It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
EXPLAINER: Is Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano going to erupt again?
By AUDREY McAVOY This Aug. 13, 2021 photograph provided by the U.S. Geological Survey shows the crater of Kilauea volcano on Hawaii's Big Island in Hawaii National Park, Hawaii. Geologists on Tuesday, Aug. 24 said they had detected a swarm of earthquakes at the volcano, though it is not erupting. (Drew Downs/U.S. Geological Survey via AP)
HONOLULU (AP) — The ground at the summit of Kilauea volcano in Hawaii has been rumbling and swelling in recent days, prompting scientists to warn that the mountain could once again disgorge lava. But there’s no indication an eruption is imminent. The volcano, which is among the world’s most active, has behaved similarly in the past without any magma breaking the surface.
Here’s an overview of the latest developments at Kilauea:
WHAT ACTIVITY ARE SCIENTISTS SEEING?
Scientists at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory on Monday noticed a surge of earthquakes and the ground swelling at the southern part of the crater at Kilauea’s summit. There are indications magma is shifting about a half-mile to a mile (1 to 2 kilometers) below the surface.
It’s not uncommon for Kilauea to have earthquakes, which could indicate rocks are moving. It’s also not unusual for the ground to swell as the heat from the sun and saturation from rain can cause the ground to expand and contract.
However, earthquakes and ground swelling at the same time may indicate magma is on the move.
“We get a lot of earthquakes here and we get a lot of deformation here, but the combination of the two makes us much more aware,” said Jefferson Chang, a geophysicist at the observatory, which is part of the U.S. Geological Survey.
There have been hundreds of earthquakes since Monday, striking as often as 25 times an hour. The strongest measured magnitude 3, with most coming in between magnitude 1 and 2 At these levels, the quakes are generally too small for people to notice. Chang said there haven’t been any reports of people feeling them. WHERE IS THE ACTIVITY HAPPENING?
It’s occurring at the summit of Kilauea volcano, an uninhabited area within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island. This is about 200 miles southeast of Honolulu, which is on a different island called Oahu
The site is miles from the nearest town. The park has close off this part of the summit to the public since 2008.
Ben Hayes, the park’s interpretation and education program manager, said the park is preparing for a potential eruption, but he said there’s nothing to be alarmed about. “It’s a natural process at one of the world’s most active volcanoes,” he said. HAS THIS HAPPENED BEFORE?
Chang said scientists observed activity in the same part of the summit in 2015. That episode lasted three days, and the volcano didn’t erupt. Just like this time, the ground swelled. One difference is that there were more earthquakes then.
The last time Kilauea erupted at the southern part of its caldera or crater was in 1974.
WHAT’S THE CURRENT SITUATION?
The earthquake swarm stopped about 4:30 a.m. Monday. The ground swelling has also subsided. But the activity could return. Chang said sometimes there’s a lull in activity lasting a day or two. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO CHANGE THE ALERT LEVEL?
The observatory changed Kilauea’s volcano alert level to watch from advisory on Tuesday, meaning the mountain was showing heighted unrest with increased potential to erupt.
But scientists don’t know when that eruption may occur, if it does. If scientists believe a hazardous eruption is imminent, they will change the alert level to warning.
The observatory also changed the aviation color code to “orange,” alerting pilots that there’s potential for an eruption and they may need to avoid the area if one occurs. HOW OFTEN HAS KILAUEA ERUPTED BEFORE?
Hawaiian chants and stories tell the stories of countless eruptions. In Hawaiian tradition, Kilauea is home to the volcano goddess Pele.
Kilauea has erupted 34 times since 1952. From 1983 to 2018, it erupted almost continuously, in some cases sending streams of lava that covered farms and homes. At the end of this decades-long eruption, Kilauea spewed lava from vents in a residential neighborhood on its eastern flank and destroyed more than 700 homes.
In December, Kilauea erupted at the crater, creating a lake with enough lava to fill 10 Hoover dams. That eruption ended in May.
WILDFIRES USA
Crews struggle to stop fire bearing down on Lake Tahoe
1 of 18 Smoke from the Caldor Fire, shrouds Fallen Leaf Lake near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2021. The massive wildfire, that is over a week old, has scorched more than 190 square miles, (492 square kilometers) and destroyed hundreds of homes since Aug. 14. It is now less than 20 miles from Lake Tahoe. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. (AP) — A Northern California fire that gutted hundreds of homes advanced toward Lake Tahoe on Wednesday as thousands of firefighters tried to box in the flames, and a thick yellow haze of the nation’s worst air enveloped tourists.
In Southern California, at least a dozen homes and outbuildings were damaged or destroyed after a fire broke out Wednesday afternoon and quickly ran through tinder-dry brush in mountains northeast of Los Angeles. Evacuations were ordered for about 1,000 people.
Crews mounted an air attack to keep the South Fire from the tiny communities of Lytle Creek and Scotland near the Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County. By nightfall, the fire appeared to be mostly contained.
To the north, a new fire erupted in the Sierra Nevada foothills and quickly burned at least 1,000 acres of land near New Melones Lake in Calaveras County, prompting evacuations.
Meanwhile, the Caldor Fire spread to within 20 miles (32 kilometers) southwest of Lake Tahoe, eating its way through rugged timberlands and “knocking on the door” of the basin that straddles the California-Nevada state line, California’s state fire chief Thom Porter warned this week.
Ash rained down and tourists ducked into cafes, outdoor gear shops and casinos on Lake Tahoe Boulevard for a respite from the unhealthy air.
South Lake Tahoe and Tahoe City on the west shore had the nation’s worst air pollution at midmorning Wednesday, reaching 334, in the “hazardous” category of the 0-500 Air Quality Index, according to AirNow, a partnership of federal, state and local air agencies.
South of Tahoe, Rick Nelson and his wife, Diane, had planned to host a weekend wedding at Fallen Leaf Lake, where his daughter and her fiance had met. However, the smoke caused most of the community to leave. The sun was an eerie blood orange, and the floats and boats in the lake were obscured by haze Tuesday.
In the end, the Nelsons spent two days arranging to have the wedding moved from the glacial lake several hours southwest to the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Everybody’s trying to make accommodations for the smoke. And I think it’s becoming a reality for us, unfortunately,” Diane Nelson said. “I just think that the smoke and the fires have gotten bigger, hotter and faster-moving.”
Climate change has made the West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Although there were no evacuations ordered for Lake Tahoe, it was impossible to ignore a blanket of haze so thick and vast that it closed schools for two days in Reno, Nevada, which is about 60 miles (100 kilometers) from the fire.
Lake Tahoe's Emerald Bay is shrouded in smoke from the Caldor Fire, near South Lake Tahoe, Calif., Tuesday, Aug. 24, 2021. The massive wildfire, that is over a week old, has scorched more than 190 square miles, (492 square kilometers) and destroyed hundreds of homes since Aug. 14. It is now less than 20 miles from Lake Tahoe.
(AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli)
The school district that includes Reno reopened most schools on Wednesday, citing improved air quality conditions. However, the Washoe County School District’s schools in Incline Village on the north shore of Lake Tahoe remained closed, the district said in a statement.
The Caldor fire has scorched more than 197 square miles (510 square kilometers) and destroyed at least 461 homes since Aug. 14 in the Sierra Nevada southwest of the lake. It was 11% contained and threatened more than 17,000 structures.
