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South Sudan activists on Monday began a campaign to pressure the country’s warring parties to meet a fast-approaching deadline to form a unity government as part of their 2018 peace agreement. 

The Civil Society Forum, a coalition of more than 100 organizations, on Monday marked the beginning of a 90-day countdown to the November deadline for the ruling party and opposition to form a government. 

“We have not got much time left. There are a lot of tasks that need to be accomplished and business should not remain as usual,” Geoffrey Lou Duke, a member of the coalition, told AFP.

South Sudan descended into war in 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy and fellow former rebel leader Riek Machar of plotting a coup.

The parties signed a peace deal in September for Kiir to form a government with Machar, but the sides already missed the first deadline, which was in May.  

Activists say scant progress has been made since then, including on vital security measures to stabilize a country reeling from nearly six years of conflict.  

The fighting has been marked by ethnic violence and brutal atrocities, and left about 380,000 dead while some four million have fled their homes.

Security funds

Before any unity government is formed, the parties are supposed to canton their fighters and redeploy them as part of the national army, police and other security forces. 

Foreign donors say it is up to Kiir’s administration to fund the security reforms. Parties to the peace deal say its implementation will cost $285 million but that only around $10 million has been provided.  

Machar’s party says he will not return to Juba until the security reforms are complete. 

“We have to see a sense of urgency and we do not want to see another situation where we give all sorts of excuses for having failed to form the transitional government,” Jame David Kolok, another member of the Civil Society Forum, told AFP Monday. “The campaign is to make sure every second from now onwards counts.”

…

European researchers say a vaccine for chlamydia — the world’s most common sexually transmitted disease — shows promise in preliminary clinical trials, but more tests are needed.

A study in the medical journal Lancet says the vaccine triggered an immune response in tests on 35 healthy women.

The researchers say they must now determine if the vaccine can actually prevent chlamydia.

Doctors say a vaccine against the disease would have a huge impact on public health and the economy around the world.

“Given the impact of the chlamydia epidemic on women’s health, infant health through transmission, and increased susceptibility to other sexual diseases, a global unmet medical need exists for a vaccine,” said Peter Anderson, Imperial College of London professor and co-author of the study.

Although chlamydia is easily diagnosed and treated with antibiotics, such treatment has failed to curb the epidemic. About 130 million people around the world are infected every year.

Untreated, it can lead to pelvic inflammation in women and possible infertility. Chlamydia in pregnancy could cause miscarriage, stillbirth, or premature delivery. 

…

Gun owners in New Zealand turned in more than 10,000 firearms in a buyback program established after the country’s worst mass shooting in modern history.

New Zealand banned most automatic and semi-automatic weapons after a gunman shot and killed 51 people and wounded scores more at two Christchurch mosques in March.

As of Sunday, 10,242 firearms had been surrendered since the program began last month. Another 1,269 have been handed in under an amnesty program that allows people to turn in their guns without any questions about how or when they obtained them, New Zealand police said Monday.

The buyback program will continue until Dec. 20. 

New Zealand lawmakers vowed to toughen the country’s gun laws after the shootings.

“On March 15, the nation witnessed a terrorist attack that demonstrated the weakness of New Zealand’s gun laws,” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said at the time. “The guns used in this attack had the power to shoot continuously. The times for the easy availability of these weapons must end. And today, they will.”

A bill to ban semi-automatic weapons was introduced in parliament two weeks after the shooting. 

Australia also introduced a nationwide gun buyback program after a shooter killed 36 people in 1996. About 650,000 weapons were collected. It also banned semi-automatic and pump-action rifles and shotguns.

Since then, research has shown, Australia has had no mass shootings, and homicides and suicides by gun have both reduced dramatically.

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In one of her first moves as Puerto Rico’s new governor, Wanda Vazquez announced late Sunday that she is suspending a pending $450,000 contract that is part of the program to rebuild and strengthen the island’s power grid, which was destroyed by Hurricane Maria.

Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority, which is more than $9 billion in debt, had been expected to sign the contract with Stantec, a consulting firm based in Canada. Vazquez did not explain why she was suspending the deal, saying only that transparency is a priority for her administration. 

“We are evaluating all government contracts, no exceptions,” said Vazquez, who on Wednesday became Puerto Rico’s third governor in a week following popular protests over government corruption and mismanagement. “There is no room in this administration for unreasonable expenses.”

A Stantec official based in Puerto Rico did not respond to a request for comment.

