Month: October 2019

When he escaped the armed group that had abducted him at the age of 15, the child soldier swore he’d never go back. But the South Sudanese teen still thinks about returning to the bush, six months after the United Nations secured his release.

“Being asked to kill someone is the hardest thing,” he told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity for his safety.
 
And yet the army offered him a kind of stability he has yet to find outside it. “I had everything, bedding and clothes, I’d just steal what I needed here, I haven’t received what I was expecting,” he said.
 
He lives with family, adrift, waiting to attend a U.N.-sponsored job skills program, struggling to forget his past.

There are an estimated 19,000 child soldiers in South Sudan, one of the highest rates in the world, according to the U.N. As the country emerges from a five-year civil war that killed almost 400,000 people and displaced millions, some worry the fighting could re-ignite if former child soldiers aren’t properly reintegrated into society.

“Without more support, the consequence is that the children will move towards the barracks where there’s social connection, food and something to do,” said William Deng Deng, chairman for South Sudan’s national disarmament demobilization and reintegration commission. “They loot and raid and it will begin to create insecurity.”

Since the fighting broke out in 2013, the U.N. children’s agency has facilitated the release of more than 3,200 child soldiers from both government and opposition forces.
 
Yet even after a peace deal was signed a year ago, the rate of forced child soldier recruitment by both sides in the conflict is increasing, the U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said in a statement earlier this month.
 
“Ironically, the prospect of a peace deal has accelerated the forced recruitment of children, with various groups now seeking to boost their numbers before they move into the cantonment sites,’ said commission chairwoman Yasmin Sooka. According to the peace deal the government and opposition should have 41,500 troops trained and unified into one national army.

Children who leave armed groups often struggle to adjust.
 
The AP followed several child soldiers among 121 released in February. Many said they are still haunted by their pasts, unable to talk about their experiences for fear of being stigmatized and often incapable of controlling their anger.

“Whenever I think about the bush, even if I’m playing football, I feel like stopping and picking something up and hitting my friends,” said a 13-year-old. The AP is not using the names of the former child soldiers to protect their identities.
 
Abducted by armed men when he was 11, he worked as a spy for an opposition group and at times was forced to witness and partake in horrific acts. He watched a soldier kill a child for refusing to do his chores, and he was forced to set a house on fire, burning alive everyone inside.

“I hear those people screaming in my dreams,” he said.
 
Once released, the former child soldiers are given a three-month reintegration package including food and the opportunity for educational and psycho-social support. However, the system is overburdened and underfunded.

“It’s a lot of work. Sometimes I can only spend 15 to 20 minutes with each child,” said Joseph Ndepi, a social worker with World Vision who is supporting 46 children.
 
Many families don’t know how to deal with their children’s change in behavior once they’ve returned.

“When he initially got out he was so rough he’d beat the kids, and when our mom tried to intervene he’d turn on her,” one 16-year-old said of her elder brother. Both children were abducted and released from armed groups at the same time.
 
While the girl wanted to forget the past, her brother tried to relive it.

At night he’d sneak out of the house and perform mock ambushes to see how close he could get to robbing people’s properties without being caught, the 17-year-old said. Since starting therapy he has stopped the late-night excursions and reined in his temper.  
 
Some of the children’s behavior is related to the power they felt in the army, said Kutiote Justin, a social worker with Catholic Medical Mission Board, an international aid group. One former child soldier he works with insists on calling himself “the commander.”

A lack of resources for reintegration could hurt long-term assistance.

About 420 children have participated in vocational courses to learn professions such as welding, carpentry and tailoring, yet it’s unclear if there will be enough funding to continue past December.
 
Almost $5 million is needed for the next two years but currently only $500,000 is available, according to UNICEF.
 
“Donors aren’t funding to the same extent they used to and now there’s potentially an even greater need,” said spokesman Yves Willemot. And more child soldiers are expected to be released in the near future, he said.

South Sudan’s government isn’t investing in child soldier reintegration, according to the national disarmament, demobilization and reintegration commission. The hope is that once a unity government is formed in mid-November, a key part of the peace deal, the international community will be more inclined to contribute.
 
But the peace deal is fraught with delays and questionable political will. The government hasn’t committed the $100 million it pledged for the peace process, and key elements such as training a unified army have yet to be realized.

