Ecuadorean indigenous and union organizations kept protests going on Saturday and promised no let-up in their push to overturn austerity measures by President Lenin Moreno’s government that have convulsed the nation for three days.

Demonstrations had been turning violent and shaping into a major challenge for Moreno, who won election in 2017 and has set his oil-producing nation on a centrist track after years of socialist rule under predecessor Rafael Correa.
But he got a reprieve on Friday when transport unions called off their strike after paralyzing roads for two days in opposition to the end of fuel subsidies.

Indigenous groups, however, continued on Saturday to block some roads around the Andean nation of 17 million people. “The indigenous movement is mobilizing indefinitely in the whole country,” Jaime Vargas, president of the CONAIE umbrella indigenous group, told Reuters. “With or without jail, our resolve is firm.”

Moreno, 66, has declared a two-month state of emergency and authorities have arrested 379 people after protesters set up burning barricades and hurled stones at police on Thursday and Friday during Ecuador’s worst unrest for years.

Struggling with a large foreign debt and fiscal deficit, Moreno’s government recently reached a three-year, $4.2 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), contingent on belt-tightening economic reforms.

As well as ending fuel subsidies, the government is reducing the state workforce and planning some privatizations. Moreno says the fuel subsidies, in place for four decades, had distorted the economy and cost $60 billion.

‘Ecuadorians indignant’

“The Ecuadorean people are indignant at this package, which is a prize for businessmen and bankers, to comply with the IMF’s recipe,” said Mesias Tatamuez, head of the Workers’ United Front umbrella union, adding there would be a national strike on Wednesday.

Despite such militancy in other sectors, taxi and bus services were gradually returning on Saturday. It was unclear why the transport unions called off their strike, though leaders said they were satisfied the government had heard their complaints. Officials have promised a revision of fare tariffs to compensate for fuel price rises.

Moreno’s popularity has sunk to below 30% compared with above 70% after his 2017 election, but he has the support of the business elite, the military appears loyal, and the political opposition is weak.

However, Ecuador has a history of volatility and sudden government changes: protests toppled three presidents in the decade before Correa took power in 2007.

Moreno, who uses a wheelchair after a 1998 shooting during a robbery that left him paraplegic, has promised a firm hand, and various transport leaders were rounded up in recent days.

Dozens of police officers have been hurt in the unrest.

Ecuador hopes to save about $1.5 billion a year from ending fuel subsidies. Along with tax reforms, the government would benefit by about $2.27 billion.

Moreno’s government has improved relations with the West and reached its loan deal with the IMF in February, dependent on “structural measures.”

Correa calls Moreno, his one-time protégé and vice-president, a “traitor.”

A flotilla of shipments from Venezuela gave Cuba some respite this week from crippling fuel shortages in the wake of tougher U.S. sanctions, while Russia’s prime minister pledged during a visit to the island on Friday to help develop its energy sector.

But support from two of its closest allies looks unlikely to resolve Cuba’s energy problems and the government has extended many of the energy-saving measures it had introduced over the past month.

Havana warned on Sept. 11 it had not secured sufficient shipments of refined fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, for the rest of the month due to sanctions imposed by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump in retaliation for its support for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

In response to the shortages, Cuba swiftly deepened austerity measures it had introduced since an economic meltdown in Venezuela, its principal supplier, choked off its energy imports.

Cuban authorities cut public transport last month, decreased production at some factories, and encouraged the use of more animal-powered vehicles and wood-fired ovens.

Venezuela responded by increasing oil shipments to its Caribbean ally, despite its own output issues and sanctions-related restrictions.

Since late September, at least eight tankers carrying some 3.83 million barrels of crude and fuel have been shipped from Venezuela, according to Refinitiv Eikon data and internal data from Venezuela’s state-run oil firm PDVSA. That represents a sharp increase from five vessels loaded with 1.98 million barrels during the first half of September.

Following the shipments, there are no longer multi-hour queues at Cuban gas stations for gasoline, although diesel remains elusive.

Transport officials on Wednesday said they would be upping the frequency of train and bus departures, although not yet restoring “normality” following the drastic cuts last month.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel celebrated that Cuba managed to avoid blackouts in September in an editorial in the Communist Party newspaper Granma entitled “No fear of the current
juncture.”

The two-day official visit of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, which concluded on Friday, also sent a signal the island is not alone.

Medvedev on Friday visited a horizontal oil well located in the Boca de Jaruco oil field in northern Cuba which is being developed by Russian and Cuban state-run companies Zarubezhneft
and Cubapetroleo.

Zarubezhneft plans to drill 30 wells in two years there at a cost of 100 million euros, Russian state-owned news agency Sputnik wrote on Friday.

The two countries are working towards reducing Cuba’s dependence on energy imports by improving its energy efficiency and collaborating on oil exploration, a senior Russian government official told TASS news agency.

However, Medvedev did not announce any short-term measures to provide relief to the island during his visit.

More shortages likely

Cuba’s oil production currently meets an estimated 40 percent of its needs. Nearly all the rest has been supplied by Venezuela for years under a barter agreement for Cuban medical services, with some imports from other allies like Algeria and Russia.

However, analysts say Venezuela and Cuba will struggle to keep beating ever-tightening U.S. sanctions.

To supply Cuba in recent days, PDVSA used a portion of an old fleet that had not left Venezuelan waters for years, likely due to difficulty leasing tankers from vessel operators.

“It’s getting tougher and tougher,” said Francisco Monaldi, a Latin American energy expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute. He said many companies in the industry were steering clear of any business with Venezuela in the wake of the sanctions.

