President Donald Trump’s plan to attend Game 5 of the World Series Sunday will continue a rich tradition of intertwining the American presidency with America’s pastime.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s limousine drove onto to the field ahead of the 1933 World Series, the last time the nation’s capital hosted the Fall Classic. Congressional hearings on the stock market collapse were postponed so senators could attend the game.

Harry S. Truman tossed out a first pitch from the stands of a regular season game in August 1945, just days after the end of World War II, giving Americans a sense that normalcy was returning after years of global conflict.

George W. Bush wore a bulletproof vest under his jacket when he threw a perfect strike from the Yankee Stadium mound during the 2001 World Series, not 10 miles from where the World Trade Center was attacked a month earlier.

Trump, who has yet to throw out a ceremonial first pitch since taking office, plans to arrive after the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros are underway and leave before the final out, in hopes of making his visit less disruptive to fans, according to Rob Manfred, baseball’s commissioner.

Deep ties to baseball 

While it will be Trump’s first time attending a major league game as president, he has deep ties to the sport.

A longtime New York Yankees fan who was spotted regularly at games in the Bronx, he was also a high school player with enough talent that, he has said, he drew the attention of big league scouts.

Presidential attendance at baseball games has “become an institution and a unifying influence in a nation that is losing both,” said Curt Smith, a former Bush speechwriter and author of “The Presidents and the Pastime.”

“It is part of the job description, whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat or a liberal or a conservative. Bush found it a joy, he understood the symbolism of the moment. And he was the rule, not the exception,” Smith said.

Trump mentioned his World Series plan to reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. But when asked whether he might throw out the first pitch, he said, “I don’t know. They’re going to have to dress me up in a lot of heavy armor,” apparently referring to a bulletproof vest. “I’ll look too heavy. I don’t like that.”

First pitch honor goes to Andres

But the Nationals, who decide on ceremonial first pitches, made clear that the president was not asked to take the mound. That honor instead will go to a notable Trump critic, celebrity chef Jose Andres, whose humanitarian work has been widely acclaimed.

Andres, a naturalized U.S. citizen from Spain, has been a longtime critic of the president’s views on immigrants and he halted plans to open a restaurant at the Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington. The Trump Organization then sued Andres, who also denounced the administration for failing to do enough to help the people of Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria in 2017.

There’s some suspense around how Trump might be greeted at the game.

Though the fans at the high-priced event are likely to skew more corporate than at a regular season Nationals contest, Trump is extremely unpopular in the city he now calls home. In the 2016 election, Trump won 4% of the vote from the District of Columbia.

Trump’s White House staff has long tried to shield him from events where he might be loudly booed or heckled, and he rarely ventures out into the heavily Democratic city. (With the exception of his hotel, a Republican-friendly oasis a few blocks from the White House.)

‘Every president gets booed’

“It’ll be loud for Trump but every president gets booed: both Bushes, Reagan, Nixon. When Americans pay for their ticket, most of them buy into the great American tradition to boo whomever they want,” Smith said. “He should embrace it: So what if the elites boo you? Think of how it plays with your voters elsewhere in the country, thinking ‘There they go again, booing our guy.’ Use it!”

Trump has long been a baseball fan, especially of his hometown Yankees. Before he became president, he would be spotted at games, sometimes along the first-base line with then-Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. Trump was also memorably photographed behind home plate across town in the moments after the final outs of the 2006 NLCS when the New York Mets lost to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Trump played high school baseball at New York Military Academy, where he was a star first baseman. His coach, Col. Ted Dobias, told Rolling Stone in 2015 that Trump “thought he was Mr. America and the world revolved around him.”

“He was good-hit and good-field,” Dobias said. “We had scouts from the Phillies to watch him, but he wanted to go to college and make real money.”

Phillies spokesman Greg Casterioto said Friday that the team’s scouting records do not go back that far and there is no way to verify that claim. But Trump, when honoring the 2018 World Series champion Boston Red Sox at the White House in May, fondly remembered his time playing the sport.

“I played at a slightly different level,” Trump said, “but every spring I loved it. The smell in the air.”

Relationship with pro sports

That event also underscored Trump’s tumultuous relationship with professional sports. Several Red Sox stars, including Mookie Betts, and the team’s manager, Alex Cora, declined to attend the White House ceremony. Trump has disinvited other championship teams, including the Golden State Warriors and Philadelphia Eagles, from attending after some of their players criticized him.

Trump is, so far, the only president since William Howard Taft in 1910 not to have thrown a first pitch at a major league game. The first president known to attend a game was Benjamin Harrison in 1892. Calvin Coolidge, nearly a decade before Roosevelt, was the only other president to attend a World Series game in Washington.

Trump will sit with league officials and likely watch from a luxury box, behind security and away from much of the crowd. That would be very different from some of his predecessors, including John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, who sat by the field for their ceremonial duties.

“In the old days, they would throw from the presidential box,” said baseball historian Fred Frommer, who has written several baseball books, including a pair of histories about Washington baseball. “Players from both teams would line up on the first base line and would fight for it, like a mosh bit. And whoever emerged with it would take it to the president for a signature.”

