American Buddhist Net

By MICHAEL ASTOR

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — Hundreds of baby penguins swept from the icy shores of Antarctica and Patagonia are washing up dead on Rio de Janeiro's tropical beaches, rescuers and penguin experts said Friday.

More than 400 penguins, most of them young, have been found dead on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro state over the past two months, according to Eduardo Pimenta, superintendent for the state coastal protection and environment agency in the resort city of Cabo Frio.

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Tribal guardian admits the Amazon Indians' existence was already known, but he hoped the publicity would lift the threat of logging

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
Sunday June 22, 2008

They are the amazing pictures that were beamed around the globe: a handful of warriors from an 'undiscovered tribe' in the rainforest on the Brazilian-Peruvian border brandishing bows and arrows at the aircraft that photographed them.

Or so the story was told and sold. But it has now emerged that, far from being unknown, the tribe's existence has been noted since 1910 and the mission to photograph them was undertaken in order to prove that 'uncontacted' tribes still existed in an area endangered by the menace of the logging industry.

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At 15,000 feet (4,572m), Mount Toromocho, 86 miles (138km) from Lima, is higher than any mountain in Europe.

Tuesday, 17 June 2008
By John Simpson

It gets its name from its shape - The Bull With No Horns. And it is composed almost entirely of copper ore: two billion tonnes of it.

It could become the most productive copper mine anywhere on earth. Now it belongs, in effect, to China.

When open-cast mining begins, in three or four years, a Chinese mining company, Chinalco, will send the copper back home to be turned into electrical wire.

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June 7, 2008
By SIMON ROMERO

“SOMEWHERE in La Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago.”

Simple enough, right? But not for Demetrio Túpac Yupanqui.

Instead, he regales visitors to his home here in this gritty port city on Lima’s edge with his Quechua version of the opening words of “Don Quixote”: “Huh k’iti, la Mancha llahta suyupin, mana yuyarina markapin, yaqa kay watakuna kama, huh axllasqa wiraqucha.”

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June 3, 2008
By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez has used his decree powers to carry out a major overhaul of this country’s intelligence agencies, provoking a fierce backlash here from human rights groups and legal scholars who say the measures will force citizens to inform on one another to avoid prison terms.

Under the new intelligence law, which took effect last week, Venezuela’s two main intelligence services, the DISIP secret police and the DIM military intelligence agency, will be replaced with new agencies, the General Intelligence Office and General Counterintelligence Office, under the control of Mr. Chávez.

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Friday May 30 2008

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - One of Brazil's last uncontacted Indian tribes has been spotted in the far western Amazon jungle near the Peruvian border, the National Indian Foundation said Thursday.

The Indians were sighted in an Ethno-Environmental Protected Area along the Envira River in flights over remote Acre state, said the Brazilian government foundation, known as Funai.

Funai said it photographed ``strong and healthy'' warriors, six huts and a large planted area. But it was not known to which tribe they belonged, the group said.

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May 29, 2008
by Rama Lingam

At his age when people hate living and suffer from senility, 96 year old Randall Butising has not only mastered the intricacies of the internet but also began his own blog which describes him as one of the world’s oldest bloggers and shows him as a man of varied interests and a multifarious personality.

The grandson of indentured workers who were taken to Guyana to work on sugar plantations, Butisingh has watched the world transform many times in the past nine decades and has adjusted himself to the changes.

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Buenos dias, ABN! Robyn
_________________

By Alice Gastine

The Violeta Parra Foundation, the Chilean Cultural Heritage Corporation and Moneda Cultural Center have jointly launched a three-stage exhibition cycle that pays homage to iconic Chilean musician, artist and writer Violeta Parra.

The exhibition’s first stage, “Celebration: party, life and music,” attracted almost 50,000 visitors. The second stage, “Chile: history and social environment,” was launched on April 26 and runs until September. The third stage is entitled “Spirituality: mysticism, religion and death” and will start in September.

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Monday May 19 2008
By TOBY MUSE

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) - A day after surrendering to the army, Colombia's best-known female rebel commander urged other guerrillas Monday to follow her example and abandon their decades-long struggle.

Nelly Avila Moreno, better known as ``Karina,'' denied her bloody reputation during a news conference and said her surrender owed much to intense military operations. She said she feared for her life after the recent murder of a fellow rebel commander by one of his bodyguards.

