Something very strange is happening to the Bees' tongues

If you think about iconic symbols of climate change, you’ll probably picture a polar bear, emaciated, and clinging to a precariously small chunk of ice. You’re probably not thinking of a bumblebee, flitting about an alpine meadow with a shorter-than-average tongue. And yet, according to new research from Nicole Miller-Struttmann from SUNY College at Old Westbury, these shrinking tongues speak volumes about how nature’s most intimate partnerships might change in a warming world.

In the central Rockies, there are many species of bumblebee, and some have unusually long tongues for their body size. These are adaptations to the deep tubes of certain flowers like Parry’s clover and alpine skypilot, allowing the bees to lap at nectar that smaller-tongued species can’t reach. The tubes, in turn, are adaptations to the long bee tongues, providing exclusive access to nectar in exchange for exclusive pollination services. Both partners are locked in a co-evolutionary dance, held together by beautifully fitting tongues and tubes.

Recently, all has not been right with this dance. Miller-Struttmann’s colleagues, who have been studying the local bees and flowers for decades, started to notice weird changes. Long-tongued bees, which have been declining in many parts of the world, had become relatively rarer in the Rockies, too. Meanwhile, foreign species from farther down the mountainsides were encroaching on their terrain.

To work out what was going on, the team measured the tongues of the two most common bumblebee species, caught at three Colorado mountains in recent years. They then compared these lengths to those of specimens collected from the same mountains between 1966 and 1980.

These archived bees (has-bee-ns?) revealed that the tongues of these species have become 0.61 percent shorter every year, and are now just three-quarters of their former glory. “We were really surprised at the strength of the result,” says Miller-Struttmann. “We obviously asked the question but we weren’t expecting such a large response, especially over just 40 to 50 years.”

Why have the long-tongued bees evolved into long-ish-tongued bees? The team ruled out several possibilities. The bees weren’t becoming smaller overall, at least not to a degree that explained their shrinking tongues. Shorter-tubed plants hadn’t taken over the mountainsides; herbarium collections revealed that they are no more common now than they were in the 1960s. And immigrant bees from elsewhere in the mountains weren’t ousting the locals from their usual long-tubed flowers.

The best remaining explanation is that the changing climate of the Rockies has shifted the balance of flowers than the bees depend upon. Jennifer Geib from Appalachian State University, who was involved in the study, says, “Our field sites are part of what ecologists describe as high-altitude desert.” That is: they’re really dry. And they’ve become drier in the last 60 years, as summers have become 2 degrees C warmer.

Water evaporated more quickly from the soil. Winter snowfalls started thawing out earlier, depriving plants of precious meltwater during the growing season. Many wildflowers that were already eking out a living on the brink of drought were pushed over the edge. On Pennsylvania Mountain alone, the team calculated that “millions of flowers were lost.” As such, today’s bees face about 60 percent less food than their predecessors from the 1970s.

The long-tubed flowers weren’t especially affected, but there were fewer of them — and not enough for long-tongued specialists to subsist on. So the long-tongued bees were forced to broaden their diets, drinking nectar from flowers of every length. Since they were now competing for resources that many other species could plunder, their long tongues no longer conferred any special advantages. So evolution, ever-thrifty and economical, selected for individuals with shorter tongues.

“That’s a really neat discovery,” says Jeremy Kerr from the University of Ottawa, who also studies pollinators. “I haven’t seen other research that suggests we’re likely to see rapid evolution in bumblebee [traits] because of climate change.” Kerr’s own research shows that North American and European bumblebees are being crushed out of their normal ranges by warming climates, seemingly unable to expand into more suitable pastures.

Miller-Struttmann’s study suggests that bees might be able to persist within these contracting habitats by changing their foraging habits and evolving accordingly. How they fare in the long term is anyone’s guess. Certainly, the widespread decline of long-tongued bees, and bumblebees more generally, is a poor portent.

