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The latest from PRI's The World and the GlobalPost

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    Israeli ex-president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Shimon Peres died on Wednesday, some two weeks after suffering a major stroke, triggering an outpouring of grief for the historic figure and beloved statesman.

    Peres, who was 93, held nearly every major office in the country, serving twice as prime minister and also as president, a mostly ceremonial role, from 2007 to 2014.

    He won the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for his role in negotiating the Oslo accords, which envisioned an independent Palestinian state.

    Peres died about 3 a.m., said Rafi Walden, who was Peres's personal doctor and also his son-in-law.

    His family held a press conference later in the morning, praising Peres' tireless work ethic and what they called his devotion to peace.

    "He had no interest other than serving the people of Israel," said his son Chemi, his eyes moist as he read a letter on behalf of the family at the hospital in Ramat Gan, a suburb of Tel Aviv.

    US President Barack Obama immediately hailed Peres as a friend who "never gave up on the possibility of peace."

    "There are few people who we share this world with who change the course of human history, not just through their role in human events, but because they expand our moral imagination and force us to expect more of ourselves," Obama said in a statement.

    "My friend Shimon was one of those people."

    Obama was among world leaders such as Britain's Prince Charles and French President Francois Hollande planning to attend Peres's funeral at Jerusalem's Mount Herzl on Friday.

    The negotiator

    Peres did not have a reputation in Israel as a tough negotiator. But he was an extremely shrewd and strategic negotiator, according to former US diplomat Dennis Ross. “He was someone I would describe not as a checkers player in negotiations, but a chess player. He was always thinking three or four steps ahead.”

    “He also felt he needed to try to create a win-win situation,” adds Ross. An outcome couldn’t only be good for Israel, it had to be good for the Palestinians as well.

    Ross worked with Peres on the Oslo Accords.

    Peres was relentlessly optimistic, even as peace with the Palestinians seemed to be moving further away. His optimism extended into his whole approach to life.

    Ross recounted how just a year ago, during a private lunch, Peres was focussed on new research into brain function and excited about the future and how this new knowledge could be applied.

    “So here was a 92 year old man — focused entirely on the future, excited by this prospect of these breakthroughs, and feeling and thinking about all the things that could be done with it.”

    “This man who was 92 was so very youthful in terms of his outlook and his excitement about new horizons. He never tired of looking at those new horizons. And in some ways, it was really his emblem.”

    The mantle of hope

    Peres has been “part of the fabric of the country” since its founding, says journalist Dina Kraft. She mentions how a comedy skit on the Israeli equivalent of Saturday Night Live, presented an imaginary future celebrating the 100th anniversary of the country, and of course Peres was still going and still in office.

    “But I think he’s going to be most missed for being able to talk about peace without it sounding hokey,” says Kraft. “For being able to talk about peace and still have some sense that it might actually happen, and there could be a different future, even when things feel bleak. And now there’s no one really to pick up that torch and pick up that mantle, and I think Israelis are feeling a little bit lost without him today.”

    'Profound sadness'

    Former US president Bill Clinton, who helped usher in the Oslo peace accords, said: "The Middle East has lost a fervent advocate for peace and reconciliation.

    "I'll never forget how happy he was 23 years ago when he signed the Oslo accords on the White House lawn, heralding a more hopeful era in Israeli-Palestinian relations."

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his "profound sadness." Opposition leader Isaac Herzog, the head of Labour, Peres's longtime party, said he will be "forever remembered as an icon of Israel's history."

    However, a spokesman for Hamas, the Palestinian Islamist movement that runs the Gaza Strip, welcomed his death and called him a "criminal." 

    The Palestinian Authority, based in the West Bank and dominated by president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah, had not commented.

    While Peres has been lauded abroad and in Israel as a peacemaker, many Palestinians view him very differently, citing his involvement in successive Arab-Israeli wars and the occupation of Palestinian territory.

    He was also prime minister in 1996 when more than 100 civilians were killed while sheltering at a UN peacekeepers' base in the Lebanese village of Qana, fired upon by Israel.

    Active in old age

    Peres had been in the hospital since September 13, when he was admitted after feeling unwell and suffered a stroke with internal bleeding.

    There were signs of improvement last week, and on September 18 Peres's office said doctors planned to gradually reduce his sedation and respiratory support to judge his response.

    But on Tuesday a source said his condition had taken a downturn and he was "fighting for his life." Family members arrived at the hospital.

    In January, Peres was hospitalized twice because of heart trouble.

    Peres had sought to maintain an active schedule despite his age.

    When leaving the hospital in January, Peres said he was keen to get back to work.

    "I'm so happy to return to work, that was the whole purpose of this operation," he said.

    In March, he met British supermodel Naomi Campbell at his Peres Center for Peace during an event linked to International Women's Day. On the same day, he met visiting US Vice President Joe Biden.

    Born in Poland in 1923, Peres emigrated to what was then the British mandate of Palestine when he was 11.

    He joined the Zionist struggle and met David Ben-Gurion, who would become his mentor and Israel's first prime minister.

    Peres became director general of the nascent defense ministry at just 29.

    Beyond his accomplishments in the public eye, he was also seen as a driving force in the development in the 1950s of Israel's undeclared nuclear program.

    The country is considered the Middle East's sole nuclear-armed nation, but Israel has never publicly acknowledged it.

    Netanyahu made reference to Peres' work on the nuclear program on Wednesday.

    "As a champion of Israel's defense, he strengthened its capacities in many ways, some of them still unacknowledged to this day," he said.

    Despite his reputation as a statesman, he never managed to outright win a national election. Many in Israel opposed to the Oslo accords also blamed him for what they saw as their failure.

    But in later life, especially during his time as president, he came to be widely embraced in Israel, while world leaders and celebrities sought him out, marvelling at his energy and intelligence.

    He once confided that the secret to his longevity was daily exercise, eating little and drinking one or two glasses of good wine.

    Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.


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    “This one just got here in March. She wasn’t enrolled,” says Carlnis Jerry, lifting an eyebrow and nodding her head toward a third-grader who is speaking in Marshallese.

    It’s a Wednesday, and Viona Koniske is sitting with her classmate during a “lunch bunch” gathering in a converted supply closet at Parson Hills Elementary in Springdale, Arkansas.

    Jerry had overheard Viona’s brother, a student at the school, speaking in the language of the Marshall Islands about someone else living in his household. She made a trip to the Koniske home and discovered the girl. She then helped Viona’s single working father figure out how to enroll his daughter in school mid-year — something he had been too confused about and too busy to do himself.

    At school, Viona picks silently through the contents of her meal until Jerry speaks to her in Marshallese. Only then does she engage in a conversation. Together, they chat about what the girls eat at home (rice, tuna, instant ramen) and what they miss most about the Marshall Islands (their grandparents).

    Community Liaison Carlnis Jerry, with studdents Viona Koniske and Santila Joklur.

    Credit:

    Jia H. Jung/PRI

    Jerry herself came to the US from the Marshall Islands in 1998 to attend high school in Hawai’i. Now, she is one of about 10 full-time community liaisons in the Springdale school district working as an interpreter for Marshallese immigrant students and their families. Her role is essential: She picks up on things that other faculty and staff might not notice and conveys information that immigrant students and their families might not yet understand in English.

    Anita Tomeing Iban was the first to do this kind of work. She came to Springdale in 1996 via Missouri, Kansas and Southern California.

    “I know what it’s like, I’ve been there,” she says. “I’d write notes to my parents and tears would smear the ink.”

    In 1997, Iban became an elementary level instructional assistant, then a parent community liaison doing translations and interpretations. In 2012, the Springdale school district hired two Marshallese community liaisons to serve the entire system. This made the role of liaison official and paved the way for schools to add their own resident community liaisons.

    At Helen Tyson Middle School across town, sixth graders in the Islander Club perform a traditional Marshallese dance during their study period. Their choreographer is another community liaison, Paul Lokebol.

    Lokebol, 24, is Marshallese American and once attended Helen Tyson. After graduating from college in Missouri, he came back to Springdale and worked as a shipping specialist. He was recruited to the school by an administrator who heard he was back in town.

    And he loves being back in these halls. After his students’ performance, Lokebol explains, “These kids are migrants, I mean, fresh off the boat, and they have no clue what’s going on. ... From [the] time I walked in until now, I’ve seen a tremendous change in the lives of the students. I’m not talking about academic-wise, but also behavior-wise.”

    In the Global Nation Exchange: Hear more from Lokebol and share your experiences in school in our Facebook discussion group.

    Superintendent Dr. Jim Rollins says that the overarching objective of Springdale’s schools is: “Teach them all. All means all. It doesn’t matter if they come from across the street or across the ocean.”

    Teaching them all is easier said than done.

    The district’s data from 2014 and 2015 show that nearly half of Pacific Islanders don't graduate. In the community, the graduation rate is between 71 and 89 percent over the same years.

    Meanwhile, the Pacific Islander population in the schools has increased steadily by 200 to 300 students each year since 2009. In 2009, islanders represented 7 percent of 18,188 students. Last year, they constituted 12 percent of 12,472 students. Hispanic students make up the largest demographic group.

