Homeland Security

Honduran congressman killed at home

The last paragraph makes me especially uncomfortable.

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras (AP) -- A Honduran congressman was shot to death by at least three unidentified assailants while resting in a hammock at his home, authorities said Tuesday.

Ramon Salgado, a congressman from Honduras' governing Liberal Party, was attacked Monday night in the Atlantic coast city of San Pedro Sula, 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of the capital of Tegucigalpa, District Attorney Manuel Lopez said.

The assailants fired some 30 M-16 machine gun rounds at Salgado, who was hit at least 14 times, Lopez said. Salgado died later in surgery at a local hospital, he added.

No one had been arrested, and police had not determined a motive for the attack.

Salgado, 43, was elected congressman representing the coastal province of Colon three consecutive times beginning in 1998.

More than 100 prominent Hondurans have been slain in the last five years, including labor leaders, environmentalists, journalists, politicians and businesspeople. Most of the slayings have gone unsolved.

Poor Homes over 800,000

Tegucigalpa, Apr 28 (Prensa Latina) Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said near 800,000 homes are ridden with destitution and 500,000 children live in abject poverty.

At a seminar on Gender, Economy and Development, Zelaya said most households, made up of women and children, are ridden with extreme poverty, poor diet, lack of medicine and unemployment.

He admitted that most of the seven million population suffers deprivation, and announced projects, like the 52-million-dollar rural housing allocation to favor single parent families led by women.

Send in your email protest to support Honduran workers

http://www.ajshonduras.org/protest.htm

Burger King Allows Labor Rights Violations

Thanks to Eduardo Kaffati, the Burgler King. Let him know personally: ekafati@burgerking.hn

http://www.ajshonduras.org/burgerking/BK%20labor%20rights%20violations.htm

Abe Huyser Honing

Go Away, Right Away

That's the essence of what employees of several Burger Kings in the Central American country of Honduras were told in wee hours of the night shift by managers cautious to make sure no customers were witness to their illegal firings.

And it's essentially the message Miami-based Burger King Corporation has given to U.S. advocates who've approached the company on the workers' behalf.

In Honduras, the owners of Burger King and other fast-food restaurants are all too accustomed to getting their way, right away.

A "Tourism Incentive" law allows them to set up shop tax-free. ("Let's fly to Tegucigalpa, Honduras-I hear they have great Whoppers there!" Right.)

The fact that the Minister of Labor works side by side at the same law firm as the lawyer for BK's Honduras franchise owner probably doesn't hurt, either.

So last year when execs at INTUR, the company that runs all of Honduras' Burger Kings, got wind that some workers in these restaurants were organizing to ask for a few things their way (complaints included having to pay for uniforms out of their meagre salaries and being forced to work overtime without pay), the execs apparently were not happy.

They demonstrated this unhappiness by firing 27 employees of Burger King and other INTUR-owned fast-food restaurants whose names appeared on a list of "organized" workers-never mind that most had never attended a meeting or even knew where they were held-and denying them the two-months' severance pay required by Honduran law for firings without warning.

Mandatory severance pay might sound to the U.S. ear like a cushy deal. But in Honduras, where companies like BK can pay their employees as low as $120 a month and the unemployment rate shoots upwards of 36%, it can mean the difference between satisfying your children's hunger or feeding them stone soup.

For a Harvard Student and Aggrieved Novelist, Plagiarism Generates Interest

By MOTOKO RICH and GLENN RIFKIN

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 28 — On Thursday night Little, Brown announced that it was pulling the Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan's chick-lit novel, "How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life," from bookstores because numerous passages in it had been plagiarized.

On Friday morning Maggie Hsu, a sophomore biology major at Harvard, went to the Harvard Coop bookstore, where she bought the last copy of "Opal" before clerks removed it from shelves. Ms. Hsu said that she had planned to purchase the book before the controversy erupted, but that the recall sent her to the bookstore. "I've been talking to a lot of people about this, and what everyone seems to be asking is, 'Why would anyone do this?' "...

...Earlier this week Steve Ross, Crown's publisher, described Ms. Viswanathan's actions as "nothing less than an act of literary identity theft." When Little, Brown said on Monday that it would "eliminate any inappropriate similarities" in future printings of "Opal," Mr. Ross questioned how quickly that could happen and said that leaving the original edition on the shelves during the time it took to make the revisions was "of great concern."

Computer Document

Mr. Schult needs some new ideas.
You can help him find out more about what is on these websites.

With a partner, that is you and one other person, create a word document and write both your names on it. You are going to email this document as an attachment to Mr. Schult's email address. His address is: dschult@seishn.com

On this document, write down something new that you learned. Each website is different. Try to visit them all but if you find one you like, stay there.

Copy down the URL address of each website you learn something new on and put that in your document as well.

Write down 3 new things you learned and their website for 5 points.
Write down 5 new things you learned and their website for 7 points.
Write down 7 new things you learned and their website for 9 points.

Write down 7 new things you learned and something else that Mr. Schult does not already know, and their website for 10 points.

Your document should have the name of you and your partner, a sentence of two about what you learned, the website where you found the information.

Here are the websites you can use.

http://school.discovery.com/brainboosters/

http://www.self-gov.org/quiz.html

http://www.venganza.org/

http://www.straightdope.com/index.html

http://www.braingle.com/

http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/

http://www.snopes.com/

Good luck!

Honduras Culture Plunder on Rise

Tegucigalpa, Apr 25 (Prensa Latina) The plundering of objects of great cultural, historical and religious value continues escalating in Honduras, said Yani del Cid, the special Attorney General of ethnic groups and cultural heritage.

Yani´s remarks came after several thieves broke into San Juan Bautista Catholic Church in Ojojona community, south of Tegucigalpa, and plundered valuable objects.

The church robbers made off with a bust of St. Jose, from the second half of the 18th century, a silver crown, an oil painting of St. Miguel Arcángel, a silver and wood cross from the colonial period and an imperial crown of gold, among other objects.

The attorney said that agents from the Criminal Investigation General Department will inspect the zone.

Fort Lauderdale Woman Shot Dead While Vacationing In Honduras

POSTED: 6:58 am EDT April 26, 2006

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- A Fort Lauderdale, Fla., woman is dead following an armed robbery on Honduras' Caribbean coast.

Authorities said a pair of gunmen shot and killed Adaline Lopez on Monday in Villanueva, about 125 miles north of Honduras' capital, Tegucigalpa.

Police said Lopez, 40, was on vacation and was preparing to fly back to the United States when she stopped at an ATM and withdrew $2,000.

A pair of assailants apparently watched her withdraw the money and approached her vehicle. They demanded Lopez get out of the car, but she tried to drive away.

The men opened fire, shooting Lopez in the neck.

The gunmen escaped with some money and remained at large Tuesday night.

Lopez was born in Honduras but immigrated to the U.S. 25 years ago and became an American citizen. She lived in Fort Lauderdale with her Honduran husband and two children.

WHY YOU SHOULD CONVERT TO FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTERISM

* Flimsy moral standards.

* Every friday is a relgious holiday. If your work/school objects to that, demand your religious beliefs are respected and threaten to call the ACLU.

* Our heaven is WAY better. We've got a Stripper Factory AND a Beer Volcano.