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Nights with Platanito Premieres New Season

by the El Reportero’s news services

With almost five years of existence, Noches con Platanito (Nights with Platanito) is the critically acclaimed “late night” program and the only Spanish-language program of its kind during Prime Time in the American Union that has become an essential part of program circuit of “late night “and practically a mandatory publicity visit for any actor, singer or artist from Hollywood and Latin America who wants to promote his most recent work. “Many actors are super excited to be in Platanito’s chair,” said actor Curtis Lum of the hit series Sirens.

Recorded in the city of Burbank in front of a live audience and entertained by Mexican comedian Sergio Verduzco, also known as Platanito, and his buddy also actor and comedian David Villalpando, Nights with Platanito has been a continuous success and one of the favorites of the public of the EstrellaTV channel, and one of the most popular programs among the coveted demographic group of young Hispanics.

Spielberg’s Oscar-Winning ‘Schindler’s List’ Set For 25th Anniversary

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List, Universal will be re-releasing the movie in a limited engagement on Dec. 7, with picture and sound digitally remastered as overseen by the filmmaker. This includes a release in formats such as 4K, Dolby Cinema and Dolby Atmos.

Schindler’s List was a very personal film for Spielberg and it went on to win seven Oscars including Best Picture and his first as Best Director. It also is one of the top-grossing black-and-white films at the domestic box office with $96M, part of its $321.3M worldwide take.

Schindler’s List tells the story of German industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson), who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust. The movie was released on Dec. 15, 1993, and played limited before breaking 1,000 theaters in the middle of March 1994.

Co-starring Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes, the film also earned Oscars for composer John Williams, screenwriter Steven Zaillian and director of photography Janusz Kaminiski, as well as art directors Allan Starski and Ewa Braun, editor Michael Kahn and producers Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen and Branko Lustig.

Venice Film Festival Ready for 2018 Edition

The Venice International Film Festival continues the countdown for the inauguration of its 75th edition in which Mexican Alfonso Cuaron has a favorite place along with the Cohen brothers.

With Cuaron as the president, the organizers of the event predict a close contest for the precious Lion of Gold award, while the followers of filmmakers like Orson Welles await interesting proposals like ‘On the other side of the wind,’ an unfinished film of the emblematic director and actor whose shooting began in 1972.

The jury will be chaired this year by Mexican director Guillermo Del Toro, winner of the Golden Lion in the previous edition for ‘The Shape of Water,’ with which he accumulated 13 nominations and won prizes in the most important categories.

The list of competitors in the event includes Damien Chazelle’s First Man (‘La La Land,’ 2016), which will open the event with the main role of Ryan Gosling, as protagonist of the mission of American astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first man who walked on the surface of the Moon.

The film ‘No Country for Old Men’ by Joel David and Ethan Jesse Coen is considered among the most anticipated, while the Italian director Luca Guadagnino (‘Call Me By Your Name,’ 2017) presents in this edition the film ‘Suspiria,’ in the horror genre.

5 examples showing America has become a state of undeclared martial law – Part 1

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:

Dear reader, the following piece, published by The Free Thought Project, a website whose mission is to “foster the creation and expansion of liberty-minded solutions to modern day tyrannical oppression. It is a well-described article that details how our nation, the United States of America, has taken the wrong path in its mission to securing the real liberty dream that the Founding Fathers envisioned for this nation and its people, but greed and corruption sequestered that coveted American dream. THIS IS ONE Of A THREE-PART SERIES.

America has been turned into a state of undeclared martial law by an authoritarian federal government and their power hungry enforcers who see citizens as their enemies

by The Free Thought Project

“A government which will turn its tanks upon its people, for any reason, is a government with a taste of blood and a thirst for power and must either be smartly rebuked, or blindly obeyed in deadly fear.”—John Salter

Police in a small Georgia town tasered a 5-foot-2, 87-year-old woman who was using a kitchen knife to cut dandelions for use in a recipe. Police claim they had no choice but to taser the old woman, who does not speak English but was smiling at police to indicate she was friendly, because she failed to comply with orders to put down the knife.

Police in California are being sued for using excessive force against a deaf 76-year-old woman who was allegedly jaywalking and failed to halt when police yelled at her. According to the lawsuit, police searched the woman and her grocery bags. She was then slammed to the ground, had a foot or knee placed behind her neck or back, handcuffed, arrested and cited for jaywalking and resisting arrest.

