Author: PolitCens

savannah, georgia — The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday halted a ruling striking down the state’s near-ban on abortions while it considers the state’s appeal.

The high court’s order came a week after a judge found that Georgia unconstitutionally prohibits abortions beyond about six weeks of pregnancy, often before women realize they’re pregnant. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney ruled Sept. 30 that privacy rights under Georgia’s state constitution include the right to make personal health care decisions.

It was one of a wave of restrictive abortion laws passed in Republican-controlled states after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended a national right to abortion. It prohibited most abortions once a “detectable human heartbeat” was present. At around six weeks into a pregnancy, cardiac activity can be detected by ultrasound in an embryo’s cells that will eventually become the heart.

Republican Governor Brian Kemp signed it in 2019, but it didn’t take effect until Roe v. Wade fell.

McBurney wrote in his ruling that “liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.”

“When a fetus growing inside a woman reaches viability, when society can assume care and responsibility for that separate life, then — and only then — may society intervene,” McBurney wrote.

The judge’s decision rolled back abortion limits in Georgia to a prior law allowing abortions until viability, roughly 22 to 24 weeks into a pregnancy.

“Once again, the will of Georgians and their representatives has been overruled by the personal beliefs of one judge,” Kemp said in a statement in response to McBurney’s decision. “Protecting the lives of the most vulnerable among us is one of our most sacred responsibilities, and Georgia will continue to be a place where we fight for the lives of the unborn.”

Abortion providers and advocates in Georgia had applauded McBurney’s ruling but expressed concern that it would soon be overturned.
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On Mexico’s northern border, migrants awaiting entry to the United States have found an unexpected source of solace: cultivating their own food. In this report, narrated by Veronica Villafañe, César Contreras shows how a community garden in Ciudad Juárez is sowing seeds of hope.
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With less than a month to go until the U.S. presidential election, the Democratic and Republican presidential nominees have a busy week ahead. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are both scheduled to continue rallying supporters in key states, amid warnings that the rhetoric is becoming more inflammatory. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Washington — SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rocket can return to flight for a mission planned for Monday to launch the European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft from Florida, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration said Sunday.

Elon Musk’s company, which has engaged in a public quarrel with the FAA in recent weeks, said Sunday it is planning the liftoff for 10:52 a.m. ET (1452 GMT) from Cape Canaveral.

“The SpaceX Falcon 9 vehicle is authorized to return to flight only for the planned Hera mission scheduled to launch on Oct. 7 from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida,” the FAA said Sunday.

The agency said it has “determined that the absence of a second stage reentry for this mission adequately mitigates the primary risk to the public in the event of a recurrence of the mishap experienced with the Crew-9 mission.”

The FAA on Sept. 30 said SpaceX must investigate why the second stage of its Falcon 9 malfunctioned after a NASA astronaut mission, grounding the launch vehicle for the third time in three months. The malfunction caused the booster to fall into a region of the Pacific Ocean outside of the designated safety zone that the FAA approved for the mission.

Hera is set to study the effects of the 2022 impact that NASA’s DART spacecraft had with the asteroid Dimorphos in a test of a planetary defense system — the first time a spacecraft managed to alter the motion of any celestial body. Dimorphos is a moonlet of Didymos, which is defined as a near-Earth asteroid.

The Hera mission is expected to provide data for future asteroid deflection missions with an eye toward redirecting objects that could pose a future collision threat for Earth.

Falcon 9 launched DART in 2021.

The FAA on Sept. 17 proposed fining SpaceX $633,000 for violating agency rules ahead of two 2023 Falcon 9 launches.

“They’ve been around 20 years, and I think they need to operate at the highest level of safety,” FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said on Sept. 24.

SpaceX took issue with Whitaker’s comments, saying the company is the “safest, most reliable launch provider in the world, and is absolutely committed to safety in all operations.”

Whitaker defended the FAA’s decision to delay a planned September Starship 5 launch, noting that SpaceX failed to complete a timely sonic boom analysis as required. The FAA has said it does not expect a license determination before late November for that launch.

Musk has criticized FAA leaders over the agency’s proposed fine and called for Whitaker’s resignation.

In February 2023, the FAA proposed a $175,000 penalty against SpaceX for failing to submit some safety data to the agency prior to an August 2022 launch of Starlink satellites. The company paid that penalty.
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Reuters — Chinese hackers accessed the networks of U.S. broadband providers and obtained information from systems the federal government uses for court-authorized wiretapping, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.

