world
5 children die in bouncy castle accident in Australia
Five children died and four others were in critical condition on Thursday after falling from a bouncy castle that was lifted 10 meters (33 feet) into the air by a gust of wind at a school on Australia's island state of Tasmania.
The school was holding a celebration to mark the end of the school year.
The children who died included two boys and two girls in year 6, which would make them 10 or 11 years old, said Tasmania police Commissioner Darren Hine. Police later Thursday confirmed a fifth child died in the hospital.
Five other children were being treated, including four in critical condition. Hine said an investigation is underway.
Also read: On a single Kentucky street, the tornado killed 7 children
Images published by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation showed police officers consoling each other as paramedics provided first aid to victims.
Parents arrived at the school gate to collect their children as helicopters ferried the injured to hospitals.
Tasmania state Premier Peter Gutwein called the incident “simply inconceivable... I know this is a strong and caring community that will stand together and support one another."
Tasmania police commander Debbie Williams told reporters “several children fell from the jumping castle. It appears they may have fallen from a height of approximately 10 meters."
“This is a very tragic event and our thoughts are with the families and the wider school community and also our first responders,” Williams said.
Also read: African children should get world's 1st malaria vaccine: UN
SKorea bans gatherings of 5 or more people amid virus surge
South Korea will prohibit private social gatherings of five or more people nationwide and force restaurants to close at 9 p.m., rolling out the country’s toughest coronavirus restrictions yet as hospitals grapple with the deadliest month of the pandemic.
Prime Minister Kim Boo-kyum said Thursday that the new measures will be enforced for at least 16 days after taking effect on Saturday, saying there’s an urgent need to bring the country to a “standstill” with the delta-driven surge overwhelming stretched hospitals and exhausted medical workers.
Schools in the densely populated capital Seoul and nearby metropolitan areas, where the virus has hit hardest, will also go back to remote learning after fully reopening in November.
The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency reported 7,622 new cases on Thursday, close to the daily record of 7,850 set a day earlier. That brought the national caseload to 544,117, with nearly 97,000 added in December alone.
Most of the transmissions were in the capital region, where officials say more than 86% of intensive care units designated for COVID-19 treatment are already occupied amid a spike in hospitalizations and deaths.
More than 890 virus patients died this month, bringing the country’s death toll to 4,518. As of Thursday morning, a record 989 patients were in serious or critical condition.
Read: Global Covid cases top 272 million
“During this period of standstill, the government will reinforce the stability of our medical response capabilities,” said Kim, Seoul’s No. 2 behind President Moon Jae-in, during a virus meeting. “We ask our people to respond to these efforts by actively getting vaccinated.”
The viral surge has been a huge setback for President Moon Jae-in’s government, which had significantly eased social distancing rules in November while declaring a phased return to pre-pandemic normalcy.
While focusing on improving the economy, officials had predicted that the country’s rising vaccination rates would keep hospitalizations and fatalities down. But there has been a surge in serious cases among people in their 60s or older, including those whose immunities have waned after getting inoculated early in the vaccine rollout that began in February.
More than 81% of the population of over 51 million has been fully vaccinated, but only 17% of people have received booster shots.
After hesitating for weeks, officials moderately tightened social distancing rules last week, banning gatherings of seven or more people in the Seoul metropolitan area and requiring adults to verify their vaccination status to use restaurants and other businesses, but such measures didn’t meaningfully slow the virus’ spread.
Jung Eun-kyeong, KDCA’s commissioner, said the country could see daily infections exceed 10,000 or 20,000 in the coming weeks if it fails to meaningfully slow transmissions now. She said that would push the number of serious cases to between 1,600 and 1,900, possibly beyond what hospitals could handle without sacrificing their non-COVID-19 care.
“We are seeing an average of 4,700 new cases in the Seoul metropolitan area, which is significantly higher than the maximum 3,600 level the hospital system could manage,” Jung said during a briefing.
Read: US faces a double coronavirus surge as omicron advances
Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said the four-person gatherings limit will only be applied to fully vaccinated adults. Those who aren’t fully vaccinated will be required to eat alone at restaurants, Kwon said. The rules won’t be applied to children 18 years or younger. Restaurants, coffee shops, gyms and karaoke venues will be required to close at 9 p.m., while movie theaters, concert halls and private cram schools will have to close at 10 p.m.
US faces a double coronavirus surge as omicron advances
The new omicron coronavirus mutant speeding around the world may bring another wave of chaos, threatening to further stretch hospital workers already struggling with a surge of delta cases and upend holiday plans for the second year in a row.
The White House on Wednesday insisted there was no need for a lockdown because vaccines are widely available and appear to offer protection against the worst consequences of the virus. But even if omicron proves milder on the whole than delta, it may disarm some of the lifesaving tools available and put immune-compromised and elderly people at particular risk as it begins a rapid assault on the United States.
“Our delta surge is ongoing and, in fact, accelerating. And on top of that, we’re going to add an omicron surge,” said Dr. Jacob Lemieux, who monitors variants for a research collaboration led by Harvard Medical School.
“That’s alarming, because our hospitals are already filling up. Staff are fatigued,” leaving limited capacity for a potential crush of COVID-19 cases “from an omicron wave superimposed on a delta surge.”
Most likely, he and other experts said at a news briefing Tuesday, an omicron surge is already under way in the United States, with the latest mutant coronavirus outpacing the nation’s ability to track it.
