Source: Associated Press


PAUL DAVENPORT ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUGUST 31, 2019 04:07 PM, UPDATED 15 MINUTES AGO

The New Mexico Supreme Court is abolishing a legal privilege that bars use of testimony by a defendant's spouse.

The Santa Fe-based court's ruling says the spousal communication privilege "has outlived its useful life" and is based in misogyny.

The ruling Friday bars future use of the privilege in the state court system.

The court took the action in a ruling that upholds David Gutierrez's murder conviction in a 2002 killing in Clovis. He had made incriminating statements to both a wife he later divorced and to his second wife.

The court took the action in a ruling that upholds David Gutierrez's murder conviction in a 2002 killing in Clovis. He had made incriminating statements to both a wife he later divorced and to his second wife.

Read more: https://www.fresnobee.com/news/politics-government/national-politics/article234603037.html

Por Martha Andrés Román FotosPL: Diony Sanabia

Washington, Aug 31 (Prensa Latina) The powerful energy of Cuban music took over the Howard Theater in this capital to the rhythm of Manolito Simonet y su Trabuco, a popular group that is on a tour of the United States.

When the curtains of that historic stage in Washington DC were raised last night and the group opened the show with one of its musical hits, La Habana me Llama, the public moved with the salsa and timba rhythms and enjoyed the concert.

The orchestra, which began the tour on August 23 in Miami, Florida, and will close its performances on Sunday in Stamford, Connecticut, pleased those present with some of its most emblematic songs over the past 25 years.

The Cuban orchestra achieved great complicity with the audience at the Howard Theater, composed of US and Cuban citizens, but especially by Latin Americans from nations such as Peru, Colombia and the Dominican Republic, who were very knowledgeable about the work of the group.

More:
https://www.plenglish.com/index.php?o=rn&id=46442&SEO=popular-orchestra-brings-energy-of-cuban-music-to-us-photos



Same song, on stage, in 2008:





Also, a song by Orishas, totally different kind of music, first the translation:

Orishas - 537 Cuba

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/Orishas-537-Cuba-lyrics.html

08/31/2019 07:00 EDT

Canada’s boreal is the largest intact forest in the world and we need to do more to protect it, researchers say.
By Samantha Beattie



ONFOKUS/GETTY IMAGES
An area of boreal forest in Canada that's been clear cut


Tens of thousands of fires are ripping through the Amazon this month, stunning the world and demonstrating the precarity of earth’s ecosystems. But Canadians need only look as far as our own expansive boreal forest to understand the damage humans can cause, experts say.

The boreal forest covers more than half of Canada, is home to hundreds of Indigenous communities and is vitally important for the environment. It stores more carbon than is in the earth’s atmosphere, supplies massive amounts of clean air, and pours oxygen and nutrients into rivers and oceans to nourish marine life, said Jeff Wells, boreal conservation vice president at the National Audubon Society.

If the Amazon is the lungs of the earth, the boreal is its circulation system.

“On the one hand, the boreal forest biome is one of the most intact ecosystems on the planet … in the order of the size of the Amazon,” said Wells.

“On the flip side, the southern portion of boreal forest is heavily impacted by industrial activities, and that’s where the bulk of degradation happens.”

More:
https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/amazon-wildfires-canada-climate-change_ca_5d698482e4b0cdfe057007ad

BY ERIK LOOMIS / ON AUGUST 31, 2019 / AT 3:48 PM

The 1619 Project is a great thing. The reactions to it by the right were totally over the top, which was elucidating and useful. Helps when you have the right enemies. Anyway, I have no criticism of it all, except to just make a comment, which is that Native history continues to be completely isolated in our discussions of the past, including on the left. I would argue that you simply can’t understand American race without centering the experience of Native Americans, but far too often, our racial history and racial present gets reduced to black and white. That’s a problem. Slavery was not a specifically African phenomenon. Not only were there lots of Native slaves in the United States, but from the perspective of Europeans, it barely mattered whether the slaves were Native or African. The point of colonization from New York to Argentina was to force people of color to labor for free. There were specific historical and demographic reasons why that eventually trended to Africans, but we still don’t get the complete picture without including Native people. Thus, I was very glad to see Andrés Reséndez be included in this broader discussion on what histories of slavery are still being left out of American classrooms.

Between 2.5 million and 5 million Native Americans were enslaved throughout the Western Hemisphere in the centuries between the arrival of Columbus and the late 19th century, when the system declined markedly (but did not disappear entirely). In contrast to the enslavement of Africans, which included a large percentage of adult males, the majority of enslaved Native Americans were women and children.

In Colonial times, the Carolinas were a major Indian slaving ground. New Englanders captured rebellious Indians and shipped them to work on plantations in the Caribbean. And French colonists in eastern Canada took thousands of Indians captive from the interior around the Great Lakes region.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, however, the traffic of Native Americans on the Eastern Seaboard was replaced and overshadowed almost entirely by Africans. Not surprisingly, Americans living east of the Mississippi River lost awareness of earlier forms of Native American bondage. When they spoke or wrote about slavery in the 19th century, they invariably meant African slavery.

More:
http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/08/centering-native-history

Published 31 August 2019

The Democratic Senator rejects President Donald Trump's support to far-right governments around the world.

The United States democrat presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders made statements in favor of Brazil’s former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva release during a political rally held in Florence, South Carolina, on August 30.

At the event stage designated to answer questions from the audience, a young man asked the Democrat senator on his opinion regarding the emergence of far-right governments around the world.

One of them is currently headed by former captain Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, a country where a corrupt judicial investigation has kept the Workers' Party (PT) leader as a political prisoner since April 2018.