Verizon Communications, AT&T and Lumen Technologies are among the telecoms companies whose networks were breached by the recently discovered intrusion, the newspaper said, citing people familiar with the matter.

The hackers might have held access for months to network infrastructure used by the companies to cooperate with court-authorized U.S. requests for communications data, the Journal said. It added that the hackers had also accessed other tranches of internet traffic.

China’s foreign ministry responded Sunday that it was not aware of the attack described in the report but said the United States had “concocted a false narrative” to “frame” China in the past.

“At a time when cybersecurity has become a common challenge for all countries around the world, this erroneous approach will only hinder the efforts of the international community to jointly address the challenge through dialog and cooperation,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters.

Beijing has previously denied claims by the U.S. government and others that it has used hackers to break into foreign computer systems.

Lumen Technologies declined to comment, while Verizon and AT&T did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Journal said the attack was carried out by a Chinese hacking group with the aim of collecting intelligence. U.S. investigators have dubbed it “Salt Typhoon.”

Earlier this year, U.S. law enforcement disrupted a major Chinese hacking group nicknamed “Flax Typhoon,” months after confronting Beijing about sweeping cyber espionage under a campaign named “Volt Typhoon.”

China’s foreign ministry said in its statement that Beijing’s cybersecurity agencies had found and published evidence to show Volt Typhoon was staged by “an international ransomware organization.”
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miami — People across Florida were given notice Sunday that Milton, for now just a tropical storm off the coast of Mexico, could intensify rapidly into a major hurricane before slamming midweek into the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast. 

Tropical Storm Milton’s center was about 1,385 kilometers west-southwest of Tampa, Florida, early Sunday, heading east at 7 kph with maximum sustained winds of 95 kph, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said. 

“Milton is moving slowly but is expected to strengthen rapidly,” the center said. “There is increasing confidence that a powerful hurricane with life-threatening hazards will be affecting portions of the Florida west coast around the middle of this week.” 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Sunday that while it remains to be seen just where Milton will strike, it’s clear that Florida is going to be hit hard — “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point.” 

“You have time to prepare — all day today, all day Monday, probably all day Tuesday to be sure your hurricane preparedness plan is in place,” the governor said. “Know your evacuation zone — there will be mandatory and voluntary evacuations.” 

DeSantis said as many as 4,000 National Guard troops are helping the Florida Division of Emergency Management and the Florida Department of Transportation to remove debris, and he declared a state of emergency in 35 counties ahead of Milton. He said Floridians should prepare for more power outages and disruption. 

“All available state assets … are being marshaled to help remove debris,” DeSantis said. “We’re going 24-7 … it’s all hands on deck.” 

FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell defended her agency’s response to the destruction wrought by Hurricane Helene after Republicans’ false claims, amplified by former President Donald Trump, created a frenzy of misinformation across devastated communities. 

“This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people and it’s really a shame we’re putting politics ahead of helping people,” Criswell told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. It’s created fear and mistrust among residents against the thousands of FEMA employees and volunteers on the ground across the southeast, she said. 

Despite this, Criswell said the agency is already preparing for Milton, well before it’s clear exactly where it will move across the Florida peninsula this week. “We’re working with the state there to understand what their requirements are going to be, so we can have those in place before it makes landfall,” she said. 

The hurricane center said Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula, the Florida Peninsula, the Florida Keys and the northwestern Bahamas should monitor the system’s progress. Heavy rainfall was expected Sunday ahead of the storm itself, and will likely then combine with Milton’s rainfall to flood waterways and streets in Florida, where forecasters said up to 30 centimeters of rain could fall in places through Wednesday night. 

“There is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday. Residents in these areas should ensure they have their hurricane plan in place, follow any advice given by local officials, and check back for updates to the forecast,” the center said. 

The Atlantic hurricane season has become more active as rescuers in the U.S. Southeast continue to search for people unaccounted for in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which left a huge trail of death and catastrophic damage from Florida into the Appalachian mountains. 

Hurricane Kirk diminished to a Category 2 hurricane in the open Atlantic early, with top winds of 165 kph, sending large swells and “life-threatening surf and rip current conditions” to Bermuda and northward along the U.S. and Canadian coasts, the center said. Hurricane Leslie also was moving northwest over the open Atlantic, with top winds of 140 kph but posing no threats to land. 
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NEW YORK — For years, the Grammy Awards have been criticized over a lack of diversity — artists of color and women left out of top prizes; rap and contemporary R&B stars ignored — a reflection of the Recording Academy’s electorate. An evolving voting body, 66% of whom have joined in the last five years, is working to remedy that.

