CANADA #BLM

Black amputees face challenges and increased costs for prostheses

Crystal Goomansingh 

© Getty Image/File Prosthetic limbs are most often made in a singular skin tone.

Overcoming a life-altering injury, an amputation or disfigurement is a challenge for anyone, but perhaps a little more so for people of colour.

Depression and fear overwhelmed John Sunday's younger brother Michael after his accident. The young Nigerian man was struggling not only with the trauma of losing several fingers but with his prosthesis -- it was white.

"His behaviour changed. This guy is not happy. God forbid he could have taken his life maybe so I had to do something fast and quick. So that's where my inspiration came from," said Sunday.

It took many attempts and countless hours but the trained artist managed to make a hand that looked like his brother's.

Read more: Saskatchewan teen amputee finds passion in music, constructs device to play guitar

Now, from his company Immortal Cosmetic Art in Nigeria, Sunday creates a variety of body parts and has clients in Italy, Germany, China and across Africa -- nearly all Black. He says his business is growing for two main reasons.

"I'm a Black man and I understand at least a little more of the Black skin tone, that's one. Secondly, it's closer [for clients] to have this access to my company," Sunday said from Uyo, Nigeria in an online video interview with Global News.

He says he sees the power of his craft -- especially helping Black individuals, as there are many options for white amputees.

Read more: Want to support Black people? Stop talking, start listening

Prosthetics are made by different companies all over the world.

Depending on the skin colour of the individual and what options the manufacturer offers, a custom paint job might be required or a specific shade of cloth for a sleeve might be needed to cover an attachment and that means a higher price tag.

In Ottawa, Annelise Petlock leads the advocacy program at War Amps and says more needs to be done to support amputees.

"You should be able to get a limb that matches your skin tone, that allows you to replicate some of the function that you've lost.

"I think you should be able to have something that maximizes the functionality, and right now, the way that the funding is across the country ... you don't. We're being restricted -- amputees are being restricted by the lack of funding," said Petlock.

Read more: Teen builds his own robotic prosthetic arm using Lego

In Canada provincial health-care coverage is not universal.

According to War Amps, Newfoundland and New Brunswick do not have any funding for artificial limbs unless the individual is on social assistance and the agency says the maximum provincial contribution is often not enough to cover the prosthesis.

In Quebec and Ontario provincial funding is available but the fee schedules are not regularly updated and so the 75 per cent coverage offered in Ontario may not even cover half the cost.

An artificial limb can cost tens of thousands of dollars depending on the individual's size and weight, and more than one might be needed over the years.

Read more: No solution yet for injured veterans forced to repeatedly prove amputated limbs are still missing

Petlock says many Canadian amputees end up resorting to fundraising.

As for Sunday, he says he feels a lot of joy from his work -- his clients hug him for a long time and appreciate how he is able to capture their colour.

While he still loves his other art forms, Sunday says this one is changing lives.

FBI warns ransomware assault threatens US healthcare system

BOSTON — Federal agencies warned that cybercriminals are unleashing a wave of data-scrambling extortion attempts against the U.S. healthcare system designed to lock up hospital information systems, which could hurt patient care just as nationwide cases of COVID-19 are spiking

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© Provided by The Canadian Press

In a joint alert Wednesday, the FBI and two federal agencies warned that they had “credible information of an increased and imminent cybercrime threat to U.S. hospitals and healthcare providers.” The alert said malicious groups are targeting the sector with attacks that produce “data theft and disruption of healthcare services."

The cyberattacks involve ransomware, which scrambles data into gibberish that can only be unlocked with software keys provided once targets pay up. Independent security experts say it has already hobbled at least five U.S. hospitals this week, and could potentially impact hundreds more.

The offensive by a Russian-speaking criminal gang coincides with the U.S. presidential election, although there is no immediate indication they were motivated by anything but profit. “We are experiencing the most significant cyber security threat we’ve ever seen in the United States,” Charles Carmakal, chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm Mandiant, said in a statement.

Alex Holden, CEO of Hold Security, which has been closely tracking the ransomware in question for more than a year, agreed that the unfolding offensive is unprecedented in magnitude for the U.S. given its timing in the heat of a contentions presidential election and the worst global pandemic in a century.

The federal alert was co-authored by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services.

The cybercriminals launching the attacks use a strain of ransomware known as Ryuk, which is seeded through a network of zombie computers called Trickbot that Microsoft began trying to counter earlier in October. U.S. Cyber Command has also reportedly taken action against Trickbot. While Microsoft has had considerable success knocking its command-and-control servers offline through legal action, analysts say criminals have still been finding ways to spread Ryuk.

The U.S. has seen a plague of ransomware over the past 18 months or so, with major cities from Baltimore to Atlanta hit and local governments and schools hit especially hard.

