10 Human Rights Causes to Support in 2018

“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.” ― Benjamin Franklin

🎉 Happy New Year! May your new year be filled with happiness, health and prosperity.

Today I continue a tradition started four years ago, whereby I dedicate the first post of the new year to noteworthy causes, organizations, and individuals committed to the advancement of human rights or the protection of Mother Earth. Last year was a particularly daunting one for those, who like myself, believe in and fight for the advancement human rights, civil rights, social justice, environmental justice and the rule of law.

Every hour of every day, it felt like my sensories were constantly being overloaded by a deluge of “Breaking News” stories. Add to this the seemingly endless number of unprecedented natural disasters that struck almost every continent on the planet: torrential rainfalls, flooding, mudslides, fires, earthquakes and hurricanes. These disasters were responsible for thousands of deaths, billions of dollars in property damage, scarity in resources, and social instability.

Perhaps the only silver lining to a year fraught with upheavals and tragedies was the ingenuity and indefatigable spirit of human beings. We rose to every occasion and proved (yet again) that we are stronger when we respect, support, and uplift each other. This truth as well as the organizations and individuals highlighted below give me great hope and a renewed sense of purpose for the year that lies ahead.

So, without further ado, here are 10 human rights causes worthy of your support in 2018.

1. Unidos Por Puerto Rico (United For Puerto Rico) is an organization created by Gov. Ricardo Rosselló’s wife Beatriz Rosselló in collaboration with the private sector, is providing a way for anyone to help victims in Puerto Rico.  The initiative aims to provide aid and support to those affected in Puerto Rico by the impact of Hurricane Irma and Hurricane María. The organization also has a list of needed construction materials and other supplies for those who would rather donate goods instead of money. Some of the pressing supply needs in Puerto Rico include bottled water, baby wipes, diapers, baby formula, pain relief medication for adults and children, canned milk, mosquito repellant, stomach relief and diarrhea medication, first-aid kits, blankets, and pillows. People can also donate through One America Appeal, a fundraising campaign originally launched by all five living former U.S. Presidents. The campaign lets donors contribute funds to Unidos Por Puerto Rico and the Fund for the Virgin Islands, a non-profit organization that was established 25 years ago by the Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands for relief efforts.

2. The Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA) is a nonprofit humanitarian agency and member of the Islamic Relief Worldwide group of organizations. IRUSA was founded in California in 1993. In addition to international relief and development initiatives, Islamic Relief USA also sponsors and funds domestic projects ranging from emergency disaster responses to assisting the American homeless population and supporting those who cannot afford basic healthcare. In 2005, IRUSA aided the victims of Hurricane Katrina by providing over $2 million in assistance and sending field workers to distribute aid and assess the needs of the victims. Partnering with IRUSA for the 2006 Yogyakarta earthquake that struck Indonesia, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints donated $1.6 million worth of emergency supplies. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, IRUSA staff and volunteers worked at shelters in New Jersey to house displaced residents. In 2014, IRUSA’s disaster response team assisted Alabama residents affected by tornadoes. In 2015, IRUSA gave $50,000 to assist Detroit residents whose water had been turned off due to difficulty paying their bills.

Recent international emergency projects include assisting displaced Syrians in Syria and neighboring countries, and assisting refugees arriving in Greece in 2015. In 2016, IRUSA’s Disaster Response Team responded to emergencies in the United States including the Flint water crisis, Louisiana flooding, and Hurricane Matthew in North Carolina. Recent non-emergency projects IRUSA have implemented or supported in the U.S. include after-school meal programs, a prison re-entry program, food aid on American Indian reservations, and assistance for victims of domestic violence. Besides the Virginia headquarters, IRUSA maintains regional offices in Illinois, New Jersey, Texas, Florida and two in California. In 2015, IRUSA was named a Top-Rated Nonprofit by Great Nonprofits. In 2016, IRUSA was awarded four out of four stars by Charity Navigator.

3. The International Organization for Migration is an intergovernmental organization that provides services and advice concerning migration to governments and migrants, including internally displaced persons, refugees, and migrant workers. In September 2016, IOM became a related organization of the United Nations. It was initially established in 1951 as the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) to help resettle people displaced by World War II.  It is the principal intergovernmental organization in the field of migration, with 166 member states and eight observer states.  IOM’s stated mission is to promote humane and orderly migration by providing services and advice to governments and migrants. IOM works to help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, be they refugees, displaced persons or other uprooted people.

The IOM Constitution gives explicit recognition to the link between migration and economic, social and cultural development, as well as to the right of freedom of movement of persons. IOM works in the four broad areas of migration management: migration and development, facilitating migration, regulating migration, and addressing forced migration. Cross-cutting activities include the promotion of international migration law, policy debate and guidance, protection of migrants’ rights, migration health and the gender dimension of migration. In addition, IOM has often organized elections for refugees out of their home country, as was the case in the 2004 Afghan elections and the 2005 Iraqi elections. IOM works closely with governmental, intergovernmental and non-governmental partners.

4. The Global Fund for Women is a non-profit foundation funding women’s human rights initiatives. It was founded in 1987 by New Zealander Anne Firth Murray, and co-founded by Frances Kissling and Laura Lederer to fund women’s initiatives around the world. The Global Fund for Women is an international grantmaking foundation that supports groups working to advance the human rights of women and girls. They advocate for and defend women’s human rights by making grants to support women’s groups around the world. Funds that support the Global Fund for Women are raised from a variety of sources and are awarded to women-led organizations that promote economic security, health, safety, education and leadership of women and girls. The Global Fund for Women accepts grant proposals in any language and in any format. It also publishes “Impact Reports” which focus on specific issues impacting women and girls. The Global Fund for Women headquartered in San Francisco, California. Since 1988, the foundation has awarded over $100 million in grants to over 4,000 organizations supporting progressive women’s rights in over 170 countries.

5. FACE Africa is a nonprofit organization founded by Liberian national Saran Kaba Jones in 2009 that provides access to clean and safe drinking water for rural communities in Liberia using an innovative social enterprise model to fund water projects. In 2003, Liberia emerged from a long and devastating civil war that took the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and displaced millions. The country suffered massive destruction and the very fabric of society was torn apart; infrastructures were in ruins – roads, buildings, health clinics, communications networks, schools, farms and factories were almost totally destroyed. With an 80% unemployment rate; extreme poverty with average earnings of $1 a day; no electricity; no running water or sewage system; and an inadequate education system, the country had enormous needs.

It was a conflict that forced Saran Kaba Jones and her own family to flee the devastation when she was just 8 years old. In 2008, a then 26 years old Saran, returned to her home country and saw the remnants of war and its attendant ills.  She promised herself that she would work to contribute to the improvement of the human condition of her people. Saran, along with many others including FACE Africa’s Country Manager Emmett G. Wilson, began the difficult process of trying to rebuild their society… one piece at a time.

FACE Africa was born from the ashes of this conflict, out of a need to help others reclaim the means to build a better life and prosper. It began with Fund a Child’s Education (FACE) but Saran quickly realized that one of the major impediments to education was the lack of access to safe drinking water. In a majority of cases, children contracted one of the many illnesses caused by unsafe water or that the school’s facilities were inadequate to attend to a child’s sanitation needs. Overall, the social and economic consequences of unsafe water penetrate into realms of education, opportunities for gainful employment, physical strength and health, agricultural and industrial development, and thus the overall productive potential of a community, nation, and/or region.

FACE Africa, which relies on fundraising events and donations for its projects, focuses on implementing low-tech water solutions in the country’s hard-to-reach rural areas. The organization is currently working as part of the WASH in Schools (WinS) Initiative, which the Liberian Government identified as the first step to recovery from the Ebola outbreak. FACE Africa’s first target has been Rivercess County’s Central C1 Education District, where only 9 of the district’s 26 schools had access to safe water before the initiative was launched. Thus far, FACE Africa has completed 5 additional safe water points and are stepping up their efforts to ensure that the remainder of the district’s 2,300 students gain access to safe water for drinking, cleaning, hand washing and hygiene purposes. Over the next few months, FACE Africa will be working with the county’s education authorities to conduct a comprehensive WASH assessment of all other education districts, with the eventual aim of rolling out its initiative throughout the county.

6. Charity: Water is a non-profit organization that provides clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. The organization was founded in 2006 and has benefitted over 7.3 million people. Based in New York City, Charity: Water uses both mainstream and social media platforms to raise awareness, including annual galas and events arranged via Twitter. The initiative, which has received donations from 300,000 individuals, provides GPS coordinates and photos of the wells it builds. The organization has 70 full-time staff members, 10 interns and more than 800 volunteers. 100% of its public donations are used to fund clean water projects, as its operating costs are funded by private donors, foundations and sponsors. Charity: Water has raised more than $252 million for more than 24,537 water projects in 24 countries, including Ethiopia, Rwanda, and Malawi. As of May 2017, Charity Navigator rates the organization among their highest-rated charities, with a full 4 out of 4 stars, and an overall rating of 92.29 out of 100 – with an ‘Accountability & Transparency’ score of a maximum of 100.

7. Re-Plate is a nonprofit and technological innovation that matches surplus food from local businesses to communities in need. A technology company at its core, Re-Plate has developed an app through which companies (mostly tech ones so far) can alert the organization when they have food leftover from meetings or company provided meals. A driver is dispatched to safely collect the often gourmet meals and deliver them to willing shelters or pantries, or sometimes even provides them directly to those living on the streets. The organization was founded in Berkerly, California on January 1, 2016 by Maen Mahfoud. Mahfoud grew up in Syria and saw the effects of poor access to food nearly every day. When he immigrated to California, he was surprised to find similar disparities within San Francisco. Mahfoud believes food is a great way to bridge the gap between income levels and become more aware of problems in our communities. To datem Re-Plate has rescued close to a million of high-quality meals for low-income communities in the San Francisco Bay Area. It has created 833,000 meals, saved 277,000 gallons of water, and diverted 13,770 pounds of CO2 from the environment. By 2020 Re-Plate projects it will recover 30M pounds of food a year.

8. Plant-for-the-Planet is a children’s initiative that aims to raise awareness amongst children and adults about the issues of climate change and global justice. The initiative also works to plant trees, and considers this to be both a practical and symbolic action in efforts to reduce the effect of climate change. In 2011, it reached a goal of planting a million trees. The idea for Plant-for-the-Planet was first developed in Germany in 2007 by Felix Finkbeiner, a nine-year old boy, who was instructed by a teacher to prepare a school report on the issue of climate change. While conducting his research, Finkbeiner came across the story of Wangari Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate from Kenya who had worked to plant over 30 million trees across Africa as part of her ‘Green Belt Movement‘.  At the end of his presentation, Finkbeiner shared the idea that the children of the world could plant 1 million trees in every country on Earth. On the 28th of March 2007 the first tree was planted at Finkbeiner’s school, thus marking the official launch of Plant-for-the-Planet. Students in Bavaria and across Germany also got involved and continued to plant trees under the initiatives name. Colin Mummert helped spearhead the Munich campaign for Plant-for-the-Planet. After one year 150,000 trees were planted and, in 2008, Finkbeiner was able to reach a larger audience becasue he was elected to the UNEP children’s board during the International UNEP Children’s Conference in Norway.

Since its creation in 2007, Plant-for-the-Planet effectively developed into a worldwide movement. In August 2009, when Finkbeiner spoke at the UNEP Tunza Children and Youth Conference in Daejeon, South Korea. There he promoted Plant-for-the-Planet and was able to gain support from children all around the world, who also promised to plant the 1 million trees in their own countries. Plant-for-the-Planet participants see each tree as an act of social justice as well as a contribution towards environmental and climate protection.  The goal of planting 1 million trees was reached in 2011 by children in 93 countries. As the organization has grown so has its main goal. As of December 2017, children have planted 15,205,240,958 trees around the world.

9. Too Young to Wed is a nonprofit organization that traces its official launch back to October 11, 2012 – the first International Day of the Girl Child. Dignitaries from around the world gathered at the United Nations in New York City that day and, surrounded by photographs of child brides as young as 5, pledged to do whatever it took to end child marriage. But the campaign’s roots stretch back another decade, to Herat, Afghanistan, where visual journalist Stephanie Sinclair was working on a story about girls and women who set themselves on fire. There, she discovered a disturbing pattern among the scarred patients in the hospital’s burn ward: Most of them had been forced into marriage as children. Horrified to learn that child marriage was common in communities throughout the world, Sinclair dedicated the next 10 years of her life to documenting the practice in the hopes of inspiring change. Sinclair joined forces with the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) to create a transmedia campaign aimed at raising awareness of the problem, supporting girls who are already married and ultimately halting the practice that affects one girl every two seconds—or an estimated 142 million more girls over the next decade. In addition, child marriage is inextricably linked to many of the world’s ills: child and maternal mortality, poverty, gender inequality, and the spread of HIV/AIDS—and ending the practice will help stamp out many of these problems.

Too Young to Wed’s traveling photo exhibit is the centerpiece of its advocacy effort and features the haunting stories of child brides from Nepal, India, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan and yes, even the United States. The exhibition continues to travel the world and partner with the UNFPA as well as other organizations such as Equality Now, the Population Council, Timret LeHiwot Ethiopia and the Canadian and UK governments. Together, Too Young to Wed not only advocates for an end to child marriage, but provides on-the-ground support to the girls in the communities where these pictures were made. Its first pilot project is a livelihood initiative in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia that employs women who have escaped child marriage and/or have been trafficked. By producing and selling high-quality soaps, these women generate a sustainable income for themselves and their families. By increasing the visibility of child marriage, Too Young to Wed hopes to provoke thoughtful dialogue and ACTION to end the practice and eradicate its consequences.

10. Life After Hate, Inc. (LAH) is U.S. nonprofit created in 2011 by former members of the American violent far-right extremist movement. Through powerful stories of transformation and unique insight gleaned from decades of experience, LAH seeks to inspire, educate, guide, and counsel. Whether working with individuals who wish to leave a life of hate and violence or by helping organizations (community, educational, civic, government, etc.) grapple with the causes of intolerance and racism, Life After Hate works to counter the seeds of hate we once planted. Through personal experience and highly unique skill sets, the organization has developed a sophisticated understanding about what draws individuals to extremist groups and, equally important, why they leave. Inspired by the organization’s work, Former San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernnick  donated $50,000 to Life After Hate in May 2017.

Before leaving office in January, the Obama administration announced that it had awarded $400,000 to a Chicago-based organization dedicated to combating right-wing domestic extremists. Jeh Johnson, then the Homeland Security Secretary, singled out the work of the group, Life After Hate, when the announcement was made. But days later, the incoming Trump administration reversed course, stopping the grant pending a review. In June 2017, when the Trump administration announced its own grants to fight extremism, Life After Hate was not on the list. The move to pull back the money from LAH received renewed scrutiny after the violent, deadly clash in Charlottesville, Virginia left dozen injured and one dead. It also prompted more than 8,000 supporters of LAH to donate more than $500,000.

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Use the Contact form to submit corrections or to nominate a cause, organization, or individual you believe should be acknowledged and featured in next year’s edition. All nominations must be submitted by November 15, 2018.

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Previous Years:
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A Wild World Upside Down

Image credit: Patty via Flickr

Hello Readers!

It has been more than three months since my last post. This means it is time for another installment of A Wild World Upside, where I briefly look back before going forward and acknowledge noteworthy news that happened while I was away. This installment will cover news from August 13 to November 22. The format of this post is slightly different than the first installment because of the overwhelming number of events that transpired in such a relatively short period. Here’s what you need to know.

1. News and events are organized by the primary month in which they occurred and by the chronological order of the photos that appear in the slideshow for that month.
2. With few exceptions, the dates on the left indicate the date the photo was taken.  It is the same date you will see if you scroll your mouse across a photo. Some events are represented by multiple photos that may have been taken on different dates.   
3. If the date a photo was taken differs from the actual date of the event, the latter will be provided in the summary.  
4. Each entry begins with the correlating photo’s caption and is followed by a summary, if needed.   
5. Click on an image to enlarge it, read the caption or see the photo credit.
6. This post is best read directly from this site because the email version alters the original formatting.

Keep in mind that these are just some of the many important stories that have cross my desk since August. It is by no means an exhaustive list. Lastly, a couple of entries deserve more attention and may appear as individual post directly above this one in the coming days. It’s a long read. So let’s get to it.

In August

Cara McClure, right, of Birmingham, Ala, cries in a friend’s arms during a solidarity rally on August 13, 2017, for the victims of a white supremacist rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, Va. Protesters decrying hatred and racism converged around the country the day after the rally in Charlottesville. (Photo: Brynn Anderson/ AP)

Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, holds a photo of Bro’s mother and her daughter on August 14, 2017, in Charlottesville, Va. Heyer was killed Saturday, Aug. 12, 2017, when police say a man plowed his car into a group of demonstrators protesting the white nationalist rally. Bro said that she is going to bare her soul to fight for the cause that her daughter died for. (Photo: Joshua Replogle/ AP)

Members of the Charlottesville community hold a vigil for Heather Heyer following a protest organized by white nationalists that turned deadly at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. on August 16, 2017. (Photo: Tim Dodson/The Cavalier Daily/Handout via Reuters)

Local Bario 18 gang leader “El Mortal”, 18, poses for a photo on August 19, 2017 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He said he has been a gang member since he was age 10. In Honduras, rival gangs including Barrio 18 and MS-13 tightly control territory, earning money from extortion and drug trafficking. (Photo: John Moore / Getty)

The lifeless body of a man lies on a street on August 19, 2017 in Mandaluyong, Philippines. A recent spike in the killings related to the government’s anti-drug operation sparked outrage among citizens as police confirmed deaths as high as 35 bodies in one day. (Photo: Jes Aznar / Getty)

A Yemeni woman sits near her cholera-infected child receiving treatment amid an acute cholera outbreak at a hospital in Sana’a, Yemen, 15 August 2017. The World Health Organization announced on 14 August that the number of suspected cases of cholera in Yemen had reached 500,000, with almost 2,000 deaths related to the disease recorded since late April. (Photo: Yahya Arhab/ European Pressphoto Agency)

Protesters and supporters carry banners and placards as they march with the hearse of slain Kian Loyd delos Santos, a 17-year-old Grade 11 student during his funeral on August 26, 2017 in suburban Caloocan city north of Manila, Philippines. The killing of Kian by police has sparked an outcry against President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug crackdown, which has left thousands dead since assuming office in June of last year. (Photo: Bullit Marquez/ AP)

Nursing home patients at La Vita Bella in Dickinson, Texas going about their day despite rising flooding waters from Hurricane Harvey on August 27 at 9:56 a.m. (Photo: Timothy J. McIntosh via Twitter @DividendsMGR)

Waves were seen lapping over Interstate-10 near Winnie, Tex., on August 29 as floodwater produced by Hurricane Harvey continued to rise. (Photo: Google Map (L); Logan Wheat (R))

US flag weathering the Hurricane Harvey on August 30. (Photo: Reuters/ Carlo Allegri)

August 13 – Cara McClure, right, of Birmingham, Alabama cries in a friend’s arms during a solidarity rally on August 13, 2017, for the victims of a white supremacist rally that turned violent in Charlottesville, Virginia. Protesters decrying hatred and racism converged around the country the day after the rally in Charlottesville.

August 14 – Susan Bro, the mother of Heather Heyer, holds a photo of Bro’s mother and her daughter on August 14, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. Heyer was killed on Saturday, August 12, 2017, when police say a man plowed his car into a group of demonstrators protesting the white nationalist rally. Bro said that she is going to bare her soul to fight for the cause that her daughter died for.

