South America

Criminal gangs are becoming a threat to the world’s glaciers, which are already receding as a result of climate change, the UN reported, citing a case in Chile where police are investigating the theft of some 5,000 kilograms of millennia-old ice from the Jorge Montt glacier.

We had a chance to talk with the humanist national leader of the Teachers’ Association, in an interview carried out in “Umbral”, in the neighbourhood of Bellavista, in which we asked him to evaluate this year’s most compelling demonstrations in Chile for a high quality and not-for-profit education, also attempting to make a projection of what may happen in the future.

Thanks to a wave of demonstrations and protests in Santiago the government has abandoned plans to force journalists to hand over images to police under controversial new legislation sponsored by interior minister Rodrigo Hinzpeter, who announced on 18 January that he would withdraw that section of the bill.

Montevideo – The World Trade Organization (WTO) has failed. In December, the Doha Round is turning ten years old, with nothing to celebrate[i]. Formal negotiations of the Round expired in 2005, without any agreement, and informal negotiations stalled in 2008. Indications in December too were that an agreement to liberalize trade among its 153 member countries was eluding.

On January 6th the birth of Silo, spiritual guide, paladin of non-violence, philosopher of the Universal Human Nation, was commemorated. He gave the world a path to comprehend human beings in their truly intentional dimension. He created the tools of a novel evolutionary psychology revealing the human consciousness living in and giving shape to multiple planes of existence.

We reproduce here a Report by Telam, National News Agency of Argentina. The boost to the manufacturing of laptops in the productive pole of Tierra del Fuego province, the programme My PC and the rise of the national production of software paved the way for an increase in the connectivity access to almost 60 percent of the inhabitants of the country.

Montevideo – In 2002, Anne Krueger, First Deputy Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), floated the idea that countries can go bust, advanced her opinion about a possible international mechanism of sovereign debt restructuring, and when considering the obstacles to an orderly debt restructuring, explicitly mentioned the behavior of vulture funds.

Brasilia- Brazil and the UN World Food Programme (WFP) have launched a new initiative to help developing countries run their own national school meal programmes to advance the nutrition and education of children.

Reporters Without Borders unreservedly condemns such acts of violence
accompanied by incitement to hatred and violence, and hopes there will soon
be results from the investigations into these incidents, which do not bode
well for the free circulation of ideas and opinions.

Article by Benoît Hervieu, form the Americas desk

Here we give publication to the complete letter we received from our friend Pedro Páez, at the moment in which he concluded his
duties as President of the Ecuadorian Presidential Technical Commission
for the New International Financial Architecture, to which he were appointed by the Ecuatorian President Mr. Rafael Correa.