Business

Five years ago, for her 27th birthday, Lorelei Bandrovschi gave up drinking for a month on a dare. She was a casual drinker and figured it would be easy. It was, but she hadn’t banked on learning so much about herself in the process.

“I realized that going out without drinking was something that I really enjoyed and that I was very well suited for,” she told The Associated Press. “I realized I’m a pretty extroverted, spontaneous, uninhibited person.”

And that’s how Listen Bar was born on Bleecker Street downtown. At just under a year old, the bar Bandrovschi opens once a month is alcohol-free, one of a growing number of sober bars popping up around the country.

Booze-free bars serving elevated “mocktails” are attracting more young people than ever before, especially women. The uptick comes as fewer people overall are drinking away from home and the #MeToo movement has women seeking a more comfortable bar environment, said Amanda Topper, associate director of food-service research for the global market research firm Mintel.

Mocktails aren’t just proliferating at sober bars. Regular bars and restaurants are cluing into the idea that alcohol-free customers want more than a Shirley Temple or a splash of cranberry with a spritz.

Alcohol-free mixed drinks grew 35 percent as a beverage type on the menus of bars and restaurants from 2016 to this year, according to Mintel. Topper said 17 percent of 1,288 people surveyed between the ages of 22 to 24 who drink away from home said they’re interested in mocktails.

The interest, she said, is also driven in part by the health and wellness movement, and higher quality ingredients as bartenders take mocktails more seriously.

“It really started a few years ago with the whole idea of dry January, when consumers cut out alcohol for that month,” Topper said. “It’s shifted to a long-term movement and lifestyle choice.”

Listen Bar recently hosted a mocktail competition for mixologists, who whipped up drinks that included The Holy Would, comprised of citrusy, distilled, non-alcoholic Seedlip Grove 42, palo santo syrup, low-acid apple juice, lemon and lime bitters produced with glycerin, and verjus, the pressed juice of unripened grapes. The drink is the brainchild of Fred Beebe, a bartender at Sunday in Brooklyn. The restaurant isn’t alcohol-free, but Beebe helped create an extensive mocktail menu that goes well beyond the sugary choices of yore, using unique ingredients.

Palo santo, for instance, is a tree native to Peru, Venezuela and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula that loosely translates to “holy wood” and is widely used in folk remedies.

“Everybody should be able to have a delicious drink at a bar,” Beebe said. “Hospitality is making sure everybody has a good time. Alcohol, for me, is not the most important part of a cocktail anymore. The cool juices and syrups and tinctures and mixtures and all that stuff makes a lot of the fun.”

Listen Bar has enjoyed packed houses every month. Photographer Zach Hilty, 40, was a first-time customer on competition night. He said he drinks alcohol occasionally.

“My girlfriend and I are interested in the health benefits of different botanicals and such,” he said.

Cat Tjan, 27, of Jersey City, New Jersey, was also on hand and brought a colleague, Ammar Farooqi, 26, from Williamstown in southern New Jersey. Neither drinks alcohol. Tjan said Listen Bar is the only sober bar she could find in Manhattan, where she works for a drug company.

“I have no interest in it,” she said of booze. “It’s not particularly fun. It’s very expensive. There are better ways to have a good night out.”

Many bartenders will mix up regular cocktails and just leave out the alcohol if you ask, but that’s different than choosing something conceived as virgin from a separate menu, Farooqi said. Mocktails generally cost a few dollars less than cocktails, but separate menus are still hard to find.

At the sober bar Getaway in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, mocktails go for $13 a pop. There’s the Paper Train, with lemon juice, tobacco syrup (from the leaf and containing no nicotine), vanilla and San Pellegrino Chinotto. And there’s A Trip to Ikea, a mix of lingonberry, lemon, vanilla, cardamom and cream. Getaway opened in April in a permanent space.

“Weekends are generally really busy,” said co-owner Regina Dellea. “My business partner’s brother is in recovery, and when he first got sober they missed having a space to hang out in at night, where you can meet up and just talk.”

Mainstream suppliers are catching on. Beer companies are experimenting with alcohol-free selections, and Coca-Cola North America gobbled up the popular Topo Chico premium sparkling mineral water. The U.K.’s Seedlip brand bills itself as the world’s first non-alcoholic spirits. It comes in three flavor profiles with ingredients like hand-picked peas from founder Ben Branson’s farm in the English countryside.

