Greek authorities were transferring around 570 migrants from an overcrowded camp on the island of Lesbos on Sunday, officials said.

A regularly scheduled ferry left Lesbos carrying the migrants, who used to live in the migrant camp of Moria.

Authorities say this is part of the plan to reduce overcrowding at the camp, where about 13,000 people live in a space designed for 3,000.

Migrants, most of them Afghans, have protested, sometimes violently, over the prevailing conditions, demanding their transfer out of Moria and a quick response to their asylum demands.

Authorities say the 570 are among what they term “vulnerable categories” — families, single women with children and unaccompanied minors.

The ferry will arrive at Piraeus, the main port in Athens, on Monday morning. The migrants will be moved to a camp near the northern city of Thessaloniki.

Separately, Greek authorities said a Syrian toddler drowned at a beach in southern Greece after the boy wandered away from his parents and exited a migrant camp.

The Ministry of Citizen Protection, which oversees Greek police, says that the boy was 2 years old. The boy drowned Sunday afternoon after leaving the camp in the city of Andravida in the western Peloponnese region. An inquiry has been launched by Greek officials.

Germany’s top security official, meanwhile, said European Union nations need to work better together on the issue of migration or they risk facing a new flood of asylum-seekers that could rival that of 2015.

Following a trip last week to Turkey and Greece, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer told the Bild newspaper on Sunday that “we need to do more to help our European partners with the controls on the EU’s external borders.”

He said “if we don’t do that, we will experience a surge of refugees like 2015, perhaps even bigger.”

Germany alone took in 890,000 migrants in 2015.

The comments come ahead of meetings Tuesday with EU interior ministers on the issue.

Seehofer also tells the Welt newspaper that Europe needs to do more to help Turkey in dealing with millions of Syrian refugees.

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From: MeNeedIt

A 16-year-old climate activist who garnered international attention when she scolded world leaders at the United Nations is visiting American Indian reservations in the Dakotas to talk about oil pipelines.

Greta Thunberg is appearing at panel discussions on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota at 5 p.m. Sunday and on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota on Tuesday.

The Lakota People’s Law Project says Thunberg is concerned about the proposed path of the Keystone XL pipeline through South Dakota, as well as plans to double oil flowing through the Dakota Access pipeline in North Dakota.

Thunberg traveled to the United States in August on a sailboat to promote her climate change campaign.

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From: MeNeedIt

Researchers have been trying to learn more about a plant that has invaded lakes across Georgia and the Southeast, contributing to the deaths of eagles and other birds.

The hydrilla has helped to cause the deaths of American bald eagles and thousands of other water birds over the past 25 years, scientists say.

The plant isn’t killing the birds directly, but is providing a home for a new kind of cyanobacteria that produces a lethal toxin, The Athens Banner-Herald reported.

Scientists have been studying the issue after bald eagle carcasses were being found at a man-made lake in Arkansas. An increasing number of afflicted birds then began showing up in Arkansas, Georgia, and other states across the South.

There were reports of injuries — the loss of motor control in eagles and in a water bird called the coot. Their symptoms included wings that twitch but don’t flap, and difficultly maintaining balance.

Necropsies found that the affected eagles and coots showed peculiar lesions that made their brains look like sponges, the Athens newspaper reported.

Wildlife scientists had a name — Avian Vacuolar Myelinopathy, or AVM — but lacked crucial details on what was causing it.

The problem has been especially acute at Thurmond Lake, a man-made reservoir on the Savannah River between Georgia and South Carolina, the newspaper reported.

University of Georgia professor Susan Wilde saw patterns. The lakes where eagles were dying of AVM are man-made, and they had been heavily invaded by hydrilla. The coots were eating the hydrilla, and the eagles found easy prey in the disabled coots.

Wilde’s hypothesis: The coots could be ingesting some neurotoxin associated with the plants, then passing on the toxin when the eagles ate them. Wilde also found that a previously unknown kind of cyanobacteria was growing on the underside of the spreading hydrilla leaves. That could be producing lethal toxins.

