Police believe they've identified sixth victim of 1970s Doodler killer

SERIAL KILLER OF GAY MEN NOT AS FAMOUS AS SCORPIO KILLER

By Calley Hair


Sketches released by the San Francisco Police Department portray The Doodler, a man believed to have killed at least six and as many as 14 men in 1974 and 1975. Image courtesy of the San Francisco Police Department

Jan. 27 (UPI) -- Homicide detectives said Thursday they believe they've identified a sixth victim of The Doodler, one of San Francisco's most prolific 1970s serial killers who remains uncaught today.

The San Francisco Police Department announced in a news release that they believe Warren Andrews was among The Doodler's victims. Andrews, 52, was beaten in Lands End in 1975 and found unconscious by a passing hiker. He never regained consciousness, dying seven weeks later.

According to the release, Andrews fit The Doodler's established pattern. All of his victims were gay white men that he likely lured into sexual encounters before murdering.

Lead detective Dan Cunningham told the San Francisco Chronicle last year that he'd be "a fool" not to consider Andrews a potential Doodler victim.

"The location, the time period, the victimology -- it all makes me think that it might be connected," Cunningham said.

The macabre nickname comes from his modus operandi. According to witnesses, The Doodler would visit bars and restaurants, identify a victim, and sketch their picture before assaulting and killing them. He's believed to have killed at least six and up to 14 men between January 1974 and September 1975.

At the time, police believed they found a suspect. Multiple victims survived attacks by The Doodler and gave a thorough description to law enforcement. But when it came time to testify, the victims refused. Publicly discussing their encounters would amount to outing their sexuality, SFGATE reports, which would have been an especially fraught decision at the time.

Police hadn't previously counted Andrews as a Doodler victim because of the method of his murder. The five other known victims were stabbed to death, but Andrews was beaten with a rock and a tree branch.

Detectives believe the killer likely struggled with Andrews, lost his knife and grabbed any weapon he could find from the trail, the Chronicle reports.

The SFPD is still looking for The Doodler. Earlier this month, it doubled its award for information leading to the killer's arrest and conviction from $100,000 to $200,000.

"We've come a long way in this investigation, and I think we're closer than ever to solving it -- but we just need a bit more information," Cunningham told The Chronicle.

Investigators asked anyone with information to call the SFPD's 24-hour tip line at 415-575-4444 or text a tip to TIP411.

Survey: Most adults with asthma wear masks despite discomfort

By HealthDay News

An online survey of more than 500 adults with asthma found that 84% reported discomfort and 75% reported trouble breathing or shortness of breath at least occasionally while wearing a face mask to guard against COVID-19. Photo by InspiredImages/Pixabay

Although they report difficulty breathing and discomfort while wearing a face mask, most people with asthma still use them in public places during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new study finds.

University of Illinois Chicago researchers conducted an online survey of more than 500 adults with asthma. They found that 84% reported discomfort and 75% reported trouble breathing or shortness of breath at least occasionally while wearing a face mask to guard against COVID-19.

Still, "the majority of those surveyed said about masks, 'Just wear it,'" study co-author Dr. Sharmilee Nyenhuis said in a university news release. Nyenhuis is an associate professor in the College of Medicine.

Poorer asthma control and wearing a mask for longer periods of time were associated with more symptoms while wearing a mask, according to the study. The findings were published in the January issue of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice.

As well as answering survey questions, participants were asked open-ended questions about their experiences wearing masks and their recommendations for other people with asthma.

In that part of the study, 45% of participants said they had problems breathing and increased coughing when wearing a mask 39% said they had no change in their asthma when wearing a mask, and 2% said their asthma symptoms improved when wearing a mask, likely because the mask filtered out pollen and pollutants that trigger respiratory distress, according to the researchers.

About 5% of the participants said they don't always wear a mask.

The study participants offered suggestions about mask-wearing for others with asthma. They included:
Take the time to find a comfortable, well-fitting mask.
Keep your inhaler with you.
Stay on top of your asthma medications.
Make sure your mask is at room temperature if cold triggers your asthma.
Take mask breaks.

"Taking a mask break is important. It allows for opportunities to take large, deep breaths and do some breathing techniques," said Nyenhuis, who suggested that employers consider making accommodations for those with asthma to take safe mask breaks.

There is no reason a person with asthma should not wear a mask, but those who have concerns about wearing a mask should talk with their doctor, Nyenhuis said.

More information

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has more on COVID-19 and asthma.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Picasso heirs launch digital art piece to ride ‘crypto’ wave

By JAMEY KEATEN

January 26, 2022

1 of 7

Marina Picasso, right, granddaughter of artist Pablo Picasso, and her son Florian Picasso pose with a ceramic art-work of Pablo Picasso in Cologny near in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Jan. 25, 2022. Heirs of Pablo Picasso, the famed 20th-century Spanish artist, are vaulting into 21st-century commerce by selling 1,010 digital art pieces of one of his ceramic works that has never before seen publicly — riding a fad for “crypto” assets that have taken the art and financial worlds by storm. (AP Photo/Boris Heger)


GENEVA (AP) — Pablo, meet Crypto.

Heirs of Pablo Picasso, the famed 20th-century Spanish artist, are vaulting into 21st-century commerce by selling 1,010 digital art pieces of one of his ceramic works that has never before been seen publicly — riding a fad for “crypto” assets that have taken the art and financial worlds by storm.

For an exclusive interview before the formal launch this week, Picasso’s granddaughter, Marina Picasso, and her son Florian Picasso opened up their apartment — which is swimming in works from their illustrious ancestor — in an upscale Geneva neighborhood. There they offered up a glimpse, however tantalizingly slim, of the piece behind what they’re billing as an unprecedented fusion of old-school fine art and digital assets.

