‘Tragic childhood’: Gaza children vaccinated against polio, war continues
Deir el-Balah, Gaza – Maha Abu Shamas, 27, has been getting her four children, all under the age of 10, ready to get their polio vaccines since the early hours of the morning. Maha, a mother of five, has been living in a classroom in Deir el-Balah’s central Gaza Strip since the family was displaced from Beit Hanoon in the north last November. “When I heard about the threat of polio spreading, I was terrified for my children. When I learned of a confirmed case of paralysis, I felt like my world had collapsed,” said Maha, holding her nine-month-old boy inside the busy paediatric ward of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, the last functioning medical facility in Deir el-Balah. Gaza’s Ministry of Health last month confirmed the first case of polio – a 10-month-old boy, now paralysed in the leg – in the enclave after 25 years, following the detection of poliovirus in wastewater. The United Nations, along with Gaza health authorities, has begun a vaccination campaign to protect children against polio, which can cause irreversible paralysis of the limbs or even death. About 640,000 children under 10 years old will receive oral drops of the vaccine to protect against the virus which primarily affects children under the age of five, is highly contagious and has no cure. The threat of polio has only compounded Maha’s worries. Displaced parents like her already contend with harsh, unsanitary conditions at shelters like the school where Maha and her children live, and in Gaza’s tent camps, as they try to survive Israel’s war on Gaza which has killed more than 40,700 Palestinians. “The lack of hygiene is the main feature due to overcrowding, a collapsed infrastructure and a catastrophic health situation,” she explains. “The school I live in is full of pools of sewage and wastewater,” Maha adds. “I can’t maintain my children’s cleanliness or health in these conditions.” In addition to taking her children to Al-Aqsa Hospital to be vaccinated, Maha had to bring her youngest child to the paediatric ward after three days of having a high fever and vomiting. “This is how most of my days pass in the war – rushing my sick children to the hospital for treatment due to the spread of diseases, if it’s available,” she says. “If this is how we struggle with minor illnesses like stomach flu, how can we fight serious diseases like polio?” Maha’s life took a devastating turn last month when her husband was killed in an Israeli air strike near their shelter. “Now, I’m the sole caregiver for five children. It’s overwhelming, but like thousands of mothers in Gaza, I have no choice but to push forward.” While she welcomes the polio vaccination drive, she points out that this addresses just one threat posed by the dire living conditions. “Malnutrition, hepatitis, skin diseases, exhaustion – our children face a range of threats. The real solution lies in improving living conditions and ending the war,” she says. “We’ve endured enough.” Hanin Abdullah lives in a crowded classroom with her husband and children. She says many parents worry about the UN vaccination drive because the war has eroded their trust in the international community [Abdelhakim Abu Riash/Al Jazeera] For 31-year-old Hanin Abdullah, the decision to vaccinate her children against polio was fraught with hesitation. Hanin, a mother of three young children, was displaced with her family from Jabalia in northern Gaza, and they now share a cramped space with 25 members of her family. “In the same classroom, about 40 others are packed in,” she says, speaking at Al-Aqsa Hospital, describing her situation as tragic. The college where she lives is crowded, sewage pools throughout and there are long queues for the toilets. The outside walls are black from the wood fires used for cooking. She says she no longer trusts any action undertaken by international organisations when it comes to the health of children in Gaza. “Our children are being killed daily by bombs and missiles, even in supposedly safe areas. Some are decapitated,” she says bitterly. “This madness is still ongoing and yet, they’re talking about fears of polio only?” Like many displaced families in her shelter, Hanin initially resisted vaccinating her children. “People here have lost faith in anything global or Western,” she explains. “Some displaced people around believe conspiracy theories that the vaccines contain substances planted by Israel and the US to weaken our children.” Despite her doubts, she ultimately felt she couldn’t risk her children’s health, especially after hearing about a confirmed polio case in Gaza, so she brought them to the hospital. “I understand the despair families feel living under war conditions. We are like the living dead, trapped in unbearable conditions,” she says, holding her baby boy. “I gave birth to my child last November and since then he has been living a tragic childhood in the shelter,” she says, frustrated. “He has no proper nutrition, no clothes, no toys. He suffers from skin rashes and constant fatigue.” For Hanin, the fight against polio is just one small part of a larger struggle. “Protecting our children from polio is important, but the real fight is against the living conditions imposed by war. These conditions are destroying their mental and psychological health and even their future,” she argues. “What is the point of vaccinating children and protecting them from disease, while the war that kills them every day continues? This is nonsense.” Adblock test (Why?)
