Eideard

Dilma Rousseff and Raul Castro
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

Brazil is easing Cuba into the free market economy with a generous package of aid in cash and kind and joint projects that give the Latin American country a pre-eminent position in Havana’s heady mix of communism and experimental capitalism.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff appeared to be in the right place at the right time when she flew into Havana in a spirit of revolutionary camaraderie and clinched deals that secured Brazil’s status as the senior partner in a long-term, multifaceted relationship…

Rousseff followed in the footsteps of populist former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva…The “excellent” ties secure Brazil an advantageous position in Cuba’s hugely porous economy, hungry for basic consumer goods, investment and modernization. Economic upgrading in all sectors and a phased end to Cuba’s international isolation offer lucrative opportunities for Brazil’s state and private sectors.

Brazil will invest $640 million in a $900 million modernization of the Mariel container port, west of Havana, led by the Brazilian firm Odebrecht.

Brazil is also giving Cuba $400 million in credits for food imports and investing $200 million in modernizing Cuban agriculture. Rousseff pledged Cuba a long-term commitment to help its economic regeneration…

Brazilian interest in the modernization of Cuban sugar industry is linked to Brazilian plans to promote its pioneering production of cane-derived ethanol, which has led to most new cars in Brazil being fitted with flex-fuel technology to run on ethanol or gasoline or a mixture of both.

The port modernization program also fits in with Brazil’s plan to forge fruitful partnerships that will benefit its aim of making its exports of both commodities and manufactured goods more competitive in the international markets.

Cubans say they need the Mariel port to be ready for expanded trade with the United States, whenever the U.S. embargo is lifted. The embargo, begun in 1960, is the longest on record.

Bravo!

Now, which will provide long-lasting trade and commercial relationships? Efforts like this from Brazil or the usual capitulation to Gusano voters in Florida by Congressional politicians?

Looking for a last-minute baby sitter? Want to let your neighbors know about a break-in? Wondering whether anyone else received an unexpectedly high water bill?

A number of people are logging on to private neighborhood websites to ask questions like these, get advice and share information through an electronic version of the backyard fence.

A company called Nextdoor, which offers a free online platform that enables people to create social networks for their own neighborhoods has launched.

Today, more than 800 neighborhoods in 43 states plus the District of Columbia have set up local websites where they can communicate one-on-one, as well as with the people nearby. There are five Nextdoor websites here in New Mexico, including three for Santa Fe neighborhoods: Los Milagros, Sol y Lomas and Talaya Hill.

Each website includes a neighborhood map, member postings, a directory of residents (including brief profiles), links to resources and reports of interest, and photographs of community events…

Access to each Nextdoor website is password-protected, and only verified residents can become members, log on and post messages. No one else has access to the content, so that people can safely share information on neighborhood topics…

Neighbors log on to the site, using their own user ID and password, to read postings, but they can also elect to receive posts instantly via email…

There are currently no advertisements on the websites, but the revenue model calls for eventually working with local businesses to provide special offers to website members — Groupon meets Facebook — according to Nextdoor spokeswoman Whitney Swindells.

It all sounds useful, practical and positive.

Hermit that I am, I probably would remain mostly as unresponsive to dialogue in the neighborhood as I am at the blogs I contribute to. But, I can think of the few times that my curiosity while out and about – spotting someone I thought might be a gangster preparing to burglarize or vandalize someone – would be useful to everyone in the neighborhood. After I called the Sheriff.

Facebook launched a new suicide prevention tool on Tuesday, giving users a direct link to an online chat with counselors who can help, the company said.

Friends are able to report suicidal behavior by clicking a report option next to any piece of content on the site and choosing suicidal content under the harmful behavior option, Facebook spokesman Frederic Wolens said. Facebook will then email the user in distress a direct link for a private online chat with a crisis representative from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline as well as the group’s phone number.

The new tool gives people who may not be comfortable picking up the phone a direct avenue to seek help…

Users also have the ability to report suicidal behavior by going to the site’s Help Center or search for suicide reporting forms. They can also use reporting links around the site.

Worried friends who reported the behavior will also receive a message to say it is being addressed, Wolens said…

The new suicide reporting tool will be made available to people who use Facebook in the United States and Canada…All reporting on the site is done anonymously and so a distressed user will not know who reported the suicidal content.