At last year’s awards, women dominated the major categories; every televised competitive Grammy went to at least one woman. It stems from a commitment the Recording Academy made five years ago: In 2019, the Academy announced it would add 2,500 women to its voting body by 2025. Under the Grammys’ new membership model, the Recording Academy has surpassed that figure ahead of the deadline: More than 3,000 female voting members have been added, it announced Thursday.

“It’s definitely something that we’re all very proud of,” Harvey Mason jr., academy president and CEO, told The Associated Press. “It tells me that we were severely underrepresented in that area.”

Reform at the Record Academy dates back to the creation of a task force focused on inclusion and diversity after a previous CEO, Neil Portnow, made comments belittling women at the height of the #MeToo movement.

Since 2019, approximately 8,700 new members have been added to the voting body. In total, there are now more than 16,000 members and more than 13,000 of them are voting members, up from about 14,000 in 2023 (11,000 of which were voting members). In that time, the academy has increased its number of members who identify as people of color by 63%.

“It’s not an all-new voting body,” Mason assures. “We’re very specific and intentional in who we asked to be a part of our academy by listening and learning from different genres and different groups that felt like they were being overlooked, or they weren’t being heard.”

Mason says that in the last five years, the Recording Academy has “requalified 100% of our members, which is a huge step.” There are voters who have let their membership lapse — and those who no longer qualify to be a voting member have been removed.

There have been renewal review processes in the past, but under the current model, becoming a voting member requires proof of a primary career in music, two recommendations from industry peers and 12 credits in a single creative profession, at least five of which must be from the last five years.

Comparisons might be made to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which announced in 2016 that it would restrict Oscars voting privileges to active members — ineligible parties included those who haven’t worked in three decades since joining the Academy, unless they themselves are nominated — as a response to #OscarsSoWhite criticisms of its lack of diversity. As a result, some members protested that the new measures unjustly scapegoated older academy members. The film academy has also grown its membership, adding more women and people from underrepresented racial and ethnic communities.

The Recording Academy sought to increase its voting body by reaching out to different, underrepresented communities, says Mason. “Let’s take the time to understand why those people aren’t engaging with us, figure out how we can fix that,” he said. “And once we fixed it, then let’s invite them or ask them if they would like to be a part of our organization. So, it was a multi-step process.”

Since 2019, the Recording Academy has also seen growth in voters across different racial backgrounds: 100% growth in AAPI voters, 90% growth in Black voters and 43% growth in Latino voters.

Still, Mason sees room to grow. Of the current voting membership, 66% are men, 49% are white and 66% are over the age of 40.

“Going forward, we’re going to continue the work. We’re going to continue to grow,” he says.

That might not look like a public commitment to a specific figure, but Mason promises “that our goals will be to be the most relevant, the most reflective, the most accurately representative of the music community that is humanly possible.” 
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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Iran has emerged as a twofold concern for the United States as it nears the end of the presidential campaign. 

Prosecutors allege Tehran tried to hack figures associated with the election, stealing information from former President Donald Trump’s campaign. And U.S. officials have accused it of plotting to kill Trump and other ex-officials. 

For Iran, assassination plots and hacking aren’t new strategies. 

Iran saw the value and the danger of hacking in the early 2000s, when the Stuxnet virus, believed to have been deployed by Israel and the U.S., tried to damage Iran’s nuclear program. Since then, hackers attributed to state-linked operations have targeted the Trump campaign, Iranian expatriates and government officials at home. 

Its history of assassinations goes back further. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran killed or abducted perceived enemies living abroad. 

A history of hacks 

For many, Iran’s behavior can be traced to the emergence of the Stuxnet computer virus. Released in the 2000s, Stuxnet wormed its way into control units for uranium-enriching centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, causing them to speed up, ultimately destroying themselves. 

Iranian scientists initially believed mechanical errors caused the damage. Ultimately though, Iran removed the affected equipment and sought its own way of striking enemies online. 

“Iran had an excellent teacher in the emerging art of cyberwarfare,” noted a 2020 report from the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Saudi Arabia. 

That was acknowledged by the National Security Agency in a document leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden in 2015 to The Intercept, which examined a cyberattack that destroyed hard drives at Saudi Arabia’s state oil company. Iran has been suspected of carrying out that attack, called Shamoon, in 2012 and again in 2017. 