They’re looking to cash in on and ride a wave of interest in non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which have netted millions for far-less-known artists and been criticized by some as environmentally costly get rich schemes.

A Picasso, his family’s promoters say, would mark the entry of a Grand Master into the game.

In economics jargon, a fungible token is an asset that can be exchanged on a one-for-one basis. Think of dollars or bitcoins — each one has the exact same value and can be traded freely. A non-fungible object, by contrast, has its own distinct value, like an old house or a classic car.

Cross this notion with cryptocurrency technology known as the blockchain and you get NFTs. They are effectively digital certificates of authenticity that can be attached to digital art or, well, pretty much anything else that comes in digital form — audio files, video clips, animated stickers, even a news article read online.

“We’re trying to build a bridge between the NFT world and the fine art world,” said Florian Picasso, the artist’s great-grandson.

The artist’s descendants are playing close to the vest, to drum up interest and protect — for now — a family heirloom. They’re showing only a sliver of the underside of the work linked to the NFTs, a ceramic piece about the size of a large salad bowl. The exposed parts show forms like a thick yellow line, a dribbling green splotch, and a brushed-on number “58” at the base.

Marina Picasso says the cherished pottery piece dates to October 1958, when she was a child.

“It’s a work that represents a face, and it’s very expressive,” she said. “It’s joyful, happy. It represents life ... It’s one of those objects that have been part of our life, our intimate lives — my life with my children.”

Cyril Noterman, a longtime manager for Florian Picasso, and Kathryn Frazier, a publicist for the project, told The Associated Press that Sotheby’s would host an auction in March that will include a unique NFT as well as the actual ceramic bowl.

But Matthew Floris, a spokesman for Sotheby’s, contacted the AP on Wednesday and said in a statement: “Sotheby’s has clarified that it will not be selling an NFT of a work by Pablo Picasso.”

Noterman and Frazier said a first-phase, online sale of more than 1,000 other NFTs starts Friday through the Nifty Gateway and Origin Protocol platforms.

Florian Picasso said they agreed on the colorful ceramic piece because it was “a fun one” to start.

An NFT Picasso brings with it almost epochal symbolism, something like when the Beatles collection was finally put up on iTunes. The family and its business managers say the aim is to create a younger community of Picasso fans.

“Everything is evolving,” said Florian Picasso, insisting that the NFT honors the great artist.

“I think it fits within Picasso’s legacies because we are paying tribute to him and his way of working, which was always being creative,” he said.

How quaint seem those days of yore when Picasso, as the legend has it, would simply doodle on a napkin as payment for a restaurant meal — his handiwork supposedly carrying a value far in excess of the cost of the food and drinks he had enjoyed.

Some of the proceeds will be donated — one portion to a charity that aims to help overcome a shortage of nurses, and another to a nongovernmental organization that wants to help reduce carbon in the atmosphere. The NFTs will also come with music put together by Florian Picasso, who is a DJ and music producer, along with songwriter John Legend and rapper Nas.

Even a full rendering of that track isn’t being publicly released just yet: Florian Picasso played a snippet for a reporter, then turned it off.

“And to hear more, you gotta purchase the NFT,” he quipped.

___

AP video journalist Boris Heger contributed to this report.

EPA acts to curb air, water pollution in poor communities

By MATTHEW DALY

1 of 6

FILE - EPA Administrator Michael Regan poses for a photo for his EPA photographer near a cemetery in a neighborhood next to the Nu Star Energy oil storage tanks, after conducting a television interview, in St. James Parish, La., Nov. 16, 2021. Regan visited low-income, mostly minority communities in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas as part of an effort to focus federal attention on communities adversely affected by decades of industrial pollution. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of enforcement actions Wednesday to address air pollution, unsafe drinking water and other problems afflicting minority communities in three Gulf Coast states, following a “Journey to Justice” tour by Administrator Michael Regan last fall.

The agency will conduct unannounced inspections of chemical plants, refineries and other industrial sites suspected of polluting air and water and causing health problems to nearby residents, Regan said. And it will install air monitoring equipment in Louisiana’s “chemical corridor” to enhance enforcement at chemical and plastics plants between New Orleans and Baton Rouge. The region contains several hotspots where cancer risks are far above national levels.

The EPA also issued a notice to the city of Jackson, Mississippi, saying its aging and overwhelmed drinking water system violates the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. The order directs the city to outline a plan to “correct the significant deficiencies identified” in an EPA report within 45 days.

In separate letters, Regan urged city and state officials to use nearly $79 million in funding allocated to Mississippi under the bipartisan infrastructure law “to solve some of the most dire water needs in Jackson and other areas of need across Mississippi.″

The actions were among more than a dozen steps announced being taken in response to Regan’s tour last November. Regan visited low-income, mostly minority communities in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas as part of an effort to focus federal attention on communities adversely affected by decades of industrial pollution.

A Toxics Release Inventory prepared by the EPA shows that African Americans and other minority groups make up 56% of those living near toxic sites such as refineries, landfills and chemical plants. Negative effects include chronic health problems such as asthma, diabetes and hypertension.

“In every community I visited during the Journey to Justice tour, the message was clear: residents have suffered far too long and local, state and federal agencies have to do better,” Regan said.

The unannounced inspections of chemical plants and other sites “are going to keep these facilities on their toes,″ he told reporters on a conference call.

Inspections currently are done on a schedule or with advance notice, Regan said, but that is about to change. “We are amping up our aggressiveness to utilize a tool that’s in our toolbox that ... has been there for quite some time,″ he said.

When facilities are found to be noncompliant, the EPA “will use all available tools to hold them accountable,″ he added.

A pilot project combining high-tech air pollution monitoring with additional inspectors will begin in three Louisiana parishes — St. John the Baptist, St. James and Calcasieu — that are home to scores of industrial sites and are long plagued by water and air pollution.

