U.S. Democratic lawmakers met privately Saturday to work on the investigation into President Donald Trump, inching closer to an impeachment vote, possibly before the Christmas holiday recess. 
 
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee were working through the weekend to review evidence against the Republican president and to draft charges that they could recommend for a full House vote as early as Thursday. 
 
The legislators disclosed a 55-page report Saturday that outlined what they viewed as the constitutional grounds on which the charges, known as articles of impeachment, could be based. 
 
On Friday, the White House said it would not cooperate with the remaining House impeachment proceedings against Trump.  

“As you know, your impeachment inquiry is completely baseless and has violated basic principles of due process and fundamental fairness,” read a letter from Pat Cipollone, counsel to the president, addressed to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler. 
 
The response was issued less than an hour before a Friday afternoon deadline for lawyers of the president to state whether they would represent him in the next round of the committee’s impeachment proceedings. 
 
“You should end this inquiry now and not waste even more time with additional hearings,” Cipollone said in the letter. 
 
The counsel reiterated the president’s tweeted words that “if you are going to impeach me, do it now, fast, so that we can have a fair trial in the Senate and so that our Country can get back to business.” 

‘He cannot claim’ unfairness
 
Later Friday, Nadler expressed disappointment Trump had decided not to participate.   
 
“We gave President Trump a fair opportunity to question witnesses and present his own to address the overwhelming evidence before us. After listening to him complain about the impeachment process, we had hoped that he might accept our invitation,” the committee chairman said in a statement. “If the President has no good response to the allegations, then he would not want to appear before the Committee. Having declined this opportunity, he cannot claim that the process is unfair.” 
 
Democrats contend the Republican president defied the norms of conduct for the office and violated his sworn obligation to uphold the U.S. Constitution by asking Ukraine to launch an investigation of Joe Biden, the former vice president running for the Democratic Party nomination to challenge Trump next year, and his son Hunter. 

Trump contends his phone conversations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy have been perfect and he did nothing wrong. Republicans have defended the president, saying Trump was right to press Ukraine to scrutinize the work that Biden’s son did for a Ukrainian natural gas company. 
 
Republicans are also pushing a debunked theory that Ukraine meddled in the 2016 election that Trump won. The U.S. intelligence community concluded it was Ukraine’s neighbor, Russia, that was doing the meddling. 
 
Trump’s request to Kyiv came at a time when his administration was withholding $391 million in military assistance approved for Ukraine to fight pro-Russian separatists in the eastern part of the country. The aid was released in September without Ukraine opening investigations of the Bidens. 
 
The request for such an investigation in exchange for military assistance is expected to be among the articles of impeachment against Trump. 

Congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson contributed to this report. 

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From: MeNeedIt

Airstrikes on areas in the last major rebel stronghold in northwest Syria on Saturday killed at least 18 people, including women and children, and wounded others as a three-month truce crumbles, opposition activists said. 
 
The airstrikes on Idlib province have intensified over the past few weeks as the government appears to be preparing for an offensive on rebel-held areas east of the province to secure the main highway that links the capital Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest and once a commercial center. 
 
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 20 people were killed in Idlib province while the opposition’s Syrian Civil Defense said 18 lost their lives. 
 
The largest number of casualties occurred in the village of Balyoun, where the Civil Defense said eight people were killed while the Observatory said nine died. Both groups also said that four people, including a child and two women, were killed in airstrikes on the rebel-held village of Bara. 
 
Both groups also said that five others were killed in the village of Ibdeita. The Civil Defense said another child was killed in a nearby village in Idlib while the Observatory had two more. 
 
Conflicting casualty figures are common in the immediate aftermath of violence in Syria, where an eight-year conflict has killed about 400,000 people, wounded more than a million and displaced half the country’s prewar population. 
 
Syrian troops launched a four-month offensive earlier this year on Idlib, which is dominated by al-Qaida-linked militants. The government offensive forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes. 
 
A fragile cease-fire halted the government advance in late August but has been repeatedly violated in recent weeks. 

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From: MeNeedIt

As the flu season reaches its peak in December and January, the Trump administration has again rejected an offer by an American physicians group of free flu vaccinations for detained undocumented immigrants.

Physicians from Doctors for Camp Closure sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) offering a flu shot pilot program to detainees at a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facility at no cost to the federal government.

The CBP said this is not a new policy, that it has never been the agency’s practice to administer vaccines to migrants.

On Friday, the physicians group reaffirmed its commitment to vaccinate migrants.

“We have the vaccinations and are ready to deliver them as soon as we receive permission, but have not been granted access by CBP or DHS,” said Marie DeLuca, an emergency physician from New York City who helped co-found Doctors for Camp Closure.

“Individuals in CBP custody should generally not be held for longer than 72 hours in either CBP hold rooms or holding facilities,” CBP spokesman Matthew Dyman wrote to VOA in an email. “Every effort is made to hold detainees for the least amount of time required for their processing, transfer, release or repatriation as appropriate and operationally feasible.”

At least 3 flu deaths

During last year’s flu season, at least three children died of the flu while in CBP custody, according to reports.

