WHO is a vital international organization we all must defend (updated)

• April 17, 2020
• Ceasefire.ca
• Blog

On Tuesday 14 April President Trump announced he would suspend the U.S. contribution to the World Health Organization (WHO), allegedly for its slow response to the coronavirus and obeisance to China.

This was a monstrous act even by Trumpian standards.

The WHO was founded as the UN global health body in 1948 in the aftermath of the second world war with a mandate to promote global health, protect against infectious disease and to serve the vulnerable. Despite its chronic underfunding, the WHO’s global coordination, facilitation and assistance roles are essential to combatting the global COVID-19 pandemic and the irony of a President – who has led one of the least coordinated responses of any developed country – dismissing its importance is on display for all who care to see it.

There was immediate pushback against both the substance of Trump’s anti-WHO tirade and the timing of the funding cuts.

Editor-in-chief Richard Horton, of the highly respected Lancet Medical Journal, explains on radio (a transcript of which can be seen here) why he dubbed Trump’s WHO defunding a “crime against humanity”:

What I think needs to be made very clear is he’s committed an act of violence against people around the world. We have 215 countries, regions and territories that have been affected by this pandemic. People are dying worldwide.

Horton also refutes the argument that the WHO was party to a Chinese cover-up of the outbreak and failed to take timely action:

There was a degree of hiding the outbreak in those early stages [by local officials in Wuhan] but eventually the news got through to Beijing and Beijing immediately told WHO on December 31st and after that the WHO in Geneva and the Chinese government worked incredibly hard to sequence the virus, to understand the nature of what this outbreak was, to understand the risk, and then write papers to tell the world….

On January 30 a situation of international concern was declared. So within a month the world went from knowing nothing to declaring a public health emergency of international concern. That’s not a cover up.

Many critics also saw other motivations at work. Professor Thomas G. Weiss, author of “Would the World Be Better Without the UN?” and the co-editor of the Oxford Handbook on the United Nations (2018), writes:

The actual explanation for depriving the organization of 22 percent of its resources at this critical juncture was that the WHO is a convenient scapegoat for his own slow and ineffective responses to what he earlier had called a “hoax.” …

Trump’s decision was a device to deflect criticism from his own wildly irresponsible and erratic behavior. Earlier targets had included the media, Democrats in Congress, state governors and Barack Obama. Trump’s vilification of the WHO is part of his systematic attack on what he considers the uselessness of international organizations.

For an authoritative article on the Trump administration’s consistently shambolic response to the coronavirus see: Timeline of the Coronavirus Pandemic and U.S. Response (Ryan Goodman and Danielle Shulkin, justsecurity.org, 16 Apr 2020).

UN Secretary-General responds

In his characteristically diplomatic – but emphatically clear – style, UN Secretary-General António Guterres embraced the need for a global performance review at the appropriate time while underscoring the WHO’s essential role right now in fighting the pandemic:

Once we have finally turned the page on this epidemic, there must be a time to look back fully to understand how such a disease emerged and spread its devastation so quickly across the globe, and how all those involved reacted to the crisis. The lessons learned will be essential to effectively address similar challenges, as they may arise in the future.

But now is not that time.

As it is not that time, it is also not the time to reduce the resources for the operations of the World Health Organization or any other humanitarian organization in the fight against the virus. As I have said before, now is the time for unity and for the international community to work together in solidarity to stop this virus and its shattering consequences.

Trump is isolated from rest of G7 Leaders over WHO

On Thursday 16 April, the leaders of the G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) held a virtual summit by teleconference where Donald Trump found himself isolated, as the other leaders expressed strong support for the World Health Organization.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated:

There is a need for international coordination and the WHO is an important part of that collaboration and coordination. We recognise that there have been questions asked, but at the same time it is really important we stay coordinated as we move through this. That is certainly what Canada is going to do.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, through her spokesperson, “expressed her full support for the WHO”, while French President Emmanuel Macron said the organization must play a “central role” as part of an “ambitious and coordinated international response” to the virus crisis; and stressed the need to bring “massive aid” to the most vulnerable countries, especially in Africa.

The Italian foreign ministry said it was committed to consolidating a global governance of health care “in which the WHO plays a crucial leadership role” while a separate statement from the French, Italian and German foreign ministers highlighted the need for new contributions to the WHO for research and distribution of a vaccine “for which a global, inclusive effort will be necessary.”

The German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas went so far as to compare the funding cut to “throwing the pilot out of the plane in mid-flight.”

Health Experts condemn Trump’s action

Health leaders and experts, less burdened by the constraints of political leadership in the time of Trump, were more direct in their denunciations of Trump’s actions:

• Lancet editor-in-chief Richard Horton (cited earlier): this is a “crime against humanity”
• Lawrence Gostin, a global health law expert from Georgetown university: “there’ll be many more deaths” without a WHO that’s empowered;
• Thomas Bollyky, the director of the Global Health Program at the Council on Foreign Relations: “The president’s decision makes Americans less safe, let’s be clear about that”;
• American Medical Association President Dr. Patrice Harris: halting funding “is a dangerous step in the wrong direction that will not make defeating COVID-19 easier.”

Microsoft co-founder and billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates tweeted:

Their work is slowing the spread of COVID-19 and if that work is stopped no other organization can replace them… The world needs @WHO more than ever.

Canada’s own Chief Public Health Officer, Theresa Tam, is a veteran of the WHO, having served on three WHO emergency committees – Ebola, Middle East respiratory syn-drome (MERS) and poliovirus.

Conservative Party interim Leader Andrew Scheer sides with Trump

There is shameful, though perhaps not unsurprising, Canadian exception to the outpouring of support for the WHO in the wake of Trump’s unconscionable funding freeze. Andrew Scheer, interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada echoed Trump’s attacks:

We’ve got serious concerns about the accuracy of the information coming out of the WHO and it’s incumbent upon this government to explain why they have based so many of their decisions on the WHO….

An example of alleged WHO incompetence cited by Scheer was the change in advice over the advisability of face masks being worn by the general public. This example reveals more about Scheer that he might realize. Rideau Institute President Peggy Mason comments:

One of the challenges the WHO and individual governments alike face throughout the pandemic is that of maintaining public confidence while conveying updated advice in light of constantly evolving data and information on the behaviour of the coronavirus, and the utility of various measures. Either Andrew Scheer does not understand this balancing act or he does not care.

We also feel compelled to note, with great concern, that the CBC online article outlining Andrew Scheer’s critique of the WHO made no ascertainable attempt to balance his accusations with readily available information on the WHO “side” of the story.

Whither Canada?

We commend Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for joining with other G7 leaders in support of the WHO and its vital role in confronting the pandemic. We call for that support to include appropriate additional funding.

We unreservedly condemn the Interim Leader of the Conservative party of Canada, Andrew Scheer, for joining in Donald Trump’s monstrous attack on the World Health Organization in the middle of a global infectious disease outbreak.

