Day: August 28, 2019

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro said Wednesday that he had accepted the help of four Chilean aircraft in the fight against wildfires in the Amazon rainforest, and he renewed his criticism of French President Emmanuel Macron. 
 
Bolsonaro again accused the French leader of calling him a liar over a dispute about how to contain the raging wildfires. He said Macron believed himself to be “the one and only person interested in defending the environment.” 
 
Bolsonaro’s remarks came one day after he said his country would accept $20 million in aid from Group of Seven countries to battle the wildfires only if Macron retracted what Bolsonaro considered offensive remarks. 
 
He initially said Tuesday that Macron had accused him of being a liar and demanded that Macron retract his comments. 
 
“From there, we can talk,” Bolsonaro said. 
 
Bolsonaro rejected the aid Monday, declaring the funds could be better used in Europe. 
 
Amazon nations’ meeting

After a meeting Wednesday with Chilean President Sebastian Pinera in Brasilia, Bolsonaro said Amazon nations, except Venezuela, would meet in Colombia Sept. 6 “to come up with our own unified strategy for preserving the environment.” 
 
A statement Wednesday from the two South American leaders acknowledged environmental challenges must be met, but only by respecting “national sovereignty.”  
 
While Bolsonaro said Brazil was willing to accept “bilateral” offers of aid, he accused Germany and France of trying to “buy” the sovereignty of Brazil.  

Macron has questioned Bolsonaro’s honesty and commitment to protecting the environment. He threatened last week to block a free-trade deal between Latin America and the European Union unless Bolsonaro, a climate change skeptic, took serious steps to fight the Amazon fires.  
 
World leaders at the recently concluded G-7 summit in France of the world’s most advanced economies committed an immediate $20 million on Monday to fight the wildfires that are threatening the world’s biggest rainforest. 
 
Macron said France within hours would provide military support in the region to fight the fires. 
 
Bolsonaro’s chief of staff, Onyx Lorenzoni, took aim at Macron on Tuesday, declaring Brazil was a nation that “never had colonialist and imperialist practices, as perhaps is the objective of the Frenchman Macron.” 
 
Lorenzoni also said Macron could not “even avoid a foreseeable fire in a church that is a world heritage site,” a reference to an April fire that devastated France’s Notre-Dame Cathedral. 

Aid for Africa
 
Macron and Pinera said the G-7 countries — the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Canada and France — were studying the possibility of giving similar aid to support Africa to fight wildfires in its rainforests. 
 
On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump pledged his “complete support” for Bolsonaro. In a tweet, Trump said Bolsonaro “is working very hard on the Amazon fires and in all respects doing a great job for the people of Brazil – Not easy.”  
 
Under pressure from the international community to protect the environment, Bolsonaro on Sunday dispatched two C-130 Hercules aircraft to help douse the flames. Macron said the U.S. supported the aid to South American countries, even though Trump skipped Monday’s G-7 working session on the environment. 
 
More than 75,000 fires covering the Amazon region have been detected this year, with many of them coming this month. Experts have blamed farmers and ranchers for the fires, accusing them of setting them to clear lands for their operations. 
 
About 60% of the Amazon region is in Brazil. The vast rainforest also extends into Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. 

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After celebrating her two-decade-plus career at the MTV Video Music Awards with a performance featuring a slew of her hits, Missy Elliott knew she did a great job when the first text she received after the performance was from another musical icon and longtime friend: Janet Jackson.

“She was like, ‘You shut that [expletive] down,'” Elliott said, laughing in a phone interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, a day after the VMAs. “And just to know that Janet even said that word was amazing. And I was like, ‘OK, I must have done good for her to use that [word].'”

Elliott, who has collaborated musically with Jackson in the past, received the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award on Monday night for the eccentric and vibrant music videos that helped establish her as a trailblazer on the music scene.

The 48-year-old Grammy winner said the road to creating iconic videos was not easy. She said in the “She’s a B—h” clip, which includes a scene where she and others are submerged, two of the dancers “had asthma attacks just from being underwater.”

