In October, California became the first US state to ban sales of animal fur products – the state’s governor signed a series of laws that ban sales of new clothing and accessories made of fur, as well as prohibiting wild animals at circuses. The decision made animal lovers happy but isn’t selling well with stores that sell fur. Angelia Bagdasaryan has the story narrated by Anna Rice. 

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Tharparkar desert in Pakistan’s Sindh province is known for being hot and dry. But a recent heavy rain spell has turned the desert into a lush green landscape. The green explosion is also attracting visitors from the city. VOA’s Muhammad Saqib has more in this report narrated by Bezhan Hamdard.

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This generation of children are called digital natives because they have grown up in a digital world. But there are two generations of older people and many disadvantaged people for whom the digital world is a mystery. A computer science teacher in Washington DC is working to change that. VOA’s Mykhailo Komadovsky reports.

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Illegal loggers ambushed a group of indigenous forest guards in Brazil’s Amazon, killing one and injuring another, authorities said Saturday.

A logger also died in the attack Friday night in Maranhao, a northeastern state, according to FUNAI, a state agency that represents indigenous interests.

Paulo Paulino Guajajara, who died after being shot in the face, was a leader in a group seeking to protect the Arariboia indigenous reserve from incursions.

Federal police will investigate Guajajara’s killing in order to “bring those responsible for this crime to justice,” said Sergio Moro, the justice and public security minister.

An indigenous leader in the area said the forest guards had previously received threats and wore protective vests while on patrol.

“We informed federal agencies of the threats but they didn’t take any action,” leader Sonia Guajajara said.

Some indigenous groups in the Amazon rainforest say they are increasingly vulnerable to incursions by loggers and cattle ranchers. Fires used to clear land in the Amazon increased sharply in July and August, causing international alarm over a region seen as critical to curbing climate change.

Concern about the rainforest had heightened after Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro took office this year with calls to loosen protections for nature reserves and indigenous lands.

Bolsonaro says some economic development is necessary in the Amazon.

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GISBORN, NEW ZEALAND – New Zealand has launched an official campaign to revive the indigenous Maori language. The ambitious project is part of an official strategy that sees the revival of the language as a key part in national identity and reconciliation. 

The language has been surprisingly resilient on its own. Case in point – an album by Maori heavy-metal band Alien Weaponry recently went straight to number one in New Zealand. But census data has shown that the number of indigenous speakers in country has fallen.  

Glenis Philip-Barbara, the former head of the Maori Language Commission, is optimistic about the future though.

“There aren’t as many people speaking Maori as I’d like, I mean, around two-in-five Maori can have a conversation in te reo Maori (the Maori language), which is still quite low.  But, look, we’ve made huge gains since the days when we were at two per cent.  That was the 1970s, so we are steadily growing and, of course, without a proper command of the language you don’t actually have that in-depth understanding of your own culture,” Philip-Barbara said.  

Maori TV is publicly funded.  Its presenters and journalists speak only in Maori.  

It is a far cry from when children were beaten or whipped at school for speaking their native tongue.

Tina Ngata, an indigenous rights campaigner, believes colonization has had terrible consequences for language.

“We talk about this idea of cultural genocide and that one of the forms that colonization takes is that the policies, the legislation, the funding, the structures really lend itself towards only letting you survive if you survive as a colonial version of yourself, and it is much more difficult to survive as a Maori.  Our resistance to that is to continue to flood our communities with beautiful Maori-speaking, Maori-singing ceremonial and contemporary versions and on-going, evolving versions of ourselves,” Ngata said.

Millions of dollars of government money has been promised to help revitalize Maori.  Like many other New Zealanders, the country’s prime minister, Jacinta Ardern, is eager to learn.

“What is the most important thing in the world? The people, the people, the people,” she said.

Words such as kia ora (hello), and kai (food) have long been part of New Zealand English.  It is hoped that by 2040, one million Kiwis will be able to speak basic Maori.  

Indigenous New Zealanders make up about 15% of the national population.

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A land mine explosion in Afghanistan claimed the lives of 9 children Saturday as they walked to school, according to police.

Spokesman Khalil Asir said the mine detonated in the northeastern province of Takhar, killing the children, who were nine to 12 years old.   

Asir said the Taliban planted anti-personnel mines to clear the area but, “Unfortunately, today, one of those mines exploded and killed nine primary school students.”

The Taliban, which controls the area and is fighting to oust U.S.-backed foreign troops, was not immediately available for comment.

Saturday’s deaths are the latest in a growing number of civilian casualties this year, despite U.S.-Taliban talks to reach a peace agreement.

The U.N. said last month a record 4,313 civilians were killed or injured between July and September, a more than 40 percent increase from the same period last year.

Of that number, more than 1,000 were fatalities — making the period the most deadly since the U.N. began compiling figures in 2009.

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Hong Kong police Saturday fired tear gas in an effort to disperse protesters whose rallies in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory show no signs of subsiding.

