Domestic violence against men: no laughing matter

March 3, 2020

New research indicates high-rates of domestic abuse against men

Today is international men’s day. This is an opportunity to shed light on issues faced by men that typically lie in the shadows of society. One of these issues is Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) against men.

The popular image of IPV is based on the familiar gender stereotype of a male villain and a female victim. But that stereotype paints an incomplete picture, with new research indicating a high number of male victims of domestic abuse.

Research on Domestic Violence

A recent UK government survey indicated that 9 percent of males had experienced some form of partner abuse, which amounts to around 1.4 million men. This includes stalking, physical violence and sexual assault. Indeed, a seminal US study found that male IPV victims are often slapped, kicked, punched, grabbed or choked by their partners.

Interestingly, a growing body of international research indicates that men and women experience IPV in similar proportions. For example, a recent survey from Canada’s national statistical agency concluded that “equal proportions of men and women reported being victims of spousal violence during the preceding 5 years (4 percent respectively).”

The aforementioned surveys indicate that small proportions of men (less than 20 percent of victims) will tell the police or a health professional about their victimization. This may be due to well-grounded fears that they will be scorned, ridiculed, or disbelieved by these authorities.

Indeed, a recent research paper by Dr. Elizabeth Bates from the University of Cumbria found that the overarching experience of male IPV victims was that “no one would ever believe me.” One victim noted “I told friends, they laughed while another stated … the police, they laughed.”

Incredulously, laughter is a common response to male victims of IPV. This is illustrated in the short “social experiment” video here, examining public reactions to a male being abused by a female on a street. This video has over 8 million views on YouTube and is a powerful educational tool.

The Mankind Initiative

The above video was created by the Mankind Initiative, a leading British charity supporting male victims of domestic abuse. Led by the indefatigable Mark Brooks OBE, the Mankind Initiative held its national conference on male victims of domestic abuse last week, which I attended.

This event attracted around 100 people. Attendees heard a range of engaging presentations from researchers, service-providers and IPV victims. The presentations overlapped with the research literature, with IPV victim Tim noting how the police and others tended to dismiss his story.

Likewise, Dr. Nicola Graham-Kevan from the University of Central Lancashire reported her latest research indicating that male IPV victims are often pathologized, and sometimes regarded with suspicion by the very agencies that should be helping them.

Nevertheless, there was a palpable air of optimism pervading the event. The conference was attended by a variety of senior figures including police officers, health care providers, lawyers, community workers, military representatives, and local government employees. This indicates a growing awareness of the seriousness of the issue among key stakeholders.

Moreover, the conference heard how the mainstream media is starting to take this issue seriously. For example, the BBC produced a poignant documentary earlier this year entitled “abused by my girlfriend.” A short-version has received over 5 million views on YouTube.

This documentary reports the painful story of 22-year-old Alex Skeel, who was repeatedly knifed, scolded, and hammered by his then-girlfriend. The police supported Alex throughout his ordeal, and his ex-girlfriend recently received a 7-year prison sentence.

All this may reflect a turning of the tide, at least with regards to growing public awareness and increased media interest in IPV against men.

The Way Ahead

The momentum must be maintained to further prevent and address IPV against men. Three discrete actions could assist in this regard.

First, official service provision for male victims of IPV remains scant. Indeed, a recent government report noted that there were 627 shelters for abused women in Canada, but only 6 percent of these admitted men, with zero shelters solely for men. In the UK, it has been reported that only around 1 percent of refuge beds are reserved for men. This demands more provision for male victims, without detracting from current provision for female victims.

Second, there is a pressing need for education and training in these issues for key stakeholders including the police, health-care providers, and the judiciary. Such efforts should enlighten stakeholders about the realities of IPV against men, while challenging gendered stereotypes built on the false dichotomy of a male villain and a female victim.

Third, there is an acknowledged need for interventions aimed at women who abuse men. Indeed, the British charity Respect notes that “Most domestic violence perpetrator programmes have been designed for men in heterosexual relationships.” More research and action should focus on developing, validating and disseminating prevention programs aimed at female domestic abusers.

Domestic violence against men is no laughing matter. It is a deadly serious issue in need of concerted action. Let’s hope the tide begins to turn.

