Drive for climate compensation grows after Pakistan’s floods
By RIAZAT BUTT and ADIL JAWAD KHAN

today

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Flood victim Rajul Noor walks towards her tent school at a relief camp, in Dadu, a district of southern Sindh province, Pakistan, Sept. 23, 2022. Every part of Noor’s life has been wrecked by this summer’s massive monsoon-driven floods. The 12-year-old girl’s family home is destroyed, as is the school that she loved. The devastation wreaked by floods in Pakistan this summer has intensified the debate over a question of climate justice: Do rich countries whose emissions are the main cause of climate change owe compensation to poor countries hit by climate change-fueled disasters? 

(AP Photo/Fareed Khan)


DADU, Pakistan (AP) — Every part of Rajul Noor’s life has been wrecked by this summer’s massive monsoon-driven floods. The 12-year-old girl’s family home is destroyed, as is the school that she loved. The friends she used to walk to school and play with are scattered, finding refuge elsewhere.

“Our whole world is underwater, and nobody has helped us,” she said, speaking in the tent where she, her parents and four siblings now live in Dadu district in Pakistan’s Sindh province.

Almost 100% of the district’s cotton and rice crops were destroyed. More than half its primary and secondary schools were fully or partially damaged, local officials say. Boats laden with people and their belongings crisscross Dadu, past buildings still partially submerged, weeks after the rains stopped. This level of damage is repeated in towns and cities across Pakistan.

The destruction has intensified the debate over a question of climate justice: Whether rich countries whose emissions have been the main driver of climate change owe 

It’s an idea that developed nations have repeatedly rejected, but Pakistan and other developing countries are pushing for it to be seriously discussed at COP27, next month’s international climate conference in Egypt.

Pakistan in many ways crystalizes the debate. Scientists have said climate change no doubt helped swell monsoon rains this summer that dumped three and a half times the normal amount of rain, putting a third of the country underwater. At least 1,300 people were killed, and 33 million people in Pakistan have been affected.

Pakistan, which contributed only 0.8% to the world’s emissions, now faces damages estimated at more than $30 billion, more than 10% of its GDP. It must repair or replace 2 million damaged or destroyed homes, nearly 24,000 schools, nearly 1,500 health facilities and 13,000 kilometers (7,800 miles) of roads. Bridges, hotels, dams, and other structures were swept away.

“These 33 million Pakistanis are paying in the form of their lives and livelihoods for the industrialization of bigger countries,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilwal Bhutto-Zardari said on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly last month.

Climate Change Minister Sherry Rehman went further, saying rich nations owe reparations to countries hit by climate disasters.

Developed nations have refused anything that smacks of reparations, fearing the door will open to massive climate claims against them from around the world.

They agreed to give money to help poorer countries reduce emissions and adapt their infrastructure for future climate change, though they have been slow in providing the money. But at COP26 in Glasgow last year, the United States and European Union members rejected demands for a fund to compensate poor countries for “loss and damage” -- destruction already wrought by climate change.

“Bigger states are extremely concerned about liability. How long can they keep kicking the can down the road? They may at some point want to settle as the issue isn’t going to go away,” said Margeretha Wewerinke-Singh, assistant professor of international public law at Leiden University in the Netherlands.

She is lead counsel for the tiny Pacific island nation of Vanuatu in its pursuit of an advisory opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice.

Wewerinke-Singh said there is a basis for legal action. International law says states have an obligation not to cause harm to the environment of other states. Violations can trigger an obligation to make reparation — either restoring the situation to what it was before or providing compensation.

Pakistan has two options, she said. It could go after states through an international body like the ICJ. But this avenue rules out China and the U.S., two of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, as they don’t recognize the ICJ’s jurisdiction. Or it could pursue cases against governments or fossil fuel companies in national courts.

She pointed to successful suits against tobacco companies for the harm caused by smoking.

“Climate change litigation is in its infancy. Tobacco litigation is an example of litigation that was construed to be far-fetched, but it really took off,” she said.

Regardless of Rehman’s statement, Pakistan’s prime minister and foreign minister have both said their country is not demanding reparations. Instead, they have spoken forcefully of rich countries’ moral obligation to help Pakistan as a victim of climate change.

That may reflect a calculation on Islamabad’s part that it is more likely to get the funding it needs by pressing developed countries to give at a U.N.-backed donor conference for Pakistan expected later this year, rather than stoke their fears on reparations by pursuing a long-term, systematic solution like a fund for loss and damage.

Complicating the case for reparations is the question of how much Pakistan’s own policies worsened the impact of the flood disaster.
A
Ayesha Siddiqi, an expert on climate change and disasters, said the greater responsibility for the destruction lies with those causing climate change, “but there is responsibility” with Pakistan as well. She was one of the authors on a scientific paper released last month that pointed to Pakistan’s self-created vulnerabilities.

Pakistan approved a national flood protection plan in 2017 but never put it in place. The World Bank extended a $200 million credit line to fund flood protection projects in Baluchistan province but it was suspended because of Pakistan’s lack of progress in implementing it; the projects were supposed to have been completed this month.

The biggest problems that Siddiqi and others point to are unrestricted building in flood zones and Pakistan’s reliance on engineering mega-projects like large dams and drainage systems along the Indus River Valley. Those mega-projects only worsen destruction by trying to pen up floodwaters, they say, when it should be trying to let the inundation flow through with as little harm as possible.

“It’s about controlling the river, taming the river, rather than small-scale solutions to manage the water and working with the ecological system,” Siddiqi said.

No reforms were enacted after 2010 flooding that killed nearly 2,000 people, said Daanish Mustafa, who co-authored Pakistan’s first climate change response strategy and was lead author on a U.N. flood response strategy for Pakistan.

