A group of nine Nicaraguan mothers whose hunger strike became emblematic of protests roiling the Central American country were taken Friday to a hospital in stable condition, according to a doctor treating the group and a Reuters witness.

The nine mothers, along with three activists opposed to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, spent nine days locked in a church in the city of Masaya to demand the freedom of their children, whom they consider to be political prisoners.

On Friday, the group of protesters and a Catholic priest serving the church were taken to a hospital in the capital by a representative of the Vatican for treatment.

“Everyone is in stable health. Some are dehydrated from prolonged fasting and two are under observation for their chronic conditions,” Maria Eugenia Espinoza, a doctor who serves as director of Vivian Pellas Hospital, told reporters.

Father Edwin Roman, the priest who joined the mothers, has complained on social media that after the group began their protest, the police cut off electricity and water in the church and prevented locals from assisting them.

Nicaragua’s churches have become political battlegrounds in recent weeks amid protests that have been raging for more than a year and a half.

Both the Organization of American States and the United Nations raised alarms this week about human rights in Central America’s largest country, as protests have intensified.

On Monday, Nicaraguan police arrested 16 anti-government protesters, accusing them of planning to carry out terrorist attacks. Some of their families say they were arrested after bringing water to the mothers in Masaya.

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From: MeNeedIt

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s indictment is expected to sharpen the battle lines in Israel’s already deadlocked political system and could test the loyalty of his right-wing allies, Israeli commentators said Friday.
                   
The serious corruption charges announced Thursday appear to have dashed already slim hopes for a unity government following September’s elections, paving the way for an unprecedented repeat vote in March, which will be the third in less than a year.
                   
In an angry speech late Thursday, Netanyahu lashed out at investigators and vowed to fight on in the face of an “attempted coup.”
                   
His main opponent, the centrist Blue and White party, called on him to “immediately resign” from all his Cabinet posts, citing a Supreme Court ruling that says indicted ministers cannot continue to hold office. Netanyahu also serves as minister of health, labor and Diaspora affairs, as well as acting minister of agriculture.
                   
He is not legally required to step down as prime minister, but Netanyahu faces heavy pressure to do so, and it is unclear whether an indicted politician could be given the mandate to form a new government. Netanyahu has already failed to form a majority coalition of 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset after two hard-fought elections this year.
                   
“This will not be an election, it will be a civil war without arms,” columnist Amit Segal wrote in Israel’s Yediot Ahronot newspaper. “There is a broad constituency that believes what Netanyahu said yesterday, but it is far from being enough for anything close to victory.”
                   

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Writing in the same newspaper, Sima Kadmon compared Netanyahu to the Roman emperor Nero, saying “he will stand and watch as the country burns.”
                   
Netanyahu was indicted on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust stemming from three long-running corruption cases. He has denied any wrongdoing and accused the media, courts and law enforcement of waging a “witch hunt” against him.
                   
The corruption charges will weigh heavily on Netanyahu’s Likud party in future elections, but it’s unclear if any senior member has the support or willingness to replace him.
                   
Hours before the indictment was announced, Gideon Saar, a senior Likud member, said a party primary should be held ahead of any future elections and that he would compete. But there are several other leading members of the party, and it’s unclear if any one of them can gain enough support to topple its longtime leader.
                   
Some Likud members expressed support for Netanyahu after the indictment was announced, but most have remained mum.
                   
“If the attorney general should indeed announce that Netanyahu can no longer form a government, will (Likud members) stand up openly and work to form an alternative government? For that to happen, they will have to sit together in one room and trust each other, which is something that has not happened for the past decade,” Segal wrote.
                  
Nevertheless, he concluded, “the great threat to Netanyahu is now posed from within.”
                   
Amid all the political machinations, Netanyahu will have to prepare to go on trial. He can battle the charges, or he might seek a plea bargain in which he agrees to resign in return for avoiding jail time or hefty fines. Either process could drag on for months.
                   
Netanyahu is Israel’s first sitting prime minister to be charged with a crime. His predecessor, Ehud Olmert, was forced to resign a decade ago ahead of a corruption indictment that later sent him to prison for 16 months.
                   
