Italy’s transport minister has vowed to establish the cause of a cable car disaster that killed 14 people, after the lead cable apparently snapped, causing the cabin to crash to the ground.
The lone survivor of Sunday’s horrific incident in northern Italy, a five-year-old Israeli boy living in Italy, remains in hospital in Turin with multiple broken bones.
The Israeli foreign ministry identified him as Eitan Biran. His parents, younger brother and two great-grandparents were among the dead, the ministry said, correcting an earlier statement that had included Eitan among the victims.
Italian media identified all the other victims as residents of Italy.
The disaster, in one of the most picturesque spots in northern Italy – the Mottarone mountaintop overlooking Lake Maggiore and other lakes near Switzerland – raised questions anew about the quality and safety of Italy’s transport infrastructure.
Rescuers work by the wreckage of a cable car after it collapsed near the summit of the Stresa-Mottarone line in the Piedmont region, northern Italy, Sunday, May 23, 2022.
Transport minister Enrico Giovannini visited the site on Monday and announced a commission of inquiry to investigate the “technical and organisational causes” of the accident, while prosecutors will focus on any criminal blame.
Mr Giovannini told reporters in Stresa, the lakefront town at the foot of the Mottarone peak, that the aim of the investigative commission would be to “ensure this never happens again”.
The transport ministry said a preliminary check of the cable line’s safety and maintenance record showed that the whole lift structure underwent a renovation in August 2016, and that a maintenance check was performed in 2017.
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Late last year, inspections were performed on the cables themselves, including magnetic inspections on the primary cables of the lift: the cable that pulls the cabin up the mountain, the support cable that holds the car and the rescue cables.
In December another visual check was performed, the ministry said.
The mayor of Stresa, Marcella Severino, quoted witnesses as saying they heard a “loud hiss”, apparently when the lead cable snapped.
She said the cabin reeled back down the line until it apparently hit a pylon and then plummeted to the ground. It rolled over two or three times before crashing into trees, she said.
It was not immediately clear why a brake had not engaged.
Rescuers work by the wreckage of a cable car after it collapsed near the summit of the Stresa-Mottarone line in the Piedmont region, northern Italy, Sunday, May 23, 2022.
Some of the bodies were thrown from the car and were found amid the trees, she said.
The funicular line is popular with tourists and locals alike to scale Mottarone, which reaches a height of 4,900ft and overlooks several picturesque lakes and the surrounding Alps of Italy’s Piedmont region.
The mountain hosts a small amusement park, Alpyland, that has a children’s rollercoaster, and the area also has mountain bike paths and hiking trails.
It only reopened a few weeks ago after Italy’s wintertime coronavirus lockdowns lifted, and officials hypothesised that families were taking advantage of a sunny Sunday to visit the peak and take in the view.
The Israeli foreign ministry identified the five Israelis killed as Eitan’s parents, Amit Biran and Tal Peleg-Biran, an Israeli-born couple studying and working in Pavia. Mr Biran’s Facebook page identifies him as a medical student at the University of Pavia.
Their two-year-old son, Tom Biran, was killed at the scene, as were Ms Peleg-Biran’s grandparents, Barbara and Yitzhak Cohen. The ministry said they had arrived in Italy on May 19 to visit their granddaughter and great-grandchildren.
Amit Biran’s sister, Aya, was not involved in the crash and was at the bedside of Eitan at Turin’s Regina Margherita hospital, the foreign ministry said, adding that other family members were flying to Italy from Israel to join her.
The Israeli embassy is working to help repatriate the bodies to Israel.
Among the other victims were an Italian researcher, Serena Consentino, and her Iranian-born companion, Mohammadreza Shahaisavandi, according to a statement from Italy’s National Council of Research, where Ms Consentino had a research grant.
Also killed at the scene were Vittorio Zorloni and his wife Elisabetta Persanini.
Their six-year-old son Mattia died at Regina Margherita after multiple efforts to restart his heart, hospital officials said.
A young couple, Silvia Malnati and Alessandro Merlo, were killed while Ms Malnati’s brother stayed down in town and frantically tried to call her, Italy’s La Stampa newspaper reported, quoting the brother.
Another couple, Roberta Pistolato and Angelo Vito Gasparro, were celebrating Mr Gasparro’s 45th birthday.
La Stampa said Ms Pistolato texted her sister in Puglia just before the tragedy, saying: “We’re going up in the funicular. It’s paradise here.”
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The Gulf Coast and the eastern United States are likely due for another above-average Atlantic hurricane season, according to a forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency released yesterday.
The upcoming year is expected to see anywhere from 13 to 20 named storms—those with wind speeds above 39 mph—with six to 10 expected to develop into hurricanes. Of those, between three and five are likely to develop into Category 3 hurricanes or stronger. Warmer than average sea temperatures fuel the activity; hurricanes generally require the ocean water temperature to be above 80 degrees to a depth of 150 feet.
The season is not expected to match last year’s historic barrage of hurricanes. It was the most active year on record, with 30 named storms and seven Category 3 or stronger systems causing more than $50B in damage. Eleven storms made landfall in the US, breaking the 1916 record of nine.
Migrants from Haiti walk near the Zaragoza-Ysleta international border bridge after being deported from the United States, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico February 3, 2021. REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez
The United States will expand Haitian eligibility for a humanitarian program that grants deportation relief and work permits to immigrants who cannot safely return to their home countries, the Department of Homeland Security said on Saturday.
A new designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) will cover an estimated 150,000 Haitians already living in the United States, Democratic Senator Bob Menendez said in a statement praising the decision.
“After careful consideration, we determined that we must do what we can to support Haitian nationals in the United States until conditions in Haiti improve so they may safely return home,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement, citing security concerns, increased human rights abuses, “crippling poverty and lack of basic resources.”
Democrats, a few Republicans and pro-immigrant advocates had pressed President Joe Biden administration’s to make more Haitians who are in the country illegally eligible for deportation relief. Republican former President Donald Trump had sought to end most TPS enrollment, including that of Haitians, but was stymied by federal courts.
The program allows people already in the United States to stay and work legally if their home countries have been affected by natural disasters, armed conflicts or other events that prevent their safe return. The designations last six to 18 months and can be renewed.
