I'm adding this to my list of favorite chess quotes.

manuel fernando ramirez

me apasiona jugar y me entretiene me gustaria avanzar y que me consideraran maestro mi apertura favorita es ruy lopez y capablanca me gusta como jugaba

Bogota Colombia

Member since April 21, 2020

Translation:

I am passionate about playing and it entertains me. I would like to advance and be considered a teacher. 

My favorite opening is Ruy Lopez. Capablanca, I like how he played.

https://lichess.org/@/mafer2605

Lots of people are dropping dead in India and South America. They were probably not wearing a mask.

New York Times

Global coronavirus cases are surging, driven by India and South America.

The number of new daily cases has exceeded 800,000 for more than a week. The spike is largely driven by the outbreak in India, which now accounts for more than 40 percent of the world’s new cases. The U.S. plans to halt travel for non-U.S. citizens from India starting Tuesday.

Vaccines in India are running short, hospitals are swamped and cremation grounds are burning thousands of bodies every day. Health experts and political analysts say that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s overconfidence and domineering leadership style bear a huge share of the responsibility for the crisis. Meanwhile, Indians living abroad are frantically seeking to help sick relatives.

Much of South America is also faring poorly. Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru, Argentina and Colombia all rank among the 20 nations with the highest number of Covid deaths per capita.

I'm adding this to my list of favorite quotes. It's about chess.

Miguel Angel Barrera Grisales

* Lover and follower of chess 🎖♚♔❤ ...

Scimitar Santander Colombia

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Santander is a north-central Colombian department in the Andes mountains. It's characterized by river valleys and rugged terrain, including the craggy mountains of the Parque Nacional del Chicamocha. The park is known for its panoramic cable car across the Chichamocha River Canyon, plus a water park. The high-altitude town of Barichara is famed for its cobblestone streets and colonial architecture.

― Google

Socialism doesn't work. Venezuela's monthly minimum wage is currently worth $2 a month. I'm not making this up.

AP News

Venezuelans once again fleeing on foot as troubles mount

By MARIANA PALAU and MANUEL RUEDA

October 8, 2020

PAMPLONA, Colombia (AP) — Eleazar Hernández slept on a sidewalk amid a light drizzle, temperatures that dipped close to freezing and the roar of passing trucks.

The 23-year-old Venezuelan migrant was trying to make it to the Colombian city of Medellin with his wife, who is seven months pregnant.

But the couple had run out of money for transportation by the time they reached Pamplona, a small mountain town over 300 miles (482 km) away from their final destination. Unable to buy a bus ticket, Hernández pinned his hopes on catching a ride on the back of a truck. It was the safest way to cross the Paramo de Berlin, a freezing plateau located at 13,000 feet (4,000 meters).

“My wife can barely walk,” said Hernández, who had spent four days sleeping on Pamplona’s sidewalks. “We need transport to get us out of here.”

After months of COVID-19 lockdowns that halted one of the world’s biggest migration movements in recent years, Venezuelans are once again fleeing their nation’s economic and humanitarian crisis.

Though the number of people leaving is smaller than at the height of the Venezuelan exodus, Colombian immigration officials expect 200,000 Venezuelans to enter the country in the months ahead, enticed by the prospects of earning higher wages and sending money back to Venezuela to feed their families.

The new migrants are encountering decidedly more adverse conditions than those who fled their homeland before COVID-19. Shelters remain closed, drivers are more reluctant to pick up hitchhikers and locals who fear contagion are less likely to help out with food donations.

“We hardly got any lifts along the way,” said Anahir Montilla, a cook from the Venezuelan state of Guarico who was approaching Colombia’s capital after traveling with her family for 27 days.

Before the pandemic, over 5 million Venezuelans had left their country, according to the United Nations. The poorest left on foot, walking through a terrain that is often scorching but can also get frigidly cold.

As governments across South America shut down their economies in hopes of stopping the spread of COVID-19, many migrants found themselves without work. Over 100,000 Venezuelans returned to their country, where at least they’d have a roof over their heads.

Today, official land and bridge crossings into Colombia are still closed, compelling migrants to flee through illegal pathways along the porous 1,370-mile (2,200-kilometer) border with Venezuela. The dirt roads are controlled by violent drug trafficking groups and rebel organizations like the National Liberation Army.