Meanwhile, families whose children have returned from the fighting are doing what they can to keep them from leaving again.

In August the 17-year-old felt lonely, so he packed his bags and headed for the bush. He got as far as the main road before his family’s words echoed through his head.

“Stay with your people, don’t go to that place,” he said, recalling their advice. “Just stay here in peace.”  
 

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There’s a familiar trend of fast food chains like KFC and Burger King entering developing countries, where citizens start to see obesity rates increase amid all the new junk food options.

This is not that story, at least in Vietnam. The junk food trend has certainly come to Vietnam already, but now there’s an even newer trend in the country, and it’s the definition of irony:  more Vietnamese citizens are looking for food products that are healthful — only to end up with products that are anything but that.

A Vietnam food puzzle

Sugar is the ingredient that perhaps best exemplifies this irony. The problem is not that Vietnamese are eating large amounts of candy and ice cream, though some are doing that. Instead, they’re buying products like fruit juices and yogurt, not realizing that all the added sugar may outweigh the health benefits of the fruit. Products are packaged in labels that appeal to citizens’ health goals.

This is part of a broader change across Vietnam, where companies are selling more ready-to-eat meals and processed foods to citizens who used to buy vegetables and eggs directly from farms. The change is leading to obvious business opportunities. For instance, the Nutifood Nutrition Food Joint Stock Company recently got an expected debt rating of B+ from Fitch Ratings, which predicts the company will profit from more Vietnamese buying health foods.

“The government has introduced initiatives to address malnutrition and stunting, whose levels remain high by global standards,” Fitch Ratings said in an explanation of its expected rating. “Fitch also expects a high birth-rate and consumers increasingly seeking convenience with nutrition will continue to drive demand for Nutifood’s products, particularly its ready-to-drink products.”

Moderation is the goal

Milk and related products sold by Nutifood and its competitors highlight the balance that is hard to strike in the national diet. Vietnam for years encouraged parents to give their children milk so the next generation would be taller and have stronger bones. Today however, obesity is a bigger problem than undernourishment, having increased 38 percent from 2010 to 2014 — the highest in Southeast Asia. That’s why Vietnam does not use the term “undernourished” but “malnourished” to describe its whole range of nutritional issues.

In other areas there’s low awareness of dietary risks, such as the overreliance on MSG and salt, usually in the form of fish sauce and soy sauce, two very popular ingredients in Vietnamese food. Sugar, however, is the more recent trend. Companies were able to influence nutritional recommendations for decades, by focusing on fat rather than sugar as a source of health complications. So Vietnamese have added sweeteners to their food and drink without a second thought. Go to a cafe, and the waiter will automatically put sugar in an order of coffee or mango juice unless the customer says otherwise. In nearby Indonesia citizens like to joke that they have their sugar with some tea, rather than have tea with sugar. Something similar could be said of Vietnam.

People have many choices

Companies like Pepsi and McDonald’s have tried to put the focus on exercise, rather than diet, for good health. Naturally active lifestyles are decreasing in Vietnam, as people move from the countryside to the cities, and from hard labor to office jobs. Citizens often get on their motorbikes to drive just one block, and walking in the cities, with 100-degree weather and few sidewalks, is hard. On top of that, citizens use new Uber-like services to have drinks or meals delivered. Researchers agree exercise and diet are both important, but the latter has a bigger impact on health.

“Vietnamese consumers care about their health more than ever,” Louise Hawley, managing director of Nielsen Vietnam, said.

That makes awareness all the more important. It is one thing to eat unhealthful food, while not caring about the effects. It is quite another thing to eat unhealthful food, however, because one thinks it’s nutritional.

The growing health concern in Vietnam has to do with not just nutrition, but also air pollution, water quality, and clean supply chains. A Nielsen survey showed health became the top concern of Vietnamese citizens in the second quarter, surpassing job security, cost of living, and work-life balance. “With the current situation relating to pollution and increased consumer awareness,” Hawley said, “health is expected to continue to be a top concern of Vietnamese consumers in the third quarter of 2019.”

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Norwegian police opened fire on an armed man who stole an ambulance in Oslo and reportedly ran down several people Tuesday.

Norwegian broadcaster NRK said that several people were struck by the ambulance, including a baby in a stroller who was taken to a hospital. NRK said that police were looking for a woman who may have been involved, but authorities wouldn’t confirm the report.
 
