Tag Archives: Caribbean

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Mysticism, modernity abound in Benin Voodoo fest

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The deified residents of the Temple of Pythons, when released to find food, sometimes slither across the road into a Catholic church that once hosted Pope Benedict XVI. The local priest, the snake handlers say, is always good enough to call or bring the gorging reptiles back to their own spiritual home.

This is life in Ouidah, a mecca of spirits and gods worshipped by practitioners of Voodoo, a recognized religion in this former French colony in West Africa that is home to 9 million people. The religion has its own pope — or two, depending on who you ask — whose reign dates back to the 1400s and can be seen about town in his SUV.

This past Thursday, local banks and the post office closed as the town celebrated its annual Voodoo Festival, an event increasingly drawing curious foreigners. With its mix of beliefs and traditions, the Voodoo practiced here shows both a clash of cultures and the ability for ancient traditional beliefs to adapt to modern life.

“It is like we are sending all the evil in the country, on the continent, away,” said Djabassi Manonwomin, a Voodoo priestess who leads others in the worship of a mermaid deity. “The people today are corrupt, we can see that. It is from the old days, but now more open.

“More people are hungry (for corruption). They put their bellies in front of themselves.”

Voodoo, also called “vodoun” here, can be seen throughout the streets of Ouidah. One local school proudly identifies itself by the religion. Down the dusty street on a recent day one could see the decapitated head of a monkey, wrapped around a stick, a curse someone had placed near a shrine of a three-head man wrapped by pythons. While the curse was grotesque, Voodoo generally does not follow the images from movies and novels from the West, of zombies and possessions.

It borrows heavily from the mythology of Yoruba people of Nigeria‘s southwest. Gods and spirits of neighboring Togo and nearby Ghana also can be openly worshipped — and others much farther afield. At Manonwomin’s own shrine, the walls bear images of the Hindu god Ganesh, as well as the image of an Indian woman praying. Outside, a small offering of bananas and biscuits, doused in perfume, could be seen by her gate outlined in chalk.

The chanting prayers include cries of “Power! Power!” Similar chants can be heard in evangelical Christian churches across Nigeria, including pastors’ repeatedly shouting that enemies should be consumed by “fire!”

Though Benin appears to be where slaves brought to America and the Caribbean learned about Voodoo, the nation itself has a mixed history with the religion. Mathieu Kerekou, a one-time Marxist dictator turned elected president, banned Voodoo practices during the Cold War. However, he himself was said to have been so angry about losing a popular election for the nation’s highest office that he put a Voodoo curse on it himself.

Now, the religion has its own national day Jan. 10. It coexists peacefully with Islam and Catholicism, the other major religions in the country.

As men prepared to slaughter goats as an offering at a shrine, foreigners raised their own cameras up to catch the moment when worshippers slit the goat’s throat. Others giggled or looked uncomfortable as they let guides at the python temple place the snakes around their shoulders or atop their head as a reptilian scarf.

“You conjure up all kinds of images that Hollywood has sent us, but I did read up about it and learn that’s not what it is,” said Greg Fry, a tourist from Kamloops, Canada. “It made me interested to see how this functions, what part it plays in their society.”

Material interests have entered the equation now as well. Peddlers selling African masks and other items surrounded those attending the festival. Daagbo Hanoun, the Voodoo pope, and his entourage also demanded payments from foreign journalists, despite their protests that the Vatican doesn’t charge to cover Mass.

Some believe the fight over money launched a years-long insurrection by another man who claims he’s the Voodoo pope by birth. That man celebrated his own Voodoo festival at a sports stadium in the city.

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Jon Gambrell can be reached at www.twitter.com/jongambrellAP .

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

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Venezuela plans show of support for ailing Chavez

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Venezuela‘s government has organized what seems an alternative inauguration outside the presidential palace Thursday and is hosting regional leaders in an unusual show of support for ailing President Hugo Chavez, whose swearing-in ceremony has been indefinitely postponed.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro urged supporters to gather on a street outside Miraflores Palace to demonstrate their solidarity with Chavez, who remains in Cuba fighting complications after cancer surgery and hasn’t spoken publicly or been seen in more than a month.

“Everyone to the street,” Maduro said at a televised Cabinet meeting Wednesday night. “We’re going to have a great function in honor of President Chavez.”

Leaders from throughout Latin America and the Caribbean were invited, as they normally would be for a formal inauguration. President Jose Mujica of Uruguay arrived Wednesday, and other presidents expected to attend included Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega.

Maduro said heads of state, foreign ministers and other officials from 19 countries had come to Caracas. The vice president, whom Chavez designated his chosen successor last month, said that even though it wasn’t an official swearing-in, Thursday’s event still marks the start of a new term for the president following his re-election in October.

“A historic period of this second decade of the 21st century is starting, with our commander leading,” Maduro said.

But glaring above all in the planned event was Chavez’s absence from the presidential where he has so often spoken for hours on television, chided his opponents and called for a socialist revolution.

The opposition, limping from two recent electoral defeats, seems powerless to effectively challenge the postponement of Chavez’s swearing-in, a legislative move that was endorsed Wednesday by a Supreme Court widely viewed as favoring the government.

Apparently clinging to life in Cuba, unable to travel home or speak publicly, Chavez remains fully and legally in power. The opposition has been left complaining that there are no independent institutions or courts inside Venezuela for them to appeal to, and the world appears to be giving a collective shrug to their plight.

The door to a court challenge was slammed by Supreme Court President Luisa Estella Morales even before the opposition could file one. Morales announced Wednesday that it was fine to delay the inauguration past the Jan. 10 date set by the constitution, saying the Supreme Court could handle the issue later, “at a time and place to be determined.”

