Reuters – At least 25 suspected drug gang members were killed in an army raid in rural northeastern Mexico on Thursday, the army said in a press release. Soldiers were sent to the location after an airborne patrol sighted armed men outside a building. Fighting began when the men opened fire on the troops. Read Article
ScienceDaily – The ozone layer, which protects humans, plants, and animals from potentially damaging ultraviolet (UV) light from the Sun, develops a hole above Antarctica in September that typically lasts until early December. However, in November 2009, that hole shifted its position, leaving the southern tip of South America exposed to UV light at levels much greater than normal -Read Article
BBC – The federal police force in Mexico says it has sacked almost 10% of its officers this year for corruption, incompetence or links to criminals. Commissioner Facundo Rosas said 3,200 officers had been fired. More than 1,000 others were facing disciplinary action and could also lose their jobs, he added. In a separate development, a shoot-out between troops in Veracruz state and a suspected drugs gang has left six gunmen and one soldier dead. Read Article
Columbia Reports – Private military firm Blackwater violated U.S. arms trafficking regulations when training the Colombian military in 2005, a leaked State Department report shows. The controversial firm, renamed Xe Services LLC in 2009, was fined $42 million for violating US export and arms traffic laws on 228 occasions, mostly related to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Read Article
Nature-With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But during the Southern Hemisphere’s recent winter, unusually low temperatures in part of the country’s tropical region hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins -Read Article
UN Dispatch – The sluggish international response to the Pakistan floods emergency is actually not all that sluggish, at least compared to these humanitarian crises. Introducing the five most under-funded and ignored humanitarian crises:
BBC-Brazil’s government has given the formal go-ahead for the building on a tributary of the Amazon of the world’s third biggest hydroelectric dam. After several failed legal challenges, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva signed the contract for the Belo Monte dam with the Norte Energia consortium -Read Article
Reuters – Mexican troops fanned out in the remote countryside near the Texas border on Thursday as they hunted the perpetrators of the worst massacre in the country’s escalating drug war. With helicopters overhead, heavily armed patrols in armored personnel carriers, trucks and jeeps swept though towns and cities in the border region a day after the bodies of 72 people were found in an empty building at a remote ranch. Read Article
NY Times — Some here joke that they might be safer if they lived in Baghdad. The numbers bear them out. In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000. Even Mexico’s infamous drug war has claimed fewer lives. Venezuelans have absorbed such grim statistics for years. Read article
BBC – A Venezuelan businessman suspected of being part of a major drug trafficking ring has been arrested by Colombian authorities. Walid Makled Garcia, 43, who is wanted by the US on drug charges and Colombia and Venezuela on murder charges, was caught in the border city of Cucuta. He is accused of trafficking 10 tons of cocaine every month to the US and Europe. Read article
Telegraph – Brazil’s comedians and satirists have been banned from making fun of candidates ahead of the nation’s presidential election in October. Brazilian performers are planning to fight for their right to ridicule with protests in Rio de Janeiro and other cities on Sunday. Dubbed the “anti-joking law”, the relic of Brazil’s 1964-1985 dictatorship prohibits ridiculing candidates in the three months before elections. Critics say the ban threatens free speech and is a blight on the reputation of Latin America’s largest nation. Read Article
PressTV – The Venezuelan ambassador to Tehran says his country is ready to sell gasoline to Iran despite US and EU unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic. “Every time Tehran announces its demand, we will provide it with gasoline,” David Velasquez Caraballo told Fars news agency on Monday. Caraballo added that the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has announced Caracas’ readiness to provide Tehran with gasoline. In September 2009, Hugo Chavez said that his country is to provide Tehran with 20,000 barrels of gasoline per day. Read Article
Independent – As fires wreck Russia’s harvests and poor countries brace for shortages, it’s boom time for Kansas farmers. Wildfires, floods, crippling droughts, and even a threatened plague of locusts have wrecked crops and ruined harvests around the world, raising fears of global food inflation shortage and food riots. Read Article
Reuters– A lake in Argentina’s remote, inhospitable northwest may offer clues on how life got started on Earth and how it could survive on other planets, scientists say. Researchers have found millions of “super” bacteria thriving inside the oxygen-starved Lake Diamante, in the center of a giant volcanic crater located over 15,400 feet above sea level -Read Article
