Gabriel Pacheco scored a set piece goal 6:44 into the game and both defenses limited offensive opportunities as the Hofstra University men scored a 1-0 victory over the University of Penn Monday night in front of a capacity crowd of 1,600 fans at Hofstra Soccer Stadium.
Coconut Bread with Sweet Pineapple Butter
Coconut Bread
1 mug (1 stick) saltless butter, thawed, plus 1/2 even more for oiling the frying pan
3 mugs all-round flour
1 tbsp cooking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 mug brownish sugar, loaded
2 eggs, gently defeated
1 tsp vanilla remove
Enthusiasm of 1 lemon, carefully grated
1 1/2 mugs bitter coconut milk
1 1/2 mugs shredded coconut, toasted
Confectioners’ sugar, for cleaning
Pleasant Pineapple Butter
1 (8 ounce) can smashed pineapple, drained pipes
1 mug (2 sticks) saltless butter, softened
Pre-heat the stove to 375 levels F. Grease all-time low and also sides of a 9 x 5-inch loaf frying pan with butter.
In a huge dish, blend the flour with the cooking powder, salt, and also cinnamon.
In one more huge dish, blend with each other the thawed butter with the brownish sugar, eggs, vanilla essence as well as lemon passion. Cook for 1 hr to 1 hr 15 mins, or till a wood choice comes out tidy when put right into the facility of the bread. Great the bread in the frying pan for 20 mins or so; after that great sufficient to take care of, get rid of the coconut bread to a reducing board and also allow amazing entirely prior to cutting.
Press the fluid out of the smashed pineapple utilizing the rear of a spoon. (If there is excessive juice, the fruit will certainly divide from the butter.).
In a little dish, mash the pineapple with the softened butter up until well mixed. Toast the pieces of coconut bread, dirt with confectioners’ sugar, and also offer with the velvety pineapple butter.
In one more big dish, blend with each other the thawed butter with the brownish sugar, eggs, vanilla remove and also lemon enthusiasm. In a tiny dish, mash the pineapple with the softened butter up until well combined. A food cpu is a fast option to making the substance butter, so utilize it if you have one. Mound the butter in a tiny offering dish. Toast the pieces of coconut bread, dirt with confectioners’ sugar, as well as offer with the velvety pineapple butter.
In a press release, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) announced on 7 August 2023 that it had received a number of legal opinions from states and international organisations in preparation for the advisory opinion it is due to deliver on the prolonged occupation and colonisation of Palestinian territory by Israel: see official ICJ press release in English and French.
Among the 57 opinions registered, from the American continent, submissions were received (in chronological order) from Canada, Chile, Guyana, Brazil, Belize, the United States, Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia and Guatemala, while no organisation from this continent sent any submissions (unlike, for example, the African continent, with an opinion from the African Union, in addition to those from two other international organisations: the League of Arab States and the Organisation of the Islamic Conference).
From the Middle East, submissions were received from (in chronological order) Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Yemen, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Kuwait.
This is the second time in history that the advisory procedure has been used before the ICJ to address the situation in Palestine: in 2004, the ICJ rendered an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s construction of a wall in Palestinian territories (see full text with, in paragraph 9, the chronological list of legal opinions received from states and international organisations).
As will be recalled, on 30 December 2022, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution confirming and ratifying one previously adopted in November 2022 (Note 1): in it, the ICJ was asked to give an advisory opinion on the situation in the Palestinian Territory (see official UN communiqué).
The ICJ’s advisory procedure is regulated in articles 65-68 of its Statute (see text).
This request was formally registered on 19 January in The Hague (see official ICJ communiqué in English and French dated 20 January 2023). It should be noted that the advisory procedure allows the ICJ to receive legal opinions from both states and international organisations.
The two questions put to the ICJ contained in resolution A/Res/77/247 (see text) are the following (paragraph 18):
“(a) What are the legal consequences of Israel’s continued violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, its prolonged acts of occupation, settlement and annexation of the Occupied Palestinian Territory since 1967, including measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the Holy City of Jerusalem, and Israel’s adoption of related discriminatory legislation and measures?
(b) How do Israel’s policies and practices referred to in paragraph 18(a) affect the legal status of the occupation and what are the legal implications of that status for all States and for the United Nations?”
We have had the opportunity to analyse and put into perspective the previous vote, which took place on 11 November 2022 in the Fourth Committee of the General Assembly, and to point out the profound fear that it had aroused in the highest Israeli authorities: see our article entitled “Palestine: Israeli occupation and colonisation soon to be examined by the International Court of Justice (ICJ)”.
