a former us diplomat. he says, this is the starkest language abbie hoffman has used. yet he does have a military background. if you look at his nobel prize speech from some years ago, he used a lot of war imagery to talk about the lessons learned about the hell of war. but here we are, you know, almost full circle with the nobel peace prize winner. using the most bellicose language to try to ramp up the stakes ahead of the defense. not only of e t o p life and death, you know, he's basically, he's willing to die for the cause, which is the type of stark language we haven't even seen from him until now. austria has become the 1st country in western europe to reimpose, a national corona, virus. lockdown infections surging there and neighboring countries. japanese health minister predicts people will either be vaccinated, recover or die by the end of winter. president, a bell roof to the confrontation with poland over the border crisis could lead to war. alexander lucas shack is calling on the you to take in 2000 stranded refugees . and michael's closing being in arguments have been made in the us state of georgia in the armored aubrey murder trial. 3 white men are accused of killing the black man. last year, 25 year old was shot dead while jogging after being chased by the men in pickup trucks. police in the u. s. state of walker. sho, in wisconsin, have arrested a man who drove a car into a christmas parade on sunday, killing at least 5 people. 39 year old dow brooks will be charged with intentional homicide. more than 40 people including children were injured in the incident. those are the headlines were back in half an hour right now. it's felt like frank assessments this crisis continue to weaken a luca shanker, even though perhaps he believes in the beginning that it was informed opinions like think connotations, will now be under incredible pressure from the young people. that is one of the most hopeful things come out of this critical debate. do you think that age should be facilitated? not sure. okay, it's a great, it's a really simple question. let's get a child. once inside story on al jazeera, me, everybody was family. and now everybody's day it that i grew up with their families, their parents are day, it is hot breaking because i know the live that was in these walls, you know, and now there's no live in the wall. andre west grew up in this house in the 5th wars, historically black neighborhood and east houston. for years residence here suspected that the number of cancer cases was unusually high, is say it, this is deb that lead to me now. where it used to be, we were so happy running around the your playing ball kickball riding in the little red wagon. we was happy you. you've got to find your own weight, you know? because everybody's got home in december 2019. the worst fears were confirmed. the cancer cluster was discovered in their community. the state concluded that the 5th ward, the nearby neighborhood called cashmere gardens, at higher than expected roots of certain cancers. but they didn't explain what it is meant for dante. what are you? we have been suffering. we have lost loved ones, we have lost parents, we have when i was free and we have wealth allowed. some residents here blame the cancers on decades of possible exposure to korea, so a likely human carcinogen. a nearby real yard use the chemical mixture to preserve wood for almost 75 years. not want to know. is it a good i want to know? do i come back to now? don't make the good thing. i have. maybe we need to know what is they print when, when a thing fault loans travels to houston, texas to follow communities search for answers and justice. real bourbon i was diagnosed with the suffered your cancer in may of 2018 benita. check. from your instructor. he said 9 chemotherapy treatments and reconstructive surgery on his esophagus. how would you describe because payment is in, is for sharing. that's all i can say and where you sit there and you hear a person say come quick. i feel like i'll, i'm gonna die. i need you here with me that pretty big lump in your throat, and they're gonna kill changes to give you that power. now, along with what you have, he's lived in cashmere garden since he was a child. like i say he was a police officer, so he still has that spunk in him. he just wants to be able to get back to his normal life. is hard to see him like bear. he just don't look like himself and yet i just thought i'd try to make sure i see the man that i marry the person that i know. he wouldn't have been man. he had some weight on him. that was before the diagnosis. last lower. you would think he was 70 years old on a pitcher for he's no longer default. you can see his rios, in other words, right? you know, his debt had lung cancer, his cousin that from lung cancer, his uncle's head, throat cancer in oliver lived right there. always at his mom's house right there on lavender street for years residence per should the state to look into why so many people in the community had cancer in 2019 the texas public health department found elevated rates of a soft reduced broncos larynx and lun transfers. in cashmere gardens and the 5th ward, a couple nights ago when i got in from the hospital and i started counting the houses that the people just on my block that have cancer. i had, hey, at cancer, you know, 8 people in one block. and you know, including those that have died from cancer, you know, so yeah, something is definitely wrong. how many were you in this house? 