However, a power company spokesman emailed a statement to The Associated Press saying that PREPA executive director Jose Ortiz planned to meet with Vazquez on Monday to explain why it was important to sign the contract. Ortiz said the contract has to be submitted before Oct. 6 so the U.S. territory can obtain federal hurricane recovery funds.

It is unclear whether Vazquez’s move will delay efforts to rebuild and bolster the power grid, which remains fragile and is prone to outages that have exasperated many of the island’s 3.2 million people. Power company spokesman Jorge Burgos said that he had no further details and that more information would be released after Monday’s meeting.

Puerto Rico’s power company has awarded several multimillion-dollar contracts since the Category 4 storm hit on Sept. 20, 2017, and many of those deals have come under intense scrutiny, with some being cancelled. Currently, Mammoth Energy Services’ subsidiary Cobra Acquisitions, which has some $1.8 billion in contracts with the power company, is facing a federal investigation.

Economist Jose Caraballo said he hopes Vazquez’s announcement is the first of more changes to come.

“I hope this isn’t a smoke screen and that there’s a real audit,” he said in a phone interview. “That’s what all these people who have lost trust in the government expect.”

Puerto Rico has been mired in political turmoil, with then-Gov. Ricardo Rossello resigning Aug. 2 following large protests. The island’s Supreme Court then ruled that his replacement was illegally sworn in, which left Vazquez, the justice secretary, next in line to become governor. The U.S. territory also is struggling to emerge from a 13-year recession and trying to restructure some of its more than $70 billion public debt load. 

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Conservative candidate Alejandro Giammattei has won the presidential runoff election in Guatemala. 

The election commission said late Sunday that with more than 90% of the polling places counted, Giammattei had won nearly 60% of the vote.  His opponent, former first lady Sandra Torres garnered 40%. 

Just moments after declaring victory, Giammattei said he would seek to revise a deal that current president Jimmy Morales made with U.S. President Donald Trump, requiring Hondurans and Salvadorans to seek asylum in Guatemala when crossing through the country to reach the U.S.  It will be up to Guatemala’s new president, who takes office in January, to sign or nullify the agreement.

The controversial migration pact is highly unpopular in Guatemala.  

Giammattei is a 63-year-old doctor.  He has campaigned for the presidency three times before this year, finally winning it on his fourth run. 

His opponent Torres is a business woman who has operated a textile and apparel company.  She married and divorced former President Alvaro Colom who was Guatemala’s president from 2008 to 2012.  

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As America’s opioid crisis spiraled into a fentanyl epidemic, prosecutors say one young Utah man made himself a drug kingpin by creating counterfeit prescription painkillers laced with the deadly drug and mailing them to homes across the United States. 

Former Eagle Scout Aaron Shamo, 29, will stand trial beginning Monday on allegations that he and a small group of fellow millennials ran a multimillion-dollar empire from the basement of his suburban Salt Lake City home by trafficking hundreds of thousands of pills containing fentanyl, the potent synthetic opioid that has exacerbated the country’s overdose epidemic in recent years. 

The federal government’s case is expected to offer a glimpse at how the drug, which has killed tens of thousands of Americans, can be imported from China, pressed into fake pills and sold through online black markets to people in every state.

Prosecutors have alleged that dozens of the ring’s customers died in overdoses, though the defense disputes that and Shamo is charged only in connection to one: a 21-year-old identified as R.K., who died in June 2016 after snorting fentanyl allegedly passed off as prescription oxycodone.

Shamo’s family, though, said he’s been singled out even as deeply involved friends are offered more lenient plea deals. His father, Mike Shamo, said his son was a chess whiz as a kid who experimented with marijuana in his teen years, but later earned his Eagle Scout badge crocheting blankets for a hospital. 

Aaron Shamo became an internet-savvy aspiring entrepreneur and health-conscious workout buff who loved self-improvement books like “The Secret” and had dreams of starting his own tech-support business, Mike Shamo told The Associated Press. 

“He was brought in and saw the opportunity for making money, and he didn’t truly understand the danger behind what he was doing, how dangerous the drugs were,” he said. “I think he was able to separate what he was doing because he never saw the customer. To him, it was just numbers on a screen.”

At the time of Aaron Shamo’s 2016 arrest, authorities said the bust ranked among the largest in the country. 

The drug operation

In a raid on his home in the upscale suburb of Cottonwood Heights, agents found a still-running pill press in the basement, thousands of pills and more than $1 million in cash stuffed in garbage bags, according to court documents. 