Some analysts say one objective of Medvedev’s visit was likely to discuss helping Cuba out of its energy crisis, perhaps in conjunction with Venezuela.

There has been a flurry of visits between high-level Russian, Venezuelan and Cuban officials of late. Most recently, Venezuela’s Executive Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was in Moscow and then Havana.

“But the degree to which Russia can provide that is questionable given their own economic situation,” said Jason Marczak, Director at the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center.

TASS said Russian supplies of oil products to Cuba grew almost four-fold in the first half, citing the Russian government. It did not provide details, nor did it give shipment volumes for the second half, during which the Trump administration has upped the pressure.

Cubans, meanwhile, are struggling.

Niuris Higueras, owner of Havana restaurant Atelier, said authorities met a group of private business owners to ask them to slash their electricity usage by as much as half.

“I’ve mostly stopped using air conditioning and the electric oven,” she said.

State offices are turning off electricity for several hours at midday. With the computers off, employees turn to paperwork or leave the office to escape the Caribbean heat.

Some state workers who were told to stay home without a cut in salary have not yet been recalled, while some Havana cinemas have only one screening a day instead of two or three.

“They ended the comedy shows at night due to the oil problems,” said Yolanda Santana, a cleaner at the modernist Yara cinema. “I’ve no clue when the situation could improve.”

Iraqi officials say one person was killed in Baghdad as police fired on anti-government protesters Saturday, the first day of demonstrations since a two-day curfew was lifted.

Demonstrators began taking to the streets last Tuesday to protest unemployment, poor public services and corruption.
 
Saturday’s protests came one day after former Shi’ite militia leader Moqtada al-Sadr, who leads the largest opposition bloc in parliament, called on the government to resign and said “early elections should be held under U.N. supervision.”
 
Iraqi forces have been opening fire on the protesters, and medical and security sources say at least 65 people have been killed this week.
 
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) issued a statement Friday saying “the deaths of civilians and the growing number of wounded at the ongoing protests across the country is particularly worrying, as is the use of firearms for restoring public order.”

The ICRC has called on both sides to show restraint as it monitors developments on the ground.

‘Difficult choices’

Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi said Friday that the security measures, including the temporary curfew imposed were “difficult choices” but they were needed like “bitter medicine” that had to be swallowed.

In addition to those killed, hundreds of people have been wounded since the demonstrations began. The demonstrations have spread in Baghdad and in areas south of the capital.

The protests are the first major challenge to Abdul-Mahdi, who formed his government a year ago.

The government blamed the violence on “groups of riot inciters” and said security forces worked to protect the safety of peaceful protesters.

Iraq’s parliament has ordered a probe into the violence.

Many Iraqi citizens blame politicians and government officials for the corruption that has prevented the country from rebounding from years of sectarian violence and the battle to defeat Islamic State militants, who at one point controlled large areas in the northern and western part of the country.

At his weekly Cabinet meeting earlier this week, the prime minister released a statement promising jobs for graduates. He also ordered the oil ministry and other government agencies to apply a 50% quota for local workers in future contracts with foreign countries.

Thousands of residents of Pakistan-held Kashmir rallied Saturday on board vehicles and motorbikes to press for their demand that India lift a two-month old controversial clampdown in its controlled portion of the disputed region.

The protesters were calling for Kashmir’s independence from both the countries and they were headed to the Line of Control (LoC), which divides the Himalayan territory, vowing to force their way into the Indian side.

“We want freedom on this [Pakistani] side and that [Indian] side,” chanted the slowly moving and charged up crowd that is expected to reach the boundary line on Sunday.

Local police have placed roadblocks just a few kilometers from the LoC, however, to prevent the rally from reaching the de facto border.

“I am going with this march to express solidarity with our Kashmiri brothers, who have been under curfew for two months now,” Ejaz Ahmed, a 64-year-old medical doctor by profession, told VOA.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist government on August 5 unilaterally scrapped a decades old constitutional semi-autonomous status for the country’s only Muslim-majority state.

New Delhi has since deployed tens of thousands of additional troops, cut phone and internet services, and arrested nearly 4,000 people, including the region’s top political leadership, journalists and lawyers, amid serious allegations of torture and abuses.

The unprecedented lockdown to deter dissent and violent reactions by the local population has effectively isolated millions of Kashmiris from the rest of the world.  

Modi has defended his actions in Kashmir, saying they are meant to bring development and prosperity to the violence-plagued region. Critics, including those in India, have rejected these assertions, though, calling for an immediate easing of the lockdown.

Saturday’s protest demonstration was being led by the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) group, which operates on both sides and has been seeking total independence from India and Pakistan. The leader of the Indian chapter of JKLF is also among those Indian authorities have detained on the other side of the border.

JKLF activists made a similar attempt to cross the disputed border in 1992, but a police crackdown prevented them from doing so and the ensuing clashes killed at least 12 people.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan asked the protesters to desist from crossing the Kashmir LoC, saying it would give India “an excuse to increase violent oppression of Kashmiris” on the other side. He warned that India also could use it to launch a cross-border attack on Pakistani-held part of the region, known as Azad (free) Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).

“I understand the anguish of Kashmiris in AJK seeing their fellow Kashmiris in IOJK [Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir] under an inhuman curfew for over 2 months,” Khan tweeted just before the rally began its march from the main city of Muzaffarabad.

Last week, while Khan was addressing the United Nations General Assembly in New York, he emphatically urged member nations to intervene to persuade India to lift its siege of Kashmir before it results in another direct military conflict between the two nuclear-armed nations.

