Can Calif. Law Requiring Trump To Disclose His Taxes Survive Legal Challenges?

Gov. Gavin Newsom, shown in June, signed a bill Tuesday requiring all candidates to release five years of tax returns in order to appear on the 2020 California primary ballot. Legal experts expect a court challenge. (Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press)

BY MAURA DOLAN

THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

Nearly 30 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court decided 5 to 4 that states could not impose qualifications on candidates for Congress that were stricter than those specified in the Constitution, a ruling that could apply to presidential candidates.

The Constitution says that to be president, a person must be a natural-born citizen, a resident for 14 years and at least 35 years old.

A measure signed into law by California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday adds another requirement for presidential candidates who want to appear on the state’s presidential primary ballot: They must disclose their income tax returns.

Passed on a party-line vote, the law was clearly aimed at President Donald Trump, who has refused to release his returns.

Legal scholars said Wednesday that the 1995 ruling that barred states from imposing certain requirements for ballot access is likely to be at issue in litigation over the constitutionality of California’s new law. They disagreed, however, about whether the law would be upheld.

“This new law raises some very interesting and novel constitutional issues,” said UCLA constitutional law professor Adam Winkler. “Because it is novel, it is hard to know how the courts would go, but there is plenty of reason to think courts will be hostile to California’s requirements.”

One lawsuit has already been filed.

Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente, a perennial candidate who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination in 2020, sued California in U.S. District Court in San Diego on Tuesday to overturn the ballot requirement. The suit said California could not force him to waive rights he is guaranteed under federal law.

University of California, Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who believes the law is constitutional, said it could easily be distinguished from the 1995 high court ruling overturning state ballot qualifications.

That decision, U.S. Term Limits Inc. v. Thornton, found unconstitutional state laws that denied ballot access to House of Representatives candidates who had already served at least three terms and Senate candidates who had served two terms.

“I think there is a huge difference” between California’s law and those at stake in the earlier case, Chemerinsky said.

The term limits ruling dealt with a state requirement that categorically prevented some incumbents from appearing on the ballot, while the California law has created a condition “that can be easily met,” he said.

The Supreme Court has ruled that states may have ballot qualifications as long as they don’t discriminate based on wealth or ideology, he said, and the state has an important interest in having its electorate informed.

“The Supreme Court has repeatedly and emphatically upheld disclosure requirements, saying the interest in having voters informed justifies the burden on candidates,” said Winkler, the constitutional law professor.

Douglas W. Kmiec, professor emeritus at Pepperdine Law School, generally agreed, “given the unqualified power of the state legislatures to determine the method by which electors to the electoral college are chosen.”

Still, he said, the outcome of litigation over the law was hard to predict.

“Overall, this has been an area of the Constitution where the court has not often given definitive guidance,” he said.

The prospects for the law would be better if it took effect after the 2020 presidential election, he said.

“Applying it beforehand gives it a rather distinct anti-Trump frame of reference that the court could find objectionable,” he said.

Theodore B. Olson, a high-profile lawyer who has argued frequently before the Supreme Court, said he believed the California law was unconstitutional.

“California can’t come along and say to get on the ballot, you have to disclose your tax returns,” Olson said. “And then Iowa might say you have to disclose records of domestic (litigation) with an ex-wife, and Alabama might say you have to disclose whether you have any illegitimate children.”

Such requirements could be aimed at a particular candidate and would amount to an unconstitutional interference by the states in the federal election process, he said.

Gene Schaerr, a constitutional lawyer who also practices before the Supreme Court, said federal law keeps tax returns confidential, and California cannot force a candidate to waive his or her rights under that law.

“I see it as a serious problem on both constitutional grounds and especially on policy,” Schaerr said. “You can imagine a host of other disclosures that states might want to adopt.”

“If California could do this,” he said, “some people would undoubtedly want to know whether candidates have ever been treated for a mental illness or denied insurance.”

California was among 18 states this year with bills to require presidential candidates to disclose their tax returns, but it was the only state to enact the requirement.

Ten bills remain active in other states to create the requirement, said Mick Bullock, spokesman for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Jan W. Baran, a Washington, D.C., attorney who has practiced political law for more than 40 years, said California can create tax disclosure requirements for state candidates but not for federal office seekers.

“We can amend the U.S. Constitution to require candidates for president to disclose their income tax returns, but you can’t do it by passing a single state law,” he said.

David Keating, president of the Virginia-based Institute for Free Speech, said Trump could mount a write-in campaign in California or just skip the state.

Because no one significant is running against him, he will most likely have enough electors to win the nomination without California’s, Keating said.

“Whether it is constitutional or not, I don’t think it is clear,” said Keating, whose organization is part think tank and part law firm.

©2019 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

He Was Once Homeless And Sleeping In A Bus Station. Now, He’s Collaborating With Beyoncé On ‘The Lion King’

Lebo M and Clydene Jackson perform during a news conference July 10 for Disney's "The Lion King." (Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney)

BY COURT STROUD

WASHINGTON POST

The Los Angeles Greyhound bus terminal was a noisy and sometimes dangerous place in the mid-1980s when Lebohang Morake arrived there at age 22. Morake, a South African who had been performing in nightclubs in his native country since he was a child, found himself among those experiencing homelessness, jostling to find a place to sleep at night.

“I was a street beggar,” said Morake — who has since had a dramatic reversal of fortunes — and is now a Grammy-winning musician known around the world as Lebo M.

Last month, Disney flew him to the Hollywood premiere of “The Lion King” and put him up at the Ritz Carlton. Paparazzi at the London debut snapped photos of the 55-year-old as he smiled next to Elton John and Beyoncé and shook hands with Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.

It was the latest in a stunning string of successes for Lebo M, a producer and composer who won a Grammy Award for “The Lion King’s” “Circle of Life,” and a singer whose iconic voice begins the opening scene in the film. He attributes his personal success to the same thing he thinks makes “The Lion King” story so resonant: With enough heart, even those who have been cast aside can triumph.

“I was in the right place at the right time — and I was hungry,” he said. “But when opportunity came, I overdelivered.”

Lebo M was born in Soweto, South Africa, in 1964 during apartheid. He didn’t have many outlets for his early and outsize musical talent in his humble beginnings.

When he was 9, Lebo M joined a youth recreational club that offered table tennis, ballroom dancing and music. “Music became my refuge from the streets,” he said.