Postscript: Longer-term Impact on USA itself of WHO funding cuts

If the USA is indeed concerned about China exercising too much influence over the WHO, then reducing its own role by slashing funding would seem a strange way to proceed. Amanda Glassman, of the Washington-based Center for Global Development goes further:

We need the WHO in lots of different ways. We’re able to have access to strains of flu from outbreaks in Indonesia and other places around the world in order to develop a flu vaccine for the United States because of the WHO…. The United States’ participation in the WHO is not optional.

The same applies to every other UN member state including Canada.

For an excellent review of the “diplomatic balancing act” the UN agency faces as it struggles to navigate the interests of member states that are often working at cross purposes, see: WHO’s diplomatic balancing act faces new challenge with Trump attacks (Reid Wilson, thehill.com, 15 Apr 2020).

UPDATE: The headline says it all: Global concert raises more than $127M for WHO emergency [covid-19] response fund (Rory Sullivan, CNN, 19 Apr 2020).

Photo credit: WHO

Q&A: With rock-bottom prices, will the oil industry

This Sunday, April 26, 2020, photo shows gas prices displayed at a gas station in Hattiesburg, Miss. With a barrel of crude oil costing less than a New York pizza, many U.S. shale producers are being pushed to the brink of bankruptcy and experts are wondering when, and if, the oil industry will recover. The price of benchmark U.S. crude oil closed at $12.34 a barrel Tuesday, April 28. At the start of the year, the price was around $60. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

NEW YORK (AP) — With a barrel of crude oil costing less than a New York pizza, many U.S. shale producers are being pushed to the brink of bankruptcy and experts are wondering when, and if, the oil industry will recover.

The price of benchmark U.S. crude oil closed at $12.34 a barrel Tuesday. At the start of the year, the price was around $60.

Demand for oil has been decimated by the coronavirus pandemic, especially as shelter-in-place orders reverberated around the globe. “International travel, certainly by air, has essentially ceased, and that’s shocking,” said Jim Burkhard, vice president, IHS Markit.


The Energy Information Administration expects jet fuel use to fall 34% in the second quarter. In addition, the agency expects gasoline use to drop by 25% from April to June as drivers stay home instead of hitting the road during warmer weather.

Oil prices were declining even before the pandemic hit as producers flooded the market with more oil than the world could use. Now, as demand shrinks, the industry is running out of places to store it. As the downturn wears on, oil producers are dramatically curtailing their plans to drill for new oil and some have announced they’re shutting in wells that were already producing, a process that could damage oil fields.

WILL THE U.S. OIL INDUSTRY RECOVER?

No one can predict the future, but sustained low prices are likely to have a lasting impact on the U.S. oil industry. Prices are too low for most oil companies to drill new wells, and the amount of oil that existing wells generate declines over time. When oil companies stop drilling, that leads to long-term production declines.

IHS Markit suggests U.S. oil production could decline by 3 million barrels per day to 10 million by the end of this year, and could decline further to 9 million barrels per day in 2021.

U.S. oil production might not return to the same levels it enjoyed before the coronavirus hit, and 2019 may have been the peak of global oil consumption, Burkhard said.

“U.S. production is going to get hit hard,” Burkhard said. “Once you stop drilling, you have these very rapid decline rates that you don’t have anywhere else in the world.” Many producers in the U.S. are shale producers, and their wells cost more to operate than traditional oil drilling. Their wells also produce most of their oil in the first few years; after that, production drops off dramatically, so when drilling stops that leads to rapid declines.


HOW MUCH HAS PRODUCTION DECLINED?

In March, drilling for oil was down 25% compared to last year, according to law firm Baker Hughes. And things have only gotten worse since. March began with oil trading at around $43 a barrel and ended at $20. In April, oil prices dropped to a low of $6.50 a barrel and before bouncing back to the teens.

Oil companies have cut $80 billion from capital spending budgets this year, with about $36 billion of those cuts coming from the U.S., said Chris Midgley, global head of analytics at S&P Global Platts.

WHO WILL BE HIT THE HARDEST?

Major oil companies like Exxon with diversified businesses will survive, but smaller oil producers are going to have a harder time. “They just don’t have a lot of alternatives to stay in business once they stop production,” said Richard Marshall, head of global oil and gas industry practice at Nakisa.

Many producers, especially shale companies, took on a lot of debt to finance operations and can only make ends meet at about $40 a barrel. In the shale industry, about $20 billion in debt will come due in 2021 and $30 billion in 2022, Midgley said. The heavily-indebted companies are going to have to refinance in an environment where the availability of capital is constrained, he said.

The signs are already showing. Whiting Petroleum, a shale producer, filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month, followed by Diamond Offshore Drilling. Parsley Energy, a mid-sized fracking company, lost half its market value since the year began and told regulators it has been shutting down enough wells to take about 400 barrels of oil per day off the market. Continental Resources, another shale oil producer, announced it would suspend its quarterly dividend.

Smaller producers will likely be bought by larger companies that are better equipped to weather the storm. “We will see more consolidation of the industry,” Midgley said. “We’ll probably see more bankruptcies.”

Trump order keeping meat packing plants open worries unions

By JILL COLVIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump took executive action to order meat processing plants to stay open amid concerns over growing coronavirus cases and the impact on the nation’s food supply.

The order signed Tuesday uses the Defense Production Act to classify meat processing as critical infrastructure to try to prevent a shortage of chicken, pork and other meat on supermarket shelves. Unions fired back, saying the White House was jeopardizing lives and prioritizing cold cuts over workers’ health.

More than 20 meatpacking plants have closed temporarily under pressure from local authorities and their own workers because of the virus, including two of the nation’s largest, one in Iowa and one in South Dakota. Others have slowed production as workers have fallen ill or stayed home to avoid getting sick.

“Such closures threaten the continued functioning of the national meat and poultry supply chain, undermining critical infrastructure during the national emergency,” the order states.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 1.3 million food and retail workers, said Tuesday that 20 food-processing and meatpacking union workers in the U.S. have died of the virus. An estimated 6,500 are sick or have been exposed while working near someone who tested positive, the union says.

As a result, industry leaders have warned that consumers could see meat shortages in a matter of days. Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world’s largest food companies, ran a full-page advertisement in The New York Times and other newspapers Sunday warning, “The food supply chain is breaking.”

“As pork, beef and chicken plants are being forced to close, even for short periods of time, millions of pounds of meat will disappear from the supply chain,” it read.

Tyson suspended operations at its pork plant in Waterloo, Iowa after a slew of infections, and Smithfield Foods halted production at its plant in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, after an outbreak infected 853 workers there.

The 15 largest pork-packing plants account for 60% of all pork processed in the U.S., and the country has already seen a 25% reduction in pork slaughter capacity, according to UFCW.

A senior White House official said the administration was trying to prevent a situation in which a “vast majority” of the nation’s meat processing plants might have temporarily closed operations, reducing the availability of meat in supermarkets by as much as 80%.