Khan asserted that Kashmiris would not accept the Indian moves and “what is going to happen when the curfew is lifted will be a bloodbath” for which Pakistan will be blamed, potentially drawing the two neighbors into war that could escalate into a nuclear exchange.

A new study released earlier this week warned that should a nuclear war ever occur between India and Pakistan, it would immediately kill up to 125 million people in both the countries, followed by mass starvation and ecosystem catastrophe far outside of the war zone itself. The research was jointly conducted by University of Colorado Boulder and Rutgers University.

The United States also has called on India to ease restrictions in Kashmir. Since the scrapping of the region’s special status by New Delhi, dozens of U.S. lawmakers have expressed concerns over what they have described as the “humanitarian crisis” in Kashmir.

A man wielding a long metal object rampaged through New York City early Saturday attacking sleeping homeless people, killing four and leaving a fifth in critical condition.
 
New York Police Department Detective Annette Shelton said the men were brutally assaulted in the city’s Chinatown neighborhood with the object that authorities recovered.
 
Police responded to a 911 call just before 2 a.m. as one assault was in progress.
 
A 24-year-old suspect is in custody but has yet to be charged, the detective said.
 
The victims apparently were asleep when they were attacked in three different locations. The first died of blunt trauma to the head. A second man was attacked nearby but survived. He was taken to New York Downtown Hospital in critical condition.
 
The other three victims, attacked about a block away, also died of trauma to the head.      
 
The New York Post published photos of two of the victims under a white sheet, one slumped in a blood-spattered doorway. The other lay under a sheet on the sidewalk. The identities of the victims have not been released.
 
New York City’s homeless population has grown in recent years, to a great extent because of the lack of affordable housing.
 
The killings started on The Bowery, which cuts through Chinatown and has for decades been known as New York’s skid row, inhabited by homeless addicts and alcoholics.
 
During the day, the neighborhood is bustling with small businesses and street vendors offering discount goods, its sidewalks packed with pedestrians.
 
Late at night, when the shops close, it turns into a quiet, desolate neighborhood that was the setting for Saturday’s attacks.

Singers and songwriters from U.S. tribes and Canada’s First Nations are using their art to honor and raise awareness of missing and murdered indigenous people. The following is a small sampling of their efforts.

“Little Star”

The stop-motion animated video featuring the song “Little Star” was produced by Ontario filmmaker Sarah Legault.

Sung by Cree singer and songwriter iskwē, or “blue sky woman,” the song was written to protest injustice surrounding the murders of two indigenous youth in Canada — 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, a member of the Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba, whose body was later pulled from the Red River in Winnipeg in 2014; and Colten Boushie, 22, a member of the Red Pheasant Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan, who in 2016 was fatally shot by a white farmer. In both incidents, the cases against their accused murderers were dismissed.

“Missing You”

Singer and composer Joanne Shenandoah is one of the most critically acclaimed Native American artists today. A member of the Wolf Clan of the Oneida Nation of the Haudenosaunee Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy and based in Syracuse, New York, Shenandoah is a founding board member of the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge. The song “Missing You” is an original composition, written to honor tens of thousands of missing and murdered indigenous women. The video was produced by Television, Radio and Film graduate seniors Peter Conway, Elijah Goodell and Sarah Rebetje at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications.

“Sky World”

Written by Theresa Bear Fox, a citizen of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation whose Mohawk name is Kenkiohkoktha, “at the end of a long line,” the song is in remembrance of everyone, including the missing and murdered, who have passed on. This version of the song, with lyrics in English and Mohawk, is sung by Teio Swathe, also Mohawk. Christian Parrish Takes the Gun, an Apsáalooke (Crow) rapper and dancer known professionally as Supaman, performs the fancy dance, a style performed for nearly a century at Native American powwows.

“Through the Flood”

The Winnipeg-based Indigenous pop band Indian City, which includes guitarist, songwriter, producer and festival curator Vince Fontaine and country/folk singer/songwriter Don Amero, both Ojibwe, released “Through the Flood” in 2017. Amero has called the song a “prayer and petition for all those missing and murdered Indigenous women.”

“Pray, Sister, Pray”

The murder of a young mother from the Mikisew Cree First Nation inspired Crystal Shawanda of the Wiikwenkoong First Nation of Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario to write the song “Pray, Sister, Pray” to raise awareness about the plight of missing and murdered indigenous women in Canada. The video for the song was directed by Joseph Osawabine. The director of photography was Matthew Manitowabi. Both are fellow residents of Wiikwenkong.

“Song for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women”

Antone R. George, a citizen of the Lummi Nation in western Washington state, composed “Song for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women,” whose lyrics are a prayer: “Every day and every night, I pray, pray for you, I love and miss you. Sister, come home. Please God, please God, bring her home.” The video features the West Shore Canoe Family, one of many canoe families who participated in this year’s annual Canoe Journey, a gathering of indigenous nations from Washington state, Alaska, Canada and other locations, which this year the Lummi Nation hosted. Red hands are painted across the women’s mouths, as a symbol of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) movement. The video was produced by Children of the Setting Sun. The music was arranged and recorded by Mark Nichols.

Attorneys general representing nearly half the states and lawyers for more than 500 local governments Friday blasted the terms of Purdue Pharma’s offer to settle thousands of lawsuits over the nation’s opioid crisis in court filings that also said the company had funneled up to $13 billion to its controlling family.

Their legal filings said the tentative deal does not contain an admission of wrongdoing from members of the Sackler family, would not stop family members from future misconduct and wouldn’t force them to repay money “they pocketed from their illegal conduct.”

