thursday for an estimated 68 people believed buried in a mudslide after multiple storms battered large swaths of Mexico, killing nearly 100 people nationwide and leaving thousands stranded or homeless.
While much attention was focused on tourists caught in the Pacific resort of Acapulco, grimmer reports emerged from villages in that hard-hit region of Guerrero state, which were largely cut off from aid and may have suffered large-scale devastation.
Luis Felipe Puente, the federal Civil Protection coordinator, said in a television interview that the national death toll climbed Thursday to 97 people in nine states. He said authorities were searching the Guerrero town of La Pintada, where at least 58 people were reported missing after a rain-propelled mudslide. Rescue operations have evacuated more than 300 people. Later, authorities said the missing numbered at least 68.
PHOTOS: Flooding in Mexico
“We hope all [the missing] are not” dead, Puente said.
“We haven’t seen bodies,” Interior Minister Miguel Angel Osorio Chong said after flying over the region. “But there were two-story houses that are now completely covered. There was a tall church, and now you don’t see a church. It disappeared.”
Some residents, Osorio Chong said, were resisting evacuation. “They say, I won’t go until I find my daughter, my sister.”
If confirmed, the La Pintada landslide will be the single deadliest incident after twin storms assailed opposite coasts of Mexico last weekend, a rare double whammy that officials said they had not seen here in more than half a century. President Enrique Peña Nieto flew to the region Thursday afternoon.
“We have had extraordinary rains,” Peña Nieto said.
In photographs of La Pintada that he and his associates displayed at a news conference, it looked as though someone had taken a giant paintbrush and swiped the verdant green countryside with a wide, harsh red stripe. That was apparently the mudslide that carried away residents, their homes and belongings.
Manuel, a tropical storm that hit Guerrero and other parts of the western coast several days ago — as Hurricane Ingrid was pummeling the eastern coast — weakened, then grew to hurricane strength, then weakened again Thursday, meteorological officials said. At its strongest, it aimed Thursday for Sinaloa state, where authorities reported extensive flooding.
In Acapulco, meanwhile, an airlift of thousands of stranded tourists, most of them Mexicans, continued. Forty-five flights ferried peopled from Acapulco to Mexico City on Thursday after landslides and a flooded airport isolated the popular resort town on a holiday weekend.
Angry that they were not getting sufficient attention, some tourists staged a roadblock protest in Acapulco, stopping military trucks that some believed were helping privileged Mexicans cut the long lines for flights.
“We are getting desperate; we have no more money,” tourist Alfredo Gonzalez told reporters. “We are signed up for a military flight, but they told us there are thousands and thousands of people ahead of us.”
Peña Nieto’s government was coming under criticism for having failed to give sufficient warning to residents as the storms bore down on the country. Critics said the president, with less than 10 months in office, was more worried about his first performance in annual Independence Day ceremonies and neglected weather realities.
wilkinson@latimes.com
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f6eea8bf6d3cd08b173122732c400046 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-sep-20-la-fg-wn-biden-mexico-20130920-story.html | In Mexico, Biden glad to focus on the economy rather than security | In Mexico, Biden glad to focus on the economy rather than security
MEXICO CITY — Vice President Joe Biden, in the Mexican capital Friday for meetings with government officials and business leaders, said he was glad to be focusing on trade rather than on security issues, and argued that an economically prosperous Mexico would strengthen the economy of the United States.
Biden said that his visits to Mexico as a senator in previous decades were “mostly about security issues — mostly about drugs, mostly about immigration. And finally -- finally -- we have reached the point we should have reached a long time ago, I think … where we’re looking at the relationship as partners, in a wholesome way.”
The vice president spoke Friday morning in Mexico’s Foreign Relations building to open what is planned to be a yearly “High Level Economic Dialogue” between Mexican and U.S. officials. The government of Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto has been trying to shift attention away from the country’s drug war and toward its economic potential.
Changing the subject has been complicated in recent months by an economic slowdown, continued drug-related violence, and high-profile scandals including the release of Rafael Caro Quintero, an infamous drug lord who had been imprisoned for the slaying of an American drug enforcement agent in 1985.
Such matters will apparently be handled with discretion while the two countries continue to publicly trumpet their strengthened economic ties.
American officials said that security and other matters might be discussed in a closed-door meeting between Biden and the Mexican vice president scheduled for Friday afternoon. In advance of Biden’s visit, both sides were adamant that there would be little public discussion of recent allegations that the U.S. spied on Peña Nieto last year, when he was a presidential candidate.
Biden said he was aiming to strengthen cross-border economic bonds forged by the North American Free Trade Agreement. Officials say the accord has quadrupled the rate of exchange between the two countries since it was signed in 1994.
The subsequent expansion of a Mexican consumer class, Biden said, has benefited the United States, opening up new export opportunities.
“As wages increase here, the whole world benefits,” he said. “We benefit.”
Before the meeting, Mexican officials said they were keen to improve the flow of goods and people across the border, where free trade is complicated by U.S. concerns about unauthorized immigrants and the massive flow of drugs northward.
Biden, on numerous occasions, made a point of telling the Mexicans that he didn’t want to seem like he was lecturing or condescending. But he mentioned that countries like Mexico would thrive if they focused on improving their justice systems and strengthening intellectual property rights.
The U.S. has spent millions in recent years to help Mexico improve transparency in its dysfunctional court system. The U.S. entertainment industry, meanwhile, complains about the widely tolerated bootlegging of U.S. movies and music here.
Biden argued a stronger culture of intellectual property ownership would be good for Mexico as well, because it would stimulate “homegrown innovative capacity.”
Education officials from both countries Friday were also scheduled to discuss plans to boost cross-border research and increase the number of exchange students.
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36219cb92943b2225e18f5e89d979d6c | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2013-sep-21-la-fg-wn-israeli-soldier-murdered-in-west-bank-20130921-story.html | Israeli soldier lured to West Bank and killed, officials say | Israeli soldier lured to West Bank and killed, officials say
JERUSALEM – An Israeli soldier was lured to the West Bank and killed by a Palestinian former co-worker, Israeli officials said Saturday.
The soldier, Tomer Hazan, 20 was reported missing by his family in Bat Yam on Friday.
Israeli officials said Hazan previously worked at a Bat Yam restaurant with Nadal Amar, 42, who on Friday lured the soldier to the village of Siniria.
Once there, Amar murdered the soldier and hid his body in a water well, officials said.
Upon arrest, Amar, a resident of Beit Amin near Qalqilyah, said that he planned to use Hazan’s body as a bargaining chip to win the release of Amar’s brother, Nur Al Din Amar, an operative with the militant group Tanzim who was imprisoned in 2003 for terrorist activities, according to Israeli officials.
Israeli military leaders have long warned its soldiers to be wary of kidnapping and murder plots by Palestinian militant groups who have declared their intention to capture soldiers and use them as leverage to win the release of Palestinian prisoners.
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0725677533b5be9456992bdc538b3903 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2014-jan-17-la-sci-sn-red-states-religious-conservative-divorce-20140116-story.html | More religiously conservative Protestants? More divorce, study finds | More religiously conservative Protestants? More divorce, study finds
Divorce is higher among religiously conservative Protestants – and even drives up divorce rates for other people living around them, a new study finds.
The study, slated to be published in the American Journal of Sociology, tackles the “puzzling paradox” of why divorce is more common in religiously conservative “red” states. If religious conservatives believe firmly in the value of marriage, why is divorce especially high in places like Alabama and Arkansas?
To figure that out, researchers from the University of Texas and the University of Iowa analyzed county divorce statistics against information from an earlier study of religious congregations. They categorized Protestant denominations that believe the Bible is literally true as “conservative Protestants.”
Researchers discovered that higher divorce rates among conservative Protestants were tied to earlier marriages and childbearing – factors known to ramp up divorce. Starting families earlier tends to stop young adults from pursuing more education and depresses their wages, putting more strain on marriages, University of Texas at Austin professor Jennifer Glass said.
But the study went a step further: Glass and another researcher also discovered that people living in areas with lots of conservative Protestants were at higher risk of getting divorced, even if they weren’t conservative Protestants themselves.
County by county, for every 1% increase in the share of conservative Protestants compared with mainline Protestants, the divorce rate increased 0.02%, the study found. Glass argued that community institutions in such areas might encourage early marriage, affecting divorce rates for everyone who lives there.
“Pharmacies might not give out emergency contraception. Schools might only teach abstinence education,” Glass added. On top of that, “if you live in a marriage market where everybody marries young, you postpone marriage at your own risk. The best catches … are going to go first.”
The study also found that it was not poverty nor higher rates of marriage, on the whole, that were driving up divorce in “red” counties, as others had theorized.
“It’s surprising,” said W. Bradford Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. “In some contexts in America today, religion is a buffer against divorce. But in the conservative Protestant context, this paper is showing us that it’s not.”
Wilcox added that the study also showed that more “secularism” – people not adhering to any religious tradition – was also linked to higher rates of divorce.
The nonprofit Council on Contemporary Families, where Glass is a senior scholar, provided a map to illustrate how divorce rates and populations of conservative Protestants overlap. “Young people of every religious belief -- or none -- are influenced by cultural climate,” it wrote in an announcement on the study.
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Twitter: @latimesemily
Emily.Alpert@latimes.com
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aad349448a0193060301cfe37e0db405 | https://www.latimes.com/world/la-xpm-2014-mar-13-la-fg-wn-el-salvador-presidential-election-20140313-story.html | Salvador Sanchez Ceren wins El Salvador’s presidential election | Salvador Sanchez Ceren wins El Salvador’s presidential election
MEXICO CITY – Salvadoran electoral authorities on Thursday declared leftist Vice President Salvador Sanchez Ceren the winner of a bitterly contested presidential election, but the political right refused to accept the loss.
Tension continued to run high in the small Central American country four days after a runoff vote favored Sanchez Ceren, a former guerrilla commander, by the tiniest of margins, according to a final count by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.
The tribunal said Sanchez Ceren, of the ruling Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), received 50.11% of the vote, compared with 49.89% for Norman Quijano of the right-wing Arena party, a former mayor of San Salvador, the nation’s capital. About 3 million ballots were cast, with the difference between the two candidates just shy of 6,400 votes.
The Arena party has accused the FMLN of widespread fraud and Thursday blasted Sanchez’s victory as “illegitimate,” branding the electoral commission partial. Quijano called for a full recount “vote by vote.”
“I am confident we won this election,” Quijano said. Earlier in the week, he raised the specter of violence -- a throwback to the civil war that racked the country from 1980 to 1992 -- by suggesting the army would intervene.
But military commanders said at a news conference Wednesday that they were staying out of the dispute and would accept the tribunal’s final say.
“In these elections, hope and joy overcame fear,” Sanchez Ceren said. He invited the opposition into a “dialogue” and promised to work to build an “inclusive” country.
“Twenty-two years after peace accords [that ended the war], democracy has come to El Salvador to stay,” he said on his Twitter account.
At 69, the now-gray Sanchez Ceren will be the first guerrilla fighter to govern El Salvador. The FMLN won the 2009 presidential election, ending nearly two decades of conservative rule by Arena, but the candidate that year was Mauricio Funes, a former television reporter sympathetic to the left but who had not fought as a rebel.
Funes’ term ends June 1 with Sanchez Ceren’s inauguration, barring any surprises. The parties have several days to present complaints and challenges.
The blade-thin vote margin and the festering dispute over the balloting bode ill for governing the still-violent country, dogged by gang warfare, a growing presence of drug traffickers and deep poverty.
As the vote shows, the country remains polarized, represented by political parties with starkly opposite philosophies long after a war that killed 75,000 Salvadorans and drove tens of thousands of refugees to Southern California and other parts of the U.S.
“Society is divided,” Abraham Abrego, an analyst with the Studies Foundation for the Application of Law, said by telephone from San Salvador. “There is no consensus over the models that the parties propose. There needs to be understanding and negotiation, with everyone putting in their part, and what we are seeing is the opposite of that.”
The FMLN and Arena were bitter enemies during the war, in which the U.S. government, in what it said was an effort to stop the spread of communism, backed Salvadoran governments and armies against the rebels, who received support from Cuba and the Soviet bloc. The two sides fought to a virtual stalemate. The FMLN became a political party after United Nations-brokered accords ended the war.
Sanchez Ceren, who commanded the most powerful faction of the rebel group, won the first electoral round on Feb. 2 with 49% of the vote, in a three-way race. Because no one received more than 50%, a runoff was held between him and second-place finisher Quijano.
Before Sunday’s vote, polls had suggested Sanchez Ceren would coast to victory by a substantial margin. Analysts said one reason for the tighter race may have been Quijano’s effort to portray Sanchez Ceren as a Hugo Chavez-style ruler who would take El Salvador down the same road as Venezuela.
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b0f8ab3f58ece3db387efb7774d247c9 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-argentina-economy-new-president-20151230-story.html | Argentina’s ‘little trees’ getting chopped down by new president | Argentina’s ‘little trees’ getting chopped down by new president
It didn’t take Argentina’s new president very long to ruin Lorena Garcia’s business.
Garcia, a money changer, is one of legions whose livelihood was turned upside down when Mauricio Macri, in one of his first acts as president, eliminated a subsidized exchange rate for the Argentine peso.
“The golden age is over,” Garcia said in a low voice, a calculator by her side, as she sat in her jewelry shop on Florida Street. Her district in central Buenos Aires has long been home to legions of “arbolitos,” or “little trees,” as money changers are known here, in a reference to the green of the U.S. dollar.
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The buying and selling of dollars has long been an under-the-table, technically illegal side business at shops like hers. Business boomed under Macri’s predecessor, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, who kept the official dollar exchange rate at an artificially low level, as much as 50% under the market value, in a bid to restrain inflation.
Before Dec. 16, when Macri’s center-right government abolished the subsidized rate, the peso was officially trading at about 9.5 to the dollar, but shops like Garcia’s were offering around 14 to the dollar. Once Macri’s changes went into effect, the peso’s value floated to about 13 to the dollar, close to the rate on the “blue market,” as the off-books money changers were known.
Almost instantly, some two thirds of the arbolitos closed up shop, by Garcia’s estimate. Although she continues to change money for tourists and informal business owners who keep their cash under the official radar, volume is down sharply.
“This has happened before and arbolitos have always come back,” Garcia said.
The elimination of an official exchange rate was one of Macri’s first acts after taking office on Dec. 10. He made no secret during his campaign of his plans to scrap much of Fernandez’s left-leaning economic policies and wasted little time in doing so, blaming them for Argentina’s dismal economy, which currently suffers from stagnant growth and 28% inflation.
Argentine President Mauricio Macri speaks during a meeting with the Argentine Industrial Union in Buenos Aires on Dec. 14.
Despite the pain felt by Garcia and other moneychangers, Macri’s policy shifts have generated positive public response overall, pollsters say.
“According to a survey we did for a private firm, we figure that the Mauricio Macri government now can count on 60% support,” said Analia del Franco of the Analogias polling firm in Buenos Aires.
In his short time in office, Macri has slashed high taxes on farm goods, eliminated some export controls and moved to cut a yawning budget deficit caused partially by Fernandez’s expansive spending on social-welfare programs. The red ink this year will equal 7% of the country’s total economic output, economists expect.
Macri has been busy dismantling some of Fernandez’s foreign policies as well. He scolded Fernandez’s former ally Venezuela for alleged human rights abuses at a recent meeting of regional leaders and has reiterated his campaign pledge to improve relations with the United States, a frequent rhetorical punching bag for his populist predecessor.
Among the sectors most pleased with Macri is Argentina’s farm and cattle sector, which chafed under controls implemented by Fernandez that were designed to limit many goods’ access to export markets in a bid to keep overall demand, and thus prices, low for domestic consumers.
“There is a strong optimism,” said Jaime Campos, president of Argentina Business Assn., a leading trade group, in an interview with Clarin newspaper. “We are confident that the government will do things correctly. [Macri has] a team that is well prepared, integrated and that knows the issues.”
Campos also applauded Macri’s efforts to reach out for better relations with Brazil and Chile while “keeping a distance from countries that don’t respect human rights,” a reference to Venezuela.
At the meeting of South American leaders earlier this month, Macri called on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro to release political prisoners, including Leopoldo Lopez, the former Caracas borough mayor jailed since February 2014 on incitement to violence charges, which Lopez and his supporters say are trumped up.
Fernandez was a staunch defender of Venezuela’s socialist policies and a close colleague of that country’s late president, Hugo Chavez.
Macri also served notice that he won’t repeat Fernandez’s friendly gestures to Iran, whose officials are suspected of having planned the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that left 85 dead.
Soon after taking the oath of office, Macri said he would not try to block, as Fernandez did, a 2014 ruling by a federal prosecutor that an agreement between Iran and Argentina regarding the bombing investigation was unconstitutional. The prosecutor said the agreement Fernandez made with Iran shielded certain suspects from international arrest warrants.
Macri also made friends among some U.S. investors by indicating he was open to settling a $100-billion bond default dating back to 2002 by making good on unpaid judgments.
White House aides have been quoted as saying that President Obama is considering a Latin America trip next year that will include a stop in Argentina, partly in recognition of Macri’s stated desire to improve bilateral relations.
In another move cheered by many free-speech advocates, Macri said he will “normalize” the calculation of government economic data, a reference to allegations that Fernandez pressured government statisticians to paint a rosier economic picture than warranted.
Not all Argentines approve of Macri’s market-friendly policies. Although Fernandez herself has been silent, groups of her supporters have organized three marches since Macri took power to protest his changes in telecommunications policy, his upcoming judicial appointments and other changes.
