Outbreaks Begin in Puerto Rico While Trump Tweets 'Amazing Job'

Today it’s painful conjunctivitis. Tomorrow it will be killer cholera unless the federal government acts right now, mayors and doctors say.

PABLO VENES
09.30.17 2:52 PM ET

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico—While President Trump tweets about “poor leadership” in Puerto Rico, mayors and a top physician tell The Daily Beast the island faces deadly outbreaks of cholera and hepatitis unless the federal government surges help.

Ninety-five percent of the island is still without electricity more than a week after Hurricane Maria struck, including most hospitals. Only about half of the island’s 3.4 million population has drinking water. These two factors, plus unsanitary flood water inundating homes and towns, have created a public-health emergency.

“We are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency,” San Juan Mayor Yulin Cruz said in a news conference on Friday. “I am begging, begging anyone that can hear us, to save us from dying.”

Already an outbreak of conjunctivitis has infected 300 people in Loiza, a municipality 30 minutes from San Juan by car, according to Mayor Julia Navarro who drove to the capital for help.

"I'm here because there are still murky waters clogged on my streets and residents have been showing symptoms of Zika, Dengue and conjunctivitis virus," Navarro told The Daily Beast as she walked up the stairs to the Puerto Rican Convention Center, where the government has set up a command center.

more
http://www.thedailybeast.com/outbreaks-begin-in-puerto-rico-while-trump-tweets-amazing-job

Teachers union gets restraining order against O'Keefe video venture

Source: Politico




By JOSH GERSTEIN 09/29/2017 07:57 PM EDT

The Michigan chapter of a major teachers union has obtained a temporary restraining order against an organization run by conservative provocateur James O’Keefe.

Wayne County Circuit Judge Brian Sullivan issued the order Friday that blocks Project Veritas and a woman said to be working with the group, Marisa Jorge, from disclosing videos or other information gathered during an undercover operation carried out against the American Federation of Teachers office in Detroit.

AFT alleges that Jorge, using the name Marissa Perez, obtained an internship at AFT beginning in May of this year and that during the internship she often acted suspiciously.

Jorge “showed an interest in charter schools and in instances of educators who had supposedly engaged in ‘sexting'’ with students; there were no such instances,” the court complaint says. “Over the next three months Defendant engaged Plaintiff’s staff and regularly sought information which was beyond her assignment. … Defendant Jorge appeared at Plaintiff’s work site wearing adornments which are capable of hiding a camera or recording device. She wore large pearls, large glasses and clothing with buttons capable of hiding a camera.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2017/09/29/teachers-union-james-okeefe-243323

Puerto Rico's Exodus Begins with a Trickle Into Orlando

Back on the stricken island, thousands of desperate refugees clamor for a lifeline to safety in Florida.

By FRANCISCO ALVARADO September 29, 2017

ORLANDO—A few times a day, on no particular schedule, a plane pulls up to a gate at the airport here and disgorges a hundred and fifty or more exhausted, anxious, and very often hungry people. Only three hours before, they were among thousands of panicked storm victims, packed into a sweltering airport in San Juan, clamoring for an $800 seat on anything with wings that might ferry them away from the devastation left nine days ago by Hurricane Maria. Now, in the air-conditioned comfort of Concourse D, they are safe in a country that is technically their own, but they are not home.

The halting parade of evacuees that has passed through the Orlando airport over the past week—and through Miami’s airport, too—lacks the visual drama of earlier crises in the Caribbean, when oppression, natural disaster or plain desperation pushed Cubans and Haitians onto crude homemade rafts or into the holds of leaky fishing trawlers. But this is every bit an exodus of that order. The means of escape is not a harrowing ordeal, but what’s being left behind most certainly is. And those lucky enough to get out are not so exhausted that they can’t summon anger at the government officials who they feel paid them less heed than hurricane victims on the mainland.

When Roberto Marquez and his wife Lourdes arrived at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan around 5:30 a.m. on September 25, they found utter chaos. “There were a few thousand people already there,” the 53-year-old attorney said. “There was no power, no ventilation, no cell service and no security guards. Just airline employees sort of winging it.”

The couple had tried to leave Puerto Rico before Hurricane Maria slammed into the island five days earlier, but were unable to find available seats. After the storm with its 155-mile-per-hour winds passed, Marquez was able to reach his sister in Florida, who booked two tickets on a Southwest Airlines flight scheduled to depart on September 22. It was cancelled because the airport had not reopened. Two days later, when a few flights resumed, Marquez and his spouse drove to the airport. “We had to physically be there in order to get on a list for a flight on Monday,” he said. “On Monday, we were told to get in a long line of people who were being picked to get on a plane on a first-come, first-served basis.”

more
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/09/29/puerto-ricos-exodus-maria-orlando-215659

Spanish Police Close Polling Stations To Stop Voters

Source: Newsweek




BY MARIA PEREZ ON 9/30/17 AT 11:50 AM

Spanish police have closed off schools that were designated polling stations and occupied the Catalan government’s communications hub on Saturday in an effort to stop voters from voting on a secession from Spain.