“We’ve got a number of political and legal processes which are all going to be happening now simultaneously,” Anshel Pfeffer, a Haaretz columnist and the author of a biography of Netanyahu, told The Associated Press.
                   
 “It’s impossible to predict which one will bring about the end of Netanyahu’s career,” he said. “All these things are going ahead now, but slowly.”

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From: MeNeedIt

Tens of thousands of people in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore are at risk of respiratory disease because of poor air quality related to thick smog hanging over the region, an international rights group said Friday.
                   
Amnesty International called for “urgent action” for residents of Lahore in a bid to mobilize supporters around the world to campaign on their behalf due to smog that has engulfed the city of more than 10 million people over the past week.
                   
Amnesty says Pakistani officials’ inadequate response to the smog raises significant human rights concerns.
                   
“The hazardous air is putting everyone’s right to health at risk,” said Rimmel Mohydin, South Asia Campaigner at Amnesty. “The issue is so serious that we are calling on our members around the world to write to the Pakistani authorities to tell them to stop downplaying the crisis and take urgent action to protect people’s health and lives.”
                   
Once known as the “city of gardens,” Lahore is considered one of the world’s most polluted cities, where many residents have been forced to stay at home.
                   
Mohydin said on one out of every two days since the beginning of November the air quality in Lahore has been classified as “hazardous” by air quality monitors installed by the United States Consulate in Lahore and the Pakistan Air Quality Initiative.
                   
She said people in Lahore have not had healthy air for a single day this year and that the air quality deteriorated to “hazardous” levels in November. Air quality measuring systems advise people to avoid all outdoor activity when that happens.
                   
Air becomes unhealthy when the Air Quality Index level reaches 100. Mohydin said at 300 and above, the air is considered “hazardous” and the Air Quality Index in Lahore skyrocketed to 598 on Thursday.
                   
She said the so-called “smog season,” which runs from October to February, is when poor fuel quality, uncontrolled emissions and crop burning worsens the quality of the already unhealthy air in eastern Punjab Province, where Lahore is the capital.
                   
Authorities in Lahore and elsewhere in the province have asked parents not to send their children to school on Friday to avoid being in the bad air.
                   
Pakistan often blames farmers in neighboring India for burning waste from their crops in open farms fields.
                   
“The fast blowing winds brought thick smog from India to Lahore and the international community should pressure India to take measures for controlling air pollution as it also affects us,” said Naseem-Ur-Rahman Shah, who heads the provincial Environment Protection Department in Punjab.
                   
It’s a popular practice among poor farmers in Pakistan and India to set fire to remnants of the previous season’s crop before preparing their land for the next planting. Punjab Province is considered Pakistan’s breadbasket.
                   
Rahman said thousands of people were treated this week at hospitals and private clinics for respiratory-related diseases, including asthma, flu, fever and cough.
                   
“People should not expose themselves to smog because it is harmful,” he said. “We are also taking steps to control air pollution in Punjab.”
                   
But many residents in Lahore blame the government for not taking adequate measures to contain air pollution.
                   
“I can show you several factories releasing smoke in the heart of Lahore. I can show you brick kilns on the outskirts of Lahore and you can see smoke-emitting vehicles everywhere,” said 23-year-old Mohammad Abdullah, a college student, as he sat in a bed at Mayo Hospital after having breathing problems.
                   
Uzma Tareen, 56, also complained she had to come to the same hospital on a smoke-emitting rikshaw as she could not afford a taxi.
                   
“Doctors say smog will end when rains come so I am praying for rain,” she said. “I don’t expect any action from the government to control toxic air.”

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From: MeNeedIt

Pope Francis Friday called on bishops in Thailand to keep their doors open for priests and to spread the faith as their missionary predecessors did.

“Be close to your priests, listen to them and seek to accompany them in every situation, especially when you see that they are discouraged or apathetic, which is the worst of the devil’s temptations. Do so not as judges but as fathers, not as managers who deploy them, but as true elder brothers.”