NEWSLETTER: Get the day’s top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>
“These economic measures produce the transfer of millions from Argentine workers to large exporters and to financial powers who benefit from the liberalization of the economy [and] put at risk the workers, their savings, production and jobs,” said a joint statement issued by several workers groups closely associated with Fernandez.
And some economists also warn that Macri’s domestic policy changes could exacerbate Argentines’ financial pain, at least in the short term. Few expect the current high inflation rate to moderate over the next few months and some warn that the economy could shrink over the first six months of 2016, before resuming growth by the end of next year.
But Macri says the first dividends of his more market-friendly policies have begun to arrive; he announced this month that private firms had committed $500 million in new investment in energy projects. Foreign oil and natural gas companies by and large stayed away from Argentina’s promising oil reserves during Fernandez’s administration because of her price controls and history of having nationalized energy firms.
“People and markets have reacted positively,” said Mariano Gorodisch, a Buenos Aires-based financial analyst and journalist. “Signs of confidence indicate an improved future.”
Special correspondents D’Alessandro and Kraul reported from Buenos Aires and Bogota, Colombia, respectively.
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f43c87ec40139f6ad893ec2c8a526588 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-baja-farm-labor-20150604-story.html | Baja farmworkers win raises, benefits in landmark deal | Baja farmworkers win raises, benefits in landmark deal
It started as a door-knocking campaign by poor indigenous villagers, then grew into a well-organized movement that mobilized thousands and brought powerful agribusinesses and the federal government to the negotiating table.
The tense farmworker strike in Baja California officially came to an end this week with a landmark agreement that, experts say, marks the most significant achievement by a farm labor movement in recent Mexican history.
Daily wages for thousands of workers will increase as much as 50%, and laborers will begin receiving government-required benefits long denied by many agribusinesses in the San Quintin valley, 200 miles south of San Diego.
“We have awakened. We’re not going to accept working for 100 pesos a day anymore. We’re not going to accept being denied our social security benefits,” labor leader Fidel Sanchez told a throng of cheering laborers who had gathered in the village of Vicente Guerrero on Thursday night to hear details of the agreement.
Although workers fell short of their goal of a 200-peso daily wage (about $13), and it remains to be seen whether the government will follow through on its pledge to enforce basic labor laws, experts said that didn’t diminish the significance of the achievement.
“This is a watershed moment,” said Sara Lara, a farm labor researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. In decades of studying farm issues, Lara said she has never seen agribusinesses buckle to labor demands for increased wages.
“It’s incredible,” Lara said. “It changes the paradigm and creates a new precedent in the labor movement. “
The agreement, reached late Thursday after a six-hour negotiating session, calls for a three-tiered compensation system. Large farms will pay workers 180 pesos per day (about $11.50); medium farms, 165 pesos (roughly $10.50); small farms; 150 pesos (approximately $9.50). Since most work at large agribusinesses, the raises are about $4 per day more for many of the estimated 30,000 workers in the San Quintin region.
The deal also guarantees workers’ rights to social security benefits and overtime pay, requires the government to improve infrastructure and allows for worker oversight of farm inspections by labor officials.
The deal, experts say, resulted from a convergence of factors not seen in previous labor movements. Labor leaders in San Quintin — some of them with experience working in U.S. farm labor unions — maintained solidarity and were able to consistently mobilize large protests that drew international media coverage.
Industry and labor representatives and academic researchers also credited “Product of Mexico,” a series published by The Times in December that documented labor abuses at Mexican export farms. They said it heightened awareness of labor abuse in Mexico, which led to greater scrutiny by consumers of U.S. retailers’ supply chains.
Every large U.S. retailer, including Wal-Mart, Costco and Safeway, buys berries, tomatoes, cucumbers and other produce from Baja California. Driscoll’s, the world’s largest berry company and a major distributor of Baja California produce, faced boycott threats.
“I think [the series] introduced the issue of working conditions on farms in Mexico that supply the U.S. consumer on the agenda, and [the strike] was the next installment in that conversation,” said Erik Nicholson, national vice president of the United Farm Workers.
Farmworkers’ grievances in San Quintin festered for years. Long denied government-required benefits and salary increases, workers walked out March 17 in protests that degenerated into violent clashes with police. Laborers invaded and torched government buildings, threw rocks at police and, for several hours, blocked the main highway to export markets in California.
The strike caused losses of about $80 million, industry officials said.
After weeks of negotiations, violence flared again in early May as police fired rubber bullets at protesters, injuring dozens. Video images of injured farmworkers were broadcast across Mexico, generating sympathy for laborers.
Agribusiness remained unswayed, saying raising wages more than its 15% offer could lead to an economic collapse. The breakthrough came after the federal government on May 14 offered to subsidize a portion of the wage increase. The proposal was widely criticized in Mexico and deemed unlawful, but it bought time for federal negotiators to pressure growers to boost their offer.
Despite the landmark achievement, many laborers reacted somberly to the agreement. Weary after three months of protests, they considered the gains meager given how much they sacrificed.
“After all these days without eating, without bathing, leaving kids at home and forgoing work, and this is all we get?” said Matilde Hernandez, a 47-year-old mother of three, referring to the $4 raise. “We’re fighting for crumbs.”
Some took a pragmatic attitude, saying that over the long term things would continue to improve. “We’re advancing little by little,” said Margarita Gabriel, who said her wages would go up $3.
The situation grew tense Thursday after negotiations at a salon in a San Quintin restaurant. Baja California Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid beat a hasty retreat, fearing that news of the accord could upset laborers. He and his bodyguards pushed their way through an angry crowd shouting epithets and banging on his SUV. “Coward! Rat!” yelled the crowd.
Since The Times’ investigation, the federal government has assumed a greater role in farm labor issues. In February, Secretary of Agriculture Enrique Martinez y Martinez announced the creation of an alliance of industry groups tasked with improving the lives of more than 1 million farm laborers.
In San Quintin, a federal negotiatorsteered the parties to a compromise.
Experts said the federal government was forced to take a stronger role because it needed to protect its export economy and image as a stable country in which foreign companies could invest. The government was reeling from intense media coverage of labor abuses and the violent clashes between police and protesters.
Executives at Driscoll’s, a large buyer of Baja California fruit, said it urged Mexican officials to take charge of the negotiations after its brand was unfairly tarnished in protests and social media campaigns in the U.S.
Soren Bjorn, executive vice president of the Driscoll’s of the Americas business unit, said Friday that The Times’ series and general media coverage of the Baja strikes raised awareness among U.S. consumers, who are increasingly demanding that the goods they purchase be ethically sourced.
Generally regarded as one of the more socially responsible companies operating in Mexico, Driscoll’s has been trying to get its retail buyers to pay more so it can continue improving work conditions at the company’s supplier farms in Mexico, Bjorn said.
Consumer attitudes already were shifting, Bjorn said, but the media coverage accelerated the process and compelled the Mexican government and the industry to act, he said.
“What it did was touch a nerve that was already kind of itching, and once it did that, then all of a sudden a whole bunch of people jumped to action,” Bjorn said. “And then layer on the Baja protest and that added fuel to the fire.”
Twitter: @ricardin24
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7f821ae867ea2c28014b7b5df35a1eea | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-baja-farmworkers-20150509-story.html | Dozens injured as farmworkers, police clash in Baja California | Dozens injured as farmworkers, police clash in Baja California
The San Quintin agricultural region of Baja California erupted in violence Saturday as protesters pelted police with rocks and took over a government building. Police retaliated with tear gas and rubber bullets in running skirmishes that left dozens of people injured, according to farmworker leaders and Mexican authorities.
The rioting came a day after the cancellation of a meeting between Mexican federal government officials and farmworker leaders in this region about 200 miles south of San Diego.
Farmworkers have been seeking higher wages, at least $13 per day, and government benefits, and patience on both sides seems to be wearing thin as negotiations, now in their eighth week, remain at an impasse.
The rioting flared Saturday morning when strikers gathered outside a farm near the town of Vicente Guerrero. They were there to persuade arriving workers to stay on strike, according to farmworker leader Justino Herrera.
Police responded in force after some of the strikers began setting fires in the area, according to Mexican state authorities cited in news reports.
Protesters reportedly set fire to two police cars and a police station. About 45 people were injured during the clashes with Baja California state and municipal police, and six were taken to a hospital, Herrera said.
Videos of farmworkers showing the bruises and cuts purportedly from police beatings quickly circulated on the Internet, fueling complaints of use of excessive force by Baja California state police officers.
“We’re just trying to uphold our rights as workers, and the police are coming here, provoking us, instilling fear, so we give up our fight,” Herrera said. Baja state officials were not available to comment.
The laborers for a few hours blocked the main highway linking the region to export markets in the U.S. Similar tactics at the start of the strike on March 17 prompted an aggressive response by Mexican authorities.
The strike crippled exports for a time, but most agribusinesses in recent weeks have returned to full production. Many workers returned to the strawberry and tomato fields after being offered higher wages, though not as high as leaders demanded.
The Times reported extensively on abusive labor practices at export farms in a series published in December, “Product of Mexico,” which prompted the Mexican government and large growers to establish an alliance aimed at improving conditions for workers.
Twitter: @ricardin24
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031c038a22e6eaa0a9bd9673aa45905c | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-baja-farmworkers-strike-20150320-story.html | Baja farmworkers’ strike crimping some produce supplies in U.S. | Baja farmworkers’ strike crimping some produce supplies in U.S.
Farmworkers protesting low wages at Mexican export farms in Baja California timed their strike for the peak of the harvest season, and their bold tactics appear to be having an impact.
Produce industry growers, retailers, shippers and importers on Friday reported some shortages of strawberries, zucchinis and tomatoes at stores and produce markets in Southern California and beyond. Prices remain stable, but consumers could feel the price pinch if the strike isn’t settled soon, they say.
Thousands of laborers in the San Quintin Valley 200 miles south of San Diego went on strike Tuesday, leaving the fields and greenhouses full of produce that is now on the verge of rotting. Though they stopped blocking the main highway to export markets, the road remains hard to traverse as rogue groups stop and, at times, attack truck drivers. ‘
A trucker for Del Cabo Produce reported that people threw a molotov cocktail at his truck on Thursday afternoon. He also saw the throng loot a truck for Mexican retailer Calimax.
“Our driver escaped and went into the town to hide and we called for federal police to support him,” said Juan Oliva, Del Cabo’s operations manager.
Oliva said several trucks had been delayed, causing damage to shipments of zucchinis and cherry tomatoes. Del Cabo’s farms are located in southern Baja California, but must usually go through San Quintin to reach export markets.
“It’s creating a lot of logistical problems,” Oliva said. “It’s product we need to get to the U.S. every day. We’re having to cut orders. “
Costco reported that organic strawberries are in short supply because about 80% of the production this time of year comes from Baja California. At the Los Angeles Wholesale Produce Market, importers reported shortages of tomatoes and chile peppers. Produce market stalls in Tijuana were also affected.
“It’s had a big effect,” said Moises Yeverit, owner of Chene Produce. “There’s no tomatoes, no berries. Everything is stopped up.”
Negotiations were set to re-launch Friday afternoon, and farmworker leaders expressed some optimism. They said the government had agreed late Thursday to let them break away from unions that they say favor the interests of growers over pickers.
Leaders are now moving to establish their own union specifically for farmworkers that will enable them to negotiate directly with agribusinesses. Baja California Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid drew praise for showing up at the negotiations at a San Quintin restaurant on Thursday.
He pledged his support, but some laborers remained skeptical, saying that a massive strike had been necessary to focus the governor’s attention on labor issues that had been festering for years.
“It took the raised voices of thousands of laborers for you to show up … that worries us,” said Bonifacio Martinez to Vega at the meeting.
Martinez is a spokesman for the Alliance of National, State and Municipal Organizations for Social Justice, a coalition of indigenous groups.
Martinez said if negotiations broke down, laborers would consider marching en masse 250 miles to the governor’s office in Mexicali.
The clash could be an early test of a new alliance of produce industry groups dedicated to improving conditions for farmworkers in Mexico.
The International Produce Alliance to Promote a Socially Responsible Industry was established in February, after The Times documented widespread labor abuses at Mexican export farms in a series called “Product of Mexico.”
Twitter: @ricardin24
Read The Times’ investigation: Product of Mexico
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aeb21f8908e501d4b6ed69129b089a90 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-baja-farmworkers-strike-talks-20150325-story.html | Mexico growers offer striking farmworkers in Baja only 6% wage hike | Mexico growers offer striking farmworkers in Baja only 6% wage hike
Labor negotiations in Baja California appeared on the verge of breaking down Wednesday after an association of agribusinesses offered striking farmworkers a raise of 6%, a figure far lower than what laborers are demanding.
The highly anticipated offer was made by an attorney for the Agricultural Council of Baja California, and was met with stunned silence from dozens of farmworkers gathered in a restaurant salon in San Quintin.
“It’s another slap in the face to farmworkers,” said Justino Herrera, a labor leader for the coalition of indigenous groups that represents thousands of workers in the region 200 miles south of San Diego.
Laborers, who have been on strike since last week, now earn about $10 a day and say the wage hasn’t changed in more than a decade. They also want growers to pay government-required benefits as well as overtime.
Labor leaders took turns expressing their disappointment, if not disgust, to association attorney Alberto Munoz and officials from the Baja California government, which has been trying to mediate an agreement to a strike that threatens one of Mexico’s biggest harvests.
They pointed out that one of the region’s smaller growers has already agreed to boost wages to about $20 per day, and they dismissed the proposed salary increase as a minuscule sum that wasn’t enough to feed their families.
Leaders also repeated their claims that growers had systematically denied them government-required benefits such as Social Security.
“A crime is being committed against us … it’s violating federal labor law,” said group leader Fidel Sanchez, standing up from the table and raising his voice. Turning to Munoz, he said, “Let’s be sensible about this.… Let’s be more flexible.”
The room suddenly buzzed with news that a farmworker had been arrested in a nearby town.
“Please, release him,” Bonifacio Martinez, another leader, asked officials seated at the table. They immediately started making phone calls.
The prompt response illustrated the tension gripping the once-sleepy farming region. Protests last week devolved into looting, vandalism and running skirmishes between police and protesters. The arrests of more than 200 people have been sharply criticized, triggering an investigation by Mexico’s human rights commission.
Hoping to avoid another round of violence, the government has deployed about 1,000 police and Mexican army soldiers to the region. The human rights commission has sent observers to the area.
As negotiations continued through the night, Munoz upped the growers’ offer to an 8% wage increase. But labor leaders rejected the offer and countered by proposing a daily wage of about $19.
That left the two sides far apart, and labor leaders said they plan on staying out of the fields for at least another day. Meanwhile, crowds hundreds strong gathered in several pueblos in and around San Quintin awaiting news from the negotiations. There were no reports of unrest.
Twitter: @ricardin24
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05f15feb55e44d106143526cbff4a100 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-border-sting-sinaloa-cartel-20160131-story.html | Secretive U.S.-Mexico operation nets arrest of 24 suspected Sinaloa cartel members | Secretive U.S.-Mexico operation nets arrest of 24 suspected Sinaloa cartel members
A highly secretive, daylong law enforcement operation around the Arizona border with Mexico resulted in the arrest of two dozen alleged high-level Mexican drug cartel members, according to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman.
The sting known as Mexican Operation Diablo Express took place Friday as numerous law enforcement agencies converged on Lukeville, Ariz., which sits on the border with Mexico.
Homeland Security Investigations, a unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, helped Mexican authorities nab 24 alleged members of the Sinaloa cartel who were operating around Sonoyta, Mexico, and the U.S. border, spokeswoman Gillian M. Christensen said.
The Drug Enforcement Administration, the FBI, Customs and Border Protection and Arizona state and local agencies were on hand to assist.
“The targeted Sinaloa cell has been responsible for the importation of millions of pounds of illegal drugs, including marijuana, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine, into the United States from Mexico during its existence. The organization is also responsible for the smuggling of millions of dollars in U.S. currency, along with weapons, into Mexico,” Christensen said in a statement.
The operation was conducted “with utmost secrecy” as numerous law enforcement officers worked in Lukeville and Sonoyta, bordering cities that are on the route to the Puerto Peñasco, the popular beach destination many Americans know as Rocky Point.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement helped Mexican federal police into the U.S. to keep them safe during the operation, Christensen said.
The sting also netted the seizure of several assault-type weapons and hundreds of pounds of drugs, she said.
“ICE applauds the Government of Mexico for their bold action in taking down this criminal organization and for their continued pressure on the Sinaloa Cartel throughout Mexico,” Christensen said in the statement.
The arrests are the latest blow to the Sinaloa cartel, one of Mexico’s biggest drug-trafficking organizations, after the arrest of drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman on Jan. 8, six months after he tunneled out of a top-security Mexican prison for the second time.
The Mexican government said it is cooperating with an extradition request for Guzman from the U.S.
The 24 people arrested on Friday have not been identified. They are in the custody of Mexican authorities, and the U.S. will seek extradition.
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17a1282ce205903cce868d5d678158b2 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-brazil-leaks-20160531-snap-story.html | Brazil’s government has sprung a leak, and a flood of secrets is gushing out | Brazil’s government has sprung a leak, and a flood of secrets is gushing out
There’s a saying in Brazil: “Even the past is unpredictable.”
It seems particularly apt in the wake of leaked audio recordings that point to ulterior motives for the recent impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff and that have already forced the resignations of two members of the new Cabinet.
