October, 06 2010, 03:11pm EDT
Listing of Panama's Internationally Recognized Park as "In Danger" Would Highlight Plight of People and Fish Threatened by Dams
The World Heritage Centre and the International Union for
Conservation of Nature today recommended that Panama's La Amistad
National Park be placed on the United Nations' list of "World Heritage
in Danger" sites. The park, which straddles Costa Rica and Panama, is
recognized as a World Heritage Site by the UN's Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The heart of the site is the
Changuinola River, a river system that provides habitat for hundreds of
rare, endemic, endangered and migratory species.
SAN FRANCISCO
The World Heritage Centre and the International Union for
Conservation of Nature today recommended that Panama's La Amistad
National Park be placed on the United Nations' list of "World Heritage
in Danger" sites. The park, which straddles Costa Rica and Panama, is
recognized as a World Heritage Site by the UN's Educational, Scientific
and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The heart of the site is the
Changuinola River, a river system that provides habitat for hundreds of
rare, endemic, endangered and migratory species.
This remarkable ecosystem, though, is at risk of
destruction from a series of dams being constructed in Panama by
Virginia-based AES Corporation. The first of these dams will flood four
Ngobe villages and create impassible barriers for fish species the
tribes rely upon, such as the mountain mullet and the bocachica.
A State of Conservation Report
prepared for the World Heritage Committee found that the construction
of the dams is likely to result in the direct loss of 16 species of
fish and shrimp and have negative impacts on other biodiversity. It
found that the proposed mitigation measures are inadequate to protect
against impacts of the dams and requested that the government of Panama
halt all dam construction until it conducts a comprehensive
environmental assessment of all the proposed dams and identifies the
least environmentally damaging option to meet energy and
water-management needs.
"Panama's government should take the recommendation to
place La Amistad on the UN 'danger list' as a very clear signal from
the international community that these dams should not be built," said
Jaclyn Lopez, a Center for Biological Diversity attorney. In April, the
Center provided UNESCO with a report on the predicted impacts of the dams.
The area made up of Talamanca Range-La Amistad Reserves
and La Amistad National Park has been on the World Heritage List since
1983 and represents a unique ecological gem along the boundary of Costa
Rica and Panama. Following an IUCN mission to the area, the
government of Panama was required to produce a detailed report on the
state of conservation efforts and mitigation with regard to the site.
The IUCN and World Heritage Centre found that the recently submitted
report failed to provide adequate mitigation measures and that the dam
construction would lead to the irreparable loss of biodiversity. Of
more than 900 properties designated on the World Heritage List, only 34
are on the list of those in danger. Placing a property on the list is
designed to let the greater international community know of factors
threatening the site and to encourage corrective action.
Learn more about the Center's efforts to protect La Amistad.
At the Center for Biological Diversity, we believe that the welfare of human beings is deeply linked to nature — to the existence in our world of a vast diversity of wild animals and plants. Because diversity has intrinsic value, and because its loss impoverishes society, we work to secure a future for all species, great and small, hovering on the brink of extinction. We do so through science, law and creative media, with a focus on protecting the lands, waters and climate that species need to survive.
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'Flawed and Dangerous': US Appeals Panel Upholds Potential TikTok Ban
"This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans' access to information, ideas, and media from abroad."
Dec 06, 2024
First Amendment advocates on Friday criticized a U.S. appellate court for upholding a law that would ban TikTok in the United States if its Chinese parent company does not swiftly sell the social media platform used by an estimated 170 million Americans.
Signed by President Joe Biden in April, the law gives ByteDance until January 19 to divest from TikTok. Three judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the parts of the law considered by the panel "do not contravene the First Amendment" nor other parts of the Constitution of the United States.
"The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States," Judge Douglas Ginsburg wrote in an opinion the company is expected to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Responding to the decision on social media Friday, Ashley Gorski, senior staff attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project, said that "the D.C. Circuit's decision today to uphold the TikTok ban is enormously disappointing. If allowed to stand, it would give the government far too much power to restrict Americans' speech online."
Jameel Jaffer, who was on a friend-of-the-court brief as director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, issued a similar warning after the ruling was released.
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Kate Ruane, director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Free Expression Project, also looked ahead to the next court fight.
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In addition to arguing the law is unconstitutional, attorneys for TikTok and ByteDance "have claimed it's impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically,"
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Trump is expected to try to halt the TikTok ban, people familiar with his views on the matter told The Washington Post in early November, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
Alan Rozenshtein, a former national security adviser to the Justice Department, said Trump could take any of three actions to help TikTok fend off the ban: persuading Congress to repeal the law, directing his new attorney general not to enforce it, and declaring that ByteDance has satisfied the statute by performing a "qualified divestiture" of TikTok.
Although the president-elect hasn't yet weighed in on the new court decision, on Thursday he shared on his Truth Social platform a post-election overview of how his campaign performed on TikTok.
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The killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside of a Manhattan hotel Wednesday has sparked a wave of dark humor and fresh fury at the for-profit U.S. healthcare system.
The barbs at UnitedHealthcare—the country's largest private insurer—included a mock denial of coverage letter posted to the subreddit r/nursing in a thread on Thompson’s murder.
"We regret to inform you that your request for coverage has been denied," the letter reads. "Our records indicate that you failed to obtain prior authorization before seeking care for the gunshot wound to your chest." The Daily Beastreported a spoof rejection letter was also posted to a since closed thread on r/medicine.
Police are in their third day searching for Thompson's killer, who shot the healthcare executive multiple times in front of a Hilton hotel in Midtown before fleeing the scene. The New York Police Department has released an image that shows a man authorities deem "a person of interest wanted for questioning" in connection to the Wednesday killing, perCNN. The image was captured at a hostel in Manhattan, according to CNN, citing law enforcement.
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"When the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is allowed to fully do its job, Americans only stand to benefit."
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