This isn’t the only mutualism at risk in a warming world. In warmer oceans, corals eject the algae that they depend on for photosynthesis, depriving them of both the energy they need to construct their mighty reefs, and the source of their color. Starving and alone, they become weak and ghostly versions of themselves.

Meanwhile, carpenter ants, a hugely successful group with around 1,000 species, depend on bacteria inside their cells to supplement their diets with important nutrients. These microbes are also sensitive to temperature, and it’s possible that a warmer world would crush these ants — and the many other insects that depend on supplementary microbes — into ever narrower niches.

And what of the long-tubed flowers, now decoupled from their partners in pollination? “Alpine plants are very long-lived, so any effects of reduced pollination efficiency from the recent past would likely not be seen in their populations for some time,” says Geib. “But if climate-change models are accurate, these plants are likely to face a multitude of synergistic pressures in the future, including drought, and increased competition as the ranges of lowland species shift upward. The combination of these pressures, coupled with decreased pollination, could forecast a troubled future.”

Source: Atlantic

Argentina installed a different traffic light to fight gender discrimination

It was installed in Córdoba (Argentina) the last weekend. The initiative seeks to "reduce violence inflicted on women by the patriarchal system that has for years"

The initiative was approved in June 2014 and aims to "reduce the violence inflicted on women by the patriarchal system that has for years," said Councilman radical Miriam Acosta, promoter of the project.

The light signal was installed at the corner of Boulevard and San Juan Obispo Trejo, in full pedestrian provincial capital of Cordoba. Instead of showing the typical enlightened man has the image of a woman.

Acosta said that "to make urban living space in an area of ​​equality, it is necessary to give women a special place in the symbolic representation, in order to compensate for historical exclusion".

The Commission on Gender Equality of Cordoba City Council, said: "If we see the woman in the city, the woman begins to take a leading role and will appear different to reduce the violence inflicted upon her by the patriarchal system. coming years. "

The initiative already has different experiences worldwide. Holland, Sweden and Germany have these lights.

Ireland Refuses to Extradite Man to US Because Prison System is Too Inhumane

(ANTIMEDIA) Throughout the world, the U.S. prison system is often seen as inhumane and excessively large.

The American prison system is so reviled, in fact, that Irish officials recently refused to extradite an alleged terrorist to the U.S. The court cited concerns that if he were sent to the U.S., he would probably be placed in Colorado’s “Supermax” prison, ADX Florence (Administrative Maximum Facility). The prison is nicknamed Colorado’s “Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

Irish High Court Justice Aileen Donnelly went as far as to write a 333-page report about why the suspect shouldn’t be extradited. One highlight from the court’s ruling was that incarceration at ADX Florence prison would amount to “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Donnelly said the prison “amounts to a breach of the constitutional requirement to protect persons from inhuman and degrading treatment and to respect the dignity of the human being.”

“[P]rolonged exposure to involuntary solitary confinement exacts a significant physiological toll, is damaging to the integrity of the mind and personality, and is damaging to the bodily integrity of the person,” she continued.

According to the Los Angeles Times, “An Irish resident originally from Algiers, Damache, 50, [is]accused of using online chat rooms to recruit American women into a would-be terrorist cell operating in this country and Europe.

One man and two women, including Damache’s wife, have already been convicted in U.S. courts of providing material support to terrorists. And Damache was captured by Irish authorities in 2010 in Dublin on a separate charge of making a telephone death threat and held without bail.”

In 2011, Damache was indicted from a distance in a Philadelphia court on “charges of plotting to assassinate a Swedish cartoonist who depicted the prophet Muhammad as a dog.”
Damache was released in May after serving his time, but the U.S. is still pushing for his extradition.

“I always had faith in the Irish legal system,” he said in a statement presented by his lawyers. “After more than five years in jail, I am looking forward to moving on with my life here.”
The Colorado prison has held some of the most well-known criminals in American history, keeping them in solitary confinement with extremely limited access to outside communication. Notorious inmates include Timothy McVeigh and other people accused of high level terrorism—such as Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in a civilian court for involvement in the 9/11 attacks.
Lawyers have even argued that incarceration at ADX Florence is worse than the death penalty. Defense expert Mark Bezy called it “a mechanism to cut off an inmate’s communications with the outside world.”