But Dyman said that because CBP is a law enforcement agency and because of the short amount of time migrants are held and other logistical challenges, operating a vaccine program is not feasible.

Both the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Department of Health and Human Services “have comprehensive medical support services and can provide vaccinations as appropriate to those in their custody,” he said.

The physicians organization, which has 2,000 physician members, was formed a few months ago. The group had outlined a plan to vaccinate about 100 migrants in a San Diego, California, facility, and then expand and vaccinate more migrants.

A lot can happen in 72 hours

Commenting on CBP’s 72-hour hold statement, Danielle Deines, a pediatrician in Virginia and member of the group, said a lot can happen in 72 hours for someone with the flu.

“You can have a number of migrants exposed in that amount of time. … People who are going to come into this really crowded situation are already vulnerable from a health standpoint because their bodies are stressed based on the travel and things that they’ve had to do just to get [to the border]. And then you’re placing them in a place where there’s limited access to anything to maintain hygiene, so it’s a kind of a great setup for getting the flu,” Deines said.

She said the flu vaccine cuts the risk of hospitalization, intensive care admission, and death.

“There’s multiple reasons why this is important. And I think the biggest one is that they’re not following their own protocols as far as how long they’re putting people [in detention] and how they’re handling in keeping people healthy,” she said.

CBP has not been able to limit time in its custody to 72 hours, spokesman Dyman said.

“However, that is still the goal and the agency, working with partners, is still doing everything it can to move people out of temporary CBP holding facilities,” he said.

Teen died of flu

During the 2018-2019 flu season, at least three children died of the flu while in CBP custody, according to reports.

One of those people was Carlos Gregorio Hernández Vásquez, a 16-year-old boy. In a video, shot earlier this year and published Thursday by ProPublica, Vásquez is visibly disoriented and motionless after he collapsed in his concrete cell around 1:36 a.m. The migrant Guatemalan boy died May 20.

Though border officials said the boy was found “unresponsive this morning during a welfare check,” the video ProPublica published shows another migrant boy, who shared the cell with Vásquez, was the one to discover Vásquez four hours later in the same position and unresponsive.

Vásquez was detained in the Border Patrol station in south Texas. An autopsy revealed he died of the flu and other complications.

A CBP spokesperson told VOA the investigation into his death is ongoing.

Flu activity elevated

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website shows that seasonal influenza activity in the United States has been “elevated for four weeks and continues to increase.” CDC recommends that everyone 6 months old and older get a flu vaccine each season.

Though CBP has more than 250 medical personnel along the U.S. Mexico border, which includes a mix of nurse practitioners and physicians assistants, Deines, of Doctors for Camp Closure, said they are not qualified to diagnose patients.

Doctors for Camp Closure co-founder DeLuca said Vásquez’s death was preventable, adding that childhood death from influenza is rare in the U.S. because of preventative measures such as flu vaccines, and because of the medical care received by children in offices and hospitals across the country.

“To see a child suffering as [Vásquez] did in that video is horrifying and inhumane. His death was preventable. … The video also makes it clear that detention is unsafe and can have deadly consequences,” DeLuca said.

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From: MeNeedIt

Pacific Gas and Electric says it has reached a $13.5 billion settlement that will resolve all major claims related to devastating wildfires blamed on its outdated equipment and negligence.

The settlement, which the utility says was reached Friday, still requires court approval. PG&E says it is a key step in leading it out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The settlement is to resolve all claims arising from the 2017 Northern California wildfires and 2018 Camp Fire, as well as all claims from the 2015 Butte Fire and 2016 Ghost Ship Fire in Oakland.

“From the beginning of the Chapter 11 process, getting wildfire victims fairly compensated, especially the individuals, has been our primary goal,” Bill Johnson, PG&E Corporation’s CEO and president, said in a statement. “We want to help our customers, our neighbors and our friends in those impacted areas recover and rebuild after these tragic wildfires.”

The settlement is still subject to a number of conditions involving PG&E’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plans, which must be completed by June 30, 2020.

Friday’s settlement figure responds to pressure from Gov. Gavin Newsom to give wildfire victims more than it originally offered, but it still relies on the bankruptcy judge’s approval as part of the proceedings. A February hearing at which an official estimation of losses will be made still looms for the utility and could upend any settlement deals.

“We appreciate all the hard work by many stakeholders that went into reaching this agreement,” Johnson said. “With this important milestone now accomplished, we are focused on emerging from Chapter 11 as the utility of the future that our customers and communities expect and deserve.”

PG&E said the proposed settlement is the third it has reached as it works through its Chapter 11 case. The utility previously reached a $1 billion settlement with cities, counties and other public utilities and an $11 billion agreement with insurance companies and other entities that have paid claims relating to the 2017 and 2018 fires.

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From: MeNeedIt

He came to Afghanistan as Dr. Tetsu Nakamura in the 1980s to help treat leprosy patients in Afghanistan and refugee camps in Pakistan during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. His body is leaving Afghanistan as “Kaka Murad” or Uncle Murad, revered by millions of people across the country who feel indebted to his three decades of humanitarian work in the war-torn country.