Congress voted to put Rousseff on trial on charges that she shifted funds to cover holes in the national budget. The recordings — made before she was booted from office — bolster the suspicions of many Brazilians that her impeachment was both a power grab by political opponents and an effort to stop widespread corruption investigations that targeted them.
The first Cabinet resignation came last week. Romero Juca, the planning minister, stepped down after a leaked recording suggested that his main reason for wanting to remove Rousseff from office was to stop the corruption inquiries. “We have to change the government to stop the bleeding,” the then-senator said in the recording.
Then on Monday night, Fabiano Silveira, who held the newly created post of transparency minister, resigned after the release of a recording of him criticizing corruption investigations and advising two allies on how to avoid punishment. At the time, he was a member of the National Council of Justice, which monitors the court system.
“The recordings show that some of the worst fears about what was happening in Congress weren’t just speculation,” said Mauricio Santoro, a political scientist at Rio de Janeiro State University.
An undated picture provided by Brazil’s National Council of Justice on May 31, 2016, shows Transparency Minister Fabiano Silveira speaking at a conference in Brasilia, the nation’s capital.
He said the revelations undermine the government of Michel Temer, who was elected vice president in a cross-party alliance with Rousseff in 2014 and became acting president after the impeachment.
“This is a government that was essentially created because of a widespread protests against corruption,” Santoro said.
After taking over as president, Temer quickly installed a conservative administration that established a government far more conservative than even right-wing presidential candidates have proposed in recent elections.
He has made the economy his top priority, a move that has pleased international investors and political elites.
In a poll shortly before he took power, he was more unpopular than Rousseff, whose ratings plunged over the last two years as the country slid into its worst recession in decades.
Rousseff, who was never personally accused of corruption or charged with a criminal offense, continues to speak out against the impeachment, which she and many supporters equate to a coup d’etat.
Her trial has not been scheduled, but it must be completed within the 180-day period she has been suspended from office. If convicted, she will be permanently removed.
The leaked recordings dogging the new administration were created as part of a massive corruption investigation by federal police. Known as the Lava Jato, or Car Wash, the inquiry began in 2014 as an investigation into the state-owned Petrobras oil company and quickly came to engulf the political establishment.
Sergio Machado, a former head of a Petrobras subsidiary who recently negotiated a plea bargain, had secretly recorded Juca and Silveira.
It’s not only political elites who have been secretly recorded.
Renan Antonio Ferreira dos Santos, a leader of the Free Brazil Movement, a group of young activists promoting free-market economic policies, was caught discussing how the group received support from political parties to promote pro-impeachment rallies. The source of the recording was unclear.
The group told local media that it collaborated with the parties because the march “belongs to all Brazilians.”
“There’s nothing more natural than inviting opposition parties to use their communications and activist networks to advertise the date,” the group said, according to UOL, an online news service.
Many Brazilians have grown even more cynical about their politicians.
“It’s obvious that Brazil’s politicians set this whole thing up to help themselves, not Brazil,” said Patricia Magalhaes, 19, a student who also works selling snacks with her family in downtown Sao Paulo, where she watched the pro-impeachment marches this year.
“I don’t think anything Dilma actually did wrong was the real reason she was removed,” she said.
The country is braced for more revelations that could further damage the Temer administration.
On Tuesday, local media reported that Marcelo Odebrecht, one of the country’s most powerful businessmen, signed a plea-bargain deal after his construction company was accused in the Petrobras scandal. Brazil is eagerly awaiting to find out whom he might implicate.
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Bevins is a special correspondent.
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a9da96f824321676a31a694101574a31 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-brazil-politics-temer-20170519-story.html | Political crisis in Brazil threatens to topple the president, further destabilize the nation | Political crisis in Brazil threatens to topple the president, further destabilize the nation
Brazil’s escalating political crisis — compounded by mounting economic woes and new allegations of corruption — is already threatening to end the young presidency of Michel Temer and destabilize Latin America’s largest nation.
“It’s a major crisis of leadership,” said Paulo Sotero, director of the Washington-based Brazil Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “Most think Temer has really lost. The political battle is a really difficult one for him. He’s an unpopular president.”
The latest allegations of impropriety involve claims that Temer endorsed the payment of money to a former senator to “stay quiet” while in jail, according to media accounts. The prominent newspaper O Globo published reports this week of a secret recording of the president authorizing the bribe.
Temer, the former vice president, assumed the presidency in September after the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff. He has denied wrongdoing and vowed to fight to prove his innocence. But on Friday Brazil’s Supreme Court released explosive plea-bargain testimony accusing Temer, along with former presidents Rousseff and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, of receiving millions in bribes, Reuters reported.
Protests swept several Brazilian cities following reports of the Temer recording , and opposition leaders called for his resignation or impeachment.
Analysts said Temer’s political demise, though highly possible, might not be imminent. His term ends next year and an impeachment process would take time. Brazilians, having just weathered the lengthy and bitter proceedings that led to Rousseff’s ouster, might not be willing to go through impeachment again so soon.
“It may be easier for the Brazilians to let things go until the 2018 election than to have even more destabilization now,” said Laura Randall, a professor emerita of economics at Hunter College City University of New York and former co-chairwoman of the Columbia University Seminar on Brazil.
Furthermore, some analysts who have listened to the recording said there was room for doubt over whether Temer had explicitly authorized the payment of hush money.
It’s not cut and dried, said Marcos Troyjo, co-director of the BRICLab at Columbia University, a special forum on Brazil, Russia, India and China at School of International and Public Affairs. He listened to the recording and joined other analysts in questioning whether it may have been edited.
If the recording is the main evidence against Temer, “I’m not sure you have enough material there,” Troyjo said. “This is from a legal perspective. From a political perspective it’s a different ball game.”
After just eight months, Temer’s administration has been engulfed in scandal. Dozens of politicians are being investigated for crimes such as corruption and money laundering, including eight ministers, 24 senators and 39 lawmakers in the lower house of Congress. Some of these officials have been implicated in a wide-ranging investigation, code-named “Lava Jato,” or Car Wash, that has implicated scores of officials in possible corruption.
Although Temer is protected by laws that prevent a sitting president from being investigated for acts that occurred before he assumed office, his name has been mentioned in evidence and transcriptions related to investigations into some of his top allies.
The country has grown familiar with government skulduggery leading to political demise.
Rousseff was impeached for breaking budgetary rules by shifting around funds to cover short-term deficits. Her predecessor, Lula, faces corruption charges in connection with alleged bribes from the Brazilian business conglomerate, Odebrecht.
“What we saw in Brazil in recent years was [corruption] not only moving from endemic to epidemic, but from epidemic to systemic,” said Troyjo, the Columbia adjunct professor.
Political chaos has helped aggravate the country’s economic woes.
“The political turmoil is leading to daily uncertainties,” Randall said.
Production has declined, stocks have plunged and the job market is enduring a downward spiral. An economic recession that started in 2014 grew to the worst in the Brazil’s history and has continued into this year. The country’s public expenses are spiraling out of control.
Analysts said Temer’s chances for political survival could hinge on his ability to get Brazil’s economy back on track.
“The past 12 months, one has to admit, whether you like President Temer or not, were a period of significant advances towards what Brazil lost two to three years ago, which was economic stability,” said Troyjo.
Under Temer, Brazil has managed to put inflation back within target and governance in some state-owned enterprises has improved, analysts said. He has introduced structural reforms of social security, labor and the tax systems.
Despite the political and economic uncertainty, several analysts said they were confident that Brazil’s democratic institutions would prevail. The faith lies in the country’s cadre of younger judges and prosecutors “who have been responding to the desire to end impunity,” Sotero said.
Ordinary Brazilians have also shown that they are no longer willing to accept political transgressions. The pushback is evidenced in the recent protests and the the interest and backing of the judiciary as it conducts its probes into political wrongdoing, analysts said.
“This is a major attack on corruption in Brazil,” Sotero said. “We have come a long way. Support in society for these investigations is massive. Brazilians used to know the names of the players on their soccer team; now Brazilians know the names of judges.”
Special correspondent Jill Langlois in Sao Paulo, Brazil, contributed to this report.
ann.simmons@latimes.com
For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page, and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter
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0c8b07a7f702b70e34b73944d7853f89 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-colombia-rebels-20141114-story.html | Colombia peace negotiator warns FARC rebels | Colombia peace negotiator warns FARC rebels
With peace talks between Colombian officials and leftist guerrillas stalled as the two-year mark nears, the government’s lead negotiator warned this week that his side’s patience was limited and demanded a halt to recent attacks on civilians and the military.
Humberto de la Calle’s comments Wednesday at a political meeting in Bogota pointed up the wide differences between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, despite agreements reached on three main negotiating points. Since May, talks have been stuck on victims’ rights and reparations, with no resolution in sight.
“I want to tell the FARC categorically that the time has come to make big decisions,” De la Calle said of the talks, which began Nov. 15, 2012. “Colombian society needs concrete signs that the FARC’s desire for peace is real.”
------------FOR THE RECORD: Colombian rebels: In the Nov. 14 Section A, an article about negotiations between the Colombian government and leftist rebels said that civil society groups estimate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, killed, abducted or “disappeared” as many as 220,000 people since 1990. The organizations cite the number as an estimate of victims of all armed groups in Colombia, including FARC, right-wing paramilitary fighters, criminal gangs and the military, since during the last half-century. — ------------
FARC rebels were accused this week of killing two unarmed civilians in southwestern Cauca state, outraging many Colombians and putting wind in the sails of critics led by former President Alvaro Uribe, now an opposition member of the Senate. The victims’ offense: pulling down a sign that rebels had put up on their reservation to commemorate the death of FARC leader Alfonso Cano.
“I am very pessimistic about the talks because the FARC continues these acts of terrorism and violence,” said Sen. Alfredo Rangel, a close ally of Uribe. As conditions of an eventual deal, “FARC leaders have insisted they won’t spend a day in jail and that they won’t lay down their arms, demands that are unacceptable to most Colombians.”
Rebels are also suspected of killing three soldiers and kidnapping two others in recent days. The FARC also has been accused of stepping up bomb attacks on oil pipelines and field workers, a factor in driving down the country’s oil revenue.
The victims’ rights issue is a complicated one because of the numbers. Civil society groups estimate the FARC has killed, abducted and “disappeared” as many as 220,000 people since 1990, and reparations are part of the negotiations. The rebels also are accused of land grabs totaling millions of acres in farms and ranches that the government insists must be returned.
The government has its own atrocities to answer for. Peace researcher John Lindsay-Poland said soldiers and police may have killed 5,700 civilians over two decades, claiming they were guerrillas to boost body counts.
The cost of compensating victims and their families and redistributing land to rightful owners will be high. So will the cost of demobilizing, educating and reintegrating rebels into society. The International Monetary Fund estimates the 10-year cost of a peace deal to be as much as $45 billion. The brunt of the price tag would be shouldered by the government, but the rebels — with resources drawn from the seized land and drug trafficking — might also be expected to chip in.
Colombia will need help from the U.S. and other nations in raising its share of the funds. In anticipation of a peace deal, President Juan Manuel Santos this month visited European capitals to request financial support in the post-conflict stage.
Despite the delays, the resurgence of violence, the projected costs and the “sticking point” of victims’ rights, Colombia specialist Bruce Bagley, a University of Miami professor, is optimistic there will be peace.
“The FARC doesn’t want to admit guilt because it could expose leaders to International Criminal Court prosecution,” he said. “But the fact that these talks are taking place at all and that the two sides have reached some agreements in the face of Uribe’s wrath and serious doubts among some Colombians is a major accomplishment. President Santos’ instincts were right and so was his timing in making the attempt for peace.”
Rodrigo Uprimny, a human rights researcher who heads the DeJusticia think tank in Bogota, said progress in the talks so far, although slow, had made him “moderately optimistic” for an eventual accord.
“What is left to negotiate is difficult and so are the political agreements that will have to be struck to put a peace deal in force,” Uprimny said. “But what has already been done is much more important. I’m not one of those who believe the easy issues were settled first. Quite the opposite.”
The two sides have reached broad agreement on agrarian reform, political participation and drug cultivation and trafficking. But Rangel notes that those steps still leave practical details to be worked out, including specifically what the FARC’s role will be.
Eventually, any peace accord will go before voters for approval. And though Santos has said peace involves “swallowing toads,” or accepting a deal’s unpleasant details in the interests of attaining an overall peace, Rangel said Colombians’ appetite for unpleasant conditions will have limits.
“The polls show the public doesn’t want peace at any cost and won’t accept that terrorists guilty of crimes against humanity will get free seats in Congress or be excused from disarming,” Rangel said.
Kraul is a special correspondent.
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ebea7e6f2f42609588e42ca78fb5110a | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-colombia-soldiers-slain-20150415-story.html | Colombian truce at risk as clash leaves 11 soldiers dead | Colombian truce at risk as clash leaves 11 soldiers dead
A Colombian corporal and 10 other soldiers were killed in a confrontation with leftist guerrillas in southwest Cauca province, the nation’s defense ministry confirmed Wednesday. It was the most serious breach yet of a cease-fire declared by the insurgents in December.
The rebels attacked a unit of the army’s 17th Mobile Brigade late Tuesday with explosives, grenades and firearms near the Buenos Aires township as the troops were carrying out unspecified security operations, the ministry said in a statement. Nine other soldiers were wounded.
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FOR THE RECORD
April 15, 1:25 p.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that one of those killed was an officer. The slain soldier was a corporal.
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In the release, the Colombian military blamed the Miller Perdomo Mobile Column of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, for the attack. The FARC has been negotiating a peace agreement with government officials since November 2012.
In comments to reporters before entering a session of the talks in Havana on Wednesday, a FARC negotiator known by the alias Pastor Alape confirmed the battle but blamed the government for “incoherence” and for planning military operations against “rebels who are in a truce.”
The FARC declared a unilateral cease-fire in December as what it termed a peace gesture. The government declined to respond in kind, maintaining as it has throughout the negotiations that the military would cease hostilities only when a peace deal is signed.
The government did agree to halt aerial bombardment of rebel camps, but President Juan Manuel Santos’ office released a statement Wednesday calling off that agreement in the wake of the soldiers’ killings.
There have been several violent incidents since December resulting in soldier and rebel deaths. However, none has been on the scale of Tuesday night’s incident, which analysts said bore the characteristics of an ambush. The southwest zone of Colombia is a particular area of conflict because the rebels’ access to the Pacific, where they trade guns and drugs, runs through it.
There was no immediate reaction from the government’s negotiating team in Havana as to whether the killings would affect negotiations. Representatives for the government team did not respond immediately to a request for comment, and Wednesday’s session opened as scheduled.
The two sides have made moves toward a peace deal, including the government’s decision to suspend bombardments and last month’s agreement that the FARC would participate in de-mining activities. But agreement has been reached on only three of five main points in a prospective accord. Santos is pressing the rebels to sign an agreement by the fall so it can be put before Colombian voters by year’s end.
Sen. Alvaro Uribe, a former president and persistent critic of the negotiations, said in a message sent out over social media that the “Peace of Santos is the extermination of the armed forces.”
Kraul is a special correspondent.
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f5e0e7529cf5fc663c83420f379f59e6 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-cuba-air-20160213-story.html | Commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba could resume as early as this fall | Commercial flights between the U.S. and Cuba could resume as early as this fall
The Obama administration will allow U.S. air carriers to start regular scheduled commercial flights to and from Cuba as early as this fall for the first time in more than 50 years, U.S. officials said Friday.
Air travel could resume with up to 20 daily scheduled round-trip flights to Havana, and 10 flights to nine other airports around the island nation.
The move is the latest by a White House determined to restore normal ties with the long-shunned communist government, and to expand American engagement with the Cuban people and their economy.
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Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx will sign the bilateral arrangement with his Cuban counterpart Tuesday in Havana to reestablish regular commercial air travel, and to start government screening of eligible air carriers.
The Transportation Department will solicit applications from airlines to operate the service. U.S. officials expect the opportunity to kick off a bidding war for the new routes.
Airlines could begin selling tickets this fall, probably around October, administration officials said. American passengers will still have to apply for Cuban visas to make the trip.
Charter flights to Cuba, which now fly about 10 or 15 times a day, will continue. Cuban airlines are not expected to begin reciprocal service to U.S. airports in the near future, officials said.
Diplomats agreed to restore commercial air service in December, but it’s taken this long to assess Cuban air operations, security procedures and other challenges.
U.S. law still bars tourists from visiting Cuba, but the commercial flights will expand opportunities for other visitors, such as students and business executives.
NEWSLETTER: Get the day’s top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>
It also is intended to strengthen the people-to-people ties that President Obama hopes will make the detente last after he leaves the White House next year.
Washington and Havana restored diplomatic relations in July, a process that began with behind-the-scenes talks between personal emissaries of the White House, the government of Raul Castro and the Vatican.
Obama has relaxed travel and trade restrictions under his direct authority, but many remain in place and can only be changed by Congress.
The White House has urged Congress to drop its trade embargo, which was passed in 1963 and remains a source of tension with Havana.
Many political conservatives and Cuban Americans oppose what they see as a rush to drop sanctions. The Castro government still draws international criticism, including from the White House, for its jailing of political dissidents and its human rights abuses.
Aides to Obama say he is convinced that greater U.S. engagement with Cuba and its economy will pressure its leaders to accept reforms.
The restoration of commercial flights promotes travel, commerce and the free flow of information, said James Williams, president of the nonpartisan advocacy group Engage Cuba, a supporter of the new Obama policy.