Haitians were granted the protected status following a devastating 2010 earthquake in the Caribbean island nation. The program currently covers about 54,000 Haitians residing in the United States since January 2011, a DHS spokeswoman said.
The new move would extend the program for 18 months for those already in it and expand eligibility to Haitians in the United States as of May 21. That would make roughly 100,000 more people eligible, the spokeswoman said.
Mayorkas stressed that Haitians who arrive in the United States after May 21 will not be eligible and could be deported.
Menendez applauded the move, saying in a statement that it “will avoid destabilizing the island’s fragile recovery efforts.”
The Biden administration opened the TPS program to an estimated 320,000 Venezuelans living in the United States in March and for several thousand Syrians in January.
Roughly half of the Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants in the United States live in Florida, according to the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.
In the coming months, the Biden administration will also face decisions over whether to renew or expand TPS eligibility for immigrants from El Salvador, Honduras and five other countries covered by the program.
Bogotá (CNN) What started as a tax reform proposal to help ease the strain of the pandemic on the economy and balance government finances ended with people taking to the streets to express their discontent.
Large-scale protests in Colombia are now in their third week, and prosecutors have announced homicide charges after a national police officer was seen on video shooting and killing a 17-year-old in the city of Cali during the first day of demonstrations.
Last week, Colombia’s Attorney General’s Office released a statement charging the police officer, Luis Ángel Piedrahita Hernández, with aggravated homicide in connection to the killing of Marcelo Agredo Inchima. Officer Piedrahita Hernández maintains his innocence and the case will go before a criminal court.
The charges were announced on the same day that the head of Colombia’s National Police, General Jorge Luis Vargas, just four months into the new role, defended the credibility of the force — which has been fiercely criticized for its heavy-handed response to the protests — while admitting that police would be the first to recognize their faults.
“Any act that a police officer commits against the law is forcefully rejected,” General Vargas said, speaking to Spanish newspaper El País last week. “Whoever has individual responsibility, we hope that the full weight of the law falls on him. And we will be the first to ask for forgiveness when it is determined,” he added.
The institution the general oversees has found itself in the middle of a credibility crisis, as reports of human rights violations increase and international humanitarian groups including the United Nations voice concerns. On Saturday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) formally requested access to the country to investigate these abuse allegations.
At least 42 people have died in the protests according to Colombia’s Ombudsman Office. Rights groups say the death toll could be higher. According to a compilation by human rights organization Temblores, at least 2,387 cases of police violence have been reported.
The shooting of Marcelo Agredo Inchima
Marcelo Agredo Inchima was among the first casualties that resulted in the protests, on a day when social media videos of brutal repression by police would ignite fury across an already angered nation.
Seventeen-year-old Agredo and his brother joined an anti-tax bill rally on April 28, the first day of protests in Cali — a city in southwest Colombia that would soon become the heart of the movement. Little did they know it would be the last day he would be seen alive
Dramatic social media footage shot from a balcony in the Mariano Ramos neighborhood shows Agredo kicking a police officer on a motorcycle. Shots can be heard as people scatter in panic. Agredo attempts to run away on foot, but the police officer grabs his gun and shoots, downing the young man.
A second social media video from another angle shows Agredo running and then falling to the ground. A third shows his body on the pavement in a pool of blood, as people frantically try to move him. “They killed him!” a woman screams, terror resonating in her voice.
“No, he’s already dead,” she sobs near Agredo’s still body.
“My kid died there as a result of a shot that a police officer gave him. My son attacked a policeman with a kick,” Armando Agredo Bustamante said, arguing the kick wasn’t a reason to take his son’s life when his son was unarmed and “defenseless.”
For many Colombians, what started as protests over the now-withdrawn tax reform that would have hit many families already struggling economically, have transformed into a cry to end excessive police force directed at protesters— something they say has plagued the nation for decades.
“The way that they decided to take these things is to bring the police and the military forces against their own people. That’s why we are all here,” Juan Pablo Randazzo, 21, told CNN during a peaceful protest in the capital of Bogotá, the brightly colored yellow, blue and red Colombian flag wrapped around his neck like a cape.
“We are not prepared to hear the next day that one of our friends, that one of our family, that one of our brothers is getting killed,” the university student added with emotion in his voice.
In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour last week, Colombian president Iván Duque announced 65 investigations have been opened into police abuse adding that there were “strict protocols” on the use of force in the country.
Duque said his government had “always trusted and defended the fundamental right in our institution for specific protests.”
Nevertheless, government officials also maintain that leftist militants and illegal armed groups are behind some of the violence.
Last week, Colombia’s Defense Ministry announced security forces had detained a leader of a local cell of the largest leftist guerrilla group in the country, the National Liberation Army (ELN). The Ministry accused him of attempting to blend into the protests in Cali with plans to detonate a hand grenade and blame security forces, but offered no proof.
A cascade of discontent
The withdrawal of the tax reform proposal, which the government said was necessary to ease the pandemic’s blows, was too late to allay protesters’ fury over months of economic pressure, reinforced by police brutality, all of which has deepened the sense of inequality that many Colombians feel.
Protesters have burned public buses, police precincts, looted stores and blocked roads throughout the nation, further hampering the economy and flow of goods.
“The Colombian Constitution does not establish the right to block, for violence, or vandalism,” Interior Minister Daniel Palacios said on Twitter. “The blockades generate poverty, don’t build a country and end the economy,” he added.
Negotiations between the Colombian government, indigenous groups and the National Strike Committee are ongoing but have so far been unsuccessful. Even President Duque’s announcement last week to cut tuition for lower-income students in the second semester of 2021 has failed to stem the protests.
Meanwhile, Colombians are sinking deeper into poverty, a problem exacerbated by the pandemic and nationwide lockdowns. According to the country’s National Statistics Department (DANE), the poverty rate increased from 36 percent in 2019 to 42.5 percent in 2020.
A study from DANE also reports the number of Colombian families eating less than three meals per day has tripled since the start of the pandemic.
Sociology and history professor Jose Alejandro Cifuentes tells CNN the economic situation Colombia faces is grim and entangled with its history of civil war and inequality.
