Month: May 2021

A pair of military vets navigate the hilly, meandering paths in a historic cemetery in Boston, searching out soldiers’ graves and planting American flags in front of them.
About 10 miles away, scores of other vets and volunteers do the same, placing more than 37,000 small flags on the downtown Boston Common — a sea of red, white and blue meant to symbolize all the Massachusetts soldiers killed in battle since the Revolutionary War. It’s an annual tradition that returns in full this year  after being significantly scaled back in 2020 because of the pandemic.Bob Workman of Boston, a retired Marine Gunnery Sgt., and past commander of the Boston Police VFW, replaces flags at veteran’s graves ahead of Memorial Day on May 27, 2021, in the Fairview Cemetery in Boston.In Boston and elsewhere, this holiday weekend will feel something closer to Memorial Days of old, as COVID-19 restrictions are fully lifted in many places.
“This Memorial Day almost has a different, better feeling to it,” said Craig DeOld, a 50-year-old retired captain in the Army Reserve, as he took a breather from his flag duties at the Fairview Cemetery earlier this week. “We’re breathing a sigh of relief that we’ve overcome another struggle, but we’re also now able to return to what this holiday is all about — remembering our fallen comrades.”
Around the nation, Americans will be able to pay tribute to fallen troops in ways that were impossible last year, when virus restrictions were in effect in many places. It will also be a time to remember the tens of thousands of veterans who died from COVID-19 and recommit to vaccinating those who remain reluctant.
Art delaCruz, a 53-year-old retired Navy commander in Los Angeles leads the Veterans Coalition for Vaccination, said his group has been encouraging inoculated veterans to volunteer at vaccine sites to dispel myths and help assuage concerns, many of which are also shared by current service members.
“We understand it’s a personal choice, so we try to meet people where they are,” said delaCruz, who is also president of Team Rubicon, a disaster-response nonprofit made up of military veterans.
There’s no definitive tally for coronavirus deaths or vaccinations among American military vets, but Department of Veterans Affairs data shows more than 12,000 have died and more than 2.5 million have been inoculated against COVID-19 out of the roughly 9 million veterans enrolled in the agency’s programs.
The isolation of the pandemic has also been particularly hard on veterans, many of whom depend on kinship with fellow service members to cope with wartime trauma, says Jeremy Butler, a 47-year-old Navy Reserve officer in New York who heads the advocacy group Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.
“We’re reuniting now, but it’s been an extremely challenging year,” he said. “To have those connections cut off — the counseling sessions, the VA appointments, social events with other vets — those are so important to maintaining mental health.”
But for the families of veterans who survived the horrors of war, only to be felled by COVID-19, Memorial Day can reopen barely healed wounds.
In western Massachusetts, Susan Kenney says the death of her 78-year-old father last April from the virus still remains raw.
Charles Lowell, an Air Force veteran who served during the Vietnam War, was among 76 residents of the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home who died in one of America’s  deadliest coronavirus outbreaks last year in a long-term care facility. A memorial service was held at the home earlier this week, and the names of residents who died over the past calendar year were read aloud.
Kenney, who has been a vocal advocate for reforming the troubled home, says there are still lingering questions about who else should be held accountable, even as top officials at the state-run facility face criminal negligence and abuse charges and federal and state agencies launch investigations.
“I’ve been reliving this for a whole year,” she said. “At every milestone. Veterans Day. His birthday. His death anniversary. Everything is a constant reminder of what happened. It’s so painful to think about.”
For other families, Memorial Day will be as it ever was, a day to remember loved ones killed in war.
In Virginia, Willie Ransom, a 74-year-old Vietnam War vet, said his family will hold a modest service at the grave of his youngest son.
Air Force Maj. Charles Ransom was among eight U.S. airmen killed in Afghanistan when an Afghan military pilot opened fire at the Kabul airport in 2011. The American Legion post in Midlothian, Virginia, that the elder Ransom once helped lead is now named in his honor.
The Powhatan resident says a silver lining this year is that the country is poised to end the war that claimed his 31-year-old son and the lives of more than 2,200 other American fighters. President Joe Biden has promised to end the nation’s longest conflict by Sept. 11, the anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks that launched the war.
“It’s the best decision we could make,” Ransom said. “It’s become like Vietnam. They don’t want us there. We should have been out of there years ago.”
Back in Boston, DeOld will be thinking about his father, an Army vet wounded in a grenade attack in Vietnam.
Louis DeOld returned home with a Purple Heart and went on to become a police officer in New Jersey, but the physical and mental scars of war persisted long after, his son said. He died in 2017 at the age of 70.
On Memorial Day, DeOld will gather with fellow vets at the VFW post in the city’s Dorchester neighborhood that he commands.
They will lay a wreath by the American flag out front and then grill burgers out back. It will be the first large social event hosted by the post since the pandemic virtually shuttered the hall more than a year ago.
“I hope it’s nice,” DeOld said. “I hope folks linger. Families and friends gather. Good camaraderie. The way it should be.”
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All seven passengers aboard a plane, including “Tarzan” actor Joe Lara and his diet guru wife, are presumed dead after it crashed in a lake near the U.S. city of Nashville, authorities said.
 
The small business jet crashed at around 11:00 am local time Saturday, shortly after taking off from the Smyrna, Tennessee airport for Palm Beach, Florida, Rutherford County Fire & Rescue (RCFR) said on Facebook.
 
The plane went down into Percy Priest Lake, about 19 kilometers south of Nashville.
 
