martes, 30 de diciembre de 2014

The end of gangs (as we knew them).

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/politics-and-law/the-end-of-gangs-los-angeles-southern-california-epidemic-crime-95498/#.VKL1zdIgxHh.facebook

Bank of America violates ADA, will pay $110,000

Bank of America in Chicago failed to make adjustments for a blind employee.  
Bank of America will pay $110,000 to a former temporary worker and provide other equitable relief under a consent decree resolving a disability discrimination case brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the agency announced today.
The EEOC alleged that Bank of America failed to accommodate a visually impaired data entry worker and instead terminated his temporary assignment at one of the bank's branches in downtown Chicago after one day on the job.
Such alleged conduct violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires that employers provide reasonable accommodations to qualified individuals with disabilities. This can include making adjustments or modifications in the workplace that enable an employee with a disability to perform the essential functions of his job. For example, an employer may be required to provide screen magnifying software that would enable an employee with a visual impairment to perform essential computer work. Questions and answers about blindness, visual impairments and the ADA are available on the EEOC's website.
The EEOC filed suit (EEOC v. Bank of America, N.A., Civil Action No. 11-cv-6378, September 13, 2011 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois), after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its conciliation process. U.S. District Judge Milton I. Shadur entered the decree resolving the suit December 18. In addition to monetary relief for the former employee, the decree includes an injunction requiring the bank provide reasonable accommodations to temporary and contingent workers at its branches throughout Illinois, provides for training about the ADA's requirements and imposes recordkeeping and reporting requirements for the duration of the decree.
"Of the millions of working-age Americans with vision loss, research has shown that fewer than half are employed, An employer of the size and sophistication of Bank of America, which employs an enormous number of people working at computer terminals, ought to be a national leader in employing individuals with disabilities, including vision loss, and a leader in ADA compliance generally," said John Hendrickson, EEOC Chicago district regional attorney. "We're optimistic that this consent decree is going to prompt that kind of progress at Bank of America, not only because it's the law, but also because it's the right thing to do."

The EEOC's Chicago District Office is responsible for processing charges of discrimination, administrative enforcement, and the conduct of agency litigation in Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and North and South Dakota, with area offices in Milwaukee and Minneapolis.

viernes, 19 de diciembre de 2014

¿Y si Cuba arrebata el turismo de México?

http://www.sinembargo.mx/19-12-2014/1196602

Crisis del ébola acerca a Estados Unidos y Cuba(1)

Médicos cubanos en albergues para personas con ébola en Africa.
¿Cuándo fue la última vez que un alto funcionario de Estados Unidos elogió a  Cuba públicamente? ¿Y desde cuándo el gobierno cubano se ofrece a cooperar con los estadounidenses?
Es raro que los políticos de estos dos países se desvíen de la sospecha y la intransigencia que han impedido la colaboración productiva entre ambos durante más de medio siglo, desde que Estados Unidos impuso un embargo comercial, económico y financiero a Cuba en 1960, poco después de que Fidel Castro llegara al poder en la isla caribeña en 1959.
Y eso es precisamente lo que sucedió en las últimas semanas, cuando el secretario de Estado, John Kerry, y la embajadora estadounidense ante la Organización de las Naciones Unidas, Samantha Power, hablaron a favor de la intervención médica de Cuba en África occidental, y el presidente cubano, Raúl Castro, y su antecesor Fidel Castro expresaron su voluntad de cooperar con los esfuerzos estadounidenses para frenar la epidemia de ébola que se desató en diciembre de 2013 en la región.
El ébola causó más de 6,.000 muertes en África occidental hasta la fecha y generó el temor del resto del mundo, por lo que tiene pocos elementos positivos. Pero uno de ellos puede ser la oportunidad de cambiar la naturaleza de las relaciones entre Estados Unidos y Cuba, para el bien general.
No desperdicien la oportunidad
“Uno nunca quiere que las crisis graves se desperdicien”, llegó a decir el actual alcalde de Chicago, Rahm Emanuel. “Con eso me refiero a una oportunidad de hacer cosas que pensabas que no podías hacer antes”, añadió.
El presidente estadounidense, Barack Obama, debería prestarle atención a su exjefe de gabinete y no desperdiciar la oportunidad que presenta la crisis del ébola.
Los dirigentes políticos de la Casa Blanca, en Washington, y del Palacio de la Revolución, en La Habana, podrían transformar la lucha contra una amenaza en común en una cooperación conjunta que no solo promueva los intereses nacionales de ambos países, sino que también signifique un avance de los derechos humanos en el Sur en desarrollo, ya que el derecho a la salud es un derecho humano.
Las condiciones políticas están dadas. Los estadounidenses respaldan con firmeza las medidas enérgicas contra el ébola y elogiarían a un presidente que hiciera más hincapié en la cooperación médica y en salvar vidas que en la ideología y el resentimiento.
En el sexto de una serie de editoriales que sostienen la necesidad de un cambio en la política de Washington hacia Cuba, el diario “The New York Times" pidió a Obama que deje de aplicar una política que facilita la deserción a Estados unidos de los médicos cubanos que prestan asistencia médica en servicios en el exterior, por su naturaleza hostil y su impacto negativo en las poblaciones que reciben el apoyo y la atención de los profesionales cubanos en África, América Latina y Asia.
“Es incongruente que Estados Unidos valore la contribución de los médicos cubanos que son enviados por su gobierno a ayudar en las crisis internacionales, como el terremoto de Haití de 2010, mientras que trabaja para subvertir a ese gobierno al facilitar tanto la deserción”, señaló el editorial. Se debe enfatizar y no obstaculizar el fomento de los aportes médicos cubanos, agregó.
A medida que se conoce más sobre las gestiones sanitarias de Cuba en el plano internacional se hace menos razonable que Washington presuponga que toda la presencia cubana en el mundo en desarrollo sea perjudicial para los intereses estadounidenses.
La apertura constante a la cooperación bilateral con Cuba de parte de instituciones de salud gubernamentales, el sector privado y fundaciones con sede en Estados Unidos puede desencadenar dinámicas positivas para actualizar la política de Washington hacia La Habana. También enviará una señal más amigable a la reforma económica y la liberalización política en la isla.
Lea Beneficio, Página 2

