Category Archives: Viva!

Arkansas Attorney General Eager to Start Killing

Governor plans to quickly set execution dates for eight men.

Source: Arkansas Attorney General Eager to Start Killing

If he is that eager, he should do the executing himself and not put the killing on someone else’s heart.

Netanyahu threatens to shoot young Palestinian stone-throwers

<img title=”Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends the weekly cabinet meeting at his office in Jerusalem August 16, 2015. REUTERS/Abir Sultan/Pool” src=”http://s2.reutersmedia.net/resources/r/?m=02

Source: Netanyahu threatens to shoot young Palestinian stone-throwers

He should be arrested for crimes against children – rock throwing is not a death sentence crime!

Serena Williams Struggles to Win Second-Round Match – The New York Times

While Serena Williams has won the first three major tournaments this year, at times she has looked frustrated and vulnerable. She lost nine sets in her first 21 matches and was forced to play three tiebreakers. That pattern surfaced again in a second-round match Wednesday at the United States Open when Williams had to scrounge out a victory over Kiki Bertens, the 110th-ranked player in the world.Williams withstood Bertens’s aggressive approach and her own nerves to win, 7-6 (5), 6-3. She needs five more wins to become the sixth player to win the Grand Slam in a calendar year.

Source: Serena Williams Struggles to Win Second-Round Match – The New York Times

Two Indigenous Solar Engineers Changed Their Village in Chile | Inter Press Service

CASPANA, Chile , Sep 2 2015 (IPS) – Liliana and Luisa Terán, two indigenous women from northern Chile who travelled to India for training in installing solar panels, have not only changed their own future but that of Caspana, their remote village nestled in a stunning valley in the Atacama desert.“It was hard for people to accept what we learned in India,” Liliana Terán told IPS. “At first they rejected it, because we’re women. But they gradually got excited about, and now they respect us.”Her cousin, Luisa, said that before they travelled to Asia, there were more than 200 people interested in solar energy in the village. But when they found out that it was Liliana and Luisa who would install and maintain the solar panels and batteries, the list of people plunged to 30.“In this village there is a council of elders that makes the decisions. It’s a group which I will never belong to,” said Luisa, with a sigh that reflected that her decision to never join them guarantees her freedom.Luisa, 43, practices sports and is a single mother of an adopted daughter. She has a small farm and is a craftswoman, making replicas of rock paintings. After graduating from secondary school in Calama, the capital of the municipality, 85 km from her village, she took several courses, including a few in pedagogy.Liliana, 45, is a married mother of four and a grandmother of four. She works on her family farm and cleans the village shelter. She also completed secondary school and has taken courses on tourism because she believes it is an activity complementary to agriculture that will help stanch the exodus of people from the village.But these soft-spoken indigenous women with skin weathered from the desert sun and a life of sacrifice are in charge of giving Caspana at least part of the energy autonomy that the village needs in order to survive.

Source: Two Indigenous Solar Engineers Changed Their Village in Chile | Inter Press Service

Opinion: Women in the Face of Climate Change

Renee Juliene Karunungan, 25, is the advocacy director of Dakila, a group of artists, students, and individuals in the Philippines committed to working towards social change, which has been campaigning for climate justice since 2009. Karunungan, who is also a climate tracker for the Adopt a Negotiator project, is in Bonn for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meetings currently taking place there.

By Renee Juliene Karunungan
BONN, Sep 2 2015 (IPS)

After surviving the storm surge wreaked by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines in November 2013, women in evacuation centres found themselves again fighting for survival … at times from rape. Many became victims of human trafficking while many more did anything they could to feed their families before themselves.

Climate change has become one of the biggest threats of this century for women. But these ‘secondary impacts’ of disaster events are rarely considered, nor are the amplifying impacts of economic dependence, and lack of everyday freedoms at home.

At the Road to Sendai conference held in Manila in March, women’s leaders shared their traumatic experience. For many affected by Typhoon Haiyan, simple decisions such as the freedom to decide when to evacuate could not be made without their husbands’ permission.

Renee Juliene Karunungan

Renee Juliene Karunungan

When typhoons come, women’s concerns rest with their children, but they remain uncertain of what to do and where to go. These are some of the crushing realities poor women live with in the face of climate change.

“We must recognise that women are differentially impacted by climate change,” according to Verona Collantes, Intergovernmental Specialist for UN Women. “For example, women have physical limitations because of the clothes they wear or because in some cultures, girls are not taught how to swim.”

“We take these things for granted but it limits women and girls and affects their vulnerability in the face of climate change,” she noted, adding that these day-to-day threats of climate change are only set to increase “if we don’t recognise that there are these limits, our response becomes the same for everyone and we disadvantage a part of the population, which, in this case, is women.”

