Turkey battles forest fires for third day

Izmir (Turkey) (AFP) – Firefighters were battling a strong forest fire in Turkey's Aegean city of Izmir for a third day on Saturday, AFP reporters said, a day after hundreds of local people in nearby villages had to be evacuated.


Issued on: 17/08/2024

Firefighters battle a strong forest fire in Turkey's Aegean city of Izmir for a third day 

Firefighters said they had partially beaten back the flames that have been threatening the port city over the last three days, although fires were still burning in the nearby forests.

In the northern suburb of Ornekkoy, AFP journalists saw the charred remains of several buildings and vehicles in an industrial zone while grey smoke billowed into the sky.

"We don't know what to do. Our workplace is located in the middle of the fire. We have lost our livelihood," said 48-year-old Hanife Erbil, who earns a living collecting paper and plastic waste.

Firefighters battle a strong forest fire in Turkey's Aegean city of Izmir for a third day

The pine trees that once crowned the surrounding hills were also burned.

"It was such a beautiful route, it smelled of pine trees everywhere. It makes me want to cry," said taxi driver Ayhan.

The smell of smoke was hanging over the city, the third most-populated in Turkey.

Firefighters from other Turkish cities have been sent as reinforcements and the army has been mobilised.

"Everyone is working hard. I'm on my 36th hour of service. We can say the fire is partially under control," said Izmir firefighter Arjin Erol.

-Evacuations-

The fire started on Thursday and spread quickly to residential areas by winds blowing at 50 kilometres (30 miles) an hour.

Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said 900 residents in five affected districts had been evacuated Friday night in Izmir.

The fire in the western province of Izmir damages houses 

On Saturday, those villages remained empty for security reasons, except for a handful of volunteers who left food and water for animals living in the forest, AFP journalists saw.

Wild animals, cats and dogs died in the fire but no human victim has yet been reported.

The fire damaged 16 buildings and affected 78 people, with 29 of them admitted to hospital, the Turkish health ministry said.

"Currently, two planes and eleven helicopters are continuing to intervene," said Agriculture and Forestry Ministry Ibrahim Yumakli, after the strong winds had earlier grounded the helicopters and water bombers.

Residents of the city should not be worried, he added.

Four helicopters were dropping water on the flames throughout the day, backed by two planes, AFP journalists witnessed.

Around 1,600 hectares (3,900 acres) have been affected, the minister said, adding that the challenging terrain was making it difficult to put out the fire at its origin.

- Fresh flames-

Five other fires continue to rage in forest areas in other cities in Turkey, including northwestern Bolu and Aydin in the west.

And new fires broke out again in Izmir late on Saturday engulfing several districts including Bayindir and the popular holiday resort of Cesme, local mayor Cemil Tugay said on social media.

The authorities have controlled the fire in Cesme that lies across the Greek island of Chios, he said.

Officials said seven people were detained in Izmir over alleged links to the fire.

To come to the a

id of its regional ally, Azerbaijan has sent a water bomber plane, the Turkish presidency announced.

Scientists say climate change makes extreme weather events including heatwaves more likely, longer lasting and more intense, increasing the risk of wildfires.

In June, a fire that broke out in Mardin in southeastern Turkey claimed the lives of 15 people.

Observers ho

wever say Turkey has made progress since it was hit by the worst fires in its history in 2021.

At the time President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government was criticised for its failure to mobilise due to a lack of planes and helicopters.

PHOTO © Yasin AKGUL / AFP

© 2024 AFP

Thousands of wildfire evacuees return to Jasper, Canada

Agence France-Presse
August 17, 2024 

Smoke rises from a wildfire burning in Canada's Jasper National Park in July 2024, in a photo released by the park (Handout)

Thousands of residents who evacuated Jasper, a beloved tourist town in western Canada partly destroyed by a massive wildfire, were able to return Friday, authorities said.

Approximately 25,000 residents and tourists were forced to flee the area three weeks ago as the fire suddenly swelled, outpacing firefighters' capabilities.

"It will be long, it will be difficult," Mayor Richard Ireland said on social media Friday, adding that "we will rebuild, side by side, stronger than ever."