In Alabama, police first tasered then shot and killed an unarmed man who refused to show his driver’s license after attempting to turn in a stray dog he’d found to the local dog shelter. The man’s girlfriend and their three children, all under the age of 10, witnessed the shooting.

In New York, Customs and Border Protection officers have come under fire for subjecting female travelers (including minors) to random body searches that include strip searches while menstruating, genital probing, and forced pelvic exams, X-rays and intravenous drugs at area hospitals.

At a California gas station, ICE agents surrounded a man who was taking his pregnant wife to the hospital to deliver their baby, demanding that he show identification. Having forgotten his documents at home in the rush to get to the hospital, the husband offered to go get them. Refusing to allow him to do so, ICE agents handcuffed and arrested the man for not having an ID with him, leaving his wife to find her way alone to the hospital. The father of five, including the newborn, has lived and worked in the U.S. for 12 years with his wife.

These are not isolated incidents.

These cases are legion.

This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough.

This isn’t just happening in crime-ridden inner cities.

It’s happening all across the country.

America has been locked down.

This is what it’s like to be a citizen of the American police state.

This is what it’s like to be an enemy combatant in your own country.

This is what it feels like to be a conquered people.

This is what it feels like to be an occupied nation.

This is what it feels like to live in fear of armed men crashing through your door in the middle of the night, or to be accused of doing something you never even knew was a crime, or to be watched all the time, your movements tracked, your motives questioned.

This is what it feels like to have your homeland transformed into a battlefield.

Mind you, in a war zone, there are no police—only soldiers. Thus, there is no more Posse Comitatus prohibiting the government from using the military in a law enforcement capacity. Not when the local police have, for all intents and purposes, already become the military.

In a war zone, the soldiers shoot to kill, as American police have now been trained to do. Whether the perceived “threat” is armed or unarmed no longer matters when police are authorized to shoot first and ask questions later.

In a war zone, even the youngest members of the community learn at an early age to accept and fear the soldier in their midst. Thanks to funding from the government, more schools are hiring armed police officers—some equipped with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles—to “secure” their campuses.

In a war zone, you have no rights. When you are staring down the end of a police rifle, there can be no free speech. When you’re being held at bay by a militarized, weaponized mine-resistant tank, there can be no freedom of assembly. When you’re being surveilled with thermal imaging devices, facial recognition software and full-body scanners and the like, there can be no privacy. When you’re charged with disorderly conduct simply for daring to question or photograph or document the injustices you see, with the blessing of the courts no less, there can be no freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

And when you’re a prisoner in your own town, unable to move freely, kept off the streets, issued a curfew at night, there can be no mistaking the prison walls closing in.
This is happening and will happen anywhere and everywhere else in this country where law enforcement officials are given carte blanche to do what they like, when they like, how they like, with immunity from their superiors, the legislatures, and the courts.

(PART 2 WILL CONTINUE NEXT WEEK).

Beyond an artificial world

Futurists are inclined to predict a world in which AI (artificial intelligence) will take over a major portion of what is now human activity.

In a matter of decades, for example, they say one computer will have more capacity than all the human brains on the planet put together.

Then, the prediction goes, AI will be virtually human, or more than human.

However, just because AI has greater computational skills than any person or group of persons, where is the quality that makes it human?

In order to answer that, you have to perform a little trick. You have to downgrade your assessment of humans. You have to say that humans are really only high-class machines.

Many pundits have no difficulty with this.

Consider their genes-cause-everything hypothesis: Since all existence is assumed to take place on a material level, on a physical level, it’s only a matter of time until we figure out which genes create which human qualities; eventually, we’ll have a complete map.

To change humans, we just fiddle with the genes.

Of course, this style of reasoning can be used to justify external control of Earth’s population. The assumption is: we are already living in a closed system of cause and effect, and that system IS controlling all human behavior. Gene tinkering and handing over immense decision-power to advanced computers is nothing more than re-arranging the closed system. It was closed and it is closed and it will be closed. No problem.

Right now, the system appears to dictate wars and pain and suffering, so won’t it be much better when the gene-reconfiguration and the AI computers-in-charge eliminate that aspect of things?

Believe me, many scientists are thinking along these lines, and they are serious about their goals.

They consider themselves humanitarians.

I bring all this up, because there is really only one way to defeat this kind of thinking.

YOU NEED TO ACKNOWLEDGE THAT A PRIME ASPECT OF EXISTENCE IS NON-MATERIAL.