Francis gave a speech to the Asian Bishops Conference at the Shrine of Blessed Nicholas Bunkerd Kithamrung in Sam Phran, 56 kilometers west of capital Bangkok.

Huge crowds, including faithful from Vietnam, Cambodia and China welcomed the pope  when he earlier arrived for a meeting with clergy and seminarians at Saint Peter’s Parish in Nakhon Pathom province.   

Francis concluded the day’s celebrations with a Mass dedicated to young people at Bangkok’s Cathedral of the Assumption.
       
Francis is only the second pope to visit Thailand. Pope John Paul II, now Saint John Paul II, was the first in 1984.

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From: MeNeedIt

A Hong Kong court on Friday suspended its decision to strike down a government ban on wearing face masks at protests, allowing police to enforce the decree for another week around keenly contested local elections in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.
                   
The court had ruled Monday that the ban, imposed in October under rarely used emergency powers to prevent anti-government protesters from hiding their identity, infringed on fundamental rights more than was reasonably necessary.
                   
The government had appealed for a freeze on the ruling while it appeals to higher courts.
                   
The High Court agreed Friday to grant a one-week suspension in view of the “highly exceptional circumstances that Hong Kong is currently facing,” local broadcaster RTHK reported. China’s rubber-stamp parliament rebuked the court ruling this week, in what some interpreted as an indication it might overrule the verdict.
                   
Many Hong Kong protesters have defied the ban, and during lunchtime rallies Friday, some chanted “We have the right to wear masks.”
                   
The city’s new police commissioner, Tang Ping-keung, told reporters police would be out in force at polling stations Sunday to respond to any outbreak of violence “without hesitation.”
                   
Six masked protesters surrendered before dawn Friday, bringing to about 30 the number that have come out in the past day from a university campus surrounded by police.
                   
The group emerged from a campus entrance and held hands as they walked toward a checkpoint around 3 a.m. Five wore the black clothing favored by the protest movement and the other was in a blue checked shirt.
                   
Most of the protesters who took over Hong Kong Polytechnic University last week have left, but an unknown number have remained inside for days, hoping somehow to avoid arrest.
                   
Tang Chun-Keung, head of the Hong Kong Association of the Heads of Secondary Schools, said the holdouts include minors, numbering less than 10, and they are emotionally unstable. Tang entered the campus Friday with some others but failed to find them.
                   
“We have lawyers and social workers ready to provide assistance and we hope to persuade them to leave the campus. We are worried our work is getting more and more difficult because students are refusing to meet us,” he told reporters.
                   
Police chief Tang reiterated that those under 18 can leave, although they may face charges later, and pledged impartial treatment for all adults facing arrest.
                   
“The condition is deteriorating and dangerous, there are many explosives and petrol bombs inside … we hope to end the matter peacefully,” he said, adding police didn’t set any deadline to end the siege.
                   
The anti-government protesters battled with police and blocked the nearby approach to a major road tunnel, which remains closed. It was the latest bout in more than five months of unrest. Protesters are demanding fully democratic elections and an investigation into alleged police brutality in suppressing the demonstrations.
                   
Anti-government rallies were held sporadically in the past two days. Riot police broke up minor scuffles between protesters and pro-Beijing supporters at a downtown bridge Friday, but there were no major clashes ahead of Sunday’s district council elections.
                   
City leaders have said they want to go ahead with the vote, seen as a bellwether of public support for the protests, but warned violence could make it impossible to hold a fair and safe election.
                   
Asked if the police presence would make voters feel uncomfortable, police chief Tang said it will make citizens “feel safe to go out and vote.”

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From: MeNeedIt

A study of grazing in Yellowstone National Park found that bison essentially mow and fertilize their own food. This allows them to graze in one area for two to three months during the spring and summer while other hoofed mammals must keep migrating to higher elevations to follow new plant growth.

Hundreds of bison grazing in an area stimulates the growth of nutritious grasses, in part because their waste acts as a fertilizer, according to research published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“They add fertilizer through urinating and defecating, they drop nutrients back on the landscape, which are then available to plants,” Yellowstone scientist Chris Geremia said Wednesday.