“We are in control of the ambulance that was stolen,” Oslo police tweeted. “Shots were fired to stop him. He is not in critical condition.”
 
The Aftenposten newspaper published a photo showing a man, wearing green trousers lying next to the vehicle surrounded by police officers.
 
Further details weren’t immediately available.
 
The incident took place in the northern part of Oslo, the Norwegian capital.

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When Germain Kalubenge gets a request for a ride on his motorcycle, it can be a matter of life or death. The 23-year-old is a survivor of the Ebola virus and often is the only driver his community trusts to help if someone suspects they are infected.

“I wake up every day at 5 in the morning to … wait for calls from suspected Ebola cases who do not like to take an ambulance,” he said. “In the community they are afraid of ambulances. They believe that in an ambulance, doctors will give them toxic injections and they will die before arriving at the hospital.”

Kalubenge is a rare motorcycle taxi driver who is also an Ebola survivor in eastern Congo, making him a welcome collaborator for health workers who have faced deep community mistrust during the second deadliest Ebola outbreak in history. More than 2,000 people have died since August of last year, and the World Health Organization last week said the outbreak still warrants being classified as a global emergency, even as the number of confirmed cases has slowed.

This is the first time Ebola has been confirmed in this part of Congo, and rumors quickly spread in Beni, an early epicenter of the outbreak, that the virus had been imported to kill the population. The community has been traumatized by years of deadly rebel attacks and is wary of authorities, blaming them for the insecurity that has killed nearly 2,000 people since late 2014.

Gaining people’s trust has been a constant challenge for health workers.

Imagine that you are running a fever and you see a dozen jeeps carrying doctors wearing head-to-toe protective gear, said Muhindo Soli, a young man who was arrested earlier this year for throwing stones at Ebola responders’ vehicles. “That would scare me,” he said, adding that some young people refuse to let patients be taken away.

Soli called on Ebola responders to stop working with military and police escorts, which he said only heightens tensions: “One wonders why the people who come to treat us come with soldiers?”

Dr. Muhindo Muyisa, who leads the response to Ebola alerts in Beni, said they have received more than 150 alerts daily about potential cases. They have intervened more than 90% of the time, sending an ambulance or other vehicle, when people refuse to go to centers where testing is done for the virus, Muyisa said.
 
Kalubenge, who as a survivor is immune to Ebola, saw the community resistance and decided to help. At times he has taken about 10 people a day to the Ebola centers after surviving the virus last year.
 
He and his motorcycle are sprayed with chlorine each time he arrives.

One day in August, he received a call from a parent whose 5-year-old had a fever and was vomiting. His first step was to convince the mother to allow her child to go to the center for testing. The symptoms were similar to other diseases common in the area such as malaria, which can add to people’s hesitation about Ebola. In the end, the child was found to have malaria.

Kalubenge makes sure to tell potential patients his own Ebola story and says they will only get better if they go to a center to be checked.
 
Riding with him draws far less attention than an ambulance would. People like to ride a motorcycle “to avoid neighbors’ curiosity,” he said.

Kalubenge is the only good link between the Ebola centers and the population, said Beni resident Sammy Misonia, who met the driver during a community question-and-answer session with Ebola survivors.

“There are too many rumors that make people afraid to go,” Misonia said. “With this initiative, people will always agree to go because we now see someone who has come out of the treatment center alive.”

Kalubenge said he is happy to help give people hope — even when some riders vomit on him during the journey.

“People need to know that doctors treat well, and I was well cared for,” he said. “Ebola is not the end of life. After Ebola, there is life.”
 

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The Russian military says two of its nuclear-capable bombers will visit South Africa in what appears to be the first-ever such deployment to the African continent.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Monday that sending the Tu-160 bombers is intended to help “develop bilateral military cooperation” and reflects a “strategic partnership” with one of Africa’s most developed economies.

The mission comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin is set to host the first-ever Russia-Africa summit this week with 43 of the continent’s 54 heads of state or government in attendance. The remaining 11 countries will be represented by foreign ministers or other officials.

As part of efforts to expand its clout in Africa, Russia has signed military cooperation agreements with at least 28 African countries, the majority in the past five years.

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A study of former professional soccer players in Scotland finds that they were less likely to die of common causes such as heart disease and cancer compared with the general population but more likely to die from dementia. The results raise fresh concerns about head-related risks from playing the sport — at least for men at the pro level.

