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Eric Adams wins Democratic primary in NYC’s mayoral race
Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City after appealing to the political center and promising to strike the right balance between fighting crime and ending racial injustice in policing.
A former police captain, Adams would be the city’s second Black mayor if elected.
He triumphed over a large Democratic field in New York’s first major race to use ranked choice voting. Results from the latest tabulations released Tuesday showed him leading former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia by 8,426 votes, or a little more than 1 percentage point.
“While there are still some very small amounts of votes to be counted, the results are clear: an historic, diverse, five-borough coalition led by working-class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York,” Adams said in a statement.
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He said he was running to “deliver on the promise of this great city for those who are struggling, who are underserved, and who are committed to a safe, fair, affordable future for all New Yorkers.”
Adams will be the prohibitive favorite in the general election against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican founder of the Guardian Angels. Democrats outnumber Republicans 7-to-1 in New York City.
Adams’ closest vanquished Democratic rivals included Garcia, who campaigned as a technocrat and proven problem-solver, and former City Hall legal advisor Maya Wiley, who had progressive support including an endorsement from U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Andrew Yang, the 2020 presidential candidate known for his proposed universal basic income, was an early favorite but faded in the race.
Voting in the primary ended June 22. Early returns showed Adams in the lead, but New Yorkers had to wait for tens of thousands of absentee ballots to be counted and for rounds of tabulations done under the new ranked choice system.
Under the system, voters ranked up to five candidates for mayor in order of preference. Candidates with too few votes to win were eliminated and ballots cast for them redistributed to the surviving contenders, based on the voter preference, until only two were left.
The city’s first experience with the system in a major election was bumpy. As votes were being tallied on June 29, elections officials bungled the count by inadvertently including 135,000 old test ballots. Erroneous vote tallies were posted for several hours before officials acknowledged the error and took them down.
The mistake had no impact on the final outcome of the race.
Adams, Garcia and Wiley all filed lawsuits last week seeking the right to review the ranked choice tally.
Wiley said in a statement Tuesday that the board “must be completely remade following what can only be described as a debacle.” As for herself, she said her campaign would have more to say soon about “next steps.”
Garcia’s campaign issued no immediate response to Tuesday’s vote tally, but said she would be making a statement Wednesday morning.
Adams, 60, is a moderate Democrat who opposed the “defund the police” movement.
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“We’re not going to recover as a city if we turn back time and see an increase in violence, particularly gun violence,” Adams said after three people including a 4-year-old girl were shot and wounded in Times Square in May.
“If Black lives really matter, it can’t only be against police abuse. It has to be against the violence that’s ripping apart our communities,” he told supporters the night of the primary.
But Adams is a study in contradictions who at different times has been a defender of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a registered Republican and a Democratic state senator thriving in a world of backroom deals.
Adams speaks frequently of his dual identity as a 22-year police veteran and a Black man who endured police brutality himself as a teenager. He said he was beaten by officers at age 15.
Adams became a police officer in 1984 and rose to the rank of captain before leaving to run for the state Senate in 2006.
While in the police department, he co-founded 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a group that campaigned for criminal justice reform and against racial profiling.
After winning a state Senate seat from Brooklyn in 2006, Adams made an impression with an impassioned speech favoring same-sex marriage rights in 2009, two years before New York’s state legislators passed a marriage equality bill.
Adams also weathered a few controversies, including a 2010 report from the state inspector general that faulted his oversight of the bidding process to bring casino gambling to the Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens. Adams had accepted campaign contributions from a politically connected group bidding for the gambling franchise.
Adams was elected in 2013 as Brooklyn borough president, his current job.
Adams is a vegan who credits a plant-based diet with reversing his diabetes. He has a 25-year-old son, Jordan Coleman, with a former girlfriend. His current partner is Tracey Collins, an educator who holds an administrative job in the city’s public school system.
Journalists raised questions during the race about where Adams lived. He was born in Brooklyn, walked the beat there as a cop, owns real estate there and represented it in the state Senate. But he slept in his office in Brooklyn Borough Hall for months during the pandemic and opponents noted that he shares a place with his partner in Fort Lee, New Jersey.
Adams gave reporters a tour of a basement apartment in Brooklyn that he said was his primary residence.
Read:Adams takes fragile lead in NYC Democratic mayoral primary
Adams can be a charismatic speaker but has also made cringe-worthy utterances, such as his 1993 suggestion that Herman Badillo, a Puerto Rican-born politician, should have married a Latina instead of a white, Jewish woman.
Speaking at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day event last year, Adams complained about gentrifiers moving to the city from elsewhere.
“Go back to Iowa. You go back to Ohio,” Adams said. “New York City belongs to the people that were here and made New York City what it is.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, was barred by the city charter from seeking a third term.