The fire, touched off by lightning strikes in the drought-stricken area, destroyed more than 350 of the 1,100 buildings in the town, which is home to some 5,000 people.

As of Thursday evening, the fire was estimated to be 33,000 hectares (13,400 acres) in size, the biggest in a century to hit vast Jasper National Park, which attracts some 2.5 million tourists a year.

The fire could burn for months more, authorities have warned, scorching a region known as one of Canada's natural gems, which is famed for its scenic mountains, lakes, waterfalls and glaciers.

Returning has proven difficult for some residents, who came home to discover their town scarred and defaced.

"As you enter into the town and see the fire residue, and everything around it, that is when it becomes emotional," Clara Adriano, whose business was destroyed, told public broadcaster CBC.

In total there are 104 active fires in the province of Alberta.

Canada's western region has been hard-hit by wildfires this summer.

Repeated heat waves and dry conditions, both likely linked to global climate change, are believed to be key factors, scientists say.

Venezuelan opposition, regime backers to hold rival protests


By AFP
August 17, 2024


Venezuelans in Mexico protest on August 10. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has called demonstrations Saturday for more than 300 cities in Venezuela and abroad - Copyright AFP/File ALFREDO ESTRELLA
Andrea TOSTA

Venezuela’s opposition and regime supporters will vie for the streets of Caracas Saturday in rival demonstrations amid a political crisis sparked by the election victory claimed by strongman Nicolas Maduro but widely rejected at home and abroad.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has called demonstrations for more than 300 cities in Venezuela and abroad, what she called a “Protest for the Truth.”

On Friday, she urged supporters to “keep up the fight.”

Anti-Maduro protests have claimed 25 lives so far, with nearly 200 injured and more than 2,400 arrested since the July 28 vote that both the president and opposition say they had won.

Machado, who had her presidential candidacy blocked by institutions loyal to Maduro, will be at the Caracas march despite having been largely in hiding since election day.

Maduro had called for Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who replaced her on the ballot, to be arrested. He accuses them of seeking to foment a “coup d’etat.”

Venezuela’s CNE electoral council proclaimed Maduro the winner of a third six-year term until 2031, giving him 52 percent of votes cast on July 28 but without providing a detailed breakdown of the results.

The opposition says polling station-level results show Gonzalez Urrutia took more than two-thirds of the vote.



– ‘Lies, repression, violence’ –



Maduro’s victory claim has been rejected by the United States, European Union and several Latin American countries.

Machado called in a live Instagram broadcast Friday for people to “keep up the fight” and stand strong against Maduro’s strategy of “demoralization” through “lies, repression, violence.”

Neighbors Colombia and Brazil on Thursday called for fresh elections in Venezuela, but Machado said this would show “a lack of respect” for the popular will already expressed on July 28.

On Friday, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, traditionally a leftist ally of Maduro, took a harsh tone, describing the regime in Caracas as “very unpleasant” as he insisted it release a detailed vote breakdown.

In a radio interview, Lula declined to label the Maduro government a dictatorship, but said it had an “authoritarian bias.”

The Organization of American States approved a resolution in Washington Friday urging Caracas to “expeditiously publish the presidential election records, including the voting results at the level of each polling station.”

And in a joint statement Friday, the European Union and 22 countries called for an “impartial verification” of the election outcome.



– Cyber ‘attack’ –



The CNE says it has been unable to release the results due to a “cyber terrorist attack” on its systems, though the Carter Center observer mission has said there was no evidence for such a claim.

The opposition, for its part, says it has had access to 80 percent of paper ballots cast, which show that Gonzalez Urrutia won handily.

The ruling “Chavista” movement, named after Maduro’s socialist predecessor Hugo Chavez, has also called demonstrations for Saturday in Caracas “in support of the victory” of the president in office since 2013.

Maduro has asked the Supreme Court, also said to be loyal to him, to “certify” the election result.

“Venezuela’s conflicts… are resolved among Venezuelans, with their institutions, with their law, with their Constitution,” he insisted on Thursday.

Maduro’s reelection to a second term in 2018 was also rejected as illegitimate by most Western and Latin American countries.

