- Texas deploys barrier of buoys, nets in Rio Grande to deter border crossings, amid protests Houston Chronicle
- Abbott faces lawsuit over using buoys along Rio Grande to mitigate border crossings CBS TEXAS
- Abbott faces lawsuit over using buoys in Rio Grande to mitigate border crossings CBS News
- Texas floating barriers will cause ‘imminent and irreparable harm,’ lawsuit claims KLBK | KAMC | EverythingLubbock.com
- Joaquin Castro says floating barriers in Rio Grande dangerous KENS 5: Your San Antonio News Source
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: Crossings
Biden-Harris Administration Announces Funding for 63 Projects in 32 States That Will Help Reduce Train-Vehicle Collisions and Blocked Rail Crossings in the U.S. | US Department of Transportation – Department of Transportation
- Biden-Harris Administration Announces Funding for 63 Projects in 32 States That Will Help Reduce Train-Vehicle Collisions and Blocked Rail Crossings in the U.S. | US Department of Transportation Department of Transportation
- Biden administration gives out $570 million in grants to eliminate railroad crossings across US Fox News
- Olathe’s 119th Street Extension bridge gets major federal funding FOX4 News Kansas City
- 400 railroad crossings will be upgraded or eliminated under new program The Washington Post
- U.S. invests $570 million to fix intersections where trains and cars meet WFAA
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Ukraine allows perilous Dnieper crossings to flee Russian occupation
Appeals came in from relatives that had been separated for months, elderly parents hoping to return to their families and a woman, nine months pregnant, trying to reach a hospital to deliver her baby: sundered from a city they used to be able to visit without a second’s thought, by a river that has become the front line of a grinding war.
On Saturday, more than three weeks after Ukraine regained control of the city, Ukrainian officials announced they would be lifting a ban on crossing the river, encouraging residents on the occupied eastern bank to flee to Kherson, whatever the danger, in a possible sign that Ukraine’s offensive could continue to push east. But those hoping to cross in the opposite direction, to rescue or reunite with those stranded, would remain barred.
Few have taken up the offer to flee. Many people had no way of getting across, and those on the Ukrainian side of the river — including motorboat drivers like Fomin — had no way of helping. Those willing to dare the journey face grave peril: a 65-year-old woman, attempting to cross the river by boat alongside her husband, died under gunfire Sunday, according to a statement released by Kherson City Council. Her husband survived. Local officials did not respond immediately to requests for more information and did not say whether Russian or Ukrainian forces had fired the shots.
“Guys, I would get into a boat and go to you,” Fomin told someone by phone on Sunday, while standing in front of the river on the Kherson city side. But “it’s not possible at all right now.”
Even after the announcement that one-way westward crossing would be permitted, the Dnieper River was practically free of boats on Sunday.
A spokesman for the regional government said officials made their decision after receiving requests from Ukrainians living on the east bank of the river. Officials told Kherson residents they would be allowed to enter the city at one location, a ferry terminal.
“We are waiting for everyone who has the opportunity and wants to return to the territory controlled by Ukraine!” the Telegram message stated.
But getting across wouldn’t be easy — and Ukrainian authorities offered no assistance.
From firing positions on the east side of the river, Russian forces have battered the city with shelling in recent days. Ukrainian forces, meanwhile, have reportedly crossed the Dnieper River onto the eastern bank. A video posted on a Telegram page of a volunteer Ukrainian special forces team showed a Ukrainian flag tied to a crane near the shore, which the fighters described as “a springboard for the de-occupation of the left bank of the Kherson region.”
But some of those still living in the occupied areas across the river were afraid to make the crossing. One woman living in the east bank, who asked Fomin for help, said she and four other people were trying to return to Kherson, but worried their boats would come under fire — a concern borne out by the fate of the woman shot Sunday.
On the Kherson side of the river, residents gathered in below-freezing temperatures at the ferry terminal on Sunday, asking soldiers for any information about the evacuations to Kherson.
Many were trying to go in the opposite direction.
One woman, Svitlana, hoped to cross the river to reunite with her husband and daughter on the east bank. She thought it would be better than staying apart from them in Kherson, where the missile strikes were constant. On Sunday, her 64th birthday, she went to the river terminal to see if it might be possible to cross.
“The Russians are there,” she said, “but I’m willing to take the risk.”
One 74-year-old man, Yurii Senchuk, was among the first waiting at the river terminal on Sunday, alongside his dog, Baikal. He hoped to cross the river to stay with his friends at their house on the eastern side. His wife and daughter had fled the country. The retired bus driver said the power, water and heat in his apartment have been cutting out. Across the river, his friends have a heating stove and a well. And he hoped it might be safer than Kherson, where he heard shelling near his home five times the previous night.
“It might be warmer there,” he said. “The Russians are not going to do anything to me.”
Among the only people who managed to cross the river on Sunday, at least at the official entry point, were a group of workers coming and going from an industrial crane on the eastern side, who said they had special permission and were not traveling under the general edict.
