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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.
A police officer removes a bicycle outside Lambeth County Court, during a raid on an Extinction Rebellion storage facility, in London, Oct. 5, 2019.
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.
Activists arrive at a camp set for Extinction Rebellion climate activists next to the Reichstag in Berlin, Oct. 5, 2019. Hundreds of activists plan to block major roads in the German capital in a week of protests for new climate-protection policies.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Outdoor toilet North Korean workers use near their compound in Ouakam, Dakar (Photo: Christy Lee / VOA)
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
The flu season has started in the Northern Hemisphere. Although it’s still very early in the season, two deaths have been reported. One was a child, the other an adult with a chronic illness, but seemingly healthy people can also die from the flu.
Those most likely to die from the flu are the very young and the very old. But seemingly healthy people die as well.
Jen Ludwin was one of those seemingly healthy people when she caught the virus. She was young — 23 years old with no underlying conditions.
“I figured, ‘You know what, I’ll spend seven days in bed and just fight it off and I’d be OK.’ But I was totally wrong,” she said.
Ludwin’s organs to begin to fail.
“I was already in septic shock, and that my organs were starting to fail,” she said. “On top of that I had ARDS, which is a respiratory distress syndrome, and then DIC, which caused me to bleed internally and clot in my extremities. And all of those complications together led to gangrene in my limbs, and so I became an amputee.”
Researchers Think They Know Why Some Flu Patients Get Heart Problems video player.
Researchers Think They Know Why Some Flu Patients Get Heart Problems
Dr. Eric Adkins at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center says when a virus attacks the body, it’s like an all-out war.
“The body’s response to infection is basically a big inflammatory response that can cause all kinds of problems in the various organs,” he said.
A clue in a protein
It’s a mystery why otherwise healthy people have severe complications from the flu. But researchers at Ohio State University College of Medicine uncovered a clue. Jacob Yount specializes in the study of microbial infection at Ohio State. He says the researchers found a link between a heart complication as a result of getting the flu and a protein that’s critical to fighting it.
“We make this protein and it inhibits viruses from entering our cells,” he said.
But, Yount says, some people have a genetic mutation that blocks the production of that protein, and without it, the flu is more likely to infect the heart and lead to heart failure.
“It can actually block the electrical current that’s traveling through the heart,” he said.
The study found that the mice without this gene were more likely to have heart complications after being infected with the flu virus. Adkins says this finding may help doctors care for flu patients in the future.
“If you know that they’re missing the gene ahead of time, then you may tailor your medical therapy differently,” he said.
Millions affected
The researchers say that millions of people worldwide are likely to have this genetic mutation, including about one-fifth of those of Chinese descent.
Now that scientists understand what might be causing the problem, they are searching for treatments that might prevent or reverse these heart complications in the future. Right now, though, the best protection is getting a flu shot
Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi promised to listen to people’s grievances in a televised address after three days of deadly protest in Baghdad and several other cities. Hundreds of protesters rallied in the capital for a third consecutive day Thursday, defying a curfew, to call for jobs, improved services and an end to widespread corruption. About 30 people have been killed so far and hundreds others have been injured in clashes between the police and protesters. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the authorities authorities have extended a curfew in several southern cities as the death toll rises.
When considering what lies ahead in the impeachment inquiry targeting President Donald Trump, a famous movie line comes to mind. “Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
That line was uttered by legendary Hollywood actress Bette Davis in the 1950 film, “All About Eve.” But it would seem to fit the times when it comes to where the president and opposition Democrats are headed in the weeks to come.
Emotions and tensions are running high in Washington as the impeachment inquiry targeting Trump gains momentum. And many political experts believe this latest battle over the Trump presidency is likely to sharpen the longstanding political divide within the country just as the 2020 presidential campaign gets underway in earnest.
Impeachment Battle Fuels Sharp Partisan Divide video player.
Trump has appeared to be in battle mode in recent days as the prospect of impeachment looms. On Thursday, in front of reporters outside the White House, he openly urged Ukraine and China to start investigating Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter.
As the President of the United States, I have an absolute right, perhaps even a duty, to investigate, or have investigated, CORRUPTION, and that would include asking, or suggesting, other Countries to help us out!
It was a phone conversation between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on July 25, however, that is at the heart of the impeachment inquiry being pushed by congressional Democrats. In a summary of the call released by the president, Trump urged Zelenskiy to investigate the Bidens, even though neither Trump nor his allies have produced any public evidence of wrongdoing.
Trump’s mood has grown increasingly combative in recent days as more details emerge about the call.
“People have said to me, how does he handle it?” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “Because it is all a fraud, and because of that, and because I know that I am right and because I am doing a great job for the American people, I am very, very happy living the way I am living.”
Trump has also ramped up his attacks on the news media.
“Much of it is corrupt. You have corrupt media in this country and it truly is the enemy of the people,” he said.
FILE – Then-U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden attend an NCAA basketball game between Georgetown University and Duke University in Washington, Jan. 30, 2010.
Democratic pressure
Congressional Democrats remain focused on Trump’s phone call with Ukraine’s leader and his appeal for help in trying to find political dirt on Democratic rival Joe Biden. For months, Biden has consistently beaten Trump in head-to-head matchups in polls.
Democrat Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has become the face of the impeachment inquiry and told reporters Wednesday that Democrats were determined to quickly move ahead with their inquiry.
“To try to effectively coerce a foreign leader that is completely dependent on our country for military, economic, diplomatic and other support to intervene in our election to help his campaign. It is hard to imagine a more corrupt course of conduct,” Schiff said.
Trump has denied any wrongdoing and described the phone exchange as a “perfect call.”
But legal expert Paul Schiff Berman of the George Washington University Law School said the allegations are serious.
