Brazil’s lower house begins presidential impeachment debate ADVERTISING Brazil’s lower house begins presidential impeachment debate BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — The lower chamber of Brazil’s Congress on Friday began a raucous debate about whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, a question
Brazil’s lower house begins presidential impeachment debate
BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — The lower chamber of Brazil’s Congress on Friday began a raucous debate about whether to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, a question that underscores the deep polarization in Latin America’s largest country and most-powerful economy.
If lawmakers approve the measure in a vote slated for Sunday, it gets sent to the Senate, where an impeachment trial could take place, prompting the president’s suspension from office.
The atmosphere in the lower Chamber of Deputies was electric, as Rousseff’s critics festooned themselves with yellow and green ribbons and brandished placards reading “Impeachment Now!”
Lawmakers backing impeachment allege Rousseff’s administration violated fiscal rules, using sleight of hand accounting in a bid to shore up public support. However, many of those pushing for impeachment face grave accusations of corruption themselves, prompting Rousseff and her supporters to decry the whole process as a bold-faced power grab by her foes.
Top finance officials say world economy still faces threats
WASHINGTON (AP) — The global recovery has regained most of the ground lost from the market turbulence at the beginning of the year, finance officials of the world’s largest economies said Friday. But they worry that growth remains uneven in the face of a variety of threats ranging from terrorist bombings to Britain’s upcoming vote on whether to leave the European Union.
The finance ministers from the Group of 20 major economies pledged to pursue policies that will bolster growth and further stabilize financial markets, but they offered no new measures to accomplish these goals.
The joint statement from the G-20 finance ministers and central bank governors repeated many of the promises the group made during their last meeting in late February. However, at that time global financial markets had just gone through a significant bout of turbulence because of concerns about a worse-than-expected slowdown in China, falling oil prices and the threat they posed to the global economy.
As clinic access tightens, group touts pregnancy-ending drug
NEW YORK (AP) — The tightening of restrictions on abortion clinics in many states has emboldened some abortion rights advocates to launch an outreach effort, reminding women they have relatively safe and effective means of ending a pregnancy on their own through use of a miscarriage-inducing drug.
Anti-abortion groups are wary of the phenomenon, disavowing any drive to prosecute women who self-abort but favoring crackdowns on illegal distribution of the drug. Even in the abortion rights community, the outreach effort has raised some concerns.
Dr. Hal Lawrence, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, says it’s always preferable for a woman undergoing abortion to be under direct supervision of a medical professional.
Advocates of the new approach say they would agree, under ideal conditions, but they worry that many women — out of fear, poverty or lack of a nearby clinic — are not getting access to professional services and need accurate information if they’re considering self-induced abortion. Notably, they want to highlight the option of using the drug misoprostol as a generally safe method for inducing a miscarriage within the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.
“There will always be people who need to do this for themselves, and they deserve to have the resources and information so they can do so safely and effectively, free from the threat of arrest,” said Jill Adams, executive director of the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice at the University of California-Berkeley law school.
US researchers see more signs NKorea is producing plutonium
WASHINGTON (AP) — As North Korea intensifies testing of its ballistic missile technology, a U.S. website said Friday it also sees further signs from satellite imagery that North Korea is looking to produce more plutonium for nuclear weapons.
The website 38 North, which monitors sites in North Korea associated with its weapons programs, says an image taken Monday at the Nyongbyon nuclear facility shows a rail flatcar at a radiochemical laboratory complex where the North separates weapons-grade plutonium from waste from a nuclear reactor.
It says the tanks or casks seen on the flatcar could be used to supply chemicals or haul out waste products. In recent weeks, exhaust plumes have been seen at the laboratory complex, also suggesting that nuclear reprocessing activity could be in the works.
“The presence of a loaded flatcar, together with the presence of exhaust plumes, suggest that North Korea is preparing or conducting a reprocessing campaign to separate more plutonium for weapons,” says the analysis by Joseph S. Bermudez, a specialist in satellite imagery and North Korea’s military.
South Korean and U.S. officials said Friday that North Korea conducted a failed launch of what was reportedly an untested mid-range missile that could one day be capable of reaching far-off U.S. military bases in Asia and the Pacific. It is the latest in a series of provocations. The North conducted its fourth, underground nuclear test explosion in January and a long-range rocket launch in February that drew the strongest international sanctions yet against Pyongyang.
Syria government team joins peace talks amid Aleppo clashes
GENEVA (AP) — The U.N.’s special envoy to Syria met with a government delegation as part of peace talks in Geneva on Friday as humanitarian workers warned that fighting in Syria’s north was triggering a new wave of civilian displacement.
Syria’s U.N. ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said he had “constructive and fruitful” discussions with Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura and said his delegation proposed “amendments” to the de Mistura’s blueprint for negotiations.
Ja’afari’s brief comments to reporters suggested the government is still focusing on the basic principles toward a political solution in Syria, and not yet willing to consider what de Mistura calls the “mother of all issues” — political transition away from President Bashar Assad’s rule.
De Mistura met with delegates from the High Negotiations Committee, an umbrella opposition coalition backed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and other Western powers, later in the day.
The committee said it was distrustful of the government’s intentions.
