Month: July 2021

Katie Ledecky is now the first swimmer to win a gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle in three consecutive Olympics.  The 24-year-old U.S. swimming phenom says she is looking forward to competing in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.  She’s leaving Tokyo with a bundle of medals — gold in the 800- and the 1,500-meter race, in addition to silver in the 400 and the 4×200 relay.U.S. Swimmer Caleb Dressel set a world record and won his third gold medal of the Tokyo Games in his 49.45-second triumph in the 100-meter butterfly.Simone Biles Makes Mental Health the Talk of the Tokyo GamesOlympians in many sports have spent the past two days coming forward to recount their own battles while offering support to BilesAmerican gymnast Simone Biles will not compete Sunday in the finals for the uneven bars and the vault.  USA Gymnastics did not say whether Biles will compete in next week’s floor exercise and balance beam finals.  Biles withdrew from the team and individual all-round competitions earlier this week, saying she had mental health issues and trouble maneuvering in the air.  She posted on Instagram, “Literally can not tell up from down.”  Ivan Litvinovich won the gold in the men’s trampoline final.  The score for the 20-year-old from Belarus was 61.715, while China’s Dong Dong won the silver with 61.235.  New Zealand’s Dylan Schmidt took home the bronze.  On Saturday, the Olympic Games announced 21 new COVID-19 cases among people connected with the Olympics, bringing the total number to 246, including 26 athletes.  Olympic Swimming: More Gold for Dressel, Ledecky and McKeownBritain wins the inaugural mixed medley relay
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A nationwide eviction moratorium is set to expire Saturday after President Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress worked furiously but ultimately failed to align on a long-shot strategy to prevent millions of Americans from being forced from their homes during a COVID-19 surge.More than 3.6 million Americans are at risk of eviction, some in a matter of days, as nearly $47 billion in federal housing aid to the states during the pandemic has been slow to make it into the hands of renters and landlords owed payments.Tensions mounted late Friday as it became clear there would be no resolution in sight. Hours before the ban was set to expire, Biden called on local governments to “take all possible steps” to immediately disburse the funds. Evictions could begin as soon as Monday.”There can be no excuse for any state or locality not accelerating funds to landlords and tenants that have been hurt during this pandemic,” Biden said in a statement.”Every state and local government must get these funds out to ensure we prevent every eviction we can,” he said.The stunning outcome, as the White House and Congress each expected the other to act, exposed a rare divide between the president and his allies on Capitol Hill, and one that could have lasting impact as the nation’s renters face widespread evictions.Biden set off the scramble by announcing he would allow the eviction ban to expire, rather than challenge a recent Supreme Court ruling signaling this would be the last deadline. He called on Congress on Thursday to swiftly pass legislation to extend the date.Racing to respond, Democrats strained to rally the votes early Friday. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi implored colleagues to pass legislation extending the deadline, calling it a “moral imperative,” to protect renters and also the landlords who are owed compensation.But after hours of behind-the-scenes wrangling throughout the day, Democratic lawmakers had questions and could not muster support to extend the ban even a few months. An attempt to simply approve an extension by consent, without a formal vote, was objected to by House Republicans. The Senate may try again Saturday.Lawmakers were livid at prospect of evictions in the middle of a surging pandemic.Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the Financial Services Committee chair who wrote the emergency bill, said House leaders should have held the vote, even if it failed, to show Americans they were trying to solve the problem.”Is it emergency enough that you’re going to stop families from being put on the street?” Waters testified at a hastily called hearing early Friday morning urging her colleagues to act.But Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington, the top Republican on another panel handling the issue, said the Democrats’ bill was rushed.”This is not the way to legislate,” she said.The ban was initially put in place to prevent further spread of COVID-19 by people put out on the streets and into shelters.Congress pushed nearly $47 billion to the states earlier in the COVID-19 crisis to shore up landlords and renters as workplaces shut down and many people were suddenly out of work.But lawmakers said state governments have been slow to distribute the money. On Friday, they said only about $3 billion has been spent.By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.Some places are likely to see spikes in evictions starting Monday, while other jurisdictions will see an increase in court filings that will lead to evictions over several months.Biden said Thursday that the administration’s hands are tied after the Supreme Court signaled the moratorium would only be extended until the end of the month. 
