Pandemic hampers raising rare whooping cranes for the wild

WHOOPING CRANES (NORTH AMERICAN IBIS) SUMMER IN ALBERTA AS DO THE GREAT BLUE HERON BOTH ENDANGERED SPECIES 

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY June 10, 2020

1 of 9
In this May 11, 2014 photo provided by the International Crane Foundation, curator of birds Kim Boardman holds an endangered whooping crane, while senior aviculturist Marianne Wellington performs artificial insemination. The foundation is not using the technique this year because foundation officials feel it would go against COVID-19 social distancing guidelines. This is among reasons that far fewer young whooping cranes than usual will be released into the wiild this fall to help bring back the world's rarest crane. (International Crane Foundation via AP)


NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The COVID-19 pandemic is drastically reducing the number of young whooping cranes to be released this fall to help bring back the world’s rarest cranes. Zoos and other places where the endangered birds are bred have had to cut not only staff size but use of two techniques to boost the birds’ numbers: artificial insemination and hand-rearing -- or, rather, costume-rearing -- chicks.

Whooping cranes are North America’s tallest birds, 5 feet (1.5 meters) high from their black feet to the little red caps on their heads. They’re white with black tips on wings spanning 7 feet (2.1 meters). They mate for life.

MORE STORIES:
– Louisiana's whooping crane comeback: 5 chicks this year
– Last of whooping cranes departs Maryland breeding program
– Reward up to $10K for tips leading to whooping crane killer

Only about 825 exist. All are descended from 15 that had survived habitat loss and hunters in 1941, breeding in Canada’s largest national park and wintering in Aransas, Texas.


In this photo provided by the Audubon Nature Institute, Heather Holtz takes semen from an endangered whooping crane for artificial insemination on Sunday, May 31, 2020, while Elyssa Buch holds the bird at the institute's Species Survival Center in New Orleans. In the background, Hanna Carter keeps the female crane from trying to protect her mate. Because of money losses and staff cutbacks due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Audubon is using the technique only for its most genetically valuable birds. (Audubon Nature Institute via AP)

Biologists are trying to establish two more flocks to mitigate disaster should anything happen to the original flock, now 500 strong. There are 75 birds based in Louisiana and 85 in a flock taught to migrate from Wisconsin to Florida by following ultralight aircraft.

In a normal year, breeders in various areas and wildlife agents in Louisiana and Wisconsin would collect some eggs for incubation, knowing the parents will lay a second and even a third clutch. That both increases the number of chicks per year and, in Wisconsin, helps keep wild chicks from hatching during the worst of the bloodsucking black fly season, which has proven dangerous to them.

\
Some incubated chicks get captive whoopers as surrogate parents, but there aren’t enough for all. To keep the rest from viewing people as their flock, keepers don baggy white “crane costumes” that cover them from head to ankles, and manipulate crane-head hand puppets to teach chicks to forage for insects.

Audubon Nature Institute’s Species Survival Center in New Orleans usually costume-raises a number of chicks. But COVID-19 is expected to cut revenues $21 million — nearly 37% of the year’s planned budget — at the institute, which also includes a zoo, aquarium, insectarium and nature center. That has meant staff cuts -- mostly in maintenance — which means keepers are doing some of that work and have less time overall, curator Michelle Hatwood said.

She said costume-rearing is expensive and will be used only if a crane couple turns out to be poor parents. The center’s 21 birds include eight pairs, some unmated birds and a few that would normally be housed next to growing chicks as behavior models.

The birds were moved to Audubon two years ago after the federal breeding center at Patuxent, Maryland, closed down, she said. “Most are brand-new -- they’ve never raised a chick.”

FILE - In this March 23, 2018 file photo, an endangered whooping crane flies over a crawfish pond in St. Landry Parish, La. Louisiana's flock is one of two made up almost entirely of birds raised in captivity and released in the wild to mitigate disaster in case anything happens to the only natural flock. But the COVID-19 pandemic will mean fewer youngsters than usual to release in the wild in fall 2020, helping to bring back the world's rarest cranes. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

No chicks at all are expected at the species’ largest breeding center. All 41 whooping cranes at the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin, require artificial insemination. One person holds a bird while another collects or injects sperm.

“That doesn’t really go with the social distancing guidelines,” aviculturist Kim Boardman said.

The technique is needed for a variety of reasons -- old injuries, arthritis, or because their mates aren’t the best genetic match in a highly inbred species


The big birds mate standing up, and a male with a bad wing or leg can’t do the job, Hatwood said.

FILE - In this June 11, 2018 file photo, a pair of captive-bred whooping cranes and their 2-month-old wild-hatched chicks forage through a crawfish pond near an egret, far right, in Jefferson Davis Parish, La. The COVID-19 pandemic means far fewer chicks than usual are being bred in captivity to release in the wild in fall 2020, helping to bring back the world's rarest cranes. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)


Each center sets its own policy, and Audubon decided the procedure was brief enough to let keepers in masks and eye shields work with the most genetically valuable birds.

A third person is often needed to fend off a bird’s mate during the operation, Hatwood said: “They have very sharp nails and very poky beaks.”

Other breeding centers are at the Calgary Zoo in Alberta, Canada (27 birds), the White Oak Conservation Center in Yulee, Florida (10) and the Dallas Zoo and Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute in Virginia (9 each), with another 25 birds too old or otherwise unsuited for breeding living at zoos for display only.


The Dallas Zoo’s birds, which arrived at a 2½-acre off-site breeding facility last August, were chosen as both genetically well suited and likely to breed on their own, said Matt James, senior director of animal care. “We’re going to try for the first couple of seasons to do this naturally,” he said.

Wild whooping cranes are hatching chicks, but those don’t get counted as members of the flock until they can fly. And even then, it isn’t easy being free. In Louisiana, 21 chicks hatched from 2016 through 2019. Seven lived to fly. Three have avoided perils such as predators, power lines and people who shoot at birds, and are still alive.

___

FILE - In this June 21, 2018 file photo, a recently hatched endangered whooping crane chick follows a keeper wearing a "crane suit," to resemble an adult endangered whooping crane so the chick doesn’t view humans as its flock at Audubon Nature Institute's Species Survival Center in New Orleans. The center usually "costume-raises" a number of chicks. But because the coronavirus pandemic has cut money and staffing it will do so in 2020 only if adult whoopers at the center are doing poorly at raising chicks. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

FILE - In this June 11, 2018, file photo, a captive-bred whooping crane and its wild-hatched chick forage through a crawfish pond in Jefferson Davis Parish, La. The COVID-19 pandemic means far fewer chicks than usual are being bred in captivity to release in the wild in fall 2020. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Follow Janet McConnaughey on Twitter: @JanetMcCinNO

Colorado reexamines Elijah McClain’s death in police custody

By PATTY NIEBERG and THOMAS PEIPERT June 25, 2020

1 of 5
File-In this Nov. 23, 2019, file photo, demonstrators gather for a press conference at the Aurora Municipal Center after the police department released the body camera footage of Elijah McClain, who died after being stopped by three Aurora officers in August 2019. (Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado via AP,File)

DENVER (AP) — The Colorado governor on Thursday ordered prosecutors to reopen the investigation into the death of Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old Black man put into a chokehold by police who stopped him on the street in suburban Denver last year because he was “being suspicious.”