He began singing jazz professionally, and recorded his first single in 1977, when he was 14.

Two years later, he followed a migration of young people to Lesotho, the independent country encircled by South Africa, to pursue a musical career. He had heard about a new nightclub opening up.

Shortly after he arrived, he learned that he had been exiled, forbidden by the white South African regime to return to his family in Soweto. The reason? He didn’t have a passport or an ID, he said.

Then one night, Lebo M performed before Lesotho’s ambassador to the United States, Tim Thahane, who noticed the teenager’s vocal talent. With Thahane’s help, Lebo M applied to the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington and was soon accepted.

Once in the District, he was taken under the wing of Union Temple Baptist Church in Southeast.

“Lebo M was so eager, so talented,” said the Rev. Mary L. Wilson, who remembers when the teenager first stepped into her church.

Lebo M noticed the African artifacts in the worship hall and proclaimed, “We’re home,” Wilson recalled.

Wilson and her husband, the Rev. Willie F. Wilson, realized the youth had nowhere to sleep and invited him to stay in a spare bedroom at their house while he attended high school. She said he became like one of her own children.

“He still even calls us Moms and Pops,” she said.

After graduating in 1983, Lebo M thought he’d found his path to success. A music producer promised him an opportunity to record a single on the West Coast. Lebo M scraped together the money for a one-way ticket. After arriving in Los Angeles, the singer got into the producer’s car, he recalled, but it turned out to be a scam. After learning that the African refugee didn’t have any money, the producer dumped Lebo M by the side of the road, he said.

Alone in a new place, Lebo M started living on the streets. For about 2½ years, he was homeless, sometimes staying at a shelter and sometimes at the bus station. He took jobs to get back on his feet — at McDonald’s, as a parking attendant and a music intern — but he never stopped performing.

On Thursdays and Fridays, he often showcased at Marla’s Memory Lane Jazz and Supper Club, the club owned by Marla Gibbs from “The Jeffersons.”

“That's when I was slowly coming out of the streets,” he said.

Then, in a stroke of luck, he ran into a friend from childhood who was a bass player for South African singer and songwriter Johnny Clegg, who was in Los Angeles on a world tour. Lebo M met Clegg's producer, who gave him a job at his recording studio.

“I was the tea guy there, the runner,” said Lebo M. “When the studio wasn’t busy, I would do demos.”

Through the studio, in 1991, he met Hans Zimmer, who’d created scores for the Oscar-winning movies “Rain Man” and “Driving Miss Daisy,” and was working on “The Power of One,” a film set in South Africa. He and Zimmer hit it off, and they collaborated on the film. Lebo M ended up co-producing, co-writing and performing the soundtrack for the film with Zimmer.

It was his breakout project.

“That started our friendship and professional working journey,” said Lebo M.

It was about that time that Lebo M got his nickname. He was touring with Quincy Jones when an interviewer who couldn’t pronounce his last name referred to him as “Lebo M.” The shorthand reference stuck.

The next year, Lebo M ended his 13-year exile and returned home as Nelson Mandela was poised to become South Africa’s first black president.

In Los Angeles, Zimmer began working with Disney on an unnamed African animation project, and he wanted Lebo M. Zimmer tracked him down in Soweto and they collaborated on the soundtrack for “The Lion King,” which was released in 1994. The movie made more than $900 million at the box office, becoming one of the most successful animated films of all time.

It opens with “Circle of Life” and Lebo M’s rousing musical cry, “Nants ingonyama, bagithi Baba!”

“It's just an instant emotional, spiritual connecting moment in the creative process that acknowledges the presence of a king,” he said.

That chant, a mixture of the South African languages Zulu and Xhosa, was done in a moment of inspiration as the studio session started.

“We tried a million times, but we loved that first take,” Lebo M said.

Disney decided to translate the movie for the Broadway stage, and in 1996, brought in Lebo M to work on it. The stage production won five Tony awards and became the top-grossing musical in history, earning more than $8 billion. It has been seen by more than 100 million people in 19 countries.

Lebo M said the power of “The Lion King” comes from the “spiritual idea of triumph over evil.” The plot involves a young lion prince, exiled in shame after his father’s death, who returns to overthrow the new king.

For Lebo M, the story is personal. He sees “Lion King” as not just his own story, but also that of other people who have experienced oppression.

“I became a fan of the spiritual power of what ‘The Lion King’ represents,” he said. “It’s about an immigrant exile refugee who comes back home and triumphantly overcomes evil to be a long-lasting, positive legacy.”

Lebo M has been involved in the current reboot of the movie, including collaborating with Beyoncé and Zimmer for the scene with the song “Spirit” and joining Beyoncé at the film’s European premiere in London.

“Lebo is my original inspiration,” Zimmer said about their joint effort in a news release from Walt Disney Studios.

Lebo M, who lives in South Africa, has six children. He has racked up stacks of awards and enjoyed the spotlight with superstars. But he still holds tight to his past, saying he identifies as a “refugee and immigrant.”

His grounding comes from a belief he has carried with him since his boyhood in South Africa, and those nights he slept at the bus station in Los Angeles.

“I share inspiration that is based on a very simplistic approach,” he said. “The horror I’m facing today does not define my tomorrow.”

If Germany Atoned For The Holocaust, The US Can Pay Reparations For Slavery

Kwame Nkrumah

BY BERND REITER

THE CONVERSATION
The idea of paying reparations for slavery is gaining momentum in the United States, despite being long derided as an unrealistic plan, to compensate for state violence committed by and against people long dead.

The topic saw substantive debate in the July 30 Democratic primary debate, with candidate Marianne Williamson calling slavery “a debt that is owed.” Some Democratic congressional representatives are also pushing for financial recompense for the descendants of enslaved people.

Calls for reparations in the U.S. are generally met with skepticism: What would reparations achieve? Who should receive them, and under what conditions?

Other countries have tackled these questions. In 1995, South Africa established its Truth and Reconciliation Commission and paid reparations to the victims of apartheid. Eight years before, the United States apologized to 82,000 Japanese Americans unduly imprisoned during World War II and paid them US$20,000 each to compensate for their suffering.

Even Germany, birthplace of the worst racism ever institutionalized and elevated to official policy, has some lessons for the United States as it considers reparations.
Compensating victims of Nazi enslavement

I am a professor of political science who studies the relationship between democracy, citizenship and justice. My recent work on Germany examines how the country dealt with the horrors of the Holocaust.