“Trump faces an impossible trade-off”: why a global recession is now inevitable

March 3, 2020

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

Dear readers:

The coronavirus news without doubt has taken the central stage worldwide. It putting governments on their knees begging for a prompt solution to stop the spread of the disease or most world economies could collapse – and their governments.

And we don’t know if every most of the information we’ve been getting from the mainstream media, independent news sources, and social media gossips are telling us the truth – or if they really know what the real truth is. But one thing is for sure, as Tyler Durden says it in his article below, this is a serious stuff since the economic instability of our nation is at play. – Marvin Ramírez.

by Tyler Durden

Fri, 02/28/2020 – With California reporting late on Friday that a second coronavirus case of “unknown origin” has been uncovered, prompting Santa Claria’s Health Department to caution that “now is the time to prepare for the possibility of widespread community transmission” echoing similar warnings from the CDC, the Trump administration’s response to what now appears an inevitable surge in US-based coronavirus cases is becoming an increasingly politicized topic, and not without justification: after all, it is hardly a secret that Trump’s favorite “job approval” barometer has been the stock market – which hit an all time high as recently as last week – and it is also hardly a secret that Trump hardly wishes to inspire a stock market panic by disclosing the full extent and severity of any potential domestic epidemic (which ironically, aligns Trump ideologically with China, which is now willing to sacrifice its population in the pursuit of restarting the Chinese economy).

Yet the more Trump, or various domestic institutions, appears evasive over the full extent of the corona crisis inside the US, the more markets get hit. Worse, the longer Trump avoids addressing the potential domestic epidemic, the more likely it is that the market crash that saw stocks plunge this week at the fastest rate since the financial crisis, will persist.

This brings us to an absolutely spot-on observation made by Bank of America’s rates strategist Ralf Preusser, who explains why for Trump, and US stocks, it may only get worse, before it gets even worse. That reason is that markets now seem to be taking the view that authorities – i.e., Trump – face an impossible trade-off:

– On one hand, they can adopt the Draconian quarantine measures seen in China and trigger a global recession as worldwide economic activity grinds to a halt

– Or, they can risk a pandemic by failing to take more aggressive action on Covid-19, also resulting in a global recession

China initially tried the first only to watch its economy grind to a halt, and then flipped in pursuit of the second option (while covering up the full extent of the ongoing coronavirus crisis within its borders) in hopes of rebooting the economy (the results of this diabolical approach are dismal at best as the following charts show), at least until the wave of new infections overruns the system and forces Beijing to once again “come clean”, while blaming it on a definition “glitch.”

Similar to China, the Trump administration realizes the “Catch-22” nature of the dilemma it is facing and is hoping to delay making a decision for as long as possible, knowing well that either choice could trip the US into a recession and with the November elections looming, a recessionary outcome could devastate Trump’s odds for reelection.

Of course, there will come a moment when even Trump will have to pick an approach, and if it is the first, the US economy would grind to a halt on short notice, similar to China, while the second will not only spark risks of an even greater epidemic over in the long run but trigger an aggressive popular response against Trump (one spearheaded by the resistance media), and which will paint the US President as the American version of Xi Jinping – one willing to sacrifice US citizens just to keep stock prices elevated.

While we wait to see which option in this Faustian bargain Trump picks, BofA writes that while it is hopeful that we are ” faced with a situation where the epidemic remains under control with clusters of outbreaks that are contained” even there it “cannot rule out recession risks given possible supply chain disruptions and the extent to which the global recovery is dependent on the consumer.”

Moreover, Preusser adds, “we need to acknowledge that even after recent corrections in risk assets (equities, credit, EM, periphery), allocations to risk remain meaningful and markets are short of hedges.” From that perspective, Bank of America warns that the “30-50% recession risks implied by the market do not seem extravagant to us.”

So is a recession looming, and when will we know? According to Preusser, “the question is to what extent next week’s data will incorporate this week’s deterioration in Covid-19.” One place that should give a sense of the supply disruptions is China PMIs, although this data has been notoriously massaged in the past. Separately, the US ISM print may show the sentiment effect of the China element of the outbreak, but would fail to reflect this week’s realization that the virus may be spreading meaningfully beyond Asia. Likewise the labor market report will be backward looking at this stage. Finally, German January factory orders and the details of the European PMI prints will not tell us much about the risks to the European recovery from the outbreak in Italy.

