Bio Expo Colombia 2012. Armenia 21-24 de Noviembre 2012

ORIGINAL: Bio Expo Colombia 2012

El Centro Cultural Metropolitano de Convenciones del Quindío será la sede del Evento. Armenia 

Agenda General

Durante los cuatro días de BIOEXPO COLOMBIA 2012 se tendrá una exposición comercial con 150 stands en promedio, una agenda académica con invitados internacionales y nacionales, una rueda de negocios y diversos eventos que muestran la riqueza del país y la región.

Descargar Agenda General BIOEXPO COLOMBIA 2012

Documento sujeto a cambios

Exposed: Dark secret of the farm where tigers' bodies are plundered to make £185 wine

ORIGINAL: Daily Mail

By RICHARD JONES IN GUILIN, CHINA

UPDATED: 23:05 GMT, 20 February 2010

Behind rusted bars, a skeletal male tiger lies panting on the filthy concrete floor of his cage, covered in sores and untreated wounds. His once-fearsome body is so emaciated it is little more than a pitiful pile of fur and bones.

Death is surely a matter of days away and can only come as a welcome release. Wardens at the wildlife park in southwest China say, indifferently, that they do not expect him to see the start of the Year of the Tiger which began last Sunday.

'What can we do?' a female park official asks a small huddle of visitors with a sigh and a casual shrug. 'He's dying, of course, but we have to keep feeding him until he does. It's against the law to kill tigers.'

Dying breed: One of the emaciated tigers in a cage at the Xiongshen Tiger and Bear Mountain Village in Guilin, China

Instead, it seems, they die slowly of neglect. In row after row of foul, cramped cages, more tigers lie alone, crippled and dying. One is hunched up against the side of its cage with its neck grotesquely deformed. Another, blinded in one eye, lies motionless.

This shabby, rundown park in Guilin - one of China's main tourist cities - is home to the world's biggest single collection of tigers. Yet it is never included on foreigners' tour itineraries.

For here, 1,500 captive tigers - around half as many as there are thought to be remaining in the wild - live out miserable lives in squalid conditions.

Each tiger costs around £6 a day to feed, and it is easy to see that the small clusters of visitors paying £7.50 each to wander around the cages and watch bizarre animal shows cannot possibly cover even the cost of food for the vast park.

The reason is the tigers, mostly Siberian, are far more valuable dead than alive.

For a 55lb pile of bones from a single tiger can be worth up to £225,000. There is a hugely lucrative trade in the skeletons at the Guilin park.

Dead tigers are driven 200 miles from the park, officially called the Xiongshen Tiger and Bear Mountain Village, to a huge subterranean complex where their fur is stripped from their carcasses and their bones collected to make tiger wine that can sell for £185 a bottle.

So for the park, where the tigers are bred for their bones, every year is the Year of the Tiger, and conservationists fear that the vile trade could be helping push some species of wild big cat into extinction.

On paper, China has signed international wildlife treaties that ban all trade in tiger body parts and claims to have outlawed the industry.

In reality, Xiongshen and other parks like it operate in a grey area of the law, using the bones of animals that have died naturally in captivity to produce 'medicinal' wine, apparently with the government's blessing.

Tigers have been used in Chinese traditional medicine for centuries. Their eyeballs are used to treat epilepsy, their bile to stop convulsions, their whiskers to sooth toothache and their penises as a potent sexual tonic.

The most valuable parts, however, are the bones, which are used to make wine that is said to cure rheumatism and arthritis, and prolong life.

Despite its rapid modernisation, the use of traditional medicine in China has increased rather than declined because more people can afford exotic treatments.

Going hungry: Tigers scrabbling for food in the cages at Guilin

Tiger bone wine, made by steeping tiger bones in huge vats of potent 38 per cent-proof rice wine, has for more than 2,000 years been one of the most expensive and sought-after Chinese traditional medicines, believed to bestow the tiger's power and strength upon the taker.

