World
WHO: High vaccination rates can help reduce risk of variants
A top World Health Organization official estimated Monday that COVID-19 vaccination coverage of at least 80% is needed to significantly lower the risk that “imported” coronavirus cases like those linked to new variants could spawn a cluster or a wider outbreak.
Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO’s emergencies chief, told a news conference that ultimately, “high levels of vaccination coverage are the way out of this pandemic.”
Many rich countries have been moving to vaccinate teenagers and children — who have lower risk of more dangerous cases of COVID-19 than the elderly or people with comorbidities — even as those same countries face pressure to share vaccines with poorer ones that lack them.
Britain, which has vastly reduced case counts thanks to an aggressive vaccination campaign, has seen a recent uptick in cases attributed largely to the so-called delta variant that originally appeared in India — a former British colony.
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Ryan acknowledged that data wasn’t fully clear about the what percentage of vaccination coverage was necessary to fully have an impact on transmission.
“But ... it’s certainly north of 80% coverage to be in a position where you could be significantly affecting the risk of an imported case potentially generating secondary cases or causing a cluster or an outbreak,” he said.
“So it does require quite high levels of vaccination, particularly in the context of more transmissible variants, to be on the safe side,” Ryan added.
Maria Van Kerkhove, WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, noted the delta variant is spreading in more than 60 countries, and is more transmissible than the alpha variant, which first emerged in Britain.
Read: Covid: WHO renames UK and other variants with Greek letters
She cited “worrying trends of increased transmissibility, increased social mixing, relaxing of public health and social measures, and uneven and inequitable vaccine distribution around the world.”
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, meanwhile, called on leaders of the developed Group of Seven countries to help the U.N.-backed vaccination program against COVID-19 to boost access to doses in the developing world.
With G-7 leaders set to meet in England later this week, Tedros said they could help meet his target that at least 10% of the populations in every country are vaccinated by the end of September — and 30% by year-end.
“To reach these targets, we need an additional 250 million doses by September, and we need hundreds of million doses just in June and July,” he said, alluding to the summit involving Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States.
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“These seven nations have the power to meet these targets. I’m calling on the G-7 not just to commit to sharing those, but to commit to sharing them in June and July.”
At a time of continued tight supply of vaccines, Tedros also called on manufacturers to give the “first right of refusal” on new vaccine volumes to the U.N.-backed COVAX program, or to commit half of their volumes to COVAX this year.
He warned of a “two-track pandemic,” with mortality among older age groups declining in countries with higher vaccination rates even as rates have risen in the Americas, Africa and the Western Pacific region.
Canadian police say Muslim family targeted by deadly attack
A driver plowed a pickup truck into a family of five, killing four of them and seriously injuring the other in a deliberate attack that targeted the victims because they were Muslims, Canadian police said Monday.
Authorities said a young man was arrested in the parking lot of a nearby mall after the incident Sunday night in the Ontario city of London. Police said a black pickup truck mounted a curb and struck the victims at an intersection.
“This was an act of mass murder perpetuated against Muslims,” Mayor Ed Holder said. “It was rooted in unspeakable hatred.”
Read: Canada lowers flags after discovery of bodies at school site
The extended family issued a statement identifying the dead as Salman Afzal, 46; his wife Madiha, 44; their daughter Yumna, 15; and a 74-year-old grandmother whose name was withheld. The hospitalized boy was identified as Fayez.
“Everyone who knew Salman and the rest of the Afzal family know the model family they were as Muslims, Canadians and Pakistanis,” the statement said. “They worked extremely hard in their fields and excelled. Their children were top students in their school and connected strongly with spiritual their identity.”
A fundraising webpage said the father was a physiotherapist and cricket enthusiast and his wife was working on a PhD in civil engineering at Western University in London. Their daughter was finishing ninth grade, and the grandmother was a “pillar” of the family, the page said.
The family said in its statement that the public needs to stand against hate and Islamophobia.
“This young man who committed this act of terror was influenced by a group that he associated with, and the rest of the community must take a strong stand against this, from the highest levels in our government to every member of the community,” the statement said.
Nathaniel Veltman, 20, was in custody facing four counts of first-degree murder. Police said Veltman, a resident of London, did not know the victims.
Detective Supt. Paul Waight said police had not determined if the suspect was a member of any specific hate group. He said London police were working with federal police and prosecutors to see about potential terrorism charges. He declined to detail evidence pointing to a possible hate crime, but said the attack was planned.