Elena Klymenko, an entrepreneur, went to the ferry terminal looking for information about how to reach her mother, a 77-year-old woman who has been living in a cottage across the river since September. She had hoped she would be able to rent a boat to go pick up her mother, but was unable to.
She was unfazed by the danger. “As far as we know it’s unsafe to even be in Kherson,” she said. “There’s no other way.”
But Fomin, the motorboat driver, said he feared what would happen if he tried to cross the river.
He was used to taking risks; he has ferried people — including children returning from camps in Crimea across the river secretly, he said, after a Russian-imposed curfew, when both sides of the river were occupied.
But he knew even if the Ukrainian authorities let him cross by boat, he’d be within Russian sniper range. He said he wished the authorities would help bring people over.
On Saturday, a missile struck the dock near his home where he keeps his boat. On Sunday, when he returned to the dock, he found the body of a security guard who had worked at the dock, he said, burned from the explosion a day earlier.
Even as the riverfront became increasingly dangerous, Fomin planned to keep returning to the dock.
“I was born and raised here,” he said. “I’m not going to move an inch from the city.”
Animal Crossing’s Biggest PC Rival Sure Has Grown
Over the past year, an idyllic life sim starring anthropomorphic animals has quietly picked up steam. No, it’s not a new Animal Crossing. It’s an under-the-radar game called Hokko Life, and it’s coming to consoles next month.
At first glance, Hokko Life undeniably bears a strong resemblance to Animal Crossing, Nintendo’s juggernaut series of life sims. Both games are set in an idyllic little town, populated by animals who walk and talk and live out cute approximations of human lives. Both put an emphasis on farming and decorating. Like the villager player character from Animal Crossing, you have a little ax. The obvious similarities, you’ll note in the video above, do not end there.
But Animal Crossing has only ever been playable on Nintendo machines. There’s a vacuum for that specific flavor of game in the PC and mainline console ecosystems, which Hokko Life has purported to fill. Last year, shortly after it became available in early access on Steam, Kotaku Australia noted that it didn’t quite feel meaty enough to justify public availability.
That was then. This is now. Throughout its year in early access, studio Wonderscope Games—the moniker for game dev Robert Tatnell, who’s making Hokko Life solo—has rolled out a number of updates, to the point where Hokko Life is more or less a full game. One added a ton of new items. Another added a perks system, kinda like the one that’s present in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. But Hokko Life isn’t an exact one-to-one remapping of the game that defined the pandemic’s early goings. Customization in Hokko Life is far more robust, for instance.
Hokko Life is currently playable in early access on Steam, where it has a “mostly positive” rating based on about 1,000 reviews. It’ll see its full release on PC, but also on Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, on September 27.
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Vertagear has a number of gaming chairs on sale right now. One in particular that caught our eye is the PL4500 which is embroidered with Swarovski crystals down to $500. You can also get one of their RGB kits to add a set of lights to either the top cutout sections around the headrest or a bottom LED kit for $200 to light up underneath like your chair is in Need for Speed: Underground 2.
Boris Johnson to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to cut illegal sea crossings
Under the plan, which requires the approval of Parliament, most migrants who cross illegally will be deemed inadmissible for claiming asylum in Britain, because their journeys will have taken them through safe countries before their arrival in the United Kingdom.
Johnson suggested that “tens of thousands” of such migrants could be sent to Rwanda, a Commonwealth nation, which could either accept them as refugees or send them back to their home countries.
With 80 million displaced people in the world, many fleeing poverty and violence, Britain is not alone in seeking to make illegal migration harder — and to move the asylum process “offshore.”
Denmark also explored a migration deal with Rwanda last year. Israel tried convincing illegal migrants from Eritrea and Sudan to accept cash and a one-way ticket to Rwanda in a pilot program.
The European Union is continuing to task the Libyan coast guard with pushing migrant vessels back toward North Africa. In 2019, the Trump administration sent 900 asylum seekers who crossed the U.S. border to Guatemala. President Biden suspended the program.
Johnson is now taking a page from the Trump playbook. British officials say all inadmissible adults who arrive starting on Jan. 1 will be sent to Rwanda via chartered jets. Britain will not send children or unaccompanied minors, nor will officials break up families with children.
Individuals deemed to have viable asylum claims may remain in Britain to pursue their cases, but they will no longer be housed in hotels. Instead, they will live in former military barracks in north England.
“It’s a striking fact that around seven out of 10 of those arriving in small boats last year were men under 40, paying people smugglers to queue-jump and taking up our capacity to help genuine women and child refugees,” Johnson said.
“This is particularly perverse as those attempting crossings are not directly fleeing imminent peril as is the intended purpose of our asylum system,” he said. “They have passed through manifestly safe countries, including many in Europe, where they could — and should — have claimed asylum.”
British Home Secretary Priti Patel traveled to Rwanda on Thursday to sign the deal, which includes $160 million in aid to that country. The plan, part of a new Nationality and Borders Bill, now goes to Parliament. Johnson’s Conservative Party holds a large majority there.
Yvette Cooper, a leader of the opposition Labour Party, called the proposal “unworkable, unethical and extortionate.” Cooper tweeted that Australia, which sends unauthorized migrants who arrive by sea to third countries, has spent billions of dollars on the program. She warned that Britain will, too.