President Joe Biden has made addressing racial disparities, including those related to the environment, central to his agenda. He has pledged that at least 40% of new spending on climate and the environment go to poor and minority communities. The administration’s commitment to the issue has come under renewed scrutiny in recent weeks, as two key environmental justice appointees departed. Cecilia Martinez, a top official at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and David Kieve, who conducted outreach with environmental justice groups, both left the White House, putting a spotlight on promises yet to be fulfilled.

Regan, a former environmental regulator in North Carolina, has made environmental justice a top priority since taking over as EPA head last year. As the first Black man to lead the agency, the issue “is really personal for me, as well as professional,″ he told The Associated Press in November.

“I pledge to do better by people in communities who have been hurting for far too long,” he said Tuesday.

Historically marginalized communities like St. John and St. James, along with cities such as New Orleans, Jackson and Houston, will benefit from the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law signed by Biden, Regan said. The law includes $55 billion for water and wastewater infrastructure, while a sweeping climate and social policy bill pending in the Senate would pump more than twice that amount into EPA programs to clean up the environment and address water and environmental justice issues.

As part of its enforcement action, the EPA is requiring a former DuPont petrochemical plant in La Place, Louisiana, to install fence-line monitors to identify emissions from the site, Regan said. The plant is now owned by the Japanese conglomerate Denka.

The agency also said it will push for greater scrutiny of a proposed expansion of a Formosa Plastics plant in St. James and issued a notice of violation to a Nucor Steel plant that emits hydrogen sulfide and other harmful chemicals.

Regan said he has spoken with New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell about Gordon Plaza, a city neighborhood built on the site of a former toxic landfill. Gordon Plaza was designated as a Superfund site in the 1990s, but dozens of mostly Black families still live there.

The EPA will review the site, starting in March, Regan said, and will add nine homes not included in earlier plans to help families move. City officials hope to use money from the infrastructure law to relocate families and build a solar farm on the site.

EPA also said it has completed a review of proposed actions to clean up creosote contamination from a site in Houston now owned by Union Pacific Railroad. The site, in the Kashmere Gardens area in the city’s Fifth Ward, has been linked to higher than normal cancer rates in the historically Black neighborhood.

EPA said it will work with Texas officials to ensure corrective actions address the concerns of community members.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, who toured the area with Regan, said Wednesday it was “very encouraging” that federal officials “share our concerns and know the names and faces of those affected.″

Sharon Lavigne, president of Rise St. James, a grassroots organization that has battled petrochemical plants in Louisiana, said the EPA’s actions were “just the beginning of what needs to be done″ to address pollution from the petrochemical industry.

“It’s important that EPA recognizes the need to listen to the science, which shows the destructive Formosa plastics facility should be stopped and that no other harmful chemical facilities should be allowed to cause harm in our community anymore,″ Lavigne said. “I’m hopeful that he will really get some things done.”

Study: Gas stoves worse for climate than previously thought

By SETH BORENSTEIN

1 of 4

In this photo provided by climate scientist Rob Jackson, researcher Eric Lebel samples natural gas from a stove in Stanford, Calif., in 2021. According to a study published Thursday, Jan. 27, 2022, in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, gas stoves are worse for the climate than previously thought because of constant tiny methane leaks even while they’re off. (Rob Jackson via AP)

Gas stoves are contributing more to global warming than previously thought because of constant tiny methane leaks while they’re off, a new study found.

The same study that tested emissions around stoves in homes raised new concerns about indoor air quality and health because of levels of nitrogen oxides measured.

Even when they are not running, U.S. gas stoves are putting 2.6 million tons (2.4 million metric tons) of methane — in carbon dioxide equivalent units — into the air each year, a team of California researchers found in a study published in Thursday’s journal Environmental Science & Technology. That’s equivalent to the annual amount of greenhouse gases from 500,000 cars or what the United States puts into the air every three-and-a-half hours.

“They’re constantly bleeding a little bit of methane into the atmosphere all the time,” said the study’s co-author Rob Jackson, a Stanford University climate scientist.

That methane is on top of the 6.8 million tons (6.2 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide that gas stoves emit into the air when they are in use and the gas is burned, the study said. Methane is a greenhouse gas that is dozens of times more potent than carbon dioxide but doesn’t stay in the atmosphere nearly as long and isn’t as plentiful in the air.

The researchers examined 53 home kitchens in California — many in bed and breakfasts they rented. They sealed most of the rooms in plastic tarps and then measured emissions when the stoves were working and when they were not. And what was surprising was that three-quarters of the methane released happened while the stoves were off, Jackson said. Those are emissions releases that the government doesn’t account for, he said.

“That’s a big deal because we’re trying to really reduce our carbon footprint and we claim that gas is cleaner than coal, which it is,” said study lead author Eric Lebel, a scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, an Oakland nonprofit. But he said much of the benefit disappears when leaks are taken into account.

Many communities have bans on gas stove use in future new construction that will take effect in future years, including New York City and the Bay Area cities of San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Berkeley, Jackson said.

“People can already choose electric appliances if they want,” said Frank Maisano, a Washington policy and public relations expert who represents gas and appliance interests. “People just like gas appliances because they perform better, especially in colder climates.”

“Natural gas appliances are generally more energy- and cost-effective than their electric counterparts,” Maisano said.

Jackson estimated that when all natural gas use and extraction is taken into account, about 100 million tons (91 million metric tons) of gas leaks into the atmosphere. And the couple million tons from gas stoves “is meaningful. That’s a substantial part and it’s a part that we haven’t included accurately in the past.”

The leakage finding is “a very important takeaway” and fits with other work that found there are often big leaks that account for much of the emissions, said Zachary Merrin, a research engineer with the Illinois Applied Research Institute’s Indoor Climate Research & Training group.

