[posted by Arthur Neslen on The Guardian, March 5th, 2018] Officials from 24 Latin American and Caribbean states have signed a legally binding environmental rights pact containing measures to protect land defenders, almost two years to the day since environmental leader Berta Cáceres was killed in her home in Honduras. Last year almost 200 nature protectors were killed across the world, 60% of them in Latin America. The new treaty...

[posted on The Guardian, February 6, 2018] A court in central Vietnam has sentenced an activist to 14 years in jail for livestreaming fishermen marching to file a lawsuit against a Taiwan-owned steel plant’s spill of toxins into the ocean. Hoang Duc Binh, 34, was convicted of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state, organisation and people, and opposing officers on duty, following a trial on Tuesday by...

[posted on FoodWatch, February 7, 2018] The European Union is currently negotiating a series of new free trade agreements that would have a negative impact on consumer rights, environmental standards and democratic principles. These are the findings of a report from the organisations PowerShift and foodwatch. According to the report, the EU trade deals that are being planned with Mexico, Indonesia, Japan and other countries include...

[posted on Digiconomist, January 16, 2018] Bitcoin’s usefulness as a payment system has been deteriorating fast over the past year. Bitcoin transaction fees and price volatility skyrocketed, prompting big companies such as Steam and Microsoft to stop accepting Bitcoin payments. This development has resulted in the community now being increasingly focused on defining Bitcoin as an alternative to physical gold; making it a long-term way...

[posted by Riccardo Arena, Anna Martinelli on La Stampa, February 6, 2018] A tight-knit criminal organization, with only one goal in mind: money, as much as possible, a lot of money and more. Among the many million-worth cases they had their tentacles on, the Eni bribes in Nigeria was by far the hottest one, so hot it had the “judicial gang” arrested. The gang of 15 in fact, is not made of common criminals but actually men of law,...

[posted on ScienceDaily, January 31, 2018] University of Wyoming researchers led a climate study that determined recent temperatures across Europe and North America appear to have few, if any, precedent in the past 11,000 years. The study revealed important natural fluctuations in climate have occurred over past millennia, which would have naturally led to climatic cooling today in the absence of human activity. Bryan Shuman, a UW...