Nazi Germany not only killed millions of Jews between 1933 and 1945. It also forced over 20 million people into slave labor, working them to their death in German industries. By 1944, a quarter of the German workforce was enslaved laborers.

After Hitler’s defeat in World War II, the newly democratic government of West Germany knew it had to face the evils of the past.

Nazi industries that used slave labor, such as the steel and artillery producer Krupp, were dismantled. High-ranking Krupp CEOs were judged war criminals at the Nuremberg Trialsand imprisoned.

Pressured by Israeli leaders David Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer agreed to pay 3 billion German marks in reparations to Israel between 1953 and 1967. Germany also paid 450 million German marks to the World Jewish Congress, an international federation of Jewish communities and organizations.

Assuming the midcentury rate of 4 German marks to $1, that’s the equivalent today of $7 billion for Israel and $1 billion for the Jewish Congress.

Some Germans protested against Adenauer’s support for Israel. Their country was just beginning its economic recovery after the war – a process aided, incidentally, by the U.S.-funded Marshall Plan – and many Germans insisted they had nothing to do with the persecution of the Jews.

In negotiating the German reparations agreement of 1952, Ben-Gurion invoked the biblical question, from Kings 21:29, “Have you murdered and also inherited?”

Germany’s post-war Chancellor Adenauer knew that, for the German people, the answer was yes.

“In the name of the German people, unspeakable crimes were committed which create a duty of moral and material restitution,” he said.

By 1956, the German state was supplying 87.5% of Israel’s state revenue. The young new country used the money to buy equipment and raw materials to build up its industry, railways and electrical grid. Mining equipment, irrigation and fuel were also high on the list of Israel’s reparations-fueled development priorities.
Atonement is a process

Germany’s efforts to atone for the Holocaust were not limited to money.

To avoid repeating the mistakes of the past, the 1949 German Constitution – as well as the penal and criminal codes of the country – outlaw the use of symbols that incite hatred against any segment of its population. The Constitution also guarantees asylum to political refugees and all people fleeing war.

In 1952 Germany officially apologized for the Nazis’ crimes, at Israel’s demand.

“The responsibility rests on the German nation as a whole,” replied Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett of making amends for the Holocaust.

Reparations went to individuals, too. In 2000, the German government, together with partner organizations from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, the Czech Republic and the not-for-profit Jewish Claims Conference, created the Remembrance, Responsibility and Future Foundation.

By 2007, the organization had paid a total of $4.9 billion to 1.66 billion people worldwidewho’d been forced into labor and servitude by the Nazis, or to their living descendants – their share of the wealth slavery produced for Germany.

Most recently, the German government in 2013 agreed with the Jewish Claims Conference to pay about $1 billion for the home care of all elderly Holocaust survivors.

As a result of the reparations paid, Germany’s open admission of guilt and the policies it put in place to prevent another Holocaust from occurring, German-Jewish relations have largely normalized since World War II.

Germany’s Jewish population has even begun to recover from genocide. With 150,000 Jewish residents in 2018, Germany is home to Europe’s fourth-largest Jewish community.
Lessons for the United States

Instead of seeking to wipe the Holocaust from its history, the German government has worked hard to ensure remembrance, penance, recompense and justice.

The United States, in contrast, has no official policy of atoning for slavery.

While the House of Representatives and Senate made separate apologies for slavery in 2008 and 2009, these apologies were never reconciled or signed by President Barack Obama, due to lack of political support.

Racist symbols are openly displayed in the United States, protected by the First Amendment.

Nor has there been any financial compensation for the descendants of formerly enslaved Americans, despite President Abraham Lincoln’s famous promise of “40 acres and a mule” for all freed black men.

The German experience with reparations is, of course, not directly comparable to that of the United States.

Germany had to lose a devastating war before it compensated the Jewish people. And, as in the case of the Japanese American prisoners of war who received reparations, the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime and their descendants were relatively easy to identify.

The U.S. government paying reparations today for state terror that ended 150 years ago poses numerous practical challenges. They include identifying the rightful recipients and sourcing the money appropriately – whether state-based or federal.

Those who say they did not benefit from slavery must be persuaded that reparations are required to right a moral wrong. Polling shows a majority of Americans oppose cash payments as a redress for slavery.

But old injustices don’t simply disappear with time. Left unaddressed, they fuel the kind of division, shame and resentment that, as America knows well, can divide a nation.

Nigerian Women Struggle To Raise Children Born Of Libya Rape

Nigerian women returning home from Libya with babies born as a result of rape struggle to rebuild their lives and raise the children (AFP Photo/FATI ABUBAKAR)

BY SOPHIE BUILLON

BENIN CITY (AFP) -- She was only just 18 when she gave birth without a doctor in a Tripoli apartment, gripping the hand of her best friend who had come on a journey they hoped would lead from Nigeria to Europe.

For Joy, who told her story to AFP on condition her name be changed, those dreams of a new life on another continent had come to a halt.

Her daughter was the child of her Libyan captor -- a guard at a detention camp for illegal migrants where she had first been held after being picked up by authorities in the conflict-ravaged country.

He had asked her to move to his flat, and she was not in a position to be able to say 'no'. Once there, she said that she was trapped inside for a year and turned into his slave.

When she became pregnant, he had attempted to force her out and tried everything to send her finally on the perilous journey by boat across the Mediterranean.

After a series of failed attempts to make her leave, he threatened to kill her and the child, she said.

"They say we are black and we are not Muslims so it's a forbidden thing to have a child from them," Joy, now aged 19, said.

Joy eventually managed to escape and to hide with a friend. She had never been to see an obstetrician and feared if she went to a hospital her baby would be taken from her.

"I heard too many things like that," she added.

"There (in Libya) they can beat you up, abuse you, rape you, they can even kill you, they don't care."

- Back home -

Joy returned to her homeland of Nigeria in February last year thanks to a voluntary programme organised by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

She is one of more than 14,000 Nigerians who have flown back on chartered planes from Libya under the scheme since 2017.

About 35 percent of those who have returned are women.

But the United Nations does not give a figure for the number of children "for their own protection".

The IOM estimates that there remain more than 60,000 Nigerians in Libya among roughly 600,000 migrants from 39 nations, most of them with no legal documents, held in camps, prisons, private houses or brothels.