Based on specimens collected last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said omicron accounted for about 3% of genetically-sequenced coronaviruses nationally. Percentages vary by region, with the highest — 13% — in the New York/New Jersey area.
Read: Global Covid cases top 272 million
But Harvard experts said these are likely underestimates because omicron is moving so fast that surveillance attempts can’t keep up.
Globally, more than 75 countries have reported confirmed cases of omicron. In the United States, 36 states have detected the variant. Meanwhile, delta is surging in many places, with hot spots in New England and the upper Midwest. The five states with the highest two-week rolling average of cases per 100,000 people are New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Michigan, Minnesota and Vermont.
Universities are abruptly closing classrooms during finals week with infections multiplying at a fast rate. Both t he NBA and NHL have had to postpone games, and the NFL had its worst two-day outbreak since the start of the pandemic, with dozens of players infected.
Outside the U.S., the president of the European Union said omicron will become the dominant variant in a month and declared that “once again, this Christmas will be overshadowed by the pandemic.”
Scientists around the world are racing to understand omicron, which has a large number of worrisome mutations in important regions of its genetic structure that could affect how it spreads from person to person. How quickly the number of cases doubles, known as “doubling time,” can give a preview of what the disease burden could be in a few weeks.
CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday that early data suggests omicron is more transmissible than delta, with a doubling time of about two days.
In Britain, where omicron cases are doubling every two to three days, the variant is expected to soon replace delta as the dominant strain in the country.
The U.K. on Wednesday recorded the highest number of confirmed new COVID-19 infections since the pandemic began, and England’s chief medical officer warned that the situation is likely to get worse as omicron drives a new wave of illness during the holidays.
“The data out of the UK are quite alarming at this point,” and foreshadow what’s to come in the United States, said Bronwyn MacInnis, director of pathogen genomic surveillance at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. For example, she said, by Tuesday afternoon, omicron was already the most common variant in London.
Read:Biden visiting storm-ravaged Kentucky to offer aid, support
In many ways, omicron remains a mystery. Hints are emerging from South Africa, where it was first reported, indicating it may cause less severe disease than delta but be better at evading vaccines.
But, MacInnis warned: “There’s much more that we don’t know about this variant than we do, including the severity.”
At the same time, Lemieux said, there seem to be fewer tools to fight it. Some monoclonal antibody treatments don’t work as well against omicron in lab tests, Lemieux said. Vaccines appear to offer less protection, although CDC officials said booster shots strengthen that protection.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said Wednesday there is no need, for now, for an omicron-specific booster shot. The two-dose mRNA vaccines, the Pfizer and Moderna shots, still appear to offer considerable protection against hospitalization from omicron, Fauci said.
“If we didn’t have these tools, I would be telling you to really, really be worried,” Fauci said.
Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said the U.S. has the tools to fight the virus, including omicron, and “there is no need to lock down.” With vaccines available now for 95% of Americans, “we know how to keep our kids in schools and our businesses open. And we’re not going to shut down.”
Health officials called on Americans to get vaccinated, get their booster shots, wear masks indoors and get tested before traveling and before holiday gatherings.
“Hospital capacity is already at a breaking point in many states because of severe cases of COVID-19,” Michael Fraser, CEO of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, said in a statement.
Given the high level of transmission, MacInnis said there will undoubtedly be severe cases.
“No matter how severely it affects healthy, fully vaccinated and boosted populations, it will hit the most vulnerable among us the hardest still,” she said. “So the elderly, the immunocompromised, other vulnerable populations will still be at greatest risk and still bear the brunt of this.”
Myanmar public urges gas sanctions to stop military funding
The young woman in Myanmar decided to speak out when she realized that money from the company she loved was now in the hands of the military leaders she hated.
She and her parents had long worked for Total Energies, the French company that operates a lucrative gas field off the coast of southern Myanmar with a state-owned enterprise. But in February, the military took over Myanmar’s government and its bank accounts, including those that receive hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the Total gas field, known as Yadana.
As military abuses such as the murder and detention of thousands have grown, the young woman joined others across Myanmar in a groundswell of support for targeted sanctions on oil and gas funds, the country’s single largest source of foreign currency revenue. But Western governments — most notably the United States and France — have refused to take that step amid lobbying from energy company officials and resistance from countries such as Thailand, which gets gas from Myanmar. On Friday, the U.S. announced a raft of sanctions against several Myanmar officials and entities, but again left out oil or gas revenues.
The young woman chanted slogans outside Total’s offices, and later protested the military’s takeover. She said she has since lost her job, and was thrown into prison for three weeks.
“We had a good relationship and good memories of Total,” said the young woman, whose name, like those of other Myanmar gas workers in this story, is being withheld by The Associated Press for their safety. “Total has taken a lot from Myanmar....so they should at least help Myanmar with a little bit of effort during such a bloody period in our country.”
In recent months, the Myanmar public’s cries for sanctions on gas revenues have grown thunderous. In August, activists launched the “Blood Money Campaign” movement, risking their lives by marching in the streets and carrying signs that read: “Freeze payments to junta and save Myanmar.” Others posted photos of themselves on social media holding signs that targeted the gas companies at the center of the debate: “Total, Chevron — Stop accessory to murder.”