This fear heralded diplomatic efforts at the highest level, which were indeed deployed by Israel and its loyal US ally from 11 November onwards to stop this initiative at all costs. As we analysed in the case of Latin America, these attempts had a very limited effectiveness, with very few exceptions (one of them being Costa Rica): see our article entitled “Latin America in the face of a request for an advisory opinion from international justice on the situation in Palestine: brief notes on Costa Rica’s unusual vote against”.
On 11 November, in the Fourth Committee of the General Assembly, the result was 98 votes in favour, 17 against and 52 abstentions. In the vote held on 30 December in the General Assembly as such, the result was 87 votes in favour, 26 against and 53 abstentions.
The voting table reproduced below shows in detail which states succumbed to all kinds of pressure from the Israeli diplomatic apparatus and its staunch US ally. This table also makes it possible to predict the probable position that was sent in the legal opinion submitted to the ICJ in The Hague before 28 July 2023.
It should be noted that these diplomatic demarches did not produce any major effects, with a few exceptions: the only – somewhat peculiar – case of a state that voted in favour in November and then voted against in December (Kenya). As is customary in such contests, no official explanation has been given for the sudden change of position of the Kenyan delegate to the UN.
The vote of Latin American States in 2022: Guatemala and Costa Rica the only ones to vote against
When reviewing in detail what happened between November (first vote) and December (second vote), in Latin America, Guatemala maintained its vote against in both votes.
It should be noted that Guatemala was the only Latin American State to vote against during the vote in November 2022. It is worth recalling that Guatemala was the only State in the world to feel obliged to “second” the then President of the United States in 2018, also moving its embassy to Jerusalem after the United States did so (see France24 article of May 2018). At the time Guatemala officially recognised Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on 24 December 2017, we had the opportunity to write that:
“After the failure obtained at the United Nations, first in the Security Council, with a marked result of 14 votes against the sole American veto, and then in the General Assembly (128 votes in favour, 9 against), for the United States and Israel to have another state to agree with the US decision was a top priority: Guatemala now allows them to materialise it” (Note 2).
Returning to the General Assembly resolution requesting an advisory opinion from the ICJ, in this second vote on 30 December 2022, it should be noted that Ecuador, Haiti, Honduras and Uruguay maintained their previous abstention in November. It is worth noting that although these four states (like many others) were pressured by Israel and its loyal US ally, they chose to maintain their position unchanged.
On the other hand, it is worth noting the sudden change of position between the 11 November and 30 December vote of the following states: Brazil voted in favour on 11 November and abstained on 30 December. The same happened with the delegations of Panama and the Dominican Republic. It is interesting to note that Brazil’s vote took place while its president was already on his way to the United States, declining to participate in the inauguration ceremony of the newly elected Brazilian authorities on 1 January 2023: the latter were able to count on the presence of the head of Palestinian diplomacy by personally attending the ceremony (see the interesting interview conducted by Correio Braziliense on 3 January 2023, which augurs a renewed strengthening of relations between Brazil and Palestine).
The cases of Costa Rica and Colombia, which had both abstained in the first vote on 11 November 2022, are considered much more striking.
– Costa Rica, which abstained on 11 November, went on to vote against on 30 December, joining 25 other states (among which reappears the group of states that, year after year, automatically seek to protect Israel at the UN, namely Australia, Canada, the United States, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru and Palau). Unless we are mistaken, no official explanation has been given for this sudden change of position by the Costa Rican diplomatic apparatus;
– Colombia, for its part, opted to change its position and vote in favour of the resolution.
As will be recalled, Costa Rica recognised Palestine as a State since February 2008, while Colombia did so only in August 2018: see article in El Pais of Spain and DW’s article explaining that this act by the Colombian Executive took place on the last day of the Presidency of Juan Manuel Santos. Bearing in mind that Colombia became the last state in Latin America to have made this recognition, Costa Rica’s sudden change of heart in December 2023 at the UN General Assembly is even more difficult to understand.
It is the first time in many years that Costa Rica has voted so singularly on the Palestinian issue, a state that had managed to distance itself from Israel since 2006, after a long period in which Costa Rica adopted positions very close to those sought by Israeli diplomacy at the United Nations. Former Costa Rican foreign minister Bruno Stagno (2006-2010) said:
“I recalled two cases that in one way or another reflected the intricate, but still veiled set of interests that came into play when dealing with the Israel issue. As Ambassador, Permanent Representative to the United Nations, I had lived and suffered through it. I remembered how, in order to mark me on votes on the Middle East situation, the then Costa Rican Ambassador in Washington DC, Jaime Daremblum, alienated some members of the US Congress, so that they would send me letters urging or instructing me to vote in favour of Israel. Congressman Tom Lantos would be the most insistent, even addressing President Pacheco de la Espriella directly. I also recalled the indignation with which Ambassador Emeritus Emilia Castro de Barish commented on how in the past it had been accepted that an official of the Permanent Mission of Israel would sit in the second row of seats, reserved for Costa Rica, in order to ensure Costa Rica’s “correct” vote” (Note 3).