August 16 – Members of the Charlottesville community hold a vigil for Heather Heyer following a protest organized by white nationalists that turned deadly at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S. on August 16, 2017.

August 19 – Local Bario 18 gang leader “El Mortal”, 18, poses for a photo on August 19, 2017 in San Pedro Sula, Honduras. He said he has been a gang member since he was age 10. In Honduras, rival gangs including Barrio 18 and MS-13 tightly control territory, earning money from extortion and drug trafficking. San Pedro Sula has one of the highest rates in the world for violence and homicide rates, most of it gang-related, for a populace not at war. Poverty and violence have driven immigration to the United States, although the number of U.S.-bound immigrants has dropped during the first months of the Trump Presidency.

August 19 – The lifeless body of a man lies on a street  in Mandaluyong, Philippines on August 19, 2017. A recent spike in the killings related to the government’s anti-drug operation sparked outrage among citizens as police confirmed deaths as high as 35 bodies in one day. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte lauded the killing of the 35 people and had asked for the killing of more people involved in drugs. This led to more nationwide protests denouncing his tactics. 

August 23 – A Yemeni woman sits near her cholera-infected child receiving treatment amid an acute cholera outbreak at a hospital in Sana’a, Yemen. After two and a half years of war, little is functioning in Yemen. Repeated bombings have crippled bridges, hospitals and factories. Many doctors and civil servants have gone unpaid for more than a year. Malnutrition and poor sanitation have made the Middle Eastern country vulnerable to diseases that most of the world has confined to the history books. The World Health Organization announced on 14 August that the number of suspected cases of cholera in Yemen had reached 500,000, with almost 2,000 deaths related to the disease recorded since late April. It is one of the world’s largest outbreaks in the past 50 years, prompting The New York Times labeled it the “The World’s Worst Humanitarian Crisis” on August 23, 2017.

August 26 – Protesters and supporters carry banners and placards as they march with the hearse of slain Kian Loyd Delos Santos, a 17-year-old student, during his funeral on August 26, 2017, in suburban Caloocan city north of Manila, Philippines. The killing of Kian sparked an outcry against President Rodrigo Duterte’s anti-drug crackdown. Witnesses to the Santos incident claim that they saw police hand the boy a gun and asked him to run before shooting him to death. On October 18, Duterte reluctantly transferred the anti-drug operation from the PNP to the PDEA. On November 13, Donald Trump met with Duterte at an economic summit during his twelve-day visit to Asia. After the meeting, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that “human rights briefly came up in the context of the Philippines’ fight against illegal drugs.” Journalists covering the meeting noted that Duterte called the press “spies” and joked about assassinating them. Trump reportedly chuckled at the comments.

August 27 – Nursing home patients at La Vita Bella in Dickinson, Texas going about their day despite rising flooding waters from Hurricane Harvey on August 27 at 9:56 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. CBS later posted a photo to Instagram of the women after they had been rescued. Hurricane Harvey was the costliest tropical cyclone on record, inflicting nearly $200 billion in damage, primarily from widespread flooding in the Houston metropolitan area, breaking the previous record set by Hurricane Katrina. It was the first major hurricane to make landfall in the United States since Wilma in 2005, ending a record 12-year span in which no hurricanes made landfall at such an intensity in the country. Harvey was the wettest tropical cyclone on record in the United States. Over a six-day period, Harvey dropped 27 trillion gallons over Texas and Louisiana. At least 46 were killed, around 30,000-40,000 homes were destroyed, and 35,000 people relocated to emergency shelters. Full recovery from the storm is expected to take years to complete.

August 29 – Waves were seen lapping over Interstate-10 near Winnie, Texas, on August 29 as floodwater produced by Hurricane Harvey continued to rise.

August 30 – The U.S. flag weathering the Hurricane Harvey on August 30, 2017. 

In September

Storm damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma, in Sint Maarten on September 6, 2017. (Photo: Gerben Van Es / Dutch Defense Ministry via AP)

An altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe is covered with fallen debris inside the earth-damaged home where Larissa Garcia, 24, lived with her family in Juchitan, Oaxaca state, Mexico on Saturday, September 9, 2017. The family was caught under rubble when the house partially collapsed, leaving Garcia with a broken arm and her father with a head injury. Her mother, who had to be pulled out from underneath a foot-thick section of wall which collapsed (Photo: Rebecca Blackwell / AP)

Josué Tolentino Gómez, 11, stands beside his family’s home on September 10, where he was trapped under the rubble for an hour before being rescued when part of the structure collapsed during the 8.1 magnitude Chiapas  earthquake that struck on September 7 in Juchitán, Oaxaca state, Mexico. (Photo: Rebecca Blackwell / AP)

Antifa (short for anti-fascism) members hold a sign denouncing Nazis along a road at a waterfront park in downtown Portland, Oregon on September 10, 2017. (Photo: Natalie Behring / AFP / Getty)

A Black Lives Matter protester stands in front of St. Louis Police Department officers equipped with riot gear in St. Louis on September 15, 2017. (Photo: Lawrence Bryant / Reuters)

Demonstrators confront police while protesting the acquittal of former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley, in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 16, 2017. Dozens of business windows were smashed and at least two police cars were damaged during a second day of protests following the acquittal of Stockley, who was charged with first-degree murder last year following the 2011 on-duty shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith. (Photo: Scott Olson / Getty)

Bill Monroe poses as he protests the not-guilty verdict in the murder trial of Jason Stockley, a former St. Louis police officer charged with the 2011 shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith, in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 16, 2017. (Photo: Joshua Lott / Reuters)

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the launch of a Hwasong-12 missile in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 16, 2017. (Photo: KCNA via Reuters)

People remove debris from a collapsed building, looking for possible victims after a quake rattled Mexico City on September 19, 2017. (Photo: Omar Torres / AFP / Getty)

The body of woman hangs crushed by a collapsed building in the neighborhood of Roma Norte, in Mexico on September 19, 2017. Throughout Mexico City, rescue workers and residents dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings seeking survivors following a 7.1 magnitude quake. (Photo: Marco Ugarte / AP)

A view of the devastation caused by a forest fire in an area of Brasilia’s National Forest in Brazil on September 18, 2017. (Photo: Ueslei Marcelino / Reuters​)

Shaheda, 40, a Rohingya refugee woman who said her body was burnt when the Myanmar army set fire to her house, receives treatment at the Cox’s Bazar District Sadar Hospital in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, September 19, 2017. (Photo: Mohammad Ponir Hossain / AP)

​Members of the New England Patriots kneel during the national anthem before a game against the Houston Texans at Gillette Stadium on September 24, 2017, in Foxboro, Massachusetts. (Photo: Jim Rogash / Getty)

A giant sign in the front yard of a St. Croix homeowner asks U.S. President Donald Trump for “tremendous! huge! best ever!” relief for the U.S. Virgin Islands, as seen from a Navy helicopter passing over St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, on September 25, 2017. (Photo: Jonathan Drake / Reuters)

After the passage of Hurricane Maria, a man rides his bicycle through a storm-damaged road in Toa Alta, west of San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 25, 2017. (Photo: Ricardo Arduengo / AFP / Getty)

Saudi women activist ​Manal al-Sharif flashes the victory sign from behind the wheel​. ​On ​September 26, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced that women would be allowed to drive starting in June​ 2018. (Photo: AFP​ / Getty)

Naval Aircrewman (Helicopter) 2nd Class Brandon Larnard, assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron, carries an evacuee off an MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter following the landfall of Hurricane Maria on the island of Dominica on September 27, 2017. (Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Sean Galbreath / US Navy / Reuters)

Tomasa Mozo, 69, a housewife, looks up at the roof as she poses for a portrait inside the ruins of her house after an earthquake in San Jose Platanar, Mexico, near the epicenter, on September 28, 2017. The house was badly damaged but with the help of her family Mozo rescued some furniture. She lives in another room of her house and hopes to repair the damage as soon as possible. “I’m afraid to go out, I cannot sleep,” Mozo said. (Photo: Edgard Garrido / Reuters)

U.S. Army veteran Luis Cabrera Sanchez holds his machete as he pauses for a portrait while clearing debris from his damaged home, with family and neighbors, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, on September 29, 2017. Sanchez, who served in the military from 1966 to 1969, said his greatest needs are water, food, and energy. (Photo: Gerald Herbert / AP)

September 6 – Storm damage in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma in Sint Maarten on September 6, 2017. Hurricane Irma was an extremely powerful Cape Verde hurricane, the strongest observed in the Atlantic since Wilma in 2005. It sustained winds of 185 mph (295 km/h) for 37 hours, becoming the only tropical cyclone worldwide to have had winds that speed for that long, breaking the previous record of 24 hours set by Typhoon Haiyan of 2013. It was the first Category 5 hurricane to strike the Leeward Islands on record, followed by Hurricane Maria two weeks later, and the costliest Caribbean hurricane. It was also the most intense Atlantic hurricane to strike the United States since Katrina in 2005, and the first major hurricane to make landfall in Florida since Wilma in 2005.

September 9 – An altar to the Virgin of Guadalupe is covered with fallen debris inside the earth-damaged home where Larissa Garcia, 24, lived with her family in Juchitan, Oaxaca state, Mexico on September 9, 2017. The 2017 Chiapas earthquake struck at 23:49 CDT on  September 7 (local time; 04:49 on the 8th UTC) in the Gulf of Tehuantepec off the southern coast of Mexico, near state of Chiapas,  with a Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The magnitude was estimated to be Mw 8.2. The earthquake caused some buildings in Mexico City to tremble, prompting people to evacuate. It also generated a tsunami with waves of 1.75 meters (5 ft 9 in) above tide level; and tsunami alerts were issued for surrounding areas. Mexico’s president Enrique Peña Nieto called it the strongest earthquake recorded in the country, in a century. It was also the second strongest recorded in the country’s history, behind the magnitude 8.6 earthquake in 1787, and the most intense recorded globally, so far in 2017.

September 10 – Josué Tolentino Gómez, 11, stands beside his family’s home on September 10, where he was trapped under the rubble for an hour before being rescued when part of the structure collapsed during the 8.1 magnitude Chiapas  earthquake that struck on September 7 in Juchitán, Oaxaca state, Mexico.

September 10 – ANTIFA (short for anti-fascism) members hold a sign denouncing Nazis along a road at a waterfront park in downtown Portland, Oregon on September 10, 2017. The exact origins of Antifa are unknown, but the group can be traced to Nazi Germany and Anti-Fascist Action, a militant group founded in the 1980s in the United Kingdom. In America, the term is used to define a broad group of people whose political beliefs lean toward the left – often the far left – but do not conform with the Democratic Party platform. The Antifa garnered attention from mainstream media after some of its members showed up in Charlottesville, Virginia as counter-protesters to condemn hate and racism. Members have been spotted at high-profile, right-wing events across the country, including Milo Yiannopoulos‘ appearance at the University of California, Berkeley in February. They also protested Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.

September 15 – A Black Lives Matter protester stands in front of St. Louis Police Department officers equipped with riot gear in St. Louis on September 15, 2017. Protest erupted in the city after Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson acquitted former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley of first-degree murder in the 2011 shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith, a 24 year old African-American man. Some of the protests turned violent and some police officers were pelted with water bottles and rocks after declaring the protest an “unlawful assembly.” The St. Louis Police Department response to protests was criticized as unconstitutional and excessive force by the American Civil Liberties Union following a video release of law enforcement officers chanting “Whose streets? Our streets” while making mass arrests.

September 16 – Demonstrators confront police while protesting the acquittal of former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley, in St. Louis, Missouri, on September 16, 2017. Dozens of business windows were smashed and at least two police cars were damaged during a second day of protests following the acquittal of Stockley, who was charged with first-degree murder last year following the 2011 on-duty shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith.

September 16 – Bill Monroe poses as he protests the not-guilty verdict in the murder trial of Jason Stockley, a former St. Louis police officer charged with the 2011 shooting of Anthony Lamar Smith, in St. Louis, Missouri on September 16, 2017.

September 16 – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un watches the launch of a Hwasong-12 missile in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on September 16, 2017. North Korea has fired 22 missiles during 15 tests since February 2017, further perfecting its technology with each launch. It launched missiles over Japan on August 29 and September 15 – two scuds missiles (solid-fueled short or medium-range ballistic missiles) and two Hwasong-12 (liquid-filled intermediate-range ballistic missile). Meanwhile, Trump and Jong Un have continued to trade insults publicly, with the latest juvenile interaction suggesting that a mutually acceptable solution to North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is still some way off.

September 18 – A view of the devastation caused by a forest fire in an area of Brasilia’s National Forest in Brazil on September 18, 2017. The National Institute of Space Research (INPE) detected 106,000 fires destroying natural vegetation in September – the highest number in a single month since records began in 1998, said Alberto Setzer, coordinator of INPE’s fire monitoring satellite program. Experts and environmentalists say that the blazes are almost exclusively due to human activity, and they attribute the uptick to the expansion of agriculture and a reduction of oversight and surveillance. Lower than average rainfall in this year’s dry season is also an exacerbating factor.

September 19 – People remove debris from a collapsed building, looking for possible victims after another earthquake rattled Mexico City on September 19, 2017. The 2017 Central Mexico earthquake struck at 13:14 CDT (18:14 UTC) with an estimated magnitude of Mw 7.1 and strong shaking for about 20 seconds. Its epicenter was about 55 km (34 mi) south of the city of Puebla. The earthquake caused damage in the Mexican states of Puebla and Morelos and in the Greater Mexico City area, including the collapse of more than 40 buildings. More than 370 people were killed by the earthquake and related building collapses, including 228 in Mexico City, and more than 6,000 were injured. The quake coincidentally occurred on the 32nd anniversary of the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which killed around 10,000 people. The 1985 quake was commemorated, and a national earthquake drill was held, at 11 a.m. local time, just two hours before the 2017 earthquake. Twelve days earlier, the even larger 2017 Chiapas earthquake struck 650 km (400 mi) away, off the coast of the state of Chiapas.

September 19 – The body of woman hangs crushed by a collapsed building in the neighborhood of Roma Norte in Mexico City on September 19, 2017. Throughout Mexico City, rescue workers and residents dug through the rubble of collapsed buildings seeking survivors following a 7.1 magnitude quake.

September 19 -Shaheda, 40, a Rohingya refugee woman who said her body was burnt when the Myanmar army set fire to her house, receives treatment at the Cox’s Bazar District Sadar Hospital in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh on September 19, 2017.  Almost 600,000 Rohingya refugees have crossed into Bangladesh, fleeing the violence in Burma’s Rakhine state, since August 25. Many of the refugees tell distressing stories of their villages being attacked or burned by Burmese soldiers, or of their neighbors or family members being injured or killed. The United Nations has accused Burmese troops of waging an ethnic cleansing campaign. The new arrivals in Bangladesh join an already-existing large population of Rohingya refugees, which has prompted the government to announce plans to build one of the world’s largest refugee camps to house more than 800,000 stateless Rohingya, replacing hundreds of makeshift camps that are popping up near the border. Local medical teams, supported by UNICEF and WHO, have started a massive immunization drive in the camps, racing to prevent outbreaks of infectious diseases. The UN Refugee Agency has called the current crisis the fastest-growing refugee emergency in the world today.

September 24 – Members of the New England Patriots kneel during the national anthem before a game against the Houston Texans at Gillette Stadium on September 24, 2017, in Foxboro, Massachusetts. The new wave of #TakeAKnee protests came one day after Donald Trump launched a sensational attack on NFL players during a campaign-style speech in Alabama on September 23, challenging the league’s owners to release any player who engages in the movement started last year by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out! He’s fired. He’s fired!”, Trump said to a small, frenzied crowd of ardent supporters. Current and former players decried the president’s remarks. Minnesota Vikings running back Bishop Sankey tweeted: “It’s a shame and disgrace when you have the president of the US calling citizens of the country sons of a bitches.” NFL commissioner Roger Goodell criticized Trump’s “divisive comments”. On November 13, GQ named Colin Kaepernick Citizen of the Year.

September 25 – A giant sign in the front yard of a St. Croix homeowner asks Donald Trump for “TREMENDOUS! HUGE! BEST EVER!” relief for the U.S. Virgin Islands after the island was devastated by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, as seen from a Navy helicopter passing over St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, on September 25, 2017.  After Hurricane Irma pummeled St. John and St. Thomas, St. Croix was mercifully left with about 90% power. But two weeks later, Hurricane Maria arrived to change that, decimating the island. Many of the more than 100,000 residents who live in the islands were left without a place to stay after the storms destroyed their homes. Many residents were also left without the means to communicate. Recovery will be slow but there has been some progress since Hurricane Maria.  Electrical power has been restored to 20% of customers in St. John, 20% of customers in St. Thomas and 10% of customers in St. Croix, according to FEMA. On St. Croix and St. Thomas, about 90% of power has returned to critical facilities such as hospitals, airports and shelters. About 95% of roadways are passable and no major roadways are closed.  Approximately 43% of cell service has been restored. Julio Rhymer, executive director for the Virgin Islands Water and Power Authority (WAPA), recognizes that Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico, are still struggling from being hit by the hurricanes, but he wants “to make sure the Virgin Islands doesn’t get forgotten in the restoration process.”

September 25 – After the passage of Hurricane Maria, a man rides his bicycle through a storm-damaged road in Toa Alta, west of San Juan, Puerto Rico on September 25, 2017. Maria crashed across the entire U.S. territory of Puerto Rico on September 20, making landfall with winds approaching 150 mph (240 kph). Widespread destruction from the worst storm to hit in nearly a century left almost the entire island without power, and many without running water or cell phone service. Maria also brought heavy rains and flooding. The death toll remains unclear. The task of recovery and rebuilding homes and infrastructure on the island — home to 3.4 million people — has been daunting. On September 29, San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz begged the federal government to step up its recovery efforts to get the island back on track: “I am asking the President of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives,” she added, warning that “if we don’t get the food and water into peoples’ hands what we are going to see is something close to a genocide”.  Her passionate pleas for help were met with criticism and anger by Donald Trump, who did not visit the island until two weeks after the storm. On October 13, Trump threatened to pull federal emergency management workers from the storm-ravaged island in yet another Twitter tirade. November 20 marked two months since Maria made landfall and Puerto Rico is still in crisis mode. The electrical system has been partially resuscitated, helped by mega-generators imported by the Army Corps of Engineers, but still less than half — 46.6 percent — of Puerto Rico has power. Telecommunications is still operating at about 75 percent capacity; cellphone service at 65 percent; and 1-in-10 Puerto Ricans still lack potable water.

September 26 – Saudi women activist ​Manal al-Sharif flashes the victory sign from behind the wheel​. ​On ​September 26, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced that women would be allowed to drive starting in June​ 2018. The decision highlights the damage that the ban on women driving has done to the kingdom’s international reputation and its hopes for a public relations benefit from the reform. Saudi leaders also hope the new policy will help the economy by increasing women’s participation in the workplace. Many working Saudi women spend much of their salaries on drivers or must be driven to work by male relatives.

September 27 – Naval Aircrewman (Helicopter) 2nd Class Brandon Larnard, assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron, carries an evacuee off an MH-60S Sea Hawk helicopter following the landfall of Hurricane Maria on the island of Dominica on September 27, 2017. Dominica was Hurricane Maria’s first victim, and it was clear from a flight over the island nation that the storm showed no mercy.  At least 15 people were killed and there was widespread destruction in the capital of Roseau. Many buildings were damaged, cars and boats were overturned, bridges were clogged with huge tree trucks and many roads were impassable. According to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, 100% of the agriculture sector and 95% of the tourism sector was destroyed. The Caribbean island of 73,000 residents was a place of lush greenery, punctuated by waterfalls and rain forests. The rain forests appear to have vanished. The remaining residents on the island still have no clean, running water and no power.