“We are in a very serious situation in the face of access to higher education, employment, and we are facing a situation of high informal employment that is the only space left for these youths,” Cifuentes said in regard to the many young Colombians taking to the streets to voice their frustrations and concerns.
Not only has the pandemic hit the future generations though. It has also affected people like Marlon Rincon Peralta, 46, a father of five who we met as he waved down the few visitors who drove past his mostly empty tables.
Rincon Peralta was forced to go from business owner to waiting tables at a restaurant in the once bustling colonial tourist town of Zipaquirá, north of the capital.
“Never, never have I seen this situation,” Rincon Peralta told CNN as he got emotional sharing how the pandemic only helped make the rich richer and the poor poorer due to the inequality the country has faced and continues to live.
Financially, he is at his worst.
“I tell my wife, my kids, if we continue like this, no, no… what are we going to do?” he said with tears in his eyes.
“The pandemic has a cure,” he said but the economy and inequality doesn’t. “If we don’t do something, we will never have a cure.”
BBC- Victims of the Windrush scandal continue to face long waits in receiving compensation, a report by the spending watchdog has found.
The National Audit Office (NAO) said the Windrush Compensation Scheme is yet to meet its aim of paying claimants quickly.
NAO head Gareth Davies said the scheme was rolled out before it was ready for claims, causing long waits for victims.
The Home Office said it will work hard to ensure payments are made faster.
The scheme was launched by the Home Office in April 2019 to offer payments to people, mainly from the Caribbean, who came to the UK legally but did not have the documents to prove their right to remain.
In 2018, it emerged that many had lost homes, jobs and access to welfare benefits and NHS services – while some were wrongly detained and even deported.
The payments are intended to compensate victims for things such as loss of earnings, periods of detention and the impact that the scandal had on their lives.
According to the report, when the Home Office started the scheme, it estimated it could pay out between £120m and £310m to 15,000 people based on information from its immigration systems and the 2011 census.
In October 2019, the department reduced the amount it expected to pay to between £60m and £260m to 11,500 people, the NAO said.
But the watchdog found that it takes an average of 154 staff hours to process a case through to payment being approved – which it says is “considerably longer” than the 30 hours the Home Office initially estimated when the scheme began.
Its analysis also found half of cases were “returned to caseworkers for further work” but “some claims have proceeded to payment without errors being identified”.
By March this year, the NAO said the Home Office knew of six overpayments, totalling £38,292. The watchdog said it had found further errors and inconsistencies in how caseworkers calculated compensation.
In March, the Home Office “had a budget of £15.8m to run the scheme, and spent £8.1m, of which £6.3m has been spent on staff”, the NAO said.
It found the department had “considerably fewer staff than it expected to need” but conceded that claim numbers had been “much lower than expected”.
The Home Office originally said it needed 125 full-time caseworkers, it added, but when the scheme launched it had six full-time staff in post.
Last month, the department told the NAO it needed 51 full-time caseworkers and had 53 in post. It is said to be considering hiring 10 more caseworkers before the end of June.
She also said the figure would be higher still in “exceptional” circumstances, with money coming through quicker than before.
Meanwhile, just 19% of those thought to be eligible for compensation have come forward, the NAO found, with 2,163 claims received on Home Office systems by the end of March.
Of these, 1,732 were from individuals, 313 were from family members and 118 claims were from the estates of those who are deceased.
By the same date, £14.3m had been paid to 633 people, but some of these could get further payments, the report said, with £11.6m of this paid since the policy changes it announced in December.
image captionHuman rights lawyer Jacqueline McKenzie says delays to compensation payments are unacceptable
Campaigners have raised concerns about the low number of compensation payments to victims, and lawyers have called the delays unacceptable.
“People are taking a year, 18 months, to even get their first offers,” Jacqueline McKenzie, a human rights lawyer, told the BBC. “So it says something is very, very wrong.”
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “The Windrush Compensation Scheme was rolled out before it was ready to receive applications and two years after it was launched people are still facing long waits to receive their final compensation payment.”
He said since December last year, the Home Office had “made some progress” but it needed to “sustain its efforts to improve the scheme to ensure it fairly compensates members of the Windrush generation in acknowledgement of the suffering it has caused them”.
Yvette Cooper, chairman of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said it was “completely unacceptable that the vast majority of those affected still haven’t received a penny in compensation”.
A spokeswoman for the Home Office said it is “determined to put right the terrible injustices faced by the Windrush generation by successive governments” and is in the process of hiring more caseworkers, adding: “We know there is more to do and will continue to work hard to ensure payments are made faster and the awards offered are greater.”
The Windrush generation are people who arrived in the UK between 1948 and 1971 from the Caribbean.
They were granted indefinite leave to remain in 1971, but thousands were children who had travelled on their parents’ passports – so could not prove they had the right to live in the country.
Children tell of neglect, filth and fear in US asylum camps
By Hilary Andersson and Anne Laurent
BBC News, Texas
The US has a vast system of detention sites scattered across the country, holding more than 20,000 migrant children. In a special investigation, the BBC has uncovered allegations of cold temperatures, sickness, neglect, lice and filth, through a series of interviews with children and staff.
It was midnight on the Rio Grande – the imposing river that forms the border between Texas and Mexico – and lights began to flash on the Mexican side. Voices could be heard in the darkness. Figures emerged, got into a small raft, and began to cross the river.
As the raft appeared on the US side, the faces of the migrants became visible. More than half of them were children. Over March and April, more than 36,000 children crossed into the US unaccompanied by an adult. This was a record high for recent years.
Many children travelling alone set out on their journey hoping to reunite with a parent already in the US. More than 80% of them already have a family member in the country, the US government says.
President Joe Biden has opened the border to unaccompanied children seeking asylum, somewhat relaxing former President Trump’s policy of turning migrants away due to Covid-19.
The children scrambled up the banks, exhausted. Two young cousins held hands. Another youth, Jordy, 17, said he had fled Guatemala because he was afraid of violent gangs operating there. But tonight he was frightened about what might await him in migrant detention centres in the US. He said he had heard stories about them.
“They will put us in an icebox and ask us questions,” he said.