He has recommended removing obstacles that block natural drainage and preventing home building on flood plains.

In Dadu, Noor keeps the same routine as she once did in her village of Gholam Nabi Pir. She wakes at 5 a.m. and helps her four younger sibling get ready for the day. They go to school in a nearby tent. But there’s no longer the long walk to school with her friends, no more playing tag around her house, no hearty traditional breakfast of fried eggs and paratha flatbread.

“I lived happily at home. I miss everything about it,” she said. “It makes me cry.”

PEOPLE SHOULD BE EVACUATED 

NOT JUST TOLD TO EVACUATE

Disasters like Ian pose extra risk for fragile older people

By ANITA SNOW and JAY REEVES

yesterday


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In this photo provided by Johnny Lauder, Lauder's mother, Karen Lauder, 86, is submerged nearly to her shoulders in water that has flooded her home, in Naples, Fla., Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022, following Hurricane Ian. (Johnny Lauder via AP)


FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) — Older people with limited mobility and those with chronic health conditions requiring the use of electrically powered medical devices were especially vulnerable when Hurricane Ian slammed into Southwest Florida, and experts warn such risks to society’s oldest are growing as disasters increase with the impact of climate change.

Almost all of the dozens of people killed by Ian in hardest hit Lee County were 50 or older, with many in their 70s, 80s and even 90s. That’s highlighted the rising dangers for those least likely to be able to flee such disasters and those most likely to be impacted by the aftermath.

Climate change makes hurricanes wetter and more powerful, but it also increases the frequency of heat waves like ones that scorched the Pacific Northwest the last two summers, killing scores of mostly aged people. It’s also intensified drought fueled wildfires like the inferno that incinerated the California town of Paradise in 2018, killing 85 people, again mostly older.

“It’s not terribly surprising that physically frail, socially isolated people are the most likely to die in these events. But it is politically significant,” said New York University sociology professor Eric Klinenberg. “If we know people are at risk, why aren’t we doing more to help them?”

Klinenberg, who wrote the book “Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago” about extreme heat that killed more than 700 mostly older and Black people in July 1995, called Ian a mere preview.

“We saw this happen in Chicago, in (Hurricane) Katrina, in (Superstorm) Sandy, and we are going to see more and more as the globe becomes increasingly hotter,” he said.

Florida in particular will feel the increased impact of climate-fueled disasters, sitting in the path of many Atlantic storms and with a large share of retirees drawn by warm weather, a vast coastline and relatively cheap housing. About 29% of Lee County’s population is 65 and older.

One of the more dramatic stories of Ian demonstrates the risks. Johnny Lauder’s 86-year-old mother Karen Lauder, who uses a wheelchair, initially refused to evacuate. But as the water inside her home began to rise nearly above her head, she was unable to flee and her son had to come rescue her in an ordeal he documented.

The extreme dangers some face when they lose power was especially clear in Lee County, where an 89-year-old man died after the electricity he needed for his oxygen went out and then his backup generator failed.

Florida has attempted to address some of these issues by setting up shelters where people with health conditions that require electricity for oxygen, dialysis and devices like ventilators can preregister to stay.

AARP Florida Director Jeff Johnson praised the special shelters, saying the state’s county emergency management agencies had modernized and improved evacuation operations the past two decades.

“There is room for improvement, but it would be wrong to say they aren’t doing anything,” he said.

Home-based networks that deliver care and services to older people, as well as neighborhood associations and faith communities can also help by checking on socially isolated older people, Johnson said.

Several hurricane survivors sat in wheelchairs Thursday outside one special shelter set up at an elementary school in Fort Myers.

Merrill Bauchert, 60, was staying there because Ian destroyed his home and he needs electricity for the CPAP machine he uses for severe sleep apnea.

Bauchert said dozens of residents from a senior living facility were staying there, many of them with mobility problems or dependent on electrical medical devices to stay alive.

Large oxygen tanks were used at first for people with breathing problems, he said, but those were later replaced with mechanical oxygen generators for individual use. Conditions have improved with restored water service, but the early days were tough, Bauchert said.

With many people too frail to go outside and no sewer service inside, using the restroom involved putting a plastic bag in a toilet and sitting down, sometimes with help.

“You were actually doing your business in a trash bag. Take the trash bag, tie it in a knot, throw it in the trash can and put another bag in for the next person,” he said.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has recognized the disproportionate effect Ian had on the state’s older residents, and the need for local groups to help their recovery.

“It hit in areas that have a lot of elderly residents, and I’ve met a lot of the folks,” DeSantis said at a news conference Thursday. “So you’re somebody who’s maybe 85 years old. You may not be able to do the same home repair that you used to be able to do when you were younger.”

While the death toll of over 100 and property damage from Ian was catastrophic, Hurricane Katrina caused far more deaths and destruction in August 2005.

Researchers have concluded that nearly half of those killed by Katrina in Louisiana were 75 or older. A 2006 Senate Committee report noted a failure by all levels of government to effectively evacuate thousands of older, sick and disabled people from New Orleans as neighbors with cars fled the city.

Older people are also at risk from heat in the days and weeks after major storms.

After Hurricane Ida slammed Louisiana in 2021, of nine New Orleans residents killed by heat and 10 for whom heat was a contributing cause of death, only four — two in each group — were under the age of 60, according to information provided by the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office.

The aftereffects of Hurricane Irma in 2017 took an especially large toll. The direct impacts of the storm killed more than 90 people in the U.S., but researchers at the University of South Florida and Brown University found 433 additional residents at Florida nursing homes died within 90 days of the storm, compared to the same period in 2015, when there were no hurricanes.