“Now is the time for Washington to listen to the majority of Americans and Cuban people, and fully end the outdated embargo,” he said.
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d2a0ff028510cf8943569d479e229b7d | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-cuba-migrants-20170113-story.html | ‘Obama has killed our dream’: Cuban immigrants marooned in Mexico and Central America after Obama ends their special status | ‘Obama has killed our dream’: Cuban immigrants marooned in Mexico and Central America after Obama ends their special status
Alexander Gutierrez Garcia left Cuba last August, beginning a treacherous journey up the spine of South and Central America in a quest to reach the United States.
Along the way, he was robbed, kidnapped and fell ill. No matter. As a Cuban, Gutierrez, 36, knew all he had to do was reach the U.S. and he would be allowed to stay.
No longer.
On Thursday, President Obama ordered an immediate end to a long-standing policy that granted residency to Cubans who set foot on American soil, leaving Gutierrez and thousands of other Cubans on their way to the U.S. in sudden limbo.
Some Cubans were mere steps from border entry points when the news came down, and began crying as Border Patrol agents turned them away. They can now be deported, just like Salvadorans, Mexicans or any other immigrant attempting to enter the U.S. illegally without valid humanitarian or asylum claims.
“What can we do?” Gutierrez asked in a telephone interview from Costa Rica, his voice shaking. “Obama has killed our dream of living in freedom.”
Gutierrez has lived in Costa Rica since November, trying to regain his health and earn money for the next leg of his journey, which he planned to resume in a few weeks.
He has been getting paid under the table for work as a handyman and looked forward to the days when he had enough spare change to call home to Cuba. His wife and two daughters are there. A third daughter, from a previous marriage, lives in Texas.
Gutierrez’s dream was supposed to end there, in Texas, with a green card and the legal right to bring the rest of his family to join him. It was not supposed to end in Costa Rica, paying to live in a flophouse among strangers.
An evangelical pastor, Gutierrez says he left Cuba because of lack of religious freedom on the island.
Although the communist government has widened its tolerance of some faiths, Gutierrez said it has cracked down on certain evangelical religions, in some cases destroying chapels.
This summer, Gutierrez kissed his wife and daughters goodbye as he and another pastor paid a smuggler to help them get to the U.S.
They were part of a wave of roughly 100,000 Cubans who have fled the island since 2014 out of fear that Cubans might lose their special immigration status amid waning tensions between the old Cold War adversaries.
Over 11 months ending in August, 38,573 Cubans showed up at the southwestern border without visas, according to federal statistics. That’s six times the number of Cubans who arrived in 2009.
For years, many Cubans traveled to Florida in rickety boats. If they landed on U.S. shores, they were allowed to stay. If intercepted at sea, they were sent back to Cuba, and the policy became known as “wet foot, dry foot.”
In recent years, though, more Cubans traveled by land. The coyote hired by Gutierrez and his pastor friend promised he could help smuggle them into Panama, much nearer to the U.S. than Ecuador or Guyana, which Cubans could easily reach without visas.
The smuggler gave Gutierrez clear instructions: Book a flight to Guyana with a stop in Panama. At the airport in Panama City, buy a SIM card and dial this number. The person on the other end will give instructions on how to escape the airport.
Gutierrez followed his orders. But when he dialed the number, the phone rang and rang. Nobody answered.
“That is how my calamity began,” he said.
The two pastors had no choice but to go on to Guyana, adding some 1,000 miles to their trek. Along the way, he said, they were kidnapped by highway thieves and robbed by rogue police officers who stole their phones, money and even eyeglasses.
“What I have learned on this journey is that there are good people and bad people,” Gutierrez said in an interview last fall.
He was sitting at a $4-a-night hotel in Turbo, Colombia, a rough-and-tumble port city that in recent years has become a way station for a growing number of migrants from all over the world traveling to the U.S. Babies wailed as migrants from Haiti, Africa and Bangladesh lined up to use the hotel’s single shower.
Gutierrez and his friend, like other Cubans on the road, tended to stick to themselves. After all, “wet foot, dry foot” made them different. Other migrants knew this too, and they sometimes uttered resentful comments under their breath.
One afternoon in Turbo, Gutierrez and his friend haggled for rain boots and lanterns. The next day, the two of them with another Cuban began their passage by foot through the Darien Gap, a stretch of jungle on the Panamanian border so thick no roads have ever traversed it. He had heard stories about other migrants who had died — by jungle snake, or at the hands of the drug traffickers and militants — so he bowed his head in prayer.
“I’m not afraid of death,” he said, his bottom lip quivering. “I’m just afraid of never seeing my family again.”
When they emerged days later from the sticky, buggy jungle, they took their bleeding feet and mosquito-bitten legs to a Catholic church in Panama City that has become known as a refuge for Cubans on the road.
Gutierrez was worried they would be turned away because of their evangelical faith, but the first question the priest asked when they arrived at the stately old church was: “What can we feed you?
“It was a special moment,” Gutierrez said. “I thought we were enemies. But they treated us like kings.”
He stayed there for weeks, sleeping shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of other migrants and eating meals of beans and rice.
By then, Gutierrez’s body was covered in lichen planus, a skin rash that can be triggered by infection or stress. He and his friends managed to cross into Costa Rica, but Gutierrez didn’t think he was well enough to go on to Nicaragua, another notorious and lawless passage.
Gutierrez’s friends went on without him, eventually spending two weeks in a Mexican migrant detention center before they were released. Mexico, which also has cracked down on illegal immigration, often tolerated Cubans passing through the country because the U.S. would readily accept them. How the country will view Cubans now is uncertain.
Gutierrez later learned his companions crossed into Texas on Dec. 9. Soon, they will be issued work permits, and within a year, they will be allowed to apply for green cards.
One of them, Marcelino Quintana, is living with extended family members in Austin, where the size of the homes and the number of restaurants at first put him in a state of shock.
“I’m trying to adapt to the liberty of this great nation,” he said Thursday.
For Gutierrez, it’s too late.
He sees few options: ask for political asylum in Costa Rica, or return to Cuba, where he worries he might be punished by the government. The Cuban government has said it will take back those who left.
He would never cross illegally into the U.S., he said, and though he could ask for asylum based on his religious beliefs, asylum claims are notoriously hard to win.
On Thursday and Friday, he stayed close to a wi-fi hot spot, scrolling for updates on the policy change. He messaged to panicked friends also on their way to the U.S. but who have only made it to Panama or Peru. He kept hoping he would find news articles saying President-elect Donald Trump vowed to overturn Obama’s decision. Trump, he said, is the only hope for Cubans like him.
He knows he should, but he still hasn’t called his family in Cuba to tell them what he plans to do next. It’s because, he said, he has absolutely no idea.
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
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59c1f04055942606e677a7b5062f2646 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-el-salvador-deportees-20170226-story.html | Meet El Salvador’s growing middle class: Deportees from the U.S. | Meet El Salvador’s growing middle class: Deportees from the U.S.
The smell of slow-cooked Texas barbecue wafted over the outskirts of San Salvador as Jose Reyes cracked open another beer. It was Super Bowl Sunday, and Reyes had gathered with several dozen friends in a parking lot outside a stadium where the game would be screened. Dressed in baggy NFL and college jerseys, they traded jokes in English between bites of pulled pork and hamburgers.
Reyes was deported from the United States in 2001 after serving a prison sentence for wounding two people in a shooting in Houston when he was 17. His mother had brought him to the U.S. as a baby, and when he stepped off an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in El Salvador, he had no recollection of the country of his birth.
For the record:
An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that 400,000 Central Americans were detained at the U.S. border in the last fiscal year. In fact, 400,000 was the total number of all people detained.
Now he is 39 and thriving as a manager at an English-language call center that takes questions from AT&T customers in the United States. He and his friends, other U.S. deportees also working in call centers, earn well over El Salvador’s minimum wage.
Among the Central Americans caught in a decades-long cycle of migration and deportation, Reyes is one of the more fortunate ones.
The U.S. deported 2.5 million immigrants under then-President Obama, more than any previous administration. Roughly 150,000 of those were returned to El Salvador at a time when surging violence there and elsewhere in Central America was driving more migrants into the United States illegally.
Breaking from the long-standing policy of targeting immigrants convicted of serious crimes and turning a blind eye to most of the rest, the Trump administration announced this week that all 11 million people living illegally in the U.S. are potentially subject to deportation. It also said more immigrants may be deported without a hearing or review.
That means a whole new generation of deportees could soon be returning to countries that have long struggled to absorb them. An estimated 700,000 people from El Salvador alone are living in the U.S. illegally.
Each person picked up in the U.S. and delivered back will have to forge a new life, sometimes in an unfamiliar homeland. Some will make new beginnings. Others will struggle to find work or become new soldiers — or victims — in a gangland underworld.
Influx of deportees
Immigration has been a fact of life in El Salvador since the 1980s, when millions fled a violent civil war that pitted leftist guerrillas against the U.S.-backed military government.
Deportation has been a fact of life since the 1990s, when many Salvadorans, especially those who had become involved with U.S. street gangs, started to be sent home.
The gangster culture some had adopted in Los Angeles and elsewhere returned with them, and soon a different war took hold, this one involving rival gangs and police.
The violence, along with extreme poverty, has prompted new waves of migrants to leave the country. More than 400,000 people were detained at the U.S. border in the last fiscal year, a majority of them from Central America .
Many believe El Salvador is unprepared for what could be a massive influx of deportees.
“They are not ready at all,” said Salvador Carrillo, who is a deportee and is working with others to create programs to help new arrivals get jobs and government services.
“This is what the government should be doing, not us,” Carrillo said. “We came back and found a country under stress. The whole situation is very precarious here, and it’s going to get worse.”
Jeannette Aguilar, who runs a public polling center at Central American University in San Salvador, said the growing number of call centers that employ English-speaking deportees there isn’t a long-term solution.
“We have a country that is already not able to absorb its labor force,” Aguilar said. “And we have an economy that depends fundamentally on remittances from the United States.”
Others have a more optimistic view. Pablo Alvarado, a U.S. citizen who fled El Salvador during the civil war and leads the National Day Laborer Organizing Network, a U.S. immigrant rights group, is working to create employment training centers for returnees, who he believes have much to offer El Salvador.
“I think migrants are the answer,” he said.
Gang problem
Juan Villegas said he was a member of the 18th Street gang in Los Angeles before being deported back to El Salvador. Villegas has been shot two times since returning to the country. He sells pastries on the streets, making a small profit. “Who’s going to give me a job?” he asks.
Luis Ramirez, left, and Juan Villegas, both deported back to El Salvador, visit a rehab center in the capital, San Salvador.
Maggie Moran, 45, a deportee, now lives in a women’s shelter where she helps with cooking and child care. Her children live in the United States, where she lost custody of them.
Deportee Maggie Moran, 45, gets a hug from Sam Hawkins at a church in San Salvador. Moran says she was able to change her life for the better by being deported, but she misses her family in the United States.
Maggie Moran walks a child from school back to the women’s shelter where she cooks and provides child care.
Jose Reyes, 39, right, parties with Ivania Hernandez and Walter Lopez. Reyes and Lopez were both deported from the U.S. after growing up in Houston. “My whole life was there,” Reyes said. “My first language was English.”
Deportee Walter Lopez, 38, center, is checked for weapons before attending a Super Bowl party at a local sports stadium. “I dream in English,” said Lopez.
Mayra Machado, 31, was deported to El Salvador in 2017, away from her three children. She arrived in El Salvador without a passport or any identification.
A photo of Mayra Machado, 31, and her children. Machado was deported back to El Salvador in 2017. Her children, who are U.S. citizens, remain in Fayetteville, Ark. She still hasn’t told them she isn’t coming back.
Juan Villegas went to the U.S. to be with his mother — and came home several years ago covered with gang tattoos.
A member of the 18th Street gang in the Los Angeles area, Villegas quickly fell in with members of his gang living in El Salvador.
His body tells the story of the violence he has faced since his return: scars on his arms and torso from being shot on two occasions by rival gang members. Deportation has meant a return to street life and a fight to stay alive. “It’s worse every day,” he said.
Most afternoons, Villegas stops by a bakery staffed by recovering drug addicts and buys dozens of boxes of fresh pastries. Then he walks the streets, selling them for a small profit.
He chooses his route carefully. “There are places where I can’t walk,” he explained.
Villegas said he was approached on the street about his gang affiliation as soon as he returned to El Salvador. “They see you’re tattooed and have a bald head and say, ‘Where are you from?’” he said.
Many calls centers won’t hire people with prominent tattoos, like the ones that creep from his forearms down to his hands. “Who’s gonna give me a job?” he said.
Currently, he is preoccupied with his teenage daughter, conceived in El Salvador after he was deported on an earlier occasion. He said she is using drugs.
He wishes he could raise her in the U.S., he said, where he has a young son.
“To be a kid here is to be cursed,” he said. “Their life is not normal.”
A second chance
Every Friday, Maggie Moran takes a bus to the airport in San Salvador to greet dozens of deportees arriving from the United States.
“Don’t think this is the end,” she tells them in English, pressing pamphlets for her church into their hands. “There’s more to life than just being in the States.”
It’s a lesson Moran, 45, learned after her deportation three years ago. In Oregon, she smoked and sold methamphetamine, lost custody of her kids and bounced in and out of jail. Back in her native El Salvador, which she fled when she was 14 after her father was killed in the civil war, she has found a second chance.
“I was going to die,” she said. “God knew what he was doing when I was deported.”
Not that things haven’t been hard. Moran, with her wavy, bottle-blond hair, has been harassed on the street by gang members and by police who ask whether she has gang ties. Like other deportees, she has found that the government has few services to help her.
But with the assistance of a U.S.-based Christian missionary, Moran found a job as a supervisor at a home for single mothers and their children. She also recently started at a call center.
After getting off work, Moran makes lunch for the children and reads them books as they doze off into naps.
She’s grateful for the chance to exercise her maternal instincts after missing out on years with her own children, who are U.S. citizens living in Oregon. Now, she speaks to them in video chats.
An uncertain future
Mayra Machado, 31, landed in San Salvador last month. She didn’t have a Salvadoran passport and didn’t even know her native country’s telephone code.
Machado, who speaks English with a folksy Southern accent, has three young children in Fayetteville, Ark., who are U.S. citizens. She still hasn’t told them she isn’t coming back.
In the U.S., Machado made good money as an ophthalmologist’s assistant and ferried her kids between school and extracurricular activities in a BMW. She spent a year in immigration detention and was eventually deported after a routine traffic stop revealed felony convictions for forging a check years ago.
With no close relatives remaining in El Salvador, Machado asked to stay with family friends in Usulutan, a largely rural province lined with sugar cane fields that is home to a large “free trade zone,” where international companies lured by tax breaks can hire low-wage workers to assemble products.
It is one of the most dangerous areas of the country, with rival gangs vying for territory. At night, it’s common to hear gunshots.
The first time Machado ventured out, a gang member sidled up and asked her about the small crown tattooed on her shoulder. It was a Juicy Couture logo — a remnant of her days in the U.S. — but the gang member thought it might be a sign she belonged to a rival gang.
Afraid to walk alone, Machado now spends her days inside the family’s dark house, swatting away mosquitoes. She doesn’t know what to do next.
“I feel overwhelmed with reality,” she said, crying on a recent muggy afternoon. “Not being able to go out, how can I even start to build a life here?”
Nods to U.S. life
For Reyes and his friends, game day tailgating is a part of preserving their adopted American traditions in a country where the word futbol is universally understood to mean soccer.
As the Super Bowl party wore on, they began reminiscing about the past.
“My whole world was there,” Reyes said. “My first language was English.”
“I dream in English,” said his friend, Walter Lopez, 38.
As the sun set, they filed into the stadium to load up on fried pork skins and get settled in the bleachers before kickoff. When the first notes of “The Star-Spangled Banner” sounded, Reyes and the other deportees rose to their feet. It was the national anthem they knew best.
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Twitter: @katelinthicum
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dea6cc31139e36070d5f2e46e19a6a39 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-el-salvador-gangs-20150730-story.html | Gang killings of bus workers freezes San Salvador’s transportation system | Gang killings of bus workers freezes San Salvador’s transportation system
El Salvador’s street gangs paralyzed the capital city of San Salvador on Wednesday as many bus drivers stayed clear of their routes after the killing of at least nine transportation workers in a challenge to the government’s crackdown on violence.
Police and local media said Wednesday that the chaos was spreading.
“There is a death sentence for our people here who go out to work, for those who don’t want to pay extortion. Here [the authorities] have to be stronger,” Genaro Ramirez, president of the union representing bus companies, said during a news conference in the Salvadoran capital.
In the third day of de facto strikes, at least 142 routes through the teeming capital were shut down and there were no immediate prospects of normal transportation resuming soon, Ramirez said.
NEWSLETTER: Get the day’s top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >>
“Things are getting worse,” he said, an assessment shared by Salvadoran news media, which reported a nearly 50% increase overnight in idled bus routes. The city of 1.8 million residents lacks a subway, suburban train network or other alternative for shuttling people to their jobs.
Television showed stranded bus passengers piling into pickup trucks provided by the government to try to get them to their jobs and errands. Private truck owners were stepping in to offer rides, but at as much as four times the normal fare charged, the Prensa Grafica news website reported.
Photographer Oscar Machon, who works for newspapers, said in a telephone interview from San Salvador that at least 60% of the city’s bus service had ground to a halt.
“But people are trying to get to work as best they can, walking or taking other options,” he said. “They can’t stop working because of this; they have to get by.”