“Somebody has written to Brazilian authorities to get Lula out of jail; it is an issue that I feel very strongly about," Sanders said.

More:
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/U.S.-Presidential-Hopeful-Bernie-Sanders-Backs-Lulas-Freedom-20190831-0005.html

Experts produce clusters of enamel-like calcium phosphate to crack age-old problem
Nicola Davis
@NicolaKSDavis
Fri 30 Aug 2019 14.00 EDT Last modified on Fri 30 Aug 2019 14.01 EDT

Scientists say they have finally cracked the problem of repairing tooth enamel.

Though enamel is the hardest tissue in the body, it cannot self-repair. Now scientists have discovered a method by which its complex structure can be reproduced and the enamel essentially “grown” back.

The team behind the research say the materials are cheap and can be prepared on a large scale. “After intensive discussion with dentists, we believe that this new method can be widely used in future,” said Dr Zhaoming Liu, co-author of the research from Zhejiang University in China.

Tooth decay is extremely common: according to 2016 figures about 2.4 billion people worldwide live with caries in permanent teeth, while 486 million children have decay in their milk teeth.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/aug/30/scientists-grow-tooth-enamel

08/31/2019 12:05 pm ET

The Brazilian president says he’s dumping the French brand in favor of one of his country’s own as tensions ratchet up between the two nations.

By Amy Russo

As raging fires rip through the Amazon, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is keeping focus on a diplomatic tit-for-tat with French President Emmanuel Macron, now vowing to stop using Bic pens.

Bolsonaro said Friday he was dumping the French brand in favor of one of his country’s own, Agence France-Presse reported.

“A pen [of the Brazilian brand] Compactor and no more Bic will work,” he said, according to the outlet.

His remarks follow a Facebook live broadcast on Thursday during which he said he would no longer use Bic “because it is French.”

. . .

Bolsonaro ― who has mocked concerns about climate change and appointed a top official who calls it a Marxist hoax ― was clearly irked that Macron would suggest addressing a matter concerning Brazilian territory at meetings where Bolsonaro himself would not be in attendance. In response, he lashed out at the French president, accusing him of harboring a “colonialist mindset in the 21st century.”

More:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-stop-using-bic-pens-emmanuel-macron-feud_n_5d6a8553e4b01108044fe39a

LBN:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142362271

Source: Huffington Post/Agence France Presse

08/31/2019 12:05 pm ET

The Brazilian president says he’s dumping the French brand in favor of one of his country’s own as tensions ratchet up between the two nations.

By Amy Russo

As raging fires rip through the Amazon, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is keeping focus on a diplomatic tit-for-tat with French President Emmanuel Macron, now vowing to stop using Bic pens.

Bolsonaro said Friday he was dumping the French brand in favor of one of his country’s own, Agence France-Presse reported.

“A pen [of the Brazilian brand] Compactor and no more Bic will work,” he said, according to the outlet.

His remarks follow a Facebook live broadcast on Thursday during which he said he would no longer use Bic “because it is French.”

. . .

Bolsonaro ― who has mocked concerns about climate change and appointed a top official who calls it a Marxist hoax ― was clearly irked that Macron would suggest addressing a matter concerning Brazilian territory at meetings where Bolsonaro himself would not be in attendance. In response, he lashed out at the French president, accusing him of harboring a “colonialist mindset in the 21st century.”

Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brazil-jair-bolsonaro-stop-using-bic-pens-emmanuel-macron-feud_n_5d6a8553e4b01108044fe39a

VF Corporation owns Kipling, Timberland and Vans brands and says it advocates sustainable living and no longer has security over Brazil's raw material

Arthur Cagliari

Aug.30.2019 1:48PM

The owner of Kipling, Timberland, Vans, and fifteen other brands confirmed that it would suspend the use of Brazilian leather until there is security regarding the origin of the products.

"VF Corporation and its brands have decided not to continue to supply Brazil's leather and tannery directly to our international business until there is an assurance that the materials used in our products do not contribute to environmental damage in the country."

In the message, the company also argued that its business "aims to empower active and sustainable lifestyle movements."

"Since 2017, we have refined our global leather supply through studies to ensure that leather suppliers meet our responsible sourcing requirements."

More:
https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/internacional/en/business/2019/08/american-apparel-company-suspends-purchase-of-brazilian-leather.shtml

POSTED ON AUGUST 30, 2019 BY EVAN GOUGH


Work on the Mars 2020 Rover is heating up as the July/August 2020 launch date approaches. Mission engineers just attached the Mars Helicopter to the belly of the rover, where it will make the journey to Mars. Both the solar-powered helicopter and the Mars Helicopter Delivery System are now attached to the rover.

NASA’s Mars Helicopter will be the first aircraft to fly on another planet. The small rotor-craft only weighs 1.8 kg (4 lbs.) and is made of lightweight materials like carbon fiber and aluminum. It’s largely a technology demonstration mission, and is important to NASA. The overall mission for the Mars 2020 rover won’t depend on the helicopter, but NASA hopes to learn a lot about how to proceed with aircraft on future missions by putting the Mars helicopter through its paces on Mars.

NASA is no hurry to deploy the helicopter once the rover lands on Mars in February 2021. The helicopter and the delivery system will ride with the rover after it lands at Jezero Crater. Once they find a suitable place for test flights, the helicopter will be deployed.

NASA says that the Mars Helicopter is a high risk technology mission. If it works, and is able to fly as planned, then it will also be a high reward mission. The results will tell NASA a lot about using helicopters, and the generation of helicopters after this one will hopefully add an aerial component to future rover missions. This would open up a lot of scientific and exploration options in the future.

More:
https://www.universetoday.com/143270/mars-2020-rover-gets-its-helicopter-sidekick/