“It’s almost like the bison become this giant fleet of lawnmowers moving back and forth across the landscape,” he said.

When more bison grazed an area more intensely, the area greened up earlier and faster and the grass stayed greener and had a higher nutritional quality for a much longer time, Geremia said.

Many other migratory animals in Yellowstone — pronghorn, bighorn sheep, mule deer and elk — do not form these large groups while they migrate and graze, Geremia said.

“Bison don’t just move to find food, kind of the classic way that we think of animal migration,” Geremia said, “but they create good food by how they move and how they graze.”

From 2012 to 2017, researchers fenced off plots of grass along bison migration corridors and compared them to the grazed areas.

“The data showed that grasses heavily grazed by bison were more productive compared to exclosures where bison were not allowed to graze,” said Matthew Kauffman, unit leader of the U.S. Geological Survey’s Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at the University of Wyoming. “The mowed-down forage had higher ratios of nitrogen to carbon, a standard measure of nutritional quality.”

Trampling and nibbling by the bison kept the plants shorter and denser and forced the plants to keep growing, giving the bison a steady supply of fresh, nutritious grass.

“During most of May and June and part of July … they are grouped together

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From: MeNeedIt

It wasn’t until she became a high school senior that Kayla Ireland had another black person as a teacher in Waterbury, a former manufacturing hub where the students are mostly minorities and the educators are generally white.

The imbalance never troubled her much, except for some moments, like when a white teacher led a discussion of police brutality and racial profiling. But the absence of black teachers has been a frequent topic of discussion among Kayla’s classmates at Wilby High School, which has struggled with high numbers of disciplinary issues, including a mass suspension over dress-code violations.

“Sometimes people go through bad days. But because you don’t have that person that looks like you, a person that you can talk to that can relate to it, you don’t really know how to explain it,” said Kayla, 16. “So it feels good to have a teacher that you can go to, and you feel comfortable with, because you’re not going to be deemed the girl in class who doesn’t know anything.”

More than half of the students in American public schools are minorities, but the teaching force is still 80% white, according to statistics from the U.S. Education Department. As mounting research highlights the benefits minority teachers can bestow on students, the gap has received renewed attention, including from Democratic presidential candidates who have endorsed strategies to promote teacher diversity.

Sen. Kamala Harris, who spoke at a September debate about the importance of black teachers for black students, has proposed spending $2.5 billion for teacher-preparation programs at historically black colleges and universities. Other leading Democrats have also called for investment in those schools, as well as mentorship programs, assistance for teacher aides and new requirements to promote transparency around teacher hiring.

The Waterbury school system has taken steps to close the racial gap following complaints from the NAACP. Its limited success so far highlights some of the challenges of addressing the problem, which some see as rooted in teacher training programs and barriers that date back to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that led to desegregation.

An agreement reached by a state human rights commission and Waterbury’s mayor in 2017 committed the city to build a partnership with black colleges and universities for recruiting purposes, to train students interested in teaching beginning as early as middle school and to provide cultural competency training to current educators. The 2016 national teacher of the year, Waterbury’s Jahana Hayes, was hired as the top recruiter before becoming the first black woman from Connecticut elected to Congress in 2018.

Known as the Brass City for its historical brass production, Waterbury has 19,000 students in its school district. The number of black and Hispanic educators has been rising, but the teaching force was still 86% white as of the last school year. Among new hires, the percentage of minority teachers jumped above 30% for two years before falling back to around 25% last year.

Despite the district’s outreach efforts, teachers and administrators often pass up or leave jobs in Waterbury for nearby districts offering higher salaries.

“We’re one of 169 towns in the state. And so there is stiff competition,” said W. Lee Palmer, the district personnel director. “And that’s one of the reasons that we have to be really aggressive about what we do.”

Cicero Booker, a former NAACP Waterbury branch president, said the district is doing the necessary work and change will take time. He also raised questions about the city’s financial commitment.

“What are we going to do to make it attractive for teachers from other communities? Are we going to help them with housing? Are we going to give them six months’ living expenses?” he said.