    A Spanish-language spelling bee:Once, students were punished for speaking Spanish. Here, they are honored.

    Language is the greatest and most obvious barrier for the Marshallese population, and Arkansas does not allow the use of languages other than English in its classrooms — the state has been English-only by law since 1987.

    Arkansas is not alone in mandating unilingual education. Mississippi, North Dakota and North and South Carolina joined Arkansas with English-language laws of their own in 1987. California passed a law in 1998 that mostly eliminated bilingual education. Massachusetts and Arizona were both part of a dual-language movement in the 1980s, but have since moved to placing students in separate classes based on their English abilities. Today, only 19 states, including New York and the District of Columbia, accommodate languages other than English in the classroom.

    Also:Why Massachusetts is rethinking its strict English immersion law for schools

    Springdale provides English-Language Learner curricula, federally funded at $300 per student, and conducts a summer Family Literacy program that served approximately 200 immigrant families this past season. Monitor Elementary School launched a pilot Pre-K Center last year to acclimate multilingual toddlers to an English-only environment as early as possible. In addition to teachers, the center provides two Marshallese family service managers and Marshallese paraprofessionals who serve as instructional assistants.

    But the sentiment is growing among Marshallese communities that their English education too often comes at the price of losing native language and culture. They believe that the real key to education for their students is to use and retain their native language while developing and practicing English.

    JociAnna Chong Gum is one of just two Marshallese students currently attending the University of Arkansas. She remembers her disorientation when she was placed on the ELL track as a young student.

    “I was pulled away from my classrooms to sit in a small room with other bilingual students and was basically taught to be fully Americanized,” she says. “I felt like I had to leave my culture at the door before I sat down to a teacher teaching me simple vocab and how to learn in a "regular" classroom. ... I feel like that pushed me back. I still struggle to keep up with the Marshallese language.”

    More from Arkansas:Most high schoolers worry about graduation. These students are also being challenged to save their culture

    Marshallese linguist Alfred Capelle also believes that bilingual education is more effective for immigrant students than English immersion. He’s a proponent of “Long Term Maintenance bilingual education,” which provides instruction in two languages at least through sixth grade. Stanford researchers and the New York City Department of Education, which added 40 new dual-language programs throughout school system last year, also subscribe to a bilingual education model.

    The Marshall Islands is also emphasizing Marshallese instruction in its own educational system, one of the most poorly performing in the Pacific. The country has had English-language education for its Marshallese-speaking population since World War II, when the US established a military presence there.

    In Springdale, home to the largest population of Marshallese in the continental US, Capelle and his colleagues have called for the formation of bilingual charter schools. He says this could be done with support from the Customary Law and Language Commission, an initiative set up in 2004 in the Marshall Islands to fund educational programs that preserve Marshallese language and culture worldwide.

    But many Marshallese American young adults are not holding their breath for brand new schools. Benetick Maddison, 21, is president of the Manit Club, a Marshallese college group that he founded to advocate for cultural empowerment and educational attainment. He has long been cynical about the Springdale schools district’s ability to adapt at the pace of its changing student population.

    For one, he feels the US Department of Education’s Race to the Top program creates the wrong incentives for public schools to win federal money at all costs. In short, Maddison says the competitive structure of the bonus funding encourages schools to try to distinguish and then separate “good, smart kids from these other kids” rather than addressing the needs of all.

    “We want these young kids to be successful in school but, of course, we also want them to stay rooted — know their language, culture and heritage,” Maddison says. “Staying rooted will be of huge benefit for them later in the future. But in order for anyone to know their culture and heritage, they must know the language first.”

    This fall, the Manit Club is piloting a bilingual mentoring program in cooperation with Hellstern Middle School, also in Springdale.

    Aside from providing moral guidance and inspiration, the mentors plan to speak in Marshallese and teach students about their culture and the importance of holding onto it. They aim to do this with a bilingual curriculum cobbled together from internet resources and brainstorming about what they would have wanted at that age. They want to stick with the students through high school and help them prepare for college and beyond.

    Notably, half of about 20 of the Manit mentors had lost their own Marshallese skills through years of English-only instruction. So, Maddison relearned the language himself in order to help get his fellow mentors up to speed.

    College members of the Manit Marshallese cultural club pose with future mentees at Hellstern Middle School. In the back row are mentors Benetick Maddison, JociAnna Chong Gum, Cenitha Langinbelik, Joshua Boaz, Dennis Melong and Yukio Benjamin. Mentor Maira Andrew is in the front row.

    Credit:

    Courtesy of Benetick Maddison

    As a child, Maddison attended J.O. Kelly Middle School, which has a large Marshallese population. He remembers he was a de-facto community liaison for the staff while he was still a young student. He feels he knows firsthand what the students need, and is frustrated that other schools have not joined his program.

    But he's confident Manit Club's program will succeed and that other schools will follow suit.

    Chong Gum, who will also be a mentor, says, “This will definitely help them be better as students. They can have role models and actually know Marshallese who are in college.”

    Maddison adds, “I believe that we can give them good words of advice because we, too, were once like them.”


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    A long list of world leaders offered warm words of condolence after the passing of Shimon Peres on Wednesday. Among them was Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

    Abbas sent a letter to the family of the former Israeli prime minister “expressing his sadness and sorrow,” according to a statement quoted by the official Palestinian Authority news agency, WAFA. 

    “Peres was a partner in making the brave peace with the martyr Yasser Arafat and prime minister [Yitzhak] Rabin, and made unremitting efforts to reach a lasting peace from the Oslo agreement until the final moments of his life,” Abbas was quoted as saying in the Times of Israel.  

    Many Palestinians, however, will not remember Peres as a man of peace.

    “He is the founder of the Israeli settlement enterprise,” says Sam Bahour, a Palestinian American businessman who lives in Ramallah, in the West Bank.

    Bahour left Youngstown, Ohio, where he grew up, in the early 1990s. It was a time of great hope for the prospects of peace between Palestinians and Israelis. There was a buzz in the air, Bahour says, created in large part by the Oslo peace process that Peres helped make possible with Rabin and Arafat. 

    “I actually went to Tel Aviv University in Israel and got an MBA,” Bahour says. “Peres was there when I got the MBA and shook my hand after the graduation ceremony.” 

    But then, one night in early November of 1995, a Jewish extremist murdered Rabin.

    “He and Peres were at the same event, and that was the end of what I believe [was] the buzz. And from that point on, it’s been a downhill spiral,” Bahour says.

    Now, when Bahour thinks about the legacy of Peres, he says three things come to mind first and foremost.

    “[Peres is] someone that I can’t forget was part of establishing the Israeli military. He was part of the founding, if not the father, of the Israeli nuclear program. And [he was] someone who played a major role in the military and killed a lot of [Palestinians] under his command,” Bahour says. 

    When it came to peace, Bahour adds that Peres could certainly talk the talk. 

    “He had become a professional fig leaf for the Israeli society. He would cover up the war crimes that went on and continue to go on, by putting on this international talk about the need for peace and the desire for peace,” Bahour says. 

    “But he did not enact policy on the ground. He did not restrain the military when he could, just the opposite. What he did is more important than what he said."

    One Palestinian official who spoke with The World on Wednesday said the death of Peres came long after the death of the peace process itself, and that Peres was largely responsible for beautifying what is a very ugly reality for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The official would not talk on the record because he was not authorized to do so.

    However a spokesman from the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, was willing to go on the record.

    “Shimon Peres was the last of the generation of co-founders of the Israeli occupation and therefore his death represents the end of an era in the history of occupation and the beginning of a new era of weakness and retreat for the Zionist entity,” Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said to Reuters.

    “We say that the Palestinian people are happy at the departure of this criminal who had been involved in many crimes and in the bloodshed of the Palestinian people,” Abu Zuhri said.

    Bahour says the deaths of Palestinians will always be part of Peres’ legacy.

    “No one likes to see anyone pass away, regardless of the politics,” Bahour says. “However, we have to understand that this is a 50-year military occupation.” 

    For Israelis, Peres is a complicated figure. While much of the Israeli public admires the lofty goals that Peres so eloquently spoke about for much of his political life, this great statesman was never able to turn that admiration into electoral success.

    This might just add to the skepticism of Palestinians. If a political giant like Peres could not bring about "a new Middle East," it is hard to see who can. 


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    Bhangra is a style of both music and dance that's popular in the Punjab region of India.

    But a new bhangra video that went viral has a distinctly different backdrop: Peggy's Cove, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. 

    In the video, two men dance on a big granite ledge in front of the Atlantic Ocean. 

    Hasmeet Singh is part of the Halifax-based group, called Maritime Bhangra.

    He's shocked and overjoyed by the responses the video has received.

    "It was one of those things we usually do, right? We just go anywhere and start dancing and make a small clip out of it and just post it," he says. "I would say in the first few hours we saw that people were taking a lot of interest in this and we were very happy. We were like, 'Okay, this will get like 1,000 or 1,500 views.' And it looks like it's going to go 300,000 in a few moments."

    Minutes later that number was 326,000 and counting. It's all about momentum. But there are plenty of bhangra videos on the internet — why did this one take off?