Non-material means: without a rigid cause-and-effect structure.

To put it another way, the individual human being has freedom, and he also has imagination and creative power. These qualities are not material or physical in nature, they are not generated by the brain or by genes.

In all societies, past and present, those people who agree that these non-physical capacities are quite real explain them by opting for ORGANIZED religion, promoting one church or another.

Only a tiny number of people state that such non-material qualities and abilities are INHERENT in the human being and need no explanation or embroidery.

Believe me, this inability to put all life under the umbrella of science is frustrating to obsessed rationalists. They refuse to allow the possibility that imagination and freedom are outside the boundaries of physical cause-and-effect…and if they have to, they will try to prove their position by imposing one system after another on humans, in order to wipe out the freedom they claim doesn’t exist in the first place.

In every technological society, power is thought of as physical, and the greatest power is produced by machines. To say that human power is ultimately a non-material capacity, and is equal to or greater than what a machine can do…this is considered the height of absurdity.

Yet there are thousands, perhaps millions of artists all over the world who’ve glimpsed, or know deeply, what I’m talking about in this article. They know they’re creating beyond any closed system of cause and effect. Their problem, if they have one, stems from believing they have to be psychological underdogs, in order to invent their art. This is a cultural artifact, this belief, and it can be cast aside by nakedly comprehending the unlimited power of imagination they possess.

Imagination creates reality.

(Jon Rappoport is the author of three explosive collections, The Matrix Revealed, Exit From The Matrix, and Power Outside The Matrix).

Political prisoners explain hunger strike against abuses in prisons in Nicaragua

by the El Reportero’s wire services
Some 120 political detainees left in the National Penitentiary System (SPN) arrived Thursday on their third day with an indefinite hunger strike in protest against the ill-treatment they suffer and for their liberty removed by the political revenge of the repressive regime by Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo in Nicaragua.

The strike was published in a letter sent by the Executive Secretary of the Permanent Commission for Human Rights (CPDH), the Marcos Carmona organization to which the letter was sent.

According to the document, political prisoners refrain from eating solid food since Aug. 28.

“The political prisoners of La Modelo, who live constant threats from this moment, begin an indefinite strike (…) to get our righteous edition”, expressed in the letter.

Political prisoners, whose signatures are included in the letter, reject the ruling against young Brandon Lovo and Glen Slate, accused of the assassination of journalist Ángel Gahona “for a crime they did not commit” and the victim’s family blames the police in the service of the dictatorship.

Human rights commission condemns murder of Brazilian journalist

The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned the murder of the journalist Marlon de Carvalho Araújo and urges the Brazilian authorities to investigate the possible connection of the crime to the journalistic work of the victim.

According to the information available, the journalist Marlon de Carvalho Araújo was shot to death at his residence in the town of Chapada, a rural area of the city of Riachão of Jacuípe, Bahia, on the morning of Aug. 16.

Bill to increase access to Ethnic Studies moves to governor’s desk

Assemblymember José Medina’s (D-Riverside) bill AB 2772, which increases access to ethnic studies education, was concurred upon on the Assembly Floor on Thursday.

AB 2772 was amended in the Senate to create a pilot program that would allow up to 11 school districts add the completion of a course in ethnic studies to high school graduation requirements through an opt-in grant program, starting in the 2021-22 school year. The original version of the bill would have required high schools students to take a semester of ethnic studies in order to graduate.

The ethnic studies curriculum that will be implemented is currently being developed by the Instructional Quality Commission of the State Board of Education. AB 2772, as amended, will also require the California Department of Education to provide resources and technical assistance to districts who are participating in the opt-in pilot program. Districts who participate in the pilot will be required to report to the Legislature by 2024 with best practices and findings from the pilot.

“Ethnic studies courses are shown to better engage and empower students, as well as improve academic performance. All students can benefit from this holistic curriculum that will help will them better understand the rich histories and cultures that make up the United States,” Medina said.

 The bill now heads to the Governor’s desk for signature.

San Francisco Marriott workers to hold mass labor day civil disobedience

Thousands of UNITE HERE Local 2 workers in 55 hotels had their contracts expire just weeks ago on August 15. Although Marriott is the biggest hotel employer in San Francisco and the most profitable hotel company in the world, after multiple negotiation sessions throughout the summer, we remain far apart on the issues that matter most to us. This Labor Day, instead of grilling out and picnicking, Local 2 hotel workers will participate in a direct action to hold the company accountable for jobs that are enough to afford the cost of living, to support our families, and to retire with dignity. 