The United Nations’ top expert on human rights in Myanmar says millions of people across the country are imposing personal sanctions by withholding taxes, refusing to pay power bills and boycotting products linked to the military. And on Nov. 30, 540 civil society organizations in Myanmar joined international colleagues in sending a letter to CEO Patrick Pouyanne asking Total to “put an end to its complicity in crimes against humanity” by making payments to a holding account. The letter argued that Total is violating local laws against misappropriating public money and “has placed itself on the side of the junta.”
The AP also obtained a copy of a letter from workers at Yadana to their managers earlier this year calling on Total’s subsidiary, Total E&P Myanmar, to suspend export payments to the military, place the funds in a protected account and freeze income tax.
“We are specifically concerned that the profits gained from Yadana Project, which we are working for, will, one way or another, help fund the military junta’s violent repression of Myanmar people,” the letter said.
Total and Chevron say they condemn human rights abuses, but also want to prevent further harm to the people of Myanmar by cutting off electricity. In addition, Total said it is wary of putting its local employees in danger of reprisals from the military, including forced labor.
Meanwhile, tolerance on the ground for global inaction has worn thin. Local armed groups, referred to as People’s Defense Forces, have targeted bill collectors for the national utility and sabotaged buildings and infrastructure, according to EarthRights International, which works on environmental and human rights issues in Myanmar.
Pro-sanctions activists do not want to shut down the gas field itself. Instead, they want to sanction the project’s revenues and place them in a protected offshore bank account that the military can’t touch.
The sanctions would target the state-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), which is a joint venture partner in all offshore gas projects in Myanmar, including Yadana with Total, Chevron, and Thailand’s PTT Exploration & Production. Total has a majority stake in the venture and runs its daily operations, while MOGE collects revenues on behalf of the government. Gas from Yadana is piped to Myanmar and neighboring Thailand.
Total cancelled exploration for new deposits in Myanmar after the military takeover. But it argues that it has to pay taxes and respect its contracts under the law, and that it will donate the equivalent of the taxes to human rights associations in Myanmar. Total said it would willingly comply with any new international sanctions, which would override local laws that govern its contracts in Myanmar.
Read: Myanmar democracy in new era as Suu Kyi sidelined by army
“In particular, should MOGE be under economic sanctions it would oblige all parties to put all cash flows due to MOGE in an escrow account,” the company told AP in a statement. “We have taken all possible measures under our control and respecting the legal framework without putting our staff at risk.”
Several smaller offshore gas fields also operate in Myanmar’s waters, run by companies from Thailand, Japan, Malaysia, India and South Korea in partnership with MOGE. And China is an investor in the pipeline that delivers the gas to the country.
About 50 percent of Myanmar’s foreign currency comes from natural gas revenues, with MOGE expected to earn $1.5 billion from offshore and pipeline projects in 2021-2022, according to a Myanmar government forecast. The Yadana gas project and pipeline is particularly important, earning around $400 million in revenues in 2017-2018.
Yet despite the growing calls for action, neither U.S. President Joe Biden nor French President Emmanuel Macron have publicly moved against Myanmar’s oil and gas revenues. The current sanctions from the U.S. and European Union lean heavily on gemstones.
The U.S. State Department did not directly address AP’s questions about why it has yet to impose sanctions on MOGE. Instead, the department pointed to a list of other people and entities the U.S. has already sanctioned, including several military officials and their family members, two army units believed responsible for a litany of atrocities, the military’s two largest holding companies and a state-owned gems enterprise.
“We will not hesitate to take further action against those who perpetrate violence and suppress the will of the people,” the department said in a statement.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the Biden administration is weighing tough new sanctions on Myanmar to pressure the country’s military leaders to restore a democratic path. He did not mention oil and gas sanctions.
An aide on the House Foreign Affairs Committee acknowledged that oil and gas make up “a huge chunk” of the military’s ability to maintain control. Despite that, a measure introduced in the House in October that specifically calls out MOGE as a potential sanctions target has yet to advance.
The aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the thinking around the legislation, said objections from Singapore and Thailand have played a role in the Biden administration’s hesitation to impose new sanctions, as has lobbying from Chevron. Activists have accused Singapore’s banks of holding assets on the Myanmar military’s behalf, although its central bank has said regular surveillance showed Myanmar companies and citizens did not have “significant funds” in the city state.
In the first half of 2021, Chevron reported spending $3.7 million on federal lobbying in the U.S., with “Burma Energy Issues” and “Myanmar Energy and Investment Issues” listed as specific lobbying areas of focus.
“It certainly seems in the U.S. there is a major lobbying campaign going on from Chevron to try and protect its interests,” said Chris Sidoti, a human rights lawyer and a member of the U.N. Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar from 2017 to 2019.
In response to questions from the AP, a spokesman for Chevron pointed to an earlier statement from the company, which said Chevron would comply with any sanctions imposed by the U.S.
“Any actions should be carefully considered to ensure the people of Myanmar are not further disadvantaged by unintended and unpredictable consequences of well-intentioned decisions,” Chevron wrote in its May statement.
Read: Myanmar urged to halt evictions, cease intimidation of residents
The French government also said it wants to avoid adding to the burdens of Myanmar civilians through sanctions and aims to target individuals from the junta rather than a vital economic sector. France wants to avoid normalizing relations with the junta but also wants to “stay involved on the ground” for humanitarian reasons, which requires “operational contacts” with Myanmar’s administration, according to a senior official in the French president’s office. He described the French government’s thinking on condition of anonymity.
