Gerry Marsden, frontman of 1960s group Gerry and the Pacemakers, has died aged 78, the singer’s friend Pete Price announced Sunday. Liverpool-born Marsden, who died after a short illness, had a 1960s hit with his cover of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song “You’ll Never Walk Alone”, which originally featured in their musical Carousel. Liverpool FC fans adopted the Gerry and the Pacemakers’ version of the song, which became one of the most famous football anthems in the world. It is still sung regularly by Liverpool supporters before and during matches. Marsden re-recorded the track in April 2020 in tribute to Britain’s National Health Service during the coronavirus pandemic. He also wrote the 1960s hit “Ferry Cross the Mersey” at a time when The Beatles had made Liverpool pop music’s most important city. It was Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein who signed up Gerry and the Pacemakers. As part of the “Merseybeat” groups, Gerry and the Pacemakers also broke into the American market.Ex-Beatle Paul McCartney tweeted that “Gerry was a mate from our early days in Liverpool. He and his group were our biggest rivals on the local scene.””His unforgettable performances of You’ll Never Walk Alone and Ferry Cross the Mersey remain in many people’s hearts as reminders of a joyful time in British music,” he added.Liverpool football club, on their Twitter account, said, “It is with such great sadness that we hear of Gerry Marsden’s passing.”Gerry’s words will live on forever with us. You’ll Never Walk Alone.”The famous song was also adopted by fans of other European football teams including Celtic in Scotland, Borussia Dortmund and Feyenoord.Marsden’s friend and broadcaster Price announced the death when he wrote on Instagram: “It’s with a very heavy heart after speaking to the family that I have to tell you the legendary Gerry Marsden MBE, after a short illness which was an infection in his heart, has sadly passed away.”I’m sending all the love in the world to Pauline and his family. You’ll Never Walk Alone.”Marsden received his MBE at Buckingham Palace in 2003 for services to charities in Liverpool and beyond.
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Month: January 2021
Japanese Government Considering Placing Tokyo Under State of Emergency Amid Surge of COVID-19 Cases
Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said the government is considering declaring a state of emergency for Tokyo and three surrounding areas after an alarming uptick of new coronavirus infections. The health ministry recorded 3,150 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, including 51 deaths, bringing the total number of infections to 244,559, including 3,612 fatalities. The Japanese capital alone set a single-day record of 1,337 new cases last Thursday, New Year’s Eve. The emergency declaration would cover Tokyo and the neighboring prefectures of Saitama, Chiba and Kanagawa. Then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe formally declared a 30-day state of emergency for Tokyo and six other prefectures last April as coronavirus infections began rising during the early days of the pandemic. The decree stopped short of imposing a legally binding nationwide lockdown, due to Japan’s post-World War Two constitution, which weighs heavily in favor of civil liberties. Prime Minister Suga also told reporters Monday the government has moved up the beginning of the national vaccination effort to late February, with frontline medical workers and the elderly given first priority. Suga also vowed that the Summer Olympic Games, postponed from last year because of the pandemic, will be held as scheduled between July 23 and August 8. He said staging the Games would serve as proof that people “have overcome the coronavirus.”
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Warning to Trump by 10 Former Pentagon Chiefs
All 10 living former secretaries of defense cautioned Sunday against any move to involve the military in pursuing claims of election fraud, arguing that it would take the country into “dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory.” The 10 men, both Democrats and Republicans, signed on to an opinion article published in The Washington Post. Following the Nov. 3 election and subsequent recounts in some states, as well as unsuccessful court challenges, the outcome is clear, they wrote, while not specifying Trump in the article. “The time for questioning the results has passed; the time for the formal counting of the electoral college votes, as prescribed in the Constitution and statute, has arrived,” they wrote. The former Pentagon chiefs warned against use of the military in any effort to change the outcome. “Efforts to involve the U.S. armed forces in resolving election disputes would take us into dangerous, unlawful and unconstitutional territory,” they wrote. “Civilian and military officials who direct or carry out such measures would be accountable, including potentially facing criminal penalties, for the grave consequences of their actions on our republic.” Several senior military officers, including Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have said publicly in recent weeks that the military has no role in determining the outcome of U.S. elections and that their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to an individual leader or a political party. The 10 former Pentagon leaders also warned in their Post article of the dangers of impeding a full and smooth transition at Defense Department prior to Inauguration Day as part of a transfer to power to President-elect Joe Biden. Biden has complained of efforts by Trump-appointed Pentagon officials to obstruct the transition. Without mentioning a specific example, the former defense secretaries wrote that transfers of power “often occur at times of international uncertainty about U.S. national security policy and posture,” adding, “They can be a moment when the nation is vulnerable to actions by adversaries seeking to take advantage of the situation.” Tensions with Iran represent just such a moment. Sunday marked one year since the U.S. killing of Qassem Soleimani, the top Iranian general; Iran has vowed to avenge the killing, and U.S. officials said in recent days that they are on heightened alert for potential Iranian attack on U.S. forces or interests in the Middle East. In a further sign of U.S.-Iranian tension, the acting secretary of defense, Christopher Miller, announced Sunday evening that he has changed his mind about sending the Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, home from the Middle East and instead will keep the vessel on duty. Just last week, Miller announced that he was sending the Nimitz home, a decision that had been opposed by senior military officers. In reversing himself, Miller cited “recent threats issued by Iranian leaders against President Trump and other U.S. government officials.” He did not elaborate, and the Pentagon did not respond to questions. The opinion article in the Post was signed by Dick Cheney, William Perry, Donald Rumsfeld, William Cohen, Robert Gates, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Ash Carter, James Mattis and Mark Esper. Mattis was Trump’s first defense secretary; he resigned in 2018 and was succeeded by Esper, who was fired just days after the Nov. 3 election. The Post reported that the idea for writing the opinion piece began with a conversation between Cheney and Eric Edelman, a retired ambassador and former senior Pentagon official, about how Trump might seek to use the military in coming days.
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China-Vietnam Border Wall Would Target Smugglers, Chinese Economic Refugees
Reports that China is building a wall along the border with Vietnam to keep its own citizens at home spotlights economic hard times on the Chinese side and frustration on both sides with rampant smuggling, analysts believe.Authorities in southwestern China are working on a two-meter-high wall along the 1,300-meter border, Radio Free Asia reported in October, referring to Chinese social media reports and individuals living nearby.“The most logical reasoning is that China wants to control,” said Alexander Vuving, professor at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Hawaii. “The wall would be a perfect tool to control the flows of people, of things, of everything across the border.”Chinese workersChina wants to restrain people who are out of work and seeking new job markets, experts say. Economic fallout from COVID-19-related shutdowns worldwide has weakened demand for China’s all-important manufactured exports, putting pressure on factory jobs.The national unemployment rate grew to 6% in the first half of 2020.Chinese workers are protesting wage delays and pay cuts as their companies scale back production or go out of business, the Hong Kong-based advocacy group China Labour Bulletin says.The Beijing government frowns on citizens leaving without approval, especially if they take money out — a threat to the command economy.Video footage posted to Chinese social media in late October appeared to show about 1,000 Chinese migrant workers gathering in southwestern China near a border checkpoint with Vietnam.In Vietnam, about 900,000 people were unemployed as of June 30 and another 18 million were underemployed, according to the state General Statistics Office. Despite those record numbers, factories invested by Chinese entrepreneurs are looking for other workers from China due to their familiarity with business practices at home.The investors picked Vietnam to avoid paying tariffs on goods exported directly from China to the United States, the outcome of a 3-year-old Sino-U.S. trade dispute, said Nguyen Thanh Trung, Center for International Studies director at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City.“The trade war between China and the U.S., that’s the reason why so many Chinese companies come to Vietnam to avoid Chinese tariffs, and that’s the reason they need Chinese labor,” Nguyen said.A wall along any border would have the added effects of thwarting any escapes by Chinese political dissidents and stopping casino gamblers from taking capital out of the country, Professor Vuving said. China is also building a fence along parts of its border with Myanmar, a hotspot for Chinese casino tourists. Joint concern about smugglingBoth Vietnam and China have sounded alarm about border smuggling, a mutual economic threat. Rare animals and wood often pass illegally into China, while electronics and consumer goods move the other way. The two communist nations work closely together on trade despite political ties that are strained by a maritime sovereignty dispute.Officials from China’s Guangxi Zhuang region, just north of Vietnam, said in 2015 they would spend $16 million to build an 8-kilometer-long border fence to fight smuggling, the state-owned Chinanews.com reported at the time. The fence would be equipped with monitoring devices.Guangxi law enforcement agencies had cracked 923 smuggling cases and seized more than 1,000 suspected smuggling vehicles in just the first quarter of that year, Chinanews.com said.The Vietnam-based Youth news website said in July that despite 16 Vietnamese checkpoints established to prevent illegal entry, Chinese smugglers “have been blazing dozens of new trails from China” and challenging the work of border guards. Illegal entries, the report added, threaten to infect Vietnam with new COVID-19 cases. Mountain-dwelling ethnic minority groups have historically traded across the border and moved goods from one side to the other regardless of the formal boundary lines. China ranks as Vietnam’s biggest trade partner with a volume of about $100 billion in the first 10 months of 2020. Most of that amount represents exports to Vietnam. “Vietnam has as much interest as China in closing cross-border smuggling, particularly since it has such a massive trade deficit with China,” said Carl Thayer, Southeast Asia-specialized emeritus professor from the University of New South Wales in Australia.