This action comes just weeks after 1,500 hotel workers picketed Marriott hotels hours after contract expiration.

U.S. is denying passports to Hispanics, questioning citizenship

by the El Reportero’s wire services 

 

 

The Trump administration is accusing hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Latinos along the border of using fraudulent birth certificates since they were babies, and it is undertaking a widespread crackdown on their citizenship.  

 

In a statement, the State Department said that it ‘has not changed policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications,’ adding that ‘the U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.’  

 

But cases identified by the Washington Post and interviews with immigration attorneys suggest a dramatic shift in both passport issuance and immigration enforcement. In some cases, passport applicants with official U.S. birth certificates are being jailed in immigration detention centers and entered into deportation proceedings. 

 

In others, they are stuck in Mexico, their passports suddenly revoked when they tried to reenter the United States. As the Trump administration attempts to reduce both legal and illegal immigration, the government’s treatment of passport applicants in south Texas shows how U.S. citizens are increasingly being swept up by immigration enforcement agencies. 

 

The government alleges that from the 1950s through the 1990s, some midwives and physicians along the Texas-Mexico border provided U.S. birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico. 

 

Under President Trump, the passport denials and revocations appear to be surging, becoming part of a broader interrogation into the citizenship of people who have lived, voted and worked in the United States for their entire lives. 

 

In its statement, the State Department said that applicants ‘who have birth certificates filed by a midwife or other birth attendant suspected of having engaged in fraudulent activities, as well as applicants who have both a U.S. and foreign birth certificate, are asked to provide additional documentation establishing they were born in the United States.’  

 

“Individuals who are unable to demonstrate that they were born in the United States are denied issuance of a passport,” the statement said. The State Department says that even though it may deny someone a passport, that does not necessarily mean that the individual will be deported. But it leaves them in a legal limbo, with one arm of the U.S. government claiming they are not North Americans and the prospect that immigration agents could follow up on their case. 

 

It’s difficult to know where the crackdown fits into the Trump administration’s broader assaults on legal and illegal immigration. Over the last year, it has thrown legal permanent residents out of the military and formed a denaturalization task force that tries to identify people who might have lied on decades-old citizenship applications. 

 

Now, the administration appears to be taking aim at a broad group of North Americans along the stretch of the border where Trump has promised to build his wall, where he directed the deployment of national guardsmen, and where the majority of cases in which children were separated from their parents during the administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy occurred. 

 

The State Department would not say how many passports it has denied to people along the border because of concerns about fraudulent birth certificates. The government has also refused to provide a list of midwives who it considers to be suspicious. 

 

The denials are happening at a time when Trump has been lobbying for stricter federal voter identification rules, which would presumably affect the same people who are now being denied passports, almost all of them Latino, living in a heavily Democratic sliver of Texas. 

 

 

López Obrador meets with Latin American and Caribbean ambassadors 

 

President-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador will hold a meeting today with ambassadors and consuls from Latin America and the Caribbean in Mexico.  

 

The meeting will take place at the transition house, located on Chihuahua Street in Colonia Roma, south of the capital, where access was restricted by fences. 

 

The next foreign minister, Marcelo Ebrard, said a few days ago that the meeting will address bilateral, multilateral and group agendas such as the Southern Common Market and the Pacific Alliance. 

 

He added the next administration will focus on relations with the countries of Central and South America and the Caribbean. 

8 years after Los Zetas’ massacre of 72 migrants, ‘no real investigation’

11 have been charged in Tamaulipas mass murder, but no one sentenced

by Mexico Daily News

Eight years after 72 undocumented migrants were killed in a massacre in Tamaulipas, authorities still haven’t conducted a “real investigation” into the crime, charges the head of an NGO that represents the families of 10 victims.

Ana Lorena Delgadillo, director of the Foundation for Justice and the Democratic Rule of Law (Fundación Justicia), told the newspaper El Universal that despite 11 people being charged in connection with the San Fernando massacre, allegedly committed by the Zetas drug cartel in August 2010, not one person has been sentenced.

“To date, we don’t really know what the truth is. There is no real investigation of the state to find out to what extent there could have been complicity of authorities,” she said.

Documents made public by the federal Attorney General’s office (PGR) in 2014 revealed that local police had collaborated with organized crime in the murders.