As for demands that, under the constitution, a caretaker should be named for the unseen president in Cuba, Morales said that so far, “there is not even a temporary absence.”

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles condemned the high court’s endorsement of delaying the inauguration. “Institutions should not respond to the interests of a government,” he said at a news conference.

He said the opposition had urged various governments not to send representatives to Thursday’s event, and said he was grateful to presidents who had decided not to come to Caracas.

Government officials are at pains to insist that Chavez remains in command, even if unheard from. Pro-Chavez politicians have been wearing T-shirts with an image of the president’s eyes. New murals with Chavez’s smiling face have gone up on city walls.

Maduro on Wednesday reiterated hopes of Chavez eventually returning. Still, the long silence by the dominant Venezuelan politician of the past 14 years has fed speculation that he could be near death, raising anxieties and tensions.

Military leaders have sought to show they are in step with Maduro and the government. They appeared alongside ministers at Wednesday night’s Cabinet meeting. A military commander, Maj. Gen. Wilmer Barrientos, also spoke on television saying that the armed forces were “very pleased” with the court’s decision and were focused on providing a “sense of peace and tranquility.”

Chavez has been fighting an unspecified type of pelvic cancer since June 2011 and has undergone repeated surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatments.

Chavez said before his latest operation that if he were unable to continue as president, Maduro should take his place and run in an election to replace him.

The government said earlier this week that Chavez was in a “stable situation” while being treated for a severe respiratory infection. The government has hasn’t said how severe his “respiratory deficiency” is.

___

Associated Press writers Vivian Sequera and Christopher Toothaker contributed to this report.

___

AP Interactive: http://hosted.ap.org/interactives/2012/venezuela/

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

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Cuba cracks down on racy music lyrics

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At 10 o’clock on a Saturday night, the Mariana Grajales park in downtown Havana pulses with a thumping beat. Young men in drooping trousers and women in miniskirts dance, raise their hands in the air and grind pelvis to pelvis amid whooping, clapping and coarse jokes.

The risque dance style known as “perreo,” which translates loosely as “dogging,” is associated with reggaeton, an up-tempo mix of reggae, hip-hop and Latin rhythms that was popularized in Puerto Rico and has become a mainstay on Cuban TV and radio.

Now, the music finds itself squarely in the sights of critics who lament the genre’s notoriously suggestive lyrics, steamy videos and sometimes misogynistic stereotyping.

Cuban authorities recently announced restrictions reportedly declaring state-run recording studios and broadcasts off-limits to songs with questionable lyrics. They also prohibit such music in performance spaces subject to government control.

The rules would theoretically apply to all genres, but it’s reggaeton that leading cultural lights have singled out for criticism in official media while warning of new rules governing “public uses of music.”

Legislators are also studying a bill to regulate the airwaves and performance spaces. Artists would face potential sanctions for lyrics and performances deemed too racy, although it’s not yet clear who would be the official arbiters of taste or what penalties may be imposed.

“It has been decided,” said Danilo Sirio Lopez, director of the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television, in a December speech to lawmakers. “We will not play one more rude song, one more base song, one more song with offensive lyrics or videos that attack or denigrate the image of women.”

The proposal apparently falls short of an outright ban, but in a country where the government is the main patron of the arts and controls all airwaves, the threat of losing access to broadcasts, production facilities and performance spaces sends a clear message to reggaetoneros: Clean up your act, or else.

The past year’s hit song, “Quimba Pa’ Que Suene,” by Los Principales, translates gently as “Shake It So It Goes Off” and is a kind of homage to masturbation. The video was uploaded to YouTube and heralded as “the new hymn of Cuban youth,” and for the last year it could be heard booming at top volume at private parties, school events and other get-togethers.

The runaway smash “El Chupi Chupi,” by Osmani Garcia and various artists, was also criticized for its creative wordplay about sexual acts. “Go on make yourself pretty, and turn out the lights, the orgy has begun,” goes one of the few lines printable in a family newspaper.

Officials, critics and the influential Cuban Women’s Federation complain both songs are vulgar and demeaning to women.

“Obviously everyone is free to listen in private to whatever music they want,” said Orlando Vistel, president of the Cuban Music Institute, an arm of the Culture Ministry that promotes music. “But that freedom does not include the right to reproduce it and play it in state or private restaurants or cafeterias, public buses or public spaces in general.”

Whether the government can successfully crack down on the music remains to be seen.

Cuba‘s unique political and economic model may have cut many off from the Internet and other global phenomena, but they haven’t insulated the island from all of the region’s trends, said Roberto Zurbano, a promoter at the government-run cultural institute Casa de las Americas. Reggaeton’s popularity on the island is a product of those influences, he said.

“Reggaeton is a music that very much reflects the era, an era of marginalization,” Zurbano said. “In general reggaeton is about the poor people of the Caribbean, with its poverty, violence, precariousness, machismo, the avalanche of television, consumerism, the lack of values.”

Experts also credit reggaeton’s popularity to its simple but catchy beat. And they say it’s here to stay, as evidenced by artists from other genres such as salsa incorporating the sound into their music.

“Very easy to dance to. … It should be no surprise that it has caught on so easily among young people,” said Raul Fernandez, a professor at the School of Social Sciences of the University of California, Irvine, who has written about Cuban music.

“The lyrics to dance music are often not exemplary in a literary sense,” he added, but “people aren’t going to dance in order to be educated by the lyrics.”

Indeed, some fans barely notice the slangy, rapid-fire lyrics, or say it’s not the main attraction.

“I really like reggaeton. It has a beat that fires me up,” said Yanet Perez, a 28-year-old Havana resident. “It’s fun to dance to because of the way it gets you moving, although the lyrics sometimes can be bad or slimy.”

