New disclosure says NSA spied
on presidents in México, Brazil


The Brazilian government Monday summoned the U.S. ambassador over new allegations that the U.S. National Security Agency spy program targeted President Dilma Rousseff.

U.S. Ambassador Thomas Shannon met with Brazilian Foreign Minister Luiz Alberto Figueiredo, following a report on Brazil's Globo TV that the United States spied on Rousseff and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

The U.S. National Security Agency spied on emails, phone calls and text messages of the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, a Brazilian news program reported, a revelation that could strain Washington's relations with Latin America's two biggest nations.

The report late Sunday by Globo's news program “Fantastico” was based on documents that journalist Glenn Greenwald obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, was listed as a co-contributor to the report.

“Fantastico” showed what it said was an NSA slide dated June 2012 displaying passages of written messages sent by the Mexican president, who was still a candidate at that time. In the messages, Peña Nieto discussed who he was considering naming as his ministers once elected.

A separate slide displayed communication patterns between Ms. Rousseff and her top advisers, “Fantastico” said, although no specific written passages were included in the report.

Both slides were part of an NSA case study showing how data could be intelligently filtered by the agency's secret internet surveillance programs that were disclosed in a trove of documents leaked by Snowden in June, “Fantastico” said.

Brazil's government, already smarting from earlier reports that the NSA spied on the emails and phone calls of Brazilians, called in Shannon to explain the new allegations that the agency had spied on Rousseff herself.

Justice Minister José Eduardo Cardozo said the contents of the documents, if confirmed, “should be considered very serious and constitute a clear violation of Brazilian sovereignty.”

“This hits not only Brazil, but the sovereignty of several countries that could have been violated in a way totally contrary to what international law establishes,” he told O Globo newspaper.

Cardozo traveled last week to Washington and met with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden and other officials, seeking more details on a previous, seemingly less serious set of disclosures by Snowden regarding U.S. spying in Brazil.

Ms. Rousseff is scheduled to make a formal state visit in October to meet with Obama in Washington, a trip intended to illustrate the warming in Brazilian-U.S. relations since she took office in 2011.

Ms. Rousseff held a cabinet meeting Monday that included the country's defense, justice, communications and foreign affairs ministers to discuss a response to the espionage report. A presidential spokesman would not comment on the new allegations.

“We value our relationship with Brazil, understand that they have valid concerns about these disclosures, and we will continue to engage with the Brazilian government in an effort to address those concerns,” a U.S. embassy spokesman said. “Brazil and the United States are global partners and we agree that our broader relationship will remain vital and moving forward.”

Mexico's presidential palace said it had no immediate comment. In July, after initial reports of NSA surveillance of  Internet communications in Latin American nations, Peña Nieto said it would be totally unacceptable if it were revealed that the United States had spied on its neighbor and largest business partner in the region.

The United States is hoping to sell Brazil 36 F-18 fighter jets, but a Brazilian government official said manufacturer Boeing's chances of landing the more than $4 billion deal have been set back by the espionage scandal.

During a visit last month, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry urged Brazil not to let spying revelations derail growing trade, diplomatic and cultural relations between the two largest economies in the Americas. But he gave no indication the United States would end the secret surveillance.

Kerry said the NSA surveillance was aimed at protecting Americans and Brazilians from terrorist attacks.

But Justice Minister Cardozo said Monday that the latest revelations based on Snowden's documents show that U.S. electronic surveillance goes beyond combating terrorism and has political targets and may even involve commercial espionage.

Until the report of spying on their president, Brazilian officials, while outwardly furious, appeared to be intent on putting the espionage scandal behind them so that it would not hurt relations with Washington and Ms. Rousseff's state visit next month.

Carl Meacham, head of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, believes Brazil has more to lose than the United States if the visit is scrubbed.

Ms. Rousseff, whose popularity has been hurt by massive protests in June against corruption and poor public services, might even make political hay out of the NSA spying affair, he said.

