Colombia's former FARC rebel chief 'Timochenko' to run for president

For most Colombians, former rebel chief Rodrigo Londoño – better known by his wartime alias “Timochenko” – is more commonly associated with kidnappings and bomb attacks than voter polling and stumping on the campaign trail.

So an announcement that the leader of the demobilised Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, Farc, plans to run for president in next year’s elections, has prompted widespread outrage in the Andean nation.

His first test will be convincing a suspicious electorate that he has left his violent past behind. Within minutes of the announcement, “Timochenko” was trending on Colombian Twitter – with most users expressing anger.

“Each vote that Timochenko receives is an insult to the victims,” one user tweeted.

But Londoño’s move into politics forms a crucial part of a peace deal sealed last November, ending 52 years of war that left 220,000 dead and more than seven million displaced.

At: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/01/colombias-former-farc-rebel-chief-timochenko-to-run-for-president

Bullets to ballots: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and former FARC leader Rodrigo Londoño.

Monsanto, BASF weed killers strain U.S. states with damage complaints

Source: Reuters

U.S. farmers have overwhelmed state governments with thousands of complaints about crop damage linked to new versions of weed killers, threatening future sales by manufacturers Monsanto and BASF SE.

Monsanto is banking on weed killers using a chemical known as dicamba - and seeds engineered to resist it - to dominate soybean production in the United States, the world’s second-largest exporter.

The United States has faced a weed-killer crisis this year caused by the new formulations of dicamba-based herbicides, which farmers and weed experts say have harmed crops because they evaporate and drift away from where they are applied.

Monsanto and BASF say the herbicides are safe when properly applied. They need to convince regulators after the flood of complaints to state agriculture departments.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-pesticides-complaints/monsanto-basf-weed-killers-strain-u-s-states-with-damage-complaints-idUSKBN1D14N0

New York attack: five Argentines confirmed among the dead

Argentina's Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported this afternoon that among the victims of today's attack in New York there were five Argentine citizens.

The group had traveled to the United States as part of a group of ten people celebrating their graduation anniversary. They had attended the Polytechnic College of Rosario, Argentina third-largest city.

The victims had reportedly rented bicycles and were riding through Lower Manhattan, when they were hit by a truck on West Ave and Debrosses Street. In addition to the five fatalities, another member of the group from Argentina was seriously wounded; the other four members of the group are out of danger.

"The Government of the Argentine Republic is deeply shocked by the death of the compatriots and works to help the relatives and friends of the victims," ​​the Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

In turn, Foreign Ministry noted that "the federal authorities of the United States reported that they are conducting a criminal investigation into the terrorist act, having applied the summary secrecy rule and therefore have not yet disclosed the identity of the deceased."

A total of eight people were killed and 12 wounded after a 29-year-old man from Uzbekistan hit them with a rented van in a pedestrian and bicycle path in southwest Manhattan, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.lanacion.com.ar%2F2078086-atentados-en-nueva-york-cancilleria-confirmo-que-hay-argentinos-entre-las-victimas-fatales&edit-text=

Trick or Treat!

(bitter or sweet)

500 years since 95 Theses, Martin Luther's legacy divides some of his descendants

Five centuries ago, Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation. The anniversary prompted a recent meeting of his descendants to discuss the legacy Luther left when he nailed his theses on a church door.

Many Protestants around the world are celebrating the start of the Reformation five centuries ago. As the story has it, on the eve of All Saints' Day, October 31, 1517, a renegade monk named Martin Luther hammered 95 theses that challenge Catholic doctrine onto a church door in Germany. And he launched a movement that forever changed Christianity.

But as NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports, not everyone is comfortable with the German theologian's legacy, including some of his descendants.

Luther led a backlash against increasing corruption in the Catholic Church, especially the sale of indulgences that were supposed to help the buyer get to heaven. He also helped unify the German language.

But there's a lot about Luther that makes the descendants uneasy, including his rants against Jews who failed to convert. Luther's words were used over the centuries to justify German anti-Semitism, including during the Nazi era.

"I would say Luther, in our time, would not survive," Christian Priesmeier, a descendant of his, said. "So he would be not a political person who would change anything."

He is optimistic, however, that Luther's church and the Catholic Church will finally reconcile.

At: http://www.npr.org/2017/10/21/559215320/500-years-since-95-theses-martin-luther-s-legacy-divides-some-of-his-descendants

Intolerant, uncompromising and stubborn, Luther nevertheless changed history 500 years ago today.

JFK Files: J. Edgar Hoover said public must believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone

Source: NBC News

"There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead."