In September, a ransomware attack hobbled all 250 U.S. facilities of the hospital chain Universal Health Services, forcing doctors and nurses to rely on paper and pencil for record-keeping and slowing lab work. Employees described chaotic conditions impeding patient care, including mounting emergency room waits and the failure of wireless vital-signs monitoring equipment.

Also in September, the first known fatality related to ransomware occurred in Duesseldorf, Germany, when an IT system failure forced a critically ill patient to be routed to a hospital in another city.

Holden said he alerted federal law enforcement Friday after monitoring infection attempts at a number of hospitals, some of which may have beaten back infections. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

He said the group was demanding ransoms well above $10 million per target and that criminals involved on the dark web were discussing plans to try to infect more than 400 hospitals, clinics and other medical facilities.

“One of the comments from the bad guys is that they are expecting to cause panic and, no, they are not hitting election systems,” Holden said. “They are hitting where it hurts even more and they know it.” U.S. officials have repeatedly expressed concern about major ransomware attacks affecting the presidential election, even if the criminals are motivated chiefly by profit.

Mandiant’s Carmakal identified the criminal gang as UNC1878, saying “it is deliberately targeting and disrupting U.S. hospitals, forcing them to divert patients to other healthcare providers” and producing prolonged delays in critical care.

He called the eastern European group “one of most brazen, heartless, and disruptive threat actors I’ve observed over my career.”

While no one has proven suspected ties between the Russian government and gangs that use the Trickbot platform, Holden said he has “no doubt that the Russian government is aware of this operation — of terrorism, really.” He said dozens of different criminal groups use Ryuk, paying its architects a cut.

Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and former chief technical officer of the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, said there are “certainly lot of connections between Russian cyber criminals and the state," with Kremlin-employed hackers sometimes moonlighting as cyber criminals.

Neither Holden nor Carmakal would identify the affected hospitals. Four healthcare institutions have been reported hit by ransomware so far this week, three belonging to the St. Lawrence County Health System in upstate New York and the Sky Lakes Medical Center in Klamath Falls, Oregon.

Sky Lakes acknowledged the ransomware attack in an online statement, saying it had no evidence that patient information was compromised. It said emergency and urgent care “remain available” The St. Lawrence system did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

Increasingly, ransomware criminals are stealing data from their targets before encrypting networks, using it for extortion. They often sow the malware weeks before activating it, waiting for moments when they believe they can extract the highest payments, said Brett Callow, an analyst at the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft.

A total of 59 U.S. healthcare providers/systems have been impacted by ransomware in 2020, disrupting patient care at up to 510 facilities, Callow said.

Carmakal said Mandiant had provided Microsoft on Wednesday with as much detail as it could about the thr eat so it could distribute details to its customers. A Microsoft spokesman had no immediate comment.

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Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington, D.C., Lisa Baumann in Seattle and Deepti Hajela in New York City contributed to this report.

Frank Bajak, The Associated Press

Trump bet against science, and voters are casting judgment

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, CNN

The failed bet laid by President Donald Trump to ignore science and prioritize his political goals early in the pandemic, revealed Wednesday in fresh detail by new Jared Kushner tapes, is backfiring in devastating fashion at the critical moment of his reelection bid.

© Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

Dark warnings by scientists and new data showing a nationwide explosion in a virus Trump says is going away, crashing stock markets and real-time examples of the White House's delusions about its failed response are consuming the President as tens of millions of early voters cast judgment.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden, leading in the polls with five days of campaigning to go, is accusing the administration of surrendering to the virus and offering to shoulder the nation's grief in the grim months to come.

The extent to which the country's worsening trajectory has overtaken the final days of the campaign emphasizes how the election has become a personal referendum on Trump and how he mishandled the worst domestic crisis in decades.

The roots of his current difficulties were bedded down months ago.

"Trump's now back in charge. It's not the doctors," the first son-in-law and White House adviser, Kushner, said back in April in tapes of interviews with Bob Woodward, obtained by CNN.

To win next Tuesday, the President will have to convince sufficient Americans to build an Electoral College majority that his populist anti-Washington message, cultural themes, hardline "law and order" rhetoric and claimed expertise in rebuilding the ravaged economy are more important than his botched choices on a pandemic that is getting worse every day.

Stock slump is another blow to Trump

While the coronavirus tightened its grip, the President tried to change the subject, seizing on violence in Philadelphia after another police shooting to blame Democrats for looting.

But another huge slump on Wall Street showed how the election endgame narrative was slipping out of his control. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, one of the President's favorite metrics for his own performance, was off more than 900 points Wednesday.

Former top Department of Homeland Security official Miles Taylor outed himself as the author of a searing 2018 New York Times op-ed by "Anonymous" that castigated Trump's leadership.

And new polling showed few signs that the President is making the kind of late run that helped power his shock win over Hillary Clinton four years ago. A new CNN national survey had Biden leading by 12 points among likely voters. Even a win in the high single digits could assure Biden a comfortable margin in the Electoral College. Other swing state polls in Wisconsin and Michigan also had the Democrat ahead.