In short, the lack of any clear confirmation that the global economy is stalling may give Trump just the ammo to keep his head stuck in the sand, pretending there is no trouble and that only Powell is to blame for the market’s woes. The irony, of course, is that the longer Trump delays picking an approach, leading to what Bank of America calls a state of “Schrodinger’s Recession”…

… the more likely it is that a very real recession will be the inevitable outcome, and this week the stock market, whose discounting abilities have been crushed by the Fed’s central planning in the past decade but still function if just barely, finally realized that.

Ernesto Cardenal, Nicaraguan priest, poet and revolutionary, dies at 95

March 2, 2020

Father Cardenal defied the Roman Catholic Church in the 1980s by serving as a minister in the revolutionary government of Nicaragua

by Elias E. López

The Rev. Ernesto Cardenal, one of Latin America’s most admired poets and priests, who defied the Roman Catholic Church in the 1980s by serving in the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua, died on Sunday in Managua, Nicaragua. He was 95.

His personal assistant, Luz Marina Acosta, confirmed his death to The Associated Press.

Born to a wealthy Nicaraguan family, Father Cardenal became a prominent intellectual voice of the Nicaraguan revolution and an ardent proponent of liberation theology, a Christian movement rooted in Marxist principles and committed to social justice and uplifting the poor. He was appointed Nicaragua’s first minister of culture after the Sandinistas overthrew the dictator Gen. Anastasio Somoza Debayle in 1979.

As the Vatican’s opposition to liberation theology intensified in the 1980s under Pope John Paul II, Father Cardenal became a focal point. Before a scheduled visit to Nicaragua in 1983, the pope publicly demanded that Father Cardenal and four other priests who had actively supported the revolution resign their government positions. The Sandinista government refused the demand to replace them, but said its invitation to the pope still stood.

After months of public arguing, the pope accepted the invitation and landed in Managua, Nicaragua’s capital. As he walked along a receiving line on the tarmac shaking hands, the pope seemed taken aback to see Father Cardenal among the dignitaries.

While other priests were in clerical garb, Father Cardenal had shown up wearing a collarless white shirt, slacks and his signature black beret over his thick white hair. When he knelt to kiss the pope’s ring, the pope withheld his hand and wagged his finger at him as he spoke to him, apparently sternly. According to a Vatican official, the pope told Father Cardenal, “You must straighten out your position with the church,” The Associated Press reported.

Videotape of the scolding, though not audible, was broadcast around the world.

“Christ led me to Marx,” Father Cardenal said in an interview in 1984. “I don’t think the pope understands Marxism. For me, the four gospels are all equally communist. I’m a Marxist who believes in God, follows Christ, and is a revolutionary for the sake of his kingdom.”

His priestly authority was revoked by Nicaragua’s bishops that same year. (Three other priests were also disciplined.) Father Cardenal’s suspension was lifted in February 2019, when Pope Francis granted him absolution from “all canonical censorships,” the Vatican News reported.

Father Cardenal began writing poetry as a young man, tracing the tormented history of Nicaragua and Latin America as epics in blank verse.

Much of his poetry, though, was intimate: love poems that recalled the longings of his youth, finely wrought images of city lights at dusk or his famous “Prayer for Marilyn Monroe,” in which he describes how Monroe was found on her deathbed in 1962, “like someone wounded by gangsters/stretching out his hand to a disconnected telephone.”

Fascinated by evolution and its lessons for politics, Father Cardenal began to incorporate science into his poetry in the 1980s. He developed the theme until the end of his life, marveling at the origins of the universe and the mysteries of DNA — sources of awe that in his vision brought people closer to God.

“In this monumental vision, everything merges and condenses,” the Nicaraguan writer Sergio Ramírez wrote in the introduction to Father Cardenal’s anthology “Ninety at Ninety,” which was published in Spanish in 2014. “Not only do the poet’s intimate personal experience and the scientific exploration of the heavens enter into the mystical, so do the memories of his own past.”

The most recent complete collection of Father Cardenal’s poetry published in English was “Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems,” (2009, edited and translated in part by Jonathan Cohen).

Closing the volume was the poem “Stardust,” Father Cardenal’s meditation on death. It concludes:

And the galaxy was taking the shape of a flower

the way it looks now on a starry night.

Our flesh and our bones come from other stars

and perhaps even from other galaxies,

we are universal,

and after death we will help to form other stars

Editors’ Picks and other galaxies.

