A Montana man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after his conviction on federal hate crime and firearm charges related to a “self-described mission to rid the town of Basin of its lesbian, queer and gay community,” officials said.
John Russell Howald was convicted in February for firing an AK-style rifle at the home of a woman who openly identified as a lesbian, the US Department of Justice said in a news release. The woman was inside the home during the March 2020 incident.
Howald was armed with two assault rifles, a hunting rifle, two pistols and multiple high-capacity magazines that were taped together for faster reloading, the release said.
“Hoping he had killed her, Howald set off toward other houses occupied by people who identify as lesbian, queer or gay,” the release said.
Some residents who knew Howald spotted him and stalled him long enough for a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office deputy to respond, prosecutors said.
Howald was recorded “yelling and firing more rounds with the same rifle, expressing his hatred toward the community’s gay and lesbian residents and his determination to ‘clean’ them from his town,” the release said.
Howald pointed his rifle at a responding deputy, “nearly starting a shootout in downtown Basin,” before running into surrounding hills, according to the release.
He was arrested the next day, armed with a loaded pistol and a knife. “In Howald’s car, officers found an AR-style rifle and a revolver. During a search of Howald’s camper, officers found an AK-style rifle, a hunting rifle, and ammunition,” prosecutors said.
“Motivated by hatred of the LGBTQI+ community and armed with multiple firearms and high-capacity magazines, this defendant sought to intimidate – even terrorize – an entire community by shooting into the victim’s home trying to kill her for no reason other than her sexual orientation,” ATF Director Steven Dettelbach said in the release.
Howald’s 18-year prison sentence, to be followed by five years of supervised release, was announced during Pride Month and comes as the Human Rights Campaign has declared a national state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community in the US.
“The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived – they are real, tangible and dangerous,” the group’s president, Kelley Robinson, said. “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”
Howald hoped to inspire similar attacks around the country, said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend the rights of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, to be free from hate-fueled violence,” Clarke said in the release. “This Pride Month, we affirm our commitment to using the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act to hold perpetrators of hate-fueled violence targeting the LGBTQI+ community accountable.”
Anger is growing over the handling of a migrant boat disaster off Greece last week that has become one of the biggest tragedies in the Mediterranean in years. The calamity is dominating the country’s political agenda a week ahead of snap elections.
The Hellenic Coast Guard is facing increasing questions over its response to the fishing boat that sank off Greece’s southern peninsula on Wednesday, leading to the death of possibly hundreds of migrants. Nearly 80 people are known to have perished in the wreck and hundreds are still missing, according to the U.N.’s migration and refugee agencies.
Critics say that the Greek authorities should have acted faster to keep the vessel from capsizing. There are testimonies from survivors that the Coast Guard tied up to the vessel and attempted to pull it, causing the boat to sway, which the Greek authorities strongly deny.
The boat may have been carrying as many as 750 passengers, including women and children, according to reports. Many of them were trapped underneath the deck in the sinking, according to Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. “The ship was heavily overcrowded,” Frontex said.
About 100 people are known to have survived the sinking. Authorities continued to search for victims and survivors over the weekend.
The disaster may be “the worst tragedy ever” in the Mediterranean Sea, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson said on Friday. She said there has been a massive increase in the number of migrant boats heading from Libya to Europe since the start of the year.
Frontex said in a statement on Friday that no agency plane or boat was present at the time of the capsizing on Wednesday. The agency said it alerted the Greek and Italian authorities about the vessel after a Frontex plane spotted it, but the Greek officials waved off an offer of additional help.
Greece has been at the forefront of Europe’s migration crisis since 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people from the Middle East, Asia and Africa traveled thousands of miles across the Continent hoping to claim asylum.
Migration and border security have been key issues in the Greek political debate. Following Wednesday’s wreck, they have jumped to the top of the agenda, a week before national elections on June 25.
Greece is currently led by a caretaker government. Under the conservative New Democracy administration, in power until last month, the country adopted a tough migration policy. In late May, the EU urged Greece to launch a probe into alleged illegal deportations.
New Democracy leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who is expected to return to the prime minister’s office after the vote next Sunday, blasted criticism of the Greek authorities, saying it should instead be directed to the human traffickers, who he called “human scums.”
“It is very unfair for some so-called ‘people in solidarity’ [with refugees and migrants] to insinuate that the [Coast Guard] did not do its job. … These people are out there … battling the waves to rescue human lives and protect our borders,” Mitsotakis, who maintains a significant lead in the polls, said during a campaign event in Sparta on Saturday.
The Greek authorities claimed the people on board, some thought to be the smugglers who had arranged the boat from Libya, refused assistance and insisted on reaching Italy. So the Greek Coast Guard did not intervene, though it monitored the vessel for more than 15 hours before it eventually capsized.
“What orders did the authorities have, and they didn’t intervene because one of these ‘scums’ didn’t give them permission?” the left-wing Syriza party said in a statement. “Why was no order given to the lifeboat … to immediately assist in a rescue operation? … Why were life jackets not distributed … and why Frontex assistance was not requested?”
Alarm Phone, a network of activists that helps migrants in danger, said the Greek authorities had been alerted repeatedly many hours before the boat capsized and that there was insufficient rescue capacity.
According to a report by WDR citing migrants’ testimonies, attempts were made to tow the endangered vessel, but in the process the boat began to sway and sank. Similar testimonies by survivors appeared in Greek media.
A report on Greek website news247.gr said the vessel remained in the same spot off the town of Pylos for at least 11 hours before sinking. According to the report, the location on the chart suggests the vessel was not on a “steady course and speed” toward Italy, as the Greek Coast Guard said.
After initially saying that there was no effort to tow the boat, the Hellenic Coast Guard said on Friday that a patrol vessel approached and used a “small buoy” to engage the vessel in a procedure that lasted a few minutes and then was untied by the migrants themselves.
Coast Guard spokesman Nikos Alexiou defended the agency. “You cannot carry out a violent diversion on such a vessel with so many people on board, without them wanting to, without any sort of cooperation,” he said.
Alexiou said there is no video of the operation available.
Nine people, most of them from Egypt, were arrested over the capsizing, charged with forming a criminal organization with the purpose of illegal migrant trafficking, causing a shipwreck and endangering life. They will appear before a magistrate on Monday, according to Greek judicial authorities.
“Unfortunately, we have seen this coming because since the start of the year, there was a new modus operandi with these fishing boats leaving from the eastern part of Libya,” the EU’s Johansson told a press conference on Friday. “And we’ve seen an increase of 600 percent of these departures this year,” she added.
Greek Supreme Court Prosecutor Isidoros Dogiakos has urged absolute secrecy in the investigations being conducted in relation to the shipwreck.
Thousands of people took to the streets in different cities in Greece last week to protest the handling of the incident and the migration policies of Greece and the EU. More protests were planned for Sunday.
President Joe Biden’s administration is set to allow New York City to move forward with a landmark program that will toll vehicles entering Lower Manhattan, after a public review period ends Monday.
In practice it works like any other toll, but because it specifically charges people to drive in the traffic-choked area below 60th street in Manhattan, it would be the first program of its kind in the United States.
Proposals range from charging vehicles $9 to $23 during peak hours, and it’s set to go into effect next spring.
The plan had been delayed for years, but it cleared a milestone last month when the Federal Highway Administration signed off on the release of an environmental assessment. The public has until Monday to review the report, and the federal government is widely expected to approve it shortly after.
From there, the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) can finalize toll rates, as well as discounts and exemptions for certain drivers.
New York City is still clawing out of from the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Congestion pricing advocates say it’s a crucial piece of the city’s recovery and a way to re-imagine the city for the future.
“This program is critical to New York City’s long-term success,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said last month.
The plan would also mark the culmination of more than a half-century of efforts to implement congestion pricing in New York City. Despite support from several New York City mayors and state governors, car and truck owners in outer boroughs and the suburbs helped defeat proposals.
In 2007 Mayor Michael Bloomberg called congestion “the elephant in the room” when proposing a toll program, which state lawmakers killed. A decade later, Gov. Andrew Cuomo — who had long resisted congestion pricing — said it was “an idea whose time has come” and declared a subway state of emergency after increased delays and a derailment that injured dozens. Two years later, the state gave the MTA approval to design a congestion pricing program.
Ultimately, it was the need to improve New York City’s public transit that became the rallying cry for congestion pricing.
Each day 700,000 cars, taxis and trucks pour into Lower Manhattan, one of the busiest areas in the world with some of the worst gridlock in the United States.
Car travel at just 7.1 mph on average in the congestion price zone, and it’s a downward trend. Public bus speeds have also declined 28% since 2010. New Yorkers lose 117 hours on average each year sitting in traffic, costing them nearly $2,000 in lost productivity and other costs, according to one estimate.
The toll is designed to reduce the number of vehicles entering the congestion zone by at least 10% every day and slash the number of miles cars travel within the zone by 5%.
Congestion comes with physical and societal costs, too: more accidents, carbon emissions and pollution happen as belching, honking cars take up space that could be optimized for pedestrians and outdoor dining.
Proponents also note it will improve public transit, an essential part of New York life. About 75% of trips downtown are via public transit.