Saturday marked the 22nd consecutive weekend of pro-democracy protests in the territory’s streets.

Friday, Shen Chunyaok, the director of the Hong Kong, Macao and Basic Law Commission warned that China “absolutely will not permit any behavior encouraging separatism or endangering national security and will resolutely guard against and contain the interference of foreign powers in the affairs of Hong Kong and Macao and their carrying out acts of separatism, subversion, infiltration and sabotage.”

Eighteen-year-old protester Gordon Tsoi told the French news agency AFP: “The government and the police have been ignoring and suppressing the people’s demands so we need to continue the movement to show them we still want what we are asking for.”

The Asian financial hub has been mired in massive and oftentimes violent protests since June, sparked by a proposed bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China.  The protests have evolved into demands for full democracy for Hong Kong, an independent inquiry into the possible use of excessive force by police and complete amnesty for all activists arrested during the demonstrations.  Masked activists have vandalized businesses and the city subway system, and attacked police with bricks and homemade gasoline bombs.

Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy under the “one government, two systems” arrangement established when China regained control of Hong Kong from Britain in 1997.  But political activists and observers say Beijing is slowly tightening its grip on the territory and eroding its basic freedoms.

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Vietnam Friday announced its first arrests in a suspected cross-border trafficking case in Essex, England, where authorities found the bodies of 39 Vietnamese they believe suffocated to death in a refrigerated truck.

Police in Ha Tinh province said they arrested and charged two suspects after 10 local families reported fearing their family members were among the 39 victims. The case has reached the highest levels of government, with both the British and Vietnamese prime ministers ordering investigations. The probes have expanded to include transit countries China, Ireland, and Belgium, where officials say the driver of the truck said he’d been transporting cookies and biscuits.

“The Ha Tinh Police have gathered the forces and means to clearly investigate the legal violations of individuals and organizations involved,” a post on the police website said Saturday. They did not name the suspects but said they detained others for questioning too.

 The suspects were charged with “organizing and brokering for other people to flee abroad or stay abroad illegally.” British police have also arrested or charged at least five people on suspicion of manslaughter and conspiracy to traffic people.

Journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai, the author of the book “Chinese Whispers: The Story Behind Britain’s Hidden Army of Labour,” wrote in the Guardian Wednesday that it is not constructive to merely focus on crime or “evil human traffickers.” She argued the 39 found last month were not hapless victims lured into trafficking, but workers “fighting for a future for their families.”

“In reality, the Vietnamese young men and women who choose to travel on these dangerous routes only do so when they cannot come to Britain in formal ways,” she wrote.

Pai said there “will be more deaths in lorries unless Britain changes” its anti-migrant policies.
“Let our fellow human beings have the opportunity to live and work in the open,” she wrote.

Separately, police in another Vietnamese province, Nghe An, said last week they arrested four people suspected of involvement in a trafficking ring, local media reported. It is unclear if that network was at all involved with the Vietnamese migrants found in Essex, but the truck deaths have increased the attention and urgency around existing investigations.

For the Essex Police, the truck deaths reportedly mark the biggest investigation they have conducted into mass casualties.

Although Vietnam has greatly decreased poverty since the end of the U.S.-Vietnam war, some still find they can earn more money to support their families by going overseas.

Among Asian migrants, Vietnamese pay the highest costs to brokers, and the number of migrants is rising, according to the International Labor Organization in Vietnam. It recommends that governments collaborate to ensure safe channels for migration, so people don’t have to resort to brokers. Migrants are still going through irregular channels because globalization has created more jobs in more places; however, while globalization has fostered the flow of companies and capital across borders, it has not done so for workers, pushing them toward trafficking.

“With collaboration and cooperation, labor migration can be a positive development force, and risks to the safety of migrant workers can be reduced,” Chang-Hee Lee, the ILO country director in Hanoi, said Tuesday.

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A breast cancer diagnosis is terrifying enough at any time. But for 49-year-old Grecia Solis, the arduous choices faced by all cancer patients were complicated by the crippling decline of Venezuela’s public health facilities.

After her diagnosis two years ago, doctors recommended surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Before the oil-producing nation’s steep economic decline of recent years, those services would have been available free of charge or for a nominal fee at a state-run public hospital.

But trained staff, medicines and equipment are in such short supply at those facilities today that a public hospital was no longer an option. Instead, Solis was forced to borrow money from family and friends to pay for her operation at a privately run, for-profit clinic.

Her operation, performed in May 2018, cost her $500, a modest amount by U.S. standards, but a huge sum in Venezuela where hyperinflation has ravaged most people’s savings. With additional financial help from a sister in Ecuador, Solis was able to pay for the recommended eight sessions of chemotherapy, which were completed in December.

Solis’ story is a common one among cancer patients in Venezuela. Patients are not just afraid of the disease itself, but they also fear dying because they cannot find or afford the necessary treatment.

