News

Children Of Flint Water Crisis Make Change As Young Environmental And Health Activists

Published

7 months ago

2024-04-22

AP - VOR News Image

Flint, Michigan – Their childhood memories remain vivid: cautions against drinking or cooking with tap water, waiting in lengthy lines for cases of water, and washing in buckets filled with warm, bottled water. Some people have stomachaches, skin rashes, and hair loss.

On April 25, 2014, ten years ago, city and state environmental officials in Flint raised champagne glasses as the mayor depressed a button to stop the flow of Lake Huron water that Detroit had been supplying for almost 50 years. That triggered a public health disaster including lead and bacteria from which the city has yet to recover.

However, dozens of water crisis survivors, now teenagers and young adults, have used their pain to advocate for change. They provide feedback on public health programs, participate in social problem campaigns, distribute filters, and offer free water testing to households.

AP – VOR News Image

Children Of Flint Water Crisis Make Change As Young Environmental And Health Activists

They realize Flint is still struggling. The population has decreased by approximately 20,000 over the last decade, leaving abandoned houses as targets for arsonists. Almost 70% of children live in poverty, and many struggle in school.

Despite the fact that the water has been confirmed safe to drink, there is widespread skepticism, and hundreds of lead water pipes remain in place since householders were given the option of not replacing them.

However, the young activists say they want to make a difference and change the way outsiders perceive their community. They seek to defy expectations.

“One of the biggest issues about growing up in Flint is that people had already decided and predetermined who we were,” said Cruz Duhart, a 22-year-old Flint Public Health Youth Academy member.

“They had ideas about our IQ, about behavioral things, but they never really stopped to speak to us and how we thought about it and the type of traumas that we were going through.”

AP – VOR News Image

Children Of Flint Water Crisis Make Change As Young Environmental And Health Activists

Sima Gutierrez, 16, has always found it easier to express herself through painting. Drawings, paintings, and wire sculptures adorn her family’s neat cottage.

The self-described “very shy” teen, who rarely spoke up for fear of being ignored, now collects water samples from people’s homes and transports them to the Flint Community Water Lab, where over 60 high school and college interns have provided free testing to thousands of residents since 2020.

As a member of the Flint Public Health Youth Academy, she assisted in the planning of public awareness campaigns on issues such as gun violence and how racism impacts public health.

“I wanted to be surrounded by people who weren’t going to cover up the whole fact that people are still having problems,” Sima remarked. “I was able to … share my life (with) anybody else who’s going through what I’m going through.”

She complained a decade ago that drinking water made her stomach pain. Her mother insisted that it would help Sima’s body flush out the medication she was taking for an autoimmune disease, which was causing her hair to come out in sections and leaving her skin with light blotches.

Residents began reporting skin rashes and complaints about discolored, odorous, and foul-tasting water shortly after the city began drawing from the Flint River to save money before it could connect to a new Lake Huron pipeline. However, they were told that everything was alright.

Sima claimed she was unaware of the issues until one of her elementary school classmates, Mari Copeny, a 7-year-old beauty pageant winner known as Little Miss Flint, started protesting. Mari became the crisis’s face, and she continues to raise awareness of environmental justice concerns among her almost 200,000 Instagram followers, as well as funds for water filters that she distributes in communities around the United States.

“I want to keep on using my voice to spread awareness about the Flint water crisis because it’s not just Flint that has a water crisis,” Mari went on to say. “America has a water crisis.”

Almost a year and a half after Flint made the transition, homeowners dissatisfied with the water quality contacted an expert, who discovered excessive lead levels caused by the city’s inability to add chemicals that prevent pipe corrosion. State officials had stated that these were superfluous. Around the same time, a pediatrician observed that levels in children’s blood had doubled since the changeover.

Outbreaks of Legionnaire’s disease, which resulted in a dozen deaths, were eventually traced to the city’s water supply.

Flint reconnected to its previous water line shortly thereafter, but the pipes continued to leak lead. The state gave households filters and bottled water.

Lead is a strong neurotoxin that can harm children’s brains and neurological systems, impairing learning, behavior, hearing, and speaking. There is no safe level of exposure throughout childhood, and issues can appear years later.