The President insisted he was doing "fantastically" in polls and was in better shape than four years ago. Trump appears, however, to face a complicated scenario on the electoral map that would require him to run the table on a string of Southern and Western battlegrounds before a final showdown with Biden in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

With more than 75 million votes already cast -- one-third of registered voters -- the chance for a late change to the race is limited, even as the President tried to shore up his far Western power base with rallies in Arizona, a state that could help Biden block his route to 270 electoral votes.

'Negotiated settlement'

The new recordings of Kushner's interviews with Woodward for his book "Rage" show in the most intimate detail yet how the President and close aides marginalized government scientists earlier this year in a bid to push economic openings at all cost to help his reelection effort.

In a conversation on April 18, the President's son-in-law told The Washington Post veteran that Trump was "getting the country back from the doctors" and referred to public health officials as if they were adversaries when he talked of a "negotiated settlement" with them.

Comprehensively misreading the situation, Kushner, who had no previous governing experience to match his elevated influence, also said the US was moving swiftly through the "panic phase" and "pain phase" and was at the "beginning of the comeback phase," while allowing there was a lot of pain to come for a while.

At the point of the recordings, more than 40,000 Americans had died from the virus. More than 227,000 have now perished, the death toll is rising and hospitals in many states risk becoming overwhelmed.

But Trump told his crowd in Bullhead, Arizona -- as usual packed together with little mask wearing -- that "people are getting better."

"We will vanquish the virus and emerge stronger than ever before. Our country will be stronger than ever before," he claimed.


Biden warns beating the virus is not just 'flipping a switch'

Unlike the President, who is in charge of stemming the latest spike in infections, Biden had a briefing from public health experts Wednesday. He emerged to tell Americans that mask wearing was patriotic, not political, but warned that if he is elected president he won't be able to end the pandemic by "flipping a switch." And he drew on his own experience of personal tragedies to console bereaved relatives of Covid-19 victims.

"I know all too well what it feels like to have your heart ripped out, losing a loved one too soon, to sit by their hospital bedside and feel like there's a black hole in the middle of your chest," Biden said.

Health experts inside and outside the government made clear that the state of the pandemic was closer to the status report laid out by Biden than the President's continuing false appraisals.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said, "We are not in a good place," and predicted that even with a vaccine, it would be "easily" late 2021 or into the following year before Americans experience any degree of normalcy. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former head of the US Food and Drug Administration, said the US was on a trajectory to "look a lot like" Europe's current spike by early November.

Trump has been arguing with some justification in recent days that European countries lauded for doing a better job than he is in fighting the virus are now experiencing awful escalations in infections. France imposed a new lockdown starting on Thursday.

But those countries, by aggressively managing the virus, were able to give their populace some respite over the summer, saving thousands of lives. Trump's push for state openings unleashed a viral surge across the Sun Belt in the summer and the US never returned to the lower levels of infections experienced across the Atlantic.

Several Trump aides on Wednesday tried to defend Trump's handling of the virus but only served to expose his negligence. Campaign spokesman Hogan Gidley told CNN's "New Day" that "we are moving in the right direction" after a White House document boasted Trump had ended the pandemic. And Alyssa Farah, the White House communications director, conceded that the choice of words was poor but said the US is "rounding the corner."

White House attacks 'Anonymous'

The White House went on the offensive Wednesday after Taylor -- who had been chief of staff to then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, revealed he had written the 2018 New York Times op-ed and a book critical of Trump. (He was Nielsen's deputy chief of staff when the op-ed was published.)

"Issuing my critiques without attribution forced the President to answer them directly on their merits or not at all, rather than creating distractions through petty insults and name-calling," Taylor, who is now a CNN contributor, wrote in a statement. "I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves."

In the op-ed, Taylor slammed Trump for "amorality," "reckless decisions" and "erratic behavior" -- and he sparked a White House hunt for his identity.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany released a statement blasting Taylor as a "low-level, disgruntled former staffer" and a "liar and a coward who chose anonymity over action and leaking over leading."

But in many ways, the President's decision to ignore the ramifications of sidelining scientists in favor of minimizing the pandemic and concentrating on his own electoral prospects validates Taylor's critique.

Biden draws contrast with Trump on coronavirus as pandemic worsens in campaign's final days

By Eric Bradner and Sarah Mucha, CNN
Udated 4:00 PM ET, Wed October 28, 2020

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden attends a virtual public health briefing at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020.


(CNN)Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden sought Wednesday to make the differences in how he and President Donald Trump have approached the coronavirus pandemic a part of his closing message, sitting for a briefing with health experts and addressing the crisis as Trump campaigned out West as if it was over.

Wednesday's event was the latest in Biden's series of demonstrations of how he would handle the pandemic -- which have become a regular feature of his campaign, underscoring his aides' belief that the virus' spread on Trump's watch is the dominant factor in the November 3 election.

