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Haitians on Texas border undeterred by US plan to expel them
Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said they will not be deterred by U.S. plans to speedily send them back, as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico.
Scores of people waded back and forth across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio.
Junior Jean, a 32-year-old man from Haiti, watched as people cautiously carried cases of water or bags of food through the knee-high river water. Jean said he lived on the streets in Chile the past four years, resigned to searching for food in garbage cans.
“We are all looking for a better life,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security said Saturday that it moved about 2,000 of the migrants from the camp to other locations Friday for processing and possible removal from the U.S. Its statement also said it would have 400 agents and officers in the area by Monday morning and would send more if necessary.
Read:Haiti PM, under fire, addresses evidence in leader's slaying
The announcement marked a swift response to the sudden arrival of Haitians in Del Rio, a Texas city of about 35,000 people roughly 145 miles (230 kilometers) west of San Antonio. It sits on a relatively remote stretch of border that lacks capacity to hold and process such large numbers of people.
A U.S. official told The Associated Press on Friday that the U.S would likely fly the migrants out of the country on five to eight flights a day, starting Sunday, while another official expected no more than two a day and said everyone would be tested for COVID-19. The first official said operational capacity and Haiti’s willingness to accept flights would determine how many flights there would be. Both officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Told of the U.S. plans Saturday, several migrants said they still intended to remain in the encampment and seek asylum. Some spoke of the most recent devastating earthquake in Haiti and the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse, saying they were afraid to return to a country that seems more unstable than when they left.
“In Haiti, there is no security,” said Fabricio Jean, a 38-year-old Haitian who arrived with his wife and two daughters. “The country is in a political crisis.”
Haitians have been migrating to the U.S. in large numbers from South America for several years, many having left their Caribbean nation after a devastating 2010 earthquake. After jobs dried up from the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, many made the dangerous trek by foot, bus and car to the U.S. border, including through the infamous Darien Gap, a Panamanian jungle.
Jorge Luis Mora Castillo, a 48-year-old from Cuba, said he arrived Saturday in Acuna and also planned to cross into the U.S. Castillo said his family paid smugglers $12,000 to take him, his wife and their son out of Paraguay, a South American nation where they had lived for four years.
Told of the U.S. message discouraging migrants, Castillo said he wouldn’t change his mind.
“Because to go back to Cuba is to die,” he said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection closed off vehicle and pedestrian traffic in both directions Friday at the only border crossing between Del Rio and Ciudad Acuña “to respond to urgent safety and security needs” and it remained closed Saturday. Travelers were being directed indefinitely to a crossing in Eagle Pass, roughly 55 miles (90 kilometers) away.
Read:Nowhere to go for Haiti quake victims upon hospital release
Crowd estimates varied, but Val Verde County Sheriff Frank Joe Martinez had said there were about 13,700 new arrivals in Del Rio as of Friday. Migrants pitched tents and built makeshift shelters from giant reeds known as carrizo cane. Many bathed and washed clothing in the river.
It is unclear how such a large number amassed so quickly, though many Haitians have been assembling in camps on the Mexican side of the border to wait while deciding whether to attempt entry into the U.S.
The number of Haitian arrivals began to reach unsustainable levels for the Border Patrol in Del Rio about 2 ½ weeks ago, prompting the agency’s acting sector chief, Robert Garcia, to ask headquarters for help, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Since then, the agency has transferred Haitians in buses and vans to other Border Patrol facilities in Texas, specifically El Paso, Laredo and Rio Grande Valley. They are mostly processed outside of the pandemic-related authority, meaning they can claim asylum and remain in the U.S. while their claims are considered. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement makes custody decision but families can generally not be held more than 20 days under court order.
Homeland Security’s plan announced Saturday signals a shift to use of pandemic-related authority for immediate expulsion to Haiti without an opportunity to claim asylum, the official said.
The flight plan, while potentially massive in scale, hinges on how Haitians respond. They might have to decide whether to stay put at the risk of being sent back to an impoverished homeland wracked by poverty and political instability or return to Mexico. Unaccompanied children are exempt from fast-track expulsions.
DHS said, “our borders are not open, and people should not make the dangerous journey.”
“Individuals and families are subject to border restrictions, including expulsion,” the agency wrote. “Irregular migration poses a significant threat to the health and welfare of border communities and to the lives of migrants themselves, and should not be attempted.”
U.S. authorities are being severely tested after Democratic President Joe Biden quickly dismantled Trump administration policies that Biden considered cruel or inhumane, most notably one requiring asylum-seekers to remain in Mexico while waiting for U.S. immigration court hearings.
A pandemic-related order to immediately expel migrants without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum that was introduced in March 2020 remains in effect, but unaccompanied children and many families have been exempt. During his first month in office, Biden chose to exempt children traveling alone on humanitarian grounds.
Read: In Haiti, close relation between the living and the dead
Nicole Phillips, legal director for advocacy group Haitian Bridge Alliance, said Saturday that the U.S. government should process migrants and allow them to apply for asylum, not rush to expel them.
“It really is a humanitarian crisis,” Phillips said. “There needs to be a lot of help there now.”
Mexico’s immigration agency said in a statement Saturday that Mexico has opened a “permanent dialogue” with Haitian government representatives “to address the situation of irregular migratory flows during their entry and transit through Mexico, as well as their assisted return.”
