Their protest dragged out for more than a month, as state and federal government officials alternately ignored them or responded evasively. Finally, the frustrated protestors decided to send a stronger message. On Nov. 12, after their second meeting with state and federal government officials who again offered no resolution to their problems, they set fire to the barges.

Gleba Nova Olinda covers 172,900 hectares between the Maró and Aruá Rivers, at the source of the Arapiuns River in the municipality of Santarém. Its natural resources are vital to the survival of the people of the Arapiuns. The protest unites 14 communities from throughout the region in the “Movement in Defense of the Life and Culture of the Arapiuns.”

Gleba Nova Olinda’s indigenous and peasant communities have petitioned the government for legal recognition of their territorial rights since the creation of the neighboring Tapajos-Arapiuns Extractive Reserve 13 years ago. Over the past decade, state land exchange programs and development incentives drew loggers and potential soy farmers to Gleba Nova Olinda. The influx sparked conflicts over land and resource rights with the area’s inhabitants that rapidly turned violent. Violence and threats of violence are a common means of conflict resolution in the state of Pará, where valuable resources such as timber lead to high-stakes conflicts and state enforcement is minimal.

The logging companies have divided communities in the region, spreading conflict beyond the traditional confrontation between loggers, land speculators, and communities. The companies have co-opted some communities, purchasing community support cheaply by providing infrastructure that the government never delivered, such as generators and community buildings, or jobs that turn the area’s inhabitants into agents of deforestation. Most people of the region, however, continue to protest the presence of the loggers.

The government of the state of Pará effectively decided not to expel the loggers and land speculators operating in traditional and indigenous territories. On the contrary, the proposal authorized 11 “sustainable management plans” and reduced the size of the Vista Alegre Agro-extractive Agrarian Reform Settlement Project from 25,000 hectares to 5,000 hectares.

Bogus products that make “breakthrough” health claims on the Internet or promise cures for illnesses, such as cancer, target the most vulnerable consumers. Be wary of on-line swine flu remedies not authorized by Health Canada that are making unsubstantiated health claims that they kill or ward off the virus. Consult your health care practitioner before trying any new treatment. Don’t be influenced by “miraculous” testimonials discussed on websites and blogs. Think twice before buying a product that claims it can “do it all.”
QUICK TIP: If you have questions or complaints about counterfeit drugs and/or drugs purchased over the Internet, please call Health Canada’s toll-free line at 1 800 267 9675. If you suspect that a website is promoting a treatment or cure that is too good to be true.

2. Not So “Free” Trials

You may want to try out a new diet product, an acne cream or teeth whitener, but be careful about signing up for ‘free’ trial offers. Many websites offering a free trial for products do not disclose the billing terms and conditions or do not have such details prominently displayed on their website. Before providing any credit or debit card information, review the website fully to avoid in repeated billing. Remember that money transfers and direct debit are two of the main methods by which scam artists seek to obtain your money.
QUICK TIP: When considering trial offers, be sure to first determine whether you are enrolling in a membership, subscription or service contract that allows the company.

3. ID Theft

Often people find out that they are victims of identity theft after they are contacted by a collections’ agency for an account they never set up or because their credit has taken a hit. ID theft is when someone uses your information to obtain loans, goods, or services and does not pay the bills. Increasingly, people are being lured online into revealing personal information.

QUICK TIP: Do not fall for requests for information, or other scare tactics. Online scammers send emails that look legitimate, requesting that your “account information needs to be updated.” Another new tactic called “scareware” has a pop-up message showing that your computer is infected with a virus and that you need to visit a website to purchase and download anti-virus software that would fix the problem. These are all phishing tactics, ways to get you to reveal personal or financial information. If you receive these messages just delete them and do not click on any links. Doing so may compromise your computer’s security. If you are a victim of ID Theft call your financial institutions to request that your current cards be cancelled and that new cards be issued. You should also contact your local police and Canada’s main credit reporting agencies: TransUnion Canada at tuc.ca (1 866 525 0262) and Equifax Canada at equifax.ca (1 866 779 6440).