The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the order before its release, said the White House was also working with the Labor Department to provide enhanced safety guidance for meatpacking workers. That will include trying to minimize the risk to workers who may be prone to serious complications from the virus, including strongly recommending those over the age of 65 and with preexisting conditions stay home.

The order, which was developed in consultation with industry leaders including Tyson and Smithfield, is designed, in part, to provide companies with additional liability protections in case workers get sick.

Trump on Tuesday said the order would address what he described as a “legal roadblock.” It will “solve any liability problems where they had certain liability problems and we’ll be in very good shape.”



But UFCW International President Marc Perrone said that more must be done to protect the safety of workers.

“Simply put, we cannot have a secure food supply without the safety of these workers,” he said in a statement, urging the administration “to immediately enact clear and enforceable safety standards” and compel companies to provide protective equipment, make daily testing available to workers, and enforce physical distancing, among other measures.

Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said the administration should have acted earlier to put safety measures in place.

“We only wish that this administration cared as much about the lives of working people as it does about meat, pork and poultry products,” he said.

And Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, which represents 3,000 workers at the JBS meat processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, said the order “will only ensure that more workers get sick, jeopardizing lives, family’s income, communities, and of course, the country’s food supply chain.”

The administration is working with companies to help them secure protective equipment, like face shields and masks, and ramp up testing, the official said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration have issued extensive guidelines on steps companies and workers should take.

Protecting workers can be especially challenging at plants that typically employ thousands of people who often work side-by-side carving meat, making social distancing all but impossible. Some companies have been working to reduce infections by checking workers’ temperatures, staggering breaks and altering start times. Owners said they have also done more to clean plants and added plastic shields between workstations.

When outbreaks have happened, local public health agencies have pushed in some cases for temporary closures so they can limit wider outbreaks in communities and conduct mass testing to determine who is carrying the virus. Some plants have also briefly closed for deep cleaning and to install new safety measures.

Yet concerns about working conditions persist and have led some to walk off the job. In central Minnesota, some workers at the Pilgrim’s Pride poultry plant walked out Monday night to protest the company’s record on worker safety.

Mohamed Goni, an organizer with Greater Minnesota Worker Center, said workers have complained the company is not sharing information about sick colleagues, has not implemented social distancing on the line, and that workers who were sick returned after just two or three days, and some workers who developed symptoms were not allowed to leave when they asked to go home.

“The company refused, saying there would be a shortage of workers,” Goni said, adding that 80% to 85% of the plant’s workers are Somali.

“They have other family members living with them — elderly, children, people with underlying conditions. So if one of them brings that to their homes, it’s going to be more worse and a more serious problem,” Goni said.

Cameron Bruett, head of corporate affairs for JBS USA and Pilgrim’s, said in an email that employees are never forced to work or punished for an absence due to health reasons.

“We will endeavor to keep our facilities open to help feed the nation, but we will not operate a facility if we do not believe it is safe. The health and safety of our team members remains our number one priority,” Bruett said.

In South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem has said she hopes to see a reopening plan for Smithfield this week, but sidestepped questions Tuesday about whether she agreed with Trump’s order, which might have prevented the Sioux Falls plant from shutting down if it had been in place earlier.

“We need to keep (plants) running, but we also need to protect people,” Noem said.

___

Associated Press writers Ryan J. Foley in Iowa City, Iowa; Amy Forliti in Minneapolis; and Stephen Groves in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, contributed to this report.


Trump to use Defense Production Act to order meat plants stay open

By Sommer Brokaw
CARGILL BEEF PROCESSING PLANT
April 28 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would sign an executive order under the Defense Production Act to make meat processing plants stay open amid the pandemic.

The announcement was made in an Oval Office meeting with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis open to reporters.

"We're going to sign an executive order today, I believe, and that'll solve any liability problems," Trump said.

The order comes amid farmers fearing that the $19 billion in aid to cope with the coronavirus pandemic won't be enough because of widespread closures due to virus outbreaks.

It also comes about a week after Tyson Foods suspended operations at its Waterloo, Iowa, plant after almost 200 out of 2,800 workers tested positive for COVID-I9.

The company, based in Springdale, Ark., which is one of the world's largest food companies, said that workers would continued to be paid while the plant was closed.

It also paused production at its Pasco, Wash., facility to test its more than 1,400 workers for COVID-19.

Tyson is among more than a dozen meat plants that have closed since the start of the pandemic.

Due to closures, Howard AV Roth, president of the National Pork Producers Council, said last week farms are so crowded there are hog farmers who have started to kill pigs they can't sell to slaughterhouses.

The executive order Trump plans to sign will declare the meat processing plants as critical infrastructure.

The Trump administration is working with the Department of Labor to issue guidance on which employees should stay home, including vulnerable populations.

In March, consumer demand for meat surged across the country, but the closures since then have resulted in reduced capacity to process meat.

The Center for Biological Diversity, a nonprofit organization with focus on conservation, criticized Trump's statement that he would order meat plants to remain open.

"It doesn't get more Trumponian than shielding meatpacking companies' profits at the expense of worker protections," the center's director, Stephanie Feldstein, said in a statement. "Even before the pandemic hit, Trump's USDA had gutted federal oversight of hog slaughterhouses and was routinely approving waivers for chicken plants that exceeded federal safety limits for slaughter line speeds. And now Trump is willing to sacrifice workers' lives to prop up the nation's inhumane and environmentally destructive addiction to meat."

Trump previously invoked the DPA in late March to push General Motors to produce ventilators and also invoked it more recently for COVID-19 testing swabs.

Still, Trump has urged hospitals and states to take the lead in getting other supplies. In response, nurses protested last week to demand Trump use the DPA to produce personal protective equipment for health workers who care for COVID-19 patients.

UK climate activists stranded in historic town in Kosovo
By VISAR KRYEZIU

1 of 11
In this photo taken on Friday, April 24, 2020, Rosie Watson and Mike Elm visit the medieval fortress in Prizren, Kosovo. British climate activists Rosie Watson and Mike Elm were on an international bicycle and running tour to promote their campaign when they got stuck in Kosovo because of the coronavirus pandemic. Watson, 25, from Loweswater in northwestern England, and Mike Elm, 32, from Edinburgh, Scotland, have been stranded in Prizren, a town in Kosovo, 85 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of the capital Pristina. Since mid-March, Kosovo has been in a lockdown with all of its land and air border crossings shut. The virus has killed at least 22 people and there are more than 780 confirmed cases. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu)PRIZREN, 

Kosovo (AP) — British climate activists Rosie Watson and Mike Elm were on an international bicycle and running tour to promote their green campaign when they got stuck in Kosovo because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Watson, 25, from Loweswater in northwestern England, and Elm, 32, from Edinburgh, Scotland, have been stranded in Prizren, a town in Kosovo, 85 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of the capital, Pristina.