Researchers from the University of Glasgow reported the results in the New England Journal of Medicine on Monday. They compared the causes of death of 7,676 Scottish men who played soccer with 23,000 similar men from the general population born between 1900 and 1976. Over a median of 18 years of study, 1,180 players and 3,807 of the others died.

The players had a lower risk of death from any cause until age 70.

However, they had a 3.5 times higher rate of death from neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. In absolute terms, that risk remained relatively small — 1.7% among former players and 0.5% for the comparison group.

Former players also were more likely to be prescribed dementia medicines than the others were.

The results “should not engender undue fear and panic,” Dr. Robert Stern, a Boston University scientist who has studied sports-related brain trauma, wrote in a commentary published in the journal.

The findings in professional players may not apply to recreational, college or amateur-level play, or to women, Stern noted.

“Parents of children who headed the ball in youth or high-school soccer should not fear that their children are destined to have cognitive decline and dementia later in life. Rather, they should focus on the substantial health benefits from exercise and participation in a sport that their children enjoy,” while also being aware of the risks of head-balling, Stern wrote.

English Football Association chairman Greg Clark said “the whole game must recognize that this is only the start of our understanding and there are many questions that still need to be answered. It is important that the global football family now unites to find the answers and provide a greater understanding of this complex issue.”

The association and players’ union sponsored the study.

“We need to kick on now and understand what it means, because that’s all an awful lot we don’t know,” English FA chief executive Mark Bullingham said. “We don’t know if concussion was the cause or whether it was heading or whatever or whether it’s the old heavy ball or something entirely different.”

But the association’s medical advisory group has not deemed it necessary to issue to change how the game is played, even reducing heading among younger age groups.

“In youth football, you might want to reduce the likelihood of aerial challenges,” Bullingham said. “But our research shows this has already been reduced significantly over the years as we change to small size of pitches, move to possession-based football and now rolling substitutes.”

Referees across all levels can stop games for three minutes to fully assess head injuries, but some experts believe that is not long enough. The English FA also is pushing soccer’s global lawmaking body for the introduction of concussion substitutes, with an additional player switch or as a temporary replacement.

Campaigning to discover more about the long-term impact of head injuries in soccer has been led in England by the family of former England striker Jeff Astle, whose death at age 59 in 2002 was attributed to repeatedly heading heavy, leather balls. In 2017, a British study of brains of a small number of retired players who developed dementia highlighted the degenerative damage possibly caused by repeated blows to the head.

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At least 12 white supremacists have been arrested on allegations of plotting, threatening or carrying out anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S. since the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue nearly one year ago, a Jewish civil rights group reported Sunday.

The Anti-Defamation League also counted at least 50 incidents in which white supremacists are accused of targeting Jewish institutions’ property since a gunman killed 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. Those incidents include 12 cases of vandalism involving white supremacist symbols and 35 cases in which white supremacist propaganda was distributed.

US to Seek Death Penalty for Accused Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooter

The massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue was the deadliest attack ever on Jewish Americans in the US

The ADL said its nationwide count of anti-Semitic incidents remains near record levels. It has counted 780 anti-Semitic incidents in the first six months of 2019, compared to 785 incidents during the same period in 2018.

The ADL’s tally of 12 arrests for white supremacist plots, threats and attacks against Jewish institutions includes the April 2019 capture of John T. Earnest, who is charged with killing one person and wounding three others in a shooting at a synagogue in Poway, California. The group said many of the cases it counted, including the Poway shooting, were inspired by previous white supremist attacks. In online posts, Earnest said he was inspired by the deadly attacks in Pittsburgh and on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, where a gunman killed 51 people in March.

Nearly 50 Killed in New Zealand Mosque Attacks; 4 in Custody

Mass shootings at two mosques full of worshippers attending Friday prayers killed at least 49 people on what the prime minister called ‘one of New Zealand’s darkest days’

The ADL also counted three additional 2019 cases in which individuals were arrested for targeting Jews but weren’t deemed to be white supremacists. Two were motivated by Islamist extremist ideology, the organization said.

The ADL said its Center on Extremism provided “critical intelligence” to law enforcement in at least three of the 12 cases it counted.