Merrin, who wasn’t part of the study, said the emission of un-combusted methane is “clearly bad. From an emissions standpoint, cooking directly with gas is better than using a fossil fuel powered electric stove but worse than using a solar powered electric stove.”

The methane leak isn’t dangerous to human health or as a possible explosive, Jackson said. But when conducting the tests, researchers found high levels of nitrogen oxides, greater than 100 parts per billion. Jackson said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency doesn’t have indoor air quality standards for that gas, but the measurements they took exceed its outdoor air quality standards. While methane doesn’t include nitrogen, the nitrogen oxides are byproducts of the combustion in natural gas ovens, he said.

Maisano said people should always use hood ranges and make sure they have proper ventilation. Jackson, who has a gas stove that he plans to replace, said he never used ventilation before this study, but that he now does so every time.

___

Follow AP’s climate coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate and follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at https://twitter.com/borenbears.

___

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.

Book sheds light on Israel role in destruction of Jerusalem Mughrabi quarter

AFP - 

© RONALDO SCHEMIDT


After the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel planned the "destruction" of Jerusalem's historic Mughrabi neighbourhood at the base of the Western Wall but tried to hide it, according to a book published Friday.

Its author, French historian Vincent Lemire, expects the book "In the Shadow of the Wall: The life and death of the Mughrabi quarter of Jerusalem" to spark controversy because of the sensitive nature of the Holy City.

Lemire, who published several books on the history of Jerusalem, said he drew material from local archives, as well as Ottoman and French ones, for his work released by Le Seuil in Paris.

Most tourists who visit Jerusalem make a stop at the Western Wall plaza, a large esplanade of polished stone that extends from the ancient wall, which according to Jewish tradition is the surviving structure of the Second Temple and the holiest site where Jews can pray.


© RONALDO SCHEMIDT

The Western Wall plaza extends from the ancient wall, which, according to Jewish tradition, is the holiest site where Jews can pray

But before the Six-Day War, when east Jerusalem -- including the old walled city -- was controlled by Jordan, there was no esplanade at the base of the wall.

Instead, there was a Muslim neighbourhood of about 135 homes initially established in the 12th Century by Emperor Saladin, and where iconic Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat lived for a period during his youth.

Lemire, director of the French Research Center in Jerusalem, traces the area's history in a book due to be translated into English later this year by Stanford University Press.

- 'Definitive proof' -

The commonly told story about the fate of Jerusalem's Mughrabi quarter is that immediately after Israel captured the Old City a group of 15 private Jewish contractors destroyed the neighbourhood to make space for the Western Wall plaza.


© RONALDO SCHEMIDT

Jerusalem's historic Mughrabi neighbourhood stood at the base of the Western Wall

The role played by then Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek in the operation has previously been reported by media outlets.

But Lemire told AFP that his book offers "definitive, written proof on the premeditation, planning and coordination of this operation".

He cites minutes of a meeting between Kollek and the army commander in charge of Jerusalem on June 9, 1967, just 36 hours before the neighbourhood was demolished.

"One of the items on the agenda is the destruction of the Mughrabi quarter," Lemire said.

He said he also consulted an internal foreign ministry note from the same day that prepared talking points to explain the neighbourhood's destruction, "designed to make people believe they were slums and dangerous buildings".

He said he found a note in the Jerusalem municipality's archives that references the need to remove the rubble of the area "on the order of the military command".

- International response -

Following Israel's creation in 1948, France, the colonial power in most of North Africa at the time, had been a financial supporter of the Mughrabi quarter.

Lemire writes that this was part of a larger regional tactic of currying favour among North African Muslims "to counter the rise of the independence movement in Algeria", then a French colony.

But after Algerian independence in 1962, France "abandoned" the Mughrabi quarter and stayed quiet -- as did several other nations -- as Israel destroyed the area.

Jordan, then a bitter Israeli rival that had just lost control over east Jerusalem, also said nothing, Lemire writes.

"My intuition as a historian is that there was an implicit agreement between the Israelis and the Jordanians," he told AFP.

Jordan was allowed to retain control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, which is above the Western Wall and is Islam's third holiest site, a post-war concession that may have bought Amman's silence over the Mughrabi quarter's destruction, Lemire said.

He also said displaced residents of the area received "minimal, but fast" financial compensation after the demolition, "to secure their silence".

Lemire told AFP he expected some "hostile" responses to his book, given sensitivities surrounding Jerusalem's holy sites and the "fact that this story is unpleasant for everyone".

But he said he was compelled to write about a neighbourhood that was lacking a recorded history.

"With this book, there's the beginning of a history. It's a start," he said.

gl/mib/bs/dv/hkb

As world marks Holocaust, some survivors in Israel struggle

By ILAN BEN ZION and ISAAC SCHARF

1 of 5

Tshuva Kabra, left, director of the national welfare system at the Chasdei Naomi charity, embraces Holocaust survivor Freida Rovenchim, in her family apartment in Jerusalem, Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022. Several dozen impoverished elderly Israelis, among them Holocaust survivors, received food donations from the Chasdei Naomi charity, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Thursday. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

JERUSALEM (AP) — Several dozen octogenarians, bundled against the cold, chattered in Russian and Hebrew as they picked through heaps of carrots, onions and grapefruit in a Jerusalem courtyard.

Nearly all of them Holocaust survivors, they were picking up donations of food and winter blankets before a snowstorm hit the city on the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Israel was established in 1948 as a refuge for Jews in the wake of the Holocaust, and it makes great efforts to remember the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide and to honor those who survived as heroes.

Yet among Israel’s estimated 165,000 survivors, roughly one in three lives in poverty, according to a survivors’ advocacy group. Though survivors receive government stipends, many still depend on food donations organized by Israeli charities like Chasdei Naomi.