The Irish court’s refusal to extradite Damache adds to a growing trend of nations that opt to exercise their own sovereignty amid pressure from powerful American influence. Such nations are increasingly moving to decide issues for themselves as they refuse to be persuaded into following the orders of a more powerful empire.

-------------
This article (Ireland Refuses to Extradite Man to US Because Prison System is Too Inhumane) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Cassius Methyl and theAntiMedia.org.

Argentina rejects accusations from The SUN

Ambassador in London referred to the version launched by the British newspaper The Sun, saying that they "sells junk" serving the British "military lobby".

According to the ambassador in London, Alicia Castro, launched by The Sun is a lie of "tabloid""patently anti-Argentine and therefore against latin america" that seeks to benefit the "British military lobby making UK to keep spending money."

With the cover referred to the sinking of the Cruise Gral. Belgrano, Castro said that The SUN seek "to make the british citizens believe that Argentina is a danger to the UK or to the inhabitants of the Malvinas Islands".

The ambassador said that it is "a gross and dirty propaganda" that serves the British government as an "excuse used by the military lobby to keep spending money" in the rearmament of the Malvinas occupied.

However, Castro said that "no question of a growing part of English society he sees as useless as no cuts" in social benefits for the people, "while an excessive spending is done to avoid an invasion that never happen

Millions Of Gallons Of Oil Settled At The Bottom Of The Gulf After BP Oil Spill

Big Oil is always telling us how safe they are. But we know the truth. They are evil companies.
They don´t care about the environment and they only pay attention to their earnings without any other concern.

So, we need to keep this news in the public agenda...

Here one new study about BP Oil spill published by ThinkProgress

Millions of gallons of oil from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill didn’t get cleaned up, and instead settled in the sediment of the Gulf of Mexico’s floor, a new study has found.

The study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, found that 6 to 10 million gallons of oil from the spill are buried in the seafloor. The researchersmeasured the amount of carbon 14 — a radioactive carbon isotope that’s found in organic material but not found in oil — in an approximately 24,000 km² area of sediment near the spill site, a process which allowed them to see what parts of the sediment were low in carbon 14 and thus contained oil.

The study sought to determine two things: whether oil had, in fact, settled on the seafloor, and how much of it had settled. Jeff Chanton, Professor of Oceanography at Florida State University and lead author of the study, told ThinkProgress that he had thought the total amount of oil they would find at the ocean floor would be higher, because after the spill, so many people had observed the oil clumping at the water’s surface and sinking.

Regardless of the amount, however, Chanton said that sedimentation was a “new phenomenon” that hadn’t been heavily observed or studied after previous oil spills.

“Everyone thinks oil is very buoyant and that it just floats on the surface,” Chanton said. So in the past, sedimentation of oil hasn’t been a main concern for scientists and cleanup workers. The federal Oil Budget Calculator, which was developed to determine where the oil of the Deepwater Horizon spill ended up in the short term, didn’t include efforts to figure out how much of the oil ended up in the Gulf’s sediment.

The researchers found that the oil was buried in the top layers of the Gulf’s sediment, meaning that if the sediment is stirred up in the future, the oil could once again enter the water. Chanton said the oil’s position on the sediment’s surface also means that it’s a part of the food chain: the worms and other benthic organisms that live on the seafloor and feed on sediments will ingest the oil, and the contaminants associated with the oil will be passed on to the creatures that eat the worms. That could be a long-term problem for the health of these deepwater Gulf fish, Chanton said.

Chanton’s study isn’t the first to look at sedimentation after the Deepwater Horizon spill. Last fall, a study found the spill had left a 1,235-square-mile “bathtub ring” of oil on the ocean’s floor. And last May, after a group of researchers spent about a month in the Gulf, one of them — Andreas Teske, marine sciences professor at the University of North Carolina — told ThinkProgress that the oil on the bottom of the seafloor is becoming “part of the geological record.”