The western side of the blaze continued to threaten more than a dozen small communities and wineries. On the fire’s eastern side, crews bulldozed fire lines, opened up narrow logging roads and cleared ridgetops in hopes of stopping its advance, fire officials said.
More than 2,500 firefighters were on the line and more resources were streaming in, including big firefighting aircraft, fire officials said.
Meanwhile, California’s Dixie Fire, the second-largest in state history at 1,148 square miles (2,973 square kilometers), was burning only about 65 miles (104 kilometers) to the north. New evacuations were ordered after winds pushed the blaze to the northeast on Wednesday, as flames crossed State Route 44 and headed toward campgrounds near Eagle Lake.
The Dixie Fire, which broke out July 13, was 43% contained. At least 682 homes were among more than 1,270 buildings that have been destroyed.
Smoke rises from the mountains as the South fire burns in San Bernardino County north of Rialto, Calif., seen from Fontana, Calif., Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021. In Southern California, an unknown number of remote homes and outbuildings burned after a fire broke out Wednesday afternoon and quickly ran through tinder-dry brush in mountains northeast of Los Angeles. Evacuations were ordered, and crews mounted an air attack to keep the South Fire from the tiny communities of Lytle Creek and Scotland near the Cajon Pass in San Bernardino County. (AP Photo/Ringo Chiu)
In the southern Sierra Nevada, there was growing concern after the French Fire expanded near Lake Isabella, a popular fishing and boating destination.
“The fire really made a big push and put up a huge column of smoke,” fire spokesman Alex Olow said Wednesday. Because flames were still active, assessment teams have been unable to get into neighborhoods to see if any homes were damaged, he said.
About 10 communities were under evacuation orders. The fire has blackened 32 square miles (83 square kilometers) since Aug. 18.
Nationally, 92 large fires were burning in a dozen mainly Western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
Northern California has experienced a series of disastrous blazes that have burned hundreds of homes, and many remain uncontained.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden declared that a major disaster exists in California and ordered federal aid made available to local governments, agencies and fire victims in four northern counties ravaged by blazes dating back to July 14.
California wildfire dangers may be spreading south
A firefighter tries to extinguish the flames at a burning house as the South Fire burns in Lytle Creek, San Bernardino County, north of Rialto, Calif., Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2021. (AP Photo/Ringo H.W. Chiu)
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A wildfire that burned several homes near Los Angeles may signal that the region is facing the same dangers that have scorched Northern California.
The fire in San Bernardino County erupted Wednesday afternoon, quickly burned several hundred acres and damaged or destroyed at least a dozen homes and outbuildings in the foothills northeast of LA, fire officials said. Crews used shovels and bulldozers and mounted an air attack to keep the South Fire from the tiny communities of Lytle Creek and Scotland near the Cajon Pass.
Some 600 homes and other buildings were threatened along with power transmission lines, and 1,000 residents were under evacuation orders.
By nightfall, firefighters appeared to have gained the upper hand and few flames were to be seen. But the blaze was worrying because Southern California’s high fire season is typically later in the year when strong, dry Santa Ana winds blast out of the interior and flow toward the coast.
After a few cooler days, the southern region was expected to see a return of hot weather heading into the weekend. In addition to dangerously dry conditions, the region is faced with firefighting staffing that is increasingly stretched thin, said Lyn Sieliet, spokeswoman for the San Bernardino National Forest.
“Some of our firefighters that we normally have on our forests are working on fires in Northern California, or Idaho and Washington,” she told KTLA-TV. “We don’t have the full staff that we normally do.”
The largest fires in the state and in the nation were in Northern California, where they have burned down small mountain towns and destroyed huge swaths of tinder-dry forest.
The Caldor Fire destroyed some 500 homes since Aug. 14 in the Sierra Nevada southwest of Lake Tahoe, including much of the tiny hamlet of Grizzly Flats. It was 12% contained and threatened more than 17,000 structures.
Buck Minitch, a firefighter with the Pioneer Fire Protection District, was called to the fire lines last week while his wife fled their Grizzly Flats home with their two daughters, three dogs, a kitten and duffel bag of clothes, the San Jose Mercury News reported.
Hannah Minitch evacuated to her parents’ property and the next morning received a text from her husband showing only a chimney where their house once stood. The two briefly wept together during a telephone call before he got back to work.
“‘We’ve got nothing left here,’” she recalled him saying. “‘I’ve got to go protect what’s left for other people.’”
At times the wind-driven fire was burning 1,000 acres of land per hour and on Wednesday it was less than two dozen miles from Lake Tahoe, an alpine vacation and tourist spot that straddles the California-Nevada state line.
There weren’t any evacuations in Tahoe but the fire continued to cast a sickly yellow pall of smoke over the scenic region.
South Lake Tahoe and Tahoe City on the west shore had the nation’s worst air pollution at midmorning Wednesday, according to AirNow, a partnership of federal, state and local air agencies.
Meanwhile, California’s Dixie Fire, the second-largest in state history at 1,160 square miles (3,004 square kilometers), was burning only about 65 miles (104 kilometers) to the north. It was 45% contained. Some 700 homes were among nearly 1,300 buildings that have been destroyed.
In the southern Sierra Nevada, there was growing concern as the French Fire expanded near Lake Isabella, a popular fishing and boating destination. About 10 communities were under evacuation orders. The fire has blackened 32 square miles (83 square kilometers) since Aug. 18.
Smoke from the fires had fouled air farther south. The South Coast Air Quality Management District issued an advisory through Thursday morning for large portions of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Nationally, 92 large fires were burning in 13 mainly Western states, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
Climate change has made the West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.
Gaps in wildfire smoke warning network leave people exposed
Smoke that has traveled from wildfires in Montana and the Western U.S., covers the Missoula Valley on Tuesday, Aug. 3, 2021, obscuring visibility and creating unhealthy air quality in Missoula, Mont.
(AP Photo/Padmananda Rama)
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Huge gaps between air quality sensors in the western U.S. have created blind spots in the warning system for wildfire smoke plumes sweeping North America this summer, amid growing concern over potential health impacts to millions of people exposed to the pollution.
Government programs to alert the public when smoke pollution becomes unhealthy rely on about 950 permanent monitoring stations and dozens of mobile units that can be deployed around major fires.
Those stations are heavily concentrated around major cities on the West Coast and east of the Mississippi River — a patchwork that leaves some people unable to determine local risks from smoke, including in rural areas where air quality can quickly degrade when fires ignite nearby. The problem persists far beyond fire lines because wildfire smoke travels for thousands of miles and loses its tell-tale odor yet remains a danger to public health.
The monitoring gaps underscore what officials and public health experts say is a glaring shortage of resources for a type of pollution growing worse as climate change brings increasingly long and destructive wildfire seasons to the U.S. West, southern Europe and eastern Russia.
“It’s a very frustrating place to be where we have recurring health emergencies without sufficient means of responding to them,” said Sarah Coefield, an air quality specialist for the city of Missoula, Montana. “You can be in your office just breathing smoke and thinking you’re OK because you’re inside, but you’re not.”
Missoula, perched along the Clark Fork River with about 75,000 people, is surrounded by mountains and has become notorious as a smoke trap. All across the region are similar mountain valleys, many without pollution monitors, and smoke conditions can vary greatly from one valley to the next.
