Despite US threats of “strong and swift economic sanctions” that the WSJ reported overnight could cut off a crucial source of revenue for Venezuela’s financially distressed state oil company, PDVSA, the socialist state’s leader Nicolas Maduro is claiming victory in a vote to create a new “constituent assembly,” a vote that US government officials have labeled a "sham."
We didn’t need any more data to definitively expose the many shortcomings of the US-led global prohibition on narcotics – but we got one today, courtesy of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.
Submitted by Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk via Bawerk.net,
Over 25,000 people are now confirmed as being infected with the Zika virus in Colombia, with 3,100 of them being pregnant women, President Juan Manuel announced over the weekend. As the disease continues to ravage the America’s Brazil is investigating the link between Zika and microcephaly, a birth defect marked by an unusually small head size. Alarabiya.net reports: Researchers have identified evidence of Zika infection in 17 of these cases, either in the baby or in the mother, but have not confirmed that Zika can cause microcephaly.
From the initial discovery in the heart of Ugandan forest darkness to mysterious genetically-modified Mosquitoes in Brazil, the newest threat to human health (most notably pregnant women) is the ominous-sounding Zika virus. The epidemic is spreading from its epicenter in Brazil - threatening disaster at the Olympics with "female athletes to consider participation "very carefully"", to Colombia (with 2100 pregant women infected), and further north in America with CDC confirming 6 cases in Texas.