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By Daniel Howden, Deputy Foreign Editor
Thursday, 15 May 2008

Brazil has been accused of turning its back on its duty to protect the Amazon after the resignation of its award-winning Environment Minister fuelled fresh fears over the fate of the forest. The departure of Marina Silva, who admitted she was losing the battle to get green voices heard amidst the rush for economic development, has been greeted with dismay by conservationists.

"She was the environment's guardian angel," said Frank Guggenheim, executive director for Greenpeace in Brazil. "Now Brazil's environment is orphaned."

In a letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Ms Silva said that her efforts to protect the rainforest acknowledged as the "lungs of the planet" were being thwarted by powerful business lobbies. "Your Excellency was a witness to the growing resistance found by our team in important sectors of the government and society," she wrote.

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By Richard Spencer
Last Updated: 2:31AM BST 10/05/2008

Chinese farming companies may be backed by the government to buy and lease tracts of land in Africa and Latin America to grow crops to feed its 1.3 billion people.

A proposal before the state council, or cabinet, proposes extending a business strategy known as the "go-out policy" to farmland.

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By Antonio de la Jara

PUERTO MONTT, Chile, May 9 (Reuters) - A towering plume of ash from an erupting volcano in Chile's remote Patagonia could collapse back down to devastate the surrounding area, a leading expert warned on Friday.

Luis Lara, a geologist and volcano expert with the government's geology and mining agency Sernageomin, says his models show the vast column of ash, which has soared 7.5 miles (12 km) into the air, at a critical stage.

A sudden collapse would shroud vast areas with hot gas, ash and molten rock, killing anything in its way.

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May 8, 2008
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Remains of meals that included seaweed are helping confirm the date of a settlement in southern Chile that may offer the earliest evidence of humans in the Americas.

Researchers date the seaweed found at Monte Verde to more than 14,000 years ago, 1,000 years earlier than the well-studied Clovis culture.

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Raymond Colitt, Reuters Published: Tuesday, May 06, 2008

BRASILIA (Reuters) - A jury in Brazil on Tuesday convicted in a retrial a man accused of murdering a U.S.-born nun but acquitted a previously convicted rancher accused of ordering the killing in a land dispute in the Amazon rain forest in February 2005, a court said.

Dorothy Stang's death became a symbol of the often violent conflict for natural resources in the vast Amazon region. For more than 20 years she helped peasants threatened by loggers and ranchers and opposed the destruction of the rain forest.

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Born in India 2.600 years ago Buddhism was only noted by the West over the past century and as its ideas spread a new form of Buddhism, the West Buddhism, is emerging leading people to ask what these old ideas can offer to the western men and women of the 21st century.

April 24, 2008

Rio de Janeiro, RJ (PRWEB) April 24, 2008 -- Yanabooks is pleased to announce the launching of its first book, "The Gospel of Buddha", an updated edition of a classical book on Buddhism that throws light on the core ideas of Siddhartha Gautama, the founder of Buddhism, an eastern faith that is being reshaped in the West.

Since 560 BC Buddhism, currently the faith of 400 million people, spread from India to Tibet, China, Southeast Asia and Japan giving birth to new forms of Buddhism as it absorbed the local culture. But in the last century we are seeing a new move as Buddhism travels west. The so-called West Buddhism (or Western Buddhism) is taking shape as westerns abandon the prevailing ritual aspects of oriental Buddhism and shift the focus to its philosophical and ethical principles.

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April 23, 2008
By Ravinder Singh Robin

It was a bit unusual to see a yoga school in a Latin American country like Chile, but classes at a yoga school in Chilean capital Santiago seems to be catching on.

Just three-years-old, the yoga school today has over 700 students practicing yoga. Chilean teachers teach yoga asanas to their students, which they have picked up from India.

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By Patrick J. McDonnell, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
April 20, 2008

ASUNCION, PARAGUAY -- A former Roman Catholic bishop who championed the downtrodden and challenged the long-entrenched political elite was elected Paraguay's president Sunday, ending six decades of one-party rule in this South American nation.

Fernando Lugo, 56, dubbed "the bishop of the poor," was leading by 10 percentage points with more than 90% of the results in, electoral officials said. He had about 41% of the vote to about 31% for his chief opponent, Blanca Ovelar of the ruling Colorado Party. Ovelar called the margin of victory "irreversible" and conceded defeat in the evening.

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By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 13 April 2008

You may know it as Google, but in bamboo-and-thatch roundhouses deep in the Amazon rainforest the iconic brand goes by another name. The Surui people, one of the most remote on Earth, call it ragogmakan – "messenger" – and they're banking on the search engine to save them and their ancestral lands from extinction.