Joy now lives at Betsy Angels Shelter, a reintegration and training centre in Benin City in Nigeria's southern Edo State, a hub for human trafficking to Europe, and her one-and-a-half-year old daughter is in daycare.

Her lighter skin makes her stand out from the other children.

"I tell people that her dad is a white man," Joy says, as if she, somehow, managed to live a bit of the new life she longed for in Europe.

- 'Arabo children' -

Migrants and the aid workers in Nigeria helping them say that most children born in Libya and brought back to Nigeria by their mothers have African, not Libyan, fathers.

They speak of the babies more often being born as the result of rape by traffickers, who transport the migrants through the deserts, or from coerced sex with sub-Saharan African customers in Libyan brothels, where women are often sold and locked up.

Whatever their origins, in Nigeria these children born in Libya are nicknamed "Arabo children" -- stigmatised for the circumstances of their birth.

"Some will say 'those Arabo children, we don't want them in our house'," Jennifer Ero, national coordinator for Nigeria's Child Protection Network, said.

When the women leave on the journey to Europe, families expect them to end up sending back money to help relatives at home.

But the reality can be very different.

"Now they come back, they didn't reach Europe, they come with debts, and with baggage -- with a child with no name," Ero said.

The protection centre that Ero runs in Benin City also provides psychological support for the women.

The carer says that most of the mothers being looked after confide that they thought of aborting, if only they'd had access to the necessary medical help.

Some can be aggressive with their babies, she adds.

- 'There is hope' -

Tiny Justice is small for a toddler of his age.

But at 18 months, he already carefully investigates the bedroom where he stays and immediately toddles over to hug his mother when he sees her cry.

Faith, who also asked for her name to be changed, was 19 when she became pregnant in what she calls the "ghetto" -- a cluster of buildings in Gatrone in Libya's southwestern desert where migrants are held.

Her smugglers sold Faith and 10 other people to another gang of traffickers. Three years on, she is the only one to have returned to Nigeria.

One remains trapped in Libya.

"The rest of us… all of them are gone. Only the two of us survived," she told AFP.

Faith said the traffickers, who came from a number of different countries, brutally ruled over their prisoners' lives as they demanded ransoms to release them.

"We are kept captives, the men they torture them, they hang them on a cross like Jesus, they burn them," she recounted.

"The girls, if we don't sleep with them, they wouldn't give us food. They tell us that if we don't sleep with them, they will sell us. They sleep with us all the time. This is how I got pregnant."

Since returning to Nigeria she has not been able to find work and is struggling to rebuild her life.

But as she talks, the young mother caresses her son's head -- and this gives her strength.

"As long as my baby and me are alive, there is hope," she said.

"Because of what we've been through together, I love my baby very, very much."

Ex-Nurse =Recalls Failed 1944 Polish Revolt Against Germans

Maria Mostowska, 96, shares her memories with The Associated Press Thursday, July 11, 2019, in Warsaw, Poland, of having faced death during the 1944 Warsaw Rising struggle against the occupying Nazi Germans ahead of state ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the failed revolt. Mostowska was a young paediatric nurse during the Warsaw Rising, treating wounded resistance fighters and civilians in Warsaw, and the memories are still vivid even seventy-five years on. On Thursday Aug. 1, Warsaw will honor the failed rising. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

BY MONIKA SCISLOWSKA

WARSAW, POLAND (AP) — Maria Mostowska was a young pediatric nurse when the Warsaw Rising against the Nazi Germans occupying Poland broke out on Aug. 1, 1944.

Seventy-five years on, she still vividly remembers how German troops put her against a wall and aimed a machine gun. She recalled how quickly the hospital filled with wounded resistance fighters and civilians, and how the Nazis destroyed the capital city.

“We worked round the clock dressing wounds, we did not leave the surgery,” Mostowska told The Associated Press.

Some 50,000 fighters of Poland’s clandestine Home Army — most of them poorly armed — fought the Germans for 63 days before surrendering, in the biggest single act of resistance in occupied Europe during World War II. Some 18,000 insurgents were killed and another 25,000 were injured.

On Thursday, Warsaw honored the failed uprising, which had been a taboo topic during four decades of communist rule imposed on Poland after the war.

Wreath laying ceremonies by state leaders took place and sirens were set to wail at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT), the hour when the uprising began. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also joined the events, in a symbolic acknowledgement of his nation’s crimes against the Polish people decades earlier.

Maas asked Poles for forgiveness, stressing German responsibility for the atrocities. He said he felt ashamed of the crimes Germany carried out against Poland, and they were forgotten for too long.

The resistance fighters were hoping for quick support from the Allies to free Warsaw from the Germans and take control before the Soviet Red Army arrived.

But no substantial help came, and the desperate fight that had been ordered by the government-in-exile in London went on for two months before the surviving insurgents surrendered.

German bombings and mass executions led to the death of some 180,000 civilians, and rebellious Warsaw was razed. The Nazis expelled some 500,000 remaining residents, sending many to the Auschwitz death camp. The Warsaw Rising failed to prevent the Soviet control of the city and of the country.

Mostowska was working at the Karol and Maria hospital in the Wola district, where, on Adolf Hitler’s orders, German and Ukrainian troops exterminated tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children, in revenge for the revolt.

She recalled that the Germans came one day and raided the hospital, acting like “madmen,” killed the chief doctor and top nurses.

“They put us against the wall, aimed a machine gun, so we thought they would kill us that instant,” she said.

But suddenly the orders changed and they were made to run, carrying the children, to another hospital. She was carrying a paralyzed 10-year-old girl.

“When we reached that hospital, we saw heaps of dead bodies of the doctors and the patients (the Germans) had killed,” Mostowska said.

The eight babies they had brought from the first hospital died within days because “We had nothing to feed them,” she said.

She remembers the bravery of young women, including one who helped save a fighter’s life.

“One day a teenage girl reached the hospital, dragging and pulling a young fighter with a severed leg, who was in a very bad shape. And she herself was rather petite. I have no idea how she managed to drag him to the hospital but she did it,” she said.

The young nurse and others searched the abandoned houses for food and medication. They saw German troops come in trucks at night, taking valuables from houses whose residents had been mass-executed before setting the properties ablaze.