“Since one cannot take a gigantic vacuum cleaner and clean up this stuff, getting buried is the best alternative,” Teske said.

Oil’s been found to have gathered in sediment closer to shore too: last year, a 1,250-pound tar mat was discovered off the beach of Santa Rosa Island, Florida.

Chanton’s study comes amid the third and final stage of BP’s civil trial for the spill. Earlier this month, an expert witness for BP testified that the Gulf’s shoreline had shown “substantial recovery” since the spill, and that BP’s work to clean up the oil had been “comprehensive” and “effective.” A BP executive also claimed in Politico last year that his company “didn’t ruin the Gulf.” But Chanton’s study — and previous studies on the health of the Gulf post-spill — shows that though beaches might be cleaner than they were four years ago, the spill’s lasting impact on the Gulf has yet to be determined.

Al Gore is still kicking butt as a climate warrior

Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College wrote an article in Grist where he gives us their opinion about Al Gore. 

I found it very interesting and I´m reproducing it here for you

The news from Davos last week — that Al Gore is reviving his Live Earth music festival, and that Pharrell Williams will serve as creative director — should make everyone … happy.

Not just because it will reach millions with a crucial message, but because it comes as a good reminder of Gore’s ongoing, tireless, and creative work, in what must be the most successful second act of any political life in U.S. history. Though insular Americans tend not to know it, he’s a global rock star, the political equivalent of one of those slightly older but very much beloved musicians. (The Paul McCartney of climate change?) I heard him speak one evening in September to an international crowd gathered by the U.N. in New York, and he brought people to their feet again and again.

And what was interesting was how. Instead of just dutifully repeating the old hits, his message on warming has changed. It’s now defiant and optimistic: The old energy system is doomed, as he wrote in Rolling Stone last summer. The falling cost of solar panels will ultimately sabotage fossil fuels. “The forward journey for human civilization will be difficult and dangerous, but it is now clear that we will ultimately prevail.”

This message is poison to the Exxons of the world; it’s a clever undercutting of their argument that burning ever more coal and gas and oil is inevitable, that the world has no choice. It’s a message delivered at the highest levels (Gore is always there in places like Davos where the 1% have to listen) and at the broadest: Live Earth, set for June 18, will be more about harmony than dissonance, but it will reach wide swaths of the planet, reinforcing the message that change is coming and that it’s cool.

The one potential downside to this message is that it might also undercut the efforts of those of us in — to stretch a metaphor — the various garage bands out there fighting the fossil fuel industry more directly. The larger public might start to think that standing up to power isn’t necessary because power is going to do the right thing by itself. But it’s precisely here — in lending his credibility to the rest of us — that Gore has been so powerfully helpful, and often in unacknowledged ways.

I remember, for instance, in the fall of 2008, when 350.org was as fledgling as an organization could be. The world was meeting in Poznan, Poland, for its annual effort to do nothing about climate change, and Gore was, patiently, once again giving the keynote address to the assembled delegates, trying to exhort them to do more. We’d asked him if he would embrace the new 350 ppm carbon dioxide target outlined by Jim Hansen, but we didn’t dare hope he really would: The last thing the hapless negotiators wanted was a harder target. But toward the end of his speech, Gore said: “Even a goal of 450 parts per million, which seems so difficult today, is inadequate. We need to toughen that goal to 350 parts per million.”

All the young people in the room erupted in cheers that stopped the talk for a minute or more. I pounded May Boeve, now executive director of 350.org, so hard on the back that she may still have a bruise. He had said, in effect, listen to the outsiders; go beyond the process.

And not for the last time. I remember the first week of the sit-ins against the Keystone pipeline in August of 2011. Now they seem like the curtain-raiser on what’s become the enviro fight of a generation, but at the time it was almost impossible to get anyone to pay attention, despite the largest civil disobedience action about anything in many years. Official Washington knew the pipeline was a done deal, and that no motley collection of Native Americans, ranchers, scientists, and climate activists was going to derail it. But then Gore wrote a short note on his blog. In its entirety:

The leaders of the top environmental groups in the country, the Republican Governor of Nebraska, and millions of people around the country — including hundreds of people who have bravely participated in civil disobedience at the White House — all agree on one thing: President Obama should block a planned pipeline from the tar sands of Alberta to the Gulf of Mexico.