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The United States made tremendous progress lifting its citizens out of poverty with an expansion of public assistance programs during the coronavirus pandemic, but now, with many emergency measures set to expire, millions face the grim possibility of a return to impoverishment.A sobering report from the Urban Institute, a prominent liberal-leaning think tank in Washington, this week projects poverty levels in the U.S. will sit at 7.7% through the end of 2021, down from 13.9% in 2018. The decline can be attributed to a suite of policies, including stimulus checks, enhanced unemployment insurance payments and eligibility, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payments and refundable child tax credits.The impact of these various programs was especially pronounced among children. In 2018, government programs kept the rate of poverty among Americans under the age of 18 at 14.2% rather than the 26.9% rate that would have been the case without government assistance. But in 2021, a year when 30.1% of children would have been living in poverty without government assistance, the addition of pandemic-related relief to normal assistance programs drove the child poverty rate down to 5.6%.Amazing … or not“On the one hand, it was rather amazing to see the projected poverty rates that low,” said Laura Wheaton, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and one of the report’s authors. “But then on the other hand, when we look at the amount of resources that have been provided, it’s not surprising.”The report finds that by the end of 2021, governments at the federal and state levels will have plowed more than $1 trillion dollars in benefits into the bank accounts of low-income Americans, far more than the $237 billion they paid out in 2018.“The average person below poverty is getting almost two and a half times more from the government in 2021, than they did in 2018,” Wheaton said. “And so that really makes a difference.”Support is going awayThe majority of the additional support injected into the economy this year is expected to disappear in the near term. Stimulus checks have been distributed and no additional round of payments is on the horizon; expanded unemployment insurance is scheduled to sunset by later this year — and has already been canceled in some states; likewise, expanded SNAP payments are ending. Most of the subsidy programs were financed through deficit spending.The only additional benefit not slated to disappear is monthly child tax credit refunds. However, according to the Urban Institute analysis, those have a far lower effect on poverty levels than other relief programs.This leaves U.S. policymakers with some difficult choices.Defining povertyIn the U.S., the “poverty threshold” is a level of income below which an individual or family cannot afford the basic necessities of life. For example, in 2021, a family of four living in the contiguous 48 states is considered to be in poverty if its annual income falls below $26,500.For its report, the Urban Institute relied on what is known as the Supplemental Poverty Measure, created by the Census Bureau, which takes a family’s income plus government payments into account to determine whether or not income is below the poverty line.The report from the Urban Institute states its conclusions in fairly anodyne language, saying, “Our projections demonstrate that government benefits can reduce poverty well below traditional levels when substantial resources are devoted to that task.”It continues, “Policymakers who want to make some aspects of the higher level of support permanent will need to consider the appropriate levels and types of increased supports, the best ways to fund such efforts, and the potential macroeconomic implications of various choices.”Other poverty researchers were more pointed in their observations.A ‘policy choice’“Often, we think of poverty as an inevitable social problem; but this is indicating how it’s actually a policy choice in many ways,” said Sarah Halpern-Meekin, a professor in the LaFollette School of Public Affairs and the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.At the most basic level, she said, the major lesson here is simple: “Policy works. If we give folks money, they will end up above the poverty line. That, I think, is the most fundamental lesson.”Indivar Dutta-Gupta, the co-executive director of the Center on Poverty and Inequality at Georgetown Law School, agreed, saying, “The central takeaway from the Urban Institute report…is that poverty is a choice, but not by the people who experience it so much as it is by national policymakers.”What next?While the primary lesson in the report may be simple, interpreting it for the future is quite a bit more complex. The benefits people received during the pandemic were broadly understood to be temporary, which means that it’s dangerous to extrapolate from the results of the past year to the future effects of similar policies.“One mistake we could make is assuming that whatever we saw people doing over this last year tells us how these policies would affect people’s behavior during ‘normal’ times,” Halpern-Meekin said. “People react differently to policies when they’re temporary. You react differently to money when it’s your monthly wages that you expect to get over and over again versus a big gift from your aunt or something like that.”She said it is important to be careful when trying to generalize from the experience of the pandemic.“Because families are encountering extraordinary circumstances because of the pandemic, the set of choices that they have to make with their money in terms of employment, around child care and schooling, etc., are different than the options and choices they would have during other periods of time,” she said.Reassessing the need for supportAt the least, the success of the pandemic-era programs at lowering poverty ought to prompt a reassessment by policymakers of who actually needs government support, Dutta-Gupta said.He noted that one aspect of the relief programs implemented during the pandemic was a simple expansion of eligibility, for example, by making unemployment insurance payments available to people who would not ordinarily have qualified. By some estimates, only about three in 10 of the people who received unemployment benefits during the pandemic would have qualified before it.“The truth is some of the hardship that was addressed through the extraordinary emergency and temporary responses during the pandemic were long-standing problems,” Dutta-Gupta said. “Now, policymakers face a choice. Do they want to go back to a system that was excluding, in this case, the vast majority of unemployed workers? Or did they learn something about the shortcomings of our system for protecting unemployed workers and across the board?” 