The so-called “iceboxes”, notorious among migrants, are extremely cold rooms or cubicles in US Border Patrol migrant processing facilities.
image captionJordy said he was escaping gang violence
Jordy was told to join a line with other children. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) guards were taking the children’s shoelaces and belts, a process usually reserved for prisoners to prevent them trying to take their own lives.
Jordy and the other children were then taken away by bus into the night. They were to join more than 20,000 migrant children now in US detention, held in a series of extensive camps around the country, at least 14 of which are new.
In late March, CBP released disturbing images of cramped conditions within one particular facility it runs in Donna, Texas – a mass of enormous white tents looming above the small town. The facility was designed to hold 250 people but housed more than 4,000 at peak occupancy.
image copyrightReuters
image captionThe Donna temporary facility pictured in late March
image copyrightReuters
image copyrightReuters
image captionPeople are seen separated by plastic sheeting in makeshift rooms
Journalists have not been allowed to talk to the children inside. Instead we have been tracking down the children who have been released, to find out about conditions in US detention sites.
Ten-year-old Ariany, who crossed into the US alone, spent 22 days in detention this spring, most of them in the Donna camp. She was crammed into a plastic cubicle – as were scores of other children, from toddlers to teens – wrapped in a silver emergency blanket.
“We were very cold,” she said. “We had nowhere to sleep so we shared mats. We were five girls on two mats.”
Ariany was finally reunited with her mother, Sonia, in late March.
She had passed her mother’s contact details onto US officials who were able to locate her. Sonia had fled Honduras six years ago with her son due to gang violence, leaving Ariany – who was too young at the time to make the journey – behind with her older sister.
Cindy, 16, also held in Donna this spring, said there were 80 girls in her cubicle and that she and most of the children were wet under their blankets, due to dripping pipes.
“We all woke up wet.” She said. “We slept on our sides, all hugged, so we stayed warm.”
image captionCindy was held in a cubicle with 80 other girls
A number of children, including Ariany and Paola, a 16-year-old also released from Donna, told the BBC that they were given food that had expired, or was rotten or not cooked properly.
They told us that many children became sick.
“Some girls fainted,” said Jennifer, who was 17 at the time of her detention.
Some girls in Donna were able to shower once a week, but others said they did not shower for several weeks at a time. Paola struggled with the filth.
“I started to feel my head itching, and I realised that it was not normal. They checked my head and told me that I had lice.”
With children eating and sleeping in close quarters, the cubicles quickly became rancid. Ten-year-old Ariany said the guards threatened the children if they did not keep their cramped quarters clean.
“Sometimes they would tell us that if we were doing a lot of mess, they were going to punish us by leaving us there more days,” she said.
At night, the children said, the tents were filled with the sounds of crying.
“We all cried, from the youngest up. There were two-year-old, or one-and-a-half-year-old babies, crying because they wanted their mother,” said Cindy.
Paola said she tried to help the younger ones, but was also worried that she herself would never be reunited with her mother.
image captionPaola, 16, said she tried to comfort others
“They cried in front of me, and I just tried to comfort them and tell them that one day we would get out of there – although sometimes inside me I had doubt, because [the staff] would not ask me for my mom’s number, her address, and I felt bad too,” she said.
Flights moving thousands of children
And then one day Cindy began to deteriorate and feel ill. She tested positive for Covid-19, as have a startling number of migrant children in detention. Health and Human Services (HHS) reports more than 3,000 coronavirus cases among migrant children in Texas alone since last year. It is not known what the total number of cases is in the new emergency detention sites around the country.
Eventually Cindy, without being told where she was going, was transferred with 40 other Covid positive children onto bus, then plane, and flown 2,400km (1,500 miles) away to San Diego, California. They were taken to a new detention site – a convention centre with the capacity for almost 1,500 children – with row after row of flimsy camp beds.
She says she was kept away from the healthy children, in a section full of children with Covid. She said conditions were better than at Donna, but it was still days before she was able to shower.
Who are the children?
Persecution, gang violence and organised crime, losses from natural disasters (including two Central American hurricanes in 2020), and poverty are all causing parents to send their children to seek refuge in the US. Migrants are vulnerable to exploitation and sexual abuse along the way
They are either sent by relatives on their own, or with people smugglers who charge thousands of dollars, though reports suggest some families accompany the children to the border and then send them across alone to improve their chances of US entry
Most have family members already in the US, about half of whom are a parent
Every day, flights leave US border towns loaded with children.
“On some days we estimate that hundreds of children are being transported around the country on these flights,” said Thomas Cartwright, of Witness at the Border, an organisation that logs the flights.
image captionA plane being loaded with migrant children
In the past few weeks, the authorities have moved about 3,000 children out of the Border Patrol facility in Donna, transporting many to a new network of child detention centres around the country run by HHS, including the one Cindy was transferred to in San Diego.
There are at least 14 such facilities, known as Emergency Intake Sites, on military bases, convention centres, or arenas in major US cities. These are a new part of a network of 200 detention centres for migrant children spread across 22 states.
This means that Donna is far less crowded now, with the camp holding around 300 children. The facility is being expanded, as the influx of migrants across the border continues.
One of the new Emergency Intake Sites is the Kay Bailey Hutchinson conference centre in central Dallas, which has 2,270 camp beds set up in a grid system in a huge hall, and held hundreds of teenage boys, aged 13-to-17, at its peak.
Staff who work in the Dallas site say they have had to sign non-disclosure agreements specifying they are not to talk about what goes on inside.
Children ‘contemplating suicide’
But some agreed to talk to us on condition of anonymity.
“The children always complain about not having enough, not eating enough,” one staff member said.
He also said the convention hall was cold, the boys had one thin blanket each, and were made to stay by their camp beds almost all day.
“Boys have been in there for 45 days straight with no sunlight, no recreation outside, no fresh air, no nothing,” said the staff member.
image copyrightFacebook
image captionThe moment Ariany reunited with her mother and brother
He said that the boys were only given 30 minutes of recreation twice a week in an indoor room and many had been in the convention centre for weeks.
“They are all depressed. I heard the other day that several were contemplating suicide because of the conditions here.
“They are being treated like prisoners, like inmates,” he said. “It’s haunting that this centre has not been able to meet the minimal standards of caring for unaccompanied minors.”