At the time, Delgadillo said, the release of the information was an important step toward finding the truth, but lamented that the amount of information released was limited.

Now, she says, while the PGR has allowed Fundación Justicia to see its investigative file, it has repeatedly refused to furnish it with copies which, in turn, could be passed on to the families the NGO represents in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala and Brazil.

“For us it is very regrettable that this information doesn’t get to the families in Central America, they don’t have access to the information,” Delgadillo said.

One of the most recent developments in the case was the arrest of Martiniano de Jesús Jaramillo Silva, the presumed mastermind of the massacre, in Ciudad Victoria last November.

However, the regional leader of the Los Zetas Vieja Escuela criminal cell in Tamaulipas spent only two days behind bars before he died of kidney failure in a Mexico City hospital.

The massacre came to light when authorities found the bodies of the 58 male and 14 female victims on a farm in August 2010 after a survivor, a migrant from Ecuador, reported the incident.

He said they were offered work as gunmen for Los Zetas with a salary of US $1,000 every two weeks but were killed when they didn’t accept.

To mark the eighth anniversary of the massacre, representatives of Fundación Justicia along with human rights activists and priests yesterday participated in a ceremony to place memorial crosses on the ranch where the bodies were found.

Father Pedro Pantoja, an advisor at the Casa del Migrante (Migrant Shelter) in Saltillo, told El Universal that 72 crosses — one for each victim — were erected. He said a meeting with the wives of massacred migrants will be held at a later date in Guatemala.

“It wasn’t just a genocidal massacre . . . it was a cry of terror for all Central American migration,” he said.

“[Our] hearts are full of indignation, sadness and pain. As defenders [of human rights], we have to take on their pain, place ourselves in their flesh.”

In other criminal justice news in Mexico:

10 years on and Mexico’s justice system is not yet world class
Senior security official says better standards required

Ten years after the New Criminal Justice System (NSJP) was first introduced, the system is still not “world class,” a high-ranking government security official has acknowledged.

Álvaro Vizcaíno Zamora, executive secretary of the National Public Security System (SNSP), said yesterday that one of the system’s main shortcomings is that it has created a “revolving door,” with people detained and released time and time again.

“. . . We still need to achieve better standards in order to be able to offer Mexicans the justice they deserve,” he said.

Speaking at the second International Forensic Sciences Symposium in Mexico City, Vizcaíno added that building the system “is not easy” because it requires the political will of all three levels of government as well as money, which, he explained, is usually not enough.

The new accusatory system, which replaced a Napoleonic system based on written arguments with trials in which evidence was presented orally, was approved constitutionally in 2008 but states were given eight years — until June 2016 — to make the transition.

Under the new system judges have more leeway to release suspects pending trial and increased power to dismiss a case if they believe a suspect’s rights have been violated.

Vizcaíno said the solution to the “revolving door” problem is “pre-trial units,” whose role is to conduct a risk analysis for each person accused of a crime.

The analysis could subsequently be used as the basis for a prosecutor’s argument to a judge regarding what precautionary measures should be adopted as the accused awaits trial, he explained.

“. . . If its preventative prison, then let it be imposed,” Vizcaíno said.

He explained that the pre-trial units were not created in the first years of the implementation process and now more work needs to be done to make them more effective.

“. . . Two years ago, only four states had this piece of the justice system [in place] at intermediate to optimal [levels]. Now there are 32 units but they have to mature and continue to advance,” he said.

Vizcaíno also said those charged with implementing the new system — such as police and officials in security and justice institutions — needed more and better training.

Source: Milenio (sp)

Aretha Franklin, queen of soul’s funeral set for Aug. 31

por los  servicios de noticias de El  Reportero 

 

 

El funeral de la cantante estadounidense Aretha Franklin, conocida mundialmente como la reina del soul, será el 31 de agosto en Detroit, confirmó su portavoz y representante, Gwendolyn Quinn.  

 

La vocalista también apodada Lady Soul y reconocida como una de las artistas más influyentes en la música contemporánea, murió el 16 de agosto, a sus 76 años, luego de una dura batalla contra el cáncer. 

 

Según el representante, el funeral tendrá lugar en el Gran Grace Temple, en Detroit, la ciudad en la que creció el artista, pero se limitará a la familia y sus amigos más cercanos. 

 

Sin embargo, el cuerpo de Franklin se exhibirá en el Museo de Historia Afroamericana Charles H. Wright, Detroit, el 28 y 29 de agosto, para todos los fanáticos que quieran despedirse de ella. 