On Wednesday, Nakamura was on his way to work with five members of his aid organization, Peace Japan Medical Services, when his car came under attack by unidentified gunmen in Jalalabad, the capital of eastern Nangarhar province.

He and his staff were shot and killed, with Nakamura dying of his wounds on the way to Bagram Airfield, a U.S. military base in northern Afghanistan, local Afghan officials said.

Life’s work in Afghanistan

Nakamura, 73, had dedicated most of his adult life to working in Afghanistan, trying to save lives at times as a physician and at times as a mason, building water canals for people affected by drought.

“You’d hear a child screaming in the waiting room, but by the time you got there, they’d be dead,” Nakamura told NHK TV, Japan’s national broadcasting organization, in October.

“That happened almost every day. They were so malnourished that things like diarrhea could kill them. … My thinking was that if those patients had clean water and enough to eat, they would have survived,” he added.

Japanese Afghan citizen

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani bestowed upon Nakamura an honorary Afghan citizenship in October, and earlier this year residents of Nangarhar province campaigned on social media for him to become the mayor of Jalalabad city.

“This morning a terror attack against the reconstruction hero of Afghanistan, Japanese Afghan Dr. Tetsu Nakamura, resulted in his injury. His deep wounds unfortunately led to his death,” Ghani tweeted in Pashto earlier this week.

Ghani offered “our deepest condolences” to Japanese Ambassador to Afghanistan Mitsuji Suzuka, as well as to the families of the Afghans who were killed in the attack.

On Friday, Ghani met with Nakamura’s family in Kabul, the presidential office said.

#SorryJapan

#SorryJapan has been trending on Afghan social media networks with officials, activists and Afghan citizens expressing sorrow over Nakamura’s death and apologizing to Japan for not being able to protect him.

“#Nakamura I can’t stop my tears. My heart cries for you, my heart aches so much. I can’t forget you, you were the true servant of this land,” Basir Atiqzai wrote on twitter.

Bilal Sarwary, a former BBC reporter in Afghanistan, said Nakamura had great affection for the people of Afghanistan.

Sarwary tweeted he remembered “the joy and jubilation” on Nakamura’s face “after inaugurating the water canal. His friendly hugs with Gul Agha Shiraz and his laughter of joy shows his deep love for Afghanistan.”

Amrullah Saleh, the former chief of Afghan intelligence and Ghani’s running mate in September’s presidential elections, said the crime against Nakamura would not go unpunished.

Nakamura has become “a hero of compassion for all Afghans. He was an uncle for east Afg before. There is no way his murder will remain a mystery for ever. No way. He is too big to be cremated or buried. This high profile crime won’t go unpunished. We promise,” Saleh wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Vigils

Candlelight vigils have been held in several provinces in Afghanistan. Locals named a roundabout after Nakamura in Eastern Khost province with Kam Air, a local Afghan airline, putting Nakamura’s portrait on an Airbus 340 to pay tribute to the slain aid worker.

WATCH: Afghan Activists Hold Vigil in Honor of Slain Japanese Doctor

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Afghans living in the Washington, D.C., area are planning a candlelight vigil Saturday.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack against the group. The Taliban denied responsibility for it, but Afghan officials and civil society activists have blamed the insurgent group for it.

On Friday, a group of activists held a protest in Kabul in front of Pakistan’s Embassy to condemn the terror attack and criticize Pakistan’s alleged support for the Afghan militants.

Pakistan has not immediately reacted to the protest.

“Afghans will never forget his services for this country,” Rahimullah Samandar, a civil society activist, told Reuters. “The whole nation will love him and keep him in their memories.”

‘I couldn’t ignore Afghans’

Nakamura was born in western Japan. He was a physician by profession and left his country in 1984 to work at a clinic in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. He treated Afghan refugees displaced by war and suffering from leprosy.

He eventually opened a clinic in Afghanistan in 1991. He found the health problems in Afghanistan overwhelming for his clinic and instead found another way to combat them: irrigation canals.

In 2003, borrowing tactics from Japan’s irrigation systems, he swapped his doctor’s tools for construction gear. He began building an irrigation canal to help address the drought issue in eastern Afghanistan. He and local residents spent six years completing the construction of a canal that has reportedly changed the lives of nearly a million people.

“As a doctor, nothing is better than healing patients and sending them home,” and providing water to drought-stricken areas did the same for rural Afghanistan, Nakamura told NHK TV.

“A hospital treats patients one by one, but this helps an entire village. … I love seeing a village that’s been brought back to life,” he added.

Since the construction of the irrigation canal, more than 16,000 hectares (about 40,000 acres) of desert has been reportedly brought back to life.

Nakamura was fluent in both Dari and Pashto, the two main languages spoken in Afghanistan.

“I couldn’t ignore the Afghans,” Nakamura told NHK TV.

VOA’s Mehdi Jedinia and Rikar Hussein contributed to this story from Washington. Some of the materials used in this story came from Reuters.

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From: MeNeedIt

Maritime sovereignty rivals China and Vietnam have started talking again after a prolonged standoff earlier this year, entering what analysts call a routine show of peace before more flare-ups.

