“The United States continues to believe that its interpretation — that the covenant applies only to individuals both within its territory and within its jurisdiction — is the most consistent with the covenant’s language and negotiating history,” the Times reports Mary McLeod, the State Department’s acting legal adviser, as saying during the session.
“This world is an unsafe place,” countered Walter Kalin, a Swiss professor of constitutional and international law who sits on the panel. “Will it not become even more dangerous if any state would be willing to claim that international law does not prevent them from committing human rights violations abroad?”
The U.S. delegation told the panel that its drone strikes were “in compliance with international law.”
The U.S. is constantly talking about “human rights,” Kimber Heinz, Organizing Coordinator with War Resisters League, told Common Dreams. But, as in the case of Venezuela, that language is manipulated to serve what could be disruptive for the current government. When the U.S. uses a human rights framework, “it’s speaking out of both sides of its mouth,” she added, and pointed to the example of the U.S. continuing to pour military aid into Egypt.
“All we can do,” Heinz continued, “is to try to pressure Congress members to implement something like the Leahy Law that implements human rights” because right now “there is no political will.” Change, she said, is going to come via the grassroots.
“We are the people, as a movement, as organizations, as people who care — we are the human rights movement. We have to put pressure on and create new parameters of the conversation about what constitutes human rights,” she said.
The UN panel also urged the U.S. to disclose the Senate report on the CIA torture and rendition program.
“The U.S. shortcomings are highlighted by the committee’s sharp questions on everything from drone killings and NSA surveillance to the humane treatment of immigrants and prisoners, especially discrimination against minorities,” stated ACLU Human Rights Program Director Jamil Dakwar, who was in Geneva for the session.
“The U.S. government now has an opportunity to reverse course, remedy rights violations, and take concrete actions like declassifying the Senate report on CIA torture,” Dakwar stated.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
A man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly 25 years has been set free after buried evidence showing he was over 1,000 miles from the crime was unearthed.
Jonathan Fleming, who is black, was convicted of a 1989 Brooklyn murder, a crime he attested he couldn’t have committed because he was at Disney World.
There was evidence to support Fleming’s claim, but it was never turned over to the defense.
Joaquin Sapien writes at ProPublica:
That the evidence wasn’t turned over to authorities “could not have possibly been a mistake,” said Taylor Koss, one of Fleming’s lawyers.
“I’m finally a free man,” said Fleming.
Click Here: cheap sydney roosters jersey
As for his plans now, Fleming said, “I’m going to have dinner with my mother and my family and I’m going to live the rest of my life.”
“Though times have changed, and racial biases are no longer as overt as they were in the Scottsboro Boys days,” writes Edwin Grimsley, a Case Analyst with the Innocence Project, “the criminal justice system is still marked by racial injustice and the discrimination still manifests itself in similar ways—through racial profiling, police misconduct, indigent defense, jury selection and more. Wrongful conviction cases reveal these biases well— both in individual cases and systemically.”
________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
A brokered Easter weekend truce in Ukraine that followed on an international agreement designed to reduce tensions last week was shattered early Sunday morning when a gun battle in the eastern part of the country resulted in the death of several people.
Early details vary on the exact number of people who may have been killed near the city of Slavyansk with Reuters reporting that “at least two” local pro-Russian fighters were dead while other agencies put the number at five or more killed on both sides.
The deal reached in Geneva on Thursday by top diplomats from the U.S., Russia, the EU, and Ukraine interim government in Kiev called for pro-Russian separatists who have seized government buildings and built barricades in numerous eastern Ukraine cities to lay down their arms and return home. On Friday, however, most of the protesters said they would continue to maintain their encampments until they were granted the referendums central to their demands.
According to the Guardian:
Click Here: camiseta rosario central
Reuters adds:
On Twitter:
Tweets about “eastern Ukraine Russia”
________________________________
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Eight wrestlers remain mathematically alive as NJPW’s G1 Climax 30 enters its final stretch.
Four competitors still have a shot in each block with one A Block show and one B Block show remaining before Sunday’s final. In A Block, Jay White controls his own destiny. In B Block, it’s EVIL who controls his own fate.
After that, things get more cloudy.
White, Kota Ibushi, Kazuchika Okada, and Will Ospreay still have a chance to win A Block.
The most likely A Block scenarios would be White winning with a victory over Ishii or Ibushi winning with a win over Taichi and a White loss. Ospreay needs to win and get help. Okada needs to win or draw and Ibushi and White both to lose.
In B Block, EVIL, Tetsuya Naito, SANADA, and Zack Sabre Jr. are still in the running.
