With half the country at least partially protected against the coronavirus, Americans escaped their pandemic doldrums over the three-day holiday weekend that traditionally unleashes the country’s pent-up wanderlust at the doorstep of summer. A year after Memorial Day weekend travel was depressed by fears of the spreading virus, Americans took to the skies and roads. The Transportation Security Administration said 7.1 million people were screened at U.S. airport checkpoints from Thursday through Sunday. Friday was the highest single travel day since March 2020, when COVID-19 slashed air travel demand, as 1.96 million people were screened. Last week, AAA forecast travel to jump by 60% for the Memorial Day holiday period, with 37 million people expected to travel 80 kilometers (50 miles) or more from home, AAA Travel said. FILE – Travelers check in at Love Field airport, May 28, 2021, in Dallas.United Airlines said it was forecasting Monday to be its busiest travel day since March 2020. For the five-day holiday period, it was forecasting 1.34 million passengers, which was fewer than the 2.3 million during the same period in 2019. Tracking firm GasBuddy said Sunday’s U.S. gasoline demand jumped 9.6% above the average of the previous four Sundays, the highest Sunday demand since summer 2019. The 2021 total, which is still 13% below that of 2019, includes 34.4 million people traveling by car, AAA said. Patty Doxsey, 63, of Red Hook, New York, was set to take a 10-hour drive with her husband on Monday for a weeklong camping stay at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee in hopes of seeing a synchronous firefly light show. The couple, both vaccinated, had planned to go last year, but the pandemic scotched their trip, she said. “I am so excited,” said Doxsey, a reporter for the Daily Freeman in Kingston, New York. “It has been a long, long year, and we like to travel.” By Sunday, 50.5% of Americans had received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The number of new coronavirus cases plummeted from a seven-day average of more than 250,000 a day in early January to about 18,900 on Saturday, the lowest number since the emergence of the pandemic in March 2020, the CDC said. Top Memorial Day travel destinations this year were Las Vegas, Nevada, and Orlando, Florida, AAA said.
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Month: May 2021
Morocco, Spain Trade Accusations of Violating Good ‘Neighborliness’
Morocco and Spain traded new accusations on Monday in a diplomatic row triggered by the Western Sahara territorial issue that led this month to a migration crisis in Spain’s enclave in northern Morocco.Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez described Morocco’s actions in appearing to relax border controls with the enclave of Ceuta as unacceptable and an assault on national borders.Morocco’s Foreign Ministry meanwhile blamed Spain for breaking “mutual trust and respect,” drawing parallels between the issues of Western Sahara and Spain’s Catalonia region, where there is an independence movement.The dispute was sparked by Spain admitting Western Sahara independence movement leader Brahim Ghali for medical treatment without informing Rabat.”It is not acceptable for a government to say that we will attack the borders, that we will open up the borders to let in 10,000 migrants in less than 48 hours … because of foreign policy disagreements,” Sanchez said at a news conference.Most migrants who crossed into Ceuta were immediately returned to Morocco, but hundreds of unaccompanied minors, who cannot be deported under Spanish law, remain.The influx was widely seen as retaliation for Spain’s decision to discreetly take in Ghali.Morocco regards Western Sahara as part of its own territory. The Algeria-backed Polisario seeks an independent state in the territory, where Spain was colonial ruler until 1975.Describing Spain as Morocco’s best ally in the European Union, Sanchez said he wanted to convey a constructive attitude toward Rabat but insisted that border security was paramount.”Remember that neighborliness … must be based on respect and confidence,” he said.Morocco’s foreign ministry said in a statement that Spain violated good neighborliness and mutual trust and that migration was not the problem.Rabat added that it has cooperated with Madrid in curbing migrant flows and in countering terrorism, which it said helped foil 82 militant attacks in Spain.The case of Ghali “revealed the hostile attitudes and harmful strategies of Spain regarding the Moroccan Sahara,” the ministry said in a statement.Spain “cannot combat separatism at home and promote it in its neighbor,” it said, noting Rabat’s support for Madrid against the Catalan independence movement.Separately, Ghali, who has been hospitalized with COVID-19 in Logrono in the Rioja region, will attend a Tuesday high court hearing remotely from the hospital, his lawyer’s office said.Morocco, which has withdrawn its ambassador to Madrid, has said it may sever ties with Spain if Ghali left the country the same way he entered without a trial.