It is popular among wealthy middle-aged men including, reportedly, some of the Communist Party's senior officials and is said to have been used by modern China's founder Chairman Mao Tse-Tung himself, in the superstitious belief that it counters the effects of ageing and boosts flagging sex drive.

Because of the scarcity of tigers, a single bottle of tiger bone wine from a rare vintage year can sell for £600 or more. As well as a supposed medical remedy, it is a prestigious drink sometimes shared between men at high-level political or business meetings, or drunk at lavish parties.

The lucrative trade has accelerated the disappearance of all but a handful of China ' s remaining wild tigers as peasants turn poachers to track down the animals, knowing just one will make them more money than a farmer can earn in a decade.

Millionaire Zhou Weisen, who is 47 and was born in the Year of the Tiger himself, realised at an early age he could make his fortune by keeping tigers in wretched captivity. He opened the Guilin park with 60 tigers in 1993, breeding them intensively so their numbers boomed to today's population of 1,500.

The park has the atmosphere of a medieval circus, with animals treated in a way that would cause outrage in any western country.

Twice a day, a few relatively tame tigers are put on leashes and led out to amuse small groups of visitors.

For the equivalent of £1.80 a time, parents and their children get the opportunity to feed strips of beef to a scrawny, undernourished young tiger in the care of a park keeper who, with no sense of irony, tells them the tiger is a 'symbol of power in the animal kingdom'.

Then a ramshackle carnival float decorated with pictures of tigers is led out with a collection of big cats cowering on its deck where they are forced by park keepers to stand up on their hind legs, and beaten with wooden stakes if they do not obey.

Parents clap and shriek with laughter while children look on with bemused grins as the daily ritual is performed.

A closer look reveals that one of the performing tigers has a tumour on his left leg the size of a football. Other tigers have untreated wounds and scars from thrashings or fights with other tigers.

Only a few hundred of the park's animals are on view to visitors. The majority are hidden from sight in row after row of cages outside the public area of the park. Here, bored tigers crammed four or more to a cage, pace restlessly back and forth.

Others are kept locked in small, concrete enclosures, spending their days in perpetual darkness. They occasionally jump up on their hind legs to peer through narrow, slit windows, to get a rare glimpse of daylight.

Life imprisonment: The rows of squalid sheds where the tigers live at Guilin 'park'

Welfare expert David Neale from Animals Asia, said after inspecting the park: 'These animals are kept in appalling conditions and it is clear that many are suffering from malnutrition. And if what the public can see is so appalling, can you imagine what the conditions are like for the tigers hidden from view?'

Ironically, the park is littered with billboards proclaiming the owners' desire to protect wildlife. At the end of their tour of the park, visitors are directed to a 'science hall' where a complete tiger skeleton is displayed in a Perspex case.

This building is decorated with pictures showing a cave lined with earthenware jars.

'Each jar contains 500kg of rice wine with a complete set of tiger bones,' saleswoman Miss Li tells us with a practised patter.

'The wine is brewed in mountain caves a few hundred kilometres away where the water is ideal. Top [Communist Party] officials like to drink this wine. We serve it to them whenever they visit.'

Cutting hurriedly to the chase before the next group of guests finish their tour of the park and enter the science hall, she then offers the tiger wine in three, six and nine-year vintages at £60, £92 and £185 a bottle.

Miss Li assures us that if we buy here, our tiger wine comes with a cast-iron guarantee of quality.

'We have more than 1,500 tigers,' she says. 'There is no lack of raw materials for us. There are a few hundred dead tigers lying in our freezers. I can promise you that we sell only authentic tiger products.

'You know, of course, that the tiger is a protected animal but the government does allow us to trade tigers that have died naturally, as a way of helping us financially.'

Asked whether they all died natural deaths, she replied vaguely: 'Many of them die from illness or in fights with other tigers.'