Records with explicit lyrics in the United States have carried parental warning labels since the 1980s, and last year the Rihanna video “S&M” was banned in at least 11 countries. In 2009, Jamaica prohibited songs and videos with explicit references to sex and violence from being broadcast on radio or TV.

The backlash against reggaeton has historical echoes in Cuba, where genres such as danzon, cha-cha, timba and salsa once scandalized older generations by pushing contemporary boundaries of sensuality. Today, they are firmly established in the musical mainstream.

In the 1960s the Beatles were banned from Cuban radio, and some fans were forced to cut their long hair, reprimanded at work or passed over for jobs. Now, a Havana plaza boasts a statue of John Lennon and the nearby Beatles-themed bar The Yellow Submarine is a thriving nightspot.

Ironically, some of those who would clamp a lid on reggaeton’s excesses once rebelled against their own elders by listening clandestinely to John, Paul, George and Ringo.

“Reggaeton is very popular among young people,” said 22-year-old singer Carlitos “Papi” Chacon, who avoids explicit lyrics in his own music but acknowledged that many of his peers “say crazy stuff.”

“I think (the backlash) has only made people listen to it more,” Chacon said. “What you have to do is keep working and not box yourself in. … You have to make music.”

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

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Cuba to free doctors from onerous travel rules

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A Cuban doctor says the Caribbean nation is eliminating longstanding restrictions on health care professionals’ overseas travel as part of a broader migration reform.

The doctor says hospital directors met Saturday with Health Minister Roberto Morales and were told of the new policy, effective Jan. 14.

For many years Cuban physicians have been limited in their ability to travel or had to undergo cumbersome bureaucratic procedures.

But now they are supposed to be treated “like any other citizen” when it comes to traveling abroad.

The doctor was not authorized to talk to foreign journalists and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity Monday.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

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Wave of illness subsides on Caribbean cruise

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The cruise line that operates the Queen Mary 2 says an apparent outbreak of gastrointestinal illness has subsided as the trip heads back to port.

Cunard Line spokeswoman Jackie Chase says just two passengers had suspected cases of norovirus on Tuesday. That’s down from 201 cases reported by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control as the ship made its way through the Caribbean on a 12-night voyage with more than 2,600 passengers.

Norovirus is easily transmittable and typically results in vomiting and diarrhea. The CDC and Cunard said the crew of the Queen Mary 2 took steps to halt the spread of the virus such as deploying teams to do additional cleaning of public areas with disinfectant.

The ship returns Wednesday to New York.

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News

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AP's Honduras correspondent navigates violent land

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Every Saturday morning, one of my taxi drivers pays about $12 for the right to park his cab near a hospital, about two blocks from a police station.

But it’s not the government that’s charging.

An unidentified man pulls up in a large SUV, usually brandishing an AK-47, and accepts an envelope of cash without saying a word. Jose and nine other drivers who pay the extortionists estimate that it amounts to more than $500 a year to park on public property. During Christmas, the cabbies dish out another $500 each in holiday “bonuses.”

Meanwhile, Jose pays the city $30 a year for his taxi license.

“Who do you think is really in charge here?” Jose asked me.

It is an interesting question, one I have been trying to answer since I arrived here a year ago as a correspondent for The Associated Press. Is the government in charge? The drug traffickers? The gangs? This curious capital of 1.3 million people is a lawless place, but it does seem to have its own set of unwritten rules for living with the daily dangers.

Jose, who did not want his last name used for fear of reprisals, says his extortionists are from “18th Street,” a powerful gang that started in U.S. prisons. The taxi drivers don’t bother to report the crime, he says, because they suspect police are involved in the racket. In the first six months of 2012, 51 taxi drivers were killed in Tegucigalpa — most of them, Jose’s colleagues believe, for failing to pay extortionists.

When I moved to Tegucigalpa last March several friends back home in Spain wanted to know why. The big story was in Egypt, Libya and Syria; what was I planning to do on the other side of the globe? “Bear witness,” I said, “to the most violent place in the world, to a country in crisis.”

I am the only foreign correspondent here, with no press pack to consult on questions of security, or to rely on for safety in numbers. I fall back on instincts honed in war zones, but they are not always sufficient when you are covering a failing state.

When you are in the trenches of Libya, you generally know where the shooting comes from. But in Honduras, you never know where danger lurks.

Three weeks after I arrived, I attended a ceremony in the capital where U.S. Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield delivered 30 motorcycles to President Porfirio Lobo to help Honduras fight crime. A neighborhood leader, however, had complained to me that the narcos had bribed some police officers to look the other way. I asked the officials if they weren’t afraid the motorcycles would end up in the hands of the bad guys.

I got no answer. Instead a Honduran reporter wrapped his arm around my shoulder and whispered, “We don’t ask questions like that here.” If I wanted to survive in Honduras, he said, “Keep a low profile.”

More than two dozen Honduran journalists have been killed in the last two years. Some reporters carry weapons to protect themselves, others use the armed guards that President Lobo offered after a prominent Honduran radio journalist was assassinated last May — reportedly in retaliation for a government crackdown on cartels.

It is not hard to become a fatality. A few months ago, I interviewed a lawyer, Antonio Trejo, who was defending the peasants of Aguan Valley in a land dispute against agribusiness tycoon Miguel Facusse, one of the most powerful men in the country. Trejo had warned repeatedly that he would be killed for helping the campesinos. Two days after I interviewed him, he was shot six times as he was leaving church by two men on a motorcycle.