Trump's strategy on climate? Amplify myths about Harris

Washington (AFP) – An unrelentingly bitter US presidential race, defined by name-calling, attack ads and stunted campaigning, has so far left little space for discussion about climate change, despite the world experiencing unprecedented heat and disasters.

Issued on: 18/08/2024 -

US Vice President Kamala Harris at the COP28 United Nations climate summit in Dubai on December 2, 2023 © Karim SAHIB / AFP/File


But with Donald Trump now facing Kamala Harris rather than Joe Biden, the Republican has used recent rallies to echo misinformation and memes on X, including fictional bans on red meat and gas stoves.

The aim? To undermine Harris.

"Kamala called for slashing consumption of red meat to fight climate change," Trump said during a July 27 rally in the state of Minnesota.

The Democratic nominee would "get rid of all cows … and I guess that at some point, they'll go after the humans," the former president added, echoing "depopulation" conspiracy theories that have plagued Harris in right-wing spaces since she waded into the topic of "climate anxiety" among younger generations at a White House press conference last year.

J.D. Vance, Trump's running mate, amplified the claims in an August 3 speech in Atlanta, saying Harris "wants to take away your gas stoves, she even wants to take away your ability to eat red meat."

Such climate myths took on a life of their own on X, encouraged by conservative commentators in swing states and MAGA accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers.

However, Harris made no such campaign promise.

She has cooked with a gas stove herself and noted in a 2019 environmental panel that she "love(s) cheeseburgers from time to time," although she has supported the idea of updating dietary guidelines.

"A tried-and-true tactic in politics is to misrepresent your opponent's positions to make them sound extreme and unacceptable. Trump and Vance are doing exactly that with Vice President Harris's positions on climate action," said Edward Maibach, director of George Mason University's Center for Climate Change Communication.
Harris's climate record

The false narratives add onto Trump and Vance's criticism of the vice president's stance on issues such as fracking, a violently disruptive underground oil and gas extraction technique.

Harris initially advocated banning the practice in 2019 before becoming Biden's running mate in 2020. She has more recently sought to avoid questions about it, particularly in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania where fracking is big business.

Still, climate activists have mostly saluted Harris, whose environmental stance has historically been to the left of the president -- notably in going after oil companies as California attorney general.

The Biden administration also pushed a renewable energy shift in passing the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment in reducing carbon pollution in US history.

A supporter holds up a sign as former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump leaves after casting his vote in Florida's primary election on August 14, 2024 in West Palm Beach, Florida © CHANDAN KHANNA / AFP

Trump has vehemently opposed the legislation, adopting the slogan "drill, baby, drill" to sum up his fossil fuel-friendly approach.

The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental advocacy group, told AFP the Trump campaign's amplification of misinformation on "widespread bans" constitutes "ridiculous scare tactics" perpetrated to undermine recent "climate progress."
Potential to 'backfire'

Responding to AFP's request for comment, Harris spokeswoman Lauren Hitt did not address specific claims from Trump and his running mate, but said the Democrat "is focused on a future where all Americans have clean air, clean water, and affordable, reliable energy."

Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly dismissed the threats of climate change.

"The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 400 years," he told Elon Musk on X in mid-August. Musk officially endorsed Trump in July.

More than a third of registered voters disagree, saying global warming is very important to their vote in the 2024 election, according to a recent survey from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

"I suspect the tactic will backfire with a relatively smaller number of uncommitted voters, most of whom are concerned about climate change," Maibach said.

"Trump and Vance attacking VP Harris on her climate positions will hurt them more than help them."

© 2024 AFP

Harris in campaign dash before protest-shadowed convention


By AFP
August 18, 2024 

A Chicago police officer photographs people posing before a mural of US Vice President Kamala Harris outside the United Center ahead of the Democratic National Convention - Copyright AFP Charly TRIBALLEAU

Danny KEMP

Kamala Harris takes her surging US presidential campaign on a battleground bus tour Sunday, before heading to the Democratic National Convention for a star turn that will be shadowed by protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The vice president, riding a wave of enthusiasm after replacing President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket less than a month ago, will dash to the swing state of Pennsylvania to push her case against Republican rival Donald Trump.