Crisis del ébola acerca a Estados Unidos y Cuba(2)

dicos cubanos atienden a una paciente con ébola en Africa. 
Beneficio, Página 2
El potencial de cooperación entre Cuba y Estados Unidos va mucho más allá de la prevención y la derrota del ébola. Nuevas pandemias en el futuro próximo podrían poner en peligro la seguridad nacional, la economía y la salud pública de otros países, a la vez que causarían la muerte de miles de personas, frenarían los viajes y el comercio y fomentarían la histeria xenófoba. En este momento dramático, la Casa Blanca debe pensar con claridad y creatividad.
Como el país líder del hemisferio occidental, Estados Unidos debería proponer la creación de una estrategia de respuesta y cooperación integral frente a las crisis sanitarias a nivel continental en la próxima Cumbre de las Américas, que se celebrará en Panamá en abril de 2015. Como ya expresaron muchos países de América Latina, Cuba debe estar incluida en esa ocasión.
Cuba desarrolló una amplia pericia médica en el país y el extranjero, con más de 50,000 médicos y profesionales de la salud que prestan sus servicios en 66 países. Las medidas de prevención, la detección temprana, los controles estrictos de las infecciones y la coordinación de la respuesta en casos de desastres naturales son partes esenciales del enfoque cubano para cortar las pandemias de raíz.
La falta de alguno de esos elementos en los sistemas de salud ya colapsados explica los fracasos en la gestión que acrecentaron el impacto del ébola en África occidental.
Cuando Obama era senador y candidato presidencial, fue uno de los mayores críticos de la política que veía a Cuba mediante el prisma de la Guerra Fría. Ahora que es presidente, no alcanza con que actualice la misma política de embargo que aplicaron sus antecesores. Debe adaptar el discurso oficial de Washington sobre la Cuba posterior a Fidel: no es una amenaza para Estados Unidos, sino un país en transición hacia una economía mixta y una fuerza positiva para la salud mundial.

miércoles, 17 de diciembre de 2014

Shale oil poses risks, controversy for Argentina(1)

Loma Campana is Argentina's second largest oil field producer.
Unconventional oil and gas reserves in Vaca Muerta in southwest Argentina hold out the promise of energy self-sufficiency and development for the country. But the fracking technique used to extract this treasure from underground rocks could be used at a huge cost.

The landscape begins to change when you get about 100 km from Neuquén, the capital of the province of the same name, in southwest Argentina. In this area, dubbed “the Saudi Arabia of Patagonia”, fruit trees are in bloom and vineyards stretch out green towards the horizon, in the early southern hemisphere springtime.
But along the roads, where there is intense traffic of trucks hauling water, sand, chemicals and metallic structures, oil derricks and pump stations have begun to replace the neat rows of poplars which form windbreaks protecting crops in the southern region of Patagonia.
“Now there’s money, there’s work – we’re better off,” truck driver Jorge Maldonado said. On a daily basis he transports drill pipes to Loma Campana, the shale oil and gas field that has become the second-largest producer in Argentina in just three years.
It is located in Vaca Muerta, a geological formation in the Neuquén basin which is spread out over the provinces of Neuquén, Río Negro and Mendoza. Of the 30,000 sq km area, the state-run YPF oil company has been assigned 12,000 sq km in concession, including some 300 sq km operated together with U.S. oil giant Chevron.
Vaca Muerta has some of the world’s biggest reserves of shale oil and gas, found at depths of up to 3,000 meters.
A new well is drilled here every three days, and the demand for labor power, equipment, inputs, transportation and services is growing fast, changing life in the surrounding towns, the closest of which is Añelo, eight km away.
“Now I can provide better for my children, and pay for my wife’s studies,” said forklift operator Walter Troncoso.
According to YPF, Vaca Muerta increased Argentina’s oil reserves ten-fold and its gas reserves forty-fold, which means this country will become a net exporter of fossil fuels.
But tapping into unconventional shale oil and gas deposits requires the use of a technique known as hydraulic fracturing or “fracking” – which YPF prefers to refer to as “hydraulic stimulation”.
According to the company, the technique involves the high-pressure injection of a mix of water, sand and “a small quantity of additives” into the parent-rock formations at a depth of over 2,000 meters, in order to release the trapped oil and gas which flows up to the surface through pipes.
Víctor Bravo, an engineer, says in a study published by the Third Millennium Patagonia Foundation, that some 15 fractures are made in each well, with 20,000 cubic meters of water and some 400 tons of diluted chemicals.
The formula is a trade secret, but the estimate is that it involves “some 500 chemical substances, 17 of which are toxic to aquatic organisms, 38 of which have acute toxic effects, and eight of which are proven to be carcinogenic,” he writes. He adds that fracking fluids and the gas itself can contaminate aquifers.
Neuquén province lawmaker Raúl Dobrusin of the opposition Popular Union bloc said: “The effect of this contamination won’t be seen now, but in 15 or 20 years.”
In Loma Campana, Pablo Bizzotto, YPF’s regional manager of unconventional resources, played down these fears, saying the parent-rock formations are 3,000 meters below the surface while the groundwater is 200 to 300 meters down. “The water would have to leak thousands of meters up. It can’t do that,” he said.
Read Fracking, Page 2


