International

UnitedHealth, the discredited scofflaw U.S. health insurance company, just paid $12 million in fines to 37 state governments for its illegal administrative practices. The settlement followed years of legal problems. This hasn’t stopped UnitedHealth from seeking to expand its profiteering in the United Kingdom.

As one of his very first official actions Dec. 3, Kevin Rudd, Australia’s newly sworn-in prime minister, signed the instrument of ratification for the Kyoto Protocol limiting greenhouse gas emissions. The ratification will come into force in 90 days.

CHICAGO — Wearing white lab coats and red armbands, dozens of American Medical Student Association members from schools across the Midwest rallied here Nov. 30, urging presidential candidates to back expanded, comprehensive programs to fight AIDS and reject President Bush’s abstinence-only focus. Nationwide rallies took place in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., on Dec. 1.

It looks like President Bush’s apocalyptic push for World War III with Iran has been postponed. With the stunning release of the National Intelligence Estimate this week reporting that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program in 2003 (if it ever had one, which is up for debate), the “war option” is “off the table” for now, at least according to numerous government officials.

The campaign to reshape Venezuela’s 1999 constitution toward a socialist future ended Dec. 2 in a narrow defeat for the government of President Hugo Chavez.

Several years ago, before the start of Bush’s (and Cheney’s) Iraq war, I wrote a column about the words the administration was using to boost its case for war. They were making liberal use of weasel words — “could,” “might,” “possibly” and so on.

We have read the science. Global warming is real, and we are a prime cause. We have heard the warnings. Unless we act, now, we face serious consequences. Polar ice may melt. Sea levels will rise. A third of our plant and animal species could vanish. There will be famine around the world, particularly in Africa and Central Asia.

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (Prensa Asociada) — Organizaciones independentistas denunciaron el 27 de noviembre que existe hostigamiento en su contra por parte del gobierno estadounidense en Puerto Rico.

El presidente Nicolás Sarkozy creyó que era fácil implementar las políticas neoliberales en Francia. Pero no, el país está convulsionado. Primeramente fueron los universitarios que se oponen a la ley de Pecresse — por el nombre del ministro de Educación — y que mantiene en pie de lucha al estamento estudiantil. A última hora se han sumado al movimiento los estudiantes de bachillerato.

Tras la decisión del presidente de Colombia, Álvaro Uribe, de acabar con el la mediación de su homólogo venezolano, Hugo Chávez, en las negociaciones para un canje humanitario entre el gobierno colombiano y las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), el periodista colombiano y director del semanario La Voz, Carlos Lozano, estimó en una entrevista con TeleSur que el mandatario colombiano “en el fondo, no quiere acuerdo humanitario”.