The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed seven people had been aboard the plane, CNN reported.
 
By Saturday night, operations had switched from search and rescue to recovery efforts, RCFR incident commander Captain Joshua Sanders told a press conference.
 
“We are no longer in an attempt to (look) for live victims at this point so we’re now recovering as much as we can from the crash site,” he said.
 
On Sunday afternoon, RCFR said on Facebook that recovery operations had found “several components of the aircraft as well as human remains” in a debris field about half a mile wide.
 
Operations would continue until dark and resume Monday morning, RCFR wrote.
 
Lara played Tarzan in the 1989 television movie “Tarzan in Manhattan.” He later starred in the television series “Tarzan: The Epic Adventures,” which ran from 1996-1997.
 
His wife Gwen Shamblin Lara, whom he married in 2018, was the leader of a Christian weight-loss group called Weigh Down Ministries. She founded the group in 1986, and then in 1999 founded the Remnant Fellowship Church in Brentwood, Tennessee.
 
She is survived by two children from a previous marriage, according to a statement posted on the church’s website.
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The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) used a partnership with Denmark’s foreign intelligence unit to spy on senior officials of neighboring countries, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Danish state broadcaster DR said.
 
The findings are the result of a 2015 internal investigation in the Danish Defense Intelligence Service into NSA’s role in the partnership, DR said, citing nine unnamed sources with access to the investigation.
 
According to the investigation, which covered the period from 2012 to 2014, the NSA used Danish information cables to spy on senior officials in Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including former German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and former German opposition leader Peer Steinbruck.
 
Asked for comment on the DR report, a spokesperson for the German chancellery said it only became aware of the allegations when asked about them by journalists and declined to comment further.
 
Danish Defense Minister Trine Bramsen declined to comment on “speculation” about intelligence matters in the media. “I can more generally say that this government has the same attitude as the former Prime Minister expressed in 2013 and 2014 – systematic wiretapping of close allies is unacceptable,” Bramsen told Reuters in a statement.
 
In Washington, the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Danish Defense Intelligence Service also declined to comment.
 
Denmark, a close ally of the United States, hosts several key landing stations for subsea internet cables to and from Sweden, Norway, Germany, Holland and Britain.
 
Through targeted retrievals and the use of NSA-developed analysis software known as Xkeyscore, NSA intercepted both calls, texts and chat messages to and from telephones of officials in the neighboring countries, sources told DR.
 
The internal investigation in the Danish Defense Intelligence Service was launched in 2014 following concerns about former NSA employee Edward Snowden’s leaks the previous year revealing how the NSA works, according to DR.
 
Snowden fled the United States after leaking secret NSA files in 2013 and was given asylum in Russia.
 
Following DR’s report, Snowden posted a cryptic Danish-language comment on Twitter saying: “If only there had been some reason to investigate many years ago. Oh why didn’t anyone warn us?”
 
Steinbruck told German broadcaster ARD he thought it was “grotesque that friendly intelligence services are indeed intercepting and spying on top representatives” of other countries.
 
“Politically I consider it a scandal,” he said.  
 
Swedish Defense Minister Peter Hultqvist told Swedish SVT broadcaster that he “demanded full information”. Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen told broadcaster NRK that he took the allegations seriously.
 
In Paris, French Minister for European Affairs Clement Beaune told France Info radio that the DR report needed to be checked and that, if confirmed, it would be a “serious” matter.
 
“These potential facts, they are serious, they must be checked,” he said, adding there could be “some diplomatic protests.”
 
A decision in August last year to suspend the head of the Danish Defense Intelligence Service and three other officials following criticism and accusations of serious wrongdoings from an independent board overseeing the agency centered on the 2015 investigation, according to DR.
 
Denmark said last year it would initiate an investigation into the case based on information from a whistleblower report.
 