8 of us, one, i would my mom, it was an i andre west grew up with 7 brothers and sisters on lavender street in the 5th ward. yeah. this was same street where shiranda and oriole live. wonderful memories here. lot of good memories here. lot of good people in the community, a lot of love in the community. lot of family. you know, family you. everybody was family. bunch of kids, you could hear kids laugh and ron, and playing on the bicycles in the wagons, just on it get bad out. everybody's door get in thick. this is my sister, cynthia george de one. that's the thief with the lung cancer. this is carolyn horn, cynthia, a year port 2 years and boy. and she passed away when lung cancer, also in 2015, under his eldest sister, cynthia died from lung cancer at 63 years old. 2 years later, her sister carol and also passed away from lung cancer. my sister's wasn't smokers and for them to get lung cancer. they was a smoker. my sister cynthia, she retired from her job to find out the fall every year that she had kids hard work. mother figure for us at the my mother passed my sister carolyn, which was next the next oldest to cynthia. very hard work, very loving mother and grandmother. andries family moved to the 5th ward in 1963. her child at home is a few 100 feet from a real yard or by railroad shine at union pacific from 1911 until nights and 84 railroad ties and telephone poles were preserved is increased soon. chris, it is a mixture of hundreds of chemicals. many of them, toxic fumes, can irritate the skin and eyes make breathing difficult. this smell was real strong, irritated, throw burned your eyes, smell like talk. and you definitely had to go inside, but going is i didn't help it. we live in poverty stricken neighbourhood, you know, we don't have ac conditions. we have the little ceiling, fans them up in the attic, that blue to cool air down into the house. me gas mental air could hardly breathe. like i said, i had balls to come up and my body rushes. i have the marks from scratch and why do you think your family has been so affected by cancer? because of the kiss off because of the crystal? yes, because of it, there's nothing else. there's nothing else if, if the crystal is the rail york, the really hard stop treating wood with creosote in 1984. but now the ground water under more than $100.00 properties near the site is contaminated with chemicals found in korea. so this is the actual site, but these are the 110 properties that have grown contamination underneath dr. lauren hopkins that a community survey in january 2020, to learn more about the people within the cancer cluster. of the 30 household, your team surveyed, 43 percent reported the cancer diagnosis. the city average 6 percent were able determine precisely where the chancellors in the cluster located. we know which census tracks are elevated and the census tracks that are elevated out of the 10 are surrounding the union pacific railroad sites. do you think research contamination has anything to do with this cancer cluster? i don't know what is causing the cancer's. we do know that those, those are the kinds of cancers you would expect with exposure to those chemicals. on the little i think because of all the chemicals that he's been living around, being a little boy growing up, living around, railroad tracks, the air, the pollutants, the water and stuff, all that had a lot to do with this cancer. how does it feel now, knowing that you spend a lot of your life growing up in the area where you're more likely to get cancer? terrified, terrified because no one what i know now. and if my mother would have known, she probably wouldn't never bought ecier to live. sandra edwards grew up on lavender street next door to andre. she's part of a group called impact formed in 2016 to pressure the state to study the cancer rates in the community. i feel good to hear, man, it's cold. i've done. my impact is also demanding that union pacific, which owns the real yard address, the pollution in the neighborhoods campus. if, if you just, you're really in a band that you can come out of, i'm not going to, well, we stated lose alarm in san jude. that people don't lose what they stand up to you . i am ready to fight and i am going to fight you to go underground to i'm day and yeah, better hope i don't that no time union pacific made nearly 6000000000 dollars in profits 2019 it's one of the biggest railroad companies in the world decrease all thing they could have straight down my street across that track, straight a he was where the paid thing was, where they cookie. so we know when a ryan is out in our neighborhood, is, is, is, is everywhere. in january 2020 sandra spoke at the 1st public meeting about the cancer cluster. since the study was released it was organized by congress woman, sheila jackson, lee grass, the state to study the cancer routes and cashmere gardens of the 5th ward, the early 20. 