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the delta variant of the coronavirus is as contagious as chickenpox and that infections in vaccinated people may be as transmissible as in the unvaccinated. Internal CDC documents, first obtained by the Washington Post, urged staff to “acknowledge the war has changed” in light of the delta variant.  The CDC said the variant requires a new approach to help the public understand the danger, adding that evidence shows the delta variant may pose a greater risk for hospitalization and death.The agency also emphasized that vaccines are highly effective at preventing infections, severe disease and death. The CDC said that while the vaccinated are less likely to get sick, they might be just as likely as those who are unvaccinated to pass the disease to others. FILE – Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, April 13, 2021.Top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said during an interview Friday with Reuters that he hopes regulators will grant full approval for COVID-19 vaccines as soon as next month. He said the move could encourage more Americans to get the shots, which are currently authorized on an emergency-use basis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. U.S. President Joe Biden announced Thursday that civilian federal government employees must be vaccinated or submit to regular testing and wear masks.   A station employee walks by a COVID-19 infection prevention instructions sign at a Tokyo metro station in Tokyo, Japan, July 30, 2021.Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa and Osaka are the new prefectures to be under the state of emergency. Several other prefectures will be placed under pre-emergency measures.   Under a state of emergency, business is suspended in locations that serve alcohol or have karaoke. Under pre-emergency measures, businesses are asked not to serve alcohol. Japan reported more than 10,000 daily coronavirus cases Thursday, the first time the country’s daily count exceeded 10,000.Around the globeIn Israel, health officials began administering coronavirus booster shots Friday to people older than 60 who have been fully vaccinated in an effort to stop a recent spike in cases. German officials announced Friday that unvaccinated travelers arriving in the country will need to present a negative COVID-19 test result.  FILE – Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, attends a meeting in Geneva, May 24, 2021.WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a news conference from Geneva on Friday that “hard-won gains are in jeopardy of being lost” because of the delta variant.   WHO officials have said they fear that 47 of Africa’s 54 countries will miss a September target of vaccinating 10% of their populations, a goal set earlier this year by the World Health Assembly, the world’s highest health policy-setting body. Africa accounts for less than 1% of the more than 4 billion vaccine doses administered globally.   Overall, around the globe, just 1.1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose.  The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported Friday more than 197 million global COVID infections and more than 4.2 million deaths from the disease worldwide. Some information for this report came from Reuters and the Associated Press. 
