Guatemala expels Dutch 'abortion ship'

Yahoo – AFP, February 26, 2017

Members of the Dutch organization Women on Waves can be seen on the group's
 "abortion ship" as it visits the Pez Vela Marina in the port of San Jose, Escuintla
department, 120 km south of Guatemala City, on February 23, 2017 (AFP Photo/
JOHAN ORDONEZ)

Guatemala City (AFP) - Guatemala has expelled a Dutch "abortion ship" carrying activists who had vowed to help women circumvent the country's longstanding prohibition against terminating pregnancies, the army said Sunday.

Activists from the group Women on Waves had been guarded aboard their moored sailboat by a navy vessel, Saul Tobar, commander of Puerto Quetzal on Guatemala's Pacific coast, told reporters.

"Notified of its expulsion from the country's territorial waters for having failed to comply with immigration regulations" late Saturday, the crew requested permission to set sail, he said. The activists saw no patients.

The immigration authorities ordered the expulsion on Friday, saying the group's members lied in their entry declaration papers, claiming to be tourists and not members of a "health organization" that aimed to perform abortions.

Abortion is allowed in Guatemala only in cases in which a mother's life is deemed in danger.

The sailboat Adelaide arrived at the southern port of San Jose on Tuesday carrying 10 activists from Guatemala, as well as from Brazil, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and Spain.

They had planned to offer abortions in international waters off Guatemala's coast over five days, picking up five women at a time by dinghy.

Abortions were to be induced with two pills. Counseling, treatment and aftercare were also to be available for women seeking the group's services.

However, following the Dutch-registered boat's arrival, President Jimmy Morales ordered the government to file a formal complaint with the prosecutor's office.

(L-R) Merrilee Evans, Daniel Evans and Alice Ottz, members of the Dutch 

organization Women on Waves, speak with a private guard at the Pez Vela 

Marina in the port of San Jose, Escuintla department, 120 km south of 

Guatemala City, on February 23, 2017 (AFP Photo/JOHAN ORDONEZ)

Port officials ordered the activists to stay on board their ship, saying they had not declared the motive of their trip and therefore could not go ashore.

Stopping, unsafe illegal abortions

Women on Waves says some 65,000 illegal and unsafe abortions take place in the Central American country every year.

Although the group would use all available legal means to carry out its campaign, it would also respect Guatemalan law, spokeswoman Leticia Zenevich said.

Women on Waves had previously said its sailing ship was illegally "detained" by the military, which it accused of "obstructing a lawful protest against the state's restrictions on the Guatemalan women's right to safe abortion."

Its arrival had prompted protests by conservative as well as religious groups.

"It's very offensive that this group comes here to practice abortion, which is ultimately to practice murder," said Gonzalo de Villa, president of Guatemala's Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Guatemala Evangelical Alliance president Cesar Vasquez, called the NGO's activities "crimes against humanity."

However, some feminist groups supported the campaign.

Set up in 1999, Women on Waves has generated controversy in the past.

It sent the boat to Ireland, Poland, Portugal and Spain in previous years, prompting protests by pro-life groups in each country.

The group had urged the Guatemalan government to "remove abortion from the penal code," saying it is "a regular medical procedure and a human right," and calling for access to contraceptives and free, safe abortions.

Brazilian town embraces universal income experiment

Yahoo – AFP, Louis GENOT, 14 February 2017

Brazilian town embraces universal income experiment

Does being handed money every month -- no strings attached -- sound attractive? The residents of a small town in Brazil are finding out.

Governments and think-tanks around the world are increasingly fascinated by the idea of a universal basic income, where citizens are given cash to spend as they want.

In Marica, a seaside town of about 150,000 people near Rio de Janeiro, the left-wing municipal government has spent the last year finding out how it works.

"We are a laboratory for the Brazilian left," says Washington Quaqua, who introduced the experiment as mayor in December 2015 before stepping down. He was replaced by another candidate from the leftist Workers' Party, Fabiano Horta.

The idea of a universal basic income isn't new, but long-considered as a potential tool for social equality and redistribution of wealth.

The concept has gained traction more recently among high-powered business thinkers, especially in Silicon Valley, as they ponder how society will cope with the ever-expanding role of automation -- a trend some futurists believe may create mass unemployment.

In Marica -- a surviving Workers' Party bastion in increasingly right-leaning Brazil -- the basic income idea fits in well with the leadership's socialist fervor.

Just about every public building is decorated in socialist red and Quaqua's office sports portraits of communist revolutionary Che Guevara, whose name is also soon to be given to a new hospital.

