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China has inked a new deal with leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean to deepen ties across almost all areas of society in what one analyst likened to a plot to 'take over' the region. As part of the deal, Beijing has committed to supplying the region with 'civilian' nuclear technology, helping to develop 'peaceful' space programmes, building 5G networks of the kind Washington warns will be used to spy on people, and to pumping in cheap loans and financing for 'elaborate development plans.' China has even pledged to build schools and fund classes teaching Chinese language and 'culture',...

For Immediate ReleaseTuesday, October 5, 2021Office of Press Relationspress@usaid.govToday, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is launching an ambitious new project that will work with partner countries and the global community to build better preparedness for future global health threats. Discovery & Exploration of Emerging Pathogens - Viral Zoonoses (DEEP VZN), a five-year, approximately $125 million project (pending availability of funds), will strengthen global capacity to detect and understand the risks of viral spillover from wildlife to humans that could cause another pandemic.The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how infectious diseases threaten all of society, up-ending people’s lives and...

We are on a cruise around the tip of South America. Somehow Facebook is now in a foreign language. How in the h--- did that happen? I use to know how to set it back to Englisg but don't see the option anymore.

The Omicron variant of coronavirus is 2.4x more likely to reinfect people than the original stain, a study from South Africa suggests. The research, which has not been peer-reviewed, found people who had tested positive for Covid could pick up the virus again. It did not say how the variant will behave when spreading in a highly vaccinated population such as the UK, or whether the virus can evade the protection offered by vaccines against severe disease.... ..."We believe that vaccines will still, however, protect against severe disease because we've seen this decrease in protection using vaccines with the other...

Anonymous alleged “U.S. and congressional officials” told the Wall Street Journal this week President Joe Biden is planning to remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a nearly 60-year-old terrorist organization responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, from America’s list of designated foreign terrorist groups. The FARC, a communist group, has been responsible for a wide variety of human rights atrocities in Colombia since its founding in 1964 that include mass killings, kidnappings, child rape, forced abortions, the use of child soldiers, and one of the world’s most lucrative drug trafficking operations. The government of then-President Juan Manuel...

New book suggests St. Gallen Mafia agreement may have led to Pope Benedict XVI’s resignationAuthor Julia Meloni tells us that Martini's own confessor claimed that Benedict's resignation had been “scripted since his pontificate's beginning – because Martini had shifted his votes to Ratzinger at the 2005 Conclave."(LifeSiteNews) — The American scholar and columnist Julia Meloni has just published her long-awaited, excellent, and deeply researched history of the Sankt Gallen Mafia, a group of progressive bishops regularly meeting in Switzerland and plotting to further revolutionize the Catholic Church. The Sankt Gallen Mafia: Exposing the Secret Reformist Group Within the Church tells...

On the face of it, America has little to fear from China's new deal to upgrade Cuba's power grid. The countries are already firm allies via their Communist leaders, Havana is under a diplomatic and economic embargo from Washington, and all efforts to mend ties between the two ended when Obama left office. But scratch the surface and what emerges is a picture of Chinese economic dominance in America's backyard that would be enough give any president sleepless nights. In fact, the deal with Cuba - signed this week as part of China's trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative - is...

Around 17,000 migrants are stuck in Colombia as they await safe passage to Panama to make their way to the United States. Thousands more Haitian migrants are embarking on a perilous journey through Latin America to reach the US, after US officials cleared out an encampment which was also 17,000 strong outside Del Rio, Texas last week. Up to 4,000 Haitian migrants have already crossed the Darien Gap in Panama along the Colombian border, a roadless, 66-mile stretch of treacherous jungle, Panamanian government sources tell Reuters. Some of them wait in camps in Mexico before continuing their journey.... ...Around 17,000...

Peru’s new president Pedro Castillo, 51, deserves credit for vowing to focus his government on improving the lives of the country’s poverty-stricken indigenous population. But his first steps in office raise fears that he will scare away investors, generate capital flight and — after a short-lived populist fiesta — create more poverty. Castillo, a leftist former elementary school teacher who had never before held public office, assumed the presidency on July 28 after winning the runoff elections with a razor-thin 0.3 percent of the vote. He controls only 37 seats in the 130-member Congress. Some hoped that Castillo’s minority in...

Argentina coronavirus cases hit 3 million on Sunday since the pandemic began, as medical workers said hospitals were full to capacity despite toughened government measures to bring down the spread of infections. The country's health ministry said there were 11,394 new cases over the last 24-hour period, bringing up the grim new milestone, with 156 new deaths taking fatalities to 64,252. The government of President Alberto Fernandez this week unveiled a new round of tougher restrictions as a second wave of infections has battered the country, filling up intensive care units and setting new daily records for cases and deaths....