In August, I took a walk on a Sunday with a couple of friends in a sad dilapidated park — one of only two in the city. I got a call on my iPhone. I stepped away from friends and began to walk as I talked, as you would in a normal city, a normal park. Suddenly two teenagers approached me, asking first for a cigarette, then for the phone. I hung up, put the phone in my pocket and shouted over to my friends, who helped me chase the young men away — once we realized they weren’t armed.

But I learned my lesson. Unwritten rule: Do not walk around talking on an iPhone, which costs about three times a monthly salary in Honduras. And forget the park.

Like most Hondurans who can afford it, my family and I live behind high gated walls with a guard out front. After the park episode, I gave up my morning ritual of newspapers and espresso at an outdoor cafe. I don’t go out at night.

In the daytime, I use trusted drivers like Jose to guide me through Tegucigalpa’s chaotic streets, past its barbed-wire fences, mounds of garbage and packs of dogs. I keep the tinted windows up, the doors locked, and we don’t stop at the lights, so we won’t get carjacked.

I vary my routes. I try not to fall victim to the permanent sense of danger that hangs over the capital, where the conversation is invariably about whose relative was just killed, or what atrocity happened on the corner. Yet I constantly check the rear and side mirrors of Jose’s car for approaching motorcycles. Honduras has the world’s highest murder rate, and paid gunmen almost always travel by motorcycle to make a quick getaway through impossible traffic.

The violence is a stark contrast to the friendly feel of a land where many have a Caribbean attitude about life, happy and easygoing. Once you leave the cities, the landscape is amazing — wild, healthy, and savage, from the waterfalls of La Tigra National park, just half an hour from the capital, to the islands of the Caribbean and the world’s second largest coral reef.

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Our babysitter, Wendy, sells Avon products door-to-door to make extra money after her child’s father disappeared on his clandestine journey to the U.S. to find work.

Last month, she was on her way to deposit her Avon earnings in the bank when a robber pointed a knife at her waist and told her to hand over the cash. He took 5,000 lempiras — about $250 — which was everything she had earned, including the money she owed Avon.

Again last week, Wendy encountered thieves, this time as she left my house about 7:30 p.m. Half a block away, she passed a group of basketball players just as three gunmen threw them up against a wall, stealing their money and phones. “They looked like police,” she said of the gunmen.

Two days later, a neighbor in her poor barrio of ramshackle huts and dirt roads was robbed by an armed drug addict. The neighbor escaped, went home for his own gun and returned to kill the drug addict. “Police thanked him for the favor,” Wendy said.

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My best friend here is a man named German who studied art and opened a tattoo parlor with a business partner. They were talented and developed a good clientele, particularly among youths looking to leave the street gangs and get rid of the signature tattoos. German learned how to convert numbers such as 18 into pirate ships, and to turn other gang symbols into random designs. He saw this as a kind of social service, removing a stigma from the skin of a gangster who wanted to return to civilian life, and he asked to borrow a camera of mine to take pictures of their work.

Some days later, German’s partner was walking home when a black car drew near. He tried to run until the front-seat passenger screamed at him to halt. “Get in and put this on,” the man said, handing him a black hood.

They took him to a dark room where they removed the hood and claimed he spied on them. They tortured him for several hours before letting him go, with a broken rib.

My friend closed his shop and moved to a new house. He knows they are looking for him.

German comes from a family of means. Here, violence is democratic.

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Honduran officials receive aid from the U.S. to fight the trafficking of cocaine headed for the U.S. market. The country has 640 kilometers (400 miles) of northern Caribbean coastline, with plenty of tree cover and great uninhabited stretches for moving drugs. It is flanked by the port town of Puerto Lempira in the east and San Pedro Sula in the west.

While Hondurans blame their police for much of the crime, police say they are overwhelmed and outgunned by the drug traffickers and criminals. AP photographer Esteban Felix and I decided to see this for ourselves, and rode with police in San Pedro Sula, the country’s largest and wealthiest city.

In one night, we saw the bodies of two bus drivers who had been killed for refusing to pay a cut to gangs, a police officer executed on a highway with a single shot to the head, and three people shot dead in a pool hall for what was described as “a settling of accounts.”

The hospital emergency room looked like a scene out of a civil war, with mop-wielding orderlies failing to keep up with the blood pooling on the floor.

The owner of the bus company urged his employees to remove the drivers’ bodies and collect the fares from the bloodied bus before police did. Once again, I made the mistake of asking a question, this time of the owner of the bus company. He turned in anger and ordered me not to publish what I had seen, while asking me repeatedly, “Where are you staying?”

Needless to say, I did not stay the night in San Pedro Sula.

I returned to the capital, which, despite the violence, has become my home. My two-year-old daughter can say Tegucigalpa — which is not easy. And every time she sees the flag, she waves and says “Honduras,” as she was taught in her preschool.

Somehow, we already belong to this country. After 10 months living here, I have learned the rules of survival. If Jose pays his weekly extortion fee, chances are he’ll survive.

And since I’m usually sitting in the passenger seat, chances are so will I.

Source: Fox World News

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State Department warns Americans of new Haiti travel hazards

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The State Department has issued a revised Haiti travel advisory, warning Americans planning to travel to the Caribbean island nation about robbery, lawlessness, infectious disease and poor medical facilities.

“U.S. citizens have been victims of violent crime, including murder and kidnapping, predominantly in the Port-au-Prince area. No one is safe from kidnapping, regardless of occupation, nationality, race, gender, or age,” the department said.

The new travel warning was released Friday to replace a less strongly worded advisory issued in June.

In recent months, travelers arriving in Port-au-Prince, the capital and largest city, on flights from the United States have been attacked and robbed after leaving the airport. This year, at least two U.S. citizens were shot and killed in robbery and kidnapping incidents, the State Department said.

“Haitian authorities have limited capacity to deter or investigate such violent acts, or prosecute perpetrators,” the department said.