    "To be honest, the first factor is Peggy's Cove," he says. "People living in Halifax and on the east coast, they always relate themselves to that ocean. So when they see rocks they just feel connected through their ancestors and their family members and the time they have spent there with their family."

    There's also the special connection you get to other cultures through dance. It connects in a way that's different from music or even food.

    "I think dancing is so much an expressive thing," Singh says. "As they say, actions speak louder than words. So when you are doing a specific thing and have a meaning attached to it ... it brings more attention. It gives us the ability for others to connect with us."


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    When the Nobel Prize in physics is awarded next Tuesday, many in the world of science will be surprised if Rainer Weiss, an MIT professor emeritus, is not among those honored.

    Weiss dreamed up the idea behind the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory or LIGO. It's a sort of massive antenna so sensitive it detected faint invisible ripples in space from 1.3 billion years ago, a discovery made secretly last fall and revealed in September.

    Weiss traces his love for science back to his European youth. His mother was a German actress. His father was a Jewish doctor, and a communist. When the Nazis rose to power, the family fled Germany. Weiss spoke about his childhood and his discoveries in physics.

    On his family's flight from Slovakia in 1938 to America

    "We got out for a very special reason. There was a family in St. Louis, they ran a department store, they gave bond to the American government. They said 'Look, we'll take 10,000 Jews, if they get in trouble we'll pay for them.' Which was remarkable. Just imagine such a thing. [In America] we were considered Germans. And I think my mother made a wonderful mistake, sending me to public school in lederhosen. And this was the day the Germans bombed Rotterdam. And the teacher and all the kids read the paper, and here's this damn German. That was the only time I ever sensed any hostility." 

    On the beginnings of his scientific career 

    "I was probably 12 or so, and the war was over, and the streets of New York, especially downtown New York, were loaded with stuff coming back as war surplus. And you'd go down to Cortland Street in New York, which no longer exists, it was near the World Trade Center. What would happen is you'd go here and you'd find a whole box full of transformers, another box full of capacitors, vacuum tubes, anything you could ever want — radar sets half disassembled. As a kid that was mind-boggling. You bought stuff for nothing at all. If you could lug it on the subway home, you got it. I started making all sorts of stuff, radio, hi-fi sets which didn't exist. And I was very lucky there was a movie theater in Brooklyn that had a fire behind the screen. If you went down there and unscrewed the loud speakers that were behind the screen you could have them. So I took them home, I got six or seven of them home, they were heavy, big loud speakers." 

    On his earliest audio creations

    "I had a wonderful setup because three things were happening simultaneously: FM radio was coming in, good amplifier circuits were around, I mean I copied other people's circuits — what did I know. I built something and I would invite some of the emigres, because they were very interested in music, to come over and listen. We would hear the New York Philharmonic, and these people were just blown away. Imagine, they said '[music] like in the concert hall!' And so they wanted one. And so little by little this thing grew into a business. If I had not gone to college, I probably could have made some money. 

    But what got me to go to college was the problem that you raised: Everything was wonderful if you had an FM set, but vinyl wasn't there yet. It was shellac records that made that horrible [scratching], 78s. All you heard was that goddamn record scratch! So the thing was, how do you get rid of that? And that was a puzzle that was just beyond me. I couldn't do it. I didn't know enough math, I didn't know enough real electrical engineering, and effectively that drove me to college. Let's face it, I wanted to solve that problem."
     
    On the mechanics of black holes

    "A black hole is a place where if you were an astronaut and you approached it, very strange things begin to happen to you. Your feet get tugged away from your head, and you get stretched apart. And then the molecules that made you, they get stretched apart. And then even the inside of the molecules get separated into atoms and then into individual pieces. But that whole idea that the geometry is so curled up and the strength of gravity is so strong that it breaks up matter, it becomes the strongest thing in the world inside that black hole."

    On creating LIGO

    "It wasn't me alone that built that. You make it sound like I was this incredible person. There were a lot of other very good people. Let's take cognition of that.

    What did we discover? We knew black holes existed. But we established that black holes live in pairs. The other thing that we found is we were able to detect gravitational waves directly. Now they had been seen before by indirect methods, very beautiful experiments had shown that there were gravitational waves. But the fact is that you could make an instrument that could detect them.

    And then the most important thing to me, that may not be so important to others, is that the Einstein equations that he struggled over in 1915, and he really agonized over them, he didn't know anything about black holes, he didn't know about this. It worked for gravity, that he understood. But here is an extreme case where gravity is all there is, and things are moving damn near the velocity of light, and it still works! [Einstein's] equations are still good in that extreme regime. To me it's just spectacular!" 

    On what he would like to have shown Einstein

    "One of the dreams I would have, had Einstein been still alive, is to tell him about this. I would have loved to have seen what he would have thought, what his expression would be. We were able to measure very very tiny motions, smaller than he would have ever imagined. 

    You look at the remarkable things we could do, and Einstein would have been tickled pink by them, I think."


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    When 5-year-old Nadia Savushkina cut her leg on a tree this summer, her Ukrainian doctors cleaned her wound with hydrogen peroxide — and didn’t mention anything about a tetanus vaccine.

    Three weeks later, the girl fell down and couldn’t get up again. She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t speak. Then the muscle spasms began. Her head fell back.

    “For four days, they didn’t know what it was,” said her mother Irina Savushkina.

    When doctors finally diagnosed tetanus, the Savushkinas were informed that medication to treat the illness was entirely unavailable in the country.

    Snake venom antidotes, rabies vaccines, tetanus treatments — entire sections of Ukraine's national medicine cabinets have been running empty since the country's conflict with Russia began. While those meds are easily obtainable from other neighboring countries, they were not legally importable because Ukraine’s Health Ministry hadn't authorized it. As a result, diseases that were under control for many decades are making a comeback.

    Tetanus medicine had to be smuggled into Ukraine to treat a boy this summer.

    Credit:

    Courtesy of Yulia Klimeniuk

    “It’s the first time I encountered this disease in my 30 years as a doctor,” said Yaroslav Gavashuk, the head doctor of pediatrics at Khmelnytskyi city hospital, who treated two children with tetanus in the last year. In each case, a tetanus antitoxin had to be smuggled across the border because the medication was not registered in Ukraine. “I had to treat them intuitively, I couldn’t ask anyone,” Gavashuk said.

    The rabies vaccine, which was developed in the 19th century, was also unavailable in Ukraine for most of this year.

    “We looked for the vaccine in Poland, in Romania, and in Turkey,” said Dana Novarchuk, the director of an animal control organization in the city of Lutsk, who needed the vaccine last year after she helped catch a rabid cat. “It was very scary, because we didn’t know what would happen. It took a week to find the vaccine.”

    The situation was particularly absurd because Ukraine did have rabies vaccines — but for dogs, not humans, Novarchuk said. Ukrainian newspapers reported an increasing number of people dying from rabies.

    Ukrainians who were affected by the situation say that the shortage is probably due to the conflict with Russia. Ukraine used to purchase the rabies vaccine from Russia, Novarchuk said, and no other supplier was licensed by the Health Ministry.

    Tetanus antitoxins and vaccines used to be manufactured in Donetsk, in conflict-torn eastern Ukraine, and in Crimea, before the peninsula was annexed by Russia, said Yulia Klimenuk, a pharmacy employee who helped find tetanus medication for a 6-year-old boy this summer. 

    However, an additional issue may have been logistical. After the Ukrainian revolution of 2013-2014, the government decided to temporarily transfer the responsibility for purchasing vaccines to the United Nations in order to fight corruption, according to documents that were provided to GlobalPost by Yevgeniy Zelenko, the communications officer at the Kiev office of the UN Development Program.

    Yet the UNDP did not receive the funds to purchase the medicines and medical supplies until December 2015, according to the documents.

    The Ukrainian Health Ministry did not respond to a request for a comment.

    On its Facebook page, the ministry announced this month it had finally obtained 91,390 doses of the rabies vaccine. It is not clear for how long these will last, Novarchuk said.

    The national health authority also posted a pamphlet about tetanus, to warn parents that this disease is on the rise.

    But in reply, a panicked mother named Tatiana Kovalchuk, whose 4-year-old son stepped on a nail recently, asked when the tetanus antitoxin and the vaccine would become available in Ukraine. 

    “I don’t know what to do. Who can help me?” she wrote. “Every day I worry and I cry that something might happen to my son.”

    As for poor 5-year-old Nadia, she's still in the hospital. She can eat on her own now, but can't walk. Doctors say she will be OK but it will take some time.


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    In a small yard by the side of the road in the Bekaa Valley, eastern Lebanon, Kim and David are watching over their students.

    The couple moved from Texas five months ago to set up a school for Syrian refugee children. They called it the House of Love.

    “We have nothing left in the States now. We sold everything,” says Kim. “We have a 10 x 12 [foot] storage unit with our family pictures and my favorite chair. That’s it.”

    The couple, who asked for their last names not to be used, built the school from scratch, using money they fundraised in the US before coming. They staffed it with volunteers from around the world. All of them are motivated by a desire to help Syrian children living in desperate conditions. But there’s something else driving them, too.