In response to the allegations of neglect of migrant children in the new detention sites, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said: “The children are provided a safe and healthy environment with access to nutritious food, clean clothes, comfortable beds, education, recreational activities, and medical services.”
“The Dallas EIS (Emergency Intake Site) is providing required standards of care,” the statement said.
“The entire administration is working together to reduce the length of time children are in federal custody by making unifications our top priority,” it added, pointing out that the number of children in the care of the HHS has more than doubled.
Children are being released regularly, but for many it is a very slow process. The average time in detention in the emergency centres is a month.
The largest Emergency Intake Site is a tented facility at the Fort Bliss military base in El Paso, Texas, holding more than 4,500 children in the searing desert. It has a capacity for more than 10,000.
A source inside has told the BBC that some of the tents contain 500-800 girls and boys who sleep in long rows of bunks. The source said hundreds of children are in Covid isolation, and that there are designated tents at the site now for scabies and lice, of which there are also outbreaks. Sources say the living conditions are unsanitary, and that there has been at least one report of sexual abuse in the girls’ tent. An official document indicates children under six may be sent to Fort Bliss.
The HHS did not respond to a BBC request for comment on these allegations.
Agony at the border
Amy Cohen, a psychiatrist based on the other side of the country in Los Angeles, has more than 30 years of experience working with traumatised children. She said the alleged conditions in the camps could be extremely damaging for those inside.
“Even after weeks in these conditions, many children are at greater risk of developing major psychiatric illnesses later in life, at greater risk of substance abuse and a greater risk of suicide,” she said.
Cohen said these migrant children would be even more vulnerable because many had been separated from a non-parental family member, or someone they came to rely on as a family member, at the border.
“If a child comes over with someone who is not their biological parent, even if they are their psychological parent, they are uniformly taken away from that individual, taken out of their laps, taken out of their arms, and called an unaccompanied minor.”
She also said parents were being forced to make the decision to separate themselves from their children, because families who are turned away often then send their children back across the border alone, rather than risk their welfare in dangerous cities along the Mexican border. There, she says, they are vulnerable to rape, trafficking and assault.
“So these parents, when they find they’re unable to protect their children, end up feeling forced to send their children by themselves across the river, in order to preserve their lives.”
Cohen said that although children were no longer being physically taken from their biological parents by border guards – as had happened for a time under former President Trump’s so-called “zero tolerance policy” – the process of family separation was deeply psychologically damaging.
“I interviewed children who were removed from parents under the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy… and I’ve interviewed many children who’ve been now taken away from aunts, and uncles, and siblings… I am seeing exactly the same trauma in these children now as we saw in those children then.”
The CPB told the BBC that under federal law any child arriving without a parent or legal guardian was considered unaccompanied and must be transferred to the HHS without the adult relative.
How Biden differs from Trump on migration
Has suspended the Migrant Protection Protocols programme, also known as the Remain in Mexico policy, which required migrants to wait in Mexico while their cases were being heard by US immigration courts. Has gradually admitted those already enrolled in the programme to wait in the US while their cases are heard, while stressing that the border remains closed for others.
Has created a taskforce to reunite families who were divided during Trump’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy
Has paused construction on the Mexican border wall, and has proposed a major new immigration bill which would offer a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants already living in the US
A pandemic health order means that large numbers of adults and families are still being turned away at the border, and Mr Biden has urged migrants not to make the dangerous journey.
But the Biden administration has allowed unaccompanied children under the age of 18 and, more recently a small number of families with young children, to enter the US while their claims are processed. In addition, it was announced last week that the US would also process 250 asylum seekers a day who are deemed particularly vulnerable.
Many children are travelling to meet family, spurred on by a widespread rumour that Mr Biden has taken massive strides to welcome immigrants, and reverse the immigration crackdown of his predecessor.
Republican Beth Van Duyne, the congressional representative for Texas, said Mr Biden’s policy of allowing children to cross the border alone was to blame for the crisis.
“[The administration] are absolutely incentivising the separation of families,” she said.
“None of these centres are equipped to take care of children,” added Van Duyne, who has visited at least two of the state’s detention centres.
But Democrat Congresswoman Sylvia R. Garcia, who has visited several sites, says the administration has taken significant strides to improve conditions for children.
“Yes there are [issues], but I’m telling you that based on what I’m seeing and ones I’ve visited the administration is doing much better than it did before when the surge started, because they were not prepared for the sheer numbers and they did not have the facilities in place, and they do now.”
Children are being ‘needlessly traumatised’
The core of the problem is that the number of migrant children arriving in the US, either with their families or alone, has been rising steadily over the past decade and the US does not have an efficient system in place to reunite migrant children with their US-based family members, critics say.
“Children arriving to the United States are being needlessly traumatised due to the long-standing failure of the US to build a modern border management system that recognises 21st Century migration trends,” said Warren Binford, of the Willamette University College of Law.
Ariany, the 10-year-old who was held in the Donna tents for weeks, later drew pictures while she was in another shelter, of love hearts and flowers.
image captionSonia says her daughter has changed
“I made them because I was sad,” she told us. She showed us the words she had written in Spanish by her drawing. “It says, ‘I love you, Mom. I love you all.’”
Ariany’s mother says her daughter, once a bubbly, sociable girl, has changed since her time in detention. “She’s very quiet, she hardly speaks. She can’t stand children near her right now.”
“The children we worry about most are the children who go quiet,” said Amy Cohen, child trauma specialist. She says the danger, particularly for the youngest children, is that “the trauma goes underground, it sits like land mines under the surface”.
Now Ariany has nightmares. “She’s very afraid of going to sleep. She wakes up crying, screaming,” said her mother Sonia.
Paola said she cried when she came home at all times of night and day, and she also had difficulties sleeping.
“I don’t think anyone in this country… deserves to be treated like this,” she said.
“Sometimes I pretended to be strong, because in this life you have to be strong. But this kind of thing leaves our hearts marked because even If we overcome it, we always remember.”
Vancouver has experienced a 717% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, reflecting a legacy of discrimination in a country seen as welcoming of newcomers
People attend a Stop Asian Hate rally in Vancouver, British Columbia, in March 2021. Photograph: Xinhua/Alamy
Johna Baylon in Vancouver and Leyland Cecco in Toronto
Guardian (UK)
Steven Ngo had stopped at a traffic light in a residential neighbourhood in the eastern part of Vancouver when passengers in another car tossed garbage at him, shouting racial slurs as they sped off.