The study was prompted by the heat-related deaths of 12 residents at a Broward County nursing home that occurred when the storm knocked out air conditioning and staff didn’t move them to another facility. An administrator and three nurses were later charged.

Klinenberg, the sociologist who wrote about the Chicago heat deaths, said the fault lies in in how society cares for its elders not only during disasters, but daily.

“We live in an aging society and in a way we are victims of our own success,” he said. “Europe has the same problem. Also Japan and Korea. People are living decades longer because of medical science, but we don’t know how to care for them.”

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This version has been corrected to show the deadly Chicago heat wave occurred in 1995, not 1991.

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Snow reported from Phoenix. Janet McConnaughey in New Orleans contributed reporting.

Historic homes may prove to be more resilient against floods

By BEN FINLEY

yesterday

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Co owner of Building Resilient Solutions, Kerry Shackelford, right, gestures as he describes the process for testing wood along with Paige Pollard, left, at their lab Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022, in Suffolk, Va. Whenever historic homes get flooded, building contractors often feel compelled by government regulations to rip out the water-logged wood flooring, tear down the old plaster walls and install new, flood-resistant materials. But Virginia restorers Paige Pollard and Kerry Shackelford say they can prove that historic building materials can often withstand repeated flooding. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)


SUFFOLK, Va. (AP) — Whenever historic homes get flooded, building contractors often feel compelled by government regulations to rip out the water-logged wood flooring, tear down the old plaster walls and install new, flood-resistant materials.

It’s a hurried approach that’s likely to occur across southwest Florida in the wake of Hurricane Ian. But restorers Paige Pollard and Kerry Shackelford say they know something that science is yet to prove: historic building materials can often withstand repeated soakings. There’s often no need, they say, to put in modern products such as box-store lumber that are both costly to homeowners and dilute a house’s historic character.

“Our forefathers chose materials that were naturally rot-resistant, like black locust and red cedar and cypress,” said Shackelford, who owns a historic restoration business. “And they actually survive better than many of the products we use today.”

Pollard and Shackelford are part of an emerging movement in the U.S. that aims to prove the resilience of older homes as more fall under the threat of rising seas and intensifying storms due to climate change. They hope their research near Virginia’s coast can convince more government officials and building contractors that historic building materials often need cleaning — not replacing — after a flood.

In Florida, historic preservationists already fear older homes damaged by Ian may be stripped of original materials because so few craftsmen are available who can properly perform repairs.

“There are some companies that just roll through, and their job is just to come in and gut the place and move on,” said Jenny Wolfe, board president of the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation.

Pollard and Shackelford’s joint venture in Virginia, the retrofit design firm Building Resilient Solutions, opened a lab this year in which planks of old-growth pine, oak and cedar are submerged into a tank mimicking flood conditions. The tests are designed to demonstrate historic materials’ durability and were devised with help from Virginia Tech researchers.

Meanwhile, the National Park Service has been working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on similar research at the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in Champaign, Illinois.

Researchers there have read through construction manuals from the mid-19th and early 20th centuries to assemble everything from tongue-and-groove flooring to brick walls coated with plaster. The materials were lowered into water containing bacteria and mold to simulate tainted floodwater.

The research may seem glaringly redundant considering all of the older homes that stand intact along the nation’s coasts and rivers: many have withstood multiple floods and still boast their original floors and walls.

Pollard and Shackelford say lumber in older homes is resilient because it came from trees that grew slowly over decades, if not centuries. That means the trees’ growth rings were small and dense, thereby making it harder for water to seep in. Also, the timber was cut from the innermost part of the trunk, which produces the hardest wood.

Plaster can also be water resistant, while common plaster coatings were made from lime, a substance with antiseptic qualities.

But here’s the problem: U.S. flood insurance regulations often require structures in flood-prone areas to be repaired with products classified as flood-resistant. And many historic building materials haven’t been classified because they haven’t been tested.

U.S. regulations allow exceptions for homes on the National Register of Historic Places as well as some state and local registries. But not everyone fully understands or is aware of the exceptions, which can be limited.

The far bigger challenge is a lack of expertise among contractors and local officials, Pollard said. Interpretations of the regulations can vary, particularly in the chaos after a major flood.

“You’ve got a property owner who’s in distress,” said Pollard, who co-owns a historic preservation firm. “They’re dealing with a contractor who’s being pulled in a million directions. And the contractors are trained to get all of that (wet) material into a dumpster as quickly as possible.”

In Norfolk, Virginia, Karen Speights said a contractor replaced her original first floor — made from old-growth pine — with laminate flooring after her home flooded.

Built in the 1920s, Speights’ two-story craftsman is in Chesterfield Heights, a predominantly Black neighborhood on the National Register of Historic Places. It sits along an estuary of the Chesapeake Bay in one of the most vulnerable cities to sea-level rise.

“I still believe I had a good contractor, but flooding was not his expertise,” Speights said. “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

Along Florida’s Gulf Coast, there are thousands of historic structures, said Wolfe of the Florida Trust. A large number of them are wood-framed houses on piers with plaster-and-lath walls.

Many likely just need to be dried out after Ian, Wolfe said. But only so many local contractors know what to do “in terms of drying them slowly and opening up the baseboards to get circular airflow.”

Andy Apter, president-elect of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry, agreed that many contractors aren’t well-versed in older building materials.

“There’s no course that I know of that teaches you directly how to work on historical homes,” said Apter, a Maryland contractor. “It’s like an antique car. You’re going to be limited on where you can find parts and where you can find someone who’s qualified to work on it.”

But interest in the resilience of older homes has grown since Hurricane Katrina, which deluged hundreds of thousands of historic structures along the Gulf Coast in 2005, according to Jenifer Eggleston, the National Park Service’s chief of staff for cultural resources, partnerships and science.