In Europe, the states that abstained in November and voted against in December 2022 were Croatia, the United Kingdom and Romania.
To recapitulate from the voting board, only Guatemala and Costa Rica from Latin America as a whole voted against the resolution.
The unbreakable “coalition” in the UN that Israel can always count on
As has become customary in such UN contests, an observer will recognise among the ‘hard core’ of states that consistently oppose any pro-Palestinian language, including Australia, Canada, the Marshall Islands, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the United States, among the ‘no’ votes. In general, this small core group manages to attract occasional and circumstantial votes (whether from Europe, Africa or Central America).
As one example, among many others, when in November 2012 the General Assembly recognised Palestine as a “Non-Member Observer State” by adopting resolution A/Res/67/19 (138 votes in favour, 9 against and 41 abstentions), this odd association of states was joined by Panama and the Czech Republic (see official UN communiqué). To date, Panama persists in remaining the only Latin American state not to formally recognise Palestine as a state.
In the same way (9 votes against), in a vote in the General Assembly on the obligation not to transfer embassies to Jerusalem in December 2017, with 128 votes in favour and 35 abstentions (see official UN press release): it should be noted that this was a very similar text that was the subject of a previous vote in the Security Council, in which the United States alone voted against (veto) against 14 votes in favour (see our note on this subject).
This curious “coalition”, to use the term used by the Washington Post in 2012 (see article), was also expressed in 2021, during the vote on resolution A/RES/76/225 (see text), with 7 votes against, against 156 votes in favour and 15 abstentions (see details of the vote): far from being a circumstantial alliance, the ties that unite its members appear to be those of a real, lasting and fairly solid front.
In 2022, these ties reappeared during the vote on the resolution entitled “Non-violent settlement of the question of Palestine” A/77/L.26, adopted on 30 November 2022 by 153 votes in favour, 9 against and 10 abstentions (see details of the vote during which Hungary and Liberia joined the aforementioned “coalition”, Australia having finally abstained).
This already small group can sometimes be even smaller: one of the most modest expressions in number of votes of the so-called “coalition” (4 votes: United States, Israel, Marshall Islands and Micronesia) is certainly this resolution voted in October 2003 on the construction of the wall built by Israel on Palestinian territory, adopted with 144 votes in favour and only 4 against (see the official UN communiqué). In the case of resolution, A/RES/ES-10-15 voted on 20 July 2004 urging Israel to implement the ICJ’s advisory opinion of the same month, the vote was 150 in favour, 10 abstentions and six votes against (Australia, United States, Marshall Islands, Israel, Micronesia and Palau).
Beyond the (rather limited) effect of the pressure exerted by Israel and the United States to stop this initiative, the fact remains that this resolution was adopted and ratified in December 2022. It was subsequently referred to the international judge in The Hague in early 2023 to examine the situation in Palestine in the light of current international law.
As indicated, the consultative procedure before the ICJ allows for the submission of written submissions both by other states and by international organisations. In the first case, it is very likely that Israel and the United States persuaded some foreign ministries to draft legal opinions in favour of Israel, as happened in a similar consultative procedure before the ICJ in 2003-2004 in relation to Israel’s construction of a wall on Palestinian territory (Note 4): On that occasion, resolution ES/10/14 (see text) requesting such an opinion from the ICJ was adopted on 8 December 2003 with 90 votes in favour, 8 against – Australia, Ethiopia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the United States – and 74 states opting to abstain. Notably, no Latin American State voted against at the time (Note 5). In the second case – legal opinions of international organisations – when transmitting the request for an advisory opinion to the ICJ on 17 January 2023 (see letter), the UN Secretary-General informed the ICJ that his services were already preparing a document that would be useful to the judges in their future deliberations:
“In this regard, I would like to further inform you that, pursuant to Article 65, paragraph 2, of the Statute of the Court, the Secretariat will start to prepare a dossier containing a collection of all relevant documents that are likely to throw light upon these questions. The dossier will be transmitted to the Court in due course”.
At a time when the United States and Europe seek to convince the rest of the world of the imperative need to strongly condemn Russia for the military aggression suffered by Ukraine since 24 February 2022, for the intentional destruction by Russia of public infrastructure that allows the subsistence of the Ukrainian civilian population, the two votes related to Palestine in the last months of 2022 evidenced the inconsistency of many, by not wanting to allow the ICJ to examine the application of these same international norms in the Palestinian territory.