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Hundreds Evacuated, Some by Helicopter, From New Zealand Floods
Several hundred people in New Zealand were evacuated from their homes Monday, with some recounting dramatic helicopter rescues as heavy rain caused widespread flooding in the Canterbury region. Authorities declared a state of emergency after some places received as much as 40 centimeters (16 inches) of rain over the weekend and into Monday. Forecasters warned of possible heavy rain through Monday evening before conditions improve. The military helped evacuate more than 50 people, including several overnight in an NH90 military helicopter. One man was clinging to a tree near the town of Darfield when he jumped into floodwaters and tried to swim to safety but was swept away, the military said. Helicopter crews scoured the water for 30 minutes before finding the man and plucking him to safety. The military helicopter also rescued an elderly couple from the roof of their car. A member of the New Zealand Defense Force rescues a dog from floods as they assist a family with their evacuation near Ashburton in New Zealand’s South Island, Sunday May 30, 2021.”Seeing the community overnight pull together and support the displaced residents who were evacuated from their homes has been heartening,” said Captain Jake Faber, Army liaison officer. Another man was rescued by a civilian helicopter pilot Sunday after he was swept from his farm as he tried to move his stock to safety. Paul Adams told the news organization Stuff that he thinks he got hit by a wall of water he didn’t see coming. He was swept down the raging Ashburton River before managing to drag himself onto a fence and then into a tree. Another farmer spotted his headlamp and organized a rescue mission. “The rescuers are fantastic,” Adams told Stuff, adding that he was now back on his farm and “good as gold.” He said that so far, he’d found only about 100 of his herd of 250 animals alive. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who was visiting New Zealand, told reporters that he was thinking of those caught up in the floods. “Australia is no stranger to floods,” Morrison said. “Or fires, or cyclones, or, indeed, even mouse plagues. We have, both countries, endured a large amount of challenge over the course, particularly, of these last few years.” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern planned to travel to Christchurch later Monday to be briefed on the situation firsthand.
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Mobile Vaccination Units Hit Tiny US Towns to Boost COVID Immunity
FALLON, Nev. — Pick-up truck drivers motor up to a white trailer in a parking lot on Fallon Paiute-Shoshone land in Nevada’s high desert and within a few moments, they’re handed forms to sign, jabbed with coronavirus vaccine and sent on their way. The pop-up clinic, 96 kilometers east of Reno, is one of 28 locations in the Western state where the Federal Emergency Management Agency has dispatched mobile vaccination units to ensure people in far-flung rural areas and one-stoplight towns can get inoculated. It’s one of the tactics health officials are using across the country to counter waning interest in vaccinations. In churches, ballparks, strip clubs and even marijuana dispensaries in tiny towns, officials are setting up shop and offering incentives to entice people as the nation struggles to reach herd immunity. In Nevada, health officials acknowledge they’re unlikely to hit their initial goal of vaccinating 75% of the population believed necessary to reach herd immunity. People pass by a temporary vaccination clinic the Washoe County Health District organized with the Nevada National Guard offering COVID-19 shots at the home season opener for the Reno Aces Triple-A minor league baseball team in Reno, May 13, 2021.Their push in northern Nevada is headquartered at the Reno Livestock Events Center, where 65-year-old Dan Lavely and others are showing up for shots. Lavely said he teared up while thanking the nurses who vaccinated him. “I told them I was just so thankful that they were volunteering their time to help get us back to normal so I can go shop at the mall or go to the beach at Lake Tahoe,” said Lavely, who works at a big box store in neighboring Sparks. Waiting to get vaccinated had nothing to do with safety concerns or distrust of the government, he said. “It was a scheduling deal. Plus, my middle name is procrastinator,” Lavely said. No turnout too smallTwo FEMA mobile trailers have meandered through Nevada to towns without pharmacies, clinics or other vaccination sites, giving doctors, nurses and National Guardsmen a firsthand look at rural and tribal communities where finding vaccinations has been difficult for residents. “That’s our philosophy: It doesn’t make any difference if there are two (people) nor 200,” said Peggy Franklin, a volunteer nurse who has traveled alongside a FEMA trailer to Fallon, Alamo, Panaca and other towns in Nevada. To preserve the vaccine, the trailers are equipped with ultra-cold refrigerators powered by generators-on-wheels. On Monday, the two mobile clinics completed six-week loops through Nevada that included returning to finish two-shot regimens in the state that covers an area that would stretch from Boston to Baltimore and Buffalo, New York. Initially, the goal was to vaccinate 250 people a day at each stop. But the numbers have varied, as vaccine supply has increased, and demand has fallen. FILE – Peggy Franklin, a volunteer nurse from Reno, administers vaccines at a mobile vaccination clinic held at a tribal health center on the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Reservation and Colony on May 18, 2021 in Fallon, Nev.”Just a month ago, people were still having a hard time finding vaccination sites. That’s really changed in the last three or four weeks. And now, we’re trying to find people that are more vaccine-hesitant,” said Marc Reynolds, a doctor from Fallon who has volunteered at the mobile clinic in his hometown and the state prison in Lovelock. Other states using mobile clinicsThe clinics have delivered 7,600 shots during two tours of Nevada and have also been used in Arizona, Illinois, Kentucky and other states. Nevada Division of Emergency Management Chief Dave Fogerson said people in the remote communities of the state “probably would not have got it any other way.” Gerlach, for example, is 160 kilometers from the closest pharmacy in Reno-Sparks. With just 34 people, it was once home to a booming gypsum mine on the edge of the desert that hosts 80,000 visitors each year for the Burning Man Festival. The desolate landscape was featured in this year’s Academy Award-winning movie, Nomadland. Nearly half of Nevada’s eligible population has had at least an initial vaccination against COVID-19. But rates have varied geographically. In Clark and Washoe counties, home to Las Vegas and Reno, respectively, about half of those eligible have gotten at least one dose, the state reported. The rate has been about half of that in Eureka and Elko counties, while Storey County has seen just a 15% rate. As infection rates drop and the state moves further away from the height of the pandemic, officials acknowledge persuading the vaccine-hesitant to get shots won’t get easier. As a result, on the heels of the FEMA effort, officials have been preparing similar pop-up events in urban centers, suburban neighborhoods and unconventional venues ranging from a Las Vegas strip club to a Sparks truck stop along an interstate that runs to Utah. FILE – Jeff Cantrell waits at Larry Flint’s Hustler Club strip club after getting his second dose of coronavirus vaccine, May 21, 2021, in Las Vegas. Las Vegas officials held a pop-up vaccine clinic at the strip club.”It’s important that the people running the vaccination events look like the community,” said Jeanne Freeman of Carson City Health and Human Services. “Comfort levels are important. Sometimes, just being in a familiar location.” Nevada has long struggled with some of the nation’s worst vaccination rates. It improved to fifth-worst last year with 42% of adults vaccinated against the flu, according to the CDC. Part of the current outreach effort targets the 340,000 people who got those flu shots but have not yet gotten a COVID-19 vaccination. Nevada is refining its messaging based on a growing understanding of why some people remain reluctant to get shots. Much of the focus so far has been on cultural and historical barriers that make certain groups less open to vaccinations. But for many, it may come down to simple convenience. Convenience an issue”A lot of individuals are not opposed to getting vaccinated, it’s just not fitting well in their daily life,” said Karissa Loper, chief of Nevada’s Bureau of Child, Family and Community Wellness. “That’s truly what we’re moving to work on now with all of our partners, to do those mobile and pop-up clinics.” Jackie Shelton, a vice president with the public relations firm that Nevada hired to help promote vaccine equity and outreach, said the latest ad campaign intends to “show people who look like you — peers who are getting the vaccine and why.” “People don’t want to be told what to do, but they love to see their friends and others talking about why they are doing it,” she said. “It’s all about empathy. And reminding people what they have missed during the pandemic and what they can get back.” IncentivesFuture promotional ideas include raffles open to residents who are fully vaccinated by July 4. Colorado, Maryland, Ohio, New York and Oregon are among several states already enticing people with lottery prizes approaching $5 million. Immunize Nevada is planning vaccination pop-ups at breweries, churches and parks — complete with swag like water bottles — and scheduling them to coincide with holidays such as Juneteenth to target specific populations. In Reno, shots are offered at minor league baseball games, and the Medical Social Justice League at the University of Nevada’s School of Medicine was set to co-host a clinic Saturday at a Catholic church with a large Latino congregation. “We need to meet them where they are and where they feel safe,” Diana Sande, spokeswoman for the university’s School of Community Health Sciences, said about outreach efforts to the Latino community. Kyra Morgan, Nevada’s chief biostatistician, has suggested it may not be possible for the state to reach its initial goal of vaccinating 75% of the population. Still, communities may be able to return to normalcy even if they don’t reach the threshold needed for herd immunity, added Dr. Nancy Diao, division director for epidemiology and public health preparedness in Washoe County. “If we can reach a high enough population level, say maybe 60% or 70%, that might also just be good enough for our community to bring the numbers drastically down,” she said. “And we can have this virus live with us in an equilibrium like we do with so many other diseases.”