The tribe – whose first contact with the modern world was less than 40 years ago – are replacing their bows and arrows with hi-tech gadgets in their battle for survival. They have already begun using satnav on their traditional trails through the trees. And Google Earth has just agreed to provide high-resolution satellite images of their forest home.

The initiative is the brainchild of their chief, Almir Narayamoga Surui, who is leading their struggle against illegal loggers besieging their territory, an isolated 600,000-acre green oasis in Rondonia, in the wild Brazilian west. Last year the 34-year-old Almir visited Google near San Francisco to ask it to help monitor the loggers' incursions. He said he also hoped to be able to use the internet firm to "alert the world". He added: "We call Google ragogmakan because we hope it will help us get our message out."

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April 12, 2008
Jason Mitchell in Buenos Aires and James Bone in New York

The footballing great Diego Maradona pulled out of the Olympic torch relay in his native Argentina yesterday as the flame ran the gauntlet of fresh protests in Buenos Aires.

The Argentine star, famous for his “Hand of God” goal against England in the 1986 World Cup, had been scheduled to carry the torch the first 200 yards of the parade but withdrew at the last moment. Maradona delayed his return from Mexico in an apparent attempt to avoid the controversy. He was expected to be replaced by the windsurfer Carlos EspÍnola.

As doubts grew over the future of the Olympic torch relay, Japan announced that it would bar the “thug” Chinese security guards who accompany the flame after they were identified as paramilitary police.

Ban Ki Moon, the UN Secretary-General, said that he would not attend the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games on August 8 but added that this was because of a “scheduling issue” and was not a boycott.

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By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Friday, 4 April 2008

The number of migratory songbirds returning to North America has gone into sharp decline due to the unregulated use of highly toxic pesticides and other chemicals across Latin America.

Ornithologists blame the demand for out-of-season fruit and vegetables and other crops in North America and Europe for the destruction of tens of millions of passerine birds. By some counts, half of the songbirds that warbled across America's skies only 40 years ago have gone, wiped out by pesticides or loss of habitat.

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By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer Mon Mar 31, 11:11 PM ET

WASHINGTON - The earliest known gold jewelry made in the Americas has been discovered in southern Peru. The gold necklace, made nearly 4,000 years ago, was found in a burial site near Lake Titicaca, researchers report in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The discovery "was a complete shock," said Mark Aldenderfer, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona.

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By Daniel Howden, Deputy Foreign Editor
Thursday, 27 March 2008

A deal has been agreed that will place a financial value on rainforests – paying, for the first time, for their upkeep as "utilities" that provide vital services such as rainfall generation, carbon storage and climate regulation.

The agreement, to be announced tomorrow in New York, will secure the future of one million acres of pristine rainforest in Guyana, the first move of its kind, and will open the way for financial markets to play a key role in safeguarding the fate of the world's forests.

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I, for one, think that the Dalai Lama should go for Tibetan independence rather than continue trying for "meaningful autonomy," as he has been doing for decades. This is the right time to make the change. It is abundantly clear--with over fifty years of solid proof--that China will never live up to its promises of "autonomy" for Tibet. Just forget it. They will never do it. Tibet's historical case is fully as sound as its social, political, and religious one. When people speak of "China," what they really mean is the small oligarchy that rules the territory of the PRC. The Dalai Lama has made many concessions to this oligarchy, but has received nothing in return for himself or for the Tibetan nation. It will be an easy case for him to take back his concession on Tibetan independence now. Repression and violence in Tibet can hardly get any worse, so he won't cause problems on that score. At worst he will gain a real bargaining chip for "talks"--if they ever happen--with the PRC. At best, he will succeed. ABN
___________

The Associated Press
Published: March 25, 2008

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica: Costa Rican President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oscar Arias said Tuesday that the Dalai Lama has asked him to help start talks with China over unrest in Tibet.

Arias said the Dalai Lama sent him a letter asking for help initiating a dialogue in which "we can sit down and talk like civilized people."

"Nobody is asking for independence for Tibet," Arias said. "The Dalai Lama has never asked for that. What is at stake is preserving the autonomy of Tibet."

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A TOWN in South America is living in fear after several sightings of a 'creepy gnome' that locals claim stalks the streets at night.

11 Mar 2008
By VIRGINIA WHEELER

The midget - which wears a pointy hat and has a distinctive sideways walk - was caught on video last week by a terrified group of youngsters.

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