A scenario exists in B Block where there could be a three-way tie for the lead heading into Sunday, although it seems far more likely that Saturday’s EVIL vs. SANADA matchup will determine the B Block winner.
Here are the updated standings and scenarios:
G1 Climax 30 standings —
A Block
Jay White — 12 points (6-2) *wins the block with a win over Ishii*
Kota Ibushi — 12 points (6-2) *wins the block with a win over Taichi and a White loss/draw/no contest*
Kazuchika Okada — 12 points (6-2) *wins the block with a win over Ospreay, White and Ibushi losses/draws/no contests or a draw with Ospreay and Ibushi/White losses/no contests*
Will Ospreay — 10 points (5-3) *ties for the block win with a win over Okada, White and Ibushi losses/no contests*
Taichi — 8 points (4-4) *eliminated*
Jeff Cobb — 8 points (4-4) *eliminated*
Tomohiro Ishii — 6 points (3-4) *eliminated*
Shingo Takagi — 6 points (3-5) *eliminated*
Minoru Suzuki — 6 points (3-5) *eliminated*
Yujiro Takahashi — 0 points (0-8) *eliminated*
B Block
EVIL — 12 points (6-2) *wins the block with a win over SANADA or a draw/no contest with SANADA, Naito loss and Sabre loss/draw*
Tetsuya Naito — 12 points (6-2) *wins the block with a win/draw over KENTA and an EVIL loss/no contest*
SANADA — 10 points (5-3) *wins the block with a win over EVIL and a Naito loss/no contest*
Zack Sabre Jr. — 10 points (5-3) *ties with Naito & EVIL for block win with a win over Tanahashi, a Naito loss, and a SANADA/EVIL no contest*
Hirooki Goto — 8 points (4-4) *eliminated*
KENTA — 8 points (4-4) *eliminated*
Toru Yano — 6 points (3-5) *eliminated*
Hiroshi Tanahashi — 6 points (3-5) *eliminated*
Juice Robinson — 6 points (3-5) *eliminated*
YOSHI-HASHI — 2 points (1-7) *eliminated*
Click Here: All Blacks Rugby Jersey
As election results for European Parliament across the continent showed a popular disgust for elite parties and the economic status quo, in Greece it was the leftwing Syriza Party that best exhibited political victory for those pushing a progressive anti-austerity agenda in Europe.
“This is a historic win,” declared Syriza’s youthful leader Alexis Tsipras to a crowd of enthusiastic supporters in Athens early on Monday. “Today, the whole of Europe is talking about Greece because it condemned austerity.”
As Helena Smith reports for The Guardian:
In addition to a notable win by Sinn Fein in Ireland, which also embraces a left critique of EU-imposed austerity, the broader election results in Europe suggest that anti-austerity and anti-elite sentiment has also created political opportunity for the continent’s far-right parties who exploit the economic pains many are feeling to push their anti-immigrant and nationalist agendas.
This was true in Greece, where even as Syriza soared in the polls, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn Party also secured ten percent of the EU parliament vote. That is enough to send three MEPs to represent the country in Brussels, even as most of the party’s leadership remains in prison on charges of political violence and conspiracy.
And as CNN reports, the rise of ultra-right parties is taking place in numerous other countries as well:
Across Europe, what are called the ‘Euroskeptic’ parties—who mistrust the dominant role of the European Parliament and the experiment of the EU itself—have now gained the ability to form a sizeable coalition.
As Deutsche Welle reports, the European Parliament, though still likely controlled by the center-right coalition, will now have more than 130 euro-skeptic representatives:
_______________________________
Click Here: los jaguares argentina
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Click:图和图谱有什么区别
RIO DE JANEIRO – It seemed like “a good deal” at the time, but then things changed. That description of the 2006 purchase of a U.S. refinery, one of the oil industry scandals hanging over the Brazilian government’s head, could also apply to attitudes towards the FIFA World Cup.
In 2007, the fact that Brazil was chosen to host the 2014 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) global championship triggered a sense of national euphoria. The mega sporting event would crown the economic ascent of this emerging power, which has won the most World Cups – five out of 18.
But now, instead of planning welcome parties for the Jun. 12-Jul. 13 tournament, Brazilians are taking to the streets in protests that are blocking traffic and bringing cities to a halt, holding strikes to demand wage hikes, and complaining about corruption and rights violations during the public works to prepare for the global event.
The country of football and joy is turning its back on its stereotype.
In Rio de Janeiro, the few streets decorated in green and yellow – the colors of the national team – contrast with the celebrations and sense of anticipation ahead of previous World Cups. The enthusiasm has been dampened just when Brazil is hosting the world’s biggest single-sport event.