But public-transit ridership is 35% to 45% lower compared to pre-pandemic levels. The MTA says congestion fees will generate a critical source of revenue to fund $15 billion in future investments to modernize the city’s 100-year-old public transit system.
The improvements, like new subway cars and electric signals, are crucial to draw new riders and improve speed and accessibility — especially for low-income and minority residents, who are least likely to own cars, say plan advocates.
New York City is “dependent on public transit,” said Kate Slevin, the executive vice president of the Regional Plan Association, an urban planning and policy group. “We’re relying on that revenue to pay for needed upgrades and investments that ensure reliable, good transit service.”
Improving public transportation is also key to New York City’s post-pandemic economic recovery:If commutes to work are too unreliable, people are less likely to visit the office and shop at stores around their workplaces. Congestion charge advocates hope the program will create more space for amenities like wider sidewalks, bike lanes, plazas, benches, trees and public bathrooms.
“100 years ago we decided the automobile was the way to go, so we narrowed sidewalks and built highways,” said Sam Schwartz, former New York City traffic commissioner and founder of an eponymous consulting firm. “But the future of New York City is that the pedestrian should be king and queen. Everything should be subservient to the pedestrian.”
While no other US city has yet implemented congestion pricing, Stockholm, London and Singapore have had it for years.
These cities have reported benefits like decreased carbon dioxide pollution, higher average speeds, and congestion reduction.
Just one year after London added its charge in 2003, traffic congestion dropped by 30% and average speeds increased by the same percentage. In Stockholm, one study found the rate of children’s acute asthma visits to the doctor fell by about 50% compared to rates before the program launched in 2007.
Some groups are fiercely opposed to congestion charges in New York City, however. Taxi and ride-share drivers, largely a low-income and immigrant workforce, fear it will hurt drivers already struggling to make ends meet. The MTA said congestion pricing could reduce demand for taxis by up to 17% in the zone.
Commuters and legislators from New York City’s outer boroughs and New Jersey say the program hurts drivers who have no viable way to reach downtown Manhattan other than by car, and that this would disproportionately impact low-income drivers. (But out of a region of 28 million people, just an estimated 16,100 low-income people commute to work via car in Lower Manhattan, according to the MTA.)
Other critics say it could divert more traffic and pollution from diesel trucks in Manhattan into lower-income areas like the Bronx, which has the highest rates of asthma hospitalization in the city.
The MTA and other agencies have plans to mitigate many of these adverse effects, however.
Taxis and for-hire vehicles will be tolled only once a day. Drivers who make less than $50,000 a year or are enrolled in certain government aid programs will get 25% discounts after their first 10 trips every month. Trucks and other vehicles will get 50% discounts during overnight hours.
Additionally, the MTA pledged $10 million to install air filtration units in schools near highways, $20 million for a program to fight asthma, and other investments to improve air quality and the enviornment in areas where more traffic could be diverted.
The stakes of New York City’s program are high, and leaders in other cities are watching the results closely.
If successful, congestion pricing could be a model for other US cities, which are trying to recover from the pandemic and face similar challenges of climate change and aging public infrastructure.
“It’s good to see New York City’s program is moving forward,” said the Los Angeles Times Editorial Board last month. “Los Angeles should watch, learn and go next.”
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is set for another five years as Turkey’s president after winning a divisive election that at one point seemed to threaten his hold on power.
The 69-year-old, who has dominated his country’s politics for two decades, was on track to win the runoff vote by 52 percent to 48 percent, with more than 99 percent of ballot boxes counted, beating opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, according to preliminary official results from Turkey’s Supreme Election Council.
In the first round of voting on May 14, the president also came out on top, defying the polls, but fell short of an outright majority, which triggered the runoff vote.
Erdoğan declared victory in front of his residence in Istanbul, singing his campaign song before his speech. “I thank our nation, which gave us the responsibility of governing again for the next five years,” he said.
“We have opened the door of Turkey’s century without compromising our democracy, development and our objectives,” he added.
Erdoğan also called on his supporters to take Istanbul back in the next local elections in 2024. His AK Party lost the city to the opposition in the 2019.
The triumphant president continued his campaign tactic of targeting LGBTQ+ people. “Can LGBT infiltrate AK Party or other members of the People’s Alliance [the broader coalition backing Erdoğan]? Family is sacred to us,” he said.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and French leader Emmanuel Macron were among the first world leaders to congratulate Erdoğan on his victory. Both leaders emphasized working together on world affairs. The government of Qatar and Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, also congratulated the re-elected president.
Erdoğan’s victory follows a campaign in which he accused his rival of being linked to terrorism and argued that the country faced chaos if the six-party opposition alliance came to power.
He has ruled Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister and then as president, and the election has been widely seen as a defining moment for the country.
Erdoğan’s supporters say he has made the country stronger, but his critics argue that his authoritarian approach to power is fatally undermining Turkey’s democracy.
Kılıçdaroğlu said it had been “the most unfair election process in years” in his own post-election speech.
“All the resources of the state have been mobilized for one political party. They have been spread at the feet of one man,” he said.
The opposition candidate gave no indication that he was planning to resign, adding that the struggle would go on.
Erdogan taunted his rival, saying: “Bye, bye, bye Kemal.”
By contrast with earlier elections in which the president and his Islamist-oriented AK party easily beat their secular rivals, Erdoğan headed into this May’s contest behind in the polls.
His reelection campaign had to contend with economic problems such as painfully high inflation — currently 43 percent — and a weak currency, as well as the legacy of February’s devastating earthquake. At least 50,000 died in the disaster and the government was criticized for poor construction standards and its own slow response.
But Erdoğan’s first round performance on May 14 put him five percentage points ahead of Kılıçdaroğlu and just a few hundred thousand votes short of an absolute majority.
The opposition candidate then shifted to a more nationalist stance, promising to deport millions of Syrians and Afghans, but that move proved ultimately unsuccessful. Sinan Oğan, the nationalist candidate who won 5 percent in the first round then endorsed Erdoğan, not Kılıçdaroğlu.
Political analysts say Erdoğan’s victory highlights the polarization in Turkish society, particularly divisions between Islamists and secularists. While much of Turkey’s coastline, the big cities and the largely Kurdish southeast voted for Kılıçdaroğlu, the heartlands strongly favored Erdoğan.
Opposition supporters also argue that the election reflected Erdoğan’s grip on power, including his near-total influence on the country’s media, which is largely controlled by groups friendly toward the governing party.
After Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy was backed by Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish party, Erdoğan accused his rival of being in league with Kurdish terrorists, showing a doctored video in the closing days of the campaign to make his case.
This article has been updated to include reaction from Erdoğan.
SEVILLE, Spain — Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez won’t be on the ballot when Spaniards vote in local elections Sunday — but he might as well be.
Everyone in the country sees this weekend’s municipal votes as a dress rehearsal for the national election, which has to be held by the end of the year.
That’s bad news for Socialist candidates like Antonio Muñoz, the mayor of Seville who just wants to be reelected on his own merit — but may end up losing his post because Sánchez is so unpopular.
In an interview with POLITICO, Muñoz complained that the national framing of the election — and the conservative party’s critiques of Sánchez — had undermined the possibility of real debate over how to improve Spain’s fourth-largest city, the capital of the country’s Andalusia region.
“If you want to just generate noise and have a debate about national politics: run for parliament, not mayor of Seville,” Muñoz said. “Me, I’ve stayed faithful to my slogan in these elections — Seville and only Seville — and I think that’s what voters want to hear about.”
In any ordinary election season, Muñoz might be right.
The openly gay, 63-year-old economist is an unusually popular mayor in Seville, a city that once had a reputation for being inward-looking and socially conservative.
Elected to the city council in 2011, Muñoz has worked to redefine the city’s identity and reinforce the idea that there’s more to it than bullfights, religious processions and flamenco — while being careful not to alienate Seville’s traditionalists.
As the city council member in charge of the powerful urbanism, tourism and culture portfolios, he bet on a more alternative, vibrant vision of Seville — promoting electronic music and indie film festivals; and lobbying to steal major events like the Goyas, Spain’s version of the Oscars, away from Madrid.
It was under Muñoz’s watch that Game of Thrones came to town, when the dragon-packed extravaganza used the lush Alcázar palace as a stand-in for the kingdom of Dorne. The producers of Netflix’s The Crown also passed through, using the palatial Alfonso XIII Hotel as a double for Beverly Hills and filming Mohamed Al-Fayed’s Egyptian wedding in Seville’s sumptuous Casa de Pilatos estate.
At the same time that he’s shown off the city center — famed for its narrow, winding streets, whitewashed homes, interior gardens and Moorish architecture — he’s also promoted newer parts of Seville. These include the high-tech Cartuja Science and Technology Park, where the European Commission recently inaugurated the headquarters of its new European Centre for Algorithmic Transparency.
He’s also an enthusiastic booster of the eclectic Fibes Conference Center, located in the working-class Sevilla Este district, which this year will host the 2023 Latin Grammys, the first-ever to be held outside the United States.
“During the next term, we’ll be doing even more to consolidate this city as a Spanish and European reference point for culture, the green economy and the digital transition,” said Muñoz. He became mayor early last year when his predecessor stepped down to run for office at the regional level.
While crafting a more modern image of Seville, Muñoz has been careful not to neglect the city’s classic cultural scene.
