WASHINGTON – Despite little evidence that a massive program of aerial coca crop fumigation has worked in Colombia, and despite serious reservations by the Pentagon and by Afghan president Hamid Karzai, the U.S. State Department, backed by the White House, is quietly pushing the expansion of aerial poppy eradication into Afghanistan as a way to fight the Taliban. Soon Afghanistan, which produces 92 percent of the world’s opium and 80 percent of the world’s heroin, may be the target of a program of Plan Colombia-style aerial crop eradication. With the Afghan war entering a tenuous new phase, the stakes are [...]
Many of us can recall when it was hazardous for tourists to drink tap water in much of Europe. Although times have changed and most Europeans (and tourists) now take clean drinking water for granted, an estimated 120 million people — one person in seven — on the continent do not have access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation, according to a recent analysis by the United Nations Economic Commission on Europe (UNECE). This makes them vulnerable to water-related infections, such as cholera, dysentery, E. coli, viral hepatitis A and typhoid. To remedy this situation, UNECE produced the 1999 [...]
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — Oscar Morales never imagined that his idea a month ago to mobilize a protest march on Facebook against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) would turn into the biggest protest march against an illegal armed group in Colombia’s history. On Monday, from Colombia’s border jungle towns to the capital, an estimated 4.8 million Colombians took to the streets in protest against leftist guerrillas. They were joined by thousands of other Colombians in some 130 cities across the world, with the biggest rallies taking place in Latin American capitals, Madrid and Washington. Public schools closed for the [...]
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