AP Morning Wire

Biden says pause on J&J shots shows gov’t putting safety 1st

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccination campaign hit a snag when federal regulators recommended a “pause” in administering Johnson & Johnson shots. But the White House……Read More

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US to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will withdraw all U.S. troops from Afghanistan by Sept. 11, the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America that were coordinated from that coun…Read More

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Decision expected on charges for cop who shot Black motorist

BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) — Prosecutors expect to decide Wednesday whether to charge the white former police officer who fatally shot a Black man during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis subu…Read More

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Royal funeral offers chance for William, Harry to reconcile

LONDON (AP) — When Prince Philip’s funeral takes place on Saturday, it will be more than a focal point for national mourning. Many will also be watching for any signs of reconciliation betwee…Read More

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100 Days: Tokyo Olympics marked by footnotes and asterisks

TOKYO (AP) — Tokyo pitched itself as “a safe pair of hands” when it was awarded the Olympics 7 1/2 years ago. “The certainty was a crucial factor,” Craig Reedie, an IOC vice president at the….Read More

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Doctors speak of a new variant of the virus that appears to be spreading faster than ever before

• Coronavirus – latest updates

 

But despite his growing sense of foreboding, the second wave of coronavirus that began to engulf India last month has confounded even Senthil’s worst expectations.

“People became so complacent, acting as if the virus had vanished which was absurd,” said Senthil, who is a urologist in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

“Now we are experiencing a wave of coronavirus infections that is far worse than the first and the magnitude of the spread is getting worse and worse. In Tamil Nadu it has taken just 15 days to reach the same level of cases in hospitals which was the peak last time. In the big cities in the state, the hospitals are already almost full.”

This week has marked a series of grim Covid milestones for India. It was this week the country once again outstripped Brazil to become the second-worst affected globally, with a total of over 13.68m cases. Each day has brought a new record for new infections; on Tuesday, the figure was 161,736. Active cases also hit a new high, while deaths continued to escalate to a total of over 171,000.

 

Nightmare scenes of a country struggling to cope have begun to emerge as doctors speak of a new variant of the virus that appears to be spreading faster than ever before, affecting young people and even children this time around and pushing India’s healthcare system to the brink of collapse. States such as Maharashtra have imposed a weekend lockdown in an attempt to curb infections, while Delhi has introduced a night curfew, with a total lockdown still not ruled out.

Over the weekend bodies piled up outside the government hospital in Raipur, in the state of Chhattisgarh, because the hospital had “not expected so many people to die at once” from coronavirus and could not cremate them fast enough. In Surat, in the state of Gujarat, crematoriums became so overwhelmed with coronavirus victims that families began burning their dead on open ground.

“This sheer tsunami of cases has already overwhelmed the healthcare infrastructure in the state,” said Dr Shashank Joshi, a member of the Mumbai Covid taskforce. “This time we are seeing younger people between 20 and 40 getting seriously affected and even children are now being hospitalised with severe symptoms. The capacity for the healthcare system to hold on is fast dwindling.”

Kshitij Thakur, a local politician in the Vasai-Virar municipality of Maharashtra, made a desperate public plea for help with an “acute” shortage of oxygen in the local government hospital, which had already led to the loss of three lives.

“The supply can run for only three hours,” said Thakur in a tweet directed at the central government and prime minister Narendra Modi. “There are more than 7,000 active cases in the area and more than 3,000 people require oxygen supply daily.”

Though over 108 million people have been vaccinated so far, in a country of 1.3bn it has not been enough to curb the second wave. On Tuesday, the drugs controller general of India (DCGI), Dr VG Somani, approved the Russian Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, for emergency use in India, with distribution likely to begin next month, and also cleared the way for Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson to be given approval.

Just a month ago, while Europe grappled with soaring cases and stringent lockdowns, there was a widespread belief across India that the country had avoided the spectre of a second wave through a combination of herd immunity from the first wave, which eased off around November, and a speculated natural immune resistance among Indians.

In January, health minister Harsh Vardhan proclaimed that India had “successfully contained the pandemic”. Caps were lifted on social and religious gatherings, including the Kumbh Mela, a Hindu festival which on Monday drew crowds of over a million. Several populous states held their elections over the past month, with prime minister Modi and home minister Amit Shah among those holding political rallies where thousands gathered without social distancing or masks enforced. All three states are now experiencing a sharp rise in cases.

Much of the blame for the second wave has been attributed to complacency, but an increasing body of evidence, backed up by first-hand accounts from doctors on the frontline, also points to possible new variants in India which are proving to be drastically more infectious.