September 28 – Tomasa Mozo, 69, a housewife, looks up at the roof as she poses for a portrait inside the ruins of her house after an earthquake in San Jose Platanar, Mexico, near the epicenter, on September 28, 2017. The house was badly damaged during a powerful 6.1 earthquake on September 23, but with the help of her family Mozo rescued some furniture. She lives in another room of her house and hopes to repair the damage as soon as possible.This was the third major earthquake to strike Mexico in the month of September.

September 29 – Hurricane Maria – U.S. Army veteran Luis Cabrera Sanchez holds his machete as he pauses for a portrait while clearing debris from his damaged home, with family and neighbors, in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria in Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, on September 29, 2017. Sanchez, who served in the military from 1966 to 1969, said his greatest needs are water, food, and energy.

In October

A pair of cowboy boots lies in the street outside the concert venue after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on October 1, 2017. A lone gunman fired automatic weapons into a gathering of 22,000 country music fans killing 58 people and wounding hundreds more. (Photo: Steve Marcus / Reuters)

Flowers are placed near the scene of the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip on October 2, 2017. (Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez / AP)

A woman makes a sign at a vigil on the Las Vegas strip following a mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 2, 2017. (Photo: Chris Wattie / Reuters)

Independence supporters march during a demonstration downtown Barcelona, Spain on October 2, 2017. Catalan leaders accused Spanish police of brutality and repression while the Spanish government praised the security forces for behaving firmly and proportionately. Videos and photographs of the police actions were on the front page of news media outlets around the world. (Felipe Dana /AP)

Air Force One departs Las Vegas past the broken windows on the Mandalay Bay hotel, where shooter Stephen Paddock conducted his mass shooting along the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S., October 4, 2017. (Photo: Mike Blake)

Veronica Hartfield, widow of slain Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Officer Charleston Hartfield, and their son Ayzayah Hartfield, 15, attend a vigil for Charleston Hartfield at Police Memorial Park on October 5, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Charleston Hartfield, who was off duty at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival on October 1, was killed when Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd killing at least 58 people and injuring more than 450. (Photo: Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty)

A toy car is placed in the coffin of Juan Miguel Soares Silva, 4, one of the victims of the recent municipal daycare center attack, during his burial at Saint Luke’s cemetery in Janauba, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, on October 6, 2017. A Brazilian nursery school guard sprayed children with alcohol and set them on fire, killing six small children and a teacher in an attack which horrified the nation. (Photo: Alex De Jesus / AFP / Getty)

​About 8,000 people lived in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park and a neighboring subdivision​ before the a northern California fire turned it into ash. ​ (Photo: ​Google Earth (L); California Highway Patrol/Golden Gate Division/Handout via ​Reuters (R)​)

Signorello Estate winery, located on Silverado Trail, before flames climbed the ivy-covered walls of the winery headquarters and it eventually collapsed. (Photo: Signorello Winery Estate)

Signorelle Estate winery (2/2) – The remains of the fire damaged Signarello Estate winery after an out of control wildfire moved through the area on October 9, 2017 in Napa, California. Tens of thousands of acres and hundreds of homes and businesses have burned in widespread wildfires that are burning in Napa and Sonoma counties. (Photo: Justin Sullivan/ Getty)

Photographer Ian Frank just took this photo of DeAndre Harris, 22, that he titled “Die Nigger” as heard today with his very own ears at the pro-Trump white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, VA. On October 10, the Charlottesville police department announced that it had issued an arrest warrant for Harris. He is accused of attacking one of the men who beat him.

Emergency crews work to pull bodies from the buildings demolished by the twin bomb blasts in Mogadishu, Somalia on October 14, 2017. At least 327 people and injured nearly 400 police said. The attack was the deadliest in Somalia’s history. (Photo: Mohamed Abdiwahab/ Agence France-Presse/ Getty)

Somalis remove the body of a man killed in a blast in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Saturday, October 14, 2017. A huge explosion from a truck bomb has killed at least 20 people in Somalia’s capital, police said Saturday, as shaken residents called it the most powerful blast they’d heard in years. (Photo: Farah Abdi Warsameh / AP)

A forensics expert walks in a field after a powerful bomb blew up a car (Rear) killing investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Bidnija, Malta, October 16, 2017 (Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi / Reuters)

A woman cries as she looks at her house in Raqqa on October 20, 2017, after a Kurdish-led force expelled the Islamic State group from the northern Syrian city. For three years, Raqqa saw some of IS’s worst abuses and grew into one of its main governance hubs, a center for both its potent propaganda machine and its unprecedented experiment in jihadist statehood. (Photo: Bulent Kilic /AFP/Getty)

Myeshia Johnson kisses the casket of her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, during his burial service at the Memorial Gardens East cemetery on October 21, 2017, in Hollywood, Florida. Sgt. Johnson along with Army Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright were killed in an ambush in Niger on October 4. (Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty)

A relative of Maseno University student Titus Okul, who was shot during a protest the day before, touches his hand at the morgue in Kisumu on October 27, 2017. According to his parents, he was expecting to graduate on December 15. One person was shot dead as fresh protests hit western Kenya on October 27, a day after a deeply divisive election rerun which was marred by low voter turnout and violence, taking the death toll to six. (Photo: Yasuyoshi Chiba / AFP / Getty)

People celebrate after Catalonia’s parliament voted to declare independence from Spain in Barcelona on October 27, 2017. Catalonia’s parliament voted to declare independence and proclaim a republic, just as Madrid was poised to impose direct rule on the region to stop it in its tracks. The motion declaring independence was approved with 70 votes in favor, 10 against, and two abstentions. Catalan opposition MPs walked out of the 135-seat chamber before the vote in protest at a declaration unlikely to be given official recognition. (Photo: Pau Barrena / AFP / Getty)

Samantha Hanahentzen, 17, poses for a #MeToo portrait in Detroit, Michigan, on October 29, 2017. Hanahentzen said: “When I saw the #MeToo hashtag I was just coming to terms with my sexual assault. It happened when I was in middle school by one of my teachers. (Photo: Lucy Nicholson / Reuters)

Eric Fleming, 41, stops to express his condolences near a bicycle where people have placed flowers to remember the victims of the October 31 terrorist attack in New York City on November 2, 2017. (Photo: Andres Kudacki / AP)

October 1 – A pair of cowboy boots lies in the street outside the concert venue after a mass shooting at a music festival on the Las Vegas Strip on October 1, 2017. Stephen Paddock fired automatic weapons into a gathering of 22,000 country music fans killing 58 people (excluding Paddock) and wounding 546 more. The incident was the deadliest mass shooting by a lone gunman in United States history, with 58 fatalities. Paddock’s motive for the shooting is unknown. He died in his hotel room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

October 2 – A woman makes a sign at a vigil on the Las Vegas strip following a mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Country Music Festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. on October 2, 2017.

October 2 – Independence supporters march during a demonstration downtown Barcelona, Spain on October 2, 2017. Increasing rancor between Madrid and Catalonia culminated in a constitutionally illegal referendum on October 1st in which some 43% of the population (approx. 2.3 million voters) turned out to vote with 90% of ballots cast for independence. In some areas, this quickly descended into violent clashes and street violence. Spanish troops attempted to put down pro-independence demonstrations, injuring some 900 people. Catalan leaders accused Spanish police of brutality and repression while the Spanish government praised the security forces for behaving firmly and proportionately. Videos and photographs of the police actions were on the front page of news media outlets around the world.

October 4 – Air Force One departs Las Vegas past the broken windows on the Mandalay Bay hotel on October 4, 2017, where shooter Stephen Paddock breached the windows to conduct his mass shooting along the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.

October 5 – Veronica Hartfield, widow of slain Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Officer Charleston Hartfield, and their son Ayzayah Hartfield, 15, attend a vigil for Charleston Hartfield at Police Memorial Park on October 5, 2017, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Charleston Hartfield, who was off duty at the Route 91 Harvest country music festival on October 1, was killed when Stephen Paddock opened fire on the crowd killing at least 58 (excluding) people and injuring more than 450.

October 6 – A toy car is placed in the coffin of Juan Miguel Soares Silva, 4, one of the victims of the recent municipal daycare center attack, during his burial at Saint Luke’s cemetery in Janauba, Minas Gerais state, Brazil on October 6, 2017. A Brazilian nursery school guard sprayed children with alcohol and set them on fire, killing six small children and a teacher in an attack which horrified the nation.

October 9 – About 8,000 people lived in Santa Rosa’s Coffey Park and a neighboring subdivision​ before the a northern California fire turned it into ash on October 9. The October 2017 Northern California wildfires were a series of wildfires that started burning across the state of California, United States. Twenty-one of the wildfires became major fires that burned at least 245,000 acres (99,148 ha). The wildfires broke out throughout Napa, Lake, Sonoma, Mendocino, Butte, and Solano counties. Seventeen separate wildfires were reported in October.  Owing to the extreme conditions, shortly after the fires ignited on October 8 and 9, they rapidly grew to become extensive, full-scale incidents spanning from 1,000 acres (400 hectares) to well over 20,000 acres (8,100 ha), each within a single day. By October 14, the fires had burned more than 210,000 acres (85,000 ha), forcing 90,000 people to evacuate from their homes. The Northern California fires have killed at least 43 people and hospitalized at least 185, making the week of October 8, 2017, the deadliest week of wildfires in California history. Collectively, this event constitutes the largest loss of life due to wildfires in the United States since the Cloquet Fire in 1918. In total, an estimated 8,900 structures were destroyed.

October 9 – Signorello Estate winery, located on Silverado Trail, before flames climbed the ivy-covered walls of the winery headquarters and it eventually collapsed.

October 9 – The remains of the fire damaged Signarello Estate winery after an out of control wildfire moved through the area on October 9, 2017 in Napa, California.

October 10 – Photographer Ian Frank just took this photo of DeAndre Harris, 22, that he titled “Die Nigger” as heard today with his very own ears at the pro-Trump white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. On October 10, the Charlottesville police department announced that it had issued an arrest warrant for Harris. He is accused of attacking one of the men who beat him.

October 14 – Emergency crews work to pull bodies from the buildings demolished by the twin bomb blasts in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia on October 14, 2017. The blasts killed at least 327 people and injured nearly 400 police. It was the deadliest attack in Somalia’s history, and has shaken and angered thousands across the country. The attack came as the United States under Trump has made a renewed push to defeat the Al-Shabab, Somali-based militants who have terrorized the country and East Africa for years, killing civilians across borders, worsening famine and destabilizing a broad stretch of the region. The blast occurred two days after the head of the United States Africa Command was in Mogadishu to meet with Somalia’s president, and after the country’s defense minister and army chief resigned for undisclosed reasons. While no one had yet claimed responsibility for the bombings, suspicion immediately fell on the group, which frequently targets the capital, Mogadishu. Previous attacks on the capital this year have killed or wounded at least 771 people, according to data compiled by the Long War Journal. The operations included remotely detonated vehicles, suicide car bombings and suicide assaults. At least 11 of these attacks have been assassination attempts against Somali military, intelligence, and government personnel, as well as Somali journalists.

October 14 – Somalis remove the body of a man killed in a blast in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Saturday, October 14, 2017. Huge explosions from a pair of truck bombs killed at least 327 people and injured nearly 400 police.

October 16 – A forensics expert walks in a field after a powerful bomb blew up a car (Rear) killing investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia in Bidnija, Malta, October 16, 2017.  Galizia spent much of her work in recent years reporting on the Panama Papers, the cache of records from a law firm in Panama that detailed offshoring activities of powerful officials and companies around the world. Her reporting on allegations about the wife of Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat and a shell company in Panama had caused concern when Malta had assumed the rotating, six-month presidency of the Council of the European Union, the Guardian reported. No suspects have been identified in the bombing, but Galizia’s son Matthew said that his mother was dead because of the incompetence and negligence of the Maltese government and police. “My mother was assassinated because she stood between the rule of law and those who sought to violate it, like many strong journalists,” he said in a post on Facebook. “But she was also targeted because she was the only person doing so. This is what happens when the institutions of the state are incapacitated: the last person left standing is often a journalist.” Nine journalists have been killed for their work this year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. If it is confirmed that Galizia was targeted, she would be the 10th, and the first in Europe, the CPJ said.

October 20 – A woman cries as she looks at her house in Raqqa on October 20, 2017, after a Kurdish-led force expelled the Islamic State group from the northern Syrian city. For three years, Raqqa saw some of ISIS’s worst abuses and grew into one of its main governance hubs, a center for both its potent propaganda machine and its unprecedented experiment in jihadist statehood. Although there has been an overall reduction of civilian casualties in areas where de-escalation zone agreements have been put in place, the humanitarian situation has nonetheless escalated significantly in the face of military operations in Raqqa City and Deir-ez-Zor. UNICEF remains extremely concerned about the safety and well-being of children who are caught in the crossfire and face constant aerial bombardments. Conditions in these areas continue to deteriorate due to severe food, water, electricity and medical shortages. In Raqqa, the population has resorted to collecting unsafe water from the Euphrates River, increasing the risk of waterborne disease outbreaks.

October 21 – Myeshia Johnson kisses the casket of her husband, U.S. Army Sgt. La David Johnson, during his burial service at the Memorial Gardens East cemetery on October 21, 2017, in Hollywood, Florida. Sgt. Johnson along with Army Staff Sgt. Bryan C. Black, Staff Sgt. Jeremiah W. Johnson, and Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright were part of a 12-man U.S. special forces team that was ambushed October 4, 2017, by militants believed to be linked to the Islamic State. Five Nigerien soldiers were also killed in the shooting, which broke out as the soldiers left a meeting with local officials near Tongo Tongo. The Trump administration waited nearly two weeks to acknowledge the attack, and details about it remain hazy while an investigation is ongoing. Initial media reports said Johnson’s remains had been discovered by Nigerien troops 48 hours after the ambush. But later reports suggested children found Johnson’s body, with his hands bound and a large gash on his head. The soldiers were initially believed to have been attacked by roughly 50 militants, but that estimate rose to approximately 200 in recent days. Additional remains of Johnson were reportedly found in the African nation in early November – after his funeral had already been held, with his widow questioning whether he was even in the casket. The U.S. military’s inconsistent account of the ambush and the soldiers’ service in Niger has raised drawn scrutiny from Congress and the public to America’s evolving role in African missions. President Donald Trump raised even more controversy when Johnson’s widow accused him of making an insensitive condolence call in which he said her fallen husband “knew what he signed up for.” Trump denied this and accused the widow of lying.

October 27 – A relative of Maseno University student Titus Okul, who was shot during a protest the day before, touches his hand at the morgue in Kisumu on October 27, 2017. According to his parents, he was expecting to graduate on December 15. One person was shot dead as fresh protests hit western Kenya on October 27, a day after a deeply divisive election rerun which was marred by low voter turnout and violence, taking the death toll to six

October 27 – People celebrate after Catalonia’s parliament voted to declare independence from Spain in Barcelona on October 27, 2017. Catalonia’s parliament voted to declare independence and proclaim a republic, just as Madrid was poised to impose direct rule on the region to stop it in its tracks. The motion declaring independence was approved with 70 votes in favor, 10 against and two abstentions, throwing Spain into the biggest constitutional crisis in its 40-year democratic history. Catalan opposition MPs walked out of the 135-seat chamber before the vote in protest at a declaration unlikely to be given official recognition. Under Spanish national law, the vote has made secessionist parliamentarians vulnerable to arrest for sedition. Immediately following the vote, the Spanish parliament in Madrid voted to strip the Catalan regional government of its powers, invoking a never-before-used article of the constitution — Article 155 — which allows Madrid to dissolve the autonomy of a region if the unity of Spain is deemed at risk. All of that means we have reached the moment the Iberian Peninsula has both anticipated and dreaded since a controversial referendum on Catalan independence was held on October 1: brinksmanship and deep uncertainty about the future.

October 29 – Samantha Hanahentzen, 17, poses for a #MeToo portrait in Detroit, Michigan, on October 29, 2017. Hanahentzen said: “When I saw the #MeToo hashtag I was just coming to terms with my sexual assault. It happened when I was in middle school by one of my teachers. It took me a while to come forward with what had happened to me and then when I went to the administration I was told I didn’t have enough evidence to prove anything and I should just keep quiet about it because I and the school could be sued for slander if I went public with my experience. It was really silencing because when I was being assaulted it was that stereotypical line of ‘let’s keep this between me and you.’ And then when I found the courage to come out with out I was told again ‘let’s keep this quiet.’ So for me too, it was a way to have a voice and it was a way for me to see that I’m not the only one that has gone through this and that women all around the world have all experienced the same thing. It was really unifying.”

October 31 – Flowers are placed near the scene of the mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip. A driver plowed a pickup truck down a crowded bike path along the Hudson River in Manhattan on October 31, killing eight people and injuring 11 before being shot by a police officer in what officials are calling the deadliest terrorist attack on New York City since Sept. 11, 2001. The rampage ended when the motorist — whom the police identified as Uzbek immigrant Sayfullo Saipov, 29 — smashed into a school bus, jumped out of his truck and ran up and down the highway waving a pellet gun and paintball gun and shouting “Allahu akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” before he was shot in the abdomen by the officer. Saipov was indicted on 22 charges, ranging from terrorism to both murder and attempted murder in aid of racketeering. The associated image was taken on November 2, 2017. 

In November

Myanmar’s de-facto leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has visited the country’s conflict-ridden Rakhine State on November 2, for the first time since an outbreak of violence in August forced more than 600,000 people to flee from the ongoing ethnic cleansing. (Photo: Khine Htoo Mratt / Reuters)

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men, along with 10 other princes, was arrested in Saudi Arabia on November 4, 2017. A midnight blitz of arrests ordered by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia over the weekend of November 4 has ensnared dozens of its most influential figures, including 11 of his royal cousins, in what appears to be the most sweeping transformation in the kingdom’s governance for more than eight decades. (Photo: Ishara S.Kodikara/ Agence France-Presse / Getty)

Saad Hariri announced on November 4 from Riyadh, the Saudi capital, that he was stepping down as Lebanon’s prime minister, but officials in Lebanon have said that his departure would not take effect until he delivered his resignation in person in Beirut. Mr. Hariri’s unexpected trip and resignation unsettled the Middle East, setting off a political crisis in Lebanon and even raising fears of war. Mr. Hariri said he feared for his safety in Lebanon. (Photo: Ratib Al Safadi / Anadolu Agency / Getty)

A migrant arrives at a naval base after he was rescued by Libyan coastal guards in Tripoli, Libya, on November 6, 2017. (Photo: Ahmed Jadallah / Reuters)

People mourn the 26 victims killed at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs during a prayer service on November 6, 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas. (Photo: Scott Olson / Getty)

A woman places flowers on coffins during the funeral service for 26 Nigerian women, at the Salerno cemetery, southern Italy. The women died around November 6 while crossing the Mediterranean sea in an attempt to reach Italy. The photo was taken on November 17, 2017. (Photo: Alessandra Tarantino / AP)

An estimated 60,000 people marched alongside ultranationalists and Nazis to mark the 99th anniversary of Polish National Independence on September 11, 2017. Some of the protesters carried flags, including the red falange flag of 1930s fascism, and held up banners and signs that had a clear far-right extremist message, including “Clean Blood,” and “White Europe.” (Photo: Janek Skarzynski / AFP / Getty)

​A woman mourns as she holds the body of her daughter, who died in an earthquake in Sarpol-e-Zahab, western Iran, on November 13, 2017. A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck along the Iran-Iraq border on Sunday night, killing at least 500 people and injuring another 8,000. (Photo: Mosleh Pirkhezranian / Islamic Republic News Agency via AP)

A damaged building is seen following an earthquake in Sarpol-e Zahab county in Kermanshah, Iran, on November 13, 2017 (Photo: Tasnim News Agency / Reuters)

Protesters gather for a rally in support for marriage equality in Sydney on November 14, 2017. (Photo: AAP)

Protesters block Highway 1806 in Mandan during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota. (Photo: Stephanie Keith / Reuters)

Protesters in Harare demanding that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe step down after the military seized control of the capital, Zimbabwe Broadcasting Company and other central locations on November 14, 2017. Photo taken on November 18, 2017. (Photo: Jekesai Njikizana/Agence France-Presse / Getty)

Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 and once proclaimed that “only God will remove me!”, resigned as president on September 21 shortly after lawmakers began impeachment proceedings against him, according to the speaker of Parliament. (Photo: Stringer/ Reuters)

Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladić flashes a thumbs up as he enters the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, on November 22, 2017, to hear the verdict in his genocide trial. (Photo: Peter Dejong / AP).