Since mid-March, Kosovo has been in a lockdown with all of its land and air border crossings shut. The virus has killed at least 22 people in the Balkan nation, which has more than 790 confirmed cases.

The couple decided against getting on an evacuation flight organized by the British government, saying they are against plane travel and they want to continue their journey once it’s possible to do so. Their trip is low-budget and they have had free accommodation since the start.

They are enjoying the historic, cobblestone streets of Prizren, a town along the Bistrica River and the Sharri Mountains that was founded in the second century A.D. and has a medieval castle. They have also been sampling fli, a local butter pie, and been reassured by a traditional welcome from residents.

In Prizren, they have focused on writing about their trip. Watson has a blog as does Elm.

Watson started her “The New Story Run” in August last year from the United Kingdom, planning a two-year tour on foot to Mongolia “to tell stories of people finding a better and more equal and healthy way of living for us and the planets and tackling the climate crisis.” After running 3,570 kilometers (2,220 miles), or 17 kilometers (around 10 miles) per day, she has a lot to write about.

Inspired by her efforts, Elm joined her in November aiming to cycle a total of 12,000 kilometers (7,450 miles), or 50 kilometers (30 miles) a day. Before getting stuck, they took different routes, but they met up time and again along the way.

Elm met people in Prizren trying “to improve this beautiful city by bringing more trees and green space.” Previously, he was in Zlarin, which aims at becoming Croatia’s first single-use plastic free island. In neighboring Albania, Watson met with a community battling against hydroelectric operations that he says are endangering nearby Valbona National Park.

“A better world for our children needs a better world for us right now,” Elm said.

The pandemic will urge people to “see some of the benefits of having less cars in the city and the cleaner air, the nicer sound, the quieter environment,” he added.


When borders reopen, their plan is to continue their journey through Bulgaria, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and finally Mongolia.

This virus has shown that we, and governments, have the ability to transform society and whole countries very fast — something which we need to do to avoid the impacts of the climate crisis,” Watson said.
_

Llazar Semini contributed to this report from Tirana, Albania.

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Follow AP coverage of climate change at http://apnews.com/Climate

USA
Riots, escapes and pepper spray: Virus hits juvenile centers

By MARGIE MASON and ROBIN McDOWELL

FILE - In this July 8, 2010 file photo, teenagers head toward the gym at Caddo Juvenile Detention Center in Shreveport, La. Fear and frustration is raging as fast as the coronavirus in some juvenile detention centers, with riots and escapes reported in hotspot facilities such as New York and Louisiana. (Val Horvath/The Shreveport Times via AP, File)

Nicole Hingle wasn’t surprised when the call came. Frustrations had been building inside juvenile detention centers nationwide as the number of coronavirus cases continued to climb. Now, her 17-year-old son Jace, was on the phone telling her around 40 kids had rioted at his facility in Louisiana — the same state where more than a dozen youths escaped during two breakouts at another site this month.

Hingle said her son described whirring helicopters above the Bridge City facility just outside New Orleans. Juveniles kicked down their doors, a SWAT team swarmed in, kids were pepper-sprayed and a staffer was injured during the melee.

“It’s a real mess,” the teen told his mother. “Everything is destroyed.”

Due to coronavirus lockdown measures, it’s been more than two months since Hingle has been able to visit her son. She has accused administrators of keeping her in the dark, and said she was growing increasingly upset by the lack of a clear plan to protect or release those held inside. Ten youths have tested positive at Bridge City in recent weeks.

“This could be life or death for my child,” said Hingle, adding that her son was among a group transferred to the Acadiana Center for Youth after the brawl, where they were pepper-sprayed twice over the weekend by parole officers brought in to help due to short staffing.

“I don’t want condolences from the state. I don’t want condolences from the governor,” she said. “I do not want sympathy. I want them to do what is right on behalf of our kids because they cannot save themselves nor can we save them without the help of these politicians.”

As more and more state and local officials announce the release of thousands of at-risk inmates from the nation’s adult jails and prisons, parents along with children rights’ groups and criminal justice experts say vulnerable youths should be allowed to serve their time at home. But they say demands for large-scale releases have been largely ignored. Decisions are often not made at the state level, but instead carried out county by county, with individual judges reviewing juvenile cases one by one.

Such legal hurdles have resulted in some kids with symptoms being thrown into isolation for 23 hours a day, in what amounts to solitary confinement, according to relatives and youth advocates. They say many have been cut off from programs, counselors and school. Some have not been issued masks, social distancing is nearly impossible and they have been given limited access to phone calls home. One mother reported that her daughter was so cut off from the outside world — with no TV and staff not wearing any protective gear — that the girl had no idea a deadly virus was even circulating in America. In some states, authorities have been shuttling kids between facilities, trying to make sure sick and healthy young people are kept apart.

Growing fears and frustrations have led to violence and mayhem not just in Louisiana, but at juvenile centers in other coronavirus hot spots such as New York. Young people are calling their parents to say they’re scared and desperate to escape. Sheriff’s deputies responded to a facility in Portland, Oregon, this month after a “disturbance” broke out, but no injuries were reported.

“The department has maintained essential staff at the juvenile detention center in accordance with national standards throughout the COVID-19 outbreak, and is working hard to balance the social and emotional needs of youth in our care during this extraordinary time,” the Multnomah County Juvenile Services Division said in a statement.

Vincent Schiraldi, co-director at Columbia University Justice Lab and a former correctional administrator, said he hoped these problems would serve as a warning to other juvenile facilities, especially those that have not yet been hit by the virus.

“If this storm is coming in your direction, don’t wait until you have 100 mile-an-hour winds to put the boards up on the windows,” he said. “Deal with it now. Come up with your COVID plan now. Get everybody out of your facility that can be gotten out, start training your staff, start developing your lines of communication, so that if people start getting sick and staff start calling in sick, then you can manage it as best you can.”

As of Monday, 150 juveniles and 283 staff had tested positive for COVID-19 at facilities nationwide, according to an unofficial log being kept by Josh Rovner at the Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit The Sentencing Project. He said because testing has been so limited, it’s likely the real numbers are “much, much higher.”

New York is one of the few cities that operates two juvenile facilities. At the first sign of illness there, the city agency that oversees the sites decided to put healthy kids at the Crossroads Juvenile Center in Brooklyn, while moving all of the infected residents to the Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx.

Fernando Cabrera, a Bronx council member, said he saw the potential danger of suddenly ripping kids away from familiar staff and routines, especially during a time of crisis.

“You transfer all these kids to another borough, they are going to be anxious,” he said after dozens of police responded when a fight broke out in Crossroads about two weeks ago. “They are in self-preservation mode.”

The city’s Administration for Children’s Services provided few details about the brawl, but said some staff suffered minor injuries, including one who needed offsite medical treatment.