 
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The United States seized a Singapore-owned oil tanker Friday that was used to make illegal oil deliveries to North Korea, the Justice Department said.A New York federal judge issued a judgment of forfeiture authorizing the United States to take ownership of the M/T Courageous, which is currently in Cambodia.The ship, which has a capacity of 2,734 tons, was purchased by Singaporean national Kwek Kee Seng, who remains at large, according to a Justice Department statement.”Kwek and his co-conspirators engaged in an extensive scheme to evade … U.S. and U.N. sanctions by using vessels under their control to covertly transport fuel to North Korea,” the statement said.From August to December 2019, the Courageous would illegally stop transmitting its location information. Satellite imagery showed that during that time, the tanker engaged in ship-to-ship transfers of more than $1.5 million worth of oil to a North Korean ship.The Justice Department has accused Kwek of trying to hide the scheme by using shell companies, lying to international shipping authorities and falsely identifying the Courageous to avoid detection.Kwek has been charged with conspiracy to evade economic sanctions on North Korea and money laundering conspiracy.Cambodian authorities seized the tanker in March 2020 on a U.S. warrant and have held the Courageous there since.The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York filed a civil forfeiture action against the tanker on April 23.Relations between Washington and Pyongyang are strained, with North Korea’s foreign minister in June ruling out any talks with the United States, saying such dialogue would “get us nowhere.”Negotiations between the two countries have long been stalled over the international sanctions imposed on the nuclear-armed state and what North Korea should give up in return for having them lifted.
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Former President Donald Trump suffered a pair of setbacks Friday when the Justice Department cleared the way for the release of his tax records and also disclosed a memo showing he urged top officials to falsely claim his election defeat was “corrupt.”Handwritten notes taken by Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue in December and released Friday by the chair of the House of Representatives Oversight and Reform Committee paint a damning picture of Trump as he desperately sought to get the department to take the unprecedented step of intervening to try to upend his 2020 election loss.Hours later, the department cleared the way for the Internal Revenue Service to hand over Trump’s tax records to congressional investigators — a move he has long fought.The fact that the Justice Department allowed the handwritten notes concerning the election to be turned over to congressional investigators marked a dramatic shift from actions taken during the Trump administration, which repeatedly invoked executive privilege to skirt congressional scrutiny.Department ‘won’t snap its fingers’The newly released notes detail a December 27 phone call in which Jeffrey Rosen, who was appointed as acting attorney general a few days later, is quoted as telling Trump: “Understand that the DOJ can’t + won’t snap its fingers + change the outcome of the election.””Don’t expect you to do that,” Trump replied. “Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen,” in a reference to Republican lawmakers.Trump’s representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment.FILE – Justice Department attorneys reversed course and said the department had erred in 2019 when it found that the request for former President Donald Trump’s taxes by the House Ways and Means Committee was based on a “disingenuous” objective.The Justice Department ordered the IRS to hand over Trump’s tax returns to a U.S. House of Representatives congressional committee, saying the panel had invoked “sufficient reasons” for requesting it.Reversed courseThe department’s Office of Legal Counsel reversed course and declared the department had erred in 2019 when it found that the request for Trump’s taxes by the House Ways and Means Committee was based on a “disingenuous” objective aimed at exposing them to the public.The Justice Department’s actions will make it easier for congressional investigators to interview key witnesses and collect evidence against Trump.Earlier this week, the Justice Department decided that because of “compelling legislative interests,” it was authorizing six former Trump administration officials to sit for interviews with the House Oversight Committee. These include Rosen and Donoghue, as well as former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who resigned amid pressure from Trump.Also among the six was former Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who became the subject of a Justice Department inspector general’s investigation after news reports said he’d plotted with Trump in a failed bid to oust Rosen so he could launch an investigation into alleged voter fraud in Georgia.In the December 27 call with Rosen, Trump threatened to put Clark in charge, according to the handwritten notes, telling Rosen: “People tell me Jeff Clark is great, I should put him in. People want me to replace DOJ leadership.”‘We are doing our job’Throughout the call, Trump repeatedly pushed false claims that the election had been stolen. “You guys may not be following the internet the way I do,” Trump said.Rosen and Donoghue tried to tell Trump his information was incorrect multiple times.”We are doing our job,” the notes say. “Much of the info you’re getting is false.”A little more than a week later, based on Trump’s false claims that the election was stolen, thousands of his supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol in a failed bid to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
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U.S. President Joe Biden Friday met virtually with governors from seven Western U.S. states to discuss how the federal government can help fight the wildfires that are raging across that region.
Biden, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, spoke via video conference with the governors of California, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.  
The meeting followed a similar one Biden hosted exactly a month ago, and the president noted that since then, the number of large, uncontained wildfires burning in the western U.S. has doubled to 66. Those fires have destroyed more than 3.4 million acres of land.  