Dionna Brown, who was 14 when the water crisis started, grew interested in lobbying after taking an environmental inequality class at Howard University. She’s now building her life around it, pursuing a master’s degree in sociology at Wayne State University with the goal of becoming an environmental justice lawyer.

AP – VOR News Image

Children Of Flint Water Crisis Make Change As Young Environmental And Health Activists

She is also the national director of Young, Gifted & Green’s youth environmental justice initiative, which was previously known as Black Millennials for Flint and was formed by Washington advocates to help Flint recover from the disaster.

Every year, Brown hosts a two-week summer environmental justice camp in Flint to educate youth about policy, climate justice, sustainability, and housing inequality. She also works with children in Baltimore and Memphis.

She claimed that the Flint water crisis strengthened the children’s resilience.

“I tell people all the time: I’m a child of the Flint water crisis,” Brown added. “I love my city. And we made it clear to the world that you couldn’t just poison a city and expect people to forget about it.”

SOURCE – (AP)

News

Pam Bondi Is Appointed US Attorney General Following Gaetz’s Resignation.

Published

4 hours ago

2024-11-22

Salman Ahmad

Photo via Reuters

(VOR News) – President-elect Donald Trump selected Pam Bondi, a former Florida Attorney General and ally, to succeed Matt Gaetz on Thursday after the latter withdrew from consideration.

Gaetz’s drug use and sexual intercourse with a 17-year-old girl were the subject of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee. He denies any wrongdoing.

During Trump’s first administration, Pam Bondi, 59, served on the Opioids and Drug Abuse Commission. He served as police chief of the third-most populous state from 2011 to 2019.

She was also a member of Trump’s defense team at his first impeachment hearing, where he was charged with use military assistance to get Ukraine to look into the wrongdoing of his opponent, now President Joe Biden. The Senate cleared Trump on all charges.

The right-wing America First Policy Institute, which has collaborated with Trump’s campaign to create government concepts, most recently had Pam Bondi as its leader of the legal branch.

Unlike Pam Bondi, Gaetz lacks the experience necessary to serve as attorney general and is likely to encounter resistance from Senate Democrats and some Republicans.

According to Jones Walker defense attorney David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor in Florida, “She is unequivocally qualified for the position on paper.” Throughout her life, she battled in court. She stood out from the previous nominee because to her resume.

In a tweet announcing his intention to nominate Bondi, Trump praised her skills as a prosecutor and her firm stance against crime as Florida’s first female attorney general. Trump said that even though Bondi was elected on November 5th, while numerous state and federal criminal investigations were underway, he pledged to keep federal prosecutions from being politicized.

According to Trump, “The biased Department of Justice has been weaponized against me and other Republicans for an excessive duration.” Not true anymore.

Discussion about Pam Bondi and Trump’s history before 2016.

In 2013, the Trump Foundation may have broken federal law by giving $25,000 to a political action committee that supported Pam Bondi. Bondi thought about looking into the for-profit Trump University.

Pam Bondi disputed that her decision to end her legal actions against Trump University following the 2016 disclosure of Trump’s $25,000 gift had anything to do with her decision to withdraw from those actions. According to her, all pertinent material was made public by her office.

The erroneous money disclosure was attributed by the Trump team to a “series of unfortunate coincidences and errors.” New York state fraud investigations resulted in the dissolution of both Trump University and the Trump Foundation.

After misleading Trump University students, he settled for $25 million and was fined $2 million for misusing charitable funds.

Following Special Counsel Jack Smith’s acquisition of two indictments against him for his interference in the 2020 election and his possession of secret materials after leaving office, Trump has voiced his displeasure with the present leadership of the Justice Department and pledged retaliation.

AFPI’s Pam Bondi remains loyal to Trump.

She and a number of other lawyers claimed that Smith’s appointment was illegal in an amicus brief they prepared in support of Trump in the secret information litigation. The Justice Department filed an appeal after U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump nominee, rejected the case.

According to a long-standing rule against charging a sitting president, Smith and other top Justice Department officials are examining how both of the Trump criminal cases were resolved.