Eggleston said the park service recognized the growing need to protect older structures and issued new guidelines last year for rehabilitating historic buildings in flood-prone areas.

The guidelines recommend keeping historic materials in place when possible. But they don’t list specific materials due to the lack of research on their flood resistance.

That’s where the studies come in.

A recent study by the park service and Army Corps found that some historic materials, such as old-growth heart pine and cypress flooring, performed considerably better than certain varieties of modern lumber, Eggleston said.

Those particular floor assemblies could be dried for reuse after so-called “clean water” damage, Eggleston said. But they would likely require refinishing to remove “biological activity,” such as mold and bacteria.

Pollard and Shackelford said they’re hoping for an eventual shift in practices that will save money for homeowners as well as taxpayers, who often foot the bill after a major disaster.

In the meantime, flooding in historic areas will only get worse from more frequent rain storms or more powerful hurricanes, said Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers.

“Think about our historic settlement patterns in the country,” Berginnis said. “On the coasts, we settled around water. Inland, we settled around water.”

FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE
Telemedicine was made easy during COVID-19. Not any more

By TOM MURPHY

yesterday

Helen Khuri poses for a portrait on the campus of Emory University Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022, in Atlanta. Khuri’s mother found a specialist to help her when the 19-year-old’s post-traumatic stress disorder flared up last spring. But the Emory University student had to temporarily move from Atlanta to Boston for treatment, even though she never set foot inside the hospital offering it. “It didn’t necessarily make sense to … kind of uproot my life, just to receive this three-week treatment program,” Khuri said.

 (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Telemedicine exploded in popularity after COVID-19 hit, but limits are returning for care delivered across state lines.

That complicates follow-up treatments for some cancer patients. It also can affect other types of care, including mental health therapy and routine doctor check-ins.

Over the past year, nearly 40 states and Washington, D.C., have ended emergency declarations that made it easier for doctors to use video visits to see patients in another state, according to the Alliance for Connected Care, which advocates for telemedicine use.

Some, like Virginia, have created exceptions for people who have an existing relationship with a physician. A few, like Arizona and Florida, have made it easier for out-of-state doctors to practice telemedicine.

Doctors say the resulting patchwork of regulations creates confusion and has led some practices to shut down out-of-state telemedicine entirely. That leaves follow-up visits, consultations or other care only to patients who have the means to travel for in-person meetings.

Susie Rinehart is planning two upcoming trips to her cancer doctor in Boston. She needs regular scans and doctor visits to monitor a rare bone cancer that has spread from her skull to her spine.

Rinehart doesn’t have a specialist near her home outside Denver who can treat her. These visits were done virtually during the pandemic.

She will travel without her husband to save money, but that presents another problem: If she gets bad news, she’ll handle it alone.

“It’s stressful enough to have a rare cancer, and this just adds to the stress,” the 51-year-old said.

Rinehart’s oncologist, Dr. Shannon MacDonald, said telemedicine regulation enforcement seems to be more aggressive now than it was before the pandemic, when video visits were still emerging.

“It just seems so dated,” said MacDonald, who recently co-wrote a piece about the issue in The New England Journal of Medicine.

To state medical boards, the patient’s location during a telemedicine visit is where the appointment takes place. One of MacDonald’s hospitals, Massachusetts General, requires doctors to be licensed in the patient’s state for virtual visits.

It also wants those visits restricted to New England and Florida, where many patients spend the winter, said Dr. Lee Schwamm, a vice president for the Mass General Brigham health system.

That doesn’t help doctors like MacDonald who see patients from around the country.

Cleveland Clinic also draws a lot of patients from out of state. Neurosurgeon Dr. Peter Rasmussen worries about how some will handle upcoming travel, especially because winter can bring icy weather.

A fall “literally could be life ending” for someone with a condition like Parkinson’s disease who has trouble walking, he said.

Psychiatrists have a different concern: Finding doctors for patients who move out of state. This is especially difficult for college students who temporarily leave home.

Most U.S. counties have no child and adolescent psychiatrists, noted Dr. Shabana Khan, chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s telepsychiatry committee.

“If we do try to transition patients, often there is no one there,” Khan said.

Helen Khuri’s mother found a specialist to help her when the 19-year-old’s post-traumatic stress disorder flared up last spring. But the Emory University student had to temporarily move from Atlanta to Boston for treatment, even though she never set foot inside the hospital offering it.

She rented an apartment with her father so she could be in the same state for telemedicine visits, a situation she deemed “ridiculous.”

“It didn’t necessarily make sense to … kind of uproot my life, just to receive this three-week treatment program,” Khuri said.

Even people seeing doctors close to home can be affected.

Dr. Ed Sepe’s Washington, D.C., pediatric practice has patients in Maryland who have started driving a few miles across the border into the city to connect by video. That saves them a 45-minute trip downtown for an in-person visit.

“It’s silly,” he said. “If you are under a doctor’s care, and you are in the U.S., it doesn’t make any sense to have geographic restrictions for telemedicine.”

Sepe noted that low-income families tend to be in jobs that don’t allow time off for in-person visits. Some also have a hard time getting transportation. Video visits were helping with these obstacles.

“It’s bigger than just telemedicine,” he said. “There’s a missed opportunity there to level the playing field.”

States can play an important role in telemedicine’s growth by guarding against fraud and protecting patient safety, according to Lisa Robin, an executive with the Federation of State Medical Boards.

But the federation also recommends that states loosen some telemedicine restrictions.

That includes permitting virtual follow-ups for someone who has traveled out of state to seek care or for people who temporarily move but want to stay with a doctor.

