…rst eight months of 2016, ZLC’s sales totaled 6.755 billion dollars, around 600 million dollars less than 2015’s figure of 7.350 billion dollars for the same time period. Colombia and Venezuela are still the key partners for the ZLC’s 500,000 resale businesses, though their trade volume has decreased by 22.4% and 56.4% respectively. Between January and August 2016, Colombia accounted for 811 million dollars of trade, Panama 613 million dollars, Co…

The UN General Assembly declared June 8th as World Oceans Day, but has done little to alleviate the “trash islands” that have rapidly accumulated throughout the planet. Verónica Cirellia wrote in La Nación of Buenos Aires that nearly 2,600 tons of garbage have accumulated in the Southwest Atlantic alone, and exhorted readers to stop treating the ocean like a waste basket. As far south as Antarctica, oceans are subject to contamination…

…exercise their profession in a vacuum.” Normally they work in or for media companies that are part of a capitalist society, and “all companies are subject to the rules of capital.” In most cases their media employers are “just a branch, a media leg of a business in a larger diversified conglomerate.” Within this framework one has to be naïve to ignore the “relationship between journalistic opinion and money.” With “the introduction of power” the “…

El Salvador faces a number of challenges before its agricultural sector becomes a viable mode of subsistence for many rural families. According to Gloria Marisela Morán of ContraPunto of El Salvador, one of these challenges is the violence afflicting the country. “The issue of violence affects the development of rural areas. People can’t achieve economic independence because they have to pay rent to criminal groups,” said Glayson Ferrari, Manager…

…y 23, a group of disabled protesters organized in front of the Ministry of Communication building, supported by workers of la Empresa Pública Nacional Estratégica de Textiles, or Enatex, who had begun their own protests on May 16 when it was announced that their company was closing. The workers at Enatex have had their own hardships as well; on May 18, in the midst of a violent protest, a man lost his left hand, a cameraman was injured in the eye,…

…engineering, metallurgy and petroleum saw their average income fall to S/ 3,077. Civil engineers earn, on average, S/ 2,622. This is up from S/ 2,206 last year. Surprisingly, the marketing industry has the fourth highest average income which comes in around S/ 2,296. The next highest paid careers are design, sciences communication, mechanical engineering, and fishing engineering. These fall between the fifth and the ninth highest paid careers, re…

With negotiations for peace continuing in Cuba, Colombia’s Commander in Chief reaffirmed that certain topics have not and will not ever be up for discussion at the round table. El Espectador of Bogotá reported that during a meeting with over 600 active military personnel, President Santos assured the audience that neither military structure nor economic systems would be up for negotiation in Havana during the ongoing peace talks with the FARC. Th…

…200,000 cars over ten years old were imported into Paraguay. In total, over 600,000 cars, trucks, vans, and buses traverse the city daily, as well as hundreds of thousands of motorcycles. All of these produce a sufficient amount of sulfur to pose a serious lung cancer to residents, especially those living in the city’s center. The new data was gathered during 2015 as part of studies conducted by the Mario Molina Center for Strategic Studies on Ene…

…h August of this year. These numbers only hint at the massive waves of unaccompanied children who are being apprehended by immigration authorities. This surge in “unaccompanied alien children” (UACs) has been deemed a humanitarian crisis by the White House, especially given the marked increase in the numbers of children under twelve years of age who are crossing the border. In addition, the United Nations refugee agency has reported a substantial…

…59 inquiries were made regarding the crime of torture and the Human Rights Commissions of the Republic reported 6,600 claims of torture from 2006 to 2016. All Mexican institutions have been accused: the Army, Navy, Federal Police, and local and municipal regimens. The passage of the General Law has been met with the approval of the public who hope for a safer and more just Mexico. Many believe that torture as a means to obtain a confession is immo…