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House Republicans have intensified their dissent against an impeachment inquiry of U.S. President Donald Trump, protesting that the House Intelligence Committee is questioning witnesses in hearings closed to the public and other lawmakers. The protest is part of Republicans’ strategy of attacking the process by which House Democrats probe allegations Trump sought foreign interference in the 2020 presidential election. VOA’s congressional correspondent Katherine Gypson reports from Capitol Hill.
 

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Torrential rain that caused flooding and mudslides in towns east of Tokyo left at least nine people dead and added fresh damage in areas still recovering from recent typhoons, officials said Saturday.

Rescue workers were looking for one person still missing in Chiba. Another person was unaccounted for in Fukushima, farther north, which is still reeling from damage caused by Typhoon Hagibis earlier this month.

The death toll included eight people in Chiba and one in Fukushima.

Chiba inundated

While rains and floodwater subsided, parts of Chiba were still inundated. About 4,700 homes were out of running water and some train services delayed or suspended.

In the Midori district in Chiba, mudslides crushed three houses, killing three people who were buried underneath them. Another mudslide hit a house in nearby Ichihara city, killing a woman. In Narata and Chonan towns, three drivers drowned when their vehicles were submerged.

“There was enormous noise and impact, ‘boom’ like an earthquake, so I went outside. Then look what happened. I was terrified,” said a resident who lived near the crushed home in Midori. “Rain was even more intense than the typhoons.”

In Fukushima, a woman was found dead in a park in Soma city after a report that a car was washed away. A passenger is still missing.

Rain also washed out Friday’s second round of the PGA Tour’s first tournament held in Japan, the Zozo Championship in Inzai city.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe held an emergency task force meeting Saturday morning and called for “the utmost effort in rescue and relief operations.” He also urged quick repairs of electricity, water and other essential services to help restore the lives of the disaster-hit residents.

Month’s worth of rain in half a day

The Prime Minister’s Office said the average rainfall for the entire month had fallen in just half a day Friday.

The downpour came from a low-pressure system above Japan’s main island of Honshu that moved northward later Friday. Power was restored Saturday at most of the 6,000 Chiba households that had lost electricity.

Two weeks ago, Typhoon Hagibis caused widespread flooding and left more than 80 people dead or presumed dead across Japan.

Yoshiki Takeuchi, an office worker who lives in a riverside house in Chiba’s Sodegaura city, said he had just finished temporary repairs to his roof after tiles were blown off by the September typhoon when Friday’s rains hit hard.

“I wasn’t ready for another disaster like this. I’ve had enough of this, and I need a break,” he told Kyodo News.

…

The Trump administration is banning U.S. flights to all Cuban cities except Havana in the latest move to roll back the Obama-era easing of relations, officials said Friday.

Supporters of the ban said it would starve the Havana government of cash and limit its ability to repress Cubans and support Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whom the U.S. wants to overthrow.

Opponents said prohibiting flights would simply make it harder for Cuban-Americans to visit their families outside the capital, without making a significant impact on the Cuban government.

The State Department said JetBlue flights to Santa Clara in central Cuba and the eastern cities of Holguin, Camaguey would be banned starting in December. American Airlines flights to Camaguey, Holguin and Santa Clara, the beach resort of Varadero and the eastern city of Santiago are also being banned.

Flights to Havana, which account for the great majority of U.S. flights to Cuba, will remain legal.

“This action will prevent the Castro regime from profiting from U.S. air travel and using the revenues to repress the Cuban people,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Twitter. Raul Castro stepped down as president last year but remains head of the Communist Party, the country’s highest authority.

Another stated reason for the move is to prevent tourism to Cuba, which is barred by U.S. law. But it is not clear how many people take the banned flights for tourism purposes. Many are used by Cuban-Americans visiting relatives in cities far from Havana by road.

“Eager to punish Cuba’s unbreakable defiance, imperialism is going after regular flights to various Cuban cities. It doesn’t matter that they’re affecting family relations, or the modest pocketbooks of most Cubans in both countries,” Carlos F. de Cossio, head of Cuba’s department of U.S. affairs, said on Twitter. “Our response isn’t changing.”

Charter flights to destinations outside Havana are apparently not affected by the ban, but those flights tend to be more expensive and far less convenient. The other remaining legal option is a flight to Havana and then a road trip that could last as much as eight to more than 12 hours over rutted, unsafe roads, in the case of Cuba’s eastern cities.

JetBlue and American issued brief statements saying they would comply with the decision.

The announcement coincided with an event in Miami calling for regime change in Cuba and featuring U.S. officials, Organization of Americans States President Luis Almagro, and a variety of Cuban-Americans and Cuban dissidents.

“This is a step forward,” said Cuba-born barber Ernesto Regues, who said he left the island in 2012 and still has family in Havana. “ow they need to stop the flights to Havana.”

Carrie Filipetti, deputy assistant secretary for Cuba and Venezuela in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, said Havana would serve as the gateway for Cuban-Americans wanting to see their relatives.