Is it not in the interest of any Member State of the United Nations and of the international community as such that these same rules, rightly invoked by Ukraine, be applied uniformly and duly respected by all other states, including Israel (Note 6)? Is it not the right of any state to appeal to an international judicial body such as the ICJ when it considers itself the victim of violations by another state of rules in force in the international legal order?
This second question should ask ourselves of the states that already officially recognise Palestine as a state (currently totalling 138), a recognition in which Costa Rica played a notorious and decisive role in Latin America (Note 7).
Note 1: The text of the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on 11 November 2022 is available in the various official languages here. For the few studies on this first resolution, see POWER S., “UN General Assembly Committee Adopts Resolution Requesting Second Advisory Opinion from ICJ on Occupied Palestinian Territory”, EJIL-Talk, 20 December 2022 edition, available here. As well as this very comprehensive 13-question booklet by Diakonia, Centre for International Humanitarian Law (no authors indicated), “The ICJ advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory”, November 2022, available here.
Note 2: See in this regard our analysis in BOEGLIN N., “La desafortunada decisión de Guatemala de trasladar su embajada a Jerusalén: breves apuntes”, DerechoInternacionalcr, edition of 29/12/2017. Text available here.
Note 3: See STAGNO UGARTE B., Los caminos menos transitados. La administración Arias Sánchez y la redefinición de la política exterior de Costa Rica, 2006-2010, Heredia, Editorial UNA (EUNA), 2013, pp. 70-71.
Note 4: The same ICJ in 2004 issued an advisory opinion on the legal consequences of Israel’s construction of a wall in occupied Palestinian territory. The question that had been put to the international judge in 2003 by the General Assembly in Resolution ES/10/14 (see text) adopted with 90 votes in favour, 8 against and 74 abstentions (see official communiqué) was as follows: “What are the legal consequences arising from the construction of the wall being erected by Israel, the occupying Power, in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including in and around East Jerusalem, as described in the report of the Secretary-General, taking into account the rules and principles of international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the relevant Security Council and General Assembly resolutions? “. In the period 2003-2004, almost 50 states submitted their legal opinion to the ICJ (see official link to the documents submitted by these states). In the text of the advisory opinion released only seven months after, and whose full reading is recommended, it will be noted that the operative part – paragraph 163(2) – was adopted with 14 votes in favour and only one against, the American judge Thomas Buergenthal. In this other link of the same ICJ, you can read the text in Spanish of this important advisory opinion of 2004.
Note 5: Regarding the vote on resolution ES/10/14 of 8 December 2003, in Latin America, Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Mexico, Panama voted in favour, and the following States abstained: Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay and Venezuela.
Note 6: On the case of Ukraine and Russia, we refer to our brief analysis of Russia’s failure to appear before the judge in The Hague: BOEGLIN N., “La fuerza del derecho ante el derecho a la fuerza. A propósito de la no comparecencia de Rusia ante la Corte Internacional de Justicia (CIJ)”, Portal de la Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR), Voz Experta section, 23 March 2022 edition. Text available here.
Note 7: Costa Rica’s recognition of Palestine as a state in February 2008 reactivated support for Palestine as a state in Latin America and other parts of the world. Following Costa Rica’s recognition, Latin America responded to this call by making a similar gesture in favour of Palestine: in chronological order, Venezuela (April 2009), the Dominican Republic (July 2009), Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Paraguay (December 2010), Peru and Chile (January 2011), Argentina (February 2011), Uruguay (March 2011), El Salvador and Honduras (August 2011) and Guatemala (April 2013). In August 2018, Colombia proceeded to recognise Palestine as a state. It should be noted that an official Palestinian request made in 2011 to the Security Council to become a full Member State of the United Nations (see note) is still waiting to be resolved: the fact that it has not been resolved by the beginning of 2023 has not in the least prevented 138 States from formally recognising Palestine as a State; and that since 2012, Palestine has been granted the status of “Non-Member Observer State” by the United Nations General Assembly, allowing it to accede to a number of multilateral treaties. In case of doubt on the point of knowing if, legally, a non-member state of the United Nations has this legal capacity, it suffices to recall that Switzerland was not a member of the United Nations until 10 September 2002.
Artwork by Selena Pacheco, Artist Residency Alumnus ‘23. Image courtesy Xuemeng Zhang
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Summer is nearly in the rearview mirror, which means the big summer crossover events in comics are behind us as well. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some amazing comic book and graphic novel stories on the horizon, though. As the weather starts to turn colder, it always makes me want to curl up with the glossies. Give me cool weather, a couple fingers of Scotch, and great superhero stories any day.