The agency didn’t specify if it was referring to the Haitians in Ciudad Acuña or to the thousands of others in Tapachula, at the Guatemalan border, and the agency didn’t immediately reply to a request for further details.
In August, U.S. authorities stopped migrants nearly 209,000 times at the border, which was close to a 20-year high even though many of the stops involved repeat crossers because there are no legal consequences for being expelled under the pandemic authority.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom stays in power as recall fails
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Tuesday became the second governor in U.S. history to defeat a recall aimed at kicking him out of office early, a contest the Democratic governor crafted as part of national battle for his party’s values in the face of the coronavirus pandemic and lingering threats from “Trumpism.”
The victory cements Newsom as a prominent figure in national Democratic politics and preserves his prospects for a future U.S. run. It also ensures the nation’s most populous state will remain in Democratic control as a laboratory for progressive policies on immigration, climate change, representation and inequality.
“‘No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight,” Newsom said at a news conference. “I want to focus on what we said ‘yes’ to as a state: We said yes to science, we said yes to vaccines, we said yes to ending this pandemic.”
A Republican almost certainly would have replaced Newsom had the recall succeeded, bringing a polar opposite political worldview, though they would have had to contend with a state Capitol dominated by Democrats.
The recall, which turned on Newsom’s approach to the pandemic, mirrored the nation’s heated political divide over business closures and mask and vaccine mandates, and both parties will dissect its outcome heading into the 2022 midterm elections.
Read:Firefighters advance on blaze that shut California highway
President Joe Biden sought validation of the Democratic Party’s approach of tighter restrictions and vaccine requirements, urging Californians to show the nation that “leadership matters, science matters.” The race also was a test of whether opposition to former President Donald Trump and his right-wing politics remains a motivating force for Democrats and independents.
“We defeated Donald Trump, we didn’t defeat Trumpism. Trumpism is still alive, all across this country,” Newsom said as he campaigned in a state that the former president lost by 29 percentage points.
Republicans had hoped for proof that frustrations over months of pandemic precautions would drive voters away from Democrats. They also searched for evidence that voters were tiring of liberal leadership. Democrats have controlled every level of government in California for more than a decade, a period marked by a housing crisis and the increasingly damaging effects of climate change. Republicans won back four U.S. House seats last year, success that leaders hoped had indicated revived signs of life.
But a recall election is an imperfect barometer — particularly of national trends. Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly 2-to-1 in California, so the results may not translate to governors in toss-up states or reflect how voters will judge members of Congress next year. That the unusual contest was held at the tail end of summer meant some voters weren’t even tuned in.
Voters were asked two questions: Should Newsom be recalled, and, if so, who should replace him? Only a handful of the 46 names on the replacement ballot had any level of public recognition, but most failed to gain traction with voters.
Conservative talk radio host Larry Elder held a commanding lead on the second question and appeared all but certain to end the race with the votes needed to have replaced Newsom had the recall been a success.
He had entered the race just three months before Election Day and quickly rose to the top of the pack. But that allowed Newsom to turn the campaign into a choice between the two men, rather than a referendum on his performance.
Newsom seized on Elder’s opposition to the minimum wage and abortion rights as evidence he was outside the mainstream of California. The governor branded him as “more extreme than Trump,” while Biden called him “the closest thing to a Trump clone I’ve ever seen.”
Though the contest didn’t quite bring the circus-like element of California’s 2003 recall — when voters replaced Democratic Gov. Gray Davis with Republican movie star Arnold Schwarzenegger — it featured quirky moments of its own.
Reality TV star and former Olympian Caitlyn Jenner entered the race but gained little momentum and left the state for part of the campaign to film a reality show in Australia. Businessman John Cox, who lost badly to Newsom in 2018, tried to spice up his campaign by hiring a live bear to join him, branding himself as the “beast” to Newsom’s “beauty.” The best known Democrat on the replacement ballot was a 29-year-old YouTube star who dispenses financial advice to his followers.
Though Newsom defeated the recall, he may soon be running against Elder again: The governor is up for reelection next year, and the primary, which puts candidates from all parties on one ballot, is just nine months away.
Read: California governor seeks $16.7M in aid for Afghan refugees
The recall, initiated by an amateur political organizer, wasn’t the first attempt to oust Newsom, and it began as an expression of frustration over Democrats’ grip on power. But when Newsom issued the nation’s first statewide stay-at-home order, the pandemic became the race’s driving force.
Recall organizers needed about 1.5 million signatures — California has 22 million registered voters — to make the ballot. They owe their success in part to a single day in November, when a judge gave them four extra months to gather signatures due to the pandemic.
That same day, Newsom attended a birthday party with friends and lobbyists at the lavish French Laundry restaurant, a gathering that violated his pandemic rules. The episode spiraled into a public relations disaster.
Supporters of the recall expressed frustration over months-long business closures, restrictions that kept most children in distance learning for a full academic year, and the confusing patchwork of rules that governed how people could gather with friends and family. Rising homicides, an unabated homelessness crisis and an unemployment fraud scandal further angered Newsom’s critics.
But the broader public stayed on Newsom’s side. Polling from the Public Policy Institute of California showed his approval rating remaining above 50% throughout the pandemic. With weeks to go, the institute’s poll showed 60% of Californians approved of Newsom’s handling of the pandemic.
In the early months of his campaign, Newsom declared California was “roaring back” from the virus, and he used a windfall of tax dollars to dole out billions for programs from child education to homelessness. Middle- and low-income Californians got checks of up to $1,100 each.