“The ones who really need to be responsible for taking care of Holocaust survivors is the state of Israel. Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist,” said Tshuva Cabra, the group’s head of donations.

The charity’s staff and volunteers distributed food parcels, flowers and chocolates to impoverished survivors in Jerusalem on Wednesday. “If we will not be there for them, who will? It’s really sad that only NGOs are standing up and acting,” she said.

Thursday’s international remembrance day marked the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland. An estimated one-third of world Jewry was annihilated by Nazi Germany and its allies. After the war, hundreds of thousands of survivors made their way to the newly established Israel.

With each passing year, the number of remaining Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle, and with it the country’s living connection to those who endured one of the greatest atrocities in modern history. The Holocaust Survivors’ Rights Authority, a government department, said that more than 15,000 survivors died in 2021.

The Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, an umbrella group representing 50 organizations that assist Holocaust survivors, said that around one-third of Israel’s Holocaust survivors live in poverty.

Many of the most destitute immigrated to Israel in the 1990s from the former Soviet Union after its dissolution. They arrived with little means, had difficulty learning a new language late in life and many struggled to establish social networks.

“During the war, it was very difficult for the Jews. Jews suffered from the Nazis. We fled and we did whatever we could to survive,” said Paulina Perchuk, an 83-year-old immigrant from Ukraine. “I hope it will not happen again in the world.”

Colette Avital, a former Israeli diplomat and Holocaust survivor who heads the Center of Organizations of Holocaust Survivors in Israel, said that while the government’s attitude has improved, “the blanket is short and that is not enough.” She said there’s broad public support for survivors but the government needs to provide more assistance.

Israel’s Social Equality Ministry said it doled out some $1.2 billion in support to Holocaust survivors in 2021. Just over 50,000 survivors receive monthly stipends of between $800 and $2,000 per month, while around 15,500 receive $3,600 because of more severe disability.

But for many, those sums are not enough to make ends meet as the cost of living in Israel continues to skyrocket. The Chasdei Naomi charity says it provides food to 10,000 survivors, a figure that increased by 4,000 since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. In the past year, requests for assistance in paying electric bills rose 40% alongside inflation and rising cost of living in Israel.

Meirav Cohen, Israel’s social equality minister, said her department oversees the “final watch” over Holocaust survivors’ well-being.

“The average age of Holocaust survivors is 85,” she said in a statement released by her office. “These are the final years we have to serve them, to allow them to grow old with dignity and document as much as possible from their stories, because very soon, there won’t be anyone left to tell them.”

Her office declined an interview request.

Holocaust remembrance remains a cornerstone of Israeli identity. A large percentage of the country is made up of survivors and generations of their descendants. The country marks its own Holocaust Remembrance Day each spring. Foreign dignitaries visiting the country pay homage to the Jews killed in the Holocaust at Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, which serves as a memorial and research center.

Earlier in the week, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that the government would budget nearly $10 million in additional funds to Yad Vashem to help “preserve the memory of the Holocaust in Israel and the world.” That marked a nearly 20% jump in the institution’s annual budget in 2020, of which the Israeli government financed over a third.

Avital praised the government for allocating more funds to Yad Vashem but added that “the welfare of Holocaust survivors should come before anything else.”

World remembers Holocaust as antisemitism rises in pandemic

CROCODILE TEARS

1 of 18

Mickey Levy, Speaker of the Knesset, reacts during the commemoration of the "Day of Remembrance of the Victims of National Socialism" in the German Bundestag, Berlin, Thursday, Jan.27, 2022. (Kay Nietfeld/dpa via AP)

By VANESSA GERA and SAMUEL PETREQUIN

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Survivors recalled their agony to a world they fear is forgetting, Israel’s parliamentary speaker wept in the German parliament and politicians warned of a resurgence of antisemitism on Thursday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The day falls on the anniversary of the liberation by Soviet troops of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the most notorious of the death camps where Nazi Germany carried out its Final Solution seeking to murder the Jewish people of Europe.

At the memorial site in Poland, which was subjected to a brutal German occupation during World War II, a small number of survivors gathered in an auditorium. Attendance at the yearly event was sharply curtailed amid Europe’s coronavirus surge. Others joined online.

Nazi German forces killed 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, most of them Jews, but also Poles, Roma and others.

Halina Birenbaum, a 92-year-old Polish-born poet who lives in Israel, recalled her suffering remotely. She was 10 when the Germans invaded and occupied Poland in September 1939, and was 13 when she was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau after being led out of the gas chamber of the Majdanek camp thanks to a malfunction.

“I saw masses of the powerful but arrogant army of Nazi Germany as they marched cruelly, victoriously, into the devastated and burning streets of Warsaw,” she recalled.

“The countless experiences of infinite suffering on the brink of death are already a distant, unimaginable story for new generations,” she said.

Commemorations everywhere took place amid a rise of antisemitism that gained traction during lockdowns as the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated hatred online.

German parliament speaker Baerbel Bas said the pandemic has acted “like an accelerant” to already burgeoning antisemitism.

“Antisemitism is here — it isn’t just on the extreme fringe, not just among the eternally incorrigible and a few antisemitic trolls on the net,” she said. “It is a problem of our society — all of society.”

In recent days alone, a 12-year-old Jewish boy in Italy was attacked and subjected to antisemitic slurs while two men were punched in London.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the London attack “is a terrible reminder, on Holocaust Memorial Day, that such prejudice is not consigned to history, but remains a very real problem in society.”

Holocaust survivor Inge Auerbacher, 87, told the German parliament she still remembers “the terrible time of horror and hatred.”

“Unfortunately, this cancer has reawakened and hatred of Jews is commonplace again in many countries in the world, including Germany,” she said.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a virtual U.N. Holocaust remembrance ceremony Thursday that he has made tackling the roots of intolerance an urgent priority.