“We want to make sure that Cuban-Americans do have a route to their families. You need to enter. Havana is currently carved out for this,” she said.

She warned, however, that “we will continue to increase sanctions” and said other countries should do the same.

“It is a long path with many steps along the way,” she said to a standing ovation.

Lourdes Diaz, a retired Cuban-American who arrived in the U.S. one year after Castro’s Revolution, said she disagrees with the current sanctions, feeling they help Cuba’s communist government more than hurt it.

“The only thing that suffers is the people,” Diaz said.

The Trump administration has been regularly tightening the six-decade-old embargo on Cuba in recent months with the stated purpose of cutting off income to the Cuban government and forcing it to cut ties to Venezuela and grant more human rights to Cuban citizens. Washington has barred U.S. cruise ships visiting Cuba, sanctioned oil tankers moving petroleum from Venezuela to Cuba and permitted lawsuits against foreign companies profiting from their use of properties confiscated from Americans or from Cubans who later obtained American citizenship.

The measures have contributed to the Cuban government’s chronic shortages of hard currency and were blamed for several weeks of fuel shortages on the island, but so far there is no indication that the Trump policy is having its desired effect. Cuba’s security services continue to detain and harass dissenters and human rights groups say freedom of expression, assembly and other rights remain highly curtailed.

The Cuban and Venezuelan government remain tightly aligned and both have declared their intent to become even closer allies in the face of the Trump measures.

…

North Korea has proposed that Seoul discuss the removal of its facilities from the North’s resort of Mount Kumgang, a key symbol of cooperation that Pyongyang recently criticized as “shabby” and “capitalist,” the South’s officials said on Friday.

In the latest sign of the neighbors’ cooling ties, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has urged that the South’s “backward” and “hotchpotch” facilities at the infrequently used resort be taken down and rebuilt, the North’s KCNA news agency has said.

On Friday, North Korea sent notices to the South’s Unification Ministry, which handles issues between the two sides, and Hyundai Group, whose affiliate Hyundai Asan Corp built resort facilities, asking for the demolition and seeking discussion through the exchange of documents, the ministry said.

“The government will prepare a creative solution to the Mt. Kumgang tourism project” by protecting the property rights of South Korean people while considering the international situation, inter-Korean agreements and domestic consensus, Unification Ministry spokesman Lee Sang-min said in a briefing.

Any withdrawal of South Korean relics from the scenic resort would be another setback for President Moon Jae-in’s campaign to end confrontation between the old foes, including efforts to resume stalled business initiatives.

“The North asking the South to discuss the issue ‘in writing’ means they don’t even want to talk about other things,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at South Korea’s Sejong Institute.

Mt. Kumgang is on North Korea’s eastern coast, just beyond the demilitarized zone separating the two countries. It was one of two major inter-Korean economic projects, along with the Kaesong industrial zone, and an important token of rapprochement during decades of hostilities following the 1950-53 Korean War.

Kim, on a visit to a nearby province, hailed a new tourist resort being built there as a striking contrast to Mt. Kumgang’s “architecture of capitalist businesses targeting profit-making from roughly built buildings,” KCNA said.

However, the South’s Unification Minister Kim Yeon-chul said he did not see the North’s proposal as a bid to exclude the South, because Kim Jong Un had said he would welcome South Koreans if it was properly rebuilt, the Yonhap news agency said.

Tourism has become increasingly key to Kim’s policy of “self-reliant” economic growth, as it is not directly subject to U.N. sanctions aimed at curbing the North’s nuclear programs, though they ban the transfer of bulk cash to Pyongyang.

There have been no South Korean tours to Mt. Kumgang since 2008, although there have been infrequent events such as the reunions of families from both sides separated by the war.

Kim has called for Mt. Kumgang to be refurbished in “our own style” alongside other tourist zones, such as the Wonsan-Kalma coastal area and the Masikryong ski resort.

The Wonsan beach resort, one of Kim’s pet projects, is seen nearing completion by early 2020 after “remarkable construction progress” since April, 38 North, a U.S.-based project that studies North Korea, said in a report, citing satellite imagery.

…

At least two demonstrators were killed in renewed anti-government rallies in the Iraqi capital on Friday, officials said, as security forces unleashed tear gas to push back thousands from Baghdad’s high-security Green Zone.

The protests were the second phase of a week-long movement in early October demanding an end to widespread corruption, unemployment and an overhaul of the political system.

Activists called Iraqis to go out on the streets again on Friday, which marks a year since Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi came to power. It is also a deadline set by the country’s top Shiite authority for him to enact desired reforms.

But the rallies began early, with hundreds gathering in the capital’s iconic Tahrir (Liberation) Square on Thursday evening.

On Friday, many crossed the bridge to mass near the Green Zone, which hosts government offices and foreign embassies, but security forces used a volley of tear gas to push them back.

“Two demonstrators died, with preliminary information indicating they were hit in the head or face by tear gas canisters,” said Ali Bayati, a member of the Iraqi Human Rights Commission.

