Category Archives: human rights

Navajo Nation to Receive $1 Billion Settlement from Tronox Bankruptcy Case

On Thursday, April 3, 2014, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the court decision for Tronox Inc. v. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. Tronox will receive 88 percent of the $5.15 billion settlement and the Navajo Nation will receive 23 percent of that amount, totaling $1 billion.

via Navajo Nation to Receive $1 Billion Settlement from Tronox Bankruptcy Case.

WHO | Ebola virus disease: background and summary

Just saying… WHO – formerly known as a helpful agency – seems to have become trapped in a protect our budget and behinds mode. There is a major outbreak but they will not say so or warn people from traveling to the effected area because supporters of the governments in the effected areas are more afraid of losing business in the short run, than having people die.

WHO encourages countries to strengthen surveillance, including surveillance for illness compatible with EVD, and to carefully review any unusual patterns, in order to ensure identification and reporting of human infections under the IHR (2005), and encourages countries to continue national health preparedness actions.

WHO does not recommend that any travel or trade restrictions be applied with respect to this event.

via WHO | Ebola virus disease: background and summary.

OKR: Inside Inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt : Facts and Perceptions across People, Time, and Space

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This book joins four papers prepared in the framework of the Egypt inequality study financed by the World Bank. The first paper prepared by Sherine Al-Shawarby reviews the studies on inequality in Egypt since the 1950s with the double objective of illustrating the importance attributed to inequality through time and of presenting and compare the main published statistics on inequality. To our knowledge, this is the first time that such a comprehensive review is carried. The second paper prepared by Branko Milanovic turns to the global and spatial dimensions of inequality. The objective here is to put Egypt inequality in the global context and better understand the origin and size of spatial inequalities within Egypt using different forms of measurement across regions and urban and rural areas. The Egyptian society remains deeply divided across space and in terms of welfare and this study unveils some of the hidden features of this inequality. The third paper prepared by Paolo Verme studies facts and perceptions of inequality during the period 2000-2009, the period that preceded the Egyptian revolution. The objective of this part is to provide some initial elements that could explain the apparent mismatch between inequality measured with household surveys and inequality aversion measured by values surveys. No such study has been carried out before in the Middle-East and North-Africa (MENA) region and this seemed a particular important and timely topic to address in the light of the unfolding developments in the Arab region. The fourth paper prepared by Sahar El Tawila, May Gadallah and Enas Ali A. El-Majeed assesses the state of poverty and inequality among the poorest villages of Egypt. The paper attempts to explain the level of inequality in an effort to disentangle those factors that derive from household abilities from those factors that derive from local opportunities. This is the first time that such study is conducted in Egypt. The book should be of interest to any observer of the political and economic evolution of the Arab region in the past few years and to poverty and inequality specialists that wish to have a deeper understanding of the distribution of incomes in Egypt and other countries in the MENA region.

via OKR: Inside Inequality in the Arab Republic of Egypt : Facts and Perceptions across People, Time, and Space.

CENSORED NEWS: US Senators push to terminate portion of Arapaho’s Wind River land

A new push by U.S. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., to

terminate a portion of the Wind River Reservation should appall and worry Native

American people everywhere, Northern Arapaho leaders said Tuesday.

Draft legislation by Enzi, and supported by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., would eliminate

the reservation status of a significant portion of Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone

homeland in central Wyoming.

“It’s chilling to see this kind of attack on Indian Country in 2014,” said Northern Arapaho

Business Council Chairman Darrell O’Neal.

The bill is a response to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to treat the

Wind River tribes as a state under the Clean Air Act. A detailed legal analysis in the EPA

decision concluded that the town of Riverton is part of the Wind River Reservation, a

position the tribes have always held.

via CENSORED NEWS: US Senators push to terminate portion of Arapaho’s Wind River land.

Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 2575) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the 30-hour threshold for classification as a full-time employee for purposes of the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replace it with 40 hours. (H.Res. 530) – GovTrack.us

AKA – Pimping for fast food and quickie retail outlets who don’t want to cover the more than 50% of their regularly scheduled 30 hour a week employees!

…threshold for classification as a full-time employee for purposes of the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replace it with 40 hours.

via Providing for consideration of the bill (H.R. 2575) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the 30-hour threshold for classification as a full-time employee for purposes of the employer mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and replace it with 40 hours. (H.Res. 530) – GovTrack.us.

Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan invests in contraception companies

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, which makes Plan B and ParaGard, a copper IUD, and Actavis, which makes a generic version of Plan B and distributes Ella. Other holdings in the mutual funds selected by Hobby Lobby include Pfizer, the maker of Cytotec and Prostin E2, which are used to induce abortions; Bayer, which manufactures the hormonal IUDs Skyla andMirena; AstraZeneca, which has an Indian subsidiary that manufactures Prostodin, Cerviprime, and Partocin, three drugs commonly used in abortions; and Forest Laboratories, which makes Cervidil, a drug used to induce abortions. Several funds in the Hobby Lobby retirement plan also invested in Aetna and Humana, two health insurance companies that cover surgical abortions, abortion drugs, and emergency contraception in many of the health care policies they sell.

via Hobby Lobby’s retirement plan invests in contraception companies.

DRC logging is out of control as Chatham House study lays bare | Greenpeace International

DRC logging is out of control as Chatham House study lays bare | Greenpeace International.

On top of everything else, continued logging and deforestation will induce new outbreaks of ebola and create perfect conditions for massive increase in breeding grounds for malarial carrying mosquitoes!

Vote rigging in Anti-union vote in Tennessee? Haslam Administration Linked $300M Offer To VW-UAW Process – NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather & Sports

After seeing the confidential documents, UAW organizer Gary Casteel argued that they show the Haslam administration was part of a coordinated anti-union campaign doing exactly what they had denied — using hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers as leverage.

“I think since this document is public, and I appreciate you bringing it forward, that it’s obvious that the state was threatening or at least intimidating Volkswagen [that], to get the incentives, they had to change their business model,” he said.

NewsChannel 5 Investigates asked Casteel, “Is this incentive document a game changer?”

“To me,” he answered, “it puts pressure on the state to do what they should have done in the first place — and that’s give the incentives with no strings attached, just like they would any other company, union or non-union.”

The Haslam administration declined to provide anyone to go on camera to answer questions about the documents.

But we also obtained emails that show that Senator Corker’s chief of staff was in direct contact with anti-union organizers who were brought in to fight the UAW. He then shared those emails with people in the Haslam administration who were in charge of the incentives.

The union has asked the National Labor Relations Board to order new elections, citing interference by Tennessee political leaders.

via Haslam Administration Linked $300M Offer To VW-UAW Process – NewsChannel5.com | Nashville News, Weather & Sports.

Weekend Gun Report: Don’t let your child be shot and killed by accident, if you are Hispanic and in North Carolina…

Often when a child is accidentally shot by a friend or family member no one goes to jail, the reasoning being that the shooter has suffered enough. As a result, the penalty for such shootings varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

On Christmas Eve last year, 2-month-old Kestyn Davis was shot to death by her father, who was playing with a 9-mm handgun at their East Lampeter, Pa., home. G. Scott Davis, 36, pleaded guilty, but a judge decided not to imprison him, saying it would compound a tragedy and serve no purpose. The judge instead sentenced him to six years of probation, saying that he was “certain this is something that will haunt you the rest of your life.”

Davis said the day of the shooting replays in his mind daily, and told the judge that he loved his daughter. “I was so proud of my wife and family. I had such big dreams for her,” he said.

In October, 4-year-old Zoie Dougan was shot in the head and killed by a man who was target shooting in his backyard in Rogersville, Mo. The man had no idea Zoie was in range of his .22 caliber rifle as he took aim at a pile of trash, and he was reportedly distraught. The Christian County Prosecutor decided earlier this month not to file charges.

The girl’s mother, Alyssa, cried hysterically at the scene, but also reportedly told police, “Don’t let (him) get in trouble, it was an accident.” The man, who has not been identified, told officers he knew shooting at that location “wasn’t good judgment. I understand that.”

But Jeffery David Perez, 32, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and failure to secure a firearm when his 4-year-old son, Killian Perez, died while playing with a handgun in Fayetteville, N.C., last November. Perez, a soldier in the United States Army who was stationed at Fort Bragg, was home alone watching his son and two twin babies when the victim grabbed the loaded handgun from the top of a refrigerator and shot himself.

In the wake of shooting, Fayetteville police said that parents should have a safe in their homes so kids do not confuse a gun for a toy. “Our children sometimes just don’t know the difference and that’s kind of what happened in this case,” Sgt. Steven Bates said.

Here is today’s report.

via Weekend Gun Report: March 28-30, 2014 – NYTimes.com.

Guinea: Mobilisation against an unprecedented Ebola epidemic | Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International

Conakry / Brussels / Geneva, 31 March 2014 – With eight confirmed cases of Ebola reported in the capital Conakry, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is facing an unprecedented epidemic in terms of the distribution of cases now scattered in several locations in Guinea.

“We are facing an epidemic of a magnitude never before seen in terms of the distribution of cases in the country: Gueckedou, Macenta Kissidougou, Nzerekore, and now Conakry,” said Mariano Lugli, coordinator of MSF’s project in Conakry.

via Guinea: Mobilisation against an unprecedented Ebola epidemic | Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) International.