The documents say members of the Sackler family, one of the wealthiest in the U.S., made $12 billion to $13 billion from Purdue, a higher amount than court records had previously given. The figure was in a sworn statement given last month by Jesse DelConte, a restructuring consultant for Purdue; an excerpt of his deposition did not specify when those payments were made.

Billions made on OxyContin

In a previous deposition, former Purdue chief executive Richard Sackler gave only a broad range, between $1 billion and $10 billion, that the family made from its signature painkiller, OxyContin.

Friday’s court filings object to Purdue’s request that all lawsuits against members of the Sackler family be halted as part of tentative settlement terms that are being considered in bankruptcy court in White Plains, New York. The family faces hundreds of lawsuits in state courts, including at least two dozen filed by state attorneys general.

Purdue’s filing for bankruptcy protection last month removed the company from federal litigation in Cleveland that involves some 2,600 local governments, Native American tribes, unions and hospitals. The first trial in that multidistrict case is scheduled to begin Oct. 21.

The company filed for bankruptcy after half of state attorneys general and lawyers representing local governments agreed to their settlement offer, which could be worth as much as $12 billion over time.

Family not held accountable

The bankruptcy court filings this week, most of them Friday, showed the level of dissent over that offer among state and local governments that had been seeking a nationwide settlement.

Many of them argue that the Purdue settlement offer does not hold the Sackler family sufficiently accountable for a crisis that has contributed to more than 400,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. over the past two decades. That’s why, they argued, the state cases against the family should continue even as Purdue’s bankruptcy plays out.

“The Motion appears to be an attempt to have this Court prematurely approve a ‘firebreak’ strategy for the benefit of the Sacklers, in which the Sacklers have decided to offer up Purdue and see if they can outrace justice for a price they deem acceptable,” the local government attorneys said in their filing.

What the settlement says

Under its settlement offer, Purdue would be operated as a public benefit trust and its profits would be part of the settlement, as would the value of overdose antidotes and a treatment drug in development; the Sacklers would give up control of the company. Part of the deal’s value would come from a contribution of $3 billion to $4.5 billion from members of the Sackler family, an amount that at least partially depends on how much they receive from selling their global opioid business, Mundipharma.

“The offer does not shut down Purdue; instead it would keep Purdue in business under a new name, so that settlement money could be collected from future OxyContin sales,” the attorneys general said in their filing. “If the States accepted the offer, there would never be a trial to determine the Sacklers’ liability for one of the greatest public health crises of our time.”

The company has told the bankruptcy judge that if the family has to continue to face hundreds of lawsuits across the country, it might be “unwilling — or unable” to contribute to the settlement. The 500 governments who jointly filed Friday said the company had it “backwards.”

“The Sacklers’ failure to make an adequate contribution itself impairs the prospect of achieving a consensual plan of organization,” the filing said. “That failure is a reason to deny the injunction (against the state lawsuits), not grant it.”

Forbes has estimated that the Sacklers are one of the 20 wealthiest families in the U.S.

$13 billion not what it seems

Daniel Connolly, a lawyer for the branch of the Sackler family that are heirs to one of the company’s late patriarchs, Raymond Sackler, responded to the court filing that revealed the $12 billion to $13 billion figure. He said the amount of money taken out of Purdue by the Sacklers is not as simple as it seems.

“The distribution numbers do not reflect the fact that many billions of dollars from that amount were paid in taxes and reinvested in businesses that will be sold as part of the proposed settlement,” Connolly said in a statement Friday evening.

He said the Sacklers have agreed to give up control of the company and contribute money to address the opioid epidemic if all lawsuits against them are stopped. That, he said, would “allow parties to focus their efforts on this goal rather than on litigation that will waste resources and delay the deployment of solutions to communities in need.”

Hunter Biden frequently attended his father’s political events and rallies. But when former Vice President Joe Biden officially launched his Democratic presidential campaign in May in Philadelphia, Hunter Biden was a no-show.

His decision to stay out of the limelight came amid the latest in a stream of embarrassing stories about his turbulent personal life, alcohol and drug addiction, and questionable business decisions. Yet his efforts to lower his profile to help his father in his third and presumably final bid for the presidency proved unsuccessful.

For months, President Donald Trump has sought to undermine Joe Biden’s front-running candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination with broadsides suggesting unfounded corrupt practices by both father and son.

With the House of Representatives now conducting an impeachment inquiry into Trump’s effort to encourage Ukrainian meddling in the 2020 U.S. election, the embattled president is openly calling on Ukraine and China to investigate the Bidens on charges long disproved or lacking in evidence.

Though no evidence of wrongdoing has emerged, critics have raised questions about several positions that would not be readily available to a person of lesser fame:

• In 1998, Hunter Biden got a job as director of e-commerce policy for the Department of Transportation after then-Commerce Secretary William Daley, who had served on Biden’s 1987 presidential campaign,

Ecuadorean transport unions agreed Friday to suspend protests after two days of unrest in which demonstrators blocked roads across the country.

The announcement indicates that an agreement between the transport unions and the government was reached although details of any deal were not immediately announced.

The protests, which began Thursday, were carried out by public transportation drivers, students and workers who were angry over the government’s decision to scrap decades-old fuel subsidies.

Demonstrators blocked roads across the country with tires and branches, forcing many bus and taxi services to shutdown.

The government said Friday about 350 people had been detained for blocking traffic, interrupting public services or attacking police. Officials said the arrests took place mainly in the capital, Quito, and the coastal city of Guayaquil.