China’s withdrawal of a survey ship from disputed waters in October and Vietnam’s ascent to chair the Association of Southeast Asian Nations led the reasons that the two began talking this month, political observers say.

On Wednesday, a Vietnam-China working group on maritime cooperation held its 13th round of talks in Ho Chi Minh City. The event brought in midlevel officials from each side’s foreign ministry, Viet Nam News reported.

“It seems to me they’re moving into a phase of talk, because the confrontation no longer serves any particular purpose,” said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialist emeritus professor with the University of New South Wales in Australia.

China and Vietnam have cycled through dozens of tiffs and talks over at least the past 20 years. Diplomacy normally comes after the two sides bury a specific issue and one or both wants to boost its image as a peacemaker — especially when a tense China-ASEAN dialogue looms — experts have said. Their talks do not solve underlying disagreements about rights to the resource-rich South China Sea.

“China’s still maintaining a firm stance on the South China Sea issue,” said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies director at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City. “They will not make many concessions to push forward for negotiations with other countries in the region.”

The two neighbors with a centuries-long history of territorial disputes both claim western parts of the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, although China is militarily and economically stronger, which has given it more clout at sea since the 1970s. Both countries are looking for potentially vast reserves of oil and gas under the seabed.

Cycle of spats, talks

Vietnam and China typically negotiate after China moves ships or a rig into contested waters, or the Vietnamese step up energy exploration. For example, talks picked up speed in 2014 as both sides wanted to get past an incident in which Vietnamese boats had rammed Chinese counterparts near the Gulf of Tonkin over Beijing’s approval for an oil rig. Then, during a meeting in Vietnam in 2017, senior officials from both sides agreed to manage disputes in the sea.

This year’s standoff began in June when a Chinese energy survey ship, the Haiyang Dizhi 8, began patrolling contested waters around Vanguard Bank, 350 kilometers off the coast of southeastern Vietnam. In October a rig contracted by Vietnam said it had stopped work in the tract and a day later the survey ship retreated.

Reasons for talks this month

Vietnam should look like a negotiator, not a fighter, among regional leaders over the next year as ASEAN chair, analysts say. Beijing for its part hopes to get along with Vietnam through its term into late 2020, in case the 10-country bloc takes action on the South China Sea, they say.

“China has to confront an ASEAN with Vietnam at the chair, which has already been very, very strongly opposing China’s actions,” Thayer said.

The Vietnamese government wants its citizens to see it trying to work with China in case something goes wrong later, Nguyen said. Talks might produce more deals on fishing or energy exploration, he added.

“For Vietnam, because now it’s the ASEAN chair, so it doesn’t look good on Vietnam if it continues to adopt a more militant stance toward China, especially after China has already withdrawn that survey vessel from Vanguard bank,” said Collin Koh, maritime security research fellow at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.

In the future, though, China will still “coerce within a manageable threshold” and Vietnam will want China to stop, Koh said. The negotiations now mark a “repetition of the cycle” of struggle and reconciliation, he said.

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From: MeNeedIt

The recent film release, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” by Marielle Heller, is based on the Esquire magazine article, “Can you say..Hero?” that award-winning journalist Tom Junod wrote in 1998 about Fred Rogers. Rogers is an American TV personality who spoke to children and advocated empathy, understanding and reconciliation. The newly released films shows how two polar opposites, an empathic Mister Rogers and a cynical writer, become friends. Some have said the movie makes them “want to be better people.” Conversely, Todd Phillips’ “Joker,” a billion-dollar box office hit, offers a dark portrait of Batman’s nemesis, thriving on rancor, revenge and social chaos. VOA’s Penelope Poulou looks at the two films’ contrasting messages

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From: MeNeedIt

New clashes between government security forces and the Taliban in northern Afghanistan are said to have killed around 20 combatants on both sides.

The predawn fighting in Kunduz province erupted after insurgents assaulted several Afghan police outposts in the volatile Imam Sahib district.

A provincial police spokesman, Inamuddin Rahmani, told VOA the clashes left at least nine police personnel, including a local commander, dead and several others injured. He said 11 assailants were also killed.

For its part the Taliban claimed in a statement that the raid killed 14 among the government forces and overran the security posts. It did not give insurgent casualties.

It was not possible to verify either claim from independent sources in a province that has been the site of intense fighting for years. The Taliban twice captured, though briefly, the provincial capital, also known as Kunduz.

The latest fighting comes as the United States is preparing to relaunch its peace negotiations with the Taliban, possibly next week, nearly three months after President Donald Trump abruptly halted the process.

U.S. chief negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, is currently visiting the Afghan capital of Kabul, where he is holding meetings with politicians inside and outside of the government before heading to Doha, Qatar, where Taliban negotiators are based.

“In Doha, Ambassador Khalilzad will rejoin talks with the Taliban to discuss steps that could lead to intra-Afghan negotiations and a peaceful settlement of the war, specifically a reduction in violence that leads to a ceasefire,” a State Department announcement said.

The Gulf nation played host to the yearlong U.S.-Taliban dialogue before it was  called off by Trump on September 7, when the process had entered a decisive stage, say Taliban officials. Trump had cited intensification in deadly insurgent attacks in Kabul that also killed, among others, an American soldier.