“Antisemitism, virulent anti-Muslim bigotry, persecution of Christians, racism, and anti-refugee hatred are becoming normalized in a coarsening public discourse – often amplified in online echo chambers of hate,” he said.

The U.N. General Assembly adopted a resolution in 2005 establishing International Holocaust Remembrance Day as an annual commemoration.

About 6 million European Jews and millions of other people were killed by the Nazis and their collaborators. Some 1.5 million were children.

“Our country bears a special responsibility — the genocide against the European Jews is a German crime,” Bas said in the German parliament, the Bundestag.

Israel’s parliamentary speaker, Mickey Levy, broke down in tears in the Bundestag while reciting the Jewish mourner’s prayer from a prayer book that belonged to a German Jewish boy who celebrated his bar mitzvah on the eve of Kristallnacht, an outburst of anti-Jewish violence in 1938.

Levy said that Israel and Germany experienced “an exceptional journey on the way to reconciliation and establishing relations and brave friendship between us.”

In Rome, Pope Francis met Holocaust survivor Edith Bruck, a Hungarian-born writer and poet who survived Nazi death camps and settled in Italy. Both emphasized the “inestimable value of transmitting the memory of the past to the young, even in its most painful aspects, to not repeat the same tragedies.” the Vatican said.

In Austria, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid paid an emotional visit to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where his grandfather, Bela Lampel, was murdered in 1945.

“Grandpa Bela, a quiet man whose family nickname was ‘Bela the Wise,’ sent me here today to say on his behalf, that the Jews have not surrendered,” Lapid said.

“The Nazis thought they were the future, and that Jews would be something you only find in a museum. Instead, the Jewish state is the future, and Mauthausen is a museum. Rest in peace, grandfather, you won,” he said.

He was joined by Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer. The two men hugged each other during the memorial service.

“I apologize, on behalf of the republic of Austria, for the crimes committed here. I apologize that your grandfather was murdered here,” Nehammer said.

Gathered at the European Parliament, EU lawmakers listened to 100-year-old Holocaust survivor Margot Friedlander’s ordeal. She was arrested in 1944 and brought to Theresienstadt, now part of the Czech Republic. A year before, her mother and brother were deported to Auschwitz and killed.

“We must be vigilant and not look the other way as we did then,” she said. “Hatred, racism and antisemitism must not be the last word in history.”

Charles Michel, the head of the EU Council bringing together leaders of the 27 EU member countries, said that with each passing year, the Holocaust “inches towards becoming a historical event.”

“More and more distant, more and more abstract,” Michel said. “Especially in the eyes of the younger generations of Europeans. This is why, paradoxically, the more the years go by, the more important the commemoration becomes.”

To tackle Holocaust denial, UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress launched a partnership Thursday with the online platform TikTok popular with youngsters. They say it will allow users to be oriented toward verified information when searching for terms related to the Shoah.

According to the U.N., 17% of content related to the Holocaust on TikTok either denied or distorted the Holocaust.

In Italy, members of the Jewish community and lawmakers gathered in Rome’s Ghetto to lay a wreath where more than 1,000 people were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz on Oct. 16, 1943.

In Albania, Foreign Minister Olta Xhacka honored Holocaust victims while expressing pride in his country’s role in sheltering Jews.

___

Petrequin reported from Brussels. Geir Moulson in Berlin, Nicole Winfield in Rome, Ilan Ben Zion and Josef Federman in Jerusalem, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Sylvia Hui in London and Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, contributed to this report.

Holocaust 'GRAPHIC' novel ‘Maus’ banned in Tennessee school district

TRUMPERS OBJECT TO NUDE FEMALE (MOUSE)

AND SWEAR WORDS

This cover image released by Pantheon shows "Maus" a graphic novel by Art Spiegelman. A Tennessee school district has voted to ban the Pulitzer Prize winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman. (Pantheon via AP)

ATHENS, Tenn. (AP) — A Tennessee school district has voted to ban a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust due to “inappropriate language” and an illustration of a nude woman, according to minutes from a board meeting.

The McMinn County School Board decided Jan. 10 to remove “Maus” from its curriculum, news outlets reported.

Art Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992 for the work that tells the story of his Jewish parents living in 1940s Poland and depicts him interviewing his father about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor.

In an interview, Spiegelman told CNBC he was “baffled” by the school board’s decision and called the action “Orwellian.”

“It’s leaving me with my jaw open, like, ‘What?’” he said.

The decision comes as conservative officials across the country have increasingly tried to limit the type of books that children are exposed to, including books that address structural racism and LGBTQ issues. The Republican governors in South Carolina and Texas have called on superintendents to perform a systemic review of “inappropriate” materials in their states’ schools

The minutes from the school board meeting indicate objections over some of the language used in “Maus.” At first, Director of Schools Lee Parkison suggested redacting it “to get rid of the eight curse words and the picture of the woman that was objected to.”

The nude woman is drawn as a mouse. In the graphic novel, Jews are drawn as mice and the Nazis are drawn as cats.

“It shows people hanging, it shows them killing kids, why does the educational system promote this kind of stuff? It is not wise or healthy,” School Board Member Tony Allman said about the book, which was part of the district’s eighth-grade English language arts curriculum.

Instructional supervisor Julie Goodin, a former history teacher, said she thought the graphic novel was a good way to depict a horrific event.

“It’s hard for this generation, these kids don’t even know 9/11, they were not even born,” Goodin said. “Are the words objectionable? Yes, there is no one that thinks they aren’t. But by taking away the first part, it’s not changing the meaning of what he is trying to portray.”

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, which does not play a role in McMinn County, noted the timing of the news on Twitter. Weingarten, who is Jewish, pointed out that Thursday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“Yes it is uncomfortable to talk about genocide, but it is our history and educating about it helps us not repeat this horror,” Weingarten said.

