HONDURAS

The world's conservative groups and their usual propagandists [i] received the news of the June 28 coup in Honduras with immense pleasure[ii]. Although they made critical noises about the coup itself, they swallowed and justified the arguments of those who carried it out, repeating that "President Manuel Zelaya had committed numerous violations of the constitution by wanting to hold a referendum to remain in power." [iii]

CUBA: A NEW SOCIALISM

Cubans are used to living with crises, limits, shortages, emergency plans, "special" -and less "special"- periods. That may be why for a number of months many Cubans have been watching with detachment the economic and financial crisis that has been battering the world for two years now. Even politicians and the media contributed to this sense that in Cuba there would be no job cuts, no foreclosed homes (because no one can legally buy one, for a start), and no gutting of social programmes.

Much More Than a Walk in the Countryside

Costa Rican tourism is incorporating rural community-based vacations as the fourth leg of an industry otherwise centered on beaches, ecotourism and adventure travel.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Seized Lumber Sold to Compensate Jobless

Brazil's ministries of Environment and Social Development will compensate workers who lost their jobs due to shutdowns of illegal charcoal factories and logging companies. They will be paid with revenues from sales of the seized lumber.

Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Polluting Pig Farms Shut Down

The 43 pig farms that still operate in the Lake Valencia watershed in northern Venezuela will have to stop soon and retool for some other activity or move to a different site - in order to reverse contamination caused by the livestock waste.

Ecobreves – CUBA: Cane-Based Fertilizer Improves Yields

The bio-fertilizer Fitomás-E, a sugarcane derivative that Cuba began producing this year, boosts yields of several types of crops and improves soils, according to officials from the farm sector.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Progress on Standards for Limiting Air Pollution

The Chilean government revealed the main characteristics of its bill for regulating the concentration of particulate matter in the air, with a diameter of less than 2.4 micrometers (one-millionth of a meter), the most harmful to human health.

Ecobreves – HONDURAS: New Law on Environmental Education

After reaching broad consensus with civil society organizations, the Honduran national Congress last week approved the first Law on Environmental Education.

Recipes for Food Sovereignty

There are no strong or weak foods, only complementary foods, proclaims Brazilian expert Clara Brandão, promoter of a unique approach to nourishment.

CHINA: SIGNS OF SLIGHT MOVEMENT AWAY FROM THE DEATH PENALTY

Movement towards the global abolition of the death penalty and the reduction in the number of executions over the last decade were confirmed in the last report of Hands Off Cain. Moreover, in China, which accounts for more than 80 percent of the world's executions, this reduction was accompanied by another promising development: the vice president of the Chinese Supreme Court, Zhang Jun, announced in a statement on June 29 that the country would gradually slow the implementation of capital punishment to the point that there is "a very limited number of executions".

HONDURAS: ANOTHER CHALLENGE FOR OBAMA

A few months were enough for Obama to peacefully revolutionise the United States and the world. He radically changed the policies of Washington, domestic and international, with visible consequences at the global level despite a financial and economic crisis that, notwithstanding certain signs of improvement, is still far from turning around.

Mapping the Riches of the Tropical Andes

The cartography of the biodiverse Northern and Central Andes of South America is the first step towards their environmental conservation.

Tequila Leaves Environmental Hangover

The environmental impact of tequila production is only recently being recognized by the industry, say observers.

Ecobreves – BRAZIL: In Pursuit of Illegal Cattle in the Amazon

Seven meatpacking plants and two exporters in the northern Brazilian state of Pará have pledged not to accept meat or livestock from illegally deforested areas of the Amazon.

Ecobreves – MEXICO: Transgenic Oversight Agency Awakens Doubts

Mexico has set up an agency to monitor the presence of genetically modified organisms, but environmentalists see it as a cosmetic effort.

Ecobreves – ARGENTINA: Applause for Maritime Rules in Antarctica

The non-governmental Whale Conservation Institute of Argentina is celebrating the International Maritime Organization's decision to regulate navigation in Antarctica's waters in order to protect the environment.

ART, APOCALYPSE, AND THE FUTURE

When in 1982 Ridley Scott filmed his prophetic and futuristic Blade Runner and showed the city of Los Angeles devastated by acid rain, sealed off, and darkened by a ceiling of clouds of a dense gas, that future (November 2019, in the film) seemed so remote and so poetic that few would have ever imagined it could come true. Now, ten years from that date, the world has deteriorated to the point that the images from Blade Runner amaze us less and frighten us more because we know how close we are to living on a planet similar to the one shown in the film.

Green Therapy on the Rooftops

In Mexico City there are more than 8,000 square meters of public building rooftops covered with vegetation. This novel approach for bringing green to the cities is now reaching hospitals and kindergartens.

A Slow Revolution at the Dinner Table

"The day we all decide to eat fresh and local, to eat less meat... we will have a revolution," says Paolo di Croce, secretary-general of Slow Food International.

Ecobreves – VENEZUELA: Desert Park Prepares for Vacationer Onslaught

Venezuela's National Institute of Parks is preparing monitoring and crowd control measures for the 100,000 tourists expected during the August-September school vacation season at the Médanos de Coro National Park, 400 km northwest of the capital.

Ecobreves – CHILE: Government and Ecologists Clash over Pollution

The Chilean government began an environmental education campaign - "Care for the Air: Breathe Easy" - to encourage using bicycles and public transportation instead of individual cars, dampening the ground before sweeping to prevent raising dust, and to discourage the burning of leaves in the polluted national capital.