4. Home Repair Rip-Offs

Imagine hearing that your furnace is leaking dangerous carbon monoxide into your home. Many times homeowners are told that they need to do an immediate replacement due to a crack in their heat exchanger or because the contractor has a gas-sniffer device which shows high carbon monoxide levels. This high pressure safety situation often ends up in unnecessary and costly repairs.
QUICK TIP: Do not make a decision to repair right away. Start with the Better Business Bureau and search for a company reliability report at bbb.org. Ask the person to provide a gas permit and a license with the BC Safety Authority and call to verify it at: 1 866 566 7233.

6. Free Government Money Schemes

Do you think you are entitled to free money from the Canadian government? Be suspicious of companies offering “free” advice on obtaining government grants. Often social networking sites and online ads will point to blogs that appear to be written by everyday people who are sharing the secret of how they received thousands of dollars in grants from the government to pay off their debt. In reality, this is a mass marketing scheme that does not provide an easy way for you to get a government grant. Rather, it costs you money to participate.

7. Business Opportunities

Your friend or a family member may have invited you to attend a presentation involving an investment opportunity. You don’t know anything about the company, and are desperate to hear that it is legit. These investments appear lucrative, but often involve more hype than substance. The promoter convinces investors that they can be part owners of an exciting investment portfolio, provided that they enlist new recruits. The promoter may even offer promising commissions in cash and bullion.

QUICK TIP: In reality, this could be an illegal pyramid scheme. The new capital brought on by new investors is keeping this imaginary investment afloat. Get the facts. If you attend an information session, be sure to collect business cards and promotional materials

8. Cashback Fraud

Cashback fraud usually begins when you advertise something for sale, such as a car. A buyer agrees to pay your asking price, but sends you a cheque or banker’s draft for a larger sum. The person asks you to bank his cheque and send him a money transfer for the difference. Sure enough, his or her cheque bounces a few days after your money transfer has left your account. You’re now out of pocket and looking for a bogus buyer who’s out-of-reach.
QUICK TIP: Criminal cashback works because cheques take longer to clear than electronic bank transfers. Do not ever wire money to a stranger. Do not allow greed to be your guide – be careful of offers higher than the asking price.

9. Hidden Cell Phone Charges

If you own a cell phone and see new and unexplained charges on your bill each month, it may be due to premium text message services. People complain that they did not realize they were signing up for this service when they agreed to play an online game or to take an IQ test. In the end they receive monthly billings which do not come from their cell phone service providers, but through other third-party companies.

10. Mystery Jobs Scams

The scenario sounds too good to be true, and it is. You have been led to believe that you will be paid to mystery shop via a wire-transfer service. You receive a cheque, which you are told to deposit, keeping a small percentage of the money as your wage. You are then asked to send the back difference via a wire transfer and to complete a survey on the service you encounter. In the end, the cheque bounces and you lose all your money.
QUICK TIP: Be skeptical of mystery shopper ads in newspapers or online. In most cases these are bogus services requiring you to pay money upfront. Avoid companies that promise guaranteed jobs, and that sell directories of companies that provide mystery shoppers

In its second report on the potentially defective building materials, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission said its investigation also has found a “possible” link between health problems reported by homeowners and higher-than-normal levels of hydrogen sulfide gas emitted from the wallboard coupled with formaldehyde, which is commonly found in new houses.

The commission, along with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, continues to study the potential health effects, and the long-term implications of the corrosion.

“We can say that we believe that there’s a number of different chemicals that when brought together can be related to some of these irritant health effects that we’ve been getting reports of,” said CPSC spokesman Scott Wolfson. “But we’re still working toward that exact nexus.”

The commission said it can now move forward with additional studies to identify effective remediation of the problem and potential assistance from the federal government. However, Warren Friedman of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said it’s too soon to discuss specifics of any financial assistance homeowners could get.
During the height of the U.S. housing boom, with building materials in short supply, American construction companies imported millions of pounds of Chinese-made drywall because it was abundant and cheap. An Associated Press analysis of shipping records found that more than 500 million pounds of Chinese gypsum board was imported between 2004 and 2008 — enough to have built tens of thousands of homes.

They are heavily concentrated in the Southeast, especially Florida and areas of Louisiana and Mississippi hit hard by Hurricane Katrina.

The suspect building materials have previously been found by state and federal agencies to emit “volatile sulfur compounds” and produce a rotten-egg odor. Homeowners complain the fumes are corroding copper pipes, destroying TVs and air conditioners, blackening jewelry and silverware, and making them sick.