With thousands unable to make their way across the vast city, normal commerce and services were suffering. Prensa Grafica said nearly 1,500 surgeries and medical procedures had to be canceled because of the transportation snarl.
Random slayings in El Salvador are nothing new, as the country vies with neighboring Honduras for the highest homicide rate in the hemisphere. But attacks on public transportation workers, which began last weekend and grew to nine fatalities by Wednesday, speak to an escalation of the violent showdown between the gangs and Salvadoran authorities trying to rein in their power.
The main criminal rings, the Mara Salvatrucha and the Barrio 18, were born on the streets of Los Angeles, formed by thousands of young people who fled to the United States to escape the violent civil war that began in 1979. When the fratricide abated in the early 1990s, the United States deported thousands of the gangsters, who have since regrouped to fight one another for control of drug markets and territory in their homeland.
Slayings in the country have jumped by more than 50% this year. A government-brokered truce negotiated between the gangs in 2012 broke down in May 2013.
President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, who had moved some gang leaders out of maximum-security prisons to lock-ups closer to their families and extended more privileges to them as part of the cease-fire agreement, recently moved them back and launched the crackdown against the estimated 60,000 gangsters terrorizing the nation of 6 million.
The body count is a result of not just gang-on-gang violence, but a mounting “small scale war” between the government and the gangs, according to Jose Miguel Cruz, research director at Florida International University’s Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center.
“Part of the gang push is to try to force the government to let up on its crackdown,” Cruz said in a telephone interview from San Salvador.
The targeting of the capital’s public transportation system sends a brazen message that the gangs retain the power to sow disorder and fear.
“The government is outnumbered and the gangs have effective control in some parts of the country and here in the city. The government can’t send enough police in to gain control of communities where the gangs have had control for so long,” said Cruz.
The government crackdown has been harsh and reports have circulated of police massacres of civilians. Still, Sanchez Ceren’s administration has been unable to contain the gangs or shield the public.
The gangs remain a problem for the United States as well. People are fleeing El Salvador to the United States to escape the violence. Last year, there was a surge of unaccompanied minors arriving at the U.S. border from Mexico through which their parents sent them to escape the gang warfare.
“There is a sense among people on the streets here that things are spiraling out of control,” Cruz said.
Special correspondent Bonello reported from Mexico City and Times staff writer Williams reported from Los Angeles.
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ab8a7bf219161f02a8711bedd3accb26 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-el-salvador-refugees-20170216-htmlstory.html | Why tens of thousands of kids from El Salvador continue to flee to the United States | Why tens of thousands of kids from El Salvador continue to flee to the United States
Why tens of thousands of kids from El Salvador continue to flee to the United States
By Kate Linthicum | Photography by Carolyn Cole
Feb. 16, 2017 | Reporting from Sonsonate, El Salvador
The death threats started last spring. Sixteen-year-old Mauricio Gomez answered a phone call from an unknown number and heard a nasal voice on the line.
Give me $400 by the end of the week, the gangster warned, or I’ll kill you and your family.
“Do you understand me?” the voice continued. “We can cut you into pieces.”
Mauricio, a lanky high school student who wore thick-framed glasses, hung up the phone, shaking. He had no idea who the gangster was, and he didn’t have $400.
He had to flee, Mauricio decided, but unlike the thousands of “unaccompanied minors” from Central America who braved the trek to the U.S. border in hopes of winning asylum, he applied for an Obama administration program that would allow him — just possibly — to join family in the United States.
But would the program take him? And could he survive the gangs until it did?
Although a fierce military crackdown on El Salvador’s two main warring gangs has chipped away at violent crime in the last year, this tiny Central American nation remains one of the most dangerous places on Earth, with a per capita homicide rate more than 15 times that of the United States.
Children as young as 9 are recruited for gang membership. Extortion is rampant, with gangs squeezing street vendors, restaurant owners and even grandmothers for cash.
Last year, nearly 1 in 4 people were victims of a crime, according to a poll conducted by Central American University, which also found that more than 40% of Salvadorans hoped to leave the country within a year. In certain areas, such as Mauricio’s hometown of Sonsonate, located on a strategic drug route on the Pacific Coast, many people rarely venture out after dark.
The specter of violence is driving increasing numbers of asylum seekers to nearby countries, such as Costa Rica and Mexico, while thousands of others attempt the perilous 2,000-mile journey to the U.S.
A record 17,512 unaccompanied Salvadoran children were apprehended at the U.S. border in the fiscal year that ended in September, according to the Department of Homeland Security. It was an 87% increase over the year before.
More than 27,000 minors or adults traveling in family units also were apprehended; that was a 150% increase.
After the threatening phone calls continued, and menacing-looking men started loitering outside the house, Mauricio and his family decided last summer to test the new program created by President Obama that allows Central American children with at least one parent living legally in the U.S. to apply for refugee status while in their home country.
More than 10,000 young people have applied for the program, which was designed to protect children from the risks of the migrant path and help stop the flow of unauthorized migrants north. Immigrant advocates have hailed the effort as a small but important step toward recognizing the violence in El Salvador and neighboring countries.
Mauricio endured months of vetting. He was asked to play recordings of the death threats for U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers. He submitted DNA samples, underwent background checks and stripped off his clothing in front of a doctor to prove he was free of infectious disease.
Last month, he received a letter saying he had been granted refugee status, and the international body that helps administer the program had booked him a seat on a flight to Los Angeles on Feb. 9. The family wept with joy.
But a new U.S. president with deep doubts about the country’s refugee programs was about to complicate things.
Over the last four decades, violence has become as much a part of life in El Salvador as muggy summers and periodic eruptions of the country’s active volcanoes.
The civil war, which pitted leftist guerrillas against the U.S.-backed right-wing government, raged for 12 years, killed 75,000 people and caused millions to flee. An estimated 2 million people of Salvadoran origin now reside in the United States, according to the Pew Research Center, about 700,000 of them illegally.
Mauricio’s father, Max, left San Salvador for Los Angeles in 1981, after he said he was targeted by the military for speaking out in favor of leftist leaders. He and his wife, Alicia, received green cards after President Reagan signed a bill in 1986 granting amnesty to many people living in the U.S. without permission.
After a peace treaty ended the war in 1992, Max returned to El Salvador, where Alicia gave birth to Mauricio. He worked as a criminal lawyer, occasionally representing members of gangs, such as Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18, that formed in Los Angeles in the 1980s and were introduced to Central America by large numbers of U.S. deportees.
The government has estimated that nearly half a million people are now connected to the gangs — in a country of slightly more than 6 million.
Since 2003, the government has taken what it calls an “iron fist” approach to criminal groups, sending soldiers armed with automatic weapons and dressed in black balaclavas into gang-controlled areas. Recently, federal prosecutors have accused law enforcement officials of going too far — of “disappearing” young men — and residents of some neighborhoods have complained of extrajudicial killings.
Many people, including Mauricio, know someone who has been slain. The father of one of his friends was shot by a gangster not long ago after taking money out of an ATM.
“It’s getting worse,” he said. “We are in a war.”
His father and mother fled to Los Angeles for a second time several years ago after gangsters started demanding that Max represent them in court for free. Mauricio remained at the family’s pretty red stucco home in Sonsonate, a colonial-era city with cobblestone streets lined with vendors frying tortillas and pupusas.
They became one more transnational family in El Salvador, where as many as 40% of young people grow up without one or both parents because of migration.
For children like Mauricio, having parents living in the United States was a boon and bane: They sent money for nice things, but occasionally you were robbed of those nice things, like when gangsters with knives jumped Mauricio as he got off his school bus in 2015 and demanded that he hand over his new sneakers and wristwatch.
The phone calls were different than being randomly targeted on the street. They were incessant, for one. The gangsters called so many times, even after Mauricio changed his phone number, that for a short time he thought that joining the gang might be his only way out.
Mauricio lived alone, looked after by a housekeeper and his older sister, who lived with her own family. They installed boards on the front windows of the house after Mauricio spied a man peering in. The housekeeper quit, saying she was afraid, and Mauricio started sleeping in an upstairs bedroom that was harder to reach from the outside.
He stopped going to school for several weeks — afraid he’d be jumped on the long bus ride — and transferred to a closer school guarded by armed security officers.
“Leave here, leave here, you have to leave,” he remembers thinking.
He just had to hang on until Feb. 9, the day he was to leave for Los Angeles. His father flew down to help him pack and to close up the house. They canceled the Internet and the power.
Then, 14 days before he was supposed to leave, President Trump issued an executive order calling for the immediate suspension of all refugee admissions to the U.S. for 120 days. That included Mauricio, who received a second letter, this one telling him the program was on hold.
He and his father wept again. Mauricio spoke to his brother and sister in the U.S., both citizens, who apologized for having voted for Trump. Then he unpacked his bags.
Mauricio and his father considered their options. Should he go to Mexico to seek asylum there? Or maybe to Italy, where they had extended family? But they didn’t have that kind of money. Father and son slunk around the neighborhood, trying not to attract attention.
And then, last weekend, came beautiful news: A federal judge issued an injunction on Trump’s ban, freeing migrants to travel. An appeals court upheld the injunction Thursday. That same day, Mauricio and Max boarded a plane for LAX.
Mauricio was met there by a brother and his mother, who gathered him in her arms. They went to celebrate at a doughnut shop and then took in a movie.
He was taken aback by how nice people in the U.S. were, and how pretty Los Angeles was. The best part, he said, was that he felt safe.
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Twitter: @katelinthicum
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c02c9cac2d50f6916af9d24108973e97 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-global-abortion-drugs-20160327-story.html | Brazil seizes abortion drugs sent to women living in fear of Zika | Brazil seizes abortion drugs sent to women living in fear of Zika
The messages from the expectant mothers in Brazil resonate with desperation.
“I’m thinking of doing the worst,” one woman wrote when her order for abortion medication failed to arrive. “I really need help. I can no longer eat, and I cry all the time.”
The messages were sent to an international advocacy group that had been providing abortion-inducing drugs free of charge to expectant mothers who fear that the Zika virus could cause severe birth defects.
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Now, however, the group has temporarily suspended its operations in the country because Brazilian authorities have confiscated the drugs in the mail. Abortion is prohibited in most instances in Brazil, and the drugs are illegal.
“It’s not fair to tell women they are going to get a package, and it will not arrive to them,” said Leticia Zenevich, a spokeswoman for the advocacy group, Women on Web. “It’s very tragic.”
Even in the face of the Zika virus, providing pregnancy-ending alternatives to women in a country where abortion is in most cases illegal is proving to be nearly impossible, Zenevich said.
Women on Web, a Canadian group that is based in the Netherlands and operates worldwide, said in February that it had sent “dozens of packages” to women in Brazil but only two packages had arrived. The rest were apparently seized. The packages provided by Women on Web contained misoprostol and mifepristone, which can end a pregnancy.
Authorities acknowledge that they are confiscating abortion drugs sent in the mail because the medicines are banned in Brazil.
The Brazilian Health Surveillance Agency said it was illegal for individuals to receive misoprostol — an abortive substance best known in Brazil by the brand name Cytotec — in the mail.
“Packages are checked when they arrive at the post office, and if medications are discovered they are forwarded to us,” said Carlos Dias Lopes, an agency press officer.
Lopes, whose bureau is responsible for approving and supervising pharmaceuticals, told The Times: “We have a duty to send any illegal substances for destruction.”
Since Feb. 1, Women on Web has been providing misoprostol together with mifepristone, a combination that increases the efficacy of the procedure, free of charge to women in countries affected by the Zika virus.
In Brazil, 95% of the packages have been seized, the group said in a statement.
Lopes said his agency was not familiar with the origin of the packages because that was not part of the government body’s work.
The World Health Organization lists misoprostol and mifepristone on its Model List of Essential Medicines that “satisfy the priority healthcare needs of the population,” but includes the annotation “where permitted under national law and where culturally acceptable.” It also notes that usage of these drugs requires “close medical supervision.”
Two-week-old Sophia, who was born with microcephaly, attends a physical therapy session in February at the Pedro I municipal hospital in Campina Grande, Brazil.
Brazil is among several nations in Latin America and the Caribbean that prohibit abortion in most circumstances.
In Brazil, it is only permitted when necessary to save a woman’s life, in rape cases or in cases of a birth defect known as anencephaly. Calls to relax the country’s abortion laws in the face of the Zika outbreak have run up against fierce opposition from clergy and some politicians.
According to Women on Web, nearly a third of the women who ordered abortion medication from them did so out of a fear of Zika. Scientists suspect that the mosquito-borne virus is linked to an increase in cases of microcephaly, a rare condition in which babies are born with unusually small heads.
Zenevich said the organization received 9,500 emails last year from women largely in Brazil inquiring about abortion medication, and an additional 10,400 emails from women in the Spanish-speaking Americas.
The fear of facing motherhood in the era of Zika had increased demand for the drugs, Zenevich said.
Reproductive rights advocates fear the lack of access to abortion pills might push women to pursue unsafe options to terminate a pregnancy.
“We have a situation here in Brazil in which women are having clandestine abortions, and in which women are dying,” said Sonia Coelho, a spokeswoman for the National Campaign for the Legalization of Abortion. “This brings consequences ... principally for poorer women and black women, who lack the means to have an abortion in a safer place.”
Though illegal, relatively safe clandestine abortions are available in Brazil to those able to pay around $800 or more, almost four times the monthly minimum wage.
The flood of emails from women who ordered the drugs from Women on Web but didn’t receive them has been frantic.
One woman, whose medication was confiscated twice, wrote to the group saying she had run out of options: “Here in my town there’s nothing else to do, it’s either your service or nothing.”
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Some who ordered the confiscated drugs feared they might be “hunted down” and face criminal prosecution, as one women put it.
The group is advising women with the means to find a post office box in another South American country, such as neighboring Argentina, where the packages could be sent. But for many of the low-income women seeking help, the option is simply unrealistic.
Even before the Zika crisis, a booming business in fake abortion pills had sprung up, said Coelho. Many women resort to buying drugs from traffickers only to discover they are bogus and sometimes dangerous, she said.
“We have had cases of women calling us for advice, saying they bought Cytotec but that it did not work,” Coelho said. “What can we say? There’s nothing she can do. Who is she going to complain to given that the medicine is prohibited in Brazil?”
Special correspondent Rigby reported from São Paulo and Times staff writer Simmons reported from Los Angeles.
For more news on global sustainability, go to our Global Development Watch page: latimes.com/global-development
And follow me on Twitter: @AMSimmons1
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d3aa410db490cb46648c229d91dc76ad | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-global-drug-policy-20160419-story.html | U.N. to consider significant reforms to international drug policy | U.N. to consider significant reforms to international drug policy
At what is being billed as the most significant high-level gathering on global drug policy in two decades, the stage will be set for world leaders to discuss what would have once been unthinkable — reversing course in the war on drugs.
The United Nations General Assembly Special Session on the World Drug Problem, which begins Tuesday in New York, will bring together government, human rights and health leaders to discuss whether the hard-line tactics of combating drug trafficking and money laundering have failed.
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FOR THE RECORD
April 22, 10:06 a.m.: This article quotes Yuri Fedotov, the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, as saying the agency was changing course in the war on drugs and was examining the decriminalization of drug use, among other innovations. Though the U.N. was examining policy changes, that statement was based on a news release that was a hoax. Fedotov’s other comments in the article are based on an email conversation he had with The Times. The article also quotes Kevin Campo, who is identified in the fake news release as a spokesman for the U.N. agency. He is not an agency spokesman.
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It will also provide a forum for reformists and government leaders who are pushing for turning the current drug policy on its head by halting drug-related incarcerations, treating drug abuse as a health issue rather than a crime and even legalizing drugs.
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“The drug control regime that emerged during the last century has proven disastrous for global health, security and human rights,” reads a statement to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon that was signed last week by more than 1,000 world leaders, activists and celebrities. The letter urges a complete rethinking of the conventional war on drugs.
As the summit opened Tuesday, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime announced new international recommendations, including the decriminalization of marijuana, universal access to controlled medicines, criminal justice system reforms including elimination of mandatory minimum jail sentences and abolition of the death penalty and acknowledging marijuana’s medical use.
“The science increasingly supports decriminalization and harm reduction over proscriptive, fear-based approaches,” UNODC Executive Director Yuri Fedotov said in a statement Tuesday. “It’s time to reverse the cycles of violence that occur wherever ‘drug wars’ are undertaken, and to abandon policies that exacerbate suffering.”
The UNODC also said it would reform its decision-making process to include a more diverse range of voices.
“We can begin to dismantle ‘just say no’ policies that result in millions needlessly killed and incarcerated — and that defy logic and science — and instead bring to the forefront humane solutions that are known to work,” said Kevin Campo, a spokesman for the drugs agency.
In the United States, federal authorities remain opposed to the legalization of drugs, although some states allow the sale and use of marijuana.
In Canada, government leaders are calling for greater flexibility to control cannabis, by relaxing criminal sanctions and possibly legalizing, taxing and regulating marijuana. Mexico is already debating a bill to legalize pot and changes in its drug laws.
In Colombia, where drug wars have claimed thousands of lives and criminal bands compete to control the lucrative exports, government leaders have long complained that the current global drug policy puts the nation in a difficult position — obligated to crack down on the production of heroin, cocaine and marijuana, yet faced with the economic realities of rural areas where poor farmers have few options but to join the drug trade.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos has complained that the laws put too much onus on producing countries to destroy supply and not enough on consuming nations to block demand.