Montana has 19 permanent monitoring stations. That’s about one for every 7,700 square miles (20,000 square kilometers) or an area almost as big as New Jersey. New Jersey has 30.
THURSDAY, AUG. 12, 2021 - Maureen Fogarty poses for a photo in her home on Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021, in Missoula, Mont. Fogarty, who has lung cancer and suffers from breathing problems, breathes with the aid of oxygen and air filters provided by Climate Smart, a small non-profit group founded to bring attention to global warming and help residents adapt to changes in climate. (AP Photo/Padmananda Rama)
Data on air quality is particularly sparse in eastern Montana, where smoke from a 266-square-mile (690-square-kilometer) fire on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation got so bad this month that officials closed a health clinic when air filters couldn’t keep up with the pollution.
The smoke prompted tribal authorities to shield elders and others who were at risk by extending an evacuation order for Lame Deer, a town of about 2,000 people that sits beneath fire-scarred Badger Peak and is home to the tribal government complex.
But on the same day, Lame Deer and surrounding areas were left out of a pollution alert from state officials, who said extremely high smoke particle levels made the air unhealthy across large areas of Montana and advised people to avoid prolonged exertion to protect their lungs. A pollution sensor on the reservation had burned in the fire, and the nearest state Department of Environmental Quality monitor, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) away, showed an air quality reading of “good.”
That left tribal officials to judge the pollution hazard based on how far they could see — a crude fallback for areas without monitors. On a scale of one to 20, “I would say the smoke was a 19,” tribal spokesperson Angel Becker said.
“What makes it difficult is that Lame Deer is sitting in between a couple of ravines,” she added. “So when you get socked in (with smoke), it just sits here and that’s not good for elders or kids that have asthma or any breathing issues.”
Doug Kuenzli, who supervises Montana’s air quality monitoring program, said regulators recognize the need for more data on smoke but high-grade monitors can be prohibitively expensive — $10,000 to $28,000 each.
Oregon expanded its network over the past two years with five new monitors along the state’s picturesque coastline where smoke only recently became a recurring problem, said Tom Roick with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.
“We’re seeing more prevalence of wildfire smoke and increased intensity,” Roick said. “It’s not because we have more monitoring; it’s getting worse.”
Throughout the West, public health officials have struggled to get the message about dangers of smoke to at-risk communities, such as migrant workers who spend lots of time outdoors, people in houses without air filters and the elderly. Children, too, are more at risk of health problems.
That’s no small subset of society: People over 65 and children under 18 make up 40% of the population, said Kaitlyn Kelly, a wildfire smoke pollution specialist with the Washington Department of Health.
Rapid technological advancements mean households can buy their own monitoring equipment for around $250. The equipment is not as reliable as government stations, officials said, but the data from many of the privately-owned sensors is now displayed on an interactive smoke exposure map by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Forest Service.
Although inaccurate readings have been reported for some consumer-grade sensors, officials said they can help fill blind spots in the government’s network. The number in use is fast increasing — from about 6,000 private sensors last year to more than 10,000 currently, according to EPA.
“There’s still gaps,” said Kelly. “The low-cost sensors are the first step in filling in the gaps where we don’t have (government) monitors.”
In Missoula, a small non-profit group founded to bring attention to global warming is going beyond warning people about smoke. It’s providing makeshift air filters and portable air cleaners to the homebound elderly and impoverished households.
Vinette Rupp, a 74-year-old Missoula woman who received a portable air cleaner, said she “can almost taste it” when the smoke gets thick in town. Neighbor Maureen Fogarty, 67, who has lung cancer and suffers from breathing problems, said her coughing has eased since she got one of the filters.
“Well it’s a lifesaver because I can breathe easier now,” Fogarty said. “The way it is, you know, you’ve got to come and go and you’re bringing in the unhealthy air, and it’s gonna affect you.”
Climate Smart Missoula, which provided the portable air cleaner, also makes and distributes filters through a local food bank. Costing about $30 apiece — versus $150 or more for a manufactured unit — the do-it-yourself purifiers are endorsed by public health officials. They’re crafted from box fans with high-efficiency furnace filters duct-taped to the back to trap pollution particles as air passes through.
Climate Smart Missoula director Amy Cilimburg said she and a colleague have built roughly 200 of them, paid for largely with donations.
“Our strategies for dealing with wildfire smoke were pray for rain, or leave town, or suffer — and that seemed inadequate,” Cilimburg said “It’s kind of caught up with us, even though scientists have told us it’s coming. I felt like we needed to get to work.”
Palestinians walk along Al-Baali Street next to debris of homes heavily damaged by airstrikes during an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 16, 2021. Since 2008, more than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in four wars, according to the United Nations. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
BEIT HANOUN, Gaza Strip (AP) — The electricity is out again tonight in what’s left of Zaki and Jawaher Nassir’s neighborhood. But from the shell of their sitting room, its wall blown open by Israeli missiles, twilight and a neighbor’s fire are enough to see by.
Here, down a narrow lane called Al-Baali, just over a mile from the heavily fortified border separating northern Gaza and Israel, cinderblock homes press against each other before opening to a modest courtyard below the Nassirs’ perch.
Until this neighborhood was hammered by the fourth war in 13 years between Israel and Hamas militants, the Nassirs often sipped coffee by a window, watching children play volleyball using a rope in place of a net. Other days, the couple looked out as relatives pulled fruit off the yard’s fig and olive trees.
Now they spend day after day surveying the wreckage of the May 14 airstrike from broken plastic chairs while awaiting building inspectors, the gaping holes in surrounding homes serving as windows into their neighborhood’s upheaval.
In the skeleton of one building, children play video games atop a slab of fallen concrete. In another, a man stares out from beside a bed covered in debris, ignoring the ceiling fan drooping overhead like a dead flower. The smell of pulverized cement and plaster dust hangs in the air.
Each afternoon, demolition workers arrive to hack away at this real-life stage set so that the Nassirs and their neighbors can start rebuilding -- again.
“We have no peace in our lives and we expect that war can happen again at any time,” says Zaki Nassir, who lost a nephew from the household across the yard in the first war, another from next door in this year’s war, and whose home is still scarred by shelling during the third war.
The story of the Nassirs, their neighbors and the toll of four wars is Gaza’s story.
___ New visual analysis by The Associated Press and SITU Research spotlights the magnitude of damage from airstrikes in Gaza and the scope of efforts to rebuild. The Nassir family and their neighbors live in the ruins left by the fourth war. (Aug. 25)
TO VIEW an enhanced interactive version of this story, click here.
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Since 2008, more than 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflicts, according to the U.N. While many were fighters for Hamas or other militant groups, more than half were civilians. Thousands have been injured. On the Israeli side, the death toll from the four wars stands at 106, officials say.
The Islamic militants, who reject Israel’s right to exist, have fired thousands of rockets across the border during the conflicts, operating from a maze of underground tunnels. Israel, one of a number of countries that label Hamas a terrorist organization, has repeatedly hit the Strip with overwhelming firepower that, despite its high-tech precision, continues to kill civilians.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has likened Israel’s periodic offensives to mowing an unruly lawn. But Israel’s policy of degrading Hamas -- and inflicting a toll designed to undermine its public support -- makes little pretense of resolving Gaza’s deepening crisis. And international efforts focus only on relief and reconstruction. Meanwhile, each war has boosted approval of Hamas, often when it was flagging.