 

Muchos artistas rinden homenaje a estas figuras icónicas de la música mundial que usaron su voz a favor de los derechos raciales en los Estados Unidos y la liberación de las mujeres. 

 

The last performances of the exceptional singer took place in 2017: a concert in Philadelphia, in August, and two months later it was presented in New York for the foundation of the British musician Elton John who fights against AIDS. 

 

Franklin developed an extensive musical career in which she accumulated a score of albums, 18 Grammy awards and 75 million albums sold. 

 

 

Cuban first ballet dancers invited to international gala in Chile 

 

The first dancers of the National Ballet of Cuba (BNC) Grettel Morejon and Dani Hernandez will share a gala in Chile with artists from more than 10 countries, the company, directed by prima ballerina assoluta Alicia Alonso, announced.  

 

The gala will take place at the Oriente Theater, in Santiago, on August 30 and 31, with the participation of 25 artists from 12 countries. 

 

Morejon and Hernandez will stage the pas de deux ‘Aguas Primaverales’ (Spring Waters), by the Russian choreographer Asaf Messerer, with music by Sergei Rachmaninov; and Nutcracker, in Alicia Alonso’s version of Lev Ivanov’s original, with music by Piotr Ilich Tchaikovsky. 

 

In addition to the Cuban pair, Natalia Berríos, Romina Contreras and Emmanuel Vásquez, from the Ballet of Santiago, will also be on stage, as well as Cesar Morales, from the Royal Ballet of Birmingham (United Kingdom), and Andrei Yermakov, from the company of the Mariinsky Theater (Russia). 

 

On behalf of another Russian group, from the Mikhailovsky Theater, the dancers Ekaterina Borchenko, Julian Mackay and Sabina Iapparova will travel to Chile, while Ketevan Papava and Denys Cherevychko will represent the Ballet of the State Opera of Vienna (Austria). 

 

 

SANFIC Film Festival opens in Chile 

 

The 14th edition of the Santiago International Film Festival (SANFIC) spread its red carpet on Sunday night to the Spanish actress Maribel Verdu and several Latin American movie stars.  

 

At the inauguration at the CorpArtes Theater, the Argentinean film ‘El Angel’ (The Angel), directed by Luis Ortega, was the colophon of the gala. 

 

Maribel Verdu, the guest of honor at SANFIC-14, who has been nominated 11 times to the Goya Awards and has won two in the Best Actress category in 2008 and 2013, made statements to reporters. 

 

‘It is wonderful to be in a festival that provides luxury opportunities to knowledge and sharing to the entire Hispanic American cinema. I have very close ties with this region and I wish new projects came, with Chile, for example,’ the Spanish actress said. 

 

SANFIC cubre tres segmentos competitivos: cine internacional, cine y cortometrajes chilenos y talento nacional. También tendrá las aclamadas secciones Visiones del mundo y Maestros del cine. 

 

La Patronal from Perú, free concert

Compiled by the El Reportero’s staff 

 

 

Hailing from the Peruvian capital of Lima, La Patronal is a singular brass band rooted in the tradition of fiestas populares (or town fairs) common in rural villages across Latin America. Direct descendants of rural musicians from Peru, the members of La Patronal combine their first-hand knowledge of folk culture with their formal music studies to celebrate their heritage.  

 

With contagious percussion, vibrant brass and winds, and the vivid visual aspects of fiestas populares, including masks and traditional dance, La Patronal’s lively performances encourage, nay demand, audience participation and dancing.  

 

PRE-CONCERT DANCE WORKSHOP. Starting at noon, an interactive dance workshop explores different dances of Peru: cumbia, marinera, morenada and toril. The workshop invites participants to learn basic movements and learn differences between the genres, and to learn the history the dances are rooted in. 

 

On Aug 30, at 12:30 p.m. – 1:30 p.m., at Esplanade, Yerba Buena Gardens, Mission St. between 3rd & 4th Sts., San Francisco. 

 

 

Workers to March for Patient Care to Kaiser Oakland  

 

U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-San Jose), Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Richmond), and more than 1,000 healthcare workers and their allies will march and protest this Labor Day, , to protest the corporation’s plans that would undermine patients and the people who care for them.  

 

A similar protest will be held Sept. 3 in Los Angeles County, where an additional 1,000 Kaiser Permanente employees and allies will march and protest at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Downey.  