Right idea, good idea. Too late for a young guy I worked with.

He killed himself a week later – disconsolate over a failed relationship.

Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

President Barack Obama promised victims of the deadliest U.S. tornado in 65 years that the federal government would help them rebuild, saying on Sunday it was a national tragedy.

“The cameras may leave. The spotlight may shift,” he told a memorial service for the 139 known victims of the May 22 twister. But the federal government “will be with you every step of the way until Joplin is restored and this community is back on its feet,” Obama said to a standing ovation from survivors.

Before the service in an auditorium at Missouri Southern State University, Obama rolled up his sleeves and toured a disaster scene where crushed cars, piles of wood, clothing and a broken dishwasher lay helter-skelter amid the debris on lots where houses once stood.

The president, who returned on Saturday night from a six-day trip to Europe, vowed to cut through any federal red tape to help with rebuilding that he predicted would be “a tough, long slog.”

“This is just not your tragedy,” he said after meeting survivors. “This is a national tragedy and that means there’s going to be a national response.”

Meanwhile –

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor assured the people of Joplin, Mo., Sunday that Congress will help them recover, but said the funds must be offset elsewhere. That means they won’t get a penny until after negotiations in Congress to cut other programs designed for working folks.

Cantor also said House Republicans “absolutely” stand by the Medicare plan of Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., despite losing a special election in New York last week.

So, he didn’t miss a chance to back privatizing Social Security and turning Medicare over to our “friends” in the Insurance Business.

That’s what Republican aid for folks in Tuscaloosa and Joplin looks like.

A woman who was a repeated victim of sex trafficking and suffered severe sexual degradation is to be paid substantial damages by the Home Office after it returned her to Moldova, where she faced grave dangers.

The “groundbreaking” settlement was reached on the eve of a high court hearing of her claim against the Home Office for failing to take steps to protect her and for sending her back to Moldova despite substantial grounds to believe she was at risk from her traffickers.

The woman, who cannot be named because she and her family are still at risk of retribution by her traffickers, was kidnapped at the age of 14 and then continually trafficked and re-trafficked for forced prostitution in Italy, Turkey, Hungary, Romania, Israel and Britain until she was 21…

She was arrested by police and immigration officers in a brothel in London in 2003, but instead of rescuing her they charged her with possessing false documents, which had been provided by her traffickers.

She was imprisoned for three months before being sent back to Moldova through a fast-track immigration process. Her trafficker was neither investigated nor arrested but was allowed to visit her in Holloway prison and Oakington detention centre, where he posed as her boyfriend, in order to intimidate her.

Her solicitor, Harriet Wistrich, said the woman was found by her trafficker when she got back to Moldova and was savagely ill-treated before being trafficked back into prostitution for a further two years.

In 2007 she was arrested again in Britain and held at Yarl’s Wood immigration detention centre, but was eventually referred to the Poppy project, which identified her as a victim of sex trafficking and provided her with the necessary support to make an asylum claim…

Wistrich said the undisclosed “substantial damages” followed the “groundbreaking” attempt to sue the Home Office for its failure to protect her. She said she hoped immigration authorities would learn from the experience so that other trafficked women would be treated as victims instead of criminals and rescued rather than handed back to their traffickers to be raped and ill-treated.

I don’t believe there is any genetic predilection that forces bureaucrats to behave like an absolute iron-headed ass. Going “by the book” resulting in predictable abusive treatment like this should be halted at the source.

For decades cranberry juice has enjoyed a reputation as an effective way to prevent bladder infections. Scientists have doggedly tried to confirm this well-known folk truth with dozens of studies, some in test tubes and some in people.

The latest results are now in, and the answer is conclusive: This field is all bogged down. Har!

Some older studies found the juice worked. Some found it didn’t. All were too small to be definitive. In 1998 a substance presumed to be the active component in the cranberry was identified with some fanfare, and two years ago another study suggested that a cranberry extract containing this substance was almost as powerful as an antibiotic.

Now a large, impeccably designed and executed study of cranberry juice has found that the presumed active compound apparently has no effect. And yet the newest study closed no doors. It may simply mean that the juice works, but by an unknown mechanism.

How can one little berry be so difficult to pin down?