In Oregon alone, Biden noted the “Bootleg Fire” has destroyed more than 400 structures, including more than 160 homes.  
The president asked the governors what the federal government can do immediately to help address the problem, including fighting the fires and fire prevention.
Montana Republican Governor Greg Gianforte said in his state this year so far, there have been 1,600 fires which have burned 220,000 acres. He said, along with obvious resources such as manpower and equipment, the governor asked for better cooperation between federal agencies such as the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management in taking action to fight fires as they start.
California’s Gavin Newsom said he agreed, noting at times, federal agencies take a “wait and see attitude” in attacking fires, which all too often leads fires to grow out of control. He called for a change in that culture, especially in California, where 57 percent of the forests are under federal management.
Newsom, along with Washington state Governor Jay Inslee also urged Biden to more aggressively take steps to address climate change. The president said climate change is helping drive fire conditions and the factor cannot be ignored.
Much of the region continues to see record heat and drought conditions in recent months.
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The United States is sending three million doses of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine to the Philippines, the White House said Friday.A White House official told reporters the shipping process began Friday and that the doses would arrive “early next week.”The U.S. is providing the doses through COVAX, a campaign to provide equitable access to COVID-19 vaccine worldwide, the official said. The White House official said the U.S. is not contributing the doses to the Philippines “with strings attached” but because, “It’s the right thing morally, the right thing from a global public health perspective, and right for our collective security and well-being.”America’s vaccine donations to the Philippines “represents the largest-ever purchase and donation of vaccines by a single country,” according to the official.The U.S. has donated $2 billion to COVAX and will buy 500 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for distribution this year to the African Union’s 55-member nations and “92 low and lower middle-income countries” as defined by COVAX, the official said.Philippines Says US Visiting Forces Agreement to Remain in EffectDuterte retracts termination letter sent last yearThe White House announcement to provide doses to the Philippines came on the same day Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte reversed a decision to end a vital defense agreement with the U.S., as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrapped up a visit to the country on Friday.The deal regulates the rotation of U.S. troops in and out of the Philippines for war drills and exercises. The agreement became increasingly important to the U.S. and its allies as they contend with an increasingly aggressive China.White House Bureau Chief Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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Amazon.com Inc has been hit with a record $886.6 million (746 million euros) European Union fine for processing personal data in violation of the bloc’s GDPR rules, as privacy regulators take a more aggressive position on enforcement.The Luxembourg National Commission for Data Protection (CNPD) imposed the fine on Amazon in a July 16 decision, the company disclosed in a regulatory filing on Friday.Amazon will appeal the fine, according to a company spokesperson. The e-commerce giant said in the filing it believed CNPD’s decision was without merit.CNPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment.EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, requires companies to seek people’s consent before using their personal data or face steep fines.Globally, regulatory scrutiny of tech giants has been increasing following a string of scandals over privacy and misinformation, as well as complaints from some businesses that they abuse their market power.Alphabet’s Google, Facebook Inc, Apple Inc and Microsoft Corp have drawn heightened scrutiny in Europe.In December, France’s data privacy watchdog handed out its biggest ever fine of 100 million euros ($118.82 million) to Google for breaching the nation’s rules on online advertising trackers.
