by the El Reportero’s staff
Members of several groups of community organization have reasons to celebrate after the San Francisco Board of Supervisors released a $100,000 relief fund on behalf of the people of the Nicaraguan Atlantic Coast impacted by Hurricane Felix.
“First of all we want to express our gratitude to the Board of Supervisors of the City and County of San Francisco, Mayor Gavin Newsom, the Northern California Nicaraguan Hurricane Relief Coalition and Somos Costa Atlántica for all their work and support to assure that $100,000 of funding was earmarked to bring relief to communities impacted by Hurricane Felix in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region (RAAN) of Nicaragua,” said in a written statement, Ana C. Pérez, from the Central American Resources Center (CARECEN).
CARECEN, which played an administrative role of the funds, released two important projects that were selected for the funding.
Among them are, the Fundacion Alistar Anic, which was awarded $40k for material aid and $5k to administer the project. Alistar will build water holding tanks and a purifying system to serve two communities in the Waspam municipality: Krasa and Santa Rosa.
The second project is IPADE (Instituto para el Desarrollo y la Democracia), which was awarded $40,000 to purchase material aid and $5,000 to administer the project. IPADE will purchase Zinc roofi ng (metal roofi ng sheets) and will be distributing roofi ng materials in the communities of Kamala, Signi, and Signilaya.
Ralph Nader won presidential nomination on Peace and Freedom Party 2008
Saturday Peace and Freedom Party convention in Sacramento chose former 3Green Party Ralph Nader as their nominee for President for the 2008 election.
Nader garnered just over 50 percent on the first floor ballot, and his victory guarantees
his name will appear on the ballot for President in California. He was the 1996 and 2000 presidential nominee for the Greens.
He ran an independent race in 2004, as he is this year.
His running mate is Matt Gonzalez, a former Green Party president of the Board of Supervisors in San Francisco.
Cynthia McKinney, the former 12-time Democratic Party member of Congress and this year’s Green Party nominee for President, finished behind Nader.
In the Peace and Freedom Party’s presidential preference primary in California earlier this year – which was not binding – the results were Nader (41 percent), McKinney (21 percent), La Riva (20 percent) and Moore (11 percent).
Feds can seize travelers’ electronics, more
As of July 16, US federal agents have the power to seize travelers’ laptops and other electronic devices at the border and hold them for however long they want, says a Friday report. The seizures do not require a suspicion of wrongdoing, and are aimed to counter terrorism, with the new policies passed by two Department of Homeland Security agencies. The contents of the confiscated laptops and electronics can then be shared with not only other agencies, but private entities in order to decrypt the data they contain.
DHS officials maintain the new policies allow federal agents to take any hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers and video or audio tapes, as well as books and any written materials from any person entering the USA, US citizens included. While the measures were being practiced before they were made public in mid-July, pressure from civil rights and business travel groups made the government admit the existence new policies.
To protect sensitive business information and privileged material, such as between lawyers and clients, the policies require agents to destroy any copies of the data they acquire once a review is complete and there is no more probable cause to leave the information on file.