    “Actually it was God’s idea,” Kim says. She and her husband, middle-aged with eight grown children, had worked at their church in Texas and describe themselves as nondenominational Christians. During a previous visit to Lebanon to help refugees, they heard the call, as they put it, to return permanently.

    “You know what, all kids all over the world just wanna be loved. They just want attention and they want to know they are worth something. That’s what we do here at House of Love,” she says.

    A number of large, established Christian charities work with refugees in Lebanon, but not many people like Kim and David, who say they are here as independent missionaries, no big institution attached. It’s risky work, and raises a list of ethical questions.

    Their school consists of two container buildings a few feet apart, with a school yard in the middle. It even has a sports court adjacent. Work was recently finished on a fence surrounding the property — a team had come from the US to build it after raising the money themselves.

    Most of the kids who attend the school live in informal camps that dot the landscape in the Bekaa.

    The Lebanese government and aid agencies have been overwhelmed by more than a million Syrians crossing the border to escape that country’s almost 6-year-old war. Many of the refugees here live in crippling poverty.

    Syrian refugees in Lebanon map

    Registered Syrian refugees in Lebanon as of June 30, 2016. Source: UNHCR

    Credit:

    Kuang Keng Kuek Ser

    The kids are mostly Sunni Muslims from across Syria. In the morning they receive English and Arabic lessons, then in the afternoon they learn about Jesus and the Bible. On the afternoon of our recent visit, the children were singing along to a music video called “Jesus Is My Sugar,” which showed adoring children gathered around Jesus while singing those words.

    Missionary work like this is controversial in Lebanon. The country has a sizeable and influential Christian population of its own, but relations between Christians and Muslims here have a complicated past, to say the least. (See the 1975-1990 civil war, fought largely along sectarian lines. Relations are continuing to be rebuilt 26 years after the war ended.)

    So the few foreign missionaries who come here on their own are walking into a fraught situation. “Some of the independent missionaries who come out might not know the delicate balance of certain areas,” says Christine Lindner, a historian at Murray State University in Kentucky who has studied the history of missionaries in Lebanon.

    “People who might have good intentions, but don’t necessarily speak the language, don’t know where to go or what not to say or do, they might inadvertently cause more problems than good.”

    Kim and David, who are learning Arabic, say they are aware of the potential issues with their work and are very upfront with the parents of the kids they’re teaching.

    “The families around us that bring their kids here, they know that we are Christians from the States and they are OK with that. We let them know, ‘look, it’s in our nature, it’s gonna be in the way we teach morals and values. And are you OK with that?’ Of course! And if they are not, then they don’t come. This is neutral ground,” Kim says.

    Still, this kind of work can be dangerous. Back in 2002, American missionary Bonnie Penner was fatally shot in the southern city of Sidon. Less than a year later, a Jordanian convert to Christianity was killed in a bomb attack on a European missionary’s home in the Lebanese city of Tripoli.

    Extremists aside, many in the Muslim community don’t look kindly on any activity that could be perceived as Christian evangelizing.

    David and Kim insist this is not what they are here to do.

    “I know some that come here, that this is their main agenda, and they want to evangelize to see them converted from Islam. We’re not here to convert anyone,” says Kim.

    “Our main agenda is not to see that they become a follower of Christ, but if they ever question us, we certainly share with them.”

    Out of school

    More than 250,000 Syrian children registered with the United Nations as refugees in Lebanon are not in school. The true number is likely higher because many are not registered.

    The House of Love caters to around 40 students who might otherwise not receive any education at all. The team of volunteers, which includes a Syrian former principal from Damascus, visit the camps and explain they are Christians and have a school nearby.

    Not everyone is eager. The couple says they haven’t had a lot of trouble with locals, although David acknowledges they had to relocate the school when they first arrived due to “tensions.”

    “We were very close to the [refugee] camp, there was a camp literally right behind us, and there was a lot of jealousy, sort of,” he says.

    The couple doesn’t have to look far to see how things can get complicated for those wanting to convert, even if that is not what they are trying to do.

    Christopher, a volunteer at the House of Love, is a Kurd from Iraqi Kurdistan, the semi-autonomous region of northern Iraq. He says he was a “good Muslim.” He prayed five times a day and went to mosque. When the Islamic State swept into northern Iraq, Christopher joined the Kurdish peshmerga security forces with his friend Elias, who was a Christian.

    When Elias was killed, Christopher remembered what he had said about the Bible and decided to buy one.

    “I stayed about two months at home not going out, just staying at home. And then I thought about what he told me about God, and I decided to buy a Bible and I felt like something is happening inside me,” he says.

    His family found out, and did not approve.

    “My father, at first he burned a bible. I bought a new one and then after one week he checked my stuff and found another one, so that’s why he tried to kill me. Because it’s like shame or to bring back honor or something.”

    When asked if he worried whether the children at the House of Love would get in trouble with their family like he did, Christopher replies: “Yes of course, but that’s why we just talk through the story and watch movies about Jesus. We don’t tell them what to do. They are going to decide, not us.”

    Many people, including Lindner, the historian, argue that supporting local organizations is the best way to help refugees.

    “There are a number of organizations on the ground that have been here for a long time, that know the communities, that would love to receive funding, that would love to receive prayers. This would be providing jobs for individuals from the region,” she told The World by phone. “And if you were interested in maintaining Christianity in the Middle East, provide jobs for Christians in the Middle East, don’t displace them.”

    Kim and David said they thought about working with a local organization, but it just didn’t feel right — they didn’t feel peace.

    Today, they insist they are here for the long run, despite the danger.

    “You have to understand that as a Christ follower, I don’t fear death. I know where I’m going, so it changes my worldview,” Kim says.

    “Did I sign up to be a follower of Christ to be safe or to be happy? I signed up to follow Christ because of what he did for me. It’s in my heart to give back to him, and what he wants is to love on these people.”

    Richard Hall reported from Bekaa Valley, Lebanon.


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    I'm not a big fan of golf, but I couldn't be more excited to go to the Ryder Cup in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with my dad this weekend.

    Golf played a big part of my childhood. On Sundays, we'd often go over to my grandparents' house for dinner. After our meal was done, I'd lay on the floor while my dad and my grandpa watched golf on TV. All kinds of golf. Hours of golf.

    For the most part, I entertained myself, rolling around on the carpet while the game played on. The Phoenix Open, the Nestle Invitational, the Buick Classic. Fred Couples, Davis Love III, Greg Norman. Tournaments and players that whirled past me amid a sea of green grass.

    But one tournament, in particular, stands out in my memory — the Ryder Cup. I grew up in a suburb of Kansas City, and in 1993, my hometown's native son, Tom Watson, led the US Ryder Cup team to a victory over Team Europe in perhaps the only golf event that could be called really good TV. Best ball competitions, match play — it was entirely different from any other golf tournament, and I thought it was great.

    So, when I found out (almost two years ago) the Ryder Cup was coming to my town, I eagerly set out to get tickets with my dad. Last year, we entered the requisite lottery, and my dad won. We were able to get tickets for the day of our choosing — and that day is Friday.

    The Ryder Cup is unlike typical golf tournaments. It happens only every other year, and it alternates between the US and Europe. It's Team USA versus Team Europe, with players' individual performance contributing to the team's score.

    Actual match play starts Friday and runs through Sunday. Some 250,000 people are expected to turn out for the various events this week, including tens of thousands of golf enthusiasts from overseas. My dad is coming into town from St. Louis, Missouri, just for the occasion. 

    Of course, with this being 2016, terrorism is a major concern for organizers. 

    “This is one of the three biggest sporting events in the world, and it’s my duty to make sure everyone there and everyone in the community is safe,” Chaska Police Chief Scott Knight told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “It’s the Olympics, soccer World Cup and the Ryder Cup. They’re almost equal in terms of how many people they reach around the world.”

    It's not unheard of. The Ryder Cup used to be played in odd-numbered years, but in 2001, just weeks after 9/11, Team USA asked for the event to be postponed for a year, out of concern for team safety.

    This year the game will go on, but with some strict rules. No cars, bikes or pedestrians will be allowed anywhere near the golf course. That includes residents of several neighborhoods around the golf course; they won't be able to venture out unless they're in a vehicle with a special permit.

    No dog walking or strolling around the vicinity, so police can easily swoop in on pedestrians/would-be terrorists.

    So, my dad and I are jumping on the bus. It's a bit of a haul, but we're still pumped. The event tees off at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, and the two of us will be glued to the action — just like we were in 1993 when Tom Watson brought Team USA a historic victory.

    We'll be wearing the red, white and blue.


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    On Sunday, Colombians will vote on whether to ratify the peace agreement negotiated between the government and the FARC guerrillas to end 50 years of war. At the annual Bogota Music Market festival, also known as BOmm, many young musicians talked about the prospects for peace in Colombia.

    The annual gathering was held during an emotional period for Colombia. The peace agreement and the vote were on everyone's mind.