We come from the stars, and to them we shall return.

Father Cardenal reading from his book of poems in 1980. Credit…Lachmann/Ullstein Bild, via Getty Images

Ernesto Cardenal Martínez was born on Jan. 20, 1925, to an upper-class family in Granada, a city on Lake Nicaragua. He studied literature in Managua and at Columbia University in New York City, where he read Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Ezra Pound.

He returned to Nicaragua in the 1950s, but after a failed coup against the Somoza family, he fled and joined the Trappist monastery Gethsemani, in Kentucky, where he befriended the American monk and writer Thomas Merton. He was ordained a priest after his subsequent return to Nicaragua.

Father Cardenal was an early supporter of the Sandinista National Liberation Front, which was founded in the early 1960s, named after Augusto César Sandino, the revolutionary who had led a guerrilla campaign against the American occupation of Nicaragua in the 1920s and ’30s and was assassinated in 1934.

Father Cardenal furthered the cause after settling on an island in the Solentiname archipelago, in vast Lake Nicaragua near the southern border, in the 1960s. He built a chapel, founded an artists colony, and taught literature and painting to local residents.

His poetry began to gain recognition. He became known for what he called his “Epigrams” — lyrical bursts about love and longing mixed with political and social commentary against the Somoza regime. In one, he wrote:

I’ve handed out clandestine pamphlets,

yelling: VIVA LA LIBERTAD! In the middle of the street

defying armed guards.

I participated in the April rebellion:

but I grow pale when I pass by your house

and one look from you makes me tremble.

His sermons, too, were political, full of denunciations of the Somoza regime. Some of his young parishioners became “guerrilleros,” and the island became a central military training ground for the Sandinista movement. After the Sandinistas came to power in 1979, after a bloody period of rioting, guerrilla resistance and a mass kidnapping operation in the capital, Father Cardenal was named minister of culture by the junta leader, Daniel Ortega.

As a government minister, Father Cardenal sought what he called the “democratization of culture.” He created poetry workshops around the country, tapping into Nicaragua’s rich poetic tradition, embodied in part by Ruben Dario, who spearheaded a Latin American modernist literary movement in the late 19th century.

But Father Cardenal’s critics said the ministry was imposing ideological uniformity by pressuring new writers to produce propaganda, particularly during the Sandinistas’ long guerrilla war against an American-backed counterrevolutionary force, known as the contras.

No immediate family members survive. His brother, the Rev. Fernando Cardenal, died in 2016.

Father Cardenal remained culture minister until 1987, when the ministry was dissolved and merged with another government agency. In the 1990s he distanced himself from the Sandinista government and in recent years criticized what he called the increasingly authoritarian style of Mr. Ortega, who became president in 2007. For Father Cardenal, the Sandinista revolution had failed.

But he remained committed to his Marxist ideals.

“I am a revolutionary,” Father Cardenal said in an interview with The New York Times published in January 2015. “Revolutionary means that I want to change the world.”

He added: “The Bible is full of revolutions. The prophets are people with a message of revolution. Jesus of Nazareth takes the revolutionary message of the prophets. And we also will continue trying to change the world and make revolution. Those revolutions failed, but others will come.”

Reported by The New York Times.

(Elisabeth Malkin contributed reporting).

Improve sleep quality by increasing your intake of these 8 vitamins and minerals

March 2, 2020

by Darnel Fernández

Many Americans get less than the recommended amount of sleep. In fact, according to the National Sleep Foundation‘s inaugural Sleep Health Index, about 35 percent of Americans have poor sleep quality. Meanwhile, 20 percent of Americans say that they do not wake up feeling refreshed on any day of the week. Not getting enough sleep has been linked to a variety of chronic diseases, such as heart disease, obesity and Type 2 diabetes.

But new research suggests that poor-quality sleep may be linked to nutrient deficiency. In a study presented at Nutrition 2019, the annual meeting of the American Society for Nutrition, researchers found that people who get less than seven hours of sleep each night also consume less calcium, magnesium, zinc and niacin. In addition, these people were deficient in vitamins A, B1 and D.

“This work adds to the body of growing evidence associating specific nutrient intake with sleep outcomes,” said Chioma Ikonte, one of the authors of the study. “Our findings suggest that individuals with short sleep duration might benefit from improving their intake of these nutrients through diet and supplementation.”