In 2014, nearly two decades after the neurological disease first showed up, Wilde and her colleagues had a name for the cyanobacteria: Aetokthonos Hydrillicola, or eagle-killer. They’d also isolated the toxin it produces.

On Thurmond Lake, more than 105 AVM eagle deaths have been confirmed so far, and scientists believe the death toll is higher since many animal carcasses are never found.

Lake managers are trying strategies to beat back the plant invader and its toxic companion. They’ve had some success stocking Thurmond and other lakes with a kind of sterile grass-eating carp to gnaw away at the hydrilla, combined with sowing native water plants. Lake managers are also using chemical killers on the plants, though that carries its own set of environmental risks.

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From: MeNeedIt

Jordan’s government said Sunday it has reached a pay deal with the teachers union to end a one-month strike, the country’s longest public sector strike that disrupted schooling for more than 1.5 million students.

The deal came after the strike threatened a deepening political crisis when the government last week began legal steps against the unions after they rejected meager pay hikes they said were “bread crumbs” and the government said it could not afford to give more.

The pay deal that raises allowances from 35% to 60% to teachers from next year comes after weeks of deadlock with the government intransigent over meeting an original 50% pay rise demanded by the unions it said would strain the heavily indebted country’s finances.

Officials said King Abdullah had ordered the government to reach the hefty wage deal which tests the ability of Prime Minister Omar al Razzaz to stay on track in implementing tough fiscal reforms backed by the International Monetary Fund aimed at reducing a record $40 billion public debt.

The government fears new pay demands by other public sector employees, including doctors, and pension increases for retired soldiers would wreck efforts to restore fiscal prudence needed for a sustained economic recovery.

Dozens of activists from the powerful teachers union, whose members succeeded in forcing the government to agree to substantial pay hikes after a four-week standoff, celebrated in front of their headquarters in Amman.

“The teachers got their demands,” said Nasser Al Nawasrah, deputy head of the Jordanian Teachers Syndicate. He called on his organization’s 100,000 members to immediately resume teaching pupils in around 4,000 public schools that had been affected by the strike.

Many parents had kept their children at home out of solidarity with the striking teachers.

In many of the country’s rural areas and smaller cities, traditional heartlands of support for the monarchy, the strike also became a protest against successive governments’ failure to deliver on promises of economic growth.

Growing disenchantment among ordinary Jordanians over tough IMF austerity measures and high taxes spilled into large street protests in the summer of 2018 that railed against corruption and mismanagement of public funds.

Officials say Jordan can no longer afford to sustain a public sector in which salaries eat up much of the central government’s $13 billion budget in a country with some of the world’s highest government spending relative to its economy.

The debt is due, at least in part, to the adoption by successive governments of an expansionist fiscal policy marked by job creation in the public sector.
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Extra layers of security, intense on-screen action and a frightening incident inside a New York theater combined to create an unsettling experience for some moviegoers who went to see “Joker” on its opening weekend.

A young man who was loudly cheering and applauding on-screen murders sent some people heading toward exits in a crowded theater in Manhattan’s Times Square on Friday night. Other patrons yelled at the man, who spit on them as they left early, said Nathanael Hood, who was in the theater.

“I was scared. I’m sure a lot of other people were,” Hood said in an interview conducted by private messages.

Social media users posted photos of police, security sweeps and safety notices at theaters in California and Florida. And in Tennessee, a drive-in theater banned moviegoers from wearing costumes to a screening of the R-rated “Joker,” which scored an October box-office record with $13.3 million in earnings.

The Warner Bros. film, directed by Todd Phillips, presents the backstory of the man who becomes Batman’s classic foe. Starring Joaquin Phoenix, it probes the journey of a disturbed man with a penetrating laugh into a killer.

While Phillips has said he hopes the film inspires discussions about guns, violence and the treatment of people with mental illness, some feared the movie could inspire violence, particularly after a mass shooting killed 12 at a Colorado theater during a screening of another Batman movie in 2012.