States could also form regional compacts with their neighbors to ease cross-border care, noted Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a Harvard health policy professor who studies telemedicine.

“There’s so many ways that these issues can be addressed,” he said

In the meantime, patients who need care now are trying to figure out how to manage it.

Lucas Rounds isn’t sure how many visits he will make to see MacDonald in Boston to monitor his rare bone cancer. The 35-year-old Logan, Utah, resident already spent months away from home earlier this year, undergoing radiation and surgery.

Plus he has a wife and three young girls and expenses like a mortgage to consider.

Rounds says he has to think about taking care of his family “if the worst happens.”

“If I die from cancer, then all these expenses we’ve accrued … those are dollars that my family wouldn’t have,” he said.

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Follow Tom Murphy on Twitter: @thpmurphy

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

Singer driven from Belarus for speaking out tries to rebuild
By MARK PRATT

yesterday

Opera singer Ilya Silchukou sits for a photograph at a park in a suburb of Boston, Tuesday, Oct. 4, 2022. Silchukou was a cultural icon in his native Belarus, the lead soloist at the State Opera Bolshoi who represented his nation at official government functions at home and abroad and performed at opera houses all over Europe. He lived a privileged and comfortable life in his homeland, but gave it up after joining tens of thousands of Belarusians at election protests that were violently suppressed by the Lukashenko government. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)


BOSTON (AP) — Ilya Silchukou was a cultural icon in his native Belarus, the lead soloist at the State Opera Bolshoi who represented his nation at official government functions at home and abroad and performed at opera houses across Europe.

He lived a privileged and comfortable life in his homeland.

And he gave it all up.

Silchukou dared to speak out against Alexander Lukashenko, who has led the former Soviet republic with an iron fist for nearly three decades.

He’s now living in suburban Boston with his wife and three children and teaches music to middle school students while he tries to revive his singing career in the U.S., where he remains relatively unknown.

“I am known in Europe, but I’ve never performed in the States, and it was like a blank piece of paper for me, just a new page,” he said during a recent interview in Boston. “We had to start from scratch here.”

When Lukashenko won a sixth term in office in 2020 in an election regarded by his opposition and the West as fraudulent, Silchukou joined tens of thousands of Belarusians at election protests that were violently suppressed and resulted in the arrests of thousands.

“It was so evident to all of us that we could not keep silent any more,” he said.

He renounced three awards that he had received personally from Lukashenko.

His friends warned him of the risks.

“They said, ‘What is the problem with you? You have everything you need,’” he said. “I was well paid in Belarus and I had all the benefits from that. I said, ‘Yes they pay me, but they don’t own me.’”

His public opposition to Lukashenko got him fired from the opera for an “act of immorality” and he was black-listed, he said. In response, he had one more act of defiance — using his baritone voice in a video of the traditional Belarusian hymn, “Mahutny Bozha,” which means “Mighty God,” and has become a signature anthem of the opposition to Lukashenko.

Still, it wasn’t until March 2021 when the police came after his wife, Tanya, and accused her of defrauding the nation’s state-sponsored child support system and threatened her with two years in jail that he knew he had to get out. He took it as a thinly-veiled threat to break up their family.

“Lots of kids in Belarus have both parents in prison,” he said.

When his children finished school in May of that year, the family packed four suitcases with some vital documents and photos and flew from Belarus to the nation of Georgia, then on to Seattle, where his parents live.

The family came to the East Coast about a year ago at the suggestion of Marina Lvova, who runs the nonprofit Belarusians in Boston, drawn by Boston’s cultural scene, proximity to Europe and vibrant Belarusian expatriate community.

Lvova and her husband first saw Silchukou at one of his last public performances in Minsk and “fell in love with his voice,” she said.

But she was also impressed with his bravery for standing up to Lukashenko.

“Ilya is a real patriot of Belarus,” she said. “You cannot be successful in a country that is a prison, and unfortunately our country is a prison right now.”

Silchukou is making ends meet teaching 5th through 9th graders at the private Star Academy school.

“It’s pretty incredible that he’s able to share some of the experiences he’s had at some of the best opera houses in Europe,” said Margarita Druker, Star Academy’s co-director.

The school has many students of Eastern European descent whose families have similar stories of fleeing oppression.

“It was very courageous for someone of his stature to walk away from all he had into so much uncertainty,” Druker said.

Silchukou has returned to the stage, collaborating with pianist Pavel Nersessian, an associate professor at Boston University, for two recent concerts in Boston and New Jersey.

For both, he put together a retrospective of some of his personal favorite pieces spanning his career from his first singing lessons to his time at the national opera, including “Papageno” from “The Magic Flute” and “Cavatina Figaro” from the “The Barber of Seville.” He capped off the shows with what he called the “jewel of the concert,” a duet with his mezzo-soprano wife.

He recently had an audition with the Boston Lyric Opera and is trying to secure auditions with other opera houses in the U.S., and he’s in negotiations with U.S. agents.

“I am looking forward with hope,” he said.

One of those hopes is a return to his homeland.

He remains in touch with friends and colleagues in Belarus who are “working in fear,” afraid of speaking out against Lukashenko.

“We hope to see them again, and for sure we will sing our songs on the squares on our true independence day,” he said.

COLONIALIST NEWS NETWORK
CNN apologizes for entering Thai massacre site, pulls video

Buddhist pray with relatives of the victims of a mass killing attack gather for a Buddhist ceremony front on the Young Children's Development Center in the rural town of Uthai Sawan, north eastern Thailand, Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022. Thai police are investigating a report that a CNN crew inappropriately entered the daycare center where more than 20 preschoolers were slain as they were reporting on the attack, authorities said Sunday. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

UTHAI SAWAN, Thailand (AP) — CNN pulled a story on the massacre of Thai preschoolers and apologized Sunday over criticism its journalists entered the day care where the children were slain and filmed the crime scene without permission.