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AP Fact Check: Trump’s Claims of Fake Georgia Votes are Unfounded
President Donald Trump put forth an array of fuzzy accounting and false claims in a phone call to Georgia’s secretary of state seeking a reversal of his election defeat. In the hourlong conversation Saturday with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Trump suggested that the Republican find enough votes to hand Trump the victory. The Associated Press obtained the full audio of Trump’s conversation with Georgia officials from a person on the call. The AP is not publishing the full audio in keeping with its policy of not amplifying disinformation and unproven allegations. A look at Trump’s claims on the call and how they compare with the facts: TRUMP: “If we can go over some of the numbers, I think it’s pretty clear we won, we won very substantially in Georgia.” THE FACTS: Trump lost Georgia in an election the state has certified for Democrat Joe Biden. Republican election officials have affirmed the election was conducted and counted fairly. With ballots counted three times, including once by hand, Georgia’s certified totals show Trump lost to Biden by 11,779 votes out of nearly 5 million cast. Raffensperger certified the totals with officials saying they’ve found no evidence that Trump won. No credible claims of fraud or systemic errors have been sustained. Judges have turned away legal challenges to the results, although at least one is still pending in state court. TRUMP: “People should be happy to have an accurate count. … We have other states I believe will be flipping to us shortly.” THE FACTS: No reversal of the election outcome is in the offing in any states. Biden defeated Trump by about 7 million popular votes nationwide and by a tally of 306-232 in the Electoral College, including winning key states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Arizona. Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr, found no evidence of widespread election fraud. Trump’s allegations of massive voting fraud have been dismissed by a succession of judges and refuted by state election officials and an arm of his own administration’s Homeland Security Department. A group of Senate Republicans, led by Sens. Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, say they plan to object to the election results when Congress meets Wednesday to tally Biden’s Electoral College victory over Trump. The objections will force votes in both the House and Senate, but none are expected to prevail. TRUMP: “We have anywhere from 250 (thousand) to 300,000 ballots were dropped mysteriously into the rolls, much of that had to do with Fulton County, which hasn’t been checked.” THE FACTS: Trump appears to be referring to large numbers of votes that were tabulated in the early hours of Wednesday morning after Election Day and later. The arrival of those votes was expected because many of Georgia’s 159 counties had large stacks of mail-in ballots that had to be tabulated after polls closed and in-person ballots were counted. News organizations and officials had warned in the days leading up to the election that the results would likely come in just as they did: In-person votes, which tend to be counted more quickly, would likely favor the president. And mail-in-ballots, which take longer to count since they must be removed from envelopes and verified before they are counted, would favor Biden. States tend to count mail-in ballots at the end of the process. TRUMP: “We think … if (there is) a real check of signatures going back in Fulton County, you’ll find at least a couple of hundred thousand of forged signatures.” THE FACTS: It would be impossible for anyone to have forged hundreds of thousands of signatures on mail-in ballots in Fulton County because there were only about 147,000 mail-in ballots in Georgia’s most populous county, with about 116,000 of them going to Biden. TRUMP, saying thousands of voters moved out of Georgia, registered in another state, and then improperly cast ballots in Georgia: “They came back in, and they voted. That was a large number.” THE FACTS: Not so. Trump supporters are working from a list of questionable accuracy, according to Ryan Germany, the general counsel for Raffensperger’s office. He told Trump during the call that those claims have been investigated and that in many cases, voters “moved back years ago. It’s not like it happened just before the election. There’s something about that data that it’s just not accurate.” TRUMP: “It doesn’t pass the smell test, because we hear they’re shredding thousands and thousands of ballots and now what they’re saying (is) ‘Oh, we’re just cleaning up the office.'” THE FACTS: The shredding in question was taking place in suburban Cobb County, not in Fulton County as Trump said. Cobb County elections officials said November 24 that none of the items shredded by a contractor were “relevant to the election or the re-tally” and instead were things like old mailing labels, other papers with voter information, old emails and duplicates of absentee ballot applications. TRUMP, about a legal settlement that Georgia signed with the state Democratic Party over how signatures on absentee ballot applications and absentee ballots are verified: “You can’t check signatures, you can’t do that. … You’re allowed to do harvesting, I guess, in that agreement. That agreement is a disaster for this country.” THE FACTS: There is nothing in the March 6 consent decree that prevents Georgia’s election clerks from scrutinizing signatures. The legal settlement addresses accusations about a lack of statewide standards for judging signatures on absentee ballot envelopes. Raffensperger has said that not only is it entirely possible to match signatures, but that the state requires it. Ballot harvesting, the practice of collecting numbers of absentee ballots and delivering them back to elections officials, remains illegal in Georgia. TRUMP, referring to investigations into his baseless claims of voter fraud: “You have your never-Trumper U.S. attorney there.” THE FACTS: The U.S. attorney in Atlanta is a Trump appointee. Byung J. “BJay” Pak is a longtime Republican who also served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 2011 until 2017. He was nominated by Trump to become the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia in 2017. In announcing his nomination, the White House said that Pak and five other nominees for U.S. attorney’s posts “share the president’s vision for ‘Making America Safe Again.'” Pak had previously also worked as an assistant U.S. attorney. TRUMP, citing 18,000 “suspicious” votes: “The tape that’s been shown all over the world … they said very clearly there was a major water main break. Everybody fled the area and then they came back … there were no Republican poll watchers … and there was no law enforcement. … It was stuffed with votes. They weren’t in an official voter box; they were in what looked to be in suitcases or trunks. … The minimum number it could be … was 18,000 ballots, all for Biden.” THE FACTS: State and Fulton County election officials say that the surveillance video Trump refers shows no improper behavior, but normal ballot processing using not suitcases, but ballot containers on wheels. Officials said that the entire video showed the same workers had earlier packed the ballot containers with valid, uncounted ballots. Republicans have said that their observers were told to leave Fulton County’s vote counting center, but elections officials said they left after confusion that arose because election workers thought they were done for the night. An independent monitor and an investigator oversaw the vote count, according to state and county officials. Trump also refers to a phony confession attributed by a woman allegedly involved in the incident that was posted on social media. TRUMP: “In other states we think we found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines, but we’ll have to see.” THE FACTS: No such corruption has been found. There’s “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised,” said the federal agency that oversees election security, in a statement joined by state and electoral-industry officials.