    Daniel Restrepo leads a jazz band called Fatso. He's in the "yes" camp and says, "This is a very tense time. Not even war-wise, but it became a tense social time. People going towards the 'yes,' people going towards the 'no.' I'm more towards the if there's any possibility of no one getting killed anymore, then I go towards the 'yes.' I'm not sure if it's going to work, I have my doubts sometimes. It's been a long war, so there's a whole bunch of people who have been in it since they're kids, so it's very difficult. But I think if there's any chance of starting that peace process, it's very important. This time is awesome. I hope everything goes well."

    Colombian singer Maria Mulata

    Colombian singer Maria Mulata performs at the 2016 Bogota Music Market. 

    Credit:

    Betto Arcos

    Singer Maria Mulata is on the "yes" side too. When she was six, she wrote her first song, "Quiero Paz," meaning, "I want peace."

    "It was a children's song with the words, 'I want peace in the world, you and I. Let's play, but let's not play evil.' It was one of the songs on my first album that I recorded with my brother. And it's because we've never known peace," she says.

    At a concert called A Drink for Peace, hundreds of young people danced to the music of Canalón de Timbiquí, a traditional Afro-Colombian ensemble from along the country's Pacific coast. Singer Nidia Gongora says her region has suffered a great deal. But a peace agreement is only the start of what needs to happen.

    "Colombia is a country with a vast inequality, and as long as there's hunger, and lack of education and health care for the poor, the real the conflict will not end," she says.

    Canalón de Timbiquí

    Canalón de Timbiquí is a traditional Afro-Colombian ensemble from Colombia's Pacific coast. 

    Credit:

    Betto Arcos

    Stuart Bailie knows something about what it's like after a peace agreement takes effect. He's a co-founder of the Oh Yeah Music Centre in Belfast. And he was in Bogotá giving a talk about the role of music during and after the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Bailie says music was essential for young people like him during the '70s and '80s when things were at their worst.  

    "We had a very lively punk scene, which was very rebellious, and it more or less told people to ignore the two traditions and 'find your own alternative Ulster,' to use a phrase from the band Stiff Little Fingers. So music kind of liberated my generation, it liberated our minds."

    Bailie says in Colombia now, he can feel a cautious optimism. No one is throwing a hat in the air just yet, he says, but people sense that things can and will change for the better.

    "I met probably 20, 30 individuals who are all working in their own way for the future of Colombia through music, and that was very exciting, and that was very good for my heart. I can't pretend to understand the absolute context of everything that goes on in here. But I just know, my phrase is that 'music never lets you down', music is always there, and it is an incredible catalytic force."


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    In recent weeks, the Egyptian government has been preparing its citizens for a period of austerity designed to ease the national debt.

    Billboards around the country urge Egyptians to "rationalize our consumption, reduce our imports," trying to sell the public on market reforms linked to an International Monetary Fund loan.

    It’s not working too well. In fact, outrage is mounting, particularly over the rationing of one treasured commodity: baby formula.

    A 13 percent devaluation of the Egyptian pound has been underway for a year. Led by a slump in tourism, the country’s trade deficit has skyrocketed from $9.5 billion before the 2011 revolution to $45 billion today.

    At the same time, the government is on the verge of signing a $12 billion loan from the IMF. The deal will require a massive reduction of Egypt’s trade deficit and other cost-saving measures.

    Enter baby formula, which costs this nation $51 million annually in scarce foreign currency reserves. In August, Egypt began strictly limiting access to subsidized formula — causing market prices to surge.

    Near one austerity billboard, a rare protest broke out earlier this month over the new rules.

    “We are poor — the children have the right to have milk,” said Abu Samir, an unemployed construction worker and father of five-month-old twins in Cairo. “Some mothers are now using water and sugar to feed their children because of the price hikes.”

    On top of that, the government is actually mandating breast exams for women seeking formula. New mothers in hospitals were the first to get the exams last month, intended to prove their need for extra milk.

    This measure symbolizes, some say, a depraved regime that disrespects women.

    "Let me now remind you of Sisi's words when he said Egyptian women will not be molested,” said Hamza Zawba, a former spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, in commentary aired on a Brotherhood TV station beamed into Egypt from Turkey.

    “Sisi said he would not let them end up in boats in the sea like Syrian women," he added. "But he will let them expose their breasts to a soldier or a doctor to see if they have milk or not!"

    The ministry rejected claims that women not already in hospitals would have to undergo public examinations, saying the formula eligibility checks will take place privately in mobile health clinics. They said they have rolled out a “smart card” system for synthetic milk similar to the device given to indigent families receiving government food assistance.

    Adding insult to price hikes

    The demonstrators who gathered earlier this month — outside the headquarters of the Egyptian Pharmaceutical Trading Company, a state-owned firm in Cairo — said that the government was erecting obstacles to their children’s survival by restricting the distribution of subsidized formula to just over a thousand government-run pharmacies in this country of more than 90 million people. There are about 60,000 privately owned pharmacies in Egypt.

    At the Health Ministry’s headquarters near Tahrir Square, spokesperson Khaled Megahed said the breast examinations were part of a series of new rules to prevent “leakages” in the supply of subsidized formula — namely the black market that has developed around the product.

    Nursing mothers say they are paying the price for the government’s inability to stop the illicit trade in baby milk.

    “They told us that life would become more expensive but instead, it has become insulting and exhausting,” said protesting mother Um Mahmoud, 28, in Cairo. “I go from pharmacy to pharmacy, and I’m told there is no milk for less than $6 a unit.”

    Those $6 units are 28 ounces each. The average breadwinner in Egypt brings home just over $100 per week, according to the government.

    Earlier this month, the Al-Haqaneya Association for Rights and Freedoms, a civil rights group, filed an appeal with the government claiming the new formula rules violate child welfare and protection clauses in Egypt’s constitution.

    “There is definitely a tightening of the rules with eligibility for the formula subsidy limited to women who have twins, have breast defects or suffer from a chronic disease,” said Dalia Abd El-Hameed, a gender researcher at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

    “We are monitoring the breast exams issue but so far, we have no reports of abuse related to this rule and new mothers.”

    How much is too much formula?

    In response to the protests, this week Egypt’s army — eager to prevent unrest and maintain its place at the center of society — stepped into the infant formula business, as well.

    “Citizens must realize that the armed forces exert all efforts to ease the burden on ordinary people,” said military spokesman Mohamed Samir, who announced that Egypt’s army had signed a contract with a French firm to import baby formula.

    The military said it would sell the formula at a price of around $3 a unit instead of the $6 market price.

    Still, the government is getting support for its measure from an unexpected quarter. Maternal and child health specialists, as well as the UN children’s agency, believe the government has good reason to limit the use of infant formula, unrelated to austerity.

    “There is a need to better inform mothers and communities on the importance of breastfeeding for their child’s survival and mental and physical development,” said Bruno Maes, UNICEF’s Egypt representative.

    The agency says fewer than one-third of children in Egypt aged 4 to 5 months are exclusively breastfed.

    “The formula companies have done too good a job in marketing their product,” said Salma Ramadan, a pediatrician at Helwan General Hospital. “Many new mothers are not interested in hearing what we have to say about breastfeeding and start asking for the cans of subsidized milk even before they give birth.”


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    It’s sadly an all-too-familiar sight: the remains of fallen US soldiers arriving back in the United States. The difference for these men is that it’s been 170 years since they lost their lives. 

    The remains of several US soldiers killed in the Mexican-American War were received Wednesday at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware with the usual military honors. They were able to come home from Mexico thanks to years of diplomatic negotiations and detective work by scientists and historians at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. 

    It's not clear exactly how many remains were repatriated, but the number is believed to be between 11 and 13. At least some of those men are thought to have hailed from Tennessee — the Volunteer State.

    Thirty-five Tennesseans died in the battle of Monterrey in late September 1846. Monterrey was a brutal three-day slugfest fought in the early months of the Mexican-American War. It was one of the bloodiest battles of the war for Americans, with 531 men reported killed, wounded or missing. Mexico suffered 367 casualties.

    Some of the toughest fighting during the battle was for control of an old tannery that had been fortified by Mexican troops trying to hold off the US invaders. US regular troops, together with volunteers from Mississippi and Tennessee, ended up winning control of the tannery — but at a heavy cost.

    The dead were buried nearby. And there they lay until a building project uncovered some of their remains in 1996. More have been found since.

    Coins and buttons quickly showed the remains included Americans. But Mexico held up the repatriation of the bodies, anxious to ensure that remains of Mexican soldiers weren't accidentally taken away, too.

    The Tennesseans were all volunteers. Just a few weeks before the battle, they'd been laboring on their farms and in workshops in central Tennessee. After the War Department called on the states for help, thousands volunteered and were quickly shipped down to New Orleans and across the Gulf to join the Army on the Rio Grande.

    The scientists at MTSU hope the remains will shed light on the lives of ordinary men in the 1840s. Bones can reveal a lot about the type of life a person enjoyed or endured: the rigors of life, their diet and overall health. They can also reveal the wounds they suffered, and how they were treated.

    In that sense, we can know a lot about these soldiers. But we may never know their identities.

    The lead MTSU scientist on the case, Hugh Berryman, says the chances of matching the remains with the names of the fallen are very remote. But his colleague Derek Frisby is trying to collect as much documentation as possible about the battle to help identify the soldiers involved. He’s appealing to the public for help, asking that anyone with relevant diaries or letters or other documents from the time, to contact him at derek.frisby@mtsu.edu.