Read:More than 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada
About a dozen police officers combed the area around the crash site looking for evidence Monday. Blue markers on the ground dotted the intersection.
“We believe the victims were targeted because of their Islamic faith,” Police Chief Stephen Williams said. “... There is no tolerance in this community who are motivated by hate target others with violence.”
FDA approves much-debated Alzheimer’s drug panned by experts
Government health officials on Monday approved the first new drug for Alzheimer’s disease in nearly 20 years, disregarding warnings from independent advisers that the much-debated treatment hasn’t been shown to help slow the brain-destroying disease.
The Food and Drug Administration approved the drug from Biogen based on study results showing it seemed “reasonably likely” to benefit Alzheimer’s patients. It’s the only therapy that U.S. regulators have said can likely treat the underlying disease, rather than manage symptoms like anxiety and insomnia.
The decision, which could impact millions of Americans and their families, is certain to spark disagreements among physicians, medical researchers and patient groups. It also has far-reaching implications for the standards used to evaluate experimental therapies, including those that show only incremental benefits.
The new drug, which Biogen developed with Japan’s Eisai Co., did not reverse mental decline, only slowing it in one study. The medication, aducanumab, will be marketed as Aduhelm and is to be given as an infusion every four weeks.
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Dr. Caleb Alexander, an FDA adviser who recommended against the drug’s approval, said he was “surprised and disappointed” by the decision.
“The FDA gets the respect that it does because it has regulatory standards that are based on firm evidence. In this case, I think they gave the product a pass,” said Alexander, a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins University.
The FDA’s top drug regulator acknowledged that “residual uncertainties” surround the drug, but said Aduhelm’s ability to reduce harmful clumps of plaque in the brain is expected to help slow dementia.
“The data supports patients and caregivers having the choice to use this drug,” Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni told reporters. She said the FDA carefully weighed the input of people living with the “devastating, debilitating and deadly disease.”
Under terms of the so-called accelerated approval, the FDA is requiring Biogen to conduct a follow-up study to confirm benefits for patients. If the study fails to show effectiveness, the FDA could pull the drug from the market, though the agency rarely does so.
Biogen said the drug would cost approximately $56,000 for a typical year’s worth of treatment, and said the price would not be raised for four years. Most patients won’t pay anywhere near that thanks to insurance coverage and other discounts. The company said it aims to complete the FDA-mandated follow-up trial by 2030.
Biogen shares jumped 38% in trading Monday on the news, with analysts forecasting billions in future sales. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company plans to begin shipping millions of doses within two weeks.
The non-profit Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which studies drug value, said Biogen’s drug would have to halt dementia entirely to justify its $56,000 per-year price tag.
Some 6 million people in the U.S. and many more worldwide have Alzheimer’s, which gradually attacks areas of the brain needed for memory, reasoning, communication and basic daily tasks. In the final stages of the disease, those afflicted lose the ability to swallow. The global burden of the disease, the most common cause of dementia, is only expected to grow as millions more baby boomers progress further into their 60s and 70s.
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Aducanumab (pronounced “add-yoo-CAN-yoo-mab”) helps clear a protein called beta-amyloid from the brain. Other experimental drugs have done that but they made no difference in patients’ ability to think, care for themselves or live independently.
The pharmaceutical industry’s drug pipeline has been littered for years with failed Alzheimer’s treatments. The FDA’s greenlight Monday is likely to revive investments in therapies previously shelved by drugmakers.
The new medicine is manufactured from living cells and will be given via infusion at a doctor’s office or hospital.
Researchers don’t fully understand what causes Alzheimer’s but there’s broad agreement the brain plaque targeted by aducanumab is just one contributor. Evidence suggests family history, education and chronic conditions like diabetes and heart disease may all play a role.
“This is a sign of hope but not the final answer,” said Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the National Institute on Aging, which wasn’t involved in the Biogen studies but funds research into how Alzheimer’s forms. “Amyloid is important but not the only contributing factor.”
Patients taking aducanumab saw their thinking skills decline 22% more slowly than patients taking a placebo.
But that meant a difference of just 0.39 on an 18-point score of cognitive and functional ability. And it’s unclear how such metrics translate into practical benefits, like greater independence or ability to recall important details.
The FDA’s review of the drug has become a flashpoint in longstanding debates over standards used to evaluate therapies for hard-to-treat conditions. On one side, groups representing Alzheimer’s patients and their families say any new therapy — even one of small benefit — warrants approval. But many experts warn that greenlighting the drug could set a dangerous precedent, opening the door to treatments of questionable benefit.