Park owner Mr Zhou is also the owner of the secretive, subterranean factory 200 miles from Guilin where the bones and tiger bodies are processed in vast cellars storing up to 8,000 tons of tiger bone wine. The factory sells around 200,000 bottles a year and keeps up to 600 tiger skeletons at a time in huge vats.

The underground caverns, where witnesses have reported seeing entire tigers in 5ft high vats, are strictly off limits to visitors. But an assistant in the factory shop was keen to tell us about the scale of the operation.

'Our peak time is now, just before the Chinese New Year,' she said. 'We have so many orders and we simply haven't got enough boxes to complete the packaging, or workers to process the orders.'

The factory has a huge network of salespeople across China, she said, and charges steep distribution fees for anyone who wants to enjoy a slice of the business in tiger wine.

Factory sales manager Miss Wang told our interpreter over the phone: 'If you want to be a distributor, the licence will cost you 150,000 yuan (£14,000) a year for a provincial capital-and 80,000 yuan (£7,500) for a smaller city. A provincial sole distributor licence costs five million yuan (£468,000) a year.'

The factory's products are showcased in a sales office in the nearby town of Pingnan, where a variety of bottles of tiger bone wine are on show for potential buyers. But even here, deep in the Chinese countryside, the trade in tigers is a secret guarded with paranoid intensity.

Sour taste: Just one of the cellars filled with vats of tiger wine at Guilin 

As I took pictures of the outside of the sales office, I was approached by two security guards who demanded to look at my camera and insisted I deleted any pictures of the building.

They held me for 20 minutes and made frantic phone calls before letting me go once they were satisfied my camera's memory was empty. 

Hundreds of miles south in Shenzhen, on the border with Hong Kong, the city's licensed distributor - who gets his tiger bone wine from the Guilin park - runs his business from the ground floor shop of a private apartment complex.

Lu Xi Ning, who is in his early 40s, has known Zhou Weisen of the Guilin tiger farm for more than ten years.

Visitors to his wine shop are allowed in by appointment only. 'It's a sensitive business,' he tells me in a room containing bottles of tiger bone wine of different vintages.

'My business has been improving in the last three years. But I cannot advertise,' he says as he pours tea. 'It is reliant on regulars and recommendations. Customers come back again and again though. More people want our products because of the Year of the Tiger.'

Praising its health benefits, Lu said: 'I have been drinking it every day for the past three years. I recommend one or two Chinese teacups each day. It is good for your circulation.' He added with a knowing wink: 'It is particularly good for men.'

Taking us to one side, he said quietly: 'If you travel by plane, you'd better take the wine out of the tiger bottle and put it into a red wine bottle or a Pepsi bottle, just to be on the safe side. Then it should be fine.'

Jill Robinson, director of Animals Asia, has little doubt that the park has similar networks of sellers for other tiger parts, such as skins, teeth, eyeballs, whiskers and penises: all highly valued in Chinese traditional medicine.

Robinson, who visited the park last year, described it as being nothing more than a thinly disguised tiger farm.

'You can see that their remit is to keep the animals barely alive,' she said. 'They keep breeding and do not properly report births or deaths so they can use the bodies.'

It is a trade that Steve Broad, executive director of the international wildlife watchdog group TRAFFIC, described as 'a disaster' not only for China but the world's remaining wild tigers.

'It is inevitable that wild tiger products will get drawn into a market created by farmed tiger parts,' he said. 'These business people are creating a market that could be catastrophic for the wild tiger population.

'We are not talking about a medicine trade but a trade where the tiger tonic is seen as a pick-me-up and the people who use it are doing it for bravado. The rarer the animal the better. It is nurturing the worst possible market among the rich and naive.'

Another body fighting to halt the trade in tiger bones is the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA). Spokeswoman Debbie Banks said: 'Tiger bone wine is not about tradition. It is about commerce. If China is truly committed, they will make a ban on all trade in tiger products happen. They need to stop farming and breeding tigers.