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According to reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to make public Friday an internal federal health document about the delta variant of the coronavirus that can be spread “as easily as chickenpox” by vaccinated and unvaccinated people.The newspapers reported the document is a slide presentation distributed to CDC officials. The presentation details the difficulties the agency has experienced in convincing some populations to get vaccinated and wear masks.The presentation urges CDC officials to develop public service messages that “emphasize vaccination as the best defense against a variant so contagious that it acts almost like a different novel virus, leaping from target to target more swiftly than Ebola or the common cold.”With the delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 rapidly spreading across the country, U.S. President Joe Biden has announced civilian federal government employees must be vaccinated or submit to regular testing and wear masks.“Every federal government employee will be asked to attest to their vaccination status,” Biden said Thursday in a speech from the White House East Room. “Anyone who does not attest or is not vaccinated will be required to mask, no matter where they work, test one or two times a week to see if they’ve acquired COVID, socially distance, and generally will not be allowed to travel for work.”Nurse Darryl Hana prepares a dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine at a three-day vaccination clinic at Providence Wilmington Wellness and Activity Center on July 29, 2021, in Wilmington, California.The federal government employs more than 4 million Americans, including over 2 million in the federal civilian workforce, a White House statement said.The same standards will apply to federal contractors, Biden added.Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced lockdown measures Friday for the Manila capital region, home to 13 million people. The move is designed to curb the spread of the delta variant of the coronavirus.  The lockdown will go into effect beginning Aug. 6 and lasting until Aug. 20.Tokyo’s neighbors are being placed under a state of emergency from Aug. 2-31, according to the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun.  Tokyo, where the Olympic Games are currently being held, and Okinawa have already been placed under a state of emergency due to the spread of the coronavirus.Saitama, Chiba, Kanagawa and Osaka are the new prefectures to have the emergency state imposed on them.Hokkaido, Ishikawa, Kyoto, Hyogo and Fukuoka prefectures, also neighboring Tokyo, will be placed under pre-emergency measures.Under a state of emergency, business is suspended in locations that serve alcohol or have karaoke.Business are asked not to serve alcohol under pre-emergency measures.Japan has reported a record number of daily COVID cases as the country hosts the Olympics Games in Tokyo.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
download this video to view it offline.Download File360p | 14 MB480p | 20 MB540p | 27 MB720p | 55 MB1080p | 108 MBOriginal | 124 MB Embed” />Copy Download AudioAsahi Shimbun reported late Thursday that Japan had more than 10,000 daily coronavirus cases, the first time the country’s daily count has exceeded 10,000. Tokyo had 3,865 infections, eclipsing the previous day’s total of 3,177, according to the publication. The newspaper also reported that 24 people associated with the Olympic Games tested positive for COVID-19, including three athletes, bringing the total to 193 for people connected with the Games who have tested positive for COVID-19.WHO officials fear that 47 of Africa’s 54 countries will miss a September target of vaccinating 10% of their populations, a goal set earlier this year by the World Health Assembly, the world’s highest health policy-setting body. Africa accounts for less than 1% of the more than 4 billion vaccine doses administered globally.Many Latin American countries also are lagging. The region, along with the Caribbean, has suffered 1.25 million COVID-19-related deaths and is struggling to secure the vaccines needed by those countries. While Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay have inoculated about 50% of their populations, most of the others have managed to vaccinate only about 30% — with Honduras, Guatemala and Venezuela trailing at under 10%.The U.S. sent millions of doses of vaccine to Latin America earlier this month as part of Biden’s commitment to end the pandemic across the globe. One million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine were shipped to Bolivia, a million doses of Pfizer to Paraguay on Friday, and 1.5 million doses of Moderna to Guatemala, according to the White House.Overall, across the globe, just 1.1% of people in low-income countries have received at least one vaccine dose.The Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center reported 196,634,210 global COVID infections early Friday.
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Once seen as a vaccine hoarder, the U.S. is now sharing its COVID-19 doses, acting on the Biden administration’s pledge to deliver a half-billion doses around the world over the next year. VOA correspondent Mariama Diallo reports on some of the countries that have received their first batches.