“What Colombians want is that the U.N. become cognizant of its other mandates, not just to control drugs but promote the well-being of the population, foment human development and protect human life,” said Bruce Bagley, a drug-trafficking expert and international relations professor at the University of Miami who is participating in the U.N. special session this week.
Colombia is expected to ask the U.N. to liberalize its rules regarding drug use and help with economic alternatives to growing coca, poppies and marijuana. The country also might consider legalizing “dispensaries” where heroin addicts can take the narcotic under relatively hygienic conditions.
But not all nations favor relaxation of global drug control. Russia and China, for example, support more forceful drug suppression policies, while in Saudi Arabia and Singapore offenders can still face the death penalty for smoking pot.
“We want a drug-free society, not a drug-tolerant one,” Desmond Lee, a senior minister of state in Singapore’s Home Affairs and National Development ministries said at a preparatory session before this week’s summit.
Fedotov said the high-level gathering presents an opportunity “to create the necessary cooperation to address the world drug problem.” But he insisted it was not “simply about policy.”
“It is about putting people first,” Fedotov said in written responses to questions from The Times. “This means supporting health and human rights, promoting the safety and security of all our societies, emphasizing the role of the international drug control conventions in promoting the health and welfare of humankind, and acknowledging that every country has a shared responsibility to confront this issue.”
Drug reform advocates are not convinced that the policy as it stands serves the best interest of the world’s citizens.
Those who signed the letter to the U.N. secretary-general, including Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, charge that the system focuses so heavily on criminalization and punishment that it has “created a vast illicit market that has enriched criminal organizations, corrupted governments, triggered explosive violence, distorted economic markets and undermined basic moral values.”
Governments, they argue, have “devoted disproportionate resources to repression at the expense of efforts to better the human condition.”
In the U.S., for example, poor people and racial and ethnic minorities have faced mass incarceration for mostly low-level and nonviolent drug law violations. Problem drug use has spread along with infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and hepatitis, while access to harm reduction and other treatment options have been hampered because of outdated attitudes about such programs, activists say.
“There’s been this obsession with eradicating drug use altogether but that’s unlikely to ever actually happen” said Diederik Lohman, an associate director with the health and human rights division of Human Rights Watch. “We should be trying to minimize the use of drugs to protect public health.”
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has faced criticism over her husband’s “three strikes” crime bill that authorized life sentences for criminals convicted of a violent felony after two or more prior convictions, including drug crimes. The policy is widely believed to have contributed to prison overcrowding and the disproportionate jailing of minorities.
In other countries, the global drug policy has served as an excuse for unjust punishment and execution. Destruction of drug crops has also caused environmental harm and deepened poverty in some nations where farmers depend on the yields to survive. And despite the billions of dollars spent on pursuing, killing, prosecuting, extraditing and imprisoning kingpins, dealers and people who use drugs, illicit drugs are less expensive and more accessible today than ever before, according to Human Rights Watch.
Simply put, Lohman and others argue, “the so-called war on drugs has been lost.”
Times special correspondent Chris Kraul in Bogota, Colombia, contributed to this report.
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b46dd594f1b6506d6c53316f913c0956 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-global-hurricane-matthew-haiti-20161007-snap-story.html | How much more must Haiti endure? | How much more must Haiti endure?
When Hurricane Matthew slammed Haiti this week, it unleashed a new wave of suffering on a country already besieged by challenges. The storm hammered the Caribbean nation’s poor and densely populated southern coast, damaging up to 80% of homes and leaving at least 350,000 people in need of immediate aid.
Preliminary official estimates put the death toll at 300, but some media reports quoting local authorities put the figure at more than 800 — a devastating blow to a nation already traumatized by social, economic and political woes.
Since 2000, Haiti’s 10.4 million people have endured repeated natural disasters, health crises and political unrest. And it remains one of the world’s poorest nations.
Poverty problems
More than 6 million people live below the national poverty level, surviving on less than $2.42 per day, and 24% of the population lives under the extreme poverty line of $1.23 per day, according to World Bank data. The poverty situation has been worsening over the past decade. And according to the United Nations, about 50% of urban Haitians are unemployed.
The country’s overall social indicators are generally bad, World Bank data show. Life expectancy is only 57 years compared to the 69-year average in Latin America. Less than half of the population is literate. Only about 1 in 5 children of secondary-school age actually attend secondary school. Some 100,000 children under 5 years of age suffer from acute malnutrition, while 1 in 3 children are stunted, or irreversibly short for their age, according to the U.N. World Food Program.
Less than 50% of households have access to safe water and only a quarter of the population has adequate sanitation, the agency said.
With so many Haitians lacking proper sanitation and clean water, “It is feared that the hurricane will worsen an already precarious situation,” the U.N. Children’s Fund reported.
Earthquake
Before Matthew wrought havoc, Haiti was still struggling to recover from a 7.0 earthquake that struck the country in 2010, killing at least 220,000 people.
The devastation was staggering. According to data from the Disasters Emergency Committee, a collaboration of 13 leading aid agencies in the United Kingdom, the earthquake destroyed at least 105,000 houses, badly damaged an additional 188,383, and rendered 1.5 million homeless. In addition, 80% of schools in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were destroyed or damaged. The U.N. put the cost of the damage and losses at about $8 billion.
According to UNICEF, 55,000 people were still living in shelters — thousands of them in tents — when Matthew struck.
The earthquake’s destruction came six years after more than 3,000 people were killed in flooding and mudslides triggered by Hurricane Jeanne in 2004.
Cholera crisis
Health crises have also plagued Haiti. Months after the earthquake, an outbreak of cholera sparked another humanitarian emergency. The disease has killed at least 9,100 people and sickened hundreds of thousands. More than 27,000 suspected cholera cases have been reported already this year, according to UNICEF.
In August, the United Nations acknowledged responsibility for introducing the waterborne illness after scientists traced the outbreak to a base housing U.N. peacekeepers who had been dispatched from Nepal to help with the recovery.
The nonprofit organization Partners in Health warned of a looming health crisis.
“Cholera cases will spike as a result of this storm,” Charles-Patrick Almazor, chief medical officer in Haiti for Partners in Health, said in a statement. “The conditions on the ground with contaminated water are setting the stage for the next wave of this disaster.”
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said that in addition to cholera, diseases such as dengue fever and the Zika virus could worsen as a result of damage to sewage infrastructure and water sources.
Drought dries up food supply
The hurricane has exacerbated an already critical food shortage. According to the U.N. World Food Program, at least 3.6 million Haitians do not have enough to eat, and among them more than 1.5 million are facing severe hunger.
Drought caused the main 2015 harvest to fall below average with losses of up to 70% in some areas, the U.N. agency reported earlier this year, noting that this was “a severe blow to food security in Haiti, where agriculture employs half of the working population.”
Political instability
The hurricane threatens to strain an already fragile political situation that has mired Haiti in instability. The country has been without an elected president since February. Several rounds of elections have been postponed due to claims of fraud and concerns over the potential for violence.
The nation had been scheduled to hold a new presidential election Oct. 2, but the vote that had drawn 27 candidates has been postponed indefinitely.
The lack of governance has aggravated Haiti’s social and economic woes. According to the World Bank, “corruption and misuse of public funds have resulted in a decline in the quality of all public services, including fundamental areas of traditional governmental responsibility, such as the police, the justice system and the provision of basic infrastructure.”
The international financial institution attributed Haiti’s endemic poverty to the lack of proper governance.
There have been 45 leaders since the country achieved independence from France in 1804, and for the most part they have pillaged and plundered, ruled as despots, stifled opposition and violated human rights — largely with impunity.
Times staff writer Alexandra Zavis contributed to this report
ann.simmons@latimes.com
For more on global development news, see our Global Development Watch page, and follow me @AMSimmons1 on Twitter
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6519564728566e3b67b0c3f826ba72ff | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-global-zika-qa-03092016-story.html | Could climate change be the culprit in spread of Zika virus? | Could climate change be the culprit in spread of Zika virus?
The Zika virus sweeping across South America may be only one of several long-dormant infections that will resurface in coming years because of climate change and deforestation, says a Johns Hopkins University neurologist now leading research efforts in Colombia, one of the countries hardest hit by the disease.
According to Dr. Carlos Pardo Villamizar, warmer climates may have triggered the emergence and subsequent spread of the Zika virus by making more of the world habitable for the Aedes aegypti mosquito, its main carrier. Higher temperatures and dryness have been linked to the spread of another mosquito-borne illness, dengue, and deforestation is thought to be a cause of the most recent Ebola outbreak in Africa.
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The neurologist suspects that Zika, which so far has struck 42,000 Colombians, may also have caused other complications, including a 50% increase in Guillain-Barre, a nervous system disorder causing partial paralysis. There have been no reported cases in Colombia of newborns with microcephaly, or abnormally small heads, as seen in Brazil. But Colombia’s more than 6,600 Zika-infected pregnant women are being monitored.
The Zika epidemic – why now?
Although Zika was discovered in the 1940s, it remained dormant for many decades, reappearing in Micronesia about 10 years ago. Since then it has slowly spread to other areas of the world. But no one paid any attention to it until now because there was no epidemiological problem, no great outbreak of the virus. “Why now?” is a matter of ecology and environment.
Is it inevitable that Zika will come to the U.S.?
The magnitude of the problem we are seeing in South America will not be seen in the United States because the mosquito cannot live in the majority of the U.S. Parts of the South could be vulnerable, but the ecology of most of the U.S. is not conducive to the presence of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which is the main vector, or carrier, of Zika.
What makes the disease so threatening?
The mother’s exposure to the virus in the early stages of pregnancy could lead to microcephaly in a small subset of patients. But the fetus is potentially vulnerable to neurological complications at any stage of pregnancy. It’s very possible that viral infections in later stages of pregnancy could lead to future developmental disorders for the child in the future, such as epilepsy and learning and language disabilities. The spectrum of neurological problems that could emerge is quite wide.
What makes the Zika virus so potentially harmful to newborns?
In a subset of victims, Zika triggers a change in their immune systems. It seems to produce a kind of cross-attack against the nervous system. We suspect the virus may have the direct capability to attack the brain and spinal cord. Scientists in the 1950s experimenting with animals were able to demonstrate that Zika targeted neurons, the cellular elements of the brain and spinal cord.
You say that Zika’s apparent role in promoting Guillain-Barre disease is as worrisome, if not more so, than microcephaly. Why?
I have just come from seeing a Guillain-Barre patient here in Cali and it is horrible to see how they are left weak and incapacitated. It can be devastating for them and for caregivers. It is a temporary condition in most cases, but it is very aggressive and some will be incapacitated for the rest of their lives. Patients can be left with a lot of consequences, such as atrophy of muscles and a deficit in sensations. You talk to neurologists in affected areas who before may have seen three or four cases a year who now are seeing 10 or 15 per month. That’s the magnitude of the problem. In Brazil the increase in Guillain-Barre cases since the Zika outbreak is even more striking.
What makes you think climate change is behind the spread of Zika?
We know that dengue follows a pattern of climate change and that dengue and Zika have a common vector or carrier, the Aedes mosquito. It’s well known in South America that when you have El Niño climate conditions of dryness and heat, dengue cases increase. And where there is dengue, you have the possibility of Zika.
What treatment is there for Zika, and is there hope for a vaccine?
There is no treatment and a vaccine will take years and years to develop. You need to first find a vaccine, then test it for safety and efficacy. How much money and how many years have we spent looking for vaccines for malaria and dengue? So it is very challenging. A better approach in the near term is to control the spread of the mosquito.
You can easily imagine a doomsday scenario for Zika.
We are still learning about the disease, but there are biological features which make it different from dengue and chikungunya. There is evidence that Zika is present in the urine, saliva and semen. That means the virus has the potential to attack different cell populations and organs, whereas dengue affects mainly the blood. That means Zika has a potential to cause more complications from the disease and for it to spread.
Looking ahead, what encourages you?
In January we established a task force of researchers from Johns Hopkins and Columbia University medical schools and the National Institutes of Health with our Colombian colleagues at six different university hospitals here. Many fields of expertise are represented, such as neurology, virology and maternal-fetal medicine. Collaboration is the only way to learn about this disease, not just to diagnose the neurological problems but the factors behind this emerging disease, in order to design treatment and ways of managing patients.
But we need support. We have been knocking at the door for federal grants but nothing has come through. I’m here thanks only to philanthropy from a family foundation called the Bart McLean Fund for Neuroimmunology Research, which has been supporting Johns Hopkins for 10 years. I asked them if I could divert some of their support to Colombia and the family quickly agreed.
Kraul is a special correspondent.
For more news on global sustainability, go to our Global Development Watch page: latimes.com/global-development
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365b45a6226fe3ca62a84204dd2cd719 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-guatemala-mudslide-20151009-story.html | Deadly Guatemala mudslide was preceded by hazard warnings | Deadly Guatemala mudslide was preceded by hazard warnings
When her house began to shake and the lights went dark, Alba Sen Pu froze, along with her husband and four children.
A few minutes later, after the rumbling, shaking and screaming had stopped, Sen Pu, 32, told her husband she was going to check on her parents and siblings. They lived nearby in Guatemala’s Cambray II neighborhood, at the base of a hillside on the outskirts of Guatemala City.
“The idea did not seem likely but I had the hope they were still in the house,” she said.
But she couldn’t even find her parents’ modest home. It was one of the many houses in the neighborhood buried under layers of mud unleashed by a massive landslide.
Whole families were wiped out last week by the earth that came tumbling down the hill near the Pinula River. As of Thursday, the official death count was 220, with hundreds still missing.
Several hundred people were being housed in shelters run by the local government, according to the National Disaster Reduction Committee, known as Conred.
The agency has said it issued a number of warnings about the instability in the area in recent years. Officials this week declared the area uninhabitable. The country’s prosecutor’s office has announced an investigation of the matter.
Manuel Pocasangre, the communications director for the municipality of Santa Catarina Pinula, which includes Cambray II, said state employees in recent years had gone door-to-door to talk to people about the risks of where they lived.
“What we know is that people were conscious about the risk they were taking,” Pocasangre said Wednesday.
Sen Pu cried Thursday as she spoke of her loss. At the municipal cemetery, she had stood next to a wall of grave openings where the bodies of her mother Ceferina, 46, and her siblings Nelson, 23; Rony, 20; and Astrid, 14; were being laid to rest. After the bodies were placed inside, she scrawled their names into the still-fresh cement.
“Our parents always taught us how important family was. We were a close family,” she said.
Her father, Diego, 60, was also believed killed by the landslide. Alba Sen Pu and her sister Glenda were expected to go to the morgue to identify his body.
“It’s hard to lose so many family members and know you are never going to see them again. And it hurts knowing the way they died,” said Glenda, 30, who went to the cemetery with Alba.
Their sister Brenda, 25, the other sibling in the house with their parents that night, was listed as missing.
The Sen Pu family has lived in the Cambray II neighborhood for 21 years. Alba and Glenda frequently went to their parents’ place to eat a meal or celebrate a birthday.
Alba Sen Pu acknowledged that government warnings about the safety of the area may not have made much difference to her and her family.
“If I had known there was risk,” she said, “I might not have left because we don’t have the resources to buy or rent a house.”
Special correspondents Brigida and Bonello reported from Guatemala City and Mexico City, respectively.
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dffc6d78504897849306b3163ca5d09d | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-guatemala-president-judge-order-20150902-story.html | Guatemalan President Perez Molina resigns, faces fraud charges | Guatemalan President Perez Molina resigns, faces fraud charges
Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has resigned after a warrant was issued for his arrest in connection with a customs fraud scandal.
His resignation, which was later formally accepted by the nation’s Congress, followed widespread protests among fellow citizens both rich and poor over the extensive corruption plaguing his government.
The country’s public prosecutor announced on Twitter late Wednesday that the warrant had been issued after Congress voted Tuesday to strip the president of his immunity from prosecution.
Perez Molina, a 64-year-old former general who was active during the country’s decades-long civil war, which ended in 1996, appeared before a judge on Wednesday in connection with the case.
The president had said earlier this week said he wouldn’t resign. However, in a letter presented to Congress about an hour after the arrest warrant was issued, he announced that he was stepping down “in the interest of the country,” according to his spokesman.
Guatemalans go to the polls Sunday to elect a new president. The nation’s presidents are blocked by law from seeking reelection, and Perez Molina’s term would have ended in January.
With his resignation, Vice President Alejandro Maldonado was expected to become interim president.
Atty. Gen. Thelma Aldana said via Twitter on Thursday: “The Guatemalan people have shown maturity and are demanding that everyone should face the same justice process,” she said in Spanish.
On Wednesday she told local media that Perez Molina faced “charges of fraud, illicit association and corruption” related to a group accused of giving discounts on import tariffs to companies in exchange for kickbacks.
Perez Molina has always maintained his innocence of any involvement in corruption. Former Vice President Roxana Baldetti, who resigned in May, is in jail facing charges for her alleged role. She also denies the charges.
Dozens of other politicians have resigned following a United Nations investigation into the alleged scheme, and more than 30 people have been arrested.
Bonello is a special correspondent.
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e5be01e3a956e97eb315bf93c25d3d43 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-haiti-prime-minister-resigns-20141214-story.html | Haitian prime minister quits under pressure; election crisis may loom | Haitian prime minister quits under pressure; election crisis may loom
Amid a deepening political crisis, international pressure and violent domestic unrest, Haiti’s prime minister announced his resignation Sunday, possibly clearing the way for overdue elections.