19. i don't want to be full of badness, but i do want to say that this is serious. some way i know that we now have in a big baggy in some way, lough, someone or someone gas leak or something, but we have all been affected in some way. 3 on other bodies and every now stick together, we are going, i gotta make why everybody is here. well intentioned, to help find out the answer. we've been waiting a long time nationally renowned environmental activist erin brockovich was also there to support the community. so tonight, where everyone is here, could i hear from you, are you frustrated? are you getting answer? who in this room has cancer? or knows of someone that lives here that have cancer? is it normal? i don't know what else we have to do here and and they need to know that the community wants union pacific to clean the contaminated groundwater clinical and compensate people for the pollution in the neighborhood. i borrow, i was diagnosed with cancer and 2017. i've been treated i'm in remission. i'll know if there's some kind of funding to help me move. i'm on the loan to love to fade away from them. he's fun to help us help us. we are sitting on a tie up. a number, you know, i got a guy with the union. pacific representative was at the town hall with left before we could ask or any questions. hey, award. it's jason mark. log with paula. so we got on the phone and we've just been to some of the streets near the site. most of the houses are vacant, just a handful of people still there. you know, if they were talking to, would you tell them it's still safe to live in these homes? a water neighbor. experts say that once creosote, 16th into the earth, it's extremely difficult to take out. union assistant is removing only what's closest to the surface, but leaving the rest behind. one of the things that union pacific had proposed for the korea. so basically just wait and see, let mother nature do her thing. rodrigo can to the environmental lawyer who's advising impact the chemicals and it can actually seep up through the soil and they can come into the atmosphere. and if there's someone living above or recreating above or simply walking on their property, they may be breathing in those vapors. we know this is how the chemicals increase or behave and they haven't done the testing. so to see whether or not that that mechanism is taking place. according to state records, regulators have known about the contaminated groundwater since at least the 1980s the residents we spoke with. so they didn't hear about the contamination until decades later. the state environmental agency in charge of overseeing the site in the state health department both declined or interview requests even though you were on a railroad track out in the fall pace. it was so pace. is it so much as i said, my father get sick at 80 something but can't from own counseling. and 2 months later he was taking this. it made me so angry for what the everybody on land story is. i know 5 or 6 family watch. just goal is no way you don't know the thief. you can that made me believe you don't know that you were killing people. they looked at it is what public community didn't care. they just safely git, they'll never bow across the united states. communities of color are more likely to breathe polluted air than white woods and black residents in particular are the most likely to live near polluting industries and toxic sites. why is it the continued sites are disproportionately founder, communities of color, the historical institutional racism that has gone on in this country that has led to sort of the limiting of where black and brown people can buy homes and live. steven lester, is a toxicologist with nearly 40 years of experience helping people in contaminated communities find answers. it's probably no coincidence that many of these communities, many of these cancer clusters that we see, many of the industrial clusters that exist in this country today happened to be around. and in the midst of communities of color, we track down some of the men who used to work in the chris and facility at that real yard during the 1960 seventy's and eighty's. how many of you have health problems that you think were caused by korea? so i had it took a tumor, you long lung cancer. i'll find out on the 17 of this month. well i have a prostrate cancer. my. so what was it like working there? terrible smell. it smells we get in this man. we go back home with chris. oh, they're strong. they would burn your skin, you know, in the summer time you know. yeah, real burn on. if it hit your skin, it would mix it, it would make where the water dripping water. it would mixing without i've got to go, but of water fountain hindering the water. if in the water it was real. don't you know the ground when it would rain? you know, the ground knew it would bubble, you know, just like it was. i don't know what we never didn't know what it was. it was like gas, you know, it just, bob all over the yard. you know where chris was running down side of the yard for one or 2 the other into the railroad tracks and into a neighborhood back there where the, where the houses were. did anyone ever complain and what happened if you did? no, i did. i didn't know all we didn't do that. we was on the breathing this in it. no, no, nothing. no. we never know protective gear. no i also no, no, no because we use the new year. i guess we just had to work in order to support our family. and so they didn't say nothing, and i guess we