Speaking in the same apartment where she has lived since before the war, Mostowska, 96, conceded that while the rising will always be seen as “controversial,” it was motivated by the determination to fight the Germans.

“The hatred was so intense that I thought I could almost touch it,” she said.

Mostowska has put the hatred away, though.

“The Germans are completely different now,” she said. “We live on the same planet; we can’t be in conflict all the time.”

1-Year-Old Daughter Of Congo Man Who Died Of Ebola Has Virus

In this Sunday, July 14, 2019 photo, burial workers put on protective gear before carrying the remains of Mussa Kathembo, an Islamic scholar who had prayed over those who were sick, and his wife, Asiya, to their final resting place in Beni, Congo. Both died of Ebola. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)

BY SALEH MWANAMILONGO, IGNATIUS SSUUNA

KINSHASA, CONGO (AP) — The 1-year-old daughter of the man who died of Ebola in Congo’s major city of Goma this week has the disease, the health ministry said Thursday, while Rwanda closed its border with Congo over the virus outbreak that now enters its second year.

The man died on Wednesday after spending several days at home with his large family while showing symptoms. This is the first transmission of Ebola inside Goma, a city of more than 2 million people on the Rwandan border, a scenario that health experts have long feared. The painstaking work of finding, tracking and vaccinating people who had contact with the man — and the contacts of those contacts — has begun.

This outbreak has killed more than 1,800 people, nearly a third of them children. It is now the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, and last month the World Health Organization declared it a rare global emergency.

Rwanda’s state minister for foreign affairs Olivier Nduhungirehe confirmed the border closure, a day after WHO officials praised African nations for keeping their borders open. Last week Saudi Arabia stopped issuing visas to people from Congo while citing the Ebola outbreak, shortly before the annual hajj pilgrimage there this month.

Congo’s presidency swiftly condemned Rwanda’s decision

WHO has recommended against travel restrictions amid the outbreak but says the risk of regional spread is “very high.” Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan have long begun vaccinating health workers. In June, three people died in Uganda before their family members were taken back to Congo for treatment and Ugandan officials declared the country free of the disease.

The death on Wednesday in Goma “in such a dense population center underscores the very real risk of further disease transmission, perhaps beyond the country’s borders, and the very urgent need” for more global support, United Nations agencies said in a joint statement marking a year of the outbreak.

The man in his 40s was a miner returning from an area of northeastern Ituri province, Mongwalu, where no Ebola cases in this outbreak have been recorded, WHO said. He was exposed to the virus along the roughly 300-mile-long (490-kilometer) route from Komanda to Goma as he took motor taxis over a number of days through the densely populated region at the heart of the outbreak.

The man arrived in Goma on July 13 and started showing symptoms on July 22. He was isolated at an Ebola treatment center on Tuesday. He had spent five days being treated at home and then went to a health facility, where Ebola was suspected. Symptoms can start to occur between two and 21 days from infection, health experts say.

“He may not even have been aware of the exposure that he had,” WHO emergencies chief Dr. Michael Ryan said on Wednesday. Symptoms such as fever can be confused with malaria, which is endemic in the region.

Congo’s new Ebola response coordinator, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, has said there appears to be no link between the case and the previous one in Goma that was announced two and a half weeks ago. That case was a 46-year-old preacher who managed to pass through three health checkpoints on the way from Butembo, one of the communities hardest hit by this outbreak.

The declaration of a global health emergency — the fifth in history — came days after that first Goma case. It has brought a surge of millions of dollars in new pledges by international donors, but some health workers say a new approach is needed to combat misunderstandings in a part of Congo that had never experienced Ebola before.

Health workers responding to the outbreak have been attacked, even killed, in a region where rebel groups are active and the population is wary of outsiders.

There is no licensed treatment for Ebola, which is spread by close contact with bodily fluids of those infected, and survival can depend on seeking treatment as quickly as possible. And yet many people in the region don’t believe that the virus is real, health workers have said.

This outbreak is second only to the 2014-16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa that left more than 11,300 people dead.

Ssuuna reported from Kigali, Rwanda. Associated Press writer Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro contributed.

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Reagan Called President Nixon To Slur Africans As ‘Monkeys.’ Of Course There Are Tapes.

Former Governor of California Ronald Reagan (1911 - 2004) making a speech during the Republican presidential primary in New York, March 1980. Reagan won the New York primary and was later selected as the Republican nominee, before being elected President in 1981. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

BY MORGAN KRAKOW, TIM ELFRINK

WASHINGTON POST

It was October 1971, and the United Nations had just voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China.

Then-California Gov. Ronald Reagan was infuriated that delegations from Africa did not align themselves with the U.S. position - that the U.N. should recognize Taiwan as an independent state - and wanted to get President Richard Nixon on the phone. He was apparently disgusted after watching delegates from Tanzania celebrate the U.N. decision to support Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan.

"To see those, those monkeys from those African countries - damn them, they're still uncomfortable wearing shoes!" Reagan said.

Nixon replied with a big laugh.

"Well and then they - the tail wags the dog, doesn't it? The tail wags the dog." Nixon said.

The conversation between Reagan and Nixon was published in The Atlantic. Tim Naftali, a history professor at NYU and the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, worked to get the tape released and wrote the subsequent article for The Atlantic.

The National Archives withheld the racist comments in the recording's first release in 2000, which Naftali says was apparently in protection of Reagan's privacy. But after Reagan's death in 2004, and amid continued review process by the National Archives, Naftali was successful in getting the full conversation released.

"It was worse than I expected," Naftali told The Washington Post, referring to the audio on the tape. "It was the combination of the slur by Reagan and then Nixon's repeating it, not once but twice in later conversations. This was not just revealing about what Ronald Reagan thought about Africans in 1971, and arguably later, it was also a reminder of how Nixon could hold racist views but not think of himself as a racist."

After the call with Reagan, Nixon phoned Secretary of State William Rogers and then employed the same language Reagan used as he described the frustrations over the U.N. decision.

"As you can imagine, there's strong feeling that we just shouldn't, as [Reagan] said, he saw these, as he said, he saw these - these, uh, these cannibals on television last night, and he says, 'Christ, they weren't even wearing shoes, and here the United States is going to submit its fate to that,' and so forth and so on," Nixon said in the recorded phone call.