Virus hunters: The scientists tracking deadly diseases in tough conditions
It was September 2017 at a teaching hospital in Nigeria’s southern state of Bayelsa. An 11-year-old boy came into the clinic with a fever, rash and lesions on his body. Infectious disease scientist and Chief Medical Director Dimie Ogoina examined him. At first, doctors thought it could be chickenpox, but after hearing the boy had previously had the illness, they suspected it must be something more serious. Upon further examination, Ogoina concluded that it was likely monkeypox, a highly infectious disease that causes a skin rash, mucosal lesions and other symptoms the boy was experiencing. It was a stunning finding. The last case of monkeypox – now called mpox – detected in Nigeria was nearly 40 years earlier. And even then, there were only two cases ever recorded. The country was not prepared for it. At that point, Ogoina couldn’t be certain of the diagnosis, though. He first had to notify the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, which needed to take a sample and then send it to the Institut Pasteur in Dakar, Senegal, for testing. The process took days, but when the results came in, it was as Ogoina had suspected. As alarm bells rang through Nigeria, more suspected cases started to stream into his hospital. Every one had to be tested and confirmed from Dakar. Fear, stigma and speculation grew and were palpable inside the hospital. They were aided by fake theories spreading in the media about “another Ebola” – the haemorrhagic viral disease that hit the country just three years before. The 11-year-old, on returning home healthy again, was taunted by neighbours as “monkey boy”. Other misconceptions also emerged: One man who’d been traced from an infected female sexual partner refused to report to a hospital, insisting his sickness was a “spiritual attack” and would be cured as such. Some patients could not bear the fear and waiting. “We lost [a] patient to suicide – she died even before the results came out,” said Ogoina, who is still on the front lines of detecting and treating mpox cases, seven years since he sounded that first alarm. “We had challenges telling the family, and we had to use some diplomacy to resolve that problem. Sometimes outbreaks are not just medical challenges. They are social challenges as well,” he told Al Jazeera. A health official leaves a room in which a probable case of mpox is being treated in Tshopo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, during the 2022 outbreak [File: Arlette Bashizi/Reuters] Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared mpox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) – its highest alert level. Ogoina sits on the global expert panel that prompted the WHO to issue the declaration. It’s the second time in two years that the mpox virus is on the move. This time, a new, faster-spreading variant is flitting across continents and sparking concerns of another serious epidemic. Cases in the new outbreak have been recorded in about 15 countries in East and West Africa, Asia and Europe. This follows dozens of countries reporting cases in a previous outbreak that started in 2022. The origins and history of mpox go back decades. It was first discovered in Denmark in 1958 in monkeys that were kept for research. The first case in humans was detected in 1978 in a nine-month-old baby in the DRC. After that, the disease steadily emerged in West and Central Africa, spreading in two distinct strains, clade 1 and clade 2. Since 2005, cases have been reported in the DRC, usually flaring in remote areas and then petering out. But since 2017, when mpox re-emerged in Nigeria, it has spread among people and travellers in the region. New medical findings As the 2017 Nigerian outbreak grew, Ogoina’s hospital was forced to improvise. The country did not have the ability to test for the disease. At the same time, there were also no isolation centres, so his team hastily turned one ward into a cordoned-off area for both male and female patients. Soon, one of the doctors caught the disease. Added to the physical challenges and limitations, Ogoina had other headaches as well. Unlike past outbreaks of the disease that were recorded in the DRC, patients were presenting with rashes and lesions on their genitals – areas that most people find sensitive to report in a hospital. Some were instead visiting small medicine kiosks that dot Nigeria so they could treat themselves, meaning more cases were likely being transmitted under the radar. It is now known that mpox spreads by close contact and skin-to-skin touch with someone who has the disease – including through kissing and sex. But when the first cases were discovered in the 1970s, mpox was thought to be contracted from animals and believed to be more dangerous and common in children. People wait at an mpox treatment site in Munigi, DRC, in August 2024 [Moses Sawasawa/AP] In 2017, Ogoina noticed that a different population appeared to be most affected. “I was like, ‘Why are we having young men between 30 and 35?’ I’ve read the literature, and it’s most common among children. … And why are they having genital ulcers?” he wondered. Many of the patients were also HIV-positive. Ogoina suspected sexual transmission, but this had never been documented before. “I wanted to explore that. I remember even developing a questionnaire to get their sexual history, but people thought I was mad. But I said, ‘This is a new type of mpox.’” Ogoina put his findings in research papers but was met with harsh pushback. One review of his work read: “It is quite reckless to speculate [about] possible sexual transmission as no epidemiological data are available in the literature.” It was during the 2022-2023 global outbreak that scientists found evidence that some variants of mpox were indeed sexually transmittable. Doctors found most cases at that time did not present in children as in the past, but largely in groups of men who have sex with
Corruption pushing African youth to emigrate: Poll
North America is their top destination, followed by the UK, France, Germany and Spain in Western Europe. Nearly 60 percent of young Africans want to leave their countries because their governments are not reining in corruption, according to a new poll of youth across 16 African nations. They cited corruption as the biggest obstacle to progress, according to the 2024 African Youth Survey published on Tuesday. The poll commissioned by the Johannesburg-based Ichikowitz Family Foundation surveyed 5,604 people between the ages of 18 and 24 in Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania and Zambia. Eighty-three percent of them said they are concerned about corruption at home, and 62 percent believe the government is failing to address it. The poll showed nearly 58 percent of young people saying they are “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to consider emigrating to another country in the next three years. “Concern is widespread across different spheres, including national and local governments, businesses, and police forces,” said the survey, conducted via face-to-face interviews in January and February. “They want tougher sanctions against corrupt politicians, including banning them from standing for office,” the foundation said. More than half, or 55 percent, of those polled said Africa was headed in the “wrong direction”, although there was a modest rise to 37 percent in “Afro-optimism” from the 2022 survey. Young Africans looking to emigrate favoured North America as their top destination, followed by Western Europe, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Spain. Foreign influence In addition to corruption at home, 72 percent of those polled also worried about the negative effect of foreign influence. “They are concerned about their countries being exploited by foreign companies especially their natural mineral wealth being mined and exported without any further benefit to the people,” said the foundation. Nevertheless, 82 percent had positive views about the influence of China, whose Belt and Road Initiative has spawned massive infrastructure projects across the continent. Members of the Chinese honour guard walk past as Mali’s interim President Assimi Goita arrives in Beijing for the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), on September 1 [Ken Ishii/Pool via Reuters] Seventy-nine percent viewed the influence of the United States positively, with 41 percent saying it provides “important loans and economic support”. Most said a Donald Trump victory in the US presidential election in November would be a far worse outcome for Africa than a win by Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. Perceptions of Russian influence increased, notably in Malawi and South Africa, with more than half of those with a positive view of Russia citing its provision of grain and fertiliser. However, a significant number of youths – 30 percent – view Russian influence negatively, mostly due to “detrimental impacts on African countries caused by Russia’s engagement in conflicts”, said the survey. Africa is home to nearly 420 million youth aged 15-35, one-third of whom are unemployed, the African Development Bank says. It has the world’s youngest and fastest-growing population, with it expected to double to more than 830 million by 2050. Adblock test (Why?)
Video: Red Poncho protesters in Bolivia clash with police
NewsFeed Members of Bolivian social movement the Red Ponchos broke through a line of police in riot gear who responded with tear gas and rubber-coated bullets, during protests over the state of the country’s economy. Published On 3 Sep 20243 Sep 2024 Adblock test (Why?)