The tar sands are the dirtiest source of liquid fuel on the planet. This pipeline would be an enormous mistake.  The answer to our climate, energy and economic challenges does not lie in burning more dirty fossil fuels — instead, we must continue to press for much more rapid development of renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies and cuts in the pollution that causes global warming.

Short, but it spoke volumes. Here was the man who should actually have been in the White House, backing protesters who were pressing the president from the party where he’d spent his life. He didn’t need to do it — it would have been easy to excuse himself on the grounds that he needed to keep communication lines open with the White House, or some such — but do it he did, and it helped grant credibility to the fight.

Al Gore and PharrellAl and Pharrell, cooking up big plans.World Economic Forum
These examples could be multiplied all day. For someone who did his service to humanity with An Inconvenient Truth, clearly the most important moment of the effort to address global warming, Gore has proven remarkably willing to go on fighting, and at every level. I know where I’ll be on June 18: tuned in to Live Earth. Pharrell said it well: “Happiness is the truth.”

Argentine prosecutor Nisman who accused Pres. Kirchner of coverup in AMIA bombing probe found dead in his apartment

The body of AMIA special prosecutor Alberto Nisman was found in the bathroom of his apartment in the Buenos Aires City neighbourhood of Puerto Madero late on Sunday.

Nisman, who was expected to take part in a closed-door hearing in Congress today to reveal the details of explosive allegations that involved President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Foreign Minister Héctor Timerman, was found minutes before midnight. The prosecutor reportedly committed suicide, according to sources, who say he was found in a pool of blood. That information has yet to be confirmed.

 Nisman, who was appointed 10 years ago by the president’s late husband Néstor Kirchner, had revealed to some members of the opposition that he was ready to appear at the congressional hearing with more documents to back his allegations.

He had accused Fernández de Kirchner of ordering impunity for the Iranian suspects in the 1994 AMIA attack in order to boost trade with Tehran. According to Nisman, Argentina wanted to import oil and export grains Iran. Government allies had been pushing for today’s congressional hearing to be open to the public.

Source: Buenos Aires Herald

Israel has arrested a ISIS cell

The Israel Security Agency has arrested seven Israeli Arabs, residents of the Galilee, for setting up an official Islamic State (ISIS) affiliate branch in Israel, it was cleared for publication Sunday.

The Shin Bet said that the seven admitted that over the last year they had formed a Salafi jihadi group, which they later aligned with ISIS. One of them also admitted to purchasing weapons to commit terror attacks on Israelis, specifically against the security establishment and the Druze community, in ISIS's name.

Several more Galilee residents were arrested in this context.

The seven have now been named as: 

• Adnan Jameel Said Al-A-Din, 40, from Nazareth; a lawyer by trade. 
• Karim Morsal Khaled Abu Saleh, aged 22, from Sakhnin. 
• Hussam Aziz Hamdal Marsiat, aged 30, a resident of Deir Hanna and past terrorist prisoner.
• Alaa Mahmoud Khaled Abu Saleh, aged 27, from Beer Sheva; originally from Sakhnin. 
• Fadi Mohammed Salim Bashir, aged 29, a resident of Sakhnin. 
• Khaled Marsal Khaled Abu Saleh, aged 30, a resident of Sakhnin. 
• Mohammed Ibrahim Mohammed Abu-Saleh, aged 27, a resident of Sakhnin, a pharmacy intern by trade. 

All seven met with a senior Sheikh running anti-Israel terror groups in the north, who was not named in the report; the Sheikh encouraged them to form the jihadist group and carry out terror attacks.