All told, the wars have done more than $5 billion in damage to Gaza’s buildings, roads, electrical and water systems, roughly double the Strip’s annual economic output. Nearly 250,000 homes have been damaged or destroyed.
The wars, coupled with a crippling blockade and the fallout of infighting between Palestinian factions, also have scarred Gaza in ways that can be difficult to quantify.
“It’s not (just) about you are losing a building. You are losing the hope that things will get better,” says Omar Shaban, an economist who runs a think tank in Gaza City. “Forty percent of the population was born under siege.”
Gaza’s crisis is rooted in events that came long before Hamas seized control in 2007. More than half of those packed into the Strip are from Palestinian families who fled or were driven from what is now Israel during the 1948 war over its formation. But the recurrent fighting and the blockade of recent years have made life in Gaza far worse.
Six years ago, U.N. officials warned that wars and economic isolation had done so much to intensify Gaza’s “de-development” that it risked becoming uninhabitable by 2020. Since then, the Strip’s 2 million residents have endured yet another war, even as the economy teeters, with unemployment close to 50 percent, among the world’s highest.
“Every year we write that, OK, Gaza hit rock bottom,” says Rami Alazzeh, a U.N. economist who has studied the long-term costs. “And every year we repeat the same sentence because, actually, it gets worse and worse.”
The Nassirs and their neighbors, many holding on to memories of life before Gaza was so embattled, are all too familiar with that narrative of despair. But they resist it, even after a fourth war.
“This is what we have,” Zaki Nassir says. “We have to live.”
___ Palestinians walk at night along Al-Baali Street, next to homes heavily damaged by airstrikes during an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, Monday, May 31, 2021.
(AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
Five decades ago, Zaki Nassir’s father moved his family to a plot of farmland in what was then a village. Today, three- and four-story homes along Al-Baali Street -- at the heart of that tract and named after Zaki’s father -- are filled with Nassirs.
“There were not a lot of residents here like there are today,” says Nassir, 47, recalling the family’s citrus trees, greenhouses and cattle. Some of his brothers were among the tens of thousands of Gaza residents who crossed daily to work in Israel. “Things back then were way better in those days.”
Even then, though, it was no paradise. Since the 1967 war that saw Israel take control of Gaza, the West Bank and east Jerusalem, the rights and movements of Palestinians have been dictated by Israeli security concerns. Critics call it a form of apartheid. That infuriates Israel, where Gaza is often spoken of as a foreign country, separate from the larger Palestinian conflict.
Over the years, the Nassir family -- 13 daughters and 12 sons born to two wives -- grew with Beit Hanoun, which today has a population of 57,000. Beyond the archway marking the entrance to town, an ever-present Israeli surveillance balloon hovers over the border wall, keeping the community under watch.
As the Nassir siblings married, they built homes on much of the family’s land, still a few minutes by donkey cart from fields of grain and fruit trees.
Until he was sidelined by a heart condition and the pandemic, Zaki Nassir’s job with the Palestinian Authority had him inspecting area farms and, more recently, working part-time at an agricultural college. Jawaher, 46, is expecting their ninth child in September.
Life in Beit Hanoun deteriorated sharply after Israel withdrew settlers and troops in a 2005 disengagement, isolating Gaza. Hamas, which had killed hundreds of Israelis in suicide bombings, filled the vacuum.
In 2006, militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier, prompting an Israeli incursion that destroyed roads in northern Gaza and flattened groves. After winning Palestinian legislative elections, Hamas prevailed over the rival Fatah party in a clash for control of the Strip. Israel and Egypt imposed a strict economic blockade.
Then, in the last days of 2008, Israel launched a major military offensive after heavy rocket and mortar fire by militants across the border. Soon the first war came to Al-Baali Street.
On an afternoon about 2½ weeks into the war, Israel’s military declared a brief pause so residents could gather needed supplies. Khaldiya Nassir was preparing the family’s remaining vegetables when her husband, Adham -- Zaki Nassir’s nephew -- announced he was taking his donkey and cart out to replenish the family’s supply of flour.
“We told him not be deceived. There is no truce. They are lying,” says Khaldiya Nassir, sitting at the entranceway of her house, a pale pink structure that runs the length of the courtyard.
Adham -- a cart driver prone to working long hours, often returning with boxes of mangoes for his six children -- went anyway.
On his way home that afternoon, a woman flagged him down, pleading for help with her wounded daughter. As the 38-year-old Adham carried the girl from their house, he was wounded in the neck and back by a spray of gunfire. Moments later, a rocket obliterated his cart.
Evacuated to an Egyptian hospital, Adham died three weeks later.
His wife blames Israeli special forces. The Israeli military said at the time that he had been carrying rockets, but he was only carrying what they needed to eat, Khaldiya says.
For five years afterward, Khaldiya Nassir set aside much of the orphans’ assistance her family received through the Palestinian Authority, the Fatah-led government that still administers parts of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. With it, she built a home filled with personal touches, like kitchen tiles illustrated with coffee cups and doors decorated with floral patterns.
This Ramadan, days before the war erupted, her children hand-cut paper hearts to celebrate. They still hang from the ceilings of rooms littered with chunks of concrete. Much of the house will have to be torn down, U.N. inspectors say.
“Everything is gone,” she says. “We cannot afford any more fear.”
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THE FIRST WAR’S TOLL: About 1,400 Palestinians killed and 13 on the Israeli side. Homes damaged or destroyed: 60,000. Fifteen hospitals and 41 primary health care centers were damaged, two destroyed.
Among the casualties were two boys, killed when shells loaded with white phosphorous hit a United Nations-run school where 1,600 people were sheltering.
Phosphorous, used to create smoke screens, was a signature weapon of the first war, which ran from Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 18, 2009. Because it burns at up to 1,500 degrees, it caused devastating injuries.
Israel renounced its use in 2013.
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With food and construction materials in short supply after the war, Israel continued its blockade, increasing pressure on residents confined to an area less than a tenth the size of the smallest U.S. state.
Israel bars nearly all Palestinians from exiting through its lone crossing for travelers -- a building faced with glass on its side of the border, but with steel doors and a caged enclosure on the Gaza side that give it the feel of a cattle run.
Undeterred by the restrictions, Zaki’s brother Jamal and wife Munira took savings from his job driving a taxi and opened the Abu Nashat Grocery, across the street from the courtyard. Jamal, once a construction worker in Israel, ran the shop along with Munira and two of their 12 children, while others drove the taxi.
As neighbors flocked in for cold drinks and other items, earnings grew to $3,000 a month, paying for family outings to Gaza beaches.
But peace was fleeting. In 2012, after months of Palestinian rocket fire into Israel, an Israeli air strike killed Ahmed Jabari, the leader of Hamas’ military wing. The war that followed lasted just eight days, beginning on Nov. 14; this time, the Nassirs and their neighbors were largely spared. But the conflict was never far away.
On Nov. 19, an Israeli bomb dropped on a home in the nearby Jabaliya refugee camp killed a 46-year-old school janitor and his children, ages 4 and 2. A day later, a missile strike killed a farmer and his two children as they gathered mint from their garden in the neighboring town of Beit Lahiya.
“We are the owners of this land, so why does this always happen?” says Kemal Al Kafarna, whose home a few minutes walk from Al-Baali’s courtyard had been strafed in 2008, then occupied by Israeli troops.