Earlier Friday, President Lenin Moreno, who had declared a state of emergency over the strike, said he would not reverse himself on his decision to end fuel subsidies.

Moreno declared the state of emergency Thursday as the demonstrators took to the streets in Quito and other large cities.

The president said he had to declare the emergency, which curbed some civil rights, because the protests were meant to “damage and destabilize” his government.

American Airlines, Iberia, Air France and KLM rerouted flights during the protests, as demonstrators blocked routes into and out of the Quito airport.

Ending the fuel subsidy is part of a $2 billion government fiscal reform package that includes the loosening of labor protections, corporate tax breaks and other steps to stimulate the economy.
 

A federal judge upheld Massachusetts’ four-month ban on the sale of vaping products Friday, at least for now.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani denied the vaping industry’s request for a temporary reprieve from the ban while their legal challenge plays out in Boston federal court, saying the plaintiffs did not show they would likely succeed on the merits of the case or that the “balance of hardships” weighs in their favor. Talwani had said in a hearing earlier in the day that the legal motion felt premature and that the public health concerns prompting the ban likely outweigh any short-term impacts to local businesses.

Another court hearing is set for Oct. 15 where both sides are expected to deliver more extensive arguments in the case.

Lawyers representing local vape shops argued that small, independent operators are being disproportionally hurt by the ban, with many forced to lay off staff or close their shops entirely.

“You’re saying I ought to be more concerned about the economic harm to businesses for a two-week period than the potential people who will end up in the hospital during this two-week period?” Talwani asked industry lawyers at one point during the hearing.

Republican Gov. Charlie Baker issued the ban and declared a public health emergency Sept. 24 after more than 60 potential cases of lung disease related to the use of electronic cigarettes and vaping were reported to the state.

The state Public Health Department has since said at least 10 represent probable or confirmed cases of lung illness caused by e-cigarette products. Nationwide, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said 18 have died and 1,080 people have been sickened.

Baker has said the ban will allow health officials to determine the cause of the illnesses and decide what further steps are required.

At least three lawsuits have been filed in state and federal court challenging Massachusetts’ ban, which runs through Jan. 25, 2020, and is considered among the harshest imposed on the industry. Several states, including Michigan, Oregon and Rhode Island, have issued some kind of ban. On Thursday, an appeals court in New York temporarily blocked the state from enforcing a proposed ban on sales of flavored e-cigarettes.

The Vapor Technology Association, a national trade group that’s challenging the bans, argued in its federal lawsuit in Massachusetts that the ban will cause “irreparable harm” to their multimillion-dollar industry.

It also said the ban poses a public health risk by eliminating what it argues is a safer alternative to tobacco and forcing those seeking vaping products to find them on the black market.

Immigrants applying for U.S. visas will be denied entry into the country unless they can prove they can afford health care, according to a proclamation signed Friday by President Donald Trump.

The new rule applies to people seeking immigrant visas from abroad — not those in the U.S. already. It does not affect lawful permanent residents. It does not apply to asylum-seekers, refugees or children.

But it would apply to the spouses and parents of U.S. citizens. That could have an impact on families who are trying to bring their parents to the U.S.

No insurance, no entry

The proclamation says immigrants will be barred from entering the country unless they are to be covered by health insurance within 30 days of entering or have enough financial resources to pay for any medical costs. The measure will be effective Nov. 3.

The Trump administration is trying to move away from a family-based immigration system and into a merit-based system, and Friday’s proclamation is another effort to limit immigrant access to public programs.

The Trump administration earlier this year made sweeping changes to regulations that would deny green cards to immigrants who use some forms of public assistance. The White House also directed officials to recover income-based welfare payments from sponsors, and proposed a rule requiring verification of immigration status for anyone seeking access to public housing benefits.

The required insurance can be purchased individually or provided by an employer, and it can be short-term coverage or catastrophic.

Medicaid doesn’t count. And an immigrant will not be able to obtain a visa if using the Affordable Care Act’s subsidies when buying insurance. Those subsidies are paid for by the federal government.

ACA Catch-22

“While lawful immigrants qualify for ACA subsidies, they’ll be stuck in a catch-22 because subsidized coverage does not qualify as insurance under the proclamation,” tweeted Larry Leavitt, executive vice president for health policy at Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care policy think tank.

The White House said in a statement that too many non-citizens were taking advantage of the country’s “generous public health programs,” and said immigrants contribute to the problem of “uncompensated health care costs.”

According to the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan immigration think tank, 57 percent of U.S. immigrants had private health insurance in 2017, compared with 69 percent of U.S.-born, and 30 percent had public health insurance coverage, compared with 36 percent of native-born.

The uninsured rate for immigrants dropped from 32 percent to 20 percent from 2013 to 2017, since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, according to Migration Policy.

There are about 1.1 million people who obtain green cards each year.

“This new attempt at an immigration ban is as shameless as it is stunning,” tweeted Doug Rand, a former Obama administration official who is the co-founder of Boundless Immigration. “It will be chaotic to implement and guaranteed to separate U.S. citizens from their legal immigrant spouses and other close relatives.”
 

Diahann Carroll, the Oscar-nominated actress and singer who won critical acclaim as the first black woman to star in a non-servant role in a TV series as “Julia,” has died. She was 84.

Carroll’s daughter, Susan Kay, told The Associated Press her mother died Friday in Los Angeles of cancer.

During her long career, Carroll earned a Tony Award for the musical “No Strings” and an Academy Award nomination for best actress for “Claudine.”

But she was perhaps best known for her pioneering work on “Julia.” Carroll played Julia Baker, a nurse whose husband had been killed in Vietnam, in the groundbreaking situation comedy that aired from 1968 to 1971.