He said Total’s activities in Myanmar, including how it carries out payment for the gas, are the company’s responsibility. Both the French government and Total want a return to a democratically elected government, “but at the same time you have to take into account the reality on the ground,” he said.
French authorities have told activists that Europe is expecting to impose a fourth round of sanctions by Feb. 1, the anniversary of the military’s takeover, and that both the energy and banking sectors are on the table.
MOGE can be targeted for sanctions without interrupting the flow of energy, said Tom Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur on Myanmar.
“The people of Myanmar are not calling for anything that they, themselves, are unwilling to do,” Andrews said in an e-mail to the AP. “But the fact remains that to be truly effective, the people of Myanmar need countries to join them and impose sanctions on MOGE.”
Human rights activists say it’s unconscionable for any company to help fund a military that has, in recent months, engaged in mass torture, launched attacks on medics, forcibly disappeared thousands of people, and returned mutilated corpses to victims’ families as tools of terror. Since February, soldiers and police have killed at least 1,300 people and arrested more than 10,800, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors deaths and arrests.
Last month, the National Unity Government, an underground opposition group and parallel administration, released a public statement that dubbed MOGE the military’s most important financial lifeline and called for urgent sanctions.
“As a nation, we have these natural resources to build a school, to build a hospital, to build a road,” said spokesman Dr. Sasa, who goes by one name. “So why are we still using this money to kill the people of Myanmar? To us, it is barbarity.”
In response to questions, the military said state revenue is used for education, infrastructure, development projects and public service, and is also used “proportionately for the rule of law and for defense.” The military has long denied allegations of human rights abuses.
“All state revenue is spent according to the needs of the country,” the military said in a statement to the AP. “Putting restrictions on the current government is directly affecting the social and economic life of the citizens.”
The Yadana project provides less than 1.5 percent of Chevron’s worldwide natural gas output, and Total says Yadana represents less than 1 percent of its production. But while Yadana isn’t a significant source of income, it also doesn’t cost the companies much because major set-up fees were incurred decades ago, said Readul Islam, a Singapore-based research analyst at Rystad Energy. Chevron and Total would also struggle to sell the operation, given the remaining short life of the aging gas field and the grim political situation, he said.
“These operations are not company-makers by any sense, but they are profitable,” Islam said.
Also, Chevron and Total’s aversion to sanctions may be less about money than about precedent, said John Sifton, Asia advocacy director at Human Rights Watch.
“If you signal that every time a country has serious human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch and other groups can come in and say, ‘You should sanction your revenue,’ it’s going to create business headaches for them all over the world,” he said.
With public pressure mounting, Total and Chevron announced in May that they were suspending dividend payments by the Moattama Gas Transportation Company, which owns the Yadana pipeline. While welcoming the move as a first step, activists argue the dividend payments are a fraction of the military’s gas revenues.
The energy analytics firm Wood Mackenzie in November downgraded its forecast of Myanmar gas exports to Thailand after Yadana’s output fell faster than expected. Rights activists said Thai fears of a gas slowdown or cutoff at a time of surging prices across Asia have stiffened its resistance to new sanctions, which the U.S. and EU appeared reluctant to challenge. The Thai government did not respond with comment.
In Myanmar, some gas workers have dismissed the energy companies’ concerns that they will face retaliation with sanctions, arguing the entire country is already oppressed. One 10-year employee of Total said the risk of losing his job due to sanctions was nothing compared to the risk of the generals remaining in power.
“Everyone needs a job,” he said. “But I don’t want to survive by working here while everyone is suffering from this crisis.”
Given he and millions of others already have risked so much in the pursuit of democracy, he is frustrated with the international community’s failure to act.
“I don’t understand why they keep paying the junta,” he said.
After the young woman whose family had long worked for Total protested outside its gates, the contractor company that hired her warned her not to participate again in the country’s pro-democracy Civil Disobedience Movement, she said.
A few months later, she posted on social media about what she felt was Total’s poor treatment of a colleague who died of COVID-19. Days later, she said, the contractor company fired her for allegedly defaming Total. In a statement, Total said that no Total E&P employees have been fired since the military’s takeover, and none have been prevented from participating in the Civil Disobedience Movement.
In September, she was arrested and imprisoned for three weeks under Section 505(A) of the Penal Code, which, in part, criminalizes comments that “cause fear” or spread “false news.”
“I feel very disappointed in Total because they are neglecting this country in which they invested,” she said.
For another Total employee, the lack of action from those who claim to stand for human rights is baffling. Why, he asked, hasn’t the international community told gas companies that if they do business with the military, they can no longer do business with the rest of the world?
For him, the solution to military abuse is simple.
“If they do not have revenue, they cannot buy weapons,” he says. “If they cannot buy weapons, this revolution will end quickly.”
9 die in India bus accident
At least nine people were killed and as many missing after a passenger bus crashed into the side railing of a bridge and plunged into a rivulet in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday, officials said.
The accident occurred in the state's West Godavari district, close to 900 kms from Andhra capital Amaravati, when the government bus with 47 people on board, including a driver and a conductor, was on its way to Jangareddygudem from Aswaraopet.
Read:Sole survivor of Indian military chief's chopper crash dies
"The bus hit the bridge railing and fell into the rivulet. We have so far recovered nine bodies, including five female passengers," district police chief Rahul Dev Sharma told the local media. "Some 22 passengers have been rescued so far. Efforts are on to fish out the bus."
