El Salvador Congress passes law taxing foreign donations to NGOs
SAN SALVADOR, May 20 (Reuters) - El Salvador's Congress approved a law on Tuesday that levies a 30% tax on transactions from foreign donors to local organizations in a crackdown on "foreign agents" that critics say will boost state control over non-governmental organizations.
The law will come to effect eight days after it has been published in the official gazette.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
7 hours ago
- The Independent
Stablecoin bigwig Circle set to make its debut on the New York Stock Exchange
Crypto enthusiasts will be watching the stock market Thursday as the U.S.-based issuer of one of most popular cryptocurrencies makes its debut on the New York Stock Exchange. Circle Internet Group issues USDC, a stablecoin that can be traded at a one-to-one ratio for U.S. dollars, and EURC, which can similarly be traded for euros. Stablecoins are a fast-growing corner of the cryptocurrency industry that offer a buffer against volatility because they are pegged to real-world assets, like U.S. dollars or gold. That makes them a much more reliable means of conducting commercial transactions than other forms of crypto. Interest in Circle's initial public offering is high. The company's underwriters priced the offering at $31 per share Wednesday, up from an expected price of $27 to $28. The number of shares being sold was raised to 34 million from 32 million. Circle will trade on the NYSE under the symbol 'CRCL.' The dominant player in the stablecoin field is El Salvador-based Tether, which has the stablecoin known as USDT that currently has about $150 billion in circulation. USDC is the second most popular stablecoin market cap, with about $60 billion in circulation. Circle said in a regulatory filing that USDC has been used for more than '$25 trillion in onchain transactions' since its launch in 2018. Revenue-wise the company has seen tremendous growth, going from just $15 million in 2020 to $1.7 billion in 2024. Stablecoin issuers make profits by collecting the interest on the assets they hold in reserve to back their stablecoins. Circle said USDC is backed by 'cash, short-dated US Treasuries and overnight US Treasury repurchase agreements with leading global banks.' Circle's IPO comes amid a push by the Trump administration and the crypto industry to pass legislation that would regulate how stablecoin issuers operate in the U.S. A Senate bill advanced last month with bipartisan support. There is also growing competition in the stablecoin field. A crypto enterprise partly owned by the Trump family just launched its own stablecoin, USD1. Circle said its long track record and values – the company says its mission statement is 'to raise global economic prosperity through the frictionless exchange of value' – will help it stand apart in the field.
Reuters
10 hours ago
- Reuters
Latin America's abortion rights in spotlight as Chile debates legalization
MEXICO CITY, June 5 (Reuters) - Chile's Congress is set to begin debating a bill that could make abortion legal on request nationwide, a debate which could have ripple effects across Latin America as a rift grows between nations making reproductive choices more accessible and those hardening legislation against abortion. Major Latin American countries like Mexico and Argentina provide broad access to abortion, while a Supreme Court case in Brazil seeking to expand access has been stalled for eight years. Although some countries have recently expanded abortion rights amid a wave of progressive politics, most still ban abortion in all or nearly all cases. Cuba became Latin America's first country to decriminalize abortion in 1965, decades ahead of its neighbors. Public hospitals provide the procedure free up to 12 weeks, with later abortions allowed in certain cases. These cases - rape or incest, fetal non-viability or risk to the woman's health or life - are commonly known as the "tres causales" (three reasons) and serve as a key reference across the region. Guyana legalized abortion in 1995, allowing it on request up to 8 weeks, with some extensions. Uruguay legalized abortion on request in 2012 up to 12 weeks, while Chile in 2017 eased a total ban to the tres causales restriction up to 12 weeks. In 2020 Argentina legalized abortion up to 14 weeks. Since President Javier Milei took office, some groups have raised concerns about cuts to funding and limited access to related healthcare. In 2022, Colombia — which had earlier legalized abortion under the tres causales — decriminalized abortion up to 24 weeks, placing it among the world's more permissive countries. Mexico ruled criminal penalties for abortion unconstitutional in 2021 and reaffirmed this with a broader ruling in 2023, but as of today 10 of 32 administrative entities have yet to update their local laws. Much of Latin America currently allows abortion in limited cases - many use the "tres causales", and others allow for a broader set of reasons including mental health, economic constraints and social issues. Few countries allow abortion beyond the first three months. Brazil, the region's most populous nation with some 211 million inhabitants, currently allows abortion only with the "tres causales", specifically if the fetus is missing parts of its brain or skull. A Supreme Court case seeking to decriminalize abortion was filed in 2017 but remains on pause. Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia and Venezuela have limited access broadly aligned with the "tres causales", though many restrict it to situations where the woman's life is at risk, while pregnant women living in Central America and the Caribbean are broadly subject to stricter laws. Even in countries where abortion is legally permitted under certain conditions, barriers such as limited medical infrastructure, provider reluctance, and documentation requirements can make access difficult. In many cases, pregnancies must meet strict timelines or legal proof standards. Much of Central America and the Caribbean ban abortion in all or most cases. Countries with complete bans include Nicaragua, which ended exceptions even for life-threatening pregnancies in 2006; Honduras, where a 2021 constitutional amendment makes reversal unlikely; and El Salvador, which enforces some of the region's strictest penalties. El Salvador's constitution recognizes life from conception, and women have received decades-long prison sentences for abortion-related charges, even when advocates argue the cases were miscarriages or even newborn deaths. As of now, no women are imprisoned under these charges, but President Nayib Bukele has said he will not change the law. Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which share the Caribbean island on Hispaniola, ban abortion in all circumstances. Dominican activists are seeking legalization under the "tres causales" but efforts have stalled. In Haiti, a penal code that would have decriminalized abortion up to 12 weeks was delayed after the president's assassination in 2021. A worsening armed conflict has led to widespread sexual violence, a failing health system and mass insecurity, forcing many pregnant women to seek care across the Dominican border. Activists say pregnant Haitians have been targeted in Dominican deportations. In 2013, the Dominican Republic changed its law to revoke its nationality from children born to Haitian parents.