He said nearly 100 more people were wounded.

There were no reports of live fire being used to disperse protesters.

‘We want dignity!’

“We’re not hungry — we want dignity!” a protester shouted in Baghdad on Friday morning, while another lashed out at “the so-called representatives of the people who have monopolised all the resources”.

One in five people lives in poverty in Iraq and youth unemployment sits around 25 percent, according to the World Bank.

The rates are staggering for OPEC’s second-biggest oil producer, which Transparency International ranks as the 12th most corrupt state in the world.

“I want my share of the oil!” another protester told AFP.

Rallies were also rocking the southern cities of Diwaniyah, Najaf and Nasiriyah, where demonstrators said they would remain in the streets “until the regime falls”.

Iraq’s highest Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who has backed reforms, urged protesters Friday during his weekly sermon to use “restraint” to stop the demos descending into “chaos”.

But the real test will be the afternoon, when many are expecting supporters of Moqtada al-Sadr — an influential cleric who controls the largest parliamentary bloc — to hit the streets.

His supporters have breached the Green Zone in previous years. This week, he called on his supporters to protest and even instructed members of his own paramilitary force to be on “high alert.”

They could be seen in parts of Baghdad on Friday in a clear show of force.   

PM snipes at Sadr

The movement is unprecedented in recent Iraqi history both because of its spontaneity and independence, and because of the brutal violence with which a torrent of protests on October 1-6 was met.

At least 157 people were killed, according to a government probe published on Tuesday, which acknowledged that “excessive force” was used.

A vast majority of them were protesters in Baghdad, with 70 percent shot in the head or chest.

In response, Abdel Mahdi issued a laundry list of measures meant to ease public anger, including hiring drives and higher pensions for the families of protesters who died.

The beleaguered premier defended his reform agenda in a scheduled televised appearance early Friday, telling watchers it was their “right” to demonstrate as long as they did not “disturb public life”.

But he also said political figures demanding “reform” had themselves failed to enact it, in an apparent reference to Sadr’s “Alliance towards Reform” bloc.

Some have backed the government, including the powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force whose political branch is the second-largest parliamentary bloc.

And Iraq’s mostly-Kurdish north and Sunni west have stayed out of the protests.

Iraq has been ravaged by decades of conflict that finally calmed in 2017 with a declared victory over the Islamic State group.

Thus began a period of relative calm, with security forces lifting checkpoints and concrete blast walls and traffic choking city streets at hours once thought too dangerous.

Restrictions had even softened around the Green Zone but were reinstated as the October demonstrations picked up in Tahrir, which lies just across the Tigris River.

Authorities also imposed an internet blackout, which has been mostly lifted although social media remains blocked.

…

From making so-called side deals with Ukraine to pulling U.S. forces from northeastern Syria, U.S. President Donald Trump has gone his own way when it comes to conducting U.S. foreign policy. But the Syria decision has sparked widespread opposition in Washington and in the case of Ukraine, critics say Trump sidestepped career U.S. diplomats to further his own interests against a potential election rival. 

Despite criticism, U.S. President Donald Trump is standing by his decision to move U.S. troops from the Syrian-Turkish border, where they fought alongside longtime Kurdish allies.
 
“They stayed for almost 10 years. Let someone else fight over this long, bloodstained sand,” Trump said.

This, as the top U.S. official to Syria appeared to distance himself from Trump’s decision.
 
“Were you consulted about the withdrawal of troops as was recently done?” Senator Bob Menendez, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee asked James Jeffrey, the U.S. Special Representative for Syria.

“I personally was not consulted,” Jeffrey said.

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Trump to Lift Turkey Sanctions

US president says he made decision after Ankara informed him that its ceasefire in an offensive against Kurds in northeastern Syria will be permanent

Elsewhere on Capitol Hill, other diplomats testified about the Trump administration’s delay providing approved U.S military assistance to Ukraine.  

A written statement by one described how the White House bypassed normal diplomatic channels to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats and the Bidens in return for military aid.    

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White House Admits Quid Pro Quo Between Trump and Ukraine

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney says Trump froze aid to Ukraine to pressure it to investigate Democrats and the 2016 presidential election

Democratic lawmakers have denounced this.

“The idea that vital military assistance would be withheld for such a patently political reason, for the reason of serving the president’s re-election campaign is a phenomenal breach of the president’s duty to defend our national security,” said Democrat Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

Trump’s actions on Ukraine could threaten his presidency as the impeachment inquiry continues.  
 
“We have agencies, we have tasked areas along government, whose job it is to investigate those. And if President Trump wanted the Bidens investigated for their activities there, it should have been done through the diplomatic channels,” said Shannon Bow O’Brien of the University of Texas at Austin.

Those normal diplomatic channels have set the United States apart from countries whose policies are set by autocratic leaders, says terrorism expert Mike Newton.  
 
“The checks and balances, where agencies push back against each other, and really experienced, smart policy makers wrestle with choices and consequences and diplomatic fallout and maybe military best practices,” Newton said.
 