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At least 55 Killed in Eastern Congo Massacres, UN Says
At least 55 people were killed overnight in two attacks on villages in eastern Congo, the United Nations said on Monday, in potentially the worst night of violence the area has seen in at least four years.The army and a local civil rights group blamed the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), an Islamist armed group, for raiding the village of Tchabi and a camp for displaced people near Boga, another village. Both are close to the border of Uganda.Houses were burned and civilians abducted, the U.N. office for humanitarian affairs said in a statement.Albert Basegu, the head of a civil rights group in Boga, told Reuters by telephone that he had been alerted to the attack by the sound of cries at a neighbor’s house.”When I got there I found that the attackers had already killed an Anglican pastor and his daughter was also seriously wounded,” Basegu said.The Kivu Security Tracker (KST), which has mapped unrest in restive eastern Congo since June 2017, said on Twitter the wife of a local chief was among the dead. It did not attribute blame for the killings.”It’s the deadliest day ever recorded by the KST,” said Pierre Boisselet, the research group’s coordinator.The ADF is believed to have killed more than 850 people in 2020, according to the United Nations, in a spate of reprisal attacks on civilians after the army began operations against it the year before.In March, the United States labeled the ADF a foreign terrorist organization. The group has in the past proclaimed allegiance to Islamic State, although the United Nations says evidence linking it to other Islamist militant networks is scant.President Felix Tshisekedi declared a state of siege in Congo’s North Kivu and Ituri provinces on May 1 in an attempt to curb increasing attacks by militant groups.Uganda announced earlier this month that it had agreed to share intelligence and coordinate operations against the rebels but that it would not be deploying troops in Congo.
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Spam Is No Longer Just Luncheon Meat for Sandwiches
Before “spam” became a computer term, it was an American luncheon meat that was exported and embraced by cultures around the world, especially Asians. Spam is sold in more than 40 countries worldwide, and immigrants in the U.S. are serving it — but with a twist. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee went on a Spam culinary tour in Los Angeles.Producer: Elizabeth Lee Camera: Elizabeth Lee, Roy Kim
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Russia’s Navalny Asks Court to End Prison Security Checks
Imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny asked a court Monday to halt the hourly nighttime checks he has been subjected to in his penal colony. Speaking to the court in a video link from prison, Navalny charged that he has done nothing that would warrant the authorities’ decision to designate him as a flight risk, which has resulted in the checks. “I just want them to stop coming to me and waking me up at nighttime,” he told the judge in remarks that were broadcast by the independent Dozhd TV. “What did I do: Did I climb the fence? Did I dig up an underpass? Or was I wringing a pistol from someone? Just explain why they named me a flight risk!”He argued that the hourly nighttime checks “effectively amount to torture,” telling the judge that “you would go mad in a week” if subjected to such regular wake-ups.The court later adjourned the hearing until Wednesday.Navalny, the most determined political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in January upon his return from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin — accusations that Russian officials reject.In February, he was handed a 2 1/2-year sentence for violating terms of a suspended sentence stemming from a 2014 embezzlement conviction, which he says was politically motivated.He went on a 24-day hunger strike in prison to protest the lack of medical treatment for severe back pain and numbness in his legs, ending it last month after getting the medical attention he demanded.While he still was on hunger strike, Navalny was moved from a penal colony east of Moscow, where he was serving his sentence, to the hospital ward of another prison in Vladimir, a city 180 kilometers (110 miles) east of the capital. He remains at that prison, where he said the nighttime checks continued, although they were less intrusive.With Navalny in prison, prosecutors have asked a Moscow court to designate his Foundation for Fighting Corruption and his network of regional offices as extremist groups. A bill, which has sailed quickly through the Kremlin-controlled lower house of Russian parliament, bars members, donors and supporters of extremist groups from seeking public office.The parallel moves have been widely seen as an attempt to keep any of Navalny’s associates from running in September’s parliamentary election.