Australia long sent asylum seekers who arrived by boat to processing centers on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and the small Pacific island nation of Nauru.
Australia reaffirmed its deal with Nauru last year, reiterating its hardline policy. “Anyone who attempts an illegal maritime journey to Australia will be turned back, or taken to Nauru for processing. They will never settle in Australia,” Karen Andrews, the minister for home affairs, said in a statement.
Advocacy groups in Britain warned that the measures could violate human rights. “I think it’s rather extraordinary that the government is obsessing with control instead of focusing on competence and compassion,” Enver Solomon, chief executive of the Refugee Council, told BBC radio.
Johnson conceded legal challenges probably would seek to block the plan’s implementation. He denied that the measures were “draconian or lacking in compassion,” saying it was far worse to let people drown in the channel. And he denounced the traffickers as “vile.”
“Smugglers are abusing the vulnerable and turning the channel into a watery graveyard, with men, women and children drowning in unseaworthy boats and suffocating in refrigerated lorries,” he said.
Johnson predicted that the plan would soon be adopted as “an international model.”
The Trump administration’s deal with Guatemala permitted the United States to send asylum seekers who crossed the U.S. border to Guatemala. It negotiated similar arrangements with Honduras and El Salvador, though those were never implemented. All three deals were suspended when Biden took office.
Advocates warned that Guatemala was unprepared to house asylum seekers or offer them long-term refuge. By the end of the Trump administration, not a single migrant sent to Guatemala had received asylum there, in part because of bureaucratic delays. Many said they didn’t know they were flown to Guatemala until their planes arrived in the capital.
The British prime minister said his goal was “to break the business model” of the smuggling gangs, which can make $400,000 for each launch of an unseaworthy dinghy. He said he was sending a message that people who cross illegally “risk ending up not in the U.K. but in Rwanda.” He described this as “a considerable deterrent.”
Bulama Bukarti, a Nigerian human rights lawyer in London, said Johnson contradicted his own government’s assessment of Rwanda when he called it “one of the safest countries in the world.”
In an assessment last year, the United Kingdom recommended that the East African nation launch probes into allegations of extrajudicial killings, deaths in state custody, forced disappearances and torture. “It’s a clear case of Europe thinking Europeans at risk are more entitled to live in peace and build a better life than people from Africa,” Bukarti said, referring to the several million Ukrainians who have fled their homeland following Russia’s invasion. Britain has granted 25,000 visas to those refugees, though many have not yet arrived.
Critics of Rwanda’s president have faced arbitrary detentions and beatings on a regular basis, noted Lewis Mudge, central Africa director at Human Rights Watch, and trials are known to lack fairness. “Anyone even perceived as critical to the government or its policies can be targeted,” he said in a statement Thursday.
Not all migrants to Britain arrive in rickety boats after braving the English Channel’s fast-moving tides and frequent storms. Some are smuggled in shipping containers, cargo trucks and trains through the undersea tunnel from France. In 2019, the bodies of 39 Vietnamese people — including two boys and eight women — were found in a refrigerated tractor-trailer abandoned by its driver in southeast England. In a single incident in November, at least 27 migrants died while attempting the crossing.
More than 28,500 people were apprehended last year trying to enter Britain via the channel, up from 8,400 in 2020.
About 600 people made the crossing Wednesday. Johnson warned that thousands a day might attempt it in the coming weeks, as the weather warms and the sea calms.
“I accept that these people — whether 600 or 1,000 — are in search of a better life,” he said. “But it is these hopes, these dreams, that have been exploited.”
The prime minister stressed that the British people are welcoming and generous but that illegal immigration put an unsustainable burden on the country’s schools, health care system and welfare state.
“We cannot sustain a parallel illegal system,” he said. “Our compassion may be infinite, but our capacity to help people is not.”
Kevin Sieff in Mexico City and Danielle Paquette in Dakar, Senegal contributed to this report.
Access to three US-Canada border crossings cut off by trucker protest blockades
To address the ongoing issue, the Canadian government announced Thursday it would send additional officers and resources to protests throughout the country.
“The plan is to make sure police have all the resources they need,” said Marco Mendicino, the public safety minister. “Our top priority is to make sure that these illegal blockades end.”
For two weeks now, the trucks have blockaded the downtown core of Ottawa, the capital of Canada. In recent days, demonstrators have parked their bulky vehicles in the middle of critical roadways between Canada and the US.
Thursday marked the fourth day protesters impeded access to the Ambassador Bridge, which connects Detroit and Windsor — the busiest international crossing in North America. Second, a mix of semi-trailers and farm equipment shut down the border crossing connecting Emerson, Manitoba, and Pembina, North Dakota, according to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Manitoba. And third, the Coutts access point between Alberta and Montana has also been blocked.
The protests were ignited by truckers who oppose the nation’s new rule that requires them to be fully vaccinated when crossing the Canada-US border or face a two-week quarantine. Their “Freedom Convoy” has since drawn others who are resisting Covid-19 preventative measures, including mask mandates, lockdowns and restrictions on gatherings.