The rise of the highly contagious delta variant over the summer dampened Newsom’s positive messaging, as he began to frame the race as one of “life or death” consequences. He pointed to Texas and Florida, which were seeing worsening surges as their Republican governors rejected mask and vaccine mandates, as cautionary tales for what California could become. When Texas’ new law banning most abortions took effect Sept. 1, Newsom’s comparison with the GOP state only became more stark.
Newsom’s administration has mandated children wear masks in schools and is requiring all health care workers to get vaccinated. Teachers and government employees must be vaccinated or tested regularly. Ace Smith, one of Newsom’s political consultants, said before the race concluded that he believed it would provide Newsom — and the Democratic Party — a “clear mandate” for “sanity” on public health.
The party’s biggest luminaries stepped out for Newsom, highlighting the national stakes. Beyond Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and former President Barack Obama appeared in state or in campaign ads to help Newsom drive up turnout.
National Republican leaders largely kept the contest at arm’s length. Trump barely commented on the race until the final days, when he suggested with no evidence that the results would be rigged because of mail-in balloting. One of the recall’s original organizers said his comments would do more harm than good.
Read: Fires harming California’s efforts to curb climate change
In the closing days, Elder’s campaign echoed Trump’s messaging, saying he expects “shenanigans” and linking to a website insinuating Newsom had already won the election due to fraud. The site included language from a petition circulated to help Trump’s effort to overturn last year’s presidential election, but that wording was removed by Tuesday afternoon.
Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, once considered the party’s best hope to win back statewide office given his record in a Democratic city, failed to find his niche with voters, struggling to appeal to both the party’s base and the broader electorate. Elder immediately captured attention from the party’s conservative grassroots, but he also alienated independents and Democrats who may have considered a vote against Newsom.
Newsom has been viewed as a potential White House contender since at least 2004, when he defied federal law to issue marriage licenses to LGBT couples as mayor of San Francisco. His victory maintained those prospects, though he will still have to navigate around the ambitions of Harris, who came up through San Francisco politics alongside Newsom.
Newsom came to the contest with advantages — it was his to win or lose. California’s electorate is less Republican, less white and younger than it was in 2003, when voters booted the Democratic Davis. Newsom was allowed to raise unlimited funds, dwarfing his competitors while flooding TV screens with advertising. Public worker unions and business and tech executives poured millions into his campaign.
The GOP had looked to build on its four congressional wins in 2020 and recruited tens of thousands more volunteers to campaign for the recall. Voter turnout and the recall results in the four Southern California districts, in Orange County and the Los Angeles suburbs, will offer an early indication of the party’s ability to hold the seats next year.
Japan passes 50% vaccination rate, may ease limits in Nov.
Japan’s government says more than 50% of the population has been fully vaccinated.
Japan’s vaccine rollouts began in mid-February, months behind many wealthy countries due to its lengthy clinical testing requirement and approval process. Inoculations for elderly patients, which started in April, were also slowed by supply shortages of imported vaccines, but the pace picked up in late May and has since achieved 1 million doses per day.
Read: Japan suspends 1.63M doses of Moderna over contamination
Economy Minister Yasutoshi Nishimura, who is in charge of COVID-19 measures, told NHK public television’s weekly talk show Sunday that about 60% of the population is expected to be fully vaccinated by the end of September, on par with current levels in Europe.
The government is studying a roadmap for easing restrictions around November when a large majority of the population is expected to be fully vaccinated. That would allow fully vaccinated people and those who test negative to travel, gather for parties or attend mass events.
The progress of vaccinations has helped reduce serious cases and deaths among older people, but infections from virus variants spread explosively in August among younger generations still largely unvaccinated, severely straining health care systems.
Read: Japan to further expand virus emergency areas as cases surge
Japan last Friday extended the ongoing state of emergency in Tokyo and 18 other areas until Sept. 30. It had been scheduled to end Sunday. The measures focus on requests for eateries to close early and not serve alcohol.
Japan has done much better than other developed countries in curbing illnesses and deaths without a lockdown. It has counted more than 1.65 million cases and 16,700 deaths.
Fighting Texas abortion law could be tough for federal gov’t
Foes of the new Texas law that bans most abortions have been looking to the Democratic-run federal government to swoop in and knock down the most restrictive abortion law in effect in the country. But it’s nowhere near that simple.
President Joe Biden , who denounces the law as “almost un-American,” has directed the Justice Department to try to find a way to block its enforcement. And Attorney General Merrick Garland says his prosecutors are exploring all possible options. But legal experts warn that while the law may ultimately be found unconstitutional, the way it’s written means it’ll be an uphill legal battle.
Known as SB8, the new state law prohibits abortions once medical professionals can detect cardiac activity — usually around six weeks, before some women know they’re pregnant. Courts have blocked other states from imposing similar restrictions, but Texas’ law differs significantly because it leaves enforcement to private citizens through civil lawsuits instead of criminal prosecutors.
Pressure is mounting not only from the White House but also from Democrats in Congress, who want Garland to somehow take action. Nearly two dozen lawmakers wrote to him Tuesday calling for the “criminal prosecution of would-be vigilantes attempting to use the private right of action established by SB8.”
But what action can the Justice Department take? How?
So far, the attorney general has said only that federal officials will not tolerate violence against anyone who is trying to obtain an abortion in Texas. At the forefront of that plan is enforcement of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act.