“Diahann Carroll walked this Earth for 84 years and broke ground with every footstep. An icon. One of the all-time greats,” director Ava DuVernay wrote on Twitter. “She blazed trails through dense forests and elegantly left diamonds along the path for the rest of us to follow. Extraordinary life. Thank you, Ms. Carroll.”

Although she was not the first black woman to star in her own TV show (Ethel Waters played a maid in the 1950s series “Beulah”), she was the first to star as someone other than a servant.

NBC executives were wary about putting “Julia” on the network during the racial unrest of the 1960s, but it was an immediate hit.

It had its critics, though, including some who said Carroll’s character, who is the mother of a young son, was not a realistic portrayal of a black American woman in the 1960s.

“They said it was a fantasy,” Carroll recalled in 1998. “All of this was untrue. Much about the character of Julia I took from my own life, my family.”

On stage

Not shy when it came to confronting racial barriers, Carroll won her Tony portraying a high-fashion American model in Paris who has a love affair with a white American author in the 1959 Richard Rodgers musical “No Strings.” Critic Walter Kerr described her as “a girl with a sweet smile, brilliant dark eyes and a profile regal enough to belong on a coin.”

She appeared often in plays previously considered exclusive territory for white actresses: “Same Time, Next Year,” “Agnes of God” and “Sunset Boulevard” (as faded star Norma Desmond, the role played by Gloria Swanson in the 1950 film).

“I like to think that I opened doors for other women, although that wasn’t my original intention,” she said in 2002.

On screen

Her film career was sporadic. She began with a secondary role in “Carmen Jones” in 1954 and five years later appeared in “Porgy and Bess,” although her singing voice was dubbed because it wasn’t considered strong enough for the Gershwin opera. Her other films included “Goodbye Again,” “Hurry Sundown,” “Paris Blues,” and “The Split.”

The 1974 film “Claudine” provided her most memorable role. She played a hard-bitten single mother of six who finds romance in Harlem with a garbage man played by James Earl Jones.

In the 1980s, she joined in the long-running prime-time soap opera “Dynasty” as Dominique Deveraux, the glamorous half-sister of Blake Carrington; her physical battles with Alexis Carrington, played by Joan Collins, were among fan highlights. More recently, she had a number of guest shots and small roles in TV series, including playing the mother of Isaiah Washington’s character, Dr. Preston Burke, on “Grey’s Anatomy” and a stretch on the TV show “White Collar” as the widow June.

In nightclubs
 
She also returned to her roots in nightclubs. In 2006, she made her first club appearance in New York in four decades, singing at Feinstein’s at the Regency. Reviewing a return engagement in 2007, a New York Times critic wrote that she sang “Both Sides Now” with “the reflective tone of a woman who has survived many severe storms and remembers every lightning flash and thunderclap.”

Carol Diann Johnson was born in New York City and attended the High School for the Performing Arts. Her father was a subway conductor and her mother a homemaker.

She began her career as a model, but a prize from “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” TV show led to nightclub engagements.

In her 1998 memoir “Diahann,” Carroll traced her turbulent romantic life, which included liaisons with Harry Belafonte, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Sammy Davis Jr., Sidney Poitier and David Frost. She even became engaged to Frost, but the engagement was canceled.

An early marriage to nightclub owner Monte Kay resulted in Carroll’s only child, Suzanne, as well as a divorce. She also divorced her second husband, retail executive Freddie Glusman, later marrying magazine editor Robert DeLeon, who died.

Her most celebrated marriage was in 1987, to singer Vic Damone, and the two appeared together in nightclubs. But they separated in 1991 and divorced several years later.

After she was treated for breast cancer in 1998, she spoke out for more money for research and for free screening for women who couldn’t afford mammograms.

“We all look forward to the day that mastectomies, chemotherapy and radiation are considered barbaric,” Carroll told a gathering in 2000.

Besides her daughter, she is survived by grandchildren August and Sydney.
 

Editor’s note: We want you to know what’s happening, and 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. hits refugee cap; another decrease looms

The U.S. hit its self-imposed refugee arrivals cap of 30,000 on Monday, the close of the 2019 fiscal year. VOA Immigration Unit reporter Victoria Macchi reports that more than half of those refugees came from Africa. By individual country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo accounted for 13,000, followed by Myanmar (4,932), Ukraine (4,451), Eritrea (1,757), and Afghanistan (1,198). Fewer than 600 were from Syria.

In the current fiscal year 2020, the Trump administration seeks to cut refugee arrivals yet again, this time to 18,000 — the lowest ceiling in U.S. history. 

‘Inhumane’ overcrowding on Greek islands

The United Nations refugee agency reports worsening humanitarian conditions on the Greek Islands of Lesvos, Samos, and Kos, which host some 30,000 asylum-seekers who arrived by sea, many of them from Afghanistan and Syria. The U.N. agency has warned that the asylum-seekers should be moved to the mainland, calling for “urgent steps” from Greek authorities to alleviate “inadequate and insecure conditions.” VOA’s Lisa Schlein reports. 

From the Feds

— A Saudi citizen and former Oklahoma resident was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for concealing his attendance at an al-Qaida training camp in 2000, along with visa fraud. 

— U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in partnership with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, awarded 105 kilometers worth of border wall contracts in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. The total contract value: $812,604,005.00. President Trump hopes to extend border barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border by more than 600 kilometers before the end of his first term in 2020, as VOA’s Michael Bowman recently reported. 