Andhra Governor Biswa Bhusan Harichandan expressed "anguish and profound grief" over the tragic bus accident and instructed the officials concerned to provide immediate medical help to all the injured.
"A probe has been ordered to ascertain if the driver was speeding," the police official said.
This is the second major road accident in the state in the past 10 months. In March this year, eight people were killed and six others injured in a head-on collision between a van and a lorry in Nellore district.
Read: India orders tri-services probe into military chief's chopper crash
Road accidents are very common in India, with one taking place every four minutes. These accidents are often blamed on poor condition of roads, rash driving and scant regard for traffic laws.
The Indian government's implementation of stricter traffic laws in recent years have failed to rein in accidents, which claim over 100,000 lives every year.
Biden visiting storm-ravaged Kentucky to offer aid, support
For the fifth time since taking office less than a year ago, President Joe Biden is taking on the grim task Wednesday of visiting an area ravaged by natural disaster to offer comfort and condolences.
Biden was headed to Kentucky to survey damage and offer federal support for the victims of devastating tornadoes that killed dozens and left thousands more in the region without heat, water or electricity.
More than 30 tornadoes tore through Kentucky and four other states over the weekend, killing at least 88 people and demolishing homes, downing power lines and cutting off residents from key utilities as temperatures dropped below freezing in Kentucky earlier this week.
Biden will visit Fort Campbell for a storm briefing and Mayfield and Dawson Springs to survey storm damage. While Biden is not expected to deliver an address, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president will meet with storm victims and local officials to provide federal support.
Biden “wants to hear directly from people, and he wants to offer his support directly to them,” Psaki said.
Jeff and Tara Wilson, a married couple from Mayfield, were at the Graves County Fairgrounds on Tuesday, where a distribution center has been set up to pass out food, water and clothing to storm victims. They were setting up a mobile site for storm victims to receive counseling and said their home was unscathed.
Read: On a single Kentucky street, the tornado killed 7 children
Asked about the president’s visit and the reception he’ll receive in this prominently Republican region, Tara Wilson replied: “Don’t know. I think that as long as everybody’s hearts are in the right place, we need to not focus on politics right now.” She said it was a “very positive thing” that Biden was visiting, and she and her husband expressed hope the president might help unite the community.
“This place is like a bomb has been dropped on it. And everyone needs to come together,” Wilson said. “So far that’s what’s happening. You’re seeing everyone pull together.”
Biden’s trip to Kentucky comes at the close of a year marked by a notable uptick in extreme weather occurrences driven primarily by climate change. Only a month after he was sworn into office, Biden went to Houston to survey the damage wrought by last winter’s historic storm there. He ultimately traveled to Idaho, Colorado and California to survey wildfire damage during the summer, as well as Louisiana, New Jersey and New York earlier this fall after Hurricane Ida tore through the region.
The disasters have offered Biden urgent and visceral evidence of what he says is the dire need for America to do more to combat climate change and prepare for future disasters — a case he made to help push for passage of his spending proposals.
The $1 trillion infrastructure bill, signed into law last month, includes billions for climate resilience projects aimed to better defend people and property from future storms, wildfires and other natural disasters. His proposed $2 trillion social spending package, still pending in Congress, includes billions more to help shift the nation away from oil, gas and coal and toward widespread clean energy and electric vehicle use.
The White House has spent much of the week engaging with lawmakers on the latter. Biden talked with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a key Democratic holdout, in hopes of smoothing over some of his issues in time to pass a package before year’s end.
Read: Kentucky hardest hit as storms leave dozens dead in 5 states
But on Wednesday, Biden’s focus will be squarely on Kentucky. Five twisters hit the state, including one with an extraordinarily long path of about 200 miles (322 kilometers), authorities said.
In addition to the deaths in Kentucky, the tornadoes also killed at least six people in Illinois, where the Amazon distribution center in Edwardsville was hit; four in Tennessee; two in Arkansas, where a nursing home was destroyed and the governor said workers shielded residents with their own bodies; and two in Missouri.
The president signed two federal disaster declarations for Kentucky over the weekend, providing federal aid for search and rescue and cleanup operations, as well as aid for temporary housing and to help individuals and businesses recover.
Biden said earlier this week during a White House briefing on the tragedy with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other top emergency response officials that the federal government is committed to providing whatever the affected states need in the aftermath of the storm.
“We’re going to get this done,” Biden said. “We’re going to be there as long as it takes to help.”
On a single Kentucky street, the tornado killed 7 children
The little red wagon was strewn upside down on a heap of rubble — a pile of boards and bricks, a mangled blue bicycle, a baby doll.
Behind it, there was little more than a hole in the ground where a house had stood. Across the street, the tidy homes on this cul-de-sac were reduced to mounds of lumber. Clothes hung from the branches of snapped trees. The walls of one house were gone, and the only thing left standing inside was a white Christmas tree.
When a tornado touched down in Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the middle of the night, its violence was centered on this friendly subdivision, where everyone waved at one another and giggling children spent afternoons tooling around on bicycles on the sidewalks. Fourteen people died in a few blocks, 11 of them on a single street, Moss Creek Avenue. Entire families were lost, among them seven children, two of them infants. Neighbors who survived are so stricken with grief they struggle to speak of it. All around them, amid the ruins, is evidence of the kids they used to watch climb off the school bus.