That law, commonly known as the FACE Act, normally prohibits physically obstructing access to abortion clinics by blocking entrances or threatening to use force to intimidate or interfere with someone. It also prohibits damaging property at abortion clinics and other reproductive health centers.
Garland says that while his department is still urgently exploring options to challenge the state law, Justice will enforce the federal law “in order to protect the constitutional rights of women and other persons, including access to an abortion.”
However, that federal action could be limited by the fact that the act is geared more toward physical acts of intimidation or violence than lawsuits, said Mary Anne Franks, a constitutional scholar and professor at University of Miami School of Law.
“The nefarious cleverness” of the Texas law is that “you can’t do anything until someone actually attempts to use this law,” she said. “And that’s really late in the game.”
And even if an abortion provider — or people who help a woman get an abortion — should successfully defend a lawsuit, that wouldn’t block a stack of future suits. A Texas judge’s decision last week temporarily shielding some some abortion clinics from being sued by the state’s largest anti-abortion group, for example, didn’t affect any other groups.
“That raises real concerns about any efficacy of any of the actions DOJ could take,” Franks said.
Still, there are tools the federal government could use, she said. Prosecutors could bring criminal charges under civil rights measures originally written to root out the Ku Klux Klan. Those say that private citizens working with the state to deprive people of their constitutional rights could face criminal violations.
There’s also a tool on the civil side, called a Section 1983 action, that allows people to sue someone else who is blocking them from exercising their constitutional rights. Those civil lawsuits must be filed by the person under attack rather than the government, but federal attorneys could join suits already filed, she said.
Those actions, she said, could have their own chilling effect on abortion foes: People opposed to abortion who might want to sue providers might reconsider if they could potentially face federal criminal charges.
As for more direct action against the Texas law, legal experts say the Justice Department will likely work to help overturn it with a so-called friend-of-the-court brief, which could help bolster an already existing lawsuit challenging the state law.
Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University Law School, sees the law as likely to be eventually struck down in court, since it prohibits abortion long before the fetus is viable outside the womb.
“It’s very likely it will be found unconstitutional. The framers, the drafters themselves understood that ... they have set a line well below existing case law for banning abortions,” he said. “Courts are likely to make fast work of the Texas law.”
But if Democrats take action in Congress aimed at preserving access to abortion on the federal level, as some are calling for, he warned it could end up backfiring since there’s existing case law establishing that states can make laws related to the procedure.
Such a federal law, if passed by Congress, would almost certainly end up in court and could ultimately lose ground for abortion-rights supporters if a ruling is made that strengthens the states’ ability, he said.
Meanwhile, the Texas law’s citizen-enforcement mechanism is something Democrats may not want to see limited widely either, since the concept is also a key piece of enforcing environmental laws. Courts have limited people’s ability to file civil suits before, as in defamation suits that could run afoul of freedom of speech.
The Supreme Court declined to block the Texas law in a 5-4 decision, though it did not rule on whether the law itself was constitutional.
Turley argues a graver threat to abortion access is an upcoming case on the Supreme Court docket: Mississippi is asking to be allowed to enforce an abortion ban after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
By taking up that single question, the justices will be considering whether states can impose limitations on abortion before the fetus is viable outside the womb. There are no other questions at play, no other ways the case could be more narrowly decided. If the high court sides with Mississippi, that would open the door to other states passing similar laws.
“That is a more important threat,” he said.
From election to COVID, 9/11 conspiracies cast a long shadow
Korey Rowe served tours in Iraq and Afghanistan and returned home to the U.S. in 2004 traumatized and disillusioned. His experiences overseas and nagging questions about Sept. 11, 2001 convinced him America’s leaders were lying about what happened that day and the wars that followed.
The result was “Loose Change,” a 2005 documentary produced by Rowe and his childhood friend, Dylan Avery, that popularized the theory that the U.S. government was behind 9/11. One of the first viral hits of the still-young internet, it encouraged millions to question what they were told.
While the attacks united many Americans in grief and anger, “Loose Change” spoke to the disaffected.
“It was the lightning rod that caught the lightning,” Rowe recalls. He had hoped the film would prompt a sober reassessment of the attacks. Rowe doesn’t regret the film, and still questions the events of 9/11, but says he’s deeply troubled by what 9/11 conspiracy theories revealed about the corrosive nature of misinformation on the internet.
Twenty years on, the skepticism and suspicion first revealed by 9/11 conspiracy theories has metastasized, spread by the internet and nurtured by pundits and politicians like Donald Trump. One hoax after another has emerged, each more bizarre than the last: birtherism. Pizzagate. QAnon.
Read: 9/11 artifacts share ‘pieces of truth’ in victims’ stories
“Look at where it’s gone: You have people storming the Capitol because they believe the election was a fraud. You have people who won’t get vaccinated and they’re dying in hospitals,” Rowe says. “We’ve gotten to the point where information is actually killing people.”
There were, of course, conspiracy theories before 9/11 happened – John F. Kennedy’s assassination, the moon landing, a supposed 1947 UFO crash in Roswell, New Mexico. And the country’s interest in fringe theories was on the rise before 9/11, exemplified by the 1990s show “The X-Files,” with its taglines of “The truth is out there” and “trust no one.” But it was 9/11 that heralded our current era of suspicion and disbelief and revealed the internet’s ability to catalyze conspiracy theories.