He may not be a member of any religious brotherhood, but he has no problem joining religious processions during Holy Week. He may not be a bullfighting enthusiast, but he’s happy to socialize with famous toreros. And while he may not have a passion for flamenco, he’s an almostomnipresentforce at the city’s annual April Fair, where smartly dressed men spend a week dancing with women in long, ruffled, polka-dot dresses while downing pitchers of rebujito, the signature Andalusian cocktail.
“You can like those events more, or less … but they’re a part of our history, our way of life,” said Muñoz.
The skill with which Muñoz has walked the line has played well among sevillanos, especially those who work in the hospitality sector and have been delighted to see the number of tourists in the city boom. Some 6.5 million overnight stays were registered last year.
“I’ve always been proud of my city, but right now I feel that Seville is at a new level as a destination, as a brand,” said restaurant owner Emilio Gimeno. “I think a lot of that has to do with the mayor because he’s always promoting the city, he never stops.”
“I like that he’s a normal guy who lives in the city and doesn’t move around in an official vehicle or surrounded by bodyguards,” he added. “If you’re opening up a new bar, he’s the sort of person who will make time in his schedule to show up at the inauguration, the sort that wants things to work out and go well for you.”
The Sánchez problem
The trouble for Muñoz is that when Sevillanoshead to the polls, they’re be making their choice based not just on his performance — but on the reputation of his party.
“The polls suggest that three out of four Spaniards intend to base their vote on local matters, but a quarter admit their vote will depend on national issues,” said Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III university. “That’s problematic for some mayors because Sánchez is such a polarizing figure.”
The local election will take place just months before Sánchez’s fragile left-wing coalition government — the first in Spain’s history — is set to complete its four-year term in December.
Despite the devastating impact of the COVID crisis and the economic impact of the war in Ukraine, from the outside, Sánchez’s administration appears to have weathered the storm well.
Spain’s gross domestic product has been growing at a rate above the EU average, and unemployment has dropped to levels not seen since 2008.
The country’s residents pay some of the lowest power prices in Europe, thanks to the Iberian Exception energy price cap. The European Commission has applauded Spain for efficient handling of its share of the bloc’s pandemic recovery cash.
And yet, within Spain, perception of the government is negative, and all of the parties in the ruling coalition have suffered a steep drop in the polls. Since May of last year, Sánchez’s Socialists have trailed behind the country’s conservative Popular Party, which is currently 7 percentage points ahead.
Simón, the political scientist, said that some Spaniards distrust Sánchez for having entered into a coalition government with far-left parties with which he said he’d never govern. Not to mention that, like most political leaders, the prime minister’s prestige took a hit during the pandemic.
“The government’s policies — the higher minimum wage, the basic income, the country’s role in Europe — are broadly popular,” Simón said. “But at a personal level, he isn’t.”
Juan Espadas, Muñoz’s predecessor in Seville’s city hall and current leader of the Andalusian Socialists, admitted that the prime minister’s unpopularity had become a factor in the local elections.
“The right has realized that they can’t challenge him on his politics, so now what they’re trying to do is to discredit him on a personal level,” he said, adding that the Popular Party had focused on casting Sánchez as “an egoist” willing to do anything to hold on to power.
“Their only goal is to make it so that people won’t go vote because they don’t like the person behind the party,” he said.
The ghost of ETA
In addition to invoking the unpopular prime minister, the Spanish conservatives have been reminding voters of the coalition government’s cordial relations with pro-independence parties in the national parliament.
When the Basque pro-independence party EH Bildu included 44 former members of the terrorist group ETA in its official lists for the local elections earlier this month, the Popular Party seized on the issue and turned it into a major talking point in its campaign in cities across the country.
Muñoz has worked to redefine Seville’s identity and reinforce the idea that there’s more to it than bullfights, religious processions and flamenco | Cristina Quicler/AFP via Getty Images
In Seville, José Luis Sanz, the conservative candidate for mayor, rallied supporters by declaring that his neighbors “could not understand how Muñoz’s Socialists have surrendered to the heirs of ETA.”
Like other Socialist candidates, Muñoz has denounced this line of attack, stressing its irrelevance in a campaign that should be about the threat posed by housing insecurity or extreme heat — not a terrorist group that ceased to exist more than a decade ago.
“I think what the [Popular Party] is doing is enormously disrespectful toward voters,” he said. “Instead of talking about what’s needed in this city’s poorest neighborhoods, about what we can do to promote culture, about how we should manage tourism, they want to talk about a party that isn’t up for election in Seville.”
But what politicians want to talk about and what voters are hearing seem to rarely be the same thing.
In the middle-class Los Remedios district, 83-year-old María Camacho Rojas has followed the campaign and decided she won’t give her vote to the mayoral candidate of a party led by Sánchez, a politician she believes to be “a compulsive liar.”
“[Sánchez] does deals with ETA, he doesn’t care about Spain, and I — like most Spaniards — am worried about the state in which he’s going to leave our country,” she said.
She added she’d vote for Muñoz in a heartbeat if he belonged to another party. “I like the mayor, I like how much he does for the city, how much he cares about Seville,” she said. “I’m not going to vote against him but I won’t vote for him: I’ll cast a blank ballot on Sunday.”
In Seville, the latest polls predict a technical tie, with Muñoz’s Socialists winning 12 or 13 seats in the city council and the Popular Party taking 12. That would leave the two mainstream parties dependent on the support of more extreme elements, the far-right Vox party on one side and array of left-wing groups on the other — with those two ideological blocs also nearly tied.
Whatever the outcome, the fallout is not likely to remain contained within city limits: Muñoz’s Sánchez problem could easily become Sánchez’s Seville problem.
Losing the city — the largest municipality controlled by the Socialists — would be a severe blow for the prime minister just months ahead of the national elections.
“One city won’t decide a general election,” said Simón. “But it can make the outcome easier for some, and all the more difficult for others.”
Moscow took 12 hours to respond after an explosion lit up the dome of the Kremlin complex last Wednesday.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, the security services needed time to investigate the incident.
But the Kremlin’s spin doctors worked extra hours too, no doubt.
On the eve of Victory Day — which traditionally celebrates the Soviet triumph over Nazi Germany, but which has become emblematic of Russia’s current war against Ukraine — the Kremlin’s line at home is that the country is battling an enemy as powerful as it is evil.
That narrative is meant to account for the absence of success on the battlefront after 14 months of fighting, while offering Russians a sense of security that for them life will continue as usual.
But a series of mysterious incidents — including Wednesday’s early-morning blast — is revealing cracks in Russia’s facade of strength. The cancellation of some of the Victory Day festivities is another sign that appearances are beginning to slip.
The Kremlin eventually described the 2 a.m. incursion of two drones onto the heavily protected Moscow compound as an assassination attempt on President Putin by the “Kyiv regime.” That was in a statement Wednesday afternoon, which also claimed the right to respond “where and when it sees fit.” Putin wasn’t in the complex at the time. A day later, Moscow added the U.S. to its accusation of blame for the blast.
“We know very well that decisions about such actions, such terrorist attacks, are not made in Kyiv, but in Washington,” Peskov said on Thursday.
Both Kyiv and Washington vehemently deny any involvement.
Playing it down
Wednesday’s drone attack was the latest in a number of unexplained incidents on Russian soil in recent months, including a car bomb attack on an ultranationalist writer on Saturday — the third targeting of pro-war figures since the start of the invasion, resulting in two deaths. There also have been a number of crashed drones, the derailing of freight trains, and at least two fires at fuel depots in Crimea.
In allthose cases, the Kremlin downplayed the news or kept its distance.
The Kremlin is one of the best-protected sites in Russia, and it has been widely assumed that piercing its air defenses was next to impossible | Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images
So the fact that this time, it chose to publish an official statement and pointed the finger at the U.S., its main enemy, suggests the Kremlin wants people to take note. But to what effect?
Predictably, the Kremlin’s main mouthpieces have clamored for revenge. Former Russian president and current head of the Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, has called for the “physical elimination” of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
“Maybe now things will start for real?” wrote Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of Russian state-controlled broadcaster RT.
But other than the usual jingoistic saber-rattling, Russia’s main evening news programs did not air the scenes of the drone explosion.
And still, more questions than answers remain.
The Kremlin is one of the best-protected sites in Russia, and it has been widely assumed that piercing its air defenses was next to impossible. Moreover, it is well-known that Putin spends most of his time at other locations.
That has fed speculation that the drone attack was in fact a false-flag operation staged by one of Russia’s own security services.
Possible motives could be an internal power struggle — as much as the security services are seen as a monolith, they are in fact infamously divided — or an attempt to dissuade the West from further weapons deliveries to Ukraine, since the arms would supposedly be used in strikes on Russian territory.
Symbolic space
But an attack on the heart of power carries a large symbolic, if not physical, price. It was in the domed Kremlin Senate that Putin staged the historic meeting with his security advisers that preceded the February 2022 launch of his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Its symbolism is undeniable.
Regardless of who is behind the incursion, it is less likely to produce a rally-around-the flag effect than raise eyebrows over the Kremlin’s own defense system.
