Ebola treatment center in Congo is attacked again; one dead
KINSHASA, Congo — Heavily armed assailants again attacked an Ebola treatment center in the heart of eastern Congo’s deadly outbreak on Saturday, with one police officer killed and health workers injured, authorities said, while frightened patients waited in isolation rooms for the gunfire to end.
The early-morning attack in Butembo came less than a week after the treatment center reopened following an attack last month, which forced Doctors Without Borders to suspend operations in the city amid warnings that ending this outbreak is impossible if health workers aren’t protected.
Dozens of armed groups are active in mineral-rich eastern Congo, though some have allowed health workers access to administer Ebola vaccines and track contacts of infected people after delicate negotiations.
Security forces on Saturday repelled the attackers, one of whom was wounded, Butembo Mayor Sylvain Kanyamanda said. Congo’s health ministry in a statement said forces had surrounded the center after being tipped to a possible assault, “saving many lives.”
The attack occurred hours before the World Health Organization director-general and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director visited the center, which remained open. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus encouraged workers to continue their fight against the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, which is spreading in a region compared to a war zone.
Companies decry ‘valve turners’ who shut down pipelines
BISMARCK, N.D. — As Enbridge prepared to move tar sands crude through a 40-year-old pipeline in eastern Canada in 2015, environmentalists and indigenous peoples including Vanessa Gray thought about what happened in Michigan just five years earlier: Another of the company’s lines had burst, sending oil into a river in one of the largest spills in U.S. history.
With that in mind, Gray and others decided they needed to do more than just speak out. In December 2015, three activists from Montreal entered Enbridge property near the Quebec-Ontario border and turned an above-ground emergency pipeline shut-off valve. About two weeks later, Gray and two others did the same at a different site, drawing even more attention because authorities levied charges that could have landed them in prison for life.
They ended up with no jail time and accomplished their goal of raising awareness.
“I hope it inspires others,” Gray, 26, a member of an Ojibwe tribe, said in a recent interview.
It already has, by activists in the U.S. who believe fossil fuels are precipitating a global warming crisis. Just last month four activists targeted an Enbridge oil pipeline in northern Minnesota. But pipeline companies say so-called valve turners are dangerous — to themselves and the public — and many energy industry officials and advocates say they should be treated as domestic terrorists. Several states are considering increasing fines and prison terms for such incidents and holding associated organizations legally accountable as well.
As budget deficit balloons, few in Washington seem to care
WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficit is ballooning on President Donald Trump’s watch and few in Washington seem to care.
And even if they did, the political dynamics that enabled bipartisan deficit-cutting deals decades ago has disappeared, replaced by bitter partisanship and chronic dysfunction.
That’s the reality that will greet Trump’s latest budget, which will promptly be shelved after landing with a thud on Monday. Like previous spending blueprints, Trump’s plan for the 2020 budget year will propose cuts to many domestic programs favored by lawmakers in both parties but leave alone politically popular retirement programs such as Medicare and Social Security.
Washington probably will devote months to wrestling over erasing the last remnants of a failed 2011 budget deal that would otherwise cut core Pentagon operations by $71 billion and domestic agencies and foreign aid by $55 billion. Top lawmakers are pushing for a reprise of three prior deals to use spending cuts or new revenues and prop up additional spending rather than defray deficits that are again approaching $1 trillion.
It has put deficit hawks in a gloomy mood.
From wire sources
Wanted: More pastures for West’s overpopulated wild horses
CHEYENNE, Wyo. — If you ever wished to gaze at a stomping, snorting, neighing panorama of Western heritage from your living-room window, now could be your chance.
A classic image of the American West — wild horses stampeding across the landscape — not only has endured through the years but has multiplied past the point of range damage. Through May 3, the U.S. government is seeking more private pastures for an overpopulation of wild horses.
Many consider rounding up wild horses to live out their lives on private pastures a reasonable approach to a tricky problem. Wild horses, after all, not only have romantic value, they are protected by federal law.
Just keep in mind a few of the dozens of requirements for getting paid by the government to provide wild horses a home.
“It’s not like you can do this in your backyard, or even a 5-acre plot,” said Debbie Collins, outreach specialist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management’s Wild Horse and Burro Program in Norman, Oklahoma.
More blackouts hit Venezuela as opposition, government rally
CARACAS, Venezuela — The Venezuelan opposition and government loyalists held rival demonstrations in Caracas on Saturday, as both sides prepared for what some fear could be a protracted power struggle.
The rallies unfolded as power and communications outages continued to hit Venezuela, intensifying the hardship of a country paralyzed by economic and political crisis. The blackouts heightened tension between the bitterly divided factions, which accused each other of being responsible for the collapse of the power grid.
“Hard times are ahead,” said opposition leader Juan Guaido, who addressed crowds with a loudspeaker after security forces earlier dismantled a speakers’ stage that the opposition had erected. He said he planned to tour Venezuela to seek support and lay the groundwork for a massive rally in Caracas.
The 35-year-old leader of the National Assembly said he anticipated more government efforts to sideline and intimidate the opposition. However, President Nicolas Maduro’s government has not moved directly against Guaido since he returned to Venezuela from a Latin American tour Monday.
Guaido earlier speculated that Maduro was effectively ignoring him in an attempt to sap the energy of the opposition, whose hopes of ousting the government have so far been stymied.