Speaking of which, I’m pretty excited about a ton of new superhero series launching this month with new #1 issues, which are always great jumping-in points. There’s also a true crime in comic book form, which is pretty unusual. There is also a new epic fantasy comic and a wild fantasy/cyberpunk cross-world comic. Oh, and we can’t forget a pair of brilliant new graphic novels tacking coming-of-age and race.
There are a ton of great comics coming to us in September 2023, but I’m keeping the list short and sweet so you don’t get overwhelmed when you visit your local comic book shop. But by all means, peruse the rest of the shelves while you’re there. Without further preamble, here are nine great comics and graphic novels coming this month.
Birds of Prey #1 by Kelly Thompson, Leonardo RomeroThe Dawn of DC initiative continues, this time with long-time Marvel writer Kelly Thompson coming over to DC to helm a new Birds of Prey series. The setup is that Black Canary is putting together the deadliest Birds of Prey team ever. That team will include Big Barda, Cassandra Cain, Zealot, and Harley Quinn. This should be fun. |
Daredevil #1 by Saladin Ahmed, Aaron KinderSaladin Ahmed is promising a fresh, new take on Matt Murdock and Marvel’s Hell’s Kitchen. Also, Elektra is going to make an appearance. Marvel is keeping everything else about his issue close to the vest, but Ahmed and Kinder seem like a great pair to take on the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen. This is one of the new comics in September 2023 that you really need to read. |
Edenwood #1 by Tony S. DanielHere’s a new epic fantasy comic with multiversal battles between demons and witches. Rion was born in Edenwood, the witchcraft-controlled lands defending what remains of the United States from the demonic Necronema. After killing a transient demon, Rion is rising through the ranks in this action-packed new comic. |
Hunt for the Skinwalker #1 by Zac Thompson, Valeria BurzoBased on actual events in Utah, this true crime comic with deep paranormal themes is bringing something really different to comic book shelves. UFO and Bigfoot sightings, crop circles, and every other variation of unusual activity haunted the Gorman Ranch, spawning a famous nonfiction book, now adapted to comics. |
Power Girl #1 by Leah Williams, Eduardo Pansica, Julio FerrieraComing out of the Knight Terrors event, a new threat has emerged, with its sights set on taking down Kryptonians. Who can stop such a threat? Power Girl, of course. Now, she’s on a trip through time, confronting her own past, all in the hopes of saving the present. |
Spider-Gwen Annual #1 by Karla Pacheco, Stephanie Phillips, Rosi Kampe, Alberto FocheAnnual issues are always great for getting bonus-sized, standalone stories that also bring you into the fold. This one is no exception, seeing the multi-dimensional Spider-Gwen squaring off against White Fox while Agatha Harkness messes with all of reality. Good times. |
Subgenre #1 by Matt Kindt, Wilfredo TorresI’ll read pretty much anything by Matt Kindt, so I’m certainly in for a new series from him. One man lives very different lives. While awake, he’s a PI in a dystopian, cyberpunk universe. When he falls asleep, he’s a nomadic adventurer in a magical and brutal fantasy world. Are these different people? Is it all in his head? |
Blackward by Lawrence LindellFour bookish and awkward Black friends have struggled to find a place where they can really be themselves, and so one day, they make one. They call it the Section, and these Black, queer, weird kids are trying to find like-minded souls. But anxiety, low attendance, and bullies make everything harder, don’t they? |
Roaming by Jillian Tamaki, Mariko TamakiThe brilliant pair that brought us This One Summer is back with another great new graphic novel. Best friends Zoe and Dani, along with Dani’s classmate Fiona, are on their first college spring break. They decide on New York City, spelunking around the massive city in a quest to see everything and to find themselves along the way. |
What other comics or graphic novels are you excited about in September 2023? What about the rest of 2023? I need to know!
Unions and farmers are at odds over changes to the way foreign workers are employed on Australian farms.
Growers say they’ll be forced to employ fewer workers from the Pacific as the Australian government introduces changes to its Pacific worker program.
Under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme workers must be offered 30 hours of work per week.
Currently the hours can be averaged over the duration of the employment, typically nine months for short-term farm workers.
But new guidelines introduced by the federal government will mean that from July next year, the employers will no longer be able to average the hours and must ensure 30 hours are offered each week.
The changes are part of the government’s plan to expand the PALM scheme, merging the former Pacific Labour Scheme and Seasonal Worker Program.
Australian Fresh Produce Alliance chief executive Claire McClelland said the changes would make it harder for farmers to employ workers via the scheme.
“We’ll have no choice but to reduce the number of PALM workers engaged in our workforce,” Ms McClelland said.
“That’s going to have a really significant impact on our relationship with the Pacific, which is something that we’ve built over 10 years through the program.