“The rate at which cases have increased in this wave far exceeds the rate at which cases grew the first time,” said Gautam Menon, professor of physics and biology at Ashoka University. “There is certainly evidence that it is spreading faster, suggesting that it is likely more infectious.”

Menon believed it was “new variants driving this rapid increase”, in particular an Indian variant known as B.1.617, which contains two mutations which are associated with increased infectivity and “immune escape”. Menon pointed to data from Maharashtra, the Indian state worst affected by Covid-19, where this variant has been found to be responsible for 20% of the cases.

The government has been accused of being slow in genome sequencing of Covid cases in India over the past few months and therefore failing to detect new and possibly more virulent domestic variants, as well as the virulent Brazil and UK variants. In the state of Punjab which is experiencing a severe rise in case, 80% have been found to be the UK variant.

Menon said that it was unlikely that a second wave in India could have been avoided altogether. “However, a more robust sequencing program should have acted as an early warning system, picking up the new variants of concern at an earlier stage,” he said. “This would have helped to slow down, if not actually stop, the spread.”

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France suspending all flights to and from Brazil over Covid variant fear

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By Priscilla Alvarez, CNN

(CNN)The Biden administration has secured agreements for Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala to tighten their borders and stem the flow of migration, Special Assistant to the President for Immigration for the Domestic Policy Council Tyler Moran told MSNBC on Monday.

“We’ve secured agreements for them to put more troops on their own border. Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala have all agreed to do this. That not only is going to prevent the traffickers, and the smugglers, and cartels that take advantage of the kids on their way here, but also to protect those children,” Moran said.

The Biden administration has struggled to keep up with the influx of migrants coming to the US southern border, particularly unaccompanied minors, who have languished in Border Patrol stations as officials scramble to find sites to accommodate them.

Moran also outlined a two-pronged approach to address the situation at the border, including processing unaccompanied minors safely in the US and addressing the reasons why people migrate to the US.

“We’re addressing the reasons that people are coming from the region. This is really important. If you just focus on our border, you’re not addressing why people are actually coming to our border. The President has a blueprint and he’s working with the vice president on this,” Moran said, citing in part investments in the region.

US Customs and Border Protection apprehended more than 172,000 people attempting to cross the US-Mexico border in March, a 71% increase from February, according to the agency’s data.

While the majority of encounters along the border were single adults, who are being expelled under the public health order, CBP apprehended a record number of unaccompanied minors, with 18,890 in March, nearly double that of February.

President Joe Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris last month with overseeing efforts with Central American countries to stem the flow of migrants to the US southern border.

Harris has since spoken with President Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala and discussed increasing humanitarian assistance to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, as well as exploring opportunities to create jobs and improve conditions for people in the region, according to a White House readout. Harris also thanked Giammattei for his efforts to secure Guatemala’s southern border.

Administration officials have repeatedly underscored the importance of addressing root causes of migration and improving conditions in home countries.

Last week, the US Agency for International Development announced it was deploying a Disaster Assistance Response Team to respond to urgent humanitarian needs in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

“USAID leads the U.S. Government’s humanitarian response to mitigate the impact of recurrent drought, severe food insecurity, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic especially in communities still recovering from back-to-back hurricanes that hit just four months ago. We are deploying a Disaster Assistance Response Team, or DART, which comprises disaster experts from USAID focused on rapidly scaling up emergency food assistance, programs to help people earn an income, protection for the most vulnerable, and other critical humanitarian programs,” the statement read in part.

The Biden administration has also placed around 28,000 radio ads in Latin America as part of a stepped-up campaign to discourage people from journeying to the US.

The spots, which are recorded in Spanish, Portuguese and six indigenous languages, have reached at least 7 million Central American radio listeners via 133 radio stations, according to a State Department spokesperson, who added the scripts are derived from real-life testimonials. The US is also using social media to relay the administration’s message.

This story has been updated with additional details Monday.

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(CNN)Hundreds of protesters gathered for a third night of protests to express anger over the police killing of a Black man in a Minneapolis suburb as prosecutors decide whether to press charges against the officer authorities say shot him.

Washington County Prosecutor Pete Orput told CNN that he hopes to have a charging decision regarding former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter in the fatal shooting of 20-year-old Daunte Wright by Wednesday.

“I hope to have a charging decision by tomorrow,” Orput said in an email Tuesday afternoon. “I just received voluminous documents and with enough coffee I’ll have something tomorrow.”