At Listen Bar, Tjan and Farooqi sipped on a mocktail dubbed Me, A Houseplant, a green concoction comprised of Seedlip’s Garden 108 variety (the one with the peas), cucumber, lemon and elderflower. Each glass was garnished with a hefty cucumber slice. It was thought up by Jack McGarry, co-founder of the booze-serving Dead Rabbit bar in lower Manhattan and a well-known mixologist.

McGarry is also three years sober. At Listen Bar’s “Good AF Awards,” he was one of the judges, clipboard in hand.

“Alcohol-free used to be very simplistic with, like, homemade lemonades and ginger ales. People are wanting more diverse offerings,” he said. “I’m intrigued at how it will all shake out. I’ve seen lots of trends come and go. When people come in asking for non-alcoholic drinks, we have a bunch of drinks that have been thought out.”

Chris Marshall in Austin, Texas, has been sober since 2007. He was once a drug and alcohol counselor whose clients often shared their frustration at not having an alcohol-free nightspot to frequent. They were his motivation for founding Sans Bar in Austin, with pop-ups all over the country, including Anchorage, Kansas City, Washington, D.C., Portland, Seattle, New York, Nashville and St. Louis.

“The response is just overwhelming,” he said. “We’re taking out community spaces, coffee shops and places like that. The lack of a social circle is the one thing so many of my clients lacked after treatment.”

Marnie Rae Clark, who lives outside Seattle, is also a recovering alcoholic. She’s experienced the struggle of socializing while sober and started a blog about the sober lifestyle in 2017. She founded National Mocktail Week this year. Part of her mission is to encourage bars and restaurants to up their mocktail games.

“I just want to be able to go out with my friends and have a nice grown-up sophisticated cocktail,” said the 51-year-old Clark. “It’s really about promoting inclusion and connection in the hospitality industry.”

…

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.

 

…

After canceling a trip to Poland to stay stateside to oversee the federal government’s response to an approaching hurricane, President Donald Trump took time out to golf and to send a thinly veiled warning to his ousted Oval Office gatekeeper.

The president, on Saturday morning, was flown on Marine One from Camp David in Maryland to his Trump National Golf Club in Sterling, Virginia.
 
Camp David has a driving range and a single golf hole with multiple tees, but the president, keeping to his weekend routine when the weather is fair, chose to head to the nearest of his private 18-hole courses.

Before departing the presidential retreat, which he rarely has used, Trump dispatched a blizzard of tweets – at a rate of nearly one per minute over an hour – on his personal @realDonaldTrump account.

Some of his tweets referenced Hurricane Dorian, a Category 4 storm poised to damage the southeastern U.S. coast, with Trump noting it could pose more of a threat to South Carolina and Georgia than the original forecast of landfall in Florida.

Looking like our great South Carolina could get hit MUCH harder than first thought. Georgia and North Carolina also. It’s moving around and very hard to predict, except that it is one of the biggest and strongest (and really wide) that we have seen in decades. Be safe!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2019

“He’s being briefed every hour” about the hurricane, according to White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham.

Amid continuing questions about why Trump postponed his trip to Poland for a hurricane that is not expected to hit any of the United States until after the time the president would have returned from Europe, Grisham said, “Obviously, being here domestically is better. … We’re more nimble and all his agencies are here.” 

After time at his golf course, Trump was to receive another briefing, back at Camp David, about the hurricane.

On Sunday, Trump is scheduled to return to the White House and then visit the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in downtown Washington.

A pair of Saturday tweets by Trump focused on the abrupt departure of Oval Office gatekeeper Madeleine Westerhout, who had dished gossip to a group of reporters during an off-the-record dinner and drinking session about the president’s eating habits. She also disparaged daughter Tiffany Trump, claiming the president does not like being photographed with her because he thinks she is overweight.

Book publishers reportedly have been seeking to contact Westerhout after she was not permitted to return on Friday to her job as a personal assistant to the president.

Trump, on Twitter, said Westerhout had signed a confidentially agreement, but “I don’t think there would ever be reason to use it. She called me yesterday to apologize, had a bad night. I fully understood and forgave her! I love Tiffany, doing great!”