The group had started two years before, and grew to include more than a dozen people, some of whom Aaron Shamo met working at an eBay call center, court documents allege. Prosecutors say it started with a partnership between Aaron Shamo and Drew Crandall, a shy friend he had bonded with over skateboarding and tips for talking to girls. The pair eventually began importing and reselling steroids to gym buddies, and the operation grew from there, according to court documents. 

Another man, Jonathan “Luke” Paz, has also pleaded guilty to helping develop the recipe and press the fentanyl-laced pills after Crandall left on an extended international trip. 

Attorneys for Crandall and Paz did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Aaron Shamo ordered the fentanyl from China and paid a number of people to receive it at their homes and turn it over to him, according to authorities. He and Paz allegedly cut the powder, added other fillers and pressed it into pills, using dyes and stamps to mimic the appearance of legitimate pharmaceuticals, prosecutors said. 

Public health experts warn that such mom-and-pop drug trafficking networks can be especially dangerous: They cut and mix fentanyl — a few flakes of which can be deadly — without sophisticated equipment, meaning in a single batch, one counterfeit pill might contain little fentanyl and another enough to kill instantly. 

They were shipping “disguised poison,” prosecutor Michael Gadd said at one hearing. “If you think for a moment about what type of people abuse prescription oxycodone, it’s your neighbor, it’s my neighbor. It’s people who had a knee surgery and got hooked.”

The pills were sold online, through a dark-web marketplace store called Pharma-Master. The dark web is a second layer of the internet reached by a special browser and often used for illegal activity, but it still has sites with user-friendly interfaces and customer reviews, similar to platforms like Amazon and eBay. 

Pharma-Master allegedly grew to become one of the most prominent darknet dealers, sometimes processing 20 to 50 orders a day, according to court documents. 

When orders came in, packagers counted pills, sealed them with a vacuum sealer and slipped them into envelopes or boxes addressed to homes across the U.S., prosecutors said. They put pills into Mylar bags to mask the contents, wrote fake return addresses like “Jamaica Green Coffee,” and even included phony invoices. The packages were dropped in mailboxes all over the Salt Lake area to hide from police, authorities said. 

Some were small orders from people buying for themselves, but in other cases, the group shipped thousands of pills in bulk to gang members and drug dealers who then resold them on the street, prosecutors allege. 

Each pill cost less than a penny to make, and could be sold on the street as a legitimate pharmaceutical for $20 or more, prosecutors said. 

In June 2016, though, U.S. customs agents seized a package of fentanyl addressed to someone receiving it for Aaron Shamo, and things unraveled from there, according to court documents. 

Five months later, investigators had found an incoming shipment from a Chinese company known as “Express,” which is also under investigation. They also scooped up outgoing shipments: A single day’s worth included 35,000 fentanyl-laced pills in 52 packages addressed to homes in 26 states, prosecutors said. One box alone had a wholesale value estimated at more than $400,000, according to court documents. 

Aaron Shamo’s house was also raided in late 2016, and the following spring Crandall was arrested in Hawaii when he returned from the globe-trotting trip through Australia, New Zealand and southeast Asia to marry his girlfriend.

In the years since his arrest, Aaron Shamo has become something of an advocate for other jail inmates, starting a letter-writing campaign calling on local churches to write to people behind bars to give them hope for life after incarceration, said his father, Mike Shamo. He’s also written to the governor, calling for more rehabilitation programs for jail inmates. 

Meanwhile, Paz and Crandall have already agreed to plea deals and could testify against their onetime friend, along with a potential parade of other alleged co-conspirators.

His family will be watching the trial, too. 

“We just want equity. We want equality for everyone in this, so those that were equally guilty are held accountable for their actions,” Mike Shamo said.

…

Tanzania was in mourning Sunday, preparing to bury 69 people who perished when a crashed fuel tanker exploded as crowds rushed to syphon off leaking petrol.

President John Magufuli declared a period of mourning through Monday following the deadly blast near the town of Morogoro, west of Dar es Salaam.

He will be represented at the funerals by Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa, an official statement said.

“We’re currently mourning the loss of 69 people, the last of whom died while being transferred by helicopter to the national hospital in Dar es Salaam,” Majaliwa told residents in comments broadcast on Tanzanian television.

The number of injured stood at 66, he said.

The burials will start Sunday afternoon, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Jenista Mhagama announced during the morning after relatives identified the dead.

“The preparations for the burials have been completed. Individual graves have been dug and the coffins are ready,” Mhagama said, adding that experts would be available to offer psychological counselling to the victims’ relatives.

