Climate Change and Poverty Deadly for Dominicans | Cambio climático y pobreza son nefasto para dominicanos

By Patricia Grogg, IPS. The Dominican Republic (DR) could lose about one fifth of its territory to rising sea levels. In the DR, where over 43 out of every 100 people are poor, and over 16 out of 100 are abjectly poor, 70 percent of the cities are on riverbanks and other waterways that are covered by impoverished urban settlements. (English | Spanish)

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MIT Climate Change Study: Tropical Rains to Become More Extreme

By Jennifer Chu, MIT News Office. According to a study by the Department of Atmospheric Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with every 1 degree Celsius rise in Earth’s surface temperature, tropical regions will see 10 percent heavier rainfall extremes, with possible flooding in populous regions.

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Let Them Eat Sand | Un sucre mêlé au sable vendu sur le marché dominicain

By Staff, AHP | Translation by Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. The Dominican National Institute for the Protection of Consumer Rights (Proconsumidor) has sounded the alarm against consuming “Canaria” sugar imported from Brazil into the Dominican Republic (DR) by Casa SRL Chepe: a product marketed for two months in the DR and Haiti. (English | French)

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Deadly Denim

By Staff, International Labor Rights Forum. Two separate fires in Pakistan killed more than 300 trapped workers: 289 workers in a Karachi apparel factory (sweatshop) and 25 workers in a Lahore shoe factory on Tuesday September 11, 2012. National Trade Union Federation of Pakistan (NTUF) leader Nasir Mansoor called this the “darkest and saddest day in the history of Pakistan’s labor movement.” The fires are considered to be the logical result of the low prices buyers offer the factories and the quick deliveries they demand.

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Mountains Behind Protests

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Haiti’s most populous cities erupted in protest in early September, and some areas remain more or less in a state of continuous protest against human rights abuses, soaring food prices, 80 per cent unemployment, crashing agriculture, government corruption and racism, and many other severe political and economic ills.

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Colonialism of the Mind – Part II

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Of all the campaigns to undermine Haitian culture, the one to discredit restavek adoption — in which a biological parent collaborates with a respected adult to care for a child — enjoys the most zealous support from the west’s NGO and alternative press.

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Poor Children as Big Pharma’s Lab Rats

By K. S. Harikrishnan, IPS | Staff, Rediff Business. American pharmaceutical companies, taking advantage of a Congressional provision called The Pediatric Exclusivity Provision, have been carrying out clinical trials in poor and developing countries where the drugs might never be available.

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Colonialism of the Mind – Part I | ‘Colonizar as Mentes’ – Parte 1

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Western journalists increasingly assume the voices of subjugated countries’ natives while muzzling them by denying them access to the press. In the United states, the more visible venues of the alternative press, such as online news sites Truthout, Common Dreams, and Huffington Post are essentially closed to native writers. More than this, the punditry promotes the neoliberal agenda and encapsulates it in reasonable-seeming and progressive-sounding language.

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Cuba’s Cholera Outbreak Over in Two Months

Press Release from Cuban Ministry of Public Health, Granma, Cuba Debate. With epidemiological vigilance, public education, and appropriate treatment, Cuban public health workers completely ended in two months what might have become a major cholera epidemic and limited a cholera outbreak to three deaths and 417 cases. (English|Spanish)

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With MINUSTAH Up for Renewal, ‘Legal Bandits’ on Rampage

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Dr. Serge L. Bernard, Professor and Vice-Chair of the board of directors of the University of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, was shot dead by five gunmen on motorcycles around midday on Friday August 31, 2012, within sight of police. Dr. Bernard is the latest victim of the traditional Spring-to-October insecurity that has preceded the renewal of MINUSTAH’s mandate every year since 2005.

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Isaac, Gener and Katrina: Climate Change in Action

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Like a hulking giant, Isaac has stomped across the Caribbean at practically human speed, for days. Ten miles per hour, 14 mph, and Isaac continues its march northwest and west-northwest, for nearly one week, as if for a rendez-vous. Isaac appears set to revisit Katrina’s old haunts. The timing is identical: midweek, near the end of August.

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Tropical Oceans: Beating Heart of Climate Change

By University of Plymouth Scientists, Phys.org. The tropical regions of the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic Oceans appear to act like a heart: accumulating heat and then pulsing it in bursts across the Earth.

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Isaac Takes Boat from Haiti to Florida GOP Convention

By Dady Chery, Haiti Chery. Haitian government officials finally did something about Tropical Storm Isaac. They gathered 32 boats and 1250 temporary shelters as peace offerings to the storm gods. Then they gave a press conference at which they demanded that all those in charge of safety — whoever they might be — do their jobs, whatever these might be.

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Hurricanes and Climate Change

By Brenda Ekwurzel, Union of Concerned Scientists | NOAA | Haiti Chery. Scientific evidence links the destructive power of hurricanes to higher ocean temperatures driven by global warming.

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