While Madeleine Westerhout has a fully enforceable confidentiality agreement, she is a very good person and I don’t think there would ever be reason to use it. She called me yesterday to apologize, had a bad night. I fully understood and forgave her! I love Tiffany, doing great!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2019

In a subsequent tweet, the president claimed he is “currently suing several people for violating their confidentiality agreements,” including former White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman, who was fired after one year as the communications director in the White House Office of Public Liaison.

…Yes, I am currently suing various people for violating their confidentiality agreements. Disgusting and foul mouthed Omarosa is one. I gave her every break, despite the fact that she was despised by everyone, and she went for some cheap money from a book. Numerous others also!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 31, 2019

A number of former federal lawyers and private attorneys rebutted Trump on Twitter, asserting that the non-disclosure agreements are not legally enforceable unless classified information is revealed.

Trump himself is facing some criticism about revealing sensitive U.S. government information after he tweeted on Friday a detailed photograph of a launchpad explosion of an Iranian rocket that was set to put a satellite into space.  

Analysts say the public release of an image with such resolution is unprecedented and was probably taken by a KH-11 American spy satellite known as USA-224.

“We had a photo and I released it, which I have the absolute right to do,” Trump told reporters on Friday.

U.S. presidents are able to declassify information at their discretion – the most prominent example being John Kennedy’s decision in 1962 to make public pictures taken by a U-2 spy plane that revealed Soviets troops were placing missiles in Cuba aimed at the United States.

 

…

The Colombian military has killed nine rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces in Colombia (FARC), President Ivan Duque said.

A FARC commander and eight other guerrillas were killed in a bombing raid in southern Colombia on Friday, just days after the group announced it was taking up arms again to ensure their political rights under an historic peace agreement.

Duque said the attack occurred in the municipality of San Vicente del Caguan, located in the province of Caqueta, after he authorized a military operation in rural areas in the southern part of the country.

Duque said Friday’s bombing sends “a clear message” to FARC members to lay down their weapons.

Among those killed was a rebel known by his alias, Gildardo Cucho, a member of a group led by former FARC chief negotiator Luciano Marin, who was trying to recruit potential rebels for a new guerrilla movement.

On Thursday, former FARC commander Ivan Marquez announced in a video that a new offensive would be launched, three years after FARC signed a peace deal with the government, ending five decades of armed conflict in the South American country.

“This is the continuation of the rebel fight in answer to the betrayal of the state,” Marquez, in a 32-minute YouTube video. “We were never beaten or defeated ideologically, so the struggle continues.”

Marquez, a former chief rebel negotiator, appeared alongside some 20 heavily armed guerrillas when he made the announcement, which comes amid severe challenges to the complex peace agreement.

In response to the FARC announcement, Duque said “Colombia takes no threats. Not of any nature.”

Colombia’s peace tribunal also has issued arrest warrants for Marquez and the others who have pledged to take up the insurgency again.

President Duque is offering an $863,000 reward for information leading to the capture of anyone who appeared in the YouTube video, according to Reuters.

Hundreds of former rebels and human rights activists have been murdered since the accord was signed.  That, coupled with delays in funding for economic efforts by former rebels — has exacerbated deep political divisions within the country.

Marquez said the group’s objective is to ensure the installation of a government that will promote peace. Marquez said the group will fight corruption and fracking (the hydraulic fracturing crude oil extraction process) and demand payments from participants in illicit economies and from multinational corporations.

About 7,000 rebels surrendered their weapons to United Nations observers as part of the agreement that was negotiated with the support of the United States, Cuba and Norway. But smaller rebel groups and drug traffickers have filled the void, leaving many citizens frustrated with the slow pace of implementing the agreement.

Security sources estimate the force commanded by Marquez could number 2,200 fighters.

 

…

Current Time TV is a Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.

MOSCOW — Thousands of Russians defied authorities and marched in central Moscow, ignoring officials’ warnings and pressing demands to let independent candidates run in upcoming city council elections.

Police did not interfere with the August 31 protest, which was markedly smaller than previous ones.

However, camouflaged officers linked arms to keep marchers out of the road when demonstrators arrived at Pushkin Square — a symbolically important public park closer to the Kremlin. A heavy presence of detention buses and water-cannon trucks were visible on nearby side streets.