Officials: Storm lashing Florida strengthens into hurricane
A storm that has lashed the Caribbean and the Florida Keys with pounding rain and gusty winds and complicated the search for survivors in a deadly condominium collapse has strengthened into a hurricane.
The National Weather Service said Tuesday that Hurricane Elsa was packing winds as high as 75 mph (121 kph) as it hurtled toward Florida’s northern Gulf Coast. The Category 1 storm is expected to make landfall between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Wednesday, somewhere between the Tampa Bay area and the Big Bend region.
In addition to damaging winds and heavy rains, the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center warned of life-threatening storm surges, flooding and isolated tornadoes. A hurricane warning has been issued for a long stretch of coastline, from Egmont Key at the mouth of Tampa Bay to the Steinhatchee River in Florida’s Big Bend area. Landfall was expected somewhere in between.
The Tampa area is highly vulnerable to storm surge because the offshore waters and Tampa Bay are quite shallow, experts say. Gov. Ron DeSantis said the area would take a hard hit from the storm overnight.
Read:Tropical Storm Elsa moving across west Cuba, then to Florida
Now is “not a time to joyride” because “we do have hazardous conditions out there,” DeSantis said at a news conference Tuesday. The storm is expected to make landfall between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. Wednesday, he said.
Still, on the barrier island beach towns along the Gulf Coast, it was largely business as usual with few shutters or plywood boards going up early Tuesday. Free sandbags were being handed out at several locations, and a limited number of storm shelters opened Tuesday morning in at least four counties around the Tampa Bay area, although no evacuations have been ordered.
Nancy Brindley, 85, who lives in a seaside house built in 1923, said she has experienced 34 previous tropical cyclones and is not having shutters put on her windows. Her main concern is what will happen to sand on the adjacent beach and the dunes that protect her house and others. She’s staying through the storm.
“The main concern here is, if it doesn’t speed up and decides to stall, there will be enormous erosion,” she said.
Friends Chris Wirtz, 47, and Brendan Peregrine, 44, were staying put at a beachfront inn with their families. Both are from Tampa, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) across the bay and have been through storms many times.
“Before we left, we knew it was coming,” Wirtz said.
Others were taking no chances. Annie Jones, 51, has lived along the Gulf Coast her entire life. She was buying ice and food at a local grocery store in advance of the storm.
“I’ve seen this happen over the years and I decided to load up,” Jones said.
Read:Tropical Storm Elsa nears Cuba amid fears of flooding
Across the Tampa Bay region that’s home to about 3.5 million people, events, government offices and schools were closing down early Tuesday in advance of the storm. Tampa International Airport shut down at 5 p.m.
Duke Energy, the main electric utility in the Tampa Bay area, said in a statement it has about 3,000 employees, contractors, tree specialists and support personnel ready to respond to power outages in the storm’s aftermath. Additional crews are being brought in from other states served by Duke Energy. “We’re trained and prepared, and we want to ensure our customers are safe and prepared for any impacts from the storm,” said Todd Fountain, the utility’s Florida storm director.
The fifth game of the Stanley Cup finals between the Tampa Bay Lightning and Montreal Canadiens, set for Wednesday night, will take place, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said. The Lightning lead the NHL’s championship series 3-1 and could clinch the title with a victory.
Bands of rain reached Surfside on Florida’s Atlantic coast, soaking the rubble of the Champlain Towers South, which collapsed June 24, killing at least 36 people. Search and rescue crews have worked through rain in search of more than 100 others unaccounted for, although lightning forced rescuers to pause their work for two hours early Tuesday, officials said.
Its core was about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Tampa. It was continuing to move to the north at 14 mph (about 23 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center.
DeSantis expanded a state of emergency to cover 33 counties.
After Florida, forecasters predicted Elsa would hit coastal Georgia and South Carolina, portions of which were under a tropical storm warning.
Read:Hurricane Elsa races toward Haiti amid fears of landslides
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp issued a state of emergency Tuesday affecting 92 counties in middle, south and southeast Georgia in preparation for the storm.
Elsa’s westward shift spared the lower Florida Keys a direct hit, but the islands were still getting plenty of rain and wind Tuesday.
Cuban officials evacuated 180,000 people against the possibility of heavy flooding from a storm that already battered several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people.
Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.
Searchers at collapse site ‘not seeing anything positive’
Officials overseeing the search at the site of the Florida condominium collapse sounded increasingly somber Tuesday about the prospects for finding anyone alive, saying they have detected no new signs of life in the rubble as the death toll climbed to 36.