“I want all these mandates gone, and I’m not leaving until all the mandates are gone. So, I am here for the long haul,” Dylan Friesen, a protester in Ottawa, told CNN on Wednesday. “They can try get rid of us, but we’re not leaving.”
The blockades have slowed the movement of goods and caused production issues at a number of car manufacturing plants along the border. Ford, General Motors and Stellantis all announced production issues due to the blockade.
Further, about 60 to 70 vehicles were attempting to disrupt traffic at Ottawa International Airport on Thursday by circling the arrivals and departure terminals, the airport said in a statement. Videos on social media showed a handful of vehicles driving around near a street close to the airport carrying Canadian flags and honking.
Ottawa police said on their website that there have been 25 arrests since protests began about two weeks ago and more than 1,500 tickets have been issued for traffic, noise and other violations.
Resolving the standoff is a delicate operation. Forcibly removing the truckers could cause even more problems, Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens told CNN on Thursday.
“It’s very frustrating because people just want us to go in and flush everyone out, and there’s a real threat of violence here. We’ve seen protesters come out with tire irons when the police attempted to tow a car. It could escalate very, very quickly,” he said.
“At the same time, going in and moving out 100 or 200 protesters — well, we could probably do that. What we don’t want to see happen is have 300 more show up tomorrow to replace the ones that were moved out. So, police are trying to negotiate.”
Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly said a company that could move the trucks has been threatened.
“At least one of the major tow trucks (company) that would have been able to supply us with the logistics to tow illegal vehicles and to a significant degree reduce the size of the demonstrations has been threatened themselves,” he said. “They have been threatened through some sophisticated online activities and direct threats to harm to their employees and their business.”
He added that authorities might try other options.
“We are considering other methods that may allow us to not need to use tow trucks to the extent we initially thought,” he said. “All options are on the table.”
A criminal investigation into the threats is underway, Sloly said.
Similar protests could take place on the other side of the border. American officials are warning that rallies soon could happen in the United States, where right-wing media outlets have raised that prospect and offered positive coverage of the protests. Sunday’s Super Bowl in Southern California could draw such crowds, the officials said.
What the protesters are demanding
The protesting truckers represent a vocal minority among their profession and fellow citizens.
Canada has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with about 4 in every 5 Canadians fully vaccinated, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Nearly 90% of Canada’s truckers are fully vaccinated and eligible to cross the border, according to the government.
Friesen, the protesting trucker, was let go from a job at a transport company in Ontario for not taking the Covid-19 vaccine, he explained.
“That’s not right for companies be able to decide that and take away our right to earn money and support our livelihood,” Friesen said.
Samuel Gauthier, who supports the truckers protesting in Canada, is unvaccinated, which has prevented him accessing certain businesses in his home province of Quebec, he told CNN.
“I can’t go skiing, I can’t go to Walmart, I can’t go to Canadian tire, I can’t go to Home Depot, I can’t go to restaurants, I can’t go to bars, I can’t go to the gym,” Gauthier said, noting restrictions in Quebec have been “a bit more intense than in other places in Canada.”
The protesters’ many different requests make the negotiations tricky, Dilkens said.
“I would call them a leaderless group, and frankly, the requests that these folks have, they are not unified,” he said. “There are folks here protesting government, like you’d see at a G-7 or G-20 protest. There are folks that are protesting climate change initiatives, and there are some folks who protesting vaccine mandates.”
Meanwhile, officials are pressing demonstrators to stop blocking the critical pathways.
“I’ve said consistently, we welcome the freedom of people to protest lawfully and peaceful, but this is not a lawful protest,” Alberta Premier Jason Kenney said during a news conference this week.
CNN’s Paradise Afshar, Josh Campbell, Tanika Gray, Jason Hanna, Chris Isidore, Chuck Johnston, Paul P. Murphy, Donie O’Sullivan, Raja Razek and Geneva Sands contributed to this report.
Animal Crossing’s New Amiibo Cards Nearly Impossible To Find
Nintendo has once again released Amiibo Cards for Animal Crossing: New Horizons and they’ve once again sold out, leading to a second-hand market full of hassle and sky-high mark-ups. It’s perfect timing considering the game’s big 2.0 update and Happy Home Paradise DLC recently went live, and players are desperate to get new villagers onto their islands.
In case you’re unaware, Amiibo Cards are like trading cards that activate virtual goods inSwitch games via NFC (near-field communication) technology. In Animal Crossing’s case, the random cards in each pack correspond to villagers, who will then move to your island when the card is scanned. It beats waiting around to get lucky over the course of the game, especially for players after the rarest and most coveted island residents.
On November 5, Nintendo released the fifth series of Animal Crossing Amiibo Cards, containing some extremely sought-after returning villagers like Shino and Sasha, both of whom currently go for millions of bells (Animal Crossing’s currency) in the in-game multiplayer market. At least, it released them in theory. In practice the cards were more or less immediately out of stock online, and if you tried to buy them in person you were much more likely to encounter a confused store clerk or empty shelf than any new packs.