The forced resignation of Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe may appease a whirlwind of critics at home and abroad, but it might not be enough to rescue the hemisphere’s poorest nation from political collapse.
President Michel Martelly will now have to appoint a new government that can oversee legislative and municipal elections delayed by more than three years.
If elections are not held by Jan. 12, when some legislators’ terms end, parliament will be forced to shut down, allowing Martelly to rule by decree -- a development that would be seen by many as a return to the days of dictatorship that dominated much of Haiti’s history.
In a nation still recovering from a calamitous earthquake five years ago next month, in which more than a quarter of a million people were killed, angry demonstrations demanding the resignations of both Martelly and Lamothe have spread from the capital, Port-au-Prince, to other Haitian cities.
Despite modest economic growth in recent years, the government is seen by ordinary Haitians as corrupt and self-serving.
One man was reported shot to death in protests near the ruins of the presidential palace in Port-au-Prince last week, while other demonstrators were overcome by tear gas fired by riot police. United Nations peacekeepers have also opened fire on demonstrators in at least one incident currently under investigation.
Lamothe, in a resignation speech broadcast on television early Sunday, said that he was proud of his administration and that Haiti had been put on a positive course.
“I am leaving the post of prime minister,” Lamothe, 42, said, “with a feeling of accomplishment.” A close ally of Martelly and sometimes mentioned as a potential presidential candidate, Lamothe added that he was stepping down with the hope that the move would “unblock the political crisis.”
A special presidential commission last week had recommended that Lamothe be removed as part of a series of measures aimed at easing mounting tensions.
Yet replacing him could open up another period of conflict and instability. Parliament must approve Martelly’s choice, and the Jan. 12 dissolution date provides a tight deadline. It took Martelly three choices and several months to get Lamothe approved in 2012.
The political impasse has threatened Haiti’s slow recovery and ability to attract foreign investment. Martelly has blamed the delay in elections on opposition senators, who in turn contend that election legislation unfairly favors government candidates.
U.S. officials have been active in attempting to help defuse the crisis. U.S. State Department officials met with Haitian leaders in Haiti last week, Reuters reported. Special Haiti Envoy Bill Clinton, the former president, defended Lamothe and Martelly in a recent interview with the Miami Herald.
“The one thing that Haiti doesn’t want to get out of this process is looking like ‘OK, we had four great years, we were growing like crazy so you think we’ll throw it all away and go back to the old ways,’” he told the paper. “It won’t be good for the country.”
That apparent support for the Haitian administration has angered many ordinary citizens, giving the current wave of protests an anti-American tinge.
For more news out of Mexico, Latin America, follow @TracyKWilkinson
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db31db903f3dd1ace390d42aab1d392c | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-haitian-influx-tijuana-20160908-snap-story.html | Haitian influx continues through Tijuana, straining shelters | Haitian influx continues through Tijuana, straining shelters
With the city’s shelters full, migrant advocates in Tijuana say they are in crisis mode — and calling for more government help in coping with large numbers of Mexicans, Haitians and others petitioning for entrance to the United States.
“People are waiting in the streets,” Father Patrick Murphy, director of Tijuana’s Casa del Migrante, said in an interview late last week. “We have people outside the door.”
The 160-bed shelter, run by members of the Catholic Scalabrinian order, is one of four non-government shelters in the city that have been offering food and shelter both to deportees and migrants hoping to enter the United States, many of them Mexicans fleeing violent areas of their country. Earlier this year, the shelters started taking in unprecedented number of Haitians.
Numbers provided last week by U.S. Customs and Border Protection showed that through July 31, a total of 3,060 Haitian “inadmissibles” sought admittance to the United States through San Diego ports of entry during the first 10 months of the current fiscal year.That is more than 15 times the number seeking entry through Miami during that same period.
“The whole Haitian increase is based in San Diego,” Customs and Border Protection Commissioner R. Gil Kerlikowske said last week during a stop in San Diego. He said the extent of smugglers’ involvement in getting them to the San Diego border remains unclear.
“It would seem that you almost always have to have a network to get here,” Kerlikowske said. “There’s got to be some kind of facilitation.”
For most Haitians, the ultimate destination is Miami or New York City, where there are established Haitian communities. Customs and Border Protection’s director of field operations in San Diego, Pete Flores, said some are saying they are afraid to return to Haiti, while some say they just want to find work.
The sharp increase in numbers of Mexicans, Haitians, and other foreigners last May overwhelmed Customs and Border Protection’s processing capacity, leaving hundreds to camp out outside San Ysidro’s pedestrian entrance. Customs and Border Protection has since begun processing the migrants on an appointment basis.
In a statement sent Friday, Tijuana’s Coalicion Pro-Defensa del Migrante, called on the Mexican government “to recognize the forced displacement of Mexican and foreign migrants who come to Tijuana in order to enter the United States as asylum petitioners.”
The groups are demanding that “federal, state and municipal authorities in Baja California assume their responsibility of providing comprehensive humanitarian assistance to persons in search of U.S. asylum who come through Tijuana.” The groups called for “the respect of their human rights, their freedom of transit, the absence of discrimination, as well as security and protection.”
Dibble writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.
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a0ed12b23506eac931d2184030e34ab7 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-honduras-caravan-death-20181110-htmlstory.html | Mexico confronted Central American migrants with new severity. It cost one man his life | Mexico confronted Central American migrants with new severity. It cost one man his life
Henry Diaz Reyes and about 1,500 other Central American migrants had just pushed past Guatemalan authorities and onto a border bridge to Mexico.
Mexican federal police were waiting for them in riot gear. The official border entry was closed, police said.
The migrants shouted obscenities and hurled rocks at the police, who responded by launching tear gas.
As the Oct. 28 scuffle escalated, projectiles started whizzing through the air. One struck Diaz, who fell to the ground, bleeding from his head. Rescuers rushed him to a hospital, where the 26-year-old was declared dead.
“He had so many plans,” said his half-sister, Glenda Reyes, who lives in Florida. Plans to work in the U.S. and have his son learn English. Plans to reunite with family members who had made the journey north and were finally living comfortable lives. “They took them,” Reyes said.
Large-scale confrontations on Mexico’s southern border were unheard of until last month. In the past, Mexican immigration agents regularly deported Central Americans in the country illegally, but usually after intercepting individuals or small groups well inside Mexico at checkpoints along highways or railroad tracks.
That changed in the run-up to the U.S. midterm election, when President Trump began referring to migrant caravans as invasions and threatened to withhold aid from Mexico and Central American nations that failed to stop them.
In response, Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto ordered hundreds of federal police to the southern border — putting them on a collision course with the groups of migrants mainly from Honduras that were heading north through Guatemala.
It is unclear what training or instructions the police on the border bridge had received.
Dozens of migrants and 10 police officers were injured the day Diaz was killed.
An autopsy performed by Guatemalan authorities found that Diaz died from a traumatic brain injury.
Mexican authorities have said police fired only tear gas. Found at the scene, however, were casings that two law enforcement experts said appeared to be from powerful projectiles that are designed to penetrate doors or other barriers and release chemical irritants — but not to be fired at people.
The experts based their opinions, made independently, on two images of casings — one taken by a photographer working for The Times who was several feet from Diaz when he collapsed, the other captured by a journalist working for another outlet and uploaded to YouTube.
Manufactured by Combined Systems Inc., which is based in Jamestown, Pa., the projectiles are meant to be used during “specific tactical situations” such as hostage scenarios, according to the product specifications. The company warns users to “exercise extreme care and caution to minimize the possibility of this projectile striking a human.” The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
“It shouldn’t be used for crowd control at all,” said a weapons expert at Omega Research Foundation, a nonprofit that tracks police and military use of weapons. The expert could not be named because of company policy.
The other expert, Ara Marcen Naval, a human rights advocate at Amnesty International, said that firing such projectiles into a crowd “breaches international human rights law and standards” that specify when law enforcement officials can use force and how much.
A Mexican official who spoke on condition of anonymity denied that federal police had fired such projectiles and said police do not use any products made by Combined Systems Inc. Asked where the projectiles may have come from, the official said: “We do not have that information.”
Human rights groups and journalists have documented past use of the same projectiles by police, including against crowds that demonstrated when Peña Nieto was sworn into office in 2012.
The day after Diaz was killed, the rest of the migrants he was traveling with waded across the Suchiate River illegally and continued their journey north mostly unimpeded by Mexican authorities.
Diaz’s body was sent back home with the help of the Honduran government. The simple wood casket was placed in the living room of the small house that Diaz had shared with his grandmother and six other relatives on the outskirts of the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.
Diaz left Honduras because he was constantly broke, relatives said. The $250 a month he made as a delivery truck driver was barely enough to buy groceries and pay “taxes” to gangs to cross their territory on his routes.
Three times he had attempted the dangerous 1,500-mile journey to the Texas border, and three times he failed, most recently last year. But the possibility of traveling north in a large group — without paying a smuggler thousands of dollars, without having to pay Mexican cartels that controlled the route — gave his dream new allure.
His ex-wife and their 7-year-old son left in mid-October in the first migrant caravan, which drew international attention after Trump angrily tweeted about it. Back in Honduras, Diaz watched television footage that showed caravan members being hailed as heroes as they trekked north through Guatemala, where locals gave them food and places to sleep and cheered them from the sides of the road.
When Diaz heard about a second caravan forming, he told his relatives he was leaving. That night in the living room of his grandmother’s house, its walls bare except for a few framed pictures of family, a debate broke out.
“Don’t go,” said his uncle, Orlando Reyes Banegas, 53. “‘It will be hard. America is not like you think.”
Reyes spoke from experience. He had crossed illegally into the U.S. to find work in the 1980s before returning a few years later, homesick for his family and disheartened by the racism he said he encountered in the suburbs around Washington, D.C.
“You’re going to suffer so much,” he told his nephew. “Maybe it’s not in God’s plan.”
But Diaz hardly heard him. For years he had listened in wonder to more seductive stories about life in the U.S. from other family members who had gone there.
Glenda Reyes and another half-sister had obtained legal residency there thanks to their father, a U.S. citizen, and now cleaned houses in Naples, Fla. Their children ate at McDonald’s whenever they wanted, attended good schools and spoke English.
Diaz wanted the same for his son, Jafed.
His grandmother, Felina Banegas, had also recently gone to Naples — legally — to seek treatment for a heart condition.
Diaz missed his 74-year-old grandmother, who had raised him when his own mother was absent. She doted on him, and he on her, calling her “mama” and reminding her to take her heart medication.
On the day he decided to leave Honduras, he had her first name tattooed across his chest.
“If I die, at least I will hold her close to my heart,” Diaz said to his relatives before heading to the bus station.
Diaz traveled to the Honduran city of San Pedro Sula to meet up with the second caravan. The group maintained a festival-like atmosphere as it crossed into Guatemala, some migrants singing to keep their spirits up.
On Oct. 27, the migrants arrived in the Guatemalan town of Tecun Uman, just across the Suchiate River from Mexico. That night, they slept in a public park.
When the sun rose, they headed to the bridge, which had been closed since the first caravan of migrants had passed through more than a week earlier.
Those migrants had pushed their way onto the bridge, but turned back after Mexican authorities fired tear gas at them and several migrants were injured in the chaos that followed. Trump publicly thanked Mexico for its show of force against the people on the bridge that day, even as hundreds of migrants crossed illegally via the river.
The second caravan did not back down. As its confrontation with Mexican police unfolded, Glenda watched on television in Florida. She frantically dialed her brother.
“Please go home,” she pleaded when he answered. “You’re risking your life.”
He told her he wanted to be near the front of the group in case Mexican authorities opened the border.
“I can’t go back,” he shouted before hanging up.
A few moments later, she watched in real time as her brother’s limp body was carried away from the fracas by several young men.
When he was placed in an ambulance, his shirt opened, and the tattoo for their grandmother could be seen.
Special correspondent Jeff Abbott in Tecun Uman, Guatemala, and Cecilia Sanchez of The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
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kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Twitter: @katelinthicum
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137808fb064be44b1ea9e4dc01fc6f02 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-honduras-election-20171128-story.html | Honduras still hasn’t declared a winner in its presidential vote — and tensions are rising | Honduras still hasn’t declared a winner in its presidential vote — and tensions are rising
Protesters from opposing political parties took to the streets Tuesday in Honduras, where election officials still have not declared a winner in Sunday’s presidential vote amid allegations of fraud.
International monitors called for a speedier and more transparent vote count as several prominent civil society groups accused the government of slowing its release of tallies because it appeared the incumbent president was headed toward a loss.
After more than 24 hours without publicly updating vote tallies, the country’s electoral court reported Tuesday that with 67% of ballots counted, opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla led a field of nine candidates with 964,883 votes, or 44% of the total. President Juan Orlando Hernandez had 901,115 votes, or 41%.
The new tally represented a major gain for Hernandez, narrowing Nasralla’s lead from 93,975 votes to 63,768.
The court’s president said that it will take until as late as Thursday to tally the remaining votes and that election officials would not name a winner until every vote had been counted.
Growing uncertainty about who will lead the nation comes as both Nasralla and Hernandez have declared victory and have sought to rally popular support. Nasralla has been celebrating with boisterous public gatherings, and the head of the political party that Hernandez belongs to has urged the president’s supporters to take to the streets to “defend the triumph.”
The longer election officials wait to name a winner, the more likely there may be conflict, said Adriana Beltran, an expert on Central America at the think tank Washington Office on Latin America.
“The silence feeds into ongoing tensions,” Beltran said.
There is a growing suspicion among people from across the political spectrum that the vote count has been intentionally delayed so that officials can work out a secret deal that would benefit Hernandez, she said.
The nonpartisan civil society group N-26 said in a statement Tuesday that it believes that the final vote data have been available to the Supreme Electoral Tribunal for days, and it warned that the court’s “unjustified silence” would stoke distrust among voters. Respecting the final vote is the duty of candidates, it said: “We reiterate to the political parties their duty to be respectful of the institutions and the final results.”
Those who say Nasralla should have already been declared the winner point to a statement by Marcos Ramiro Lobo, a magistrate on the election court, who on Monday told the Reuters news agency that the court’s experts believed Nasralla’s lead was “irreversible.”
In a news conference Tuesday, the president of the electoral tribunal denied allegations of fraud.
“The will of the people is being respected and will not be changed,” tribunal President David Matamoros said.
The election was clouded in controversy long before voters went to the polls.
Eight years ago, Hernandez backed a military coup against former President Manuel Zelaya, in part because Zelaya had proposed running for a second term, which at the time was barred by the constitution.
But after Hernandez was elected president, several Supreme Court judges who were considered to be his allies voted to overturn the constitutional ban on term limits, and Hernandez announced his campaign for reelection.
Hernandez is popular among U.S. officials and many in the business community for his efforts to reduce violence in Honduras, where the homicide rate — once among the highest in the world — has fallen in recent years. But he and his National Party have been dogged by allegations of corruption and ties to criminal groups.
Nasralla, a 64-year-old television personality with no prior political experience, was the candidate of the Alliance Against Dictatorship, a coalition formed with Zelaya’s leftist party. He ran a populist campaign, pledging to lower taxes and fight corruption.
Hernandez received much more media attention before the vote, benefiting from 65% of election coverage, compared with 15% for Nasralla, according to a team of election observers from the European Union.
Speaking to reporters in Tegucigalpa, the capital, on Tuesday, members of the team said the people of Honduras deserve more transparency from election officials.
Quick communication about vote results “is a right of the Honduran people,” said Marisa Matias, a Portuguese official who heads the team.
During the 2013 presidential election, the electoral court provided more frequent updates of vote tallies, with five updates released in the day after polls closed, compared with only one this time around, she said.
Martin Fernandez, head of the nonpartisan Broad Movement for Dignity and Justice, said his doubts about election rigging were “absolute.”
“We completely repudiate this process,” Fernandez said. “The popular vote isn’t being respected.”
kate.linthicum@latimes.com
Twitter: @katelinthicum
Cecilia Sanchez in Mexico City contributed to this report.
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624f3e8f1b96e0ebb512b35c8e0e1197 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-honduras-election-protests-20171203-story.html | Worried that their election is being stolen, Hondurans take to the streets in droves | Worried that their election is being stolen, Hondurans take to the streets in droves
Thousands of opposition backers waving banners and shouting anti-government ballads marched through the streets of the Honduran capital Sunday in a boisterous but peaceful repudiation of the administration of President Juan Orlando Hernandez.
The mostly young demonstrators repeated the president’s initials, JOH, in a rhythmic chant — “Fuera JOH,” meaning “Out with JOH” — demanding that the president concede defeat in his reelection bid in the Nov. 26 vote.
“People are fed up with the corruption, the theft, the poverty,” said Jonathan Alarcon, 28, who was part of a musical combo singing an anti-Hernandez ballad in cumbia style along the protest route. “It’s time for JOH to go.”
The street demonstration was called the largest here in recent years, although there was no official estimate of the crowd, which stretched for at least six blocks along a major boulevard. It came exactly a week after presidential balloting that was plagued by allegations of fraud.
With some 95% of the ballots counted, official results show Hernandez, who is seeking a second term, with a lead of about 1.5 percentage points over his principal challenger, Salvador Nasralla, a television personality. Nasralla has forged a broad alliance across ideological lines and pushed an anti-corruption message.
But the opposition’s charges of ballot rigging and its demands for an extensive review of the vote have brought the vote-counting process to a standstill.