The federal government says China is assisting with the investigation.

The complainants, known as ”petitioners” in China, are typically detained while trying to submit grievances to government offices that are legally established to hear their complaints, says the Human Rights Watch report, An Alleyway in Hell.

Conditions in the black jails are ”invariably harsh”, with detainees subjected to food and sleep deprivation, appalling sanitary conditions, beatings and worse.
”They threatened that if I escaped, they’d take me to the male prison and let [the inmates] take turns raping [me],” said a woman, 42, in Sichuan province, who was one of 38 illegally detained petitioners interviewed by Human Rights Watch.

Officials at various tiers of government have created this network of extra-judicial abductions and detentions as a way of improving their own work performance appraisals, as merit points are deducted when complaints are made against them.
Security forces at all tiers of government are complicit in the system, refusing to assist victims and frequently assisting their captors, says the report, to be released today. It says a series of recent central government regulations and edicts that require local officials to resolve problems locally are likely to make the problems worse.

”Chinese legal scholars and academics who have researched black jails say their emergence since 2003 constitutes one of the most serious and widespread uses of extra-legal detention in China’s recent history,” says the report.
Despite dozens of cases closely documented by reporters and Chinese lawyers, in June the Chinese Government told the United Nations Human Rights Council: ”There are no black jails in the country.”

Local judicial systems are usually impotent to deal with complaints made against local officials, as they are run by those same officials.

Complainants typically try to petition higher tiers of government so they can deal with officials who are not involved with their immediate problems.

But Professor Yu Jianrong, at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, says that only one out of 632 petitioners that he surveyed in Beijing had their complaints successfully resolved.

It was revealed this week that two reports in early 2006 warned the federal government that prisoners turned over by Canadian troops were likely being tortured.

Yet when allegations of abuse surfaced in the spring of 2007, Harper and several cabinet ministers insisted they had received no credible reports about possible torture.

Asked about the matter today, Harper said he never saw the diplomat’s reports “at the time.”

Richard Colvin, who is now an intelligence officer at the Canadian embassy in Washington, wrote in May 2006 that the allegations of torture regarding Afghan prisoners were “serious, imminent and alarming.”

He followed it up with another warning in early June 2006, almost a full year before the federal government acknowledged the problem.

A public hearing by the Military Police Complaints Commission into the torture allegations was shut down Wednesday for at least six months to let lawyers argue appeals over the scope of the agency’s power and what it can investigate.

Freya Kristjanson told Canada AM on Thursday that while the government has said it’s cooperating with the commission, it has not turned in any documents since March, 2008.

“This commission has not received a single new document (sic) despite repeated assurances that the government would be producing the documents both in the House and by their lawyers directly to the commission,” she said in an interview from Ottawa. “The government has simply failed to deliver any documents.”

“If the government cooperates with a body established by parliament within its mandate and gives the commission documents and access to witnesses then Canadians will know what happened,” she added.
The controversy being explored in the inquiry surrounds whether or not the Canadian government knew that Afghan prisoners were at risk of being tortured when the Canadian military transfered custody to the local authorities.

The content of the first report is still covered by national security. Colvin said the second report gave specific findings that “dealt with two issues, one of which concerned the risk of torture and/or actual torture of Afghan detainees.”

The reports were widely distributed to the Foreign Affairs and Defence departments as well as senior military commanders in both Ottawa and Kandahar.

His statement contradicts earlier assurances by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other high-ranking officials that they had not received any credible reports from Canadian officials about prisoner abuse.

He said to attain this, they must reduce bureaucracy to make dealings with the government departments and agencies easier for the public.

Currently, he said, the Public Complaints Bureau received an average of 11,000 complaints per month on civil servants and the services rendered, including through e-mails and SMSes.

“As public servants, they should not be satisfied with their present level of performance. Instead, they must always look back to improve the services further,” he said at a Public Complaints Management Seminar, here, Tuesday.

Sidek said he understood the challenges faced by civil servants in dealing with the myriad of complaints received from the public, especially those publicised by the media

“The apology must be given the same measure of publicity by Sony Corporation in all channels where the unfortunate adverts were aired.”

Sony has apologised for any offence caused by the advert, which it said was not intended for broadcast outside the United States.

