Month: September 2019

When Maria Augusta Almeida, 45, heard her grandson cough incessantly, she knew what was to blame: the fires raging in the Amazon forest, some of them more than 200 miles (322 km) away from Porto Velho.

The smoke permeating the city, the capital of Brazil’s northwestern state of Rondonia, is leading concerned parents to wait for hours in line at local hospitals to get help for their children who are struggling to breathe.

The Thomson Reuters Foundation visited four health centers in the city, one of the hardest hit by smoke from the burning rainforest. In all, there were reports of children, some of them infants, seeking medical care due to smoke inhalation.

Last month, Brazil’s space research agency, INPE, revealed the number of fires in the Amazon was the highest since 2010. 

That sparked international calls for the country to do more to protect the world’s largest tropical rainforest — key to curbing climate change — from deforestation and other threats.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro authorized the military to fight the fires after several days of public protests and criticism from world leaders.

In Porto Velho, residents said the Cosme e Damiao Children’s Hospital, run by the Rondonia state government, had become the epicenter for children with breathing difficulties.

The symptoms from outdoor smoke inhalation have evolved into a full-blown crisis for some parents, as they do not know how to protect their children from what is in the air.

The daughter of local salesman Mauro Ribeiro do Nascimento, almost two years old, has asthma and could not stop coughing.

“I have taken her to Cosme e Damiao three times already,” her father said. “They were doing nothing but putting her on a nebulizer.”

The device helps patients breathe in medicine as a mist through a mask or a mouthpiece, to treat respiratory problems.

Worried about the strain on her lungs, do Nascimento took his daughter to a different center for an X-ray, which showed her lungs were “congested” due to irritation caused by smoke.

Staff at Cosme e Damiao were not authorized to say how many children they had attended since the fires escalated, and did not respond to requests for comment.

But volunteers and locals said the lines grew much longer about a month ago, when smoke began choking the city streets.

“The city was so filled with smoke you did not know if you should keep the windows open to maybe get some fresh air, or close them to stop more smoke from getting in,” said Sara Albino, a nursing student who volunteers at the hospital.

At her worst, Albino’s 20-month-old daughter had to use a nebulizer five times a day, which she has at home.

Eye drops had to be applied constantly to ease the burning sensation in the child’s eyes, her mother said. 

“Her eyes would not stop tearing up … they were almost glued shut; it was like conjunctivitis,” she said.

Urban fires

According to the World Health Organization, fires in the Amazon pose a risk to health including from respiratory diseases, especially in children.

But not all fires affecting Porto Velho are far away in the jungle, as they have become a cheap way to clear vegetation from urban areas for construction purposes, according to residents.

Last week, the city’s airport had to shut down after smoke from an urban fire got out of control. The vegetation on the roadsides leading to the airport was burned to a crisp.

The fires in Brazil’s sprawling Amazon rainforest have receded slightly since Bolsonaro sent in the military to help battle the blazes last week.

Meanwhile, families do what they can at home.

“I bought a humidifier … we keep it in my granddaughter’s room,” said Raimundo dos Santos, 71, who was selling water to people waiting in line at a Porto Velho health center.

The machine, which increases moisture in the air, has helped his eight-year-old granddaughter breathe. But the rest of the family is still struggling.

“I myself have already been to the hospital since the fires started,” dos Santos said, adding that he was treated for smoke inhalation.

…

Few in the Bahamas will be able to sleep tonight with Hurricane Dorian stalled over Grand Bahama Island, pounding it overnight with fierce winds and massive rainfall.

Prime Minister Hubert Minnis has confirmed at least five deaths on the Bahamas’ Abaco Island, calling the destruction in the northern Bahamas “unprecedented and extensive.”

Dorian is the strongest Atlantic hurricane to strike land in 84 years and the worst ever to hit the Bahamas.

“The images and videos we are seeing are heartbreaking,” he said at a news conference in Nassau. “Many homes, businesses, and other buildings have been completely or partially destroyed. There is an extraordinary amount of flooding and damage to infrastructure.”

Minnis says the U.S. National Guard is on Abaco to help with rescues, but the major rescue efforts will have to wait until the storm eases.

“I ask Bahamians and residents on islands not devastated by this monster storm to open their homes to friends, families, and others who may be in need. This is the time for us as Bahamians to show our love, our care, and our compassion for our fellow brothers and sisters.”

Dorian is a Category 4 hurricane with top sustained winds downgraded slightly late Monday to 225 kilometers per hour.