“We are not against Israeli people, the normal ones. We are against those who come to our country to take it.”
___
THE SECOND WAR’S TOLL: 168 people in Gaza, six Israelis. About 450 homes destroyed between Nov. 14 to 21, along with two stadiums and eight sport clubs; 10,000 homes and more than two dozen schools damaged.
The war marked the first time rockets fired from Gaza reached Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. ___ The remains of a building destroyed by airstrikes during an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, sit at night on Al-Baali Street, in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, Friday, June 11, 2021. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
In July 2014, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped from a bus stop in the West Bank and found dead weeks later. Members of Hamas eventually claimed responsibility and Israel arrested scores of the group‘s leaders in the West Bank.
Militants responded by firing rockets from Gaza into southern Israel, igniting a crackdown that exploded into yet another war, from July 8 to Aug. 26. At seven weeks, it was by far the longest and most deadly. Israel launched scores of air attacks on targets throughout the Strip, then sent in ground forces.
In Beit Hanoun, residents were told to evacuate and seek shelter. On Al-Baali street, though, some were reluctant.
Jawaher Nassir, seven months pregnant, worried she might not be strong enough to flee on foot. Three doors down, neighbors Fauzi and Neama Abu Amsha told their sons that they were staying put, insisting that at 63 and 62, the Israeli military would never see them as a threat.
There was little time to argue. With Israeli tanks firing on Beit Hanoun, residents of Al-Baali street joined a tide of people coursing toward a U.N. school providing shelter in Jabaliya. Every few minutes, Jawaher stopped to rest on the side of the road, her strength sapped by Ramadan fasting.
“But when we got to the school we found there was no room for us,” she recalls. “We had to stay in the stairwell.” The others assigned her the bottom step, while they crowded the floor.
The space became the family’s home for the next 51 days. Some 3,000 people took refuge at the school, including one of Zaki’s sisters, Wafaa Sihueil, and her husband Thaer.
Two weeks later, a barrage of Israeli artillery shells hit the building around 4:45 a.m. Parents and children lost each other in the smoke.
“We didn’t know what was happening,” Thaer Sihueil says, visibly upset by the recollection. “After the bombing stopped I started searching for my children. I found them screaming, ‘Here I am, Dad!’ And then I found my nephews.”
One of the teens was dead, his head bloody and disfigured. The other, his shoulder pierced by shrapnel, would survive for three months before dying of infection. More than 20 people died in the attack, one of seven on U.N. schools being used as shelters.
When the war ended in late August, the Sihueils and others returned to a war-scarred neighborhood. Zaki and Jawaher found their home littered with shrapnel, with cracks crossing the ceiling and a hole that funneled in rainwater. In his brother’s home next door, an incendiary shell had scorched the ceiling black.
Down the street, neighbor Akram Abu Amsha and his brothers also returned home. But their parents were not in the spot under the stairs where they’d promised to hide. Then the men turned to a narrow space between the buildings -- the most direct escape route, but one readily visible to drones.
“We found them in pieces,” Akram says.
___
THE THIRD WAR’S TOLL: 2,251 Palestinians dead -- about three out of four of them civilians, according to the U.N. Seventy-four people on the Israeli side were killed, including 6 civilians. More than 11,000 Palestinians and 2,400 Israelis injured.
The longest and most devastating of the four conflicts, it destroyed 17,800 homes in Gaza and damaged 150,000. It displaced 100,000 people and inflicted an especially harsh toll on Gaza’s children, killing 550, destroying 22 schools and damaging 118 others.
___
In the aftermath of the 2014 war, Khaldiya Nassir spent $12,000 mending holes in the ceiling of the house she’d only just finished building.
“This is where we find comfort, in our own place,” she says.
With the U.N. giving priority to rebuilding homes that had been destroyed, many neighbors had to pick up the bill for lesser repairs.
A few blocks closer to the border, Kemal Al Kefarna had difficult choices to make. Shelling had perforated the facade of his three-story home with scores of holes, from the front steps to the parapet.
With only enough to replace windows and fix the interior, he left the outside as is: “I will fix it in the future when I get money. Even if they destroy it again and again. And if they destroy it after that, my children will fix it.”
Seven years passed. But as he forecast, war returned to Beit Hanoun.
This May protests erupted over the anticipated eviction of Palestinian families from homes in east Jerusalem and Israeli restrictions on Ramadan gatherings. That led to a clash with Israeli police at the holy city’s Al-Aqsa mosque. Hamas demanded the forces withdraw by 6 p.m. on May 10.
An hour before the deadline, the home of Zaki’s older brother, Ali, buzzed with excitement over the imminent birth of his new grandchild. With a couple of hours of light left, another of Ali’s sons, 24-year-old Mohamed, told his parents he was going out to pick up grain his employer sought for his horses.
Just outside town, Mohamed pulled his cart alongside the field farmed by 23-year-old Mohamed al-Masri and his family. The men settled on a price for a few bags of grain as the al-Masri children played.
As al-Masri filled the bags, he says, he “heard the rocket coming.” A moment later, it exploded into the gathering, killing Mohamed Nassir, a companion and six members of al-Masri’s family.
Al-Masri, his right eye, abdomen and leg injured, says he “looked to the right and to the left and I saw the body parts of children. We had all been together just seconds before and now there were just (body) parts all around me.”
The Israeli military says the victims were hit by a rocket, fired by militants, that missed its target. Indeed, Hamas and other militant groups fired more than 4,300 rockets toward Israeli cities during the 11-day conflict. But Human Rights Watch recently concluded that the strike was delivered by an Israeli missile.
A half hour after Mohamed Nassir was killed, his brother’s wife gave birth to a son -- “a gift from God to mitigate the sadness,” Ali Nassir says. They named the baby Mohamed.
Three nights later, the Nassirs and their neighbors hunkered down, the sound of shelling cutting through the dark. In Zaki and Jawaher’s second-floor home, the couple and their children clustered in an interior room, away from any windows, the youngest boys sleeping while their oldest daughter studied for a college medical studies test.
Across the yard, dozens of relatives of Itzhak Fayyad packed into the four-story building he shares with his brothers, many sleeping on mattresses they’d carted from homes near the border susceptible to artillery fire.
A little after 12:30 a.m. on May 14, shouts from outside the Fayyad home warned of military fire to the east. Itzhak, 46, ran upstairs to reassure those sleeping on the roof, just as the first of seven Israeli missiles exploded into the courtyard.
The force flung Fayyad to the ground from a fourth-floor window, shattering his right leg. (Hospitalized in Egypt, his family says Fayyad faces at least two months of recovery.) Two buildings away, shrapnel and debris lacerated 27-year-old Shaima Nassir, who relatives say has since required four rounds of surgery to reconnect severed nerves.
Across the yard, the shockwaves flattened the Nassirs’ grocery and killed several horses and donkeys. Inside, bricks shaken loose from the wall fell on Jalal Nassir, leaving his back twisted in pain.
“I put my fingers in my ears and we were screaming,” says Lama Sihueil, Zaki’s 14-year-old niece.
“May nobody, neither Jews nor Arabs, ever experience such a night,” Fayyad’s brother, Khalil, says.