Gov. Jared Polis signed an executive order directing state Attorney General Phil Weiser to investigate and possibly prosecute the three white officers previously cleared in McClain’s death. McClain’s name has become a rallying cry during the national reckoning over racism and police brutality following the deaths of George Floyd and others.

“Elijah McClain should be alive today, and we owe it to his family to take this step and elevate the pursuit of justice in his name to a statewide concern,” Polis said in a statement.

He said he had spoken with McClain’s mother and was moved by her description of her son as a “responsible and curious child ... who could inspire the darkest soul.”

Police in Aurora responded to a call about a suspicious person wearing a ski mask and waving his arms as he walked down a street on Aug. 24. Police body-camera video shows an officer getting out of his car, approaching McClain and saying, “Stop right there. Stop. Stop. ... I have a right to stop you because you’re being suspicious.”

Police say McClain refused to stop walking and fought back when officers confronted him and tried to take him into custody.

In the video, the officer turns McClain around and repeats, “Stop tensing up.” As McClain tries to escape the officer’s grip, the officer says, “Relax, or I’m going to have to change this situation.”

File-In this Nov. 23, 2019, file photo, attorney, Mari Newman, right, hugs Sheneen McClain during a press conference at the Aurora Municipal Center after the police department released the body camera footage of McClain's son, Elijah, being stopped while walking by three officers from the Aurora Police in late August 2019. McClain died three days later from injuries sustained during the stop. (Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado via AP, File)

As other officers join to restrain McClain, he begs them to let go and says, “You guys started to arrest me, and I was stopping my music to listen.”

One of the officers put him in a chokehold that cuts off blood to the brain, something that has been banned in several places in the wake of Floyd’s death May 25 under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer and the global protests that followed.

In the video, McClain tells officers: “Let go of me. I am an introvert. Please respect the boundaries that I am speaking.” Those words have appeared on scores of social media posts demanding justice for McClain.

He was on the ground for 15 minutes as several officers and paramedics stood by. Paramedics gave him 500 milligrams of the sedative ketamine to calm him down, and he suffered cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital. McClain was declared brain dead Aug. 27 and was taken off life support three days later.

A forensic pathologist could not determine what exactly led to his death but said physical exertion during the confrontation likely contributed.

McClain’s younger sister, Samara McClain, told The Denver Post shortly after his death that her brother was walking to a corner store to get tea for a cousin and often wore masks when he was outside because he had a blood condition that caused him to get cold easily.

File-In this Oct. 1, 2019, file photograph, the father of Elijah McClain, LaWayne Mosley, left, and mother, Sheneen McClain, right, flank the family's lawyer, Mari Newman, during a protest outside city hall in Aurora, Colo. Elijah McClain died after being stopped by three police officers while walking in the east Denver suburb of Aurora. (Philip B. Poston/Sentinel Colorado via AP, File)

In the video, Elijah McClain sobs as he repeatedly tells officers, “I’m just different.” Samara McClain said her brother was a massage therapist who planned to go to college.

The Police Department put the three officers on leave, but they returned to the force when District Attorney Dave Young said there was insufficient evidence to support charging them.

“Ultimately, while I may share the vast public opinion that Elijah McClain’s death could have been avoided, it is not my role to file criminal charges based on opinion, but rather, on the evidence revealed from the investigation and applicable Colorado law,” Young said shortly before Polis ordered the investigation reopened.

Aurora police said interim Police Chief Vanessa Wilson won’t comment to avoid interfering with the investigation.

Mari Newman, the McClain family’s attorney, said she was pleased with the governor’s decision.

“Clearly, Aurora has no intention of taking responsibility for murdering an innocent young man,” she said. “Its entire effort is to defend its brutality at all costs, and to lie to the public it is supposed to serve. It is time for a responsible adult to step in.”

Colorado’s attorney general said in a statement that the investigation will be thorough and “worthy of public trust and confidence in the criminal justice system.”

Nieberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

DEPT.OF DUH OH
Can tear gas and pepper spray increase virus spread?

By CARLA K. JOHNSON

June 8, 2020

FILE - In this May 31, 2020, file photo, a protester tries to talk the police back amid tear gas in downtown Atlanta, as protests continue across the country over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers on May 25. Police deployment of tear gas, pepper spray and chemical agents on protesters has raised concern that the practice may have increased the spread of the coronavirus. (Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP, File)


Police departments have used tear gas and pepper spray on protesters in recent weeks, raising concern that the chemical agents could increase the spread of the coronavirus.

The chemicals are designed to irritate the mucous membranes of the eyes, nose and throat. They make people cough, sneeze and pull off their masks as they try to breathe.

Medical experts say those rushing to help people sprayed by tear gas could come into close contact with someone already infected with the virus who is coughing infectious particles. 

Also, those not already infected could be in more danger of getting sick because of irritation to their respiratory tracts.

There’s no research on tear gas and COVID-19 specifically, because the virus is too new. 

But a few years ago, Joseph Hout, then an active duty Army officer, conducted a study of 6,723 Army recruits exposed to a riot control gas during basic training. The study found a link between that exposure and doctors diagnosing acute respiratory illnesses.

o-Chlorobenzylidene Malononitrile (CS Riot Control Agent) Associated Acute Respiratory Illnesses in a U.S. Army Basic Combat Training Cohort 

Joseph J. Hout, MS USA, Duvel W. White, MS USA, Anthony R. Artino, MSC USN, Joseph J. Knapik, ScD Author NotesMilitary Medicine, Volume 179, Issue 7, July 2014, Pages 793–798,

https://doi.org/10.7205/MILMED-D-13-00514

Published: 01 July 2014ABSTRACTAcute respiratory illnesses (ARIs) are among the leading causes for hospital visits in U.S. military training populations and historically peak during U.S. Army Basic Combat Training (BCT) following mandatory exposure to the riot control agent o-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile (CS). This observational prospective cohort studied the association between CS exposures and ARI-related health outcomes in 6,723 U.S. Army recruits attending BCT at Fort Jackson, South Carolina from August 1 to September 25, 2012 by capturing and linking the incidence of ARI before and after the mask confidence chamber to CS exposure data. Recruits had a significantly higher risk (risk ratio = 2.44; 95% confidence interval = 1.74, 3.43) of being diagnosed with ARI following exposure to CS compared to the period of training preceding exposure, and incidence of ARI after CS exposure was dependent on the CS exposure concentration (p = 0.03). There was a significant pre-/postexposure ARI difference across all CS concentration levels (p < 0.01), however, no significant differences were detected among these rate ratios (p = 0.72). As CS exposure is positively associated with ARI health outcomes in this population, interventions designed to reduce respiratory exposures could result in decreased hospital burden and lost training time in the U.S. Army BCT population.