— CBP issued five Withhold Release Orders on products from five countries — China, Malaysia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, and Brazil — that they determined were produced using prison or forced labor. The products include garments, disposable rubber gloves, gold, rough diamonds, and bone black. 

Cameroon separatists said the release of more than 300 fighters ordered by President Paul Biya is not enough to stop the war that has killed at least 2,000 people in the central African state.

Separatists said calm can only return if  leaders sentenced to life in prison are unconditionally freed. The president’s order came during a “national dialogue” sponsored by the government this week.

Biya’s order, issued Thursday, discontinues court proceedings against 333 separatist fighters from Cameroon’s English-speaking regions.

Biya said the order is part of efforts to calm a conflict that has killed at least 2,000 people in the past three years.

Order is a positive step

Sylvanus Ngufor, a Cameroonian sociologist who took part in the dialogue, said Biya’s order is a positive step, but said the government must do more to make English-speakers feel equal to the French-speaking majority.

“Our job is just starting,” Ngufor said. “All documents be printed in French and in English with the same sizes or logos. One language should not be a little smaller than the other. We are trying to rebrand the Cameroonian culture.”

Napoleon Ntamack, a 29-year-old taxi driver who traveled from the English-speaking town of Bamenda to take part in the dialogue, said peace can only return if top separatist leaders given life in prison by a military tribunal are unconditionally released.

These include the top separatist leader, Julius Ayuk Tabe, who was arrested in Nigeria with 47 of his supporters and extradited to Cameroon last year.

“If they do not release the separatist leaders that they arrested from Nigeria, if they do not release them, whatsoever they are saying, there will not be peace in this country,” Ntamack said. “For those that they think whatsoever the dialogue has decided can give us the solution [peace], I do not think so.”

Autonomy must be addressed

Kobo Emmanuel, 35, said the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions must also be given autonomy.

“It is time for us to be given that opportunity to vote our governors, our administrators and to manage our resources,” Kobo said.

Fontem Esua, Catholic archbishop of the English-speaking town of Bamenda, said even after the president’s announcement, fighting was reported in four English-speaking towns, including Bamenda and Mamfe. He said this is an indication Biya must do more to end the conflict.

“The problem that has caused the situation in which we live now, is the fact that the people are not satisfied with the form of government,” Esua said. “The best form of government in order to satisfy our needs is federalism.”

Peace talk demands

Rebel groups refused to take part in the dialogue but said they would agree to negotiations if they take place in a foreign country with United Nations mediators and in the presence of world powers such as the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

The crisis erupted in 2016 when English-speaking teachers and lawyers protested discrimination at the hands of the French-speaking majority.

Rapper 21 Savage believes immigrants like him who lived in America illegally as children should automatically become U.S. citizens.

The Grammy-nominated artist who this year was held in federal immigration detention told The Associated Press on Thursday night that such immigrants also shouldn’t have to endure the lengthy process to obtain visas. He spoke in an exclusive interview before receiving an award from the National Immigration Law Center.

“When you’re a child, you don’t know what’s going on,” he said. “Now, you grow up and got to figure it out. Can’t get a job. Can’t get a license. I’m one of the lucky ones who became successful. It’s a lot of people who can’t.”

NILC honored 21 Savage for being an advocate for immigrant justice. He was arrested in February in what U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said was a targeted operation over his expired visa.

He spent 10 days in a detention center in south Georgia before being released.

The Atlanta-based rapper, whose given name is She’yaa Bin Abraham-Joseph, is a British citizen who moved to the U.S. when he was 7. His visa expired in 2006, but his lawyers had said that wasn’t his fault.

“When you ain’t got no choice, you should be exempt,” 21 Savage said. “It’s not like I was 30, woke up and moved over here. I’ve been here since I was like 7 or 8, probably younger than that. I didn’t know anything about visas and all that. I just knew we were moving to a new place.”

He said people in his shoes should be made citizens.

“I feel like we should be exempt,” he reiterated. “I feel like we should automatically become citizens.”

Federal immigration officials have known 21 Savage’s status since at least 2017, when he applied for a new visa.

The 26-year-old rapper’s immigration case still remains pending a hearing before a new judge, according to his lawyer.

21 Savage said the process to apply for a visa discourages a lot of other immigrants who don’t have documents because it “hangs over your head forever.”

“They just lose hope,” he said. “I feel like kids who were brought here at young ages, they should automatically be like `Yeah, you good to stay here, work and go to college.’ It should be nipped in the bud before it gets to a point before you come of age.”

Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors applauded 21 Savage for becoming an advocate for social justice and also shedding light on immigrant issues for black people.

“Up until the moment when he was arrested, there wasn’t a nationally or public conversation about black immigrants,” said Cullors, who introduced 21 Savage and handed him the Courageous Luminaries award. Her activist organization led a coalition to facilitate his release from ICE custody.

“The conversation primarily revolved around Latin immigrants,” she continued. “His detention really pushed a national conversation and it made us talk about what’s happening with black people who are undocumented. All the black people in America aren’t just citizens.”

21 Savage was thankful for the award, but said there are countless immigrants who are battling to stay in the U.S.

“We got a fight that we need to continue in this country,” he said. “It ain’t over yet. Even after everything is cool with me, we still have to fight and help people who can’t fight for themselves.”

A Russian journalist has been arrested in the Iranian capital and kept in custody since earlier this week, the Russian embassy to Tehran said on Friday.

The embassy’s press attache told the Tass news agency that Yulia Yuzik flew into Tehran last Sunday and that Iranian officials seized her passport at the airport for unknown reasons. She was arrested in her hotel room on Wednesday.