The Israeli military told The Associated Press it targeted Al-Baali because the area sat atop an underground tunnel belonging to Palestinian militants. The Air Force had used “precision weapons” to demolish the tunnel, while avoiding civilian casualties, it said.
It is true that Israeli missiles did not hit any of the homes directly. But the force blew walls and ceilings apart and left deep craters in the street and yard.
Residents have returned to what’s left. Inspectors, though, say most of the buildings facing the courtyard will have to be torn down and rebuilt or require major repairs. Looking over the damage, they recall visiting some of the same homes after previous wars.
U.N. engineer Sayeed Abu Shaban has inspected destroyed or damaged homes since the first conflict. “You see the same thing every couple of years,” he says. “Unfortunately, only civilians pay the price. That’s here and in Israel.”
___
THE FOURTH WAR’S TOLL: More than 250 dead in Gaza, including 129 civilians, according to the U.N.; 13 deaths in Israel. More than 4,000 homes destroyed or severely damaged, and thousands more requiring repair.
Worst hit was densely populated Gaza City, where airstrikes destroyed a number of high-rise apartment buildings and 122 were killed.
___ Zaki Nassir walks with his sons to an apartment he rented after their house was heavily damaged by airstrikes in Beit Hanoun, northern Gaza Strip, Wednesday, June 16, 2021. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana)
If his father was alive to see what has become of Al-Baali Street, he would surely weep, Zaki Nassir says. Still, it’s home.
“Our memories are here,” Jawaher Nassir says, sitting beside a bare wall that used to hold photos of her children and of her husband receiving his diploma in agriculture.
U.N. inspectors say the building will have to come down. The Nassirs and their neighbors say they’ll rebuild. Until then, most sleep in apartments rented nearby or at the homes of relatives, returning each morning despite inspectors’ warnings not to spend time in the wreckage.
“They said it’s not safe, that we should be afraid,” Zaki says. He grins, reassuring a visitor that if the house begins to collapse, “I’ll hold it up so you can get out.”
But even after four wars in 13 years, and with every expectation that conflict will erupt again, he is staying put.
“We’ve been here for a month,” he says, “and so far, nothing bad has happened.”
___
Associated Press reporters Helen Wieffering in Washington, Wafaa Shurafa and Felipe Dana in Gaza and Josef Federman and Joseph Krauss in Jerusalem contributed to this story.
DENYING ACCESS TO REFUGEE'S
EXPLAINER: What’s next for the ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy?
FILE - In this Jan. 29, 2019, file photo, migrant Carlos Catarldo Gomez, of Honduras, center, is escorted by Mexican officials after leaving the U.S., the first person returned to Mexico to wait for his asylum trial date as part of a new program "Remain In Mexico" policy in Tijuana, Mexico. The Supreme Court has ordered the reinstatement of the policy, saying that the Biden administration likely violated federal law by trying to end the Trump-era program that forces people to wait in Mexico while seeking asylum in the U.S. The decision immediately raised questions about what comes next for the future of the policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
PHOENIX (AP) — The Supreme Court’s decision to order the reinstatement of the “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy is sparking criticism from advocacy groups and praise by former President Donald Trump. It’s also prompting promises by the Biden administration to keep pushing back against a lower court’s decision to reactivate the policy, which forced people to wait in Mexico while seeking asylum in the U.S.
The high court’s decision, which came late Tuesday, said the Biden administration likely violated federal law by trying to end the Trump-era program, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols. The ruling raised many questions, ranging from whether a legal challenge would prevail to the practical effects of reinstatement if it stands.
___ WHAT’S NEXT FOR THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION?
The Department of Homeland Security said it was taking steps to comply with the high court’s decision while the Biden administration appeals.
The administration could try again to end the program by having the department provide a fuller explanation for its decision to end Migrant Protection Protocols.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Wednesday the administration had appealed a district court decision that the Supreme Court’s order sprang from, and would continue to “vigorously challenge” it.
Trump, meanwhile, welcomed the court order and said the Biden government must now reinstate “one of my most successful and important programs in securing the border.”
During Trump’s presidency, the policy required tens of thousands of migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. to turn back to Mexico. It was meant to discourage asylum seekers, but critics said it denied people the legal right to seek protection in the U.S. and forced them to wait in dangerous Mexican border cities.
U.S. immigration experts note that no matter what happens over the long term, the Biden administration has wide discretion on how much it would reimplement the policy if appeals are unsuccessful.
“It could reimplement it on a very small scale for families who meet certain criteria from very specific nationalities, or it could do something broader,” said Jessica Bolter, associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington.
___ HOW IS MEXICO REACTING?
Mexico’s Foreign Relations Department refused to say late Wednesday whether the government will allow the U.S. to reinstate the policy of sending asylum seekers back across the border to wait for hearings on asylum claims.
Roberto Velasco, Mexico’s director for North American affairs, said the court ruling is not binding on Mexico. He stressed that Mexico’s “immigration policy is designed and executed in a sovereign manner.”
“The Mexican government will start technical discussions with the U.S. government to evaluate how to handle safe, orderly and regulated immigration on the border,” Velasco said.
Mexico is not legally obligated to receive returning migrants who are not Mexican citizens, and most of the asylum seekers are not.
During the Trump administration, the Mexican government said it was cooperating with the program for humanitarian reasons. Although migrants were granted humanitarian visas to stay in Mexico until they had their U.S. hearings, they often had to wait in dangerous areas controlled by cartels, leaving them vulnerable to being kidnapped, assaulted, raped or even killed. Others were transported by bus to parts of southern Mexico or “invited” to return to their home countries.
“I don’t think either Mexico or the Biden administration want to reimplement MPP at its maximum capacity right now,” Bolter said. “If it is reimplemented at a low level, it will have serious consequences for the families or other migrants who are subjected to it. But overall, I think it’s unlikely to drastically change the policy landscape at the border.”
___ HOW ROBUST WAS THE PROGRAM IN RECENT YEARS?
Immigration specialists note that Migrant Protection Protocols already had been significantly scaled back during the pandemic as officials began using public health protocols to swiftly expel migrants.
The Trump administration placed roughly 6,000 migrants into the program from April 2020 to January 2021 — a fraction of the more than 71,000 migrants placed into the program overall, said Bolter. It launched the program in January 2019.
“Clearly, it wasn’t operating at the level it had been operating before, but there definitely were still people being placed into it,” said Bolter. She added that the program was largely being used for migrants who Mexico refused to take back under pandemic-era health protocols known as Title 42.
Victoria Neilson, managing attorney with CLINIC’s defending vulnerable populations program, noted that since the pandemic far fewer migrants have been placed in the MPP program, with many expelled from the border under the health protocols initiated under the Trump administration and continued by President Joe Biden.
____
WHAT ABOUT TITLE 42 EXPULSIONS?
The State Department is holding talks with the Mexican government as the administration reviews the Trump-era protocols to determine how they can be implemented while Title 42 is in effect, said a Homeland Security official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention renewed the Title 42 public health powers early this month. The administration has emphasized that Title 42 is not an immigration authority, but a public health authority, and its continued use is dictated by the CDC’s analysis of the public health situation.
While Title 42 expulsions continue, the U.S. for now has suspended the processing into the U.S. of people who were returned to Mexico under Migrant Protection Protocols during the Trump administration.