As yet, the most important military parade, in Moscow — broadcast live on Russian state television — is still on | Olga Maltseva/AFP via Getty Images
Comparisons are being made to when the 19-year-old German Mathias Rust landed a Cessna plane near the Kremlin during the Cold War. The fact that he managed to fly across the border unchallenged was a stark humiliation for Mikhail Gorbachev. Heads rolled among his defense staff as a result.
The timing of last week’s incident does not help either, coming right before the country puts on its usual display of military prowess for Victory Day on May 9.
Even before Wednesday’s strike, the situation was tense. Avoiding the use of the word “war,” which has been banned, dozens of Russian cities have canceled their military parades in order to not “provoke the adversary.” The Immortal Regiment, a hugely popular procession of people carrying photos of their relatives who fought in World War II, has been called off. Some places have even nixed their fireworks shows.
On the one hand, such changes to an important national holiday could drive home the message that Russians are at war with, as the Kremlin puts it, “terrorists.” But the knife cuts both directions.
“In the current context, the cancellation of the parades will be taken as yet another sign that things are going very badly,” Abbas Gallyamov, a former Kremlin speechwriter turned analyst, told the Echo Moskvy outlet.
While avoiding mass gatherings in cities close to Russia’s border with Ukraine might seem like a logical precaution, that is less obvious for those thousands of kilometers away in Siberia.
Red Square speech
Some wonder aloud whether certain cities might simply lack the military equipment for a parade. Or whether they might wish to stop people taking to the streets holding photos of their relatives who have died in Ukraine, thereby providing a visual of Russia’s wartime death toll.
As yet, the most important military parade, in Moscow — broadcast live on Russian state television — is still on. But the tension in the capital is palpable.
Red Square has been shut to the public for two weeks and streets have been barricaded.
Following Wednesday’s incident, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin immediately banned the use of drones, and dozens of other regions have since followed suit. Days in advance, Muscovites were already experiencing problems with their GPS signals.
Much will hinge on Putin. His yearly Victory Day speech on Red Square is one of the few moments when his whereabouts are known in advance.
After Wednesday’s security breach, some question whether he might reconsider.
But the optics of his absence would not be good, and chances are slim that the Kremlin would risk the psychological fallout.
And yet, the question of whether it is safe enough for the president to come out in public in central Moscow speaks louder than the sound of 10,000 men marching on Red Square.
A large portion of a public park near Atlanta on the proposed site of a police and fire training facility – dubbed “Cop City” by critics – has been temporarily closed by an executive order, after county officials said they located “life threatening” hidden traps scattered in the park.
“They confiscated booby traps, boards with nails that were hidden by leaves and underbrush. You could kill a small child or a pet with those,” DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond told CNN by phone.
Thurmond said the park is a very popular area where people walk and enjoy nature.
“It’s just not safe right now,” he added.
The planned facility has received fierce pushback since its conception, by residents who feel there was little public input, conservationists who worry it will carve out a chunk of much-needed forest land and activists who say it will militarize police forces and contribute to further instances of police brutality.
Thurmond said he “understands the pushback against Cop City, but this is too far.”
Under the executive order, unauthorized persons entering the properties will be subject to prosecution for criminal trespass, and unauthorized parked vehicles will be towed and impounded, according to a news release about the executive order.
DeKalb County has been unable to send its parks employees into the site of the proposed $90 million, 85-acre training facility because “they have been attacked with rocks” and other objects, Thurmond said.
Tensions between law enforcement and protesters have continued to rise since the January shooting death of a protester, who law enforcement says fired on officers first and seriously wounded a state trooper.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation on Friday released an incident report in which a trooper with the state’s Department of Public Safety SWAT team described law enforcement officers calling for the protester, Manuel Paez Terán, to come out of his tent during a clearing operation.
Paez Terán refused to leave, the report says, and as the protester was zipping up the front door of the tent, the trooper fired pepper bails into the opening. Paez Terán then started shooting “steadily,” the report says. The trooper says he ditched the pepper ball launcher and fired his pistol at the shooter.
“While shooting I observed a small explosion at the front of the tent and a large plume of white powder going into the air,” the officer writes in the report.
The officer says he fired until it became clear Paez Terán was no longer shooting or had set off additional explosive devices. A use of force report indicates in addition to the trooper firing at the protester, five other troopers shot their weapons.
A spokesperson for Paez Terán’s family sent CNN a statement calling on the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to release witness statements and evidence. It also criticized the bureau for investigating the shooting, which came during an operation the bureau planned.
“The GBI is investigating its own tragic operation. The family calls upon the GBI to explain what steps it has taken to preserve the integrity of its investigation of its own operation,” said Enchanta Jackson.
Jackson noted the incident report was filed February 13.
“The officer narratives released today by the Department of Public Safety were drafted weeks or, in some cases, months after the incident,” Jackson said. “When officers drafted these statements, each had the opportunity to review the publicly available video and the press releases issued by the GBI.”
Kamau Franklin, the leader of the Community Movement Builders organization which opposes the facility, calls the latest move by DeKalb County an excuse to close the park and criminalize the climate activists working to preserve the green space.
“I think part of the reason is to stop and quell protests and then, to continue putting out a narrative that suggests that people who are protesting against Cop City are criminals or criminal-minded,” he told CNN. “They want to put fear into people who use the park by suggesting it’s sabotaged and booby-trapped, but without presenting any real evidence that links anything that they allegedly found to any organizers or activists.”
He says the claim that organizers sought to hurt anyone trying to enter the park flies in the face of why they’re protesting in the first place.
“The very reason we use the area, the very reason that these protests are happening is to stop the Cop City training center from going on so that the community around here can have continued access, as was promised, to that environment and to that park.”
The South River Forest Public Safety Training Center is set to be built on a piece of land which used to be a prison farm. Though it is just outside Atlanta city limits, the plot of land is owned by the city, meaning residents who live around the site do not have voting power for the leaders who approved it.
The training center would be built in a predominantly Black and Brown neighborhood.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has established a community task force to address the opposition and controversy surrounding the training center.
More than 40 “experts and community stakeholders” will join the South River Forest Public Safety Training Center Community Task Force, according to the mayor’s office. The task force adds members to the existing advisory committee.
“The new Community Task Force will add more voices and broaden the scope of community input to include the surrounding green space and the nearby site of the former Atlanta Prison Farm, as well as public safety training curriculum,” the mayor’s office said in a news release.
Included in the task force are representatives from the Georgia NAACP, ACLU, and Georgia State University, as well as other community and clergy members.
“The ACLU of Georgia is committed to helping ensure the safe and unencumbered right to protest, and as such, joins the City’s task force with demonstrators’ First Amendment rights at the forefront,” officials from the organization said in a statement.
The organization said “dozens of people” at the site have been charged with domestic terrorism in recent months. They call the charges “an over-criminalization of demonstrators under a constitutionally dubious statute.”
“The ACLU of Georgia is committed to helping ensure the safe and unencumbered right to protest, and as such, joins the City’s task force with demonstrators’ First Amendment rights at the forefront,” the ACLU of Georgia, which is part of the new task force, said in a statement.
Like many of those who are part of the new task force, the ACLU of Georgia opposes the training center’s construction.
Noticeably absent from the task force is anyone from the Muscogee Nation, or “Creek” Native American tribe. When asked by CNN why there was no Native American representation on the task force, the mayor’s office did not reply.
The “Creek” have maintained the land in the Weelaunee Forest, which is expected to house the training center, is sacred Native American land. Their fight has been joined by a robust coalition of decentralized activists, including climate activists who believe paving the 85 acres would – among other things – lead to an increase in flooding in an already flood-prone area.
Anti-policing activists, some of whom have traveled from as far as France and Canada, have also joined the movement.
Anyone looking at France right now could be forgiven for thinking the country was on the edge of a revolution.
Major cities from Paris to Lyon erupted in riots overnight on Thursday, with black-clad protesters lighting bonfires and hurling projectiles at riot police after President Emmanuel Macron rammed an unpopular reform of the pension system through parliament. More than 400 police were injured.
The violence capped weeks of mass protests as millions marched through French cities to oppose the reform, which will raise the legal age of retirement to 64 from 62 currently. More protests are already planned for next week, piling pressure on Macron’s already embattled government and prompting Britain’s King Charles to cancel a highly-awaited visit.
Yet for all the sound and fury of the protests, which could yet worsen if students join in, there’s nearly zero risk that Macron himself will have to leave office. Having narrowly survived a vote of no confidence, he may seek to reshuffle his cabinet and sack his prime minister, Élisabeth Borne — but the presidential system is so designed that the leader is nearly guaranteed to remain president until the last day of his term, in 2027.
The bigger question, then, is about what happens after Macron, whose hyper-personal style of leadership has often been described as king-like, even by the standards of France’s monarchical Republic, leaves the stage for good.
Barred from seeking a third term by the constitution, Macron will leave behind a leaderless and rudderless ruling party that may well cease to exist without him, creating a power vacuum that far-left and far-right leaders, including three-time presidential contender Marine Le Pen, are itching to fill.
And while Macron has a solid hold on power now, the parliamentary rebellion his government faced down this week — and the chaos engulfing the country — raise ominous questions about the future for anyone who hopes to see France stay firmly anchored to the pro-EU, pro-NATO liberal camp.
In other words, after Macron, le déluge.
