TOKYO ( McDonald’s Japan to Import Chicken from Brazil after Chinese Supplier Scandal )

TOKYO – McDonald’s Japan will import chicken from Brazil after withdrawing all poultry products of Chinese origin following the Husi company rotten meat scandal in Shanghai, Japanese media reported on Wednesday.

This is one of the measures the Japanese subsidiary of the American franchise said it will take to “recover the confidence of consumers,” after being one of the multinational fast food chains affected by the purchase of meat from Husi, which was closed down by Chinese authorities over accusations that it sold products past their expiry date.

Last Friday, McDonald’s Japan said that it would withdraw all chicken products made in China, and that it would replace suppliers in that country with others in Thailand.

The company will also import poultry meat from Brazil “to ensure the supply and availability of all its products,” McDonald’s Japan president Sarah Casanova said in a press conference.

“We will do all that is necessary to guarantee the security of our menu,” Casanova told the state channel NHK.

Casanova asked for “sincere apologies” to customers in her first appearance before the media as President of McDonald’s Japan.

Among other measures, the company will publish information about the origin of all its products on its website and will perform “safety inspections” at the premises of its suppliers in Thailand and China, which still provides ingredients for some products.

McDonald’s Japan cancelled all its orders from the Shanghai Husi Food Co., which provided 20 percent of the meat used in their “chicken nuggets.”

Since the scam came to light last week, the sales of McDonald’s Japan have fallen between 15 and 20 percent, a senior company official told the Nikkei newspaper.

In addition to McDonald’s, other multinational fast food chains like KFC, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, Burger King, Papa John’s, 7-Eleven and the Chinese Dicos were affected by the scandal and have withdrawn Husi meat.

Chinese authorities said the Husi plant had falsified the expiry dates of more than 4,000 boxes of meat, and added that five people have been arrested since the fraud was exposed in a report by Shanghai’s Dragon TV.

Among other irregularities, the channel released footage filmed at the Husi factory in Shanghai showing how chicken discarded after routine checks by authorities were repeatedly reprocessed to pass quality controls.

The report, made with a hidden camera and undercover journalists, also showed employees picking up meat from the floor and throwing it into the grinder to make hamburgers.

MEXICO CITY ( Teachers Trash Ruling-Party Offices in Southern Mexico )

MEXICO CITY – More than 60 members of the militant CNTE teachers union destroyed regional offices of Mexico’s governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in the southern state of Oaxaca, a party spokesman told Efe on Friday.

“They attacked the offices. They knocked down the main door with a pickup truck, broke windows, furniture, and they cut up the entire telephone system,” Rodolfo Romero said from Oaxaca city, the state capital.

The CNTE activists also painted slogans on the walls accusing the PRI of betraying the teachers, whose support was part of the electoral formula that kept the party in power from 1929-2000 and allowed it to retake the presidency in 2012.

The PRI state party filed a criminal complaint with prosecutors and expects authorities to act against the perpetrators, Romero said.

Around 500 members of the CNTE staged a march Thursday in Oaxaca city to protest the education overhaul enacted last year by the PRI administration of President Enrique Peña Nieto.

Romero said that while the bulk of the protesters blocked a street, a smaller group broke away and attacked the PRI offices, which were empty at the time.

The CNTE, representing a third of Mexico’s public school teachers, has mounted numerous protests against Peña Nieto’s education initiative, which subjects teachers to a comprehensive regime of evaluation.

The union says it does not object in principle to teacher evaluation, only to the “punitive” scheme devised by the government, seen by the CNTE as setting the stage for massive layoffs.

BOGOTA ( Army Officer Arrested for Murder of Colombian Journalist )

BOGOTA – A retired army officer accused of being one of the people involved in the 1999 murder of popular journalist and political humorist Jaime Garzon was captured Thursday after a decade on the run, the Colombian Attorney General’s Office said.

Jorge Eliecer Plazas Acevedo was arrested in San Martin, a town in the central province of Meta, Deputy Attorney General Jorge Perdomo told reporters.

Plazas became a fugitive from justice after escaping in 2003 while serving a 40-year sentence for the murder of Israeli businessman Benjamin Khoudari.

Perdomo said that Plazas’ capture came after a joint operation with the National Police and after a year of investigation that eventually enabled authorities to locate him via intercepted telephone calls.