didn't even actually we didn't know we didn't actually know question, but you know, how many people here think the cancer cluster in this community was caused by chris of contamination? a 100 dual react when you learned about the cancer cluster you it lives when you were you thinking after there was enough error that got out there, they added up say the government answers, they can't prove what caused the hire marina cancer. when you do next, it's no way to solve neighborhood for this and what, nothing else, nothing but the carissa, me i have they come back to say this, not that you're lying and you're not gonna tell my people there and they got on. i believe you the state of texas decided not to do an epidemiological study, but could explain what's causing the higher cancer. it's saying it wasn't feasible . well, the people in the 5th ward, cashmere gardens ever find the answers they're looking for. there is no clear way to distinguish what's causing without investing a great deal of money and government stop to it. and then of course you have the corporate side of it who's, who's putting pressure on government to say, well, if i should leisure certain that these chemicals are, these alpha comes related to this chemical minuchi ticket. so it sounds like people are on their own. yes. unfortunately, people are on their own. and until there's a change in this country until people stand up and say enough, till people get involved and force government to address these questions, people are going to stay on hulu . i don't know who i am with we want them to put account that we want them to make them me. my object in my goal is to get a cancelled clinic put in the field more. these people were affected by them. they brought the council to them, they didn't go out and kitch these, they'd an expertise is only right for you to bring a signal to them for them to get hill. no thought it is right. yeah. because i'm proud of it. i yeah, yeah. you know, i didn't gone on so long gone on to low. so what we're gonna do is, so your empathy with how we are marilyn i live in this mic. i don't live in this area anymore. when i came back to fight, because this is a part of my hobble beginning, and you never should forget, jehovah, beginning and nestled mom. he's always say when you can't go nowhere, you can always go home. but definitely home over there any more. just like it's like a dead zone over there is a dead zone over there. and it's just, it breaks my heart. but it makes me angry. it's time for them to make it right. make it right. what. what are people in phil warden cast? go on yoga harbor and all these different places. it's time for them to shut up and put up. is the company doing enough to address your concerns? day? not doing anything, sir. they got a hot blood. they have a hotline, they don't you much have a nerve compassion to talk one on one with the people they give us a hotline union pacific didn't agree to our request for a non camera interview. instead, they sent a written statement saying important quote, decades of testing, sure, there is no crease or pathway to reach property owners and recent health studies lack scientific testing needed to make any firm conclusions about the cause of their medical conditions. once everything comes out in korea, so is the reason behind it. then they can see the told that it's taken on me, if in war so especially my husband and how, you know, loss of income, increased medical bills, all the pain and suffering, you know, ah, plans that we had to do, things are just on hold right now. are you optimistic that you ever get answers about what's causing thinking maybe once we start getting the ball rolling then yes, our eventually i'll get some answers in our push until i get answers 2 weeks after we met shronda and her husband oriel died from complications related to cancer, he was 55 years old after royal died, shronda became one of more than a 1000 other residents from cashmere gardens, in the support filed lawsuit against you to pacific. when we got together and there's something in our cover for year and it was a long i'm a lot, i'm gonna get, i'm gonna get what do you feel when you look out across this really are a lot of her pain, a lot of down to the community is since on calls. you know, we matter. we matter. i, me, i ah, this is al jazeera, it's november the 15th day, one of the new era and television news. if you have known that, that was the scale of bloodshed would you have still going to go to miss all landed about a 100 meters away from us. we're on the front line, but it's on the right time. we have a call that isn't on the very, really coming our way. i was just over here. god by the police on purpose. ah. do with a vote board. i was 0 is offices in gaza are housed in that building, and the cover has come down little before in human history as the ones for steam environment, the arctic in such peril. ah ah . if y'all be as prime minister abbey, and that says he will lead the military from the front lines as rebel advances threatened his hold on the capital. ah, i have them seeker, this is ally from doha. also coming up get vaccinated or risk dying from cobit, germany's warning as cases surge in europe next door in austria, it's locked down once again. the u. s. jury is asked to weigh up.