“Conspiracy theories have always been with us, and it’s just the means of sharing them that has changed,” says Karen Douglas, a psychology professor at the University of Kent in England who studies why people believe such stories. “The internet had made conspiracy theories more visible and easy to share than ever before. People can also very quickly find like-minded others, join groups, and share their opinions.”
Conspiracy theories about the attack and its aftermath also gave early exposure to some of the same people pushing hoaxes and unfounded claims about COVID-19, vaccines and the 2020 election, including Alex Jones, the Trump-supporting publisher of InfoWars, who has accused the United States of plotting the attacks and says the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax. Jones was a co-producer of the third edition of “Loose Change.”
Polls show belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories peaked soon after the attack, then subsided. That’s not surprising, according to Mark Fenster, a University of Florida law school professor who studies the history of conspiracy theories. He says shocking, sudden events often spawn conspiracy theories as people collectively grapple with understanding them.
“A plane that runs into the World Trade Center? That runs into the Pentagon? It sounds like the stuff of films,” Fenster says. “It just didn’t seem like a real event, and it’s when you have a major anomalous event like this that conspiracy theories sometimes come around.”
Conspiracy theorists once relied on books, pamphlets and late night television shows to espouse their beliefs. Now, they use message boards like Reddit, post videos on YouTube, and win over converts on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.
The first known 9/11 conspiracy theory originated only hours after the attack, when an American software engineer emailed a post to an internet forum questioning whether the destruction of the towers looked like a controlled demolition.
Twenty years on, a search on YouTube for content related to 9/11 turns up millions of hits.
Thousands of videos focus on conspiracy theories. That is a lot, but the grandfather of modern conspiracy theories has been outpaced by the upstarts: A Google search of “9/11 conspiracy theory” turns up more than 8 million results, while a search for “COVID conspiracy theory” turns up more than three times that.
Tech companies say they do what they can to limit the spread of false information about 9/11. YouTube has added links to authoritative sources to some 9/11-related videos. Facebook says it has added fact checks to viral hoaxes about 9/11, including one that the Pentagon was struck by a missile and not a plane.
Bogus claims about the Sept. 11 attacks never posed the threat ascribed to misinformation about COVID-19 or the 2020 U.S. elections. But even proponents of 9/11 conspiracy theories say questions about what happened helped create today’s environment of distrust and anxiety.
Read: US to leave troops in Afghanistan beyond May, 9/11 new goal
“The danger is, once you have that distrust of authority and government, it’s a dangerous place to be,” says Matt Campbell, a British citizen whose brother died in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Campbell believes the towers came down after a controlled demolition, and is seeking a new inquest into his brothers’ death in the UK.
On the grand scale, such the distrust the underlies such beliefs can become dangerous when they begin to divide a society, or when they are exploited by a political leader like Donald Trump, Fenster says.
“Usually it is the case that the people who feel they are being excluded from power who are committed to conspiracy theories,” Fenster says. “What’s different this time is that it was the party that was in power — the party that had the White House — that was the main broadcaster of conspiracy theories.”
No decision yet on vaccinating the under-18: DGHS
The government is yet to take any decision on bringing people below 18 years under Covid-19 vaccination, said the Directorate General of Health Services on Sunday.
“So far we know, no decision has been taken yet. But the government is thinking about it. Measures will be taken as per the decision of the National Advisory Committee,” said Dr Shamsul Haq, director of DGHS Vaccination Programme.
He said some university students were vaccinated as per the list of the University Grants Commission.
Those who don’t have NID cards and are yet to get vaccinated may get their jabs showing birth certificates, he added.
Also read: PM: Govt has arranged to bring one crore Covid vaccine doses a month
However, on Saturday Health Minister Zahid Maleque said students below 18 can be vaccinated with Pfizer and Moderna jabs following the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) directives as per the availability of vaccine doses.
About 80% teachers and students involved in medical treatment have been brought under vaccination campaigns, the minister added.
Besides, pregnant and lactating women can get jabs without SMS from nearby vaccination centres at any convenient time after registration, Dr Shamsul Haq said on Sunday.
"We have changed the previous rules for vaccinating pregnant and lactating women and given new instructions," he added.
Moreover, Dr Shamsul said pregnant and lactating women must take a doctor's advice card before getting the jab. They can go to the vaccination centres and get a jab by signing a letter of consent.
Do we need humans for that job? Automation booms after COVID
Ask for a roast beef sandwich at an Arby’s drive-thru east of Los Angeles and you may be talking to Tori — an artificially intelligent voice assistant that will take your order and send it to the line cooks.
“It doesn’t call sick,” says Amir Siddiqi, whose family installed the AI voice at its Arby’s franchise this year in Ontario, California. “It doesn’t get corona. And the reliability of it is great.”
The pandemic didn’t just threaten Americans’ health when it slammed the U.S. in 2020 -- it may also have posed a long-term threat to many of their jobs. Faced with worker shortages and higher labor costs, companies are starting to automate service sector jobs that economists once considered safe, assuming that machines couldn’t easily provide the human contact they believed customers would demand.
Past experience suggests that such automation waves eventually create more jobs than they destroy, but that they also disproportionately wipe out less skilled jobs that many low-income workers depend on. Resulting growing pains for the U.S. economy could be severe.
Read: Covid-19 in Bangladesh: Big medical bills making many people paupers
If not for the pandemic, Siddiqi probably wouldn’t have bothered investing in new technology that could alienate existing employees and some customers. But it’s gone smoothly, he says: “Basically, there’s less people needed but those folks are now working in the kitchen and other areas.”