FILE - In this May 31, 2020, file photo, milk is poured into a demonstrator's eyes to neutralize the effect of pepper spray during a rally at Lafayette Park near the White House in Washington. Police deployment of tear gas, pepper spray and chemical agents on protesters has raised concern that the practice may have increased the spread of the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)

Could tear gas lead to an increase in coronavirus infections? “I think it’s plausible, yes,” Hout said Monday.

The gases and sprays “by their nature, make you cough, sneeze and excrete fluids,” said Hout, now employed by Fairfax, Virginia-based Knowesis Inc., a private contractor.

“If there is a person who is positive for the virus, I can see them coughing on someone else and spreading it that way,” Hout said. “Another less likely way is through irritation of the respiratory system. It could create an environment for opportunistic infection in the body.”

Last week, more than 1,000 medical professionals and students signed a letter urging public health officials to oppose any use of “tear gas, smoke, or other respiratory irritants, which could increase risk for COVID-19 by making the respiratory tract more susceptible to infection, exacerbating existing inflammation, and inducing coughing.”

In the U.S., mayors in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle have ordered limits on the use of one common gas for crowd control. A judge in Denver imposed restrictions on the use of chemical weapons by police. And officials in Pittsburgh, New Orleans and Washington, D.C., have proposed bans or limits on tear gas use.

As protests over the death of George Floyd and other black Americans killed by law enforcement continue, it will take weeks before the effect might show up in rising COVID-19 case numbers. If cases increase, there are other factors that could share the blame, such as shouting, singing and, for thousands who were arrested, being confined in close spaces with others.

FILE - In this May 30, 2020, file photo, a protester is assisted with a solution to help neutralize the effects of tear gas fired by police outside the Minneapolis 5th Police Precinct. Police deployment of tear gas, pepper spray and chemical agents on protesters has raised concern that the practice may have increased the spread of the coronavirus. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File)

___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Venice flooded by unusual high tide, 3rd highest for June

A quarter of Venice has been submerged by a near-record high tide for June, a time of year when such flooding is rare.

June 5, 2020


A view of flooded St. Mark square in Venice, Italy, Thursday night, June 4, 2020. Venice has been submerged by a near-record high tide that is rare for this time of year. The water level in the lagoon city reached 116 centimeters late Thursday, the third-highest mark for June. That level indicates around a quarter of Venice has been flooded. (AP Photo/Luigi Costantini)

ROME (AP) — A quarter of Venice has been submerged by a near-record high tide for June, a time of year when such flooding is rare.

The water level in Italy’s lagoon city reached 116 centimeters (3 feet, 9.7 inches) late Thursday, the third-highest mark for June. That level indicates that around a quarter of Venice has been flooded.

Venice’s sea monitoring agency blamed the unusually high late spring tide on a storm in the Atlantic that brought heavy winds and rain to northern Italy. Another unseasonably high tide is expected Friday night.

The highest June high tide was registered in 2002, when the water mark hit 121 centimeters, followed by 117 centimeters in June of 2016.

Venice authorities on Friday didn’t put out pedestrian bridges, which are usually only used in the peak “acqua alta” season from September to April.

Venice and the rest of Italy are still closed to cruise ships but Italy relaxed travel restrictions for Italians and most Europeans on Wednesday.

__


Read all AP coverage of climate change issues at https://apnews.com/Climate

BET Awards highlight Black voices as artists turn political

1 of 12 https://apnews.com/82d410e5f6697ab2c46e1cfed96329e7

In this video grab issued Sunday, June 28, 2020, by BET, rapper DaBaby performs "Rockstar" as an actor playing a police officer presses his knee on DaBaby's neck, replicating the last few moments of George Floyd's life, during the BET Awards. (BET via AP)


NEW YORK (AP) — The BET Awards served as an extension of the voices of Black people protesting in the streets about the inequalities Black people face daily, as artists used their performances to highlight the Black Lives Matter movement, civil rights and the lives of those lost because of police officers, including George Floyd.

DaBaby, with his face pressed against the ground as an officer’s knee crippled his neck — replicating the last moments of Floyd’s life — rapped a verse from the Black Lives Matter remix of his hit song “Rockstar.” His performance also featured images from protests, a reflection of the current world in the wake of Floyd’s death and the death of others, including Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery.

Sunday’s show, a virtual event because of the coronavirus pandemic, featured a number of highly produced, well-crafted and pre-taped performances. The BET Awards kicked off with Black artists rapping and singing anthems about the Black experience and fighting for equal rights.

Keedron Bryant performs "I Just Wanna Live" during the BET Awards.

The 12-year-old sensation Keedron Bryant, who turned heads on social media with his passionate performance about being a young Black man in today’s world, started the show with an a cappella performance of his poignant song “I Just Wanna Live,” which earned him a record deal. That was followed by an all-star performance of Public Enemy’s 1989 anthem “Fight the Power,” featuring Nas, Black Thought, Rapsody and YG adding new lyrics to the song, even namedropping Taylor and others.

Michelle Obama highlighted Beyoncé’s commitment to the Black community before presenting her with the humanitarian award, saying: “You can see it in everything she does, from her music that gives voice to Black joy and Black pain, to her activism that demands justice for Black lives.”

Beyonce accepts the humanitarian award during the BET Awards.

Beyoncé used her speech to encourage viewers to vote “like our life depends on it” in the upcoming election.

“I want to dedicate this award to all of my brothers out there, all of my sisters out there inspiring me, marching and fighting for change. Your voices are being heard and you’re proving to our ancestors that their struggles were not in vain. Now we have one more thing we need to do to walk in our true power, and that is to vote,” she said. “There are people banking on us staying at home during local elections and primaries happening in states across the country. We have to vote like our life depends on it, because it does.”

Sunday’s show celebrated BET’s 20th awards show and BET’s 40th year as a network. The three-hour event, which aired on CBS for the first time, was hosted by comedian, actress and TV personality Amanda Seales, who starred in several skits, including one about women who identify as “Karen,” a common stereotype and term for racist and privileged white women.

Roddy Ricch wears a shirt that says Black Lives Matter while performing during the BET Awards.

Other artists were political during their performances, including Roddy Ricch, who wore a Black Lives Matter shirt while he rapped, Alicia Keys, Anderson Paak and Jay Rock, as well as brothers SiR and D Smoke, who performed with their mother Jackie Gouché.

Lil Wayne paid tribute to NBA icon Kobe Bryant, who died in January, with a performance of his 2009 song “Kobe Bryant,” weaving in new lyrics. Wayne Brady, in a glittery suit, rolled around on top of a piano as he sang a medley of Little Richard hits.

Nipsey Hussle, who was named best male hip-hop artist and earned the humanitarian award at last year’s BET Awards, won video of the year for “Higher,” a clip he filmed with DJ Khaled and John Legend shortly before he died .

“This is for Nipsey Hussle and hip-hop,” Khaled said in a taped video. “Nipsey Hussle, thank you for working with me on this ‘Higher’ record. I appreciate you. Nipsey’s family, we love you.”

Chloe x Halle perform during the BET Awards.

The BET Awards, one of the first awards shows to air virtually, featured performances that were sharp with artsy stage production, giving extra life to the songs being performed. It was a welcome break from the “living room” and homebound performances hundreds of artists have shared on social media since the pandemic hit in March.