"The world lacks creativity and Marica is giving the example of a town that knows how to redistribute its riches," Quaqua says with pride about his pet project.

Modest reality

Despite his claims, Marica is only taking baby steps.

Inconclusively tried around the world for decades, the experiment is currently getting a high-profile rollout in Finland. The left-wing French presidential candidate Benoit Hamon, backed by the star economist Thomas Piketty, has also made the basic income part of his platform.

However, if Finland is handing out payments of about $590 a month -- and only to a test group of unemployed people for now -- the amount in Marica is a measly 10 reais, or about $3.20. The new mayor hopes to raise the amount to $32 in 2017.

Only the town's 14,000 poorest families are currently being given the income, which is denominated in Mumbucas, a virtual currency created to pay welfare under Quaqua three years ago.

The 10 reais is added to the 85 reais ($27) monthly welfare check for families whose income doesn't top three times the minimum wage. The extra money is also given to poorer people aged between 14 and 29 and pregnant women already receiving other benefits.

There's another limitation: only 131 local businesses -- less than 10 percent of the total -- accept payment in Mumbucas, the mayor's office says.

The currency, which physically exists only on specially issued red magnetic cards, is unpopular with business owners because they must wait more than a month after purchases are completed for the government to convert payments into reals.

Feasible or fantasy?

Opposition politician Filippe Poubel denounces what he calls an attempt to addict the people of Marica to welfare. Handing out an income, he says, will backfire.

"People want to work, they want to earn their income with dignity. They would be a lot happier if the mayor would create jobs and offer them decent hospital care."

Horta dismisses such criticism saying a basic income will in fact create jobs, "stimulating the local economy."

And he says that the town, which draws revenues from offshore oil exploitation, can afford to boost the program "in an exponential way over the next 10 years."

"The rich love it when they get millions in tax breaks," Quaqua says of his project's opponents. "But they are furious when we give a few hundred reais to the poor."

Brazilian town experiments with a universal basic income, whereby residents are given cash to spend as they want https://t.co/n8F2zkigjB pic.twitter.com/i8bnxj2Wo8

— AFP news agency (@AFP) February 14, 2017

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Thousands of Mexicans protest against Trump

Yahoo – AFP, Yemeli ORTEGA, February 12, 2017

People hold sugns against US President Donald Trump during an anti-Trump
march in Mexico City, on February 12, 2017 (AFP Photo/RONALDO SCHEMIDT)

Mexico City (AFP) - Thousands of Mexicans protested Sunday against US President Donald Trump, hitting back at his anti-Mexican rhetoric and vows to make the country pay for his "big, beautiful" border wall.

"Mexico must be respected, Mr Trump," said a giant banner carried by protesters in Mexico City, who waved a sea of red, white and green Mexican flags as they marched down the capital's main avenue under the watchful eye of thousands of police.

In what is shaping up to be Mexico's biggest anti-Trump protest yet, some 20 cities joined the call to march from a protest movement backed by dozens of universities, business associations and civic organizations.

Protester Julieta Rosas was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Trump sporting an Adolf Hitler mustache.

"We're here to make Trump see and feel that an entire country, united, is rising up against him and his xenophobic, discriminatory and fascist stupidity," said Rosas, a literature student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

US-Mexican relations have plunged to their lowest point in decades since Trump took office on January 20.

Trump, who launched his presidential campaign calling Mexican immigrants "criminals" and "rapists," has infuriated the United States' southern neighbor with his plan to stop illegal migration by building a wall on the border and his vows to make Mexico pay for it.

US-Mexico trade in goods since 2006 with breakdown by industry sectors

(AFP Photo/Christopher HUFFAKER, Sophie RAMIS)

Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto canceled a January 31 trip to Washington over Trump's insistence that Mexico will fund the wall.

"We are all migrants. We are all one. This is a time to build bridges, not walls," said 73-year-old protester Jose Antonio Sanchez, who was marching with his nine-year-old granddaughter.

Trump has also wrought havoc on the Mexican economy with his threats to terminate the country's privileged trade relationship with the United States, blaming Mexico for the loss of American jobs.

The Mexican peso has taken a beating nearly every time Trump insisted on renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), attacked car-makers and other companies that manufacture in Mexico, or vowed to slap steep tariffs on Mexican-made goods.

Mexico sends 80 percent of its exports to the United States -- nearly $300 billion in goods in 2015.