Ideally, automation can redeploy workers into better and more interesting work, so long as they can get the appropriate technical training, says Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands. But although that’s happening now, it’s not moving quickly enough, he says.
Worse, an entire class of service jobs created when manufacturing began to deploy more automation may now be at risk. “The robots escaped the manufacturing sector and went into the much larger service sector,” he says. “I regarded contact jobs as safe. I was completely taken by surprise.”
Improvements in robot technology allow machines to do many tasks that previously required people -- tossing pizza dough, transporting hospital linens, inspecting gauges, sorting goods. The pandemic accelerated their adoption. Robots, after all, can’t get sick or spread disease. Nor do they request time off to handle unexpected childcare emergencies.
Economists at the International Monetary Fund found that past pandemics had encouraged firms to invest in machines in ways that could boost productivity -- but also kill low-skill jobs. “Our results suggest that the concerns about the rise of the robots amid the COVID-19 pandemic seem justified,” they wrote in a January paper.
The consequences could fall most heavily on the less-educated women who disproportionately occupy the low- and mid-wage jobs most exposed to automation -- and to viral infections. Those jobs include salesclerks, administrative assistants, cashiers and aides in hospitals and those who take care of the sick and elderly.
Employers seem eager to bring on the machines. A survey last year by the nonprofit World Economic Forum found that 43% of companies planned to reduce their workforce as a result of new technology. Since the second quarter of 2020, business investment in equipment has grown 26%, more than twice as fast as the overall economy.
The fastest growth is expected in the roving machines that clean the floors of supermarkets, hospitals and warehouses, according to the International Federation of Robotics, a trade group. The same group also expects an uptick in sales of robots that provide shoppers with information or deliver room service orders in hotels.
Restaurants have been among the most visible robot adopters. In late August, for instance, the salad chain Sweetgreen announced it was buying kitchen robotics startup Spyce, which makes a machine that cooks up vegetables and grains and spouts them into bowls.
It’s not just robots, either -- software and AI-powered services are on the rise as well. Starbucks has been automating the behind-the-scenes work of keeping track of a store’s inventory. More stores have moved to self-checkout.
Read: Ensuring global access to Covid vaccines EU’s priority: Teerink
Scott Lawton, CEO of the Arlington, Virginia-based restaurant chain Bartaco, was having trouble last fall getting servers to return to his restaurants when they reopened during the pandemic.
So he decided to do without them. With the help of a software firm, his company developed an online ordering and payment system customers could use over their phones. Diners now simply scan a barcode at the center of each table to access a menu and order their food without waiting for a server. Workers bring food and drinks to their tables. And when they’re done eating, customers pay over their phones and leave.
The innovation has shaved the number of staff, but workers aren’t necessarily worse off. Each Bartaco location — there are 21 — now has up to eight assistant managers, roughly double the pre-pandemic total. Many are former servers, and they roam among the tables to make sure everyone has what they need. They are paid annual salaries starting at $55,000 rather than hourly wages.
Tips are now shared among all the other employees, including dishwashers, who now typically earn $20 an hour or more, far higher than their pre-pandemic pay. “We don’t have the labor shortages that you’re reading about on the news,” Lawton says.
The uptick in automation has not stalled a stunning rebound in the U.S. jobs market -- at least so far.
The U.S. economy lost a staggering 22.4 million jobs in March and April 2020, when the pandemic gale hit the U.S. Hiring has since bounced back briskly: Employers have brought back 17 million jobs since April 2020. In June, they posted a record 10.1 million job openings and are complaining that they can’t find enough workers.
Behind the hiring boom is a surge in spending by consumers, many of whom got through the crisis in unexpectedly good shape financially -- thanks to both federal relief checks and, in many cases, savings accumulated by working from home and skipping the daily commute.
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, expects employers are likely to be scrambling for workers for a long time.
For one thing, many Americans are taking their time returning to work -- some because they’re still worried about COVID-19 health risks and childcare problems, others because of generous federal unemployment benefits, set to expire nationwide Sept. 6.
In addition, large numbers of Baby Boom workers are retiring. “The labor market is going to be very, very tight for the foreseeable future,” Zandi says.
Read:US assures Covid cooperation to continue as 1-mn doses of Pfizer's vaccine received
For now, the short-term benefits of the economic snapback are overwhelming any job losses from automation, whose effects tend to show up gradually over a period of years. That may not last. Last year, researchers at the University of Zurich and University of British Columbia found that the so-called jobless recoveries of the past 35 years, in which economic output rebounded from recessions faster than employment, could be explained by the loss of jobs vulnerable to automation.
Despite strong hiring since the middle of last year, the U.S. economy is still 5.3 million jobs short of what it had in February 2020. And Lydia Boussour, lead U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, calculated last month that 40% of the missing jobs are vulnerable to automation, especially those in food preparation, retail sales and manufacturing.
Some economists worry that automation pushes workers into lower-paid positions. Daron Acemoglu, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University estimated in June that up to 70% of the stagnation in U.S. wages between 1980 and 2016 could be explained by machines replacing humans doing routine tasks.
“Many of the jobs that get automated were at the middle of the skill distribution,” Acemoglu says. “They don’t exist anymore, and the workers that used to perform them are now doing lower-skill jobs.”