Then the 59-year-old will jet to Chicago for a rapturous reception from Democrats, who have dared to hope again after an astonishing turnaround which has seen Harris wipe out Trump’s lead in the polls.

Security will however be tight with tens of thousands of protesters expected to rally from Sunday and then on every day of the convention against the Biden-Harris administration’s support for Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza.

The demonstrations are expected to begin on Sunday and continue on Thursday, with major gatherings scheduled for Monday and Wednesday in particular.

The four-day Democratic bonanza comes hot on the heels of one of the most tumultuous election cycles in memory, including an assassination attempt on Trump and the 81-year-old Biden’s stunning withdrawal.

The 78-year-old Trump has struggled to adapt to a shake-up which has suddenly made him, instead of Biden, the oldest presidential candidate in US history.

Trump has lashed out at Harris with increasingly bizarre personal insults despite appeals by Republicans to stick to the issues.

As he too headed to Pennsylvania for a rally on Saturday, the former president doubled down on his confrontational style, saying that he was “much better looking” than Harris and branding her a “lunatic.”

Pennsylvania, in the US rust belt, is perhaps the most prized of all the swing states that could define the 2024 race and the candidates are making repeated visits there.

New Democratic standard-bearer Harris was squeezing in some crucial campaigning with running mate Tim Walz on Sunday, launching a bus tour from Pittsburgh before making multiple stops across western Pennsylvania to woo blue-collar voters.



– ‘Decency and dignity’ –



All eyes will turn on Monday to the Chicago convention, which is Harris’s big chance to tell her story to an American public that is still getting to know the candidate after her rapid rise from being merely Biden’s vice president.

Harris is due to speak on the final day on Thursday, but CNN reported that she will also appear on stage with Biden when he gives his speech on Monday, in a show of unity despite the president’s new lame-duck status.

The ageing president is reportedly still frustrated by the way Democrats pushed him out after a catastrophic debate performance against Trump in June.

But Biden is expected to focus on passing the torch and on the threat to democracy posed by Trump as he seeks to cement his legacy by helping his vice president to victory.

He will be backing the new nominee as well as trumpeting his own administration’s successes in recovering from the Covid pandemic and “restoring decency and dignity to the White House,” the campaign said.

Biden will “make the case for Vice President Kamala Harris” and “highlight the stakes of the election for all Americans,” it added.

First Lady Jill Biden will also take to the stage on Monday, while former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama are also expected to appear during the week along with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Taking the stage on Wednesday will be Harris’s vice presidential pick Walz, the folksy Minnesota governor who has made his name with attacks on the “weird” Trump and his running mate Vance.

Midway through the convention Harris and Walz will break off to campaign in Milwaukee in Wisconsin, another battleground state, before returning to Chicago — reportedly for a speech by Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff.

Canada remembers Harris as a homesick student who loved to dance

Agence France-Presse
August 17, 2024 

In this undated yearbook photo released by the Westmount High School, US presidential candidate Kamala Harris said her favorite pastime during her teen years spent in Montreal was dancing (AFP)

Kamala Harris spent her adolescence in Montreal often pining for her California hometown, but former Canadian classmates remember the American presidential candidate as an outgoing student with a big smile, who loved dancing.

It was in 1976 at the age of 12 that the vice president and Democratic candidate in this year's US presidential race discovered the harsh, cold winters of Canada's second largest city.

Her divorced mother uprooted her and her sister Maya from their California hometown of Oakland to take a job researching cancer at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital.

"The thought of moving away from sunny California in February, in the middle of the school year, to a French-speaking foreign city covered in twelve feet of snow was distressing, to say the least," Harris recounted in her 2019 memoir.

The first woman, first African-American and first Asian-American to become vice president of the United States, Harris has said little about her years in Canada and her biography on the White House website does not even mention them.

Although she didn't speak French when she arrived in Montreal, her mother insisted on enrolling her in a French-language school. After struggling to pick up French, she transferred to a bilingual school with artistic and musical programs and then to Westmount High School, an English-language public high school, where she graduated in 1981.

- A diverse public school -

Harris was "very friendly, very outgoing. Nice to everybody," former classmate Anu Chopra Sharma told AFP, describing her friend as a bright student who took the time to help others.