Research has found that black students who have at least one black teacher are more likely to graduate from high school and that black teachers are likely to have higher expectations for black students. Exposure to teachers of the same race has also been linked to lower rates of suspension and expulsion for black students.

Kayla remembered the police brutality discussion as an example of when a white teacher struggled to connect with black students. During a sophomore-year English course, the teacher assigned the class to read “The Hate U Give,” a young adult novel about a police shooting. As students talked about how they avoid going into stores with hoodies on, the teacher understood but could not relate, she said.

After the mass suspension of over 150 students for dress code violations at Wilby in the spring of 2017, the appointment of a black principal brought optimism that the climate would improve, Kayla said. With more minority educators, she said, there would be less antagonism.

“I just feel like if we had a more diverse staff that reflected the school population, people would feel a little more comfortable in school, a little more comfortable to open up,” she said.

The low numbers of minority educators nationally results partly from disparities in teacher training programs, which have been shown to enroll disproportionately large numbers of white students. Researchers also have traced declines in the numbers of black teachers to the period of desegregation marked by school consolidations and a trend toward tighter accreditation requirements.

The issue has received attention from state leaders in Connecticut, which this year passed a law creating new flexibility in teacher certification requirements and providing mortgage assistance for teachers who graduated from colleges that traditionally serve minority students. But advocates say it will take change at each individual district.

“If there is an opening in your building, unless you say I am intentionally going to fill that opening with a person of color, we will not change,” said Subira Gordon, director of the ConnCAN education advocacy group.

Kayla’s mother, LaToya Ireland, said she will never forget a black teacher she had in seventh grade.

“She took her time not just with me but with other students, and she really left a lasting impression on my life,” she said. “I would like for my girls and other kids to see that.”

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From: MeNeedIt

A major Internet outage in Iran aimed at suppressing anti-government protests has extended into a 5th day, with access levels rising slightly as authorities said they reconnected several regions to the web.

Real-time technical data corroborate reports in #Iran news media that some connectivity is being restored, although only partially.

At the current time national connectivity has risen further to 10%.

Follow our live report for updates on the situation https://t.co/1Al0DT8an1

— NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) November 21, 2019

In a series of Thursday tweets, London-based Internet monitoring group NetBlocks said Iran’s almost-total Internet shutdown began to ease after 113 hours, with the national connectivity rate rising from 5% to 10%. Connectivity had plummeted to about 5% late Saturday and mostly remained at that level until Thursday afternoon Iran time.

Iranian state news agencies reported that authorities were gradually restoring Internet access in several regions, including the southern province of Hormozgan that is home to the major port of Bandar Abbas.

Speaking to reporters in Tehran, the Secretary of Iran’s Supreme Cyberspace Council Abolhassan Firouzabadi said the state body would make a decision later Thursday about whether to end the five-day Internet shutdown that has caused further damage to an economy already weakened by U.S. sanctions and government corruption and mismanagement. He expressed hope  the outage would end “within the next two days.”
 
Iranian authorities imposed the shutdown to stop opposition activists from communicating and posting online images of nationwide protests that erupted last Friday in response to the government’s abrupt 50% increase in the subsidized price of gasoline. The protests had spread to more than 50 urban centers in Iran by Saturday, according to images received from Iran and verified by VOA Persian.

Many Iranians see the gas price increase as putting a further burden on their wallets at a time of worsening economic conditions. Iran’s currency has slumped versus the dollar, while inflation and unemployment have soared in the past year, as the U.S. has tightened economic sanctions aimed at pressuring Tehran to stop perceived malign behaviors. Government corruption and mismanagement also have contributed to the malaise.
 
“Mismanagement by the Iranian regime is helping to make the U.S. sanctions more effective,” Ilan Berman, a Middle East security analyst at the American Foreign Policy Council, said in a VOA Persian interview.
 
“Iranians are angry at the regime for the way it is conducting political and economic business. There is much less anger directed at the United States. Iranians know who the real culprit is,” he said.
 
State-approved Iranian news sites published several articles on Wednesday, highlighting ways in which the internet shutdown has been hurting the economy even more.
 