Many supporters of the poll stayed overnight in schools with their children and plan on staying there until Sunday to keep the polls open for other voters, despite a Spanish government source saying more than half of the schools have been sealed off, Reuters reports.

There have been 1,300 schools shut down in the area that were earmarked as polling places, and 163 of those schools were occupied by families.

The Catalan government said police have settled into its communications hub and will remain there for the next two days after it was ordered by Catalonia’s High Court to police to stop electronic voting. The Court also instructed Google to delete an application that was issued to inform civilians on the vote.



Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/spanish-police-shut-down-polling-places-stop-voters-674976

Schiff Mocks Price: He Committed 'Unpardonable Sin' Of Not Owning Jet

Source: Talking Points Memo



By NICOLE LAFOND Published SEPTEMBER 30, 2017 10:11 AM

Longtime vocal critic of President Donald Trump, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) mocked Trump and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price for not being “rich enough” to fit into “Trump’s world.”

Before Price’s resignation was announced Friday, Trump told reporters that he has some “great secretaries” and that some of his cabinet secretaries actually own their private planes, which “solves that.” He was referencing reports that Department of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos frequently travels using a private plane that she owns and pays for herself.

Not long after news of Price’s resignation broke, Schiff tweeted that Price committed the “one unpardonable sin in Trump’s world: Being rich, but not rich enough to own his own private jet.”

https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/913869447584256001

Price resigned on Friday after a week’s worth of reports that he had spent more than $1 million of taxpayer money to travel in private jets since coming to the White House.

###

Read more: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/schiff-mocks-price-committed-unpardonable-sin-not-owning-jet

AM Joy panel unloads on Trump's lazy Puerto Ricans Smear

'Ego before country': Dan Rather blasts Trump's 'bumbling Puerto Rico tantrum tweet' storm

White House: San Juan mayor 'might be too busy doing TV' to meet with Trump

Source: The Hill




BY ALICIA COHN - 09/30/17 01:27 PM EDT

The White House on Saturday said a Puerto Rican mayor dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Maria “might be too busy doing TV” to meet with President Trump during his visit to the island on Tuesday.

The response follows sharp criticism by Trump of the mayor of San Juan, Carmen Yulin Cruz. Cruz has maintained in media appearances that her city, the capital and largest city in Puerto Rico, desperately needs more assistance than the Trump administration has provided in the wake of Hurricane Maria.

-snip-

Asked if Trump would meet with Cruz when he visits Puerto Rico on Tuesday, a White House official said they were “not sure.”

“She has been invited to FEMA command center several times to see operations and be part of efforts but so far has refused to come, maybe too busy doing TV?" the White House official told ABC News.



Read more: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/353243-white-house-san-juan-mayor-might-be-too-busy-doing-tv-to-meet-with

Egypt "hunting down" gays, conducting forced anal exams - Amnesty

Source: Reuters



#WORLD NEWS SEPTEMBER 30, 2017 / 7:48 AM / UPDATED 6 HOURS AGO

CAIRO (Reuters) - Six Egyptian men arrested for “promoting sexual deviancy” and “debauchery” on social media will be subjected to anal examinations ahead of their Oct. 1 trial, Amnesty International said on Saturday.

Their arrest is part of a wider crackdown against homosexuality that started last week when a group of people were seen raising a rainbow flag at a concert, a rare public show of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights in the conservative Muslim country.

At least 11 people have since been arrested, Amnesty said, and one man has been sentenced to six years in jail after local media launched a highly critical campaign against those who raised the rainbow flag at a Mashrou’ Leila concert, a popular Lebanese alternative rock band whose lead singer is openly gay.

Amnesty said the Forensic Medical Authority was due to subject the six men to anal examinations to determine whether they have had homosexual sex. Judicial sources said any defendant accused of “debauchery” or “sexual deviancy”, a euphemism for homosexuality in Egypt, is subjected to a medical examination based on an order from the Public Prosecutor.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-egypt-rights/egypt-hunting-down-gays-conducting-forced-anal-exams-amnesty-idUSKCN1C50D3?il=0

There He Goes Again: Trump's Demented, Racist Saturday Morning Puerto Rico Tweetstorm - By Joy Reid