    Once the MTSU scientists have completed their research, the remains will be reinterred with full military honors. 


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    A US congressional vote to allow the relatives of 9/11 victims to sue the Saudi Arabian government over alleged connections to the attacks could "open the floodgates" to retaliatory cases against the US, according one legal expert.

    The law, called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, amends the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, which grants foreign states immunity from suits in US courts, except when it comes to commercial activity. JASTA makes terrorism on US soil another exemption.

    Philippe Sands, a law professor at University College London, says the consequences for international relations could be profound: "Some people will say, OK, if the US is opening the door to cases against Saudi Arabia, why can't we open to the door to the United States? Essentially it could be endless."

    President Barack Obama had vetoed the legislation, arguing it would expose the US government to a range of legal challenges relating to US foreign policy. Congress overruled his veto by a vote of 348-77. The Senate vote was even more lopsided: 97-1.

    US allies in the Middle East have signaled their concern about the move.

    Bahrain warned Thursday that the vote would come back to hurt the US.

    "The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act is an arrow launched by the US Congress at its own country," Bahraini Foreign Minister Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed Al Khalifa said on Twitter.

    Some families of 9/11 victims campaigned vigorously for the law, convinced the Saudi government played a role in orchestrating the attacks that killed almost 3,000 people. Fifteen of the 19 attackers were Saudis. Documents declassified in July show US intelligence suspected a connection between the Saudi government and the attackers, but couldn't prove a link. Saudi Arabia denies involvement.

    According to Sands, there's good reason for nations to respect foreign state immunity in their domestic courts. 

    "It's a sort of self-serving convention, but it does have a rational basis," he says. "And I think that when the United States starts to get sued around the world, and is met with response: 'You've done this, why should you have immunity any more?' — it will be a difficult question to answer."


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    In the last few years, thousands of Cubans have left the island for South American countries. From there, they make their way north, trekking thousands of miles, hoping to get to the United States.

    Last year, 29,000 Cubans crossed the border from Mexico into Texas — quadrupling the total from a decade ago. Now the numbers are even higher.

    Heidy Vera, a young Cuban woman, made that journey in 2015. She then headed to Miami, where Cubans have settled for generations.

    When she arrived there, she thought she was done traveling. She had been on the road for a long time, from Ecuador all the way on up.

    “I saw things you don’t see in Cuba. Gangs, you may be killed, people may shoot guns. But I was ready for anything because I knew I wasn’t in my country any more,” she remembers.

    She crossed borders. Walked many miles. Took planes, buses, trains. Several times she was detained. Once hospitalized. She slept on streets and in laundromats. Along the way, she met other Cubans making the journey. They stuck together.

    She was robbed, forced to pay bribes and all the while fiercely guarded her Cuban citizenship paperwork — which helped promise her residency in the US.

    “It was a difficult trip for us. Because other Latinos, in Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, they’d say, if I’m also Latino why don’t they give us the opportunity to come to this country. But you yes. We were afraid of the other Latinos — in fear that they’d assault us, they’d steal our passports, our papers because with those papers you can come in,” she said.

    For decades, Cubans have been allowed to stay in the US under the Cuban Adjustment Act. But now, as the relationship between the two countries shifts, Cubans wanting to leave wonder if that policy will end. So many Cubans are migrating now that earlier this year, US Sen. Marco Rubio, himself the son of Cuban immigrants, spoke about it on the Senate floor.

    “We have a significant migratory crisis that’s building,” he said.

    Back in Pinar del Rio on the western side of Cuba, Vera's mother makes the equivalent of $8 a month at a pig butchery. Vera had studied to do administrative work and wanted more from life. By the time she arrived in Miami, the 24-year-old was broke and forced to stay in shelters with some of the people she’d met on her trip. But she got lucky — a local activist posted on Facebook that newly arrived Cubans needed help.

    Gregoria Fernandez, a 50-year-old woman in Pittsburgh, saw the post and commented on it.

    “I said, 'look my house isn’t big but I live in Pittsburgh. If they’re willing to come here, here there’s work, there’s possibility for everyone,'” she said.

    Fernandez and her partner live in a run-down two-bedroom apartment. She remembered how hard it was when she herself came from Cuba.

    “First of all it’s the language. You know that without language, it's like throwing yourself in a river and not knowing how to swim,” she said.

    She left Cuba during the mid-1990s. At that time Cubans were going by raft to US soil at Guantanamo and from there onto South Florida. She settled there and then, during the financial crisis, she moved to Pittsburgh, looking for work.

    Her life was pretty quiet until the Cubans showed up.

    They slept all over the house. It was pretty makeshift but Vera says she felt so at home. 

    “When we got here, she had everything. It's like we say, ‘You're at your family’s house now.’ We didn’t have to do anything,” she says. “We got food, clothes.”

    For Fernandez, it wasn’t totally altruistic — she was alone all the time because she and her partner work opposite hours — he at a Chinese restaurant, she stocking shelves at Macy's. 

    “I was also looking for company. So I said, why don’t I have those people come this way, that way they can keep me company. And I can keep them company. Because I was very lonely,” she said.

    While the group of nine Cubans was there, it was fun for her — hearing stories of what life is like back home, helping them figure out the US for the first time, cooking big meals, which she hadn’t had a chance to do because her own kids were already grown.

    “I helped them, to bring them to interviews, I took a bunch of them to immigration, to do their paperwork to be allowed to work. I was an interpreter as much as I could be, but I also don’t speak amazing English,” she said.

    But then slowly, they started leaving. All these months later, the Christmas stockings are still hanging on the living room wall, the glitter from their names slowly crumbling onto the floor.

    She shows off a rack of coats left behind at the top of the stairs. Some moved to Houston, others to Jacksonville. A couple went to Phoenix. One man decided to return to Cuba.

    Now it's just Vera left, who recently applied for her green card. She sends money home to Cuba she earns at an Italian restaurant.

    Lately Fernandez hasn’t seen any posts looking for help. And because her landlord said he’d raise the rent if more people lived there, she can’t host too many more. Still, if they showed up, she says she’ll help them out.

    “Until now, I’ve never had the opportunity to help people. I always wondered, how does one do this, but I didn’t have an idea,” she said.

    In the meantime though, Fernandez likes having Vera around. Vera calls her "Tia"— aunt — and plans on staying there indefinitely. They keep each other company and connect each other to a homeland they both miss.


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    A mother of a 9/11 victim now has the right to sue Saudi Arabia over its alleged support of the attackers. But she's not celebrating.

    Adele Welty lost her son, firefighter Timothy Welty, in the World Trade Center attack. She was working just a few blocks away, and knew that her son was among the first responders. 

    When Ms. Welty heard this week that Congress had voted to override a presidential veto, thus allowing lawsuits against Saudi Arabia to proceed, her first thought was not relief or joy — but a question. "I wondered whether the chickens will be coming home to roost when this lawsuit takes place." 

    Welty says she's concerned about the United States becoming vulnerable to similar lawsuits. "I'm aware that the United States and the CIA have interfered in the internal affairs of so many sovereign countries, and I'm wondering if Saudi Arabia is no longer accorded sovereign immunity, that the United States, then, would no longer have sovereign immunity, and that there will be a rush of lawsuits against us for our interference in the affairs of other countries."

    Many 9/11 families see the court system as a path to justice for the deaths of their loved ones. But Welty is not so sure justice will be served.

    "I'm really ambivalent about suing Saudi Arabia," she says, "because I'm not sure why the president vetoed the legislation. I trust him as a leader. I know he wants justice for the families. But there has to be a reason — or many reasons — why he would veto it, and I don't know what those reasons are."

    Welty will be following progress of litigation as it progresses. "I'm involved in one of those lawsuits," she says. "But mostly because I thought it would reveal information about who, if anybody, really was involved. And maybe, if this goes to court, we'll find out." 

    Welty, as a peace activist and a member of the September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, has traveled the world since her son's death, speaking with families who have lost loved ones to war and violence. She understands why families of victims would want to seek justice through any avenue. But she adds a note of concern. "Once the lawsuit goes forward," she says, "it will be covered in the press and the media. I'm fearful of an increase in Islamophobia."

    "Thousands of peaceful families who happen to be Muslim are living in fear," she observes. "Children are being harassed at school. There is a tendency toward very strong racist beliefs and actions lately, not only in the United States but in Europe as well. That's very, very frightening. And these are all things that, I think, come into play, that maybe we haven't thought about too carefully."

    Read more: Islamophobia is on the rise in the US. But so is Islam.


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    Once upon a time there was a harmless cartoon frog named Pepe. He first appeared in 2005 in the debut issue of Matt Furie's comic book series, "Boy's Club." Pepe was a stoner. He lived with three friends, played computer games and hung out in his underwear.

    People loved Pepe the Frog. They shared him online, mixed and matched him, and made him say funny things, sad things, all types of things.

    Pepe had become a meme.

    But eventually, things turned ugly. The alt-right got ahold of Pepe. And they haven't let go.

