The government-owned China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. (CRRC) has begun building a $60 million factory in Springfield that will produce more than 280 Red and Orange Line cars for the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA). The new plant will begin assembling cars next year and see the first ones rolling off its assembly line by 2018. The Springfield factory is expected to employ 150 local workers, and serve as the company’s North American headquarters.   read more

Edin Carey Avendano-Hernandez, who was born male in Oaxaca, came to the United States in 2000 and began taking hormones and living as a woman in 2005. In 2006, she was convicted twice of driving while intoxicated and was deported to Mexico in 2007 after serving a year in jail. While in Mexico, Avendano-Hernandez said, she was beaten and raped by police officers. She returned to the United States the following year.   read more

Bolivian President Evo Morales kicked the DEA out of his country in 2008. Bolivia’s coca cultivation fell 11% in 2014 over the previous year. The amount of land being used for coca production in Bolivia is now at 20,400 hectares (about 79 square miles), the lowest number since the UN began its surveys in 2003.   read more

Twenty years ago, world leaders set a goal of having women make up 30% of all lawmakers. Only 44 nations have managed to achieve this and the United States isn’t one of them. The U.S. is only at 20% in its Senate and 19% in the House, giving it an overall percentage of 19%. That’s good for the 75th best among world nations and puts the United States one better than Tajikistan, but two behind that noted wellspring of women’s rights, Saudi Arabia.   read more

The class claims Nestlé has tried to hide its involvement with human rights violations from the public. Nestlé reportedly contracts with a Thai company, Thai Union Frozen Products PCL, to import more than 28 million pounds of seafood-based pet food, some of which is obtained through slave labor. “By hiding this from public view, Nestlé has effectively tricked millions of consumers into supporting and encouraging slave labor on floating prisons,” Steve Berman said in a statement.   read more

Paul Paz y Miño told Courthouse News Service, “The impetus behind the investigation was to find out how much U.S. policy was directly responsible for helping human rights violators. They not only killed his lawyers, they killed the 17-year-old son of one of his lawyers, they killed people that worked on his ranches; there were a lot of innocent victims....There was a lot of collateral damage and huge human rights blowback to it.”   read more

A three-judge panel voted 2-1 Tuesday to strike down a law requiring companies to disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) when their products contain minerals from conflict areas in central Africa in and surrounding the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The opinion was written by George H.W. Bush appointee Raymond Randolph and joined by David Sentelle, a Ronald Reagan appointee. A 29-page dissent was written by Barack Obama appointee Sri Srinivasan.   read more

The U.S. government did its best to support the ouster of Zelaya. It blocked a resolution by the Organization of American States that would have required Zelaya’s return as a pre-condition for staging an election. The United States also refused to call the change in government a military coup, which would have meant a cutoff in aid to Honduras.   read more

The legal action is part of what is described as a “vast multi-district” lawsuit against hundreds of defendants who are claimed to have provided support for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. On appeal the litigation was restored, which put Al-Swailem back as a defendant. He again asked to be removed, as did the Saudi Royal Family, saying Al-Swailem’s position as head of the charities entitled him to diplomatic immunity. Judge Daniels granted Al-Swailem’s motion last week.   read more

Jeb Bush said Thursday that his brother George W. Bush’s efforts in “taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.” The cost of taking out Saddam Hussein, who was found to have no weapons of mass destruction, was staggering. --More than 4,424 American lives were lost fighting in Iraq. Those numbers don’t include veterans suffering from PTSD who killed themselves after returning home. Thousands more American service members were seriously wounded.   read more

Dole and Chiquita used the pesticide dibromochloropropane (DBCP), manufactured by Dow Chemical and others, on their banana farms in Central and South America. The plaintiffs who had worked on those farms claimed in their suit that they were exposed to the chemical in the 1970s and ’1980s, but illnesses such as kidney problems, infertility and an increased risk of cancer did not appear until later. Their lawsuit also claimed that Dole has known about DBCP’s toxic properties since 1958.   read more

When a $42 million deal was agreed to, it was faxed to Mexico City, signed by Puig and forwarded to Puig’s putative agent, Jaime Torres, for his signature. All that money wasn’t going to Puig though—smugglers are paid for their work by taking a percentage of a player’s first contract, often a 20% to 30% cut. Some of the smugglers are connected with Mexican drug gangs and other criminals.   read more

The group Airwars says its six-month investigation into the airstrikes found enough evidence to believe at least 57 attacks caused between 459 and 591 civilian deaths and between 48 and 80 allied military fatalities between Aug. 8, 2014 and June 30, 2015. The coalition has looked into only 10 reported incidents of non-IS deaths, admitting just two civilians have died out of more than 5,800 airstrikes that unleashed 18,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq and Syria.   read more

Labor salaries have tripled in China over the past decade, from $4.35 to $12.47 an hour. The average manufacturing wage in the U.S. is $22.32, which is still higher than in China. But when the costs of energy and materials are factored in, Chinese executives have concluded their businesses may be better off in the U.S. American states can provide tax breaks and subsidies and the companies get better prices on natural gas and cotton.   read more

Warafi’s lawyer, citing declarations by President Barack Obama that the Afghan war is over, tried to get him released. The government has an obligation to release all POWs at the end of a conflict. But federal Judge Royce Lamberth rejected Warafi’s argument, saying regardless of what Obama has said publicly, U.S. soldiers are still fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. Since the beginning of 2015, three Americans have been killed in Afghanistan.   read more

The Malaysian government wants in on the TPP, but that couldn’t happen unless the U.S. upgraded its rating on the country’s human rights record. So the State Dept. under President Obama improved its ranking from Tier 3 to Tier 2. The change angered human rights advocates who say Malaysian officials have done little to stop sex slavery. Mass graves holding more than 130 human trafficking victims were discovered in April, yet now Malaysia’s human rights record has improved, says the State Dept.   read more