That investigation is expected to be concluded later this year.
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U.S. President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the nation’s top military officials are due to take part in a wreath-laying ceremony Monday at Arlington National Cemetery as the country observes the annual Memorial Day holiday dedicated to honoring its war dead. Biden, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley will also speak during a remembrance ceremony at the cemetery located just outside of Washington. “We must remember the price that was paid for our liberties,” Biden said Sunday as he addressed a crowd of veterans and families of fallen service members. “We must remember the debt we owe those who have paid it, and the families left behind. My heart is torn in half by the grief.”   Biden’s remarks came on the sixth anniversary of the death of his son Beau, who served as a major in the Delaware Army National Guard, including a tour of duty with U.S. forces in Iraq before dying of cancer in 2015.President Joe Biden speaks at a Memorial Day event at Veterans Memorial Park at the Delaware Memorial Bridge in New Castle, Del., May 30, 2021.“I know how much the loss hurts,” Biden said. “I know the black hole it leaves in the middle of your chest; it feels like you may get sucked into it and not come out.”    “Folks, you know, despite all the pain, I know the pride you feel in the loved one and— that you lost and those who are still serving — the pride and the bravery in the service to our great American experiment,” he said.  The United States has commemorated Memorial Day to honor its war dead at the end of May since 1868 after the Civil War. The national holiday is now held on the last Monday in May of each year.  To coincide with the holiday, flags are placed by the headstones at Arlington National Cemetery and at many of the other national cemeteries across the country, where many who served in the U.S. military are buried.  The holiday also marks the unofficial start of summer and what traditionally has been a busy travel season in the United States. While travel suffered last year because of coronavirus restrictions, this year Americans are looking to get back to their pre-pandemic routines. More than 1.8 million people went through U.S. airports on Thursday and Friday, according to the Transportation Security Administration.     The U.S. travel group AAA said it expected a 60% jump in travel this Memorial Day from last year, with 37 million Americans planning to travel at least about 80 kilometers (50 miles) from home, mostly by car. The travel boom comes despite higher prices for gasoline.     The price index for typical Memorial Day activities rose this year about 4.3%, faster than the overall consumer price index, according to Reuters. It listed higher prices over pre-pandemic rates for cookout fare such as hamburgers and hotdogs, as well as higher prices for dinner and drinks out, amusement parks, concerts and car rentals. Prices are below pre-pandemic levels for airfare and hotels.  Prices for many goods have been rising because of surging consumer demand as well as supply issues for both materials and labor. 
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President Joe Biden visits Tulsa, Oklahoma, this week as part of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre. The visit comes as the United States reflects on its legacy of slavery and racial violence. Michelle Quinn reports.Produced by: Mary Cieslak    
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U.S. President Joe Biden paid tribute Sunday to the nation’s war dead on the eve of his first Memorial Day as the country’s commander-in-chief.“We must remember the price that was paid for our liberties,” Biden said at the War Memorial Plaza near the Delaware Memorial Bridge. “We must remember the debt we owe those who have paid it, and the families left behind. My heart is torn in half by the grief.”  Biden delivered remarks on the sixth anniversary of the death of his son Beau, who served as a major in the Delaware Army National Guard, including a tour of duty with U.S. forces in Iraq before dying of cancer in 2015.   “I know how much the loss hurts,” Biden said. “I know the black hole it leaves in the middle of your chest; it feels like you may get sucked into it and not come out.”   “If [Beau] were here, he would be here as well, paying his respects to all those who gave so much for our country,” Biden said.  “And I promise you the day will come when the mention of the name of your son or daughter, husband, wife — they will, in fact, bring not a tear to your eye, but a smile to your lips,” Biden said. “And I hope that day comes sooner than later.”Ahead of Memorial Day, members of the U.S. armed forces place flags in front of more than 260,000 headstones at Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia, May 27, 2021.“Folks, you know, despite all the pain, I know the pride you feel in the loved one and — that you lost and those who are still serving — the pride and the bravery in the service to our great American experiment.” he said.   “The American creed is the connective tissue that binds us,” Biden said. “It’s a long chain of patriots that come before us and those who will follow us in turn. That creed holds that the ideals that inspire people to service and that us — fill us with pride when we see our loved ones put on that uniform.”“And our progress toward that creed together, as one nation united and preserved through their sacrifices, is the best and strongest memorial to their lives,” he said.“And so, I hope — I hope that the nation comes together,” he concluded. “We’re not Democrats or Republicans today. We’re Americans. We’re Americans who have given their lives.”The United States has commemorated Memorial Day to honor its war dead at the end of May since 1868 after the Civil War. The national holiday is now held on the last Monday in May of each year.  Outside Washington, to coincide with the holiday, flags are placed by the headstones at Arlington National Cemetery and at many of the other national cemeteries across the country, where many who served in the U.S. military are buried.The holiday also marks the unofficial start of summer and what traditionally has been a busy travel season in the United States.   
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Helio Castroneves won the Indianapolis 500 on Sunday for a record-equaling fourth time, in front of the largest crowd to attend a sporting event in the United States since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.The 46-year-old Brazilian surged to the front with two laps to go and held off a challenge from hard-charging Spanish young gun Alex Palou to claim victory and join AJ Foyt, Rick Mears and Al Unser as the only four-time winners of the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing.”It was the 21st Indy 500 start for Castroneves but his first with Meyer Shank Racing, his other wins in 2001, 2002 and 2009 all coming with Team Penske.With the race back in its traditional U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend slot, after last year’s event was moved to August and held at an empty track because of the pandemic, a sold-out crowd of 135,000 excited fans flocked to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.While the crowd was well shy of the nearly 400,000 that the speedway can accommodate, the roars returned to the Brickyard as fans partied in the sunshine.
 