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House Speaker Pelosi Opens Trump Impeachment Inquiry

Move has potential to reshape current presidency and further divide the nation just a year before Donald Trump plans to stand for re-election

When this process is bypassed, experts say, U.S. credibility around the world is damaged.
 
“If there are doubts about the President’s decisions which there are in the State Department and the Pentagon, and the intelligence community as well as in the Congress, there’s real questions about cohesiveness of U.S. foreign policy and whether we have a real strategy,” said Mark Simakovsky of the Atlantic Council, an international affairs think tank.
 
Donald Trump was elected on promises to break with traditional U.S. foreign policy, and his supporters show no sign of abandoning him.

But the impeachment inquiry and outcry over his Syria policy show there are limits to his approach.  
 

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Fewer reports of vaping illnesses are coming in, but U.S. health officials say they are not sure what to make of it.
 
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 125 additional cases were reported in the last week, bringing the total to 1,604 in this year’s outbreak. That includes 34 deaths, one more than last week.
 
The outbreak is still happening, but the count of new cases has dropped for three straight weeks. A CDC spokeswoman said reporting delays could be one explanation.
 

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Federal Judge Upholds State’s Ban on Vaping Products

The judge upheld Massachusetts’ four-month ban on the sale of vaping products; another hearing soon

The CDC reported the numbers Thursday.
 
The outbreak appears to have started in March. No single ingredient, electronic cigarette or vaping device has been linked to all the illnesses. Most who got sick said they vaped products containing THC, the high-inducing ingredient in marijuana.

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Former President Jimmy Carter is out of the hospital where he was treated after fracturing his pelvis in a recent fall.

The Carter Center said in a statement Thursday that the former president had been released from a hospital and was recovering at his home in Plains, Georgia.

The 95-year-old Carter is the oldest living former president in U.S. history.

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Kurdish people in northeastern Syria are mourning the loss of lives and territory as they try to regroup after recent battles and ponder an uncertain future.  VOA’s Heather Murdock has this report from Qameshli and Tal Tamer in Syria

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U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is reversing course months after threatening six-figure fines against immigrants taking sanctuary at churches. 
  
Seven women have been notified that ICE, using its discretion, is withdrawing its intent to pursue fines of $300,000 or more for their refusal to leave the country as ordered, according to the National Sanctuary Collective, a coalition of attorneys, organizers and other advocates for them. They count it as a victory. 
  
“We knew that these exorbitant fines were illegal and were nothing more than a tool to scare our clients and retaliate against them for fighting back and standing up to this administration,” attorney Lizbeth Mateo, who represents a Mexican woman living at an Ohio church, said in a statement. Mateo said immigration officials should exercise the same discretion “to release sanctuary families.” 
  
The immigrants have remained in the U.S. in violation of the law and still are subject to removal orders that ICE will enforce “using any and all available means,” agency spokesman Richard Rocha said in an email. He said ICE also could reassess the fines.   

Immigrants have sought relief from deportation at houses of worship because immigration officials consider them “sensitive locations” and avoid enforcement action at such sites. Maria Chavalan-Sut, an indigenous woman from Guatemala seeking asylum, moved into a United Methodist church in Charlottesville, Virginia. Another woman has lived in sanctuary with her 11-year-old son in Austin, Texas, for more than two years. 
  
Mateo’s client, Edith Espinal, has stayed at a Columbus church for the past two years. She was notified in June that she faced a fine of nearly $500,000. 
  
In a statement, she said ICE’s reversal on the fines was “an example of what speaking out and organizing can accomplish.” 
 
The agency said it issued nine notifications in June about its intent to pursue fines. It said Wednesday that eight of those had been withdrawn and one still was being pursued. It didn’t identify those cases or name the immigrants involved. 

Top priority for Trump
 
The six-figure penalties were another reminder of how President Donald Trump has made cracking down immigration, legal and illegal, a top domestic priority.   
  
Immigrants who are free on bond but ordered to leave the country are typically given a date to report to immigration authorities for removal. Others are ordered to check in with authorities, which, under former President Barack Obama-era policies, generally didn’t result in deportation unless the person was convicted of a serious crime in the United States. 
  
Trump lifted those restrictions almost immediately, causing people to get deported when they reported to ICE offices as instructed and discouraging others from coming. 

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Saudi Arabia appointed as foreign minister Wednesday a prince with diplomatic experience in the West in a partial Cabinet reshuffle as the kingdom tries to mend its international image and prepares to take over the Group of 20 presidency next year.

Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud had served for the last few months as Saudi ambassador to Germany and earlier as political adviser at the Washington embassy. His previous business career in the defense industry included being chairman of a joint venture with Boeing.

Saudi Arabia, a key U.S. ally in confronting Iran, has faced intense Western criticism in the past year over its human rights record, including the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and its involvement in the devastating war in Yemen.

Outgoing foreign minister Ibrahim al-Assaf, who had earlier served as finance minister for years, remains a minister of state. He was appointed less than a year ago to restructure the ministry.