Women’s groups have been active in pushing for gender to be included in the negotiating text of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and according to Kate Cahoon of Gender CC, “we’ve seen a lot of progress in negotiations in the past decade when it comes to gender.”“Climate change has become one of the biggest threats of this century for women. But these ‘secondary impacts’ of disaster events are rarely considered, nor are the amplifying impacts of economic dependence, and lack of everyday freedoms at home”

However, this week in Bonn, where the UNFCCC is holding a series of meetings, there has also been growing concern that issues central to supporting vulnerable women have been side-tracked, and may be left out or weakened by the time the U.N. climate change conference takes place in Paris in December.

“We want to make sure that gender is not only included in the preamble,” said Cahoon, explaining that this would amount to a somewhat superficial treatment of gender sensitivity. “We want to ensure that countries will commit to having gender in Section C [general objectives].”

Ensuring that gender is included throughout the Paris agreement is essential to ensure that there will be a mandate for action on the ground, especially in the Philippines. This is the only way to ensure that Paris will make a change in women’s lives at the grassroots level.

“We want a strong agreement and it can only be strong if we account for half of the world’s population,” stressed Cahoon.

Meanwhile, Collantes noted that UN Women is working to ensure that women will not be seen as vulnerable but rather as leaders. She believes that we now need to highlight the skills and capabilities that women can use to support their communities in moments of disaster.

“Women are always portrayed as victims but women are not vulnerable,” said Collates. “If they are given resources or decision-making powers, women can show their skills and strengths.”

In fact, according to an assessment by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), “women play a key role in adaptation efforts, environmental sustainability and food security as the climate changes.”

The women most affected by Typhoon Haiyan could not agree more.

“We are always seen as a group of people to give charity to. But we are not only receivers of charity. We can be an active agent of making our communities more resilient to climate change impacts,” a woman leader from the Philippine women’s organisation KAKASA said during the Road to Sendai forum.

What does a good climate agreement for women look like?

According to Collantes, it must correct the lack of mention of women in the previous conventions, and it must also be coherent with the goal of gender equality, the Post-2015 Agenda, Rio+20, and the Sendai Disaster Risk Reduction Framework.

“Without gender equality, the Paris agreement would be behind its time and will not validate realities women are facing today,” says Collantes.

For the three billion women impacted by climate change, we can only hope negotiators here in Bonn won’t leave them behind.

Edited by Phil Harris   

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

Opinion: Women in the Face of Climate Change | Inter Press Service

What does a good climate agreement for women look like?According to Collantes, it must correct the lack of mention of women in the previous conventions, and it must also be coherent with the goal of gender equality, the Post-2015 Agenda, Rio+20, and the Sendai Disaster Risk Reduction Framework.“Without gender equality, the Paris agreement would be behind its time and will not validate realities women are facing today,” says Collantes.For the three billion women impacted by climate change, we can only hope negotiators here in Bonn won’t leave them behind.

Source: Opinion: Women in the Face of Climate Change | Inter Press Service

Measles outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo grows worse

The current measles epidemic in the Katanga province within the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to grow worse.

As of today, over 20,000 people have gotten sick from measles, and approximately 300 people have died from the outbreak this year alone. Local officials say that Katanga lacks the resources to adequately fight the outbreak.

Over 20 out of the 68 health districts located in Katanga have now been affected by the illness. In June, only 10 were affected.

“Every day we discover new deaths related to measles that have not been accounted for,” Augustin Ngoyi, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) coordinator of the response, said. “In a village of 500 inhabitants two hours’ drive from Kabalo, more than 30 children under five years of age have died in the last two months. Their little graves are still visible in the cemetery. This represents one third of this age group in the community.”

The government in Congo has not yet given an official declaration about the epidemic. This decision may have caused the timely response to be delayed.

“We need more actors in the field,” Jean-Guy Vataux, MSF head of mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, said. “MSF remains one of only two organizations in Katanga today involved in treating measles and immunizing children against it.”

Measles outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo grows worse | Vaccine News

The current measles epidemic in the Katanga province within the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to grow worse. As of today, over 20,000 people have gotten sick from measles, and approximately 300 people have died from the outbreak this year alone. Local officials say that Katanga lacks the resources to adequately fight the outbreak.

Source: Measles outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo grows worse | Vaccine News

Humans of New York

“When the competition was announced to design this bridge, I was still a student. I was only 25 at the time. I didn’t even feel qualified to enter. And I assumed the project would be awarded to powerful people with connections. But Ali encouraged me. He told me: ‘If you design it, we will win.’ So I submitted the design, and one month later I got a call. It was Ali. He told me that we’d won. I just remember staring down into an open drawer of my desk. I was excited. But I was also terrified. Designing it was one thing. Now we had to build it.”———————————————–Leila Araghian and Alireza Behzadi are the young designer and builder behind Tehran’s recently completed Tabiat Bridge. Construction of the bridge was completed in 2014 despite the difficulties of international sanctions. The bridge has become a cultural and physical centerpiece of Tehran, and Leila captured the imagination of the architecture world by winning the right to design it at the age of 26.

Source: Humans of New York