"We all had a tough time with French, because we weren't native French speakers," she commented.

French is spoken by the majority in the province, but in the 1970s and 1980s tensions between English and French speakers peaked as a Quebec nationalist identity tied to the language of Moliere took shape -- marked by two failed referendums on Quebec independence.

Westmount High School, located in a wealthy and English-speaking borough of Montreal, accepted students from nearby neighborhoods and so "a lot of the kids were working class," said former art teacher Mara Rudzitis.

The student body was also ethnically diverse, drawing from Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani and Chinese immigrant communities.


- 'Always had stuff to say' -

Active and very sociable, Harris, now 59, was at the time a member of various clubs and participated in a school fashion show.

As a young girl, born to a Jamaican father and an Indian mother, she found sisterhood in disco dance troupes "Super Six" and "Midnight Magic," according to a school yearbook.

Old photos show Harris and fellow dancers in glittery costumes busting a move.

"She was always smiling, laughing, as you see her today. She was getting along with anybody," said her friend Dean Smith.

Rudzitis remembers a "very smart" teenager with a lot of friends, who loved learning and spending time in the art room during lunch breaks.

She was eloquent and "always had stuff to say," she added, delighted to see her former student aspire to the presidency of the United States.

It was also during her years in Canada that she decided on a career as a prosecutor, eventually working her way up to district attorney of California.

"When I was in high school, I had a best friend who I learned was being molested," Harris recounted in a September 2020 campaign video. "A big part of the reason I wanted to be a prosecutor was to protect people like her."

Her friend Wanda Kagan had stayed with Harris's family for several months after revealing she had been abused by her stepfather.

While Harris appeared to have made the best of her time in Canada, she admitted in her memoir to feeling "homesick" for the United States. "I felt this constant sense of yearning to be back home," she said.

Once she had completed her Canadian studies, she returned to the United States, where she attended Howard University from 1982, a historically black school in Washington that has been called the "Black Harvard."

Indian doctors stage nationwide strike over colleague’s murder

By AFP
August 17, 2024

Nurses in the Indian city of Chandigarh took part in a candlelight vigil to condemn the rape and murder of a doctor in Kolkata - Copyright AFP -
Arunabh SAIKIA and Sailendra SIL in Kolkata

Indian doctors launched a nationwide strike Saturday, escalating protests after the “barbaric” rape and murder of their colleague that has channelled outrage at the chronic issue of violence against women.

The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied body on August 9 at a state-run hospital in the eastern city of Kolkata sparked furious protests in several cities across the country.

Many have been led by doctors and other healthcare workers, but also joined by tens of thousands of ordinary Indians demanding action.

In Kolkata, thousands held a candle-lit vigil into the early hours of Saturday morning.

“Hands that heal shouldn’t bleed,” one handwritten sign held by a protester in the eastern city read.

“Enough is enough,” another read, at a rally by doctors in the capital New Delhi.

The murdered doctor was found in the teaching hospital’s seminar hall, suggesting she had gone there for a rest during a 36-hour shift.

An autopsy confirmed sexual assault, and in a petition to the court, the victim’s parents said they suspected their daughter was gang-raped.



– ‘Struggle for justice’ –



Those in government hospitals across several states on Monday halted elective services “indefinitely”, with multiple medical unions in both government and private systems backing the strikes.

On Saturday morning, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) escalated protests with a 24-hour “nationwide withdrawal of services”, and the suspension of all non-essential procedures.

“We ask for the understanding and support of the nation in this struggle for justice for its doctors and daughters,” IMA chief R.V. Asokan said, in a statement ahead of the strike.

The IMA called the killing “barbaric”.

“The 36-hour duty shift that the victim was in and the lack of safe spaces to rest… warrant a thorough overhaul of the working and living conditions of the resident doctors,” IMA said in a statement.

Doctors are demanding the implementation of the Central Protection Act, a bill to protect healthcare workers from violence.

Members of the wider public have also marched in several cities this week, including at a candlelight midnight rally in Kolkata that coincided with the start of India’s independence day celebrations on Thursday.

Sexual violence against women is a widespread problem in India — an average of nearly 90 rapes a day were reported in 2022 in the country of 1.4 billion people.