The State Department also noted that while the incidents of cholera have declined, the disease persists in many areas of Haiti. Medical facilities, including ambulance services, are particularly weak.

“Thousands of U.S. citizens safely visit Haiti each year, but the poor state of Haiti‘s emergency response network should be carefully considered when planning travel. Travelers to Haiti are encouraged to use organizations that have solid infrastructure, evacuation, and medical support options in place,” the department said.

Source: Fox US News

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19 ill in suspected norovirus outbreak on liner

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Nineteen people aboard the cruise ship Queen Mary 2 have been diagnosed with a gastrointestinal illness as the liner is docked in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

Cunard Line spokeswoman Jackie Chase says officials aboard the ship have taken steps to prevent other passengers from catching the suspected norovirus. Sick passengers have been asked to remain in their cabins and will be reimbursed for shore-excursion costs.

Chase said Friday that there are a total of 2,613 passengers aboard the Queen Mary 2.

The liner departed New York on Saturday on a 12-night Caribbean cruise. The ship’s next scheduled stop is St. Maarten.

Cunard Line is part of Miami-based Carnival Corp., the world’s largest cruise operator.

Source: Fox World News

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New York surfer apparently drowns in Puerto Rico

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A tourist from New York has apparently drowned while surfing off a popular beach town in Puerto Rico.

A police statement Sunday has identified the tourist as 23-year-old Dylan Smith, whose body was found floating Sunday morning near his surfboard in waters off Maria’s Beach in the western Puerto Rican community of Rincon. The town’s beaches attract surfers from across the world.

Authorities say a local resident spotted Smith in the water and brought him to shore. A local doctor tried to resuscitate him but the surfer showed no signs of life.

Smith’s hometown in New York was not immediately clear.

The U.S. Caribbean territory’s police are investigating the death.

Source: Fox World News

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Dominican police help bust drug-trafficking gang

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Dominican police joined with forces with other nations in the region to dismantle an international drug-trafficking organization accused of laundering at least $70 million this year, authorities said Thursday.

Twenty-six suspects were initially captured in this Caribbean country earlier this month, the majority of them from Colombia and Venezuela. Nine were released, but a judge this week ruled that the remaining 17 can be detained until trial.

“This is one of the biggest drug-trafficking hits we’ve had in recent years,” General Prosecutor Francisco Dominguez said.

Police in Colombia said in a statement that they, along with authorities in Panama and Venezuela, also worked on the yearlong investigation that led to the arrests.

Authorities said the organization worked for Mexican cartels and stored large amounts of cocaine in the Dominican Republic‘s southern region that its couriers would then transport in suitcases with secret compartments. The organization branded cocaine packets with the image of a swan, officials said.

Dominguez said the organization had operated since 2009. He said authorities had seized more than $1 million, along with a variety of weapons, more than 20 luxury vehicles and properties valued at $10 million.

Fidel Calcano, director of the National Investigations Department, said his agency is still looking to arrest four more suspects who they believe are in the Dominican Republic.

The announcement came as officials in the Dominican Republic said Thursday that they have seized a record 8.3 tons (7.53 metric tons) of cocaine this year. Authorities said the increase was largely because they have stepped up searches for smuggled drugs aboard speedboats and container ships.

A U.S. drone also has been monitoring waters around the Dominican Republic, said Rolando Rosado, director of the country’s National Drug Control Agency.

Source: Fox World News

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Disneyland expands Three Kings Day celebration

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Disneyland is marking Three Kings Day in a big way this season, another milestone in the mainstreaming of a holiday that is beloved in Latin America and other cultures around the world.

The Christian holiday — also known as Twelfth Night or Feast of the Epiphany — takes place Jan. 6, ending the 12 days of Christmas. Many Hispanic communities in the U.S. celebrate Three Kings Day with parades and performances depicting the Biblical story of three kings following a star to find the baby Jesus, bringing gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh.

Disneyland spokeswoman Michele Himmelberg said the theme park in Anaheim, Calif., “launched the Three Kings Day celebration last year as a test. It was a big success, particularly with the Hispanic community, and we’re expanding it this year to a larger area.”

The park will host Three Kings Day on Jan. 4 to 6 at the Big Thunder Ranch Jamboree in Disneyland’s Frontierland. There will be Mexican folklorico dancing, mariachi musicians, photo ops with Disney characters and bilingual hosts offering face painting, crown making and other children’s activities. Food carts will serve sweet corn tamales, chimichangas, Mexican hot chocolate and king cake, which is a round, sweet, doughy cake called rosca de reyes (king’s ring).

“I love the fact that Disney is doing this,” said Evette Rios, a correspondent with ABC’s “The Chew,” who grew up celebrating Three Kings Day with her Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn, N.Y. “It means a lot. This is the changing face of America. We are becoming more open to different holidays and traditions. I don’t have a homogenous view of what America is and I’m glad Disney doesn’t either.”

As a child, Rios said, she’d leave a dish of water under her bed for the three kings’ camels — “actually for the horses because there were no camels in Puerto Rico” — along with grass to represent hay. The next morning, she’d find small toys hidden in her shoes, gifts left by the kings.

Rios still celebrates the holiday by attending a parade in East Harlem in Manhattan organized by El Museo del Barrio, a museum devoted to Latin American and Caribbean culture. The colorful parade, in its 36th year, includes costumed actors, floats, bands and real camels. It’s always held on a weekday — this year Jan. 4 — so schools can participate.

In Miami, three kings of basketball — Heat superstars LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh — are grand marshals of the 43rd annual Three Kings parade in the Cuban-American neighborhood of Little Havana. The parade is scheduled for Jan. 20 along Southwest Eighth Street.