Read: Thousands without heat, water after tornadoes kill dozens
Melinda Allen-Ray has barely slept since early Saturday, when tornado alerts started screaming and she carried her grandchildren into the bathroom as winds whipped her house apart. After just minutes of destruction, there was silence. She went outside and heard her neighbors’ screams.
“I heard them — it traumatized me. I think about that each night when I go to sleep, when I do sleep,” she said. In her dreams she hears the screaming and wakes up. She wept all weekend.
“I just think about all those babies,” she said.
Hers is a diverse community of families from around the world — Bosnia, Myanmar, Nigeria — many of whom fled from violence. For some, this fresh destruction triggers thoughts of the dark days they fled in their homelands, where they hid from bombs and lost whole families.
“We come from war; this reminds us, it touches the memory of that, where we’ve been and how we came here,” said Ganimete Ademi, a 46-year-old grandmother who fled Kosovo in 1999 during the war, in which she lost her uncle and a nephew. Now she looks around her own neighborhood.
“I turn my memory back to 22 years ago,” she said.
One of the families that lost many members was from Bosnia. Two brothers lived in homes next door to each other with their families, Ademi said. They were happy and gregarious, holding summertime parties in the yard. From the two brothers’ households, one woman died, along with two children and two infants, police said. Their surviving relatives said it’s too difficult to speak of it.
Another family here lost six members: three adults, a 16-year-old girl, a 4-year-old boy and another child.
Around the corner, a 77-year-old grandmother was killed. Two others from the neighborhood died of their injuries at the hospital.
“That’s hard to think about — you go to bed, and your entire family is gone the next day,” said Ronnie Ward, with the Bowling Green Police Department. They usually tell people to get in a bathtub and cover up with a mattress, he said, but that probably would’ve made little difference here: Some homes were destroyed so completely the tornado ripped all they way through the floor, exposing the earth below.
Read: 8 factory workers dead, 8 missing from US tornado: Spokesman
Now, they comb through what remains, turning over every strip of dry wall and each twisted car to make sure there aren’t more victims underneath. It can be horrific work, Ward said, but they try to steady themselves enough because they know it must be done.
“So you go about that task of trying to get this work done, and then you come across a wagon,” he said, standing near the Radio Flyer bent and broken on a pile. “And you think, that’s associated with a child somewhere. And did that child live? Those thoughts, they overtake you, they overwhelm you.”
What these children left consumes them. There’s a Barbie doll missing a leg. A reindeer stuffed animal. A scooter, a toy horse, a hula hoop. There’s a pink Disney princess backpack. A car from “Paw Patrol,” and bedding printed with the faces of its goofy animal first responders.
The people who’ve had to see it are reckoning with how close they and their own children came. As the tornado tore through the subdivision, it decimated some houses and damaged others, yet left some just next door unscathed.
“It’s almost hard to look at, because how did it miss that house but it got this house?” Ward said.
A tree shot through the neighborhood like a missile and landed in Ademi’s backyard, about a dozen feet from where she’d cowered with her husband. Her four children and two grandchildren live nearby. “This tree could have come in my house, and we’d all be gone too,” she said.
The tornado turned just as it got to Benedict Awm’s house. Inside, he, his wife, their 2-year-old son and infant held one another under a blanket to protect their eyes and bodies from the broken glass shooting through shattered windows. His wife shook and asked if they would die. He said he didn’t know.
“It’s terrible, you can’t imagine, I thought we were dead,” he said. Had the tornado kept on its course, they would be, he thinks. But instead it turned slightly. Thunderous winds turned to silence, and their house still stood. A miracle, thinks Awm, who moved here from war-torn Burma.
Around the corner, someone spray-painted on their front door the words “By God’s grace we survived,” and hung an American flag from the wreckage of their rafters.
For days now, volunteers have arrived from all over with trucks and tools, and there’s comfort in that.
“Sometimes it makes me want to cry, to see how people are willing to help me,” Awm said.
Ben Cerimovic pulled his truck and trailer in every day over the weekend. He’s an immigrant from Bosnia, and he knows the family that died here.
“The feelings I’m having right now I really can’t explain,” he said. There’s a close-knit, thriving Bosnian community in Bowling Green, which has a robust refugee resettlement program to bring migrants to Western Kentucky. Most of them came here from war so their children would have a better life, he said. Now this subdivision looks like a war zone, scattered with things their children loved.
Cerimovic volunteered Saturday and Sunday, but he had to take Monday off to gather his emotions.
“Every time I see this, and I hear about those kids, I think about mine,” he said. “What if they were my kids?”
US COVID death toll hits 800,000, a year into vaccine drive
The U.S. death toll from COVID-19 topped 800,000 on Tuesday, a once-unimaginable figure seen as doubly tragic, given that more than 200,000 of those lives were lost after the vaccine became available practically for the asking last spring.
The number of deaths, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Atlanta and St. Louis combined, or Minneapolis and Cleveland put together. It is roughly equivalent to how many Americans die each year from heart disease or stroke.
The United States has the highest reported toll of any country. The U.S. accounts for approximately 4% of the world’s population but about 15% of the 5.3 million known deaths from the coronavirus since the outbreak began in China two years ago.
The true death toll in the U.S. and around the world is believed to significantly higher because of cases that were overlooked or concealed.