The two CNN journalists involved were fined after authorities found that they had been working in the country after entering on tourist visas, but cleared of wrongdoing for entering the day care center where more than 20 children were killed, deputy national police chief Surachate Hakparn said.

He said his investigation had determined the journalists believed they had obtained permission to enter and film after being waved into the building by a volunteer or a health officer, and were unaware the person was not authorized to allow them inside.

They each agreed to pay fines of 5,000 baht ($133) and leave the country, he said.

Both journalists apologized, as did CNN International’s executive vice president and general manager Mike McCarthy.

In a statement, he said his reporters sought permission to enter the building but the team “now understands that these officials were not authorized to grant this permission,” adding that it was “never their intention to contravene any rules.”

“We deeply regret any distress or offense our report may have caused, and for any inconvenience to the police at such a distressing time for the country,” he said in the statement tweeted by CNN.

He said CNN had ceased broadcasting the report and had removed the video from its website.

Authorities began looking into the incident after a Thai reporter posted an image on social media of two members of the crew leaving the scene in northeastern Thailand, where they were reporting on the Thursday attack by a fired policeman who authorities say massacred 36 people, 24 of them children. One CNN crew member was seen climbing over the low wall and fence around the compound, over police tape, and the other already outside.

That prompted criticism from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand, which said it was “dismayed” by CNN’s coverage and the decision to film the crime scene inside.

“This was unprofessional and a serious breach of journalistic ethics in crime reporting,” the FCCT said.

The Thai Journalists’ Association criticized CNN’s actions as “unethical” and “insensitive,” and called for an internal company investigation of the incident in addition to the official Thai probe.

In an initial response, CNN tweeted that the crew had entered the premises when the police cordon had been removed from the center, and were told by three public health officials exiting the building that they could film inside.

“The team gathered footage inside the center for around 15 minutes, then left,” CNN said in its tweet. “During this time, the cordon had been set back in place, so the team needed to climb over the fence at the center to leave.”

As Thailand’s worst such massacre, the attack drew widespread international media attention to the small town of Uthai Sawan in the country’s rural northeast. By Sunday, few remained but a large number of Thai media continued to report from the scene.

Families seek truth as Airbus, Air France face crash trial

By NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY and JEFFREY SCHAEFFER

yesterday

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Workers unload debris, belonging to the crashed Air France flight AF447, from the Brazilian Navy's Constitution Frigate in the port of Recife, northeast of Brazil, June 14, 2009. It was the worst plane crash in Air France history, killing people of 33 nationalities and having lasting impact. It led to changes in air safety regulations, how pilots are trained and the use of airspeed sensors. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)

PARIS (AP) — Nicolas Toulliou had just proposed marriage to his girlfriend. Nelson Marinho Jr. was heading off on a new oil exploration job. Eric Lamy was about to celebrate his 38th birthday.

They were among 228 people killed in 2009 when their storm-tossed Air France flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris slammed into the Atlantic. After more than a decade of legal battles, their families have a chance at justice in a courtroom.

Aviation industry heavyweights Airbus and Air France are charged with manslaughter in a trial that opens Monday over the crash of Flight 447 on June 1, 2009. The worst plane crash in Air France history killed people of 33 nationalities and had lasting impact, leading to changes in air safety regulations, how pilots are trained and the use of airspeed sensors.

But it almost didn’t come to trial. The companies insist they are not criminally responsible, and Air France has already compensated families. Investigators argued for dropping the case, but unusually, judges overruled them and sent the case to court.

“We made a promise to our loved ones to have the truth for them and to ensure that they didn’t die for nothing,” Ophelie Toulliou, whose 27-year-old brother Nicolas was killed, told The Associated Press. “But we are also fighting for collective security, in fact, for all those who board an Airbus every day, or Air France, every day.”

She said the companies present themselves as “untouchable,” and that Airbus made no effort to address families’ concerns. “For them, we are nothing. They did not lose 228 people. They lost a plane.”

Few families in Brazil, which lost 59 citizens in the crash, can afford to travel to France for the trial. Some feel the French justice system has been too soft on Airbus and Air France — two industrial giants in which the French government has an ownership stake.

The trial is expected to focus on two key factors: the icing over of external sensors called pitot tubes, and pilot error.

The Airbus A330-200 disappeared from radars over the Atlantic Ocean between Brazil and Senegal with 216 passengers and 12 crew members aboard. The first debris was only spotted at sea five days later. And it wasn’t until 2011 that the plane — and its black box recorders — were located on the ocean floor, in an unprecedented search effort at depths of more than 13,000 feet.

France’s air accident investigation agency BEA found that the accident involved a cascading series of events, with no single cause.

As a storm buffeted the plane, ice crystals present at high altitudes disabled the pitot tubes, blocking speed and altitude information. The autopilot disconnected.

The crew resumed manual piloting, but with erroneous navigation data. The plane went into an aerodynamic stall, its nose pitched upward. And then it plunged.

The pilots ”did not understand what was happening to them. A difficulty of interpretation, in an all-digital aircraft like all the aircraft in the world today — well, it’s easy to be wrong,” said Gerard Feldzer, a former pilot and pilot trainer for Air France.

He said he and pilots around the world asked themselves afterward “if it had been me, would I have acted in the same way? It has been a very difficult question to answer.”

No one risks prison in this case; only the companies are on trial. Each faces potential fines of up to 225,000 euros — a fraction of their annual revenues — but they could suffer reputational damage if found criminally responsible.