A similar situation occurred at two branches of the Swanson Center for Youth in Louisiana. Its facility in Columbia had been designated for healthy youths, while its Monroe site was reserved for the infected, resulting in kids being transferred back and forth. So far, at least 17 have tested positive for the coronavirus in the two facilities, according to The Sentencing Project. In addition, two escapes occurred this month at Monroe involving 13 youths, according to a statement from the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice.

One of the main obstacles to monitoring the spread of the coronavirus in youth lockups is that so few tests are being administered. In addition, some juvenile justice agencies, citing privacy concerns, have refused to release even basic information, including the number of people infected.

Virginia’s Department of Juvenile Justice initially didn’t release figures. But on April 17, it revealed that more than two dozen kids had tested positive at the Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center outside Richmond, accounting for a quarter of all reported cases at youth facilities nationwide at that time, according to The Sentencing Project. On Monday, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services said 26 youths have tested positive at the Memphis Center for Success and Independence.

No severe cases were reported at Bon Air, and the majority were asymptomatic, according to a statement from Christopher Moon, the department’s chief physician.

But Rachael Deane, of the Legal Aid Justice Center’s Just Children Program, accused the department in a letter of not providing proper medical care to kids housed at Bon Air. She said one client with symptoms was not tested and another whose swab came back positive was never examined by a doctor. Deane also alleged that the department wasn’t communicating with parents when their kids became infected and that some clients had been denied access to counseling for weeks. She charged that legal rights were also being violated.

“Our clients report they are kept in their rooms for at least 23 hours per day. Although they are supposed to receive one hour per day outside their rooms, this is not always honored,” the letter said. “Even when their free hour is made available, residents are sometimes forced to choose between using it for essential activities, like taking a shower, instead of exercise and recreation.”

Valerie Boykin, director of the Virginia department, said in a statement that Bon Air residents’ parents and loved ones are kept informed in a timely manner.

More than 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the United States — more than anywhere in the world. But the threat posed by COVID-19 extends well beyond the prison walls. Even though most personal visits have been stopped, hundreds of thousands of guards, wardens and other correctional facility administrators go in and out every day, potentially carrying the virus home to their families and communities.

The juvenile population behind bars has been decreasing over the past couple of decades and stood at around 43,000 in 2017, the last available count. Roughly 70% were accused of low-level crimes.

It’s unclear exactly how many kids have been released due to the coronavirus, but a new survey by the Baltimore-based Annie E. Casey Foundation looked at a snapshot of juvenile justice agencies in 30 states housing more than 3,700 youths. The survey found the number of young people in local secure detention centers — where they are held until a court decides whether to confine them until their hearings or allow them to wait at home — dropped 24% from March to April, mostly due to fewer admissions. However, the data only represents about one-tenth of counties nationwide.

Nate Balis, director of the foundation’s juvenile justice strategy group, said far more young people should be released to home confinement to prevent the spread of COVID-19, especially given that the overall population is only a fraction of the number of adults behind bars.

“Whether or not kids are being released has to do with who’s calling the shots and that is very different from state to state,” he said. “We’re talking about states that may have a couple hundred young people in custody or less.”

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court denied a petition earlier this month asking it to limit new admissions and allow for the immediate release of some detained youths to prevent the spread of the virus in juvenile facilities.

Maryland’s Court of Appeals denied a similar petition but offered guidance to administrative judges, saying the health and well-being of the juveniles should be taken into consideration during the public health crisis. Since the filing, 164 juveniles have been released, according to the public defender’s office. There are now about 450 kids remaining in the system.

The coronavirus doesn’t typically hit young people hard, but it has been shown to attack anyone with underlying health problems. Locked-up children face much higher rates of asthma and other respiratory ailments, along with substance abuse issues.

Up to 70% have mental health problems and many have learning disabilities or are illiterate, with more than half placed in a grade level below their age, according to the nonprofit Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights.

Seven youths and 11 staff have tested positive in juvenile detention centers in Connecticut.

Jibrelle Milner said her 17-year-old son is only getting out of his two-person room at the Manson Youth Institution in New Haven County for one or two hours a day. She said he’s supposed to graduate high school this year, but he’s a special education student who’s only receiving learning packets to complete on his own.

She said he suffers from allergies and asthma and is still recovering from injuries after being shot twice last year. She worries about the virus but is equally concerned about his mental health.

“There’s no visitation, there’s no school going on,” Milner said. “I feel like it’s incarceration on top of incarceration.”

____

Virus lockdown worsens suffering for Johannesburg beggars
By BRAM JANSSEN

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Bakair Zaina, a blind migrant from Mozambique, sits on the floor of his room he shares with two sons in Johannesburg, South Africa on April 14, 2020. A total of 23 families of blind and disabled foreign nationals living in the dilapidated building and earning a living by street begging have been hard hit by South Africa's lockdown as they are forced to remain indoors. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)
Charles Mogwenya, right, and his brother, Comeforth, stand inside their room in Johannesburg, South Africa on April 14, 2020. They rely on the income of their mother, Rosewite Prikisi, a blind street beggar from Zimbabwe who shares the small room with her four children. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)
Anna Sene, a blind Zimbabwean migrant, poses for a portrait in Johannesburg, South Africa on April 13, 2020. Sene, who usually goes outside the beg for donations, has been hard hit by South Africa's lockdown as she is forced to stay indoors, making her unable to provide for her five children. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)
Disabled Zimbabwean Triumph Gonese, right, and her caretaker. Simangele Sibanda, pose for a portrait in Johannesburg, South Africa on April 13, 2020. Triumph's mother died of cancer in 2016, so she and Simangele have to go out to the streets to beg for donations. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)
Ali Thembo, a blind migrant from Zimbabwe, poses for a portrait in Johannesburg, South Africa on April 13, 2020. A total of 23 families of blind and disabled foreign nationals living in a dilapidated building and earning a living by street begging have been hard hit by South Africa's lockdown as they are forced to remain indoors. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)

Fellowship Mukanhairi, the daughter of a blind Zimbabwean migrant, has her hair styled in the courtyard of their building in Johannesburg, South Africa on April 16, 2020. A total of 23 families of blind and disabled foreign nationals living in a dilapidated building and earning a living by street begging have been hard hit by South Africa's lockdown as they are forced to remain indoors. (AP Photo/Bram Janssen)

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Inock Mukanhairi shows the small amount of food that he has for himself, his wife, Angeline, and five children — barely enough to make it through another week of South Africa’s strict coronavirus lockdown.

The 58-year-old and his wife are both blind. Normally, they would be begging at traffic lights on Johannesburg’s streets, relying on handouts from motorists, pedestrians and shop owners.

But the lockdown, now in its fifth week, has changed that.

Police are preventing them from leaving their dilapidated building to beg on the empty streets and barren sidewalks.


The building houses about two dozen blind or otherwise disabled foreigners who rely on handouts to make enough for food and rent. With their children, they make up about 70 people. Many have entered South Africa illegally from Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi.

“I really understand that the coronavirus is killing a lot of people. But at the same time, I’m locked inside my room,” said Mukanhairi. “So death is death, due to corona or due to hunger.”