Meteorologists say the wind currents high in the atmosphere that dictate the direction a hurricane will move have been completely calm above Dorian, keeping the storm parked over the Bahamas.

But forecasters predict Dorian will remain a Category 4 as drifts “dangerously close” to the east coast of Florida late Tuesday and Georgia and South Carolina coasts Wednesday and Thursday.

Hurricane warnings are posted from just north of Miami to the Florida-Georgia border. Millions from Florida to South Carolina have been ordered to evacuate.

A National Guard spokesman says there has been almost no resistance from people being told they have to get out.

“People do understand that Dorian is nothing to mess around with,” he said.

Even if Dorian does not make landfall on the Atlantic Coast, the storm’s hurricane-force winds extend 56 kilometers to the west. Towns and cities can still expect up to 25 centimeters of rain, life-threatening flash floods, and some tornadoes.

Director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Jared Moskowitz says “Hurricane Dorian is the strongest storm to ever threaten the state of Florida on the East Coast. No matter what path this storm takes, our state will be impacted.

Forecasters predict Dorian will remain a hurricane as it moves up the Atlantic seaboard this week. Forecast maps show the storm reaching an area off Nova Scotia, Canada by Saturday.

…

An environmental spat between France and Brazil, rolling in questions about integrity, colonialism and Bic pens, shows signs of deepening with calls by dozens of French lawmakers and environmental groups to slap trade sanctions on Brazilian beef and soybeans. 

In a petition published Sunday in France’s weekly Le Journal du Dimanche, the group also called on the European Union to suspend a recently agreed Mercosur trade deal with South America and take broader steps barring products issued from deforestation and other environmentally harmful activities from entering the European market.

“What is lacking is political will” in France and elsewhere in Europe in ensuring green commerce, wrote the group of signatories, who included members of French President Emmanuel Macron’s La Republique en Marche (LREM) party.

While opposition to trade pacts is nothing new, the backlash to Mercosur comes at a time when other trade spats, including between the U.S. and China and Japan and South Korea, are also making headlines. And, some analysts say, it reflects growing alarm of ordinary Europeans about the social and environmental impacts of trade deals that is resonating among their leaders. 

“Europeans are very concerned about climate and human rights, and the Bolsonaro administration’s policies are going in all the wrong directions,” said Uri Dadush, senior fellow at Brussels-based economic think-tank Bruegel, referring to Brazilian leader Jair Bolsonaro. “That’s a different dimension from the trade agreement, but the two are becoming linked.” 

G-7 and wildfires

The citizen pushback adds kindling to a diplomatic dispute that ignited last month when G-7 host Macron added Amazon wildfires to the summit’s agenda, claiming their environmental impact was of global concern. The move, along with Macron’s threat to block the Mercosur trade deal over Amazon inaction, spiraled into trans-Atlantic barbs, ranging from Bolsonaro’s accusations of colonialism and an apparent slur targeting Macron’s wife, to claims the Brazilian leader lied over climate change promises. 

More recently, Bolsonaro — who conditioned accepting some $20 million in G-7 aid to fight Amazon fires to Macron’s apologizing for calling him rude — announced he would stop using French Bics, although the pens sold in Brazil are manufactured locally.

Beyond the mud slinging, however, environmentalists hope the wildfires will nudge European leaders into a bigger rethink of Mercosur. 

“We saw Europe was inclined to sign the treaty,” said Adelie Favrel, forest specialist for NGO France Nature Environnement, one of the signatories of the Amazon petition. “If deforestation had not become center stage, with the media talking about it, these environmental concerns might not have been raised.”

She and others are demanding France enforce a two-year-old law requiring companies to mitigate the environmental and human rights consequences of their actions — such as importing soybeans that may contribute to the Amazon’s deforestation — and that EU countries adopt similar legislation. 

A separate French petition to boycott companies supporting Bolsonaro’s government has recently collected nearly 2,000 signatories. More broadly, a number of U.S. and European countries have paused or reconsidered financial deals with Brazil over the Amazon fires, Britain’s Guardian newspaper reports. 

Mercosur trade agreement 

Still Europe is divided over linking the Mercosur pact to Amazon action. Along with France, Luxembourg and Ireland have similarly threatened to block it. But powerhouse Germany counts among other EU members opposed to such a move. 

“We’re not going to attack the climate challenge by refusing to do trade,” European Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom told Le Monde newspaper. 