Nelson Marinho, whose son Nelson Jr was killed, is angry that no company executives will be tried.

“They have changed various directors, both at Airbus and Air France, so who will they arrest? No one. There won’t be justice. That’s sadly the truth,” Marinho, a retired mechanic who leads a support group for victims’ families, told The AP.

Air France is accused of not having implemented training in the event of icing of the pitot probes despite the risks.

In a statement, the company said it would demonstrate in court “that it has not committed a criminal fault at the origin of the accident” and plead for acquittal.

Air France has since changed its training manuals and simulations. It also provided compensation to families, who had to agree not to disclose the sums.

Airbus is accused of having known that the model of pitot tubes on Flight 447 was faulty, and not doing enough to urgently inform airlines and their crews about it and to ensure training to mitigate the resulting risk.

An AP investigation at the time found that Airbus had known since at least 2002 about problems with pitots, but failed to replace them until after the crash. The model in question — a Thales AA pitot — was subsequently banned and replaced.

Airbus blames pilot error, and told investigators that icing over is a problem inherent to all such sensors.

“They knew and they did nothing,” said Danièle Lamy, president of an association of victims’ families that pushed for a trial. “The pilots should never have found themselves in such a situation, they never understood the cause of the breakdown and the plane had become unpilotable.”

Lamy lost her son Eric a few days before his 38th birthday. She has struggled ever since to find out the truth.

“The plane had sent messages to the ground about the problem but had not warned the pilots. It’s as if you were driving a car at 130 (kph, about 80 mph), your brakes were no longer working but the car sent the alert to the mechanic and not to the driver,” Lamy told the AP.

She is among 489 civil parties to the trial, which is scheduled to last through December.

The crash forced Airbus and Air France to be more transparent and reactive, Feldzer said, noting that the trial will be important for the aviation industry as well as for families.

“The history of aviation security is made from this, from accidents,” Feldzer said.

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This story corrects the type of plane to A330-200 and corrects the spelling of Toulliou’s last name.

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Vaux-Montagny reported from Lyon, France. David Biller in Rio de Janeiro and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed.

Ukraine nuclear plant reconnected to grid after line was cut


 A view of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, in Enerhodar, Zaporizhzhia region, in territory under Russian military control, southeastern Ukraine, on May 1, 2022. An external power line to Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — the biggest in Europe — was repaired on Sunday Oct. 9, 2022 after shelling disconnected the facility from the grid and forced it to resort to emergency diesel generators, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said. (AP Photo, File)


BERLIN (AP) — An external power line to Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant — the biggest in Europe — was repaired on Sunday after shelling disconnected the facility from the grid and forced it to resort to emergency diesel generators, the U.N. nuclear watchdog said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said the 750-kilovolt line was reconnected to the plant on Sunday evening following repair work by Ukrainian engineers. That enabled the plant to start switching off the generators that had kicked in to provide it with power after the line — its last connection to the grid — was cut early Saturday.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi tweeted that the reconnection was “a temporary relief in a still-untenable situation.”

The plant has been held by Russian forces for months, but operated by Ukrainian employees. All six reactors at the site are shut down but they still require electricity for cooling and other safety functions.

Grossi has spent weeks pushing for the establishment of a “nuclear safety and security protection zone” around the plant. He says he will travel to Russia and then see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an effort to realize that plan.

Grossi condemned attacks “in areas that could affect the safety and security” of the plant, including in nearby Enerhodar and in the Ukrainian-held provincial capital of Zaporizhzhia.

“Almost every day now, there is shelling in the region where the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant is located and where the plant workers and their families live,” he said. “The shelling must stop, immediately. It is already having an impact on the nuclear safety and security situation at the plant.”

Ukrainian operating staff told IAEA experts that a convoy of five trucks carrying “vital additional diesel fuel supplies” is currently in the city of Zaporizhzhia and plans to cross the front line to reach the plant on Monday, the agency said. The site currently has diesel reserves for about 10 days. Separately, a supply of diesel provided by the Russian state nuclear company Rosatom has arrived in Enerhodar, the IAEA added.

Zaporizhzhia is one of four regions in Ukraine that Russian President Vladimir Putin has annexed in violation of international laws.

Putin signed a decree Wednesday declaring that Russia was taking over the nuclear plant. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry called it a criminal act and said it considered Putin’s decree “null and void.” Ukraine’s state nuclear operator, Energoatom, said it would continue to operate the plant.

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‘War crime:’ Industrial-scale destruction of Ukraine culture

By HANNA ARHIROVA

yesterday

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The 1,500 year-old golden tiara, inlaid with precious stones, one of the world's most valuable artifacts from the blood-letting rule of Attila the Hun, is seen in a museum in Melitopol, Ukraine, in November 2020. Russian troops stole and carted away the priceless crown and a hoard of other treasures after capturing the Ukrainian city of Melitopol in February. (AP Photo)

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The exquisite golden tiara, inlaid with precious stones by master craftsmen some 1,500 years ago, was one of the world’s most valuable artifacts from the blood-letting rule of Attila the Hun, who rampaged with horseback warriors deep into Europe in the 5th century.

The Hun diadem is now vanished from the museum in Ukraine that housed it — perhaps, historians fear, forever. Russian troops carted away the priceless crown and a hoard of other treasures after capturing the Ukrainian city of Melitopol in February, museum authorities say.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, now in its eighth month, is being accompanied by the destruction and pillaging of historical sites and treasures on an industrial scale, Ukrainian authorities say.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Ukraine’s culture minister alleged that Russian soldiers helped themselves to artifacts in almost 40 Ukrainian museums. The looting and destruction of cultural sites has caused losses estimated in the hundreds of millions of euros (dollars), the minister, Oleksandr Tkachenko, added.