    Now, the Anti-Defamation League has gotten involved. Cartoon meme Pepe the Frog has been added to the ADL's list of hate symbols.

    "What we've seen over the past several months is an increase in this particular meme of Pepe the Frog being used by white supremacists and bigots of all kinds," says Oren Segal, the director of the ADL's Center on Extremism. "Because of the volume of the hatred and the efforts to use it to harass people online, we felt it was time to add Pepe the Frog to our database."

    Segal says the alt-right is doing more than just putting a Hitler mustache on Pepe the Frog or placing him in front of a concentration camp. They're using the memes against individuals. "Those images have tended to target Jews and maybe perceived Jews and others in an effort to intimidate and harass."

    Furie, Pepe's creator, isn't pleased with the ADL's move. In an email he wrote: "I think it overlooks the fact that Pepe is a symbol used to express an extremely wide range of life-affirming and peaceful views by many people, and its swift inclusion into the database is an attempt to add legitimacy to Hillary Clinton's false claim that Pepe's image is "almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists"."

    Furie's email continues:

    "Pepe is not usually racist. He's a chill, sad frog that kids love. Pepe is love. The images of Pepe that are on the [ADL] website are OBVIOUSLY racist to anyone who seems them, there is no hidden agenda — it's just right there: a small group of anonymous idiots jerk off all day in their mom's basement and make sick, racist versions of Pepe because they are losers. The majority of Pepe memes are just cool stoned frog remixes. This whole thing is a waste of News. Let's talk about Ecology and the Future of Mankind."

    The ADL's Segal says it's exactly because a meme can take thousands of different forms that the organization decided to add Pepe to its database.

    "Instead of selecting the Pepe the Frog with the Hitler mustache or the Pepe the Frog standing in front of the burning World Trade Center, what we decided was to take the meme in its totality and say: there are still many uses of this meme that are not offensive, that are meant to be fun, that are used by people who have no ill intent whatsoever. But because of the volume and the amount of memes that we're seeing that do have this more hateful underpinning, we felt it was important to let people know that, that too, is happening."

    Furie is upset about how the alt-right have used Pepe the Frog, and he has some advice for them: "The alt-right need to take mushrooms and realize we are all one. One love. Peace."

    Segal, too, is confident the Pepe meme will outlast the alt-right. "Listen, I don't think this is the last chapter for Pepe the Frog. I think there is a possibility that he will be reclaimed, and that the positive uses of this meme will outweigh those negative ones. But for now, Pepe the Frog is being used and abused in ways that are just unacceptable."

    Like any good meme, Pepe the Frog has reacted online to the ADL's decision. Most of those responses are too crude to print, but here are a few:

    Furie remains kind of mad at the ADL. "At this moment, I feel the need to ask the ADL [to] make it clear that I, Matt Furie, in no way support this sh*t. Please take my name off the database, take Pepe off of the database, it's ironically defaming my copy-written intellectual property and affecting my livelihood as a working creative artist and peaceful hippy [sic]."


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    Arizona is, historically, a red state. With the exception of Bill Clinton in 1996, they've voted Republican in every presidential election since 1952. 

    But that might be shifting this year.

    The conservative Arizona Republic newspaper endorsed Hillary Clinton for president this week. It's the first time it has endorsed a Democrat over a Republican in its entire 126-year history.

    And here's another significant change: Latinos in Arizona are increasingly making sure they get to the voting booth.

    Petra Falcon directs a group called Promise Arizona. She says her group has registered more than 46,000 new voters this election cycle alone.

    "Our color is yellow and we're like bumblebees out their in the neighborhoods," Falcon says.

    They go door-to-door — to churches, colleges, neighborhood stores, parks — trying to sign up as many people as possible by October 10, the registration deadline for this year's national election.

    An August Latino Decisions poll found that more than 80 percent of those asked in Arizona were "absolutely certain" they would vote. Only 18 percent had a favorable opinion of Republican candidate Donald Trump (PDF).

    But it's not just about Trump. Promise Arizona is part of One Arizona, a non-partisan coalition that was founded in 2010 when a controversial law was passed in the state.

    SB 1070 was formally called the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act," but critics called it the "show me your papers law." The law required law enforcement to ask anyone they stopped — for jay-walking, broken taillights or any reason — for proof of their legal residence in the US if they suspected them of being undocumented.

    "Immediately, we feel, it demonized the most vulnerable members of our community," Falcon says. "It was a real slap in the face to people who come here to work really, really hard."

    The courts have struck down much of the law as unconstitutional and earlier this month the state attorney general issued new guidelines that narrow law enforcement's authority to detain and profile people based on race or ethnicity.

    In the meantime, though, the law fueled not only Falcon's activism, but the creation of One Arizona coalition.

    "SB 1070 galvanized and really energized not only immigrants, but the Latino community in general," says Falcon. "Many Latino families are mixed-status families, or they know someone who is undocumented and had been impacted by this law."

    Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio's hard stance on immigration fueled the organizing too. Arpaio is now facing criminal charges for violating a court order to end racial profiling in his agency. He too has a tough road ahead — for the first time in years — to keep his seat in upcoming elections.

    More from Arizona:'Detained because my name was Gonzalez'

    One Arizona says more than one million Latinos could be eligible to register in the state and the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials says that about 17 percent of registered voters are Latino, as of February 2016 (PDF). NBC Latino reports that the One Arizona coalition has also helped increase the number of Latinos on the early voter list. There were 90,000 Latinos on the list in 2010. Now, there are more than 300,000.

    Falcon, who has lived in Arizona her whole life, says early voting helps a lot. It gives people an opportunity to talk about the issues and get prepared.

    Arizona, she says, has already lived through the "divisive, racist language" of this election cycle. "We've got to bring the community back together."


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    Zahra Noorbakhsh came out as bisexual shortly after the shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando last June. She did it in a very public way — on her podcast, #GoodMuslimBadMuslim. Below is an excerpt of an essay she wrote for Bitch Media called "Coming out as bi when you're Muslim and married."

    ... In “Secrets and Safety,” episode 19 of our podcast, #GoodMuslimBadMuslim, my cohost Taz Ahmed pointed out that some Muslims stood in solidarity with the queer community while simultaneously silencing the queer Muslims in their own mosques. It made me sick. Islam and queerness should not be at odds. There are rich communities of LGBTQ Muslims, but we’re often still seen as exceptions or rare cases. It felt important to me to come out both to counter the media coverage that set up Muslim people and LGBTQ people as two distinct groups that never overlap and to help change the homophobia I saw in a lot of Muslim communities. What I didn’t know was if I’d be shaking up any homophobia in my own family.

    As my cohost shared her poem, “Secret Identities,” I couldn't bring myself to sit in silence. To do so felt like a homophobic act on my part. I could feel the heat in my neck and the tightness in my chest with every passing second that I said nothing. My head felt like it was boiling until it felt like my ears were going to pop off, and I couldn't take it anymore.

    “I’m bisexual,” I said into the microphone, “and I’m married to a man. That’s not an erasure....”

    Those were the thoughts I was able to piece together in the moment. As soon as I said it, I felt better. After we recorded, after our producer finished the final edits, after we launched it, after I remembered that my parents listen to the podcast, I felt sick again. I have never come out to my parents. Do I need to come out to my parents? I’m married. What do they care?

    “Is this necessary?” I asked my queer friends who I knew wouldn’t call me a coward to my face. I was so scared and expected that I’d get an answer like, “You’re not bisexual, you’re just not letting yourself be gay.” Or worse, that I would be seen as somehow usurping a queer identity as a woman married to a man, a woman who lives a straight-passing life, who is not “gay enough” to be queer. But I got none of those dismissive responses. What I got instead from friends and fans of the podcast alike was, “Zahra, coming out is so hard. I am sending you so much love right now. I wish I could give you a hug.” ...

    Read the full essay at Bitch Media

    Comedian Zahra Noorbakhsh is the co-host of the podcast #GoodMuslimBadMuslim.


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    Argentina’s President Mauricio Macri has vowed to eliminate poverty in the country.

    But in order to even begin, he needs to know how many people actually live below the poverty line in South America’s third-most-populous country. Politics has made this task shockingly difficult — the previous administration even gave up counting for a couple of years.

    Now back on the job, the government’s National Statistics and Census Institute released some eye-popping figures on Wednesday: Argentina’s urban poverty rate is 32.2 percent, with more than 6 percent of urban residents living in extreme poverty.

    These are the first official poverty stats from the national agency in three years. They come after a period of tumult and embarrassment over state-sponsored mathematics.

    Macri’s populist predecessor, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, claimed throughout her tenure that the country’s poverty rate was in the low single digits. Last year, she famously said Argentina had less poverty than Norway or Denmark — “below 5 percent.”

    Her economy minister remarked that the poverty rate was a “stigmatizing figure” when he announced the government would stop keeping track.

    Since 1980, the number of people living in extreme poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean has dropped by two-thirds, according to the World Bank. Despite all the fuzzy data, it's likely Argentina's poverty rate has dropped since then, too. Almost half the country was poor before President Nestor Kirchner took office in 2003, as Bloomberg reported.