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Some fans who tried to get a head start on the mayhem reported long lines outside of places like Target. Others had no choice but to peruse sites like eBay and decide whether or not the prices being charged by scalpers were worth it.
The packs of six cards normally cost $6 each, but many resellers are currently selling them for $20 or more. “6 PACKS Nintendo Animal Crossing Amiibo Character Cards Series 5 – SHIPS TODAY!” reads one listing for $175. On Amazon they’re going for over $40 a pack. Because each pack’s contents are random, players desperate enough to partake could end up paying for mostly duplicates anyway, never even getting the rare villager they want.
Read More: The Bootleg Amiibo Business Is Booming, Thanks To Nintendo
“I was lucky enough to get a couple packs because of a few people I follow on Twitter,” wrote one person in the Best Buy reviews section. “These packs are great. I’m really happy with my pulls. I do wish the cards weren’t so hard to get. It baffles me that a multi billion dollar company can’t distribute more Amiibos.” Another simply wrote, “The scalpers ruin another thing that’s supposed to bring small children joy.”
If you’re getting a massive case of déjà vu it’s because the market for ACNH accessories has been a mess since the game launched. As a result, a whole black market around custom hacked Amiibo Cards has risen up on places like Etsy. Unfortunately, Nintendo doesn’t seem eager to expand supply to meet demand.
Earlier this year, Nintendo released Sanrio Amiibo Cards containing Hello Kitty-themed villagers and items. Those, too, sold out immediately and made everyone sad.
Animal Crossing’s Sanrio And Series 5 amiibo Cards Are Now Available From My Nintendo UK
Update: Incredibly, it appears that the Series 5 cards are already out of stock. Gah…
Clicking through to the website now lets you sign up to be notified of new stock, so at least there’s a chance you’ll still get your hands on some in the future. They’re also available at GAME, but a higher price of £3.99 plus £4.99 delivery means you’ll have to pay a ridiculous £8.98 for just one pack.
Good news, folks! The brand new set of Animal Crossing amiibo cards are now available to purchase from Nintendo’s very own UK store.
Series 5, which contains 48 new cards to collect, can now be picked up from My Nintendo UK Store for £3.49 a pack. The special Sanrio cards have also returned, available at £4.99.
Each Series 5 pack contains three cards in total, and there’s a limit of 10 packs per customer. Get stuck in:
Please note that some external links on this page are affiliate links, which means if you click them and make a purchase we may receive a small percentage of the sale. Please read our FTC Disclosure for more information.
These will go fast, so let us know if you managed to grab a pack in the comments below!
Animal Crossing’s Happy Home Paradise Update Will Be The Game’s “First And Only Paid DLC”
We’ve heard how Animal Crossing: New Horizons will soon be receiving its final major free update, but what you might not have also known is that the Happy Home Paradise expansion for the game – arriving on the same date (5th November) – will be the game’s “first and only” paid DLC content.
Nintendo elaborated on this in the following statement to IGN:
“Animal Crossing: New Horizons – Happy Home Paradise introduces a new gameplay experience in which the player joins the Paradise Planning team and helps make their client’s dream resort home become a reality.
“It is a major update to Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and offers a distinguishing and different gameplay experience. Therefore, it made sense to include it as the first and only paid DLC for Animal Crossing: New Horizons.”
Although this will be it for paid DLC, in terms of updates – there’ll still likely be some “minor” patches released in the future (following the arrival of the final “major” one) to address bugs, glitches and more.
It’s worth noting the DLC will also be accessible to NSO ‘Expansion Pack’ subscribers.What are your own thoughts about Nintendo ending paid DLC support for Animal Crossing: New Horizons so soon? Leave a comment down below.
The pandemic, paired with natural disasters, drives a record number of illegal U.S. border crossings.
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A record 1.7 million migrants from around the world, many of them fleeing pandemic-ravaged countries, were encountered trying to enter the United States illegally in the last 12 months. The tally capped a year of chaos at the southern border, which has emerged as one of the most formidable challenges for the Biden administration.
It was the highest number of illegal crossings recorded since at least 1960, when the government first began tracking such entries. The number was similarly high for the 2000 fiscal year, when border agents caught 1.6 million people, according to government data.
Single adults represented the largest group of those detained in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, at 1.1 million, or 64 percent of all crossers. There were also large numbers of migrant families — more than 479,000, which is about 48,000 fewer than during the last surge in family crossings in 2019.
But the nearly 147,000 children whom agents encountered without parents or guardians was the largest number since 2008, when the government started tallying unaccompanied minors.
The crossers hailed from around the globe, many of them seeking economic opportunity as the coronavirus pandemic erased hundreds of millions of jobs. Agents caught people from more than 160 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, with Mexico accounting for the largest share.
In addition to the pandemic, two hurricanes destroyed livelihoods and homes in Guatemala and Honduras, where extortion and violence from gangs have persisted in many communities, further fueling an exodus.
A public health rule, invoked by President Donald J. Trump at the beginning of the pandemic in 2020 to seal the border, has remained in place under the Biden administration. Over the last 12 months, the Border Patrol has carried out more than one million expulsions of migrants back to Mexico or to the migrants’ home countries.