The two foes in the 18-year war, America’s longest, had come close to concluding an agreement that would have set the stage for a phased withdrawal of U.S and NATO forces. In return, the Taliban would have immediately observed a ceasefire in areas of troop withdrawal and given counterterrorism assurances, The insurgent group would have also been required to launch intra-Afghan negotiations to discuss a permanent ceasefire across Afghanistan among other political issues.

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From: MeNeedIt

Steven Lacchin grew up a fatherless boy, but he knew some very basic facts about the man who was his father.
                   
He knew Lacchin, the name on his Kenyan birth certificate, was his dad’s name. He knew that Mario Lacchin abandoned him and his mother.
                   
When he was older, he learned that his father was an Italian missionary priest – and that in leaving, he had chosen the church over his child.
                   
What he did not know is that less than 10 kilometers (6 miles) away, another man was on a quest to prove that Mario Lacchin was his father, too.
                   
These two men would find each other thanks to an Associated Press story that appeared on the front page of Kenya’s main newspaper. All agreed that they bore a marked resemblance, but they underwent genetic testing to be certain.
                   
Were they indeed half-brothers, sons of the same Father?
                  
The Vatican only publicly admitted this year that it had a problem: Priests were fathering children. And it only acknowledged the problem by revealing that it had crafted internal guidelines to deal with it.
                   
“I don’t know how many children of priests there are in the world, but I know that they are all over the planet,” said Anne-Marie Jarzac, who heads the French group Enfants du Silence (Children of Silence), which recently opened negotiations with French bishops to access church archives so these children of priests can learn their true identities.
                   
Just as clergy sex abuse victims have long suffered the indifference of the Catholic hierarchy, many of these children of priests endure rejection multiple times over: abandoned by their fathers, deprived of their identities and ignored by church superiors when they seek answers or help.
                   
Steven Lacchin’s lineage was no secret. Members of Mario Lacchin’s order were well aware of it and exerted pressure on him to choose the church over his young family, according to his letters.
                   
His mother, Madeleine, kept a decade worth of correspondence with the priest, as well as meticulous records of her efforts to seek child support from the Consolata leadership and regional bishops after Steven was born June 21, 1980. (Steven Lacchin asked that his mother be identified only by her first name.)
                   
The two had met two years earlier in Nanyuki, about 200 kilometers north of Nairobi, where Madeleine was a school teacher at an all-girls school and Lacchin would celebrate Mass. Madeleine would later tell the Consolata regional superior that she first went to Lacchin with “a spiritual problem,” but that they then eased into a “friendly pastor-parishioner” relationship that grew into love.
                   
On July 28, 1979, Mario Lacchin wrote a birthday card to Madeleine in his neat cursive, promising to spend more time with her and her young daughter from a previous relationship, Josephine, despite the risks their union posed.
                   
“I do really love you with all my heart and body,” he wrote. “You are the only one who is giving me, not only physical satisfaction, but a lot more. You are telling me and teaching me how beautiful it is to love and be together no matter the sacrifices we have to make for it.”
                   
Soon after, Madeleine became pregnant. A few months before Steven was born, Lacchin wrote from Rome about meetings he held with the Consolata leadership at the order’s headquarters about his impending fatherhood.
                   
“I had a little trouble in Rome with my superiors,” he wrote Madeleine on March 4, 1980. “It is my impression that nobody is going to help me in the way I would like to go,” he wrote, adding: “How is the baby?”
                   
By the end of 1981, with Steven Lacchin a year old, the priest seemed determined to end his “double life” and devote himself to his family.
                   
“I took a courage to meet with my provincial superior about you, about Steven, about my readiness to leave the priesthood,” he wrote. “I want you, and I will fight until I will be with you, Steven and Josephine forever.”
                   
But in that same letter, Lacchin told Madeleine that his superior wasn’t at all on board with the plan. “He told me that he wants to save my priesthood, but I told him that I will never be able to continue in such a life knowing I had a child belong to me,” he wrote.
                   
Lacchin never left the Consolatas. His letters over the following years speak of his order’s “pressure” to remain a priest, as well as his own feelings of “failure” and his apologies for having promised Madeleine “a future which will never come.”
                   
While the Vatican was loath in those years to let a priest abandon his vocation, the Consolata’s deputy superior, the Rev. James Lengarin, insists that if a priest formally requested to be released from his vows because he had fathered a child, he would have been allowed to go.
                   
By 1985, Madeleine was increasingly unable to care for the children. She was ill, and shunned by her devout Catholic family because of her liaison with Lacchin.
                   
Lacchin, then stationed in Uganda, had left 1.7 million Ugandan shillings for her in the Ugandan diocese of Tororo that year (the equivalent at the time of $2,500), but in the midst of a civil war, Madeleine couldn’t access the money. Due to the upheaval, the money lost nearly all its value.
                   