The approval came despite a scathing assessment in November by the FDA’s outside panel of neurological experts. The group voted “no” to a series of questions on whether reanalyzed data from a single study submitted by Biogen showed the drug was effective.
Biogen halted two studies in 2019 after disappointing results suggested aducanumab would not meet its goal of slowing mental and functional decline in Alzheimer’s patients.
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Several months later, the company reversed course, announcing that a new analysis of one study showed the drug was effective at higher doses and the FDA had advised that it warranted review. Company scientists said the drug’s initial failure was due to some patients not receiving high enough doses to slow the disease.
But the changes to dosing and the company’s after-the-fact analysis made the results hard to interpret, raising skepticism among many experts, including those on the FDA panel.
The FDA isn’t required to follow the advice of its outside panelists and has previously disregarded their input when making similarly high-profile drug decisions.
About 900 U.S. medical facilities are ready to begin prescribing the drug, according to Biogen, with many more expected in coming months. But key practical questions remain: How long do patients benefit? How do physicians determine when to discontinue the drug? Does the drug have any benefit in patients with more advanced dementia?
With FDA approval, aducanumab is almost certain to be covered by most insurers, including Medicare, the government plan for seniors that covers more than 60 million people.
Insurers could try to manage the drug’s costs by requiring strict conditions, including brain scans to confirm plaque, before agreeing to cover it.
Additional scans will be needed to monitor potential side effects. The drug carries a warning about temporary brain swelling that can sometimes cause headaches, confusion and dizziness. Other side effects included allergic reactions, diarrhea and disorientation.
Although Biogen studied the drug in people with mild dementia or early-stage Alzheimer’s, the FDA label approved the drug for anyone with Alzheimer’s, a sweeping population given doctors have broad leeway in diagnosing the condition.
“The FDA is empowering the physician to make the decision on diagnosis,” Biogen CEO Michel Vounatsos said in an interview.
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For patients already enrolled in Biogen’s trials, Monday’s announcement means they can continue taking a drug many believe has helped.
Phillip Lynn, 63, was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s in the spring of 2017 after having trouble with conversation and memory, including forgetting a recent vacation to Hawaii.
His husband Kurt Rehwinkel says Lynn’s cognitive ability has stabilized since starting on Biogen’s drug more than three years ago. And his performance on short-term memory tests has actually improved, though the couple acknowledges most patients are unlikely to see similar results.
“But even for those who it has little or no effect, I think hope is a good thing,” said Rehwinkel. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as false hope.”
Carbon dioxide levels hit 50% higher than preindustrial time
The annual peak of global heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air has reached another dangerous milestone: 50% higher than when the industrial age began.
And the average rate of increase is faster than ever, scientists reported Monday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the average carbon dioxide level for May was 419.13 parts per million. That’s 1.82 parts per million higher than May 2020 and 50% higher than the stable pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million, said NOAA climate scientist Pieter Tans.
Carbon dioxide levels peak every May just before plant life in the Northern Hemisphere blossoms, sucking some of that carbon out of the atmosphere and into flowers, leaves, seeds and stems. The reprieve is temporary, though, because emissions of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas for transportation and electricity far exceed what plants can take in, pushing greenhouse gas levels to new records every year.
Also read: Climate change accelerates during 2015-2019: WMO
“Reaching 50% higher carbon dioxide than preindustrial is really setting a new benchmark and not in a good way,” said Cornell University climate scientist Natalie Mahowald, who wasn’t part of the research. “If we want to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we need to work much harder to cut carbon dioxide emissions and right away.”
Climate change does more than increase temperatures. It makes extreme weather — storms, wildfires, floods and droughts — worse and more frequent and causes oceans to rise and get more acidic, studies show. There are also health effects, including heat deaths and increased pollen. In 2015, countries signed the Paris agreement to try to keep climate change to below what’s considered dangerous levels.
Also read: Next 10 years final chance to avert climate catastrophe: UN chief
The one-year jump in carbon dioxide was not a record, mainly because of a La Nina weather pattern, when parts of the Pacific temporarily cool, said Scripps Institution of Oceanography geochemist Ralph Keeling. Keeling’s father started the monitoring of carbon dioxide on top of the Hawaiian mountain Mauna Loa in 1958, and he has continued the work of charting the now famous Keeling Curve.