Nura Mustafic, one of the Mothers of Srebrenica and other Bosnian organizations, wipes away tears as she reacts to the verdict which the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, ICTY, handed down in the genocide trial against former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladić, in The Hague, Netherlands on November 22, 2017. A U.N. court has convicted former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladić of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison for atrocities perpetrated during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war. (Photo: Phil Nijhuis / AP)

November 2 – Myanmar’s de-facto leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi visited the country’s conflict-ridden Rakhine State on November 2 for the first time since an outbreak of violence in August forced more than 600,000 people to flee from the ongoing ethnic cleansing. Aung San Suu Kyi, a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who once embodied her country’s fight for democracy, has come under increased pressure from the international community to denounce the military’s actions. Yet Aung San Suu Kyi has remained conspicuously silent on the Rohingya issue, and when pressed by reporters, she has toed the military’s official line, which contends that the Rohingya are illegally squatting inside Myanmar. “No, it’s not ethnic cleansing,” she said in a rare interview on the subject in 2013.

November 4 – Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men, along with 10 other princes, was arrested in Saudi Arabia on November 4, 2017. A midnight blitz of arrests ordered by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia over the weekend of November 4 has ensnared dozens of its most influential figures, including 11 of his royal cousins, in what appears to be the most sweeping transformation in the kingdom’s governance for more than eight decades. The arrests, ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman without formal charges or any legal process, were presented as a crackdown on corruption. Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, a favored son of the late King Abdullah, was also removed from his post as chief of a major security service just hours before the announcement of arrests. All members of the royal family were barred from leaving the country. With the new detentions, Crown Prince Mohammed, King Salman’s favored son and key adviser, now appears to have established control over all three Saudi security services — the military, internal security services and national guard. For decades they had been distributed among branches of the House of Saud clan to preserve a balance of power in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East’s biggest oil producer.

November 4 – Prime Minister Saad Hariri, who had previously shown no signs of planning to quit, unexpectedly flew to Saudi Arabia and announced his resignation from there, to the shock of his own close advisers. Hours after Mr. Hariri’s announcement — televised Saturday on a Saudi-controlled channel — Saudi Arabia’s assertive new crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, presided over the roundup of some 500 people, including 11 princes, on corruption charges. Hariri’s unexpected trip and resignation unsettled the Middle East, setting off a political crisis in Lebanon and even raising fears of war. But during his resignation speech, Hariri blamed interference in Lebanon by Iran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah for his decision, adding that he feared an assassination attempt. On November 18, Hariri flew from Saudi Arabia to Paris and met with French President Emmanuel Macron. He told reporters there that he would clarify his political position upon returning to Lebanon for Independence Day celebrations. Hariri returned to Lebanon on November 21, 2017. The next day, Hariri announced he is suspending his resignation, at the request of President Michel Aoun.

November 6 – A migrant arrives at a naval base after he was rescued by Libyan coastal guards in Tripoli, Libya, on November 6, 2017. Many thousands of others have risked their lives this year, fleeing conflict and instability in Africa and the Middle East, in small, often decrepit vessels in an attempt to reach European territories. Migrants crossing in the central Mediterranean – from Libya and Tunisia – have until recently come mostly from Eritrea and Somalia, although increasing numbers of Syrians fleeing the country’s civil war are also making the journey. Libya has become a popular starting point for many journeys, with people traffickers exploiting the country’s power vacuum and increasing lawlessness. The relatively short distance to Lampedusa encourages more people to risk the journey. But the number of fatalities has risen dramatically in a matter of months. More than 2,200 lives have been lost since June, the UN refugee agency UNHCR believes. Migration charities believe that as many as 20,000 people may have died at sea trying to reach Europe in the last two decades.

November 6 – People mourn the 26 victims killed by Devin Patrick Kelley at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs during a prayer service on November 6, 2017, in Sutherland Springs, Texas.

November 11 – An estimated 60,000 people marched alongside ultranationalists and Nazis to mark the 99th anniversary of Polish independence. Some of the protesters carried banners and flags, including the red falange flag of 1930s fascism, and held up signs that had a clear far-right extremist message, including “Clean Blood,” and “White Europe.”

November 13 – A woman mourns as she holds the body of her daughter, who died in an earthquake in Sarpol-e-Zahab, western Iran, on November 13, 2017. The Iran-Iraq earthquake struck November 12, 2017, at 18:18 UTC (21:48 Iran Standard Time, 21:18 Arabia Standard Time). The 7.3 magnitude earthquake occurred on the Iran–Iraq border, just inside Iran, in Kermanshah Province, with an epicenter approximately 30 kilometers (19 mi) south of the city of Halabja, Iraqi Kurdistan. The earthquake was felt as far away as Israel and the United Arab Emirates. With at least 540 people killed (530 in Iran and 10 in Iraq) and more than 8,100 injured, as well as many more unaccounted for, it is currently the deadliest earthquake of 2017.

November 13 – A damaged building is seen on November 13, following an earthquake in Sarpol-e Zahab county in Kermanshah, Iran. A magnitude 7.3 earthquake struck along the Iran-Iraq border on September 12, killing at least 500 people and injuring at least 8,000.

September 14 – Protesters block Highway 1806 in Mandan during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota. The Keystone pipeline was temporarily shut down on November 16, after 210,000 gallons of oil gushed into Marshall County, South Dakota, blackening a grassy field in the remote northeast part of the state and sending cleanup crews and emergency workers scrambling to the site. TransCanada, the company which operates the pipeline, said it noticed a loss of pressure in Keystone at about 5:45 a.m. According to a company statement, workers had “completely isolated” the section and “activated emergency procedures” within 15 minutes.

TransCanada estimates that the pipeline leaked about 5,000 barrels of oil at the site. A barrel holds 42 U.S. gallons of crude oil. The Keystone pipeline system is nearly 3,000 miles long and links oil fields in Alberta, Canada, to the large crude-trading hubs in Patoka, Illinois, and Cushing, Oklahoma. The pipeline’s better-known sister project—the Keystone XL pipeline—was proposed in 2008 as a shortcut and enlargement of the Keystone pipeline. It was completed in 2011. The entirety of its northern span—which travels through North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Illinois—would stay closed until the leak was fixed, the company said.

In 2011, climate activists seized upon the Keystone XL pipeline, warning that its completion would allow the exploitation of much of Alberta’s tar sands and lock in too much future carbon pollution. James Hansen, then the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned in The New York Times that exporting oil from the Albertan tar sands would mean “game over for the climate.” In 2015, President Barack Obama blocked the pipeline as part of his administration’s preparation for the UN climate-change talks in Paris. But less than a week after his inauguration, President Donald Trump ordered that decision reversed.

November 14 – Protesters gather for a rally in support for marriage equality in Sydney on November 14, 2017. Australians voiced their opinion on same-sex marriage — and they are overwhelmingly in favor of it. According to the results of a historic national postal survey announced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on November 14, 61.6 percent of Australian voters said yes, same-sex marriage should be legalized. A majority in every single state and territory voted in favor of marriage equality, with a turnout of 79.5 percent of eligible voters nationwide. The results now go to the government, which opted to survey the population before the parliament took up its own vote on the issue. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who voted yes, has already pledged to follow through with the vote’s results. “We must respect the voice of the people. We asked them for their opinion and they have given it to us. It is unequivocal. It is overwhelming,” he said at a press conference. Turnbull said a vote will come before Christmas. Australia will become the 25th country to legalize same-sex marriage in at least some jurisdictions.

November 17 – A woman places flowers on coffins during the funeral service for 26 Nigerian women, at the Salerno cemetery, southern Italy, Friday November 17, 2017. The women died around November 6 while crossing the Mediterranean sea in an attempt to reach Italy.

November 18 – Protesters in Harare on November 18, demanding that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe step down after the military seized control of the capital, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Company and other central locations on November 14. The next day, they issued a statement saying that it was not a coup d’état and that President Robert Mugabe was safe, although the situation would only return to normal after they had dealt with the “criminals” around Mugabe responsible for the socio-economic problems of Zimbabwe. The coup took place amid tensions in the ruling ZANU–PF party between former Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa (who was backed by the army) and First Lady Grace Mugabe (who was backed by the younger G40 faction) over who would succeed the 93-year-old President Mugabe. A week after Mnangagwa was fired and forced to flee the country, and a day before troops moved into Harare, army chief Constantino Chiwenga issued a statement that purges of senior ZANU–PF officials like Mnangagwa had to stop.

November 21 – Robert Mugabe, who has ruled Zimbabwe since independence in 1980 and once proclaimed that “only God will remove me!”, resigned as president on September 21 shortly after lawmakers began impeachment proceedings against him, according to the speaker of Parliament. Cheers broke out at a special session of parliament as speaker Jacob Mudenda read out Mugabe’s resignation letter: “I Robert Gabriel Mugabe in terms of section 96 of the constitution of Zimbabwe hereby formally tender my resignation … with immediate effect.”

November 22 – Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladić flashes a thumbs up as he enters the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands on November 22, 2017, to hear the verdict in his genocide trial.  Ratko Mladić, the 74-year-old dubbed the “Butcher of Bosnia“, was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of one count of genocide, five counts of crimes against humanity, and four violations of the laws or customs of war committed by his forces during the war in Bosnia from 1992 and 1995. Mladić was found not guilty on one count of genocide. He was sentenced to life in prison on November 22, 2017.

One of the two genocide counts included ordering the siege of Sarajevo, in which his troops surrounded the city for 46 months and carried out a campaign of sniping and shelling at the civilian population “aimed to spread terror amongst them”. With an average of 330 shells pummeling the city daily, more than 10,000 people were killed in what is known as the longest siege of a capital city in recent history. The second count of genocide was for killing more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica, a UN-declared “safe haven” at the time. It was the worst genocide to occur on European soil since the Holocaust. Prosecutors successfully argued that Mladić, along with former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević and former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadžić, were among the key players that formed the “joint criminal enterprise” to create a Greater Serbia. He was found guilty of removing Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat inhabitants from Bosnia to establish a Greater Serbia and of taking UN peacekeepers hostage. An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 people were killed during the war in Bosnia, while as many as 50,000 women were raped. In pronouncing the life sentence, the presiding judge, Alphons Orie, said that Mladić’s crimes “rank among the most heinous known to humankind.”  Mladić’s lawyers said they would appeal. 

Mladić was arrested in May 2011 in a village in northern Serbia, after 16 years in hiding. His health had already deteriorated at the time, with one of his arms paralyzed due to a series of strokes. The verdict was disrupted for more than half an hour when he asked the judges for a bathroom break. After he returned, defense lawyers requested that proceedings be halted or shortened because of his high blood pressure. The judges denied the request. Mladić then stood up shouting “this is all lies” and “I’ll fuck your mother”. He was forcibly removed from the courtroom. The verdicts were read in his absence. The trial in The Hague, which took 530 days across more than four years, is arguably the most significant war crimes case in Europe since the Nuremberg trials, in part because of the scale of the atrocities involved. Almost 600 people gave evidence for the prosecution and defense, including survivors of the conflict, and nearly 10,000 exhibits were admitted in evidence.

November 22 – Nura Mustafic, one of the Mothers of Srebrenica and other Bosnian organizations, wipes away tears as she reacts to the verdict which the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, ICTY, handed down in the genocide trial against former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladić, in The Hague, Netherlands on November 22, 2017. A U.N. court  convicted former Bosnian Serb military chief Gen. Ratko Mladić of genocide and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to life in prison for atrocities perpetrated during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.

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India Plants 66 Million Trees in 12 Hours, Breaking World Record 🌳

Now aged 106, Saalumarada Thimmakka​ (aka Mother of Trees)​ has battled the arid conditions of southern India to grow​ 300 trees on the roads from her village. (Photo: Saalumarada Thimmakka International Foundation).

Although the feat has yet to be certified by Guinness World Records, Indian officials have reported that 1.5 million volunteers planted a whopping 66 million trees in just 12 hours in a record-breaking environmental drive on July 11, blowing past the previous record for most trees planted in a single day. Their previous world record was 49.3 million saplings in 24 hours planted in Uttar Pradesh, Northern India. In third place is Pakistan, which planted 847, 275 trees in 2013.

A reported 1.5 volunteers from Uttar Pradesh worked for 24 hours planting 80 different species of sapling trees along roads, railways, and on public land. Volunteers included children, the elderly and all age groups in between the two. The campaign was organized by the Madhya Pradesh government, with 24 districts of the Narmada river basin chosen as planting sites to increase the saplings’ chances of survival. The saplings were raised on local nurseries.

The effort is part of the commitment India made at the Paris Climate Conference in December 2015. In the agreement, signed on Earth Day 2016, India agreed to spend $6 billion to reforest 12 percent of its land (bringing total forest cover to 235 million acres by 2030, or about 29 percent of the country’s territory).

Trees sequester carbon dioxide from the air, thereby reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. India has experienced substantial loss of its forest cover over the past few centuries, as people cut down trees for firewood, pasture, and to make room for development.

Other countries are also replanting trees. In December, African nations pledged to reforest 100 million hectares. A wide range of stakeholders, from countries to companies, also signed on to the non-binding New York Declaration of Forests that month, with the goal of halving deforestation by 2020 and ending it by 2030. The declaration also seeks to restore at least 350 million hectares of degraded land with healthy forests.

Still, the young trees aren’t out of the woods yet, so to speak. Saplings need water and care and are susceptible to disease. Experience shows mortality rates as high as 40 percent after such massive tree plantings. Officials say they are aware of those concerns and will be monitoring the trees with aerial photography, to see which areas may need special attention.

“The world has realized that serious efforts are needed to reduce carbon emissions to mitigate the effects of global climate change,” Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said at an event promoting the planting.

Officials also hope the trees will improve air quality in India, which suffers from some of the worst in the world. Trees can help remove some pollutants from the air. Right now, 6 of the top 10 most polluted cities in the world are in the country. Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state in India, a nation of 1.25 billion people. Some of them may be able to breathe a little easier, and find shade under the trees.

“The biggest contribution of this tree planting project is, apart from the tokenism, that it focuses on the major issues,” Anit Mukherjee, policy fellow with the Centre for Global Development told the Telegraph. “It addresses many of the big issues for India: pollution, deforestation, and land use.”

Sources:
✻ India Plants 66 Million Trees in 12 Hours as Part of Record-Breaking Environmental Campaign -By Chris Baynes | The Independent (UK)
✻ 66 Million Trees Planted in 12 Hours, Well Done India -By Lulu Morris | National Geographic

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Recommended…
✻ A Walk in the Woods: A Photo Appreciation of Trees -By Alan Taylor | The Atlantic (Photos)

#MPPlants6croreTrees  #ParisAccord

Beyond International Women’s Day, Honoring Women Who Defend Land and Human Rights

Photo credit (above): Women of Green; Featured image (background): People gather to form a woman symbol to celebrate International Women’s Day at Manila’s Rizal Park on March 8, 2014. (Photo: AFP/Jay Directo)

Women around the world stand at the forefront of rising movements to defend and protect the health of water, land, air and diverse communities. While we celebrated International Women’s Day on March 8, it is vital to honor the women defenders who, with incredible courage and effort, are taking on corporations and governments to say “no” to resource extraction and the continued violation of human rights, women’s rights and the rights of indigenous peoples and front-line communities. Through their work, these women act so that the generations to come may yet stand a chance of inheriting a sustainable and livable planet.

With increased frequency however, many of the women and men who advocate daily in defense of a just world are being systematically criminalized, attacked and murdered with impunity. According to 2016 reports by Global Witness, 2015 was the most dangerous year on record for land defenders, with at least three people per week killed for nonviolent opposition to mining and fossil fuel projects, agribusiness, hydroelectric dams, logging and other extractive industries.

Indigenous peoples defending ancestral territories represent upward of 40 percent of those killed. Women, and indigenous women in particular, face even greater challenges and dangers as they navigate the brutal intersection of environmental devastation, cultural dislocation and sexual violence and gender-based persecution.

Tragedies such as the 2016 murder of Honduran activist Berta Caceres indicate the acceleration of these trends, which have prompted United Nations special rapporteur on indigenous rights Victoria Tauli-Corpuz to warn of an “epidemic” of murder of Earth defenders. The violation of women’s rights and land defenders speaks in a profound way to the derangement of our times, and to the dangerous worldviews of domination and exploitation, which sit at the root of both degradation of Earth’s natural systems, and violence against women of the world.

Despite experiencing the impacts of environmental harms with disproportionate severity, women are rising in diverse manifestations to demonstrate that they hold the knowledge, skills and heartfelt passion needed not only to protect their homelands, but also to build substantial and creative solutions needed to avert the worst impacts of environmental destruction and the climate crisis.

In this context, standing in solidarity with women defenders is critical — to uphold fundamental human rights, to protect front-line communities and to ensure sustainability on Earth. Front-line women can also be supported by demanding governments and corporate actors comply with indigenous rights and sovereignty, issues which often lie at the root of violations.

On International Women’s Day, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network shared the stories of just a few of the world’s countless women human rights and Earth defenders, and raises the call to visibilize, support and honor all frontline women defenders for their fierce dedication and unrelenting voice and action for justice.

➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺➺

​Melania Chiponda, Zimbabwe (Photo: Sema Africa) ​

Josephine Pagalan, Philippines (Photo: Tinig ng Plaridel​ via Twitter)

​​Ana Mirian Romero, Honduras (Photo:​ ​TRF/Shanshan Chen)

Joy Braun, North Dakota, USA (Photo: AP/James MacPherson)

LaDonna BraveBull Allard, North Dakota, USA (Photo: ​Emily Arasim​)​

Click the image above to see the full sized image and read the name of the featured frontline woman.

Melania Chiponda, Zimbabwe
After bearing witness to violence and sexual abuse of women by security and military forces attempting to suppress local opposition to mining, Melania Chiponda of Marange, Zimbabwe began advocating as a woman defender, working independently and with WoMin. For many years, Melania has been speaking out against actions by the diamond mining industry to forcibly break the connection between women and their ancestral lands. For her work to protect indigenous women’s land rights and stop land grabbing and militarization of mining regions, Melania has been arrested, detained and threatened many times. She commented recently as part of the #DefendHer campaign.