Macron initially gave a thumbs up to the Mercosur trade agreement signed in June between the EU and four South American nations after years of talks. But the good will vanished with the Amazon fires, as the French leader accused Bolsonaro of “lying” over climate change promises made just weeks before.

The French president has earned kudos overseas for spearheading a green agenda, including his iconic “Make the Planet Great Again” twist to the Trump administration’s America-first agenda. But at home, critics claim Macron has failed to match rhetoric with deeds. His popular environment minister Nicolas Hulot quit a year ago, citing lack of progress on climate and other green goals. 

“Macron’s talked a lot about being an environmental champion, but we haven’t seen any action,” said environmentalist Favrel. “If the EU ultimately signs Mercosur without any concrete changes, it will be the same as what’s happened in France.” 

Dadush of Bruegel thinks Mercosur faces challenges for other reasons. Other powerful interest groups, including European farmers, are against the deal. Brazil has threatened to pull out of Mercosur if Argentina’s opposition wins next month’s presidential elections.  

“The agreement overall is under significant risk,” he said, “and the fires in the Amazon do not help at all.” 

…

Joyce Sasser was born in 1970 with no bones in her thumbs. Her doctors blamed thalidomide, a drug used to treat pregnant women experiencing morning sickness, until it was found to cause congenital abnormalities. 

Sasser said her mother swore up and down she’d never taken thalidomide; the two risks she felt she’d taken were much, much milder. “She said ‘if two aspirin or half a glass of champagne could have done it, I am responsible, but I didn’t take thalidomide,’” Sasser said.  

Sasser says despite that denial, doctors continued to believe their theory and implemented treatments accordingly – including one that permanently stunted her arms.

It wasn’t until Sasser was 20 and pregnant with her first daughter that doctors found the real reason for her abnormalities: Diamond-Blackfan anemia, a congenital issue in which the bone marrow fails to make enough red blood cells. As her mother had insisted for years, it had nothing to do with thalidomide.

Sasser’s mom’s experience – and the medical decisions she allowed, despite her protestations that the doctors had it wrong – are still all too common, even a half-century later. Sasser has learned over time how to manage the multiple medical difficulties that come with her condition, and, informed by her mother’s experience, she has learned to speak her mind about her medical treatment.

Empathy gap

Doctors hold a revered position in American culture. But studies are showing that excellence of care often can depend on how much a doctor empathizes with his patient, and the medical field in the U.S. is still overwhelmingly dominated by white men.

A 2008 study of nearly 1,000 patients in an urban emergency room found that women waited an average of 16 minutes longer than men to get medication when reporting abdominal pain. They were also less likely to receive it. 

A study published in 2000 by The New England Journal of Medicine found that because women’s cardiac symptoms differ sharply from men’s, women are seven times more likely than men to be misdiagnosed and discharged from the hospital during a heart attack.

“I was in the ER with stereotypical heart attack symptoms,” wrote Nicki Coast Schneider, who participates in a Facebook group for female heart attack survivors. “The ER doctor was in disbelief and brushed me off, but took my troponin (protein used in diagnosis of heart attack) level anyway. It came back elevated, he ordered another test. That one came back higher. He said the machine must be damaged so he tested his own troponin level. His came back normal. I was immediately admitted.”

Schneider said the doctor later admitted he might have sent her home if the emergency room had been busier. As it was, she said, he ended up thanking her for the lesson.  

“He was young and I assume right out of med school,” she said.

According to a 2014 online survey of more than 2,400 U.S. women with a variety of chronic pain conditions, nearly half had been told that the pain was all in their heads. A full 91% felt that the health-care system discriminates against female patients. 

 A diagnosis of depression or anxiety can further damage credibility. 

Martha Blodgett is a heart attack survivor. She is also on medication for bipolar disease. “As soon as doctors find out I’m bi-polar, I’m written off,” she said. “I actually had a neurologist walk out on me without saying a word.”

“They don’t listen,” said Lori McElhaney, whose doctor prescribed her antidepressants for a year, despite a diagnosis of hypothyroidism — a problem that requires an entirely different type of medication. McElhaney recently changed doctors. Her new doctor, a woman, “did more for me in one visit than he [her former doctor] did in over a year,” she said.

Hypochondria stereotype

Medical journalist Maya Dusenberg, whose book “Doing Harm: The Truth About How Bad Medicine and Lazy Science Leave Women Dismissed, Misdiagnosed, and Sick” outlines the ways sexism in medicine is destructive to women’s health, said doctors sometimes take women less seriously than men, adhering to a centuries-old stereotype of women as more apt to complain.