DNA tests would be carried out on bodies that were no longer recognizable, Mhagama said, adding that families could take the remains of their loved ones and organize their own burials if they preferred.

In the latest in a series of similar disasters in Africa, 39 seriously hurt patients had been taken to hospital in Dar es Salaam while 17 others were being treated in Morogoro, 200 kilometers (125 miles) west of the economic capital of Tanzania.

Footage from the scene showed the truck engulfed in flames and huge clouds of black smoke, with charred bodies. The burnt-out remains of motorcycle taxis lie scattered on the ground among scorched trees.

A video posted on social media showed dozens of people carrying yellow jerricans around the truck.

‘No-one wanted to listen’

“We arrived at the scene with two neighbors just after the truck was overturned. While some good Samaritans were trying to get the driver and the other two people out of the truck, others were jostling each other, equipped with jerricans, to collect petrol,” teacher January Michael told AFP.

“At the same time, someone was trying to pull the battery out of the vehicle. We warned that the truck could explode at any moment but no one wanted to listen, so we went on our way, but we had barely turned on our heels when we heard the explosion.”

President Magufuli called Saturday for people to stop the dangerous practice of stealing fuel in such a way, a common event in many poor parts of Africa.

He issued a statement saying he was “very shocked” by the looting of fuel from damaged vehicles.

“There are vehicles that carry dangerous fuel oil, as in this case in Morogoro, there are others that carry toxic chemicals or explosives, let’s stop this practice, please,” Magufuli said.

Last month, 45 people were killed and more than 100 injured in central Nigeria when a petrol tanker crashed and then exploded as people tried to take the fuel.

Among the deadliest such disasters, 292 people lost their lives in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo in July 2010, and in September 2015 at least 203 people died the South Sudan town of Maridi.

…

Myanmar troops and emergency responders scrambled to provide aid in flood-hit parts of the country Sunday after rising waters forced residents to flee by boat and a landslide killed at least 52 people.

Every year monsoon rains hammer Myanmar and other countries across Southeast Asia, submerging homes, displacing residents and triggering landslides.

But this season’s deluge has tested disaster response after a fatal landslide on Friday in southeastern Mon state was followed by heavy flooding that reached the roofs of houses and treetops in nearby towns.

Hundreds of soldiers, firefighters and local rescue workers were still pulling bodies and vehicles out of the muddy wreckage of Paung township on Sunday.

“The latest death toll we have from the landslide in Mon state was 52,” Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun told AFP.

As the rainy season reaches its peak, the country’s armed forces are pitching in and have readied helicopters to deliver supplies.

“Access to affected regions is still good. Our ground forces can reach the areas so far,” Zaw Min Tun said.

Heavy rains pounded other parts of Mon, Karen and Kachin states, flooding roads and destroying bridges that crumbled under the weight of the downpour.

But the bulk of the relief effort is focused on hard-hit Mon, which sits on the coast of the Andaman sea.

About two-thirds of the state’s Ye township remained flooded, an administrator said, as drone footage showed only the tops of houses, tree branches and satellite dishes poking above the waters.

‘We thought we were dead’

Families realized they had to leave in the early hours Sunday, packing possessions into boats, rowing towards higher ground or swimming away.

Than Htay, a 40-year-old from Ye town, told AFP that water rose to their waists around 02:00 am and she and her family members started shouting for help.

The heavy rains muffled their pleas but a boat happened to pass by and gave them a ride.

“That’s why we survived. We thought we were dead,” she said.

Another resident said this year’s flooding was the worst they had experienced.

Floodwaters have submerged more than 4,000 houses in the state and displaced more than 25,000 residents who have sought shelter in monasteries and pagodas, according to state-owned Global New Light of Myanmar.

Vice President Henry Van Thio visited landslide survivors in a Paung township village on Saturday and “spoke of his sorrow” while promising relief, the paper reported.

The search for victims continued later Sunday though the rain has made the process more difficult.

“We are still working. We will continue searching in the coming days as well,” Paung township administrator Zaw Moe Aung said.

Climate scientists in 2015 ranked Myanmar at the top of a global list of nations hardest hit by extreme weather.

That year more than 100 people died in floods that also displaced hundreds of thousands.

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Syrian government forces captured an important village in the northwestern province of Idlib on Sunday, drawing close to a major town in the last rebel stronghold in the country, state media and opposition activists said.