The indignation of Brazilians erupted in June 2013, with surprising and often violent protests against the poor performance of the health and education systems, chaotic traffic, corruption, and the enormous amounts being spent on preparations for the World Cup.
Worried about further unrest, the government has ordered the deployment of 157,000 police and military troops to guarantee security during the games that will be held in 12 cities in this enormous country of nearly 200 million people.
But the declining excitement over football “is a tendency that has been seen in the last three World Cups,” said Paulo Santos, who has worked as a barber for 40 years in a lower middle-class Rio de Janeiro neighborhood and hears the views of hundreds of clients, in a kind of ongoing informal opinion poll.
Hosting the World Cup should have revived the passion of fans.
But “they’re holding the party with other people’s money – ours,” complained Santos, reflecting the widespread sensation that the whole exercise has been marked by corruption, the squandering of public funds and FIFA’s greed.
Surveys reflect this view. In February, only 52 percent of those interviewed by the Datafolha polling institute were in favor of organizing the World Cup, down from 79 percent in 2008.
The most recent poll, limited to the southern city of São Paulo, found that 45 percent of respondents were in favor and 43 percent were against, while the rest said they didn’t care. But worse than that was the fact that an overwhelming majority, 76 percent, said they thought the country wasn’t prepared to host the marathon of 64 games among 32 national teams.
Many of the projects planned, especially the urban transport works, were not carried out or were left incomplete. Some of the 12 stadiums were not finished until the last minute, without the finishing touches and without being tested. Half of them lack wireless Internet connection.
Delays in infrastructure works are a tradition in Brazil. The same thing happened in the first World Cup, held in Brazil in 1950. The main stadium, Maracaná in Rio de Janeiro, was inaugurated only a few days before the event, in the midst of a muddy construction site littered with left-over materials.
It was the world’s largest stadium. Designed for 155,250 spectators, it held a crowd of over 200,000 in the final match. Now, remodeled and sumptuous, it holds just under 74,700 people.
But the current megalomania is different. Since the last decade, Brazil has been caught up in a frenzy of building hydropower dams, railways, ports, highways and freeways, in an attempt to overcome the infrastructure deficit accumulated over the preceding two decades.
Most of the major projects are years behind. The main railway, a 4,155-km north-south route, has been under construction for 27 years, with only one-third of the rails installed.
But no delays are possible in the case of the preparations for the World Cup in 12 cities and for the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
The looming deadlines may have been a factor in some of the accidents that have caused the deaths of nine workers in the World Cup stadiums, seven of them employed by subcontractors.
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
The rise in the number of workers concentrated in large construction sites all around the country has empowered construction workers. After a number of strikes, they secured wage hikes and benefits such as more frequent visits home for those who are working in distant regions.
But working conditions are still unsafe and accidents have been frequent, almost always due to lack of protection measures such as safe scaffolding, said Vitor Filgueiras, an economist investigating the phenomenon in his postdoctoral research.
Outsourcing is “a way of transferring risks,” and it makes working conditions even more unsafe and can even give rise to slave-like labor, he argued.
The World Cup has been a common focus for the recent protests and strikes by students, teachers, bus drivers and other groups. But popular support for the street demonstrations and battles has dropped sharply, according to opinion polls – luckily for the government of Dilma Rousseff.
A year ago, 54 percent of those surveyed by the Vox Populi Institute supported the protests, compared to just 18 percent today.
That reduces the risk of massive demonstrations during the World Cup itself. But groups made up of a few dozen activists are now paralyzing cities, in a kind of guerrilla warfare benefited by the constant traffic jams.
The October presidential and legislative elections are also politicizing football. The World Cup and the government are linked in the public’s mind. A failure for Brazil, in the stadiums or in the organization of the event, would drive up the number of votes for the opposition.
The president is still the clear front-runner, but football has taken on growing influence in the elections, added to other government initiatives that also sounded like a good idea at the time – but don’t any longer.
For example, the purchase of a refinery in Pasadena, Texas by Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras was supposed to boost the firm’s international expansion and enable it to refine heavy crude in the U.S. market.
But it cost three times the initial contract for 360 million dollars, and became less important because Brazil increased its production of light crude oil. The case is under investigation by oversight bodies and amplified other scandals involving Petrobras.
Measures to reduce the cost of electricity in 2012 and benefit both industry and households also turned out to be a disaster. They encouraged consumption at a time when a lengthy drought reduced hydropower generation, unleashing an energy crisis, with the threat of power outages.