There also were domestic considerations. In 2009, the disputed reelection of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sparked the Green Movement protests. Twitter, one source of news from the demonstrations, found its website defaced by the self-described “Iranian Cyber Army.” There’s been suspicion that the Revolutionary Guard, a major power base within Iran’s theocracy, oversaw the “Cyber Army” and other hackers. 

Meanwhile, Iran itself has been hacked repeatedly. They include the mass shutdown of gas stations across Iran, as well as surveillance cameras at Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison and even state television broadcasts. 

Low costs, high rewards 

Iranian hacking attacks, given their low cost and high reward, likely will continue as Iran faces a tense international environment surrounding Israel’s conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah, Iran’s enrichment of uranium to near weapons-grade levels, and the prospect of Trump becoming president again. 

The growth of 3G and 4G mobile internet services in Iran also made it easier for the public — and potential hackers — to access the internet. Iran has more than 50 major universities with computer science or information technology programs. At least three of Iran’s top schools are thought to be affiliated with Iran’s Defense Ministry and the Guard, providing potential hackers for security forces. 

Iranian hacking attempts on U.S. targets have included banks and even a small dam near New York City — attacks American prosecutors linked to the Guard. 

Hacking attempts rely on phishing

While Russia is seen as the biggest foreign threat to U.S. elections, officials have been concerned about Iran. Its hacking attempts in the presidential campaign have relied on phishing — sending many misleading emails in hopes that some recipients will inadvertently provide access to sensitive information. 

Amin Sabeti, a digital security expert who focuses on Iran, said the tactic works. 

“It’s scalable, it’s cheap and you don’t need a skill set because you just put, I don’t know, five crazy people who are hard line in an office in Tehran, then send tens of thousands of emails. If they get 10 of them, it’s enough,” he said. 

For Iran, hacks targeting the U.S. offer the prospect of causing chaos, undermining Trump’s campaign and obtaining secret information. 

“I’ve lost count of how many attempts have been made on my emails and social media since it’s been going on for over a decade,” said Holly Dagres, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who once had her email briefly hacked by Iran. “The Iranians aren’t targeting me because I have useful information swimming in my inbox or direct messages. Rather, they hope to use my name and think tank affiliation to target others and eventually make it up the chain to high-ranking U.S. government officials who would have useful information and intelligence related to Iran.” 

Iran’s killings, abductions abroad 

Iran has vowed to exact revenge against Trump and others in his former administration over the 2020 drone strike that killed the prominent Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani in Baghdad. 

In July, authorities said they learned of an Iranian threat against Trump and boosted security. Iran has not been linked to the assassination attempts against Trump in Florida and Pennsylvania. A Pakistani man who spent time in Iran was recently charged by federal prosecutors for allegedly plotting to carry out assassinations in the U.S., including potentially of Trump. 

Officials take Iran’s threat seriously given its history of targeting adversaries. 

Even before creating a network of allied militias in the Mideast, Iran is suspected of targeting opponents abroad, beginning with members of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s former government. The attention shifted to perceived opponents of the theocracy, both in the country with the mass executions of 1988 and abroad. 

Outside of Iran, the so-called “chain murders” targeted activists, journalists and other critics. One prominent incident linked to Iran was a shooting at a restaurant in Germany that killed three Iranian-Kurdish figures and a translator. In 1997, a German court implicated Iran’s top leaders in the shooting, sparking most European Union nations to withdraw their ambassadors. 

Iran’s targeted killings slowed after that, but didn’t stop. U.S. prosecutors link Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to a 2011 plot to kill the Saudi ambassador to Washington.  
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washington — Transgender rights, the regulation of “ghost guns” and the death penalty highlight the Supreme Court’s election-season term that begins Monday, with the prospect of the court’s intervention in voting disputes lurking in the background.

The justices are returning to the bench at a time of waning public confidence in the court and calls to limit their terms to 18 years that have wide support, including the backing of Democratic President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s White House nominee.

Whether by design or happenstance, the justices are hearing fewer high-profile cases than they did in recent terms that included far-reaching decisions by the 6-3 conservative majority on presidential immunity, abortion, guns and affirmative action.

The lighter schedule would allow them to easily add election cases, if those make their way to the high court in the run-up to the Nov. 5 election between Republican Donald Trump and Harris, or its immediate aftermath.

“I think there are legal issues that arise out of the political process. And so, the Supreme Court has to be prepared to respond if that should be necessary,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson told CBS News last month in an interview to her promote new memoir Lovely One.

The court’s involvement in election disputes might depend on the closeness of the outcome and whether the justices’ intervention would tip the outcome, David Cole, the outgoing legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said at a recent Washington event.