Wright’s death during a traffic stop Sunday, which then Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon said appeared to be the result of Potter mistaking her gun for her Taser had sparked widespread anger.

Protests, some violent, have taken place each night while related developments have occurred in quick succession, including the release of body camera footage on Monday and the resignation of Potter and Gannon by Tuesday.

The third day of protest began peacefully, but by Tuesday evening, there was chaos around the Brooklyn Center police station. Officers used pepper spray and fired flash bombs at protesters, who hurled water bottles and other projectiles at officers in riot gear.

Protesters were also seen scaling a fence outside of the FBI office, holding a banner reading “Justice for Daunte Wright.” Members of the National Guard were on the ground in Brooklyn Center, Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Use-of-force expert for defense says Derek Chauvin was justified in kneeling on George Floyd

By the time the city’s 10 p.m. curfew went into effect, the once hundreds of protesters had dwindled to a few dozen. With officers and police vehicles forming a line across front yards and the street blocking the police precinct, those remaining draped themselves in blankets and lit a small garbage fire in the falling snow.

On the street where protesters were once shoulder to shoulder, the few remaining chanted: “Say his name Daunte Wright,” and “I smell bacon, fry the pig.”

Chief of the Minnesota State Patrol Matt Langer said the unified command in Brooklyn Center made “upwards of 60 arrests” Tuesday night, many of which were for “riot and other criminal behaviors.”

Speaking at the same late-night news conference, Hennepin County Sheriff David Hutchinson said there was recognition of the pain suffered in the community on Sunday night. “The person [Kim Potter] is no longer a police officer, and they’ll be held accountable for their actions,” he said. “But we can’t have people hurting our communities, we can’t have people hurting the men and women who are paid to protect them.”

Sunday’s killing of Wright is at least the third high-profile death of a Black man during a police encounter in the Minneapolis area in the past five years, after the shooting of Philando Castile in Falcon Heights in 2016 and the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis last year.

The trial of Derek Chauvin, the former officer accused of killing Floyd, is taking place just ten miles away from the scene of the latest protests.

Attorney Earl Gray is representing Potter, he told CNN on Tuesday. Gray is also the attorney for Thomas Lane, one of the four officers involved in Floyd’s death, and one of the defense attorneys for Jeronimo Yanez, the former police officer who was found not guilty in Castile’s death.

Demonstrators take cover from crowd-dispersal munitions from police outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department while protesting the shooting death of Daunte Wright, late Tuesday.

Two families come together in tragedy

Floyd’s family left the courthouse during Chauvin’s trial Tuesday “because they thought it was important that they give comfort to Daunte Wright’s mother” and family, attorney Ben Crump said at a news conference with the two families.

“We will stand in support with you. … The world is traumatized, watching another African American man being slayed,” said Philonise Floyd, brother of George Floyd. “I woke up in the morning with this on my mind. I don’t want to see another victim.”

The losses of both Wright and Floyd were acknowledged in Tuesday’s protests. Demonstrators knelt for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, to symbolize the amount of time authorities say Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck.

Daunte Wright called his mother right before he was shot. This is what he said

And just as the Floyd family did last year, the Wright family is looking for more answers surrounding their loved one’s death.

One of the family’s attorneys, Jeffrey Storms, told CNN that Gannon’s explanation — that the shooting appeared to be an accident — “is by no means proper or enough.”

“There were a number of intentional events that led to (Daunte Wright) being dead, and we need to find out exactly why each one of those intentional events happened,” Storms said.

“Grabbing your sidearm that you’ve likely deployed thousands, if not tens of thousands, of times is an intentional act,” Storms said. “A sidearm feels different than a Taser. It looks different than a Taser. (It) requires different pressure in order to deploy it.”

Wright’s father, Aubrey Wright, told ABC on Tuesday that he couldn’t accept Gannon’s explanation that Sunday’s shooting was accidental.

“I can’t accept that — a mistake. That doesn’t even sound right,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” He cited the officer’s length of service — authorities said she’d been with Brooklyn Center police for 26 years.

Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, said she wanted to see the officer “held accountable for everything that she’s taken from us.”

“It should have never, ever escalated the way it did,” Katie Wright told ABC.

Law enforcement officers advance on demonstrators gathered outside the Brooklyn Center Police Department late Tuesday.

What happened in the traffic stop that ended Wright’s life

Wright was with his girlfriend Sunday afternoon, driving to the house of his older brother, Damik Bryant.

Officers pulled him over in Brooklyn Center for an expired tag and learned he had an outstanding warrant, police said.

It was not immediately clear what the warrant was for.

Wright gave officers his name before calling his mother, Bryant said.