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Biden Inauguration Will Have Virtual Nationwide Parade
President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration will include a “virtual parade across America” consistent with crowd limits during the coronavirus era, organizers announced Sunday. Following the swearing-in ceremony on Inauguration Day, January 20, on the west front of the U.S. Capitol, Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, will join Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, in participating in a socially distanced Pass in Review on the Capitol’s opposite front side. Those are military traditions where Biden will review the readiness of military troops. Biden will also receive a traditional presidential escort with representatives from every branch of the military from 15th Street in Washington to the White House. That, the Presidential Inaugural Committee says, will be socially distanced too, while “providing the American people and world with historic images of the president-elect proceeding to the White House without attracting large crowds.” FILE – Construction crews work on the platforms where the president-elect will take the oath of office, at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 18, 2020. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)Workers in recent days began dismantling an inaugural parade reviewing stand in front of the White House as Biden’s transition team continues to prepare for festivities that will be mostly virtual. Accordingly, organizers also said they will hold a virtual parade nationwide to “celebrate America’s heroes, highlight Americans from all walks of life in different states and regions and reflect on the diversity, heritage, and resilience of the country as we begin a new American era.” The parade event will be televised and feature “diverse, dynamic” performances in communities across the country, the inaugural committee promised. Participants will be announced in coming weeks. “We are excited about the possibilities and opportunities this moment presents to allow all Americans to participate in our country’s sacred inaugural traditions,” Maju Varghese, the executive director of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, said in a statement.
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US Vaccination Campaign Picks Up as Nation Hits New Milestone
The United States fell far short of its goal to vaccinate 20 million people against COVID-19 by the end of December, but the pace of vaccinations is picking up. Michelle Quinn reports.
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7th Body Recovered from Norway Mudslide; 3 Still Missing
Rescue workers have uncovered a seventh body from a landslide that buried homes in a village near Norway’s capital, police said Sunday, but hopes persist that three people still missing might yet be found alive. The tragedy occurred early Wednesday when several houses were destroyed and shifted hundreds of meters under a torrent of mud in the village of Ask, 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of Oslo. Police spokesman Bjorn Christian Willersrud told journalists they hoped to find survivors in the landslide zone. “It is still a rescue operation until we decide otherwise,” he said. Earlier Sunday, the head of the rescue operation, Goran Syversen, told reporters: “We are working hard in the depression created by the landslide.” “We have five teams working at the same time. They are doing very difficult work which is not without risk. Nevertheless, we are making good progress,” he said. Police said the latest body was found near where two others had been recovered, but they gave no further details. The teams, backed up by sniffer dogs, helicopters and drones, have now found three bodies Sunday, one on Saturday and three on Friday. Three of the victims, two men and a woman, have been identified as Eirik Gronolen, 31, Lisbeth Neraas, 54 and Bjorn-Ivar Grymyr Jansen, 40. But police have published the names of all 10 people, including a 2-year-old and a 13-year-old, who went missing Wednesday. Ten people were also injured in the landslide, including one seriously who was transferred to Oslo for treatment. About 1,000 people of the town’s population of 5,000 have been evacuated, because of fears for the safety of their homes as the land continues to move. “It is a completely surreal and terrible situation,” one of the evacuees, Olav Gjerdingen, told AFP, adding that his family were sheltering at a hotel. The rescuers received a visit Sunday from King Harald, his wife, Sonja, and Crown Prince Haakon, who lit candles for the victims in a local church. “I’m having trouble finding something to say, because it’s absolutely horrible,” the king said after the visit. “This terrible event impacts us all. I sympathize with you who are beginning the new year with sadness and uncertainty,” he said in a televised statement. The authorities have banned all aircraft from the disaster area until Monday afternoon while they conduct aerial searches. “We are searching where we believe we might still find survivors,” said the head of the team of firefighters, Kenneth Wangen, adding that the search zone had been expanded. The rescue teams, who are also seeking to save family pets, were digging channels in the ground to evacuate casualties. Some local people have lit candles near the perimeter of the disaster site in tribute to the victims.
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Pelosi Re-elected US House Speaker
Representative Nancy Pelosi was elected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Sunday for her fourth term, with a narrower Democratic majority in the chamber and challenges ahead.The Democrat from California surpassed the necessary majority of votes Sunday afternoon, with two Democrats voting for other candidates and three more voting present.
Democrats hold a narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in the new 117th Congress, with 222 Democrats and 211 Republicans. A few members were unable to vote because they had tested positive for the coronavirus or had other health problems.For the first time since May, lawmakers had to be present for the vote instead of using a proxy system set up amid the pandemic. The vote lasted several hours as lawmakers were brought into the hall in small groups to avoid large crowd numbers.The new Congress faces several challenges, among them defeating the pandemic that so far has cost more than 350,000 U.S. lives, and reviving the U.S. economy.The 80-year-old Pelosi has indicated that after this two-year period she will not seek another term as speaker of the House, in accordance with a deal made with Democrats in 2018 who wanted her to step aside as speaker then.Pelosi did not face a challenger this term.
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Spanish-flagged Boat Rescues 265 Migrants in Mediterranean
A Spanish-flagged humanitarian ship on Sunday was seeking a port of safety for 265 migrants its crew rescued from the Mediterranean Sea in the last few days. The Open Arms charity tweeted that its vessel on Saturday had safely brought aboard 96 migrants who had been adrift in a wooden boat with without life vests in international waters. It said the passengers, most of them from Eritrea, included two women and 17 minors and were suffering from hypothermia. In a separate operation two days before that rescue, Open Arms took aboard 169 migrants, who had departed Libyan shores, where many human traffickers are based. The traffickers launch vessels, many of them flimsy rubber dinghies or rickety fishing boats, crowded with migrants who hope to reach European shores to seek asylum. Some are fleeing conflict or persecution, but many of the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have been rescued at sea in recent years are fleeing poverty and thus are denied asylum by European Union countries. Italy and fellow EU nation Malta have often refused docking permission to the humanitarian rescue boats, contending that most migrants want to reach jobs or relatives in northern Europe. Italian and Maltese government authorities have insisted other European nations do their share.
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100 Dead in Attacks on Two Villages in West Niger
About 100 people were killed in Niger, amid the presidential election, in an attack on two villages in the west, one of the worst massacres of civilians in this country and in the Sahel regularly targeted by jihadi groups. “We have just returned from the scene of the attacks” carried out Saturday. “In Tchoma Bangou there were up to 70 dead and in Zaroumadareye 30 dead,” Almou Hassane, the mayor of Tondikiwindi, the town that administers the two villages, in the Ouallam department, told AFP Sunday. “There were also 25 wounded, some of whom were evacuated to Niamey and Ouallam for treatment,” he added. The attack, which has not been claimed, was carried out Saturday by terrorists on motorcycles. To attack the two villages (7 kilometers apart), the attackers split into two columns. While one attacked Zaroumadareye, the other attacked Tchoma Bangou, the mayor said. The two villages are about 120 kilometers north of the capital, Niamey, in the Tillabéri region, bordering Mali and Burkina Faso. This region known as “the three borders” has been regularly targeted for years by jihadi groups. A delegation with Prime Minister Brigi Rafini visited the site, while outgoing President Mahamadou Issoufou will lead an exceptional National Security Council on Monday morning. Issoufou tweeted Sunday his “deepest condolences to the populations of Tchoma Bangou and Zaroumadareye, following the cowardly and barbaric attack on their villages.” According to a senior official in the Tillabéri region, the attack occurred around noon local time (11:00 GMT). At the same time, the results of the first round of the presidential election on December 27 were announced. The candidate of the ruling party, Mohamed Bazoum, former minister of the interior, garnered 39.33% of the vote. He promised to strengthen the fight against jihadi groups. Series of attacksSeven soldiers were killed December 21 in the west, where the Islamic State in the Great Sahara (EIGS) regularly operates. Thirty-four people were killed December 12 in the village of Toumour in the southeast, an attack claimed by Boko Haram. Niger organized a series of elections in December, municipal and regional ones December 13, then presidential and legislative combined on December 27. The second round of the presidential election is to take place February 20. The region of Tillabéri has been placed under a state of emergency since 2017. To fight against the jihadis, the authorities in January 2020 banned motorbike traffic day and night and the closure of certain markets. One of the poorest countries in the world, Niger has been fighting for years against Sahelian jihadi groups in its western part and Boko Haram in its southeast without much success despite regional cooperation and Western military aid. Jihadi attacks in the west and south-east have claimed hundreds of lives since 2010, and caused about 500,000 refugees and displaced people to flee their homes (including 160,000 in the west), according to the United Nations.