Chloe x Halle, who have successfully performed for various TV shows and events during the pandemic while promoting their new album, gave an epic performance of their songs “Do It” and “Forgive Me.” R&B star Summer Walker, who played guitar and sang, was also impressive during her performance, which featured Usher.

Megan Thee Stallion went to the desert with background dancers as she twerked and rapped her No. 1 hit “Savage.” She won best female hip-hop artist, beating out Cardi B and Nicki Minaj.

Megan Thee Stallion performs during the BET Awards.

“Oh my God, I probably recorded this video like 10 times. It feels so crazy doing this from my house,” she said. “I used to watch the BET Awards all the time thinking, ‘One day that’s going to be me going up there accepting my award’ — and now it is.”

Though the BET Awards are technically about handing out trophies, the awards were an afterthought. During the live telecast, Richh won album of the year for his debut “Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial”; Lizzo was named best female R&B/pop artist; and Burna Boy won best international act. Overall, Chris Brown, Beyoncé and Ricch were the night’s big winners, taking home two honors each. Beyoncé won the BET HER award for “Brown Skin Girl,” shared with daughter Blue Ivy Carter as well as Wizkid and Saint JHN. The song also won Beyoncé and Blue Ivy a Soul Train Music Award last year.

ALICIA KEYS

China forces birth control on Uighurs to suppress population
By The Associated Press

1 of 15 https://apnews.com/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c

Alif Baqytali hugs his mother, Gulnar Omirzakh, at their new home in Shonzhy, Kazakhstan. Omirzakh, a Chinese-born ethnic Kazakh, says she was forced to get an intrauterine contraceptive device, and that authorities in China threatened to detain her if she didn't pay a large fine for giving birth to Alif, her third child. (AP Photo/Mukhit Toktassyn)The Chinese government is taking draconian measures to slash birth rates among Uighurs and other minorities as part of a sweeping campaign to curb its Muslim population, even as it encourages some of the country’s Han majority to have more children.

While individual women have spoken out before about forced birth control, the practice is far more widespread and systematic than previously known, according to an AP investigation based on government statistics, state documents and interviews with 30 ex-detainees, family members and a former detention camp instructor. The campaign over the past four years in the far west region of Xinjiang is leading to what some experts are calling a form of “demographic genocide.”

The state regularly subjects minority women to pregnancy checks, and forces intrauterine devices, sterilization and even abortion on hundreds of thousands, the interviews and data show. Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang.

The population control measures are backed by mass detention both as a threat and as a punishment for failure to comply. Having too many children is a major reason people are sent to detention camps, the AP found, with the parents of three or more ripped away from their families unless they can pay huge fines. Police raid homes, terrifying parents as they search for hidden children.

After Gulnar Omirzakh, a Chinese-born Kazakh, had her third child, the government ordered her to get an IUD inserted. Two years later, in January 2018, four officials in military camouflage came knocking at her door anyway. They gave Omirzakh, the penniless wife of a detained vegetable trader, three days to pay a $2,685 fine for having more than two children.

If she didn’t, they warned, she would join her husband and a million other ethnic minorities locked up in internment camps ¬— often for having too many children.

“God bequeaths children on you. To prevent people from having children is wrong,” said Omirzakh, who tears up even now thinking back to that day. “They want to destroy us as a people.”

The result of the birth control campaign is a climate of terror around having children, as seen in interview after interview. Birth rates in the mostly Uighur regions of Hotan and Kashgar plunged by more than 60% from 2015 to 2018, the latest year available in government statistics. Across the Xinjiang region, birth rates continue to plummet, falling nearly 24% last year alone — compared to just 4.2% nationwide, statistics show.

The hundreds of millions of dollars the government pours into birth control has transformed Xinjiang from one of China’s fastest-growing regions to among its slowest in just a few years, according to new research obtained by The Associated Press in advance of publication by China scholar Adrian Zenz.

“This kind of drop is unprecedented....there’s a ruthlessness to it,” said Zenz, a leading expert in the policing of China’s minority regions. “This is part of a wider control campaign to subjugate the Uighurs.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry referred multiple requests for comment to the Xinjiang government, which did not respond. However, Chinese officials have said in the past that the new measures are merely meant to be fair, allowing both Han Chinese and ethnic minorities the same number of children.

For decades, China had one of the most extensive systems of minority entitlements in the world, with Uighurs and others getting more points on college entrance exams, hiring quotas for government posts and laxer birth control restrictions. Under China’s now-abandoned ‘one child’ policy, the authorities had long encouraged, often forced, contraceptives, sterilization and abortion on Han Chinese. But minorities were allowed two children — three if they came from the countryside.

Under President Xi Jinping, China’s most authoritarian leader in decades, those benefits are now being rolled back. In 2014, soon after Xi visited Xinjiang, the region’s top official said it was time to implement “equal family planning policies” for all ethnicities and “reduce and stabilize birth rates.” In the following years, the government declared that instead of just one child, Han Chinese could now have two, and three in Xinjiang’s rural areas, just like minorities.

But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law.

State-backed scholars have warned for years that large rural religious families were at the root of bombings, knifings and other attacks the Xinjiang government blamed on Islamic terrorists. The growing Muslim population was a breeding ground for poverty and extremism, “heightening political risk,” according to a 2017 paper by the head of the Institute of Sociology at the Xinjiang Academy of Social Sciences. Another cited as a key obstacle the religious belief that “the fetus is a gift from God.”

Outside experts say the birth control campaign is part of a state-orchestrated assault on the Uighurs to purge them of their faith and identity and forcibly assimilate them into the dominant Han Chinese culture. They’re subjected to political and religious re-education in camps and forced labor in factories, while their children are indoctrinated in orphanages. Uighurs, who are often but not always Muslim, are also tracked by a vast digital surveillance apparatus.

“The intention may not be to fully eliminate the Uighur population, but it will sharply diminish their vitality, making them easier to assimilate,” said Darren Byler, an expert on Uighurs at the University of Colorado.

Some go a step further.

“It’s genocide, full stop. It’s not immediate, shocking, mass-killing on the spot type genocide, but it’s slow, painful, creeping genocide,” said Joanne Smith Finley, who works at Newcastle University in the U.K. “These are direct means of genetically reducing the Uighur population.”

A Uighur child in a courtyard home in Hotan, a large, Uighur-majority city in Xinjiang.

_____

For centuries, the majority was Muslim in the arid, landlocked region China now calls “Xinjiang” — meaning “New Frontier” in Mandarin.

After the People’s Liberation Army swept through in 1949, China’s new Communist rulers ordered thousands of soldiers to settle in Xinjiang, pushing the Han population from 6.7% that year to more than 40% by 1980. The move sowed anxiety about Chinese migration that persists to this day. Drastic efforts to restrict birth rates in the 1990s were relaxed after major pushback, with many parents paying bribes or registering children as the offspring of friends or other family members.

That all changed with an unprecedented crackdown starting in 2017, throwing hundreds of thousands of people into prisons and camps for alleged “signs of religious extremism” such as traveling abroad, praying or using foreign social media. Authorities launched what several notices called “dragnet-style” investigations to root out parents with too many children, even those who gave birth decades ago.