President Biden has walked a fine line between trying to control the influx and put in place a more humane approach to border enforcement. Republicans have blamed Mr. Biden’s promises to reverse Trump-era immigration policies for fueling the surge, as word spread that the country’s borders had become easier to breach.
As tens of millions of Americans remain unvaccinated, state and local governments have introduced mandates requiring public employees be fully inoculated against the coronavirus. And while orders in some localities have translated into a last minute surge in vaccination rates, they are also met with steadfast refusal, leading to legal challenges or concerns over staffing issues.
Washington State’s mandate, one of the strictest in the country, went into effect on Monday. The order requires more than 800,000 public workers to be fully inoculated against the coronavirus, save for a religious or medical exemption, or risk losing their jobs. Yet as the mandate kicked in, some resistance remained firm.
The Washington State Patrol announced that 127 employees left the agency, or just under 6 percent of its work force. In one high profile case, Washington State University fired its football coach, Nick Rolovich, and four of his assistants, for their failure to comply.
Similar issues are playing out elsewhere across the country. In New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio took one of his administration’s most aggressive steps yet by requiring that all municipal workers get at least one shot by the end of the month or risk losing their paychecks. The order was met with mixed reactions from unions representing those workers, though many agree that the move could burden city agencies by leading to widespread resignations or early retirements.
Nursing homes, hit hard by the pandemic, are also struggling with low vaccination rates among staff. Some operators across the country are waiting for the federal government to issue new rules around a mandatory vaccination program for their staffs, like the one President Biden announced two months ago for workers at facilities receiving federal funding, while other facilities and labor groups are still pushing for a testing alternative for their employees.
Here’s what else happened this week:
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Widespread public mistrust of the Russian government has translated into skepticism about coronavirus vaccines, experts say, leaving the country vulnerable to a surge in new cases that are now setting records for severity. For the first time in the pandemic, Russia recorded more than 1,000 deaths in a 24-hour period, though skepticism about the validity of the official numbers remains high. President Vladimir Putin announced a national “nonworking week” to begin next Saturday, and even stricter measures were planned in Moscow, including a citywide lockdown starting next Thursday.
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The World Health Organization warned that health care workers around the world are nearing a breaking point. Health care employees are plagued by anxiety, burnout, illness and death on the front lines, the agency said, and countries need to do more to protect them. In the United States, a group representing more than 3,000 local health departments urged the Justice Department to protect public health care workers who have faced threats of violence and harassment since the onset of the pandemic.
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A New York Times review of hundreds of health departments in all 50 states indicates that local public health departments across the country are less equipped to confront a pandemic now than at the beginning of 2020. The Covid death toll in the United States has now surpassed 735,000.
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Post-vaccination infections made headlines. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was vaccinated but dealing with cancer, died on Monday from Covid-19 complications. Two other vaccinated figures tested positive: the Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto, and the director of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas.
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In a joint statement on Tuesday, leading U.S. medical groups declared a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health triggered by prolonged isolation, uncertainty and grief during the coronavirus pandemic, worsening an existing mental health crisis among children and teens.
WASHINGTON — Federal regulators evaluated for the first time on Friday the safety and efficacy of a coronavirus vaccine for children 5 to 11, saying that the benefits of staving off Covid-19 with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine generally outweighed the risks of the most worrisome possible side effects in that age group.
The analysis came on the same day that the Food and Drug Administration posted data from Pfizer showing that the vaccine had a 90.7 percent efficacy rate in preventing symptomatic Covid-19 in a clinical trial of 5- to 11-year-olds.
The findings could add momentum for F.D.A. authorization of the pediatric dose on an emergency basis, perhaps as early as next week, opening up a long-awaited new phase of the nation’s vaccination campaign. The agency’s independent vaccine expert committee is set to vote Tuesday on whether to recommend authorization.
In a briefing document posted on the F.D.A. website, the agency said it had balanced the dangers of hospitalization, death or other serious consequences from Covid-19 against the risk of side effects. That included myocarditis, a rare condition involving inflammation of the heart muscle that has been linked to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, especially among young men.
“The overall analysis predicted that the numbers of clinically significant Covid-19-related outcomes prevented would clearly outweigh the numbers of vaccine-associated excess myocarditis cases,” regulators wrote.
As is customary, the regulators took no stance on whether the new use of a vaccine should be authorized.
If the F.D.A. rules in favor of authorization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its own panel of vaccine experts agree, the 28 million children in that age group could become eligible for shots in the first week of November.
“There’s a lot of data to be encouraged by,” said Dr. Kathryn M. Edwards, a professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. She said the results exceeded the protection offered by the best flu vaccine and could eventually lead to the easing of restrictions intended to prevent elementary school children from contracting the virus.
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transcript
transcript
Ardern Announces New Covid Strategy
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand stressed the importance of vaccinations as the country moved away from lockdowns, announcing a new, color-coded system of restrictions to be implemented when the country reaches its vaccination target.