In recent weeks, Central American migrants expelled under Title 42 have been flown by the U.S. into Mexico’s south, sparking concerns by U.N. agencies about vulnerable migrants who they say need humanitarian protection.
The U.S. government has intermittently flown Mexicans deep into Mexico for years to discourage repeat attempts, but flights that began this month from Brownsville, Texas, to the Mexican state capitals of Villahermosa and Tapachula, near the Guatemalan border, appear to be the first time that Central Americans have been flown deep into Mexico.
___
Taxin reported from Orange County, California. Maria Verza in Mexico City and Ben Fox and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.
NRA cancels annual meeting, citing surging COVID-19 cases in Texas
NO MASKS, NO VACCINE, NO NRA SHOW
The National Rifle Association on Tuesday canceled its annual meeting that was scheduled to run Sept. 3-5 in Houston, Texas. File Photo by Sergio Flores/UPI | License Photo
Aug. 25 (UPI) -- The National Rifle Association has canceled its annual meeting that was scheduled next month for Houston amid surging COVID-19 cases in Texas.
"Due to concern over the safety of our NRA family and community, we regret to inform you that we have decided to cancel the 2021 Annual Meeting & Exhibits," the gun rights organization and lobbyist said Tuesday in a statement.
It added that it made the decision to cancel its Sept. 3-5 event as "[w]e realize that it would prove difficult, if not impossible, to offer the full guest experience that our NRA members deserve."
The organization said its top priority is the health and well-being of its members, staff and sponsors who were to travel across the nation to attend its annual event that attracts thousands of gun enthusiasts a year
"So any impacts from the virus could have broader implications," it said.
The organization said its decision came after analyzing COVID-19 data from Harris County, which is home to Houston, where health officials have issued a severe threat warning, the highest on its four-level scale, urging residents unless fully vaccinated to stay home as outbreaks have either strained or exceeded public health capacity.
According to county data, it reported more than 1,000 new COVID-19 infections on Tuesday, which is a significant drop compared to the more than 3,000 it registered on Thursday.
Texas as a whole has been experiencing climbing cases since the end of June when it reported around 1,400 infections compared to 13,666 on Monday.
Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, a grassroots organization against gun violence, said the the decision to cancel its event due to COVID-19 "is probably the only time the NRA has put public health and safety before profits."
"The NRA claims to have analyzed data and consulted with medical professionals and local leaders about the dangers of the pandemic in Texas, but seems to have completely ignored this exact process when it pushed permit-less carry through the state's legislature two months ago," she said in a statemen
John Feinblatt, preside to Everytown for Gun Safety, also chastised the organization, saying now that it has acted in the name of public health it should do more.
"It's time for them to extend that concern beyond their members, and stop throwing gas on another raging health crisis: gun violence," Feinblatt said.
The NRA said it "looks forward" to its "Celebration of Freedom" planned for May of next year in Louisville, Ky.
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"In the meantime, we will support many other NRA local events and smaller gatherings -- in a manner that is protective of our members and celebrates our Second Amendment freedom," it said.
CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
U.S. sanctions Paraguayan money laundering network
On Tuesday morning, Paraguayan authorities arrested Kassem Mohamad Hijazi on charges of laundering drug trafficking money. Paraguayan authorities Tuesday morning arrested Kassem Mohamad Hijazi as the United States sanctioned him over perpetrating corruption. Photo courtesy of SENAD Paraguay/Twitter
Aug. 25 (UPI) -- Amid the Biden administration's crackdown on corruption worldwide, the Treasury sanctioned a money laundering network operating in the tri-boarder area of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay.
The federal department sanctioned Kassem Mohamad Hijazi and two of his partners, Khalil Ahmad Hijazi and Liz Paola Doldan Gonzalez, along with five of their companies for their involvement in the scheme to launder hundreds of millions of dollars obtained through illicit means through the complex but vulnerable bureaucracies of the three nations' financial systems.
Kassem, 48, was identified by the Treasury as the leader of the money laundering organization based in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. The department said he has worked from at least 2017 as a despachante who navigate the expensive, expansive and lengthy governmental process to import and export goods.
The Treasury accused Kassem of maintaining "strong ties" with Paraguayan politicians, police officers, district attorneys and money exchange brokers to provide him with assurances and security to operate his businesses in the tri-boarder area, which is known to contain a large number of unregistered money exchange houses that launder money through export-import and retail electronic and automotive businesses.
Kassem, a Brazilian of Lebanese descent, uses Espana Informatica S.A., which was one of the five businesses sanctioned Tuesday as it's run by the 60-year-old Khalil, to coordinate with American and Chinese suppliers to import U.S. electronic equipment into Paraguay through companies and other despachantes to avoid taxation and to launder money.
"Kassem coordinated with a company located in Florida for shipments of goods, for which he altered invoices and submitted them to a Paraguayan bank for a wire transfer payment back to the Florida-based company," the Treasury said. "The altered invoice greatly reduced the stated value of the goods shipped to avoid taxation and allowed Kassem to further launder the profits of his import/export operations."
The value of the goods was estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Paraguay's National Anti-Drug Secretariat announced authorities arrested Kassem Tuesday morning in Ciudad del Este from where he was transferred by the Paraguayan Air Force to the capital Asuncion.
In a statement, the SENAD said he has been charged with money laundering drug proceeds and was wanted by the U.S. Justice Department.
Kassem "would skillfully permeate the weaknesses of the national and international financial system to place and stratify funds from illicit activities including drug trafficking generating fraudulent commercial transactions," it said in a statement.
The SENAD called his arrest of "high strategic value for the United States and Paraguay."
It also said he and his brother, Chadi Mohamad Hijazi, were investigated and charged in 2004 with similar crimes, which were eventually dropped.
The investigation found he operated six money laundering houses in Ciudad del Este that moved millions of dollars of illicitly obtained funds.
The Treasury on Tuesday also sanctioned Doldan, 34, an associate of Kassem, and her company Mobile Zone International Import-Export S.R.L., which was used to purchase cell phones from a Miami-based company that were shipped to Paraguay as cheaper printers or printer toner.
The sanctions, which freeze all U.S. property and interests in property under their names while also barring U.S. citizens from doing business with them, comes after President Joe Biden named corruption as a target of his administration.
In early June, he issued a memorandum that said corruption was a threat to democracies and to U.S. national security while directing agencies to crack down on perpetrators with the Global Magnitsky Act.
In a statement Tuesday, the State Department said the actions taken by the administration represent a whole-of-government effort to combat corruption in the tri-boarder area.
"The United States is committed to supporting Paraguay's efforts to combat corruption and promote accountability for those who undermine government institutions," Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. "Corruption degrades the rule of law, weakens economies and stifles economic growth, undermines democratic institutions, perpetuates conflict, deprives innocent civilians of fundamental human rights and is intrinsically linked to money laundering and the lack of financial transparency."
U.S. Naval battalion becomes first to use battlefield acupuncture
WHY NOT THEIR DOCTORS ARE CHIROPRACTORS AFTER ALL Cmdr. Andrew Olsen, left, Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 5’s commanding officer, receives battlefield auricular acupuncture therapy from Lt. Jeffrey Moy, NMCB-5’s medical officer, onboard Camp Shields, Okinawa, Japan.
Photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Stephane Belcher/U.S. Navy
Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A form of acupuncture developed for military settings is now available for the first time to members of a deployable command in the U.S. Navy, the branch said on Wednesday.