“The entire purpose and content of the call as released by the White House is only to further the president’s personal, political efforts to hurt one of his political opponents, and that is an abuse of power and authority that goes beyond anything I think we have ever seen,” Schiff Berman told VOA.
Impeachable conduct?
As the House moves ahead with its inquiry, Vanderbilt University expert Thomas Schwarz said lawmakers will eventually have to consider whether Trump’s behavior is serious enough to warrant removal from office.
“I think the real question will be whether it rises to the level of an impeachable offense. It might be helpful in the investigation if they can find a pattern of this type of behavior in his other interactions with foreign leaders.”
Even if Democrats eventually move to impeach Trump in the House, they would face long odds on actually removing him from office because Republicans control the Senate. In a Senate impeachment trial, 67 of the 100 senators would have to find the president guilty in order to remove him from office.
Pushing polarization
President Donald Trump speaks after signing an executive order regarding Medicare at Sharon L. Morse Performing Arts Center, Oct. 3, 2019, in The Villages, Florida.
The impeachment battle is already hardening feelings about Trump among both supporters and opponents.
Even as polls indicate growing support for impeachment, many of the same surveys show Trump’s base rallying to his support even more strongly than before.
And the longer the inquiry goes on, the more likely it is that it will further fray a nation already politically fractured, according to veteran analyst William Galston at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
“So the polarization is both increasing and deepening and there is no getting around the fact that we are in for months of conflict around this issue,” Galston told VOA. “It will pour gasoline on an already raging fire, I am afraid.”
On the campaign trail
The impeachment inquiry is also dominating the Democrat’s presidential primary race. On the campaign trail in Nevada, Joe Biden had a direct message for the president. You are not going to destroy me and you are not going to destroy my family.”
What happens with the impeachment effort will have a big impact on the 2020 campaign.
“The next five to eight weeks is probably going to tell us a lot more about the 2020 presidential election than the last three years have,” Brookings analyst John Hudak told a panel discussion on impeachment earlier in the week.
Trump is no stranger to political battles, and the one coming up over impeachment could be the defining moment of his presidency.
In recent days, anti-government protests have engulfed Baghdad and some other cities in Iraq. Security forces have opened fire, killing dozens and wounding hundreds. A curfew has been imposed in the capital and the internet has been cut off in several regions. The United States has urged authorities to exercise restraint. As the country stands on the brink of descending once more into violence, there are fears of a return to sectarian conflict. Henry Ridgwell reports from a recent London conference on the uncertain future of Iraq.
By the late 19th century, slavery was over, but the American South was still rife with discrimination and injustice for rural African American sharecroppers.
“They could only shop at one store, the country store, where prices were high,” says Louis Hyman, an economic historian and assistant professor at Cornell University.
“It often was the case that the landlord also owned the store, and their lives were ruled by credit. They basically could only shop at that store because their accounts would not be reconciled until the cotton crop came in. Because of that, they didn’t really have cash, and they really didn’t have an alternative way to get credit.”
A country store in Person County, North Carolina, 1939.
Enter Sears, the department store chain founded by Richard Sears and Alvah Roebuck in 1893, which had a catalog that offered black sharecroppers an alternative. Sears let customers buy on credit, which gave African Americans the option to bypass the local country store, where black customers had to wait until the white customers were served.
“They couldn’t buy the same clothes as white people. They couldn’t buy the same food as white people…This was part of the sort of everyday white supremacy of Jim Crow,” Hyman says. “And so, the Sears catalog allowed them a way to buy clothes that were nicer than were available in that country store, to buy food that the white people ate… It offered them a choice where they didn’t have to feel second-class in their shopping lives.”
Women’s hats are pictured in a 1907 Sears Roebuck catalog from the shelves of the Chicago Public Library, Aug. 26, 1948.
The Jim Crow laws, which were in effect from the 1880s to the 1960s, were state and local mandates that enforced racial segregation in the American South. The most common types of these laws outlawed intermarriage and required businesses and public institutions to separate their black and white patrons.
Sears, the department store founder, was not motivated by social justice. As a businessman, he was in it for the money. Once Sears realized that African Americans were using the catalog to avoid discrimination at the hands of white supremacists, he took steps to make sure they could continue to shop the catalog.
Sears set up systems that gave black patrons the option to go directly to the postal carrier, completely bypassing the country store, which in some cases, was also the post office.
Sharecropper eating near Clarksdale, Mississippi, 1937. (Photo by Dorothea Lange)
Rumors spread that Sears and Roebuck were black, presumably to convince white shoppers that they shouldn’t shop at Sears. Sears and Roebuck published pictures to prove they were white.
“It’s easy to think of Jim Crow as just taking away the vote from African Americans, but it was part of an everyday kind of experience of difference that legitimates a kind of hierarchy,” Hyman says, adding that African Americans have always had a less equal access to the market.
“This is what racial segregation is all about. You see that today. Where are the food deserts? In cities. Why don’t black people have access to the same kinds of stores that white suburbanites do? And a lot of the experience of black people is an experience of monopoly, not being able to get to a bank, having to rely on a check-cashing place, not being able to get to that slightly better-paying job because they’re isolated in terms of transportation or neighborhood.”
Last October, Hyman tweeted about the Sears catalog’s role in battling white supremacy. The thread went viral on Twitter and was seen by millions. Actor LeVar Burton was among those who retweeted it.
“I think the reason it connected with people is that people still shop while black, they still get trailed through stores,” Hyman says. “We still have this daily experience of not being welcome and being forced to feel second-class.”
Hyman says it’s not a coincidence that the Sears catalog began to decline after the end of the Jim Crow era. Some on the Twitter thread suggested that Amazon shopping can play a similar role for African American customers today as the Sears catalog did more than a century ago.