'The farmers are thinking of all possible loopholes to exploit. They even argue that because tiger bone is in the vat and not actually in the bottle, then it is legal to sell. They also argue that it is a tonic rather than a medicine and therefore not covered by the law.'

Wildly misleading: The image on an advert for the tiger 'park' at Guilin has no relation to the reality

Appeals by the EIA to the Chinese government have so far fallen on deaf ears. 'The State Forestry Administration said it would cost millions to phase out the farms, and that we are interfering in sovereign issues,' Ms Banks said.

Traditional beliefs are, it seems, tough to shift. The Guilin park, whose owner boasts of how he has served tiger wine to some of China's top leaders, has been given a £700,000 government grant to build new cages for its 'scientific research'.

We saw some of those new cages being put to use during our visit, housing up to ten animals each as the park's breeding programme continues apace.

China's government has stubbornly resisted attempts to stop the illicit trade in tiger parts. Despite grudgingly introducing legislation banning the use of tiger bones in medicine, China argued at an international convention in 2007 that the ban on trading tiger parts had 'seriously impacted not only Chinese traditional culture but also the medicinal treatment and health care of the Chinese people'.

Tigers, the Chinese government argued to the astonishment of delegates from other countries, should be treated like crocodiles and farmed for their bones and skin.

Perhaps fittingly, China itself is likely to be one of the first countries to feel the effect of the trade in tiger parts. One week into the Year of the Tiger, its own tiger population is on the brink of extinction.

History has been cruel to the big cat in China. Aside from the threat of hunting, there has been urbanisation, and the bizarre 1959 decision by Chairman Mao to declare the tiger 'an enemy of the people'.

Half a century later, as the trade in tiger bones puts a huge price on the head of the remaining few wild Chinese tigers, Ms Robinson and other conservationists believe the fate of the tiger in China is sealed.

'By the next Year of the Tiger [2022] China will not have any wild tigers left,' she said. 'I wonder how proud the people involved in this trade will be when they have to explain to their children what happened to the wild tigers.'

We were unable to contact Zhou Weisen at the time of going to press, but an employee at the Xiongshen Tiger And Bear Mountain Village confirmed on the phone that the park sold tiger wine, made from the bones of 'eliminated tigers'.

Questioned further about the process, he said: 'We are only selling the tiger bone wine, I am not sure about the specifics.'

Frog-Killing Fungus Sweeps The Globe

ORIGINAL: WorldCrunch - Die Welt

A skin fungus known as “Bd” is killing off amphibians the world over. Hikers may be inadvertently helping spread the microorganism, which scientists believe may be a hybrid of two less dangerous fungi. In Europe, Bd already affects 20 different amphibian species.

Dead Bd-infected frog in Panama (brian.gratwicke)

DIE WELT/Worldcrunch*

Amphibians – and hikers – beware. A fungus that attacks delicate amphibian skin is coursing through the world like wildfire, threatening thousands of species of frogs, toads, newts and salamanders.

Focusing their research on frogs in the southern Sierra Nevada mountains in the United States, a team of scientists at the University of California in Berkeley found that the fungus – known as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) – begins by disrupting the animals’ natural balance of potassium and sodium. The amphibians become progressively lethargic and stop eating until their hearts come to a halt. The team, headed by Jamie Voyles, published their findings in the journal "PLoS ONE."

The fungus first began proliferating in the Sierra Nevada in 2004. At first, only a few animals fell ill, but then the infection started spreading quickly to the point where frogs were dying en masse. By 2008, the area’s frog population fell to just a quarter of its original size.

Around the globe, the fungus has already killed off 200 species of amphibian, say researchers at RACE, the European Bd monitoring project. As for Europe, the fungus was first spotted in Spain in 1999. It has now spread to Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, and Switzerland. More than 20 species of amphibians in these countries have been infected.

How can a single fungus endanger an entire class of animals, particularly one with the longest history among land vertebrates?