“Leave no blind spots,” said two county and township directives in 2018 and 2019 uncovered by Zenz, who is also an independent contractor with the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, a bipartisan nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. “Contain illegal births and lower fertility levels,” said a third.

Officials and armed police began pounding on doors, looking for kids and pregnant women. Minority residents were ordered to attend weekly flag-raising ceremonies, where officials threatened detention if they didn’t register all their children, according to interviews backed by attendance slips and booklets. Noticesfound by the AP show that local governments set up or expanded systems to reward those who report illegal births.

In some areas, women were ordered to take gynecology exams after the ceremonies, they said. In others, officials outfitted special rooms with ultrasound scanners for pregnancy tests.

“Test all who need to be tested,” ordered a township directive from 2018. “Detect and deal with those who violate policies early.”

Abdushukur Umar was among the first to fall victim to the crackdown on children. A jovial Uighur tractor driver-turned-fruit merchant, the proud father considered his seven children a blessing from God.

But authorities began pursuing him in 2016. The following year, he was thrown into a camp and later sentenced to seven years in prison — one for each child, authorities told relatives.

“My cousin spent all his time taking care of his family, he never took part in any political movements,” Zuhra Sultan, Umar’s cousin, said from exile in Turkey. “How can you get seven years in prison for having too many children? We’re living in the 21st century — this is unimaginable.”

Fifteen Uighurs and Kazakhs told the AP they knew people interned or jailed for having too many children. Many received years, even decades in prison.

Leaked data obtained and corroborated by the AP showed that of 484 camp detainees listed in Karakax county in Xinjiang, 149 were there for having too many children - the most common reason for holding them. Time in a camp — what the government calls “education and training” — for parents with too many children is written policy in at leastthreecounties, notices found by Zenz confirmed.

In 2017, the Xinjiang government also tripled the already hefty fines for violating family planning laws for even the poorest residents — to at least three times the annual disposable income of the county. While fines also apply to Han Chinese, only minorities are sent to the detention camps if they cannot pay, according to interviews and data. Government reports show the counties collect millions of dollars from the fines each year.

Gulnar Omirzakh's fine for 17,405 RMB, or $2865, for having a third child.

In other efforts to change the population balance of Xinjiang, China is dangling land, jobs and economic subsidies to lure Han migrants there. It is also aggressively promoting intermarriage between Han Chinese and Uighurs, with one couple telling the AP they were given money for housing and amenities like a washing machine, refrigerator and TV.

“It links back to China’s long history of dabbling in eugenics….you don’t want people who are poorly educated, marginal minorities breeding quickly,” said James Leibold, a specialist in Chinese ethnic policy at La Trobe in Melbourne. “What you want is your educated Han to increase their birth rate.”

Sultan describes how the policy looks to Uighurs like her: “The Chinese government wants to control the Uighur population and make us fewer and fewer, until we disappear.”

___________

Once in the detention camps, women are subjected to forced IUDs and what appear to be pregnancy prevention shots, according to former detainees. They are also made to attend lectures on how many children they should have.

Seven former detainees told the AP that they were force-fed birth control pills or injected with fluids, often with no explanation. Many felt dizzy, tired or ill, and women stopped getting their periods. After being released and leaving China, some went to get medical check-ups and found they were sterile.

It’s unclear what former detainees were injected with, but Xinjiang hospital slides obtained by the AP show that pregnancy prevention injections, sometimes with the hormonal medication Depo-Provera, are a common family planning measure. Side effects can include headaches and dizziness.

Dina Nurdybay, a Kazakh woman, was detained in a camp which separated married and unmarried women. The married women were given pregnancy tests, Nurdybay recalled, and forced to have IUDs installed if they had children. She was spared because she was unmarried and childless.

One day in February 2018, one of her cellmates, a Uighur woman, had to give a speech confessing what guards called her “crimes.” When a visiting official peered through the iron bars of their cell, she recited her lines in halting Mandarin.

“I gave birth to too many children,” she said. “It shows I’m uneducated and know little about the law.”

“Do you think it’s fair that Han people are only allowed to have one child?” the official asked, according to Nurdybay. “You ethnic minorities are shameless, wild and uncivilized.”

Nurdybay met at least two others in the camps whom she learned were locked up for having too many children. Later, she was transferred to another facility with an orphanage that housed hundreds of children, including those with parents detained for giving birth too many times. The children counted the days until they could see their parents on rare visits.

“They told me they wanted to hug their parents, but they were not allowed,” she said. “They always looked very sad.”

One of Xinjiang's internment camps in Artux, China.

Another former detainee, Tursunay Ziyawudun, said she was injected until she stopped having her period, and kicked repeatedly in the lower stomach during interrogations. She now can’t have children and often doubles over in pain, bleeding from her womb, she said.

Ziyawudun and the 40 other women in her “class” were forced to attend family planning lectures most Wednesdays, where films were screened about impoverished women struggling to feed many children. Married women were rewarded for good behavior with conjugal visits from their husbands, along with showers, towels, and two hours in a bedroom. But there was a catch – they had to take birth control pills beforehand.

Some women have even reported forced abortions. Ziyawudun said a “teacher” at her camp told women they would face abortions if found pregnant during gynecology exams.

A woman in another class turned out to be pregnant and disappeared from the camp, she said. She added that two of her cousins who were pregnant got rid of their children on their own because they were so afraid.

Another woman, Gulbakhar Jalilova, confirmed that detainees in her camp were forced to abort their children. She also saw a new mother, still leaking breast milk, who did not know what had happened to her infant. And she met doctors and medical students who were detained for helping Uighurs dodge the system and give birth at home.

In December 2017, on a visit from Kazakhstan back to China, Gulzia Mogdin was taken to a hospital after police found WhatsApp on her phone. A urine sample revealed she was two months pregnant with her third child. Officials told Mogdin she needed to get an abortion and threatened to detain her brother if she didn’t.

During the procedure, medics inserted an electric vacuum into her womb and sucked her fetus out of her body. She was taken home and told to rest, as they planned to take her to a camp.

Months later, Mogdin made it back to Kazakhstan, where her husband lives.

“That baby was going to be the only baby we had together,” said Mogdin, who had recently remarried. “I cannot sleep. It’s terribly unfair.”

___________

The success of China’s push to control births among Muslim minorities shows up in the numbers for IUDs and sterilization.

In 2014, just over 200,000 IUDs were inserted in Xinjiang. By 2018, that jumped more than 60 percent to nearly 330,000 IUDs. At the same time, IUD use tumbled elsewhere in China, as many women began getting the devices removed.

A former teacher drafted to work as an instructor at a detention camp described her experience with IUDs to the AP.

It started with flag-raising assemblies at her housing compound at the beginning of 2017, where residents were forced to chant: “If we have too many children, we’re religious extremists....That means we have to go to the training centers.” After every flag-raising ceremony, police rounded up parents with too many children – over 180 – until “not a single one was left,” she said. Officers with guns and tasers hauled her neighbors away at night, and from time to time pounded on her door and swept her apartment for Qurans, knives, prayer mats and of course children.