“If you take away land from women in the rural areas, you take away their livelihoods; you take away the very thing that they identify with. Then we fight. Because we have nothing else to lose.”

Josephine Pagalan, Philippines
In the Philippines, Manobo indigenous woman leader Josephine Pagalan is fighting to protect her people’s ancestral lands from mining and logging operations. Following the murder of several of her colleagues, Josephine was forced to leave her community to seek safety in the city, fearing that impunity in her remote village would lead to her own death. Despite harassment, Josephine continues representing the public face of the many indigenous Lumad women who are on the front lines demonstrating, documenting human rights abuses and filing legal suits in opposition to the militarization, violation of community rights and environmental devastation taking place across their homelands.

Josephine explained to Womens E-News, “We want the government to be made accountable for the human rights violations and attacks. Mining companies promised too many things in the past but they did not deliver. We don’t want to give up our land because money can be consumed but land will not perish.”

Ana Mirian Romero, Honduras
In Honduras, Ana Mirian Romero, leader of the Lenca Indigenous Movement of La Paz and San Isidro Labrador Indigenous Council, is standing for land rights for the region’s indigenous peoples, working most recently in opposition to the Los Encinos hydroelectric dam, a project which never received free, prior and informed consent, as required by the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Repeatedly since 2014, Ana Mirian has been subject to harassment, death threats, raids, beatings by police while pregnant, arson attacks and gunmen outside her home. In 2016, while being awarded the Front Line Defenders Award for outstanding contribution to the protection of human and land rights despite the immense personal risk endured, she explained, “We defend the river, the forests and the pure air that we breathe. That is all we want — land, air and water that is not contaminated by the dams. We are persecuted and threatened for this, but we do it for our children’s future.”

LaDonna BraveBull Allard and Joy Braun, North Dakota, United States
Joy Braun (Cheyenne River Sioux Peoples) and LaDonna Brave Bull Allard (Standing Rock Sioux Peoples) are two of the extraordinary indigenous women defenders of the Standing Rock Dakota Access Pipeline resistance movement, both taking action to protect water and life since the first day of the encampments. For many months, both women and their families have been exposed to violence, militarized police forces, raids and surveillance.

Joy Braun works in the region of North Dakota where rampant fracking (which would supply the Dakota Access Pipeline if it becomes operational) has been taking a devastating toll on the health and safety of indigenous women for many years.

LaDonna’s home, and the grave of her son, overlook the Missouri River at the point of Dakota Access Pipeline crossing. During a fall 2016 interview she pronounced:

“First and foremost we are water protectors, we are women who stand because the water is female, and so we must stand with the water. If we are to live as a people, we must have water, without water we die. So everything we do as we stand here, we must make sure that we do it in prayer, and that we do it in civil disobedience. We do it with goodness and kindness in our hearts, but we stand up. We will not let them pass. We stand. Because we must protect our children and our grandchildren.”

When women land and water protectors are harmed we must speak out and take action to resist and repudiate these abuses, and acknowledge that these women put their bodies on the line for the survival of all of us. Though the challenges and dangers faced are dire, we cannot help but remember the proverb which says: “They tried to bury us, they forgot that we are seeds.”

For each woman persecuted for her courageous defense of people and planet — let 100 more rise to build the world we seek.

Source: On International Women’s Day, Honoring Women Who Defend Land and Human Rights -By Osprey Orielle Lake and Emily Arasim | Moyers & Company

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Osprey Orielle Lake is the founder and executive director of the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) International and serves as Co-Chair of International Advocacy for the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature. Follow WECAN International on Twitter: @WECAN_INTL.

Emily Arasim is an avid photojournalist, writer, seed saver and farmer from New Mexico. She has served as WECAN International‘s communications coordinator and project assistant since 2014.

Fault Lines – The Economic, Racial, & Social Inequality That Persist in South Africa

All photography by Johnny Miller.

In Makause, a sprawling settlement of overcrowded shacks built on an abandoned gold mine, some 30,000 residents face the leafy streets and gracious homes of Primrose, an affluent suburb of Johannesburg. Separated only by a narrow highway, the two neighborhoods offer a stark reminder that, 22 years after apartheid was abolished, South Africa is still defined by massive inequality and stark segregation.

This is where apartheid was born. When British financier Barney Barnato arrived in Johannesburg, not long after miners struck gold there in 1886, it was little more than a tent city, with a single hotel and a handful of saloons. The following year, Barnato founded his first mine just outside the settlement, and named it after his daughter, Primrose. The city’s fault lines were quickly established: Black Africans lived in cramped barracks, set apart from affluent whites.

Today, the residents of Makause live sardined in small shacks constructed from corrugated tin, scrap metal, and wooden planks. The ground is contaminated with toxic chemicals. Water was not available until 2008, when two pumps were installed. Fires are common. One, in 2012, destroyed 18 homes before fire trucks lingering across the street in Primrose finally arrived.

Photographer Johnny Miller moved to South Africa that year and set out to chronicle the country’s segregation from the skies. “Drones have an incredible ability to transform how we see the world,” he says. “There is an electricity in the air in South Africa right now, a nervous tension. People are tired of relying on platitudes and promises from 22 years ago. They want to see change.”

A sprawling settlement borders the Papwa Sewgolum Golf Course in Durban.

The settlement of Imizamo Yethu in Hout Bay has few toilets and no sewage system for its more than 15,000 residents. The shacks are just a stone’s throw from sprawling homes.

Leafy trees and swimming pools in the middle-class suburb of Bloubosrand border the Kya Sands settlement in Johannesburg.

The Killarney industrial park borders Dunoon, an informal settlement on the northern outskirts of Cape Town.

Source: South Africa’s Fault Lines | New Republic

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Johnny Miller is a freelance documentary photographer and filmmaker based in Cape Town, South Africa. Follow on Twitter @UnequalScenes

Vice President Joe Biden Awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom🏅

President Obama surprised Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Thursday by bestowing the Presidential Medal of Freedom on him, calling Mr. Biden “my brother” in a tearful goodbye in the East Room of the White House.

Having called Mr. Biden and his wife, Jill, to the White House for a private farewell, the president instead brought him into a room filled with his friends, family and colleagues to present him with the honor, the nation’s highest.

For the first time, President Obama awarded the medal with distinction, an added level of veneration that previous presidents had reserved for recipients like Pope John Paul II and Colin L. Powell, the former secretary of state.

Moments later, as the president called up a military aide to read the proclamation, Mr. Biden appeared to break down, turning his back to the audience to compose himself. After Obama hung the medal around his neck, the vice president cried openly.

The citation with the medal noted Mr. Biden’s “charm, candor, unabashed optimism and deep and abiding patriotism,” as well as his “strength and grace to overcome great personal adversity.” It called him one of the most “consequential vice presidents in American history.”

Addressing President Obama, who stood to his side, Mr. Biden said that he had never met anyone who had “the integrity and the decency and the sense of other people’s needs like you do.” The ceremony was an emotional conclusion to an improbable partnership that began in 2008 when Obama asked his former presidential rival to be his running mate. The two men became close during eight years in the White House.

While paying tribute to Biden during the ceremony, Obama said, “To know Joe Biden is to know love without pretense, service without self regard and to live life fully. As one of his longtime colleagues in the Senate said — who happened to be a Republican — if you can’t admire Joe Biden, you have a problem.”

President Obama spoke emotionally about the relationship between his own family and the extended Biden clan, many of whom had gathered for the ceremony. “My family is so proud to call ourselves honorary Bidens,” he said. Mr. Biden sought to return the compliment. He noted that the Constitution did not grant the vice president any inherent powers — “for good reason,” he said. But he said that Obama had made good on a pledge to make sure that Mr. Biden had a job that mattered.

“You have more than kept your commitment to me by saying you wanted me to help govern,” Mr. Biden said, adding that he hoped the history books would record that he was an asterisk in Obama’s historic presidency.

“I can say I was part of a journey of a remarkable man who did remarkable things for this country,” Mr. Biden said.

Click here to read the full transcript of the event.

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Background image: President Barack Obama surprises Vice President Joe Biden with a special send-off. In a White House ceremony honoring his Vice President, President Obama surprised an emotional Joe Biden by presenting him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom on January 12, 2017. (Photo: Yuri Gripas/ Reuters)

10 Human Rights Causes to Support in 2017

Happy New Year!

🎉🎈 🎤 🍰 🍸🍷🍾⌛️🌹

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” ― Edith Lovejoy Pierce.

Today’s post continues a tradition I started three years ago, whereby I dedicate the first post of the new year to noteworthy organizations and individuals committed to the advancement of human rights or the protection of Mother Earth. While the criteria for my list hasn’t changed, you may notice that I selected more causes that focus on refugees . The reason is simple: We are currently witnessing highest level of displacement on record. According to the UNHCR, an unprecedented 65.3 million people around the world have been forced from home. Among them are nearly 21.3 million refugees, over half of whom are under the age of 18. There are also 10 million stateless people who have been denied a nationality and access to basic rights such as education, healthcare, employment and freedom of movement. In a world where nearly 34,000 people are forcibly displaced every day as a result of conflict or persecution, the least I can do is acknowledge some of the many social entrepreneurs committed to assisting the stateless and traumatized.

There are three other things worth mentioning. (1) After toying with the idea for over three years, I have finally decided to limit the number of causes to 10 going forward. (2) There is a tie for one of the spots below. Because I don’t rank the entries, the word “tie” should be construed to mean two interconnected organizations, equally deserving of recognition, featured under the same number. (3) Feel free to leave me a comment or complete the contact form if you would like me to consider an organization, cause or person for my 2018 post! The deadline for submissions is November 20, 2017.

Now, and without further ado…

✤ 10 Human Rights Causes to Support 2017✤

1. Operation Underground Railroad (O.U.R.) is a non-profit founded by Tim Ballard which assists governments around the world in the rescue of human trafficking and sex trafficking victims with a special focus on children. O.U.R. also aids with planning, prevention, capture and prosecution of offenders, and works with partner organizations for prevention, victim recovery, and strengthened awareness or fundraising efforts. The organization has been documented for their covert operations with jump teams consisting of former CIA agents, U.S. Special Operations Forces Members, and other support volunteers. Operation Underground Railroad’s ultimate goal is to eliminate Sex Trafficking world-wide. Operation Underground Railroad has rescued 200 victims and helped law enforcement capture 130 perpetrators this year. This brings the total number of rescued victims to 529, and 182 traffickers arrested.

 

2. The Tanzanian Children’s Fund works to ensure that all children and families in the Karatu region of northern Tanzania lead healthy and productive lives and have the opportunity to become positive agents of change for their country. In order to achieve our goals, TCF provides a loving and permanent home for 97 marginalized children at the Rift Valley Children’s Village (RVCV). The RVCV staff works with local village leaders to identify orphaned children in the surrounding community in need of the safe haven RVCV can provide. From the moment they step through the gates, these children become permanent members of the RVCV family.  TCF also recognizes that the best way to promote the well-being of all children is to provide access to high-quality education, free healthcare, and microfinance trainings and loans to the entire community. Our innovative, multi-pronged approach to addressing systemic poverty is what has enabled TCF/RVCV to have a deep impact and catalyze real and lasting change.

 

3. place  (Property, Land, Access, Connections, and Empowerment) explores the complex social, economic and political effects of inadequate land rights – from environmental sustainability and food insecurity to the potential for conflict and war. However, place will not just show you what is going wrong in the world. It also want to tell you about the exciting and courageous projects unfolding worldwide to help solve this pressing issue. Its name explains its stories and its mission.Property features urban reportage – from shantytowns and slums to the pressures of development, forced eviction and mass displacement. Land focuses on rural areas, the countryside, on agriculture and the extraction of resources, from mining to logging. Access explores the battle to retain land, from squatting rights and individual tenure to freeholds and the larger community battles to secure or return to ancestral lands. Connections shed light on tenure rights, on public and private documentation and how communities – and individuals – campaign for or harness their rights. Empowerment brings you the good news, the success stories, the projects that are contributing to resolving this complex global issue. In sum, place believes property rights are human rights and wants to spark a global conversation to show that when land and property rights are denied, social stability, economic prosperity – and even peace – are at risk. 

 

4. Reshma Qureshi, Founder of Make Love Not Scars. Reshma Qureshi is an Indian model, vlogger, and anti-acid activist. In India, she is the face of Make Love Not Scars. Her foray into modeling in the United States came when she walked the catwalk for Archana Kochhar at the 2016 New York Fashion Week.

Qureshi was born the youngest daughter of a taxi driver from Eastern Mumbai, India. They lived in a two bedroom apartment that housed all ten members of the family. She studied commerce at school. On May 19, 2014, at the age of seventeen, Qureshi was attacked with sulfuric acid by her estranged brother-in-law and two other assailants when she was traveling to the city of Allahabad for an Alim exam. The attack was actually aimed at her sister Gulshan, but Qureshi was mistaken for her. While the two other assailants were never captured after the attack, her brother-in-law was arrested. After the attack, she felt suicidal for a short period of time as she was left scarred on her face and arms and lost one of her eyes completely. After healing, Qureshi became the face of the Make Love Not Scars campaign, which aims to give “a voice to those who have been assaulted” by acid attacks and campaigns for the end of the sale of acid in India. She also began making beauty tutorials online as a way to campaign against the sale of acid. Cosmopolitan has praised Quereshi’s videos as “ridiculously empowering“. Photo credit: Reshma Qureshi walks at New York Fashion Week (Mary Altaffer/AP).

 

5. Standing Rock Indian Reservation & #NoDAPL Campaign – The Dakota Access Pipeline is a part of  a 1,172-mile-long (1,825 km), 30-inch diameter pipeline underground oil pipeline project in the United States. The pipeline is being planned by Dakota Access, LLC, a subsidiary of the Dallas, Texas corporation Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. It begins in the Bakken oil fields in Northwest North Dakota and is set to travel in a more or less straight line southeast, through South Dakota and Iowa, and end at the oil tank farm near Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline is designed transport as many as 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily. The nearly $4 billion project was first proposed in 2014 and anticipated for delivery on January 1, 2017.

Construction of the DAPL would engender a renewed fracking-frenzy in the Bakken shale region, as well as endanger a source of fresh water for the Standing Rock Sioux and 8 million people living downstream. DAPL would also impact many sites that are sacred to the Standing Rock Sioux and other indigenous nations. The DAPL is a massive project being organized by the world’s largest fossil-fuel companies and banks. They have offices in cities around the world. Supporting the Standing Rock #NoDAPL camps and putting direct, nonviolent pressure on the corporations building and funding this project is critical for supporting frontline resistance to DAPL and preserving the land for future generations.

 

6. Color Of Change is a 501(c)(4) progressive nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization that utilizes the Internet, specifically e-mail and social media, as its main conduit for communicating with its members, organizing campaigns, pushing out policies, and combating racial and social injustices. The organization has successfully inspired and motivated millions of Americans from all backgrounds to fight for (or against) a gambit of issues, including criminal justice reform, racists media bias, ALEC and its support of voter ID laws, gun violence, and net neutrality. Color Of Change was co-founded in 2005 by James Rucker and Van Jones to replicate the MoveOn.org email list model among African American in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Rucker had previously worked for the MoveOn.org Political Action and MoveOn.org Civic Action while Jones was the founder of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. Rashad Robinson is the organization’s Executive Director, having joined the organization in May 2011. In 2015, Color of Change was ranked 6th on Fast Company’s list of the 50 Most Innovative Companies in the World.

 

7. White Helmets/Syrian Civil Defense rush in when bombs rain down in Syria. These volunteer rescue workers operate in the most dangerous place on earth. White Helmet volunteers are bakers, tailors, engineers, pharmacists, painters, carpenters, students, and many other who come from all walks of life. They work tirelessly to save people on all sides of the conflict – pledging commitment to the principles of “Humanity, Solidarity, Impartiality” as outlined by the International Civil Defence Organisation. This pledge guides every response, every action, every life saved – so that in a time of destruction, all Syrians have the hope of a lifeline. The White Helmets mostly deal with the aftermath of government air attacks, but they have risked sniper fire to rescue bodies of government soldiers to give them a proper burial.

The White Helmets have also trained 62 women in medical care and light search and rescue work. These heroic women respond to barrel bomb and missile strikes and dig for survivors using tools and their bare hands. In some cases, they are the only hope for other women or girls who are trapped under rubble. In Syria’s most conservative communities, people have refused to let male volunteers rescue women and girls – but the women have intervened to help those who wouldn’t have been helped otherwise. The White Helmet volunteers have saved 78,529 lives – and this number is growing daily. Many have paid the ultimate price for their compassion – 154 have been killed while saving others.

In addition to their life-saving missions, White Helmets deliver public services to nearly 7 million people, including reconnecting electrical cables, providing safety information to children and securing buildings. They are the largest civil society organization operating in areas outside of government control, and their actions provide hope for millions.

 

8. Safari Doctors is a nonprofit that provides free basic medical services to residents of remote parts of Kenya threatened by the terror group Al-Shabaab. The idea was conceived from several health initiatives around Lamu that have slowly come to a halt given the insecurities in the area and the loss of a substantial businesses that supported these projects. Safari Doctors was established in 2014 to continue with the much needed services. In collaboration with the Ministry of Health and other partners, the Safari Doctors crew sets sail once a month during high tide and embarks on to the rough roads to visit remote communities. On board is the crew, a full-time nurse, a clinical officer and a visiting specialist who provide basic curatives services. Depending on the availability of volunteering specialists, Safari Doctors plans to host trips that meet gaps of, dental, optometry, gynecology and other services. Current services include: immunizations, maternal healthcare, respiratory infections treatment, communicable diseases treatment, access to clean water, and hospital referral logistics. On August 26, Safari Doctors’ founder Umra Omar was selected as a CNN Hero in 2016. Support the programs by becoming a friend ~ Rafiki in Swahili ~ of Safari Doctors, which will ensure that Safari Doctors continue to deliver the required services and information to the neglected areas they serve.

 

9. ReDI School of Digital Integration and Refugees on Rails – Tie. The unprecedented influx of migrants to Europe, driven by the war in Syria, has created a massive backlog for authorities tasked with sorting out the new arrivals. As they figure out who’s who, where each person came from, whether they should be permitted to stay and where there is space to accommodate them, migrants have little else to do, but wait. This limbo can drag on for months, dampening the euphoria of finally making it to Europe, after so much hardship. Many Germans have been eager to help. As hundreds of thousands of people poured into the country over the last year— by rail, by foot, sometimes jammed into the back of trucks— volunteers have lined up to hand out food, and even invite them to rest at their homes. Others volunteers banded together to create separate, but interconnected, coding centers to train refugees.

The ReDI School of Digital Integration is a non-profit organization co-founded by Anne Kjær Riechert and Ferdi Van Heerden in December 2015 for tech-interested newcomers applying for asylum in Germany. The school, which has been featured on TEDx Innovations, aims to teach refugees tech skills and give them access to a future professional and social network, whilst waiting for their asylum application to be processed. The students in this course attend coding and mentoring sessions over a three to six months, with the Sunday sessions being hosted at German Tech Entrepreneurship Center in Berlin. The ReDI School of Digital Integration also host several local events where students, teachers, mentors, partners, sponsors and members of the community get together to share best practice. The school is currently accepting applications for students and volunteer as well as accepts donations for both specific and general projects.

