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Mexico Aims to Cut Emissions

Enlisting Hairstylists as Sentinels for Domestic Abuse

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HACU Capitol Forum on Higher Education

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Mexico Aims to Cut Emissions

Environmental News Network / Reuters:
Mexico aims to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by around 15 percent and wants to increase carbon trading as part of a global push to combat climate change, the environment minister said on Wednesday.

The country has a plan to cut the amount of carbon dioxide it releases into the atmosphere by between 75 million and 110 million tons a year, Environment Minister Juan Rafael Elvira told reporters.  The low end of the goal could be reached by 2012, as the government converts coal and fuel oil power plants to natural gas, improves efficiency at the state-run oil company and replaces old diesel buses and trucks with cleaner vehicles.

Mexico, whose belching factories and choking traffic have placed it 14th on the world’s list of top polluters, currently emits about 650 million tonnes a year of carbon dioxide, a gas blamed for a large role in global warming.

The government will unveil a detailed long-term plan for energy efficiency in February, which will include expanded carbon trading programs that allow rich-nation polluters to fund emission reduction projects in developing countries. Under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism, or CDM, countries like Mexico can earn money selling carbon credits on the international market.

Mexico has invested some $100 million in more than 100 CDM projects and says it has been able to offset 7.4 million tonnes of carbon pollution through the scheme. “For every new project we implement we are going to look for funding through the Clean Development Mechanism and the carbon markets,” Elvira said.

The minister will travel to Poznan, Poland, this week, joining delegates from 190 countries to work on a new climate treaty and backs the creation of a “Green Fund” to help poor nations pay for environmentally sensitive projects. “If international funds to prevent the destruction of forests are created through this negotiation, we will take advantage of that,” Elvira said. The government has invested heavily in programs to pay rural Mexicans to preserve native forests instead of cutting down trees for lumber, and an aggressive program to plant new trees has slowed deforestation, he said.

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Source: Environmental News Network

Enlisting Hairstylists as Sentinels for Domestic Abuse

By Leslie Kaufman, NY Times
Martha Castillo knew her client had a problem because their weekly hair-straightening sessions were always interrupted by phone calls from a boyfriend angrily accusing her of being with another man. Magda Florentino noticed cigarette burns on a woman’s temples when she pulled back her hair for washing — and did not buy the explanation that they had happened accidentally while she was bartending.

Candida Vasquez received a hysterical call from a customer soon after she had spent three hours knitting extensions into the woman’s hair. Her boyfriend hated the look, and in a fit of rage he had cut off not only the extensions, but also the rest of her hair. Ms. Vasquez said she was not surprised by the call. Troubled clients tell her their personal stories all the time. “They are so tormented, they just come in and share,” she said.

The privileged, often therapeutic relationship between hairdressers and clients has long been the subject of magazine articles and movies. A growing movement in New York and across the nation tries to harness that bond to identify and prevent domestic violence, a pervasive problem that victims are often too ashamed to reveal to law enforcement or other public officials.

Ms. Vasquez, Ms. Castillo and Ms. Florentino are all stylists in Manhattan who have been trained (or are being trained) as part of a one-year-old program by the city’s Administration for Children’s Services in beauty salons in the Washington Heights area, where many cases of domestic abuse and neglect include violence that is not necessarily aimed at children.

The initiative joins similar efforts that have been sprouting across the nation; perhaps the best known, called Cut It Out and based in Chicago, has trained 40,000 salon workers in all 50 states to recognize signs of domestic abuse. In the past few months, the Cut It Out program was also adopted by the Empire Education Group, which has 87 cosmetology schools, and endorsed by the American Association of Cosmetology Schools, the trade organization representing another 800 schools.
Nearly 600,000 women and girls and 144,000 men and boys nationwide were victims of violence by an intimate partner in 2006, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. In New York last year, the police received hundreds of domestic disturbance calls every day and recorded about 55,000 crimes connected to domestic violence.

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Source: New York Times

Championing Hispanic Higher Education Success

October 31, 2009

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November 2, 2009

HACU’s 23rd annual conference.  For more info visit HACU’s webpage.

HACU Capitol Forum on Higher Education

March 1, 2009

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March 3, 2009

For more details visit the HACU website.

NCLR Annual Conference

July 25, 2009 9:00 am

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July 28, 2009 2:00 pm

Visit the NCLR Site for more information.