The discontent, also fueled by a high inflation rate and a sluggish economy, infected the World Cup, which was already affected by specific factors of its own. FIFA’s demands for extraordinary terms and conditions created “a state of emergency,” wrote labor judge Lygia Cavalcanti in the magazine published by the Judges for Democracy Association.
Brazil agreed to “a temporary suspension” of certain laws guaranteeing citizens’ freedom of movement and workers’ right to strike in order to hold the World Cup, she said.
In addition, FIFA was given exclusive rights to advertise, sell and distribute products within a two-kilometer radius around the stadiums, local residents were evicted and relocated, and 18,000 volunteers have been organized to work during the World Cup, even though under Brazilian law volunteer work can only be used by non-profit cultural, civic or welfare institutions.
In addition, FIFA was given the right to file and fast-track registration of any trademark it wanted relating to the 2014 World Cup in Brazil’s patent office, including around 200 commonly used words, expressions and symbols such as names using “2014”, like “Brazil 2014” or “Natal 2014”, which can only be used commercially this year if fees are paid to FIFA.
FIFA even charged the Alzirão Recreational and Cultural Association 28,000 reals (12,500 dollars) to organize the popular street party it has held since 1978 in Rio de Janeiro, where the Brazil matches are shown on a giant screen
Alzirão was going to have to pay broadcasting rights, because more than 30,000 people a day watch the games on the big screen.
But Mayor Eduardo Paes managed to convince FIFA to exempt the non-profit event, said Ricardo Ferreira, president of the cultural association.
Ferreira told IPS that the excitement for the World Cup “was lukewarm but is growing.” A triumph by Brazil in the opening game in the São Paulo’s Corinthians stadium could cheer people up and bring back the passion, he added.
© 2014 Inter Press Service
Click Here: Golf special
Over half a million people including scientists, doctors and food safety advocates have urged the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency not to approve a new herbicide mix proposed by Dow because they say it would open the floodgates to a vast increase in toxic spraying that puts public health and the environmental at risk.
At question is Dow AgroSciences’ Enlist Duo herbicide, a mix of 2,4-D and glyphosate—the main ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup—made to be used on 2,4-D ready corn and soybean crops. Dow states that its proprietary blend “will control and help prevent further development of herbicide-resistant weeds” on the genetically engineered crops.
Food safety, environmental and health watchdogs, however, say that it’s an unsustainable and harmful approach to dealing with the problem of herbicide-resistant weeds, or “superweeds,” that exist because of the systemic issues underlying the “genetically engineered crop strategy” that keeps farmers on a “pesticide treadmill.”
“American agriculture stands at a crossroads,” stated Bill Freese, science policy analyst at Center for Food Safety. “Approval of these crops and pesticides would set American agriculture down a dangerous path that will only exacerbate the problems farmers are already facing.”
The groups and health professionals are sounding particular alarm over 2,4-D, which has been linked to numerous health problems including increased risks of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Parkinson’s and immune system problems.
Further, “In its Environmental Risk Assessment for 2,4-D, the EPA found ‘information gaps,’ ‘key uncertainties’ and ‘insufficient information’ in the analysis of the impacts of 2,4-D on nontarget organisms,” stated Food & Water Watch Executive Director Wenonah Hauter. “The agency even admitted concerns for direct and indirect effects on birds, mammals, insects (like honeybees) and plants.”
“As for its human health evaluation,” Hauter continued, “the EPA based all of its safety determinations on a study that was conducted by Dow AgroSciences.”
SCROLL TO CONTINUE WITH CONTENT
In a letter sent Monday to the EPA, 35 doctors and researchers also underscore human health dangers posed by 2,4-D, and add:
If the EPA green-lights the herbicide duo as well as the 2,4-D ready corn and soy, the groups say the amount of 2,4-D being used across the nation will exponentially increase. They point to a USDA assessment that found that 2,4-D use on crops could increase as much as seven-fold.
“If EPA approves Enlist Duo for use on genetically engineered corn and soy, it would result in the largest expansion of a known toxic herbicide use in more than three decades,” stated Mary Ellen Kustin, a senior policy analyst at the Environmental Working Group, an organization that has also sought to highlight the risks of the herbicide.
The public comment period for the herbicide mix ended Monday at midnight, but the groups are hoping that the EPA at least postpones their decision until the agency does a better, science-based assessment.
“We urge the EPA to do the right thing and deny the approval of the new mixtures of 2,4-D and glyphosate in order to protect human and environmental health,” the doctors’ letter concludes.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Click Here: camiseta rosario central