 

Kaiser Permanente, which reported $29 billion in reserves in 2017 and whose CEO is paid more than $10 million a year, is seeking deep cuts that would harm patient care. It has refused to engage in bargaining over the issue, while becoming more strident in its attitude toward workers, deepening the rift between the corporation and its employees.  

 

The March will kick off from Mosswood Park, 3612 Webster St., and continue to the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center, 275 W. MacArthur Blvd. Monday, Sept. 3 

 

 

Legendary Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes back to life 

 

Sergio Mendes, producer, composer, keyboardist and vocalist, Sérgio Mendes is one of the most internationally successful Brazilian artists of all time. His hit single, Mas Que Nada, is the first Portuguese language song to ever hit Billboard’s U.S. Pop chart and Mendes’ signature mix of bossa nova and samba and distinctive pop instrumentation have ultimately come to define Brazilian music. 

 

With a career spanning five decades, his enduring influence on the music industry continues to evolve. A three-time Grammy® Award winner, with three additional Grammy nominations, he has recorded more than 35 albums, with numerous gold and platinum albums among them. In 2012, following year, Mendes received an Oscar® nomination for Best Original Song for “Real in Rio” from the animated film Rio.  

 

On Saturday Sept. 8. Doors open at 7 p.m., show at 7:30 pm  

 

 

The Adrian Areas Latin Jazz Ensemble will be performing live 

 

This is going to be a Fantastic event full of Good Music Good Food and Beverages and Good Vibrations. Music, Family, Community and Latin Jazz At its Best with The Adrian Areas Latin Jazz Ensemble 2018 line up.  

It’s a Potluck Food & Beverages will be Available. 

 

At the Art House Gallery & Cultural Center in Berkeley. On Saturday Sept. 8, 2018. Doors 6 p.m.. Show 7 p.m.-10 p.m. All Ages welcome. $15-$25 Donation fort the arts/musicians. 

Household cleaning chemicals decrease lung function over time

by RJ Jhonson 

 

 

Being clean may do wonders for your health, but how you do it may leave you worse off. As has been suspected by researchers for a long time, the use of cleaning products can harm your lungs and you may not even know it. 

 

A study from the University of Bergen in Norway looked into the effects of cleaning products on women who used them regularly. The researchers suspected that while cleaning chemicals may not cause immediate and significant damage, they do affect the lungs gradually over time. 

 

They looked at data from 6,235 participants of the European Community Respiratory Health Survey. At the time of the study, the participants had an average age of 34. They were tracked by the researchers over a period of 20 years. 

 

To measure the effects of cleaning chemicals on lung function, the researchers obtained the participants’ forced expiratory air volume for one second (FEV1), the amount of air a person can forcibly exhale within one second. They also took forced vitality (FVC) measurements, which determine the total amount of air a person can exhale forcibly. 

 

They found that women who worked as cleaners experienced a 3.9 mL faster decline of FEV1 per year, while those who cleaned regularly at home using chemical cleaners had a 3.6 mL faster decline. These figures were compared to women who did not work as cleaners or did not use cleaning products on a regular basis. 

 

Furthermore, cleaners’ FVC figures declined by 7.1 mL on average every year. Women who cleaned regularly at home had a 4.3 mL/year faster decline. (Related: Many cleaning products, especially those billed as “antibacterial,” contain toxic chemicals that cause physical damage.) 

 

Previous studies have looked into the short-term effects of toxic chemicals in cleaning solutions on asthma, but the aforementioned research was the first to examine their long-term impact on the lungs. The researchers believe that the fumes from the cleaning products result in irritation which, with time and constant exposure, worsens significantly and weakens the lungs. The damage has been likened to that of cigarettes. 

 

Interestingly, the effect was observed only in women. Men who cleaned regularly showed no significant difference in terms of either FEV1 or FVC compared to men who did not use cleaning products. 

 

The study was published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. 

 

Cleaning your home naturally 

 

Thankfully, there are ways to keep your home clean without having to use toxic chemicals that will harm your health and that of your loved ones’. Here are some natural cleaning products you can use every day: 

 

– Water – It’s not called the “universal solvent” for nothing. Learning to use the various aspects of water, such as its pressure and temperature, to your advantage can be a life-saver. For example, warm water works great for hardened grease near your stove, while hot water can be used to deglaze hardened and burnt residues in your pots and pans. 

