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May 17, 2012 -- (San Diego’s East County) – ECM World Watch helps you be an informed citizen about important issues globally and nationally. As part of our commitment to reflecting all voices and views, we include links to a wide variety of news sources representing a broad spectrum of political, religious, and social views. Top world and U.S. headlines include:
WORLD
- Forty-nine headless corpses found in Mexico (Reuters)
- Merkel’s conservative party routed in Germany (Reuters)
- France’s “Monsieur Normal” takes office…unmarried (NBC)
- Surfer recognized for riding biggest wave ever (Los Angeles Times-video)
- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has explosive family secret (Business Insider)
- One in six cancers worldwide are caused by infections (BBC)
U.S.
- Gouged by the wind: Renewable fuel mandates are raising electricity costs (Wall Street Journal)
- Court rejects Iraq-Afghanistan veterans demand for better VA care
- Navy to demonstrate great green fleet (10 News)
- Bush convicted of war crimes in absentia (Foreign Policy Journal)
- The unbelievable brutality released on kids in for-profit prison (Alternet)
- Humane Society calls for reform of federal wildlife agency (Sacramento Bee)
- The killing agency: wildlife services’ brutal methods leaves a trail of animal deaths (Sacramento Bee)
- Game over for the climate (New York Times)
Scroll down for excerpts and links to full stories.
WORLD
Forty-nine headless corpses found in Mexico (Reuters)
May 13, 2012 -- Suspected drug gang killers dumped 49 headless bodies on a highway near Mexico's northern city of Monterrey in one of the country's worst atrocities in recent years.
The mutilated corpses of 43 men and 6 women, whose hands and feet had also been cut off, were found in a pile on a highway in the municipality of Cadereyta Jimenez in the early hours of Sunday, officials from the state of Nuevo Leon said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/us-mexico-slayings-idUSBRE84C08420120513
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/us-mexico-slayings-idUSBRE84C08420120513
Merkel’s conservative party routed in Germany (Reuters)
May 13, 2012 -- Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives suffered a crushing defeat on Sunday in an election in Germany's most populous state, a result which could embolden the left opposition to step up its criticism of her European austerity policies.
The election in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), a western German state with a bigger population than the Netherlands and an economy the size of Turkey, was held 18 months before a national election in which Merkel is expected to fight for a third term.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/us-germany-election-nrw-result-idUSBRE84C09G20120513
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/13/us-germany-election-nrw-result-idUSBRE84C09G20120513
France’s “Monsieur Normal” takes office…unmarried (NBC)
May 15, 2012 -- Just as we were getting used to President Nicolas Sarkozy’s Napoleonic style, rather large ears and twitchy manner, and his knock-out French-Italian wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy’s catwalk charm, breathless voice and bling, it’s out with the old and in with the new.
On Tuesday, Francois Hollande, so bland a politician that he turned “Monsieur Normal” into a cool campaign moniker, was inaugurated as the ninth president since the larger-than-life Charles de Gaulle created the Fifth Republic in 1958. But He is the very first to assume France’s most powerful job… unmarried.
Surfer recognized for riding biggest wave ever (Los Angeles Times-video)
May 11, 2012 -- Guinness World Records recognized pro surfer Garrett McNamara of Hawaii for surfing the biggest wave ever, a 78-footer he caught off Portugal's coast in November.
http://www.latimes.com/videogallery/69886361/News/Surfer-recognized-for-riding-biggest-wave-ever#pl-66238212
http://www.latimes.com/videogallery/69886361/News/Surfer-recognized-for-riding-biggest-wave-ever#pl-66238212
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has explosive family secret (Business Insider)
May 13, 2012 -- If you're at all interested in the strange and twisted path of North Korea's leadership, this story from ABC News Australia is a bit fascinating.
ABC reports documents recently unearthed in Tokyo appear to prove Kim Jong-Un, the North's newest descendant in its one family dynasty, is not legally eligible to rule at all and that his lineage qualifies him more for a gulag than the presidential palace.
One in six cancers worldwide are caused by infections (BBC)
May 8, 2012 -- One in six cancers - two million a year globally - are caused by largely treatable or preventable infections, new estimates suggest.
The Lancet Oncology review, which looked at incidence rates for 27 cancers in 184 countries, found four main infections are responsible.