Scripps, which calculates the numbers slightly differently based on time and averaging, said the peak in May was 418.9.
Also, pandemic lockdowns slowed transportation, travel and other activity by about 7%, earlier studies show. But that was too small to make a significant difference. Carbon dioxide can stay in the air for 1,000 years or more, so year-to-year changes in emissions don’t register much.
The 10-year average rate of increase also set a record, now up to 2.4 parts per million per year.
“Carbon dioxide going up in a few decades like that is extremely unusual,” Tans said. “For example, when the Earth climbed out of the last ice age, carbon dioxide increased by about 80 parts per million and it took the Earth system, the natural system, 6,000 years. We have a much larger increase in the last few decades.”
By comparison, it has taken only 42 years, from 1979 to 2021, to increase carbon dioxide by that same amount.
“The world is approaching the point where exceeding the Paris targets and entering a climate danger zone becomes almost inevitable,” said Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who wasn’t part of the research.
Suu Kyi appears in Myanmar court for 2nd time
Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who has been hit by criminal charges one after another, appeared in person in court for a second time on Monday in the coup-hit country's capital Naypyitaw.
Her lawyers said the five cases being dealt with by the Naypyitaw court will enter the full-scale trial phase next week, and verdicts could be handed down as early as August.
Suu Kyi has been prosecuted for six offenses, among which five minor ones -- such as the illegal import of walkie-talkies and violation of coronavirus restrictions -- are being collectively tried at the special court.
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The sixth and most serious charge is for leaking state secrets, a felony punishable by up to 14 years in prison. That case will be tried separately in the capital.
The Naypyitaw court has not conducted any substantive hearings so far, but they are expected to start in earnest on June 14 and wrap up by July 26.
The specific date for handing down the verdicts is undecided, but Khin Maung Zaw, leader of the defense lawyers team, said it could happen as early as mid-August if things proceed smoothly.
But he added that everything might not go as planned. For example, if either side raises objections, a higher court might get involved, he said.
Another defense lawyer, Min Min Soe, who also met Suu Kyi on Monday morning with other lawyers, said she asked them to arrange some money for herself, her staff and their family members who are living with her to purchase items such as food and medicine.
She was said to be living with eight people, as well her pet dog, in an undisclosed location.
READ: Myanmar residents ask Japan to push military to free Suu Kyi
Suu Kyi has told her lawyers that she and the people living with her were moved out from her former residence in the capital one day before she made her first physical appearance in court on May 24.
Israel suspends ultranationalists' march in east Jerusalem
Israeli police on Monday said they blocked a planned procession by Jewish ultranationalists through parts of Jerusalem’s Old City, following warnings that it could reignite tensions that led to a punishing 11-day war against Gaza’s militants last month.
The parade, which celebrates Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, was underway on May 10 when Hamas militants in Gaza fired rockets toward the holy city, setting off heavy fighting. Some 254 people were killed in Gaza and 13 in Israel before a cease-fire took effect on May 21.
The war was preceded by weeks of clashes between Israeli police and Palestinian demonstrators in the Old City and in the nearby neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where Jewish settlers have waged a decades-long campaign to evict Palestinian families from their homes.
READ: Israel arrests Jerusalem activists in contested neighborhood
The procession, which had intended to go through the through the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, is considered by Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem to be a provocation.
In a statement, police said the proposal to hold the parade later this week was not approved, but new plans would be considered. The decision was attacked by organizers, who accused police of caving in to pressure from Hamas.
Bezalel Smotrich, leader of the hard-line Religious Zionism party, tweeted a warning to embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “not to give in to Hamas threats.”
Renewed tensions in east Jerusalem or fighting with Hamas could complicate Israel’s shaky politics. Netanyahu’s opponents last week said they have formed a coalition that could remove the prime minister from office after a 12-year term. The new coalition is expected to be sworn into office in the coming days.
Over the weekend, Israeli police arrested and released a veteran reporter for the Al Jazeera satellite channel who had regularly been covering the Sheikh Jarrah. And on Sunday, authorities stormed the home of a leading activist in the neighborhood, arresting her and her brother. The siblings were later released.
Before Muna al-Kurd was freed, police briefly clashed with a crowd outside the station, throwing stun grenades.
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Sheikh Jarrah is one of the most sensitive parts of east Jerusalem, home to sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims and which Israel captured in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Israel views the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
The settlers are using a 1970 law that allows Jews to reclaim formerly Jewish properties lost during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, a right denied to Palestinians who lost property in the same conflict.