As part of Wednesday’s reshuffle, which was announced in state media, Saleh al-Jasser, director general of Saudi Arabian Airlines, replaced Nabil al-Amoudi as transport minister.

It was unclear if Amoudi would have another government position. He was appointed last month to the board of state oil giant Saudi Aramco, which is planning a partial share flotation.

…

QUITO – Ecuador’s indigenous movement said Wednesday that it paused talks with President Lenin Moreno because of the government’s “persecution” of the group’s leaders since a halt to violent anti-austerity protests.

Jaime Vargas, head of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) said the group had entered the talks “in good faith,” but an atmosphere of trust did not exist. 

“We cannot be at the table while they are pursuing us,” Vargas told reporters.

Ecuador’s state prosecutors’ office Tuesday opened an investigation into Vargas for allegedly promoting “subversive groups” after he had told supporters at a rally Saturday that CONAIE would create its “own army.”

In response, CONAIE said this referred to a “communal guard” to protect its territory, in accordance with the rights of self-determination granted to indigenous communities in Ecuador’s constitution.

After days of protests, Moreno last week ditched an IMF-backed plan to terminate decades-old fuel subsidies and started negotiations with the indigenous and other social groups to seek an agreement that would keep them from returning to the streets.

Moreno’s change of heart over the subsidies was a major victory for Ecuador’s indigenous peoples, who have led uprisings that helped topple at least three governments but have struggled to make a mark in day-to-day politics.

Before the protests were suspended, Moreno had refused to backtrack on the subsidy cuts, which were intended to aid Ecuador’s finances after a $4.2 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund.

At least seven people died, several hundred were injured and more than 1,000 people were arrested during the protests, which began Oct. 3, according to authorities.

…

The first thing one experiences when landing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at an elevation of about 1,600 meters, is the vastness of open space around the quiet southwestern town.

The 360-degree vistas extend as far as the eye can see on the arid high plateau, interrupted only by the Sandia Mountains to the east. In this town, the film industry is thriving and growing by leaps and bounds. Locals affectionately call it “Tamalewood” — melding the name of a beloved dish in New Mexico with that of California’s better-known Hollywood.

The TV and film industry here has gained ground since garnering tax incentives for filming in the state, leading to billion-dollar deals between leading production companies and Albuquerque Studios. But what started it all was the Albuquerque based Emmy-winning TV series “Breaking Bad,” about a struggling chemistry teacher turned meth drug lord. The show became a hit domestically and internationally.

Over a beer bet with a friend, Frank Sandoval, an extra on the show, came up with the idea of creating a company called “Breaking Bad RV tours.” He would buy an exact replica of the RV shown in the show and drive people around.

“Part of the deal was, if we got people to ride, he [Frank’s friend] would actually help us gut the RV and set it up just like the original. We did our first tour in May of 2014,” Sandoval said. It worked. He now drives two tours a day.

“’Breaking Bad’ really did put Albuquerque on the map in terms of the film industry,” he added.

Here, in an open landscape where sunshine reigns supreme for 310 days a year, and the longest traffic commute is 20 minutes, Netflix has put down roots.

The entertainment giant purchased Albuquerque Studios, a 100,000-square-foot compound, and signed a billion-dollar deal to produce TV series and movies over the next 10 years. NBC Universal followed with a $500 million deal. Its highly touted TV show “Briarpatch” is one of a dozen TV series filmed in one of the studios’ imposing stages in complete secrecy.

“Briarpatch” producers Keith Raskin and Linda Morel say New Mexico offers a great filming alternative to congested and expensive Los Angeles. The varied landscape, and local crew availability don’t hurt either. And the advantages don’t end there.

“Space! Space! We’ve been working in L.A. for a long time, obviously. I’m from there. It is very, very difficult to find stage space in Los Angeles right now. It’s always booked,“ Morel, Raskin’s longtime partner, said.

Raskin said all these benefits have become the talk of the town among L.A. producers gearing up to take their businesses to Albuquerque.

“I think we are at the beginning of a tidal wave. There’s been a big interest in shooting here,” he added.

Hollywood’s interest peaked after New Mexico further sweetened tax incentives last July, said Amber Dodson, film liaison for the city of Albuquerque.

“The rebate cap was previously at $50 million. It is now raised to $110 million,” she said.

The larger the amount a production company invests here, the larger the rebate. New Mexico wins as well, Dodson said. To get the incentive, production companies have to hire local talent.

“They are here for 10 years no matter what. And the amount of jobs! And it’s a conservative estimate, that, just that deal alone, will create is 1,000,” she said.

1,000 jobs a year, that is.

New Mexico’s film industry is also benefiting from political battles elsewhere in the country. Many Hollywood studios and production companies are pulling out of Georgia in reaction to the state’s enactment of an anti-abortion law, Dodson said.

“We have been busier than ever!” she added, calling TV and film production “a clean, creative industry” that benefits the entire city.

“When a production comes to a place like Albuquerque, they’re not just paying their casting crew,” she said. “They are using all kinds of vendors from dry cleaners to gas stations to car rentals to art galleries, lumber yards, hotels, restaurants. The list goes on and on.”