“The return of Venezuelan migrants is already happening even though the border is closed,” said Ana Milena Guerrero, an official for the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian non-profit organization helping migrants.

What’s more, many are now forced to walk within their own country for days to reach the border due to gas shortages that have diminished transportation between cities.

Hernández said it took him a week to walk from his hometown of Los Teques to Colombia.

“I can’t allow my daughter to be born in a place where she might have to go to bed hungry,” he said, while registering with a humanitarian group that handed out backpacks with food and hats for cold weather.

Once in Colombia, the migrants typically walk along highways or wait to hitch a ride. But that’s also become harder.

“It’s been very tough,” said Montilla, who was still 200 miles (321 km) away from her final destination. “But at least with a job in Colombia, we can afford new shoes and clothes. We couldn’t do that in Venezuela.”

One lengthy stretch of road connecting the border city of Cucuta to Bucaramanga further inland used to be home to 11 shelters for migrants. Most have been ordered to close by municipal governments trying to contain coronavirus infections.

Before the pandemic broke out, Douglas Cabeza had turned a shed next to his house in Pamplona into a shelter that housed up to 200 migrants a night. Now he lends gym mattresses to those sleeping outside, hoping to provide them with some protection from the cold.

“There are many needs that aren’t being met,” Cabeza said. “But with small gestures like this, we are trying to do something for them.”

Once the migrants reach their destination, a new list of worries sets in. Colombia’s unemployment rate rose from 12% in March to almost 16% in August. Those who can’t afford to pay rent are being evicted from their homes. Further complicating matters, more than half of all Venezuelans in Colombia have no legal status.

Still, for many, the prospect of earning even less than the minimum wage is a boost. Colombia’s monthly minimum wage is currently worth around $260, far higher than Venezuela’s measly $2.

Hernández was working as a street vendor in Venezuela, selling cakes baked by his wife. But money for food was becoming increasingly scarce, which prompted the couple to make the 860-mile (1,384-kilometer) journey to Medellin.

“I am Venezuelan and I love my country,” he said. “But it has become impossible to live there.”

Mariana Palau reported from Bogota, Colombia.

Can this problem be fixed? I hope so but I doubt it.

The Washington Post

Animals

Humans are decimating wildlife, and the pandemic is a sign, report says

An endangered mountain gorilla in Congo's Virunga National Park.

The giant freshwater stingray is in decline in Laos's Mekong River.

By Karin Brulliard

September 10, 2020

Humanity’s expansion, consumption and transformation of land and sea have caused wildlife populations to plunge over five decades, signaling a “broken” relationship with nature that helped trigger the global coronavirus pandemic, a report says.

Average populations of nearly 4,400 mammals, amphibians, birds, fish and reptiles dropped by 68 percent since 1970, according to the World Wildlife Fund report, which is based on vertebrate monitoring projects around the world. The losses have been driven primarily by habitat loss, it says, along with pollution, invasive species, overhunting and overfishing and, increasingly, climate change.

The result is dysfunctional ecosystems — bereft of important pollinators, predators and scavengers — less able to support human or animal health, said Rebecca Shaw, the fund’s chief scientist.

The “Living Planet Report,” published every two years, is the latest to describe stunning declines in biodiversity resulting from human activity. The United Nations warned last year that 1 million plant and animal species are on the verge of extinction. Also in 2019, ornithologists and government agencies reported North America had lost nearly 3 billion birds over 50 years.

But World Wildlife Fund officials emphasized one catastrophic consequence of the declines is now before our eyes. The coronavirus pandemic, caused by the sort of “spillover” of a zoonotic virus that is becoming more common as humans expand their footprint, should be viewed as “an SOS signal for the human enterprise,” the report says.

The report “provides unequivocal evidence that nature is unraveling and that our planet is flashing red warning signs,” wrote Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International. “Covid-19 is a clear manifestation of our broken relationship with nature and highlights the deep interconnection between the health of both people and the planet.”

More than two-thirds of emerging infectious diseases in humans have origins in animals, and scientists say the virus that causes covid-19 probably originated in a horseshoe bat, though the virus’s precise path to people remains unknown. What’s clear is that animal viruses have more chances to hop to humans as we develop formerly wild spaces, fly around the globe, trade in wildlife and intensify livestock production.