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U.S. President Joe Biden is headed Tuesday to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to commemorate the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, a white mob’s terrifying 1921 destruction of a Black community that left 300 people dead and 10,000 homeless.To this day, it is an episode in the country’s fraught history over racial violence that many Americans have little awareness of, even as the country grapples with a current-day racial reckoning to confront accusations of police abuse of minorities, racial economic inequity and contentious debates over newly enacted voting restrictions that critics say are aimed at curbing the turnout of Black and Hispanic voters to limit their influence.There appear to only be three remaining survivors, all centenarians, of the destruction of the prosperous Tulsa community known as Black Wall Street. The racial attack occurred four decades before the often-violent Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s that secured voting rights for Black Americans even as the debate continues now over voting access.  As Biden arrives in the city of 400,000 in the southwestern United States for the commemoration of the horrors of May 31-June 1, 1921, a new museum is opening to chronicle what occurred. But questions remain over whether to pay reparations — and how much — to the remaining survivors and descendants of the assault and how to search the unmarked, suspected burial grounds for those killed in the massacre.One of the survivors, Viola Fletcher, 107, recently appeared before a congressional panel in her first trip to Washington to make the case for reparations while recounting her memories from the attack on her neighborhood when she was a 7-year-old girl.FILE – This photo provided by the Department of Special Collections, McFarlin Library, The University of Tulsa shows crowds of people watching fires during the Tulsa Race Massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1, 1921.“On May 31, of ‘21, I went to bed in my family’s home in Greenwood,” she said. “The neighborhood I fell asleep in that night was rich, not just in terms of wealth, but in culture … and heritage. My family had a beautiful home. We had great neighbors. I had friends to play with. I felt safe. I had everything a child could need. I had a bright future.”“Within a few hours,” Fletcher said, “all of that was gone.””The night of the massacre, I was awakened by my family,” she recalled. “My parents and five siblings were there. I was told we had to leave and that was it. I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home. I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams.”Fletcher, her brother, Hughes “Uncle Red” Van Ellis, who is 100, and a third survivor, Lessie Benningfield Randle, 106, are the lead plaintiffs in a reparations lawsuit filed last year against the city of Tulsa, Tulsa County, the state of Oklahoma and the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. They contend that the defendants are responsible for what happened during the massacre.”I have lived through the massacre every day,” Viola Fletcher told the congressional panel. “Our country may forget this history, but I cannot. I will not. And other survivors do not. And our descendants do not.”A hundred years ago, Greenwood — the Black Tulsa neighborhood that includes the area known as Black Wall Street — was burned to the ground and the virtually all-white Tulsa Police Department joined in the attack, deputizing white mobs and providing them with arms. The massacre was triggered by accusations that a 19-year-old Black man had assaulted a 17-year-old white girl in an elevator.  FILE – In this photo provided by the McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa, two armed men walk away from burning buildings as others walk in the opposite direction, during the Tulsa Race Massacre, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, June 1, 1921.Numerous reports of the time described white policemen with badges setting fires and shooting Black people as part of the Greenwood invasion.  But the violence of 1921 was largely ignored for decades if not forgotten. Then-Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan stood in Greenwood in 2013 and apologized for the department’s role.  “I can’t apologize for the actions, inaction or derelictions of those individual officers and their chief,” Jordan said. “But as your chief today, I can apologize for our police department. I am sorry and distressed that the Tulsa Police Department did not protect its citizens during the tragic days in 1921.”  The commemoration of the events of 100 years ago, however, has been caught up in the disputes of 2021.The Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission abruptly canceled a “Remember and Rise” concert “due to unexpected circumstances.” Singer John Legend had been scheduled to perform and a keynote speech by voting rights activist Stacey Abrams was planned.Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt was ousted from the centennial commission after he signed legislation that would prohibit public school teachers from teaching about “critical race theory” that recounts the 17th century history of slavery in what more than a century later became the United States.Greenwood Rising, a new museum to commemorate the 1921 massacre, is opening this week, but some in Tulsa are denouncing the commission and instead focusing on the remaining survivors and descendants of the attack. As Biden visits, the city is resuming its excavation of a suspected mass grave where victims of the massacre are believed to be buried.Tulsa Race Massacre survivors Viola Fletcher, left, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, right, listen during a rally marking the massacre’s centennial commemorations, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, May 28, 2021.The extent of reparations remains paramount to remembering the massacre. Oklahoma state Senator Kevin Matthews, who chairs the centennial commission, told reporters last week that lawyers for the survivors had initially sought $100,000 each and a $2 million donation to a reparations fund, which the commission had agreed to. But he balked at what he said were later demands for $1 million for each survivor and a $50 million for the fund, although the survivors’ lawyers disputed his claims.“There was never a non-negotiable demand for $50 million dollars,” the lawyers said. “The non-negotiable issues were that the fund would provide direct financial support to survivors and descendants and that the fund would be administered by descendants and North Tulsa community members, and the fund be held in a Black bank.”Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum said the city has been working with Oklahoma and federal officials to make sure “people who want to participate in activities and mourn this event, the worst event in our city’s history, feel comfortable being in public doing that with different groups coming to town.”“It’s the classic case of hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” said Bynum, who reopened the search for mass graves from the massacre. 
