Secret detentions in Europe

A report released by the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly confirmed that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has operated secret detention centres in Poland and Romania.

Victims of these secret detetions are usually subject to human rights violations, including torture or other ill-treatment. Many are feared to have been unlawfully detained.

The European Parliament have recommended measures to prevent further human rights violatons of this nature from taking place in the EU, but none of these recommendations has been implemented.

Since Portugal holds the Presidency of the EU, you can call on portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates to ensure that those recommendations are implemented.

You can visit the following link: http://web.amnesty.org/pages/eur-220607-action-eng.

There you'll find more information and a sample text you can send by email or letter. The contacts are also there.

Rui Pedro

Rui Pedro is a portuguese boy that went missing in 1998. At that time, he was 11 years old and was 1,50 m. tall. He has brown eyes. He vanished while walking home from school, in a town called Lousada.

A month later, he was sighted with a man in Disneyland Paris. Three years later, images of him being sexually abused were found in a international police operation to stop a global paedophile network, but he was never found.

If you think you have seen him or have some information about him, please contact the portuguese authorities (Polícia Judiciária), using the following contacts:

Address: Rua Assis Vaz, nº113, 4200-096 Porto

Telephone: +351 225582000, +351 225088644

Fax: +351 225023642

Email: directoria.porto@pj.pt

Million Faces

Small arms.

Do you know what it means? Small arm is any type of weapon that can be carried by a single person. Small arms includes, pistols, revolvers, shotguns, rifles, hand grenades and others.

Small arms are the cause of death of about half a million men, women and children every year.

The problem is the lack of control of the arms trade. These non-existent controls allow those arms to get to conflicts around the world, fuelling them. It's a global problem and all governments are responsible for it.

So, what can we do?

Amnesty International, Oxfam and IANSA are running a global campaing promoting an Arms Trade Treaty, which would be signed by governments. The main objective of this treaty will be to control the small arms trade, preventing, for example, small arms from being sold to countries where human rights are violated. The campaing is named Control Arms.

We can help by signing the Million Faces Petition, at http://www.controlarms.org/.

SOS Live Earth

We're almost there! The big concert for our planet takes place next Saturday all around the world. It will be a moment to remember, with more than 100 music artists performing live from Sydney, Tokyo, Johannesburg, London, New York, Rio de Janeiro, Shangai and Hamburg, in a concert promoted by former Vice-President of USA, Al Gore. The main objective is to get all of us to protect our planet, in a time of climate crisis.

You all certainly hear about greenhouse gases (CO2 is the most common) and how their emission his causing our climate to change very rapidly. these gases come mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, like oil and gas, used to produce the energy we all need for living. But there are other ways of producing energy, the so called green energy, or clean energy. This energy can be produced from the wind or the sea tides and it does not pollute our environment. Changing from "fossil" energy to clean energy takes time and money, and most of our companies are not willing to change, because it takes time and money.

But we all can do something to change. We can change our daily habits in order to consume less energy. If you take a minute to think about it, you will come to the conclusion that literally everything we do consumes energy. For example, at work you use the ellevator. But if you don't use it, it have not consumed energy, or have consumed less energy. So, on the other end of the chain, less fossil fuels were burned to make that ellevator work.

There are many little things like this we can do everyday. We just need to think about it and have always in mind that everything we do takes energy, which comes mainly from the burning of fossil fuels, which releases CO2 to the atmosphere, which is making our climate to change.

Here are a few ideas of what we can do:

• Plant a tree (trees absorbs C02);
• Change your light to low-energy Compact Fluorescent Light;
• Take a bath with your wife or husband. It takes less water and it might be fun;
• Don't leave you appliances on stand-by. They are consuming energy;
• Commute using trains or other electric vehicles and leave your car at home;
• Use low-pressure showers. The mix water with air, consuming less water;
• Recycle paper, plastic, metal and glass;
• Switch off yout TV if you're not watching;
• Walk whenever you can. You are consuming your shoes (which took energy to be made), but it's less than using a car or public transport.

I could give you more ideas, but each key pressed on my keyboard takes energy. So. I'll end here to help our planet.

Bye!