US says it seizes Venezuela leader Maduro’s plane, citing sanctions breach
Justice Department says $13m aircraft bought through shell company, ‘smuggled’ out of US for Maduro’s use. United States authorities say they have seized a $13m aircraft allegedly bought for Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in violation of sanctions. The Dassault Falcon 900EX was seized in the Dominican Republic on Monday and has been brought to the US state of Florida, according to the US Department of Justice. Maduro was not on board. The seizure comes as the US has increased pressure on Maduro’s government after contested elections in July. In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the aircraft had been “illegally purchased … through a shell company and smuggled out” of the US. Such a transaction would violate sanctions imposed by Washington in 2019 that prohibit US citizens from engaging in sales to individuals acting indirectly or directly on behalf of Maduro’s government. “The department will continue to pursue those who violate our sanctions and export controls to prevent them from using American resources to undermine the national security of the United States,” Garland said in a statement. Matthew Axelrod, the Department of Commerce’s assistant secretary for export enforcement, added: “It doesn’t matter how fancy the private jet or how powerful the officials – we will work relentlessly with our partners here and across the globe to identify and return any aircraft illegally smuggled outside of the United States.” Authorities said the aircraft was purchased from a Florida-based company in late 2022 and early 2023 by a Caribbean-based shell company to evade the sanctions. They said the plane has “flown almost exclusively” to and from a military base in Venezuela and has been used to transport Maduro on foreign visits. Venezuela’s government, in a statement, decried the move as “a repeated criminal practice that cannot be described as anything other than piracy”. Contested elections The US has imposed sanctions on Venezuelan individuals and entities since 2005, but the administration of former President Donald Trump vastly expanded the programme in an effort to destabilise Maduro, who replaced socialist President Hugo Chavez when he died in 2013. The sanctions as well as economic mismanagement from the government have been blamed for worsening the country’s overlapping economic and humanitarian crises while fuelling mass migration from the Latin American country. US President Joe Biden’s administration had relaxed some sanctions to try to motivate Maduro to hold free and fair elections this year. However, many of those sanctions were soon reimposed after repeated allegations of violations. Maduro later claimed victory in the July 28 election despite opposition allegations of widespread fraud. Regional leaders and organisations have raised doubts over the outcome while the European Union has rejected the results. Washington has taken a step further, recognising opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as the victor. At least 27 people have been killed and 192 have been wounded as weeks of protests have racked the country. Speaking to reporters on background on Monday, a White House National Security Council spokesperson directly connected the plane’s seizure to the election. “Maduro and his representatives have tampered with the results of the July 28 presidential election, falsely claimed victory and carried out widespread repression to maintain power by force,” the spokesperson said. The seizure of the plane “is an important step to ensure that Maduro continues to feel the consequences from his misgovernance of Venezuela”, the spokesperson added. Maduro has repeatedly decried the role of the US in Venezuela and, after the elections, said he would call for a “new revolution” if forced to do so by “North American imperialism and fascist criminals”. Adblock test (Why?)
Hamas says Gaza captives will return ‘in coffins’ if Israel continues raids
Group’s armed wing Qassam Brigades issues statement, two days after bodies of six captives are recovered from a Gaza tunnel by Israeli forces. The armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas says captives held in Gaza would return to Israel “in coffins” if Israeli military pressure continues, warning that “new instructions” had been given to its fighters guarding the captives in case Israeli troops approach. “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s insistence on freeing the captives through military pressure instead of reaching a deal means they will go back to their families in coffins. Their families have to choose between receiving them dead or alive,” Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Qassam Brigades, said in a statement on Monday, two days after the bodies of six captives were recovered by Israel. “Netanyahu and the army are fully responsible for the death of the captives after they intentionally hindered any prisoners’ exchange deal,” it said. The statement from the Qassam Brigades came shortly after Netanyahu said the six captives whose bodies were recovered from a tunnel in southern Gaza’s Rafah area had been “executed” by Hamas. “I ask for your forgiveness for not bringing them back alive,” Netanyahu said during a televised news conference earlier on Monday as protests over the deaths continued for a second day in Israel. “We were close, but we didn’t succeed. Hamas will pay a very heavy price for this,” he added. Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Risheq said the six captives were killed in Israeli air strikes. Families and supporters of Israeli captives held by Hamas in Gaza since October 7 hold a rally calling for their release in Tel Aviv on September 2, 2024 [Jack Guez/AFP] Meanwhile, protests in Israel over the deaths of the captives continued with angry demonstrators saying they could have been returned alive if Netanyahu’s government had signed a ceasefire with Hamas. However, political analyst Akiva Eldar told Al Jazeera that a nationwide strike in Israel on Monday and rising public anger will not make a real difference to end the war in Gaza and free the captives. “It seems that for Netanyahu, the alternative – which is his personal, political and personal life – is more important than the lives of the Israeli captives,” Eldar said, adding that despite a large number of protesters, “the Israeli right and radical right” who support the government “have the upper hand”. “The government and the prime minister are now on the defensive,” Ori Goldberg, an expert on Israeli politics, told Al Jazeera. “This is about momentum now.” Meanwhile, US President Joe Biden also said Netanyahu was not doing enough to secure a deal for the release of the captives. Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, Biden was asked whether he thought Netanyahu was doing enough to reach a deal. Biden said, “No.” He did not elaborate. Months of stop-start negotiations mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt have so far failed to reach an accord on a Gaza ceasefire proposal laid out by Biden in May. Hamas wants an agreement to end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza while Netanyahu says the war can only end once Hamas is defeated. Alon Pinkas, a former Israeli ambassador and government adviser, told Al Jazeera that it is Netanyahu who “absolutely has no interest in a hostage deal or ceasefire”. “Those who are shocked and devastated and angered about what happened should not be surprised because this is exactly what the [Israeli] defence minister [Yoav Gallant] and all of us were warning would happen,” Pinkas said. “His [Netanyahu’s] and only his reluctance to engage in a deal is what made all this happen.” Adblock test (Why?)
Palestinian dies an hour after Israel arrests him from occupied West Bank
The 58-year-old man’s body is handed over to the Palestine Red Crescent Society amid intensified Israeli attacks on the Palestinian territory. Israeli troops have handed to the Palestinian health authorities the body of a Palestinian man arrested about an hour earlier in the occupied West Bank. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said on Monday that it had received the body of 58-year-old Ayman Rajeh Abed, who belonged to Kafr Dan village outside Jenin, shortly after he was arrested at dawn on Monday. The director of the Jenin Government Hospital said the body bore signs of beatings and torture. The Israeli military said Abed was detained during “counterterrorism” operations and experienced a “cardiac event” on arrival at a detention facility. He was given initial treatment by medical staff from the military before being transferred to the hospital in Jenin. “[Israel’s army] is aware of reports that the suspect died during his evacuation by the Red Crescent,” the military said in a statement, adding that details of the incident were under review. Israeli military vehicles are stationed along a street as a plume of smoke rises during an ongoing raid in the occupied West Bank’s Jenin refugee camp on September 1, 2024 [Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP] The incident came as the Israeli forces expanded their operations in the flashpoint city of Jenin and the surrounding areas for a sixth day. Bulldozers continued to dig up streets and major thoroughfares to find roadside bombs on Monday. Israel launched the operation, one of the largest in months, last Wednesday, saying Iranian-backed fighter groups were planning to attack civilian targets. Hundreds of Israeli troops backed by drones and helicopters have taken part in the operation, which has caused extensive damage to houses and infrastructure in Jenin and the densely-packed refugee camp adjacent to the city. ‘Collective punishment’ Al Jazeera’s Nida Ibrahim, reporting from Kafr Dan, said the Palestinians in Jenin kept repeating that what has been happening over the past six days is “collective punishment”. “They say Israel wants to show that Palestinians would pay a heavy price for supporting armed fighters – those who pick up arms and try to combat Israeli forces while they are raiding Palestinian homes, refugee camps and cities,” she said. At least 29 Palestinians have been killed in less than a week, with Israel claiming they were members of armed factions including Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Another 121 people have been wounded, according to Palestinian health authorities. Late on Sunday, a man was killed in the west of Jenin city. On Monday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society said another man was hit in the chest by gunfire in Qabatiya near Jenin. His condition was described as serious. Adblock test (Why?)