Palestinian mom fights to stave off punitive home demolition
Sanaa Shalaby says she had no idea what her estranged husband was up to until Israeli soldiers raided her home in the occupied West Bank last month.
Now she’s waging a legal battle to prevent Israel from demolishing the two-story villa where she lives with her three youngest children. It’s drawing attention to Israel’s policy of punitive home demolitions, which rights groups view as collective punishment.
Israeli security forces arrested her husband, Muntasser Shalaby, and accuse him of carrying out a May 2 drive-by shooting that killed an Israeli and wounded two others in the occupied West Bank. Israel says demolishing family homes is one of the only ways to deter attackers, who expect to be arrested or killed and who are often glorified by Palestinian factions.
The U.S. State Department has criticized such demolitions, and an internal Israeli military review in the 2000s raised questions about their effectiveness. The case of the Shalabys — who all have U.S. citizenship — could reignite the debate. Israel’s Supreme Court is expected to issue a final ruling on the demolition next week.
Read:Israel arrests Jerusalem activists in contested neighborhood
Sanaa and her husband had been estranged for nearly a decade. He lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he ran a profitable smoke shop and married three other women in private Muslim ceremonies not recognized by U.S. authorities.
“It’s allowed in our religion,” Sanaa said. “I didn’t agree to it.”
He came back to the West Bank in April for what she says was one of his yearly visits to see the children. He had also sought treatment for paranoia after having been institutionalized in the U.S. in recent years, according to a deposition he gave to her lawyer.
Sanaa said she knew nothing about the attack and had no indication he was planning anything.
“People commit crimes far worse than this in America and they don’t demolish their homes,” she said. “Whoever committed the crime should be punished, but it’s not the family’s fault.”
When the soldiers showed up after the attack they ransacked the home and briefly detained her 17-year-old son. She said they had a large dog that terrified her and her two younger children, a 12-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl. The soldiers came back weeks later to map out the house for demolition.
Now Sanaa says her children spend all day in bed and refuse to go to school. “I know my children and they were never like this,” she said. “My son, Ahmed, has to take his final exams and he can’t study. He opens his book, reads a couple pages and then he walks off.”
An Israeli official said the security agencies believe home demolitions are an effective deterrent. The official declined to comment on the Shalaby case, but said everyone is notified in advance and given the right to contest demolitions in court. Someone in Sanaa’s situation would have a “good legal case” if her account is independently verified, the official said.
“There are clear checks and balances,” the official said. “We are using it only when we feel that it is necessary, and only because we understand that this is an effective deterrent.”
Read:Jerusalem evictions that fueled Gaza war could still happen
The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss security procedures.
HaMoked, an Israeli rights group that has represented dozens of families seeking to halt punitive demolitions and is currently representing Sanaa, says such petitions rarely succeed. Of 83 cases brought since 2014, only 10 demolitions were prevented, it said. In the remaining cases, homes were partially or completely demolished, or apartments in multi-story buildings were permanently sealed off.
Jessica Montell, the group’s executive director, says that from a legal perspective the question of whether it serves as a deterrent is irrelevant.
“You don’t collectively punish innocent people just because they’re related to a criminal in the hope that that will deter future criminals. It’s an illegal and immoral policy regardless of the effectiveness,” she said.
The Israeli military prepared a report on punitive home demolitions in 2004 that led to a moratorium on the practice the following year, according to HaMoked, which received a Power Point presentation of the classified report in 2008 through a court petition.
The presentation raises concerns about the legality of such demolitions and international criticism of them. It also questions their effectiveness, saying the demolitions might even motivate more attacks. Such demolitions were mostly halted until 2014, when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed in the occupied West Bank.
A campaign by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinian families from their homes in east Jerusalem was one of the main causes of last month’s 11-day Gaza war, in which Israeli airstrikes demolished hundreds of homes in the militant-ruled territory.
Both forms of displacement summon bitter memories of what the Palestinians refer to as the Nakba, or “catastrophe,” when some 700,000 Palestinians fled or were driven out of what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.
Shalaby said she has been in continual contact with the U.S. Embassy but was told it couldn’t do anything about the demolition.
Read:Gaza’s bereaved civilians fear justice will never come
The State Department declined to comment on the case, citing privacy concerns. But it said it was opposed to the punitive demolition of Palestinian homes. “The home of an entire family should not be demolished for the actions of one individual,” it said in a statement.