South Africa has the most confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Africa, with more than 4,360, including 86 deaths.

The country’s far-reaching restrictions have been in effect since March 27 and residents must stay home, except for visits to grocery stores, pharmacies and health facilities. The lockdown will be eased starting May 1, but this is unlikely to help the beggars, because people will still be required to stay home.

Families of six to eight people are crammed into small rooms where they cook, eat and sleep. Under such conditions, social distancing is not possible. The building has a few taps for water, so regular hand-washing is also difficult.

The elderly and blind often just sit on their beds as their children play in the dimly lit and narrow hallways, where loose electric cords dangle from the ceiling.

Without any donations, they say they are uncertain about where they will get their next meals.

Last week, South Africa announced an increase in social grants for the poor, elderly and disabled, but these immigrants are not eligible for that aid.

At the start of the lockdown, authorities swept the homeless from the streets and took them to a housing facility where food is provided. The beggars say they fled to their own building at the time to avoid being rounded up.

They are not alone in being uncertain about how getting adequate food. The U.N. World Food Program said this month that the number of people around the world with acute hunger could almost double this year because of the pandemic. At least 265 million people could face food insecurity by the end of this year, a jump of 130 million.

Rosewite Prikise, 41, lives with her four children in one of the small rooms, where all share a bed.

“We have one week’s worth of food left,” she said. “So we cannot survive, especially us who are blind. We cannot go outside and our situation is not right.”

GDP report to show a damaged economy sliding into recession

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER 

A cyclist rides past shuttered businesses during the coronavirus outbreak on the boardwalk in Atlantic City, N.J., Tuesday, April 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy began 2020 riding the crest of a record-long expansion with every expectation that its 11th year of growth would not be its last.

Then the economy screeched to a sudden halt. And now it’s in free-fall.

On Wednesday, the government will offer a glimpse of how dark the picture has grown and how much worse it could get as the coronavirus pandemic inflicts ruinous damage. The Commerce Department is expected to estimate that the gross domestic product, the broadest gauge of the economy, shrank at an annual rate of 5% or more in the January-March quarter.


That would be the sharpest quarterly drop in GDP since the Great Recession, which ended in 2009. And it would be the first quarterly contraction in six years.

And yet forecasters say that will be only a precursor of a far grimmer GDP report to come for the current April-June quarter, when business shutdowns and layoffs have struck with devastating force. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that GDP will plunge in the current quarter by a 40% annual rate. That would be, by a breathtaking margin, the bleakest quarter since such records were first compiled in 1947.

In just a few weeks, businesses across the country have shut down and laid off tens of millions of workers. Factories and stores are shuttered. Home sales are falling. Households are slashing spending. Consumer confidence is sinking.

As the economy slides into what looks like a severe recession, some economists are holding out hope that a recovery will arrive quickly and robustly once the health crisis has been solved — what some call a V-shaped recovery. Increasingly, though, analysts say they think the economy will struggle to regain its momentum even after the viral outbreak has subsided.

Many Americans, they suggest, could remain too fearful to travel, shop at stores or visit restaurants or movie theaters anywhere near as much as they used to. In addition, local and state officials may continue to limit, for health reasons, how many people may congregate in such places at any one time, thereby making it difficult for many businesses to survive. It’s why some economists say the damage from the downturn could persist far longer than some may assume.

“The recession will be worse than the one we went through from 2007 to 2009,” said Sung Won Sohn, economics and business professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, referring to the downturn that came to be called the Great Recession because it was the worst slump since the Great Depression of the 1930s.


There is also fear that the coronavirus could flare up again after the economy is re-opened, forcing reopened businesses to shut down again.

“The virus has done a lot of damage to the economy, and there is just so much uncertainty now,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.

Zandi said he thought the economy could resume its growth in the July-September quarter before faltering in the final quarter of 2020 and then regaining its footing on a sustained basis in mid-2021 — assuming that a coronavirus vaccine is ready for use by then.

“I would characterize this period as going through quicksand until we get a vaccine,” Zandi said.



The Trump administration takes a rosier view. President Donald Trump told reporters this week that he expects a “big rise” in GDP in the third quarter, followed by an “incredible fourth quarter, and you’re going to have an incredible next year.”

The president is predicating his re-election campaign on the argument that he built a powerful economy over the past three years and can do so again after the health crisis has been resolved.

"WHITE PEOPLE IN"
Groups sow doubt about COVID vaccine before one even exists

By DAVID KLEPPER and BEATRICE DUPUY


FILE - In this March 16, 2020, file photo, a patient receives a shot in the first-stage safety study clinical trial of a potential vaccine for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle. A coronavirus vaccine is still months or years away, but groups that peddle misinformation about immunizations are already taking aim -- and potentially eroding -- confidence in what could be humanity’s best chance to defeat the virus. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — A coronavirus vaccine is still months or years away, but groups that peddle misinformation about immunizations are already taking aim, potentially eroding confidence in what could be humanity’s best chance to defeat the virus.

In recent weeks, vaccine opponents have made several unsubstantiated claims, including allegations that vaccine trials will be dangerously rushed or that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, is blocking cures to enrich vaccine makers. They’ve also falsely claimed that Microsoft founder Bill Gates wants to use a vaccine to inject microchips into people — or to cull 15% of the world’s population.

FILE - In this April 17, 2020, file photo, protesters demanding Florida businesses and government reopen, march in downtown Orlando, Fla. At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic “anti-vaxxers” had doubts about the origin and nature of the virus itself. They’ve also latched on to protests against stay-at-home orders in the U.S. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

Vaccine opponents in the U.S. have been around for a long time. Their claims range from relatively modest safety concerns about specific vaccines or the risk of side effects to conspiracy theories that border on the bizarre.

The movement is receiving renewed attention, especially as it aligns itself with groups loudly protesting restrictions on daily life aimed at controlling the spread of the virus. Health professionals say vaccine misinformation could have lethal consequences if it leads people to opt for bogus cures instead.

“Only a coronavirus vaccine can truly protect us from future outbreaks,” said Dr. Scott Ratzan, a physician and medical misinformation expert at the City University of New York and Columbia University. “But what if the effort succeeds and large numbers of people decide not to vaccinate themselves or their children?”

While vaccines for diseases such as polio, smallpox and measles have benefited millions, some skeptics reject the science, citing a distrust of modern medicine and government. Others say mandatory vaccine requirements violate their religious freedom.

Rita Palma, the leader of the anti-vaccine group in Long Island called My Kids, My Choice, is among those who say their families won’t get the coronavirus vaccine.

“Many of us are anxiety stricken at the thought of being forced to get a vaccine,” Palma said. “I will never choose to have a COVID-19 vaccine. I don’t want the government forcing it on my community or my family.”

From the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, vaccine skeptics have tailored several long-standing claims about vaccine safety to fit the current outbreak. When the first U.S. case was announced in January, some alleged the coronavirus was manufactured and that patents for it could be found online.

