Puerto Rico’s November 14-20 political week in tweets

by Nov 22, 2016News Week in Tweets0 comments

Puerto Rico Makes History by Electing First Independent Senator

With 10.75% of the vote, independent candidate José Vargas Vidot, a doctor specializing in drug rehabilitation, won Puerto Rico’s Senate seat. Thus becoming the first independent candidate ever elected as a senator in the history of Puerto Rico, tallying up an impressive number of 157,099 votes.

 

Trump University Settlement of $25 Million

To resolve litigations in New York and California involving allegations of fraud at Trump University, President-elect Donald Trump reached a $25 million settlement. However, he denies these allegations saying that the students received their money’s worth of education from seminars provided at the school.

 

Cast of “Hamilton” Addresses Mike Pence at Performance

The cast of broadway play “Hamilton” addressed Vice President-elect Mike Pence to “uphold our American values” at Friday night’s performance. President-elect Trump responded to this incident with twitter posts saying that the cast was “very rude” and “harassed” Pence and demanded the cast apologize.

 

WHO Switches to Long-Term Approach on Zika

In an announcement on Friday, the World Health Organization stated that it no longer considers Zika along with the neurological problems it causes to be a global public health emergency. Back in February when WHO declared Zika and emergency, they stated that there was an urgency to research whether Zika caused hundreds to thousands of birth defects in newborns in Brazil. Instead, WHO says that Zika still remains on the top of their emergency list, but is shifting to a long-term approach to address the virus.

 

Catholic Bishops Prepare to Defend Immigrants and Refugees Against Donald Trump

Although Catholic Bishops may be aligned with Trump’s campaign promises on views such as anti-abortion and objecting same-sex marriage, stopping immigration is one policy that many Bishops are opposing. Since more than one-third of American Catholics are now Latinos, and many others are immigrants come from dozens of other countries, the Bishops state that the church is “committed to resettling refugees and keeping immigrant families intact”.