Delays in releasing electoral results, mysterious computer crashes slowing the count and sudden shifts in the tallies have stoked widespread suspicions of behind-the-scenes chicanery in a nation where cynicism about politics is widespread. The opposition has also voiced disbelief about what it calls highly inflated voting numbers from three largely rural, mostly pro-government provinces.
The Hernandez administration has rejected allegations of fraud and called for the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, which oversees the voting process, to resume the count of the final ballots in the presence of all political parties and international observers. The opposition has expressed skepticism about the independence of the electoral tribunal, which is largely controlled by the ruling party and allies.
The government has also accused the opposition challenger, Nasralla, and his key political ally, former President Manuel Zelaya, of fomenting post-election violence.
“We urge Salvador Nasralla and Manuel Zelaya to stop calling for violence and protests in Honduras — and to show respect for our democratic institutions,” the Honduran government said in a statement Sunday distributed by a Washington-based public relations firm.
The opposition has denied calling for violence and says it has only sought peaceful protests in an effort to forestall a rigged election. Nasralla, in turn, has accused the Hernandez administration of inciting violence against opposition protesters.
The government has repeatedly called for the opposition to back a special count of the remaining ballots, which constitute about 5% of the total and have been set aside for “special scrutiny” because of the possibility of irregularities. But the opposition wants a much more extensive review of the ballots.
“The Honduran people who peacefully went to the polls to assert their civic rights last Sunday do not deserve to see their country in turmoil,” the government statement said. “The best thing for Hondurans right now is to allow the Supreme Electoral Tribunal, the national and electoral international observers, and representatives from Honduras’s political parties to continue to tabulate the rest of the votes in peace.”
Zelaya, who was ousted in a coup in 2009, heads the opposition coalition, known as the Alliance Against the Dictatorship. Many demonstrators on Sunday waved the red flag of his Libre (“Free”) party, a key opposition participant. His support has provided an important constituency for Nasralla, a political neophyte best known for his sports and entertainment telecasts.
Sunday’s march was less about the virtues of a Nasralla presidency than it was dramatizing the opposition’s contempt for Hernandez, whom it accuses of institutional corruption. Hernandez has repeatedly denied charges of corruption, including the alleged plundering of funds from the country’s Social Security system to finance political campaigns.
The president has also rejected criticism that his candidacy is illegitimate and the result of a decision by a compliant Supreme Court. A controversial Supreme Court ruling two years ago allowed Hernandez to run for office again this year despite a constitutional ban on presidential reelections.
“This protest is not about one candidate, it’s part of a social movement to transform our country, especially for the youth who have no future,” said Marcela Trejo, 23, who was among those marching in what was mostly a festive crowd. “Nasralla may be a TV personality, he may be funny, he may be arrogant, but one thing he is not is corrupt. He is not a thief.”
Nasralla focused much of his campaign on a clean-government pledge while assailing Hernandez’s administration as corrupt and autocratic. Hernandez projected a law-and-order image in a nation riven by crime and poverty.
Whether Sunday’s march would have any effect on the outcome of the stalled election count remained unclear. Both sides continue to bicker about the disputed count and whether it would be resumed.
But it seemed apparent that opposition protests would continue, despite a dusk-to-dawn curfew imposed by the government late Friday in a bid to curb post-election violence. The opposition denounced the curfew as a transparent effort to stifle protests. Hondurans angered at the election results have left their homes during the curfew hours, risking arrest, to clang pots and pans and set off fireworks in a collective sign of displeasure.
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
Twitter: @PmcdonnellLAT
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9d993a7acb1f8421d43719fc6e8fce9a | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-honduras-migrant-caravan-20181016-story.html | As caravan of Central American immigrants heads north, Trump warns of cutting aid to Honduras | As caravan of Central American immigrants heads north, Trump warns of cutting aid to Honduras
A caravan of Central American immigrants traveling northbound in buses and on foot on Tuesday provoked the ire of President Trump, who threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Honduras if the group was not stopped.
Trump said via Twitter that Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez had been warned about the group of roughly 2,000 asylum seekers and economic migrants.
“The United States has strongly informed the President of Honduras that if the large Caravan of people heading to the U.S. is not stopped and brought back to Honduras, no more money or aid will be given to Honduras, effective immediately!” Trump tweeted.
The caravan departed Saturday from the violence-plagued city of San Pedro Sula, two days after Vice President Mike Pence prevailed on the leaders of Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala to persuade their citizens not to enter the United States illegally.
The group arrived at the Guatemalan border on Monday. After a two-hour standoff, its members, who far outnumbered the police and immigration officials there, were allowed to cross. They spent the night in the small town of Esquipulas, about an hour north of the border, and on Tuesday were continuing north.
It was unclear how Trump expected Honduras to stop the caravan. Hernandez did not immediately respond to Trump’s tweet.
The U.S. gave Honduras more than $180 million in aid in 2017 for a range of programs designed to improve security and combat poverty and drug trafficking, according to the Washington Office on Latin America think tank. Those funds are appropriated by Congress.
It was also unclear how Guatemala would respond to the caravan. Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales, who is seeking U.S. support in his efforts to shut down a U.N.-backed anti-corruption body that is investigating him and several family members, has sought to curry favor with Trump.
On Tuesday, Guatemalan authorities arrested Bartolo Fuentes, a former Honduran congressman who had been acting as a spokesman for the caravan. It was unclear what charges, if any, Fuentes faced.
In April, another caravan that originated in Honduras provoked a series of tweets from Trump, who said the participants posed a threat and who sent National Guard troops to the border in response. Many participants of that caravan, which included large numbers of women and children, eventually turned themselves over to border authorities and asked for political asylum.
Similar caravans were organized in previous years but traveled largely without interference by authorities. The caravans are designed to help protect immigrants from the dangers of the migrant trail, which include robberies, rapes and assaults perpetrated by smugglers, cartel members and even some immigration and law enforcement authorities.
The latest caravan includes people fleeing violence, poverty and political repression.
Elsa Medina Santos said she joined the caravan with her husband after she had received death threats in connection to a land dispute in the municipality of El Progreso. The couple fled to another part of Honduras last year after another woman involved in the dispute was killed.
Medina said that she filed police reports with authorities, but that there was no progress on the case. She and her husband decided to leave Honduras because they believed it was unsafe.
“Everything remains in impunity,” Medina said.
Many immigrants traveling with the caravan said they decided to join it after seeing news reports about a large group of people gathering in San Pedro Sula to embark together on the journey north.
Mari Sarai Lopez, a 26-year-old from the town of La Paz in western Honduras, had been contemplating making the journey north with a friend. When they saw news of the caravan, they said goodbye to their families and took buses to meet up with the group the next day.
She said she and her friend don’t have money to pay a smuggler. The caravan seemed like a cheaper — and safer — option.
The pair plan to break off from the caravan before reaching the U.S. border and apply for permission to stay and work in Mexico.
“We want to seek a life in Mexico,” said Lopez, who was resting in the shade along the road Monday. “There are no jobs in Honduras.”
Dilmer Vigil also joined the caravan to try to find work. The 26-year-old electrical technician from San Pedro Sula has been unemployed for six months.
“We are not leaving because we want to,” he said.
Vigil blames Trump and the U.S. government in part for the recent exodus from Honduras in connection with the contested reelection of Hernandez in November.
Initial election results showed opposition challenger Salvador Nasralla with a 5-percentage-point lead over Hernandez. Then the electronic results system went down for hours. When it came back online, Nasralla’s lead had disappeared in favor of Hernandez, whose claim to victory set off months of opposition protests and violent crackdowns by the government.
Despite claims of election irregularities and calls for new elections by the Organization of American States and others, the U.S. recognized Hernandez as the winner.
“The U.S. gave the green light for this government,” Vigil said.
A spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security told the Associated Press on Monday that the caravan is “a result of well-advertised and well-known catch-and-release loopholes.” She was referring to the tradition of allowing immigrants applying for asylum to be released while waiting for their hearings.
“Until Congress acts, we will continue to have de facto open borders that guarantees future ‘caravans’ and record numbers of family units entering the country illegally,” spokeswoman Katie Waldman said.
Times staff writer Linthicum reported from Mexico City and special correspondent Cuffe from Esquipulas.
UPDATES:
3:16 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with Times reporting.
This article was originally published at 8:50 a.m.
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138e5321043a302dc5f5682d7f616258 | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-ambush-cartel-20150522-story.html | Federal forces attacked in western Mexico area dominated by cartels | Federal forces attacked in western Mexico area dominated by cartels
A Mexican official said about 40 people were killed in large-scale firefight between law enforcement and criminal suspects in western Mexico.
The official said almost all the dead were suspected criminals. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The gun battle happened in area between Michoacan and Jalisco states that is known as a stronghold of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel, which has mounted several large-scale attacks on federal and state forces in recent weeks.
The scene of the shootout is close to the community of La Barca, where authorities earlier found more than five dozen bodies in mass graves linked to the Jalisco New Generation cartel. The area also has been marked by killings of politicians.
While there was no immediate confirmation that the Jalisco cartel was involved in Friday’s shooting, the gang has been involved in the deadliest attacks against law enforcement in recent memory in the last few months.
In April, gunmen believed linked to the cartel ambushed a police convoy in the western state of Jalisco, killing 15 state police officers and wounding five.
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ef0c36cc3ab2cb111a6b723de273ff6e | https://www.latimes.com/world/mexico-americas/la-fg-mexico-amlo-inauguration-20181130-story.html | Mexico’s President-elect Lopez Obrador, who takes office Saturday, vows a national transformation | Mexico’s President-elect Lopez Obrador, who takes office Saturday, vows a national transformation
Mexico will embark on an era of high expectations and profound uncertainty Saturday under the leadership of one of the country’s most enigmatic political figures — Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
Lopez Obrador, who rode populist rhetoric and a vow of a national transformation to a landslide election in July’s balloting, is set to begin a six-year term as Mexico’s 57th president.
The inauguration will mark the stunning revival of a twice-defeated presidential aspirant who ran under the leftist banner of his own party — and who represents a stark departure from Mexico’s recent run of mostly drab, technocratic leaders.
“I am not going to be a flower pot, I’m not an adornment,” the silver-haired president-elect, who turned 65 this month, warned in a recent YouTube message. “I have a mandate. … The Mexican people want an end to corruption and impunity.”
Despite his overwhelming electoral victory, Lopez Obrador remains a divisive figure: His supporters laud him as a kind of savior for a Mexico gone terribly awry, while his critics fear the return of an old-style Latin American caudillo, or strongman, poised to turn back Mexico’s slow march toward democracy.
The inaugural guest list includes an eclectic array of world leaders, among them U.S. Vice President Mike Pence and a pair of Washington’s key adversaries — the socialist presidents of Venezuela and Cuba, recently dubbed, along with Nicaragua, Latin America’s “troika of tyranny” by John Bolton, the U.S. national security advisor.
Lopez Obrador’s ascendance has buoyed hopes of an improved economic and security panorama for many Mexicans, despite doubts among some about his ability to govern after years as a noisy dissident denouncing the “mafia of power” — his depiction of Mexico’s long-entrenched ruling classes.
His campaign vows to fight corruption and shrink poverty resonated deeply in a period of desultory economic growth, rising crime and seemingly unchecked official graft.
More than 4 of 10 Mexicans, in excess of 53 million people, still live in poverty, while the country is on pace to exceed last year’s record of more than 31,000 homicides, and a string of former governors is facing corruption charges. Public outrage with corruption during the administration of outgoing President Enrique Peña Nieto helped fuel Lopez Obrador’s electoral victory.
Lopez Obrador, with scant experience in foreign affairs, faces an immediate potential clash with Mexico’s northern neighbor. President Trump has vowed to shut the border in response to the looming presence in the border city of Tijuana of thousands of bedraggled Central Americans from migrant caravans, most seeking to enter the United States.
A sign of cooperation between the two countries occurred on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Buenos Aires on Friday, when the United States, Mexico and Canada signed an accord revising the North American Free Trade Agreement — which Trump had long threatened to cancel, leading to months of acrimonious negotiations.
The agreement, which still requires approval by Congress as well as lawmakers in Mexico and Canada, spares Mexico’s new leadership a battle with the Trump administration on trade.
As a presidential candidate, Lopez Obrador condemned Trump’s “neo-fascist campaign of hate” after his incendiary characterizations of Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists. But, as president-elect, Lopez Obrador has sought to avoid antagonizing Trump.
The two populist leaders from opposite ends of the political spectrum appear to have developed a cordial relationship, exchanging friendly telephone calls as their representatives have met in Mexico City.
Upon donning the tricolor presidential sash, Lopez Obrador said he plans to deliver an address Saturday afternoon from a balcony of the National Palace to people gathered in Mexico City’s central square, or zocalo, where a cultural festival is planned.
“It’s going to be a party,” said the man known as Amlo, a nickname based on his initials. “It’s not a change of government, it’s a change of regime. It begins a new era.”
Dismissed as a sore loser and gadfly after crushing defeats in Mexico’s two previous presidential contests, the resolute shopkeepers’ son from steamy southern Tabasco state retained faith in his ability to mount a comeback.
Lopez Obrador has already backtracked on some key issues — conceding, for instance, the need to keep the military in the streets to combat rising cartel violence, an acknowledgement that Mexican police are not prepared to handle the challenge from organized crime. Lopez Obrador unveiled a 50-point plan that would, among other measures, increase prosecutions of graft cases, criminalize influence-peddling and even expose the president to criminal prosecution for corruption.
Lopez Obrador’s almost evangelical belief in his own transformative capabilities led Enrique Krauze, the Mexican historian, to label him in 2006 as “the Tropical Messiah,” a moniker that has stuck.
“I will not fail you,” Lopez Obrador told ecstatic crowds gathered in the zocalo on the night of his election. “I want to pass into history as a good president of Mexico.”
Lopez Obrador, the first avowed leftist to assume Mexico’s presidency in recent history, repeatedly pledged to use his position to eradicate Mexico’s seemingly intractable inequities.
“For the good of all, the poor first,” he declared in the zocalo.
Lopez Obrador regularly mocks his detractors as fifi, or snobs.
He will assume power amid considerable ambiguity about how he plans to accomplish — and fund — his sweeping agenda. His campaign promises include cash grants and free university educations for the young, enhanced pensions for the elderly and disabled, stable gasoline prices and reduced violence. The money, he says, will come from savings achieved in reducing corruption and running a more austere government, cutting official salaries and pensions and doing away with sundry perks, including the presidential aircraft and bodyguards.
Many are skeptical.
“Some people think that starting tomorrow, the prices of gas, electricity and gasoline will go down — but that can’t be,” Jose Guadalupe Rios, 55, owner of a small grocery store and a Lopez Obrador supporter, said Friday in southern Mexico City. “Amlo doesn’t have a magic wand to change everything from one day to the next — besides, he can’t end corruption in a day.”
Following the election, Lopez Obrador toned down his often-combative rhetoric and called for reconciliation, reaching out in particular to critics in the business sector.
Those reassurances helped ease doubts among Mexico’s business elite. Some on the right have long charged that Lopez Obrador, if elected president, would morph into a kind of Mexican Hugo Chavez — the late Venezuelan leftist firebrand chief of state.
But much of business’ conditional support for Lopez Obrador withered with his decision in October to scrap a partially built, $13-billion airport project for Mexico City, an announcement that sent the markets and the peso plummeting. The move — after a special election that critics called rigged and involved only about 1% of registered voters — would discourage investors, business leaders said.
This week, Mexico’s Central Bank warned in a quarterly report against public policies “that create worry in markets and a loss of confidence in Mexico as a destination for investment.” The Banco de Mexico did not mention the incoming government in its report, but the statement was widely seen as a cautionary volley in advance of the presidential shift.
While many in the business community remain suspect, there is no doubt that Lopez Obrador enjoys broad public support.
He will assume office with a 66% approval rating, according to a poll this week by El Financiero newspaper. That compares to a 70% disapproval rating for Peña Nieto, whose six-year term is widely viewed as a failure.
Lopez Obrador won 53% of the ballots cast on July 1, defeating his nearest challenger by some 30 percentage points. It was the largest percentage garnered by a Mexican presidential candidate since 1982, in the heyday of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, which dominated Mexican politics for much of the 20th century.
Despite his rebel oratory, Lopez Obrador was for years a PRI stalwart, before joining a leftist breakaway current in the late 1980s. He served as mayor of Mexico City from 2000-2005 under the banner of a leftist party from which he subsequently split.
He is the first president in modern Mexican history not associated with a traditional political party, having been elected as the standard-bearer of his own bloc, the National Regeneration Movement, or Morena. Since the elections of July 1, Morena has become the country’s most potent political force, although it was formed only four years ago.
With the opposition deeply fragmented, Lopez Obrador and his allies will control both houses of congress and the mayoralty of Mexico City, the capital, a concentration of power not seen since the days of PRI hegemony. Many Mexicans find that a disquieting prospect.
“I think with Lopez Obrador we face a future of fear,” said Afredo Lopez Vasquez, 37, an engineer in southern Mexico City. “I’m worried that he could try to remain eternally in power.”
Starting Saturday, many will be watching closely to see how Lopez Obrador transitions from sideline agitator and perennial candidate to the central figure in a vast edifice of power that he has spent years denouncing.
“The campaign will be permanent,” wrote columnist Jesus Silva-Herzog Marquez in Mexico’s Reforma newspaper. “Lopez Obrador will not convert subtly to orthodoxy. He will keep viewing politics as an epic combat of symbols and not as an administration of the ordinary.”
Cecilia Sanchez of The Times’ Mexico City bureau contributed to this report.
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
Twitter: @PmcdonnellLAT
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