Russia launches barrage of drones and missiles at Kyiv
Russia launched a barrage of drones and cruise and ballistic missiles at Kyiv, as well as other cities across the country. A series of explosions rocked the Ukrainian capital in the early hours of Monday, sending residents into bomb shelters, said Ukraine’s air force. Air strikes also targeted Kharkiv and other cities. Kyiv’s Mayor Vitali Klitschko said emergency services were called to the Holosiivskyi and Solomianskyi districts of Kyiv. One person was reportedly injured by falling debris in Shevchenkivskyi district. Serhiy Popko, head of Kyiv’s city military administration, said more than 10 cruise missiles, about 10 ballistic missiles and a drone fired at the Ukrainian capital and its suburbs were destroyed by Ukraine’s air defences. Ukrainian forces said that overall they destroyed 22 out of 35 missiles and 20 out of 23 attack drones over the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Poltava, Mykolaiv and Zaporizhzhia regions. Oleh Syniehubov, head of the Kharkiv region, confirmed an early morning strike on the Industrialnyi district. The barrage comes a day after Russia’s military reported intercepting and destroying 158 Ukrainian drones targeting multiple Russian regions in one of the biggest Ukrainian attacks of the war that has raged for more than two years. Adblock test (Why?)
Israelis erupt in protest to demand Gaza ceasefire
Tens of thousands of grieving and angry Israelis have surged into the streets after six captives were found dead in Gaza. Chanting “Now! Now!”, the crowds demanded on Sunday night that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas to bring the remaining captives home. The mass outpouring of anger appeared to be the largest such demonstration in 11 months of war. Protesters said it felt like a possible turning point, although the country remains deeply divided. Israel’s largest trade union, Histadrut, sought to raise the pressure further as it called a general strike for Monday. It aims to shut down or disrupt the main sectors of the economy, including banking, healthcare and the country’s main airport. Ceasefire negotiations have dragged on for months. Many blame Netanyahu for failing to reach a deal, which opinion polls show a majority of Israelis favour. Three of the six captives who were found dead — including an Israeli American — were reportedly scheduled to be released in the first phase of a proposed ceasefire deal that was discussed in July. This fuelled fury and frustration among the protesters. The military said all six captives were killed shortly before Israeli forces reached. Netanyahu blamed Hamas for the stalled negotiations. “Whoever murders hostages doesn’t want a deal,” he said. Hamas has offered to release the captives in return for an end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including high-profile members of Gaza’s armed groups. Top security officials say the intense pressure on Hamas has created favourable conditions for a ceasefire deal. The army, noting the difficulty of rescue operations, has acknowledged that a deal is the only way to bring home large numbers of captives safely. Adblock test (Why?)
Ex-daycare worker in Australia admits sexually abusing dozens of girls
Ashley Paul Griffith pleads guilty to 307 offences against some 60 children who were in his care. A former childcare worker in Australia has admitted to sexually abusing dozens of girls in one of the worst paedophile cases in the country’s history. Ashley Paul Griffith on Monday pleaded guilty to 307 charges involving children in his care, including 28 counts of rape, 90 counts of indecent treatment and 67 counts of making child exploitation material. The offences were carried out against some 60 children, many of them under 12, at childcare centres in Australia and Italy over a span of more than 19 years. The judge’s associate at the District Court in Brisbane took more than two hours to read out the charges against Griffith, 46, who appeared emotionless as he pleaded guilty to every charge, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported. Griffith was arrested in 2022 and originally charged with several child exploitation material offences. Prosecutors later charged the Gold Coast, Queensland man with more than 1,600 offences against 91 girls, but most of those charges were dropped before Monday’s hearing. New South Wales state police Assistant Commissioner Michael Fitzgerald last year described the case as “one of the most horrific cases of alleged child abuse our detectives have seen”. Police said they had been searching for Griffith since discovering a collection of child exploitation images and videos circulating on the dark web in 2014. Griffith, who is due to be sentenced at a later date, did not seek bail and was returned to custody after his arraignment. Adblock test (Why?)