Sandoval, of the “Breaking Bad” RV tours, said he couldn’t agree more. His tour company, operating twice a day, is fully booked, drawing visitors from all over the world.

“What I see coming down the pike is where we’re going to become the next Hollywood. Some people call it Tamalewood,” he said.

…

Weaving through the crowd, Temple Gonzalez and her family enjoyed the scenes and fried snacks at the Texas State Fair in Dallas.

“Then we get on the rides and cross our fingers,” she laughed. Gonzalez, a mother from a town called The Colony, just outside of Dallas, professed love for Texas and its diversity.

“I’m proud that we love everybody,” she said. “Lots of people from everywhere. And we want more!”

Gonzalez had less welcoming words for U.S. President Donald Trump, who campaigned in Dallas recently.

“I don’t think he’s a kind person,” Gonzalez said. “I just don’t like how he treats people. He needs to be modeling that from the top down, and I don’t see that happening.”

Polls indicate suburban women like Gonzalez are a reason Texas – a state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Jimmy Carter in 1976 – may no longer be a sure bet for Trump in 2020, despite the fact that he is giving it a lot of campaign time.

“Texas is not in play,” Trump said to a cheering crowd at his October 17 rally at the American Airlines Center in down town Dallas. “Donald Trump is not going to lose Texas, I can tell you that.”

Trump Rallies Supporters in Texas

Teaser Description

U.S. President Donald Trump held a campaign rally in Texas Thursday evening to drum up support in a state that may be shaping up to become a battleground in the upcoming 2020 national election. Trump rallied as news broke about the cease-fire announced by White House officials and Turkey in its assault on Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. White House Correspondent Patsy Widakuswara has this report from Dallas.

The October rally was Trump’s third in the state in the past year and his sixth visit.

Texas Republicans welcome the attention. “It’s good to see that the president is reaching out and not taking Texas for granted,” said Rodney Anderson, chairman of the Dallas County Republican party.

Red with a purple tint

In 2016, Trump won Texas by only nine points, down from Mitt Romney’s 16-point margin in 2012. Analysts see this as evidence of the state shifting left as well as the fact that incumbent Republican senator Ted Cruz only narrowly defeated Democratic newcomer Beto O’Rourke in the 2018 Senate race.

Although it’s premature to call Texas a swing state, it will probably “go red with a very strong purple tint”, said Shannon Bow O’Brien, professor of politics at the University of Texas in Austin.

“Texas is a growing state and it’s growing in the cities, and a lot of the growth is Democratic voters,” said O’Brien. She pointed out that Trump is struggling in the suburbs in Texas, and said the Texas GOP is “worried.”

Rodney Anderson dismissed the notion but admitted that Republicans “have got a real ball game” in 2020.

Democrats gearing up

Democrats in Texas welcome the demographic shift and aim to build on their growth by wooing independents.

“There are a lot of people that just are not happy with the things that Trump has done and these are the people that actually voted for Trump in the last election,” said Tramon Arnold, political director of the Dallas County Democratic Party.

One of them is Larry Strauss, a life-long Republican, who co-founded the North Texas Jewish Democratic Council in 2017. The council recently hosted a gathering in a Dallas community center to discuss election politics with Harvey Kronberg, publisher of the political newsletter Quorum Report.

“The population is no longer reliably Republican,” said Kronberg. “Particularly the suburbs, which is the richest source of votes out there.”

Kronberg said this is partially because Texas demographics have shifted towards a larger population of Hispanic, Asian and Middle Eastern, as well as “Millennials who are antithetical to social conservatives” and what he calls “an abandonment of Republicans by women”.

But Trump can still rely on his base, who are fired up by his “ad hominem attacks, belittling and making fun of his opponents,” said Kronberg.

Larry Strauss, sitting in the front row, nodded. Strauss was a life-long Republican, until he heard the president’s remarks about the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that turned violent.

“When Donald Trump made that comment that there are good people marching on both sides, I went ballistic. I turned in my Republican membership card.”

Strauss, a retiree in his sixties was so distraught he reached out to the Dallas County Democratic Party and established the council, the first of its kind in the state, with co-founder Janice Schwartz.

Strauss supports the House impeachment inquiry against Trump. “We’re lacking integrity in the White House,” he said. “He’s not the type of president that gives a good example to my children and my grandchildren.”

Republicans dismiss the suggestion that Trump is hurting their party’s chances of winning.

“He’s absolutely helping us, 100%,” Rodney Anderson said, adding that the impeachment inquiry is energizing the Republican base even more.

Analysts point out that with strong support from rural areas, Trump may still win Texas, though with an even slimmer margin than 2016. But they say a lot can happen in a year particularly with an ongoing impeachment inquiry.

The latest poll from Quinnipiac University indicates 45% of registered voters in Texas approve of Trump. The same poll indicates 48% would not vote for him in 2020.