For one thing, the cranberry contains more than 200 active substances in addition to vitamin C, citric acid and an array of other acids…Researchers have repeatedly shown that the juice does effectively prevent some species of bacteria from adhering to the cells that line the urinary tract. More to the point, urine from both mice and people who drank modest amounts of cranberry juice also prevented bacterial adherence…

The questions asked – continue. There are so many variables, including the ingredients used in the placebo side of substances devised to imitate cranberry juice that researchers haven’t even decided which class of components may govern the success replicated in some aspects of the studies.

Like, the placebo used to imitate cranberry juice in one portion of the study resulted in diminished recurrence of infection.

From the GUARDIAN Eyewitness series

Pakistanis crowd around an army helicopter as it delivers desperately needed food supplies to the village of Tul in Sindh Province, southern Pakistan, which is surrounded by floodwaters.

PAKISTAN — Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Sunday said that the flood had caused losses worth billions of rupees and it was not possible to estimate the exact damages caused by the floodwaters at this time.

The premier, who was in Sukkar to review the flood situation, said that the government’s first priority was to save the lives of flood-hit victims. We have to combine our efforts in the relief and rehabilitation process, he added.

“Millions of people have suffered and still there is more rain and further losses are feared. I appeal to the world to help us, we are doing what we can,” Gilani told reporters, as he urged those threatened by the “unprecedented” floods to move to safer spots…

While talking to the media in Sukkar, Gilani said that the damages caused by the floods exceeded the destruction caused by the earthquake that hit Pakistan in 2005.

14 million people are dislocated. The official death toll has reached 1700 and hundreds more are missing and possibly dead. Whatever charity you may support that provides aid to South Asia – this is the time to give.

When US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton offered Pakistan help last week in exporting mangoes to the US in a bid to dampen anti-American sentiment, it marked the latest chapter in the fruit’s curious history of diplomacy and intrigue.

Clinton’s offer came three years after the Bush administration opened up the US market to Indian mangoes in exchange for allowing Harley-Davidson to sell its famed motorcycles in India – a deal that generated goodwill as the two countries finalized a civilian nuclear agreement.

Washington’s mango-powered diplomacy this time around is part of a broader $7.5 billion aid effort that is meant to improve the image of the US in Pakistan, a move officials hope will provide the Pakistani government with greater room to cooperate on turning around the war in Afghanistan.

”I have personally vouched for Pakistani mangoes, which are delicious, and I’m looking forward to seeing Americans be able to enjoy those in the coming months,” Clinton said during her visit to Islamabad last week.

The prominence of mangoes in South Asian diplomacy should come as no surprise since scientists believe the sweet and fleshy orange fruit originated in the region before Buddhist monks and Persian traders introduced the plant to other areas of the world.

Pakistan and India recognize the mango as their national fruit, and summer in both countries is defined by the sights and sounds of vendors hawking piles of soft, sweet-smelling mangoes or pureeing them to create refreshing drinks that cut through the scorching heat…

RTFA. Interesting tidbits about one of my favorite fruits.

The article ends appropriately with an Indian proverb: ”You can’t hurry a mango tree to ripen its fruit.”

Kids in refugee camp play with buckets while waiting for food
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permisssion

Al-Shabab, the Somali Islamist opposition group, has announced it will stop World Food Programme (WFP) operations in Somalia.

The armed group said on Sunday that food distributed by the UN agency had disadvantaged local farmers and accused the WFP of being politically motivated…

“The contractors working with WFP must avoid collaborating … anyone working with the agency will be seen serving the interest of WFP”…

Last August, the WFP estimated that Somalia was facing its worst humanitarian crisis since the famine of 1991/1992, with half the population – 3.64 million people – in need of outside assistance.”

Nevertheless, in November 2009, the Shabab imposed 11 conditions on UN agencies and non-government groups working in the country, insisting they stay out of Islamic affairs and pay a tax, or jiziya, of at least 20,000 dollars every six months.

The WFP stopped working in southern Somalia in January, announcing it had suspended distribution of food aid after months of attacks and extortion by rebels…

The Shabab has been fighting the government and its African Union allies alongside Hezb al-Islam, a smaller and more political group.

There is little precedent to expect anything other than inhuman policies from right-wing, sectarian nutballs. From the Inquisition to Al Qaeda, religious concerns over power and profits have always trumped humanity.