The Israeli Supreme Court will hear Sanaa’s case on June 17.
She hopes she will be able to remain in the house that she and her husband built in 2006. She said she had sold her bridal jewelry to help finance the construction. She raised her youngest children in the house, and an older daughter had her wedding there last year during a pandemic lockdown.
“My daughter got married here during the time of the coronavirus,” she said, pointing to the front courtyard and smiling at the memory. “It was better than any wedding hall.”
Last of Soviet soldiers who liberated Auschwitz dies at 98
David Dushman, the last surviving Soviet soldier involved in the liberation of the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, has died. He was 98.
The Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria said Sunday that Dushman had died at a Munich hospital on Saturday.
“Every witness to history who passes on is a loss, but saying farewell to David Dushman is particularly painful,” said Charlotte Knobloch, a former head of Germany’s Central Council of Jews. “Dushman was right on the front lines when the National Socialists’ machinery of murder was destroyed.”
As a young Red Army soldier, Dushman flattened the forbidding electric fence around the notorious Nazi death camp with his T-34 tank on Jan. 27, 1945.
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He admitted that he and his comrades didn’t immediately realize the full magnitude of what had happened in Auschwitz.
“Skeletons everywhere,” he recalled in a 2015 interview with Munich newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung. “They stumbled out of the barracks, they sat and lay among the dead. Terrible. We threw them all of our canned food and immediately drove on, to hunt fascists.”
More than a million people, most of them Jews deported there from all over Europe, were murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz-Birkenau between 1940 and 1945.
Dushman earlier took part in some of the bloodiest military encounters of World War II, including the battles of Stalingrad and Kursk. He was seriously wounded three times but survived the war, one of just 69 soldiers in his 12,000-strong division.
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His father — a former military doctor— was meanwhile imprisoned and later died in a Soviet punishment camp after falling victim to one of Josef Stalin’s purges.
After the war, Dushman helped train the Soviet Union’s women’s national fencing team for four decades and witnessed the attack by eight Palestinian terrorists on the Israeli team at the 1972 Munich Olympics, which resulted in the deaths of 11 Israelis, five of the Palestinians and a German policeman.
Later in life, Dushman visited schools to tell students about the war and the horrors of the Holocaust. He also regularly dusted off his military medals to participate in veterans gatherings.
“Dushman was a legendary fencing coach and the last living liberator of the Auschwitz concentration camp,” the International Olympic Committee said in a statement.
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IOC President Thomas Bach paid tribute to Dushman, recounting how as a young fencer for what was then West Germany he was offered “friendship and counsel” by the veteran coach in 1970 ”despite Mr Dushman’s personal experience with World War II and Auschwitz, and he being a man of Jewish origin.”
“This was such a deep human gesture that I will never ever forget it,” Bach said in a statement.
Dushman trained some of the Soviet Union’s most successful fencers, including Valentina Sidorova, and continued to give lessons well into his 90s, the IOC said.
Details on funeral arrangements weren’t immediately known. Dushman’s wife, Zoja, died several years ago.
As India’s surge wanes, families deal with the devastation
Two months ago Radha Gobindo Pramanik and his wife threw a party to celebrate their daughter’s pregnancy and the upcoming birth of their long-awaited grandchild. They were so happy that they paid little attention to his wife’s cough.
It’s an oversight that may forever haunt him. Within days, his wife, his daughter and his unborn grandchild were all dead, among the tens of thousands killed as the coronavirus ravaged India in April and May.
“Everyone whom I loved the most has left me,” the 71-year-old said on a recent night as a Hindu priest chanted mantras and performed a ritual for the dead at his home in the northern city of Lucknow. “I am left alone in this world now.”
As India emerges from its darkest days of the pandemic, families across the country are grieving all that they’ve lost and are left wondering if more could have been done to avoid this tragedy.
Read: Indian cities unlocking after declining COVID-19 infections
There are also signs that the virus is not done devastating India’s families because even as new infections are down, thousands are still dying each day and the illness is believed to be spreading undetected in areas without access to testing.
Ruby Srivastava lost her family in a single week in April. First her mother and father to the virus. Then her brother to a motorcycle accident. And finally her grandmother to shock.
Now the 21-year-old is left dealing with the insurmountable pain and the questions she asks herself.
She wonders if things might have been different if her father, a government worker in Lucknow, hadn’t been called away to help hold local elections in their state of more than 200 million people.