 The capture of Habeet opens up an approach to southern regions of Idlib, which is home to some 3 million people, many of them displaced by fighting in other parts of the country. Habeet is also close to the town of Khan Sheikhoun, which has been held by rebels since 2012, and to parts of the highway linking the capital, Damascus, with the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest.
 
Syrian troops have been trying to secure the M5 highway, which has been closed since 2012. Idlib is a stronghold for al-Qaida-linked militants and other armed groups.
 
Syrian troops have been attacking Idlib and a stretch of land around it since April 30. The three-month campaign of airstrikes and shelling has killed more than 2,000 people on both sides and displaced some 400,000.
 
The government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media said the Syrian army captured the village after fierce fighting with al-Qaida-linked militants.
 
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitor, described the capture of Habeet as “the most important advance” by government forces since April 30. It said the overnight fighting left 18 insurgents and nine pro-government gunmen dead.
 
Syrian troops have been pushing their way into Idlib and rebel-held northern parts of Hama province in recent weeks under the cover of intense airstrikes and shelling.
 
In Damascus, meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar Assad attended Eid al-Adha prayers in a mosque.
 
State news agency SANA showed Assad attending the Muslim prayers early Sunday at Afram Mosque along with top officials, including the prime minister and the country’s grand mufti.
 
Over the past few years, Assad’s forces have been able to capture most areas controlled by rebels in other parts of the country, including the eastern suburbs of Damascus.
 
Eid al-Adha, or the Feast of the Sacrifice, marks the willingness of the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham to Christians and Jews) to sacrifice his son.

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The second season of an AMC-TV drama series follows the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and a number of bizarre deaths haunting a community.

“The Terror: Infamy” is set to premiere Monday and stars Derek Mio and original “Star Trek” cast member George Takei as they navigate the forced internment and supernatural spirits that surround them.

It’s the first television series depicting the internment of Japanese Americans on such a massive scale and camps were recreated with detail to illustrate the conditions and racism internees faced.

The show’s new season is part of the Ridley Scott-produced anthology series.

Mio, who is fourth-generation Japanese American and plays Chester Nakayama, said he liked the idea of adding a supernatural element to a historical event such as Japanese American internment. He says he had relatives who lived on Terminal Island outside of Los Angeles and were taken to camps.

Residents there were some of the first forced into internment camps after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

“If you add the supernatural element, it’s a little more accessible and now it’s like a mainstream subject and it can open up more discussion about what really happened and what’s going on right now,” Mio said.

It was a role personal to him as well. “It’s not just another kind of acting job for me,” Mio said. “I really do feel a responsibility to tell this story that my ancestors actually went through.”

From 1942 to 1945, more than 110,000 Japanese Americans were ordered to camps in California, Colorado, Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming, Utah, Texas, Arkansas, New Mexico and other sites.

Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, forced Japanese Americans, regardless of loyalty or citizenship, to leave the West Coast and other areas for the camps surrounded by barbed wire and military police. Half of those detainees were children.

Takei, who was interned in a camp as a child, said he was impressed with the show’s research into recreating the camp.

“The barracks reminded me again – mentally, I was able to go back to my childhood. That’s exactly the way it was,” Takei said. “So for me, it was both fulfilling to raise the awareness to this extent of the terror. But also to make the storytelling that much more compelling.”

The series also involves others who are connected to historic World War II events. Josef Kubota Wladyka, one of the show’s directors, had a grandfather who was in Hiroshima when the atomic bomb dropped and managed to survive.

Max Borenstein, one of the show’s executive producers who lost relatives at the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, said the show’s horror genre still doesn’t compare to the horror of the internment camp.

“It was important to do the research, the lived reality that people faced,” Borenstein said. “The fact of taking people who are citizens of the country and (putting them in camps) is a great stain of our country.”

Co-creator Alexander Woo, who is Chinese American, said he believes the series is especially relevant now given the debate over immigration in the U.S. and Europe.

“The struggle that immigrants go through of embracing a country that doesn’t embrace you back is a story, unfortunately, that keeps repeating,” Woo said. “There’s going to be some people who likely didn’t know of the internment. There will be some people who had relatives in camps. We have a responsibility to be accurate.”

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A cease-fire agreement has been reached to end fighting in the Libyan capital of Tripoli during the upcoming Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha.

Libyan National Army (LNA) chief Khalifa Haftar agreed to the United Nation’s-proposed cease-fire Saturday, his spokesman, Ahmad al-Mesmari, said at a news conference in Benghazi.