Read: UK reports its first Omicron death
A closely watched forecasting model from the University of Washington projects a total of over 880,000 reported deaths in the U.S. by March 1.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday noted what he called a “tragic milestone.” He again called on unvaccinated Americans to get shots for themselves and their children, and urged the vaccinated to get booster shots.
“I urge all Americans: do your patriotic duty to keep our country safe, to protect yourself and those around you, and to honor the memory of all those we have lost,” Biden said. “Now is the time.”
Health experts lament that many of the deaths in the United States were especially heartbreaking because they were preventable by way of the vaccine, which became available in mid-December a year ago and was thrown open to all adults by mid-April of this year.
About 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated, or just over 60% of the population. That is well short of what scientists say is needed to keep the virus in check.
“Almost all the people dying are now dying preventable deaths,” said Dr. Chris Beyrer, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “And that’s because they’re not immunized. And you know that, God, it’s a terrible tragedy.”
When the vaccine was first rolled out, the country’s death toll stood at about 300,000. It hit 600,000 in mid-June and 700,000 on Oct. 1.
Read: Thousands without heat, water after tornadoes kill dozens
The U.S. crossed the latest threshold with cases and hospitalizations on the rise again in a spike driven by the highly contagious delta variant, which arrived in the first half of 2021 and now accounts for practically all infections. Now the omicron variant is gaining a foothold in the country, though scientists are not sure how dangerous it is.
Beyrer recalled that in March or April 2020, one of the worst-case scenarios projected upwards of 240,000 American deaths.
“And I saw that number, and I thought that is incredible — 240,000 American deaths?” he said. “And we’re now past three times that number.” He added: “And I think it’s fair to say that we’re still not out of the woods.”
Pfizer confirms COVID pill’s results, potency versus omicron
Pfizer said Tuesday that its experimental pill to treat COVID-19 appears effective against the omicron variant.
The company also said full results of its 2,250-person study confirmed the pill’s promising early results against the virus: The drug reduced combined hospitalizations and deaths by about 89% among high-risk adults when taken shortly after initial COVID-19 symptoms.
Separate laboratory testing shows the drug retains its potency against the omicron variant, the company announced, as many experts had predicted. Pfizer tested the antiviral drug against a man-made version of a key protein that omicron uses to reproduce itself.
The updates come as COVID-19 cases, deaths and hospitalization are all rising again and the U.S. topped 800,000 pandemic deaths. The latest surge, driven by the delta variant, is accelerating due to colder weather and more indoor gatherings, even as health officials brace for the impact of the emerging omicron mutant.
The Food and Drug Administration is expected to soon rule on whether to authorize Pfizer’s pill and a competing pill from Merck, which was submitted to regulators several weeks earlier. If granted, the pills would be the first COVID-19 treatments that Americans could pick up at a pharmacy and take at home.
Read: Pfizer says COVID booster offers protection against omicron
President Joe Biden called Pfizer’s drug “another potentially powerful tool in our fight against the virus,” in a statement Tuesday.
The U.S. government has agreed to purchase enough of Pfizer’s drug to treat 10 million people. But company executives have indicated that initial supplies will be limited, with only enough to treat tens of thousands of people before the end of the year. By March Pfizer hopes to ramp up production to provide millions of courses of treatment.
Pfizer’s data could help reassure regulators of its drug’s effectiveness after Merck disclosed smallerthan-expected benefits for its drug in final testing. Late last month, Merck said that its pill reduced hospitalizations and deaths by 30% in high-risk adults.
Both companies initially studied their drugs in unvaccinated adults who face the gravest risks from COVID-19, due to older age or health problems, such as asthma or obesity.
Pfizer is also studying its pill in lower-risk adults — including a subset who are vaccinated — but reported mixed data for that group on Tuesday.
In interim results, Pfizer said its drug failed to meet its main study goal: sustained relief from COVID-19 for four days during or after treatment, as reported by patients. But the drug did achieve a second goal by reducing hospitalizations by about 70% among that group, which included otherwise healthy unvaccinated adults and vaccinated adults with one or more health issues. Less than 1% of patients who got the drug were hospitalized, compared with 2.4% of patients who got a dummy pill.
Read: Pfizer agrees to let other companies make its COVID-19 pill
An independent board of medical experts reviewed the data and recommended Pfizer continue the study to get the full results before proceeding further with regulators.
Across both of Pfizer’s studies, adults taking the company’s drug had a 10-fold decrease in virus levels compared with those on placebo.
The prospect of new pills to fight COVID-19 can’t come soon enough for communities in the Northeast and Midwest, where many hospitals are once again being overloaded by incoming virus cases.
Both the Merck and Pfizer pills are expected to perform well against omicron because they don’t target the coronavirus’ spike protein, which contains most of the new variant’s mutations.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, appearing on NBC’s “Today” on Tuesday, said the best way for people to protect themselves against COVID-19 is to get vaccinated and get a booster shot. She said the Pfizer pill, if authorized by the FDA, “will be another great tool, but we need to diagnose people early.”
10 years at helm, Kim Jong Un’s nukes are still ‘magic wand’
As Kim Jong Un marks 10 years in power this week, the world still doesn’t quite know what to make of the North Korean leader.