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Fauci Suggests Slow Pace of US Coronavirus Vaccinations to Pick Up
Vaccinations against the coronavirus are off to a slow and chaotic start in the United States, but the country’s top infectious disease expert held out hope Sunday that the pace will soon pick up. “We are not where we want to be, no doubt about it,” Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC News’ “This Week” show. “We need to catch up.” So far, the U.S. has distributed 13 million doses of two vaccines produced by drug makers Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna throughout the country but only 4.2 million shots have ended up in the arms of Americans. “The vaccines are being delivered to the states by the federal government far faster than they can be administered!” President Donald Trump said on Twitter. But Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President-elect Joe Biden, said that the pace of inoculating people – chiefly health care workers and elderly people in nursing homes in the initial stages of the vaccination campaign – is picking up. “There is a glimmer of hope,” Fauci said, with 1.5 million shots administered in the last three days. He added, “We’ve got to get interaction between the federal government and the (country’s 50) states, a real partnership.” Florida Department of Health medical workers prepare to administer a COVID-19 vaccine to seniors in the parking lot of the Gulf View Square Mall in New Port Richey near Tampa, Florida, Dec. 31, 2020.In some states, long lines of people waiting for shots have formed on sidewalks leading to health centers. In the city of Houston, Texas, officials had 750 shots available, but 250,000 people called a registration line in hopes of scheduling a vaccination. Biden has called for 100 million vaccinations in the first 100 days of his administration that starts with his inauguration January 20. Fauci said the stepped-up pace of inoculations can be met. “It’s realistic,” he said. “We can do a million a day.” Fauci said that if 70% to 85% of Americans are vaccinated in the coming months the United States can return to some sense of normality by next September or October. Fauci was for a while the face of the Trump’s administration’s response to the pandemic that has killed more than 350,000 Americans and left more than 20.4 million infected. Both figures surpass those of any other country, according to the Johns Hopkins University. With the U.S. coronavirus caseload growing by tens of thousands a day and Trump preoccupied with a November reelection bid he lost, the White House mostly sidelined Fauci in favor of a more favorable commentary on the development of the vaccines. In a tweet Sunday, Trump indicated he was still upset about Fauci’s standing in the court of public opinion. “Something how Dr. Fauci is revered by the LameStream Media as such a great professional, having done, they say, such an incredible job, yet he works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work,” Trump said. “Gee, could this just be more Fake News?” Something how Dr. Fauci is revered by the LameStream Media as such a great professional, having done, they say, such an incredible job, yet he works for me and the Trump Administration, and I am in no way given any credit for my work. Gee, could this just be more Fake News?— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 3, 2021
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Dozens of House, Senate Republicans Join Likely Futile Effort to Reject Biden Victory
More than 100 Republican lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives and a dozen senators say they will join an almost assuredly futile effort Wednesday to try to block certification of the Electoral College vote showing that Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the November election. The certification of the 306-232 Electoral College vote favoring Biden, a fixture on the Washington political scene for nearly a half century, is the last step before he is set to be inaugurated as the country’s 46th president on January 20.Both chambers of Congress would need to uphold the challenges to Biden’s victory for the election outcome to be upended. But Democrats narrowly control the House and are certain to certify Biden’s win, while the Democratic minority in the Senate, along with some Republicans who have acknowledged Biden’s win, are likely to do the same in the Senate.Trump, who for weeks has made baseless claims that he was defrauded of election to a second four-year term, continues to cheer on protests against his loss, an outcome that will make him the fifth U.S. president in the country’s 245-year history to lose a re-election bid after a single term in office.“An attempt to steal a landslide win,” Trump said on Twitter over the weekend. “Can’t let it happen!”He tweeted a video calling for his supporters to mass in Washington on Wednesday to protest certification of Biden as the election winner, saying it “could be the biggest event” in the city’s history.President Donald Trump boards Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, in West Palm Beach, Florida, Dec. 31, 2020.Trump has lost dozens of court challenges to the outcome of the election, including twice at the Supreme Court. In the latest instance, a federal appellate court Saturday night upheld the dismissal, by a Trump-appointed lower court judge, of a lawsuit seeking to give Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, power to reject Biden’s winning electoral slates in several states and instead choose slates of Trump electors to overturn the election outcome and keep him in power.Pence is set to preside Wednesday in what is, at most times, a ceremonial role at a joint session of Congress over the tabulation of the electoral votes that have already been certified by officials in the country’s 50 states and national capital city of Washington.On Saturday evening, Marc Short, Pence’s chief of staff, said in a statement that the vice president “shares the concerns of millions of Americans about voter fraud and irregularities in the last election.”The vice president, the statement continued, “welcomes the efforts of members of the House and Senate to use the authority they have under the law to raise objections and bring forward evidence before the Congress and the American people on Jan. 6th.”Vice President Mike Pence speaks during the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, Dec. 22, 2020, in West Palm Beach, Florida.But ultimately, as has occurred several other times in U.S. history, Pence, as vice president and the presiding officer over the Senate, will be tasked with announcing his own defeat to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and that of Trump to Biden, once the electoral vote is counted and the Republican challenges heard and presumably rejected.Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri announced last week that he would challenge the Biden victory, coupled with the House protest of dozens of lawmakers led by Congressman Mo Brooks of Alabama. Hawley’s protest, specifically challenging Biden’s victory in the eastern state of Pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes, was joined Saturday by 11 other Republican senators led by Ted Cruz of Texas and included four senators elected in November being sworn into the new session of Congress on Sunday.The 11 called for a 10-day audit of election returns in “disputed states,” saying they would vote to reject the electors from those states until the audit was completed.Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican, did not join the protest against the vote in his state, saying that “a fundamental, defining feature of a democratic republic is the right of the people to elect their own leaders. The effort by Senators Hawley, Cruz, and others to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in swing states like Pennsylvania directly undermines this right.”One of the vocal Trump supporters, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” show on Sunday that he joined the protest against the Electoral College outcome because, “We’ve got tens of millions of people who think this election was stolen.”But another Trump supporter, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said proposing a commission two weeks ahead of the inauguration “is not effectively fighting for President Trump. It appears to be more of a political dodge than an effective remedy.”As they announced their protest on Saturday, Cruz and the other senators acknowledged the presumed futility of their effort, saying, “We fully expect most if not all Democrats, and perhaps more than a few Republicans, to vote otherwise” against overturning Biden’s victory.The Senate’s top Republican lawmaker, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, after weeks of refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory, congratulated Biden and Harris as the election winners after the Electoral College votes were cast in mid-December. McConnell was unsuccessful in urging Republican lawmakers to forego challenging the outcome.Trump also tweeted Sunday morning about the outcome in the southern state of Georgia, where he lost to Biden by just under 12,000 votes out of the 5 million ballots that were cast.“I spoke to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger yesterday about Fulton County and voter fraud in Georgia,” Trump said. “He was unwilling, or unable, to answer questions such as the ‘ballots under table’ scam, ballot destruction, out of state ‘voters’, dead voters, and more. He has no clue!” Raffensperger, a Republican, replied, “Respectfully, President Trump: What you’re saying is not true. The truth will come out.”FILE – Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger speaks during a news conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Nov. 30, 2020.The Georgia vote was counted initially, and then twice recounted, with Biden winning all three times, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate carried the state since 1992.Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican congressman being sworn in for a fourth term on Sunday, was re-elected on the same ballot as Trump lost in the state.But Hice said in a tweet that his first concern in the new Congress would be to “Fight for fair elections by objecting to fraud on Jan 6! Liberty must be defended!”