The U.S. Holocaust Museum tweeted that “Maus has played a vital role in educating about the Holocaust through sharing detailed and personal experiences of victims and survivors.

“Teaching about the Holocaust using books like Maus can inspire students to think critically about the past and their own roles and responsibilities today.”

The Tennessee school board emphasized in the minutes that they did not object to teaching about the Holocaust but some were concerned the work was not age-appropriate.

Although they discussed redacting parts of the book, that led to copyright concerns and board members ultimately decided to look for an alternative book about the subject.

The book isn’t the only one banned recently amid critical race theory controversy.

END DRUG PROHIBITION
Two powerful drugs now adding to US overdose crisis

By MIKE STOBBE

NEW YORK (AP) — Emerging reports show that two little-known drugs are making lethal new contributions to America’s drug overdose crisis.

Para-fluorofentanyl and metonitazene are being seen more often by medical examiners looking into overdose deaths, according to a government report published Thursday. They often are taken with — or mixed with — illicit fentanyl, the drug mainly responsible for the more than 100,000 U.S. overdose deaths in the last year.

Increasingly, one or the other of the two drugs is the sole reason for some overdose deaths, said Dr. Darinka Mileusnic-Polchan, one of the report authors.

Often injected or snorted, they are more powerful than fentanyl, she said.

“These (victims) just crumple and collapse. Frequently they don’t even inject the full syringe” before overdosing, said Mileusnic-Polchan, who leads the medical examiner’s office in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The overdose-reversing drug naloxone can still work, but more of it may be needed than when other drugs are involved, she said.

The report, published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for U.S. medical and public health professionals, is one of the first of its kind to raise alarms about the drugs. It was written by officials from the Drug Enforcement Administration; a toxicology lab at the University of California, San Francisco; and the Knox County Regional Forensic Center.

The Knoxville area recorded 770 unintentional drug overdose deaths from November 2020 through August 2021, the authors wrote. Test results for 562 of them found fentanyl, and nearly 190 of those also tested positive for methamphetamine. But 48 involved para-fluorofentanyl, and 26 involved metonitazene, according to the report.

And deaths involving those drugs have increased since the summer, Mileusnic-Polchan said.

Para-fluorofentanyl is a synthetic opioid, like fentanyl. It was invented in the 1960s and has been sold illegally in the past, sometimes under the name “China-white.”

In 2020, investigators began seeing an uptick in overdoses involving the drug. Recently, it’s been found in heroin packets and counterfeit pills.

Metonitazene is from a class of painkillers developed in the 1950s but never authorized for medical treatment. That drug began appearing more often in overdose autopsy reports last year.

It’s not clear how widespread the drugs are. Cash-strapped medical examiner’s offices and coroner’s offices are not able to pay for toxicology work that looks for every conceivable drug, Mileusnic-Polchan said. Her office documented the two drugs because it participated in a DEA program that uses the UCSF lab for analysis.

U.S. overdose deaths have been rising for more than two decades, but they accelerated in the past two years — jumping more than 20% in the latest year alone, according to the most recently available CDC data, through June 2021.

Experts have said the top drivers are the growing prevalence of deadly fentanyl and the COVID-19 pandemic, which left many drug users socially isolated and unable to get treatment or other support.

___

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

JAPANESE CHAUVINISTIC RACISM

Staffers complain of racism, abuse by WHO leader in Asia

By MARIA CHENG

World Health Organization Regional Director for Western Pacific Takeshi Kasai addresses the media at the start of the five-day annual session Monday, Oct. 7, 2019, in Manila, Philippines. Current and former staffers have accused Kasai of racist, unethical and abusive behavior that has undermined the U.N. health agency’s efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic. The allegations were laid out in an internal complaint filed in October 2021 and an email in January 2022 sent by unidentified “concerned WHO staff” to senior leadership and the executive board. Kasai denies the charges. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez, File)

Current and former staffers have accused the top director of the World Health Organization in the Western Pacific of racist, unethical and abusive behavior that has undermined the U.N. health agency’s efforts to curb the coronavirus pandemic.

The allegations were laid out in an internal complaint filed in October and again in an email last week, sent by unidentified “concerned WHO staff” to senior leadership and the executive board and obtained by the Associated Press. Two of the authors said more than 30 staffers were involved in writing it, and that it reflected the experiences of more than 50 people.

The internal complaint and the email describe a “toxic atmosphere” with “a culture of systemic bullying and public ridiculing” at WHO’s Western Pacific headquarters in Manila, led by Dr. Takeshi Kasai, director of a vast region that includes China and his home country of Japan. The AP also has obtained recorded snippets of meetings where Kasai is heard making derogatory remarks about his staff based on nationality. Eleven former or current WHO staffers who worked for Kasai told the AP he frequently used racist language.

Staffers, who did not identify themselves to WHO “for fear of retaliation,” said in the email that Kasai’s authoritarian style has led to the departure of more than 55 key staff in the past year and a half, most of whom have not been replaced. This resulted in a lack of understanding and involvement with member countries that “significantly contributed” to a surge of cases in many countries in the region, they said. However, other WHO staffers pointed out that spikes in COVID cases were due to numerous reasons, including countries’ own resources and the timing of their national efforts.

The complaint and message also accused Kasai of improperly sharing potentially sensitive vaccine information with Japan, one of 37 countries in the region he leads.

In an email to the AP, Kasai denied allegations of racism and unethical behavior. He said that after receiving the email last week, he immediately took steps to communicate with all his staff.

“I ask a lot of myself, and our staff,” he said. “This has particularly been the case during the COVID-19 response. But it should not result in people feeling disrespected.”

Kasai said he was committed to making changes that would ensure “a positive work environment” for all WHO staff in the region. However, an internal WHO message seen by the AP shows that in a meeting last week, Kasai ordered all his senior directors and country representatives to “reject” the accusations made in the email and to “totally support” him.