Macron’s shaky platform
The first danger sign flashing over French democracy is the state of Macron’s own party, the centrist Renaissance group. In many systems, ruling parties have deep roots and an ideological foundation that, at least in theory, give them a raison d’être beyond exercising power.
But this isn’t the case for Macron’s party, which was born for the sole purpose of hoisting its founder into the Elysée presidential palace and then supporting his government. As such, it’s docile by nature and, with a few exceptions, hasn’t produced bold personalities who would in other circumstances be natural successors to the president.
And while the party is already short of a majority in parliament, the rebellion against the pension reform this week revealed Renaissance to be much weaker even than was previously thought — more of a hollow platform for Macron to stand on than a launchpad for future leaders. Indeed, Prime Minister Borne believed that she could rely on support from the center-right Les Républicains party to provide the necessary votes to pass the reform, as part of an informal coalition arrangement.
Yet this hope vanished suddenly and unexpectedly when a group of 19 Les Républicains, led by southern lawmaker Aurélien Pradié, defied orders from their own party leadership and announced they would support a motion of no confidence in Macron’s government. As rebellions go, it revealed not just the weakness of Renaissance, but the continued disarray of the mainstream center-right in France — which has produced most of the country’s leaders since World War II and is now a shadow of its former self.
“The political landscape isn’t just fractured; it doesn’t offer any hope for the president, the government or their supporters,” said Jean-Daniel Lévy, a political analyst with pollster Harris Interactive. “There is no such thing as a Macron doctrine or an ideological successor to Macron.”
The rebellion against the pension reform this week revealed President Emmanuel Macron’s party to be much weaker even than was previously thought | John Macdougall/AFP via Getty Images
The second alarm bell ringing is how much the pension crisis has emboldened the far-right and far-left factions in parliament. Take Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left firebrand who’s made two failed bids for the presidency, and is now the most recognizable face in the NUPES, a recently-formed left-wing coalition gathering what’s left of the Socialist party, Mélenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed group and the Greens.
Having faded from view, Mélenchon has roared back into the limelight during the pension reform battle, appearing constantly in the media. Anti-NATO, Euroskeptic and calling for an end to France’s 5th republic (his 6th Republic would end the presidential monarchy), the ex-socialist whose sympathies lean more toward Venezuela than Brussels is ideally suited to produce revolutionary soundbites.
With his pension reform, Macron has “lit a fire and blocked all the exits,” Mélenchon quipped this week.
Le Pen eyes the crown
Yet Mélenchon’s prospects of taking power in 2027 look slim. According to an IFOP poll published in early March, just 21 percent of the French believe he’s best-positioned to lead the opposition — suggesting he’s not very well-loved by other adherents of the NUPES coalition.
Much better positioned is Marine Le Pen, the far-right chief whom Macron defeated twice in the final rounds of two presidential elections. Indeed, since her last defeat, Le Pen has made further strides toward making herself look presidential while continuing to try to detoxify her party’s image.
Not only has Le Pen ditched the “National Front” party name that was associated with her Holocaust-minimizing father, Jean-Marie Le Pen; she has abandoned an electorally-disastrous plan to exit the euro currency zone and she’s established herself as the leader of her party’s 88-strong delegation in the French parliament, placing her at the center of the action against the pension reform.
She hasn’t confirmed that she’ll make a fourth bid for the presidency. But there’s no reason to believe she wouldn’t. And this time, Macron won’t be around to stop her.
“After Macron, it will be us,” she told BFMTV this week, referring to her National Rally party.
Aside from Le Pen, the obvious choice to succeed Macron would be Édouard Philippe — his remarkably beloved one-time prime minister. Since leaving office in 2017, Philippe has been quietly biding his time as mayor of Le Havre, a mid-sized port city on France’s northern coast, and nurturing his own center-right political platform, Horizons.
The fact that Philippe, in an interview earlier this month, came out to address the fact that he’s suffering both from alopecia and vitiligo only seemed to bolster his popularity with the French, who rate him as their preferred political personality, according to this ranking.
But Philippe’s stance on retirement, backing an increase in the legal age to 67 — above and beyond what Macron proposed — has not done him any favors. According to a poll by Odoxa, 61 percent of the French weren’t happy with his attempt to defend the pension reform.
He still hasn’t said for sure whether he will run in 2027, and the past week’s action suggests his association with Macron could turn out to be a drag on his prospects once campaigning gets started, should he decide to enter the race.
What do you get for the billionaire who has everything? Perhaps his own town.
Entities connected to Elon Musk and his companies have reportedly been acquiring thousands of acres of land in Texas with the hope of starting a town where his employees could live and work, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal Thursday.
These entitieshave purchased at least 3,500 acres near Austin and are in the process of working toward incorporating a town called Snailbrook, an apparent reference to the mascot of Musk’s tunneling firm, the Boring Company, according to the Journal.
The report cites county deeds and other land records, as well as city and county emails, internal company communications, state licensing records and interviews with land owners and city and county officials. (CNN has not reviewed all of the land and other records cited in the Journal report.)
Over the years, tech companies have offered numerous amenities on campus to recruit workers and sometimes incentivize them to put in longer hours. By building out a company town of his own, Musk could take that approach even further.
According to the report, Musk wants employees at his companies Boring Co., Tesla and SpaceX — all of which have major production facilities near Austin — “to be able to live in new homes with below-market rents.” The Snailbrook effort also reportedly includes plans to build more than 100 homes, as well as neighborhood features such as apool and outdoor sports area.
Incorporating a town might also give Musk, who has been known to clash with state and federal regulators, more say over how things are run.
Musk in 2020 announced he would move Tesla’s headquarters and his personal residence from California to Texas, blamingfrustrations with California’s coronavirus-related restrictions. Last year, Tesla opened a new Gigafactory manufacturing facility in Austin. Musk’s SpaceX and Boring Co. also have facilities in Texas, and Boring Co. has reportedly been in talks with Austin about the possibility of building tunnels in the city, according to a February report from the Austin American Statesman.
Property records for Bastrop County, which is adjacent to Austin, show that the Boring Co. owns 11 parcels of land on one address near the Colorado River where mobile homes were built over the past three years, according to records reviewed by CNN. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is set to hold a meeting on plans for a wastewater treatment plant on the same site, which were submitted by an LLC registered to a Boring Co. executive, according to a public announcement of the meeting.
That same entity also owns a number of parcels of nearby property comprising commercial and residential building plots and pasture and farming land, public records show. The Journal reported that Musk’s team has discussed incorporating the town in Bastrop County. The county told the Journal that it had not received an application for incorporation, which requires a certain number of residents, from Musk or any of his entities.
Tesla, SpaceX and Boring Co. did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
Angry residents repeatedly interrupted a railroad company official at a contentious town hall in East Palestine, Ohio, on Thursday, with questions and concerns regarding cleanup efforts at the site of a toxic train derailment nearly one month ago.
“We’re going to do the right thing, we’re going to clean up the site,” said Norfolk Southern representative Darrell Wilson as shouts were raised from those in attendance. “We’re going to test until we get all the contamination gone.”
“No, you’re not!” one voice cried out.
Norfolk Southern, the operator of the train that derailed on the evening of February 3, has faced continued criticism from residents in the area, some of whom report illnesses they believe stem from the crash.
After the derailment, the dangerous chemical vinyl chloride was released and burned to prevent a potentially deadly explosion, and other chemicals of concern that were being transported are feared to have leaked into the surrounding ecosystem in Ohio and Pennsylvania – with potentially damaging health consequences. Crews involved in the cleanup have also reported medical symptoms, according to a letter on behalf of workers’ unions.
During Thursday’s town hall, officials with the Environmental Protection Agency said Norfolk Southern’s plans to remediate the site were under consideration that night, and Mark Durno, Regional Response Coordinator for the EPA, told CNN’s Brenda Goodman that teams were poised to approve it.
That paved the way for the process to begin on Friday morning. The EPA has ordered the freight rail company to fully clean up the site of the wreck.
Remediation started Friday a quarter mile from the derailment site on the south track, video from CNN’s Miguel Marquez shows.
The process will involve removing one side of the tracks, digging out the contaminated soil, conducting sampling, and then replacing the tracks. The same would then be done on the other side of the tracks.
While work is being done on the south track, trains will continue to run on the north track where there are still tank cars that can’t be removed until they’re inspected, Wilson said.
“The sooner they pick it up, the sooner they can get it out of town,” EPA Region 5 Administrator Debra Shore said at the town hall. “This is going to be a complicated, big project.”
Officials are hoping to begin the process on the north side around March 28, with the entire process finishing by the end of April, Wilson said.
Approximately 2.1 million gallons of liquid waste and approximately 1,400 tons of solid waste have already been removed from the derailment site, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s office announced in a news release Thursday, citing the state’s EPA. The wastewater and solid waste have been transported to sites in Ohio and elsewhere, including Michigan, Indiana and Texas, according to the release.
“We’re very sorry for what happened. We feel horrible about it,” Wilson said – which spurred an uproar from the crowd.
Last week, Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted had suggested the company should temporarily or permanently relocate residents who feel unsafe.
“I think that the railroad should consider buying property of people who may not feel safe or would want to relocate as a result of the spill,” he told CNN on February 23. “This is the railroad’s responsibility, and it’s up to the government officials at the federal, state and local levels to hold them accountable and do right by the citizens of East Palestine.”