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Majority Republicans in the Texas Senate on Sunday approved one of the most restrictive new voting laws in the U.S. after rushing the bill to the floor in the middle of the night.The sweeping measure, known as Senate Bill 7, passed along party lines around 6 a.m. after eight hours of questioning by Democrats, who have virtually no path to stop it from becoming law. But the bill must still clear a final vote in the Texas House in order to reach Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who is expected to sign it.“I have grave concerns about a bill that was crafted in the shadows and passed late at night,” said Democratic state Sen. Beverly Powell.Under revisions during closed-door negotiations, Republicans added language that could make it easier for a judge to overturn an election and pushed back the start of Sunday voting, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls. The 67-page measure would also eliminate drive-thru voting and 24-hour polling centers, both of which Harris County, the state’s largest Democratic stronghold, introduced last year.Texas is a key battleground in the GOP’s nationwide efforts to tighten voting laws, driven by former President Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Georgia and Florida have also passed new voting restrictions. President Joe Biden on Saturday condemned the measures as “an assault on democracy.”The vote in the Texas Senate came after a final version of the bill had been made public Saturday. Around midnight, Republicans wielded their majority to suspend rules that would normally prohibit taking a vote on a bill that had not been posted for 24 hours, which Democrats protested as a breach of protocol that denied them and the public time to review the language first. The bill would newly empower partisan poll watchers by allowing them more access inside polling places and threatening criminal penalties against election officials who restrict their movement. Republicans originally proposed giving poll watchers the right to take photos, but that language was removed from the final bill that lawmakers were set to vote on this weekend. Another provision could also make it easier to overturn an election in Texas, allowing for a judge to void an outcome if the number of fraudulent votes cast could have changed the result, regardless of whether it was actually proven that fraud affected the outcome.Election officials would also face new criminal penalties, including felony charges for sending mail voting applications to people who did not request one. The Texas District and County Attorneys Association tweeted that it had counted in the bill at least 16 new, expanded or enhanced crimes related to elections.GOP legislators are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1 p.m., which critics called an attack on what is commonly known as “souls to the polls” — a get-out-the-vote campaign used by Black church congregations nationwide. The idea traces back to the civil rights movement. Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier, chairwoman of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, said the change is “going to disengage, disenfranchise those who use the souls to the polls opportunity.”Pressed on the Senate floor over why Sunday voting couldn’t begin sooner, Republican Sen. Bryan Hughes said, “Election workers want to go to church, too.”Collier was one of three Democrats picked to negotiate the final version, none of whom signed their name to it. She said she saw a draft of the bill around 11 p.m. Friday — which was different than one she had received earlier that day — and was asked for her signature the next morning.Major corporations, including Texas-based American Airlines and Dell, have warned that the measures could harm democracy and the economic climate. But Republicans shrugged off their objections, and in some cases, ripped business leaders for speaking out.Texas already has some of the country’s tightest voting restrictions and is regularly cited by nonpartisan groups as a state where it is especially hard to vote. It was one of the few states that did not make it easier to vote by mail during the pandemic.The top Republican negotiators, Hughes and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, called the bill “one of the most comprehensive and sensible election reform bills” in Texas’ history.“Even as the national media minimizes the importance of election integrity, the Texas Legislature has not bent to headlines or corporate virtue signaling,” they said in a joint statement.Since Trump’s defeat, at least 14 states have enacted more restrictive voting laws, according to the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice. It has also counted nearly 400 bills filed this year nationwide that would restrict voting.Republican lawmakers in Texas have insisted that the changes are not a response to Trump’s false claims of widespread fraud but are needed to restore confidence in the voting process. But doubts about the election’s outcome have been fanned by some of the state’s top GOP leaders, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led a failed lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court to try to overturn the election.Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chaired Trump’s presidential campaign in Texas, offered a $1 million reward to anyone who could produce evidence of voter fraud. Nonpartisan investigations of previous elections have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. State officials from both parties, including in Texas, as well as international observers have also said the 2020 election went well. 
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Thousands of Ethiopians gathered in the nation’s capital Sunday to protest outside pressure on the government over its brutal war in Tigray. Protesters at the rally in Addis Ababa carried banners that criticized the United States and others in the international community who are voicing concern over atrocities in Tigray, where Ethiopian forces are hunting down the region’s ousted and now-fugitive leaders. Troops from neighboring Eritrea are fighting in Tigray on the side of Ethiopian government forces, in defiance of international calls for their withdrawal. But the protesters in Addis Ababa carried placards that read: “Ethiopian young people denounce the western intervention.” Others said Ethiopia’s sovereignty was at stake. The U.S. said last week it has started restricting visas for government and military officials of Ethiopia and Eritrea, who are seen as undermining efforts to resolve the fighting in Tigray, home to an estimated 6 million of Ethiopia’s 110 million people. Besides the visa restrictions, Washington is imposing wide-ranging restrictions on economic and security assistance to Ethiopia. 
 