Neither police nor independent watchdogs reported any arrests or detentions from the action — in contrast to other recent protests in which thousands were detained, sometimes violently.

The August 31 action was the latest in a series of confrontations between liberal activists, and Moscow city authorities — and the Kremlin.

Demonstrators clapped and chanted “Russia Will Be Free!” and “Down With The Tsar!” (in a reference to President Vladimir Putin, who has been in power in Russia for two decades), as they walked along a leafy boulevard just a few kilometers north of the Kremlin.

A leading opposition figure and one of the organizers of the march, Lyubov Sobol, led people chanting “Freedom For Political Prisoners.”

“People of different ages have come out because everyone wants justice. They want Russia to be free and happy and to not drown in lawlessness and mayhem. We demand this and we will not back down,” she told reporters.

At Pushkin Square, the ending point for the march, participants milled around, occasionally yelling political chants. One group entered the crowd carrying a large banner citing the clause in the constitution that gives Russians the right to gather peacefully, and yelled “We Need Another Russia!”

Unofficial estimates put the crowd size in the low thousands.

Protesters also yelled “Let Them Through!” as they marched — a reference to the City Duma elections scheduled for Sept. 8.

The refusal by election officials to register some independent candidates has been the impetus for the protests that have been held weekly since mid-July.

However, they’ve also turned into a major challenge for the Kremlin and a reflection of growing impatience among Russians with President Vladimir Putin.

The weekly protests first erupted in July as election authorities blocked some independent candidates from registering to run on September 8.

The initial rallies drew tens of thousands of people in some of the largest political demonstrations seen in the country since 2012. Some, though not all, were authorized by officials ahead of time.

Police have violently dispersed several of the earlier demonstrations, some of which authorities described as “illegal mass gatherings.” More than 2,000 people have been detained, some preemptively, drawing international condemnation.

 

…

Valerie Harper, who scored guffaws and stole hearts as Rhoda Morgenstern on back-to-back hit sitcoms in the 1970s, has died. She was 80. 
 
Longtime family friend Dan Watt confirmed Harper died Friday, adding the family wasn’t immediately releasing any further details.  

Harper was a breakout star playing the lovable sidekick on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” then as the funny leading lady of the spinoff series “Rhoda.” 
 
In March 2013, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. She had battled lung cancer in 2009, and her husband-manager said recently that he’d been advised to place her in hospice. 
 
Harper appeared on Broadway and in feature films, including “Freebie and the Bean” and “Chapter Two.” 

…

A military judge set a date Friday in early 2021 for the start of the long-stalled war crimes trial of five men being held at the Guantanamo Bay prison on charges of planning and aiding the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Air Force Col. W. Shane Cohen set the start date in an order setting motion and evidentiary deadlines in a case that has been bogged down in pretrial litigation. The five defendants were arraigned in May 2012.

In setting the Jan. 11, 2021, start, Cohen noted that the trial at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, “will face a host of administrative and logistics challenges.”

The U.S. has charged the five with war crimes that include terrorism, hijacking and nearly 3,000 counts of murder for their alleged roles planning and providing logistical support to the Sept. 11 plot. They could get the death penalty if convicted at the military commission, which combines elements of civilian and military law.

The five defendants include Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, a senior al-Qaida figure who has portrayed himself as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and other terrorist plots.

Mohammad and his four co-defendants have been held at Guantanamo since September 2006 after several years in clandestine CIA detention facilities following their capture.

…

Peter Clottey of VOA’s English to Africa service contributed to this report.

A lawyer for Tanzanian investigative journalist Erick Kabendera on Friday asked that he get a speedy trial and medical attention after more than four weeks of incarceration.

Appearing with Kabendera at a hearing in magistrate’s court in Dar es Salaam, attorney Jebra Kambole asked that the journalist’s case be resolved quickly. It was adjourned for the third time until Sept. 12, according to Reuters news service, reportedly because the prosecution’s investigation is continuing.

Kabendera was arrested at his home July 29 over what authorities at the time said were problems with his citizenship. He subsequently was charged with involvement in organized crime, money laundering and tax evasion.

Kabendera is being held at Segerea prison on the city’s outskirts.