In response to a resident’s question at the town hall meeting, Wilson said there has not been any talk about relocating residents.
“This will be an evolving conversation that’s going to go on for quite a while,” he said, adding the company will continue to collect data to inform its decisions.
This week, Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw sold $448,000 worth of the company’s stock and Shaw personally set up a $445,000 scholarship fund for seniors at East Palestine High School that an unspecified number of students will be able to use to attend college or vocational schools.
Norfolk Southern did not respond to request for comments about the stock sale, and whether Shaw plans to reduce or donate more of his salary in the wake of the accident.
In addition to the site cleanup, the EPA is requiring Norfolk Southern to test directly for the presence of dioxins – compounds considered to have significant toxicity and can cause disease. The testing will be conducted with oversight by the agency, according to a statement released Thursday.
The EPA will direct immediate cleanup of the area if dioxins are found at a level that poses any unacceptable risk to human health or the environment, according to the statement. The EPA will also require Norfolk Southern to conduct a background study to compare any dioxin levels around East Palestine to dioxin levels in other areas not impacted by the train derailment.
The agency noted dioxins may be found in the environment as a result of common processes such as burning wood or coal, and they break down slowly, so the source of dioxins found in an area may be uncertain.
The effort comes in direct response to concerns the EPA heard from East Palestine residents, the statement said.
“This action builds on EPA’s bipartisan efforts alongside our local, state, and federal partners to earn the trust of this community and ensure all residents have the reassurances they need to feel safe at home once again,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said.
As of February 28, the EPA had collected at least 115 samples in the potentially impacted area, which include samples of air, soils, surface water, and sediments, the statement said.
To date, EPA’s monitoring for indicator chemicals has suggested a low probability for release of dioxin from this incident, according to the statement.
One year of war in Ukraine has left deep scars — including on the country’s natural landscape.
The conflict has ruined vast swaths of farmland, burned down forests and destroyed national parks. Damage to industrial facilities has caused heavy air, water and soil pollution, exposing residents to toxic chemicals and contaminated water. Regular shelling around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, means the risk of a nuclear accident still looms large.
The total number of cases of environmental damage tops 2,300, Ukraine’s environment minister, Ruslan Strilets, told POLITICO in an emailed statement. His ministry estimates the total cost at $51.45 billion (€48.33 billion).
Of those documented cases, 1,078 have already been handed over to law enforcement agencies, according to Strilets, as part of an effort to hold Moscow accountable in court for environmental damage.
A number of NGOs have also stepped in to document the environmental impacts of the conflict, with the aim of providing data to international organizations like the United Nations Environment Program to help them prioritize inspections or pinpoint areas at higher risk of pollution.
Among them is PAX, a peace organization based in the Netherlands, which is working with the Center for Information Resilience (CIR) to record and independently verify incidents of environmental damage in Ukraine. So far, it has verified 242 such cases.
Left: Hostomel, Ukraine, after a Russian assault. Right: Port of Mykolaiv after a Russian strike | Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
“We mainly rely on what’s being documented, and what we can see,” said Wim Zwijnenburg, a humanitarian disarmament project leader with PAX. Information comes from social media, public media accounts and satellite imagery, and is then independently verified.
“That also means that if there’s no one there to record it … we’re not seeing it,” he said. “It’s such a big country, so there’s fighting in so many locations, and undoubtedly, we are missing things.”
After the conflict is over, the data could also help identify “what is needed in terms of cleanup, remediation and restoration of affected areas,” Zwijnenburg said.
Rebuilding green
While some conservation projects — such as rewilding of the Danube delta — have continued despite the war, most environmental protection work has halted.
“It is very difficult to talk about saving other species if the people who are supposed to do it are in danger,” said Oksana Omelchuk, environmental expert with the Ukrainian NGO EcoAction.
That’s unlikely to change in the near future, she added, pointing out that the environment is littered with mines.
Before and after flooding in the Kyiv area, Ukraine | Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
Agricultural land is particularly affected, blocking farmers from using fields and contaminating the soil, according to Zwijnenburg. That “might have an impact on food security” in the long run, he said.
When it comes to de-mining efforts, residential areas will receive higher priority, meaning it could take a long time to make natural areas safe again.
The delay will “[hinder] the implementation of any projects for the restoration and conservation of species,” according to Omelchuk.
And, of course, fully restoring Ukraine’s nature won’t be possible until “Russian troops leave the territory” she said.
Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol before and after a Russian attack |Imagery courtesy of Planet Labs PBC
Meanwhile, Kyiv is banking that the legal case it is building against Moscow will become a potential source of financing for rebuilding the country and bringing its scarred landscape and ecosystems back to health.
It is also tapping into EU coffers.In a move intended to help the country restore its environment following Russia’s invasion, Ukraine in June became the first non-EU country to join the LIFE program, the EU’s funding instrument for environment and climate.
Earlier this month, Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius announced a €7 million scheme — dubbed the Phoenix Initiative — to help Ukrainian cities rebuild greener and to connect Ukrainian cities with EU counterparts that can share expertise on achieving climate neutrality.
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Louise Guillot, Antonia Zimmermann and Giovanna Coi
Three bodies found Thursday in the Detroit area are believed to be those of three rappers missing for almost two weeks, a municipal spokesperson said.
The bodies were found in a “rat infested,” abandoned apartment complex in Highland Park, roughly 6 miles northwest of Detroit, said Michigan State Police, which is leading the investigation.
The Michigan State Police Second District tweeted Friday afternoon that the homicide task force identified the three bodies but are not releasing names until the families have been notified.
The state police tweeted a day earlier that the agency has yet to confirm a manner of death.
“Please remember all victims have families and we don’t have the luxury of guessing on their identity and then retracting if we didn’t get it right. Once information is confirmed we will update,” the state police tweeted on Thursday.
Lt. Mike Shaw said via Twitter Friday morning that “due to weather conditions and the conditions of the victims” their identities were “unable to be determined just by sight alone.”
The missing men – Armani Kelly, 28; Dante Wicker, 31; and Montoya Givens, 31 – were associates whose January 21 performance at a Detroit club was canceled, police have said. Activity on their cell phones stopped early on January 22, according to authorities.
Police were first alerted to their disappearance by Kelly’s mother, who reported him missing the next day, said Michael McGinnis, commander of major crimes at the Detroit Police Department.
“That mother became very proactive in the investigation and started searching for her vehicle through OnStar,” McGinnis said this week.
She found the car in Warren, Michigan, just a few miles from Highland Park, McGinnis said, and authorities recovered the car on January 23.
As the story of Kelly’s disappearance gained media attention, “other family members of the other missings come to realize that that’s a friend of their loved ones and they haven’t seen them either, so then they both get reported missing,” McGinnis said.
A homicide task force was at the Highland Park complex Thursday evening, state police said.
Tyre Nichols’ family on Monday met with Memphis, Tennessee, officials and viewed footage of his arrest earlier this month, giving them an opportunity to see what happened before he was taken in critical condition to a hospital, where he died days later.
Memphis Police confirmed in a statement on Twitter that police and city officials met with Nichols’ family to let them view the video recordings, which Chief Cerelyn Davis indicated would be released publicly at a later time.
“Transparency remains a priority in this incident, and a premature release could adversely impact the criminal investigation and the judicial process,” she said. “We are working with the District Attorney’s Office to determine the appropriate time to release video recordings publicly.”
Benjamin Crump, the attorney representing Nichols’ family, said in a statement the family would hold a news conference Monday afternoon.
The death of Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, follows a number of recent, high-profile cases involving police using excessive force toward members of the public, particularly young Black men.
The Memphis Police Department has terminated five police officers, all of whom are Black, in connection with Nichols’ death January 10, three days after the department says officers pulled over a motorist, identified as Nichols, for alleged reckless driving the previous day.
A confrontation followed, and “the suspect fled the scene on foot,” police said in a statement on social media. Officers chased him and another confrontation took place before the suspect was taken into custody, the statement said.
“Afterward, the suspect complained of having a shortness of breath, at which time an ambulance was called to the scene. The suspect was transported to St. Francis Hospital in critical condition,” officials said.
Details about Nichols’ injuries and the cause of his death have not been released. CNN has reached out to the Shelby County coroner for comment.
The Shelby County District Attorney’s Office expects to release the video of Nichols’ arrest either this week or next week, a spokesperson told CNN on Monday, about a week after city officials said video recorded by officers’ body-worn cameras would be released publicly after the police department’s internal investigation was completed and the family had a chance to review the recordings.
“(The video) should be made public, it’s just a matter of when,” Director of Communications Erica Williams said, adding the Nichols family was expected to meet with the DA around 12 p.m. ET Monday.
Williams declined to characterize the nature of the video, saying it would be inappropriate to comment on it before the family sees it.
Asked if officials anticipated charges against the five officers involved in Nichols’ arrest, Williams said, “charges, if any, will be announced later this week.”
The Memphis Police Department’s administrative investigation found the five officers terminated – identified by the department as Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith – violated policies for use of force, duty to intervene and duty to render aid, the department said in a statement.
“The egregious nature of this incident is not a reflection of the good work that our officers perform, with integrity, every day,” Police Chief Cerleyn “CJ” Davis said.