Nature-Dust from one of the world’s most desolate places is providing essential fertilizer for one of the most lush, scientists have discovered. Significant amounts of plant nutrients have been found in atmospheric mineral dust blowing from a vast central African basin to the Amazon, where it could compensate for poor rainforest soils -Read Article
Wired – Watch out, humans, the U.S. military has released an all-seeing, unmanned helicopter into the wild, according to Aviation Week. The Boeing A160T Hummingbird was photographed in Belize, where it was test flying a tree-penetrating Darpa radar called FORESTER. Locals were given a heads-up thanks to a press release from the U.S. Embassy. There’s no sign of the document on the website, but local reports say that the the Belize government invited the U.S. to test the Hummingbird in a mountain range 25 miles from the Guatemalan border. A few dozen military personnel – both Belizean and American – are involved in the testing, which will last until September. Read Article
Bolivia Bella-Over 1 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles, dolphins and other river wildlife are floating dead in numerous Bolivian rivers in the three eastern/southern departments of Santa Cruz, Beni and Tarija. The extreme cold front that hit Bolivia in mid-July caused water temperatures to dip below the minimum temperatures river life can tolerate. As a consequence, rivers, lakes, lagoons and fisheries are brimming with decomposing fish and other creatures -Read Article
Bloomberg- Argentina is importing record amounts of energy as the coldest winter in 40 years drives up demand and causes natural-gas shortages, prompting Dow Chemical Co. and steelmaker Siderar SAIC to scale back production -Read Article
The Guardian – President joins calls for debate after figures reveal extent of violence since launch of military offensive against cartels in 2006. Mexico’s president, Felipe Calderón, has joined calls for a debate on the legalisation of drugs as new figures show thousands of Mexicans every year being slaughtered in cartel wars. “It is a fundamental debate,” the president said, belying his traditional reluctance to accept any questioning of the military-focused offensive against the country’s drug cartels that he launched in late 2006. “You have to analyse carefully the pros and cons and key arguments on both sides.” The president said he personally opposes the idea of legalisation. Read article
UPI- Unusually cold winter weather has hit Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia, causing “millions of dead fish” in Bolivian rivers, officials said. The extreme cold and large amount of snow in Brazil and Argentine, including parts of Buenos Aires, is caused by a polar front that is plaguing most of the southern part of South America with zero and sub-zero temperatures -Read Article
Daily Telegraph – An outbreak of bubonic and pneumonic plague in Peru has killed a 14-year-old boy and infected at least 31 people in a northern coastal province. Oscar Ugarte, the health minister, said authorities were screening sugar and fish meal exports from Ascope province, located about 325 miles north-west of Lima.
Chicama beach, a popular draw for tourists to Peru, is not far away. Read article
On Saturday 31 July, the editor of www.OpenYourEyesNews.com, James Fairbairn, made a guest appearance on ABC720 Radio in Perth, Western Australia to discuss with host, James Lush, some of the key news events of recent days. The interview covered the following:
- Iraq
- Deforestation
- Church Sex Abuse Allegations
Check out our latest interview on our new Podcast channel and please subscribe to keep up to date with future episodes of OpenYourEyesNews
The Guardian-Peru has declared a state of emergency after hundreds of children died from freezing conditions that have seen temperatures across much of the South American country plummet to a 50-year low. In 16 of Peru’s 25 regions, temperatures have fallen below -24C. Reports from the country say 409 people, most of them children, have already died from the cold, with temperatures predicted to fall further in coming weeks -Read Article
ABC – Gay couples have rushed to tie the knot in Argentina two weeks after the country became the first in Latin America to grant them the same marriage rights as heterosexual couples. Talent agent Alejandro Vanelli, 61, wept as he exchanged vows with Ernesto Larrese, 60, an actor and his partner of 34 years. “We never thought we’d get to this point,” Mr Vanelli said after the service at a Buenos Aires registry office festooned with rainbow-coloured gay rights banners. Read article
Financial Times – Investors in farmland are targeting countries with weak laws, buying arable land on the cheap and failing to deliver on promises of jobs and investments, according to the draft of a report by the World Bank. “Investor interest is focused on countries with weak land governance,” the draft said. Although deals promised jobs and infrastructure, “investors failed to follow through on their investments plans, in some cases after inflicting serious damage on the local resource base”. Read Article
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