“Keeping this going is probably helpful to Rousseff,” Meacham said. “This helps distract from what is going on in Brazil, things like the economy and spending for the Olympics and the World Cup.”


Ms. Nyad achieves dream
by swimming from Cuba


U.S. endurance swimmer Diana Nyad has become the first person to swim from Cuba to Key West, Florida without the protection of a shark cage. 

Ms. Nyad swam for about 53 hours, covering a distance of 177 kilometers from Hemingway Marina in Havana, Cuba, to Smathers Beach in Key West, Florida.   

Onlookers crowded around the 64-year-old swimmer when she came ashore in Key West.

Nyad's lips were swollen, and she appeared exhausted, dazed and determined when she addressed the crowd. 

"I've got three messages.  One is, we should never, ever give up.  Two is, you are never too old to chase your dreams.  Three is, it looks like a solitary sport, but it's a team," said Ms. Nyad.

Medics then escorted the record-breaker off the beach to receive medical attention. 

At points during her swim, Ms. Nyad wore a bodysuit, mask, gloves and booties to protect her from poisonous, stinging jellyfish, and she applied a so-called sting stopper cream to her face.

Earlier Monday, a blog post on the Web site that chronicled the record-breaking swim said that as Ms. Nyad treaded water, she explained to those in boats that the jellyfish mask had cut her mouth and made it difficult to speak properly.  According to that post, with her goal in sight, Ms. Nyad thanked her support team for its generosity.

It was Ms. Nyad's fifth and final attempt to cross from Havana to Key West.  Her first attempt was in 1978, with subsequent tries in 2011 and 2012. 

Ms. Nyad has referred to the quest as a lifelong dream.   

The athlete's other feats include swimming around the island of Manhattan and swimming from the Bahamas to Florida, both in the 1970s.


Malaysia rounding up illegals
and could deport thousands


More than 2,000 immigrants in Malaysia have spent the night in detention centers in a nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration that authorities say could deport hundreds of thousands of people.

Home Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi told the press the 2,433 detainees were among approximately 8,000 people examined by authorities in dozens of operations that began Sunday.

“This shows the seriousness of the home ministry and immigration department. Ours is not a spur-of-the-moment action,” Ahmad Zahid said Monday, as quoted by Malaysia's national news agency, Bernama.

The home minister told reporters that so far, authorities have detained 717 Indonesian nationals, 555 Burmese nationals, 387 Bangladeshi nationals and 229 Nepali nationals. He said authorities also detained immigrants from Cambodia, Vietnam, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, China, Nigeria and Thailand.

Officials say more than 400,000 immigrants could be affected by the operation. Many of them hold low-paying construction and plantation jobs, while others work as domestic helpers or in massage parlors.

Their labor has helped build Malaysia into Southeast Asia’s third largest economy. But as the economy has weakened, concerns have grown among some Malaysians that foreigners could push down wages and drive up crime.

The government has vacillated in its approach to illegal immigration over the past decade, from whipping and fining people for working illegally in Malaysia, to registering 1.3 million of an estimated two million undocumented foreigners for an amnesty program in 2011.

The crackdown that began Sunday is focusing first on immigrants who signed up for amnesty but didn’t finish the process.

It comes as Malaysia is trying to transition to a higher-skilled economy and is facing a slower growth rate than expected. The central bank recently downgraded Malaysia’s economic growth forecast from 6 percent to between 4.5 and 5 percent this year.

Malaysian authorities say they are working with foreign embassies to repatriate the undocumented workers. Home Minister Ahmad Zahid also said authorities will take action in accordance with international law to avoid human trafficking.

Malaysia is a destination and transit country for trafficking victims who suffer exploitation and abuse as forced laborers and sex slaves. The U.S. Department of State placed Malaysia on its Tier 2 human trafficking Watch List for the fourth consecutive year this year, because the government does not fully comply with the minimum standards for ending trafficking.


Insects and plant diseases said
to be moving to warming north


Insects and diseases that attack food crops are moving to higher latitudes as climate change alters their habitats, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change.