Outside of New Orleans, an even longer road to Ida recovery
The coronavirus pandemic claimed Kendall Duthu’s job as a cook at a jambalaya restaurant. Then Hurricane Ida claimed his house.
The 26-year-old resident of Dulac, Louisiana, is now living out of his car with his girlfriend after Ida roared ashore a week ago Sunday, splintering homes in its path. Now he doesn’t know what’s next.
On Saturday, Duthu collected a container of red beans and rice from volunteers in nearby Houma who handed out ice, water and meals to shell-shocked storm survivors. He stopped to eat inside his Infiniti, its windshield shattered.
“Next stop, I don’t really ...” he said, trailing off. “We’ve just been living day by day.”
Read: Cleanup boats on scene of large Gulf oil spill following Ida
Both Dulac and Houma are in Terrebonne Parish, among the hardest-hit areas of Louisiana battered to an unprecedented degree by Hurricane Ida. Though Louisiana’s largest electric utility, Entergy, estimates most residents in New Orleans will have power by Wednesday, recovery efforts outside of the city could be a much longer slog.
Meanwhile, residents continue to face food, water and gas shortages while battling heat and humidity.
Some parishes outside New Orleans were battered for hours by winds of 100 mph (160 kph) or more.
Fully restoring electricity to some of these southeastern parishes could take until the end of the month, according to Entergy President and CEO Phillip May.
Ida damaged or destroyed more than 22,000 power poles, more than hurricanes Katrina, Zeta and Delta combined, an impact May called “staggering.” More than 5,200 transformers failed and nearly 26,000 spans of wire — the stretch of transmission wires between poles — were down.
By Saturday morning, power was restored to about 282,000 customers from the peak of 902,000 who lost power after Ida.
Outside of Dulac, 45-year-old shrimper Jay Breaux stood in front of his home, snapped open by the storm. Breaux could see a bed exposed through a cratered wall and a lawn chair dangling from the debris. But he smiled widely, saying his family wasn’t doing as badly as others.
“It don’t pay to cry about it,” he said of Ida, the latest storm to hit his small town along the bayou. “I got 10 or 12 of them things under my belt. But this one here is the worst.”
Read: Searches, sorrow in wake of Ida’s destructive, deadly floods
At least 16 deaths were blamed on the storm in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. In the Northeast, Ida’s remnants dumped record-breaking rain and killed at least 50 people from Virginia to Connecticut.
Louisiana’s 12 storm-related deaths included five nursing home residents evacuated ahead of the hurricane along with hundreds of other seniors to a warehouse in Louisiana, where health officials said conditions became unsafe.
On Saturday evening, State Health Officer Dr. Joseph Kanter ordered the immediate closure of the seven nursing facilities that sent residents to the Tangipahoa Parish warehouse facility.
“The lack of regard for these vulnerable residents’ wellbeing is an affront to human dignity. We have lost trust in these nursing homes to provide adequate care for their residents,” Kanter said.
As recovery efforts continued, state officials were monitoring a system of disturbed weather in Mexico’s Bay of Campeche, which appeared set to move into the central Gulf of Mexico closer to Louisiana.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said Saturday the state is planning an exercise to assess its emergency response if needed. Predictions so far don’t show the system strengthening into a hurricane, but he said “even if it’s a tropical storm, we’re in no state to receive that much rainfall at this time.”
“We can’t take the playbook we normally use because the people and assets are no longer where they would have been,” Edwards said. “How do you staff up shelters you need for the new storm and continue to test for COVID? My head’s getting painful just thinking about it. ... We will be as ready as we can be, but I’m praying we don’t have to deal with that.”
The lower Mississippi River reopened to all vessel traffic in New Orleans and key ports throughout southeastern Louisiana after power lines from a downed transmission tower were removed, the U.S. Coast Guard said.
Read:More than 45 dead after Ida’s remnants blindside Northeast USA
New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said the city would offer transportation starting Saturday to any resident looking to leave the city and get to a public shelter.
By the end of Saturday, city agencies conducting wellness checks had evacuated hundreds of people out of eight senior living complexes where officials deemed conditions unfit for living. The coroner’s office is investigating four post-storm deaths that occurred at three of those facilities.
In suburban New Orleans, Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto urged people “to calm down” as he announced Saturday that a man wanted in the shooting death a day earlier of another man during a dispute in a line at a gas station was in custody.
Meanwhile Saturday, Coast Guard cleanup crews were responding to a sizable oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico following the storm. The spill, which is ongoing, appears to be coming from an underwater source at an offshore drilling lease about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) south of Port Fourchon, Louisiana.
Powerful Hurricane Ida closing in on Louisiana landfall
Hurricane Ida crossed the Gulf of Mexico on track for a potentially devastating landfall on the Louisiana coast Sunday, while emergency officials in the region grappled with opening shelters for displaced evacuees despite the risks of spreading the coronavirus.
The National Hurricane Center predicted Ida could be an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane with 130 mph (209 kph) winds when it makes an expected afternoon landfall. The storm arrived on the exact date Hurricane Katrina ravaged Louisiana and Mississippi 16 years earlier.
Ida was a Category 2 hurricane Saturday night with maximum sustained winds of 105 mph (168 kph). The storm was centered about 235 miles (375 kilometers) southeast of coastal Houma, Louisiana, and was traveling northwest at 16 mph (26 kph).
The storm threatened a region already reeling from a resurgence of COVID-19 infections, thanks to low vaccination rates and the highly contagious delta variant.