Looking at studies comparing treatment of men to treatment of women, Dusenberg said, “I didn’t understand why so many women were being treated as hypochondriacs when I didn’t know any women who were hypochondriacs.” 

She also describes how diseases that are common to women often get less research funding than diseases that affect men – no surprise, given that most decision-makers in medical schools are men. As a result, she says, maladies seen as “women’s diseases” don’t get as much academic attention.

Another author, Abby Norman, wrote “Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain” of her struggle to get diagnosed and treated for endometriosis – a disease that almost exclusively affects women. Norman’s struggle was particularly rife with difficulties, as her severe problems set in during college and she did not have a supportive family to help her get treatment.

As her struggle to manage her illness continues, Norman is deeply aware of the complexities of securing and providing unbiased care. 

Noting that not just women, but also people of color, children, and the elderly are often forced to settle for subpar medical care because of a doctor’s unconscious bias, Norman speaks of “layers of privilege” that influence how a patient is treated.

Of her own medical struggle, she told VOA, “there were certainly people in my peer group who would have had better access [to care], whether it be because they had family members that could support them or . . . were just in a better financial situation. 

But then there also were people around me who had far, far less access, either because of their race, or their gender identity, or . . . any number of things.”

A study done at the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga in 2007 found that doctors tend to underestimate pain in patients they do not identify closely with – which, in an industry dominated by white men, translates to women, people of color, and children and the elderly. Strikingly, the study found that physicians were twice as likely to underestimate pain in black patients compared to all other ethnicities combined. 

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control says black women are twice as likely to have strokes as white women, and are much less likely to survive them. Patient advocates say the lack of empathy that causes doctors to underestimate pain levels can also result in lower-quality care, allowing for more strokes and fewer good outcomes.

Liz Zubritsky, a science writer based in Virginia, says her mother once had to return to a Massachusetts emergency room three times in one night while trying to get care for her own mother (Zubritsky’s grandmother), who had flu-like symptoms and was running a fever of 37 degrees Celcius (100 degrees Fahrenheit) – low by standard levels, but high for Zubritsky’s grandmother. Doctors sent the women home twice, saying the fever was not high enough to warrant admission.  Zubritsky says it was not until a male relative, an oral surgeon, called to intervene, that Zubritsky’s grandmother was allowed a bed at the hospital. 

What was frustrating, Zubritsky said, is that “she felt like she was being dismissed as making too much out of something that was pretty minor . . . . The doctor was not willing to take my mother’s word for it that it was very unusual for her to have a fever of 100 degrees.” 

Persistence pays

While writers like Norman and Dusenberg are anxious not to paint medical providers as evil or uncaring, the faults in the medical care system have made it clear that getting good care sometimes takes extra work.  

Sasser says: “Be your own advocate.” Having survived several types of cancer and other medical conditions related to her Diamond-Blackfan anemia, Sasser has a notebook in which she compiles all information related to her treatment, so she can save time during appointments by showing doctors the appropriate records. 

Zubritsky says she once researched and compiled a Venn diagram (a series of interlocking shapes) of her father’s medications to prove to a doctor that his discomfort was likely caused by a drug interaction.  

Norman did her own medical research to convince a doctor her appendix was inflamed, a condition he had missed. The resulting operation relieved her of years of pain.

Dusenberg says when seeking medical help, be persistent – even if a doctor tells you it’s all in your head. “Don’t be afraid to seek out a second opinion, or as many as it takes,” she says. “Trust that you know something’s wrong. You know what’s normal for your body.”

Lastly, it’s helpful to take a friend or relative along to the doctor – for moral support, asking questions, taking notes, or even just verifying the patient’s experience. Dusenberg notes that it can be helpful to tell a doctor what the illness is preventing the patient from doing, not just how it makes them feel. 

Dusenberg also notes that while one can get better medical care by being a more assertive patient, the solution to the problem is not for every patient to become a super-patient or resign themselves to subpar care. 

“So much of what we’re doing is asking individual women to compensate for the failings of the system,” she said. “We shouldn’t rely on that individual self-advocacy. The system should be better for everybody.”

…

The center of Hurricane Dorian is making its way across Grand Bahama Island with a life-threatening storm surge, drenching rains and what forecasters called “catastrophic” winds.

Dorian presents extra danger to the island because of its slow speed, moving westward at only 9 kilometers per hour early Monday.  

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm could drop 30 to 60 centimeters of rain across the northwestern Bahamas, with 75 centimeters in isolated areas.