The Border Patrol says it has insufficient time and space to conduct coronavirus testing at crowded processing stations. Officials in border cities fear further spread of the virus. Dora Eglis Ramírez and Pavel Brigido Rivero set out from Cuba to seek asylum in the United States last year, as the coronavirus rampaged across Latin America. Starting their trek in Guyana, they managed to cross eight countries, sleeping in buses and doing odd jobs, without ever contracting the virus. Then they crossed the border into the United States. U.S. Border Patrol agents intercepted them late last month in Southern California and...

Off the coast of England, there's a tiny, wind-swept island with the remains of a lifeboat rescue station from the mid-1800s. The workers who once ran the station on Hilbre Island did something that, unbeknownst to them, has become crucial for understanding the future of a hotter climate: They recorded the tides. The data, scrawled in long, handwritten ledgers, is just one example of the tens of thousands of pages of tidal measurements stored in archives around the world. Now, scientists and historians are racing to digitize them in an effort to understand how fast oceans are rising. The aging...

Until now, the United States certainly has had a concern over Iranian penetration in South America, and not just in Venezuela. One reason why Donald Trump adopted the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran was to curtail its global ambitions against the West, especially in energy-rich areas. Most of the attention from the media fell on the immediate region around Iran, such as the “land bridge” strategy through Syria to the Mediterranean and the encirclement strategy against the Saudis with Hezbollah and the Houthis.However, Iran has long tried a similar diplomatic/economic/political encirclement strategy against the US in South America. They conducted...

Prior research has suggested that during the Late Horizon, a period of Inca history, the Inca rounded up people living outside of the Inca Empire and forced them to relocate to places inside the empire as a means of bolstering the population and thus the economy. Unfortunately, to date, evidence for such forced migrations has been scant. In this new effort, the researchers conducted a thorough investigation of the remains of six people buried in a cemetery in what was once a part of the Inca empire during the Late Horizon -- they suspected that all six were people who...

Through deep genetic analyses, Stanford Medicine scientists and their collaborators have found conclusive scientific evidence of contact between ancient Polynesians and Native Americans from the region that is now Colombia—something that's been hotly contested in the historic and archaeological world for decades. (snip) Before the study brought scientific evidence to the debate, the idea that Native Americans and Polynesians had crossed paths originated from a complex—both in its structure and origins—carbohydrate: the sweet potato. It turns out the sweet potato, which was originally domesticated in South and Central America, has also been known to grow in one other place prior...

A 38-year-old, female, Belizean national from San Pedro is the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Belize, according to The Ministry of Health. The patient sought medical attention after arriving in Belize on Thursday, March 19. She arrived at the private health facility with symptoms on Friday, March 20. Prior to this visit, she travelled from Los Angeles, California and transited through Texas. Based on her symptoms and travel history, Belize’s health system was alerted, and due process and protocol was started. All necessary precautions were taken on the Ministry’s end. The sample was processed for COVID-19 and other flu...

Brazil got its first case of coronavirus just after carnival. The man, who had visited Italy, returned with symptoms and went straight to Albert Einstein hospital, a world-class institution in the southern hemisphere's biggest city, São Paulo. In the beginning, many of the cases followed a similar pattern, affecting Brazilians who can afford to travel abroad and pay for treatment in private hospitals. And it is a pattern that is replicated across the region too. The first case in Ecuador was somebody returning from Spain. In Uruguay, media reported last week that half of the country's coronavirus cases could be...

Brazilian authorities said on Feb. 26 that tests confirmed the first case of the new coronavirus in the country. The 61-year-old man, who lives in Sao Paulo, traveled to Italy earlier this month. The confirmed case is the first in Latin America. Previously, only the United States and Canada had confirmed cases in the Americas. Brazil’s Ministry of Health said that the first test, which was done at Albert Einstein Hospital, came back positive. A counterproof conducted at the Adolfo Lutz Institute confirmed the infection. The patient is in good condition and is at home with his family, authorities said...

As Vice President Mike Pence elaborated in his recent doctrinal speech on the containment of China, which might very well be the sole foreign policy legacy of this administration, massive protests, riots, and violence have been going on in Chile, Lebanon, and Hong Kong. This is a new pattern of violence, happening in relatively stable and comparatively freer societies.Hong Kong is relatively freer than mainland China, even though the protests in Hong Kong are understandable, given that it has been BeijingÂ’s long-term design to repress Hong Kong more like the mainland. The same cannot be said about Chile and Lebanon,...

——Why We Wrote This—— How to counter invasive species, a common, and often intractable, problem? One entrepreneur’s clever approach offers lessons in finding solutions in the unlikeliest of places. If you can’t beat them, eat them. That is the common wisdom of many scientists, conservationists, and fishermen who dream of ridding the western Atlantic of invasive lionfish, a stunning aquarium fish that, when introduced in the wild, dominates and destroys reef ecosystems. However, catching lionfish has never been simple; they are not easily targeted by line or net fishing. Now, a surprising new invention may bring lionfish hunting to the...