Read: Tropical Storm Ida a hurricane menace to New Orleans
New Orleans hospitals planned to ride out the storm with their beds nearly full, as similarly stressed hospitals elsewhere had little room for evacuated patients. And shelters for those fleeing their homes carried an added risk of becoming flashpoints for new infections.
Gov. John Bel Edwards vowed Saturday that Louisiana’s “resilient and tough people” would weather the storm. He also noted shelters would operate with reduced capacities “to reflect the realities of COVID.”
Edwards said Louisiana officials were already working to find hotel rooms for many evacuees so that fewer had to stay in mass shelters. He noted that during last year’s hurricane season, Louisiana found rooms for 20,000 people.
“So, we know how to do this,” Edwards said. “I hope and pray we don’t have to do it anywhere near that extent.”
In coastal Gulfport, Mississippi, a Red Cross shelter posted signs displaying directions for evacuees along with warnings about COVID-19. With skies still sunny, only a handful of people had shown up Saturday evening.
Shelter manager Barbara Casterlin said workers were required to wear face masks. Evacuees were encouraged to do the same. Anyone who refuses will be sent to an isolated area, she said, and so will people who are sick.
“We’re not checking vaccinations,” Casterlin said, “but we are doing temperature checks two or three times a day.”
President Joe Biden approved emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi ahead of Ida’s arrival.
Read: Henri hurls rain as storm settles atop swamped Northeast
Comparisons to the Aug. 29, 2005, landfall of Katrina weighed heavily on residents bracing for Ida. A Category 3 storm, Katrina was blamed for 1,800 deaths as it demolished oceanfront homes in Mississippi and caused levee breaches and catastrophic flooding in New Orleans.
In Saucier, Mississippi, Alex and Angela Bennett spent Saturday afternoon filling sand bags to place around their flood-prone home. Both survived Katrina, and didn’t expect Ida to cause nearly as much destruction where they live, based on forecasts.
“Katrina was terrible. This ain’t gonna be nothing,” Alex Bennett said. “I hate it for Louisiana, but I’m happy for us.”
Long lines formed at gas pumps Saturday as people rushed to escape. Trucks pulling saltwater fishing boats and campers streamed away from the coast on Interstate 65 in Alabama, while traffic jams clogged Interstate 10 heading out of New Orleans.
Ida intensified so swiftly that New Orleans officials said there was no time to organize a mandatory evacuation of its 390,000 residents. Mayor LaToya Cantrell urged residents to leave voluntarily. Those who stayed were warned to prepare for long power outages amid sweltering heat.
Officials also stressed that the levee and drainage systems protecting the city had been much improved since Katrina. But they cautioned flooding was still possible with up to 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain forecast in some areas.
Edwards said 5,000 National Guard troops were being staged in 14 Louisiana parishes for search and rescue efforts. And 10,000 linemen were on standby to respond to electrical outages.
Read: Rescuers racing in Haiti as storm threatens to follow quake
Ida posed a threat far beyond New Orleans. A hurricane warning was issued for nearly 200 miles (320 kilometers) of Louisiana’s coastline, from Intracoastal City south of Lafayette to the Mississippi state line. A tropical storm warning was extended to the Alabama-Florida line.
Meteorologist Jeff Masters, who flew hurricane missions for the government and founded Weather Underground, said Ida is forecast to move through “the just absolute worst place for a hurricane.”
The Interstate 10 corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge is a critical hub of the nation’s petrochemical industry, lined with oil refineries, natural gas terminals and chemical manufacturing plants. Entergy, Louisiana’s major electricity provider, operates two nuclear power plants along the Mississippi River.
A U.S. Energy Department map of oil and gas infrastructure shows scores of low-lying sites in the storm’s projected path that are listed as potentially vulnerable to flooding.
Japan suspends 1.63M doses of Moderna over contamination
Japan suspended use of about 1.63 million doses of Moderna vaccine Thursday after contamination was found in unused vials, raising concern of a supply shortage as the country tries to accelerate vaccinations amid a COVID-19 surge.
The health ministry said contamination was reported from multiple vaccination sites. Some doses might have been administered, but no adverse health effects have been reported so far, officials said.
Read: Japan to further expand virus emergency areas as cases surge
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., a Japanese drugmaker in charge of sales and distribution of the vaccine in Japan, said it decided to suspend use of doses manufactured in the same production line as a safety precaution.
It asked Moderna to conduct an emergency investigation and told medical institutions and organizers to stop using the vaccine produced in Spain and shared the production numbers that may be affected.
The health ministry and Takeda did not give details on the type of contamination or if the doses in question may have been distributed outside Japan.
Read:Japan to widen virus emergency after record spike amid Games
The Moderna vaccine problem came just as Japan struggles with surging infections, with daily new cases hitting new highs in many parts of the country and severely straining the health care system.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Katsunobu Kato told reporters the government and Takeda are discussing ways to minimize the impact on Japan’s vaccination progress.
“We will do utmost in order to avoid any impact on vaccination progress, especially at worksites and large-scale centers,” Kato said.
Read:Tropical storm to bring rain, wind, waves to northeast Japan
Japan relies entirely on foreign-developed vaccines by Moderna, as well as Pfizer Inc. and AstraZeneca. Moderna has been since mid-June at large-scale centers and workplace inoculations and has helped speed up Japan’s rollout.
About 43% of the Japanese population have been fully vaccinated, with daily doses of about 1 million.