In a second conversation with Rogers on the same day, Nixon spoke about Reagan's disgust once again. He was recorded saying Reagan "practically got sick at his stomach," and that the California governor said "this bunch of people who don't even wear shoes yet, to be kicking the United States in the teeth," characterizing Reagan's feelings about what had happened, according to Naftali.

But Nixon had also been unhappy about what transpired at the U.N. that October. Even before his phone call with Reagan, he had already requested cancellations of future meetings with African leaders whose votes had differed from that of the United States, according to Naftali.

At the time, Nixon's State Department said British and French dealings were to blame for the decision to cancel the meetings.

"Don't even submit to me the problem that it's difficult to turn it off since we have already accepted it," Nixon was recorded telling then-deputy national security adviser Alexander M. Haig. "Just turn it off, on the ground that I will be out of town."

Reagan biographers and historians are still wrestling reconciling the newly revealed audio with the president's personal record. As Naftali noted in The Atlantic, Nixon's racist views have been well documented, but Reagan's personal diaries are free of any similar rhetoric. Some of Reagan's most divisive policies -- like embracing the apartheid government of South Africa and inventing the trope of the "welfare queen" -- may take on a different light now.

"I leave it to Reagan scholars to take this and then connect it to comments about welfare queens and what this may or may not say about Reagan's general view of race," Naftali said.

One such scholar described the new audio as "shocking."

"I'm kind of taken aback. This is stunning," said Bob Spitz, author of "Reagan: An American Journey." Spitz gained access to Reagan's personal archives for the work and said he found no hint that the president would hold the kinds of views he conveyed to Nixon.

"In all of my very careful research into his private papers, I never found an instance where I felt that Reagan was racist," he said. "Generally when someone says, 'I don't have a racist bone in my body,' I'm instantly skeptical, but in this case after all my work I found myself kind of nodding my head. So this is shocking."

Naftali said he hopes his research encourages others to plum the voluminous records available on all presidents. The Reagan audio should also spark new conversations about presidential views on race, he said, and how it impacts real world policy.

“Understanding how our presidents think about race is not a matter of character assassination, it’s about understanding what drives their decision making,” he said. “It’s not partisan gamesmanship, it’s about how these people with the power we gave them as result of an election have used it. If their minds are poisoned by prejudice, we need to know.”

US To Set Up Plan Allowing Prescription Meds From Canada

In this Tuesday, July 16, 2019, file photo, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar pauses while speaking during a Cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington. Azar says he and President Donald Trump are working on a plan to allow Americans to import lower-priced prescription drugs from Canada. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

BY RICARDO ALONZO ZALDIVAR

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Wednesday it will set up a system allowing Americans to legally and safely import lower-cost prescription drugs from Canada for the first time, reversing years of opposition from federal health authorities amid a public outcry over high prices for life-sustaining medications.

The move is a step toward fulfilling a 2016 campaign promise by President Donald Trump, and it weakens an import ban that stood as a symbol of the political clout of the pharmaceutical industry. It’s unclear how soon consumers will see benefits, as the plan has to go through time-consuming regulatory approval and later could face court challenges from drugmakers.

It comes as the industry is facing a crescendo of consumer complaints over costs, as well as legislation from both parties in Congress to rein in costs, along with a sheaf of proposals from the Democratic presidential contenders. Ahead of the 2020 election, Trump is feeling pressure to deliver on years of harsh rhetoric about the pharmaceutical industry.

Making the announcement Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said the administration’s decision recognizes that prescription drug manufacturing and distribution is now international.

“The landscape and the opportunities for safe linkage between drug supply chains has changed,” Azar said. “That is part of why, for the first time in HHS’s history, we are open to importation. We want to see proposals from states, distributors, and pharmacies that can help accomplish our shared goal of safe prescription drugs at lower prices.”

Most patients take affordable generic drugs to manage conditions such as high blood pressure or elevated blood sugars. But polls show concern about the prices of breakthrough medications for intractable illnesses like cancer or hepatitis C infection, whose annual costs can run to $100,000 or much more. And long-available drugs like insulin have seen price serial increases that forced some people with diabetes to ration their own doses.

Azar, a former drug industry executive, said U.S. patients will be able to import medications safely and effectively, with oversight from the Food and Drug Administration.

One prong of the administration’s proposal would allow states, wholesalers and pharmacists to get FDA approval to import certain medications that are also available here. Another part would allow drugmakers to seek approval for re-importation of their own drugs. This second provision would cover cutting-edge biologic drugs as well mainstays like insulin.

It’s unclear how soon consumers will see results. Azar spoke of a regulatory process lasting “weeks and months” and he also called on Congress to pass legislation that would lend its muscle to the effort, even short-circuit attempts to overturn the changes in court.

“The FDA has the resources to do this,” said acting FDA Commissioner Ned Sharpless. “The agency is interested in considering any reasonable that maintains the bedrock of safety and efficacy for the American consumer.”

The importation idea has backers across the political spectrum.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman of the panel that oversees Medicare said on Twitter that importation would lower prescription drug costs. He and Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota have a bill to facilitate importation.

During Tuesday night’s Democratic presidential debate , multiple candidates talked about the need to lower prescription drug costs. Sen. Bernie Sanders, Vermont Independent, noted the disparity in U.S. and Canadian prices. “I took 15 people with diabetes from Detroit a few miles into Canada and we bought insulin for one-tenth the price being charged by the crooks who run the pharmaceutical industry in America today,” he said.

Pressure on the industry is rising across many fronts.

In the Senate, Trump is supporting Grassley’s bipartisan bill to cap medication costs for Medicare recipients and require drugmakers to pay rebates to the program if price hikes exceed inflation. Democrats in the House are pressing for a vote on a bill allowing Medicare to directly negotiate prices on behalf of millions of seniors enrolled in its prescription drug plan. Separately, the Trump administration is pursuing a regulation that would tie what Medicare pays for drugs administered in doctors’ offices to lower international prices.

Looking to his reelection campaign, Trump has made lowering prescription drug prices one of his top goals. As a candidate, he had called for allowing Americans to import prescription drugs, and recently he also backed a new Florida law allowing state residents to gain access to medications from Canada with FDA approval. That idea was incorporated in Wednesday’s plan.

Drug prices are lower in other economically advanced countries because governments take a leading role in setting prices. But in the U.S., Medicare is not permitted to negotiate with drug companies.

Some experts have been skeptical of allowing imports from Canada, partly from concerns about whether Canadian suppliers have the capacity to meet the demands of the much larger U.S. market.