New nationalism

The confrontation has stoked patriotic pride in Mexico, where US companies like Starbucks, Coca-Cola and McDonald's are the targets of boycott campaigns. Many people have taken to putting the Mexican flag in their profile pictures on social media.

Not everyone is on board with Sunday's protests, however.

Some accused Pena Nieto of using the ostensibly non-partisan marches to try to bolster his own popularity -- which has taken a beating over perceptions that he has been too conciliatory toward a bullying neighbor.

People hold sugns against US President Donald Trump during an anti-Trump 

march in Mexico City, on February 12, 2017 (AFP Photo/RONALDO SCHEMIDT)

When the rector of UNAM, the country's largest university, backed the marches, many students and professors voiced outrage. The hashtag "#It'sNotTrumpIt'sPena" is trending on Twitter in Mexico.

The new nationalism appears to be giving a boost to Mexican presidential hopeful Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, whom some political analysts call a "leftist Donald Trump" for his populist, anti-establishment rhetoric.

Lopez Obrador -- widely known by his initials, AMLO -- was the runner-up in the past two presidential elections.

He is leading in opinion polls for presidential elections in 2018 and appears to be benefiting from Trump's anti-Mexican vitriol, which has badly dented not only Pena Nieto -- who is ineligible for re-election -- but also the ruling PRI party.

Ironically, a Lopez Obrador victory next year could work to Trump's disadvantage, giving him a far more hardline counterpart to work with.

As Sunday's protests unfold in Mexico, Lopez Obrador will be visiting the United States to address both Mexicans and Americans in Los Angeles about what he called Trump's "poisonous" rhetoric.

Merkel and Uruguay's Vazquez push to deepen EU-Mercosur ties

Angela Merkel intends to push trade talks between the EU and Mercosur nations. The chancellor has met with Uruguay's president to forge new bonds in the wake of Donald Trump's inauguration in the United States.

Deutsche Welle, 8 February 2017

On Wednesday, Chancellor Angela Merkel said new right-wing administrations in Latin America had improved the chances of an EU trade pact with  Mercosur, the region's primary trading bloc. The German chancellor's search for new trade partners has grown increasingly urgent for EU businesses after the election of US President Donald Trump cast doubt on the future of bilateral trade ties with the United States.

"We, as the European Union, if we perhaps don't advance or advance more slowly with a view to the United States - we will have to see - of course will continue to negotiate other trade agreements quickly," Merkel, who is facing an increasingly tough re-election fight, said on Wednesday. "We are negotiating with Japan, with India, with Australia, and we are negotiating with Mercosur."

Trump has said he will not allow the United States to sign on to the controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership during his presidency.

"Before anything, we need to know what the agreement will be with the new US administration," Merkel said on Wednesday. "The topic of free trade will be important at the G20 meeting. We will see then what the priorities of the US administration are."

Founded in 1991, Mercosur entered into its first trade negotiations with the European Union in 1999. The bloc's members are Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, after Venezuela was suspended in December. Merkel said Uruguay could prove a "motor" toward bringing negotiations to a beneficial end in Brussels.

'To continue pushing'

President Tabare Vazquez seeks to firm overseas bonds as Uruguay's neighbors experience economic hardships. He is headed for Finland next, and his trip will wrap up in Russia. But there may be a good reason why his first stop was Berlin.

"Germany is a fundamental member of the European Union," Vazquez said. "We have committed to keep pressing the negotiations to reach an agreement between Mercosur and the EU."

The president pointed out that Uruguay "has historically advocated for the demolition of barriers and the elimination of obstacles to commerce."

Vazquez also criticized Trump, especially his ban on refugees and travelers and immigrants from seven mostly Muslim countries. He said Uruguay had been built by immigrants from Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. The indigenous population was largely wiped out by disease and colonialist slaughter by the end of the 1830s.

"We do not agree with making walls," Vazquez said on Wednesday. "We want to build bridges between nations. We do not believe that nations should discriminate on ethnic or religious grounds or on the basis of sexual preference." He added: "We believe in the peaceful search for solutions. Because of this, some of the actions of the president of the United States concern us. "

mkg/sms (EFE, Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)

Jovenel Moise sworn in as Haiti's new president

Yahoo – AFP, Amelie BARON, February 7, 2017

New Haitian President Jovenel Moise arrives at the Te Deum during his inauguration
ceremony at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, on February 7, 2017 (AFP Photo/
HECTOR RETAMAL)

Port-au-Prince (AFP) - Jovenel Moise was sworn in Tuesday as Haiti's 58th president, ending a protracted electoral crisis that had created a power vacuum in the impoverished, disaster-prone Caribbean nation.