Testifying on Capitol Hill last week, Robert Godec, the U.S. acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of African Affairs, said Ethiopia is now at a turning point and, unless it reverses course, could face further measures such as Magnitsky Act sanctions that can include asset freezes. Atrocities including brutal gang-rapes, extrajudicial killings and forced evictions have been part of the violence in Tigray, according to victims, witnesses, local authorities and aid groups. Thousands of people are estimated to have died. The Ethiopian government called U.S. actions “misguided” and “regrettable.” “The Ethiopian government will not be deterred by this unfortunate decision of the U.S. administration,” said the statement tweeted by the ministry of foreign affairs. “If such a resolve to meddle in our internal affairs and undermining the century-old bilateral ties continues unabated, the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia will be forced to reassess its relations with the United States, which might have implications beyond our bilateral relationship,” said the statement. The crisis began in November after Ethiopia accused former leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, of ordering an attack on an Ethiopian army base in the region. Troops sent by Ethiopia’s leader, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, quickly ousted the TPLF from major cities and towns, but guerrilla fighting is still reported across Tigray. More than 2 million people have been displaced by the war.  
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Jesus Lopez says he feels like a stranger in the place he was born.He’s from Guadalajara, Mexico, but his life was in Chicago. After 15 years in the city, he was deported a year ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.”I want to go back because I belong there. That’s where I have my friends, my family,” said the 25-year-old, who was once a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that gives protections to immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.Lopez, who said he didn’t renew his spot in the program because he couldn’t afford it, hopes to benefit from new efforts by advocates, groups and attorneys to bring back immigrants they believe were unfairly deported from the United States.Jesus Lopez, who was deported from the U.S. last year, holds up his Illinois driver’s license and a family snapshot, at his home in Zapopan, Jalisco state, Mexico, May 13, 2021. “I belong there,” the DACA recipient says of Chicago.With President Joe Biden in office, one of the new proposals from advocates urges creating a centralized Department of Homeland Security office to consider requests from deported immigrants trying to reunite with their families in the U.S.”We have deported hundreds of thousands of individuals, and to do that and not even have an effective safety valve to review bad decisions violates due process,” said Nayna Gupta, associate director of policy for the National Immigrant Justice Center, the Washington-based nonprofit that proposed the idea.It’s a long shot: White House officials have never publicly mentioned the idea, and it doesn’t yet have a supporter in Congress. The campaign, however, shows how immigrant advocacy has become emboldened after four years of hardline immigration policies under former President Donald Trump.It also shows how varied ambitions are among pro-immigrant advocates.Bills in CongressMany are focused instead on immigration bills that have passed the House but appear stalled in the Senate as large numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the border have weakened the White House’s position. The measures would give legal status to DACA recipients like Lopez, more farmworkers and others with special protections.Another bill Biden proposed to offer a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally includes some chance for deportees to come back to the U.S. But the Biden administration has not spoken publicly or answered questions about the possibility of regularly considering those requests.More than 700,000 immigrants have been deported from the U.S. in the last three fiscal years, according to federal data. U.S. law includes ways for deportees to return, but they rarely succeed.Claudio Rojas, a 55-year-old handyman who was deported from the U.S. in 2019, is pictured in his home in Moreno, Argentina, May 8, 2021. His wife, two sons and two grandsons remained in Florida.For some deportees, the change of administration offers hope.Claudio Rojas says he feels better since Trump left office, but he still lives with anxiety and can’t sleep some nights in his Buenos Aires home.”I am not in a detention center, but I feel like I am in jail in my own apartment. I am in Argentina, but I feel I am a foreigner. I can’t adapt,” said Rojas, 55, a handyman deported in 2019. His wife, two sons and two grandsons are in Florida.Rojas and his family overstayed a tourist visa. After a decade, he ended up in federal custody after he was stopped by police and received a deportation order. Rojas did not leave, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him again for seven months. He held a widely publicized hunger strike, and two filmmakers made a documentary based on his experience and that of others.Awaiting a rulingDays before Rojas was to speak at the 2019 Miami Film Festival, he was detained again and deported. The Argentinian has sued and is waiting for a decision from a federal appeals court.”I want back the life I lost, all this time that I lost,” Rojas said.The National Immigrant Justice Center says Congress doesn’t need to act on its proposal and that creation of a centralized process to review applications could be done through executive action because it is based on existing laws.Jesus Lopez works in his family’s carpentry workshop in Zapopan, Jalisco state, Mexico, May 13, 2021. Lopez arrived in the U.S. when he was 9 on a tourist visa that later expired. He became a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient in 2012.The plan asks the government to take into account factors such as people who were eligible for legal status and had applied before being deported or those who have compelling circumstances.The proposal has been shared with White House staff, the group said. It plans to invite Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to discuss the proposal and include a letter signed by 75 immigrant rights organizations supporting the plan.A White House spokesperson referred questions about the proposal to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond.Reunification of familiesAdvocates point to how the government has started reunifying families that the Trump administration separated at the border under its “zero tolerance” policy.”In the process of doing that, hopefully the various agencies involved recognize that this is something that can be done, that we have processes in place, such as humanitarian parole, to bring people back,” said Alina Das, co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law.And while efforts to bring back deported veterans have persisted for years, advocates have started a new campaign with that goal, which during his campaign Biden promised to carry out.In February, three California lawmakers reintroduced a bill to allow certain deported veterans to return.”If someone deserves a second chance, those are our veterans,” Democratic state Representative Mark Takano said recently.Besides that effort, DACA might have the most chance of success in Congress.Arrested, detained, deportedLopez, the Mexican immigrant, was 9 when he was brought to the U.S., and he became a DACA recipient in 2012. He didn’t renew those protections a few years later because he couldn’t afford it.He was arrested in 2019 when Iowa police stopped the car he was riding in with friends and found a small amount of marijuana. He ended up in ICE custody and was released nine months later.Last year, Lopez traveled from Chicago with his two brothers to what he thought was a routine ICE check-in in Iowa. Instead, he was detained and deported.He said he dreams of going back to Chicago to work at construction, live with his family and help his grandmother with errands.”This new administration gives me the hope of thinking that they see things in a more human way,” Lopez said.