Among the most damning claims is that Kasai made “racist and derogatory remarks to staff of certain nationalities.” The internal complaint filed to WHO alleges that Kasai once aggressively questioned a Filipino staffer during a coronavirus meeting, saying: “How many people in the Pacific have you killed so far and how many more do you want to kill further?” The complaint said he then asked “if she was incapable of delivering good presentations because she was Filipina.”

Several WHO officials present when the statements were made confirmed to the AP that the regional director has made numerous racist comments in meetings denigrating people from countries including China, the Philippines and Malaysia. They said the harassed staffers were sometimes driven to tears.

The email also said Kasai had blamed the rise in COVID cases in some countries on their “lack of capacity due to their inferior culture, race and socioeconomic level.” Three WHO staffers who were part of the agency’s coronavirus response team in Asia told the AP Kasai said repeatedly in meetings that the COVID response was hampered by “a lack of sufficiently educated people in the Pacific.”

Kasai rejected allegations that he had ever used racist language.

“It is true that I have been hard on staff, but I reject the suggestion that I have targeted staff of any particular nationality,” he said. “Racism goes against all of the principles and values I hold dear as a person….I believe deeply and sincerely in WHO’s mission to serve all countries and people.”

The claims add to a litany of internal protests from WHO personnel about the agency’s management of the pandemic during the last two years, including privately complaining about China’s delayed sharing of information while publicly praising the government. In their complaint, WHO staff admonished Kasai for “not daring to criticize the Chinese authorities” and failing to disclose what happened during a trip to Beijing to meet President Xi Jinping shortly after the coronavirus was identified in Wuhan.

“We request your urgent intervention to address our serious concerns...which is negatively impacting WHO’s performance to support (countries) in the region and WHO’s ability to function as an effective public health organization, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic,” the staffers wrote.

Kasai is a Japanese doctor who began his career in his country’s public health system before moving to WHO, where he has worked for more than 15 years. He is credited with developing the region’s response to emerging outbreaks after the SARS epidemic in 2003.

Lawrence Gostin, director of the WHO Collaborating Center on Public Health Law and Human Rights at Georgetown University, said he was in contact with many people at the office in the Western Pacific, and knew they felt battered during the pandemic.

“Dr. Kasai came into office with a good reputation, as a reasonably strong public health leader with his country’s support,” Gostin said. “But I was not surprised to hear these allegations.”

Gostin said racism in a WHO office at the center of the pandemic would be “unconscionable,” and that the allegations wounded WHO’s credibility and capacity to do what was needed during the pandemic.

“If you ever needed WHO and its key regional offices to be acting with a single voice, with a single purpose and with great energy, it would be now,” he said. “And the fact that the staff are so demoralized, feel so defeated, so humiliated and morale is so low, it hurts the pandemic response in the region.”

In the email, staffers accused Kasai of not respecting WHO’s own guidelines in the pandemic through a forced return to the office and to commutes during strict lockdown in Manila. In an internal email to staff from April 1, 2020, he said that three people on the Manila team had COVID but that “we must remain functional….This has meant keeping our country offices and the Regional office open to some level.” Some staffers were concerned that parts of the advice — including car-pooling with other staff and continuing to share desks — could put them at higher risk of catching COVID-19.

WHO staffers also alleged that Kasai abused his position to aid the Japanese government in COVID-19 vaccination planning by providing confidential data. Many countries expect WHO not to share details on sensitive issues like disease rates or vaccination unless they explicitly consent.

A WHO scientist who worked on COVID-19 vaccination in Asia told the AP that Kasai shared data with Japan so that the government could decide how to donate doses to its regional neighbors for a political advantage. The staffer, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said Kasai also pressured WHO personnel to prioritize vaccine donations from Japan over the U.N.-backed COVAX effort.

In his response to the AP, Kasai disputed that he had ever inappropriately shared information with Japan.

“At no time have I pressured staff to facilitate donations from Japan rather than COVAX,” he said. “The vast majority of Japan’s vaccine donations to other countries in the Western Pacific Region have been through the COVAX (effort.)”

Japan has donated about 2.5 million doses to countries in WHO’s Western Pacific region via COVAX since June, according to data this month from its Ministry of Foreign Affairs. By contrast, Japan has donated more than 11 million doses bilaterally over the same period to countries including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines.

WHO has dealt with internal complaints from staffers alleging systemic racism, sexism and other problems before; its director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ordered an internal probe in January 2019 to assess such allegations. Last year, the AP reported that senior WHO management was informed of multiple sexual abuse reports involving its own staffers during the Ebola outbreak in Congo, but failed to act.

The authors of the WHO email in the Western Pacific said most of them had “exhaustively” filed complaints through various WHO mechanisms, including its ombudsman, ethics hotline, staff association and office of internal oversight, but have not been informed of any investigation into their allegations.

Under WHO’s governance structure, regional directors are largely answerable only to the member countries that elect them and to the executive board that confirms their selection. Kasai was elected by member countries in the Western Pacific in 2019 and could run again next year.

WHO’s headquarters in Geneva said in an email that it was “aware of the allegations and is taking all appropriate steps to follow up on the matter.” Kasai said in a statement that he was “ready to cooperate fully with any process to investigate the concerns which have been raised.”

Kasai does not technically report to Tedros, but “all staffers are subject to the authority of the Director-General,” according to the agency’s staff rules. During a press briefing last April, Tedros praised Kasai as “my brother” and thanked him for “everything you continue to do to serve the people of the Western Pacific.”

At a virtual meeting this week, WHO’s executive board is slated to discuss issues including the ongoing response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Also on the agenda are various “management matters,” including the prevention of abuse and harassment and “increased efforts to address racism.”