Crews in yellow helmets and blue jumpsuits searched the debris for a 13th day while wind and rain from the outer bands of Hurricane Elsa complicated their efforts. Video released by the Miami-Dade County Fire Rescue Department showed workers lugging pickaxes and power saws through piles of concrete rubble barbed with snapped steel rebar. Other searchers could be seen digging with gloved hands through pulverized concrete and dumping shovels of debris into large buckets.
Search-and-rescue workers continued to look for open spaces where people might be found alive nearly two weeks after the disaster struck at the Champlain Towers South building in Surfside.
Read:Florida condo collapse: Death toll climbs to 28, 117 still missing
“We’re actively searching as aggressively as we can,” Miami-Dade County Fire Chief Alan Cominsky said at a news conference. But he added: “Unfortunately, we are not seeing anything positive. The key things — void spaces, living spaces — we’re not seeing anything like that.”
Reporters got their closest look at the site Tuesday, though it was limited to the portion of the building that demolition workers tore down Sunday after the initial collapse left it standing but dangerously unstable. A pile of shattered concrete and twisted steel stood about 30 feet (9 meters) tall, topped by a couple of air conditioning units, and spanned roughly half the length of a football field. A pair of backhoes pulled rubble off the pile, which blocked any view of the search effort.
While officials still call the efforts a search-and-rescue operation, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said families of those still missing are preparing for news of “tragic loss.” She said President Joe Biden, who visited the area last week, called Tuesday to offer his continued support.
“I think everybody will be ready when it’s time to move to the next phase,” said Levine Cava, who stressed that crews would use the same care as they go through the rubble even after their focus shifts from searching for survivors to recovering the dead.
Read:Search back on after rest of South Florida condo demolished
“Really, you will not see a difference,” she said. “We will carefully search for bodies and belongings, and to catalog and respectfully deal with any remains that we find.”
No one has been rescued alive since the first hours after the collapse, which struck early on June 24, when many of the building’s residents were asleep.
Officials announced Tuesday that teams had recovered eight additional bodies — the highest one-day total since the collapse. More than 100 people remain unaccounted for.
Severe weather from Elsa threatened to hinder search efforts. Lightning forced rescuers to pause their work for two hours early Tuesday, Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said. And stiff winds of 20 mph (32 kph), with stronger gusts, hampered efforts to move heavy debris with cranes, officials said.
Read:Florida Collapse: Demolition of condominium set; rescue work to resume after
However, the storm’s heaviest winds and rain were expected to bypass Surfside and neighboring Miami as Elsa strengthened before making landfall somewhere between Tampa Bay and Florida’s Big Bend on a path across northern Florida.
“Active search and rescue continued throughout the night, and these teams continue through extremely adverse and challenging conditions,” Levine Cava said. “Through the rain and through the wind, they have continued searching.”
Crews have removed 124 tons (112 metric tonnes) of debris from the site, Cominsky said. The debris was being sorted and stored in a warehouse as potential evidence in the investigation into why the building collapsed, officials said.
Workers have been freed to search a broader area since the weekend demolition of the unstable remaining portion of the condo building. Officials said that gave rescuers access to spaces that were previously closed off, including bedrooms where people were believed to be sleeping at the time of the disaster.
In Myanmar, the military and police declare war on medics
The clandestine clinic was under fire, and the medics inside were in tears.
Hidden away in a Myanmar monastery, this safe haven had sprung up for those injured while protesting the military’s overthrow of the government. But now security forces had discovered its location.
A bullet struck a young man in the throat as he defended the door, and the medical staff tried frantically to stop the hemorrhaging. The floor was slick with blood.
In Myanmar, the military has declared war on health care — and on doctors themselves, who were early and fierce opponents of the takeover in February. Security forces are arresting, attacking and killing medical workers, dubbing them enemies of the state. With medics driven underground amid a global pandemic, the country’s already fragile healthcare system is crumbling.
“The junta is purposely targeting the whole healthcare system as a weapon of war,” says one Yangon doctor on the run for months, whose colleagues at an underground clinic were arrested during a raid. “We believe that treating patients, doing our humanitarian job, is a moral job….I didn’t think that it would be accused as a crime.”Inside the clinic that day, the young man shot in the throat was fading. His sister wailed. A minute later, he was dead.
One of the clinic’s medical students, whose name like those of several other medics has been withheld to protect her from retaliation, began to sweat and cry. She had never seen anyone shot.
Now she too was at risk. Two protesters smashed the glass out of a window so the medics could escape. “We are so sorry,” the nurses told their patients.
READ: Washington announces further sanctions against Myanmar army personnel and enablers
One doctor stayed behind to finish suturing the patients’ wounds. The others jumped through the window and hid in a nearby apartment complex for hours. Some were so terrified that they never returned home.
“I cry every day from that day,” the medical student says. “I cannot sleep. I cannot eat well.”