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More than 1,000 people rallied Saturday in Washington in support of Palestinians and called for an end to U.S. aid to Israel.The demonstration on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial came as a cease-fire that ended 11 days of intense fighting between Israel and the Islamist movement Hamas in the Gaza Strip has held.”We are hoping to send a clear message to the United States government that the days of supporting the Israeli state without repercussions are over,” one of the demonstrators, 39-year-old Washington lawyer Sharif Silmi, said as he stood in the crowd where many protesters held red, white, green and black Palestinian flags.”We will stand against any politician that continues to fund weapons to Israel. We will oppose them, we will vote against them, we will fund their opponents, until we vote them out of office,” Silmi said.Lama Alahmad, a resident of neighboring Virginia who is of Palestinian origin, said that U.S. public opinion is turning in favor of the Palestinian cause.”There is a huge change” going on in the U.S. with regard to the Palestinian cause to secure a sovereign homeland, Alahmad said.”We just want the world to recognize that we are human beings. We are not terrorists,” said Alahmad, a 43-year-old stay-at-home mother who grew up in the United Arab Emirates before moving to the U.S. about 20 years ago.Silmi insisted there was growing opposition in the U.S. to how Israel treats the Palestinians, which he likened to apartheid in South Africa.”People have now woken up, and we’re resisting. Whether young Jews, young Muslims, young Blacks, young whites, there is a generational shift. And people are working across ethnic groups, racial groups, to work for change and freedom and liberation for Palestinian people,” Silmi said.
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Britain has confirmed yet another spike in new COVID-19 infections, with close to 4,200 cases identified across the country Friday, the highest daily number in two months. Seventy five percent of the new cases in Britain are believed to be infections with the so-called Indian variant, first detected in India, which is more transmissible than the previously dominant variant.Also Friday, Britain approved a single-shot COVID-19 vaccine developed by Johnson & Johnson. It is the fourth COVID-19 vaccine approved in the country, after inoculations made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and Moderna.The European Commission has authorized the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine for use in children as young as 12, widening the pool of those eligible to be inoculated, following similar approvals in the United States and Canada.Pfizer-BioNTech Pledges 2 Billion Doses to Poor Nations US, German partners to deliver half this year and half next year The commission made the announcement Friday after the European Union’s medical regulator, the European Medicines Agency, Friday recommended the use of the vaccine in children ages 12 to 15, saying that data show it is safe and effective.”Extending the protection of a safe and effective vaccine in this younger population is an important step forward in the fight against this pandemic,” said Marco Cavaleri, the EMA’s head of health threats and vaccines strategy.It is now up to EU states to decide whether and when to offer the vaccine to young adolescents.Germany and Italy have already said they are preparing to extend their vaccination campaign to youths ages 12-15.French President Emmanuel Macron pledged Friday to help provide South Africa and other African countries with vaccine doses. During a visit to Pretoria, Macron said France would donate more than 30 million doses this year to the United Nations-backed COVAX global vaccine initiative.According to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center, South Africa has so far vaccinated roughly 700,000 people out of its population of 40 million.In Australia, Melbourne went back under lockdown on Friday, as health authorities said a cluster of confirmed positive COVID-19 cases had increased to 39.In other developments Friday, India reported 186,364 new coronavirus infections during the previous 24 hours, its lowest daily rise since April 14. Deaths rose from the previous day to 3,660.In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said children at summer camp who are not vaccinated do not have to wear masks outside unless they are in crowds or in sustained close contact with others. The new guidance comes as millions of children are set to resume summer camp this summer after the closure of many camps last year due to the virus.Americans are celebrating the start of the Memorial Day weekend by hitting the roads and skies as they seek to cast off more than a year of pandemic restrictions and try to resume a sense of normalcy.U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas urged Americans to be patient this weekend at busy airports.”People will see lines because there’s going to be a tremendous amount of people traveling this weekend,” he told ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday.
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The gunman who killed nine of his coworkers at a California rail yard had stockpiled weapons and 25,000 rounds of ammunition at his house before setting it on fire to coincide with the bloodshed at the workplace he seethed about for years, authorities said Friday.Investigators found 12 guns, multiple cans of gasoline and suspected Molotov cocktails at Samuel James Cassidy’s house in San Jose, the Santa Clara County sheriff’s office said in a news release.He also rigged an unusual time-delay method to ensure the house caught fire while he was out, putting “ammunition in a cooking pot on a stove” in his home, Deputy Russell Davis told The Associated Press. The liquid in the pot — investigators don’t yet know what was inside — reached a boiling point, igniting an accelerant and potentially the gunpowder in the bullets nearby.The cache at the home the 57-year-old torched was on top of the three 9 mm handguns he brought Wednesday to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, authorities said. He also had 32 high-capacity magazines and fired 39 shots.The handguns found at the site were legally registered to Cassidy, Davis said, without elaborating on how he obtained them. Davis did not specify what type of guns officers found at his home, nor if they were legally owned.Authorities described a home filled with clutter, with items piled up to the point where it appeared Cassidy might be a hoarder, and weapons stored near the home’s doorways and in other spots.This undated photo provided by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office shows Samuel Cassidy, 57, the suspect in the May 26, 2021, shooting at a San Jose, California, rail station.Sgt. Joe Piazza told reporters the variety of spots where Cassidy stashed the guns might be so he could “access them in a time of emergency,” such as if law enforcement came to his house.Cassidy killed himself as sheriff’s deputies rushed into the rail yard complex in the heart of Silicon Valley, where he fatally shot nine men ranging in age from 29 to 63. He had worked there for more than 20 years.What prompted the bloodshed remains under investigation, officials said.While witnesses and Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith have said Cassidy appeared to target certain people, the sheriff’s office said Friday that “it is clear that this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could.”Casssidy’s elderly father, James, told the Mercury News in San Jose that his son was bipolar. He said that was no excuse for the shooting and apologized to the victims’ families.”I don’t think anything I could say could ease their grief. I’m really, really very sorry about that.”Neighbors and former lovers described him as moody, unfriendly and prone to angry outbursts at times. But they expressed shock he would kill.Cassidy’s ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, said he had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago, describing him as resentful and angry over what he perceived as unfair assignments.U.S. customs officers even caught him in 2016 with books about terrorism and fear as well as a memo book filled with notes about how much he hated the Valley Transportation Authority. But he was let go, and a resulting Department of Homeland Security memo on the encounter was not shared with local authorities.It’s not clear why customs