For many, the gruesome nature of the hospital attack has invoked comparisons with the horrific 2012 gang rape and murder of a young woman on a Delhi bus.

That woman became a symbol of the socially conservative country’s failure to tackle sexual violence against women.

Her death sparked huge, and at times violent, demonstrations in Delhi and elsewhere.

Smartphone app helps to lower cholera risk


ByDr. Tim Sandle
August 16, 2024
DIGITAL JOURNAL 

Bangladeshi scientist Firdausi Qadri won the Ramon Magsaysay Award - 'Asia's Nobel Prize - for her work on creating more affordable cholera and typhoid vaccines - Copyright AFP/File MUNIR UZ ZAMAN

The seventh cholera pandemic, which began in 1961, continues to this day. The pandemic has annually afflicted millions and claimed tens of thousands of lives. Recognized by the World Health Organization as the longest-lasting pandemic in history, cholera spreads through contamination of household water sources by the Vibrio cholerae bacterium, often from poor sanitation infrastructure.

In nations such as Bangladesh, where cholera is endemic due to high population density and inadequate access to clean water and sanitation facilities, the disease poses a significant public health risk.

Some scientists take the view that for high-risk populations, providing these areas with an early warning system for local cholera risks can be beneficial for health management. This includes measures like encouraging households to adopt safer water, sanitation, and hygiene practices, thereby reducing susceptibility to cholera infection.

Supported, in part, by NASA and administrated by Resources for the Future, Kevin Boyle and colleagues from Moravian University, Penn State, and the University of Rhode Island have assessed the feasibility of implementing a smartphone app designed to convey cholera risk forecasts to households to mitigate the threat of cholera in Bangladesh. This forms part of early warning measures.

The research is titled “Early warning systems, mobile technology, and cholera aversion: Evidence from rural Bangladesh,” and it appears in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

For the research, the team developed CholeraMap, an Android-based smartphone application that conveys cholera risk forecasts to households. The app enables users to access risk predictions – from low to medium to high – for both their community and individual home locations.

The app also offered guidance on understanding the cholera threat associated with their household locations and provided essential public health information to reduce cholera exposure

.

Boys fish in a Malawi river in February 2023 in an area highly affected by a cholera outbreak due to scarce access to clean drinking water – Copyright AFP/File Muhammad FAROOQ

This type of reporting is useful since cholera risk is seasonal, changing weather patterns make historical cholera risk predictions less dependable, indicating a need for predictive models. Environmental scientists worked on a predictive model for monthly cholera risk in Bangladesh. The researchers proceeded to investigated how to best communicate these predictions directly to vulnerable populations.

To develop the cholera threat model, the scientists utilized remote sensing data such as rainfall observations, anomalies, forecasts, temperature, and elevation as well as data on population density and past cholera incidence. This model was then calibrated for Matlab, a rural sub-district of Bangladesh.

To test out the software, the CholeraMap application was installed on the smartphones of approximately 750 households across Matlab. Another 750 households received a companion app – CholeraApp – which provided publicly available information about preventing cholera. Finally, as a control, 500 households that did not receive access to either app were tracked.

Children in Mpape community play in a waste water drainage area. This drainage was the suspected source of contamination of the well water that led to the cholera outbreak investigated by Nigeria FELTP residents in April 2014. Image – CDC Global, photo by Amibola Aman-Oloniyo – Nigeria / via Wikimedia (CC SA 2.0)

To assess the impacts of CholeraMap on household behaviours and health, the researchers conducted surveys among the participating households before and after the application’s installation. The respondents were asked about their households’ water use, sanitation and hygiene practices, recent health experiences, water security, and their experiences using CholeraMap.

The scientists discovered that households using smartphone apps decreased their dependency on surface water, a significant source of cholera transmission. Surface water serves as a crucial water source in Matlab, especially for activities such as laundry, dishwashing, and bathing. By minimizing their reliance on surface water, households using CholeraMap were lowering their risk of contracting the disease through proactive measures.

The analysis, overall, appears to demonstrate that everyday people will respond and act in their own interests when presented with better health-related information.