The holiday has a French accent in New Orleans, where Twelfth Night kicks off carnival season, culminating in Mardi Gras. Each Jan. 6, the mayor and leaders of top Mardi Gras krewes — organizations that host carnival parades and balls — meet at historic Gallier Hall to serve king cake, which in New Orleans is called galette des rois and is iced in purple, green and gold, the colors of Mardi Gras.

Both the French and Mexican cakes have a toy baby representing the Christ child baked inside, but Mexican king cakes are usually topped in Christmas colors of red and green, colors also found in the Mexican flag.

Ricardo Cervantes, co-owner of La Monarca bakeries in Southern California, says they sell thousands of king cakes from their stores in East Los Angeles and the largely Hispanic city of Huntington Park. But surprisingly, sales are also strong at a Santa Monica location “in more of an Anglo neighborhood. People who are not Mexican, they are intrigued,” he said. “We also get a lot of people now bringing a cake into the office.” A new La Monarca opening this month in Pasadena will also carry king cake.

Huntington Park hosts a large Three Kings celebration, as does Olvera Street in downtown Los Angeles, a block-long historic attraction showcasing Mexican culture where a candlelight procession takes place each year.

Other Three Kings Day celebrations around the country include a parade in the Humboldt Park neighborhood of Chicago; a bilingual performance of the Biblical story that’s been staged for more than three decades at the GALA Theatre in Washington D.C., and festivities at the Latino Cultural Center in Dallas and The Children’s Museum of Houston. Schools in Hartford, Conn., which has a large Hispanic population, close when the holiday falls on a weekday.

New Mexico’s tribal communities, called pueblos, host ceremonial dances on Three Kings Day in a tradition that dates back centuries to the influence of Catholic missionaries in the Spanish colonial era. Jan. 6 is also when new tribal officials are installed in a ceremony called the blessing of canes or transfer of canes. In Santa Fe, N.M., a play about the three kings has been performed annually for more than 50 years by the Caballeros de Vargas, a Catholic service organization.

In Tarpon Springs, Fla., home to a large Greek-American population, the Feast of the Epiphany is marked with a Jan. 6 event called the Cross Dive, where teenage boys dive into a bayou to retrieve a wooden cross. At Disney World near Orlando, Fla., actors portray the three kings at Epcot Center’s Mexico Pavilion as part of the theme park’s “Holidays Around the World” event through Dec. 30.

Cervantes, the bakery owner, says that traditionally, the person who gets the cake slice with the toy baby must throw a party — “tamales and hot chocolate” for all. La Monarca puts two babies in a medium size cake, three in a large, so the cost of the party isn’t borne by one person.

In New Orleans, the burden is a little lighter: Get the slice with the baby, you buy the next king cake.

Source: Fox US News

News, Politics, Government

Bin Hammam resigns from all football positions

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Mohamed bin Hammam resigned from all soccer-related posts and received a new lifetime ban from FIFA on Monday, perhaps closing one of the most damaging corruption scandals to hit the sport’s world governing body.

Bin Hammam, a FIFA executive committee member from Qatar who challenged incumbent Sepp Blatter for the presidency last year, gave up his long-running dispute with the organization after being found guilty by FIFA of “repeated violations” of its code of ethics while head of the Asian Football Confederation.

FIFA said the 63-year-old bin Hammam sent a resignation letter to both FIFA and the AFC on Saturday.

“Mr. Mohamed bin Hammam … has resigned from all his positions in football with immediate effect and will never be active in organized football again,” a FIFA statement said.

Bin Hammam, who has always denied wrongdoing, had no immediate comment on FIFA‘s announcement.

Controversy has swirled around bin Hammam in recent years — he had also been fighting a separate life ban imposed by FIFA following allegations he offered bribes to voters when running against Blatter.

FIFA said the second life ban is a result of the final report from the chairman of its ethics committee, Michael J. Garcia.

“That report showed repeated violations of Article 19 (Conflict of Interest) of the FIFA Code of Ethics of Mohamed bin Hammam during his terms as AFC President and as member of the FIFA executive committee in the years 2008 to 2011, which justified a life-long ban from all football-related activity,” the statement said.

According to the Malaysia-based AFC, a yearlong audit revealed “infringements” regarding the “execution of certain contracts” and tampering with the organization’s bank accounts while president. As a result, Garcia and the AFC ordered probes into how bin Hammam managed the accounts.

The reputation of bin Hammam, who was elected AFC president in 2002, has been in tatters since a bribery scandal erupted in May 2011 — a week before the FIFA presidential election.

The Qatari withdrew his bid just hours before FIFA provisionally suspended him, allowing Blatter to be re-elected unopposed.

FIFA used evidence from whistleblowers that pointed to bin Hammam handing out $40,000 in cash bribes to officials in each of 24 Caribbean soccer nations during his campaign visit to Trinidad. He was banned for life in July 2011, but that was lifted a years later by the Court of Arbitration for Sport. He denied any wrongdoing, claiming the FIFA investigations were politically motivated to protect Blatter.

Jack Warner, FIFA vice president and a veteran power broker in the north and central American and Caribbean (CONCACAF) region, was also implicated in the scandal that cost bin Hammam his position. Warner walked away from world soccer before FIFA concluded its probe into allegations of wrongdoing.

Source: Fox World News

Movies & TV

Jack White Drops Out of The Lone Ranger

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There’s been a changing of the guard on scoring duties for The Lone Ranger.

Rocker Jack White has reportedly dropped out of the Disney project and will be replaced by Hans Zimmer, the Oscar-winning composer who also scored Lone Ranger producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Zimmer also scored The Dark Knight Rises, Man of Steel, and Gladiator.

White’s departure has been chalked up to scheduling conflicts.