“It’s particularly disappointing that it will force employers to turn away from a regulated visa program and to focus again on employing backpackers.”
As of February, there were more than 35,000 workers on the PALM scheme in Australia, the majority employed in farming.
The alliance’s members are responsible for about 50 per cent of the Australian horticulture sector’s turnover and employ around 7,000 workers on the PALM scheme.
Ms McClelland said farmers required the flexibility to average the hours to factor in weather changes that could delay fruit picking or other farm tasks.
“The challenge with 30 hours a week is that when there’s a weather event or rain or extreme heat, we lose a couple of days of being able to safely have workers access our production sites,” she said.
“Despite there being work about work available across a longer period of time, we can’t actually get into the farm to meet those requirements.
“We need to be able to average those work hours to meet our seasonal fluctuations.”
A spokesman for the Department of Employment, which has oversight of the PALM scheme, said the guidelines would allow for exceptional circumstances such as extreme weather to be considered when meeting the minimum hour requirement.
But Ms McClelland believed averaging the hours over a four-week period would be a more appropriate outcome for the industry.
Australian Workers’ Union national secretary Dan Walton described the changes as sensible and reasonable.
“There’s a bit of hysteria about [the idea] people are not going to be able to operate,” Mr Walton said.
“If you don’t want to engage PALM workers, then you need to focus on … opportunities for local workers to work on your farms.
“It is unfair entirely to say that we’re going to bring workers in from the other side of the world and sit them on their backside to get paid two hours or an hour or four hours because I didn’t actually get organised and ready to get the harvest underway at the time they arrived.
“Essentially, that is saying that you’re poorly prepared, poorly organised and put in place poor farming practices.
“What we say is workers are not slaves.”
Changes to the PALM guidelines will also require employers to appoint a welfare support person within 200 kilometres of a worker placement.
The requirement will see one welfare support person appointed for every 120 PALM workers.
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GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) — Men walk through a lush plantation between Ecuador ‘s balmy Pacific coast and its majestic Andes, lopping hundreds of bunches of green bananas from groaning plants twice their height.
Workers haul the bunches to an assembly line, where the bananas are washed, weighed and plastered with stickers for European buyers. Owner Franklin Torres is monitoring all activity on a recent morning to make sure the fruit meets international beauty standards — and ever more important, is packed for shipment free of cocaine.
Torres is hypervigilant because Ecuador is increasingly at the confluence of two global trades: bananas and cocaine.
The South American country is the world’s largest exporter of bananas, shipping about 6.5 million metric tons (7.2 tons) a year by sea. It is also wedged between the world’s largest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia, and drug traffickers find containers filled with bananas the perfect vehicle to smuggle their product.
Drug traffickers’ infiltration of the industry that is responsible for about 30% of the world’s bananas has contributed to unprecedented violence across this once-peaceful nation. Shootings, homicides, kidnappings and extortions have become part of daily life, particularly in the Pacific port city and banana-shipping hub of Guayaquil.
“This is everyone’s responsibility: the person who transports it, the person who buys it, the person who consumes it,” vendor Dalia Chang, 59, a lifelong resident of Guayaquil, said of the cocaine trade. “They all share responsibility. They have ruined our country.”
The country, which is not a major cocaine producer, was especially rattled when a presidential candidate known for his tough stance on organized crime and corruption — Fernado Villavicencio — was fatally shot at the end of an Aug. 9 campaign rally. He had accused the Ecuadorian Los Choneros gang and its imprisoned leader, whom he linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, of threatening him and his campaign team days before the assassination.
In addition to its proximity to cocaine production, cartels from Mexico, Colombia and the Balkans have settled in Ecuador because it uses the U.S. dollar and has weak laws and institutions, along with a network of long-established gangs like Los Choneros that are eager for work.
Authorities say Ecuador also gained prominence in the global cocaine trade after political changes in Colombia last decade. Coca bush fields in Colombia have been moving closer to the border with Ecuador due to the breakup of criminal groups after the 2016 demobilization of the rebel group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better-known by their Spanish acronym FARC.
A record 2,304 metric tons of cocaine was manufactured in 2021 around the world, mostly in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. That year, nearly a third of the cocaine seized by customs authorities in Western and Central Europe came from Ecuador, double the amount reported in 2018, according to a United Nations report citing data from the World Customs Organization. Large drug busts have become more frequent and within the past month, European authorities have made record-setting busts after inspecting containers carrying bananas from Ecuador.
Authorities on Aug. 25 announced Spain’s biggest cocaine haul yet: 9.5 metric tons hidden among cardboard boxes of bananas from Ecuador in a refrigerated container. Dutch officials also made their country’s largest-ever cocaine seizure last month — nearly 8 metric tons — in a container of Ecuadorian bananas. Authorities in Greece and Italy also announced seizures of cocaine hidden in Ecuadorian bananas this year.