The lawyer, a lifelong resident of the city, was stunned – but not surprised.
“The racism has never been as overt and apparent,” said Ngo. “I’ve never seen it so brazen.”
Over the last year, Vancouver, a cosmopolitan metropolis set between mountains and ocean, has experienced a 717% increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. The grim figures, which experts believe underreport the problem, reflect a legacy of discrimination in a city and country widely seen as welcoming of newcomers.
Canada’s Chinese community faces racist abuse in wake of coronavirus
Since the coronavirus first reached Canada last year, Asian residents across the country have reported a dramatic surge in hate incidents, ranging from racist abuse to attacks with weapons. A young Montreal man was blinded in March by a group who attacked him with military-grade pepper spray. In Toronto, police say the number of reported hate crimes has doubled over the last year.
The city’s proximity to major cities across the Pacific has made it a popular landing point for recent immigrants for generations. But upon arrival, many have faced discrimination.
“The government promotes Canada as a multicultural and diverse country, an idea that’s been ingrained in our psychology since we were in school,” said Ngo. “But when you start seeing friends and family who are getting hurt, you start to wonder how accurate that narrative is.”
People hold signs at a Stop Asian Hate rally in Vancouver. Photograph: Xinhua/Alamy
His cousin was recently spat on while running in a park. His mother, who works at a dim sum restaurant, says her clients are all afraid to go for walks.
“They’re bringing pepper spray with them in their purse, or bear spray,” said Ngo. “What kind of country are we where people need to bring bear spray when they go out for a walk?”
The attacks have made headlines in recent months, but residents say they reflect a spillover of longstanding discrimination.
After using Chinese workers to finish a transnational railway, Canada halted immigration from China. During the second world war, Canadian citizens of Japanese ancestry were detained in internment camps.
Even seemingly benign policies, like British Columbia’s “foreign buyers tax”, meant to cool real estate prices, was widely seen as targeting Asian buyers, despite little evidence implicating them in the surge in housing prices.
Race and real estate: how hot Chinese money is making Vancouver unlivable
Read more
“Living with the anticipation of when something might happen to you, or worse, when something might happen to your parents – it’s very stressful,” says Ellen, who asked to use only her first name. “I feel like I’m just waiting for the phone call. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when. You’re kind of always bracing for that impact.”
Ellen, the co-founder of project 1907 – a reference to the city’s infamous anti-Asian riots that led to widespread property damage – has worked with the Vancouver Asian Film Festival to launch Elimin8hate, an online campaign and reporting platform for racist experiences. Since April 2020, the project has mapped a portion of the 1,500 submissions, many of which the police wouldn’t consider a hate crime.
Linda Li, president of the Tri-City Chinese Community Society, wears a face mask that says ‘Stop Asian Hate’ in Richmond. Photograph: Canadian Press/REX/Shutterstock
In addition to frustration that there is little police can do when a person is spat or coughed on, Ngo says the reporting process also left him confused.
After waiting on the phone for nearly half an hour, he went to the Vancouver police website, only to find that he could only submit a hate crime report in simplified Chinese.
“There’s this perception that only the Chinese community are affected by anti-Asian racism. I’m part Cantonese, part Vietnamese. It means only one part of me can report it – the other part can’t,” he said. “At the same time, why wasn’t it in English? It just didn’t make sense.”
Vancouver police said the Chinese forms were developed in response to the “drastic increase” in hate crime and incidents targeting Vancouver’s east Asian community specifically.
“However, we heard from the public that they would like the forms in other Asian languages as well,” the police said.
Residents can now report hate crimes in traditional and simplified Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Punjabi, Tagalog and Vietnamese.
“The social histories of these groups called ‘Asian Canadian’ are a pretty wide span,” said Andy Yan, director of the city program at Simon Fraser University. He pointed to recent media coverage of hate crimes that seem to single out the Chinese Canadian community in Vancouver, even though a wide range of communities has been affected by the spike in assaults.
‘We’re not taught to speak out’: Asian Americans find their voice amid rise in hate
Read more
Trixie Ling, founder of Flavours of Hope, a non-profit social enterprise that supports newcomer refugee women, called for a broader conversation around systemic racism in the city.
“The conversation needs to go beyond the Asian community [that’s] now in the public eye,” said Ling, who was recently assaulted by a man who spat on her and yelled racial and sexual slurs.
“But I want to see more than just talk. Words without action are meaningless. [The conversations] need to be translated to action and accountability,” she said. “It’s not just about interpersonal racism, it’s the systems and structures that are in place that perpetuate it.”
Global deaths from COVID-19 are likely two to three times higher than countries have officially recorded.
The total loss of life from the start of the pandemic could be between 6 million to 8 million people, compared to the official figure of 3.4 million people, the WHO said.
The lower figure is likely a reflection of countries underreporting cases and death tolls.
According to the WHO, many countries still lack functioning civil registration and vital statistics systems with the capacity to provide accurate, complete and timely data on births, deaths and causes of death.
Countries also use different processes to test and report COVID-19 deaths, making comparisons difficult, the WHO said.
The WHO estimated the total global excess deaths attributable to COVID-19 in 2020, both directly and indirectly, amounts to at least 3 million.
Excess death is the difference in the total number of deaths in a crisis compared to those expected under normal conditions. COVID-19 excess mortality accounts for both the total number of deaths directly attributed to the virus as well as the indirect impact, such as disruption to essential health services or travel disruptions.
According to the WHO, COVID-19 excess mortality estimates range from 1.3 million to 1.5 million in the Americas, about 60 percent more than the reported 860,000 COVID-19 deaths, to between 1.1 million and 1.2 million in European countries, which is roughly double the official number.
In 2020, countries reported 1.8 million COVID-19-related deaths to the WHO.
To put that into perspective, the WHO said that number would rank COVID-19 within the top 10 of causes of death globally, with only ischemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lower respiratory infections and neonatal conditions ranked higher.