The Memphis Police Association, the union representing the officers, declined to comment on the terminations beyond saying that the city of Memphis and Nichols’ family “deserve to know the complete account of the events leading up to his death and what may have contributed to it.”
PARIS — France is bracing for a day of severe disruptions and strikes on Thursday as trade unions and opposition parties vow to force the government to abandon French President Emmanuel Macron’s flagship pensions reform.
Schools, universities andpublic administrations are expected to close, public transport will be severely affected and demonstrations are planned in major cities across the country.
“It’s going to be a [day] of hassles… It’ll be a Thursday of great disruption of public services,” warned Transport Minister Clément Beaune.
Workers are protesting the government’s decision to raise the legal retirement age to 64 from 62. As part of the proposed overhaul, the number of years of contributions needed for a full pension will also rise faster than previously planned and will be set at 43 years from 2027.
This is one of the biggest tests for Macron since losing outright majority in parliament in June. Macron was reelected last year on promises he would reform France’s public pension system and bring it in line with European neighbors such as Spain and Germany where the legal age of retirement is 65 to 67 years old. According to projections from France’s Council of Pensions Planning, the finances of the pensions system are balanced in the short term but will go into deficit in the long term.
“Whatever pension projection you look at, the system will be go into the red within 15 years… it is difficult to deny the funding issues … The level of expenditure has stabilized but it’s simply higher than the revenues,” said Antoine Bozio, director of the Institute of Public Policy in Paris.
French polls suggest that the French are opposed to the reform but are aware of the need to overhaul state pensions. There is, however, deep disagreement on how to achieve that. Both the far-right National Rally party and the leftwing NUPES coalition staunchly oppose pushing back the age of retirement to 64 and argue that it will unfairly hit French working classes. Both groups vow to fight the government and stall debates as the pensions bill goes through parliament.
“The Macron-Borne reform is a serious step back for French welfare,” tweeted Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left France unbowed party — which is planning a second day of protests on Sunday.
Macron is hoping to get the votes of the conservative Les Républicains to get the reforms passed in parliament, where he does not have absolute majority.
In the battle to win over public opinion, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne, who unveiled the reform last week, has repeatedly maintained that the changes include several measures that benefit the poorest. The government plans to increase the minimum monthly pension by close to 10 percent to €1,200 for low-income earners, and vows to improve access to early retirement schemes for employees who work in difficult professions.
According to Bozio, while the government’s aim is primarily to balance the books amid increased funding needs for health, education and support for businesses, there are legitimate questions over the fairness of the reform.
“Pushing back the retirement age will not hit the poorest in France, so in that sense the reform is fair,” said Bozio referring to precarious workers who have checkered careers and often leave the workforce later at 67 years old.
In the battle to win over public opinion, French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has repeatedly maintained that the changes include several measures that benefit the poorest | Pool photo by bertrand Guay/AFP via Getty Images
However, lower-income groups, who start work early, will be disadvantaged compared to higher-income groups who have later careers.
“Those hit by the reform will be qualified factory workers, less qualified office workers … Senior managers, the intellectual classes who have done long studies, will be less affected,” he said.
There were other options on the table. In 2020, Macron’s government worked on a more balanced reform, which had the backing of one of France’s main trade unions the CFDT, but was forced to shelve it following months of strikes along with the COVID-19 pandemic which brought the country to a halt.
France has a long history of showdowns between government-led pension reforms and the public backlash on the street in the form of mass protests and walking off the job. In his second term, Macron has settled for a less aggressive, more topical reform focused on raising the legal age of retirement in the hope that it would be easier to pass through parliament. The breadth of Thursday’s protests will be a first test of that choice.
One-year-old Brenda’s tiny feet are bare on the cold asphalt of an El Paso parking lot as the harsh reality starts to sink in for her parents. They are undocumented. They are homeless. And their daughter barely escaped death when they crossed the Rio Grande.
“My daughter would have died because she was super frozen,” said Glenda Matos.
Matos’ pain is clear in her eyes as she recalls her daughter being drenched, in the freezing cold, all while crying hysterically. Matos and her husband, Anthony Blanco, say they had nothing to keep their daughter warm, not even body heat, because they, too, were wet and cold.
Matos says she hugged Brenda tightly and ran from house to house begging for help until they finally found a kind El Paso resident who helped them with clothes and shelter.
“I asked God for help,” Glenda said. “God… put those people in my way.”
For Matos, the tiny red rosary with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, hanging from Brenda’s ancle, saved them. Matos says she wrapped the religious token on her daughter’s little body for protection when they left their native Venezuela.
Brenda and her parents are some of the hundreds of migrants living in squalor in the streets of downtown El Paso around Sacred Heart Parish. The makeshift camp – with its piles of blankets, strollers and tents lining both sides of a busy street – has city officials expressing concerns about safety and public health given the area is packed with migrants who have no running water or proper shelter.
The surge of migrants aggregating here started a few weeks ago, when anxiety about the scheduled end of the Trump-era pandemic public health rule known as Title 42 prompted thousands of migrants to turn themselves in to border authorities or to cross into the United States illegally in a very short period of time.
Title 42 allows immigration authorities to swiftly return some migrants to Mexico. The policy was scheduled to lift last week, but a Supreme Court ruling kept the rule in place while legal challenges play out in court.
While the impact of the ruling has sent ripples throughout the southern border, the scene in El Paso is one of a kind. It’s the only U.S. border town where hundreds of migrants are living in the streets longer than expected. It’s a new phenomenon that city officials say had never happened during prior migrant surges.
It’s driven, in part, by the anxiety created by the uncertainty of Title 42, which motivated some migrants to cross the border illegally. These migrants don’t have family or sponsors in the US to receive them. And many also fear that traveling out of town without the proper paperwork could lead to apprehension by US immigration authorities.
The misery around Sacred Heart Parish is palpable. Evelyn Palma has blankets hooked and draped on a chain-linked fence to keep the cold and the drizzle from hitting her five children, ages 1 to 8, some of them shirtless. She’s been living on the street for eight days. But Friday was especially miserable because it was 40 degrees and it poured overnight.
“We woke up drenched,” Palma said.
The 24-year-old mother from Honduras says she and her children turned themselves in to immigration authorities earlier this month, but they were swiftly returned to Mexico, likely under Title 42. That’s why, she says, that a week ago she decided to evade authorities by crossing the river.
She is part of the growing number of migrants who El Paso city officials say have decided to enter the US illegally and, for various reasons, have not left the city.
“They are people who came into the country in anticipation of Title 42 going away,” said Mario D’Agostino, El Paso’s deputy city manager.
The living conditions Palma and other migrants are enduring has officials concerned about their safety and overall public health. City spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta says that the spread of disease is top of mind.
“We are still in the middle of what is being called a ‘tripledemic,’ with continuing high infection levels of upper respiratory infections across the community,” Cruz-Acosta said.
And while the city has space for about 1,500 migrants at shelters that have been erected at the convention center and at a public school, those beds are only offered to migrants who have turned themselves in to border authorities and have been allowed to stay in the US pending their immigration cases. Those migrants receive documentation from US Customs and Border Protection that allows them to travel within the country.
Migrants who enter the country illegally are not offered city-provided shelter because federal dollars are being used to foot the bill. And those monies can’t be used to serve people who entered the country illegally, according to D’Agostino.
City officials have been referring undocumented migrants to non-profit organizations and churches like Sacred Heart Parish, which turns into a shelter when night falls.
That’s why hundreds of migrants aggregate on the streets around the church, hoping to score one of the 120 to 130 slots to enter the church for the night.
Around 6 p.m., a line of migrants forms outside the church’s gymnasium. Parents can be seen clutching their children to try to keep them warm. Women and men with children are given priority, according to Rafael García, the priest that runs the shelter. García says it’s tough to send people away but that his church has limited resources to serve the growing need.
Angello Sánchez and his 4-year-old son Anyeider were allowed into the shelter for the night several times this week. The Colombian father says he was trying to protect his son from the cold because his little face still had windburn from being out in the elements during the recent freeze.
“I got here from southern Mexico on a train. It was so cold and he wasn’t wearing any jacket,” Angello said.
Palma, the mother of five, says she was offered entry into the shelter with her children but decided not to take the offer because a pregnant friend who is accompanying her was denied access.
El Paso, which means “The Pass” in Spanish, has historically been a gateway for migrants passing through into the United States.
“For hundreds of years people have been passing through and it’s just part of their journey,” D’Agostino said. “In normal times the community doesn’t even realize it.”
But this migrant surge is different because migrants are staying for days and even more than a week, city officials say.
Besides lacking family or sponsors in the US to receive them, many migrants don’t have money to pay for their transportation out of the city. And in the makeshift migrant camp around Sacred Heart Parish, word is spreading about another factor that has some undocumented migrants hunkering down in El Paso: The fear of getting detained at immigration checkpoints located in the interior of the US.
In the last week, at least 364 undocumented migrants who were traveling in commercial buses headed to northern cities were detained at these immigration checkpoints, according to tweetsposted by El Paso’s border patrol chief.
Palma says she heard about the checkpoints and the apprehensions and decided to stay in El Paso longer while she figures out what to do.