These four - human papillomaviruses, Helicobacter pylori and hepatitis B and C viruses - account for 1.9m cases of cervical, gut and liver cancers.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17989371
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17989371
U.S.
Gouged by the wind: Renewable fuel mandates are raising electricity costs (Wall Street Journal)
May 4, 2012 -- Politicians keep promising to reduce energy prices, but they keep ignoring one easy step: repeal renewal energy standards. Twenty-nine states have these rules requiring local utilities to purchase between 20% and 33% of their electric power from renewable sources. They were enacted over the past decade when lawmakers bought into the fad about cheap "clean energy." Their real effect has been to force utilities to pay above-market prices for electricity, which means higher electric bills for consumers.
No state has learned that lesson the hard way more than Minnesota. In 2007 the legislature mandated that utilities ramp up their renewables ...
Court rejects Iraq-Afghanistan veterans demand for better VA care
May 9, 2012 -- The plaintiffs in the case of Veterans for Common Sense v. Eric K. Shinsekithought they had a sure winner on their hands. Filed by veterans’ rights groups in 2007 against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the lawsuit, which demanded that the department fix its mental-health-care system, seemed to have public sentiment, the law, and the truth on its side.
But on Monday a federal appeals court in California voted 10–1 to dismiss the case, ruling that only Congress or the president has the authority to direct changes on how veterans are treated.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/09/court-rejects-iraq-afghanistan-veterans-demand-for-better-va-care.html
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/09/court-rejects-iraq-afghanistan-veterans-demand-for-better-va-care.html
Navy to demonstrate great green fleet (10 News)
May 10, 2012 -- The U.S. Navy for the first time will demonstrate what it calls a Great Green Fleet, a carrier strike group operating in large part on nonfossil fuels, during a larger, 22-nation exercise this summer.
The Navy's two-day demonstration, which will happen during the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise around Hawaii from June 29 to August 3, is part of its plan to send such a strike group on a regular, months-long deployment in 2016, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said on Wednesday.
http://www.10news.com/news/31039477/detail.html
http://www.10news.com/news/31039477/detail.html
Bush convicted of war crimes in absentia (Foreign Policy Journal)
May 12, 2012 -- In what is the first ever conviction of its kind anywhere in the world, the former US President and seven key members of his administration were yesterday (Fri) found guilty of war crimes.
Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and their legal advisers Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, William Haynes, Jay Bybee and John Yoo were tried in absentia in Malaysia.
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/05/12/bush-convicted-of-war-crimes-in-absentia/
http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/05/12/bush-convicted-of-war-crimes-in-absentia/
The unbelievable brutality released on kids in for-profit prison (Alternet)
May 8, 2012 -- Michael McIntosh couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He had come to visit his son at the Walnut Grove Youth Correctional Facility near Jackson, Miss., only to be turned away. His son wasn’t there.
“I said, ‘Well, where is he?’ They said, ‘We don’t know.’”
Thus began a search for his son Mike that lasted more than six weeks. Desperate for answers, he repeatedly called the prison and the Mississippi Department of Corrections. “I was running out of options. Nobody would give me an answer, from the warden all the way to the commissioner.”
Humane Society calls for reform of federal wildlife agency (Sacramento Bee)
May 12, 2012 -- The nation's largest animal protection organization, the Humane Society of the United States, is calling for reform of the federal government's wildlife damage control program.
Citing recent stories in The Bee, the society's president, Wayne Pacelle, has asked U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to investigate Wildlife Services, the agency in charge of the killing, and ban its use of poison for predator control.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/12/4484718/humane-society-calls-for-reform.html
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/12/4484718/humane-society-calls-for-reform.html
The killing agency: wildlife services’ brutal methods leaves a trail of animal deaths (Sacramento Bee)
May 12, 2012 -- The day began with a drive across the desert, checking the snares he had placed in the sagebrush to catch coyotes.
Gary Strader, an employee of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, stepped out of his truck near a ravine in Nevada and found something he hadn't intended to kill.
There, strangled in a neck snare, was one of the most majestic birds in America, a federally protected golden eagle.
http://www.sacbee.com/wildlife/
http://www.sacbee.com/wildlife/
Game over for the climate (New York Times)
May 9, 2012 -- Global warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said that Canada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”
If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/game-over-for-the-climate.html?_r=3&emc=eta1
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