Refugees on Rails is a nonprofit program co-founded by friends and tech entrepreneurs  Weston Hankins, Anne Riechert, and Ahmet Acar in 2015. It is designed to teach coding to refugees in Berlin and has now expanded to four other German cities. In many ways, the coding is almost incidental to Refugees on Rails’ real purpose: building community and friendships. Indeed, one of the founding ideas behind the start-up is the desire to counter the negative image of refugees in Europe as an economic burden to be dealt with, rather than a resource to be cultivated. Germany has welcomed over 600,000 refugees this year, many of whom are highly educated millennials with valuable work experience who simply lack the appropriate paperwork to begin contributing to their adopted society. The volunteer-run program provides refugees with a laptop and three months of coding instruction, two nights per week, for three hours each session. The classes are held in space donated by local tech companies, including the Berlin offices of Amazon.com. The course is open to refugees with rudimentary computing experience. Refugees on Rails is still in it’s early stages. Via their website, and in partnership with the Stanford Peace Innovation Lab, individuals can donate money or their old computers to help get the school and its students.

 

10. Fugees Family, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization devoted to working with child survivors of war. The organization empowers refugees integrate successfully into their new country by providing them the support and structure they need to realize their vast potential. In 2004, Coach Luma Mufleh started a Fugees team to provide refugee boys with free access to organized soccer. Since then, the organization’s programming has grown to include year-round soccer for 86 boys and girls aged 10-18, after-school tutoring, soccer for 50 elementary-aged students, an academic enrichment summer camp, and the Fugees Academy – the nation’s only school dedicated to refugee education. The school has received SAIS and SACS accreditation, blending creative teaching with academic fundamentals, interwoven with leadership and character building. The Fugees Family also offers consultation support to organizations looking to provide effective, culturally-appropriate, and impactful services to refugee and immigrant students and families. They offer expert guidance and support for planning, operating, and evaluating cultural, educational, social, and athletic programming. On August 26, Coach Muflesh was selected as a CNN Hero in 2016.

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Previous Years:
✤ 2016
✤ 2015
✤ 2014

A Wild World Upside Down

Photo: Jeffrey Dunn

Hello World! It’s been a few months since my last post. Can you believe how much has happened in such a short period of time? It was the best of times, it was the worse of times.

I don’t care how you slice it, 2016 has been a crazy year – the onslaught continues in Syria, a failed coup in Turkey leads to mass arrest, violence and deaths; an economic collapse in Venezuela leads to a sharp increase in violent crimes and civil unrest; death squads in the Philippines rage on, migrants perishing in the Mediterranean; a 50+ year war ends with a peace agreement between Colombia and FARC; U.S. leads in gold medals at Olympics in Rio while children peer from favelas at the festivities; the United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union (“Brexit”); terrorists come up with more ingenious way to murder innocent people; the Cubs end a 108-year losing streak to win the World Series; America elects Donald Trump as its 45th president; and a litany of notable people – both good and bad- passed away, including Elie Wiesel, Prince, David Bowie, Gene Wilder, Muhammad Ali, Pat Summitt, and Fidel Castro . . .to name a few.

In fact, so much has happened that I feel the need to acknowledge and highlight some of the major events I missed while away.  So that’s the goal of this post and the events below begin in June 2016 – the last month I posted – and go through November 2016. The list below is by no means exhaustive, nor is it intended to be. And I deliberately excluded a few stories, they will appear as individual posts directly above this one in the coming days. Lastly, I included mini slideshow and names of a few notable people who have passed away since June.

Some of my readers may be curious about the title, A Wild World Upside. Don’t overthink it. Instead think about how you would describe the ebb and flow of 2016. For me, it  describes the tumultuous and tenuous nature of our quickly changing world – one in which basic human rights, respect for the rule of law, and civility are being muted by crippling fear, hatred, intolerance and demagoguery. The world is changing – for better or worse and whether we like it or not. Fissures of instability are exploding all around us. The only certainty seems to be uncertainty. Tension. Lies are being traded as capital, mistrust sown deep. It feels we’re all on high alert. So the title connotes my gut reaction to all that has come to pass, all that seems to be falling apart, and all that remains to be seen. Now, let’s get to it!

❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧❧

A woman cries during a vigil in a park following a mass shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, on June 12, 2016. (Photo: Carlo Allegri / Reuters)

June 12: Gunman Kills 49 at Pulse Nightclub (Orlando, Florida)
On 12 June 2016, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old security guard, killed 49 people and wounded 53 others in a terrorist attack/hate crime inside Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, United States. He was shot and killed by Orlando Police Department (OPD) officers after a three-hour standoff. Pulse was hosting Latin Night and most of the victims were Latino. It was both the deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter and the deadliest incident of violence against LGBT people in United States history. It was also the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States since the September 11 attacks in 2001.

In a 9-1-1 call shortly after the shooting began, Mateen swore allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and said the shooting was “triggered” by the U.S. killing of Abu Waheeb in Iraq the previous month. He later told a negotiator he was “out here right now” because of the American-led interventions in Iraq and in Syria, and that the negotiator should tell the United States to stop bombing ISIL.

Initial reports said Mateen may have been a patron of the nightclub and used gay dating websites and apps, but Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) officials said they have not found any credible evidence to substantiate these claims. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also conducted an investigation and said it found no links between ISIL and Mateen.

 

Photographs of the nine victims killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. are held up by congregants during a prayer vigil at the the Metropolitan AME Church June 19, 2015 in Washington, DC. (Photo: Win McNamee / Getty Images)

June 17: The Charleston Church Massacre (Charleston, South Carolina)
The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre) was a mass shooting that took place at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, United States, on the evening of June 17, 2015. During a prayer service, nine people were killed by a gunman, including the senior pastor, state senator Clementa C. Pinckney; a tenth victim survived. The morning after the attack, police arrested a suspect, later identified as 21-year-old Dylann Roof, in Shelby, North Carolina. Roof later confessed that he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.

The United States Department of Justice investigated whether the shooting was a hate crime or an act of domestic terrorism, eventually indicting Roof on 33 federal hate crime charges. Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of the United States’ oldest black churches and has long been a site for community organization around civil rights. Roof is to be indicted on federal hate crime charges, and has been charged with nine counts of murder by the State of South Carolina. If convicted, he could face a sentence of death or thirty years to life in prison. A website apparently published by Roof included a manifesto detailing his beliefs on race, as well as several photographs showing him posing with emblems associated with white supremacy. Roof’s photos of the Confederate battle flag triggered debate on its modern display. In November 2016, Roof was declared competent to stand trial for the crimes.

 

June 23: Brexit – The United Kingdom Votes to Leave European Union (United Kingdom)
The United Kingdom European Union Membership Referendum, also known as the EU referendum and the Brexit referendum (a portmanteau of “British exit”), took place on 23 June 2016 in the United Kingdom (UK) and Gibraltar to gauge support for the country’s continued membership in the European Union (EU). The result was an overall vote to leave the EU, of 51.9% on a national turnout of 72%, the highest ever for a UK-wide referendum and the highest for any national vote since the 1992 General Election. In the constituent countries of the United Kingdom, a majority in England and Wales voted to leave, and a majority in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain. The British Overseas Territory of Gibraltar also voted to remain. To start the process to leave the EU, which is expected to take several years, the British government will have to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. The UK government has announced that it will start the formal process of leaving the EU (triggering article 50) by March 2017.

Membership of the EU and its predecessors had long been a topic of debate in the United Kingdom. The country joined the European Economic Community (EEC, or “Common Market”) in 1973. A referendum on continued EEC membership was held in 1975, and it was approved by 67% of voters. Historical opinion polls 1973-2015 tended to reveal majorities in favor of remaining in the EEC, EC or EU. In accordance with a Conservative Party manifesto commitment, the legal basis for a referendum was established by the UK Parliament through the European Union Referendum Act 2015.

“Britain Stronger” in Europe was the official group campaigning for the UK to remain in the EU and was endorsed by the Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne. “Vote Leave” was the official group campaigning for the UK to leave the EU and was fronted by the Conservative MP Boris Johnson and Secretary of State for Justice Michael Gove.

Immediately following the result, Cameron announced he would resign, having campaigned unsuccessfully for a “Remain” vote. He was succeeded by Theresa May on July 13. The opposition Labour Party also faced a leadership challenge as a result of the EU referendum. In response to the result, the Scottish Government announced that it would plan for a possible second referendum on independence from the United Kingdom, and that it would like to “explore all the possible options to protect Scotland’s place in the EU.”

Financial markets reacted negatively in the immediate aftermath of the result. Investors in worldwide stock markets lost more than the equivalent of 2 trillion US dollars on 24 June 2016, making it the worst single-day loss in history, in absolute terms. The market losses amounted to 3 trillion US dollars by June 27.

 

A man celebrates the signing of a historic ceasefire deal between the Colombian government and FARC rebels at Botero Square in Medellin, Colombia, on June 23, 2016. The sign reads, “RIP the War in Colombia 1964 – 2016.” (Photo: Fredy Builes / Reuters)

June 23: Colombia and FARC Agree to End 52 Year Civil War (Havana, Cuba)
The Colombian Peace Agreement refers to the peace process between the Colombian government of President Juan Manuel Santos and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC–EP) to bring an end to the Colombian conflict. Negotiations began in September 2012, and mainly took place in Havana, Cuba. On June 23, the government and the FARC reached an agreement on three of the main points – bilateral and definite ceasefire, decommissioning of weapons and security guarantees – of the third item on the agenda, ‘end of the conflict’.

 

A woman and her children in a camp for internally displaced persons, in Yola, the capital of Adamawa, Nigeria, after members of the Boko Haram rebel group attacked their home. (Photo: UNICEF/ Abdrew)

June 26: Nigerian Army Rescues 5,000 from Boko Haram (Borno, Nigeria)
The Nigerian army says it has rescued more than 5,000 people who were being held hostage by Boko Haram following a clearing operation in four remote villages in the northeastern Borno state. The fighting led to the killing of one civilian and six Boko Haram fighters. The 5,000 rescued, mostly women and children, had been living under Boko Haram for more than six years, since the armed group launched its violent campaign in 2009. The army also reported that two other Boko Haram fighters were killed in a separate mission to 11 villages in Borno. Boko Haram pledged support for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) last year. See The Brutal Toll of Boko Haram Attacks on Civilians for additional information.

 

Family members, colleagues and friends of the victims of Tuesday blasts gather for a memorial ceremony at the Ataturk Airport in Istanbul, Thursday, June 30, 2016. Turkish authorities have banned distribution of images relating to the Ataturk airport attack within Turkey. (Photo: AP Photo/ Emrah Gurel)

June 28: Atatürk Airport Attack (Istanbul, Turkey)
A terrorist attack, consisting of shootings and suicide bombings, occurred on 28 June 2016 at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, Turkey. Gunmen armed with automatic weapons and explosive belts staged a simultaneous attack at the international terminal of Terminal 2. Forty-five people were killed, in addition to the three attackers, and more than 230 people were injured.

Media reports indicated that the three attackers were believed by Turkish officials to have come from Russia and Central Asia. Turkish officials said the attackers were acting on behalf of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant and had come to Turkey from ISIL-controlled Syria. Commentators suggested that the attacks may have been related to stepped-up pressure against the group by Turkish authorities. No one claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

A victim of summary execution, with packing tape wrapped around his head and a sign on his chest that reads, “I am a Chinese drug lord,” found along Road 10 in Manila. (Photo: Linus G. Escandor II/PRI)

June 30: Philippine President Declares ‘Bloody War on Drugs’ in Inaugural Address (Manila, Philippines)
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was elected in May promising a “bloody war” on drugs. Since he took office in June, he has made good on that pledge. Roughly 5,000 people have been killed since the war on drugs began in July, according to the Philippines National Police. Two thousand were killed in encounters with police and 3,000 in extrajudicial or vigilante-style killings. The international community, human rights groups, Roman Catholic activists and the families of many of those killed during the crackdown say that the vast majority of victims were poor Filipinos, many of whom had nothing to do with the drug trade. Those presumed guilty are not accorded an accusation and a trial, but are simply shot down in the streets, the critics say.

This is not the first time, Duterte has been accused of gross human rights violations. While he was the mayor of Davao City in the southern Philippines, hundreds of people were killed by what human rights groups say were government-linked death squads. Mr. Duterte denies involvement with the killings but made little secret of his support for a violent approach to curbing crime.

 

People gather at site of suicide car bombing in Karrada shopping area in Baghdad on July 3, 2016. (Photo: Reuters)

July 3: Karrada Bombing (Baghdad, Iraq)
On 3 July 2016, a coordinated bomb attack in Baghdad resulting in the deaths of over 300 and injured hundreds more. A few minutes after midnight local time (2 July, 21:00 UTC), a suicide truck targeted the mainly Shia district of Karrada, busy with late night shoppers for Ramadan. A second roadside bomb was detonated in the suburb of Sha’ab, killing at least five.

The Islamic State issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, naming the Karrada bomber as Abu Maha al-Iraqi. There were reports that the source of the blast was a refrigerator van packed with explosives. The explosion caused a huge fire on the main street. Several buildings, including the popular Hadi Center, were badly damaged. The bombing is the second-worst suicide attack in Iraq by death toll after the 2007 Yazidi communities bombings and the deadliest terrorist attack in Iraq carried by a single bomber.

 

A body lies next to a baby doll on July 15, 2016 after a truck ran into a crowd celebrating the Bastille Day national holiday July 14. (Photo: Eric Gaillard/ Reuters)

July 14: Bastille Day Attack (Nice, France)
On the evening of 14 July 2016, a 19 tonne cargo truck was deliberately driven into crowds celebrating Bastille Day on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice, France, resulting in the deaths of 86 people and injuring 434. The driver was Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel, a Tunisian resident of France. The attack ended following an exchange of gunfire, during which Lahouaiej-Bouhlel was shot and killed by police.

Five hours after the attack, French President François Hollande announced an extension of the state of emergency (which had been declared following the November 2015 Paris attacks) for a further three months, announced an intensification of the French military attacks on ISIL in Syria and Iraq, and suggested the attack might have been Islamic terrorism. France later extended the state of emergency until 26 January 2017.

Later on 15 July, the French government declared three days of national mourning starting 16 July. On 16 July, two agencies linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claimed that the attack was inspired by the organization. On 21 July, Paris prosecutor François Molins said that Lahouaiej-Bouhlel planned the attack for months and had help from accomplices. By 1 August, six suspects had been taken into custody on charges of “criminal terrorist conspiracy”, three of whom were also charged for complicity in murder connected to a terrorist organization.

 

Turkish soldiers secure the area, as supporters of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan protest in Istanbul’s Taksim square, early Saturday, July 16, 2016. (Photo: Emrah Gurel/ AP)

July 15: Turkish Coup d’Etat Attempt (Turkey)
On 15 July 2016, a coup d’état was attempted in Turkey against state institutions, including, but not limited to the government and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The attempt was carried out by a faction within the Turkish Armed Forces that organized themselves as the Peace at Home Council. They attempted to seize control of several key places in Ankara, Istanbul, and elsewhere, but failed to do so after forces loyal to the state defeated them. The Council cited an alleged erosion of secularism, the elimination of democratic rule, a disregard for human rights, and Turkey’s loss of credibility in the international arena as reasons for the coup. The government accused the coup leaders of being linked to the Gülen movement, which is designated as a terrorist organization by the Republic of Turkey and led by Fethullah Gülen, a Turkish businessman and cleric who lives in Pennsylvania, United States. Erdoğan accuses Gülen of being behind the coup—a claim that Gülen denies—and accused the United States of harboring him. Events surrounding the coup attempt and the purges in its aftermath reflect a complex power struggle between Islamist and ultranationalist elites in Turkey.

During the coup, over 300 people were killed and more than 2,100 were injured. Many government buildings, including the Turkish Parliament and the Presidential Palace, were damaged. Mass arrests followed, with at least 40,000 detained, including at least 10,000 soldiers and, for reasons that remain unclear, 2,745 judges.15,000 education staff were also suspended and the licenses of 21,000 teachers working at private institutions were revoked as well after the government alleged they were loyal to Gülen. More than 100,000 people have been purged.

 

Portraits of five Dallas and DART police officers shot to death by a sniper on July 12, 2016, are displayed during the memorial service at the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas. (Photo: Paul Moseley / Ft. Worth Star Telegram)

July 17: Five Dallas Police Officers Ambushed and Killed (Dallas, Texas)
On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed and fired upon a group of police officers in Dallas, Texas, killing five officers and injuring nine others. Two civilians were also wounded. Johnson was an Army Reserve Afghan War veteran who was reportedly angry over police shootings of black men and stated that he wanted to kill white people, especially white police officers. The shooting happened at the end of a peaceful protest against police killings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, which had occurred in the preceding days.

Following the shooting, Johnson fled inside a building on the campus of El Centro College. Police followed him there, and a standoff ensued. In the early hours of July 8, police killed Johnson with a bomb attached to a remote control bomb disposal robot. It was the first time U.S. law enforcement used a robot to kill a suspect.

The shooting was the deadliest incident for U.S. law enforcement since the September 11 attacks, surpassing two related March 2009 shootings in Oakland, California and a November 2009 ambush shooting in Lakewood, Washington; both of these incidents each killed four officers.

 

A Venezuelan woman, who lives in Malaga, protests against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s government and the repression in Venezuela, in Malaga, southern Spain on March 29, 2014 (Photo: Jon Nazca/ Reuters)

July 22: Venezuelan President Declares State of Economic Emergency (Venezuela)
In 22 July 2016 decree, President Nicolás Maduro used his executive power to declare a state of economic emergency. The decree could force citizens to work in agricultural fields and farms for 60-day (or longer) periods to supply food to the country. Colombian border crossings have been temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household and health items in Colombia in mid-2016. In September 2016, a study published in the Spanish-language Diario Las Américas indicated that 15% of Venezuelans are eating “food waste discarded by commercial establishments”.

In October 2016, Fox News Latino reported that during a month-long riot at the Táchira Detention Center in Caracas, 40 inmates dismembered and consumed three fellow inmates. There have been close to 200 prison riots in Venezuela in 2016, with the cause being attributed to a worsening social situation, increasing poverty, and food shortages leading to overcrowded prisons.

 

Standing Rock Protesters (Photo: Getty Images + Pacific Press)

July 27: Standing Rock Sioux Tribe Sues U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota)
The Dakota Access Pipeline is a part of the, a 1,172-mile-long (1,825 km), 30-inch diameter pipeline underground oil pipeline project in the United States. The pipeline is being planned by Dakota Access, LLC, a subsidiary of the Dallas, Texas corporation Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. It begins in the Bakken oil fields in Northwest North Dakota and is set to travel in a more or less straight line southeast, through South Dakota and Iowa, and end at the oil tank farm near Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline is designed transport as many as 570,000 barrels of crude oil daily. Using the Nationwide Permit 12 process that treats the pipeline as a series of small construction sites, the pipeline was granted an exemption from the environmental review required by the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. The nearly $4 billion project was first proposed in 2014 and is anticipated for delivery on January 1, 2017.

Routing the pipeline across the Missouri River near Bismarck was rejected because of the route’s proximity to municipal water sources, residential areas and roads, wetland, and waterway crossings. The Bismarck route would also have been 11 miles longer. The alternative selected by the Corps of Engineers crosses underneath Missouri River, the primary drinking water source for the Standing Rock Sioux, a tribe of around 10,000 with a reservation in the central part of North and South Dakota. A spill could have major adverse effects on the waters that the Tribe and individuals in the area rely upon. The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) has reported more than 3,300 incidents of leaks and ruptures at oil and gas pipelines since 2010. And even the smallest spill could damage the tribe’s water supply. The Standing Rock Sioux also argue that the pipeline traverses a sacred burial ground. And while the land being used for the pipeline is not technically on its reservation, tribal leaders argue that the federal government did not adequately engage the Standing Rock Sioux during the permitting process—a requirement under federal law.