“They asked him to step out the car, and you know his first instinct was, ‘What did I do, what’s wrong?’ And they were like, ‘Well, put the phone down, get out the car now, we’ll talk to you about it when you get out,’” Bryant said.

“He said they pulled him over because he had air fresheners hanging from the rearview mirror,” Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, told CNN affiliate WCCO. “I heard the police officer come to the window and say, ‘Put the phone down and get out of the car,’ and Daunte said, ‘Why?’ And he said, ‘We’ll explain to you when you get out of the car,’” Katie Wright told CNN affiliate KARE.

Here’s what we know about Kim Potter, the officer who fatally shot Daunte Wright

“So, I heard the phone get either put on the dashboard or dropped, and I heard scuffling, and I heard the police officers say, ‘Daunte, don’t run.’ And then the other officer said, ‘Put the phone down’” before it sounded like the phone was hung up, she said.

Body camera footage released Monday shows Wright standing outside his vehicle with his arms behind his back and an officer directly behind him, trying to handcuff him. An officer tells Wright “don’t,” before Wright twists away and gets back into the driver’s seat of the car.

Gannon said Monday it appeared from the video that Wright was trying to leave.

The officer whose camera footage was released is heard warning the man she’s going to use her Taser on him, before repeatedly shouting, “Taser! Taser! Taser!”

Then, the officer is heard screaming, “Holy sh*t! I just shot him.”

The car’s door closes, and Wright drives away. The car crashed several blocks away, police said. Police and medical personnel attempted life-saving measures following the crash, but Wright died at the scene, Gannon said.

Gannon said the portion of body-worn camera footage released Monday led him to believe the shooting was accidental and that the officer’s actions before the shooting were consistent with the department’s training on Tasers.

CNN’s Amir Vera, Jason Hanna, Adrienne Broaddus, Carma Hassan, Keith Allen, Hollie SIlverman, Peter Nickeas, Holly Yan, Jessica Schneider, Jessica Jordan, Christina Carrega, David Close, Shawn Nottingham and Brad Parks contributed to this report.

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(CNN)- The World Health Organization has warned that the world needs a “reality check” on the state of the pandemic, as countries abandon restrictions despite four weeks of rising deaths and seven weeks of rising cases globally.

Maria van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead for coronavirus response, said 4.4 million Covid-19 infections had been recorded across the world last week globally and expressed concern about global trends.

“This is not the situation we want to be in 16 months into a pandemic, where we have proven control measures. It is time right now where everyone has to have a reality check about what we need to be doing,” van Kerkhove told a news briefing Monday.

Several countries in Asia and the Middle East have seen large increases in cases, WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said, noting that “confusion, complacency and inconsistency in public health measures” were primary drivers

Those spikes are occurring despite more than 780 million vaccine doses being administered globally, he said, adding that while vaccines were a vital and powerful tool, they were not the only ones available.

Ghebreyesus emphasized that public health measures — mask wearing, physical distancing, ventilation, hand hygiene, surveillance, testing, tracing and isolation — work to stop infections and save lives. “It takes a consistent, coordinated and comprehensive approach,” he said.

Over the last week in India, all-time high tallies of infections were recorded, as the country of nearly 1.4 billion people continues to roll out one of the world’s fastest vaccination drives.

The country reported 161,736 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, a slight dip following six consecutive days of record single-day rises, according to a CNN tally of figures from the Indian health ministry. India’s total caseload stands at more than 13.5 million — second only to the United States and Brazil — including nearly 170,000 fatalities.

India’s total caseload stands at more than 13.5 million — second only to the United States and Brazil — including nearly 170,000 fatalities.

Iran, which has the the highest number of cases and deaths in the Middle East, entered its fourth wave of the pandemic last week, the country’s health ministry said last week.

The country’s total number of Covid-19 related cases have surpassed 2 million since the beginning of the pandemic, with over 4,200 patients currently hospitalized in ICU, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health said Thursday.

More than 4,200 patients are currently hospitalized in Iranian ICUs and on Saturday the government imposed a 10-day lockdown across most of the country.

In Brazil, coronavirus cases are spiralling out of control; 4,195 people were recorded dead in just 24 hours last Tuesday, the country’s deadliest day of the pandemic yet. While the state of Sao Paulo and the city of Rio de Janeiro rank among the worst in the country for Covid-19 deaths, both eased restrictions on movement on Monday.

Sao Paulo authorities justified the reopening of schools, sports events and construction stores by pointing out that occupancy rates in intensive care units in the state have fallen from 90.5% to 88.6%.