UN Calls for Eid Truce in Libya

U.N. envoy Ghassan Salamé warns that power grab for the capital, Tripoli, could plunge entire country into conflict and open door to terrorist groups who are already a threat inside Libya

Libya’s U.N.-supported government said earlier Saturday it had accepted the proposed cease-fire for the holiday, which begins Sunday.

Militias allied with the government have been fighting since April against an LNA campaign to seize the capital.  

More than 1,000 people have been killed in the fighting, according to the World Health Organization. More than 120,000 others have been displaced.

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The U.N. refugee agency reports more than half-a-million Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh have received identity documents that will give them better access to aid. 

An estimated 900,000 Rohingya refugees are living in overcrowded, squalid camps in the town of Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh.  Most of them fled there two years ago to escape persecution and violence in Myanmar.

A joint registration project by Bangladeshi authorities and the U.N. refugee agency will give identity documents to more than 500,000 of the refugees, many for the first time.  

The data on these fraud-proof, biometric cards will give national authorities and humanitarian partners a better understanding of the population and its needs.  UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic tells VOA the data collected will allow aid agencies to better help people with specific needs. 

“The point of the verification exercise, of conducting a biometric data registration is first and foremost to protect the right of the Rohingya refugees to return to their homes… It is meant to ensure far better planning and far better targeting of the assistance, of very specific types of assistance, that, for example, women would need, that children would need,” said Mahecic.

Mahecic explains the new registration cards indicate Myanmar is the country of origin.  He says that information is critical in establishing and safeguarding the right of Rohingya refugees to return to their homes in Myanmar, if and when they decide to do so.

The UNHCR and other humanitarian agencies say they do not believe conditions in Myanmar currently are safe enough for the refugees to return home.

The registration process began in June 2018.   On average, some 5,000 refugees are being registered every day.  The UNHCR says it aims to complete biometric registrations and provide identification documents for the remaining 400,000 people in Cox’s Bazar by the end of the year.

…

GARDEN GROVE, CALIFORNIA – The suspect in a Southern California stabbing rampage that left four people dead and two injured pleaded not guilty Friday to murder, attempted murder and other counts. 

Zachary Castaneda was arrested Wednesday by police responding to two hours of slashing and stabbing attacks in Garden Grove and Santa Ana. 

Authorities said Castaneda, 33, was covered in blood when he was taken into custody after walking out of a 7-Eleven store and dropping a knife and a gun that he’d cut from the belt of a security guard he’d just killed. 

The 11 felonies filed against Castaneda also included assault with a deadly weapon to cause great bodily injury, aggravated mayhem, robbery and burglary. 

He was arraigned in his jail cell instead of court. Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the Orange County district attorney, could not immediately say why. 

Castaneda had been kept in restraints when detectives tried to interview him. 

“He remained violent with us through the night,” Garden Grove Police Chief Tom DaRe said. “He never told us why he did this.” 

Information about his defense attorney was not immediately available. 

Neighbors killed

Authorities on Friday said Gerardo Fresnares Beltran, 63, was fatally stabbed in his Garden Grove apartment. His roommate Helmuth Hauprich, 62, was also killed in the attack.  Castaneda was their neighbor. 

Robert Parker, 58, of Orange and Pascual Rioja Lorenzo, 39, of Garden Grove were stabbed separately in Santa Ana. 

Rioja Lorenzo was a construction worker and devout churchgoer from Mexico. 

He had lived in the U.S. for more than a decade but his wife and 16-year-old son remain in Mexico, said Saul Abrego, an official with the United Pentecostal Church La Senda Antigua in Santa Ana. 

Rioja Lorenzo held home Bible study events for the church, and Abrego said he thought he had just come from work and was heading to one such event when he was attacked. 

“It was just a big shock for us,” Abrego said.  

Court records show that Castaneda was a gang member with a criminal history of assault and weapon and drug crimes. 

Castaneda’s criminal history dates to 2004 and includes a prison stint for possession of methamphetamine for sale while armed with an assault rifle. 

Castaneda was convicted in 2009 of spousal abuse and paroled after serving about a year in prison, corrections officials said.  

Police had previously gone to Castaneda’s apartment to deal with a child custody issue, Garden Grove Police Lt. Carl Whitney said. 

The suspect’s mother had been living with him and had once asked police how she could evict her son, Whitney said. 

Wife sought protection

Court records show Castaneda’s wife, Yessica Rodriguez, sought a restraining order last year after she said Castaneda threw a beer can at her 16-year-old daughter. She said she also sought an order against him in 2009 when he broke her arm during a fight. 