Juan Pérez, from Venezuela, was down the street and said that “immigration is in the exits [of the city]… they’ll return us and send us to Mexico.”
The US has 110 Border Patrol checkpoints in the southern and northern borders, where vehicles are screened for the “illegal flow of people and contraband,” according to a recent US Government Accountability Office report. The checkpoints are usually between 25 and 100 miles from the border, according to the same report.
Anthony Blanco says he’s not afraid of being detained at these interior checkpoints.
“I’ve walked through many different countries without documents. I don’t think we’re going to be detained, but if that happens, it was God’s will,” Blanco said.
For days this week, Blanco has been holding a sign on the street corner that reads, “Help me with work so I can support my wife and baby,” and asking drivers who pass by for money for bus tickets to Denver.
Why Denver? He says word has spread that there is work there and living is more affordable.
Friday morning, a day which was especially miserable because it was cold after a hard overnight rain, Blanco was all smiles. He says he had collected enough money to continue his journey to Denver.
With car ownership more expensive than ever and gas prices averaging $3 a gallon, many city dwellers are ditching their wheels for their heels. This may be good for their wallets and their health.
“Car-free days inherently reduce environmental impacts such as energy consumption and vehicle emissions, as well as health impacts such as driver stress and resident exposure to pollution,” said J. Patrick Abulencia, Associate Professor, Chemical Engineering at Manhattan College.
With that in mind, LawnStarter recently ranked the best cities to live without a car in 2023, measuring them on 19 indicators of car-free-friendliness, including walkability, transit ridership, climate, pedestrian safety, and weather.
Some of the results were expected, but others were surprising.
Big cities ranked high
Densely populated cities like San Francisco and New York ranked high on the list. Why? The more packed a city, the less distance to travel and the more transportation options available. In big suburbs or sprawling cities, commuters often have to own cars to get around.
LawnStarter ranked San Francisco as the number 1 city to live without a car. The city got high marks for walking, biking, and public transportation.
Here are the top 5 cities on the list:
San Francisco, CA
Boston, MA
Washington, DC
New York, NY
Seattle, WA
Some surprises
Minneapolis ranked number 8 — the same city that, just last week during an arctic blizzard, was a crisp minus-6 degrees Fahrenheit. But Minneapolis workers don’t have to brave the cold. Downtown is connected through a system of glass-enclosed footbridges called Skyways, allowing people to move warmly through the city without going outside. When temps warm up, Minneapolis is a “cyclist’s paradise.” The city has the 16th best access to bike rentals, the eighth highest share of bike commuters, and way fewer pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents than in 177 other cities.
On the other side of the car-free spectrum is Memphis, which was ranked the fifth-worst city to go without wheels.
LawnStarter gave the city low marks for biking, safety, and walking. So much for Walking in Memphis.
Memphis’s weather also isn’t favorable for a carless existence.
“Although Memphis ranked a decent 56 in air quality, its relatively punishing climate (No. 181) makes it uncomfortable to be outdoors,” according to the survey.
Most of the worst cities to live without a car were in the South. Why? Bad weather and bad public transportation. Also, the cities down South are mostly built for cars. The exception was Alexandria, Virginia, at #31 — if you can call that the South.
KYIV — Ukrainian intelligence officials are warning that the Kremlin plans a new mobilization wave for up to 500,000 men to fight in Ukraine starting in mid-January.
The new conscription drive, which would be larger than last autumn’s Russian draft of 300,000, would include a push in big cities, including some strategic industrial centers in Russia, Andriy Cherniak, an official with the Main Military Intelligence Directorate of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry, told POLITICO on Saturday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in December said a suggested new conscription wave would be pointless as currently only 150,000 previously mobilized soldiers have been deployed in the invasion of Ukraine. The rest are still training or serving in the Russian rear.
Russia announced the end of the earlier “partial” mobilization of 300,000 men on October 31. But Cherniak claimed that Moscow has continued secret conscription all along.
Now, Ukrainian military intelligence expects a new major wave of official mobilization might begin after January 15.
“This time the Kremlin will mobilize residents of big cities, including the strategic industries centers all over Russia,” Cherniak said. “This will have a very negative impact on the already suffering Russian economy.”
Moscow plans to use the 500,000 extra conscripts in a possible new massive offensive against Ukraine, the Guardian reported, citing Vadym Skibitsky, deputy chief of Ukrainian military intelligence.
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported that Russia has seen more than 100,000 soldiers killed in action in Ukraine. The latest blow that Moscow’s army has endured was in Makiivka, a town in the occupied part of Donetsk Oblast, where hundreds of newly conscripted Russian soldiers were killed or wounded in a high-precision strike by Ukrainian forces on January 1. Although the number of casualties cannot be verified independently, the Russian Defense Ministry acknowledged the deaths of 89 soldiers, which makes it the biggest one-time military loss recognized by Moscow in the Ukraine war.
Ukrainian Armed Forces Chief Commander Valery Zaluzhnyy, in a December interview with the Economist, said Russia will conduct a new attempt at a massive offensive against Ukraine in February-March 2023. It might not start in Donbas, but in the direction of Kyiv through Belarus.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Ukraine keeps watching Russian steps in all directions.
“Russia will not be able to conceal in silence its preparations for a new wave of aggression against Ukraine and the whole of Europe. The world will know in all details — how and when the aggressor is preparing a new escalation in this war,” Zelenskyy said in an evening video statement on January 5.
“And every new mobilization step of Russia will be known to the world even before Russia makes it,” Zelenskyy said. “We will ensure this.”
German police arrested a 32-year-old Iranian man suspected of plotting a chemical attack.
The Iranian national was arrested in the town of Castrop-Rauxel, near Dortmund, on suspicion of procuring toxins including cyanide and ricin in order to commit a terror attack inspired by Islamic extremism, German authorities said on Sunday. Another person was detained during the operation, they said.
The Iranian’s house was cordoned off and searched in order to secure further evidence, with German media reporting that several officers and emergency workers in full protective suits were present at the scene.
A joint statement by Düsseldorf’s public prosecutor and the police forces of the cities of Recklinghausen and Münster said that the arrest was the result of an investigation by the region of North Rhine-Westphalia’s anti-terrorism office. German tabloid Bildreported that Germany’s law enforcement was tipped off by a foreign intelligence agency about the man’s plan.
Preparing a serious act of violence is punishable with a prison sentence of six months to 10 years under German law, according to the police statement.
Ukraine is bracing for three or four “massive” missile strikes from Russia, a top defense official in Kyiv said, while the Ukrainian president’s office suggested Moscow may wait for more frigid weather in order to “deal the most sensitive blow.”
Even as he gave the warning about imminent attacks, Oleksiy Danilov, secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, said Kyiv’s forces are able to shoot down up to 90 percent of Russian missiles, thanks to supplies of Western air-defense weapons. Danilov made the comments in an online interview on Friday.
Ukraine is still recovering from the latest Russian missile attack on the nation’s energy infrastructure on November 23, which plunged a significant part of the country, including Kyiv, into darkness.
Despite efforts to restore power supplies, Ukraine’s biggest private electricity producer, DTEK, warned on Saturday about emergency power cuts in the capital as well as such major cities such as Odesa and Dnipro.
Danilov also said that the amount of Russian missile weapons is rapidly decreasing, and Moscow is forced to “look for additional supplies around the world.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, believes that Russia is changing the tactics of its missile strikes on Ukraine.
Russian forces “are waiting for an increase in frosts … so that the temperature at night drops to 8-10 degrees below zero, and at this moment they want to deal the most sensitive blow to Ukraine,” Podolyak said in an online interview Friday night.
Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) said that Russia may be trying to generate another wave of refugees with the aim “to pressure Western officials to offer pre-emptive concessions because the Russian military has been unable to achieve strategic success.”
A wave of Chinese demonstrations against Beijing’s draconian COVID policies is testing President Xi Jinping, and how they develop from here “will be important to Xi’s standing,” the U.S.’s top intelligence official said.
The spread of angry protests and the government’s repressive response to them are “countering the narrative that he likes to put forward, which is that China is so much more effective at government” than the West, said U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
“How it develops will be important to Xi’s standing,” she said. But it’s “not something we see as being a threat to stability at this moment, or regime change or anything like that,” she added.
The comments were delivered Saturday as part of a wide-ranging interview at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in California.
Several Chinese cities have started easing COVID rules, after demonstrations against the government’s strict lockdown measures swept across the country. Authorities are shifting to more-targeted measures following the wave of angry protests against the country’s strict zero-COVID rules.
Two more deaths from COVID were reported on Sunday, the Associated Press reported. The National Health Commission said the provinces of Shandong and Sichuan each reported a death, the AP said. No information was given about the ages of the victims or whether they had been fully vaccinated.
Haines said she believed the turmoil in China was partly due to the the fact that Xi “is unwilling to take a better vaccine from the West, and is instead relying on a vaccine in China that’s just not nearly as effective against [the] Omicron” variant.
The White House last week criticized the Chinese strategy and response to the protests, insisting that “everyone has the right to peacefully protest” and instead urging a ramp-up in vaccination campaigns.
U.S. and EU politicians, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have pushed for agreements to allow Western-manufactured vaccines to be used in China. But so far “we have not received any requests or any interest by China to receive our vaccines,” a White House official said.
