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NOVEMBER 11, 2021 | The Jewish Home
Freetown Mayor Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr said she was “deeply saddened to hear” about the blast and said that the City Council’s Disaster Response Team would meet on Saturday with the National Disaster Management Agency to conduct a needs assessment. The port city of Freetown, which is home to just over a million people, has faced several serious disasters in recent years. In March, more than 80 people were injured after a major fire in one of the city’s slums left more than 5,000 people displaced. In 2017, over 1,000 people were killed after heavy rains led to a mudslide that swept through the city, leaving around 3,000 people homeless.
Chinese Carcinogenic Coats Serbian Town Residents in the Serbian town of Radinac have been breathing in thick red dust for years. The dust that emanates from the Chinese-owned Smedrevo steel mill has
been coating the town. Cancer rates in the area have quadrupled in under a decade. Now, residents are demanding that the plant be shut down or cleaned for pollutants.
According to data from the Smederevo public health body, which a watchdog called Tvrdjava obtained through a freedom of information request, the municipality of around 100,000 people reported 6,866 cancer cases in 2019, up from 1,738 in 2011. The plant has said that it has invested 300 million euros in technology and pollution reduction since China’s biggest steelmaker, Hesteel, bought it from the Serbian state for 46 million euros ($53 million) five years ago. “We are all citizens of Smederevo.... Would we be working despite pollution, against ourselves and our
children?” the plant’s manager for environmental protection, Ljubica Drake, asked in a statement. Drake says that the soaring cancer rates can be a result of NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 during a war in Kosovo. Nikola Krstic, the head of Tvrdjava, an environmental group whose name means The Fort, noted that an analysis of the red dust in September showed high concentration of heavy metals. “The air in the town is far below European standards for 120 days per year,” he said. “Red dust is greasy, it sticks to lungs, makes breathing difficult.” China has invested billions of euros in Serbia, which is a candidate to join the EU but has an uneasy relationship with the West more than two decades after the wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia, and has pursued close ties with Beijing. Authorities in Serbia say that they are willing to pressure China to comply with pollution standards. For now, residents of Radinac are waiting with bated breath for their town to be cleaned up so they can breathe freely again.
Thomas Nides New U.S. Amb. to Israel
The U.S. Senate on Wednesday confirmed Thomas Nides as U.S. President Joe Biden’s ambassador to Israel. Nides is a former deputy assistant secretary of state and a longtime Democrat. He was confirmed in a voice vote on the Senate floor, after the Republicans lifted their objections to the nomination. It was not immediately clear what had caused the Republicans to remove their objections.