Economics news site Eqtesad quoted Communications Minister Mohammad-Javad Azari-Jahromi as saying online business transactions “have fallen by 90%” since the outage began.
 
Conservative news agency ILNA cited Tehran Chamber of Commerce member Ali Kolahi as saying the shutdown “presents us with problems in exports. We have no idea where our shipments are.”

Kolahi added that if the internet is restored “in the next couple of days, it may be possible to reverse some of the damage to our international image, but if this situation continues, it will be too late.”
 
The internet outage also has caused losses in the Iranian stock market, according to pro-government news site Bahar News in a report citing Investors Guild secretary Said Elsami.

In a Thursday statement, Iran’s most powerful military branch, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said it had restored “calm” to the country after suppressing the protests. State TV showed more images of pro-government rallies around the country, as it has done for the past few days.

State media have reported the arrests of at least 1,000 people whom authorities accused of engaging in violent confrontations with security personnel, damaging businesses and looting.
 
Many of the anti-government protests seen in videos from the first few days of the unrest were peaceful.

Iran’s ongoing internet outage made it difficult to verify whether the demonstrations had ended. VOA Persian did not receive any reports of protests in Iran on Thursday.

Iran’s government has not released figures on the numbers of people killed and wounded in the protests, besides saying several security personnel were among the dead.

British rights group Amnesty International said it received information indicating Iranian security forces had killed at least 106 protesters by Tuesday. The group said it based the figure on eyewitness accounts, social media videos and reports of exiled Iranian human rights activists.
 
On Wednesday, Iran’s mission to the United Nations dismissed reports of more than 100 fatalities in the unrest as “baseless.”
 
VOA Persian has independently confirmed the killings of at least seven protesters in shootings by Iranian security forces on Saturday.
 
The killings of protesters have drawn statements of concern from the United States, the U.N. human rights agency OHCHR and the EU.

In a late Wednesday tweet, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reiterated U.S. criticism of Iran’s crackdown on the protests and expressed solidarity with the Iranian people.

“As Iranians take to the streets in protest, the Ayatollahs in Tehran continue to use violence and imprisonment to oppress their people. The United States’ message is clear: the American people stand with the people of Iran,” Pence said.

As Iranians take to the streets in protest, the Ayatollahs in Tehran continue to use violence and imprisonment to oppress their people. The United States’ message is clear: the American people stand with the people of Iran.

— Vice President Mike Pence (@VP) November 21, 2019

U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, speaking to VOA Persian on Monday, said the Trump administration has been trying to help Iran’s people to circumvent the internet shutdown, without elaborating.

Hook also called on social media companies to suspend the accounts of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohamad Javad Zarif until they turn the internet back on. All three have accounts with U.S. social media companies Twitter and Instagram.
 
Instagram spokesperson Stephanie Otway declined to comment on Hook’s appeal when contacted by VOA Persian.
 
Katie Rosborough, a Twitter spokesperson, also declined a direct response to a VOA Persian query on the issue. Instead, she pointed to a company statement published last month, saying Twitter will take action against accounts of world leaders only if they use the platform to promote violence or post content deemed harmful to others.
 
This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. Gabriele Barbati contributed.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Three agencies in charge of resettling refugees in the U.S. are suing the Trump administration over the president’s executive order allowing states and cities to block refugees from being settled in their areas.    
             
The lawsuit was filed Thursday by HIAS, Church World Service, and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services in U.S. District Court in Baltimore.
                   
They say the order, the first of its kind in U.S. history, will harm the 40-year-old program hailed as a world model.
                   
President Donald Trump issued the order in September requiring states and cities to give written consent before refugees can be settled there. He also lowered the cap on the number of refugees allowed into the country to 18,000.
                   
Trump says local officials wanted more say. Agencies say they already work closely with local governments.

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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. diplomat Gordon Sondland told the impeachment panel investigating President Donald Trump Wednesday that despite the president’s denial, U.S. aid to Ukraine was conditioned on investigations benefiting Trump’s personal political interests. Sondland’s testimony could mark a pivotal turning point in the impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports from Capitol Hill on the explosive testimony that could impact Trump’s future in office.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Syrian forces shelled a displaced-persons camp in rebel-held Idlib Wednesday, killing at least 15 civilians, anti-government activists said.