Bananas headed to Europe are boxed at plantations, loaded into trucks that take them to massive warehouses in and around Guayaquil and transferred to maritime containers driven to an area port.
Then the ships head northeast to the Panama Canal, cross to the Caribbean Sea, and go east across the Atlantic.
Knowingly or not, banana growers, exporters, shipping corporations, port operators, private security companies, customs agents, agriculture officials, police, and buyers offer opportunities that drug traffickers have exploited.
Some traffickers have created front companies to mimic legitimate banana exporters, while others have acquired legitimate businesses, including plantations. They have found companies willing to be complicit in trafficking. They also have paid off, threatened or kidnapped truck drivers and other workers to help get cocaine into shipments.
Other traffickers have corrupted or intimidated police, customs agents, security guards and port workers to assist with — or ignore — tampering with containers at the ports.
Drug trafficking has contributed to the number of violent deaths in Ecuador, which doubled from 2021 to 2022, when 4,600 died, the most ever recorded in a year. The country is on track to break the annual record again, with 3,568 violent deaths tallied in the first half of 2023.
In Guayaquil, where maritime shipping containers are part of the landscape, people live in fear these days. Pedestrians don’t dare take their phones out of their pockets. Convenience stores have floor-to-ceiling metal bars that prevent customers from entering from the sidewalk. Restaurants that survived the pandemic close early.
Along with the rise in homicides, the amount of cocaine seized at the country’s ports has increased, too, reaching 77.4 metric tons last year. That is more than three times the amount seized in 2020.
National Police Gen. Pablo Ramírez, Ecuador’s national director of anti-drug investigations, attributed the change to increased smuggling, not better enforcement.
Police data also show that of last year’s total, a record 47.5 metric tons of cocaine were found in shipments of bananas, even though the fruit’s exports dropped 6.4% compared to 2021.
No more than 30% of containers is currently inspected at Ecuadorian ports, a process done manually or with drug-sniffing dogs. President Guillermo Lasso’s government says it wants to use scanners on entire containers. Twelve of those machines were supposed to be operating already but Ramírez said that has not happened yet.
Ramírez said he expects all ports to have operational scanners by mid-2024. He said two ports have tested the scanners to smooth out internal procedures and train the people who will be working with the machines.
The operator of the largest port in Guayaquil, Contecon Guayaquil S.A., turned down Associated Press requests for an interview and access to the port to see existing security procedures. In response to written questions about the measures, spokeswoman Alexandra Pacheco said in a statement that the operator entered into an agreement with the National Police in 2022 to among other things “reinforce operations in the port.” She added that the operator plans to spend about $15 million on the scanners.
Jose Hidalgo, executive director of the Association of Banana Exporters of Ecuador, said the industry faces greater exposure to trafficking than other commodity exports because of the volume of containers that it uses.
“It is because of bananas that there are so many ports,” Hidalgo said. “It opens routes to other export products.”
He explained that exporters spend about $100 million annually on security measures, which include surveillance cameras at plantations, GPS monitoring of trucks and the identification of land routes that require police patrols to keep criminals away.
Nonetheless, some exporters have been accused of being complicit or directly involved in trafficking cocaine. The organization behind the record-setting cocaine bust in Spain, according to that country’s tax agency, operated through a banana exporting company in Machala, a city south of Guayaquil.
Hours after this story was published Monday, agriculture and customs officials in Ecuador announced in a statement that the administration had purged a government-run banana-export database. It annulled the profiles of export companies deemed to be fake or incomplete and revoked permits of plantations covering 16,000 hectares (39,537 acres) determined to be nonexistent.
Torres, the plantation owner, would like to see that type of troubled exporters kicked out of the industry. But there is no regulation that can be used to revoke a company’s banana-exporting permission when the business is tied repeatedly to drug trafficking.
“It bothers me so much,” Torres said. “My people work with bananas, they don’t work with drugs. It’s a flagship product, the best in the world, and to see it tainted like that is unfortunate.”
Residents in Tewksbury are frustrated after a water main break leaves families without running water for days.
Catamount Road, as well as the Lodge at Ames Pond apartment complex, have been without running water since Saturday. Officials said water could be restored late Tuesday evening, but the apartment complex will be facing the outage at least until Friday.
Once the water is restored, there will also be a boil order in effect until further notice.
“We haven’t been able to do any dishes, any laundry,” said Kate Dupuis-Dobson. “We can’t even flush our toilets at this point. There is no water whatsoever.”
With temperatures nearing 90 degrees, residents said it’s not just inconvenient, it’s unsafe and unsanitary.