“It has come to our attention that a recent TV advertisement for PlayStation may have offended some members of the Nigerian community,” said Sony in a statement. “We never intended to create a situation that would upset anyone, and we have taken action to immediately remove the advertisement from the air. We apologise to anyone this may have offended.”

The controversial segment in the advert has been replaced, with the salesman now saying: “You can’t believe everything you read on the internet – that’s how World War I started.”

Sony is hoping the launch of its cheaper, slimmer PlayStation 3 will give it the edge over rival consoles Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii in the run-up to Christmas.

President Hamid Karzai was speaking day after full preliminary results showed him with 54 percent of the vote, comfortably above the 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff with leading challenger Abdullah Abdullah.

Fraud investigations and recounts of suspicious ballots must finish before results are finalized, a process likely to take weeks. Observers have said enough votes are questionable that Karzai could still be forced into a runoff.

A U.N.-backed election commission has ordered a recount of ballots from 10 percent of polling stations because of suspicions tallies. Karzai and Abdullah’s camps have both accused the other of ballot-box stuffing.

Karzai told reporters that “there were some government officials who were partial toward me” — the first public acknowledgment of fraud by his supporters — but said others were partial toward Abdullah. Karzai added that he had only so far seen concrete evidence of 1,200 ballots that were faked.

“I believe firmly in the integrity of the election, in the integrity of the Afghan people and in the integrity of the government in that process,” Karzai said.
“Illegitimate rule can only help the insurgency to strengthen,” Abdullah told reporters at his house shortly after Karzai’s press conference.

But staging a run-off election could bring its own complications. Election day Aug. 20 was marred by Taliban threats that dampened turnout and militant attacks in which dozens of people died, raising fears another vote could bring more violence.

Also, many worry that delays for fraud investigations and recounts could push any runoff into the spring, creating a power vacuum in the meantime. It is not feasible to organize a nationwide vote during winter. Snows that start in November make many roads impassable for months in this mountainous country.

Some international monitors have suggested that the solution may be a power-sharing government, but both Karzai and Abdullah ruled that out Thursday. Karzai said, however, that he would welcome Abdullah — who previously served as foreign minister under Karzai — into his administration.

I’ve known Americans who’ve gone to Costa Rica, Venezuela, Peru, Mexico and Austria for medical and dental treatment they couldn’t afford here. (In fact, Logan wrote about this a few weeks ago.) If people are getting on a plane to go somewhere to get treatment, that’s got to tell you something:

MEXICO CITY — It sounds almost too good to be true: a health care plan with no limits, no deductibles, free medicines, tests, X-rays, eyeglasses, even dental work — all for a flat fee of $250 or less a year.

To get it, you just have to move to Mexico.

As the United States debates an overhaul of its health care system, thousands of American retirees in Mexico have quietly found a solution of their own, signing up for the health care plan run by the Mexican Social Security Institute.

Canadian Health care vs American health care
The governments of both nations are closely involved in health care. The central structural difference between the two is in health insurance. In Canada, the federal government is committed to providing funding support to its provincial governments for health care expenditures as long as the province in question abides by accessibility guarantees as set out in the Canada Health Act, which explicitly prohibits billing end users for procedures that are covered by Medicare. While some label Canada’s system as “socialized medicine,” the term is inaccurate. Unlike systems with public delivery, such as the UK, the Canadian system provides public coverage for private delivery. As Princeton University health economist Uwe E. Reinhardt notes, single-payer systems are not “socialized medicine” but “social insurance” systems, because doctors are in the private sector.[21] Similarly, Canadian hospitals are controlled by private boards and/or regional health authorities, rather than being part of government.

In the U.S., direct government funding of health care is limited to Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which cover eligible senior citizens, the very poor, disabled persons, and children. The federal government also runs the Veterans Administration, which provides care to veterans, their families, and survivors through medical centers and clinics.

The U.S. government also runs the Military Health System. In Fiscal Year 2007, the MHS had total budget authority of $39.4 billion and served approximately 9.1 million beneficiaries, including Active Duty personnel and their families and retirees and their families. The MHS includes 133,000 personnel, 86,000 military and 47,000 civilian, working at more than 1,000 locations worldwide, including 70 inpatient facilities and 1,085 medical, dental, and veterinary clinics.