Read more: https://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-science/smartphone-app-helps-to-lower-cholera-risk/article#ixzz8jEeVniim

'Dizzying conflict of interest': Taliban reportedly owes Trump building more than $200,000

David McAfee
August 17, 2024 

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 5: U.S. President Donald Trump (C), national security advisor H.R. McMaster (L), White House chief of staff John Kelly (2nd L) and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (R) attend a briefing with senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House October 5, 2017 in Washington, D.C. Mattis said this week that the U.S. and allies are "holding the line" against the Taliban in Afghanistan as forecasts of a significant offensive by the militants remain unfulfilled. (Photo by Andrew Harrer-Pool/Getty Images)

When the Taliban took over in Afghanistan in 2021, the Middle Eastern nation stopped making payments to one of Donald Trump's buildings, leading to a potential conflict of interest if the ex-president were to win another term, a watchdog reported.

Former federal corruption prosecutor Noah Bookbinder flagged the report from watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington Saturday.

"We found that Afghanistan owes Trump World Tower over $200,000, highlighting the potential national security risks and Emoluments Clause violations if Donald Trump serves in government again and fails to divest from his businesses," said Bookbinder, who serves as president of CREW.

According to the report, "The government of Afghanistan owes Donald Trump’s Trump World Tower more than $200,000, according to a property lien filed last week with the New York City Department of Finance." It continues: "The debt relates to unpaid charges for a unit in the building across the street from the United Nations, which is popular with foreign governments."

The watchdog notes that, "Afghanistan has not paid for common charges and other fees in the building since March 2022, resulting in a debt of $219,914.75." It adds that, "They do not appear to have missed payments while Trump served as president, but started to miss payments after the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan."

CREW also summarizes how the country bought the unit in Trump World Tower for $4.2 million in 2009, and explains past troubles associated with the tower and its board.

"Donald Trump owns a building and controls a condo board that is owed hundreds of thousands of dollars by a foreign government as he seeks to become president again. This represents a dizzying conflict of interest. Problematic as it is for Trump to make money from foreign governments, a debt raises the possibility Trump could use the power of the presidency to pursue collection, or seek retaliation," the report concludes. "Trump’s foreign entanglements are potential Emoluments Clause violations and national security threats if he serves in government again. Afghanistan’s large debt to Trump World Tower is case in point."

Read the report here.

 UK

Learning the right lessons to rescue our struggling NHS

15th August 2024Leave a Commenton Learning the right lessons to rescue our struggling NHS

“Rather than repeating the errors of 20 years ago, Labour should show real courage, and follow the examples of Attlee and Bevan who built the NHS… rather than Alan Milburn and Paul Corrigan who wasted millions trying to turn the NHS into a market.”

By John Lister

Rachel Reeves’ theatrical revelation of the black hole in government finances last month, and announcement of the projects including hospital buildings that would be axed, with more misery to come in her autumn budget, were a sorry follow-up to Labour’s electoral triumph.

Despite a massive parliamentary majority, and a clear majority of votes cast for parties promising progressive change, it seems the new government is determined to echo the Tories’ grim commitment to austerity for most of us, while allowing the super-rich and corporations to get even richer in the hopes that this will create economic “growth”.

If they stick to this position, they will inevitably fail to deliver on the manifesto and election speech promises to fix what Wes Streeting has described as our “broken” NHS.

Despite Reeve’s antics there were plenty of advance warnings issued on the scale of underfunding of the NHS in the months running up to Labour’s first election victory since 2005.

A year ago when Labour’s Mission Statement on the NHS was published, Health Foundation policy chief Hugh Alderwick argued:

“The elephant in the room is money. Labour’s narrative is that reform will need to do “the heavy lifting” to improve the NHS […]  No amount of reform will avoid the need for substantial investment for Starmer’s Labour to make real progress.”

Any doubts that government coffers have been emptied out were dispelled by Jeremy Hunt’s spring budget, which again prioritised tax cuts and cuts in National Insurance over public services.

In March, the Health Service Journal warned that the budget squeeze meant NHS organisations were facing intense pressure to cut staffing numbers, with “horrible” conversations on service cuts taking place among NHS bosses.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) also pointed out that NHS spending (after adjustment for inflation) would be £2 billion (1.2%) lower in 2024-25 than the £168.2bn in 2023-24, the largest real terms cut in spending since the 1970s.