Voter suppression

Texas is one of the most diverse states in the country, and one of the four “majority-minority” states in the United States — together with California, Hawaii, and New Mexico — where the population of racial and ethnic minorities combined is larger than the white population.

Activist groups say that because of “voter suppression tactics used by the state and other entities,” the diversity of Texas is not reflected in state legislature and minority communities’ interests are not reflected in state policy.

“Our state legislators are generally a lot whiter and a lot wealthier than Texans,” said Hani Mirza, senior attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit organization based in Austin.

Voting rights groups have long accused Texas of extreme gerrymandering and restrictive voter registration rules, that in effect have rigged the state’s election rules in ways that disempower black and brown voters.

“The tactics used in gerrymandering can dilute minority votes to where they can’t have their voice heard in elections,” said Mirza. He added that when drawing electoral lines, state legislature has broken up minority communities to dilute their votes, or packed minority groups into as few districts as possible to suppress their voice.

Texas is due for a federal census in 2020 and redistricting process in 2021 where electoral maps may be redrawn.

Presidency not the only prize

The presidency is not the only coveted prize in 2020 as Democrats make inroads in state legislature seats with an eye on redistricting.

“Honestly, it’s not flipping Texas it’s flipping the state legislature seats,” said Shannon Bow O’Brien. “And the Democrats have a shot.”

“The way that things are gerrymandered, we need to make sure that everything is the way that it’s supposed to be, and not favoring the Republican Party,” said Tramon Arnold of the Dallas County Democratic Party.

If in 2020 Democrats win nine seats that they need to control the Texas House, for the first time in decades they would have control over the redrawing of the electoral map.

Future elections based on that map may mean more Democratic lawmakers being sent to Washington, out of the 36 currently representing Texas in the U.S. House of Representatives.

…

For the first time, U.S. health regulators have judged a type of smokeless tobacco to be less harmful than cigarettes, a decision that could open the door to other less risky options for smokers.

The milestone announcement on Tuesday makes Swedish Match tobacco pouches the first so-called reduced-risk tobacco product ever sanctioned by the Food and Drug Administration.

FDA regulators stressed that their decision does not mean the pouches are safe, just less harmful, and that all tobacco products pose risks. The pouches will still bear mandatory government warnings that they can cause mouth cancer, gum disease and tooth loss.

But the company will be able to advertise its tobacco pouches as posing a lower risk of lung cancer, bronchitis, heart disease and other diseases than cigarettes.

The pouches of ground tobacco, called snus — Swedish for snuff and pronounced “snoose” — have been popular in Scandinavian countries for decades but are a tiny part of the U.S. tobacco market.

Users stick the teabag-like pouches between their cheek and gum to absorb nicotine. Unlike regular chewing tobacco, the liquid from snus is generally swallowed, rather than spit out. Chewing tobacco is fermented; snus goes through a steamed pasteurization process.

Long-term data

FDA acting commissioner Ned Sharpless said the agency based its decision on long-term, population-level data showing lower levels of lung cancer, emphysema and other smoking-related disease with the use of snus.

Sharpless added that the agency will closely monitor Swedish Match’s marketing efforts to ensure they target adult tobacco users.

“Anyone who does not currently use tobacco products, especially youth, should refrain from doing so,” he said in a statement.

Stockholm-based Swedish Match sells its snus under the brand name General in mint, wintergreen and other flavors. They compete against pouches from rivals Altria and R.J. Reynolds. But pouches account for just 5% of the $9.1 billion U.S. market for chew and other smokeless tobacco products, according to Euromonitor market research firm.
 
And public health experts questioned whether U.S. smokers would be willing to switch to the niche product.

“Snus products have a bit of a challenge” among smokers who are used to inhaling their nicotine, said Vaugh Rees, director of Harvard University’s Center for Global Tobacco Control.

U.S. smoking rate

The U.S. smoking rate has fallen to an all-time low of 14% of adults, or roughly 34 million Americans. But smoking remains the leading cause of preventable disease and death in the U.S., responsible for some 480,000 deaths annually.

The FDA’s decision has been closely watched by both public health experts and tobacco companies.
 
Public health experts have long hoped that alternatives like the pouches could benefit Americans who are unable or unwilling to quit cigarettes and other traditional tobacco products. Tobacco companies are looking for new products to sell as they face declining cigarette demand due to tax increases, health concerns, smoking bans and social stigma.

The FDA itself also has much at stake in the review of snus and similar tobacco alternatives.

Congress gave the FDA the power to regulate key aspects of the tobacco industry in 2009, including designating new tobacco products as “modified risk,” compared with traditional cigarettes, chew and other products.
 
But until Tuesday, the FDA had never granted permission for any product to make such claims.
 
The FDA is reviewing several other products vying for “reduced risk” status, including a heat-not-burn cigarette alternative made by Philip Morris International. While electronic cigarettes are generally considered less harmful than the tobacco-and-paper variety, they have not been scientifically reviewed as posing a lower risk.
 

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

A Vietnam food puzzle

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

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

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

Moderation is the goal

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

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

People have many choices

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

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

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

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

…

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

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

…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…