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Zimbabwe Reintroduces Dusk-to-Dawn Curfew to Contain Rising COVID-19 Cases
Zimbabwe has reintroduced a 12-hour dusk-to-dawn curfew to contain rising COVID19 cases and combat citizens’ disregard of lockdown regulations. The World Health Organization is calling on Zimbabweans to abide by the new regulations. Public health experts and informal traders have concerns about the measures.
Announcing the 12-hour curfew Saturday night on national television, Vice President Constantino Chiwenga said the government was concerned by a spike in coronavirus cases in Zimbabwe. “We have seen a surge in COVID-19 cases and deaths, almost double in two months, from 8,374 on 1 November to 14,084 to date. In light of the recent surge in COVID-19 cases the following stiff lockdown measures are being put in place with immediate effect,” he said. Sam Wadzai, who leads the activist group Vendors Initiative Social and Economic Transformation Zimbabwe, wants members get social protection so that they can survive during the lockdown, Jan. 3, 2021. (Columbus Mavhunga/VOA) Besides the curfew, other measures include limiting the number of mourners at funerals to 30 people, while all other gatherings at weddings, churches, bars, bottle stores, gyms and restaurants are banned. Chiwenga – who doubles as Zimbabwe’s health minister – said a review of the new measures would be done in 30 days.
Participants in the informal sector of Zimbabwe’s economy say the new measures will not work. Sam Wadzai leads the activist group Vendors Initiative Social and Economic Transformation Zimbabwe. “Clearly the government has not drawn lessons from the first lockdown where [in] March [2020] they announced the existence of a cushioning fund which did not benefit the majority of informal traders. In the few cases where informal traders received these allowances, the value had long been eroded by inflation. Lockdown measures should be implemented along with the introduction of proper social protection schemes to protect the vulnerable of our society. Otherwise, it would be very, very difficult for the measures to be abided by.” Dr. Pamela Magande, president of Zimbabwe College of Public Health Physicians, says lockdowns should be accompanied with equipping hospitals with medicines, PPEs and modern equipment. (Courtesy: Dr. Magande)Dr. Pamela Magande, president of Zimbabwe College of Public Health Physicians, says lockdowns should be accompanied with equipping hospitals with medicines, PPEs and modern equipment. “Hospitals are actually difficult to work in because there is nothing to work with. Everyone needs to be brought to the table because lockdown on its own we are just delaying the inevitable. We will emerge from the lockdown and we will have transmissions again and we will be back from where we started,” she said. Dr. Alex Gasasira heads the World Health Organization in Zimbabwe. He says citizens have to embrace the new lockdown measures so that the southern African nation can contain escalating cases of coronavirus.
“If we, as individuals play our role at our individual levels in our homes, in our communities, this will complement the measures that the government has put in place and will enable the objective of reduced transmission being achieved in Zimbabwe in short time,” he said. He said personal hygiene, wearing face masks and social distance were some of the measures that individual Zimbabweans can take if the new strict lockdown measures were to bear fruit. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe police said it had arrested over 2,000 people over the New Year’s holiday weekend who flouted the country’s lockdown regulations imposed in March.
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New Year, New Charges as Thai Protesters Slapped with Royal Defamation Charges
Thai authorities January 1 made their 38th arrest of a pro-democracy activist in recent weeks under the country’s tough lèse majesté law as authorities crack down on the country’s unprecedented protest movement.That law, Section 112 of the Thai criminal code, forbids defamation of the king and provides for three to 15 years’ imprisonment for violations.The law had been dormant since King Maha Vajiralongkorn succeeded his father, King Bhumibol Adulyadej, who died in 2016. The Thai government, though, is now using it to try to stamp out continuing protests calling for the government to resign, a new constitution and reform of the monarchy.Thailand has been a constitutional monarchy since 1932, but 13 successful coups by the arch-royalist army have inflated the power of the palace over elected governments.The protesters who lit up Bangkok’s streets for most of last year accuse Vajiralongkorn of wading beyond the charter by shifting palace wealth and elite army units under his direct control – as well as moving the pieces on the Thai political chessboard from behind the scenes.They want the return of the crown’s multibillion-dollar wealth to the stewardship of the people rather than the king, the “112” law to be scrapped and the palace to be put firmly under the constitution.Authorities are now struggling to catch up with protesters whose attacks on the monarchy – and the law which shields it – are visible both on banners hung from bridges and across the internet in memes and hashtags.Authorities are hitting back at the protests with allegations protesters have been “threatening, defaming or insulting” the royal family, which is the behavior banned in the law.According to the human rights group Thai Lawyers for Human Rights, the activist arrested January 1, whose name has been given only as “Nut,” was a Facebook administrator of a protest group and was bailed out January 2 after being charged under Section 112 for selling a calendar using the movement’s satirical rubber duck symbol to allegedly mock the monarchy.“In just a matter of weeks 112 charges have continued to surge,” the group’s tweet said.Some people have been arrested multiple times as the 112 law is used against protesters for perceived transgressions ranging from mocking the king’s fashion choices to urging Germany, where until recently Vajiralongkorn has spent much of his time, to probe the legality of his domicile there.“Even the slightest critical reference to the monarchy is now punishable,” Sunai Phasuk of Human Rights Watch told VOA.The cascade of charges also points to problems with a nebulous law that allows any member of the public to bring charges with police, who routinely refer the complaints to the courts no matter how thin the case may appear.The police who filed the charge against the 38th person “couldn’t even answer to the lawyer how this violated Section 112. This was purely political,” said Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang, a law scholar at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.“This law [Section 112] is being used all over the place. Anyone can file this charge, and the Supreme Court has never once set a guideline as to how this law should be used. It’s still very much the Wild West,” he said.The charges under the law have caught the eye of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, which last month condemned the crackdown on free expression, particularly the arrest of a 16-year-old after taking part in a catwalk satirizing the royal family’s fashion style.‘Stepping beyond fear’The lèse majesté law is also, at least for now, failing to silence the protest leadership, most of whom have been bailed out of jail on multiple charges, and who say that every time the law is used it loses some of its power.“People do not fear 112 anymore,” said Attapon Buapat, a protest leader who has been charged under the law.“Everyone fighting this battle has been prepared for our freedoms and rights to be violated one day. We have stepped beyond that fear for quite some time now. Whatever will be, will be,” he said.Protesters paused their demonstrations before Christmas and a second wave of COVID-19 has hit Thailand, spurring partial lockdowns across much of the country. It is not clear when protesters will mass in large numbers again.