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dictated that line in a memo he issued on Nov. 24, 1963, the day Jack Ruby killed Lee Harvey Oswald as the gunman was being transported to the Dallas County Jail after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Hoover appeared to be particularly concerned that the public would have to be compelled to believe that Oswald was a lone actor — not part of a larger conspiracy.

In the 1964 Warren Report on Kennedy's assassination, Hoover was firm in stating that he hadn't seen "any scintilla of evidence" suggesting a conspiracy — a sentiment he expressed in other public forums, as well, but not in words as blunt as those he used the day Oswald was killed. Hoover dictated: "The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin."

Hoover argued against appointing an independent commission to review the evidence, contending that the matter should be left to the Justice Department, the FBI's parent agency. Lyndon Johnson, the new president, announced the creation of the Warren Commission a few days later.

Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/jfk-assassination-files/jfk-files-j-edgar-hoover-said-public-must-believe-lee-n814881?cid=sm_npd_ms_fb_ai

"We'll speak again, Mr. Hoovah," Kennedy famously once told his renegade FBI director. They never did.

Argentina's Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo locate 125th missing grandchild

The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, the Buenos Aires-based human rights group founded by parents of dissidents who disappeared in Argentina in the 1970s and whose infants were abducted, announced the discovery of the 125th missing grandchild.

"We have the immense joy of announcing the restitution of the daughter of Lucía Rosalinda Victoria Tartaglia," the president of the Grandmothers, Estela Barnes de Carlotto, said.

Lucía Tartaglia, a law student at the University of La Plata, was kidnapped on November 27, 1977, at the age of 24. She developed a relationship with a fellow political prisoner, Horacio Cid de La Paz, and became pregnant a few months later.

Tartaglia gave birth in a military hospital in January 1979, and was murdered shortly afterward.

Her child's identity, who has not yet been revealed, was established through Argentina's National Genetic Data Bank for Relatives of Disappeared Children, created in 1987 on an initiative from the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

This discovery marks the 125th such grandchild to have their true identity restored since the Grandmothers were founded at the height of the Dirty War in 1977.

An estimated 500 children were either kidnapped or seized at birth from women in detention by the country's last dictatorship. The vast majority were given or sold to adoptive parents, most of whom were regime officials or wealthy supporters.

Former Deputy Police Commissioner Samuel Miara and fourteen other officers were convicted in 2011 for their roles in this and other disappearances. According to declassified dictatorship records, at least 22,000 dissidents were held in 300 detention camps and killed between 1975 and 1979.

At: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.pagina12.com.ar%2F71895-hoy-encontramos-otra-nieta&edit-text=

Lucía Tartaglia, 1953-1979.

FCC Enables Faster Media Consolidation as Pro-Trump Sinclair Group Seizes Even More Local Stations

Source: Democracy Now

A major decision by the Federal Communications Commission Tuesday eliminated a decades-old rule that ensures community residents can have a say in their local broadcast TV station.

The regulation is known as the “main studio rule,” and it requires broadcasters to have a physical studio near where they have a license to transmit.

This comes as the FCC also announced plans, at a hearing Wednesday with FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, to abolish long-standing media-ownership rules, including limits on how many stations or newspapers one company can own in a single market.

Opponents say these changes will accelerate media consolidation, allowing massive corporate media companies, such as the right-wing Sinclair Broadcast Group, to buy up and control even more local stations. Earlier this year, Trump’s FCC appointees revived a regulatory loophole that could allow Sinclair to buy 42 TV stations from Tribune Media Company, on top of the more than 170 stations it already owns.

The deal means Sinclair stations would reach about 72 % of U.S. households.

Read more: https://www.democracynow.org/2017/10/26/fcc_eliminates_rules_preventing_media_consolidation

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Found: Handwritten notes with Einstein's thoughts on a good life

Source: atlasobscura.com

In 1922, Albert Einstein sat in a hotel room in Tokyo and wrote down two thoughts: “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” and “a quiet and modest life brings more joy than a pursuit of success bound with constant unrest.”

He gave those two notes in lieu of a tip to a courier who had brought him a message, as the Japan Times reports.

It may have been that he didn’t have any change; it may have been that the courier had refused money. But Einstein had the idea that these small slips of paper might be worth much more than a handful of change one day.

When he had arrived in Tokyo, the scientist had been met by crowds of fans. He had been traveling around the world, giving a series of lectures, in America, in British Palestine, and in southeast Asia. He was in Asia when he received a telegram informing him he had won a Nobel Prize.

Read more: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/albert-einsteins-japan-notes-meaning-of-life

Einstein and friends enjoy sake in Tokyo in 1922.