For “The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)” — her 1997 debut single where she wore an inflated trash bag — she recalls walking “to the gas station to use the air pump … in Brooklyn to pump up the suit, and then realized I was too big to fit in the car, so we had to walk … on the main street in this outfit all the way to set, and it had deflated.”

She confirmed that the bees in the “Work It” video were in fact real. And in the “Pass that Dutch” clip when she was lifted up and rapping from a cornfield, “they dropped me on my knees; I thought my kneecaps had broken.”

“I was just doing these videos and … it wasn’t like I was doing them and trying to make a point for later down the line. I was just doing it,” she said. “A lot of people say, ‘Hey you should have gotten [this award] a long time ago and I realize that I’m a spiritual person and so I always say, ‘I’m on God’s time.’ And so whenever God says it was time for me to have it is the correct time.”

Elliott’s VMA performance also included the well-known hits “Lose Control” and “Get Ur Freak On,” as well as “Throw It Back,” the first single from her new EP “Iconology,” released last week. Her performance also featured dancer and actress Alyson Stoner, who first gained fame as the young child who danced with skill in the “Work It” video.

“It’s been 17 years since we shot that video,” Elliott said. “I couldn’t have done it without [Alyson]. I was like, ‘I’ve got to have Alyson in here because everywhere I went since then people have always been like, ‘What happened to that little girl that used to be in your ‘Work It’ video?'”

At the VMAs, Elliott also honored late R&B singer Aaliyah when she gave her acceptance speech. Elliott and Timbaland wrote and produced a number of hits for Aaliyah, from “One In a Million” to “4 Page Letter.” 
 
“I always pay tribute to her. And I’m always in contact with her brother, you know, checking on them. Even though each year makes it a year longer, it always still feels like it was yesterday,” Elliott said of Aaliyah, who was killed in a plane crash 18 years ago last Sunday. 
 
“I could still hear her laughter and I could see her smile and almost kind of could sense what she would be like today. She’s always been a risk taker and never a follower because when she chose to work with Timbaland and myself, we had style that was so different; she could have picked any other producer and writer that was already hot and popping,” she continued. “We hadn’t had anything out but she heard something in us and so I know that she would have just been setting the bar high.”

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Pinterest said it would try to combat misinformation about vaccines by showing only information from health organizations when people search. 
 
Social media sites have been trying to combat the spread of misinformation about vaccines. Pinterest previously tried blocking all searches for vaccines, with mixed results. 
 
Now searches for “measles,” “vaccine safety” and related terms will bring up results from such groups as the World Health Organization, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the WHO-established Vaccine Safety Net. 
 
Pinterest won’t show ads or other users’ posts, as they may contain misinformation.  
  
“We’re taking this approach because we believe that showing vaccine misinformation alongside resources from public health experts isn’t responsible,” Pinterest said Wednesday in a blog post. 
 
Though anti-vaccine sentiments have been around for as long as vaccines have existed, health experts worry that anti-vaccine propaganda can spread more quickly on social media. The misinformation includes soundly debunked notions that vaccines cause autism or that mercury preservatives and other substances in them can harm people. 
 
Experts say the spread of such information can push parents who are worried about vaccines toward refusing to inoculate their children, leading to a comeback of various diseases. 

Spike in measles cases
 
Measles outbreaks have spiked in the U.S. this year to their highest number in more than 25 years.  
  
In the U.K., Prime Minister Boris Johnson blamed people “listening to that superstitious mumbo jumbo on the internet” for a rising incidence of measles in that country. The government plans to call a summit of social media companies to discuss what more they can do to fight online misinformation, though details are still being worked out. 
 
Facebook said in March that it would no longer recommend groups and pages that spread hoaxes about vaccines and that it would reject ads that do this. But anti-vax information still slips through. 
 
The WHO praised Pinterest’s move and encouraged other social media companies to follow. 
 