Members of the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 5, known as "Navy Seabees," can receive "battlefield auricular acupuncture treatments" for pain and other ailments, according to a Navy press release.
Unlike regular treatments, which involve long needles left in patients for 20 minutes, "battlefield auricular acupuncture" involves inserting small gold needles into servicemember's ears.
The treatment focuses on the ear because servicemember's bodies are often covered by uniforms, protective gear and packs.
The smaller needles are left in for three to 14 days and can treat pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, nausea and addictions, including tobacco cessation.
The treatment doesn't sideline servicemembers, unlike some medications for pain, PTSD, anxiety, depression and substance abuse, according to the Navy.
"The really interesting thing is, when we all learned how to do this, we practiced on each other," Lt. Jeffrey Moy, the battalion's medical officer, said in the release.
"Some people felt things happen very, very quickly. They didn't have to take medicine and wait 30 minutes for a potential medication to work. You almost get a very, very quick, very sudden release of adrenaline, almost," Moy said.
Moy said that the treatment will be used in limited circumstances. For instance, it wouldn't be used if it was unclear why a service member was in pain to prevent masking symptoms.
However, in a circumstance where a servicemember sprained a knee or twisted an ankle, acupuncture would be used to ease pain while treating the injury, he said.
Battlefield auricular acupuncture was developed in 2001 by Dr. Richard Niemtzow, who found that inserting a small needle in a patient's ear disrupted their brain's pain process, according to the Military Times.
But there has been a lack of physicians trained in the technique.
A 2018 paper published in Medical Acupuncture found growing interest in acupuncture in the military healthcare system.
The paper found that acupuncture was commonly used for pain management and an alternative to opioids, but also cited a lack of data on specific uses of the treatment.
Despite the uncertainty, the U.S. military's health care system has steadily embraced acupuncture. In January 2020, the Defense Health Agency issued guidelines and regulations on the use of the treatment.
Feds report most rental assistance has still not gone out
FILE - In this Jan. 13, 2021, file photo, tenants' rights advocates demonstrate in front of the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse in Boston. A federal judge is refusing landlords' request to put the Biden administration’s new eviction moratorium on hold, though she made clear she thinks it's illegal. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich on Friday, Aug. 13, said her “hands are tied” by an appellate ruling the last time courts considered the evictions moratorium in the spring. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)
BOSTON (AP) — States and localities have only distributed 11% of the tens of billions of dollars in federal rental assistance, the Treasury Department said Wednesday, the latest sign the program is struggling to reach the millions of tenants at risk of eviction.
The latest data shows that the pace of distribution increased in July over June and that nearly a million households have been helped.
But with the Supreme Court considering a challenge to the federal eviction moratorium, the concern is that a wave of evictions will happen before much of the assistance has been distributed. Some 3.5 million people in the U.S. as of Aug. 16 said they face eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
Lawmakers approved $46.5 billion in rental assistance earlier this year and most states are distributing the first tranche of $25 billion. According to the Treasury Department, $5.1 billion in Emergency Rental Assistance has been distributed by states and localities through July, up from $3 billion at the end of June and only $1.5 billion by May 31.
Several states, including Virginia and Texas, have been praised for moving quickly to get the federal money out. But many others have still only distributed a small percentage of the rental help.
Housing advocates blame the slow rollout partly on the Treasury Department under President Donald Trump, which they say was slow to explain how the money could be spent. The criteria, while clearer under the Biden administration, was still criticized for a burdensome process that seemed more focused on preventing fraud than helping tenants.
Advocates also said states made things worse — some waited months to set up programs and others created bureaucratic hurdles.
Efforts to use coronavirus relief money for rental assistance last year faced similar challenges.
“Nearly 1 million households assisted is meaningful progress, but the overall rate of spending emergency rental assistance remains much too slow,” said Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
“Some communities are spending the money quickly and well, proving that it’s possible and making the many communities who aren’t all the more glaring and unacceptable” she said. “Seven months after funds were first allocated to them, nine states have spent less than 3% of the money and 16 states have spent less than 5%.”
National Apartment Association president and CEO Bob Pinnegar called the assistance rollout “a disaster, marred with programmatic inefficiencies and difficulties.”
“Americans are hurting and we are on the edge of another financial cliff as distribution deadlines loom and the future availability of rental assistance funds is jeopardized,” he said.
The Treasury Department has repeatedly tweaked its guidance to encourage states and local governments to streamline the distribution of the funds. The Biden administration has also asked states to create eviction diversion programs that aim to resolve disputes before they reach the courts.
On Wednesday, Treasury released additional guidance to try to speed up the process. This includes programs to allow tenants to self-assess their income and risk of becoming homeless among other criteria. Many states and localities, fearing fraud, have measures in place that can take weeks to verify an applicant qualifies for help.
Treasury also said states and localities now can distribute money in advance to landlords and utility providers “in anticipation of the full satisfaction of (the) application and documentation requirement.” And they approved providing money for tenants who have outstanding rental debt in collection, which would make it easier for them to find new housing.
“For those cities and states that wanted even more clarity that they can and should use simpler applications, speedier processes and a self-attestation option without needless delays — this answers that call,” said Gene Sperling, who is charged with overseeing implementation of President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus rescue package.
“The guidance could not be more clear in expressing that this is a public health and eviction emergency that requires putting quick and sound rental relief above unnecessary paperwork that will not reach families in time.”
The administration also announced measures aimed at averting evictions at federally-back housing, including 400,000 rental units in Department of Agriculture-backed multifamily properties. It also is offering additional rental assistance to at-risk veterans and their families and working to ensure tenants in public housing can access rental assistance.
Slow aid payments to U.S. renters stoking eviction crisis, gov't figures show
The Treasury noted that more needs to be done at the local and state levels to move the payment process along. The program is federally funded, but it's up to states to handle systems to manage the payments. File Photo by PublicCo/Pixabay
Aug. 25 (UPI) -- A federal program funded with almost $50 billion to help struggling Americans pay their rent in the face of COVID-19 hardships is still only slowly paying out money, government data showed Wednesday -- reflecting a national housing crisis that's affecting millions of landlords and tenants.
According to data released by the Treasury Department, just $1.7 billion was disbursed to 340,000 U.S. homes over the month of July, a slight increase over June.
The Emergency Rental Assistance Program was created last year to help Americans affected fiscally by the pandemic stay in their homes. The program has existed with the aid of a national eviction ban that's now being evaluated by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The aid program was funded with $46.5 billion, but Wednesday's data show that only about $5 billion has gone out to struggling Americans so far.
The Treasury noted that more needs to be done at the local and state levels to move the process along. The program is federally funded, but it's up to states to handle systems to manage the payments.
"Many grantees need to do more to urgently accelerate efforts to prevent harmful evictions of vulnerable families," the department said in a statement.
The department warned that if things don't improve after next month, monies in the fund will go elsewhere.
"After September, programs that are unwilling or unable to deliver assistance quickly will be at risk of having their rental assistance funding reallocated to effective programs in other high-need areas."
Officials said there will be new policies and measures intended to reduce delays and simplify applications.
The national eviction moratorium, issued last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been the target of numerous legal challenges spearheaded by frustrated landlords. Some federal courts have ruled against the moratorium, but none have applied the rulings to all landlords and renters nationwide.