“This measure clearly shows that the effort made in recent weeks is beginning to give results,” said vice-governor Rodrigo Garcia during a news conference on April 9. But daily numbers are still very grave — on Friday alone, the state registered over 20,000 new cases.

Meanwhile, in the city of Rio de Janeiro, ICU occupancy rates are higher at 92%, but Mayor Eduardo Paes nevertheless has decided to ease restrictions, saying that, “our reality does not allow lockdown,” during a press conference on Friday, adding that shop owners and the general population suffer economically from such measures. Still, he said, “This is no time to relax.”

Europe’s third wave

In Europe, many countries are navigating in the throes of a worrying third wave, with a more contagious variant of the virus appear to be the common culprit behind the chaos in Europe.

Two new studies suggest that the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant, which was first identified in the United Kingdom, is more transmissible, but the variant does not appear to affect disease severity in someone who gets Covid-19. The new findings clash with separate research that previously suggested the variant may be tied to a higher risk of dying from Covid-19.

In Germany, cases are on the rise, with healthcare workers “breaking down” and the country’s ICU bed occupancy reaching its “peak,” according to the director of the German intensive care association, who warned on Saturday that even with a hard lockdown, numbers will be rising for the next 10-14 days.

Last month, critics warned that Europe’s coronavirus restrictions have come too late and that the continents current problems can be traced back to politicians too eager to start easing.

On Monday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasized the urgent need for people to be vaccinated to break the third wave.

Meanwhile, England lifted restrictions after more than three months of lockdown on Monday, in a step that UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said was a “major step forward” for the country’s “roadmap to freedom.”

As part of “Step 2” in the country’s exit out of lockdown, non-essential shops, gyms, hairdressers, beauty salons and zoos reopened, as well as outdoor areas of pubs and restaurants.

The lifting of measures coincided with the UK reaching its Covid-19 vaccination target of offering a dose to all adults over 50, the clinically vulnerable and social care workers, the British government said Monday.

Nearly 40 million vaccines have now been given in total in the UK, with adults under 50 expected to begin to be invited in the coming days.

CNN’s Marcia Reverdosa, Rodrigo Pedroso, Maija Ehlinger, Rishabh M Pratap, Vedika Sud and Esha Mitra contributed to this report.

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Desmond Brown · CBC News · Posted: Apr 14, 2021 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: 34 minutes ago

Claire Matlock went from handling final exams as a medical student in St. Vincent to helping people devastated by the La Soufrière volcano eruption early Friday — and the volunteer efforts of the Kitchener, Ont., resident and her friends have extended far beyond expectations.

Between 16,000 and 20,000 people have been evacuated from the eruption area in the northern region of the island. Over 3,000 of them are staying at more than 80 government shelters.

Though covered in ash, Matlock was safe, as she lives in the capital of Kingstown in the “green zone down south,” which wasn’t as heavily impacted as the “red zone” in the north, she said when contacted by CBC News.

Recognizing the desperate need of the thousands affected by the eruption, Matlock, 27, and fellow medical student Anna Vanhoof, 23, of Bowmanville, Ont., quickly started working to help get food and supplies to them.

“There are lots of people off the grid, not in shelters, who need supplies just as well, and that’s where my friends and I come in and help fill those gaps,” said Matlock.

“As a group of aspiring physicians, it’s in our nature to help people, and many of us are finding ways to be of service between studying for final exams.”

It was Matlock’s social media post that really kicked up their efforts.

That mom that needed formula for her baby now has 10 cases of it today because friends and family back in Canada sent me some money to go to the store and then to her house.

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Canada’s WestJet today announced it will extend its temporary suspension of international sun flights to destinations in Mexico and the Caribbean until June 4, 2021.

“We are extending our suspension with the clear expectation that as more Canadians are vaccinated, government policy will transition,” said Ed Sims, WestJet President and CEO.

“We continue to advocate for the replacement of mandatory hotel quarantines with a testing regime that is equitable and consistent with global standards at all points of entry into our country. Alongside an accelerated and successful vaccine rollout, this policy transition will support the safe restart of travel and help stimulate the Canadian economy, where one in ten jobs are tourism related.”

Guests with affected itineraries will be proactively notified of the cancellations. Since November 1, 2020, WestJet has been providing refunds for all travelers, regardless of fare class booked where WestJet initiated the cancellation.

“We remain focused on a long-term solution that will serve the best interests of Canadians,” continued Sims. “A safe travel-restart framework is the most effective way to support those interests and restore jobs.”

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