“Your heart would leap out of your chest,” she said.

Then, that August, officials in the teacher’s compound were told to install IUDs on all women of childbearing age. She protested, saying she was nearly 50 with just one child and no plans to have more. Officials threatened to drag her to a police station and strap her to an iron chair for interrogation.

She was forced into a bus with four armed officers and taken to a hospital where hundreds of Uighur women lined up in silence, waiting for IUDs to be inserted. Some wept quietly, but nobody dared say a word because of the surveillance cameras hanging overhead.

Her IUD was designed to be irremovable without special instruments. The first 15 days, she got headaches and nonstop menstrual bleeding.

“I couldn’t eat properly, I couldn’t sleep properly. It gave me huge psychological pressure,” she said. “Only Uighurs had to wear it.”

Chinese health statistics also show a sterilization boom in Xinjiang.

Budget documents obtained by Zenz show that starting in 2016, the Xinjiang government began pumping tens of millions of dollars into a birth control surgery program and cash incentives for women to get sterilized. While sterilization rates plunged in the rest of the country, they surged seven-fold in Xinjiang from 2016 to 2018, to more than 60,000 procedures. The Uighur-majority city of Hotan budgeted for 14,872 sterilizations in 2019 — about 34% of all married women of childbearing age.


Even within Xinjiang, policies vary widely, being harsher in the heavily Uighur south than the Han-majority north. In Shihezi, a Han-dominated city where Uighurs make up just 2% of the population, the government subsidizes baby formula and hospital birth services to encourage more children, state media reported.

Zumret Dawut got no such benefits. In 2018, the mother of three was locked in a camp for two months for having an American visa.

When she returned home under house arrest, officials forced her to get gynecology exams every month, along with all other Uighur women in her compound. Han women were exempted. They warned that if she didn’t take what they called “free examinations”, she could end up back in the camp.

One day, they turned up with a list of at least 200 Uighur women in her compound with more than two children who had to get sterilized, Dawut recalled.

“My Han Chinese neighbors, they sympathized with us Uighurs,” Dawut said. “They told me, ‘oh, you’re suffering terribly, the government is going way too far!’”

Dawut protested, but police again threatened to send her back to the camp. During the sterilization procedure, Han Chinese doctors injected her with anesthesia and tied her fallopian tubes — a permanent operation. When Dawut came to, she felt her womb ache.

“I was so angry,” she said. “I wanted another son.”

___________

Looking back, Omirzakh considers herself lucky.

After that frigid day when officials threatened to lock her up, Omirzakh called relatives around the clock. Hours before the deadline, she scraped together enough money to pay the fine from the sale of her sister’s cow and high-interest loans, leaving her deep in debt.

For the next year, Omirzakh attended classes with the wives of others detained for having too many children. She and her children lived with two local party officials sent specially to spy on them. When her husband was finally released, they fled for Kazakhstan with just a few bundles of blankets and clothes.

The IUD still in Omirzakh’s womb has now sunk into her flesh, causing inflammation and piercing back pain, “like being stabbed with a knife.” For Omirzakh, it’s a bitter reminder of everything she’s lost — and the plight of those she left behind.

“People there are now terrified of giving birth,” she said. “When I think of the word ‘Xinjiang,’ I can still feel that fear.”

___

Contact AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org

\

Images of brutality against Black people spur racial trauma

By NOREEN NASIR


In this July 8, 2010, file photo, Wanda Johnson, center, mother of Oscar Grant, who was killed by transit officer Johannes Mehserle, speaks during a news conference in Los Angeles. As videos and stories of Black people being killed at the hands of police officers make the rounds online, many Americans have been called to protest racial injustice in recent weeks. For many Black Americans, those videos are also contributing to a sense of grief and pain. Psychologists call it racial trauma, the distress experienced because of the accumulation of racial discrimination, racial violence or institutional racism. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

Since Wanda Johnson’s son was shot and killed by a police officer in Oakland, California, 11 years ago, she has watched video after video of similar encounters between Black people and police.

Each time, she finds herself reliving the trauma of losing her son, Oscar Grant, who was shot to death by a transit police officer. Most recently, Johnson couldn’t escape the video of George Floyd, pinned to the ground under a Minneapolis officer’s knee as he pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.

“I began to shake. I was up for two days, just crying,” she said. “Just looking at that video opened such a wound in me that has not completely closed

Johnson’s loss was extreme, but, for many Black Americans, her grief and pain feels familiar. Psychologists call it racial trauma — the distress experienced because of the accumulation of racial discrimination, racial violence or institutional racism. While it can affect anyone who faces repeated prejudice, in this moment, its impact on Black people is drawing particular attention.



The unfortunate irony is that the very tool that may be helping to make more people aware of the racism and violence that Black and other people of color face is also helping to fuel their trauma. In the weeks following Floyd’s death, the spread of the video that captured it has been a major catalyst for protests demanding a reckoning with racism — attended by people of all races, many of whom never before participated in such activism. And in a few weeks, the national conversation has shifted dramatically: The term “Black Lives Matter” has been adopted widely, including in corporate America, monuments of Confederate figures have come down, and calls for criminal justice reform have yielded new laws.

“It’s really frustrating that that’s what it takes for a lot of people in this country to actually start caring,” said Alasia Destine-DeFreece, 20. “It takes showing something that’s actively harming those of us who are Black and then having it spread on social media.”

Destine-DeFreece, who remembers often being the only Black person in many situations growing up in Rhode Island, notes that such images have been used to great effect before. She learned in school about Emmett Till, a Black 14-year-old who was abducted, beaten and killed in 1955 after he was accused of whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. Her class saw photos of Till’s brutally beaten face — images, in part, that had helped spur the civil rights movement.

“Seeing that type of imagery being spread further and faster now has taken a toll on me. You’re seeing somebody who looks like you die,” she said.

Ke'Moriae Font, left, hugs Mihrell Reece while listening to a speaker during a youth-led demonstration in Los Angeles calling for an end to racial injustice and for police accountability (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)

Symptoms of racial trauma can include anxiety and depression and be similar to those of post-traumatic stress disorder. The triggering event could be a shouted slur on the street or poor treatment because of one’s race or creed. The profusion on social media of graphic images of harm to people of color means they are often inescapable.

“If you are in a situation where the danger seems ever-present, whether you’re seeing a bird watcher in Central Park being harassed, or someone falling asleep in their car in a parking lot ... there is that constant physical presence of danger and the psychological awareness that danger is just around the corner,” said Dr. Altha Stewart, past president of the American Psychiatric Association and currently a senior associate dean at the University of Tennessee Science Health Center.

That “constant bathing of our organs” in stress hormones can lead to a state of “near dysfunction,” she said.

The video of Floyd’s killing is one in a litany. Before it, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery’s fatal shooting was also captured on camera, and no one was charged until public pressure mounted after the video made the rounds. Since then, many have watched an officer fatally shoot 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks in the back following a struggle.

“It feels like it’s just been an endless cascade of hashtags of Black people dying,” said Christine Ohenzuwa, 19, who recently protested outside the Minnesota state Capitol. “I feel like for me and a lot of other Black people, it reaches a point where it’s just very traumatic to constantly see Black people being killed.”