officers detained Cassidy on his return from the Philippines.The contents of the memo, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, were described to The Associated Press by a Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.This undated photo provided by the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office shows approximately 22,000 rounds of ammunitions found at the residence of Samuel Cassidy.The memo notes that Cassidy was asked whether he had issues with people at work, and he said no. It refers to a “minor criminal history,” citing a 1983 arrest in San Jose and charges of “misdemeanor obstruction/resisting a peace officer.”San Jose police said they sought an FBI history on Cassidy and found no record of federal arrests or convictions.Mayor Sam Liccardo, a former prosecutor, said that while he has not seen the Homeland Security memo, it’s not a crime to hate your job.”The question is, how specific was that information?” he said. “Particularly, were there statements made suggesting a desire to commit violence against individuals?”The president of the union that represents transit workers at the rail yard sought Friday to refute a report that Cassidy was scheduled to attend a workplace disciplinary hearing with a union representative Wednesday over racist comments.John Courtney, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265, said in a statement that he was at the facility “simply to check on working conditions and the continual safety of the dedicated men and women who work there.”The attack comes amid an uptick in mass shootings following coronavirus shutdowns in much of the country last year. Since 2006, there have been at least 14 workplace massacres in the United States that killed at least four people and stemmed from employment grievances, according to a database on mass killings maintained by the AP, USA Today and Northeastern University.Patrick Gorman, special agent in charge of the San Francisco field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said he was not aware of any information about Cassidy, such as tips from the public, being shared with his division before the shooting. He said the entire San Jose field office responded to the crime scenes, along with other regional special agents.Kirk Bertolet, 64, was just starting his shift when shots rang out, and he saw some of his coworkers take their last breaths.Bertolet, a signal maintenance worker who worked in a separate unit from Cassidy, said he is convinced Cassidy targeted his victims because he didn’t hurt some people he encountered.”He was (angry) at certain people. He was angry, and he took his vengeance out on very specific people. He shot people. He let others live,” he said.Video footage showed Cassidy calmly walking from one building to another with a duffel bag filled with guns and ammunition to complete the slaughter, authorities said.Bertolet said Cassidy worked regularly with the victims, but he always seemed to be an outsider.”He was never in the group. He was never accepted by anybody there. He was always that guy that was never partaking in anything that the people were doing,” Bertolet said.
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The United States on Friday announced punitive measures against Belarus targeting the regime of strongman President Alexander Lukashenko, who met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin amid a global outcry over the forced diversion of a European plane.White House press secretary Jen Psaki called for “a credible international investigation into the events of May 23,” which she called “a direct affront to international norms.”Belarus scrambled a military jet to divert a Ryanair plane and arrested 26-year-old opposition blogger and activist Roman Protasevich who was onboard, triggering a global outcry.The White House announced it was working with the European Union on a list of targeted sanctions against key members of Lukashenko’s regime.Meanwhile, economic sanctions against nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises, reimposed by Washington in April following a crackdown on pro-democracy protests, will come into effect on June 3.Further U.S. moves on Belarus could target “those that support corruption, the abuse of human rights, and attacks on democracy,” Psaki said.The White House also issued a “Do Not Travel” warning for Belarus to U.S. citizens, and warned American passenger planes to “exercise extreme caution” if considering flying over Belarusian airspace.The European Union has also urged EU-based carriers to avoid Belarusian airspace.However, President Vladimir Putin celebrated Russia’s close ties with Belarus on Friday as he hosted Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort of Sochi.With observers closely watching the talks to see how far the Kremlin would go to support the regime, the Russian leader said he was “very glad” to see Lukashenko and agreed with him the Western reaction was an “outburst of emotion.”‘Rock the boat’Lukashenko complained the West was seeking to stir unrest in Belarus.”An attempt is underway to rock the boat to reach the level of last August,” he said, referring to anti-regime protests following a disputed election.”It’s clear what these Western friends want from us.”The Belarus strongman, who arrived with a briefcase, said he wanted to show Putin “some documents” related to the Ryanair incident and thanked him for his support in the latest standoff with the West.The talks lasted for more than five hours but their results were not announced.Over the past years Lukashenko has had a volatile relationship with Moscow, playing it off against the West and ruling out outright unification with Russia.But after the Ryanair plane incident his options appear to be limited.Putin and the Belarus leader have met regularly since August, when historic protests broke out against Lukashenko’s nearly three-decade rule.The 66-year-old waged a ruthless crackdown on his opponents and has leaned increasingly on the Russian president amid condemnation from the West.Several people died during the unrest in Belarus, thousands were detained, and hundreds reported torture in prison.Sunday’s plane diversion was a dramatic escalation, with EU leaders accusing Minsk of essentially hijacking a European flight to arrest Protasevich.Technical reasonsThe overflight ban has led to several cancellations of air journeys between Russia and Europe, after Russian authorities rejected planes that would have skipped Belarusian airspace.Russia insists the cancellations are purely “technical,” but they have raised concerns that Moscow could be systematically refusing to let European airlines land if they avoid Belarus.The Kremlin criticized the flight ban as politically motivated and dangerous, with foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova calling it “completely irresponsible.”EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was monitoring whether this was a broader policy from Russia, but Moscow insisted the disruptions were in no way political.Belarus authorities claimed to have received a bomb threat against the Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius carrying the dissident.Minsk said it demanded the flight land in the Belarus capital based on the message it said was sent from a ProtonMail address by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.Protasevich, who helped organize the demonstrations against Lukashenko’s rule last year, was arrested along with Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega, 23, after the plane landed in the city.’Braver’Borrell has said proposals are “on the table” to target key sectors of the Belarusian economy including its oil products and potash sectors.Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Friday urged the EU to be “braver” and impose more sanctions against the Minsk regime.After meeting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in The Hague, Tikhanovskaya said measures being discussed by EU countries did not go far enough.EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Friday warned Lukashenko that “it is time to change course.””No amount of repression, brutality or coercion will bring any legitimacy to your authoritarian regime,” she said.The European Commission president also wrote to the opposition offering a 3-billion-euro package to support “a democratic Belarus” if Lukashenko steps down.
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