International
‘Menstrual poverty’: Brazil tampon row gets political

AFP
Vanessa Moraes lives in a Rio de Janeiro slum, works multiple jobs to support her two sons and barely scrapes by on welfare.
So buying tampons and pads each month is hardly a top priority.
Like millions of women across Brazil, Moraes improvises with whatever she can when she gets her period — a long-taboo topic that took a political turn last month when President Jair Bolsonaro vetoed legislation to provide free menstrual supplies for the poor.
“Pads are expensive, so we use a piece of cloth, a pillowcase, a diaper, whatever we can,” says Moraes, whose sons are aged 11 and 12.
Her eldest, Hugo, has cerebral palsy, and has to wear diapers.
“Whenever one of my son’s diapers breaks, I think, ‘Oh, I’ll use that for a pad,’” Moraes tells AFP.
The tall 39-year-old demonstrates her technique, tearing the elastic strips off each side of a diaper, opening the absorbant middle and adding a piece of scrap cloth to make it more effective.
Moraes lives in Complexo do Alemao, a sprawling “favela” on Rio’s north side.
Much of her income from her jobs as a waitress and school-bus driver goes to caring for Hugo.
Even with the 1,100 reais ($200) she receives in government assistance each month, the family barely gets by, she says.
A pack of tampons or pads ranges in price from three to 10 reais in Brazil — a sum Moraes simply can’t afford.
Brazil, a country of 213 million people, has an estimated 60 million women and girls who get their period each month.
An estimated 28 percent of poor women suffer what is known as “menstrual poverty”, meaning they are unable to afford basic hygiene products.
Forced by necessity, they have found myriad solutions to deal with their periods: pieces of bread, cotton, paper or the “paninho” (little cloth), a piece of fabric that is washed and re-used.
But a lack of menstrual supplies keeps one in four girls home from school each month, according to a recent report by a United Nations Foundation program called Girl Up.
– ‘Matter of public health’ –
Moraes gets assistance from One by One, a local charity for impoverished disabled people and their families.
The organization provides equipment such as wheelchairs, as well as food and basic goods — including menstrual supplies.
Fifteen-year-old Karla Cristina de Almeida, another beneficiary, shares her monthly package with her sister — when they can.
“Sometimes we have one pack, sometimes we have none. When we don’t have any, I don’t even leave the house. So I miss school,” she says.
Women lined up at One by One’s recent handout of menstrual supplies.
One, Miriam Firmino, 51, remembered coming of age using a “paninho” — an experience she wants to spare her three daughters.
“To be able to afford tampons, we have to find them on sale. When we can’t, we get by however we can,” she says.
The problem has only grown worse with the coronavirus pandemic, whose economic fallout has hit hardest among the poor.
“With the pandemic and the economic crisis, a lot of the mothers we help tell us they’ve gone back to using ‘paninhos,’ paper, cotton or other materials when they menstruate,” says One by One president Teresa Stengel.
“They often complain of injuries and infections. Menstrual poverty is a public health problem.”
– Bolsonaro veto –
The issue became a topic of national conversation in October when Bolsonaro signed a bill into law promoting “menstrual health,” but used his line-item veto to block its promise of free menstrual supplies for more than five million low-income women and girls, arguing there was no funding for it.
The move has fueled scathing criticism of the far-right president, who has often been accused of misogyny and anti-women policies.
In response, Rio city hall and several other state and local governments have started giving out free tampons in public schools.
“My school has done more for Brazil than Bolsonaro. They gave out three packs of tampons to every girl,” quipped one Twitter user.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”

The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants

The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open

US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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