“We’re using pool water to bring into our home, and it’s unacceptable,” said Yvette Pacheco. “We have a family of six, and it’s just really difficult.”
Some have resorted to staying in hotels, but that’s a luxury that Dupuis-Dobson said not everyone can afford.
“A hotel really adds up really quickly, and I’ve got this guy plus a couple teenagers too,” the mom said.
Repairs crews were at the properties on Tuesday to get the water back online.
Tewksbury Town Manager Richard Montuori told 7NEWS in a statement, “We had hoped to get water restored yesterday to the neighborhood on a temporary basis, but the pump we install did not provide enough pressure to push the water uphill. We are hoping to add another pump and make other adjustments today that will solve the issue.”
Because fire hydrants are also affected, the town’s fire chief has been forced to come up with contingency plans in the event of a fire. It’s unclear when the water will be fully restored, and families said inconsistent communication from the town is frustrating.
“It’s extremely frustrating, and we’re just at the point where we are beyond upset,” Pacheco said.
Officials said a solution will be very complex, and there is no timeline set for getting water back to residents permanently.
The Chris Eubank Jnr and Liam Smith show rolled into Manchester last week but although the eagerly anticipated rematch dominated headlines, it was the British and Commonwealth super middleweight title fight between Oldham’s Mark Heffron and Little Lever’s Jack Cullen that was the talk of the North West gym scene.
The strengths and frailties of each man are common knowledge and opinion on who would win was split.
Some thought Heffron’s power would be too much for Cullen. Others insisted Cullen would be able to frustrate Heffron and use his own aggression against him. Plenty assumed that ‘Little Lever’s Meat Cleaver’ would get dragged into a war.
The only point of agreement was that the fight was unlikely to reach the halfway point. Cullen agreed.
Midway through the third round the 29 year old beat Heffron to the punch and landed a picture perfect left hook. Heffron made it to his feet but stumbled forward again, leaving referee Keiran McCann with no option but to stop the fight. Cullen (22-4-1, 10 KO’s) was the new champion.
“These are the fights that I’ve always wanted. When me and my dad were watching the boxing, this is the title he wanted me to fight for. He said, ‘One day, kid, you’ll fight for that.’ Well, I fought for it and won it,” Cullen told VIP TV.
Cullen fought his way up from the small hall circuit where his crash, bang, wallop style earned him a large following and the English title. That same give-and-take approach has made him must see television but it also exposes his vulnerabilities.
He has notched impressive victories over John Docherty and Avni Yildirim but Felix Cash and Kevin Sadjo were able to draw him into a fight and stop him whilst the excellent Diego Pacheco was simply too much and inflicted a painful fourth round defeat in March.
Cullen trains in Chorley with the Jennings brothers – former British welterweight champion, Michael, and Dave – who took on the frustrating job of trying to convince him that he will be better served by utilizing his physical advantages and under rated boxing ability rather than ignoring them. The aim has never been to turn Cullen into a 6ft 3in version of Willie Pep but to show him that his best route to success lies in rationing the chaos until the perfect moment presents itself. Their patience looks to have paid off.
“Michael said that if I stuck to the gameplan it’d be an easy night,” he continued. “If I didn’t stick to the plan, I’d have a hard night. I caught him in the second round and just kept boxing. Normally, I’m an idiot who goes jumping in.
“I’ve had nights like this before, going in as an underdog. I was a big underdog for this one. Those big fights got me ready for this. My ‘0’ went a long time ago. A lot of boxers think they can’t lose that ‘0’. If they do, that’s them done. That’s not the case at all. As long as you dig deep and keep training, it just goes to show [what you can do].”
Beating Heffron and claiming the British and Commonwealth titles will breathe new life into Cullen’s career.
The Pacheco defeat seemed to have shown the extent of his capabilities but if the lessons of the past few months have truly sunk in, Cullen’s next foray into European or fringe world class might just play out much differently. Cullen isn’t the type to call out names but he would love to give Sadjo a first hand look at the new, improved ‘Meat Cleaver’.
“Pacheco is going to be a world champion. He’s gonna be at the top of the tree in no time. I’ve only been beaten by the best. I got beat by Felix Cash, I got beaten in the European title fight [by Sadjo]. That was my own fault. That was me being stupid.
“I’d love that rematch. That’d be a lovely one. First of all I want to defend the British title and we’ll go from there.”
A Bridgeton man charged with aggravated assault is now jailed for manslaughter after the victim died. Julio Morales-Amilcar, 24, allegedly threw a large rock at the victim during a fight. He then punched and kicked 35-year-old Clemente Vazquez-Pacheco after the man was already on the ground, according to the charges. Vazquez-Pacheco, also of Bridgeton, was…