Hood, who attended an afternoon viewing of “Joker” at AMC Empire 25 in Times Square, said a disruption began in the seats when the action on the screen grew intense.

“About halfway through when Joker started killing people and monologuing about how society is evil he started clapping really loudly and incessantly for a good minute. People started yelling for him to shut up, but he kept clapping and cheering like mad,” Hood said.

The man started clapping and cheering again “really loudly” during a climatic gunfight, he said, and got “belligerent” when people told him to quit.

“Finally security came and got him. He was still being interrogated outside the theater when we came out,” said Hood. Plenty of police were around the theater, he said.

Another moviegoer, Etai Benson, said the loud man was sitting beside him at the start of the movie and poured what appeared to be a full bottle of alcohol into a drink. The man’s behavior “combined with the carnage happening onscreen got people nervous,” he said.

“This was most likely a harmless drunk guy, but all the nervousness built around the film made what happened (Friday) night really unsettling,” Benson said in an interview conducted by private messages.

A spokesman for the Kansas-based AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., which operates AMC Theatres, did not immediately return an email seeking comment.

The FBI told local police agencies to monitor potentially threatening online posts related to the film.
Photos posted on social media showed officers and a police dog outside a theater where “Joker” was being shown in Orlando, Florida, and a police SUV was parked on the sidewalk outside a cinema in suburban Birmingham, Alabama, during a screening.

In Bristol, Tennessee, the owner of the Twin City Drive-In Theater, Danny Warden, posted a warning on Facebook that anyone wearing a costume or mask to see “Joker” wouldn’t be allowed in, and anyone who smuggled in an outfit would be asked to leave. 

Warden told WJHL-TV that the decision was “common sense” after the film sparked concerns about its violent content. 

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From: MeNeedIt

Hundreds of climate activists barricaded themselves into a Paris shopping center Saturday as security forces tried to remove them, ahead of a planned series of protests around the world by the Extinction Rebellion movement.

Campaigners faced off against police and some inconvenienced shoppers as they occupied part of the Italie 2 mall in southeast Paris.

They unfurled banners with slogans like “Burn capitalism not petrol” above restaurants and the window displays fashion boutiques.

The protest comes ahead of planned disruption to 60 cities around the world from Monday in a fortnight of civil disobedience from Extinction Rebellion (XR), which is warning of an environmental “apocalypse.”

As the center tried to close in the evening, security forces ordered the protesters to leave the area, activists told AFP.

According to images broadcast on social networks, police then tried to enter the building, while protesters blocked entrances with tables and chairs.

“I am with XR to say stop this crazy system before it destroys everything,” one young woman told AFP, giving only her first name Lucie.

Other campaign groups also joined in with the Paris shopping center demonstration, including some members of the “yellow vest” anti-government protest group.

Non-violent protests are chiefly planned by XR from Monday in Europe, North America and Australia, but events are also set to take place in India, Buenos Aires, Cape Town and Wellington.

Another protest was held in Berlin Saturday, with campaigners setting up camp near the parliament building.

“To governments of the world: we declared a climate and ecological emergency. You did not do enough. To everybody else: rebel,” XR said on its website ahead of its International Rebellion wave of activism.

“You can’t count on us or Greta to do this for you,” it said, referring to teenage Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. “Look inside yourself and rebel.”

Extinction Rebellion was established last year in Britain by academics and has become one of the world’s fastest-growing environmental movements.

Campaigners want the government to declare a climate and ecological emergency, reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2025, halt biodiversity loss and be led by new “citizens’ assemblies on climate and ecological justice.”
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is back at his Vermont home after being treated for a heart attack in Las Vegas.

The plane carrying the 78-year-old senator arrived in Vermont just before 6 p.m. Saturday, one day after he was released from a hospital.

As he left the airport he told reporters “I’m feeling great, thank you.” 

He was then driven home in a motorcade where he was greeted by family at the front door.

Sanders was attending a campaign event Tuesday when he experienced chest discomfort and was taken to a hospital. 