“I don’t think the court wants to get involved, but it may have to,” Cole said.

The court turned away multiple challenges from Trump and his allies to the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Biden. It’s been nearly a quarter-century since the Supreme Court effectively decided the 2000 presidential election, in which Republican George W. Bush edged Democrat Al Gore.

When the justices gather Monday morning on a date set by federal law, they will shake hands with each other as they always do. Just after 10 o’clock, they will emerge from behind freshly cleaned heavy red drapery and take their seats on the curved mahogany bench, Chief Justice John Roberts in the center chair and his eight colleagues seated in order of seniority.

There are likely to be smiles and shared private jokes. But the friendliness of that moment will not sweep away tensions that have barely been concealed.

During the summer, two justices, Elena Kagan and Jackson, voiced support for toughening the new ethics code that so far lacks a means of enforcement.

The leak to The New York Times of the contents of a memo Roberts wrote last winter that outlined his approach to the court’s presidential immunity decision “was nothing short of shocking,” Supreme Court lawyer Lisa Blatt said last week at a Washington preview of the coming term.

Two years ago, Politico obtained the draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion case.

“Something does feel broken,” Blatt said. Describing her experience arguing before the court, she said, some justices “just seem visibly frustrated.”

Important cases dot the court’s calendar, beginning Tuesday. The court will take up a challenge to a Biden administration attempt to regulate hard-to-trace “ghost guns” that had been turning up at crime scenes in increasing numbers. The Supreme Court jumped into the case after the conservative 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals invalidated the regulation.

Last term, conservatives voted 6-3 to strike down a gun regulation that had banned bump stocks, an accessory that allows some weapons to fire at a rate comparable to machine guns. Bump stocks were used in the nation’s deadliest modern mass shooting in Las Vegas.

A day after the guns case, the justices will take up the latest twist in Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Glossip’s long quest for freedom. His case is the rare instance in which prosecutors are conceding mistakes in the trial that led to Glossip’s conviction and death sentence.

The highest-profile case on the agenda so far is a fight over transgender rights that is focused on state bans on gender-affirming care. It probably will be argued in December.

Republican-led states have enacted a variety of restrictions on health care for transgender people, school sports participation, bathroom usage and drag shows. The administration and Democratic-led states have extended protections for transgender people. The Supreme Court has separately prohibited the administration from enforcing a new federal regulation that seeks to protect transgender students.

The case before the high court involves a law in Tennessee that restricts puberty blockers and hormone therapy for transgender minors. About half the states have enacted similar restrictions.

Also on tap for the late fall is an appeal from the adult entertainment industry to overturn a Texas law that requires pornographic websites to verify the age of their users.

Only about half the court’s calendar for the term has been filled, and several big cases could be added. Among those is a push by Republican-led states and conservative legal outlets to further restrict federal agencies.

The immediate target is the method the Federal Communications Commission has used to fund telephone service for rural and low-income people and broadband services for schools and libraries.

The case, which the administration has appealed to the Supreme Court, could give the justices the opportunity to revive a legal doctrine known as nondelegation that has not been used to strike down legislation in nearly 90 years. Several conservative justices have expressed support for the idea of limiting the authority Congress can delegate to federal agencies.
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In the United States, nearly 24 million immigrants are eligible to vote in November’s presidential election, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. census data. VOA’s Jeff Swicord spoke with two naturalized citizens about the choices they are making in this vote.
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ASHEVILLE, North Carolina — Nearly a week after Hurricane Helene brought devastation to western North Carolina, a shiny stainless steel tanker truck in downtown Asheville attracted residents carrying 19-liter containers, milk jugs and buckets to fill with what has become a desperately scare resource — drinking water.

Flooding tore through the city’s water system, destroying so much infrastructure that officials said repairs could take weeks. To make do, Anna Ramsey arrived Wednesday with her two children, who each left carrying plastic bags filled with 7.6 liters of water.

“We have no water. We have no power. But I think it’s also been humbling,” Ramsey said.

Helene’s path through the Southeast left a trail of power outages so large the darkness was visible from space. Tens of trillions of liters of rain fell and more than 200 people were killed, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. Hundreds of people are still unaccounted for, and search crews must trudge through knee-deep debris to learn whether residents are safe.