Last year, about 4,700 women in Venezuela became ill with breast cancer, according to the Anticancer Society of Venezuela, although the nation’s health ministry has not produced official figures since 2012. The society reported 2,300 women died last year from the disease, one of the leading causes of cancer deaths among Venezuelan women.

Senos Ayuda, an NGO that supports breast cancer patients, estimates the number of patients are even higher, at almost 7,000 a year. And it stresses that treatment, medicine and doctors are becoming ever less accessible with the deepening of the nation’s humanitarian emergency.

The problem is part of a wider crisis in public health facilities. According to several Venezuelan doctors’ organizations, 73% of the country’s operating rooms are out of service or lack supplies and have unsanitary conditions.

A survey conducted by the organization Doctors for Health indicated that 90% of radiotherapy facilities are inoperative, 94% of health centers cannot take an X-ray, and 88% of hospitals have insufficient supplies and medicines. The Anticancer Society of Venezuela has reported that 80% of public radiotherapy equipment has been inoperative in the last year.

Solis says she is frustrated the government of President Nicolas Maduro does not accept that Venezuela is in a humanitarian crisis and has done little to address the problem, leading to avoidable cancer deaths.

Another patient, 58-year-old Algeria Dias, was diagnosed with a breast tumor in August 2017. She was able to afford treatment with the help of family, donations, some government help and the sale of the family car, but she says she now she spends every day “going from clinic to clinic, public and private, and see if they have the space or equipment I need to monitor my disease.”

For her part, Solis says she is running out time. She has until December to raise $5,000 to pay for more than 30 additional radiotherapy sessions to prevent the likely return of her cancer.

“Cancer does not wait. Cancer does not warn and when you have it, it overtakes you. It hurts having the uncertainty of not knowing if you can say, “I am a cancer survivor,” she said.

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The Washington Nationals will not have to travel far, or wait all that long, to visit the White House, as the World Series champions have a get-together planned with President Donald Trump on Monday.

Typically, teams wait until the following season when they are in Baltimore or Washington to visit the White House, but the logistics were not all that difficult for a team that plays a mere three miles away. A ceremony on the South Lawn is scheduled for 1:15 p.m. EST.

The White House visit will come after a parade to honor the champions on Saturday. The Nationals completed the seven-game World Series with a victory Wednesday at Houston. 

The road team won every game, the first time that has happened in World Series history.

Trump attended Game 5 of the series on Sunday at Nationals Park, with boos filling the ballpark when he was shown on the video board.

 Trump has also met with the 2017 champion Houston Astros and the 2018 champion Boston Red Sox, although a number of Red Sox players skipped that visit, including manager Alex Cora.

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Spaniards are voicing outrage after five men were acquitted of rape on the grounds that their 14-year-old victim had been unconscious at the time. 
 
The Barcelona-based court ruled Thursday that the men were guilty of the lesser crime of sexual abuse and sentenced them to 10-12 years and fined them 12,000 euros ($13,300). 
 
It ruled that their act could not be considered sexual assault since the girl was unconscious after consuming alcohol and drugs and so they did not need to use violence or intimidation, a requirement for a rape conviction in Spain. 
 
Spain’s deputy prime minister, Carmen Calvo, said that while her government does not comment on court decisions it has set as a priority a modification in the law to make clear consent necessary for sexual relations to occur legally. 
 
The attack occurred in the town of Manresa, near Barcelona, in 2016 when the girl and the men went into an abandoned factory to drink.

The court said that since the victim was unconscious during the attack, she “could not accept or reject the sexual relations” and that the men “could carry out those sexual relations without the use of violence or intimidation.”

Barcelona mayor Ada Colau and other left-wing politicians and feminist groups have condemned the ruling, as well as clamoring for the law to be strengthened in the victim’s favor.

“Another senseless verdict by the patriarchal Justice that doesn’t want to understand that only a Yes means Yes,” Colau wrote on Twitter. “An unconscious 14-year-old girl was gang raped. I am not a judge and I don’t know how many years of prison they deserve, (but) what I do know is that this is not abuse, it is rape!”

Marisa Soleto, of the feminist group Fundacion Mujeres, said that “this is just one more piece of proof for the necessity to change the penal code.”

A similar 2017 ruling sparked widespread protests when five men were found guilty of sexual abusing a woman but acquitted of rape for an attack in Pamplona. Spain’s Supreme Court later overruled the lower court and convicted them of rape. 
 

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“Full House” actress Lori Loughlin and her fashion designer husband are contesting the latest charges against them in the college admissions scandal.

Lawyers for Loughlin and Mossimo Giannulli filed court documents Friday saying the couple plans to plead not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit federal program bribery. The couple also waived their right to appear at a Nov. 20 arraignment.

Prosecutors recently added the bribery charge for 11 parents who previously pleaded not guilty in the case. Another 19 parents have pleaded guilty or agreed to plead guilty.

Loughlin and Giannulli are accused of paying $500,000 to get their two daughters into the University of Southern California as fake athletic recruits. Their daughters no longer attend USC.

The couple previously pleaded not guilty to fraud and money laundering.

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