Citing potential effects on the environment and lack of consultation with the Native tribes, most notably the Standing Rock Sioux, in March and April 2016, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Interior (DOI), and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a formal Environmental Impact Assessment and issue an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Construction continued.

On July 27, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe sued the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging that the agency violated the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NHPA requires the agency to consider the cultural significance of federally-permitted sites and NEPA to consider the implications for the waterways. The tribe is seeking declaratory and injunctive relief to stop the pipeline. It also sought a preliminary injunction. The litigation is ongoing, but on September 9, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied the tribe’s motion to halt construction while the case winds through the courts.

After the hearing, a joint statement was issued by the US Departments of Justice, Army, and Interior temporarily halting the project on federal land bordering or under the Lake Oahe reservoir. The US federal government asked the company for a “voluntary pause” on construction near that area until further study was done on the region extending 20 miles around Lake Oahe. As of September, the U.S Department of Justice had received more than 33,000 petitions to review all permits and order a full review of the project’s environmental effects.

 

Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards shows the difference in water between Detroit and Flint. Flint has faced a water contamination crisis since it switched water sources but did not treat the water to prevent lead, a potent neurotoxin, from leaching out of pipes. (Photo: Jake May, The Flint Journal, MLIVE.com)

July 29: Michigan Attorney Charges Government Officials for Flint Water Crisis (Flint, Michigan)
The Flint water crisis is a drinking water contamination issue in Flint, Michigan, United States that started in April 2014. After Flint changed its water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water (which was sourced from Lake Huron as well as the Detroit River) to the Flint River (to which officials had failed to apply corrosion inhibitors), its drinking water had a series of problems that culminated with lead contamination, creating a serious public health danger. The Flint River water that was treated improperly caused lead from aging pipes to leach into the water supply, causing extremely elevated levels of the heavy metal neurotoxin. In Flint, between 6,000 and 12,000 children have been exposed to drinking water with high levels of lead and they may experience a range of serious health problems. Due to the change in water source, the percentage of Flint children with elevated blood-lead levels may have risen from about 2.5% in 2013 to as much as 5% in 2015. The water change is also a possible cause of an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the county that has killed 10 people and affected another 77.

Several lawsuits have been filed against government officials on the issue, and several investigations have been opened. On January 5, 2016, the city was declared to be in a state of emergency by the Governor of Michigan, Rick Snyder, before President Barack Obama declared it as a federal state of emergency, authorizing additional help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security less than two weeks later.

Governor Snyder issued an apology to citizens and promised to fix the problem, and then sent $28 million to Flint for supplies, medical care and infrastructure upgrades, and later budgeted an additional $30 million to Flint that will give water bill credits of 65% for residents and 20% for businesses. Another $165 million for lead pipe replacements and water bill reimbursements was approved by Governor Snyder on June 29, 2016.

Four government officials—one from the City of Flint, two from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ), and one from the Environmental Protection Agency—resigned over the mishandling of the crisis, and one additional MDEQ staff member was fired. On July 29, 2016, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette charged six additional people with crimes in the crisis, three from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and three from the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

 

The opening ceremony of the Olympics featured a nod to the country’s favelas, the informally built neighborhoods where some fifteen million Brazilians live. (Photo: Ian Walton/ Getty)

August 5-21: Olympics in Brazil Exposes Gentrification and Inequality of Favelas (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
In 2008, as the city of Rio de Janeiro prepared its bid for the 2016 Olympics, special law-enforcement divisions, known as Police Pacification Units, started operating in the city’s favelas, sweeping out drug gangs and establishing permanent police presences in three dozen such neighborhoods for the first time ever. The hope was for law enforcement to forge peaceful ties with these communities and make the city as a whole safer. At first, it seemed to work. Rio’s homicide rate plunged.But, like so much else in Brazil lately, the program failed to live up to its promise.

Since 2009, when Rio won the bidding to hold the Games, more than twenty thousand families have been evicted from their homes in favelas to make way for arenas and infrastructural projects. Intent on projecting a modern image for the Olympics, Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes has insisted that those people forced to relocate received indemnities, rent assistance, or new apartments in affordable-housing projects. He underplayed the fact that, according to the researcher Lucas Faulhaber, of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, many of these twenty thousand families ended up having to move as far as thirty miles from the communities where they had previously made their lives.

Other disappointments include the notorious case from 2013, when pacification officers in the massive favela of Rocinha tortured and disappeared a construction worker named Amarildo de Souza. An epileptic, Souza is believed to have died after being subjected to electric shocks during an interrogation. While twelve officers were convicted in connection with the case, the damage done to the community’s trust has been immense. Pacification officers have since largely reverted to a more traditional, quasi-military role in Rio’s favelas. Police in the city still kill someone almost every day.

 

The faces of some of the more than 60 lawyers killed in Baluchistan’s capital of Quetta, Pakistan on August 8, 2016 (Photo: BBC Twitter via @Shaimaakhalil)

August 8: Terrorist Attack on Government Hospital Kills Entire Generation of Lawyers (Quetta, Pakistan)
Baluchistan is a place that desperately needs lawyers. It is Pakistan’s largest province by area and the home of a decades-old separatist insurgency, fueled by real grievances over neglect and lack of political representation. It is also increasingly the target of Sunni extremists, who bomb and kill its Shiite minorities. What leaders the province has are widely considered corrupt. Dozens of local journalists have been kidnapped in the past few years. It is nearly impossible for foreign reporters to enter Baluchistan. Lawyers are almost all that give the province a semblance of justice.

But on 8 August 2016, terrorists attacked the Government Hospital of Quetta in Pakistan with a suicide bombing and shooting. They killed 74 and injured more than 130 others. Most of the fatalities were lawyers who had assembled at the hospital where the body of Advocate Bilal Anwar Kasi, the president of Balochistan Bar Association, was brought after he was shot dead by an unknown gunman. Responsibility for the attack has been claimed by various Islamist groups like Jamaat-ul-Ahrar and the Islamic State. Between 70 and 94 people were killed and over 120 injured. 54 of those killed were lawyers.

A week earlier, another lawyer was fatally shot. In June, the principal of the province’s law college was, too. A generation of lawyers has been wiped out in Quetta, and it will leave Baluchistan, in more ways than one, lawless.

Quetta suffered  another another attack on 24 October 2016, when three heavily armed terrorists carried out an attack on the Balochistan police training college. At least 61 cadets and were killed and more than 165 others were injured. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province claimed responsibility for the attack, and Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Jhangvi claimed to have collaborated with them. According to Pakistani authorities, the assailants came from Afghanistan and were in contact with their handlers there while perpetrating the attack.

Footage shared online by the Aleppo Media Center is said to show a boy who was pulled from an airstrike on Aug. 17 in the Syrian city of Aleppo. (Photo: Aleppo Media Center)

August 17: The Boy in the Ambulance (Aleppo, Syria)
Sometimes you read something so eloquently written you just have to share it. The following excerpt comes from a TIME magazine article published on August 17. 

Hitting the play button begins a scene that has played out in Syria thousands of times over the past five years. It’s dark and men are frantically yelling. A young child, later identified by media citing medical workers as five-year-old Omran Daqneesh, is passed between the arms of his rescuers from a building in Aleppo. He’s caked in dust. The left side of his face is smeared with blood.

He doesn’t make a sound.

In a moment of pure horror, the boy lifts his left hand to his face, runs his fingers through his hair and then back down the side of his face before dropping it down. He looks at the palm of his hand and, unsure what to do, turns it over and wipes it on the seat. In that moment, he was like every other kid, trying to get something off his hand.

He doesn’t make a sound.

That was [some] of the first 37 seconds of footage shared on Aug. 17 by the Aleppo Media Center, reportedly showing the immediate aftermath of an apparent Syrian government or Russian airstrike in a rebel-held neighborhood of the northern city, which for years has been a battleground between government and opposition forces. The footage and a picture of the boy were shared widely online in the hours that followed.

The photographer was identified by the Associated Press as Mahmoud Raslan, who said Omran was rescued from the building with three siblings and their parents. He told the AP that none had sustained life-threatening injuries.

The picture instantly recalls that of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian-Kurdish toddler who was found dead on the Turkish shoreline almost a year ago. Kurdi, in a red t-shirt and blue shorts, was face down. The world soon learned that he had died with his older brother and mother after their boat capsized overnight on the way to Greece. That picture went viral online during the historic influx of migrants and refugees into Europe, highlighting the thousands who perished trying to flee something bad for something better.

The images of Alan and Omran do have similarities: a young boy in a vulnerable position, alone. They each instantly became the face of their own tragedy, a response of sorts to the major global players who could push to end the madness: Kurdi, as a dead refugee, and Omran, as one of the thousands of Syrian children caught in an endless war.

But Omran is unique. It’s that he is alive. It’s that he is, to a point, aware. It’s his face. It cannot be unseen.

Read the entire article here.

 

Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos (left) seals the deal in a handshake with the head of the Farc, Rodrigo Londono, in the presence of Cuban president Raul Castro. (Photo: AFP Photo/ Getty Images)

August 24: Colombia and FARC Final Agreement to End Conflict (Havana, Cuba & Cartagena, Colombia)
President Juan Manuel Santos and FARC announced a final agreement to end the conflict and build a lasting peace on August 24, 2016. But the peace agreement was rejected on 2 October 2016, after 50.21% of voters voted against the referendum and 49.79% voted in favor. On November 24, the Colombian government and FARC signed a revised peace deal. The revised agreement will be submitted to Congress for approval, bypassing the referendum process.

 

Protesters block highway 1806 in Mandan during a protest against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, North Dakota, Nov. 23, 2016. (Photo: Stephanie Keith / Reuters)

September 3: Dakota Access Pipeline Security Firm Uses Dogs and Pepper Spray On Peaceful Protesters (Standing Rock Reservation, North Dakota)
During the Labor Day weekend, on September 3, the Dakota Access Pipeline hired a private security firm and used bulldozers to dig up part of the pipeline route that contained possible Native graves and burial artifacts; it was subject to a pending injunction motion. The bulldozers arrived within a day after the tribe filed legal action. Energy Transfer bulldozers cut a two-mile (3200 m) long, 150-foot (45 m) wide path through the contested area.

When unarmed protesters crossed the perimeter fence to stop the bulldozers, the guards used pepper spray and guard dogs to attack the protesters. At least six protesters were treated for dog bites, and an estimated 30 were pepper-sprayed before the guards and their dogs left the scene in trucks. A woman that had taken part in the incident stated, “The cops watched the whole thing from up on the hills. It felt like they were trying to provoke us into being violent when we’re peaceful.” The incident was filmed by Amy Goodman and a crew from Democracy Now! Footage shows several people with dog bites and a dog with blood on its muzzle.

As of mid-October there had been over 140 arrests, including Standing Rock Tribal Chairman David Archambault II who was charged with disorderly conduct. Arrest warrants were also issued in Morton County for Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman as well as Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate Ajamu Baraka on misdemeanor counts of criminal trespass and criminal mischief. Some protesters arrested for misdemeanors and taken to the Morton County jail have reported what they considered harsh and unusual treatment.

While the protests have drawn international attention and have been said to be “reshaping the national conversation for any environmental project that would cross the Native American land”, there was limited mainstream media coverage of the events in the United States until early September. The struggle continues. Learn more about the Dakota Access Pipeline, including how you can help.

 

October 14: President Obama Further Normalizes Relations with Cuba (Washington, D.C. & Havana, Cuba)
On October 14, President Obama moved to cement his administration’s historic opening with Cuba by issuing a sweeping directive that will last beyond his presidency, setting forth a new United States policy to lift the Cold War trade embargo and end a half-century of clandestine plotting against Cuba’s government. The action formalizes the shift toward normalization that the president unveiled nearly two years ago with the announcement that he and President Raúl Castro of Cuba had secretly agreed to repair their countries’ relationship. President Obama also made what aides said were likely his final major modifications to loosen United States sanctions on Cuba before leaving office, including lifting the $100 limit on bringing Cuban rum and cigars into the United States.

 

October 18: Hate Rising – Univision Journalists Jorge Ramos’ Documentary Explores the State of Hate in America (United States)
A new film, “Hate Rising,” reported by Fusion and Univision anchor Jorge Ramos, shows the astonishing and very concerning rise of hate in America. From the Ku Klux Klan to the so-called alt-right movement, white supremacist groups. They are a small, but growing radical segment of the white non-hispanic population that feels threatened by the demographic changes in the country and is resisting the possibility of becoming a minority. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) estimates that the number of radical groups operating in the U.S. has grown from 784 in 2014 to 892 in 2015; and organizations affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan from 72 to 190. The SPLC has dubbed the mainstreaming of such hate groups “the Trump Effect“, due in part rhetoric Trump used during the election cycle.

Throughout the documentary, Ramos explores the mainstreaming of these ideas on TV and social media, and in our communities and classrooms. Over four months, he traveled to small towns across the nation speaking with neo-Nazis, members of the KKK, and the alt-right. He also heard stories of Muslims and Latinos who have been the victims of hate crimes. Last year, Ramos himself, a Mexican immigrant who is also an American citizen, experienced the anger and intolerance simmering at the surface of our society when a Trump supporter told him to “get out of my country.”

“Hate Rising” is directed by Catherine Tambini and produced in conjunction with Fusion and Univision Story House.

 

October 24: The New York Times Names All the People and Things Trump Has Insulted on Twitter During His Campaign (New York, NY)
Throughout the 2016 election, Donald Trump weaponized his Twitter account to malign his opponents and give oxygen to conspiracy theories and hate groups around the country. The Republican nominee has done so with such frequency that on many occasions his social media outbursts went well beyond his 5.9 million followers to dominate entire news cycles for days on end.

The New York Times cataloged every insult to appear on Trump’s Twitter account since he launched his campaign in June 2015. On October 24, the paper devoted two full pages of its print edition to showcasing its impressive work. The shortlist includes: President Obama, all of the 2016 presidential nominees, a disabled journalists, FOX News’ Megyn Kelly, the mainstream media, women, blacks, Mexicans, a Gold Star Family, military generals and veterans. Ironically, the presidential nominee has showered praise on foreign dictators and authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin (Russia), Kim Jung-un (North Korea), and Bashar al-Assad (Syria), Muammar Gaddafi (deceased; Libya), and Saddam Hussein (deceased; Iraq).

The majority of migrant border-related deaths since January have occurred in the Mediterranean sea. According to estimates by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and UNHCR, 3,800 people have died since the beginning of the year trying to reach European territory by crossing the Mediterranean. This figure represents 75% of the total migration-related deaths in the world this year. (Photo: Massimo Sestini/ eyevine).

October 26: Mediterranean Migrant Deaths Reach Record Level in 2016
“We can confirm that at least 3,800 people have been reported dead or missing in the Mediterranean Sea so far this year, making the death toll in 2016 the highest ever recorded,” UN refugee agency spokesman William Spindler tweeted, as the figures passed last year’s mark of 3,771. The sombre milestone was reached despite a significant decline in migrant crossing this year compared to 2015.

Last year, more than a million people reached Europe via the Mediterranean, but crossings so far this year remain below 330,000. Numbers began dropping dramatically following a March deal between Turkey and the European Union to stem the migrant tide on the Greek islands. The most dangerous route has been the Central Mediterranean route between Libya and Italy, where the United Nations has recorded one death for every 47 arrivals this year. For the much shorter Turkey to Greece route, the likelihood of perishing was one in 88, UNHCR said. Last year the rate was roughly one in 289 arrivals.

The agency explained that death rates have spiked despite nearly a two-thirds drop in total migration because smugglers are “often using lower quality vessels — flimsy inflatable rafts that do not last the journey.” Smugglers also appear to be packing increasing numbers of people on boats, possibly to drive up profits, UNHCR further said. Shipwrecks involving more people have reduced rescue rates, the agency added, also noting that several disasters this year have been linked to bad weather.

 

Juan Manuel Santos’ photo in Nobel’s Garden, Nobel Peace Center. The Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2016 to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos “for his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end, a war that has cost the lives of at least 220,000 Colombians and displaced close to six million people”. (Photo: The Norwegian Nobel Committee)

November 7: Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos Awarded Nobel Peace Prize (Oslo, Norway)
The president of Colombia was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on November 7 for pursuing a deal to end 52 years of conflict with FARC, a leftist rebel group, the longest-running war in the Americas, just five days after Colombians rejected the agreement in a shocking referendum result. Mr. Santos dedicated the prize to his fellow Colombians, especially the victims of the long conflict, and called on the opponents of the peace deal to join him in securing an end to hostilities.

 

President-Elect Donald J. Trump with his family on November 8, 2016 after election results are announced by the media.(Photo: AP)

November 8: Donald J. Trump Wins Election to Become 45th President (United States)
Donald John Trump was elected the 45th president of the United States on Tuesday in a stunning culmination of an explosive, populist and polarizing campaign that took relentless aim at the institutions and long-held ideals of American democracy. The surprise outcome, defying late polls that showed Hillary Clinton with a modest but persistent edge, threatened convulsions throughout the country and the world, where skeptics had watched with alarm as Mr. Trump’s unvarnished overtures and racists demagoguery to disillusioned voters took hold.

The triumph for Mr. Trump, 70, a real estate developer-turned-reality television star with no government experience, was a powerful rejection of the establishment forces that had assembled against him, from the world of business to government, and the consensus they had forged on everything from trade to immigration.

Democrat Presidential Nominee Hillary Clinton received over 2 million more votes than Trump, earning the majority of the popular vote. Protests in the form of school walkouts, marches, and boycotts erupted across the country, with protesters chanting #NotMyPresident and tweeting #LoveTrumpHates.

 

People enter the Bataclan concert hall in Paris, on Nov. 12, 2016. A concert by British pop legend Sting is marking the reopening of the Paris’ Bataclan. (Photo: Kamil Zihnioglu / AP)

November 12: Bataclan Night Reopens with Sting Taking Center Stage (Paris, France)
Sting reopened the Bataclan a year after 90 people were massacred by ISIS gunmen at a packed rock concert. The English singer-songwriter and former Police frontman is staging the first gig at the 150-year-old venue since the deadly terror attack that took place on 13 November last year.

Greeted on the stage to loud cheers, Sting, 65, paid tribute to those who were killed in the venue and called for the audience to stage a minute’s silence in their honor.

Speaking in French, the musician said: “We’ve got two important things to do tonight. First, to remember and honour those who lost their lives in the attacks a year ago, and to celebrate the life and the music of this historic venue: “So before we begin, I would like to ask that we observe one minute of silence … We shall not forget them.” After the minute of silence, the star launched into a string of hits, beginning with his song ‘Fragile’, singing: “Nothing comes from violence and nothing will”.

 

Members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement hold flags as they salute and shout “Sieg Heil” during a rally in front of the Statehouse in Trenton, N.J. (Photo: Mel Evans/ AP)

November 14: Hate Crimes On Rise Since Trump Elected President (United States)
Racist incidents have been on the rise across the United States since Donald Trump was elected president. Details of disturbing incidents have been popping up on social media since Tuesday and some experts say it’s the biggest rise in these types of events since right after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“Since the election, we’ve seen a big uptick in incidents of vandalism, threats, intimidation spurred by the rhetoric surrounding Mr. Trump’s election,” Richard Cohen, president of the Southern Poverty Law Center. “The white supremacists out there are celebrating his victory and many are feeling their oats.” The SPLC has recorded more than 200 complaints since the election. Several news sources, including SLATE have compiled an incomplete list of racist incidents since Trump was elected on November 8, 2016.