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- The Guardian
Trump's crusade against all immigrants – even legal ones – is unprecedented
The Donald Trump administration has billed itself as taking unprecedented steps to crack down on illegal immigration. While the total number of deportations has yet to surge, it may happen soon. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, supports suspending habeas corpus to speed up deportations, and the border czar, Tom Homan, has suggested blatantly ignoring court orders. Private companies are also lining up to cash in on mass deportations. Nonetheless, Trump's approach so far to immigration deemed illegal has not differed much from what Barack Obama and Joe Biden did. So why does everything feel different? The answer is that Trump has launched an unprecedented crusade against legal immigrants. And the tactics have been jarringly lawless and cruel. For example, Trump's administration has almost completely banned refugee resettlement, sought to revoke temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands who have immigrated to flee extreme conditions, eliminated the legal status of thousands of international students, arrested legal asylum seekers at their immigration check-ins, jailed other legal asylum seekers in a maximum security prison in El Salvador, declared an end to birthright citizenship and revoked the legal status of nearly a million humanitarian parolees who had applied for legal entry using the CBP One app. While the Obama and Biden administrations likewise took aggressive measures to regulate undocumented immigration – thus earning well-founded criticisms from immigration activists who took to calling Obama the 'deporter-in-chief' – both presidents also worked to expand the pathways for legal immigration. Some of their initiatives were blocked by Congress or the courts, but the result was a net expansion of legal immigration under both administrations. On the other hand, Trump has consistently worked to block as many pathways to legal migration as possible. In Trump's first term, certain aspects of his immigration agenda were similarly constrained by Congress or the courts, but the result was still a major decrease in legal immigration. In Trump's second term, this assault on legal immigrants has escalated at a furious pace, and while courts have already found many of these actions illegal according to long-established precedent, the administration shows no sign of slowing down. Indeed, Trump officials have become increasingly bold in defying court rulings, and all of this is taking place under the watch of a supreme court so Trump-friendly that last year it granted him sweeping immunity to commit crimes. As a historian of border policy, I find Tump's attack on the CBP One app especially demoralizing. A longstanding contradiction in our immigration system is that while technically people have the right to apply for asylum once they reach US soil, it is incredibly difficult to arrive in the US to exercise this right. Accordingly, the only legal way to immigrate for the vast majority of people is to first survive a deadly gauntlet of oceans, jungles, deserts and criminal organizations, and only then begin an asylum application, which is still a long shot. David Fitzgerald's 2019 book Refuge Beyond Reach offers a detailed description of this insidious system and its long history. While it was largely unappreciated at the time, the Biden administration took meaningful steps to address this deadly contradiction by creating a way to legally apply for asylum through the CBP One app while still abroad. This enabled people facing grave humanitarian crises to start applications outside the US, and if approved, they could then buy plane tickets and travel to the US safely with humanitarian parole. The initiative was successful, legal, and in many ways, historic. Hundreds of thousands of people were able to migrate legally and escape extremely difficult conditions. This infuriated conservatives, who launched a barrage of vicious lies to demonize the program and the people using it. JD Vance insisted on the debate stage that these immigrants were illegal, and when corrected by debate moderators, whined that fact-checking was against the rules. Ted Cruz used his podcast to accuse Biden of chartering flights to bring in undocumented people who would vote Democrat. And Trump accused them of eating pets. Just by cancelling the program for future enrollees, Trump is already launching a disturbing assault on legal immigration. Yet in an escalation of cruelty that is difficult to even comprehend, Trump canceled the program retroactively as well, capriciously revoking the legal status of hundreds of thousands of extremely vulnerable people who simply followed the rules. If you think that that sounds dystopian and cruel, you're right. And that's exactly the point: cruelty itself is a tactic to scare immigrants away. The child separation policy from Trump's first term was an early example of this penchant for using visible displays of cruelty as an immigration deterrent and his new administration has worked around the clock to invent creative new horrors: from shipping deportees to Guantánamo Bay, to sending masked agents to disappear students, to indefinitely detaining immigrants with no criminal record in a notoriously dangerous prison in El Salvador (many of whom were arrested while attending legal immigration appointments), and then sending Noem to El Salvador to do a photoshoot with these political prisoners as props. The message to immigrants is clear: leave, or never come in the first place, because this could happen to you, even if you do it 'the right way'. The takeaway from all of this is that right now, real people – our friends, families, students and neighbors – are suffering at the hands of a cruel and lawless government. And while Republican policymakers are driving these actions, many centrist Democrats, such as Gavin Newsom, are giving tacit approval by writing off these disturbing human rights violations as merely the 'distraction of the day'. I refuse to ignore this suffering. I hope you refuse as well. Daniel Mendiola is a professor of Latin American history and migration studies at Vassar College.