When video of Floyd’s graphic death began to circulate online last month, Joi Lewis refused to watch it.

“I know what it looks like. I’ve seen Black death,” the life coach and self-care expert said. Lewis, who is Black, had watched the death of Philando Castile in real time four years ago, after the 32-year-old Black man was shot by a Minneapolis police officer and video of the immediate aftermath streamed on Facebook.

But to inspire those who have been pushed into action in new ways in recent weeks, Lewis conceded: “The video had to be played.”

Therapist and racial trauma specialist Resmaa Menakem near his home in Minneapolis (AP Photo/Noreen Nasir)

Anyone might be upset by seeing such graphic images — and many are — but Resmaa Menakem, a Minneapolis-based racial trauma specialist, says, for many Black people, that pain is amplified.

“When something like this happens, it is not just the grief of watching that brother be destroyed, it is the 400 years of grief that was never addressed,” said Menakem.

Aaron Requena periodically takes breaks from Twitter to avoid such images. The 25-year-old photographer in Los Angeles says he’s struggled to balance keeping up with what is happening with not torturing himself at the same time.

Photographer Aaron Requena in Los Angeles (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
“It hits close to home for me because I’ve had interactions with the police where I was just minding my business and had to wonder, ‘Is this going to end for me the way that a lot of these situations end?’” asked Requena, who is Black. “It hits close to home because you know that it could be you next.”

___

Nasir is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow Nasir on Twitter at https://twitter.com/noreensnasir.

Worst virus fears are realized in poor or war-torn countries

By GERALD IMRAY and JOSEPH KRAUSS

1 of 20 https://apnews.com/911c9cdb10a0319fb5f36dc5ddff9d40

FILE - In this Sunday, June 14, 2020 file photo, medical workers attend to a COVID-19 patient in an intensive care unit at a hospital in Sanaa, Yemen. For months, experts have warned of a potential nightmare scenario: After overwhelming health systems in some of the world's wealthiest regions, the coronavirus gains a foothold in poor or war-torn countries ill-equipped to contain it and sweeps through the population. (AP Photo/Hani Mohammed, File)
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — For months, experts have warned of a potential nightmare scenario: After overwhelming health systems in some of the world’s wealthiest regions, the coronavirus gains a foothold in poor or war-torn countries ill-equipped to contain it and sweeps through the population.

Now some of those fears are being realized.

In southern Yemen, health workers are leaving their posts en masse because of a lack of protective equipment, and some hospitals are turning away patients struggling to breathe. In Sudan’s war-ravaged Darfur region, where there is little testing capacity, a mysterious illness resembling COVID-19 is spreading through camps for the internally displaced

Cases are soaring in India and Pakistan, together home to more than 1.5 billion people and where authorities say nationwide lockdowns are no longer an option because of high poverty.

In Latin America, Brazil has a confirmed caseload and death count second only to the United States, and its leader is unwilling to take steps to stem the spread of the virus. Alarming escalations are unfolding in Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Panama, even after they imposed early lockdowns.

The first reports of disarray are also emerging from hospitals in South Africa, which has its continent’s most developed economy. Sick patients are lying on beds in corridors as one hospital runs out of space. At another, an emergency morgue was needed to hold more than 700 bodies.

“We are reaping the whirlwind now,” said Francois Venter, a South African health expert at the University of Witswatersrand in Johannesburg.

Worldwide, there are 10 million confirmed cases and over 500,000 reported deaths, according to tally by Johns Hopkins University of government reports. Experts say both those numbers are serious undercounts of the true toll of the pandemic, due to limited testing and missed mild cases.

South Africa has more than a third of Africa’s confirmed cases of COVID-19. It’s ahead of other African countries in the pandemic timeline and approaching its peak. If its facilities break under the strain, it will be a grim forewarning because South Africa’s health system is reputed to be the continent’s best.

Most poor countries took action early on. Some, like Uganda, which already had a sophisticated detection system built up during its yearslong battle with viral hemorrhagic fever, have thus far been arguably more successful than the U.S. and other wealthy countries in battling coronavirus.

But since the beginning of the pandemic, poor and conflict-ravaged countries have generally been at a major disadvantage, and they remain so.

The global scramble for protective equipment sent prices soaring. Testing kits have also been hard to come by. Tracking and quarantining patients requires large numbers of health workers.

“It’s all a domino effect,” said Kate White, head of emergencies for Doctors Without Borders. “Whenever you have countries that are economically not as well off as others, then they will be adversely affected.”

Global health experts say testing is key, but months into the pandemic, few developing countries can keep carrying out the tens of thousands of tests every week that are needed to detect and contain outbreaks.

“The majority of the places that we work in are not able to have that level of testing capacity, and that’s the level that you need to be able to get things really under control,” White said.

South Africa leads Africa in testing, but an initially promising program has now been overrun in Cape Town, which alone has more reported cases than any other African country except Egypt. Critical shortages of kits have forced city officials to abandon testing anyone for under 55 unless they have a serious health condition or are in a hospital.

Venter said a Cape Town-like surge could easily play out next in “the big cities of Nigeria, Congo, Kenya,” and they “do not have the health resources that we do.”

Lockdowns are likely the most effective safeguard, but they have exacted a heavy toll even on middle-class families in Europe and North America, and are economically devastating in developing countries.

India’s lockdown, the world’s largest, caused countless migrant workers in major cities to lose their jobs overnight. Fearing hunger, thousands took to the highways by foot to return to their home villages, and many were killed in traffic accidents or died from dehydration.

The government has since set up quarantine facilities and now provides special rail service to get people home safely, but there are concerns the migration has already spread the virus to India’s rural areas, where the health infrastructure is even weaker.

Poverty has also accelerated the pandemic in Latin America, where millions with informal jobs had to go out and keep working, and then returned to crowded homes where they spread the virus to relatives.

Peru’s strict three-month lockdown failed to contain its outbreak, and it now has the world’s sixth-highest number of cases in a population of 32 million, according to by Johns Hopkins University. Intensive care units are nearly 88% occupied, and the virus shows no sign of slowing.

“Hospitals are on the verge of collapse,” said epidemiologist Ciro Maguiña, a professor of medicine at Cayetano Heredia University in the capital, Lima.

Aid groups have tried to help, but they have faced their own struggles. Doctors Without Borders says the price it pays for masks went up threefold at one point and is still higher than normal.

The group also faces obstacles in transporting medical supplies to remote areas as international and domestic flights have been drastically reduced. And as wealthy donor countries struggle with their own outbreaks, there are concerns they will cut back on humanitarian aid.

Mired in civil war for the past five years, Yemen was already home to the world’s worst humanitarian crisis before the virus hit. Now the Houthi rebels are suppressing all information about an outbreak in the north, and the health system in the government-controlled south is collapsing.

“Coronavirus has invaded our homes, our cities, our countryside,” said Dr. Abdul Rahman al-Azraqi, an internal medicine specialist and former hospital director in the city of Taiz, which is split between the rival forces. He estimates that 90% of Yemeni patients die at home.