"We discussed importance of wearing masks, protecting yourself, protecting your neighbor and to save around 100,000 lives in the months ahead," Biden said in a speech after the briefing. "This is not political. It's patriotic. Wearing a mask. Wear one, period."

Biden's approach demonstrates a fundamental difference between his campaign and Trump's in the closing days of the 2020 election: Trump is campaigning as if the pandemic is over, holding multiple rallies per day with thousands of maskless supporters. Biden is campaigning with an acknowledgment that it has upended American life and politics, minimizing his public events and -- when he does travel -- delivering made-for-TV speeches and holding "drive-in" outdoor rallies in which attendees stay near their cars, instead of the larger mega-rallies typical of a presidential campaign.

"We are turning the corner. We are rounding the curve, we will vanquish the virus," Trump said in Wisconsin on Tuesday, where coronavirus cases are surging.

The former vice president's closing message has been twofold: Trump is a poisonous presence in a political system Biden claims he can get to function again, which was the theme of a Tuesday speech Biden delivered in Georgia; and Trump has failed in responding to the pandemic, which his Wednesday briefing and speech were designed to highlight.

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden attends a virtual public health briefing at The Queen theater in Wilmington, Del., Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2020.

Biden's public coronavirus briefings -- a regular feature of his campaign for months -- are carefully staged. On Wednesday, he sat alone at a table on a stage in Wilmington's Queen Theater in front of a massive screen as four public health experts, including former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, briefed him remotely.

The screen also displayed charts showing the seven-day rolling average of reported coronavirus cases and hospitalizations resulting from the virus.

"There's no doubt, we are in the midst of the third wave," Dr. David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner and the chair of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said in a portion of the briefing reporters were allowed to watch. "I don't think anyone can tell you how high this is going to get."

"Almost the entire nation is worsening at this point," Kessler said.

Biden on Wednesday said the Trump administration has refused to recognize the reality of the pandemic, calling that failure "an insult to every single person suffering from Covid-19."
"Even if I win, it's going to take a lot of hard work to end this pandemic. I'm not running on the false promise of being to end this pandemic by flipping a switch," Biden said in a speech after his briefing. He added that he would start on day one "doing the right things. We'll let science drive our decisions." 

He also highlighted the contrast in optics between his campaign and Trump's, pointing out that many attendees at a Trump rally in Nebraska on Tuesday night were stranded in a cold parking lot afterward, calling it "an image that captures President Trump's whole approach to this crisis."

Israeli zeal for second Trump term matched by Palestinian enmity
Oliver Holmes Jerusalem correspondent THE GUARDIAN

Anyone in any doubt about Benjamin Netanyahu’s preferred candidate in the US presidential election need only visit his personal Twitter account.

Right at the top, behind the headshot of Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, is a banner photo of him with Donald Trump in the Oval Office, their eyes fixed on each other.

“You have been the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House,” Netanyahu told his ally during a Washington visit this year. “Frankly, though we’ve had some great, outstanding friends in these halls, it’s not even close.”

That list includes Barack Obama, whose famously icy relationship with Netanyahu extends by proxy to his vice-president and Trump’s 2020 rival, Joe Biden.

Palestinians see the prospect of a second Trump term as disastrous. “If we are going to live another four years with President Trump, God help us, God help you and God help the whole world,” the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, said this month.

Trump has arguably been the US president with most impact on the Israeli-Palestinian issue as he has sought to appeal to his pro-Israel base, including evangelical Christians. During the past four years, the US leader has ticked off much on Netanyahu’s hardline nationalist wishlist that was previously considered taboo.

He has cut hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid to the Palestinians, declared the divided city of Jerusalem Israel’s capital, shut down Palestinian diplomatic offices in Washington and devised a “peace plan” that affords Israel’s government the vast majority of its demands.

Video: Trump announces Israel is normalizing relations with Sudan (FOX News)


Led by the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the Trump administration has also persuaded the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to establish full diplomatic relations with Israel despite the ongoing occupation. It has also imposed further sanctions on Iran, a policy Israel has been advocating against its arch-enemy for years.

“For Netanyahu personally, obviously he has a preference,” said Yohanan Plesner, a former Israeli politician and president of the Israel Democracy Institute. “One of the assets that Mr Netanyahu sells to the Israeli public is his close intimate relationship with Mr Trump.”

Four more years of Trump could be hugely advantageous for the Israeli leader, particularly if Washington can convince more Arab states to establish open ties with Israel with few or no concessions to the Palestinians.

A further softening of Washington’s stance on illegal settlements in Palestinian territories, or even recognising annexation moves, could also be on the table. Trump’s US ambassador to Israel and former bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, is vocal in his support for Jewish settlements.

Trump’s image and that of his country may have plummeted worldwide, but many Israelis adore him. According to a survey conducted for the i24News channel, 63% would prefer him to win the election, compared with less than 19% who would prefer Biden.