Producer: Bakhtiyar Zamanov
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The Philippines says it has fully restored a major security agreement with the United States, with President Rodrigo Duterte retracting his intention to terminate the Philippines-U.S. Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) late Thursday.Filipino Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana told reporters at a news conference with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Friday that Duterte, after his meeting with Austin, retracted the VFA termination letter sent to the U.S. last year.“This provides us some degree of certainty going forward, so we can plan further in advance,” Austin told reporters. “And with that long-range planning, we can actually do more comprehensive exercises.”Secretary Lorenzana said he was unsure why Duterte had reversed the decision, but he welcomed the president’s move.The 1998 agreement provides legal permission for thousands of U.S. troops who rotate into the Philippines for dozens of military and humanitarian assistance exercises each year.Duterte gave formal notice to the United States of his decision to scrap the VFA in February 2020 after repeated threats to downgrade the two countries’ military alliance. He later extended the VFA until December 2021.At the time of the termination notice, Duterte had indicated that he favored relations with China and Russia over ties with the U.S.  His spokesman said the reason for terminating the VFA was to allow the Philippines military to be more independent.Analysts say access to the Philippines puts the U.S. in a position to rapidly respond to threats from China in the South China Sea. They say it also bolsters U.S. counterterror and intelligence gathering in the region.Austin said Beijing’s claim to the majority of the South China Sea encroaches on the sovereignty and basic rights afforded to Southeast Asian nations by international law.Chinese ships are accused of harassing fishermen inside the Philippine exclusive economic zone in the sea and oil and gas developers off the coasts of Malaysia and Vietnam, hindering their energy development.Despite the territorial claims of other nations, China has created hundreds of hectares of artificial islands in the resource-rich sea to bolster its claims.The VFA will also allow U.S. to continue to assist in counter terror efforts in the country’s south, where ISIS-affiliated militants are active. U.S. officials told VOA there are hundreds of radicalized Islamic militants in the Philippines.On Friday, Austin said, “A strong, resilient U.S.-Philippine alliance will remain vital to the security, stability and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific,” adding, “A fully restored VFA will help us achieve that goal together.”Before leaving the Philippines, Austin watched as John Lock – the U.S. Charge d’affairs- and Philippines Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin signed an agreement on maritime search and rescue (AMSAR) at the Department of Foreign Affairs. Afterwards, Austin had a brief meeting with Locsin. 
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Record-setting migration to the U.S.-Mexico border and scorching heat waves are contributing to an especially deadly summer for migrants negotiating desolate and unforgiving desert terrain in hopes of reaching the United States.In June alone, the remains of 43 bodies were found in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert north of the U.S. border with Mexico, according to the Tucson-based nonprofit group Water tanks from the NGO Humane Borders are placed in the desert as supply for immigrants crossing the area near Arivaca, Arizona, March 23, 2006.The group has documented remains found in the U.S. as far as 40 kilometers from the border and noticed increased traffic in the remote western desert, where migrants are cut off from almost any form of emergency assistance.The National Weather Service reported that June was the hottest month on record in the Phoenix and Tucson areas of Arizona, with temperatures regularly above 43 C (110 F).June 2021 is now the hottest June on record for Phoenix. Water is left by volunteers of the nonprofit Border Angels in a remote area of the mountains near the end of the fence at the U.S.-Mexico border, in Tecate, California, on Dec. 29, 2018.Humanitarian groups working along the border believe the actual migrant death toll is much higher than what has been officially reported over the years, with some bodies never found.Border Angels, a nonprofit organization in San Diego, California, that supports more than 15 shelters in Tijuana, Mexico, estimates that over the past 27 years, more than 11,000 migrants have perished in their attempt to cross the southern border.”But we will never know for sure,” said Border Angels Executive Director Dulce Garcia.Garcia said the group is seeing more migrants who have been waiting years to present themselves at a U.S. port of entry and ask for humanitarian relief.”These people that are here waiting, they’re very desperate. And even in 120-degree (Fahrenheit) weather (49 C), even when they know they’re risking their lives, the alternative is remaining in a country (Mexico) that also is a risk to them and their lives. So they feel like they have no other choice but attempt to cross into a country that they think is going to be safe for them,” Garcia told VOA.The U.S. Border Patrol has reported more than 7,000 migrant deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border from 1998 through 2020, according to archived data. Water drop programsBorder Angels operates what’s known as a water drop program. For roughly 20 years, volunteers have been depositing as much water as they can along the desert paths most traveled by migrants.In 2020, they placed more than 4,000 liters of water with messages written in Spanish: “Te deseo suerte,” or “I wish you luck.”Garcia said volunteers are careful to follow the law and keep interaction with any migrants they encounter to a minimum. But if someone is in distress, they call 911 for emergency assistance.”We don’t assist anyone in the crossing. We only drop supplies to make sure that people don’t die,” she added.Humane Borders has its own water program, and Jones said there are dangers associated with doing work as simple as giving out water.”It has to do with a number of hate groups and racist terrorist groups that roam the desert and are actively seeking to disrupt humanitarian supplies,” Jones said. That is one of the reasons his organization does not advertise water drop locations, he added.If Humane Borders’ volunteers find human remains during their water drop runs, Jones said, they immediately contact the U.S. Border Patrol.Looking at the latest information on post-mortem interval — the time that has elapsed since an individual’s death — for those found in the month of June, Jones said most died within the previous 30 days.”So, it’s not like these are a bunch of skeletal remains that just happened to be found. These are real, living, breathing people who in May were alive and, by the end of June, were not alive anymore,” he said.