The attache could not immediately say why the journalist was under arrest.

The Russian foreign ministry has summoned the Iranian ambassador to Moscow to explain Yuzik’s arrest, ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

Yuzik’s former husband Boris Voitsekhovsky said on Facebook on Friday that she called him from detention saying that she faces charges of espionage for Israel.

Yuzik, who worked for several prominent Russian publications and has reported from Iran, posted pictures from her trip on Instagram earlier this week, saying that she loved being there.
 

The U.S. Coast Guard is loosening its tattoo policy, reflecting increased acceptance of tattoos.

The Virginian-Pilot reports the change announced Thursday is intended to help boost recruiting and comes after other military branches have begun allowing more tattoos.

The Coast Guard doesn’t currently limit the number of tattoos but restricts where on the body they can be. The new rules will allow a single tattoo on each hand, with certain restrictions. They will also allow a tattoo on a single finger on each hand, excluding thumbs, as well as chest tattoos, as long as they don’t go past the collar of a dress uniform crew-neck T-shirt.

Coast Guard Master Chief Petty Officer Jason Vanderhaden told the newspaper the new policy adopts some of the same tattoo standards now publicly acceptable.
 

The flu season has started in the Northern Hemisphere. Although it’s still very early in the season, two deaths have been reported. One was a child, the other an adult with a chronic illness, but seemingly healthy people can also die from the flu.

Those most likely to die from the flu are the very young and the very old. But seemingly healthy people die as well.

Jen Ludwin was one of those seemingly healthy people when she caught the virus. She was young — 23 years old with no underlying conditions.

“I figured, ‘You know what, I’ll spend seven days in bed and just fight it off and I’d be OK.’ But I was totally wrong,” she said.

Ludwin’s organs to begin to fail.

“I was already in septic shock, and that my organs were starting to fail,” she said. “On top of that I had ARDS, which is a respiratory distress syndrome, and then DIC, which caused me to bleed internally and clot in my extremities. And all of those complications together led to gangrene in my limbs, and so I became an amputee.”

Dr. Eric Adkins at the Ohio State Wexner Medical Center says when a virus attacks the body, it’s like an all-out war.

“The body’s response to infection is basically a big inflammatory response that can cause all kinds of problems in the various organs,” he said.

A clue in a protein

It’s a mystery why otherwise healthy people have severe complications from the flu. But researchers at Ohio State University College of Medicine uncovered a clue. Jacob Yount specializes in the study of microbial infection at Ohio State. He says the researchers found a link between a heart complication as a result of getting the flu and a protein that’s critical to fighting it.

“We make this protein and it inhibits viruses from entering our cells,” he said.

But, Yount says, some people have a genetic mutation that blocks the production of that protein, and without it, the flu is more likely to infect the heart and lead to heart failure.

“It can actually block the electrical current that’s traveling through the heart,” he said.

The study found that the mice without this gene were more likely to have heart complications after being infected with the flu virus. Adkins says this finding may help doctors care for flu patients in the future.

“If you know that they’re missing the gene ahead of time, then you may tailor your medical therapy differently,” he said.

Millions affected

The researchers say that millions of people worldwide are likely to have this genetic mutation, including about one-fifth of those of Chinese descent.

Now that scientists understand what might be causing the problem, they are searching for treatments that might prevent or reverse these heart complications in the future. Right now, though, the best protection is getting a flu shot
 

Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi promised to listen to people’s grievances in a televised address after three days of deadly protest in Baghdad and several other cities. Hundreds of protesters rallied in the capital for a third consecutive day Thursday, defying a curfew, to call for jobs, improved services and an end to widespread corruption. About 30 people have been killed so far and hundreds others have been injured in clashes between the police and protesters. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports the authorities authorities have extended a curfew in several southern cities as the death toll rises.
 

Iraqi security forces opened fired on anti-government protesters gathering in Baghdad Friday for a fourth day of demonstrations against unemployment, poor public services and corruption.

The security forces fired directly at the protesters, not in the air, an AFP correspondent said.

No casualties have been reported.

Earlier, Iraq’s Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi during a televised address to the nation called on protesters to go home, saying their “legitimate demands” had been heard.

Abdul-Mahdi sad that the security measures, including the temporary curfew imposed were “difficult choices” but they were needed like “bitter medicine” that had to be swallowed.

At least 31 people have been killed in protests since Tuesday and hundreds of others have been wounded. The demonstrations have spread in Baghdad and in areas south of the capital.

Six people were killed during anti-government protests Thursday.

Police and medical officials said the protesters were shot to death in Nasiriyah, a city south of the capital of Baghdad.

Iraqi security forces used tear gas and fired live bullets Thursday to disperse protesters in Baghdad.

In addition, authorities have deployed water cannons and rubber bullets to try to break up the crowds.

A police officer and hundreds more have been injured since the protests began.

There were widespread reports of internet outages Thursday.

The protests are the first major challenge to Abdul-Mahdi, who formed his government a year ago.

The government blamed the violence on “groups of riot inciters” and said security forces worked to protect the safety of peaceful protesters.

Iraq’s parliament has ordered a probe into the violence.

Many Iraqi citizens blame politicians and government officials for the corruption that has prevented the country from rebounding from years of sectarian violence and the battle to defeat Islamic State militants who at one point controlled large areas in the northern and western part of the country.

At his weekly Cabinet meeting earlier this week, the prime minister released a statement promising jobs for graduates. He also ordered the oil ministry and other government agencies to apply a 50 percent quota for local workers in future contracts with foreign countries.