Plesner, however, says that does not mean Israelis are overly concerned about a Biden presidency. “Mr Biden’s track record is well established. There is no cause for any worry among Israelis,” he said. “Both candidates are considered pro-Israel.”

Biden was often used as an emissary to Israel during this vice-presidency and has previously described Netanyahu as a friend. This year, however, he said the Israel leader had drifted “so, so far to the right”.

Salem Barahmeh, the executive director of the Ramallah-based Palestine Institute for Public Diplomacy, said Trump had been “extremely dangerous for the entire world, especially for Palestine and our struggle for freedom and rights”.

He added, however, that Trump had merely accelerated long-standing US policy from both Republican and Democrat administrations that allowed Israel to continue the occupation with few significant consequences.

“The Obama administration and Biden were part of that trajectory,” he said. A Biden win may even be counterproductive for the Palestinian rights movement, he added, arguing that Trump exposed US policy in the region for the facade that it was.

“Trump is a polarising figure, he mobilises a lot of resistance,” he said. “With Biden, it would be going back to that normal, but that normal was never good for Palestine and the Palestinians.”

Merkel lashes out at populists who say coronavirus is harmless


BERLIN (Reuters) - Populists who argue the coronavirus is harmless are dangerous and irresponsible, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday, defending a circuit break lockdown aimed at slowing the spread of the virus.

© Reuters/FABRIZIO BENSCH German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a session of the Bundestag, in Berlin

"We are in a dramatic situation at the start of the cold season. It affects us all, without exception," Merkel told the Bundestag lower house of parliament, adding new restrictions to reduce social contact were "necessary and proportionate".

With an election less than a year away, Merkel is keen to keep Germans on board, despite the risk of a new hit to Europe's biggest economy. She said populists who question the seriousness of the crisis were putting lives at risk.

"Lies and disinformation, conspiracy theories and hatred damage not only the democratic debate but also the fight against the virus," she told parliament in a speech during which she was heckled by far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) lawmakers.

Criticism of the latest restrictions has come from sectors that will be hit hardest, including hospitality and gastronomy.

On a more fundamental level, many AfD lawmakers are angered by what they see as a historic curtailment of freedom.

"The daily bombardment with infection numbers is clearly designed to scare people as most don't see COVID in their daily lives," said AfD Honorary Chairman Alexander Gauland.

"In the name of citizens' health, (the government) has decided on the biggest restrictions of freedom in the history of this republic," he said.

Worried hospitals will be overwhelmed, Merkel announced on Wednesday a month-long lockdown from Nov. 2 to include the closure of restaurants, gyms and theatres.

Germany was widely praised for keeping infection and deaths below those of many of its neighbours early in the crisis but, like much of Europe, is now in the midst of a second wave. It recorded a record 16,774 rise in cases on Thursday, bringing the total to 481,013. The death toll rose by 89 to 10,272.

"The winter will be hard - four long, hard months - but it will end," said Merkel.

(Reporting by Madeline Chambers, Sabine Siebold and Thomas Escritt; Editing by Michelle Adair, Maria Sheahan, William Maclean)

US Latino voters targeted by abortion misinformation campaigns
April Glaser and Brandy Zadrozny 


In the final days before the election, Spanish-language misinformation about Joe Biden's and running mate Kamala Harris' positions on abortion is specifically targeting religious Latinos on Facebook and its messaging service, WhatsApp.

© Provided by NBC News

Several of the memes about their positions on abortion that are circulating are false.

One meme includes a picture of a crying newborn next to photos of Biden and Harris with text in Spanish that translates: "These candidates support an abortion 5 minutes before birth and if it survives the abortion, they approve of killing the baby."

Since Sept. 29, that meme has spread across 87 posts in Facebook pages and public groups, garnering 5,900 interactions, or comments, reactions and shares, according to the Facebook-owned social media analysis tool CrowdTangle. That's even with a banner warning from Verificador, the fact-checking unit of the Peruvian newspaper La República, which Facebook has enlisted as a fact-checking partner, that it had found the content "misleading."
Higher stakes

While it's unclear who created the false meme that Biden and Harris support drastically late-term abortions, it isn't the first time disinformation tied to religious issues has been used to target Latino communities online, said Sam Woolley, the project director for propaganda research at the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin.

"This is part of an ongoing campaign with far-right groups associated with the Catholic Church, focusing on pulling Latinx voters to the Republican side," Woolley said, adding that he saw similar misinformation in 2016 and 2018 likewise targeting religious Latino voters around abortion.

But this year, the stakes are even higher, with Latino voters for the first time representing the largest group of minority voters in the country — an estimated 13.3 percent of all eligible voters, according to the Pew Research Center. Spanish-speaking populations are an especially important voter base in crucial swing states, like Texas, Florida and Arizona, where Latino communities are even larger than in the rest of the country. Democrats have expressed concerns through the campaign season that disinformation has been having a major impact on Latino voters, especially in states like Florida.