But consumer groups have strongly backed the idea, arguing that it will pressure U.S. drugmakers to reduce their prices. They also point out that the pharmaceutical industry is a global business and many of the ingredients in medications sold in the U.S. are manufactured abroad.

The drug industry lobby, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, has successfully blocked past efforts in Washington to allow importation. It argues patients would be at risk of receiving counterfeit or adulterated medications.

Lawyer: Mauritanian Blogger Once Sentenced To Death Is Freed

Image: Wikipedia

BY AHMED MOHAMED SALEM

NOUAKCHOTT, MAURITANIA (AP) — A Mauritanian blogger who had been sentenced to death for comments deemed as blasphemous by authorities has been freed after five years in detention, his lawyer said Tuesday. The release comes two days before the inauguration of the country’s new president.

Mohamed ould Moine said blogger Mohamed ould Cheikh ould Mkhaitir was being accompanied by officials to a destination outside the country, likely for his security. The lawyer said he did not have details about the final destination and that the government had arranged the voyage “under a total blackout.”

Mkhaitir was arrested in 2014 and charged with apostasy over a Facebook post that condemned the use of religion to justify discrimination against his caste. It was the first death sentence handed down for apostasy in Mauritania since the African nation’s independence in 1960.

An appeals court in 2017 changed that sentence to a fine and to two years in prison after the supreme court said it accepted his repentance, despite calls for his execution by thousands of demonstrators. While the blogger had already served the time, he was held in detention until now.

Mauritania, a West African desert nation and moderate Islamic republic, was the last country in the world to abolish slavery in 1981 but did not criminalize it until 2007. While human rights group allege that tens of thousands of people still live in slavery, the government denies it is widespread.

President-elect Mohamed Ould Ghazouani, recently elected to a five-year term, will be inaugurated on Thursday. The retired general served as defense minister before becoming the chosen successor to Mauritania’s retiring president Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, who was barred from seeking a third term under Mauritania’s constitution.

“By freeing Mkhaitir three days before stepping down as president, Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz has addressed one of the most heinous injustices of his 10-year tenure,” Lama Fakih, acting Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. The rights group said family members and United Nations rapporteurs had noted the blogger’s “deteriorating health while in detention.”

This is Mauritania’s first peaceful transfer of power since its independence from France in 1960. The country has suffered five coups and has been led by military rulers for much of that time.

___

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African Union’s Lost Opportunity In DRC Ebola Crisis

Image via TRT

BY ERIC MWINE-MUGAJU

EQUATEUR PROVINCE, CONGO (TRT WORLD) -- In any country in the world, the resignation of the health minister days after the declaration of an international health emergency should not only be worrying but alarming.

Dr Oly Ilunga Kalenga, an experienced epidemiologist who was leading the fight against Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) during the second biggest outbreak ever, has stepped down from his post. He says he resigned because international agencies and donors were interfering with his work, accusing them of unnecessarily pushing for the introduction of a new vaccine.

MP Muhindo Nzangi Butondo, from the most affected eastern region, backed Ilunga saying he does not want residents to be the "guinea pigs" for a new vaccine fronted by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Five years since the worst Ebola outbreak killed 11,000 people in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, there's little assurance that lessons were learned, especially in the African response to the outbreak. The crafting of policy and strategy have been outsourced to international, mostly Western, agencies.

This failure to lead by the African Union (AU) and the blatant sidelining and undermining of African experts and local agencies could be fuelling the myths similar to those that surround the HIV virus - that it was manufactured to wipe out Africans. With foreign actors now entering the scene and forcing ministers to resign, fertile ground for similar myths to flourish, claiming that Ebola is a Western invention and pharmaceutical companies are scrambling to cash in.

One of the key challenges of containing the current outbreak is the distrust of the affected communities. This has seen nearly 200 health workers and facilities attacked since January according to the WHO.

Instead of taking the lead and showing that the AU is finally free from working under the shadows of the UN, whose barely noticeable intervention is only attributable to access to resources rather than contextual competence, the AU has once again decided to hand over the realm of responsibility to the WHO, potentially shattering the legitimacy credentials that it stood to claim.

Frustratingly, this has been neutered by the AU not completely abandoning the policy of non-intervention in member states, preferring instead to wait for an invitation letter.

Following the West Africa Ebola outbreak, failures jolted by the “African problems, African solutions” mantra, the AU formed a special team, suitably named the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

There is already confusion in the public sphere regarding who is in charge; one would expect AU to be in charge, but the UN’s WHO has the mandate, however the WHO has now fallen out with one of the most locally respected epidemiologist - Kalenga. DRC President Felix Tshisekedi’s office has now taken over the coordination of the Ebola campaign.

"As in any war, because that is what this is, there cannot be several centres of decision-making for risk of creating confusion," the health minister said following his resignation.

The loss of Kalenga, an experienced medical doctor who oversaw a successful containment of Ebola in Equateur Province between May and July 2018, is a huge blow to the campaign.

The medic criticised outside pressure thought to be from the WHO, which insists on trying a new vaccine from US-based firm Johnson & Johnson. Kalenga, a qualified epidemiologist says that the vaccine is not proven and will add more confusion.

The previous vaccine made by Merck & Co, a rival of Johnson & Johnson, is said to be 97 percent effective and had been used successfully in the DRC. Kalenga and the MP Butondo argue that pushing for a new vaccine which has to be administered twice will be complicated given the on-going unrest in the region.

It should be quite alarming that a locally-trusted former minister with a good record dealing with outbreaks resigned citing “an obvious lack of ethics by voluntarily hiding important information from medical authorities”. It is worrying that the trending hashtag in the DRC lately is #NorYourGuineaPigs.

Kalenga has been on the ground since 2000 and taken the vaccine himself to help demystify the conspiracy and stigma surrounding Ebola. Being forced to resign under circumstances involving Western agencies does not only fuel the mistrust on the ground but also has the potential to intensify attacks against health workers.

With the ‘multi-disciplinary’ team coordinating the campaign ordered to report directly to Tshisekedi, one cannot help but wonder what input a career politician can have during such a medical emergency.

The epidemic has already been politicised to disenfranchise parts of Congo. It is now becoming clear that a president who came to office without a credible mandate is looking to use Ebola to get some legitimacy. He is, however, becoming a pawn in the battle of multinationals to influence the future of the Ebola vaccine.