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We can rightfully be proud of what our world-leading response has achieved. But two things have changed since then. The first is that Delta has made it very hard to maintain our elimination strategy. Its tentacles have reached into our communities and made it hard to shake, even using the best public health measures and the toughest restrictions we had available to us. But right as our long-standing strategy was challenged, we also had a new tool, one that means as Covid has changed, we could change too. And rather than being locked down, we could move forward safely and with confidence. That tool is the vaccine. Basically, if you want to be guaranteed that no matter the setting that we are in, that you can go to bars, restaurants and close-proximity businesses like a hairdresser, you will need to be vaccinated.
Rawiri Jansen, a Maori doctor, had an urgent message for the 150 people, mostly patch-wearing members of New Zealand’s plentiful street gangs and their families, who sat before him on a bright Saturday afternoon.
Covid-19 is coming for them, he said. Cases in New Zealand’s hospitals are rising rapidly. Soon, dozens of new infections a day might become hundreds or even a thousand. People will die. And vaccination is the only defense. “When your doctors are scared, you should be scared,” he said.
By the end of the day, after an exhaustive question-and-answer session with other health professionals, roughly a third of those present chose to receive a dose then and there.
Having abandoned its highly successful “Covid-zero” elimination strategy in response to an outbreak of the Delta variant, New Zealand is undergoing a difficult transition to trying to keep coronavirus cases as low as possible. On Friday, the country set a target of getting at least 90 percent of the eligible population fully vaccinated — a goal, the highest in the developed world, whose success hinges on persuading people like those who gathered to hear Dr. Jansen.
Already, 86 percent of the eligible population has received at least one dose. But the final few percent are the most difficult to reach, and one group of particular concern is the gang community, many of whose members are Maori or Pacific Islanders, who make up about a quarter of the overall population. In the past two months, multiple outbreaks have been reported among gangs, a subset of the population less likely to comply with official vaccination efforts, forcing officials to cooperate with gang leaders to reach their communities.
MADRID, Spain — The government will reimburse hundreds of thousands of residents who were fined for violating the rules of last year’s Covid-19 lockdown amid a surge of infections.
The measure, announced Friday by the ministry of territorial affairs, is set to benefit those who paid about 1.1 million fines in the spring of 2020. At the time, Spain found itself on the front line of the pandemic and imposed one of Europe’s toughest lockdowns, including on children, who were kept inside, unable to exercise or even go on errands with their parents.
The decision comes after Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled in July that the government had overstepped its powers and violated the rights of citizens to freedom of movement when it decreed a state of emergency in March 2020.
Although not all those who were penalized paid the fines, the government estimated in July that it had collected about 115 million euros during Spain’s initial state of emergency, which lasted three months.
In its ruling, the court’s panel did not condemn the government for forcing people to stay at home to stop the spread of the coronavirus, but the judges struck down the government’s interpretation of its right to decree a state of emergency as well as some specific measures, including stopping people from leaving their official residences to spend the lockdown in a second home.
The ruling followed a complaint filed by Spain’s far-right opposition party, Vox. Spain’s constitutional court must still issue a final ruling over the legality of the country’s second state of emergency, which was intended to contain another spike in Covid-19 cases and ran from November 2020 to May 2021.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Thursday that Americans could choose a booster dose of a vaccine different from the one they had initially received — the so-called mix-and-match strategy.
Is there an advantage to mixing vaccines?
Preliminary evidence strongly suggests that mixing two Covid vaccine types produces a stronger immune response than matching the booster to the initial vaccine.
Booster doses of an mRNA vaccine (Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna) seem to raise antibody levels higher than a booster dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.
Who should get a booster shot?
Among Americans initially immunized with an mRNA vaccine, the following groups should receive a single booster dose six months or more after their second dose, the C.D.C. decided:
Adults ages 18 to 49 with certain medical conditions and those whose jobs regularly expose them to the virus may choose to get a booster. And recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine should receive a booster shot at least two months after the first dose.
When am I considered fully vaccinated?
People who have received two mRNA vaccine doses or a single Johnson & Johnson dose should still consider themselves fully vaccinated.
Research indicates that, with the exception of adults over 65, the vaccines remain highly protective against severe illness and death in the vast majority of people.
What’s still unknown?
There is not much information available on the safety of the boosters, but they may have some of the same side effects experienced with the initial doses.
It’s unclear how long protection from a booster shot might last, and whether people who receive them will need another booster in the future.
Scientists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday took aim at the question of whether the Delta variant of the coronavirus causes more severe disease, finding no significant differences in the course of hospitalized patients’ illnesses during the Delta wave compared to earlier in the pandemic.
But larger and more detailed studies from a number of other countries have found that people with Delta infections were considerably more likely to be hospitalized in the first place — a trend that the C.D.C. study was unable to address because of limitations in its data. The C.D.C. study also said that the proportion of older hospitalized patients needing intensive care or dying had shown some signs of increasing during the Delta wave.
Delta’s higher level of infectiousness has made it a far greater challenge than earlier versions of the virus, but the question of whether it also causes more serious disease has loomed as it swept around the world. The Alpha variant, an earlier version first detected in Britain, appeared to be linked to a higher risk of death, though scientists have also tried to understand whether factors besides the variant were playing a role.