Shale oil poses risks, controversy for Argentina(2)


About 24,000 oil barrels a day are produced in this Loma Campana field. 
Fracking, Page 2
 Besides, the “flowback water”, which is separated from the oil or gas, is reused in further “hydraulic stimulation” operations, while the rest is dumped into “perfectly isolated sink wells,” he argued. “The aquifers do not run any risk at all,” he said.
But Dobrusin asked “What will they do with the water once the well is full? No one mentions that.”
According to Bizzotto, the seismic intensity of the hydraulic stimulation does not compromise the aquifers either, because the fissures are produced deep down in the earth. Furthermore, he said, the wells are layered with several coatings of cement and steel.
“We want to draw investment, generate work, but while safeguarding nature at the same time,” Neuquén’s secretary of the environment, Ricardo Esquivel said.
In his view, “there are many myths” surrounding fracking, such as the claim that so much water is needed that water levels in the rivers would go down.
Neuquén, he said, uses five percent of the water in its rivers for irrigation, human consumption and industry, while the rest flows to the sea. Even if 500 wells a year were drilled, only one percent more of the water would be used, he maintained.
But activist Carolina García with the Multisectorial contra el Fracking group stated: “That water is not left in the same condition as it was when it was removed from the rivers; the hydrologic cycle is changed. They are minimizing a problem that requires a more in-depth analysis.”
She pointed out that fracking is questioned in the European Union and that in August Germany adopted an eight-year moratorium on fracking for shale gas while it studies the risks posed by the technique.
YPF argues that these concerns do not apply to Vaca Muerta because it is a relatively uninhabited area.
“The theory that this is a desert and can be sacrificed because no one’s here is false,” said Silvia Leanza with the Ecosur Foundation.
“There are people, the water runs, and there is air flowing here,” she commented. “The emissions of gases and suspended dust particles can reach up to 200 km away.”
Nor does the “desert theory” ring true for Allen, a town of 25,000 people in the neighboring province of Río Negro, which is suffering the effects of the extraction of another form of unconventional gas, tight gas sands, which refers to low permeability sandstone reservoirs that produce primarily dry natural gas.
In that fruit-growing area, 20 km from the provincial capital, the fruit harvest is shrinking as the number of gas wells grows, drilled by the U.S.-based oil company Apache, whose local operations in Argentina were acquired by YPF in March.
Apache leases farms to drill on, the Permanent Comahue Assembly for Water (APCA) complained.
“Going around the farms it’s easy to see how the wells are occupying what was fruit-growing land until just a few years ago. Allen is known as the ‘pear capital’, but now it is losing that status,” lamented Gabriela Sepúlveda, of APCA Allen-Neuquén.
A well exploded in March, shaking the nearby houses. It wasn’t the first time, and it’s not the only problem the locals have had, Rubén Ibáñez, who takes care of a greenhouse next to the well, said. “Since the wells were drilled, people started feeling dizzy and having sore throats, stomach aches, breathing problems, and nausea.”
“They periodically drill wells, a process that lasts around a month, and then they do open-air flaring. I’m no expert, but I feel sick,” he said. “I wouldn’t drink this water even if I was dying of thirst. When I used it to water the plants in the greenhouse they would die.”
The provincial government says there are constant inspections of the gas and oil deposits.
“In 300 wells we did not find any environmental impact that had created a reason for sanctions,” environment secretary Esquivel said.
“We have a clear objective:  for Loma Campana, as the first place that unconventional fossil fuels are being developed in Argentina, to be the model to imitate, not only in terms of cost, production and technique, but in environmental questions as well,” Bizzotto said.
“All technology has uncertain consequences,” Leanza said. “Why deny it? Let’s put it up for debate.”

Behind the series: Product of Mexico

http://graphics.latimes.com/product-of-mexico-behind-the-scenes/