It also damaged water utilities so severely and over such a wide inland area that one federal official said the toll “could be considered unprecedented.” As of Thursday, about 136,000 people in the Southeast were served by a nonoperational water provider and more than 1.8 million were living under a boil water advisory, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Western North Carolina was especially hard hit. Officials are facing a difficult rebuilding task made harder by the steep, narrow valleys of the Blue Ridge Mountains that during a more typical October would attract throngs of fall tourists.

“The challenges of the geography are just fewer roads, fewer access points, fewer areas of flat ground to stage resources” said Brian Smith, acting deputy division director for the EPA’s water division in the Southeast.

After days without water, people long for more than just a sponge bath.

“I would love a shower,” said Sue Riles in Asheville. “Running water would be incredible.”

The raging floodwaters of Helene destroyed crucial parts of Asheville’s water system, scouring out the pipes that convey water from a reservoir in the mountains above town that is the largest of three water supplies for the system. To reach a second reservoir that was knocked offline, a road had to be rebuilt.

Boosted output from the third source restored water flow in some southern Asheville neighborhoods Friday, but without full repairs schools may not be able to resume in-person classes, hospitals may not restore normal operations, and the city’s hotels and restaurants may not fully reopen.

Even water that’s unfit to drink is scarce. Drew Reisinger, the elected Buncombe County register of deeds, worries about people in apartments who can’t easily haul a bucket of water from a creek to flush their toilet. Officials are advising people to collect nondrinkable water for household needs from a local swimming pool.

“One thing no one is talking about is the amount of poop that exists in every toilet in Asheville,” he said. “We’re dealing with a public health emergency.”

It’s a situation that becomes more dangerous the longer it lasts. Even in communities fortunate enough to have running water, hundreds of providers have issued boil water notices indicating the water could be contaminated. But boiling water for cooking and drinking is time consuming and small mistakes can cause stomach illness, according to Natalie Exum, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“Every day that goes by, you could be exposed to a pathogen,” Exum said. “These basic services that we take for granted in our everyday lives actually do do a lot to prevent illness.”

Travis Edwards’ faucet worked immediately after the storm. He filled as many containers as he could for himself and his child, but it didn’t take long for the flow to weaken, then stop. They rationed water, switching to hand sanitizer and barely putting any on toothbrushes.

“(We) didn’t realize how dehydrated we were getting,” he said.

Federal officials have shipped millions of liters of water to areas where people also might not be able to make phone calls or switch on the lights.

Power has been restored to about 62% of homes and businesses and 8,000 crews are out working to restore power in the hardest hit parts of North Carolina, federal officials said Thursday. In 10 counties, about half of the cell sites are still down.

The first step for some utilities is simply figuring out how bad the damage is, a job that might require EPA expertise in extreme cases. Ruptured water pipes are a huge problem. They often run beneath roads, many of which were crumpled and twisted by floodwaters.

“Pretty much anytime you see a major road damaged, there’s a very good chance that there’s a pipe in there that’s also gotten damaged,” said Mark White, drinking water global practice leader at the engineering firm CDM Smith.

Generally, repairs start at the treatment plant and move outward, with fixes in nearby big pipes done first, according to the EPA.

“Over time, you’ll gradually get water to more and more people,” White said.

Many people are still missing, and water repair employees don’t typically work around search and rescue operations. It takes a toll, according to Kevin Morley, manager of federal relations with the American Water Works Association.

“There’s emotional support that is really important for all the people involved. You’re seeing people’s lives just wiped out,” he said.

Even private well owners aren’t immune. Pumps on private wells may have lost power and overtopping floodwaters can contaminate them.

There’s often a “blind faith” assumption that drinking water won’t fail. In this case, the technology was insufficient, according to Craig Colten. Before retiring to Asheville, he was a professor in Louisiana focused on resilience to extreme weather. He hopes Helene will prompt politicians to spend more to ensure infrastructure withstands destructive storms.

And climate change will only make the problem more severe, said Erik Olson, a health and food expert at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council.

“I think states and the federal government really need to step back and start looking at how we’re going to prepare for these extreme weather events that are going to be occurring and recurring every single year,” he said.

Edwards has developed a system to save water. He’ll soap dirty dishes and rinse them with a trickle of water with bleach, which is caught and transferred to a bucket — useable for the toilet.

Power and some cell service have returned for him. And water distribution sites have guaranteed some measure of normalcy: Edwards feels like he can start going out to see friends again.

“To not feel guilty about using more than a cup of water to, like, wash yourself … I’m really, really grateful,” he said. 
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washington — Spamouflage networks with connections to China are posting antisemitic conspiracy theories on social media, casting doubt on Washington’s independence from alleged Jewish influence and the integrity of the two U.S. presidential candidates, a joint investigation by VOA Mandarin and Taiwan’s Doublethink Lab, a social media analytics firm, has found.