Meeting the group held included preparations to join ISIS in Syria, tutorials on how to make Molotov cocktails, and animal slaughter as "training" to slaughter "infidels" in jihadist attacks. In addition, the group was in touch with ISIS terrorists via social media, including with other Israeli Arabs who have left for Syria to join the group.

In October, sources revealed that no fewer than 30 Arab citizens of Israel have joined ISIS; there is a move in the Knesset to revoke their citizenship. Al-A-Din presented himself as an "ISIS representative in Palestine," according to the ISA, and operated as the ringleader of the group. Al-A-Din preached terror attacks against Jews specifically and ran much of the activities during meetings.

Karim Abu Salah actually attempted to leave for Syria in July 2014 to join the jihad forces fighting there, but was turned away at the last minute by security forces after intelligence came in on his intentions, the ISA further revealed. Abu Salah then turned to Al-A-Din to make contact with ISIS in Syria and raise money for his departure.

An indictment has been filed against all seven in the Haifa District Court, on suspicion of membership and activity in an unlawful association, supporting a terrorist organization and attempted contact with a foreign agent. An additional man, Omar Musa Khalil Abu Kush, born in 1986, was also arrested in connection to the case.

Abu Kush recently completed his medical studies at the University of Jordan Science and Technology (JUST). Abu Kush was arrested in November for attempting to join the Galilee cell; he admitted under interrogation that he supported ISIS and met with members of the organization in Jordan to discuss going to fight there. The indictment follows news earlier this month that an ISIS-inspired terror cell was broken up by the IDF in Hevron.

This guy has a direct message to the Pope: Fuck The Pope!

This video was originally published in the Richard Dawkings site.
He was a very controversial and direct message to the pope. What do you think about it?
What´s your personal vision about this position of the Pope and this answer?

TRANSCRIPT:

As though the Catholic Church hadn’t already done everything it possibly could to absolutely obliterate the moral credibility it never had, this morning, I woke up to the Pope — the vicar of Christ, the head of the Holy Roman Catholic Church — advocating actual physical violence in response to offensive, or provocative speech, thereby inciting violence, and coddling the terrorists who killed my fellow satirists last week at the French weekly, Charlie Hedbo.

“If my good friend Dr. Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch. It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”
“There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others. They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Dr. Gasparri if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit.”
Well, I have three words for you, Pope Franky… Fuck you, asshole!

I not only CAN make fun of the faith of others. I do it professionally, you sick, totalitarian bastard! You terrorist apologist! Your claim to be connected to some higher power gets you no pass from criticism, ridicule, and mockery, you self-imporant jerkwad! And by the way, does the fact that I am so deeply offended by what you said now give me the right to physically harm Catholics, destroy Catholic property, or say something like, “well, if someone assassinates the Pope, the Pope brought it on himself?”, you, simple-minding, mouth-breathing provocateur?
Let me explain to you, Pope violence, why you’re dead wrong — because apparently, the 2000 years of your own vile, wicked, totalitarian history has taught you absolutely nothing about basic human decency, you sick fuck!
There are, and can be, no limits on freedom of speech because when there where — and when your very organization was in charge of imposing those limits, you locked up a man for the rest of his life for giving us one of the most important scientific findings in the history of humanity — one you might want to consider right now — that we are not the center of the universe. You murdered people — burned them alive — for speech you deemed heretical and offensive, you fucking moron.

Now, if you want to disregard the stated principles of your religion and help Nazis, or fuck young boys, I guess some would say that’s your business. And God knows you never really cared for the whole “Freedom of Speech” in the first place — what evil empire would? But your dear leader — whose ideas seem to be no where on your fucking radar — was pretty adamant about returning violence with love — and that was VIOLENCE — not simply speech, which neither picks my pockets not breaks my leg. Do you even remember that whole “turn the other cheek” bit your Lord did, you hypocritical piece of shit?

So, fuck you, Pope Francis, you terrorist sympathizer. I will mock the faith of others all I want. That is my right as a human being. You don’t get to harm other people simply because they said something you didn’t like, you fucking, knuckle-dragging caveman. Your recourse instead, is to do exactly what I’m doing here — speak your mind in opposition. That’s it! You stupid hat-wearing, son-of-a-bitch.