Continue reading…

Source: IGN Movies

News, Politics, Government

Man pleads guilty to smuggling birds from Cuba in pants

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A Miami man faces up to 20 years in prison for allegedly trying to smuggle birds from Cuba into the United States in his pants.

The U.S. Attorney’s office says Alberto Diaz Gonzalez pleaded guilty Thursday to attempting to import undeclared wildlife from the Caribbean island. He is scheduled to be sentenced in February.

Diaz’s federal public defender did not immediately respond to a request for comment Sunday.

Diaz returned to Miami from Havana on Oct. 20. Court documents show he told U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Miami that he was not carrying any wildlife.

But authorities say when officers searched Diaz, they found 16 Cuban bullfinches hidden in his pants. They say Diaz admitted the birds were from Cuba and that he planned to sell them.
Source: Fox US News

News, Politics, Government

McAfee denied asylum; expected in Belize

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Software company founder John McAfee was denied political asylum in Guatemala on Thursday and police in Belize said they expected him to be flown back soon for questioning about the killing of a fellow American expatriate.

Guatemalan authorities said McAfee’s request for asylum had been denied. It did not explain why.

McAfee was in a Guatemalan immigration detention center after his arrest for illegally entering the country ended a bizarre weekslong journey as a self-styled fugitive with an active blog and constant contact with the press.

McAfee told an AP reporter inside his private room in the center that he had suffered chest pain in the night but had refused to travel to a hospital because he had been using Chinese herbal medicine since suffering a heart attack in 1993.

“Last night I had a little bit of pain, but I am fine this morning,” he said. “I don’t like western medicine … if the people around me are kind and compassionate, that’s all that matters in life. The people of Guatemala are very kind people, so I have no complaints.”

Belizean police spokesman Raphael Martinez said officials expected McAfee to be flown back to the capital. Police hope to question him about the fatal shooting of killing of Gregory Viant Faull, who was shot to death in early November on the Belize island where both men lived.

There is no warrant for McAfee’s arrest, so it is possible that his self-initiated flight from Belizean authority could end up with him free to roam the Caribbean island where he lived for years, often clashing with neighbors and authorities over allegations he kept aggressive dogs, weapons and drug paraphernalia on his property.

McAfee was updating his blog Thursday after being given a computer by the warden at the migration center in Guatemala City, a three-story building with mesh-covered windows and barbed-wire on the roof.

He said U.S. Embassy officials had said they couldn’t help him with a request to be returned to the United States instead of Belize. McAfee said he had formally requested asylum in Guatemala because he fears for his safety because he has sensitive information about official corruption and refused to donate to local politicians.

Since refusing to turn himself in to authorities in Belize, the 67-year-old had been in hiding, blogging his movements and calling reporters, until reappearing in Guatemala to claim asylum. He has not said how he crossed the border into Guatemala.

McAfee’s lawyer Telesforo Guerra warned Wednesday night that McAfee’s life would be in danger if he is returned to Belize.

“He will be in danger if he is returned to Belize, where he has denounced authorities,” Guerra said. “From the moment he asked for asylum he has to have the protection of the Guatemalan government.”

Police in Belize deny they are persecuting McAfee and say there is no warrant for his arrest. The country’s prime minister has even questioned McAfee’s mental state.

McAfee went on the run last month after officials tried to question him about the killing of Faull, who was shot to death in early November on the Belize island where both men lived.

McAfee acknowledges that his dogs were bothersome and that Faull had complained about them, but denies killing Faull.

Faull’s home was a couple of houses down from McAfee’s compound.

The Faull family has said through a representative that the murder of their loved one on Ambergris Caye has gotten lost in the media frenzy provoked by McAfee’s manipulation of the media through phone calls, emails and blog posts detailing his life on the lam.

McAfee grabbed global attention with regular phone calls with reporters and blog updates. He claimed to be wearing disguises and watching as police raided his house. It was unclear, however, how much of what McAfee — a confessed practical joker — said and wrote was true.

He had earlier said he didn’t plan to leave Belize but ultimately did because he thought the young woman who has accompanied him since he went into hiding was in danger.

McAfee, the creator of the McAfee antivirus program, has led an eccentric life since he sold his stake in the anti-virus software company that is named after him in the early 1990s and moved to Belize about three years ago to lower his taxes.

He told The New York Times in 2009 that he had lost all but $4 million of his $100 million fortune in the U.S. financial crisis. However, a story on the Gizmodo website quoted him as calling that claim “not very accurate at all.” He has dabbled in yoga, ultra-light aircraft and producing herbal medications.
Source: Fox World News