Last December, authorities in Monroe, Washington, arrested a white supremacist after the ADL notified law enforcement about suspicions he threatened on Facebook to kill Jews in a synagogue. The ADL said it also helped authorities in Lehighton, Pennsylvania, identify a white supremacist accused of using aliases to post threatening messages, including a digital image of himself pointing an AR-15 rifle at a group of praying Jewish men.

In August, an FBI-led anti-terrorism task force arrested a Las Vegas man accused of plotting to firebomb a synagogue or other targets, including a bar catering to LGTBQ customers and the ADL’s Las Vegas office. The ADL said it warned law enforcement officials about the man’s online threats.

“We cannot and will not rest easy knowing the threat posed by white supremacists and other extremists against the Jewish community is clear and present,” the group’s CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, said in a statement.

The ADL said it counted at least 30 additional incidents in which people with an “unknown ideology” targeted Jewish institutions with acts of arson, vandalism or propaganda distribution that the group deemed to be anti-Semitic or “generally hateful,” but not explicitly white supremacist.

“These incidents include the shooting of an elderly man outside a synagogue in Miami, fires set at multiple Jewish institutions in New York and Massachusetts, Molotov cocktails thrown at synagogue windows in Chicago, damaged menorahs in Georgia and New Jersey, as well as a wide range of anti-Semitic graffiti,” an ADL report said.

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A committee guiding OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma’s bankruptcy has suggested other drugmakers, distributors and pharmacy chains use Purdue’s bankruptcy proceedings to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits seeking to hold the drug industry accountable for the national opioid crisis.

The committee of unsecured creditors said in a letter sent Sunday to the parties and obtained by The Associated Press that the country “is in the grips of a crisis that must be addressed, and that doing so may require creative approaches.”

It’s calling for all the companies to put money into a fund in exchange for having all their lawsuits resolved.

The committee includes victims of the opioid crisis plus a medical center, a health insurer, a prescription benefit management company, the manufacturer of an addiction treatment drug and a pension insurer. It says that the concept may not be feasible but invited further discussion. It does not give a size of contributions from the company.

Opioid Settlement Talks Broaden Ahead of 1st Federal Trial

Under the proposal, the distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson would pay a total of $18 billion over 18 years

The same committee has been aggressive in Purdue’s bankruptcy, saying it would support pausing litigation against members of the Sackler family who own Purdue in exchange for a $200 million fund from the company to help fight the opioid crisis.

Paul Hanly, a lead lawyer for local governments in the lawsuits, said in a text message Sunday evening that he’d heard about the mass settlement idea, calling it “most unlikely.”

The proposal comes as narrower talks have not resulted in a settlement. Opening statements are to be held Monday in the first federal trial over the crisis. The lawsuit deals with claims from the Ohio counties of Cuyahoga and Summit against a half-dozen companies. More than 2,000 other state and local governments plus Native American tribes, hospitals and other groups have made similar claims.

There have been talks aimed at settling all claims against the drugmakers Johnson & Johnson and Teva and the distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson ahead of the trial. One proposal called for resolving claims against them nationally in exchange for cash and addiction treatment drugs valued at a total of $48 billion over time.

The committee’s proposal went to those five companies plus nine others that face lawsuits.

Opioids, including both prescription painkillers and illegal drugs such as heroin and illicitly made fentanyl, have been linked to more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. since 2000.

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 The still popular former mayor of Baltimore and brother of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Thomas D’Alesandro III, died Sunday at 90.

The family said he had been suffering from complications from a stroke.

Pelosi, who is leading a congressional delegation in Jordan, issued a statement calling her brother “the finest public servant I have ever known…a leader of dignity, compassion, and extraordinary courage.”

D’Alesandro was known around Baltimore as “Young Tommy,” because his father, “Big Tommy,” was also mayor and a U.S. congressman.

“Young Tommy” was president of the Baltimore City Council and was elected mayor in 1967, leading Baltimore through four of the most tumultuous years in the city’s history. His challenges included a number of labor strikes that paralyzed city services, the push for urban renewal, and the riots that followed the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968 from which Baltimore has never fully recovered.

D’Alesandro was also the first Baltimore mayor to appoint African-Americans to important city positions.

After deciding not to run for a second term in 1971, D’Alesandro went into private law practice and could still be seen dining in Italian restaurants and attending Baltimore Oriole baseball games until just before his death.

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