“Misinformation about vaccination has spread far and fast on social media platforms in many different countries,” the statement said. “We see this as a critical issue and one that needs our collective effort to protect people’s health and lives.” 

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A detailed snapshot of the recent surge of asylum-seeking families on the Mexican border gives a sense of how they were treated after entering the U.S. and where they settled. 

Houston was the destination for 432 of 7,358 families who were briefly housed in a San Diego shelter from late October through June, 100 more than the second most popular spot, Los Angeles. The count reflects Houston’s emergence as a primary gateway for immigrants, including many Central Americans.

In another reflection of shifting demographics, Chicago, a longtime draw for Mexican immigrants, was the destination for only 76 families, ranking 21st with less than half the number of families headed to Nashville, Tennessee, and barely more than Fort Myers, Florida.

Dumas, a town of 15,000 people in the Texas Panhandle that is half Latino and has a large meatpacking plant nearby, was the destination for 56 families, more than Denver, Phoenix or Seattle. Other small cities that drew large numbers include Huntsville and Gadsden in Alabama and Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The cities were drawn from a database compiled by Tom Wong, an assistant political science professor at University of California, San Diego, based on registration forms at a shelter affiliated with the San Diego Rapid Response Network, a coalition of attorneys, advocates and civic groups. 

The coalition opened its shelter in late October, when U.S. authorities began releasing asylum-seeking families before they could arrange travel. Families were released with an ankle monitor for heads of household and notices to report to authorities in destination cities while their cases wind through bottlenecked immigration courts. 

U.S. authorities arrested or stopped nearly 800,000 people from October to June, making the San Diego survey of more than 17,100 adults and children a partial but still significant view of a surge that overwhelmed authorities and led to migrants being held in sometimes squalid conditions.

Among San Diego asylum-seeking families, 31% reported problems with U.S. custody conditions, according to a study that Wong’s U.S. Immigration Policy Center published Wednesday. Families were held an average of 3.4 days. 

The most common complaints were about food and water, including insufficient infant formula, spoiled food and dirty water. Others reported issues with hygiene, including not having a toothbrush or toothpaste and lack of showers. Nearly half those who complained had issues related to sleep, overcrowding and confinement and cold temperatures.

The study found that one of every five heads of households had a primary language other than Spanish but nearly 90% of them were given legal instructions in Spanish. Other common languages include the Mayan dialects of K’iche’, Q’eqchi and Mam, Vietnamese and Creole.

Guatemalans accounted for 48% of families served in San Diego, Hondurans made up 30%, El Salvadorans 8% and Haitians 5%.

“These findings raise serious due process concerns,” said Kate Clark, director of immigration services at Jewish Family Service of San Diego. “If asylum-seeking families are not being given vital instructions about their immigration proceedings in a language they can read or understand, how can we expect them to navigate an already complex legal process that is increasingly stacked against them?”

U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

San Diego County has allowed Jewish Family Service to occupy a former courthouse for free. The shelter, which relies on state funding and private donations, houses up to 250 people, giving hot meals, showers and cots for one to three days.

The population has dropped as border arrests have fallen and the U.S. ramped up a policy to make asylum seekers wait in Mexico while their cases wind through U.S. courts. Mexicans are exempt from the policy.

Luz Viviana Perez, 53, said she spent more than two years on the run through her native Mexico, trying to escape an abusive partner who trailed her, knocked her teeth out and pressured their 17-year-old daughter to become a prostitute.

“We’ve been throughout Mexico, fleeing from place to place,” she said Tuesday at the shelter with her daughters, 17 and 12. 

Perez is familiar with complaints about U.S. custody conditions but she had no gripes about her five days in a 30-person cell. The lights were always on but she ate four times a day and showered every other day. 

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Actress Keira Knightley turns to the 2003 Iraq War for her latest film “Official Secrets,” in which she portrays a British government employee who was fired for leaking a secret U.S. memo in the run-up to the conflict.