The link between sleep and nutrition

The term “micronutrients” refers to vitamins and minerals that the human body requires but cannot naturally produce. People, therefore, need to obtain these nutrients from external sources, such as the food that they eat or dietary supplements. (Related: Sleep deprivation may cause weight gain.)

According to studies, micronutrients play important roles in human growth and development, as well as in disease prevention. However, the World Health Organization reports that a staggering two billion people worldwide suffer from a micronutrient deficiency. To find out how micronutrients affect sleep, a team of nutritionists looked at correlations between vitamin and mineral intake and sleep quality.

The researchers analyzed data from the U.S. National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), a research program conducted between 2005 and 2015 to assess the health and nutritional status of Americans. Compared to those who got seven hours of sleep — the amount recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for adults — the researchers found that adults who slept fewer hours tended to consume lower amounts of micronutrients.

They also observed that in women, more micronutrients were associated with poor sleep than in men. However, the use of dietary supplements significantly reduced this number, suggesting that people with poor diets can meet their daily nutritional requirements by taking dietary supplements.

While their findings have significant implications, the researchers noted that more research is needed to clarify things.

“Whether chronic short sleep causes nutrient insufficiency or the nutrient insufficiency causes short sleep still needs to be determined,” Ikonte said. “A clinical study that investigates [the impact of] supplementation with these nutrients on sleep outcomes is needed to demonstrate cause and effect.”

Tips for getting good-quality sleep

When it comes to good health, getting a good night’s sleep is just as important as healthy eating and regular exercise. Besides consuming the right amounts of essential nutrients, there are other things you can do to optimize your sleep quality.

Increase exposure to bright lights during the day. The human body has an internal clock called the circadian rhythm that helps you stay awake and tells your body when it’s time for bed. Exposing yourself to natural sunlight during the day, but not at night, can help keep your circadian rhythm in check, improving daytime energy as well as nighttime sleep quality and duration.
Avoid caffeine consumption late in the day. While coffee can give you a quick boost in focus, energy and even physical performance, consuming caffeine late in the day can stimulate your nervous system and make it difficult for you to relax at night. According to a study published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, caffeine intake six hours before bedtime has disruptive effects on sleep.

Be consistent with your sleep and waking times. Research has found that having irregular sleeping patterns can alter your biological clock and mess with your melatonin levels. As melatonin regulates your sleep-wake cycle, changes in its concentrations can affect your circadian rhythm and result in poor sleep. Sleep plays an important role in your overall health. Improve the quality of your sleep by incorporating more micronutrients into your diet. (Natural News).

Sources include:

NutraIngredients-USA.com

Over 240,000 people displaced in Honduras

March 2, 2020

by El Reportero‘s wire services

More than 247,000 Hondurans, mainly women and children, are today suffering the consequences of forced displacement, a study says.

The main causes of this phenomenon are threats of a family member murder, extortion and gender violence, the newspaper El País reported.Yolanda Zapata, head of the Land Office, said women and children have been displaced by force, seeking some protection mechanisms within the municipalities.

She also stated these people suffer the most as they are forced to leave their homes and children of school age who end dropping out of school.

¨Work must be done to guarantee the rights of the population, protection and care, since there must be lasting solutions for these people,¨ Zapata stated.

¨We reviewed some figures and 38 percent of the population had an impact on the education sector, seven percent of children had to drop out school and 41 percent were affected by health.

AMLO rejects congressional bid to bring back capital punishment

He was responding to a proposal to reinstate the death penalty for perpetrators of femicide

President López Obrador announced his opposition to a proposal to reinstate the death penalty at his morning press conference on Wednesday.

“I don’t believe in the death penalty and I also don’t think it’s an option, an alternative,” he told reporters.

His declaration came in response to a proposal on Tuesday by federal deputies from the Green Party and his own Morena party to put up for discussion the amendment of four articles of the constitution, as well as the country’s withdrawal from two international treaties by which is it bound not to reinstate the punishment.

They proposed the death penalty for those found guilty of femicide and homicide of people under 18 years of age, saying that the measure would be temporary “until Mexico returns to times of peace and tranquility.”

Green Party national director Carlos Puente and the party’s parliamentary leader in the Chamber of Deputies, Arturo Escobar, also suggested that the Supreme Court be the entity to decide on the matter.