Jaime Longoria, a senior investigative researcher at First Draft, a nonprofit that provides research and training for journalists, said the focus on abortion misinformation in Spanish-speaking communities online has spread this year, in part thanks to the popularization of messaging platforms like WhatsApp among immigrant groups.

The posts target closed, private groups that often include family members and friends who have personal connections to others in the group. Posts or ideas that a family member might originally find on a Facebook page can easily be screenshot and reshared in a WhatsApp group filled with trusted family members and friends, he said.

"Misinformation really works when it's preying on your emotions, and it's even more effective when you have that dynamic between a family," said Longoria, who has been tracking the rise of disinformation that targets Latino communities online. "If you have someone in your family that is sharing information that they believe is true and that they believe is meant to help you, you're more inclined to believe it."
Rising disinformation

Disinformation about abortion targeting Latino communities online reached a high point this month in a town hall conversation when Biden said that, if he wins the election, he would "pass legislation" making Roe v. Wade the "law of the land."

Shortly afterward, religious Spanish-language blogs posted articles that were then shared to Facebook questioning Biden's devotion to his Roman Catholic faith and highlighting his words as a guarantee to enshrine a federal law making abortion broadly legal should he become president. The president can only sign legislation first passed by Congress, which would be sharply divided over any measure to codify Roe as federal law.

Two such posts viewed by NBC News received over 2,700 likes, shares and comments.

One post viewed on a conservative Latino Facebook page following Biden's town hall comments, which received nearly 800 shares, said in Spanish: "KILLING BABIES UNDER #JoeBiden would become CONSTITUTIONAL LAW OF EARTH #United States ... "

The researchers found a surge of positive posts and memes in Spanish-speaking religious Facebook groups after President Donald Trump signed an executive order at the end of September that ensures that all babies born alive prematurely or after failed abortions will receive medical care, even though, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, late-term abortions are exceedingly rare.

"A lot of the misinformation being shared in Latinx religious communities are really partisan issues," Longoria said. "When misinformation is tied to religion, it's so powerful because the people who are spreading this stuff, especially when it's tied to clergy, have such a powerful connection to their followers."

Texas landowners facing coronavirus pandemic and land seizures for border wall

By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN 


Within the last six months, as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the US, the Trump administration filed 75 lawsuits to seize private land along the US-Mexico border for the border wall, according to data reviewed by CNN from the Texas Civil Rights Project.  

© Herika Martinez/AFP/Getty Images 

This picture taken on August 28, 2019 shows a portion of the wall on the US-Mexico border seen from Chihuahua State in Mexico, some 100 km from the city of Ciudad Juarez.

In the final days of the presidential election, President Donald Trump, along with senior administration officials, have cited the border wall as a cornerstone accomplishment of his first term.

"Under my leadership, we achieved the most secure border in US history," Trump said at a rally in Arizona Wednesday. "We built almost 400 miles."

But on the other side of that effort is thousands of Texas residents juggling legal challenges and the pandemic.

"People right now are having to choose between their health and their homes," said Ricky Garza, a staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, a legal advocacy group, which is currently representing landowners in eight land seizure cases.

Between May and October 22, 75 lawsuits to take private land were filed in Texas, up from 17 lawsuits around the same period last year, according to data based on court filings. A US official confirmed to CNN that the administration has been moving at a faster rate to obtain private land to meet the White House's goal.

Generally, the government is allowed to acquire privately owned land for public use, otherwise known as eminent domain. Border barriers built under previous administrations have largely gone up in areas where land was federally owned, but extending the wall, as Trump pledged to, requires taking privately owned land.

The spike in so-called eminent domain lawsuits has been a trend under this administration, as the President tries to hit 450 miles by year's end.

The Rio Grande Valley, where land is largely privately owned and therefore an epicenter of eminent domain cases, has been particularly hard hit by the pandemic. Texas, as a whole, ranks as the number two state in Covid-19 cases.

"The government is choosing to sue people during a pandemic in one of the most vulnerable places in the United States," Garza said. "If there was any sense of concern for the people of south Texas that went through one of the worst public health crises, none of these lawsuits would be filed after March 1, but here we are with dozens."

Many of the people the Texas Civil Rights Project represents are elderly, a population especially vulnerable to the pandemic. While some hearings can be virtual, that's not the default, Garza said, adding that it's up to the presiding judge.

Among those at risk of losing their land is the Cavazos family in south Texas. The roughly 70 acres of land have been passed down from generation to generation, and hold sentimental value, as well as provide for the family's livelihood.

"It was handed down to us by our grandmother... in the early 1950s," said Baudilia "Lilly" Cavazos Rodriguez, one of three siblings, two of whom live on the property. "She bought the land on her own. Being a Hispanic woman, they wouldn't let her sign for it, my uncle and dad signed on it before they went off to World War II."

The family rents some of the property, but the government is seeking to split the land. "We don't want to give it up, we don't want to sell. It's not about money, it's about keeping what our grandmother wanted us to keep," Cavazos Rodriguez said. The acquisition process started at least by April 2018.