Bahamas Prime Minister Hubert Minnis said Sunday was “the worst day of my life” as the storm pummeled the islands with top sustained winds of 295 kilometers per hour.

“Many had not heeded the warning. Many have remained behind and still there are individuals within the West End area who still refuse to leave,” he said at a Nassau news conference. “I can only say to them that I hope this is not the last time they will hear my voice.”

Officials in states along the southeastern U.S. coast have issued their own warnings and ordered people to evacuate the most vulnerable areas.  Evacuation orders go into effect Monday in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.

“Hurricane Dorian is the strongest storm to ever threaten the state of Florida on the East Coast,” said Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Jared Moskowitz. “No matter what path this storm takes, our state will be impacted. We will continue to work around the clock to prepare.”

The NHC expects the storm to take a turn to the northeast in the coming days, but how much it turns and how quickly will determine the extent of Dorian’s effects.  For now, forecasters have put hurricane warnings in place for about half of Florida’s coast with the storm expected to bring hurricane conditions there by late Monday through Tuesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump canceled a trip to Poland to stay home to monitor the storm. He visited Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters Sunday, urging everyone in “Hurricane Dorian’s path to heed all warnings and evacuation orders from local authorities.”

Forecasters predict Dorian will affect much of the Atlantic Coast throughout the week, from Georgia, the Carolinas, and Virginia. Areas as far north as the tip of New Jersey could experience heavy rain and tropical force winds by Friday.

…

Former state Sen. Bill Larkin, a World War II veteran who served as a state lawmaker in New York for four decades, died Saturday. He was 91. 

His family announced the death Sunday, calling Larkin a “dedicated public servant, soldier and statesman.” 

Larkin represented a stretch of the Hudson Valley as an assemblyman from 1979 to 1990 and then as a state senator until his retirement last year. 

A Republican, he was known for forging bipartisan friendships in Albany and advancing veterans’ causes and health care for infants.   

“He lived a storied and authentically American life,” Dutchess County Executive Marc Molinaro said in a statement. 

 William J. “Bill” Larkin Jr. was born in Troy, New York, and was raised by his aunt and uncle. He thought he was 18 when, while still in high school, he enlisted in the Army in 1944.  

It wasn’t until years later that he discovered he was born in 1928, not 1926, as he had always believed.

“I wasn’t upset,” Larkin recalled last year. “I was in the armed forces. I met with people who cared about our country, and I was very proud.”

Larkin served in the Pacific during WWII, where he saw combat in the Philippines, and also later fought in the Korean War, where he had to be evacuated in early 1951 after suffering severe frostbite to his feet. 

 After retiring from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 1967, Larkin entered politics by getting elected supervisor of the town of New Windsor, near West Point. He was first elected to the state Assembly in 1978. 

Larkin is survived by his wife, eight children, 17 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.  

…

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Saturday she’s “alive” and on her way to being “very well” following radiation treatment for cancer.

Ginsburg, 86, made the comments at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington. The event came a little over a week after Ginsburg disclosed that she had completed three weeks of outpatient radiation therapy for a cancerous tumor on her pancreas and is now disease-free.

It is the fourth time over the past two decades that Ginsburg, the leader of the court’s liberal wing, has been treated for cancer. She had colorectal cancer in 1999, pancreatic cancer in 2009 and lung cancer surgery in December. Both liberals and conservatives watch the health of the court’s oldest justice closely because it’s understood the Supreme Court would shift right for decades if Republican President Donald Trump were to get the ability to nominate someone to replace her.

On Saturday, Ginsburg, who came out with the book “My Own Words’‘ in 2016, spoke to an audience of more than 4,000 at Washington’s convention center. Near the beginning of an hour-long talk, her interviewer, NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, said, “Let me ask you a question that everyone here wants to ask, which is: How are you feeling? Why are you here instead of resting up for the term? And are you planning on staying in your current job?”

“How am I feeling? Well, first, this audience can see that I am alive,” Ginsburg said to applause and cheers. The comment was a seeming reference to the fact that when she was recuperating from lung cancer surgery earlier this year, some doubters demanded photographic proof that she was still living.

Ginsburg went on to say that she was “on my way” to being “very well.” As for her work on the Supreme Court, which is on its summer break and begins hearing arguments again Oct. 7, Ginsburg said she will “be prepared when the time comes.”

Ginsburg, who was appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993, did not directly answer how long she plans to stay on the court. Earlier this summer, however, she reported a conversation she had with former Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired from the court in 2010 at age 90. Ginsburg said she told Stevens, “My dream is to remain on the court as long as you did.” Stevens responded, “Stay longer.” He died in July at age 99.