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Johnson: Scotland Must Wait a Generation for New Vote
Another Scottish independence referendum should not take place for a generation, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sunday, as Scotland’s leader renewed calls for a fresh vote in the wake of Brexit. “Referendums in my experience, direct experience, in this country are not particularly jolly events,” the prime minister told BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.” “They don’t have a notably unifying force in the national mood, they should be only once in a generation.” Scotland voted to remain part of the United Kingdom in 2014. FILE – In this Feb. 10, 2020, file photo, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon speaks during an event at the European Policy Center in Brussels.Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon at the time called it a once-in-a-generation vote, but now argues that Britain’s departure from the European Union, which a majority of Scots opposed, has changed the game. Recent polls have shown consistent support for independence, boosted by rows between London and the devolved governments over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic. “For too long, successive U.K. governments have taken Scotland in the wrong direction, culminating in Brexit. It’s no wonder so many people in Scotland have had enough,” she wrote on her party’s website on Saturday. “We didn’t want to leave and we hope to join you again soon as an equal partner,” she added, in a message to the EU. Johnson has ruled out holding another vote, but Sturgeon will likely claim a mandate and heap pressure on the prime minister should her party perform well in upcoming local elections. When asked why it was fair to hold a referendum on EU membership but not another on Scottish independence, Johnson told Marr: “The difference is we had a [European] referendum in 1975 and we then had another one in 2016. That seems to be about the right sort of gap.”
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Pope Criticizes People Going on Holiday to Flee COVID Lockdowns
Pope Francis condemned on Sunday people who had gone abroad on holiday to escape coronavirus lockdowns, saying they needed to show greater awareness of the suffering of others.Speaking after his weekly noon blessing, Francis said he had read newspaper reports of people catching flights to flee government curbs and seek fun elsewhere.”They didn’t think about those who were staying at home, of the economic problems of many people who have been hit hard by the lockdown, of the sick people. (They thought) only about going on holiday and having fun,” the pope said.”This really saddened me,” he said in a video address from the library of the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace.The traditional Angelus blessing is normally given from a window overlooking St. Peter’s Square, but it was moved indoors to prevent any crowds gathering and limit the spread of COVID-19.”We don’t know what 2021 will reserve for us, but what all of us can do together is make a bit more of an effort to take care of each other. There is the temptation to take care only of our own interests,” he added.Many countries have imposed strict restrictions to prevent the spread of coronavirus, which has killed more than 84 million people worldwide, according to the latest Reuters tally.
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In Somalia, COVID-19 Vaccines Are Distant as Virus Spreads
As richer countries race to distribute COVID-19 vaccines, Somalia remains the rare place where much of the population hasn’t taken the coronavirus seriously. Some fear that’s proven to be deadlier than anyone knows.“Certainly, our people don’t use any form of protective measures, neither masks nor social distancing,” Abdirizak Yusuf Hirabeh, the government’s COVID-19 incident manager, said in an interview. “If you move around the city (of Mogadishu) or countrywide, nobody even talks about it.” And yet infections are rising, he said.It is places like Somalia, the Horn of Africa nation torn apart by three decades of conflict, that will be last to see COVID-19 vaccines in any significant quantity. With part of the country still held by the al-Qaida-linked al-Shabab extremist group, the risk of the virus becoming endemic in some hard-to-reach areas is strong — a fear for parts of Africa amid the slow arrival of vaccines.“There is no real or practical investigation into the matter,” said Hirabeh, who is also the director of the Martini hospital in Mogadishu, the largest treating COVID-19 patients, which saw seven new patients the day he spoke. He acknowledged that neither facilities nor equipment are adequate in Somalia to tackle the virus.Fewer than 27,000 tests for the virus have been conducted in Somalia, a country of more than 15 million people, one of the lowest rates in the world. Fewer than 4,800 cases have been confirmed, including at least 130 deaths.Some worry the virus will sink into the population as yet another poorly diagnosed but deadly fever.For 45-year-old street beggar Hassan Mohamed Yusuf, that fear has turned into near-certainty. “In the beginning we saw this virus as just another form of the flu,” he said.Then three of his young children died after having a cough and high fever. As residents of a makeshift camp for people displaced by conflict or drought, they had no access to coronavirus testing or proper care.At the same time, Yusuf said, the virus hurt his efforts to find money to treat his family as “we can’t get close enough” to people to beg.Early in the pandemic, Somalia’s government did attempt some measures to limit the spread of the virus, closing all schools and shutting down all domestic and international flights. Mobile phones rang with messages about the virus. But social distancing has long disappeared in the country’s streets, markets or restaurants. On Thursday, some 30,000 people crammed into a stadium in Mogadishu for a regional football match with no face masks or other anti-virus measures in sight.Mosques in the Muslim nation never faced restrictions, for fear of the reactions.“Our religion taught us hundreds of years ago that we should wash our hands, faces and even legs five times every day and our women should take face veils as they’re often weaker. So that’s the whole prevention of the disease, if it really exists,” said Abdulkadir Sheikh Mohamud, an imam in Mogadishu.“I left the matter to Allah to protect us,” said Ahmed Abdulle Ali, a shop owner in the capital. He attributed the rise in coughing during prayers to the changing of seasons.A more important protective factor is the relative youth of Somalia’s people, said Dr. Abdurahman Abdullahi Abdi Bilaal, who works in a clinic in the capital. More than 80% of the country’s population is under age 30.“The virus is here, absolutely, but the resilience of people is owing to age,” he said.It’s the lack of post-mortem investigations in the country that are allowing the true extent of the virus to go undetected, he said.The next challenge in Somalia is not simply obtaining COVID-19 vaccines but also persuading the population to accept them.That will take time, “just the same as what it took for our people to believe in the polio or measles vaccines,” a concerned Bilaal said.Hirabeh, in charge of Somalia’s virus response, agreed that “our people have little confidence in the vaccines,” saying that many Somalis hate the needles. He called for serious awareness campaigns to change minds.The logistics of any COVID-19 vaccine rollout are another major concern. Hirabeh said Somalia is expecting the first vaccines in the first quarter of 2021, but he worries that the country has no way to handle a vaccine like the Pfizer one that requires being kept at a temperature of minus 70 degrees Celsius.“One that could be kept between minus 10 and minus 20 might suit the Third World like our country,” he said.
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CDC: 14 Million Vaccines Distributed, 4 Million Inoculated
The U.S. continues its run at the top of the list as the country with the most COVID-19 infections, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Early Sunday, the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported the U.S. has 20.4 million of the world’s 84.3 million COVID infections. India, the country with the second-largest number of cases has about half as many cases as the U.S. with 10.3 million. Public health officials warn, however, that India’s caseload may be undercounted. The U.S. has recorded more than 350,000 deaths related to the coronavirus. Funeral homes across the country are finding it difficult to keep up with the demand for their services. A surge of cases in the coming weeks is expected, following the holiday season, public health officials say. The CDC Data Tracker says more than 13 million coronavirus vaccines have been distributed in the U.S. but only 4.2 million people have been inoculated. States have been overwhelmed by the process and have received little, if any, direction from the federal government about how best to deliver the vaccines to the public. Twenty-five prisons in California have individually recorded more than 1,000 coronavirus infections, according to a New York Times report, and none of the prisons with the high infection rate is scheduled to participate in the state’s prison vaccination program. Avenal, the prison with the most infections, has reported more than 3,500 cases, according to The Times. A spokeswoman for the court-appointed official who oversees California’s prison health told the newspaper that California was instead focusing its prison vaccination program on locations where “people are at significant risk of becoming infected or severely ill from the coronavirus.” Former CNN talk show host Larry King is undergoing treatment for COVID-19 in a hospital in Los Angeles. CNN said Saturday King has been in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center for more than a week.