The 34-year old plays Katharine Gun, a former translator at Britain’s global spy center who was charged with breaking the Official Secrets Act for leaking a U.S. memo seeking London’s help in spying on the United Nations.

Knightley spoke to Reuters about the role. Below are edited excerpts of the interview.

Q: Very few people know Gun’s story.

Knightley: “I remember the lead up to that conflict really well and I do not remember anything about this story…I thought wow, this is a really interesting thing to shine a light on, particularly when you look at the conflict in Iraq in terms of history, you think well that’s a piece of the puzzle that feels very important and that I think people should know more about.”

Q: Why is it important for people to know more about it?

Knightley: “It’s the questions that it brings: government accountability, legality of conflict and if perhaps conflicts are not legal, who is held accountable for that? How do we want our societies to work?”

Q: How much of it was a wakeup call to our generation to pay more attention to politics and foreign affairs?

Knightley: “Definitely within my friendship group it was such a moment of disillusionment because we all went to the streets…and the idea…that they weren’t listening…and that feeling of disillusionment and that feeling of shock at certain political figures maybe not telling the truth, I think has had a major impact.”

Q: Being a mother, how do these things play on your mind for the next generation?

Knightley: “It’s going to be climate change isn’t it? It seems pretty apparent and if you read anything about climate change it seems that they’re going to be the massive things that younger generations are going to be hugely fighting against. The question really for our generation is are we doing enough?”

Q: How has the film helped you to understand what it takes for someone to risk everything by whistle blowing?

Knightley: “There will be many people that don’t believe what Katharine did was right. There will be many people who do believe what Katharine did was right. What you can’t question is her courage. The idea that somebody has a moral reaction to something and puts everything on the line…for something she believed was right in order to…save lives is an extraordinary thing. Would I have the courage to do that? I don’t know.”

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OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP and its owners, the Sackler family, are in discussion to settle more than 2,000 opioid lawsuits against the company for $10 billion to $12 billion, two people familiar with the matter said Tuesday.

Purdue is among several drugmakers and distributors that have been sued for fueling an opioid addiction crisis in the United States, which claimed 400,000 lives from 1999 to 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The lawsuits have accused the Stamford, Connecticut-based Purdue Pharma of aggressively marketing prescription opioids while misleading prescribers and consumers about risks from their prolonged use. Purdue and the Sacklers have denied the allegations.

Purdue said it was actively working with state attorneys general and other plaintiffs to reach a resolution, without specifying a settlement amount.

There is currently no agreement and the settlement discussions could collapse, the sources said.

Representatives for Purdue and the Sackler family held discussions with cities, counties and states on the contours of the potential multibillion-dollar settlement last week in Cleveland, said a person familiar with the matter.

During the meeting, Purdue outlined a plan to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as a mechanism for implementing the settlement, which the company hopes will address the lawsuits, the person said.

The Sacklers would cede control of Purdue under the settlement terms discussed last week, the person said.

All the parties face a Friday deadline to update a federal judge on the status of the negotiations, the person said.

The company has said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved labels for OxyContin that warned about risk and abuse associated with treating pain. The Sacklers have argued they were passive board members who approved routine management requests rather than micromanaging the marketing of OxyContin.

Restructuring

The settlement offer was first reported by NBC. Paul Hanly, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, in an email, replied only “Made up. Ridiculous,” when asked to confirm NBC’s report. Asked to clarify after Reuters confirmed the report, he did not respond.

Representatives for the Sackler family declined to comment and a representative for the state attorneys general did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The plan under discussion envisions Purdue restructuring into a for-profit “public benefit trust” that would last for at least a decade, one of the people familiar with the matter said.

Purdue would contribute between $7 billion and $8 billion to the trust, with some of the money coming from the sales of its drugs, including those that combat opioid overdoses, the person said. Three experts would be approved by a bankruptcy judge as trustees who would select board members to run the trust, this person said.