Rodriguez filed for divorce earlier this year, court records show, and has custody of two sons. 

Police believe Castaneda killed the two men at the apartment complex where he lived about an hour after burglarizing their unit, then robbed businesses, including a Garden Grove insurance agency where a 54-year-old woman was stabbed. She was hospitalized in critical but stable condition, police said. 

Castaneda is accused of robbing a check-cashing business next door to the insurance agency; a woman there was unharmed. 

Later, a man pumping gas at a Chevron station was attacked without warning and slashed so badly that his nose was nearly severed, police said. He was in stable condition. 

…

A federal judge in Virginia ruled Friday that a school board’s transgender bathroom ban discriminated against a former student, Gavin Grimm.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen in Norfolk is the latest of several nationwide that have favored transgender students facing similar policies. But the issue remains far from settled in the country as a patchwork of differing policies governs the nation’s schools.

The Gloucester County School Board’s policy required Grimm to use girls’ restrooms or private bathrooms. The judge wrote that Grimm’s rights were violated under the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause as well as under Title IX, the federal policy that protects against gender-based discrimination.

“There is no question that the Board’s policy discriminates against transgender students on the basis of their gender noncomformity,” Allen wrote.

“Under the policy, all students except for transgender students may use restrooms corresponding with their gender identity,” she continued. “Transgender students are singled out, subjected to discriminatory treatment, and excluded from spaces where similarly situated students are permitted to go.”

Similar claims

Allen’s ruling will likely strengthen similar claims made by students in eastern Virginia. It could have a greater impact if the case goes to an appeals court that oversees Maryland, West Virginia and the Carolinas.

Harper Jean Tobin, policy director for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said last month that she expected Grimm’s case to join the “steady drum beat” of recent court rulings favoring transgender students in states including Maryland, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

But she said differing transgender bathroom policies are still in place in schools across the country. Those polices are often influenced by court rulings or by states and cities that have passed protections for people who are transgender.

“Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times for transgender students really can depend on where you live and who your principal is,” she said.

One fight in long battle

The judge’s opinion is the latest step in Grimm’s yearslong legal battle, which has come to embody the debate about transgender student rights.

Grimm, who is now 20, has been fighting the case since the end of his sophomore year at Gloucester High School, which is about 60 miles (95 kilometers) east of Richmond and near the Chesapeake Bay. Since graduating in 2017, he has moved to California where he’s worked as an activist and attended community college.

Grimm’s lawsuit became a federal test case when it was supported by the administration of then-President Barack Obama and scheduled to go before the U.S. Supreme Court in 2017. But the high court hearing was canceled after President Donald Trump rescinded an Obama-era directive that students can choose bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.

The school board has argued that Grimm remains female, even though he obtained a court order and Virginia birth certificate declaring his sex is male in 2016, when he was still in 12th grade.

The board’s attorney, David Corrigan, argued in court last month that gender is not a “societal construct” and that it doesn’t matter that Grimm underwent chest reconstruction surgery and hormone therapy. Corrigan had told the judge that bathroom policy is based on a binary, “two choices for all” view of gender.

Contacted by The Associated Press after the ruling, Corrigan declined to comment in an email.

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Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, why and how it could impact your life, family or business, so we created a weekly digest of the top original immigration, migration and refugee reporting from across VOA. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. 
 
U.S. border 
 
A month after the start of a program forcing migrants to remain in Mexico while awaiting U.S. immigration hearings, the policy is stranding thousands, most of whom are from Central America. Hundreds are now being bused to Mexico’s southern Chiapas state, in what one Mexican immigration official described to VOA as a policy of “deportation in disguise.”
 
Raids in Mississippi 
 
Hundreds of immigrant workers detained in Mississippi were released Thursday, a day after federal agents arrested 680 undocumented migrants in raids on food-processing plants, the largest such operation in the United States in 10 years.
 

Raids’ long-term effects 
 
After Wednesday’s raids in the six Mississippi towns where the poultry plants were located, community members said the effects of the roundups would be felt long term.
 
Another court case 
 
Advocacy groups are suing the Trump administration, hoping to block last month’s rule that expands the number of migrants who can be subject to an accelerated deportation process in which they do not go before immigration judges.
 
School in a bus 
 
Migrant children attend school in a bus at the Mexican border city of Tijuana, just kilometers from the U.S. border. They sit in two neat lines and open their notebooks at desks that once served as passenger seats.
 