For those of you who agree with me, please post using the hashtag #FuckThePope.
For those who disagree, please post using the hashtag #FuckTheDeity (I win either way). Unless you’re the pope. In which case, you have a lot of work to do getting your head out of your ass. You terrorist-coddling douchbag.

It´s the Oil, stupid

Cuba would be willing to enable its citizens to travel abroad as tourists

As reported by Spanish newspaper El Mundo Cuba's government raises authorize travel by Cubans abroad as tourists, as the final document of the economic reforms of the island reported Monday.

The final version of the Cuban Adjustment plan includes as one of the measures "to study a policy that provides Cubans residing in the country to travel abroad as tourists," which is one of the main novelties of the document adopted at the recent Congress Communist Party of Cuba (PCC only).

This Monday released the final version of the so-called "Guidelines for Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution", setting out the adjustments undertaken by President Castro and ratified by the PCC to "upgrade" the socialist model and overcome the serious crisis in the country.

To leave temporarily overseas Cubans need a permit to travel abroad (PVE), popularly known as "white card", which requested the Immigration and Nationality (DIE) of your town or city of residence, as well visa granted by the country to visit, among other documents.

In the "guidelines" make no mention of a possible removal of the "white card", which is ultimately the government permission to leave the country, but it is novel to be translated into an official document for the purpose of studying a policy to facilitate the travel of Cubans abroad, at least in tourism.

The final document of the reform plan includes other news about the original project but which were already announced at the Party Congress held in April as the possibility that Cubans can buy or sell cars or houses in particular.

It also includes the new policy for Cubans access to bank loans or services to the private employment sector in order to contribute to its development.

The plan of reforms undertaken by Raul Castro's government intends to update the economic model of the island without giving up the socialist planning but "it will take into account the market" and not allowing the concentration of ownership in legal or natural forms of non-state management.

In general, adjustments to crack open a small private initiative with the expansion of self-employment and involve drastic measures such as reducing the bloated state templates.

The Sixth Party Congress ratified the reform plan in a meeting held from 16 to 19 April in which Gen. Raul Castro was elected first secretary of the organization to replace his brother, former President Fidel Castro, who stepped down in 2006 by a disease.

Source El Mundo

Cubans celebrate today the anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution

Cubans celebrate today the anniversary of the triumph of the Revolution with the challenge of reaching new heights in 2011 from a strategy based on efficiency, productivity and savings.

For the inhabitants of the island, this event occurred on January 1, 1959 marked the realization of the dreams of justice for those who gave their lives for over 100 years of struggle to achieve true national independence.

Once installed in power, the revolutionary government began dismantling neo-colonial political system, law enforcement bodies were dissolved and guarantee to citizens, for the first time, the full exercise of their rights.

Public administration was sound and misappropriated assets were confiscated and, thus, eliminating such practice from the republic.

The arrival of the Revolution was the dignity of man as the center and motivation of the revolutionary leadership, which promptly took the necessary transformations.

In that sense, a measure which was a milestone was the Agrarian Reform Law, adopted on May 17, 1959, which abolished the large estates to nationalize all properties over 420 hectares, and gave the property land for tens of thousands of peasants.

Other transformations of the new government helped to put an end to racial discrimination, gender, illiteracy, and guaranteed the right of citizens to education, health and sports, among other benefits.

The year ahead will be marked by a strategy of saving, import substitution and efficiency of compliance with investment commitments.

In terms of export plans, you must increase the physical production of items that have prices in the international market and institutions should further discipline, better preparation and comprehensive analysis in all sectors about the processes investors production and export.

Saving is considered a crucial weapon to ensure the fulfillment of economic plans, in addition to providing financing for projects to continue in 2011.

Another priority will be to increase the numbers in the food production-a timely topic in the guidelines of the socio-political realignment is necessary so that the whole organization on this front, always taking into account the conservation of resources like water and fuels.