A Customs and Border Protection official told CNN that the administration is taking precautions in engaging with landowners during the pandemic, like talking over the phone instead of in person, adding that exceptions have been made on a case-by-case basis. Some landowners willingly have turned over their land.

Eminent domain cases can be lengthy -- ranging from months to years -- though they generally don't keep the agency from being able to proceed with construction. Landowners are often fighting for what is known as just compensation -- what they deem a fair price for their property.

"It's been hard, as far as Covid-19," Cavazos Rodriguez told CNN. "People we know have passed away from Covid-19. We've been trying to be very careful."


Trump administration doubles down on land seizures

Trump laid the groundwork for what would be numerous eminent domain cases under his presidency from the beginning. In his first budget blueprint, Trump included a plan to add "20 attorneys to pursue Federal efforts to obtain the land and holdings necessary to secure the Southwest border."

The administration has also held steadfast in its attempts to acquire land in court. Last year, during a government shutdown, Justice Department attorneys continued to work on cases to seize land from property owners along the US-Mexico border, despite other cases being put on hold until the government reopened. The cases had been ongoing for years and not directly pegged to Trump's wall.

Still, the administration is quickly pressing forward with its stated goal to build 450 miles by the end of this year, the majority of which replaces old, dilapidated barriers, with an updated and more enhanced system. A small portion of the new construction has gone up in areas where no wall previously existed. CBP officials said they're on pace to reach their goal, building between 10 to 12 miles a week, adding that some contractors have been working long shifts and weekends.

Republican Rep. Will Hurd, who represents a large portion of the Texas-Mexico border, said in a statement to CNN that the private property rights of landowners should be respected in the construction process.

"Where physical barriers are going up we have to respect the private property rights of landowners on the border threatened by eminent domain. Taking land from Texans and surrendering arable land for an ineffective solution is bad policy," Hurd said. "Complete operational control of the border means having the right tools deployed in the right areas."

As of October 19, some 371 miles have been constructed on the US-Mexico border, according to Customs and Border Protection. Leadership at the Department of Homeland Security is expected to announce the completion of 400 miles on Thursday.

DHS has moved to expedite construction by waiving laws. In October 2018, for example, then-DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen waived more than two dozen laws to expedite border wall construction in Texas, including the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinki

ng Water Act and the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, among others.
That, too, has become a point of contention between the administration and environmental groups who have sued the Trump administration to halt border wall construction.

The pace of construction and piling on of lawsuits has caught many by surprise, including the landowners in the thick of it.

"It has gone fast, as far as the way things are going. We don't know what's coming next," Cavazos Rodriguez said.

#ABOLISHICE

US steps up deportation of Haitians ahead of election, raising Covid fears

US immigration authorities have radically stepped up deportation flights to Haiti in the weeks before the election, raising concerns over returned migrants’ safety on their return home and the risks of spreading coronavirus in the impoverished Caribbean state.

© Photograph: Jean Marc Herve Abelard/EPA About 25 Haitians who were deported from the United States arrive following a flight at Toussaint Louverture international airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, in June.


Julian Borger in Washington THE GUARDIAN

Twelve flights to Haiti have been recorded so far in October, marking a steep increase from previous months when there were on average between one and two flights every four weeks.

Most of the Haitian migrants have been summarily expelled under a 1944 public health law, which lawyers and refugee rights advocates say is being abused by the Trump administration to sidestep its legal obligations to give migrants the opportunity to apply for asylum and other internationally guaranteed rights.

Related: US Ice officers 'used torture to make Africans sign own deportation orders'

Some of the Haitians deported in recent weeks have been asylum seekers who had been taken from detention centres in what administration critics say is a rush to expel Black immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean ahead of the election. The Haitian flights coincide with the forced repatriation of scores of Cameroonian, Congolese and other African asylum – seekers, many of whom were flown out while they had legal cases pending.

“I believe that they are trying to deport as many people as possible prior to the elections,” said Guerline Jozef, the president of the Haitian Bridge Alliance (HBA), an immigrant advocacy and support group. “Once they arrive back in Haiti, they are just left to fend for themselves.”

Jozef said some of the deported migrants had been fleeing the political and gang violence that has become widespread across Haiti in recent years, and would be risking their lives to return to their homes.

The deportation flights also raise the potential for the spread of coronavirus in Haiti. Under government guidelines, illegal immigrants are supposed to be detained in ways that keep them socially distanced and tested before being put on flights.

“Since the start of the pandemic, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) has taken significant measures to mitigate the spread of Covid-19, including screening for symptoms and increased testing for many of those scheduled for removal,” an Ice statement said. “The health, welfare and safety of Ice detainees is one of the agency’s highest priorities.”

Jozef said social distancing had been abandoned because of a recent flood of Haitian immigrants and it was unclear whether Covid-19 tests had been actually been carried out.