Two years later, Madeleine wrote to Lacchin’s superiors seeking financial and bureaucratic help as she increasingly feared for Steven’s future. Who would pay for his education? And the child couldn’t get Kenyan citizenship because his father wasn’t Kenyan; Steven Lacchin’s birth certificate and other identity papers all bore Mario Lacchin’s name.
                   
The Consolata’s then-regional superior, the Rev. Mario Barbero, replied that he understood Lacchin had left money for Steven’s care in Uganda.
                   
“With this I think that Mario has given some contribution towards meeting the expenses for Steven’s upbringing, though I know that money is not enough to heal psychological wounds and frustrations you had to go through,” Barbero wrote.
                   
A year later, Madeleine took her case directly to Lacchin.
                   
“Even as I write, I find it difficult to believe that you, Mario, could turn me into the helpless beggar I am,” she wrote on Jan. 5, 1988.
                   
“I accepted your decision regarding me, and yet I cannot accept your hiding behind the priesthood to refuse to help a child you helped bring into the world,” she wrote. “I do not know what you think he will think of you and of your priesthood and other priests when he grows up and learns how you treated him.”
                  
By then, Mario Lacchin had been transferred north and was working at the Consolata mission in Archer’s Post, a onetime trading station in the Northern Rift Valley. There, he met Sabina Losirkale, a young girl in her final year at Gir Gir Primary School who cleaned the Consolata priests’ quarters after classes.
                   
Impregnated at 16, before the age of legal consent in Kenya, she would give birth to a boy, Gerald Erebon, on March 12, 1989. He was pale complexioned, unlike his black mother or siblings or the black man he was told was his father.
                   
When Sabina became pregnant, the Consolatas transferred Lacchin out of Archer’s Post, and he vanished from her life.
                   
Shortly before her death in 2012, family members say, Sabina told them Lacchin was Gerald’s father. The priest has denied it, and refused to take a paternity test. The order acknowledged nothing.
                   
The AP told Gerald Erebon’s story in October. That article led Steven Lacchin to reach out to Erebon on Facebook.
                   
“I saw your story and I feel for you,” he wrote. “I am letting you know, you are not alone.”
                   
Intrigued, but skeptical, Erebon responded. What did the writer want to share?
                   
“He is my dad too,” Lacchin replied.
                   
A few days later, the two met in Nairobi. It turns out they are practically neighbors, living in adjacent neighborhoods along Nairobi’s main Magadi Road. They marveled at how much they looked alike: two bi-racial men born to black African mothers, soft-spoken and pensive, though Erebon towers over Steven.
                   
Awkwardly, they hugged for the first time and looked over the documentation Steven had brought along detailing the years-long relationship between Lacchin and his mother and her efforts to hold him responsible for Steven’s upkeep.
                   
They shared the stories of their lives. Like Erebon, Steven Lacchin was brought up in the church and attended seminary for a time. Steven said he was kicked out once his bishop discovered that his father was a Catholic priest. Eventually he was able to put himself through law school, and now is married with three children.
                   
“I wouldn’t need a DNA to tell these two are brothers,” said Lacchin’s wife, Ruth. “If you look at Mario, you look at Steven, you look at Gerald, it’s one person. It’s one tree. They are brothers!”
                   
Still, they needed to know. The AP arranged for DNA tests.
                   
Two weeks later, the results were in: The findings were “entirely consistent with a direct male-line biological relationship,” the lab said.
                   
In other words, the men are almost certainly half-brothers, said Darren Griffin, a geneticist at the University of Kent who reviewed the lab results for AP.
                   
“The only thing I can say is welcome to the family!” Lacchin told Erebon, shaking his hand.
                   
“This is eternal,” Lacchin said. “We can’t run away from this. We may go our separate ways, but one thing, you know you have a brother out there.”
                   
Erebon said he had thought he was alone, and having “a relative, a family, someone you can call your own, makes it a bit easier for me now.”
                   
Mario Lacchin, who has taken a leave from his parish work in Nairobi to see his Italian relatives, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
                   
Lengarin, the deputy Consolata superior, said he searched the order’s Nairobi archives in 2018 after Erebon came forward and turned up no information about Erebon or Steven Lacchin. But he acknowledged that he only looked into the two years surrounding Erebon’s 1989 birth, and that the order doesn’t keep complete personnel files.
                   
He said AP’s inquiry about Steven Lacchin was the first the order in Rome and Nairobi had heard about a possible second son of Mario Lacchin.
                   
But Steven’s mother was in touch with the Consolata superiors in the 1980s. Steven sent letters to Consolata officials in Nairobi in 2010 and 2014, seeking financial assistance (he wanted to buy land to build a home for his family) along with help sorting out his citizenship status.
                   
Getting no response, starting in 2016 he made the same requests of Mario Lacchin’s bishop, Virgilio Pante, like Mario Lacchin, an Italian member of the Consolata order.
                   
Pante responded with an Oct. 14, 2017, text: “You look for something big. My diocese of Maralal now financially is suffering. True. Can I send you now a Christmas gift 25,000?” (In Kenyan shillings, the equivalent of around $250.)
                   
Steven still wants the church’s help in ironing out his Kenyan and Italian citizenship issues; Erebon wants Mario Lacchin to acknowledge his paternity, so the heritage of his own two children can be recognized and they can obtain Italian citizenship.
                   