Thousands of deaths later, vaccine opponents are endorsing unapproved treatments, second-guessing medical experts and pushing fears about mandatory vaccinations. They’ve also latched onto protests against stay-at-home orders in the U.S.

“The coronavirus has created this perfect storm of misinformation,” remarked David A. Broniatowski, an associate professor at George Washington University’s school of engineering and applied science who has published several studies on vaccine misinformation.

Last week, an anti-vaccine activist was arrested in Idaho after repeatedly refusing police orders to leave a playground closed because of the pandemic. The woman, who was there with other families, is affiliated with two groups that protested at the Idaho Statehouse against stay-at-home orders.

Facebook groups formed to organize the protests have been peppered with vaccine hoaxes and myths. Perhaps no one plays a bigger role in the conspiracy theories than Gates, who is funding vaccine research. The online movement has centered concerns around a COVID-19 vaccine on false claims that Gates is planning to microchip people with the vaccine or use it to reduce the world’s population.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine critic who helped popularize unsubstantiated claims that vaccines can cause autism, said Gates’ work gives him “dictatorial control of global health policy.” Roger Stone, a former adviser to President Donald Trump, went further on a New York City radio show, saying Gates “and other globalists” are using the coronavirus “for mandatory vaccinations and microchipping people.”

Such wild theories can have real-world effects. False rumors that Gates hoped to test an experimental vaccine in South Africa became mainstream after a news site erroneously reported the claim. One of the country’s political parties then sent a letter to President Cyril Rampahosa demanding answers about “deals” struck with Gates.

In fact, Gates and his wife are financing a vaccine trial in Philadelphia and Kansas City, Missouri, not South Africa. He also suggested creating a database of people immune to the virus, not implanting microchips.

On Monday, during remarks recognizing World Immunization Week, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus criticized vaccine skeptics for spreading misinformation at a time when many families are delaying or skipping routine childhood immunizations because they’re afraid of COVID-19 exposure in doctors’ offices.

“Myths and misinformation about vaccines are adding fuel to the fire,” he said.

Health experts have repeatedly said there is no evidence the coronavirus was intentionally created or spread. They also insist that vaccines are not only safe, but essential to global health.

“Vaccine researchers and anyone who is a vaccine advocate cares deeply about vaccine safety,” said Dr. Paul Offit, a Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia physician and co-inventor of a vaccine for rotavirus, which kills hundreds of thousands of children annually.

For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, that clear up in two to three weeks. But it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death for some people, especially older adults and people with existing health problems.

The vaccine debate is fertile ground for groups looking to sow discord in the United States. Russia seized on it to create divisions before the 2016 U.S. election, and appears to be at it again.

A report from a European Union disinformation task force found numerous conspiracy theories in English-language Russian media, including state-run RT, claiming an eventual vaccine will be used to inject nanoparticles into people.

“When pro-Kremlin disinformation outlets spread anti-vaccine tropes, they become responsible for those who will hesitate to seek professional medical care,” the EU report said.

Women who dare dissent targeted for abuse by Yemen’s rebels

By ISABEL DEBRE
In this March 4, 2020 photo, Samera al-Huri, poses for a portrait in her home near Cairo, Egypt. As they grow more politically active, women are increasingly targeted by the Houthi rebels who rule northern Yemen. Hundreds of women have vanished into secret prisons where they are tortured and sometimes raped, former detainees and other activists say. The Houthis deny the claims, but six women who escaped to Egypt spoke to the Associated Press about their ordeals. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

CAIRO (AP) — Samera al-Huri’s fellow activists were disappearing, one by one. When she asked their families, each gave the same cryptic reply: “She’s traveling.” A few of the women re-emerged. But they seemed broken and refused to say where they had been for months.

Al-Huri soon found out.

A dozen officers from the Houthi rebels who control northern Yemen snatched her from her home in the capital, Sanaa, at dawn.

They took her to the basement of a converted school, its filthy cells filled with female detainees. Interrogators beat her bloody, gave her electrical shocks and, as psychological torture, scheduled her execution only to call it off last-minute.

Women who dare dissent, or even enter the public sphere, have become targets in an escalating crackdown by the Houthis.

Activists and former detainees described to The Associated Press a network of secret detention facilities where they are tortured and sometimes raped. Taiz Street, a main avenue in Sanaa, is dotted with several of them, hidden inside private villas and the school where al-Huri was held.

“Many had it worse than me,” said al-Huri, 33, who survived three months in detention until she confessed on camera to fabricated prostitution charges, a grave insult in conservative Yemen.

Long-held traditions and tribal protections once guarded women from detention and abuse, but those taboos are succumbing to the pressures of war.

As men die in battle or languish in jail in a conflict now dragging into its sixth year, Yemeni women have increasingly taken political roles. In many cases, women are organizing protests, leading movements, working for international organizations or advocating peace initiatives — all acts the Houthis increasingly view as a threat.

“This is the darkest age for Yemeni women,” said Rasha Jarhum, founder of the Peace Track Initiative, which lobbies for women’s inclusion in peace talks between the Houthis and Yemen’s internationally recognized government.

“It used to be shameful for even traffic police to stop a woman.”

__

In this March 4, 2020, photo, Bardis Assayaghi, who was detained by Houthis in Yemen, poses for a portrait with her manicure in the colors of the Yemeni flag, in her home near Cairo, Egypt. Assayaghi, a prominent poet who circulated verses about Houthi repression, was detained last fall in a school and counted around 120 women held there. Some nights, the head of the Sanaa criminal investigation division, Sultan Zabin, took the “young, pretty girls” out of the school to rape them, another former detainee Samera al-Huri and Assayaghi said. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

_

“I’D FALLEN OFF THE EARTH”

Systematic arrests and prisons rife with torture have been central to war efforts by both sides, the Iranian-backed Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition trying to oust them, the AP has found.

Yet the intimidation campaign against women, observers say, is unique to rebel-held areas.


Estimates of women currently detained range from 200 to 350 in the governorate of Sanaa alone, according to multiple rights groups. The Yemeni Organization for Combating Human Trafficking says that’s likely an undercount.

Other provinces are more difficult to pin down. Noura al-Jarwi, head of the Women for Peace in Yemen Coalition, estimates that over 100 women are detained in Dhamar province south of the capital, a major crossing point from government-controlled areas into Houthi-run territory.

Al-Jarwi, who runs an informal support group in Cairo for women released from Houthi detention, has documented 33 cases of rape and eight instances of women debilitated by torture.

The AP met with six former detainees who managed to flee to Cairo before the coronavirus pandemic grounded flights and closed borders. Their accounts are supported by a recent report from a U.N. panel of experts, which said sexual violations may amount to war crimes.

One woman, a former history teacher who asked not to be identified to protect family in Yemen, was swept up in a crackdown on protests in December 2017.