But the pressures are growing. The latest figures show the scale of the problems in emergency care, elective care, community services, mental health, and of course general practice, with many GPs now taking industrial action in protest at a below inflation increase in funding. To make matters worse, hospitals are crumbling for lack of maintenance and RAAC-riddled hospitals could fall down at any time. Investment is needed to repair as well as expand.

Today’s Labour politicians need to look back to learn some key lessons from history, and times when the future of the NHS has been based on vision and courage.

BMA analysis of NHS spending since 2010 (which has been below the previous long term average)  has shown a cumulative under-spend of £362 billion – a gap far larger and created much faster than the £200-267 billion ‘under-spending’ over 25 years revealed in 2001 in the report by former NatWest boss Derek Wanless for Chancellor Gordon Brown.

It was Labour’s boldness in reversing this underinvestment with ten years of increases aimed at raising spending towards European average levels – not the half-baked, expensive ‘reforms’ (which spawned a fresh growth in an otherwise irrelevant private sector) – that played the key role in turning the tide and improving the NHS from 2000.

By contrast, in 1948 it was the bold step of nationalising the post-war mish-mash of (largely bankrupt) voluntary and municipal hospitals to form the NHS that was decisive. 1,143 voluntary hospitals (90,000 beds) and 1,545 municipal hospitals (390,000 beds) were taken over by the NHS in England and Wales. This laid the basis to get hospitals working together and build a national system.

A nationalised system made it possible for the first time to plan and allocate resources where they were needed, and to create a national system of education and training for doctors and nurses, and a career structure for doctors.

But courage was also needed on funding in the first few years of the NHS. Nobody had known how much a public system was likely to cost, but promises had been made that everything would be provided free of charge.

Before the war the partial insurance system had brought an extremely low percentage (1.8%) of national wealth invested in health and welfare. On this basis in 1946 the cost of running the new NHS was estimated at £110 million per year: by the end of 1947 this estimate had increased to £179m. But the first part-year (from July 1948) cost £328 million, and the first full year £372m – more than double the 1947 estimate.

If Clement Attlee’s government had not had the courage of its convictions, and found the extra money in a time of extreme economic pressure, the NHS could have been starved of basic funding and failed from the outset, and we would never have seen its full potential.

Today’s Labour leaders have a very different view of courage. Rachel Reeves believes she is being bold by refusing to tax the super-rich, or the super-profits of energy companies or tax dodging corporations, but instead cutting back on winter fuel allowance for pensioners, and refusing to spend more on health, social care, or welfare.

Wes Streeting’s idea of courage has been to stand aloof from the trade unions and from campaigners that have battled for the past 14 years and more to defend the NHS against cutbacks and privatisation, talk mainly to the right wing press, and wheel in a few veterans of the Blair years whose ideas were expensive failures.

Streeting insists above all that the NHS does not need more funding, but does need ‘reforms,’ and that we need to sink more NHS money, not into expanding the NHS to cope with the growing caseload, but into purchasing ‘spare capacity’ from the private sector.

In reality it’s far from clear there is anything like the amount of ‘spare’ capacity he imagines, or that the private sector wants to fill its beds with less profitable NHS patients.

The Spire chain of private hospitals have openly said they are not interested: they have plenty of work. But of course, if they did take on the extra work they would need to poach more staff from the limited pool of qualified professionals – hampering the NHS.

Rather than repeating the errors of 20 years ago, Labour should show real courage, and follow the examples of Attlee and Bevan who built the NHS – and raised the money to pay for it – rather than Alan Milburn, and Paul Corrigan who wasted millions trying to turn the NHS into a market.

Labour will never have a stronger base for bold action, to get the wealthy few to pay their fair share of tax to ensure the millions can access the health care they need, and ensure a bigger, strengthened NHS contributes to a stronger economy.

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• John Lister is a founding member of Keep Our NHS Public and co-editor of The Lowdown. You can follow him on Twitter here; read The Lowdown here; and follow Keep Our NHS Public on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. 
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