Gallery: Emergency migrant shelter in Yuma, Arizona (USA TODAY)


“Many of the people upon arrival in country ended up having coronavirus and bringing it with them,” she said. “And the majority of them are families with babies, and children that are a few months old, two years old, three years old, eight years old. It’s just absolutely unbelievable.”

“There’s so much chaos and disorder in Haiti right now that there’s no infrastructure, economically or socially for reintegration of these families that are coming back in,” Nicole Phillips, HBA’s legal director and adjunct professor at University of California Hastings College of the Law.

Phillips cited the case of a recent returnee who had been driven out of her village by political violence and since deportation had been forced to go into hiding.

The collapse of the Haitian economy following a devastating 2010 earthquake has led to the crumbling of democratic governance, the disintegration of law and order and the rise of politically affiliated gangs.

Related: Killers lurk in the shadows as Haiti chaos takes a sinister turn

Haitians fleeing the violence have typically flown to Brazil or Chile and then made the arduous and highly dangerous trek through South and Central America which can take months. Several thousands have camped in Mexico since the procedures for applying for asylum were suspended because of the pandemic.

In October there appears to have been a surge of illegal crossings by Haitians of the Rio Grande. The US border patrol in Del Rio has reported that since the beginning of the month 450 Haitians had been apprehended in their sector.

They have been deported under Title 42, a previously obscure clause of the 1944 Public Health Services Law which has been used by the Trump administration since March this year to expel more than 200,000 migrants.

The law, which gives the government the power to take emergency action to prevent “introduction of communicable diseases” was officially authorised by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Related: Trump aide Stephen Miller preparing second-term immigration blitz

It is reported to have been enforced on the insistence of the White House over the objections of CDC health experts who said there was no public health reason to use it. Stephen Miller, a close aide to Donald Trump, and the administration’s most fervent anti-immigration advocated, is said to have insisted on it.

It has been used to expel “certain persons” who are defined as traveling by land from Mexico and Canada, without valid travel documents.

The only justification on health grounds for the use of Title 42 is that those targeted would have been crowded into “congregate settings”, and therefore were prone to the spread of disease.

But legal critics of the procedure have pointed out that the migrants have been packed together by the US border patrol and Ice agents, making Title 42 a self-fulfilling means of deporting targeted immigrants and sidestepping the provisions of the 1960 Refugee Act, the Convention Against Torture and the Immigration and Nationality Act, which give the right to apply for asylum, protection against torture and against repatriation to countries where a migrant’s life could be in danger.

“What is clear is that Trump has used Covid-19 to do what courts had previously denied him: blocking asylum, even for people already on US soil,” said Tom Ricker, a programme associate at the Quixote Center, a social justice pressure group.

Activists urge 'Big Pharma' to be transparent on COVID-19 vaccine costs
By Stephanie Nebehay

© Reuters/Dado Ruvic FILE PHOTO: A woman holds a small bottle labeled with a "Vaccine COVID-19" sticker and a medical syringe in this illustration

GENEVA (Reuters) - Activists called on pharmaceutical companies on Thursday to be transparent about the costs and terms of providing COVID-19 vaccines, saying they must be available and affordable for all.

French drugmaker Sanofi and Britain's GlaxoSmithKline said on Wednesday they would supply 200 million doses of their COVID-19 candidate vaccine to the global COVAX vaccine facility backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the GAVI vaccine alliance.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) demanded the two companies provide details around price, supply and distribution of any vaccine proven safe and effective.

"Pharmaceutical corporations Sanofi and GSK must sell their vaccines at-cost and open their books to show the public exactly how much it costs to make the vaccine," said Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser at MSF's Access Campaign.

"There is no room for secrets during a pandemic and past experience tells us that we can’t take pharma at their word without data to back up their claims," she said in a statement.

Sanofi and GSK could not immediately be reached for comment.

No company has shared information on research and development, clinical trials or manufacturing costs of potential COVID-19 vaccines, MSF said, adding this was vital for the public to assess prices set.

More than half of the expected volume of doses of leading candidate vaccines has been bought up by 13% of the world, mainly high-income countries, the medical charity said.

Human Rights Watch, in a separate report, said governments funding vaccines with public money should be transparent about terms and conditions attached.

The New York-based group urged states to back a proposal by India and South Africa to wave some aspects of intellectual property (IP) rules on patents to enable large-scale manufacturing and affordability.

A temporary IP waiver was debated this month in the World Trade Organization (WTO), but was opposed by the United States, European Union, Britain, Switzerland and others.

"Since the beginning of the pandemic our priority has been to ensure that all people enjoy the fruits of science ... In these difficult times the best health technologies and discoveries cannot be reserved only for a few, they must be available to all," WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a UNESCO event on "Open Science" on Tuesday.

"Sharing data and information that is often kept secret or protected by intellectual property could significantly advance the speed at which technologies are developed," Tedros added.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Mark Potter)