During his first administration, Trump was incensed with the Justice Department’s obstructionism. Bill Barr specifically refuted Trump’s baseless claims that he lost the 2020 election due to fraud, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions permitted an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Trump’s overarching objectives for the Justice Department have been delineated through his public remarks, interviews with former department lawyers, and Mark Paoletta, a conservative lawyer who develops the department’s policy.

Federal prosecutors may give illegal immigration cases priority.

To obtain a portion of the department’s $291 million justice assistance award, cities might have to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement.

It is probable that the Civil Rights Division will refocus its attention from legal challenges to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in the public and commercial sectors to police accountability to religious freedom.

SOURCE: EAT

News

PayPal’s Technical Challenges Are Affecting Thousands Of Customers Globally.

Published

19 hours ago

2024-11-21

Salman Ahmad

(VOR News) – PayPal is a software program that enables the sending and receiving of monetary orders and transactions.

According to the corporation, which has taken responsibility for the incident that was mentioned before, PayPal is apparently experiencing problems in every region of the world in which it conducts business. This information was provided by the company.

In addition, PayPal noted on its service status website that it was experiencing “a system issue” which may affect a variety of PayPal Products, such as the ability to withdraw money from an account and the ability to complete an express checkout. This issue may even hurt the ability to complete an express checkout.

This problem may also affect other PayPal products.

In light of the fact that this vulnerability is present, there are further PayPal products that have the potential to be affected by it.

One of the remarks that was made was that “Our technical teams are actively working towards resolving the issue,” which was stated in the email that was distributed. This was one of the comments that individuals made. A number of assertions were made, and this was one of them all.

Several customers from various regions of the world have stated that they are unable to access their accounts or that they are having difficulty when it comes to making payments. These customers have also mentioned that they are encountering difficulties making payments.

These clients have informed us that they are experiencing difficulties obtaining their orders by communicating their concerns. As an additional point of interest, a number of customers have reported that they are currently having trouble processing payments. This is something that should be taken into consideration.

Up to the moment that the clock struck twelve twelve Central European Time (GMT), the platform outage monitor known as Downdetector had already received more than seven thousand alerts from users. When the clock reached twelve o’clock, this was the situation that existed.

As indicated by a dashboard that provides an overview of the current state of the services that are being offered by the organization, the crisis started at roughly 10:53 UTC.

PayPal gathered this information via the dashboard.

Among the services that were impacted by the outage, the business asserts that its bitcoin services and the peer-to-peer payment platform Venmo were among those that were affected. Venmo is a form of cryptocurrency that enables users to send and receive payments from one another.

This information suggests that these services were among those that were impacted by the circumstances. This information has been provided.

There are consumers who have voiced their frustration on social media over the fact that they are unable to access their accounts, and some of these customers have expressed their frustration over this issue. A number of users have stated their frustration about this issue.

The discontentment that users are experiencing has been communicated through posts that have been published on various social media platforms as of late.

Users of X, which was once known as Twitter, have submitted screenshots of a notification that flashed when they attempted to log into the platform.

The notification appeared after logging in.

The message was flashed on the screen whenever they attempted to log in by entering their credentials. For those individuals who were fortunate enough to receive the notification, it was strongly recommended that they “please check your entries and try again.”

Since its beginning in 1998, PayPal has developed into a global financial institution that is associated with a significance level that is significant enough to be considered noteworthy. The occurrence of this evolution took place virtually immediately following the establishment of PayPal.

Investors were informed that the total number of active accounts across all of the company’s companies had increased to $432 million for the month that ended on September 30th.

This information was provided to investors. Following the conclusion of the month, this information was made available to the public.

During the course of the month of October, investors were provided with this information for the purpose of their consideration. For those individuals who were interested in investing, the material in question was made available to them.

SOURCE: BBC

News

Thousands of Asylum Seekers in Canada Get Free Housing

Published

1 day ago

2024-11-21

Geoff Brown

With a large increase in the number of asylum seekers in Canada, several communities have begun to create free accommodations for new immigrants, while many Canadians remain homeless.

The city of Ottawa is attempting to build a sprung building, which will function as both a temporary shelter and a center for settlement services such as language training and job placement.

These facilities are intended to host refugees in the city for the first few weeks before transitioning to more suitable housing in Ottawa’s settlement infrastructure.