Is he the playful scamp who once gave an underling a piggyback ride after a rocket engine test? Or the Western-educated leader tearfully commiserating with his people’s economic misery? How about the global statesman, shaking hands with South Korean and American leaders? Or maybe the brutal pragmatist who had his uncle and virtual No. 2 — along with dozens of others — executed?
Since taking over supreme leadership a decade ago, Kim has presented many faces to an insatiably curious world, but while the image shifts perhaps the most telling way to consider Kim is through his persistent pursuit of a nuclear weapons program meant to target America and its allies.
Read: Taliban Govt reaches out to India seeking visas for Afghan students stuck in Afghanistan
An arsenal of as many as 60 nukes, by some estimates, with the means to add as many as 18 more a year, has allowed Kim to solidify domestic unity and achieve some measure of the global prestige he’s long coveted. It has also flummoxed Washington and its allies by building what Pyongyang claims is a credible deterrence against U.S. hostility.
Crushing U.N. sanctions over that weapons build-up and pandemic-related difficulties may be giving Kim the hardest moment of his rule, observers say, but those weapons are no closer to being wrenched away by outside negotiators than they were when Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, died on Dec. 17, 2011.
“Nuclear weapons are a magic wand for North Korea,” said Kim Taewoo, former head of Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification. “North Korea is one of the world’s poorest countries, but it controls the relationship with South Korea because it has nukes. If it wasn’t for its nuclear bombs, how could Pyongyang sit down for talks with the United States?”
In late 2011, many outsiders wondered if North Korea would survive with an untested, little-known 27-year-old in charge. Some predicted that Kim would push for economic reforms and possibly denuclearization because of his youth and childhood education in Switzerland. Some thought Kim might be a figurehead, relying on elderly officials installed by his father, and worried that North Korea could face political turmoil.
Instead, Kim orchestrated a spate of high-profile executions and purges, eliminating potential rivals and establishing the kind of absolute power enjoyed by his father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather and state founder, Kim Il Sung.
Read: Kim Jong Un’s decade of rule: Purges, nukes, Trump diplomacy
A think tank run by South Korea’s spy agency said in a 2016 report that Kim executed or purged about 340 people during the first five years of his rule. That included the 2013 execution of his powerful uncle, Jang Song Thaek, and the 2012 purging of military chief Ri Yong Ho, both of whom helped shepherd Kim into power.
Kim also set aside his father’s trademark “military-first” policy, restored the ruling Workers’ Party’s traditional control over the army and engineered small yet gradual economic growth in the first several years.
Nukes, however, have been a constant.
Kim has staged an unusually large number of weapons tests. And four of North Korea’s six nuclear test explosions and all of its three intercontinental ballistic missile tests have happened during Kim’s rule.
Kim’s big nuclear moves likely quieted those in the military’s old guard who were dissatisfied with Kim’s push to weaken their political clout, said Yang Wook, a military expert who teaches at South Korea’s Hannam University.
In late 2017, Kim claimed to have nuclear missiles capable of reaching the American homeland. In 2018-19, he engaged in ambitious nuclear diplomacy with then-President Donald Trump, holding the first summits between the two wartime foes and also meeting South Korean President Moon Jae-in and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
“Nukes have greatly enhanced Kim’s diplomatic standing abroad. Domestically, they’ve also served as a great propaganda tool to promote the legitimacy of his government and the image that the supreme leader is striving to build an indomitable nuclear power state,” Kim Taewoo said.
The international diplomacy broke down in 2019 when Kim failed to convince Trump to ease tough U.N. sanctions imposed after his run of weapons tests in 2016-17. Kim has since threatened to enlarge his nuclear arsenal and introduce high-tech weapons targeting the United States and its allies.
According to a 2018 South Korean estimate, North Korea has 20-60 nuclear weapons. Experts say North Korea has the capacity to add six to 18 bombs every year.
Kim can be seen as simply carrying forward a national nuclear ambition that stretches back to the 1950s, when Kim Il Sung established an atomic research institute and struck accords with the Soviet Union to receive nuclear training. Kim Jong Il, who succeeded Kim Il Sung as leader in 1994, nurtured the program by overseeing the country’s first atomic and long-range rocket tests.
Read: India 4th most powerful country in Asia; China loses ground to US: Report
But Kim Jong Un’s personality has also likely added to a more aggressive pursuit of weapons tests, said Kim Yeol Soo, an analyst with South Korea’s Korea Institute for Military Affairs.
“He’s a young leader and likely wants to show off his strength to send a message: ‘Don’t look down on me because I’m young,’” he said.
Kim will never abandon nukes, the core of his family’s power, no matter how severe the economic difficulties his people face from sanctions, said Jung Chang Wook, head of the Korea Defense Study Forum think tank.
“The Kim family would lose its power, so he can’t give them up,” he said.
China and Russia have covertly financially supported North Korea to prevent U.N. sanctions from causing “crippling” effects in North Korea, according to Kim Taewoo, the analyst.
During the pandemic, with nuclear diplomacy deadlocked, Kim Jong Un has been hunkering down and calling for stronger public loyalty to him. Last October, South Korea’s spy agency said North Korea was promoting the ideology of “Kimjongunism,” something his father and grandfather did, and removing portraits of the previous leaders from public places.
“Kim Jong Un is trying to fly his own colors (and highlight) things that symbolize his own era, not the authority of the late leaders he’s been leaning on,” said Seo Yu-Seok at the Seoul-based Institute of North Korean Studies.