Kambole later told VOA, in a phone interview, that he had asked prison authorities to allow the journalist to be taken to a state hospital for treatment of respiratory and leg problems that have developed during his incarceration.

“The last time we sit and talk,” Kambole said, the journalist had experienced faintness and leg numbness. “He cannot walk properly.”

Kabendera has been critical of President John Magufuli’s administration and the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi party in stories for The Guardian, The East African and The Times of London.

On Thursday, ahead of the court hearing, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) called for authorities to drop all charges against Kandera.

In a statement, the IFJ cited its concern “that the journalist’s arrest and the confused prosecution based on spurious charges are an attempt to hide what merely is a ruthless retaliation against Kabendera for his reporting.”

After Kabendera’s arrest, the United States and Britain raised concerns about the “steady erosion of due process” in the east African country. Their governments put out a joint statement raising concern about “the irregular handling of the arrest, detention and indictment” of Kabendera.

…

The lineup is now set for the next Democratic presidential debate in September. A total of 10 Democratic contenders qualified for the debate in Houston, Sept. 12, half the number of the previous two debates that were held over two nights. VOA National correspondent Jim Malone has more on who is in the next debate and what it means for the race to pick a Democratic presidential nominee.
 

…

A report by the U.N. refugee agency finds more than half of the world’s refugee children, about 3.7 million, do not go to school and will not gain the skills needed to build a productive future.

The statistics on education for refugee children worsen as the children grow older. The report finds 63% of refugee children go to primary school, compared to 91% globally. But that dwindles to only 24% of refugee adolescents getting a secondary education, compared to 84% globally.

Investing in the future

The U.N. refugee agency says lack of money is keeping refugee children out of school. The head of the Global Communications Service and UNHCR spokeswoman, Melissa Fleming, calls the failure to invest in refugee education shortsighted. She says this is not only sad, but also foolish.

“Not investing in refugees, people who have fled warzones, people who have fled countries where the world is interested in the future of peace is not investing—very simply—in the future of its people … who are interested in reconciliation and not revenge.”

The UNHCR is backing a new initiative aimed at kick-starting secondary education for refugees. The initiative will seek to construct and refurbish schools, train teachers and provide financial support to refugee families to cover the expenses of sending their children to school.

Secondary education

Mamadou Dian Balde is UNHCR deputy director of the Department of Resilience and Solutions. He tells VOA some pilot projects on secondary education for refugee adolescents will be conducted before the initiative gets fully underway.

“We are going to start in a very … in a very, I think, resolute manner in a given number of countries in the eastern Horn of Africa, in Asia and then move into a greater number of countries—also being aware of the scarcity of resources in such an initiative.”

The UNHCR says bringing this initiative to fruition will take vast sums of money. But an initial outlay of $250 million will get moving the process of improving refugee enrollment in secondary education.

…

In India’s northeastern Assam state, anxiety and panic is mounting among nearly four million people who fear they may no longer count as Indian citizens although many have lived in the country for decades.

As part of a campaign to root out illegal immigrants, authorities will publish on Saturday a final list of the state’s bonafide citizens.

The hundreds of thousands whose names were excluded from a preliminary list last July have scrambled through a bureaucratic maze for the past year, trying to dig out documents from government offices or engaging lawyers they often cannot afford to fight for their inclusion in the citizens’ register.

Waiting to hear their fate, they fear being packed to detention camps or becoming “stateless” and stripped of benefits such as voting rights.

“People are going around with bundles of hope, wrapped in plastic, waiting for hearings, lining up to get on to the register,” says Sanjoy Hazarika, international director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative and an Assamese scholar.

The process to identify illegal immigrants has the strong backing of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government, although it was mandated before they came to power by a Supreme Court order to update the state’s citizens’ list. Assam had been wracked by an “anti-foreigner movement” in the 1980’s as indigenous communities complained of being swamped by hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim, illegal migrants from neighboring Bangladesh.

Tracing roots to before 1971

The state’s 33 million residents, many poor and illiterate, were called on to show documentation that they or their ancestors had lived in Assam before Bangladesh’s independence in March 1971. It turned out to be a veritable nightmare for many, say human rights activists.

“Can you imagine working class people like rickshaw pullers keeping with documents dating back 50 years? It’s an incredibly unfair and slanted process where the poor find themselves at the wrong end of the process,” says Colin Gonsalves, a senior lawyer and founder of Human Rights Law Network, who visited Assam to hear about the travails of people running from pillar to post to prove they are of Indian heritage.