“If you start deforesting and are grabbing those animals out of the forest and putting them on trains and putting them on trucks and boats, alive, with domestic animals and humans, you have all this viral mixing,” Shaw said. “We’re disrupting nature and creating the opportunity for these spillover events.”

Wildlife losses were particularly precipitous for freshwater species, which saw an average decline of 84 percent, in part because of the near disappearance of most wetlands that existed 500 years ago, the report said. The average drop in species monitored in Central and South America was an astonishing 94 percent, it said.

Populations of animals large and small are dwindling, and are changing differently in different regions, according to the report.

While tigers are on the rise in Nepal, the big cats’ numbers have fallen by more than 20 percent in Russia’s far east, where habitat loss, a decline in prey and poaching pose threats. Agriculture has caused gray partridges in the United Kingdom to plummet, while illegal hunting and mining have driven down the Grauer’s gorilla population in the Congo by 87 percent.

Several species of vibrantly speckled harlequin frogs in Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela have faced “catastrophic” losses and extinctions, mostly attributable to a fungal disease that may have originated in East Asia in the 20th century and then shot around the planet with the boom in global trade and the exotic pet market.

Despite the declines, Shaw said urgent changes could blunt or even reverse some of the damage. Modeling carried out by the World Wildlife Fund and 50 partners as part of a two-year-old initiative called “Bending The Curve” found recovery will require a combination of increasing land conservation efforts and, crucially, overhauling food production to make it more sustainable and efficient and less wasteful. Those findings were described Thursday in the journal Nature.

The “Living Planet Report” describes wildlife population declines not only because they act as a barometer for ecosystem health, but also because they contain glimmers of hope, Shaw added.

“If you only measure threatened and endangered species, which has really been the focus for the conservation community for many, many years,” Shaw said, “you’re way too late.”

Karin Brulliard

Karin Brulliard is a national reporter who writes about animals. Previously, she was an international news editor; a foreign correspondent in South Africa, Pakistan and Israel; and a local reporter. She joined The Post in 2003. Follow

The next pandemic is already coming, unless humans change how we interact with wildlife, scientists say

People probably caught coronavirus from minks. That’s a wake-up call to study infections in animals, researchers say.

North America has lost 3 billion birds in 50 years

Neiva Colombia

Everything you always wanted to know about Manizales, Colombia. I just played chess with someone who lives there.

Manizales
City in Colombia

Manizales is a city in the mountainous coffee-growing region of western Colombia. It’s known for its cultural events, steep streets and views of the nearby Nevado del Ruiz volcano. Central Bolívar Square has a man-condor sculpture honoring revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar. The city's neo-Gothic Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary has a rooftop viewpoint. The neo-colonial Governor’s Palace is nearby.

Wikipedia - Manizales, Columbia

Geography

Manizales is the capital city of one of the smallest Colombian departments. The city is described as having an "abrupt topography", and lies on the Colombian Central Mountain Range (part of the longest continental mountain range, the Andes), with a great deal of ridgelines and steep slopes, which, combined with the seismic instability of the area, has required architectural adaptations and public works to make the city safer. Even though Manizales has this very difficult topography, there are many coffee plantations in its fertile lands. The city is located in the northern part of the Colombian Coffee-Growers Axis ("Eje Cafetero"), near the volcano Nevado del Ruiz, which has an altitude of 5,321 meters (17,457.3 ft).

It is in the basin of the Chinchiná River and sub-basin of the Guacaica River. Its natural threats are earthquakes, mudslides, and volcanic eruptions.

Climate

Under the Köppen climate classification, Manizales is Cfb, a subtropical highland climate but ever moist.[1] Lower elevations approach an equatorial climate (Af) as found in the plains.[2] Despite being located in the tropics, the city seldom gets very hot, featuring spring-like temperatures throughout the year owing to its high altitude. There are only two seasons in the city: the wet and dry seasons that alternate throughout the year, with each lasting about three months. Monthly averages are quite uniform. Manizales receives about 1,500 millimetres (59 in) of precipitation a year, with October being wettest.

Colombia

I never met a cow I didn't like.

BBC News. I could not find this interesting video on YouTube but you can click this link to watch it.

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/stories-48336239/how-a-new-diet-for-gassy-cows-is-helping-the-environment

How a new diet for gassy cows is helping the environment

Cattle farming is responsible for almost 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.

So some farmers in Colombia have been piloting a different way of raising cows that has proved better for the environment.