Immigration court 
 
The Trump administration launched a pilot program in 10 cities, from Baltimore to Los Angeles, aimed at fast-tracking court hearings and discouraging migrants from making the journey to seek refuge in the United States. Immigration lawyers, however, said the new timetable does not give their clients enough time to testify and get documents from abroad to bolster their claims.
 
July migration statistics 
 
Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan announced U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s enforcement actions for July, indicating more than a 20 percent decrease in U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions at the southwest border for the second month in a row.

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U.S. President Donald Trump is renewing focus on mental illness as a major cause of gun violence, following two mass shootings in two days in the U.S. that killed 31 people. VOA’s Brian Padden reports that while Trump has called for more treatment and involuntary detention of mentally disturbed individuals, his administration has rolled back federal regulations to restrict the mentally ill from buying guns and has tried to abolish a health care law that expanded access to mental health services.

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Climate change is about to hit the world in the stomach, according to the United Nations. A new scientific report from the world body that examines land degradation concludes that climate change will imperil crops and worsen hunger.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
 

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Russia appears to be using one of its most powerful weapons — tourism — against Georgia, its smaller neighbor to the south. Moscow has banned direct flights between Russia and Georgia, after the latest wave of protests in Georgia against Russia’s occupation of two of its regions.  Moscow has also called for its citizens to return home. That is meant to damage the Georgian economy, which is highly dependent on tourism.  Ricardo Marquina reports from Tbilisi in this report narrated by Jim Randle.
 

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Raging floods across Myanmar have forced tens of thousands of people from their homes in recent weeks, officials said Thursday, as monsoon rains pummel the nation.

Aerial images from Shwegyin township in Bago region showed how the area had become a vast lake of water.

Only the rooftops could be seen of many homes lining the Sittaung river.

Emergency services have been helping bring people to dry ground, many seeking shelter in local monasteries.

Others waded through waist-deep floodwaters or rowed on wooden boats with pets and any belongings they could take with them.

Than Aye, 42, who has diabetes and is partially-sighted, struggled to escape the deluge.

“I could not do anything when the flooding started but then the fire service came to rescue me by boat,” he told AFP from the safety of the monastery that has been his home for the last five days.

The most severe flooding is currently in eastern Bago region and Mon and Karen states, according to the social welfare ministry.

“There are currently over 30,000 people (across the country) displaced by floods,” said director general of disaster management Ko Ko Naing.

UN’s Office for Coordinated Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates around 89,000 people have been displaced in recent weeks, although many have since been able to return home.

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Damascus on Thursday accused Turkey of “expansionist ambitions,” saying Ankara’s agreement with Washington to set up a so-called safe zone in northeastern Syria only helps such plans and is a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.

The statement by Syria’s Foreign Ministry comes a day after the U.S. and Turkey announced they’d agreed to form a coordination center to set up the safe zone. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the move, which is designed to address Ankara’s security concerns, was important.

The announcement of the deal may have averted for now a Turkish incursion into that part of Syria. Ankara seeks to push out U.S.-allied Syrian Kurdish fighters from the region as it considers them terrorists, allied with a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey.
 
The Syrian Kurdish fighters were the main fighting force on the ground against Islamic State militants in the area, and Washington has been hard pressed to protect its partners.

Damascus said the Syrian Kurdish groups “bear historic responsibility” for the U.S-Turkey deal and urged them to drop “this aggressive U.S.-Turkish project” and align with the Syrian government instead.

Damascus has had no presence along the Turkish border since 2012, when Syrian rebels and Syrian Kurdish groups took control of different parts of the region.
 
After three days of talks in Ankara and repeated Turkish threats of a military incursion in northeast Syria, Turkish and U.S. officials agreed that the coordination center would be based in Turkey and would be set up “as soon as possible,” according to the Turkish defense ministry.
 
The ministry did not provide further details but said the sides had agreed that the safe zone would become a “corridor of peace” and that all additional measures would be taken to ensure the return of refugees to Syria.

Turkey has been pressing to control _ in coordination with the U.S. a 19-25 mile-deep zone within Syria, east of the Euphrates River, and wants no Syrian Kurdish forces there.

In its previous military incursions, Turkey entered northwestern Syria, expelling Islamic State militants and Syrian Kurdish fighters from the area and setting up Turkish military posts there, with allied Syrian opposition fighters in control. Turkish troops also man observation points that ring the last opposition stronghold in the northwest _ posts that are meant to uphold a now fraying cease-fire.

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