The investigation has so far uncovered more than 30 such X posts, many of which claim or suggest that core American political institutions, including the White House and Congress, have pledged loyalty to or are controlled by Jewish elites and the Israeli government.

One post shows a graphic of 18 U.S. officials of Jewish descent, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, and the head of the Homeland Security Department, Alejandro Mayorkas, and asks: “Jews only make up 2% of the U.S. population, so why do they have so many representatives in important government departments?!”

Another post shows a cartoon depicting Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate for president, and her opponent, Donald Trump, having their tongues tangled together and wrapped around an Israeli flagpole. The post proclaims that “no matter who of them comes to power, they will not change their stance on Judaism.”

Most of the 32 posts analyzed by VOA Mandarin and Doublethink Lab were posted during July and August. The posts came from three spamouflage accounts, two of which were previously reported by VOA.

Each of the three accounts leads its own spamouflage network. The three networks consist of 140 accounts, which amplify content from the three main accounts, or seeders.

A spamouflage network is a state-sponsored operation disguised as the work of authentic social media users to spread pro-government narratives and disinformation while discrediting criticism from adversaries.

Jasper Hewitt, a digital intelligence analyst at Doublethink Lab, told VOA Mandarin that the impact of these antisemitic posts has been limited, as most of them failed to reach real users, despite having garnered over 160,000 views.

U.S. officials have cast China as one of the major threats looking to disrupt this year’s election. Beijing, however, has repeatedly denied these allegations and urged Washington to “not make an issue of China in the election.”

Tuvia Gering, a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, has closely followed antisemitic disinformation coming from China. He told VOA Mandarin that Beijing isn’t necessarily hostile toward Jews, but anti-Semitic conspiracy theories have historically been a handy tool to be used against Western countries.

“You can trace its origins back to the Cold War, when the Soviet Union promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories all over the world just to instigate in Western societies,” Gering said, “because it divides them from within and it casts the West in a bad light in a strategic competition. [It’s] the same thing you see here [with China].”

Anti-Semitic speech floods Chinese internet

Similar antisemitic narratives about U.S. politics posted by the spamouflage accounts have long been flourishing on the Chinese internet.

An article that received thousands of likes and reposts on Chinese social media app WeChat claims that “Jewish capital” has completed its control of the American political sphere “through infiltration, marriages, campaign funds and lobbying.”

The article also brings up the Jewish heritage of many current and former U.S. officials and their families as evidence of the alleged Jewish takeover of America.

“The wife of the U.S. president is Jewish, the son-in-law of the former U.S. president is Jewish, the mother of the previous former U.S. president was Jewish, the U.S. Secretary of State is Jewish, the U.S. Secretary of Treasury is Jewish, the Deputy Secretary of State, the Attorney General … are all Jewish,” it wrote.

In fact, first lady Jill Biden is Roman Catholic, and the mother of former President Barack Obama was raised as a Christian. The others named are Jewish.

Conspiracy theories and misinformation abounded on the Chinese internet after the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill in May that would empower the Department of Education to adopt a new set of standards when investigating antisemitism in educational programs.

Articles and videos assert that the bill marks the death of America because it “definitively solidifies the superior and unquestionable position of the Jews in America,” claiming falsely that anyone who’s labeled an antisemite will be arrested.

One video with more than 1 million views claimed that the New Testament of the Bible would be deemed illegal under the bill. And since all U.S. presidents took their inaugural oath with the Bible, the bill allegedly invalidates the legitimacy of the commander in chief. None of that is true.

The Chinese public hasn’t historically been hostile toward Jews. A 2014 survey published by the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S.-based group against antisemitism, found that only 20% of the participants from China harbored an antisemitic attitude.

But when the Israel-Hamas conflict broke out a year ago, the otherwise heavily censored Chinese social media was flooded with antisemitic comments and praise for Nazi Germany leader Adolf Hitler.

The Chinese government has dismissed criticism of antisemitism on its internet. When asked about it at a news conference last year, Wang Wenbin, then the spokesperson of the Foreign Ministry, said that “China’s laws unequivocally prohibit disseminating information on extremism, ethnic hatred, discrimination and violence via the internet.”

But online hate speech against Jews has hardly disappeared. Eric Liu, a former censor for Chinese social media Weibo who now monitors online censorship, told VOA Mandarin that whenever Israel is in the news, there would be a surge in online antisemitism.