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Chemicals in, Meth out: Asia’s Golden Triangle Drug Trade Goes Into Overdrive
A large haul of precursor chemicals in Laos since the end of last year has revealed` the new recipe being used by the methamphetamine cooks of Asia and the routes crime groups are using to get raw materials from Chinese factories, through Thai ports and into the narcotics labs of the Golden Triangle.Meth production in the region has gone into overdrive since Myanmar’s February 1 military coup unsettled the complex balance of power in the Golden Triangle, an area dominated by warlords, armed militias, gunrunners and drug traffickers, say law enforcement officials.Laos, Myanmar and Thailand are within this mountainous corner. Laos and Myanmar share a border with China.Thailand, the main route for Myanmar meth to the Asia-Pacific, has so far this year seized more than 300 million meth pills known as “yaba,” or crazy medicine, and nearly 20 tons of the highly addictive crystal meth, or “ice” — double last year’s haul over the same period, according to Thai drug authorities.It is the consequence of ruptured cease-fires among Myanmar’s ethnic rebel groups as a result of the coup that ousted the government of Aung San Suu Kyi.“Fighting in Myanmar near the drug production sites is forcing out the products at a higher volume than usual,” according to Police Major General Pornchai Charoenwong, deputy commissioner of Thailand’s Narcotics Suppression Bureau (NSB).The drugs flow through Thailand, but then sweep out to the Asia-Pacific, officials say.In mid-May, the Australian Border Force found 316 kilograms of ice with a street value of nearly $80 million packed inside a shipment of immersion heaters and barbecues originating from a Thai port.But changes in production are most immediately felt by Myanmar’s neighbors. Laos is the poor, landlocked Communist-run neighbor to Myanmar’s Shan State, where most of the meth is manufactured.It is the key route into the Golden Triangle for precursor chemicals, as well as the main exit point for the end product — the highly addictive synthetic drugs to the Asia-Pacific market.FILE – A giant Buddha on the Thai side of the Golden Triangle in Chiang Rai province, is seen with Myanmar in the background and Laos on the right, Sept. 20, 2019.Authorities there recently revealed a seizure of 200 tons of precursors. The stash included 72 tons of made-in-China propionyl chloride, a new ingredient or a “pre-precursor” transported through Vietnam and captured in Bokeo, Laos, the gateway to Myanmar drug factories.“You can only imagine the amount of drugs that volume of precursors can make,” a Laos official told VOA News on the condition of anonymity.Curse of the precursorsThe highly flammable liquid is not banned — unlike traditional meth staples ephedrine and pseudoephedrine (used in cold remedies) — and its appearance heading into the Golden Triangle shows the ability of drug networks to “shift gears,” said Jeremy Douglas, regional representative with the U.N.’s Office of Drugs and Crime.“They have long been creative smugglers, but they are now bypassing stringent chemical controls and producing precursors using pre-precursors — not easy, and it signals sophistication and knowledge not seen elsewhere,” Douglas said.Precursors pose a complicated cross-border challenge, with some controlled, others entirely legal in normal industrial use.Thailand is a major entry point for the huge tonnage needed by the drug production zones but struggles to keep on top of the flow of containers full of chemicals — an issue only likely to get worse as infrastructure improves.FILE – Bags of methamphetamine pills are pictured during the 50th Destruction of Confiscated Narcotics ceremony in Ayutthaya province, Thailand, June 26, 2020.Drug traffickers exploit “loopholes” in customs’ laws, a Thai drug official told VOA News, requesting anonymity.“We’re a transit point, so customs has no authority to open the container for inspection without a warrant, or at least a good reason,” the official said. “So, these precursors are unloaded at the port onto trucks set for Laos with no problems.”The same Thai ports — especially Laem Chabang in the eastern seaboard — are being used to move the finished product of crystal meth out to the most expensive markets.The recent Australian meth haul was traced to a boat that left Laem Chabang. As Myanmar slumps deeper into chaos, and armed rebel groups hunt money to stockpile guns to fight the army known as the Tatmadaw, drug experts say stemming the flow of precursors is the only way to slow drug production.Until then, regional police fear the flow of drugs from the Golden Triangle is going to worsen, with the crime bosses at the apex of an estimated trade worth up to $60 billion a year so rich and connected they remain beyond arrest.“You can never really take down these networks,” Montree Yimyam, commissioner of Thailand’s Narcotics Suppression Bureau, told reporters.
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