– Salt – There are several ways to use salt for cleaning. By itself, it can scrub tough stains off from hard surfaces. If you have bottles with very narrow openings, just pour water and some salt inside, shake vigorously, and rinse. You’d be glad to know that salt also has antimicrobial and bleaching properties, making it an excellent, all-around natural cleaning ingredient. 

 

– Baking soda – Sodium bicarbonate, as it’s called scientifically, is effective at removing tough stains because of its mild abrasive properties. It also works great as a deodorizer, making it ideal for cleaning out your oven or fridge. 

 

– Vinegar – Its acidity makes it one of the best all-around natural cleaning agents. Not only does vinegar eliminate tough stains, it also acts as a mild antiseptic. Use it to remove water stains on glass or to increase the gleam of faucets, knobs, and shower heads at home.  

 

– Essential oils – They are a great way to imbue your home with nature’s fragrance. Essential oils like tea tree oil also have potent antibacterial properties so adding them improve the effectiveness of your natural, homemade cleaning solution. (Natural News). 

The many health benefits of eating organic strawberries

by Michelle Simmons 

 

 

Strawberries are more than just their delectable taste. This fruit, particularly its organic versions, offer many health benefits. Here are some of them: 

 

Strawberries are an excellent source of antioxidants: Strawberries are rich in antioxidants because of their flavonoid content. Because of their antioxidant capacity, they ward off free radical damage to low-density lipoprotein (LDL) or “bad” cholesterol. Based on the results of a controlled study of sixty people with abdominal obesity, strawberry raised antioxidant capacity and glutathione levels in comparison to the control. 

 

Strawberries are good for the heart: Research on the heart health benefits of strawberry has been starting to gain attention. Some studies have now demonstrated that the fruits are good for the heart because they improve cholesterol and triglycerides even in overweight people and those with metabolic syndrome. Strawberries do this by not only lowering LDL cholesterol levels but also reducing the free radical damage that makes the LDL cholesterol dangerous. In addition, a double-blind study on 25 teenage men who were overweight or obese found that consuming freeze-dried strawberry powder significantly increased the participants’ reactive hyperemia index, a measure of blood vessel responsiveness. The increase suggested that eating strawberries improves blood flow. Another study, which looked at 93,600 women, revealed that eating blueberries and strawberries cut the risk of heart attack by 34 percent due to their high anthocyanin flavonoid content. (Related: Strawberries again vindicated in the fight against heart disease, diabetes, and cognitive decline.) 

 

Strawberries help improve osteoarthritis symptoms: Eating strawberries can help improve osteoarthritis, in a way, by reducing inflammation in obese people. In a double-blind study, obese people with osteoarthritis of the knee either consumed a placebo or 50 grams of freeze-dried strawberry powder every day for 12 weeks. Results showed that markers of inflammation were substantially cut in the strawberry group in comparison to the placebo group. Moreover, the strawberry group experienced significant reductions in pain and cartilage degradation. 

 

Strawberries preserve cognitive function: A study of 16,010 women aged 70 and above revealed that eating more strawberries is linked to significantly slowing down cognitive decline by up to 2.5 years. This effect is believed to caused by the flavonoids in strawberries. 

 

Strawberries regulate blood sugar levels: In a single-blind study of 14 overweight adults, it was revealed that consuming a strawberry drink two hours before eating a meal dramatically decreases blood sugar increases after eating. This suggested that strawberry also enhance insulin sensitivity. 

 

Only buy organic strawberries 

 

Eating strawberries is healthy, but are you buying the right ones? When purchasing strawberries, make sure they were organically grown. This is because researchers from the Environmental Working Group found that strawberries contain the most pesticides of any fruit or vegetables. 

 

In the study, researchers looked at 48 types of popular non-organically grown fruit and vegetables and based the analysis on over 36,000 samples gathered by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). 

 

Even though all the samples were washed and peeled (if needed) before the examination, results still revealed that about 70 percent of the samples were contaminated with pesticide residues, with 178 various chemicals being determined. 

 

The foods that had the most number of pesticides, which were labeled as the “Dirty Dozen” were strawberries, spinach, nectarines, apples, peaches, celery, grapes, pears, cherries, tomatoes, bell peppers, and potatoes. On the other hand, the “Clean 15,” or those that contain no more than four types of pesticides include avocados, sweet corn,

pineapples, cabbages, onions, frozen peas, papayas, asparagus, mangoes, eggplants, honeydew melons, kiwis, cantaloupes, cauliflowers, and grapefruits. (Natural News). 

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