“It appears that the aggressive Bd lines are hybrids of two less dangerous forms brought together through the trade in exotic frogs,” says Dirk Schmeller of the Paris-based Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Schmeller and his colleagues have tested various amphibian populations for their susceptibility to the Bd fungus. “Almost always, the hardest hit populations are amphibians that live at altitudes of over 1,000 meters.”

Hikers are part of the problem

In Europe, amphibians living at lower altitudes are more resistant to Bd, although they can carry the fungus even if they are themselves unaffected by it. Human beings can be carriers as well, as researchers conducting a Europe-wide poll of hikers found. “Hikers seem to like amphibians a lot. Kids for example will pick one up, and maybe even bring it from one pond to another – and with it, the fungus,” Schmeller explains.

Schmeller says that if hikers were more aware of the situation they could perhaps slow the spread of the fungus. “But of course various animals and birds also spread the fungus,” he says. What is all the more annoying, he adds, is that there are ways to effectively combat the fungus.

“Bd can actually be stopped very simply with a solution of Itraconazole. But you have to keep using it,” says Schmeller. “In field research on Mallorca we showed that frogs given an Itraconazole bath seven or eight times were freed of the fungus, but that they got in again after about two years. So the treatment exists. What’s difficult, is treating amphibians in the wild.”

Read the original story in German by Pia Heinemann

Photo – brian.gratwicke

*This is a digest item, not a direct translation

All rights reserved ©Worldcrunch - in partnership with Die Welt

Support Canadian Senator Mac Harb's Bill to End the Commercial Seal Slaughter

ORIGINAL: HumaneSociety

Closure of the international demand for seal products means that the end of the Canadian commercial seal slaughter is inevitable.

But we need to act now to save the tens of thousands of baby seals that are still killed every year with Canadian taxpayer-funded government subsidies.

We need you to voice your support for Canadian Senator Mac Harb's legislation to end the slaughter. Tell the Canadian Senate you support this forward-looking, compassionate and pragmatic initiative.

Termine la demanda internacional de productos hechos con piel de foca. Apoye la ley presentada por el senador Marc Herb de Canadá con el fin de terminar con la matanza comercial de focas recién nacidas AQUÍ

Que nadie compre en el mercado de fauna silvestre

ORIGINAL: El Colombiano 

POR PAOLA A. CARDONA TOBÓN

1 de abril de 2012

A tigrillos los tienen como "gatos mascota". Una vez recuperados, se liberan en zonas protegidas FOTOS MANUEL SALDARRIAGA-JULIO HERRERA

Semana Santa es otra época crítica en el rentable comercio ilegal de animales silvestres en Medellín.

Ayer se adelantaron operativos, uno en ellos fue en La Minorista.

Cuando el peligro acecha, la hembra del oso perezoso se aferra a su cría. Para quitarles a su recién nacido, los cazadores deben herirlas y matarlas.

En el Centro de Atención y Valoración de Fauna Silvestre (CAV), que lidera el Área Metropolitana, ubicado en Barbosa, una madre exhibe en su nariz chata una herida por un machetazo. En lo que va corrido de 2012 han llegado allí dos perezosos de dos uñas y tres de antifaz o tres uñas; en 2011 se contabilizaron 26 en total.

En el mismo lugar, un loro carece de plumas debido a un "sobreacicalamiento", comportamiento derivado del estrés. También se encuentra en el CAV para ser tratado en su condición clínica y manejo comportamental, como otras especies de aves, monos, reptiles, serpientes y felinos.

Entre 25 y 30 animales llegan a esta sede especializada al día, en promedio. En 2011 ingresaron 10.258, un 70 por ciento fruto de entregas y 30 por ciento de procesos de incautación, cifras que en el pasado se invertían, pero las sensibilizaciones y unas normas más rigurosas, han ido cambiando ese panorama.