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Covid: Argentina starts new lockdown as cases soar
Argentina’s new lockdown allows supermarkets and essential businesses to remain open, but in-person school lessons will be suspended. Restaurants can only operate home delivery and pick-up services, and people may only go out until 18:00, staying in the vicinity of their home.
The government encouraged people to alert the authorities if they noticed their neighbours gathering or having parties.
The restrictions are operating for a relatively short period amid concerns about the impact on the informal workforce and poorer households with limited internet access.
Argentina’s economy contracted nearly 10% last year, partly due to the lockdown.
“I am aware that these restrictions create difficulties,” said President Fernández. But he added: “Faced with this reality, there is no choice but to choose the preservation of life.”
image copyrightGetty Images
image captionArgentina was one of the first countries outside to strike deal with Russia to use its Sputnik V vaccines
The country imposed one of the world’s longest quarantines last year, running from March to July. At times even exercise and dog-walking were not allowed. Borders were closed early and commercial flights into the country were banned for seven months.
Nonetheless it has seen 3.4 million registered cases and 73,000 deaths in total. Earlier this week, the daily death rate hit a new domestic record of 745 people, while intensive care wards have hit their highest occupancy level since the pandemic began.
The president has promised economic assistance for sectors hit by the new restrictions. He also said that more than five million doses of AstraZeneca and Sputnik V vaccines were on their way.
More than 10 million vaccine doses have been administered within a population of 45 million. In March, officials delayed the rollout of second doses to allow more people to receive their first.
Bureaucratic problems and lack of supplies have reportedly been causing the slowdown.
Uruguay – which borders Brazil and Argentina – has also been badly hit in the latest wave of cases, despite being largely praised for its handling of the initial outbreaks.
With a population under 3.5 million, Uruguay had the world’s highest death toll per capita in recent weeks, according to data from Oxford University’s Our World in Data project.
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Coming back better: New York City is reopening – but will it be fairer?
New York City: ‘We don’t want to be just be February 2020, we want to be something very different.’ Photograph: Gary Hershorn/Getty Images
Last year, the city became the Covid capital of the world. Now, as cases have dropped and home sales increased, some think it’s the perfect time for progressive changes
Of any city in the US, perhaps none has been so marked by the pandemic as New York.
Early last year, the city became the Covid capital of the world, seeing 18,679 deaths in three months. Many from the city’s wealthiest zip codes moved to more spacious places, while those in low-income zip codes bore the brunt of the virus’s health and economic impacts.
Now, despite the alarm raised by anecdotes that the city was dead forever, the numbers show New York appears to be on its way back.
The New York highway that racism built: ‘It does nothing but pollute’
Covid cases, along with hospitalizations and death, have plummeted in the city as nearly half of the population has received at least one dose of the vaccine. Home sales have increased while the number of available apartments has decreased. Tourists are slowly coming back for selfies on the Brooklyn Bridge, and beloved restaurants and bars are reopening after months of closure. Though Broadway shows will not be coming back until the fall, tickets for Hamilton’s shows in September are already sold out.
Some New Yorkers see the city’s reopening not only as a breath of relief, but also as the perfect time to kick off progressive changes. The Guardian spoke to advocates from four policy areas – housing, education, transportation and criminal justice – who believe the city can utilize changes brought on the pandemic to make the it more equitable, and fairer.
They envision a city with more affordable housing, stronger public schools, more accountability in the criminal justice system and less space for cars on the city streets. While the changes may seem radical, advocates argue the city has already seen what many could not imagine during the pandemic. Plus, with a $5.6bn boost in federal stimulus aid, the city has resources it needs to produce change.
A person rides a Citi Bike in Kips Bay. Photograph: Noam Galai/Getty Images
“Historically, we try to recover to [what was] the same, we try to just get back to what we were before, and this is a real moment for us to say we don’t want to just be February 2020, we want to be something very different,” said Barika Williams, executive director of the Association for the Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD), a coalition of housing organizations in New York. “Rewinding is not the goal.”
Preventing a mass eviction crisis
Headlines declaring the city “dead” have mostly centered on the flight of the wealthy, which has led to a decrease in housing and rent prices in certain parts of the city.
But the decrease in market prices has not aided the city’s most vulnerable, many of whom are at risk of eviction. More than 51,000 eviction notices have been filed in New York City since March last year, according to Princeton’s Eviction Lab, but evictions have largely been stalled because of the state’s eviction moratorium, which extends until the end of August.
Worries of a massive eviction crisis once the moratorium ends are prominent. The state’s most recent budget includes a $2.4bn program dedicated to giving low-income New Yorkers assistance in paying back rent, but advocates are worried it will be inaccessible. Over 57,000 applicants were denied from a similar $100m program the state enacted in July to help renters, with many saying the criteria were too hard to meet.
“For these families that couldn’t make rent during the pandemic, there is going to be nowhere for them to go,” said Jonathan Westin, the head of New York Communities for Change, which organizes low-wage workers and tenants.
The impending eviction crisis has made creating more affordable housing imperative. More than 70,000 people experienced homelessness in the city in 2019, a number that advocates say attests to the shortage of affordable housing. At least a quarter of New Yorkers earning under $50,000 are rent burdened, meaning 50% of their household income goes toward rent, with the percentage who are rent burdened being even higher for those in the lowest-income brackets.
A coalition of advocates, developers and tenant organizers released a $4bn proposed plan in December that asks the city to rethink bureaucratic hurdles that make building affordable housing difficult.
Housing advocates point to the upcoming rezoning of SoHo and NoHo, two pricey and trendy neighborhoods in Manhattan, as a hopeful sign that the city will consider opening up other wealthier areas of the city to housing development.
In January, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, said that the state could aid the creation of housing converted from distressed hotels or office spaces, which account for more than 79m sq feet of vacant space in Manhattan alone.
The idea of using vacant spaces for housing excites advocates like Williams of ANHD, who pointed to the successful conversion of vacant office spaces in the financial district into housing after companies fled the area after 9/11.
“We have entire companies … who are like, ‘We are never going back to any in-person office,’” said Williams. “That’s an opportunity for us to really think about commercial-residential conversion.”
Increasing resources for schools
When New York shut down its public schools in March last year, 1.1 million students in the country’s largest school district abruptly transitioned to remote learning. Though schools welcomed about half of the student population back for in-person learning in November, the school district – like many across the country – is grappling with the year of learning that was lost for students who struggled with online instruction.