“Our hospital doesn’t have any doctors, only a few nurses and administrators. There is effectively no medical treatment.”

___

Krauss reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writers Andrew Meldrum in Johannesburg, Emily Schmall in New Delhi, Isabel DeBre in Cairo, Franklin Briceño in Lima, Peru, and Michael Weissenstein in Havana contributed to this report.

___

Follow all of AP’s coronavirus coverage at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak

Coronavirus: Egypt’s doctors outraged as prime minister blames them for deaths

Egypt's medical union says real reason behind surge in Covid-19 cases and fatalities is shortage of PPE and ICU beds

Prime minister Mostafa Madbouly has suggested doctors are to blame for the spike of coronavirus deaths in Egypt (Reuters/File photo)

By MEE staff Published date: 24 June 2020


Egypt’s top medical union has decried remarks by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly who attributed the recent spike in coronavirus deaths in the country to the absence of medical staff.

On Tuesday, Madbouly cited “the absence of a number of doctors” and “the irregular work performance” among medical staff as the cause of some deaths of Covid-19 patients.

The statement has triggered furious reactions by doctors and the Egyptian Medical Syndicate (EMS), which argued that the real reason for the spike in cases and fatalities is the shortage of medical equipment and ICU beds in the country.


Coronavirus in Egypt: Unprotected and fearful doctors close to revolt

Read More »

“Since the beginning of the pandemic, Egyptian doctors have been an extraordinary example of sacrifice and working under immense pressure,” the syndicate said in a statement.

It also highlighted the lack of personal protective equipment (PPE) in some hospitals and assaults on a number of medical personnel without accountability for the perpetrators, referring to people attacking doctors for turning them away due to the lack of beds or equipment at hospitals.

In one incident, the family of a coronavirus patient beat up his doctor after the man succumbed to the illness.

The union condemned the delay in issuing a law that would criminalise such attacks, a demand that doctors have made for years.

It added that remarks blaming doctors, such as the one made by the prime minister, constitute “an incitement against doctors” that would only fuel anger against them, therefore contributing to more attacks.

The syndicate demanded an apology from the prime minister, urging him to instead investigate the surge in the deaths of healthcare workers, which have now reached nearly 100, and the more than 3,000 injuries they have sustained.

A cabinet spokesperson responded to the syndicate later on Tuesday saying that a government investigation has found that the absence of some medical staff has led to the death of two coronavirus patients, and that the prime minister's statement should not be generalised.

Crackdown on doctors

Since the beginning of the pandemic, many medical professionals have voiced their opinions online, mainly complaining about the lack of PPE in the country and the lack of government funding for the overstretched health care sector.

In response, authorities have detained at least five doctors and accused them of spreading false news or joining a terror group, two of the most commonly used charges against political dissidents.

Two of the doctors, according to the union, have been arrested from their private clinics.

Egypt, home to 100 million people, has so far recorded 58,141 cases of coronavirus and 2,365 deaths - the highest death toll in the Arab world.

A study by the Egyptian polling think tank Baseera, published Monday, estimated that more than 600,000 people have contracted Covid-19. Only 12 percent of those who reported symptoms have been hospitalised, according to the survey, explaining the discrepancy between official numbers and the actual spread of the disease.

OUTSOURCING/CONTRACTING OUT

Russian mercenaries enter Libya's largest oil field as Sirte battle looms
Libya's National Oil Corporation says fighters entered the Sharara oil field on Thursday in an attempt to block production

The Sharara oil field in southwest Libya has the capacity to produce one-third of the country's crude output (MEE/Tom Westcott)

By MEE staff Published date: 26 June 2020 

Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) said on Friday that Russian and other foreign mercenaries entered the southwestern Sharara oil field on Thursday in an attempt to block production there.

Production in Sharara had only this month resumed after months of closure by forces loyal to eastern military commander Khalifa Haftar, who is backed by Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.

According to a statement by the NOC, a number of Russian and foreign mercenaries entered the field on Thursday in dozens of armoured vehicles and met with representatives of the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG). It was not immediately clear whether they had seized control of the oil field.

"We do not need mercenaries from Russia or any other country to enter Libyan oil fields because all they seek is to block oil production," head of the NOC Mustafa Sanallah said.



US reveals new evidence of Russian aircraft activity in Libya

Read More »

"There are a number of countries who benefit from the absence of Libyan oil in international markets.

“Whereas these countries have publicly expressed their regrets that Libya has been unable to resume its oil production, they have been covertly doing their best to support the forces who are behind the closure of the oil fields," he added, referring to countries backing Haftar.

The NOC is the only entity allowed to export Libyan oil, with all revenues going to the Central Bank in Tripoli, where the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) is based.

Since 2015, oil-rich Libya has been divided between Haftar's forces in the east and the GNA in the west, with oil fields and export facilities mainly located in territory controlled by Haftar's self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA).

With the central bank located in Tripoli, however, Haftar has not been able to access payments for the oil exports, which was seen as one of the motivations for his unsuccessful offensive on Tripoli in April last year.

The Sharara oil field, which lies about 900 kilometres south of Tripoli, has the capacity to produce 315,000 barrels per day, approximately one-third of the country's crude oil output.

However, it was shut down by Haftar's forces in January, forcing a halt in production and costing the treasury more than $5.2bn, according to the NOC.

Following the GNA's capture of the strategic al-Watiya air base in May and city of Tarhouna in early June, and the subsequent withdrawal of Haftar's forces, the NOC announced that production at the Sharara oil field had resumed.

At the time, the NOC said that due to the damage caused by the closure, production would resume at a capacity of 30,000 barrels of oil per day until it reaches full capacity within 90 days.

Sharara is run by the Akakus company, a joint venture between NOC, Spanish oil giant Repsol, France's Total, Austria's OMV and Norway's Statoil.
'Distraction from Sirte'

Khaled Fouad, an energy and political analyst, said that blocking production at Sharara after a brief period of operation would deal a huge financial blow to the GNA.

"It is one of the major sources of income for the GNA," he told Middle East Eye.

"Entering the oil field by Haftar's allies at this time could be an attempt to distract the GNA forces now on the front lines of the battle for Sirte," he said.

"It seems like an attempt to open a new front for the GNA forces, far away from the military battles in the north."


Conflict, partnership, stalemate: Egypt and Turkey's Libya options

Read More »

Since the start of June, increased Turkish support has enabled pro-GNA forces to take control of northwest Libya, ending Haftar's assault on Tripoli.

The GNA advance is now halted outside the coastal city of Sirte, a strategic access point to Libya's key oil fields that remain under Haftar's control.

On Thursday, Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said the GNA demands that Haftar's forces withdraw from the Sirte and Jufra region as pre-conditions for ceasefire talks.

US Africa Command (AFRICOM) said last week that Russian jets were flown to Libya via Syria in May and are being actively used in Jufra and in the vicinity of Sirte.

"There is concern these Russian aircraft are being flown by inexperienced, non-state PMC [private military company] mercenaries who will not adhere to international law; namely, they are not bound by the traditional laws of armed conflict," said Bradford Gering, AFRICOM's director of operations.