Ginsburg said Saturday that she loves her job.

“It’s the best and the hardest job I’ve ever had,” she said. “It has kept me going through four cancer bouts. Instead of concentrating on my aches and pains, I just know that I have to read this set of briefs, go over the draft opinion. So I have to somehow surmount whatever is going on in my body and concentrate on the court’s work.”

Ginsburg’s appearance Saturday was not her first following her most recent cancer announcement. Earlier this week she spoke at an event at the University at Buffalo, where she also accepted an honorary degree. At the time she talked only briefly about her most recent cancer scare, saying she wanted to keep her promise to attend the event despite “three weeks of daily radiation.”

…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Vice President Mike Pence joined local leaders on Sunday to commemorate 80 years since the start of World War II in Poland, where the conflict is still a live political issue.

Few places saw death and destruction on the scale of Poland. It lost about a fifth of its population, including the vast majority of its 3 million Jewish citizens.

After the war, its shattered capital of Warsaw had to rise again from ruins and Poland remained under Soviet domination until 1989.

Ceremonies began at 4:30 a.m. (0230 GMT) in the small town of Wielun, site of one of the first bombings of the war on Sept.

1, 1939, with speeches by Polish President Andrzej Duda and his German counterpart, Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

Parallel events, attended by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and European Commission deputy chief Frans Timmermans, were held in the coastal city of Gdansk, site of one

of the first battles of the war.

Morawiecki spoke of the huge material, spiritual, economic and financial losses Poland suffered in the war.

“We need to talk about those losses, we need to remember, we need to demand truth and demand compensation,” Morawiecki said.

For Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, the memory of the war is a major plank of its “historical politics”, aiming to counteract what it calls the West’s lack of appreciation for Polish suffering and bravery under Nazi occupation.

PiS politicians have also repeatedly called for war reparations from Germany, one of Poland’s biggest trade partners and a fellow member of the European Union and NATO. Berlin says all financial claims linked to World War II have been settled.

Critics say the party’s ambition is to fan nationalism among voters at a time when populists around the world are tapping into historical revisionism. PiS says the country’s standing on the global stage and national security are at stake.

Articles paid for by a foundation funded by state companies, showing Poland’s experience in the war, appeared in major newspapers across Europe and the United States over the weekend.

The Polish National Foundation also paid for supplements in some papers consisting of a copy of their front pages from Sept. 2, 1939, that highlighted the German army’s attack on Poland.

Apportioning blame, cost

Wartime remembrance has become a campaign theme ahead of a national election due on Oct. 13, with PiS accusing the opposition of failing to protect Poland’s image.

“Often, we are faced with substantial ignorance when it comes to historical policy … or simply ill will,” Jaroslaw Sellin, deputy culture minister, told Reuters.

Merkel and Pence, who arrived on Sunday after President Donald Trump abruptly cancelled a planned trip due to a hurricane, called it an honor to participate in events later in the day in Warsaw.

“We look forward to celebrating the extraordinary character and courage and resilience and dedication to freedom of the Polish people and it will be my great honor to be able to speak to them,” Pence said.

The cancellation of Trump’s visit is a disappointment to the PiS government, which is seen as one of Washington’s closest allies in Europe. Polish and U.S. officials have said another visit could be scheduled in the near future.

For PiS, a high-profile visit by Trump would serve as a counterargument to critics who say the country is increasingly isolated under its rule because of accusations by Western EU members that it is breaching democratic norms.

Opinion polls show PiS is likely to win the October ballot.

The party’s ambition is to galvanize voters and disprove critics by winning a majority that would allow it to change the constitution.

PiS agrees with the Trump administration on a range of issues including migration, energy and abortion.

…

The Saudi-led coalition said it launched an airstrike Sunday on a Houthi target in southwestern Yemen.

Yemen rebels, known as Houthis, said the coalition hit a detention center, killing 60 people.

The coalition said it hit a facility in Dhamar where drones and missiles were stored and “all precautionary measures were taken to protect civilians.”

A rebel spokesman told the Associated Press that 170 captured government fighters were housed in the center.

Local residents, however, told AP that family members who were critical of the Houthis were housed in the center.

More than five years of fighting between the Houthi rebels and the Saudi-led coalition helping the Yemeni government have led to the deaths of thousands of civilians who are already facing severe food shortages and a lack of quality medical care.

…