Poor people such as daily wage workers in India often have no bank accounts or do not own property.

Critics also point out that the campaign is not targeting recent immigrants but those that may have migrated decades ago.

“Fifty years you have been here, you never thought you would be questioned. You have children, some of them have grandchildren and suddenly you are asked to prove you are Indian,” says Gonsalves. “It’s a thoroughly arbitrary and a biased system.”

The arbitrariness was highlighted when a war veteran, Mohammed Sanaullah was identified as a “foreigner” in May and packed off to a detention camp – he was released days later by the state’s High Court on bail when the case made headlines.

Muslims especially worried

Worries run specially high among Muslims in a state where they make up one third of the population, far higher than in other parts of India. And as many Muslims complain of bias against them, critics have slammed the BJP for exposing communal fault lines and using them as a political target to build their support base in the state.

Among those who have scrambled to prove that they are Indians are 70 members of school principal Mansur Ahmed’s maternal family whose names never made it to the citizens’ list published last year. The problem: his grandfather’s name appeared with different spellings on land records that date back to the 1930’s — a common problem in India, where record keeping in the past was never accurate.

Ahmed says the family has appeared over 12 times before officials hearing appeals. “They are becoming tired, appearing in interviews again and again. Still they are in confusion whether their name will come or not,” he says.  “It is very distressing for all people, specially Muslims, they are in great fear,”

Selling assets to prove citizenship

The BJP has strongly countered charges of anti-Muslim prejudice and pointed out that the 4 million who were excluded from the citizens’ list includes hundreds of thousands of Hindus also.

Many of these poor people have pledged their land or sold their farm animals as they frantically try to raise funds to prove that they are of Indian heritage, according to Mubarak Ali, a retired army soldier who is now with the voluntary group Citizens for Peace and Justice.

“They have to bribe to get documents and sometimes travel as far away as 400 kilometers to appeal at the designated office. And they have to carry all members of the family with them,” he says. “Poor people don’t have so many funds.”

And as tens of thousands stare at uncertainty, Sanjoy Hazarika points out that authorities have not prepared a roadmap on how to deal with those whose names do not figure on the list.

“What happens afterwards? I don’t think governments have addressed that issue very clearly except speaking in rhetorical flourishes,” he says. “The whole thing is a mess.”

Widespread criticism

Deportations are not an option — Bangladesh has said the citizenship exercise is India’s internal matter. But many fear being sent off to detention camps — six in the state already have about 1000 inmates and 10 more are being set up. Or they could just be left in limbo, with no access to rights such as voting, healthcare and education.

The government has said that those excluded can appeal to foreigners tribunals, whose numbers are being expanded. It is also promising legal aid to the poor although it may be difficult for poor people to negotiate long legal battles.

Despite widespread criticism of the controversial exercise, the government is not backing off. In fact, Home Minister Amit Shah, a close aide of Prime Minister Modi, who during an election rally called illegal immigrants “termites,” has said the campaign to root them out will go nationwide. So far Assam is the only state in the country to have a citizens list.

The contentious issue of citizenship has been further muddied by a BJP-backed proposed law that would grant citizenship rights to non Muslims such as Hindus and Sikhs from neighboring countries, but exclude Muslims.

For the time being, all eyes will be on the numbers that do not make it to Assam’s citizen’s register on Saturday — human rights activists worry it could add up to the a massive stateless population.

…

A four-legged hero who saved then-President Barack Obama from a White House intruder is now an award-winner in Britain.

Hurricane, a former Secret Service dog, has earned the Order of Merit from British veterinary charity PDSA. He’s the first foreigner to win the honor, to be bestowed at a London ceremony in October.

The Belgian Malinois intercepted an intruder who scaled the White House fence in October 2014. The intruder swung Hurricane around, punching and kicking him, but the dog dragged him to the ground, allowing Secret Service agents to intercept him. Obama, home at the time, was not harmed. 

Handler Marshall Mirarchi described Hurricane as a “legend” within the service after the attack. Mirarchi said injuries suffered in the incident contributed to Hurricane’s 2016 retirement from the Secret Service.

…