The missiles set a number of tents on fire; two missiles fell just outside a maternity hospital in the camp in Qah, near the border with Turkey.

The White Helmet rescue group said six children were among the dead.

Idlib province in northwestern Syria is the last major section of the country still under rebel control.

A Russian-brokered truce in August intended to de-escalate the attacks by both sides has just about totally collapsed.

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From: MeNeedIt

With urban populations surging around the world, cities will struggle to keep residents safe from fast-growing heat risks turbo-charged by climate change, scientists and public health experts warned this week.

Heat is already the leading cause of deaths from extreme weather in countries including the United States. The problem is particularly severe in cities, where temperature extremes are rising much faster than the global average, they said.

Even today, areas where the world’s population is concentrated, such as in Asia’s cities, are seeing warming of four times the global average temperature increase, a Lancet report on health threats from climate change noted this week.

“It’s a worldwide problem — in cities in North America, Europe, Asia, Africa,” said Joy Shumake-Guillemot, who leads a joint climate and health office in Switzerland for the World Health Organization and World Meteorological Organization.

In coming decades, urban warming “is going to put populations in a position where they’re exposed to temperatures they’re not acclimated to, cities are not built for and social systems are really not prepared to deal with,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Cities are often “heat islands” — hotter than surrounding rural areas — because their vast expanses of concrete trap and hold heat, including that given off by vehicles and energy use in the city itself, and they have fewer cooling green spaces.

But a growing number of cities are now trying to tackle the problem. Tel Aviv, for instance, plans to cover many new public spaces with shade either from trees or artificial canopies, said Shumake-Guillemot, one of the authors of the Lancet report.

Other cities are working to set heat standards for everything from workplaces to schools, establishing public cooling centers and rethinking warning messages and heat advice, to more effectively reach those most at risk, she said.

Employers and unions also are taking action, in some cases by shifting construction work to cooler night-time hours and enforcing water breaks.

But the changes are rarely easy and can have unintended consequences — such as construction workers put on night shifts who then struggle with sleep deprivation and may be at greater risk of falling, Shumake-Guillemot said.

“There are complicated trade-offs to try and figure out how we are going to live successfully and in a healthy way in a much warmer world,” noted the environmental health policy expert.

For now, especially in the hottest places, “people are working in really dangerous conditions … and sometimes they don’t have other options,” she added.

The Lancet report found that in 2018 excessive heat caused the loss of 133 billion hours of work worldwide that would otherwise have been carried out, 45 billion more than in 2000.

In several southern U.S. states, as much as 15-20% of daylight working hours last year were too hot for people to do their jobs, it found.

But construction workers, military personnel and farmers, in particular, have little choice but to be outside, noted Shumake-Guillemot.

Kristie Ebi, a professor at the University of Washington Center for Health and the Global Environment, said dealing with rising heat threats was in some ways simpler than tackling other climate-related health risks, such as the spread of diseases like dengue fever or malaria.

“People should not and do not need to be dying in heatwaves,” said Ebi, one of the Lancet report’s authors. “Every heat-related death is preventable, essentially.”

But huge amounts of work are required to understand why those most at risk from extreme heat are not getting the help they need, she said.

People over 65, for instance, are among those most likely to die during heatwaves, because of pre-existing health conditions, failing to recognize dehydration or taking prescription drugs that can interfere with their ability to sweat, Ebi said.

Many cities have set up cooling centers to help older people ride out heatwaves, but have not provided transport for them to get there, she added.

Other people who face significant heat risks include children playing afternoon sports and professional athletes training in high temperatures, she said.

Organizers of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics are currently working to cut heatstroke risks for athletes running on what promises to be a blistering marathon course next summer, even after it is painted with heat-reflective material.

“Overall, the awareness (of heat risk) is not where it needs to be — but we’re very slowly making progress,” Ebi said.

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From: MeNeedIt