Sanders’ campaign released a statement from his doctors that said two stents were inserted to open up a blocked artery in his heart. 

The doctors said the rest of his stay was “uneventful with good expected progress.” 

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From: MeNeedIt

Hawaiian shirt day, doughnuts, shared sheet cake: There are a lot of ways to try to raise morale in the office. But Maxim Moskalkov visited some very special workspaces where workers know the best morale boost comes on four legs. 
 

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From: MeNeedIt

The town of Minden, West Virginia looks like many small American towns, yet it is unique in that it is one of the most toxic places in the United States. Here, between 1970s and mid-1980s, the Shaffer Equipment Company used harmful chemicals to build electrical equipment. Those chemicals have been banned since 1979, but traces still remain. Daria Dieguts went there to find out more and filed this report narrated by Anna Rice. 
 

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From: MeNeedIt

Mike Stura runs a 230 acre farm about an hour from New York City in the state of New Jersey. He isn’t really a farmer by trade, but he is a rescuer by choice and gives ailing animals a second chance. Anna Nelson visited Stura at Skylands Sanctuary, Anna Rice narrates the story. 
 

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From: MeNeedIt

President Donald Trump emphasized corruption, not politics, is the motivation to ask foreign governments to investigate his political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden. But text messages suggest that U.S. diplomats were encouraging Ukraine’s president to investigate Biden in exchange for a meeting he was seeking with Trump. VOA’s Steve Redisch reports.Trump Denies Political Motives for Ukraine Investigations; Diplomats’ Texts Concerning 

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From: MeNeedIt

A U.N. human rights expert has expressed concern over the working conditions of North Korean workers abroad in response to VOA’s report that uncovered North Korea’s illicit labor activities in Senegal.

“It’s quite revealing about this situation of the system that exists in North Korea regarding workers abroad,” Tomas Ojea Quintana, U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in North Korea, said during an interview with VOA Korean Service Thursday.

Quintana said the VOA report reflects that “the system remains as it was conceived since the outset.” 

Human rights groups have often accused North Korea of sending its citizens to foreign countries for forced labor to sustain its economy since the inception of the regime.  The country is known to violate international labor practices when sending workers abroad, putting them to work under harsh conditions.

The VOA report revealed that approximately 30 North Korean workers were laboring under poor conditions at various construction sites in the Senegalese capital of Dakar in September. The North Koreans were doing construction work for private Senegalese companies such as Patisen in violation of international sanctions.

The workers were paid about $120 a month after having to remit a significant portion of their salary to the North Korean government, according to documents reviewed by VOA.  Typically, North Korean government takes approximately 70% of workers’ salaries.

The workers were subject to heavy surveillance by North Korean authorities while working and off duty.  They had limited communications with locals, internet access, and ability to travel, according to the VOA report.

Quintana said poor labor conditions of overseas North Korean workers are “the responsibility of North Korean government.” 

Quintana continued, “The best way to address this issue is to engage with those countries who hosted these workers and to engage those private actors and companies who also have a responsibility.”

The U.N. expert said he recognizes the importance of international sanctions placed on North Korea in an attempt to prevent the country from sending its workers abroad to earn hard currency that could be used for its nuclear weapons program.

At the same time, Quintana believes it is equally important to find ways to protect the rights of North Korean workers who want to work abroad and to create acceptable labor conditions.

Acknowledging that the North Korean system of overseas workers has shortcomings, Quintana said, “We also know that the families of these North Korean workers benefit a lot from the income, even the low income that they receive working abroad.

“So this is something we need to bear in mind when we address the issue of overseas workers,” he continued.

Quintana said he plans to reach out to Senegalese authorities and urge them to comply with basic labor standards.
   
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution in August 2017 banning member states from forming joint entities with North Korea in their territories and hiring North Korean workers, in an effort to curb North Korea’s nuclear weapons program 

A month later, the Security Council passed another resolution asking members to close any existing North Korean entities in their territories.  Then in December of that year, the council urged members to return all North Korean workers home by December 2019. 

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From: MeNeedIt