Health experts had warned against holding the polls. Fearing the virus, many of the hundreds of thousands of government workers ordered to help out had begged not to go. But the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s government in Uttar Pradesh state insisted the vote would go ahead as planned.
For four days, more than 1.3 million candidates fought for nearly 800,000 seats. Tens of millions voted as the virus spread unchecked.
In the days that followed, scores of government employees who worked the polls would die. One teachers union said 1,600 educators alone were killed, many of them complaining of fever and breathlessness.
Srivastava wonders what would have happened if her father’s superiors believed him and hadn’t denied his requests for sick leave until finally he fainted in his office and was sent home.
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She wonders if her father could have been saved had he gotten better treatment at the government-run hospital they took him to before deciding they would take care of him themselves at home.
At the height of the surge, Indian hospitals were overwhelmed and life-saving drugs and oxygen were were in short supply. People were dying on their way to health centers, gasping for breath. Families were panicking.
Once back home, Srivastava’s family paid an exorbitant price for an oxygen cylinder for her father. They were so relieved they almost didn’t notice that her mother was also coughing.
“Our full attention was on our father,” Srivastava said. “So we did not realize that she was also facing problems.”
Her mother’s situation quickly grew worse and on April 22 she died. A day later so did her father.
After their cremations, Srivastava’s younger brother was taking their ashes on his motorcycle for a ceremony to immerse them in the Ganges River when he was killed in an accident. Three days after that, her heartbroken grandmother died of cardiac arrest.
Srivastava’s entire family had been wiped out in a few devastating days.
Pramanik also has regrets about his family’s final days.
Most of all he wishes he had paid attention to his wife’s cough and off-and-on fever and never held the party for his daughter, Navanita. They had been so excited that their daughter was finally pregnant after nine years of trying and had grown complacent with health protocols at a time when they thought they were safe from the virus.
Read: Increase in Covid-19 vaccine production in India to be 'game changer' beyond borders: US
Friends suggested his wife get tested for COVID-19, but she refused.
To make matters worse, the day after the party he and his wife traveled to Navanita’s house on the fringes of the capital. There the two women talked all night, making arrangements for the baby’s birth in June.
Within 24 hours Pramanik’s wife’s fever returned, she complained of breathlessness and she was hospitalized. Three days later she died.
Distraught, the father and daughter returned to Lucknow by train. A promise was made that Navanita would take care of him.
“She told me: ‘You are not alone. I am with you,’” he recalled.
When they got home, Navanita started showing symptoms.
Over the next five days the virus took over her body. She was hospitalized and finally shifted to an intensive-care unit and hooked up to a ventilator.
On the night of April 17, Pramanik and his son-in-law sat outside the ICU trying to console one another. Together they wept.
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The next morning, doctors told them they needed to find a better-equipped medical facility for Navanita. Frantic calls around the city were met with refusals. Beds were full nearly everywhere.
After hours of trying, they finally found space for her. It was too late. Navanita died on the way to the new hospital, her unborn child inside her.
Two months later, Pramanik is still wracked with guilt. If only he had made different decisions, he tells himself, his wife and daughter would still be alive. He would be a grandfather.
“Sometimes I feel I have killed my wife and daughter,” he said. “This thought keeps me awake the whole night.”
Israel arrests Jerusalem activists in contested neighborhood
Israeli police burst into the home of a prominent family in the contested Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem on Sunday, the family said, arresting a 23-year-old woman who has led protests against attempts by Jewish settlers to evict dozens of Palestinian families from their homes in the area. The young woman was later released, but her twin brother turned himself in and remained in custody.
The arrests came a day after Israeli police detained a well-known Al Jazeera reporter covering a demonstration in the neighborhood. The reporter, Givara Budeiri, was held for four hours before she was released and sent to a hospital to treat a broken hand. It was not clear how her hand was broken, but her boss blamed police mistreatment.
Earlier this year, heavy-handed police actions in Sheikh Jarrah and other parts of east Jerusalem fueled weeks of unrest that helped spark an 11-day war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.
Those tensions are simmering again this week — and could flare anew if Israeli ultranationalists follow through on plans to march Thursday through the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Israeli police were expected to hold consultations on whether the parade, which was originally set to take place when the war erupted on May 10, would be allowed to proceed.
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Renewed violence could complicate the task of embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opponents, who formed a fragile and disparate coalition last week, of passing a parliamentary vote of confidence needed for them to replace him and take office. A close ally of Netanyahu oversees the police.