Moise, a 48-year-old banana exporter who has never held political office but ran as the candidate of the center-right Tet Kale Party (PHTK), took the oath at a ceremony at the National Assembly.

He was former president Michel Martelly's hand-picked choice to lead the poorest country in the Americas, one still struggling to recover from devastating natural disasters.

"The Haitian people have spoken: it has chosen to entrust the reins of power to a young, dynamic man" who has ideas "to get the country out of the misery and political instability that has been holding back its growth and development for too long," said National Assembly President Youri Latortue.

Haiti is fighting to emerge from the world's most significant cholera outbreak, with an estimated 30,000 cases expected this year, as well as the effects of the January 2010 earthquake, with tens of thousands of people still camping in tents without proper sanitation.

The government and aid officials have said Haiti needs nearly $300 million to provide urgent assistance for its most vulnerable inhabitants, including those affected by Hurricane Matthew last October.

The hurricane caused $2.8 billion in damage, and more than 1.5 million people are still in dire need of humanitarian assistance, said El-Mostafa Benlamlih, Representative of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH).

Musicians await the arrival of new Haitian President Jovenel Moise at his

 inauguration ceremony at the National Palace in Port-au-Prince, on February 7, 

2017 (AFP Photo/HECTOR RETAMAL)

Lengthy political crisis

Moise's election brings to a close a political crisis that began in October 2015 when the results of a first round of voting -- which Moise won -- were annulled because of massive fraud.

In February 2016, with Martelly's five-year term nearing its end and his political succession in limbo, Haiti's parliament elected Jocelerme Privert, president of the Senate at the time, to be interim president.

The presidential election was rescheduled for October and then postponed to November in the wake of Hurricane Matthew.

Haiti's political temperature remains high, with several of Moise's main opponents contesting his first-round victory.

The businessman is also at the center of an unresolved money laundering probe. He denies any wrongdoing.

The investigation was launched in 2013 as a routine bank-regulation procedure. The Central Financial Intelligence Unit (UCREF) forwarded a secret report about the inquiry to prosecutors last summer.

However, the investigating judge took no action until four opposition senators recently demanded information about the findings.

The judge delivered the conclusions to the government prosecutor, who has made no public announcements on the case.

Moise was declared the winner with 55 percent of the votes, but with a dismal turnout of just 21 percent.

People gather outside during the inauguration ceremony of the new President, 

Jovenel Moise on February 7, 2017 in Port-au-Prince (AFP Photo/Pierre Michel Jean)

Austere inauguration

After the swearing-in ceremony, the 2,000-plus guests took seats in the courtyard of the presidential palace to attend a religious ceremony and hear Moise speak.

The event took place on the site of the presidential palace, which was destroyed in the 2010 earthquake.

Austerity has been the motto of the inauguration ceremony, as Haiti is suffering from an economic crisis with more than $2 billion in debt and anemic growth that is not expected to surpass one percent this year.

According to Moise's transition team, the inaugural costs are close to $1 million, a tighter budget than those of predecessors Rene Preval and Martelly, which cost more than $4 million and $2 million, respectively.

While Martelly -- the sole former Haitian president at the ceremony -- is a well-known entertainment figure, Moise remains largely unknown to the broader public.

Moise said he had invited 53 other former presidential candidates to signal his willingness to ease political tensions.

The inauguration "of a democratically elected president allows Haiti to return to democratic and constitutional rule," US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

Canada in turn "reaffirmed its friendship and solidarity with Haiti," and "looks forward to working" with the Moise government, the ministry of international development said in a statement.

Vatican expresses 'concern' on Trump's wall, travel ban

Yahoo – AFP, February 1, 2017

Protesters gather at the Los Angeles International airport's to demonstrate
against President Trump's controversial travel ban (AFP Photo/Konrad Fiedler)

Rome (AFP) - The Vatican on Wednesday voiced "concern" over President Donald Trump's executive orders to build a wall on the US-Mexican border and impose a travel ban on nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries.

"Naturally, there is concern," the Holy See's number three, Monsignor Angelo Becciu, said on the Catholic TV channel TV2000, in response to a question.

"We are builders of bridges, far less of walls, and all Christians should emphatically reaffirm this message."

Becciu noted that Pope Francis had repeatedly stressed the need "to integrate those who arrive, who come into our society, into our culture."

Trump has run into a storm of criticism since signing orders to build an anti-migrant frontier wall with Mexico and temporarily ban nationals from seven countries -- Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen -- for 90 days.

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