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Fast Rollout of Virus Vaccine Trials in US Reveals Tribal Distrust
The news came during a hopeful time on the largest Native American reservation.Daily coronavirus cases were in the single digits, down from a springtime peak of 238 that made the Navajo Nation a U.S. hot spot. The tribe, wanting to ensure a COVID-19 vaccine would be effective for its people, said it would welcome Pfizer clinical trials on its reservation spanning Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.Right away, tribal members accused their government of allowing them to be guinea pigs, pointing to painful times in the past when Native Americans didn’t consent to medical testing or weren’t fully informed about procedures.A Navajo Nation review board gave the study quicker approval than normal after researchers with Johns Hopkins University’s Center for American Indian Health made the case for diversity. Without Native volunteers, how would they know if tribal members responded to vaccines the same as others?“Unfortunately, Native Americans have effectively been denied the opportunity to participate in these clinical trials because almost all of the study sites are in large, urban areas that have not done effective outreach to Native Americans,” said Dr. Laura Hammitt of Johns Hopkins.Suspicion and distrustAbout 460 Native Americans participated in the trials for the vaccine by Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, including Navajos. The enrollment reflects a growing understanding of the role that people of color play in vaccine development and the push to rapidly deploy it to curb infections among populations that have been disproportionately affected by the virus.Yet, few of the country’s 574 federally recognized tribes have signed on for the studies, a hesitation often rooted in suspicion and distrust. Many tribes also require several layers of approval for clinical trials, a challenge researchers aren’t always willing to overcome and don’t face in the states.While vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna Inc. roll out across Indian Country, others are being studied.In the Pacific Northwest, the Lummi Nation and the Nooksack Indian Tribe plan to participate in a vaccine trial from another company, Novavax Inc. A Cheyenne River Sioux researcher plans to enroll Native Americans and others in South Dakota in the Novavax trial and another by Sanofi and GlaxoSmithKline.On the Navajo Nation, Arvena Peshlakai, her husband, Melvin, and their daughter Quortnii volunteered for the Pfizer trials.Arvena Peshlakai said the rumors were rampant: Navajos would be injected with the virus, and researchers would use plasma from people who got COVID-19.She was assured that wasn’t happening and let the words of her parents and grandparents guide her: Don’t let our struggles be your struggles, begin with our triumphs.“What else am I supposed to do? Just sit back and say, ‘No, I don’t trust them’ and not try something new to see if we can find a breakthrough?” Peshlakai said. “We have to do something; we can’t just sit by and wait and hope and pray.”She overcame her fear of needles to get the doses and keeps track of her well-being daily on an app. As trial participants, the family can get the vaccine if they initially received a placebo.The Pfizer trials among the Navajo and White Mountain Apache tribes enrolled 275 people, about 80% of them Native American, Hammitt said. It wasn’t as many as researchers had hoped for, but she said it’s enough to compare immune and antibody responses in Native patients to others.Vaccine trials nationwide have been moving quickly, which doesn’t always align with tribal guidelines on considering research proposals.“It must be done with respect for tribal sovereignty and knowing that each individual has truly been given informed consent,” said Abigail Echo-Hawk, director of the Urban Indian Health Institute in Seattle.It helped that Johns Hopkins has a decades-long history with the Navajos and Apaches, including other clinical trials. Hammitt said the Navajo Human Research Review Board was receptive to a quick review of the vaccine trials because of the devastating impact of the pandemic.’A few brave people’In South Dakota, the Cheyenne River Sioux tribal health committee initially pushed back on Dr. Jeffrey Henderson’s proposal for trials of the Novavax vaccine. Henderson, a tribal member, was sent into the community to gauge support.He expects to get approval from a newly seated tribal council but for now, plans to set up a mobile unit outside the reservation.“We refuse to do this type of research or any research within the boundaries of a tribe without having explicit approval from the tribe,” Henderson said.In Washington state, the Nooksack tribe is set to begin enrolling volunteers in the Novavax trials Monday, said Dr. Frank James, the tribe’s health officer.“I expect a slow start to it, and we have to get a few brave people who are comfortable with it and then people to follow,” he said.The nearby Lummi Nation is moving forward with a three-part review and approval process for the Novavax trials.Initial hesitation among the tribe stemmed from a researcher who took photos of Lummi children years ago to develop a tool to diagnose fetal alcohol syndrome but didn’t offer any ways to address it, said Dr. Dakotah Lane, executive medical director of the Lummi Tribal Health Clinic.“I had already known and was aware of certainly some distrust with any kind of research within our community,” Lane said. “But I also knew the only way out of this pandemic was with access to vaccines.”Other stories about the sterilization of Native American women, noted in a 1976 federal report, and military testing of radioactive iodine on Alaska Natives have bred distrust.The Havasupai Tribe also settled a lawsuit a decade ago that accused Arizona State University scientists of misusing blood samples meant for diabetes research to study schizophrenia, inbreeding and ancient population migration without the tribe’s permission.That case came to mind when Annette Brown, a Navajo woman, heard about her tribe’s willingness to participate in COVID-19 vaccine trials.“There’s this historical distrust when it comes to any type of experimenting,” she said. “It’s just experience, I don’t know that there are many families out there who haven’t been touched by some sort of experimentation (or) biological attacks on tribal communities.”Brown has mixed feelings because she previously participated in a vaccine trial with Johns Hopkins.It was related to research that determined the first generation of vaccines for bacterial meningitis was less effective among Navajo and Apache children 6 months and younger, Hammitt said. The rate of the disease used to be five to 10 times higher among those children than the general population.Researchers and doctors in Native American communities also have found that standard doses for medications like blood thinners weren’t always the best fit for tribal members.For Marcia O’Leary, helping with a study that indirectly discovered HPV vaccines don’t protect against a strain that’s a leading cause of cancer among Native American women in the Great Plains shows the importance of having more Native researchers and being involved in clinical trials.“We can’t wait for this to trickle down,” said O’Leary, director of Missouri Breaks, a small Native American-owned research group on the Cheyenne River Sioux reservation. “It seems like in Indian Country, we keep chasing the ball of health and we never get ahead of it.”
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Fifth Body Found in Norway Mudslide; 5 Still Missing
Rescue workers have uncovered a fifth body four days after a landslide buried homes near Norway’s capital, police said Sunday, as the search goes on for five people still missing.The tragedy occurred in the early hours of Wednesday when houses were destroyed and shifted hundreds of meters under a torrent of mud at the village of Ask, 25 kilometers northeast of Oslo.”Just before 6 a.m. a deceased person was found,” a police statement said.The discovery of a fourth body was made Saturday after three were recovered the day before at the bleak, snow-covered scene at Ask, in Gjerdrum municipality.Police on Saturday identified the body of the first person found on Friday as 31-year-old Eirik GrÃnolen.The identities of the four other dead have not been released.But police on Friday published a list of the names of all the eight adults, a 2-year-old and a 13-year-old child who went missing on Wednesday.Ten people were also injured in the landslide, including one seriously who was transferred to Oslo for treatment.About a thousand people have been evacuated out of a local population of 5,000, because of fears for the safety of their homes as the land continues to move.Search and rescue teams have been using sniffer dogs, helicopters and drones in a bid to find survivors.The search teams were also digging channels in the ground to evacuate casualties.Experts say the disaster was a “quick clay slide” of approximately 300 by 800 meters.Quick clay is found in Norway and Sweden and notorious for collapsing after turning to fluid when overstressed.Prime Minister Erna Solberg described it as one of the biggest landslides the country had ever experienced.The royal court said in a statement that King Harald, his wife, Sonja, and Crown Prince Haakon were to visit the disaster area later Sunday morning.