With an influx of state and federal aid, the budgets of city schools are expected to get a $600m boost that will especially help the neediest students. The money means avoiding teacher layoffs, increasing hiring for staff positions like school librarian, nurses and social workers and repairing ageing school buildings.
The next challenge is ensuring that the money gets spent wisely and fairly.
“We need to get this right. We’re probably never going to see this amount of money ever again,” said Maria Bautista, campaigns director for the Alliance for Quality Education.
Advocates like Bautista see the district’s new funding as an opportunity to prioritize support for the district’s most vulnerable students. More than 111,000 students in the school district are in families that are experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity, and city data released in October showed that 77,000 students in public housing and shelters did not have adequate wifi or technology for remote learning.
The city recently announced initiatives that advocates have long asked for, including increasing low-cost broadband and opening up summer school to all students, but the city still has many well-established issues to address, like diversifying specialized schools, offering curriculums centered around critical race theory and decreasing the presence of police officers in schools.
“Covid unsurfaced the amount and levels of inequity that are seeped into our education system, but before then, there was a racism pandemic. Our schools have never been addressed in the way that they need to be,” Bautista said.
Transforming the city streets
The most noticeable change to New York City can easily be seen on its streets. Restaurant tables now line many of the city’s roads, and a handful of streets have been completely blocked off to cars to give pedestrians and cyclists more open space.
Advocates who have long fought for fewer cars in the city say the difference has been noticeable and previews a radical new future.
“The immediate impacts have been clear, whether it’s residents who can hear birds outside of their window or a kid can cross a street without fear,” said Danny Harris, executive director of Transportation Alternatives. “Schools, restaurants and retail can now see their future as being tied to having more space, which is out on the street.”
People enjoy an evening out in Greenwich Village in April. Photograph: Andrew H Walker/Rex/Shutterstock
The fight for fewer cars predates the pandemic, when advocates successfully pushed for changes like more protected bike and bus lanes, and congestion pricing in midtown Manhattan. Transportation Alternatives and other advocate groups say the city should go even further.
A fresh proposal calls on the city to dedicate 25% of its street to pedestrians, cyclists and public transit by 2025. The plan proposes 500 miles of protected bus-only lanes, 500 miles of protected bike lanes, and 1,000 miles of pedestrian and cyclist lanes that are closed off to cars.
“Think about the experience in New York moving around: honking, traffic, congestion, traffic violence … The notion to go back to that, with even more cars, will paralyze the city,” Harris said. “Our city cannot afford to be drowning in car traffic.”
Rethinking policing
Calls for police reform have gained traction in New York, as they have in many cities across the country, since the police killing of George Floyd last May.
In response to calls for reform, the city council passed a bill ending qualified immunity for police officers, which prevented people from suing individual police officers in civil court for violating their constitutional rights.
But other changes the city has made have come under criticism. Mayor Bill de Blasio has been specifically criticized for putting out a plan in March – which included a new reconciliation process and having the New York police department (NYPD) participate in an independent review – that critics say falls short of including any substantive changes.
NYPD officers detain a demonstrator in July last year. Photograph: Andrew Kelly/Reuters
“[De Blasio] is unwilling to clash with the police department. He is unwilling to say, ‘We’re actually going to make real change.’ He ultimately defers to them and is beholden to what the police department wants,” said Alice Fontier, managing director of Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, a non-profit public defender office.
Complicating calls for reform is the uptick in crime that has been seen in the city, as with many places across the country, which experts say is the product of rising social and economic anxiety during the pandemic. More than 500 people have been shot in the city in 2021 so far – the highest number seen at this point in the year in a decade.
City and state officials have largely pointed fingers at each other over rising crime. Progressives say the city needs to address the economic anxieties to lower the crime rate, while the city’s conservative voices have said boosting the NYPD is the answer.
Progressive advocates, most of whom have called for deep cuts to the NYPD’s $10bn budget, have all but given up on the current mayor to listen to their demands. Instead, attention has turned to the upcoming mayoral race, where policing has become a key issue.
New mayor, new city
The city is slated to get a new mayor at the beginning of 2022. The most important race in the election will be the Democratic primary, which will take place on 22 June.
For the first time in the city’s history, voters will be able to rank their top five candidates in the race, which currently has a dizzying 22-contender field.
Among the more moderate candidates in the race is Andrew Yang, best known for his presidential campaign in 2020. He has been deemed the “fun” candidate, who hopes to draw businesses, tourists and wealthier residents back to New York. Eric Adams, a former police officer and Brooklyn borough president, is running on a public safety platform that entails increasing police presence and bringing back a controversial plainclothes NYPD anti-crime unit.
Scott Stringer, currently the city’s comptroller, is seen as one of the more progressive candidates in the field, pushing for a slate of policies like defunding NYPD by $1.1bn and giving $1bn to small businesses. Stringer’s campaign has been derailed by a sexual harassment allegation, which he denies. Dianne Morales, a former non-profit executive, has put out the most progressive slate of policies among the race’s top contenders, including halving the NYPD’s budget, but has polled behind the race’s more moderate candidates.
Advocates across the four issues have emphasized that their visions of a new New York largely depend on who takes over city hall in 2022.
“Without a mayor who’s willing to push for anything, change is never going to happen,” Frontier said.
The Sandy Point Primary School has been temporarily closed as more efforts are made to contain COVID-19 relating to case 46..
Chief Medical Officer Dr Hazel Laws announced that as a precautionary measure they would have made a decision to temporarily close the Sandy Point Primary School as they engage in an extensive testing of all who attend and work at that institution
Dr Laws said they closed the Sandy Point Primary School because they identified some confirmed cases of COVID-19.
She said students of relevant classes were tested and samples are being tested
She reminded that the Ministry of Health announced that through its extensive contact tracing exercise two new cases were identified in the investigation of case 46
“There are now seven active cases. These patients are stable and being monitored.”
Dr Laws said they were aiming to break the chains of transmissions to contain the virus.
“We intend to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to contain the virus.”
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education William Vincent Hodge said the Sandy Point Primary School will ask to go back online.
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