La comercialización y tenencia de fauna silvestre están penalizadas por la ley con prisión de 48 a 108 meses y multas que van hasta los 50.000 salarios mínimos mensuales legales vigentes. Semana Santa y vacaciones son momentos críticos en el tema, pues quienes los trafican aprovechan las vías con mayor tráfico para ofrecerlos.

Comercio y rutas

En el CAV los curan y los ayudan a readaptarse a su hábitat.

Entre 2009 y 2011, la tortuga morrocoy lideró el ranking de los animales recuperados, por entregas o incautaciones. El año pasado se contabilizaron

• 1.756 ejemplares de esa especie, seguido por la 
• concha de caracol (766), 
• mariposa de la col (595), 
• perico real (503), 
• lora frentiamarilla (418), 
• iguana (404), 
• tortuga hicotea (394), 
• cangrejo violinista (340), 
• sinsonte (322) y 
• boa (300).

Al CAV en 2011 llegaron

• 28 monos cariblancos, 
• 29 tití gris y 
• 23 tití pielroja. 

El tráfico de aquellos considerados más exóticos, informó Carlos Alberto Valencia , secretario técnico del Comité de Flora y Fauna de Antioquia (Ciffa) equivale de un 10 a 15 por ciento de las especies de fauna silvestre que más se comercializan en Antioquia.

Medellín, complementó Víctor Manuel Vélez , del grupo de Fauna Silvestre del Área, es ruta obligada del tráfico ilegal que llega de la Costa Atlántica, Magdalena Medio y Chocó.

Como puntos de venta, las autoridades ambientales tienen identificados tres con mayor movimiento: El Hueco, la Plaza Minorista y la Plazuela Uribe Uribe. Hay un triángulo crítico de caza y comercialización que se presenta entre Puerto Salgar, Puerto Boyacá y Puerto Nare; también está registrado el sector La Palestina, entre Apartadó y Montería, y La Rusia, entre Caucasia y Planeta Rica.

"Tenemos un problema con los vecinos de Córdoba, porque el Ciffa despliega procesos coordinados, pero cuando pasamos a este departamento, allá parece que no hay mucho efecto", dijo Juan Camilo Restrepo , coordinador Fauna de Corantioquia.

Según investigadores de estos casos, en 2011 fueron judicializadas cinco personas vinculadas con este tráfico y comercialización; y en promedio, unas 10 personas conforman la red por cada animal, desde su caza hasta la venta.

Tortugas y aves siguen siendo las más afectadas con este tráfico.

Inclusive, debido a los controles, el comercio se adelanta en ocasiones "por encargo", es decir, sin tener los animales en los puntos ya identificados.

Campaña y operativos

Durante la Semana Santa, las autoridades estarán en vías de acceso a la ciudad, en puestos ubicados en peajes y sitios claves para evitar que los viajeros adquieran estas especies, pues, comentó Víctor Vélez , del Área, en esta época hay "mucho neonato en el ecosistema y los sacan a la carretera. Nos llegan pichones de loros, pericos, guacamayas, tortugas; y se consume mucha carne de monte, de tortuga".

Ayer se adelantaron operativos en el Valle de Aburrá en plazas de mercado y corredores viales. Un silvestre no es una mascota es la campaña de Policía Antioquia y los integrantes del Ciffa implementan más acciones coordinadas.

"Es insistirle a la gente que no los compre por pesar. Por uno que se compre son muchos más que sacan de su medio natural para venderlos, es la cadena aterradora del tráfico", confirmó Juan Camilo Restrepo , de Corantioquia.

Del total de animales que llega hasta el CAV, el 75 por cinco son reintegrados al medio silvestre, pero el 7 por ciento muere porque llegan en condiciones lamentables.

De cada 10 animales capturados solo uno llega a su destino como mascota, los otros prefieren defenderse y morir al ser sacados de su hábitat o mueren en el transporte. Duele la privación de la libertad, sufre el ecosistema, se desintegran familias. Por eso, las autoridades piden no seguir alimentando la cadena.