Studies in England, Scotland, Canada and Singapore suggested that the Delta variant was associated with more severe illness, a finding that scientists have said raises the risk that outbreaks of the variant in unvaccinated areas may put a bigger burden on health systems. Unlike the C.D.C. study, those studies drew on genomic sequencing, allowing researchers to distinguish infections with the Delta variant and to track patients from before they enter a hospital.
Without access to sequencing data, the C.D.C. researchers could not determine which variants the patients may have been infected with. It also examined patients already admitted to hospitals, making it impossible to determine whether they were at higher risk of needing hospital care in the first place.
The study, released on Friday, examined roughly 7,600 Covid hospitalizations, comparing July and August — when Delta dominated — to earlier months this year, and found no significant change in hospitalized patients’ outcomes.
The study said that the proportion of hospitalized patients aged 50 and older who died or were admitted to intensive care “generally trended upward in the Delta period,” though the differences were not statistically significant and further work was needed. At the hospitals included in the study, roughly 70 percent of Covid patients were unvaccinated.
The researchers said the findings matched those of other C.D.C. studies using similar methods that showed no significant differences in the outcomes of younger people hospitalized before and during the Delta surge.
Outside scientists questioned the reliability of the study.
Dr. David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, ran a larger study that found that people infected with the Delta variant had roughly twice the risk of hospitalization as people infected with variants that had not been labeled a concern. He said that such analyses needed to control for the range of factors that affect the course of Covid patients’ illnesses, and that the availability of vaccines, testing and treatments had all been changing during the pandemic.
“As this is the U.S. C.D.C., I’m really surprised at the small sample sizes for individuals with more detailed clinical information, as well as the use of such rudimentary statistical methods to deal with these data,” he said.
Dr. Fisman’s study, drawing on 200,000 cases and published this month, also showed significantly increased risks of intensive care admission and death among those infected with the Delta variant, after accounting for their age, sex, vaccination status and other factors.
Roughly 70 percent of people with Delta infections in the study were unvaccinated, and 28 percent were partially vaccinated. Fully vaccinated people are heavily protected from Covid.
Similarly, a study in Scotland from June based on 20,000 Covid cases showed that Delta infections were associated with an 85 percent higher risk of hospitalization, though it allowed for a wide degree of uncertainty about the precise figure.
And data from England, drawn from 43,000 cases and published in August, found that people infected with the Delta variant were just over twice as likely to be hospitalized as people with the Alpha variant, though the researchers in that study, too, were unsure of the precise figure.
Roughly three-quarters of the patients in that study were unvaccinated, and most of the rest were only partially vaccinated.
Belarusian authorities on Friday horrified some of the country’s doctors by abolishing mask mandates, less than two weeks after their introduction during the pandemic and a day after the country registered a record number of new coronavirus infections.
The decision came after the nation’s authoritarian president, Alexander G. Lukashenko, dismissed the measures as unnecessary.
“It’s just over the top to send police to track down those who aren’t wearing masks,” Mr. Lukashenko said this week. “We aren’t the West.”
Dr. Nikita Solovei, a leading Belarusian infectious disease expert in the capital, Minsk, sharply criticized the decision. He described it as “madness” amid soaring contagion, and warned that “officials will bear responsibility.”
The mask mandates were introduced on Oct. 9, requiring Belarusians to wear masks in all indoor public areas, on public transportation and in stores.
On Thursday, the country officially reported 2,097 new Covid-19 infections, the highest number for the country so far. Many have criticized the official figures as an undercount.
When the pandemic struck, Mr. Lukashenko had dismissed concern over the coronavirus as “psychosis” and refused to impose any restrictions. The country was the only one in Europe to keep holding professional soccer games with fans in the stands while the outbreak was in full swing.
The 67-year-old former state farm director previously advised Belarusians to “kill the virus with vodka,” go to saunas and work in the fields to avoid infection. “Tractors will cure everybody!” he once proclaimed.
His attitude angered many Belarusians and contributed to the public outrage over Mr. Lukashenko’s victory for a sixth term in 2020 — an election the opposition and the West have rejected as a sham.
Belarusian authorities have registered a total of more than 580,000 Covid-19 infections and 4,482 deaths. Only about 20 percent of the population has been vaccinated, using vaccines made in Russia and China.
The authorities have stopped reporting daily deaths. Andrei Tkachev, the coordinator of Belarus’s Medical Solidarity Foundation — an association of volunteers and doctors that helps medical workers who faced reprisals from the government — and others have rejected the official statistics.
“Official statistics can’t be trusted,” Mr. Tkachev said. “Overcrowded hospitals are a testimony of that.”
Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the main opposition challenger in the 2020 election, who was forced to move to neighboring Lithuania after the vote under official pressure, also dismissed the official numbers.
“People don’t believe the government and official statistics, and they see huge lines at clinics and hospitals,” Ms. Tikhanovskaya said during an online conference. “Belarus faces the worst wave of the coronavirus, and it’s not ready for that.”