With the bulk of the world’s agricultural production today taking place in the temperate zones, the study raises questions about future food security in a warming world.

Plant diseases alone claim an estimated 10 to 16 percent of the world’s crops in the field, experts say, and destroy another 6 to 12 percent after harvest.

Meanwhile, research has shown wild plants and animals are moving toward the poles as the planet gets warmer.

And the U.S. Department of Agriculture is adjusting northward its map of zones suitable for growing certain crops.

“That got us thinking,” said biologist Dan Bebber at the University of Exeter in Britain. “Is a similar process occurring with pests and pathogens that attack our agricultural crops?”

To find out, Bebber turned to reports of first sightings of new insects and diseases around the world. The data came from the agriculture research organization CABI, which began collecting the information from developing and industrialized countries about a century ago and now tracks hundreds of pests and pathogens around the world.

Bebber and his colleagues studied 612 of them from viruses and bacteria to beetles and butterflies and found that since 1960, they had shifted toward the poles at an average rate of about 3 kilometers per year.

That puts some of the most productive farmland in the world in danger.

“As new species of pests and diseases evolve and potentially the environment for them becomes more amenable at higher latitudes, the pressure on the breadbaskets of the world is going to increase,” Bebber said.


Gap between rich, poor lands
shows up in health of women


The World Health Organization reports women aged 50 and older globally are healthier now than they were 20 and 30 years ago.   But while women’s health has improved, a new study finds the gap in life expectancy is widening between older women in rich and poor countries.

The World Health Organization reports heart disease and stroke and cancers are the leading causes of death of women aged 50 years and older worldwide.  But, it notes these deaths occur at earlier ages in the developing countries.

The study is one of the first to analyze the causes of death of women aged 50 and more from a range of rich and poor countries.  It finds many of these women are meeting an early death because they live in countries that lack the money and resources to prevent, detect and treat non-communicable diseases.

The head of the World Health Organization Mortality and Burden of Disease Unit, Colin Mathers, says developed countries have the health systems and means to reduce and control cardiovascular problems.  He said screening and treatment programs also are successfully reducing the incidence of breast and cervix cancers.

He notes cervical cancer is one of the leading cancers in African women.  He says the illness is largely preventable, but African countries have fewer resources to treat it.

“There is simply not enough money to provide high quality health care to everyone that is accessible.  And, also a matter of human resources, that there often are not enough trained doctors and nurses and other health professionals in the country.  And, that is made worse by the brain drain where African nurses can migrate to high-income countries to get jobs in their health systems and so some of the training that is done in developing countries ends up not benefiting them," he said.

Mathers says donors give relatively little money toward the problem of non-communicable diseases in African countries because they tend to focus on reducing maternal mortality.  While this is understandable, he notes maternal mortality rates are going down substantially.  At the same time, he says death rates among older women are going up, so it is time for donors to rethink their priorities.

Thanks to improvements in health, the study finds women over 50, on average, have gained 3.5 years in life expectancy over the past 20 years.  It notes older women in Germany and Japan now can expect to live to 84 and 88 years respectively and women in many other developed countries can expect to live to age 83 or 84.

The report says life expectancy for women in the poorer countries is about 10 years less.  It notes women in Eastern Europe also die at an earlier age because of high rates of cardiovascular disease, accidents, and high alcohol consumption.

Mathers says major risk factors for older women include smoking, the harmful use of alcohol, overweight and obesity.

“Many of the problems faced by older women start earlier in life.  So, smoking, for example, people typically develop the habit at earlier ages.  So, it is not only about intervening in older years improving conditions and education and providing information to younger people can ultimately assist in improving health at older ages as well," he said.

The World Health Organization says the epidemic of chronic diseases can be reversed with available cost-effective ways to address common non-communicable diseases.  These include prevention, early diagnosis and management of high blood pressure, obesity and high cholesterol.

The study says inexpensive and simple tests for the screening and early detection of cervical cancer can save many lives.