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Homes of Top Republican and Democrat Vandalized
Vandals have targeted the homes of Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and Democrat Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with graffiti, fake blood and a pig’s head, U.S. media said.”Were’s [sic] my money,” and “Mitch kills the poor,” was daubed on McConnell’s front door and window in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. media reported.A pig’s head and fake blood were left outside Pelosi’s San Francisco home on Jan. 2, according to local media Saturday.The houses of the top Republican and Democrat were targeted following intense debate over a COVID-19 stimulus bailout for Americans.A long-awaited $900 billion pandemic relief package was finally approved Christmas Eve, with the Democrat-led House of Congress approving an increase in aid from $600 to $2,000.But the Republican-led Senate has not approved the increase — despite furious calls to do so from President Donald Trump.On Wednesday, McConnell had told reporters: “The Senate is not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrats’ rich friends who don’t need the help.”Kentucky Metro police said the incident occurred around 5 a.m. local time Saturday (1000 GMT) according to local news channel WAS11. It was unclear if anyone was home at the time.McConnell called the graffiti a “radical tantrum,” and added: “Vandalism and the politics of fear have no place in our society.”In San Francisco, Pelosi’s garage door was sprayed with a crossed-out “$2K,” followed by “Cancel rent!” and “We want everything!”The city’s police Special Investigations Division was looking into the incident, NBC News reported.
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Australia Amends National Anthem to Acknowledge Indigenous History
More than 140 years after it was first composed, Australia’s national anthem is being changed in a move the government says reflects a “spirit of unity.” There have been calls for Advance Australia Fair to better reflect the long history of Indigenous peoples.Australia shared a national anthem, God Save The Queen, with Britain, its former colonial power, until 1984, when the song was replaced by Advance Australia Fair.“Australians all let us rejoice for we are young and free.”However, Advance Australia Fair is not universally popular. It was written in 1878. To many Indigenous Australians, it is a colonial song that ignores their history. They have complained the anthem fails to recognize thousands of years of aboriginal culture.Now, the second line of the song will change from “For we are young and free” to “For we are one and free.”Prime Minister Scott Morrison says it is a small but significant amendment.“It is a change that I think is very much in accord with where Australians feel about these things,” he said. “I think it has been well received across the country. There will be those who do not think it goes far enough and those who think it goes too far. Well, that is democracy.”Some Indigenous leaders have welcomed the change that acknowledges their history that dates back at least 65,000 years. They believe the symbolism is important.Australia’s opposition Labor leader Anthony Albanese says it is an empty gesture, though.“Changing a single word in the national anthem whilst First Nations people are not even recognized in our national constitution is simply not good enough,” he said.Some Aboriginal communities sing Advance Australia Fair in their own language.Across the Tasman Sea, New Zealand has two national anthems of equal standing — God Save The Queen and God Defend New Zealand, which is sung in both English and Indigenous Maori.
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US Passes 350,000 COVID-19 Deaths
The United States has passed the milestone of 350,000 COVID-19 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data, even as vaccinations against the coronavirus-caused disease get off to a slow start.As countries around the world tighten lockdowns, impose curfews, ban large get-togethers and even halt alcohol sales to tackle a surge in coronavirus cases, officials in India and the U.S. announced some progress toward expanded immunization campaigns as infections rates continued to climb on multiple continents.New Delhi staged nationwide drills Saturday to launch one of the world’s biggest coronavirus vaccination programs as the country’s drug regulator approved two vaccines — one developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, the other by Bharat Biotech and the state-run Indian Council of Medical Research — for emergency use.India, the world’s second most populous country, has more than 10.3 million confirmed COVID-19 infections, second only to the United States. Reuters reported Friday that little was known about the clinical trials that informed the emergency use authorization and that Indian officials said approval of the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine was “subject to multiple regulatory conditionalities,” without providing details.In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Saturday said the country had administered more than 4.2 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines nationwide and had distributed more than 13 million doses.The U.S. continues to lead the world with more than 20 million infections, about one-fourth of the 84.5 million COVID-19 cases globally, according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, which also reported a total of more than 350,000 deaths since the pandemic began.In Russia, Health Minister Mikhail Murashko said that more than 800,000 people had received the domestically produced Sputnik V vaccine and that 1.5 million doses had been distributed throughout the country of 147 million.The Kremlin is pinning its hopes on mass vaccinations, not nationwide restrictions, to stop the spread of the virus and save its struggling economy from the hit of another lockdown.Officials in Brazil, home to the third-highest number of cases globally (7.7 million), recently told The Associated Press it was at least three weeks away from launching any formal immunization campaign.European Union leaders on Saturday offered to help any drug companies expand vaccine production and improve “distribution bottlenecks.””The bottleneck at the moment is … the worldwide shortage of production capacity,” said EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides, adding the bloc would help drug companies develop candidate vaccines.New strainBritish health officials Saturday reported another infection record — more than 57,700 in a single day. It was the fifth day in a row that new infections exceeded 50,000 cases as the country struggles with the spread of a more infectious variant of the virus.A spokesperson for Britain’s National Health Service said health workers were preparing to reopen London’s Nightingale hospitals, according to the Reuters news agency. The temporary Nightingale hospitals were set up by the military around the city and have remained on standby after receiving little use during the first wave of the pandemic.The new strain has led to renewed lockdowns in Britain as well as global travel restrictions on travelers from Britain.The New York Times reported Friday that at least 33 countries had detected the new coronavirus variant and more than 40 countries had barred travelers arriving from Britain. Florida on Friday was the third U.S. state to detect the new variant, after Colorado and California.On Friday, Turkey began banning Britons from entering the country after detecting 15 cases of the new coronavirus variant. Turkey said all those affected were recent arrivals from Britain.Ban on US travelers, tighter lockdownsThe Philippines said it would prohibit the entry of foreign travelers from the United States until at least Jan. 15 after the new coronavirus variant was detected.In Bangkok, Thai officials shuttered the city’s nightlife with a ban on bar, nightclub and restaurant alcohol sales, among a raft of restrictions aimed at curbing the kingdom’s rising coronavirus toll. In Tokyo, the city’s governor on Saturday asked Japan’s government to declare a new state of emergency as the country battles a third wave of infections, with record numbers of new cases.France, which recently lengthened an overnight curfew by two hours in parts of the country, has the highest COVID-19 case count in Western Europe with more than 2.7 million, according to Johns Hopkins.France deployed more than 100,000 police to stop end-of-the-year celebrations, but partygoers in northwestern France, near Rennes, staged a massive illegal rave, leading to hundreds of arrests.Spanish police broke up another gathering Saturday near Barcelona, where 300 people had been partying for more than 40 hours.Ireland on Saturday reported 3,394 cases of COVID-19, nearly doubling its record for a single day. Irish officials Friday said they had underreported coronavirus cases in recent days by more than 9,000, as its reporting system came under strain.Italy, which has the highest coronavirus death toll in Europe at nearly 75,000, Saturday reported 364 more people had died from the virus, a drop compared with Friday’s total of 462. The Guardian reported that new cases had also decreased, from 22,211 to 11,831.Norway, with one of the lowest infection rates in Europe, Saturday began requiring COVID-19 tests upon arrival into the country, after finding five cases of the British variant of the virus. Denmark discovered 86 cases of that new, more contagious strain.Greece has extended until Jan. 10 its strict two-month lockdown measures, ending an easing of the restrictions for the holidays.But in Australia, the finishing touches were being put on a glitzy show at the Sydney Opera House on Saturday, as the venue prepared to host an opera crowd for the first time since March.In Zimbabwe, where recorded cases have almost doubled since the beginning of November, government officials ordered a new containment Saturday evening. The southern African country has recorded nearly 14,500 cases to date, including 377 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.In South Africa, government-backed security forces stepped up a “zero-tolerance approach” to enforcing a mask mandate, and President Cyril Ramaphosa banned alcohol sales, calling it a root cause of accidents and violence that strain hospital resources.The coronavirus has killed more than 1.8 million people globally since emerging in China in December 2019, according to Johns Hopkins.But experts fear the worst is yet to come, predicting a sharp rise in cases and deaths after weeks of holiday gatherings.The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters contributed to this report.
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