Garzon, an attorney and peace activist known for his devastating impersonations of political figures, was fatally shot on Aug. 13, 1999, in Bogota while on his way to work at now-defunct broadcaster RadioNet.

At the time of the murder, Plazas was working as the head of intelligence for the army’s 13th Brigade, according to the AG’s office.

Bloggers in Russia strike back at tough new law

MOSCOW: Russian bloggers took revenge on Friday for a controversal new law imposing tough rules on online expression by inundating Moscow’s communications watchdog with phoney registration requests.
Authorities in April passed new legislation — seen by critics as a bid to muzzle dissent on social media — requiring bloggers with more than 3,000 daily readers to register and adhere to stricter rules or face a large fine.
The state ITAR-TASS news agency reported that between 20 and 30 percent of registration requests received by media regulator Roskomnadzor on Friday, the day the law came into force, were spam.
Under the new law, bloggers are required to submit personal details to a special register, and may no longer write anonymously.
Critics have warned the law could be a setback for freedom of expression as it is so vaguely worded that it could be used to target any of the social networking sites and blogs that make up Russia’s most vibrant forum for opposition political debate.
The legislation bars blogs from “making calls to carry out terrorism or publicly justifying terrorism,” publishing “other extremist materials” or promoting violence or pornography.
Bloggers also will also have to verify the accuracy of the information they publish and ensure that it does not intrude into an individual’s personal life.
Concealing or falsifying information important to the public as well as “besmirching a citizen” based on their profession or political beliefs is also banned.
“That means you can’t bad-mouth a political opponent or write something bad about the police,” wrote blogger Andrei Malgin on the popular Echo of Moscow radio station’s website earlier this year.
Those who breach the law risk hefty fines of up to 50,000 rubles ($1,400, 1,000 euros).

UNRWA Christopher Gunness Breaks Down In Tears On Live TV

Syria ( Jihadists Impose Restrictions on Women’s Clothes in Syria )

BEIRUT – The extremist Islamic State (IS) has imposed restrictions on women’s clothes in the areas they control in the Syrian province of Deir Ez-Zor, bordering Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said on Thursday.

According to SOHR, the jihadists have distributed a statement in Deir Ez-Zor province with rules for the clothing of the population in the province.

The islamist extremist group ordered women to wear a full “niqab” that blindfolds their eyes and an “abaya” or tunic which must cover the rest of their clothes and be wide enough to hide the shape of their body.

The “niqab” often hides the face but not the eyes, although it may cover the entire face.

The IS has also forbidden women from wearing high-heeled shoes and has warned all those who violate these rules they will face harsh punishment.

The IS proclaimed an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria in late June.

The group started imposing restrictions in the Syrian province of Raqqa, in the northeast of the country, on January 20th, banning smoking and music, as well imposing the full-face veil and the closure of all shops before and during prayer times.

Mexico ( Mexican Journalist Murdered at Home in Zacatecas State )

MEXICO – A Mexican journalist was found stabbed to death in his home in the town of Guadalupe in Zacatecas state (central-north), sources said Thursday.

Journalist Nolberto Herrera Rodríguez was found dead in his home Wednesday with more than 20 stab wounds, a spokesperson for Article 19, an international organization defending freedom of expression, told Efe.

Herrera Rodríguez served as a cameraman, reporter and editor on Zacatecas’ Channel 9 television and other media, and as well as in the public sector.

The office of the Attorney in Zacatecas said his murder could have been a crime of passion, although other motives must not be ruled out, Channel 9 news director Alfredo Valadez Rodriguez said.

Article 19 has called on authorities “to conduct a proper investigation to punish those responsible and break the cycle of impunity which creates a chilling effect on the exercise of journalism”, the organization said in a statement.

“It is necessary that authorities in Zacatecas provide security to journalists in the region and establish a public policy of prevention to ensure the exercise of the right to freedom of expression”, it added.

Valadez Rodríguez said Herrera was “hard working” and “a very active person”, who produced a news report and wrote on culture and news in general.

The Special Prosecutor for Crimes against Freedom of Expression of the federal government last June issued a report saying that since the year 2000, 102 journalists in Mexico had been murdered.

Ten of the murders occurred at the start of President Enrique Peña Nieto’s administration in December 2012