Last week, National Action Party (PAN) Senator Víctor Fuentes Solís proposed a debate on the issue after the widely publicized femicides of Ingrid Escamilla and 7-year-old Fátima in Mexico City.

Morena party Senate leader Ricardo Monreal spoke against it, calling the death penalty a “barbarity.”

“We cannot, for the circumstances and crises which we’ve experienced in this country in recent years, establish this type of barbarous penalty,” he said.

The death penalty was abolished in Mexico in 1929 and the country signed the American Convention on Human Rights, also known as the “Pact of San José,” in 1969.

Article 4 of the treaty, which deals with the right to life, stipulates that “the death penalty shall not be reestablished in states that have abolished it.”

Source: El Financiero (sp)

López Obrador backs arrival of cruise ship rejected in other countries

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador approved today the arrival in Mexico of a cruise ship that was denied entry to other countries because it carried on board a person suspected of having the coronavirus COVID-19.

In his morning press conference at the National Palace, the president, in response to a question on the subject, said that there is no tourist on board with a COVID-19 coronavirus and for humanism, passengers will not be prevented from getting off the ship.

Tourists on the Meraviglia cruise ship, which is stranded off the coast of Quintana Roo, will be able to disembark on Mexican soil, announced Lopez Obrador.

‘The information we have is that there are no sick people,’ the president reiterated, and recalled that this cruise ship was denied arrival at two ports, but in Mexico instructions were given to carry out an inspection so that they could be in the country, complying with health regulations.

We cannot reject those who transit through the country, he added, and there is already a review protocol on the cruise

Mexico regrets US court ruling over youth shot by border patrol

March 2, 2020

US Supreme Court justices argued that the boy’s family cannot sue the agent who killed him

by Mexico News Daily

The federal government has expressed regret about a ruling by the United States Supreme Court that prevents the family of a teenage boy who was killed in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, in 2010 from suing the U.S. border patrol agent who shot him.

In a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), the government said that it was deeply concerned about the effects that the February 25 ruling will have on similar cases in which Mexicans died on their side of the border after being shot by border patrol agents from the U.S. side.

“With this precedent, such cases could now face limitations in demanding justice and compensation in courts of that country,” the SRE statement said.

Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca, 15, was shot in June 2010 by Jesús Mesa, a border patrol agent who was on duty in El Paso, Texas. Mesa was on a bicycle patrol when he was alerted to the presence of people smugglers, the BBC reported.

Hernández and a group of his friends were in the dried-up concrete bed of the Rio Grande at the time.

According to the youth’s family, Hernández and his friends were daring each other to run across the unmarked international border in the middle of the culvert built to contain the river, and touch a fence on the U.S. side.

Mesa detained one of the boys for illegally crossing the border but Hernández and another youth returned to the Mexican side and hid behind a pillar. The 15-year-old was shot twice as he peeked out from behind the pillar.

U.S. authorities ruled that the border agent had acted in self-defense even though they found no evidence that Hernández had thrown stones at him as he claimed.

Mexican authorities charged Mesa with murder but the United States refused to extradite him. Hernández’s parents subsequently attempted to sue the border agent in the United States for violating the U.S. Constitution by using excessive force.

Lower courts dismissed their claim before the case reached the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. The justices divided five to four along conservative-liberal lines to uphold the lower courts’ decision.

The conservative justices argued that “a cross-border shooting is by definition an international incident” and therefore should be solved diplomatically rather than legally. Allowing the boy’s parents to pursue compensation in the United States would have implications on foreign relations and national security, they said.

Writing for the majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said that Hernández’s parents couldn’t sue Mesa without congressional approval.

Ruth Bader Ginsberg, one of the dissenting judges, said that the border agent’s “allegedly unwarranted deployment of deadly force occurred on United States soil” and that it did not make sense to dismiss the parents’ claim because the bullet ended up on the Mexican side of the border.

A lawyer for the family said that the ruling would “promote a Wild West attitude” on the U.S.-Mexico border.

“To be left with no remedy … given such a violent and unprovoked shooting, weakens the constitutional foundation of America’s house,” Robert Hilliard said.

In the SRE statement, the government said that it would continue to provide assistance to all Mexicans affected by cross-border incidents. It also noted that Mexico and the United States formed a border violence prevention group in 2014 that has met on six occasions and made progress on issues such as accountability and transparency.

Source: Milenio (sp), BBC (en)