Just last month, after dozens of members of the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah were killed by explosions of their pagers, Chinese online commentators acidly condemned Israel and Jews.

The attack “proves that Jews are the most terrifying and cowardly people,” one Weibo user wrote. “They are self-centered and believe themselves to be superior, when in fact they are considered the most indecent and shameless. When the time comes, it’s going to be blood for blood.”
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WASHINGTON — America’s employers added a surprisingly strong 254,000 jobs in September, the latest evidence that the U.S. labor market is still solid enough to support steady hiring and a growing economy. 

Last month’s hiring gain was far more than economists had expected, and it was up sharply from the 159,000 jobs that were added in August. And after rising for most of 2024, the unemployment rate dropped for a second straight month, from 4.2% in August to 4.1% in September, the Labor Department said Friday. 

The latest figures suggest that many companies are still confident enough to fill jobs despite the continued pressure of high interest rates. Few employers are laying off workers, though many have grown more cautious about hiring. 

In an encouraging sign, the Labor Department also revised up its estimate of job growth in July and August by a combined 72,000. 

The September job gains were fairly broad-based, a healthy trend if it continues. Restaurants and bars added 69,000 jobs. Health care companies gained 45,000, government agencies 31,000, social assistance employers 27,000 and construction companies 25,000. A category that includes professional and business services added 17,000 after having lost jobs for three straight months. 

Average hourly raises were solid, too. They rose by a higher-than-expected 0.4% from  

August, slightly less than the 0.5% gain the month before. Measured from a year earlier, hourly wages climbed 4%, up a tick from a 3.9% year-over-year gain in August. 

The economy’s progress in taming inflation led the Federal Reserve last month to cut its benchmark interest rate by a sizable half-point, its first rate cut in more than four years, and said further cuts were likely in the coming months. The Fed said it wanted to ease the cost of borrowing to help bolster the job market. Considering Friday’s strong jobs report, the Fed is now likely to reduce its key rate by more typical quarter-point increments. 

“The September jobs report shows a nice bump in labor demand at the beginning of the fall,″ said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank. “The U.S. economy is growing solidly in 2024 even as inflation slows to near the Fed’s target.” 

The resilience of the economy has come as a relief. Economists had expected that the Fed’s aggressive campaign to subdue inflation — it jacked up interest rates 11 times in 2022 and 2023 — would cause a recession. It didn’t. The economy kept growing even in the face of ever-higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses. 

Most economists say the Fed appears to have achieved the once unlikely prospect of a “soft landing,” in which high interest rates help vanquish inflation without triggering a recession. 

The economy is weighing heavily on voters as the Nov. 5 presidential election nears. 

Many Americans are unimpressed by the job market’s durability and are still frustrated by high prices, which remain on average 19% above where they were in February 2021. That was when inflation began surging as the economy rebounded with unexpected speed and strength from the pandemic recession, causing severe shortages of goods and labor. 

The public’s discontent with inflation and the economy under President Joe Biden has been a political burden for Vice President Kamala Harris in her race for the White House against former President Donald Trump. 

The jobs report for October, which the government will issue four days before Election Day, will likely be muddied by the effects of Hurricane Helene and a strike by Boeing machinists. 

Across the economy, though, most indicators look solid. The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, grew at a vigorous 3% annual pace from April through June, boosted by consumer spending and business investment. A forecasting tool from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta points to slower but still healthy 2.5% annual growth in the just-ended July-September quarter. 

The Institute for Supply Management, an association of purchasing managers, reported that America’s services businesses grew for a third straight month in September and at an unexpectedly fast pace. The economy’s service sector is closely watched because it represents more than 70% of U.S. jobs. 

Last month, the nation’s households increased their spending at retailers. And even with hiring having slowed, Americans are enjoying unusual job security. Layoffs are near a record low as a percentage of employment. The number of people filing for unemployment benefits also remains near historically low levels. 

Companies seem generally reluctant to let workers go even though some are also hesitant to expand their payrolls. That unusual dynamic may stem from many employers having been caught flat-footed and short of staff after the economy began roaring back from the pandemic recession. Posted job openings, too, have declined steadily, to 8 million in August, after having peaked at 12.2 million in March 2022. 

Workers have noticed the chillier environment for jobseekers. Far fewer feel confident enough to leave their jobs to seek a better position. The number of Americans who are quitting their jobs has reached its lowest level since August 2020, when the economy was still reeling from COVID. 
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