 
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With the delta variant of the virus that causes COVID-19 rapidly spreading across the country, U.S. President Joe Biden has announced civilian federal government employees must be vaccinated or submit to regular testing and wear masks.“Every federal government employee will be asked to attest to their vaccination status,” the president said Thursday in a speech from the White House East Room. “Anyone who does not attest or is not vaccinated will be required to mask, no matter where they work, test one or two times a week to see if they’ve acquired COVID, socially distance, and generally will not be allowed to travel for work.”The federal government employs more than 4 million Americans, including over 2 million in the federal civilian workforce, a White House statement said.The same standards will apply to federal contractors, Biden added.”If you want to do business with the federal government, get your people vaccinated,” he said.Reporters raise their hands as they shout questions to President Joe Biden after speaking about COVID-19 vaccinations in the East Room of the White House in Washington, July 29, 2021.Labor unions representing federal workers are reacting cautiously.“We expect that the particulars of any changes to working conditions, including those related to COVID-19 vaccines and associated protocols, be properly negotiated with our bargaining units prior to implementation,” said Everett Kelley, the head of the American Federation of Government Employees, which is the largest union of federal workers, representing a workforce of 700,000.“Forcing people to undertake a medical procedure is not the American way and is a clear civil rights violation no matter how proponents may seek to justify it,” said Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), which represents 30,000 people across 65 agencies.”We would, therefore, encourage the administration to work collaboratively with FLEOA and other federal employee groups to incentivize all federal employees to be vaccinated, rather than penalize those who do not,” Cosme said.The decision to get vaccinated is one federal employees will be able to make, “because largely unvaccinated people continue to spread the virus and until we have more people who are vaccinated and are curbing the spread there needs to be proper protocols to keep Americans safe,” the White House deputy press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, told reporters prior to the president’s remarks.“And as a large employer, the largest in this country, who cares about the individuals who keep the government running, we have an obligation to be good stewards of the workforce and ensure their health and their safety.”Biden also said he is asking the Department of Defense to explore how and when to add mandatory inoculations for the coronavirus to the list of vaccines required for service personnel.“Our men and women in uniform who protect this country from grave threats should be protected as much as possible from getting COVID-19,” the president said. “I think this is particularly important because our troops serve in places throughout the world, many where vaccination rates are low and disease is prevalent.”The president also discussed whether people who are fully vaccinated will need booster shots.“As of now, my medical advisers say the answer is no,” Biden said. “No American needs a booster now. But if science tells us there’s a need for boosters, that’s something we’ll do.”Asked by a reporter about ordering states to compel vaccinations, the president replied the legality of that is not yet determined.“It’s still a question whether the federal government can mandate the whole country,” he said.Biden also announced the federal government will reimburse private employers who give paid time off to get vaccinated or take a family member to get shots. And he suggested more state and local governments offer $100 to those who get fully vaccinated. Again, the president tried to depoliticize the issue of vaccination.”The vaccine was developed and authorized under a Republican administration” of his predecessor Donald Trump, Biden said.He also repeated that wearing masks “is not a political statement,” while acknowledging widespread frustration with the return to masking.”I know it’s frustrating. I know it’s exhausting to think we’re still in this fight. I know we hoped this would be a simple, straightforward line without problems or new challenges. But that isn’t real life,” he said.Noting that desperate foreign leaders are calling him “almost every day” to plead with him to send more vaccine doses to their countries, Biden said it is “an American blessing that we have vaccines for each and every American. … It’s just a shame to squander that blessing.”
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