In Sheikh Jarrah, Jewish settlers have been waging a decades-long campaign to evict the families from densely populated Palestinian neighborhoods just outside the walls of the Old City. The area is one of the most sensitive parts of east Jerusalem, which is home to sites sacred to Jews, Christians and Muslims and which Israel captured in 1967 and annexed in a move not recognized internationally. Israel views the entire city as its capital, while the Palestinians want east Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Settler groups and Israeli officials say the Sheikh Jarrah dispute is merely about real estate. But Palestinians say they are victims of a discriminatory system. The settlers are using a 1970 law that allows Jews to reclaim formerly Jewish properties lost during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation, a right denied to Palestinians who lost property in the same conflict.
The al-Kurd family in Sheikh Jarrah has been at the forefront of months of protests against the planned evictions.
Early Sunday, police took Muna al-Kurd, 23, from her home.
Her father, Nabil al-Kurd, said police “stormed the house in large numbers and in a barbaric manner.”
“I was sleeping, and I found them in my bedroom,” he said. Police then searched the house and arrested his daughter. Video posted on social media showed her being taken away in handcuffs.
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“The reason for the arrest is that we say that we will not leave our homes, and they do not want anyone to express his opinion, they do not want anyone to tell the truth,” he said. “They want to silence us.”
Police also searched for her brother, Muhammad al-Kurd, but he was not there. Later, he turned himself in to Jerusalem police.
The siblings’ lawyer, Nasser Odeh, told journalists outside the police station that his clients were accused of “disturbing public security and participation in nationalistic riots.”
Late Sunday, Muna al-Kurd was released. But before she was freed, police briefly clashed with a crowd outside the station, throwing stun grenades. Her brother remained in custody.
The arrests came a day after Al Jazeera’s Budeiri, wearing a protective vest marked “press,” was dragged away by police at a protest in Sheikh Jarrah.
According to witnesses, police asked Budeiri for identification. Colleagues said police did not allow her to return to her car to retrieve her government-issued press card. Instead, they said she was surrounded by police, handcuffed and dragged into a vehicle with darkened windows.
In video footage posted online, Budeiri can be seen in handcuffs, while clutching her notebook and shouting, “Don’t touch, enough, enough.”
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Israeli police said entrance to the neighborhood is limited due to the tense situation, and only accredited journalists are allowed in. They said that when Budeiri was unable to provide her press pass, police “removed her.” They added that Budeiri was arrested after becoming hostile and pushing an officer.
“The Israel Police will allow the freedom of press coverage, provided that these are done in accordance (with) the law while maintaining public order,” according to a statement. The statement did not reference her broken hand.
Budeiri was held for four hours before she was released and sent to the hospital, said Walid Omary, the Jerusalem bureau chief for Al Jazeera. In addition to the broken hand, Omary said Budeiri also suffered bruises on her body. He said her cameraman’s video camera was also heavily damaged by police.
As part of her release, Budeiri is banned from returning to the neighborhood for 15 days, Omary said.
“They are attacking the journalists in east Jerusalem because they don’t want them to continue covering what’s happening inside Sheikh Jarrah,” he said.
The Foreign Press Association, which represents hundreds of journalists working for international news organizations, said the treatment of Budeiri was “the latest in a long line of heavy-handed tactics by Israeli police” against the media in recent weeks. It said journalists have been hit by stun grenades, tear gas, sponge-tipped bullets and putrid-smelling water.
“We call on police to punish the officers who needlessly injured an experienced journalist and broke professional equipment. And once again, we urge police to uphold Israel’s pledges to respect freedom of the press and to allow journalists to do their jobs freely and without fear of injury and intimidation,” the FPA said.
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Last month’s war was triggered by weeks of clashes in Jerusalem between Israeli police and Palestinian protesters in and around the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a flashpoint holy site.
The war erupted on May 10 when Hamas, calling itself the defender of the holy city, launched a barrage of rockets at Jerusalem. Some 254 people were killed in Gaza and 13 in Israel before a cease-fire took effect on May 21.
Al Jazeera’s acting director general, Mostefa Souag, noted that Budeiri’s detention came after Israel’s May 15 war-time destruction of a Gaza high-rise that housed the local office of Al Jazeera. The tower also housed The Associated Press’ office.
Israel has alleged that Hamas military intelligence was operating from the building. The AP has said it has no indication of a purported Hamas presence and has called for an independent investigation.