 

Ieshia Evans, a nurse from Brooklyn, stands alone calmly while facing heavily-armed police officers who rush in to arrest her Saturday outside the Baton Rouge Police Department. Evans traveled to Louisiana to protest against the killing of Alton Sterling. (Photo: Jonathan Bachman/ Reuters)

November 16: New York Times Reports on Lack of Accountability in Police-Involved Deaths of Blacks (United States)
According to The New York Times, there have been 13 cases that have fueled outrage, heightened racial tensions and instigated protests around the nation. In some of the cases, the police offered an explanation for their actions, but raw videos led many to conclude that the police actions were unjustified.

So far, officers have been indicted or charged in seven cases. In four cases,
grand juries declined to bring charges. Officers in all 13 cases were placed on administrative leave or reassigned — a routine step that is not a form of discipline, said Christopher Dunn, the associate legal director at the New York Civil Liberties Union. Criminal charges have been brought against officers in fewer than half of the cases. Indictments are usually handed up by local grand juries, which make the decision in secret.

Courts have given leeway to the police on using deadly physical force if officers reasonably feel their lives are in danger, and juries are often reluctant to convict police officers, Mr. Dunn said. Prosecutors may feel pressure not to charge officers because they work with and rely on the police daily, and at times, facts can be distorted or withheld by the police, leaving prosecutors with incomplete or wrong information, he said. However, for victims’ families, “some action against the officer is very important to them, whether that’s criminal prosecution or dismissal from the department,” Mr. Dunn said.

 

Civilians and security forces gather at the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Hillah, about 60 miles (95 kilometers) south of Baghdad, Iraq, Sunday, March 6, 2016. A suicide bomber on Sunday rammed his explosives-laden fuel truck into a security checkpoint south of Baghdad, killing and wounding dozens, officials said, the latest episode in an uptick in violence in the war-ravaged country. (AP Photo/ Anmar Khalil)

November 24: Hillah Suicide Truck Bombing (Hillah, Iraq)
A suicide truck bombing occurred on 24 November 2016 when a truck bomb exploded at a petrol station in Hillah, some 62 miles away from southern Baghdad killing at least 100 people and many other injured while Shia pilgrims were on route back to Iran after Arba’een Pilgrimage-2016. Besides, Iranians, there were people from Basra and Nasiriyah as well.

 

A man displays bolivar notes that he carries to pay for goods at a street market in Caracas on Oct. 1, 2015. (Marco Bello /Reuters)

November 25: Venezuela’s Economy Continues to Collapse (Venezuela)
On November 25, The New York Times reported that hungry Venezuelans are fleeing on boats to escape the economic collapse. Well over 150,000 Venezuelans have fled the country in the last year alone, the highest in more than a decade, according to scholars studying the exodus. But perhaps most startling are the Venezuelans now fleeing by sea, an image so symbolic of the perilous journeys to escape Cuba or Haiti — but not oil-rich Venezuela.

On November 28, the Washington Post reported inflation is expected to reach 720 percent this year and the biggest bill — 100 bolivars — is worth about 5 U.S. cents on the black market. The currency has dropped dramatically in value as Venezuela’s oil-based economy has cratered and the government has frantically printed more money. Prices, meanwhile, are soaring. So Venezuelans must handle huge volumes of cash — so much that the bills don’t always fit in a standard wallet — with many people packing wads of currency in handbags, money belts or backpacks.

 

Still images from video show Alton Sterling as he is shot dead by police during an incident captured on the mobile phone camera of shop owner Abdullah Muflahi in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, July 5, 2016. (Photo: Handout / Reuters)

November 30: Native American and Blacks Are Disproportionately Killed by Police (United States)
The year isn’t over yet, and police have already killed at least 977 people — many of whom were unarmed, mentally ill, and people of color. This number comes from The Counted, The Guardian database of police-involved shooting in the United States. Two other reliable databases have slightly different numbers. The Killed by Police database counts 1056 people who have died at the hands of police so far this year. The Washington Post’s database, Fatal Force, reports that 878 people have been shot and killed by cops. All three databases operate in virtual real-time and generally update the information pursuant to their methodologies as well as their verification and publication protocols. Ironically, the existence of these three databases stands as a constant reminder that police killings were not tracked with any consistency in the past.

Going by the The Counted’s numbers, Native Americans (7.6%) and Blacks (5.84%) are being killed at the highest rates in the United States. There have been 233 black people killed by police so far this year, at a rate of 5.84 deaths per million. February and March were the deadliest months this year, with 100 people killed by police in each month. Police have killed 80 people this month – 27 were of unknown ethnicities, 26 were white, 14 were black, and 12 were Hispanic/ Latino.

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Notable Deaths Since June 2016 – An Incomplete List
The names are listed and the slideshow images appear in the order of each person’s passing. Click the (text) name to be redirected to the respective obituary.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Muhammad Ali, 74 (1/17/1942 – 6/3/2016)
Alvin Toffler, 87 (10/4/1928 – 6/27/2016)
Pat Summitt, 64 (6/14/1952 – 6/28/2016)
Elie Wiesel, 87 (9/30/1928 – 7/2/2016)
Gene Wilder, 83 (6/11/1933 – 8/29/2016)
José D. Fernández, 24 (7/31/1992 – 9/25/2016)
Shimon Peres, 93 (8/2/1923 – 9/28/2016)
E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr., 91 (6/1/1925 – 11/4/2016)
Ralph J. Cicerone, 73 (5/2/1943 – 11/5/2016)
Janet Reno, 78 (7/21/1938 – 11/7/2016)
Yaffa Eliach, 79 (5/31/1937 – 11/8/2016)
Greg Ballard, 61 (1/29/1955 – 11/9/2016)
Gwen Ifill, 61 (9/29/1955 – 11/14/2016)
Sharon Jones, 60 (5/4/1956 – 11/18/2016)
Theresa Manuel, 90 (1/7/1926 – 11/21/2016)
Fidel Castro, 91 (8/13/1926 – 11/25/2016)

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Health & Human Rights: Toxic Water in Flint, Michigan

Flint resident Tony Palladino Jr.’s sign reads “Synder’s dirty little secret” atop a crossed out city of Flint on the map on Thursday, Jan. 14, 2016 outside of the Capitol in Lansing, Mich., in protest against Gov. Rick Snyder, asking for his resignation and arrest in relation to Flint’s water crisis. (Photo: Jake May/The Flint Journal-MLive.com via AP)

The city of Flint, Mich., is in the midst of a water crisis several years in the making. The city opted out of Detroit’s water supply and began drawing water from the Flint River in April 2014, part of a cost-saving move. Eighteen months later, in the fall of 2015, researchers discovered that the proportion of children with above-average lead levels in their blood had doubled.

The city reconnected to Detroit’s water system in October, but the damage was done. Water from the Flint River was found to be highly corrosive to the lead pipes still used in some parts of the city. Even though Flint River water no longer flows through the city’s pipes, it’s unclear how long those pipes will continue to leach unsafe levels of lead into the tap water supply. Experts currently say the water is safe for bathing, but not drinking.

A group of Virginia Tech researchers who sampled the water in 271 Flint homes last summer found some contained lead levels high enough to meet the EPA’s definition of “toxic waste.”

The researchers posted their test results online, which are represented graphically below with other visuals to help understand just how high above normal Flint’s lead levels really were.

Lead in water is measured in terms of parts per billion (ppb). If a test comes back with lead levels higher than 15 ppb, the EPA recommends that homeowners and municipalities take steps to reduce that level, like updating pipes and putting anti-corrosive elements in the water when appropriate.

But 15 ppb is a regulatory measure, not a public health one. Researchers stress that there is no 100 percent “safe” level of lead in drinking water, only acceptable levels. Even levels as low as 5 ppb can be a cause for concern, according to the group studying Flint’s water.

So let’s start with Flint’s neighboring cities. At the city level, public health officials are most concerned with the 90th percentile level of lead exposure in homes they test — that is, 90 percent of homes will have a lead level below this threshold, while 10 percent will register above it.

Forty-five minutes away from Flint in Troy, Mich., the 90th percentile level for lead in 2013 was 1.1 parts per billion. Not too shabby at all. In the graphics that follow, each splotch represents 1 part per billion. The splotches aren’t proportionally scaled to the cups — 1 part per billion is way too small to be visualized at this level. But all of the following graphics are scaled proportionally to each other, to give an impression of relative lead levels.

In Detroit, the water supply Flint had previously been connected to, the 90th percentile reading was 2.3 parts per billion — still highly acceptable.

Here’s an illustration of water at the 5 parts per billion level. This is below the borderline for EPA acceptability, but the team of researchers studying Flint’s water say that levels this high can be a cause for concern, particularly for young children.

Now things get interesting. Here’s a glass illustrating the 90th percentile reading among the 271 Flint homes tested by researchers last summer:

At 27 parts per billion, it’s five times as high as the level of concern, and nearly twice as high as the EPA’s already-generous guidelines. According to the researchers who ran these tests, the health effects of lead levels this high “can include high blood pressure and other cardiovascular problems, kidney damage and memory and neurological problems.”

Recall, though, that 10 percent of the homes in the sample had lead levels even higher than this. Here’s the highest lead reading in that sample, from a home in the city’s 8th Ward:

That’s more than 10 times the EPA limit. It’s 30 times higher than the 5 ppb reading that can indicate unsafe lead amounts.

But that 158 ppb reading is far from the worst one that turned up in Flint, unfortunately. In the spring of 2015, city officials tested water in the home of LeeAnne Walters, a stay-at-home mother of four and a Navy wife. They got a reading of 397 ppb, an alarmingly high number.

But it was even worse than that. Virginia Tech’s team went to Walters’ house to verify those numbers later in the year. They were concerned that the city tested water in a way that was almost guaranteed to minimize lead readings: They flushed the water for several minutes before taking a sample, which often washes away a percentage of lead contaminants. They also made residents collect water at a very low flow rate, which they knew also tended to be associated with lower readings.

So the Virginia Tech researchers took 30 different readings at various flow levels. What they found shocked them: The lowest reading they obtained was around 200 ppb, already ridiculously high. But more than half of the readings came in at more than 1,000 ppb. Some came in above 5,000 — the level at which EPA considers the water to be “toxic waste.”

The highest reading registered at 13,000 ppb.

The professor who conducted the sampling, Dr. Marc Edwards, was in “disbelief.”

“We had never seen such sustained high levels of lead in 25 years of work,” he said.

According to Edwards, the team retested the water with extra quality controls and assurance checks, and obtained the exact same results.

You can check out their description of the testing at the website they set up for their water study. It includes unsettling photos of LeeAnne Walters’ tap water containing rust and metal particles large enough to be seen with the naked eye.

The Walters family had stopped drinking the water a long time ago, according to the Virginia Tech team. But still, the lead levels were too high. One of Walters’ 4-year-old sons was diagnosed with lead poisoning.

It appears that the city of Flint and state of Michigan have finally started to take the water problem seriously. Again, they reconnected the city to Detroit’s supply back in October, but the water remains unsafe to drink.

In recent days the National Guard was activated to help distribute drinking water to the city’s residents. And in yet another unsettling wrinkle in Flint’s saga, 87 cases of Legionnaire’s Disease, 10 fatal, have been diagnosed in the city since June. It’s not yet clear whether that outbreak is linked to the water.

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Reprint: This Is How Toxic Flint’s Water Really Is By Christopher Ingraham | Washington Post

Recommended: Who Poisoned Flint, Michigan -By Stephen Rodrick | The Rollingstone

Michael Moore: Flint Poisoning Is a ‘Racial Crime’ -By Michael Moore | TIME

Corrosive Impact: Leaded Water and One Flint Family’s Toxic Nightmare -By Curt Guyette | ACLU Michigan Democracy Watch Blog

A Timeline of the Flint Water Crisis

Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards shows the difference in water quality between Detroit and Flint after testing, giving evidence after more than 270 samples were sent in from Flint that show high levels of lead during a news conference on Sept. 15, 2015 outside of City Hall in downtown Flint, Mich. (Photo: Jake May—The Flint Journal-MLive.com/AP)

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The Flint water crisis is an ongoing drinking water contamination crisis in Flint, Michigan, in the United States.

After the change in source from treated Lake Huron water (via Detroit) to the Flint River, the city’s drinking water had a series of problems that culminated with lead contamination, creating a serious public health danger. The corrosive Flint River water caused lead from aging pipes to leach into the water supply, causing extremely elevated levels of lead. As a result, between 6,000 and 12,000 residents had severely high levels of lead in the blood and experienced a range of serious health problems. The water change is also a possible cause of an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease in the county that has killed 10 people and affected another 77.

On November 13, 2015, four families filed a federal class action lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan in Detroit against Governor Rick Snyder and thirteen other city and state officials, and three separate people filed a similar suit in state court two months later, and three more lawsuits were filed after that. Separately, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan and the Michigan Attorney General’s office opened investigations. On January 5, 2016, the city was declared to be in a state of emergency by the Governor of Michigan, before President Obama declared the crisis as a federal state of emergency, authorizing additional help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security less than two weeks later.

Four government officials—one from the City of Flint, two from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, and one from the Environmental Protection Agency—resigned over the mishandling of the crisis, and Snyder issued an apology to citizens, while promising money to Flint for medical care and infrastructure upgrades.

Here is a timeline of key events — a road map of poor decisions, missed opportunities and broken promises — from the 2013 decision to switch water sources to Gov. Rick Snyder admitting this week that the mess could turn out to be his Hurricane Katrina.

2013

April 16: Flint, newly under the control of an emergency manager who answers to the governor, inks an agreement to stop buying water from Detroit and join a new water authority that will get water from Lake Huron, a deal that is expected to save millions. Although it will be three years before the new water source is available, Detroit says it will stop selling water to Flint in a year.

2014

April 25: The city begins using water from the Flint River as a stopgap until the pipeline from Lake Huron can be completed. As officials raise glasses of water in celebration, Mayor Dayne Walling hails it as a “historic moment.” He says “the water quality speaks for itself,” and the state Department of Environmental Quality says residents shouldn’t notice any difference.

May: Complaints about the new water start coming in. “It’s just weird,” resident Bethany Hazard tells the Flint Journal, referring to the murky, foamy quality of the H2O coming from her taps. The state DEQ says analysis of the water shows it meets state standards.

June 12: City officials reveal they are treating the water with lime in response to complaints, but the mayor pooh-poohs concerns about safety. “I think people are wasting their precious money buying bottled water,” he tells the Flint Journal.

Aug. 15: A boil advisory for part of the city is issued after water tests positive for e.coli bacteria. A second advisory will be issued just weeks later.

Oct. 13: After the General Motors plant in Flint refuses to use the river water because it’s rusting car parts, the city arranges for the company to tap into a different water line. The residents of Flint still have to drink the river water.

2015

Jan. 4: The city announces that Flint’s water contains such a high level of trihalomethanes — a disinfectant byproduct — that it’s in violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Officials say residents with normal immune systems have nothing to worry about. “Is water from the Flint River safe to drink? Yes,” a city website declares.

Jan. 13: Protesters rally outside City Hall to demand a return to Detroit’s supply and lower bills. Hundreds turn out at a forum, some complaining of rashes on children. Detroit offered to let Flint switch back, but the city’s emergency manager says it would cost too much.

Jan. 20: Environmental activist Erin Brockovich weighs in, slamming officials on Facebook for making “excuses” for the bad water.

Feb. 18: A consultant hired by the city for $40,000 to investigate the water quality says it contains sediment and is discolored but is safe to drink.

Feb. 26: A manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tells Michigan officials that the chemistry of the river water means contaminants from pipes, including lead, are leaching into the water system.

April 2: As the city is forced to tell customers that it has flunked the Safe Drinking Water Act again because of the disinfectants, Mayor Walling posts a tweet: “(My) family and I drink and use the Flint water everyday, at home, work, and schools.”

June 5: Activists file suit in attempt to stop the city from using river water. The city gets it moved to federal court, where a judge denies a preliminary injunction.

June 24: EPA water expert Miguel del Toral sends internal memo to his bosses flagging Flint’s failure to use chemicals to control corrosion, which can cause lead to leach from pipes into drinking water. The warning was not made public until the ACLU leaked a copy of the memo weeks later.

July 22: Gov. Rick Snyder’s chief of staff says in an email to the state Health Department that he believes the Flint residents are “concerned and rightfully so” about lead in the water. “These folks are scared and worried about the health impacts and they are basically getting blown off by us (as a state we’re just not sympathizing with their plight),” he says. The agency says the data shows no increase in lead poisoning.

July 28: An epidemiologist for the state health department identifies a three-month spike in lead levels in Flint during the previous summer, after the switch to river water. She recommends further investigation in an email to her bosses, but they decide it was a seasonal anomaly.

Aug. 31: Virginia Tech Professor Marc Edwards, who is leading students in testing Flint water, reports that 42 percent of 120 samples had elevated lead levels, and 20 percent had levels that require water systems to take action. Edwards explains that the water from the river is “very corrosive” and is leaching lead from plumbing in the city’s homes.

Sept. 24: Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, a pediatrician at Hurley Children’s Hospital, says a comparison a blood samples she undertook shows a jump in lead poisoning in Flint’s children. State officials told the Detroit Free Press their own samples don’t show the same increase.

Oct. 1: State officials announce that a new analysis of their data shows Hanna-Attisha is correct: more children have lead in their blood since the water switch.

Oct. 2: Gov. Snyder announces the state will buy water filters and test lead in schools. Within a week, he will recommend that Flint start using water from Detroit, and $6 million to help the city switch back is eventually approved.

Oct. 16: Flint switches back to Detroit water.

Nov. 3: Karen Weaver, who ran for mayor on a promise of solving the water crisis, is elected over Walling.

Tap water in Flint’s hospital on October 16 (Photo:Joyca Zhu/Flint Water Study)

2016

Jan. 5: Snyder declares a state of emergency in Flint. The Department of Justice opens an investigation into the debacle.

Jan. 12: Under increasing fire, Snyder calls out the National Guard to distribute bottled water and filters in Flint.

Jan. 13: The crisis expands to include Legionnaires’ disease as officials reveal a spike in cases, including 10 deaths, after the city started using river water.

Jan. 15: The Michigan attorney general opens an investigation to see if any laws were broken in the handling of the crisis. A state legislator points out that he asked the AG to launch a probe three months earlier and was rebuffed.

Jan. 16: President Barack Obama signs an emergency declaration and orders federal aid for Flint, two days after a request from Snyder.

Jan. 17: Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders focus on Flint and criticize Snyder during a televised debate.

Jan. 18: Snyder admits in an interview with the National Journal that Flint could be his Hurricane Katrina. “It’s a disaster,” he concedes.

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SOURCES

❋ FLINT WATER TIMELINE (PDF)

❋ Bad Decisions, Broken Promises: A Timeline of the Flint Water Crisis by Hannah Rappleye, Lisa Riordan Seville, and Tracy Connor | NBC News

❋ Events That Led to Flint’s Water Crisis by Jeremy C.F. Lin, Jean Rutter, and Haeyoun Park | New York Times

❋ The Flint Water Crisis, Explained in 3 Minutes | VOX

❋ Undrinkable: The Flint Water Emergency | DTV News

❋ Wikipedia