“It started very long time ago and our father has to do the right thing, at least once,” Erebon said. “He needs to make it right. And the church should not continue with the cover-up. They should just make this right.”

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From: MeNeedIt

Kenyan police arrested the Nairobi County governor, known for his chunky gold jewelry and impromptu raps, Friday on corruption charges, a high profile move in the government’s much trumpeted anti-graft push.

Chief public prosecutor Noordin Haji told a news conference that Governor Mike Mbuvi Sonko and his associates were accused of conspiracy to commit corruption, failure to comply with laws related to procurement, unlawful acquisition of public property and laundering the proceeds of crime.

Sonko and his assistants did not respond to calls seeking comment.

Citizens and international investors have long complained of corruption in Kenya, East Africa’s business hub and richest economy.

President Uhuru Kenyatta appointed Haji, a former deputy head of national intelligence, last year after years of taking little action to rein in widespread graft.

On Friday, Haji accused Sonko, who runs the Kenyan capital as Nairobi’s most senior regional politician, of “deploying intimidation tactics and using goons to threaten law enforcement officials” investigating the case.

Police used tear gas to disperse hundreds of Sonko’s supporters when he was called into the anti-corruption office for questioning in November.

Flamboyant Sonko

Sonko, a former senator, was elected in 2017 after years of news splashes featuring his flamboyant lifestyle and flashy fashion, complete with ubiquitous chunky gold jewelry and eye-catching hairstyles.

After Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto faced charges of crimes against humanity following the disputed 2007 elections and subsequent violence, Sonko showed up to the proceedings at the Hague-based International Criminal Court with “Uhuruto Not Guilty” dyed into his hair.

He was recently photographed using a gold-plated iPad and matching iPhone and has appeared in rap videos gyrating in public offices wearing gold-colored trainers while insulting political opponents.

Gold-plated taste

He invited a storm of public criticism this month after he shared photos online of his dining room, featuring a gold-plated lion statue, and a gold-tinted dining table and chairs.

He has recruited hundreds of people into his “Sonko Rescue Team” who sweep out streets or appear at fires wearing “Sonko” branded red boiler suits in Nairobi’s poorest neighborhoods.

On Thursday, Sonko received an award sponsored by the Kenya Red Cross and United Nations Volunteers for encouraging volunteering.

Sonko has been photographed handing out cash for things like hospital bills, but Nairobi has seen little improvement in public services under his watch.

Nairobi’s public schools and clinics are crumbling, roads are potholed and hundreds of thousands of people live in slums without access to electricity, sewage or services.

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From: MeNeedIt

Add facial cuts, bruises and fractures to the risks from cellphones and carelessly using them.
                   
That’s according to a study published Thursday that found a spike in U.S. emergency room treatment for these mostly minor injuries.
                   
The research was led by a facial plastic surgeon whose patients include a woman who broke her nose when she dropped her phone on her face. Dr. Boris Paskhover of Rutgers New Jersey Medical School said his experience treating patients with cellphone injuries prompted him to look into the problem.
                   
Paskhover and others analyzed 20 years of emergency room data and found an increase in cellphone injuries starting after 2006, around the time when the first smartphones were introduced.
                   
Some injuries were caused by phones themselves, including people getting hit by a thrown phone. But Paskhover said many were caused by distracted use including texting while walking, tripping and landing face-down on the sidewalk.
                   
Most patients in the study weren’t hospitalized, but the researchers said the problem should be taken seriously.
                   
The study involved cases in a U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission database that collects emergency room visit information from about 100 hospitals. The researchers tallied 2,500 patients with cellphone-related head and neck injuries from 1998 through 2017.
                   
The study was published in the journal JAMA Otolaryngology.
                   
Nationwide, they estimated there were about 76,000 people injured during that time. Annual cases totaled fewer than 2,000 until 2006, but increased steeply after that. About 40% of those injured were ages 13 to 29, and many were hurt while walking, texting or driving.
                   
Cellphone use also has been linked with repetitive strain injuries in the hands and neck, and injuries to other parts of the body caused by distracted use.
                   
“I love my smartphone,” Paskhover said, but he added that it’s easy to get too absorbed and avoiding injury requires common sense.
                 “
“People wouldn’t walk around reading a magazine,” he said. “Be careful.”
 

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From: MeNeedIt

BOLSOVER, ENGLAND — Dennis Skinner is a no-nonsense, unchanging socialist and the only British MP ever to heckle the Queen’s Speech Ceremony, when Britain’s lawmakers process from the Commons annually to the House of Lords to hear the monarch’s address outlining the government’s legislative program.

Nicknamed the “Beast of Bolsover,” a reference to the Derbyshire constituency he has represented since 1970, the 87-year-old Skinner has traditionally occupied the seat of the front bench below the gangway in the Commons, where invariably wearing a tweed jacket and red tie, he has harangued those he deems “class enemies,” earning himself a dozen cooling off’ suspensions for what was deemed “unparliamentary language.”