The Sackler family, which has amassed an estimated $13 billion fortune over the years, is also weighing a possible sale of another pharmaceutical firm it owns called Mundipharma, with some of the proceeds potentially going toward the settlement under discussion, the person said.

David Sackler, one of a handful of family members who previously sat on Purdue’s board, was present for the discussions in the meeting last week, which included at least 10 state attorneys general, the person said.

Purdue is set on Oct. 21 to go on trial for the first time over about 2,000 federal lawsuits, largely by local governments, accusing several drug makers and distributors of fueling the epidemic.

Other companies set to face trial include drugmakers Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd and Johnson & Johnson and drug distributors McKesson Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and AmerisourceBergen Corp.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster in Cleveland, Ohio, who oversees the lawsuits, has been pushing for settlements that could “do something meaningful to abate this crisis.”

Bankruptcy protection 

Purdue, the Sacklers and the communities involved face high-stakes negotiations and Purdue has been preparing for filing for bankruptcy protection in case it cannot reach an agreement.

Going into Chapter 11 would give Purdue the exclusive right for several months to propose a reorganization plan, which if approved by a U.S. bankruptcy judge could be forced on any local governments who decide to hold out.

Some state attorneys general have said they will resist any attempt by Purdue to use bankruptcy.

New York Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed Wall Street banks, Purdue corporate entities and family offices in mid-August for records related to the Sackler family’s finances, according to court records.

In a letter to a judge in an earlier lawsuit, her office characterized payouts to the Sacklers from Purdue as fraudulent conveyances, a legal designation for clawing back money during bankruptcy proceedings.

“The opioid epidemic has ravaged American communities for over a decade, while a single family has made billions profiting from death and destruction,” James said in a statement. “We won’t let up until we have delivered justice.”

A lawyer representing the Sackler family said in a statement that the New York attorney general’s “current claims are without merit and the subpoenas are improper.”

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Explosions hit two police checkpoints in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, killing three officers and wounding several other Palestinians, the Hamas-run interior ministry said, declaring a state of emergency after the blasts.

Such attacks on Hamas, which has the most powerful armed apparatus in the enclave, were rare.

Interior ministry spokesman, Eyad Al-Bozom, said security forces were making progress in their pursuit of those behind the explosions, but he did not disclose further details.

“The sinful hands that carried out this crime will not escape punishment,” said Bozom.

A spokesman for the Israeli military said he knew of no involvement by Israel in the back-to-back incidents in Gaza city at a time of simmering cross-border confrontations with Hamas, the Palestinian enclave’s ruling Islamists.

The first blast destroyed a motorcycle as it passed a police checkpoint, witnesses said. Two police officers were killed and a third Palestinian wounded. It was not immediately clear if the riders were among the casualties.

The second explosion, less than an hour later, killed one officer and wounded several people at a police checkpoint elsewhere in the city, the interior ministry said. The ministry declared a state of emergency throughout Gaza, putting security forces on alert.

Hamas, which took over Gaza in a 2007 civil war with the forces of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, has at times faced internal opposition from more stringent Islamist militants aligned with al Qaeda or Islamic State.

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Financial records related to U.S. President Donald Trump and three of his children that congressional Democrats have requested from Deutsche Bank AG include tax returns, the bank disclosed in a court filing on Tuesday.

Two committees in the U.S. House of Representatives subpoenaed Deutsche Bank in April to provide financial records belonging to the president and his children Donald Trump Jr., Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump.

Deutsche Bank’s filing, in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, revealed that it had tax returns that it would need to hand over if it complied with the subpoenas, which the Trumps are seeking to block. It was not clear whose tax returns it had, because names were redacted from the filing.

A lawyer for the Trumps could not immediately be reached for comment. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

The disclosure comes as Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee are seeking to obtain Trump’s personal and business tax returns, which the president has refused to turn over, from the Treasury Department.

Deutsche Bank has long been a principal lender for Trump’s real estate business. A 2017 disclosure form showed that Trump had at least $130 million of liabilities to the bank.