    But the new official figures suggest President Macri has a long way to go to meet his goal of wiping out poverty, and he's realizing that. "It’s obvious we won’t reach zero poverty in four years,” Macri said this week. Rather, he added, "zero poverty is a path that we call on all Argentines to help us with because it just can’t be the task of a government.”

    The newly released urban poverty figure is pretty much in line with other, independent measurements. Economists have often pointed to reports by the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina. For April, it estimated 32.6 percent of Argentines are poor — almost equal to the government agency's new rate.

    Notably, officials at the National Statistics and Census Institute accused Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s government of intervening in their work and manipulating economic statistics. And her husband and predecessor, the late Nestor Kirchner, controversially fired the head economist at the institute back in 2006.

    Fernandez de Kirchner’s government used to fine statisticians who released figures that contradicted the “official” numbers. In 2013, Argentina became the first country to be censured by the International Monetary Fund for not issuing sound economic data. 

    The IMF was invited back to Argentina earlier this year to review the country’s finances for the first time in a decade.

    Critics of the Kirchners say they held Argentina back while much of Latin America was growing economically and reducing poverty. There are international factors at play, but domestically, the couple has been accused of exacerbating poverty through economic mismanagement, corruption (Fernandez de Kirchner’s assets are frozen as she's prosecuted for allegedly stealing millions of dollars from the country), and the tactic of hiding the scale of the country's problems.

    But now, as market-friendly Macri ushers in reforms to turn the economy around, he's taking flak for making life hard for lower-class Argentines. At least now we're beginning to learn just how many there are.


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    Immigrant rights advocates in the United States hit a setback this week, but they're pledging to continue their push to end private immigration detention facilities.

    On Wednesday, California's governor vetoed Senate Bill 1289, also known as the Dignity Not Detention Act.

    It was originally introduced in February by California Senator Ricardo Lara (D-Bell Gardens), with advocacy organizations including Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC) and the Immigrant Legal Resource Center as co-sponsors.

    If signed, California would have been the first state in the nation to stop local governments from signing contracts with private corporations to operate immigration detention centers.

    Governor Jerry Brown said in a statement Wednesday (PDF) that, while he is“troubled by recent reports detailing unsatisfactory conditions and limited access to counsel in private immigration detention facilities,” he is awaiting the Department of Homeland Security’s decision at the federal level on whether to end these contracts.

    “These actions indicate that a more permanent solution to this issue may be at hand. I urge the federal authorities to act swiftly,” Brown said.

    Leaders who’ve pushed for the end of private immigration facilities in California were disappointed with the governor’s decision.

    “An economy based upon the confinement of people for profit is immoral and should be illegal in California and throughout the country,” says Christina Fialho, co-executive director and co-founder of CIVIC, which co-sponsored the bill.

    Opponents of the bill, including the California State Sheriffs' Association, worried that the detentions would continue but that they would be shifted to already crowded public dentention facilities. Bob Naranjo, a retired ICE officer, told KPCC that tranferring detainees to private facilities also helped with local budgets.

    In August, the Department of Justice announced that it would end contracts with private companies to run federal prisons. Immigration officials said then that they wouldn’t follow suit.

    Fialho says Governor Brown’s decision to veto the bill was a missed opportunity to lead on one of the most important immigration issues of our time, but she and others will continue moving forward.

    “In the immediate future we’ll continue to monitor immigration detention facilities on a consistent basis through our affiliated visitation programs that operate in 43 immigration detention facilities,” says Fialho. “We also are going to continue advocating for community-based alternatives to immigration detention that don’t include ankle monitors or other forms of surveillance and government control.”

    The city of Santa Ana renewed its contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last year. Fialho says the city has suggested that it will not renew it again after its five-year term ends in 2020.

    “We’re working with the city of Santa Ana in California to determine a solution for closing the city’s immigration detention facility and assuring that all people are released back to their families,” says Fialho.

    California ranks second, only to Texas, for having the most detained migrants. California has four private immigration detention facilities across its state. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University estimates that over 100,000 people went through California’s detention facilities in fiscal year 2015, which is 15 percent of all immigrant detainees that were processed in the US.

    The bill would have obligated ICE to follow the 2011 ICE Performance Based National Detention Standards (PDF), which were corrected and clarified in February 2013 (PDF). ICE has the option of opting out of those 2011 guidelines and can instead follow older ones, which experts say causes poor oversight.

    “ICE has done a very poor job of overseeing the facilities and that they actually comply with those standards,” says University of Denver criminal and immigration law professor César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández. “There are some facilities operating in the United States that are operating under standards that are about 15 years old.”

    Fialho says the bill would have saved lives by giving migrant detainees access to 24/7 emergency medical and mental health care under the 2011 ICE standards. ICE reiterated these standards in a statement to PRI, but as of right now, it's not mandatory to legally enforce them.

    “Had the Theo Lacy [immigration detention center in Orange County] been required by law to operate under 2011 standards last year, then Raul Ernesto Morales-Ramos might still be alive today. He actually died in immigration detention,” Fialho says. “A recent federal investigation of his death found, and I quote, ‘a critical lapse in care and access to and continuity of care.’”

    Morales-Ramos died in April 2015while detained at Adelanto Detention Facility outside Los Angeles from complications of untreated and undiagnosed intestinal cancer. A federal review of the case chronicled his care and found problems in how he was treated (PDF). The facility is run by GEO Group.

    Talia Inlender is a senior staff attorney at Public Counsel in Los Angeles. She’s been working with the migrant detainee population for almost a decade and says the bill would have also helped lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender migrants in these facilities.

    Also: She fled abuse in Mexico, and now this trans woman says she was abused in immigration detention too

    “It would require that LGBTQ detainees be placed in housing according to their own gender identity,” Inlender says.

    Inlender says the bill would respect LGBTQ migrants’ identities and keep them safer from abuse and isolation in detention.

    García Hernández says approval of the bill by Governor Brown would have sent signals to private prison companies that one of their biggest customers, California, is no longer interested in their services.

    “It would have sent another signal to the private prison industries that policy makers across the country are starting to have some serious doubts about whether the government ought to be relying on their services,” he says. “And when you’re in any business, or any industry, once your biggest customer starts telling you, ‘No thanks’, then you have to start wondering what’s next for you.”

    Fialho says she applauds California’s legislature and the other supporters of the bill. She and others will be watching for the Department of Homeland Security's decision on Nov. 30, but in the meantime will continue their fight on the local and national stage.


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    Rufus Gifford, the US ambassador to Denmark, is not your typical diplomat, prone to a life of boring ceremonies and stiff speeches. 

    No, Ambassador Gifford is something of a celebrity. He's the star of a popular reality show on Danish TV — but, don't hear that and think of Bravo franchises.

    “We call it a documentary series, not a reality show, to distinguish ourselves as much as we can from the Real Housewives and the Kardashians,“ the American diplomat said during a visit to The World's studios. His show won a Danish television award and has just premiered on Netflix — so those in the States can start watching it, too.

    It’s called "Jeg Er Ambassadøren fra Amerika," or "I Am the Ambassador From America."

    The cameras follow Gifford around, doing what he does as ambassador; each episode also offers a candid glimpse into his personal life in Copenhagen. You can watch him say goodbye to his golden retriever as he heads off to work, embrace his husband Stephen DeVincent — Gifford is openly gay — or ride along with him as he travels to Danish high schools to talk with young students.

    Now that the documentary series is available to larger audiences, Gifford says he hopes viewers will see what it means to be a diplomat and a public servant.

    “When I agreed to do a documentary series on @dr3tv … I thought only a few thousand people would see it. ... Well, today it premieres on @netflix in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and other countries," Gifford wrote recently on Instagram. "Never in my wildest dreams did I believe this would happen."

    “And while I am incredibly nervous about the show being aired all over the world — especially in my home country — I believe in it with all my heart. Just as it has done in Denmark, I hope very much that it will serve as a vehicle through which you learn a little about the US, a little about Denmark, a little about diplomacy and the unique bond between people and nations. And hopefully make you smile and laugh a little along the way. Most of all I hope you enjoy.”

    The idea to chronicle Gifford's life on TV was partly proposed by Danish television producers, and partly his own idea based on his experiences as an ambassador.

    “When I first took the job I was traveling around Denmark and really trying to get a sense of how the US Embassy in Copenhagen really fit into the culture in Denmark. One of the things I was really struck by was the fact that Danes really had not a clue about what we did. There was sort of a fascination with what we did, but there was this perception that we would play golf during the day and go to cocktail parties at night and in between, go into the Embassy where we're up to nefarious things somehow, and it I just felt so wrong to me," he said.

    "What I really wanted to do was ... take our message to a broader audience, a younger audience, a more diverse audience. How do you do that? You need to get outside of your box, you need to get outside from behind your desk, and go to them. So you know, the show is an attempt to do that.” 

    Gifford's future is a little uncertain. He's a political appointee serving under President Barack Obama, whose presidential term ends soon. There might be another televison series in his future, or another diplomatic post — or maybe he'll take the advice of his many newfound Danish fans who have urged the ambassasor to mount his own campaign for the US presidency. 


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