The AU must move on from looking for a mandate and getting the people to trust it. The union has indeed progressed since 2002 when it scrapped its long-held non-interference policy regarding member states during the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) times. The new AU has been on peacekeeping missions across the continent but mostly on ‘peace and security matters’.

Its approach to intervening in matters of ‘peace and security’ should now extend to a non-military crises that could escalate on a huge scale or those that should be given a unique status requiring military intervention.

It has learned from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which unlike other regional blocks, has a mechanism for military intervention. That's why the AU created the African Standby Force (ASF).

Uganda's approach may provide a glimpse into the situation we have at hand. When Ebola crossed to Uganda recently, its containment was not down to luck. The army is usually employed to quarantine the affected areas, under tight security, experts move in and stop the virus from spreading.

Can the AU build from this, instead of seeking comfort from its non-interference policy in non peace and security issues? As Africa seeks to integrate and facilitate the movement of people on the continent, the AU has to be hands-on; leading, intervening, fixing, building and restoring. The Africa CDC should be an elite unit ready to control and quell disease outbreaks - not providing statements of support.

Conflict-affected health systems have to deal with increased levels of violence. The ability to quarantine the affected areas is paramount to containing the spread. With the DRC now lacking effective health systems and an ineffective state, the AU and regional blocks now have an opportunity to intervene and end the UN decade of inaction to flush out insurgents and start rebuilding community trust and health systems.

Iranians Say US Sanctions Blocking Access To Needed Medicine

In this June 19, 2019 photo, pharmacists pick medicine from shelves in a drugstore in downtown Tehran, Iran. From imported chemo and other medicines to those made domestically, many Iranians blame shortages on US sanctions. With Iran’s economy in free fall after the U.S. pullout from the nuclear deal and escalated sanctions on Tehran, prices of imported medicines have soared as the national currency tumbled about 70% against the dollar. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

BY MOHAMMAD NASIRI

TEHRAN, IRAN (AP) — Taha Shakouri keeps finding remote corners to play in at a Tehran children’s charity hospital, unaware that his doctors are running out of chemo medicine needed to treat the eight-year-old boy’s liver cancer.

With Iran’s economy in free fall after the U.S. pullout from the nuclear deal and escalated sanctions on Tehran, prices of imported medicines have soared as the national currency tumbled about 70% against the dollar. Even medicines manufactured in Iran are tougher to come by for ordinary Iranians, their cost out of reach for many in a country where the average monthly salary is equivalent to about $450.

Iran’s health system can’t keep up and many are blaming President Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign for the staggering prices and shortages. The sanctions have hurt ordinary Iranians, sending prices for everything from staples and consumer goods to housing skyward, while raising the specter of war with the U.S.

Taha’s mother, Laya Taghizadeh, says the hospital provides her son’s medication for free — a single treatment would otherwise cost $1,380 at a private hospital. She adds the family is deeply grateful to the doctors and the hospital staff.

“We couldn’t make it without their support,” says the 30-year-old woman. “My husband is a simple grocery store worker and this is a very costly disease.”

The Iranian rial has plunged from 32,000 to $1 at the time of the 2015 nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers to around 120,000 rials to the dollar these days, highly affecting prices of imported medicines. The nuclear deal had raised expectations of a better life for many Iranians, free of the chokehold of international sanctions.

The landmark accord lifted international sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s nuclear program, but now the deal has all but unraveled and new and tougher U.S. sanctions are in place.

While the United States insists that medicines and humanitarian goods are exempt from sanctions, restrictions on trade have made many banks and companies across the world hesitant to do business with Iran, fearing punitive measures from Washington. The country is cut off from the international banking system.

Last week, Health Minister Saeed Namaki said budget cuts because of the drop in crude exports have dramatically affected his department. The U.S. sanctions have targeted all classes of Iranians, he added.

“The American claims that medicine and medical equipment are not subject to sanctions is a big and obvious lie,” Namaki said.

“Our biggest concern is that channels to the outside world are closed,” said Dr. Arasb Ahmadian, head of the Mahak Children’s Hospital, which is run through charity donations and supports some 32,000 under-16 children across Iran.

The banking sanctions have blocked transactions, preventing donations from abroad, he said. Transfers of money simply fail, including those approved by the U.S. Treasury.

“Indeed, we are losing hope,” said Ahmadian. “Medicines should be purchasable, funding should be available and lines of credit should be clearly defined in the banking system.”

Official reports say Iran produces some 95% of the basic medicines it needs and even exports some of the production to neighboring countries.

But when it comes to more sophisticated medication and medicines for costly and rare illnesses and medical equipment, Iran depends heavily on imports. And though the state provides health care for all, many treatments needed for complicated cases are simply not available. Many prefer to go to private hospitals if they can and avoid long waiting lists at state ones.

Long lines form every morning in the 13-Aban Pharmacy in central Karimikhan Street, where people come looking for rare medicines for sick family members.

Hamid Reza Mohammadi, 53, spends much of his free time going in search of drugs for his wife and daughter, both of whom suffer from muscular dystrophy.

“Two, three months ago I could easily get the prescription filled in any pharmacy,” Mohammadi said, reflecting how quickly things have deteriorated.

Pharmacist Peyman Keyvanfar says many Iranians, their purchasing power slashed, cannot afford imported medicines and are looking for domestically manufactured substitutes. “There has been a very sharp increase in the prices of medicines, sometimes up to three to four times for some,” he said.

Those who still have some cash often turn to the black market.

Mahmoud Alizadeh, a 23-year-old student, rushed to the shady Nasser-Khosrow Street in southern Tehran when he got word his mother’s multiple sclerosis drug was available there.

“She is just 45 years old, it’s too soon to see her so badly paralyzed,” he said.

He pays three times more for the drug on the street than he did in May 2018. “I don’t know on whom Trump imposed sanctions except that he is punishing terminally ill people here.”

Many travel from rural areas to bigger cities in search of drugs for their loved ones.

Hosseingholi Barati, a 48-year-old father of three, came to Tehran from the town of Gonbad Kavus, about 550 kilometers (350 miles) to the northeast, looking for medication for his leukemia-stricken wife. He says he has spent $7,700 so far on her illness.

“It’s a huge strain,” he said. “I have sold everything I owned and borrowed money from family and friends.”