PARA SABER MÁS

Impacto ambiental del tráfico

Juan Camilo Restrepo, de Corantioquia, dijo que el comercio de fauna silvestre está asociado a un factor "consumo", relacionado con carne y huevos de las tortugas hicoteas e iguanas y animales de monte; y "mascota". 

Aclaró que el problema no solo radica en sacar a una especie de su hábitat sino que las consecuencias van más allá: "La mayoría de los que se sacan están muertos biológicamente para la especie, no se reproducen en cautiverio. Lo otro es en términos de su función ecológica, por ejemplo, los que son dispersores de semillas".

Además, advirtió, que los animales silvestres contienen muchos patógenos potencialmente transmisibles a los animales domésticos y al ser humano.

CLAVES

Para estar más enterado

1. Quien quiera entregar un animal puede llamar al 123 o a la Línea del Área Metropolitana: 3856000
2. Quienes quieran conocer normas en el tema pueden ver las leyes 1333 de 2009 y 1453 de 2011.
3. En los operativos de ayer no se realizaron incautaciones. El balance de Policía Ambiental fue positivo. 
4. En el CAV los curan y los ayudan a readaptarse a su hábitat.

Continúa suspendida operación que dejaría los bosques de Chocó como "campos de golf", pero hay más intereses y a más largo plazo que sólo madera

ORIGINAL:  NoticiasUNO
ORIGINAL: Huffington Post

Mientras el Presidente Santos jugaba golf con Bill Clinton y el empresario canadiense Frank Giustra, quien hace donaciones a la Clinton Global Initiative Foundation, el Ministro de Ambiente Colombiano Frank Pearl revisa el alcance de los contratos de una empresa maderera de propiedad del canadiense Giustra.

En el siguiente artículo del diario web Independiente Huffington Post, fechado en 2008, ya se da cuenta como la Fundación, Clinton Global Initiative, ha recibido aportes significativos de Frank Giustra:

Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative

The Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative will create a coalition of mining industry and non-industry actors to assist local leaders in Latin America address social, economic and environmental issues in a cost-effective, scalable and sustainable way. Partnering with the Clinton Foundation, who will help bring key stakeholders together, Frank Giustra and a number of partners have pledged in excess of $300 million to the effort. Carlos Slim Helú of Grupo Carso and the philanthropic arm of the Lundin Group of Companies have followed Giustra's example and each have pledged $100 million as part of this commitment to help alleviate poverty and build sustainable local economies in Latin America.

esta relación de vieja data, lo califica a ser invitado a jugar unos hoyos de golf recientemente en Bogotá y que se referencian en el video anterior de Noticias UNO.

Lazos de Bill Clinton con el Tratado de Libre Comercio con Colombia son incluso más fuertes que los de Penn

ORIGINAL: Huffington Post
Primera publicación: 04/16/08 

El domingo por la noche, el jefe de estrategia de la campaña de la senadora Hillary Clinton, Mark Penn, renunció a su cargo luego que se reveló que estaba trabajando (por su cuenta) para ayudar a pasar un Acuerdo de Libre Comercio con Colombia al que su candidata se opone.

Pero dentro de la campaña de Clinton, Penn no es el asesor de más alto rango con lazos financieros con los grupos e individuos que apoyan la aprobación de la medida.

El ex presidente Bill Clinton se ha ganado cientos de miles de dólares que hablaron en nombre de un grupo con sede en Colombia que impulsa el pacto comercial, y los representantes de esa organización dice The Huffington Post que el ex presidente compartió su sentimiento.

En junio de 2005, Clinton recibió 800.000 dólares por honorarios de Gold Service Internacional con sede en Colombia para dar cuatro conferencias en toda América Latina. La organización es, aparentemente, un grupo para desarrollar la tarea de atraer inversiones al país y educar a los líderes mundiales acerca de las oportunidades de negocio de la de Colombia.