The city has identified two possible sites for these centers, both in the city’s west end. Planning records refer to them as “modular tension fabric buildings.”

The proposed placements for these structures have caused concern in the local areas. The city’s first proposed location was canceled due to strong community opposition. Subsequently, it proposed two alternative options and rallies for and against constructing the structures, which took place last weekend in both locations.

Many people protested that they had not been fully consulted on the location, while others grumbled that nothing was being done to assist Canadian citizens.

Canadian authorities opened a temporary housing center for migrants with 1,050 beds in the Olympic Stadium in Montreal.

According to city data, one planned location is a federally owned tract of property near the Nepean Sportsplex, which serves around 1.5 million people annually. The other is near a public transport park-and-ride lot in Kanata’s western suburb.

City Councillor Sean Devine, whose constituency includes the Sportsplex site, stated that citizens have much to say about the problem.

“A lot of it is coming from the fact that it would have been preferable if the city of Ottawa had communicated the information sooner, perhaps in advance of the recommendations,” he told Global News during a telephone interview.

According to Devine, the number of migrants arriving in Ottawa has increased significantly in the last two years. This is consistent with national trends in refugee and asylum seeker rates.

Under Trudeua’s leadership, Canada had approximately 250,000 asylum petitions pending as of September 30, 2024, with more than 33,000 approved between January and the end of September.

International students in Canada filed nearly 14,000 asylum petitions in the first nine months of 2024, a roughly 14% increase over the same period last year. Compared to the present figures, approximately 12,000 asylum applications were lodged by international students in 2023—a tremendous surge from a mere 1,810 claims in 2018.

Devine stated that the city has been using two community center gymnasiums outfitted with bunk beds to temporarily lodge certain claimants before transitioning to other sorts of accommodation.

Asylum seekers get free housing in Quebec and Ontario.

According to a September release, the Ottawa Mission noticed a considerable increase in refugees filling its shelter beds in the summer of 2023. By October, asylum seekers were using 61% of the beds, a record high under Trudeau’s leadership.

The new structures will be funded under the federal interim housing aid program, which allows municipalities and provinces to reimburse the federal Government for expenditures incurred while temporarily hosting asylum seekers.

Since 2017, well over $1 billion has been distributed, largely in Ontario and Quebec, with the city of Ottawa getting $105 million to date.

Jenna Sudds, Minister of Families, Children, and Social Development, who represents the Ottawa riding of Kanata-Nepean, expressed disappointment with how the plans were presented to people.

Louisa Taylor, executive director of Settlement Service Organization 613 Asylum Seekers, has collaborated with the city to coordinate resources for settlement assistance at future centers.

Taylor explained that many asylum seekers in an Ottawa homeless shelter prompted her and 613 refugees to organize a recent rally supporting the structure.

“For several years, hundreds of refugee claimants have been living and sleeping on bunk beds and cots in community centers and arenas throughout the city.”

Nobody has gone out protesting about it. “What they’re protesting is the concept of having a facility in their community that they don’t know much about,” she explained.

Homeless Canadians

Homelessness is not a problem that most people connect with within Canada, but it is becoming a growing one. The projected number of homeless persons in Canada fluctuates from 150,000 to 300,000, which is increasing.

According to the 2016 State of Homelessness study, Canada had at least 235,000 homeless people. According to the Homeless Hub, the number of homeless people in Canada varies each year, ranging from 150,000 to 300,000.

However, many more people may be without a permanent home in Canada. The actual number is impossible to determine because many homeless people live in concealed places.

They are so named because they temporarily reside in squats or with friends and relatives. An estimated 1.3 million Canadians have experienced insecure housing or homelessness.

Homelessness Statistics for Canadians

Between 25,000 and 35,000 people are homeless on any given night in Canada.
Toronto has the most homeless people in Canada.
62% of homeless people in Canada are males.
30% of Canadian homeless come from Indigenous communities.
90% of homeless shelters in Canada are in Ontario, British Columbia, Quebec, and Alberta, and 44% of them are in Ontario alone.
22% of shelters are aimed at young homeless in Canada, while 20% of people experiencing homelessness are 13-24 years old.
The annual cost of homelessness is over $7 billion.
The Canadian Government has invested $2.2 billion over ten years to expand funding for the homeless.