News, Politics, Government

Venezuela chocolate king thrives despite controls

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Cacao pods ripen to colors from bright yellow to crimson in the forest-shaded plantations of Venezuela, where some of the world’s finest chocolate is born. The crop is transformed into gourmet bars that sell briskly in Venezuela and are exported to the United States, Europe and Japan by the country’s premier chocolate maker, Chocolates El Rey, or The King. As the company has won success and international acclaim, though, it has also had to cope with difficulties brought on by President Hugo Chavez’s socialist government. El Rey‘s growing business illustrates how some entrepreneurs are managing to hold on and even thrive in Venezuela despite more government regulations and state takeovers of companies and farmland. Producers of crops such as coffee and sugar have struggled in the face of price controls and cheap imports. El Rey used to go through just four bureaucratic steps to export its chocolate. Now, owner Jorge Redmond says the list of requirements has grown to more than 50. Some cacao plantations have been taken over by the government, and while those seizures haven’t affected El Rey, the company suffered a major setback a decade ago when its model farm was overrun by squatters. Those who took the land planted corn and cut down towering mahogany and saman trees. El Rey‘s attempts to get the farm back have been fruitless, and Redmond acknowledges feeling worried about the possibility of one day being targeted for expropriation by the government. Still, he remains optimistic about cacao and plans new investments to increase output at the company’s plant, which is already churning out 3,000 tons of chocolate a year. El Rey has a workforce of more than 200 employees, and plans to increase its exports. “We’re going to stay here and fight it out. We’re not giving up. And I think most other companies are going to do the same,” said Redmond, who has been leading El Rey for nearly four decades as its majority owner and president. “You have to keep working. My philosophy is that we’re going to last longer than the government.” Chavez, for his part, has talked about harnessing Venezuela‘s potential in cacao and increasing exports. His government has already established the Venezuelan Cacao Socialist Corporation, which has invested in several processing plants. Redmond said officials from the state company explained in a private meeting with buyers in November that the company plans to buy about 2,000 tons directly from growers in the region of Barlovento, east of Caracas, and then divvy it up in the industry. “We were very clear … that we’re only going to buy what suits us,” Redmond said at his office in Caracas, which is decorated with wooden cacao pods and smells of chocolate. Redmond’s company has found a winning strategy by paying more for quality cacao, providing assistance to small farmers and marketing its chocolate in Venezuela and around the world. Some of the aromatic cacao comes from independent farmers in Barlovento, where the lush coastal forests sprout with moss and bromeliads along with pea-sized cacao blossoms. Lifelong grower Pablo Planchar said he is thankful to El Rey for the higher prices it pays for each burlap sack of cacao. He’s also grateful that the company has provided equipment for pruning trees and special boxes made of apamate wood where he ferments his cacao. The cacao is then spread out and raked on a concrete patio for sun-drying, where a sliding metal roof installed by El Rey helps keep the crop dry when it rains. “It’s the institution that has helped us the most,” Planchar said of the company. On a recent morning, Planchar and six other men squatted among the trees, cracking open the cacao pods with machetes and scooping out clumps of white pulp and seeds with their fingers. “This one’s ready. Look at the color,” Planchar said, cradling a golden yellow pod in his hands. While they worked, he and the other men smoked cigars and passed around a bottle of homemade liquor made from local plants and spices. Planchar said he can earn the equivalent of $465 a month, and he hopes for higher prices and more assistance of the sort El Rey is providing, as well as credit. His typical earnings are less than the minimum wage of $476 for those with regular full-time jobs, and as a result many independent farmers do other work to make ends meet. Venezuela‘s cacao has long been highly prized as an export, harvested by slaves during Spanish colonial times in the 1600s and shipped off to Europe in increasing amounts. Then came oil in the early 20th century, passing coffee and cacao, and taking root as the lifeblood of Venezuela‘s economy. Today Venezuela produces about 17,000 tons of cacao a year, less than one-half of 1 percent of the world’s production, said Cesar Guevara, president of the country’s cacao industry association. Venezuela is one of a select group of countries producing fine aromatic varieties of cacao, along with Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, and some other Caribbean islands. Nonetheless, cacao has long been viewed as an artisanal crop here and hasn’t been promoted for export on a large scale. Connoisseurs differentiate between the rich assortment of varieties of cacao in Venezuela, with names such as Porcelana and Rio Caribe, as they would with fine wines. “Venezuela has always been a fantastic, wonderful chocolate for me,” said Michael Recchiuti, a chocolatier in San Francisco, California, who chooses Venezuelan chocolate for some of his creations and says it has a distinctive flavor with touches of yellow fruit and “blond tobacco” notes. He said he considers it to be among the world’s finest, along with chocolates from Madagascar, Ecuador and other countries. El Rey‘s business has expanded since 1995, when it launched a line of single-bean variety bars. They come in shades from milk chocolate to dark chocolate named after varieties of shade trees found on plantations. Another business that has been flourishing is the family-owned Hacienda San Jose on the eastern Paria Peninsula, which has been producing cacao since 1830. Sales manager Claudia Franceschi, who represents the family’s sixth generation in the business, said domestic sales of their Chocolate San Jose bars have more than doubled recently and a new brand of dark chocolates will be exported starting next year. German-born Kai Rosenberg, however, tells a different story. He said his small plantations were seized by the government without warning when National Guard troops arrived in 2010. “There was no explanation. They just came and put a lock on my door and said we had to go,” said Rosenberg, who hasn’t been able to talk with anyone in the government since about compensation. “They don’t want to pay, and this is the rule rather than the exception,” said Rosenberg, who for nearly three decades worked to recover rare varieties of criollo cacao. He is now challenging the government in court but isn’t optimistic about his chances. Meanwhile, the government‘s plan to buy and sell cacao in Barlovento remains up in the air; private companies such as El Rey and Nestle continue to lead the market nationwide. “We’re not exactly sure how this is going to pan out,” Redmond said. Officials with the state company couldn’t be reached for comment. In a previous state foray into the market in the 1970s, the government sought to establish a monopoly to buy and sell cacao. But Redmond and others say that led to a disastrous drop in production and the effort was scrapped. For now, El Rey is focusing on its own efforts, including producing a “private reserve” chocolate brand with a variety of cacao once grown on the same model farm that was seized by squatters. It also has adapted to expanding regulations, obtaining documents showing compliance with labor obligations and permits to move shipments both within the country and through the ports. In order to ensure quality, it’s providing regular advice to small farmers, a job that falls to agricultural scientist Francisco Betancourt. While chatting with one farmer recently, Betancourt rolled a freshly dried cacao bean between his fingers, then raised it to his nose and declared, “This one’s beautiful.” It smelled nutty and fruity, like the beginnings of a delicious chocolate bar. ___ Ian James on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ianjamesap
Source: Fox World News