“The attitude of Russians toward Ukrainian culture heritage is a war crime,” he said.

For the moment, Ukraine’s government and its Western backers supplying weapons are mostly focused on defeating Russia on the battlefield. But if and when peace returns, the preservation of Ukrainian collections of art, history and culture also will be vital, so survivors of the war can begin the next fight: rebuilding their lives.

“These are museums, historical buildings, churches. Everything that was built and created by generations of Ukrainians,” Ukraine’s first lady, Olena Zelenska, said in September when she visited a Ukrainian museum in New York. “This is a war against our identity.”

Workers at the Museum of Local History in Melitopol first tried hiding the Hun diadem and hundreds of other treasures when Russian troops stormed the southern city. But after weeks of repeated searches, Russian soldiers finally discovered the building’s secret basement where staff had squirrelled away the museum’s most precious objects — including the Hun diadem, according to a museum worker.

The worker, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, fearing Russian punishment for even discussing the events, said the Ukrainians don’t know where Russian troops took the haul, which included the tiara and some 1,700 other artifacts.

Dug up from a burial chamber in 1948, the crown is one of just a few Hun crowns worldwide. The museum worker said other treasures that disappeared with Russian soldiers include 198 pieces of 2,400-year-old gold from the era of the Scythians, nomads who migrated from Central Asia to southern Russia and Ukraine and founded an empire in Crimea.

“These are ancient finds. These are works of art. They are priceless,” said Oleksandr Symonenko, chief researcher at Ukraine’s Institute of Archaeology. “If culture disappears, it is an irreparable disaster.”

Russia’s Culture Ministry did not respond to questions about the Melitopol collection.

Russian forces also looted museums as they laid waste to the Black Sea port of Mariupol, according to Ukrainian officials who were driven from that the southern city, which was relentlessly pounded by Russian bombardment. It fell under Moscow’s complete control only in May when Ukrainian defenders who clung to the city’s steelworks finally surrendered.

Mariupol’s exiled city council said Russian forces pilfered more than 2,000 items from the city’s museums. Among the most precious items were ancient religious icons, a unique handwritten Torah scroll, a 200-year-old bible and more than 200 medals, the council said.

Also looted were art works by painters Arkhip Kuindzhi, who was born in Mariupol, and Crimea-born Ivan Aivazovsky, both famed for their seascapes, the exiled councillors said. They said Russian troops carted off their stolen bounty to the Russian-occupied Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine.

The invasion has also wrought extensive damage and destruction to Ukraine’s cultural patrimony. The U.N.’s cultural agency is keeping a tally of sites being struck by missiles, bombs and shelling. With the war now in its eighth month, the agency says it has verified damage to 199 sites in 12 regions

They include 84 churches and other religious sites, 37 buildings of historic importance, 37 buildings for cultural activities, 18 monuments, 13 museums and 10 libraries, UNESCO says.

Ukrainian government tallies are even higher, with authorities saying their count of destroyed and damaged religious buildings alone is up to at least 270.

While invasion forces hunted for treasures to steal, Ukrainian museum workers did what they could to keep them out of Russian hands. Tens of thousands of items have been evacuated away from the front lines and combat-struck regions.

In Kyiv, the director of the Museum of Historical Treasures of Ukraine lived in the building, guarding its artifacts, during the invasion’s first weeks when Russian forces sought, unsuccessfully, to encircle the capital.

“We were afraid of the Russian occupiers, because they destroy everything that can be identified as Ukrainian,” recalled the director, Natalia Panchenko.

Fearing Russian troops would storm the city, she sought to confuse them by taking down the plaque on the museum’s entrance. She also dismantled exhibits, carefully packing away artifacts into boxes for evacuation.

One day, she hopes, they’ll go back into their rightful place. For now, the museum is just showing copies.

“These things were fragile, they survived hundreds of years,” she said. “We couldn’t stand the thought they could be lost.”

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AP journalist John Leicester in Paris contributed. Efrem Lykatsky contributed from Kyiv.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Biden signs executive order on privacy protections in intelligence data

By Doug Cunningham


President Joe Biden speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C. on Monday. Friday Biden signed an executive order enhancing privacy and civil liberties protections for personal data collected by U.S. intelligence agencies. Photo by Shawn Thew/UPI | License Photo


Oct. 7 (UPI) -- President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday to enhance privacy and civil liberties protections for people's personal data collected by U.S. intelligence agencies as part of an agreement with the European Union on transatlantic data transfers.

The Biden executive order mandates that U.S. intelligence agencies only collect data from signals intelligence "in pursuit of defined national security objectives."

It sets up a Data Protection Review Court at the Justice Department to allow individuals to challenge how personal data is used by intelligence agencies.

Biden's action was taken based on a commitment to foster trans-Atlantic data flows while addressing Court of Justice concerns in Europe about privacy in personal data transfers to the United States.

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The order directs steps the United States will take to implement the European Union-U.S. Data Privacy Framework.

According to the White House, the order will add privacy safeguards for U.S. intelligence activities, requiring privacy and civil liberties be taken into consideration.

The White House said in a statement Friday that transatlantic data flows "are critical to enabling the $7.1 trillion EU-U.S. economic relationship."

The European Commission will incorporate Biden's executive order into its own rules for transatlantic data transfers to satisfy the Court of Justice data privacy concerns in E.U.-U.S. data transfers.


A White House statement said, "These steps will provide the European Commission with a basis to adopt a new adequacy determination, which will restore an important, accessible, and affordable data transfer mechanism under EU law. It will also provide greater legal certainty for companies using Standard Contractual Clauses and Binding Corporate Rules to transfer EU personal data to the United States."