The son of a coal miner — his father was sacked after the historic coal strike of 1926 — and a former miner himself, his first brush with the Speaker of the House of Commons was in 1984 when he dubbed the leader of a group of Labour defectors a “pompous sod” and was ordered out of the chamber when he agreed to withdraw only the word “pompous.” In 1992, he incurred another suspension for describing the then Conservative agriculture minister as “a little squirt” and “a slimy wart on Margaret Thatcher’s nose.”

Skinner’s working-class constituents, many of them former coal-miners or the sons and daughters of miners, have been relentlessly behind their pugnacious tribune with the snappy bark, and they have been loyal to the Labour Party. The closure of local collieries by Conservative governments in the 1980s and 1990s only deepened Bolsover’s allegiance to Labour and to their MP, who took a pay cut himself in support of the miners during a ferocious 1984-85 miners’ strike.

But the times are changing and the country’s oldest serving MP may became next week a casualty of electoral war thanks to the scrambling of British politics by Brexit and a makeover of the Labour Party, which has become more focused on metropolitan issues pushed by progressive urban recruits, irritating older and more socially conservative traditional Labour voters.

Britain’s ruling Conservatives hope Boris Johnson can pull off what his predecessor at 10 Downing Street, Theresa May, failed to do in a snap election 18 months ago. Their hope is that Johnson will breach the Labour Party’s so-called northern red wall,’ once thought to be impregnable, by persuading anti-European Union northern working-class voters to defect to the class-enemy Conservatives to “deliver Brexit.”

Skinner’s constituency is one brick in that wall and on the streets of Bolsover in the north east of the county of Derbyshire amid rolling hills, the talk is the December 12 general election may mark the end of the long-serving lawmaker’s political career. Locals say while they still admire their local MP, who’s been unable to campaign personally because of recent hip-replacement surgery, Brexit is driving them away from a Labour Party, which wants to hold a second Brexit referendum, if it wins power.

Bolsover voted 70 percent to Leave the EU in the 2016 referendum and because of that high proportion of pro-Brexit voters, the seat is a key target for the Conservatives. On a cold, breezy day when VOA visited the town center, which has the feel of left-behind desperation about it with boarded-up shops, shuttered pubs, neglected terrace houses and shabby cheap takeaways, it wasn’t difficult to find locals planning to switch their votes to either the Conservatives or the newly-minted Brexit Party of Nigel Farage.

One former miner, Dave Michaels, a stocky 65-year-old wearing a flat cap, said, “I’ve been Labour all my life, as was my father, and I don’t like Johnson, don’t trust the man, but I think he’ll get us out of the EU and stop all the dithering.” He voiced annoyance at the influx of eastern European migrants to staff new warehouses and online retail distribution centers. Locals complain migration has altered the social cohesion of this corner of Derbyshire and strained already under-resourced public services.

Others expressed similar sentiments, suggesting that Skinner’s 5,000 majority may well collapse next week, adding to a possible seismic change in British politics that could see Labour and the Liberal Democrats snatch traditional Conservative seats in the pro-EU south of England and the commuter belt around London, but lose heartland seats of their own in the north, midlands and southwest of the country.

The Conservatives’ assault on the “red wall” will make or break Johnson’s dream of securing a parliamentary majority and dictate whether Britain leaves the European Union or not.

Daphne, a 52-year-old, who’d just finished shopping in a butcher’s shop, said she’ll be voting for Skinner’s Conservative rival Mark Fletcher. The mother of two grown up daughters, Lewis says she remains grateful to Skinner for all he’s done in the past, but he is “long in the tooth” and it is time for a change. “The Conservatives seem to have a goal,” she says.

The 34-year-old Fletcher, the grandson himself of a miner who was educated at state schools before heading to Cambridge University, says locals “want to get Brexit done and the Labour party has lost its way.” He’s convinced he can win Bolsover and that the Brexit Party won’t deny him victory by splitting the Leave vote. He is buoyed by a seat-by-seat opinion survey last week produced by the YouGov polling agency that predicted he will win the seat on December 12 with 42 percent of the vote, with Labour trailing 38 percent and the Brexit Party picking up 12 percent.

But the remaining days will be crucial before voting — in Bolsover, as well as in 49 other Labour seats in Wales, the midlands and northern England targeted by the Conservatives. At the last general election there were hints the ‘red wall’ isn’t as strong as Labour strategists suppose — two of Bolsover’s neighboring constituencies, North East Derbyshire and Mansfield, defected to the Conservative camp.

The Labour activists are hitting the doorsteps hard in the northern constituencies, though, trawling residual party support. And while the Conservatives are doing well when it comes to the issue of Brexit, they are on the back foot when it comes to public-service issues, and especially in regards to the under-staffed and under-funded National Health Service.

But Brexit isn’t Labour’s only problem in the north in what commentators describe as a “hold-your-nose election.” Johnson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, seen widely as the most far-left leader the party has ever had, are vying in the unpopularity stakes, and according to opinion polls neither are trusted by voters. Johnson is the most disliked new prime minister in the modern history of opinion polling, while Corbyn is the most disliked leader of the opposition.

General election victory or defeat may come down to who is disliked the most.

…

From: MeNeedIt