She was taken to a villa somewhere on Sanaa’s outskirts, though she didn’t know where. At night, all she could hear was barking dogs, not even the call to prayer.

“I was so far away, like I’d fallen off the earth,” she said.

Around 40 women were captives in the villa, she said. Interrogators tortured her, one time tearing her toenails out. In more than one case, three masked officers told her to pray and said they would purify her from sin. They took turns raping her. Female guards held her down.

The Houthis’ human rights minister denied the torture allegations and the existence of clandestine women’s prisons.

“If this is found, we will tackle this problem,” Radia Abdullah, one of two female Houthi ministers, said in an interview.

She acknowledged many women had been arrested in a recent anti-prostitution sweep of cafes, apartments and women’s gatherings. They were accused of “aiming to corrupt society and serving the enemy,” she said, referring to the Saudi-led coalition.

A parliamentary committee created last fall to probe reports of illegal detention discovered and released dozens of male detainees in its first weeks of work.

It planned to pursue the issue of women as well. But a Feb. 16 internal memo obtained by the AP complains that the Interior Ministry pressured the committee to end its investigation.

___

A WIDENING CRACKDOWN

The first major round-up of women came in late 2017, after the Houthis killed their one-time ally in the war, former ruler Ali Abdullah Saleh. The rebels detained scores of women who thronged public squares, chanting for the return of Saleh’s body.

The scope has expanded since, said al-Jarwi. “First they came for opposition leaders, then protesters, now it’s any woman who speaks against them.”

One woman told the AP she was dragged from her taxi at a protest spot, beaten and detained. A peace advocate for a London-based humanitarian group was locked in a Sanaa police station for weeks.

A computer teacher, 48, recalled how 18 armed men broke into her home and beat everyone inside, stomping on her face and screaming sexual insults at her. She had no connection to politics but had posted a video on Facebook complaining that government salaries had not been paid for months. She and her children fled to Egypt soon after.

Al-Huri said when she rejected a Houthi official’s request to snitch on other activists, she was abducted in July 2019 by a dozen masked officers with Kalashnikovs, “as though I was Osama bin Laden.”

She was imprisoned in Dar al-Hilal, an abandoned school on Taiz Street. A fellow detainee, Bardis Assayaghi, a prominent poet who circulated verses about Houthi repression, counted around 120 women held there, “schoolteachers, human rights activists, teenagers.” She said officers banged her head against a table so hard that she needed eye surgery to see properly when released months later.

The head of the Sanaa criminal investigation division, Sultan Zabin, conducted interrogations in the school, al-Huri and Assayaghi said. Some nights, they said, Zabin took the “young, pretty girls” out of the school to rape them.

The U.N. panel of experts identified Zabin as running an undisclosed detention site where women have been raped and tortured.

At least two villas on Taiz Street have been used to detain women, along with other sites around the capital, including apartments confiscated from exiled politicians, two hospitals and five schools, al-Jarwi and the ex-detainees said.

___

“GET US OUT”

When the history teacher was released in March 2018, her limp body was dumped under an overpass. Her family refused to see her because of the shame.

In their eyes, “I had gone out to protest, so I deserved what happened,” she said.

Female ex-detainees say the Houthis aim to humiliate them with rapes and allegations of prostitution.

“It’s intimidation to the core,” said Fatima Abo Alasrar, a non-resident scholar at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. In Yemen’s patriarchal society, survivors of sexual assault are often ostracized, sometimes even killed by relatives to preserve family “honor.”

Women are set free only after pledging to stop protesting or posting on social media, and after they videotape confessions to prostitution and espionage.

“They told me: If you leave Sanaa, we will kill you, if you spread information, we will kill you, if you speak against us, we will kill you,” said Assayaghi.

In Cairo, the women help each other cope and move forward.

Over home-cooked dinners, they gather with their children and recall their city before the war, when they performed poetry and smoked water pipes in bustling cafes, many of which the Houthis have shut down to keep men and women from mingling.

Many still receive threats from the Houthis. None can see their families in Sanaa again.

Al-Huri struggles with insomnia. She knows the Houthis will release her confession soon. But she’s convinced that telling her story is worth the risk.

“There are girls still in prison,” she said. “When I try to sleep, I hear their voices. I hear them pleading, ‘Samera, get us out.’”

Irrfan Khan, of ‘Slumdog Millionaire,’ ‘Life of Pi,’ dies

22 minutes ago

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FILE- In this May 17, 2017 file photo, Bollywood actor Irrfan Khan looks on during a press conference to promote his movie "Hindi Medium" in Ahmadabad, India. Khan, a veteran character actor in Bollywood movies and one of India's most well-known exports to Hollywood, has died. He was 54. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File)

NEW DELHI (AP) — Irrfan Khan, a veteran character actor in Bollywood movies and one of India’s best-known exports to Hollywood, has died. He was 54.

Khan played the police inspector in “Slumdog Millionaire” and the park executive Masrani in “Jurassic World.” He also appeared in “The Amazing Spider-Man” and the adventure fantasy “Life of Pi.”

Khan died Wednesday after being admitted to Mumbai’s Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani hospital with a colon infection.

“Irrfan was a strong soul, someone who fought till the very end and always inspired everyone who came close to him,” a statement released by the actor’s team said.

Khan made his screen debut in the Academy Award-nominated 1988 drama “Salaam Bombay!,” a tale of Mumbai’s street children. He later worked with directors Mira Nair, Wes Anderson and Ang Lee.

Khan in 2018 was diagnosed with a rare neuroendocrine cancer and underwent months of treatment in the United Kingdom.

“I trust, I have surrendered,” he wrote in a heartfelt note after he broke the news of his battle with cancer.

Khan won a number of film awards in India, including a 2012 Indian National Film Award for best actor for his performance in “Paan Singh Tomar,” a compelling tale of a seven-time national champion athlete who quit India’s armed forces to rule the Chambal ravines in central India.

Khan received an Independent Spirit Award for supporting actor in 2006 for the Indian-American drama “The Namesake” and a viewers’ choice award at the Cannes festival 2013 for his role in the Indian romantic drama “The Lunchbox.”

Khan also starred in the Hamlet-inspired “Haider,” a Bollywood film set in militarized Himalayan Kashmir.

Tributes came from Bollywood, including from fellow actor Amitabh Bachchan, who said Khan was an “incredible talent” and “a prolific contributor to the World of Cinema.”

Khan “left us too soon,” Bachchan wrote on Twitter.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted that “Khan’s demise is a loss to the world of cinema and theatre.”

In an interview with The Associated Press in 2018, Khan said: “I’ve seen life from a completely different angle. You sit down and you see the other side and that’s fascinating. I’m engaged on a journey.”

Khan’s last Bollywood movie, “Angrezi Medium,” a sequel to one of his biggest hits, “Hindi Medium” (2017), was released before India went into a lockdown in March because of the coronavirus pandemic.

He is survived by his wife, television writer and producer Sutapa Sikdar, and sons, Babil and Ayan.