The subpoenas on Deutsche Bank, issued by the House Financial Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee, seek records of accounts, transactions and investments linked to Trump and the three named children, their immediate family members and several Trump Organization entities, including records of possible ties to foreign entities.

Deutsche Bank said in Tuesday’s filing that it also had tax returns for people who “may constitute ‘immediate family'” as defined by the subpoenas, without giving any names.

A lawyer for the Trumps last week urged the 2nd Circuit to block the bank from handing over the records, saying Congress did not have the authority to demand them. The court has not yet ruled on the case.

The Trumps are also seeking to block a separate subpoena served by the Financial Services Committee on Capital One Financial Corp seeks records related to the Trump Organization’s hotel business.

Capital One said in a court filing on Tuesday that it did not have any tax returns related to the subpoena.

The bank did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. 2nd Circuit judges had ordered both banks to disclose whether they had tax returns last week.

Before Trump, the custom for modern U.S. presidential candidates was to reveal their income tax returns during their campaigns.

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Fires across the Brazilian Amazon have sparked an international outcry for preservation of the world’s largest rainforest. Here’s a look at the role the Amazon plays in regulating the world’s climate:

Is the World’s Oxygen Supply at Risk?

No. While it’s commonly said that the Amazon produces 20% of the world’s oxygen, climate scientists say that figure is wrong and the oxygen supply is not directly at risk in any case. That’s because forests, including the Amazon, absorb roughly the same amount of oxygen they produce. Plants do produce oxygen through photosynthesis, but they also absorb it to grow, as do animals and microbes.

That doesn’t mean the fires aren’t a problem for the planet. The Amazon is a critical absorber of carbon of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels, like oil and coal.

Is the Amazon ‘the Lungs of the Planet?’

The Amazon rainforest is frequently referred to as the “lungs of the planet,” but it may not be the most accurate analogy for the forest’s role.

Carlos Nobre, a University of Sao Paulo climate scientist, says a better way to picture the Amazon’s role is as a sink, draining heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Currently, the world is emitting around 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. The Amazon absorbs 2 billion tons of CO2 per year (or 5% of annual emissions), making it a vital part of preventing climate change.

What Do the Fires in the Amazon Mean for the World’s Climate?

Fires in the Amazon not only mean the carbon-absorbing forest is disappearing, but the flames themselves are emitting millions of tons of carbon every day. Nobre says we’re close to a “tipping point” that would turn the thick jungle into a tropical savannah.

The rainforest recycles its own water to produce a portion of the region’s rain, so deforestation makes rains less frequent, extending the dry season. Nobre estimates that if 20% to 25% of the forest is destroyed, the dry season will expand enough that it will no longer be a forest, but a savannah.

“Unfortunately, we are already seeing signs of the Amazon turning into a savannah,” he said, citing the increasingly long dry seasons. “It’s not just theoretical anymore, it’s happening already.”

What is Causing the Fires?

The current fires in the Amazon are not wildfires. They are manmade and are mostly set illegally by landgrabbers who are clearing the forest for cattle ranching and crops.

Deforesting the Amazon is a long, slow process. People clear the land by cutting down the vegetation during the rainy season, letting the trees dry out and burning them during the dry season. Fully clearing the dense forest for agricultural use can take several years of slashing and burning.

“When I’m talking about 21st century deforestation, I don’t mean a family headed into the woods with a chainsaw,” said NASA researcher Doug Morton. “I mean tractors connected by large chains. They’re pulling trees out by their roots.”

He said researchers could see piles of trees months ago in satellite images. “They’re burning an enormous bonfire of Amazon logs that have been piled, drying in the sun for several months.”

“What has changed is the political discourse,” Nobre said. President Jair Bolsonaro has decreased the power and autonomy of forest protection agencies, which he says get in the way of licensing for developing land and accuses of being “fines industries.”

“The number of fires increasing is because people think law enforcement won’t punish them,” Nobre said.

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