Peru environmental issues, and unexploded US ordnance in Laos

In December, the government of Peru will host the United Nations Climate Change Conference, but the country has a spotty record when it comes to environmental protection. Last month Peru passed a law that many critics say greatly weakens the power of the country's Ministry of Environment. The law takes away the Ministry’s ability to regulate air, soil and water quality standards and its ability to regulate harmful substances. The law also limits the Ministry’s ability to establish nature reserves and fine mining companies for accidents or spills. All of this is set against the backdrop of a long history of environmental problems in the country. In the past five years there have been oil spills in the jungle region, pipeline bursts that have made hundreds of people sick, and violent protests against mining companies that resulted in eight deaths in 2012.
Frank Bajak, chief of Andean News for the Associated Press, has been reporting from Lima on environmental issues in Peru for the last three years. He joins us to explain how the new legislation has weakened the position of the Ministry of Environment, even as Peru gets ready to host the United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Then, fifty years ago, the United States began a massive bombing campaign on the country of Laos that signaled America’s full entry into the Vietnam War. By the time the war ended in 1973, the U.S. had dropped billions of pounds of explosives on a country the size of Great Britain. No nation in history has been bombed more than Laos. In their book Eternal Harvest: The Legacy of American bombs in Laos, investigative reporters Karen Coates and Jerry Redfern pose this question: How does a nearly forgotten American war continue to kill and maim civilians each week, four decades after the last bombs fell?” They detail the lives of the people who today are still at risk. We'll talk with them about the legacy of American bombs in Laos.

(photo: In this July 31, 2012 file photo, workers from the Antamina copper mine, wearing white uniforms, clean the river in Cajacay, Peru. A pipeline carrying copper concentrate laced with volatile compounds burst open on July 25. More than a month after toxic slurry from a major copper mine sickened scores of people in one of Peru's highland communities, villagers complain that the government and company have done little to help and have even failed to tell some parents that tests showed their children had been poisoned. (AP Photo/La Republica Newspaper, File))