“That was a terrible day.”The suffering caused by the military’s takeover of this nation of 54 million has been relentless. Security forces have killed at least 890 people, including a 6-year-old girl they shot in the stomach, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which monitors arrests and deaths in Myanmar. Around 5,100 people are in detention and thousands have been forcibly disappeared. The military, known as the Tatmadaw, and police have returned mutilated corpses to families as tools of terror.
Amid all the atrocities, the military’s attacks on medics, one of the most revered professions in Myanmar, have sparked particular outrage. Myanmar is now one of the most dangerous places on earth for healthcare workers, with 240 attacks this year -- nearly half of the 508 globally tracked by the World Health Organization. That’s by far the highest of any country.
“This is a group of folks who are standing up for what’s right and standing up against decades of human rights abuses in Myanmar,” says Raha Wala, advocacy director of the U.S.-based Physicians for Human Rights. “The Tatmadaw is hell-bent on using any means necessary to quash their fundamental rights and freedoms.”
The military has issued arrest warrants for 400 doctors and 180 nurses, with photos of their faces plastered all over state media like “Wanted” posters. They are charged with supporting and taking part in the “civil disobedience” movement.
At least 157 healthcare workers have been arrested, 32 wounded and 12 killed since Feb. 1, according to Insecurity Insight, which analyzes conflicts around the globe. In recent weeks, arrest warrants have increasingly been issued for nurses.
Myanmar’s medics and their advocates argue that these assaults violate international law, which makes it illegal to attack health workers and patients or deny them care based on their political affiliations. In 2016, after similar attacks in Syria, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding that medics be granted safe passage by all parties in a war.
“In other country’s protests, the medics are safe. They are exempt. Here, there are no exemptions,” says Dr. Nay Lin Tun, a general practitioner who has been on the run since February, and now provides care covertly.
Medics are targeted by the military because they are not only highly respected but also well-organized, with a strong network of unions and professional groups. In 2015, doctors pinned black ribbons to their uniforms to protest the appointment of military personnel to the Ministry of Health. Their Facebook page quickly gained thousands of followers, and the military appointments stopped.
This time, the protest by medics started days after the military ousted democratically elected leaders, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, from power. From remote towns in the northern mountains to the main city of Yangon, they walked off their jobs on military-owned facilities, pinning red ribbons to their clothes.The response from the military was fierce, with security forces beating medical workers and stealing supplies. Security forces have occupied at least 51 hospitals since the takeover, according to Insecurity Insight, Physicians for Human Rights and the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health and Human Rights.
On March 28, during a strike in the city of Monywa, a nurse was fatally shot in the head, according to AAPP. On May 8, hundreds of miles away in northern Kachin state, a doctor was arrested, tied up and also fatally shot in the head while passing a military base.
Rather than acknowledging its attacks on medical workers, the military is instead accusing them of genocide for not treating patients — despite itself being accused of genocide against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority.
“They are killing people in cold blood. If this is not genocide, what shall I call it?” military spokesperson Maj. Gen. Zaw Min Tun said during an April 9 press conference broadcast live on national television.
A military spokesperson responded to written questions submitted by The Associated Press only by sending an article that blamed supposed election fraud for the country’s problems. Suu Kyi’s party won the November election in a landslide, and independent poll watchers have largely found it free of significant issues.
The crackdown on health care is hitting an already vulnerable system at a critical time. Even before the takeover, Myanmar had just 6.7 physicians per 10,000 people in 2018 — significantly lower than the global average of 15.6 in 2017, according to the World Bank.
Now, testing for COVID-19 has plummeted, and the vaccination program has stalled, with its former head, Dr. Htar Htar Lin, arrested and charged with high treason in June. Even if vaccines are available, people are afraid of being arrested just by going to the hospital, one medic told the AP.
READ: UK announces sanctions on companies linked to Myanmar’s military regime
Given the military’s crackdown on information, there are no independent figures on current COVID cases and deaths. The state media has reported almost 160,000 positive cases and 3,347 deaths. But experts say that is an undercount, and there are clear signs another COVID surge is happening in the country.
“What we’re seeing is really a human rights emergency that is turning into a public health disaster,” says Jennifer Leigh, an epidemiologist and Myanmar researcher for Physicians for Human Rights. “We’re definitely seeing echoes of what happened in Syria, where health workers and the health facility was systematically targeted.”
The crackdown has forced doctors to make excruciating choices and find new ways to reach patients.
As an emergency physician at a government hospital, Dr. Zaw had been on the frontlines of the fight against COVID. In January, the first vaccines arrived from India, giving the exhausted doctor a rush of hope.
But after months of fighting a virus, she found herself instead fighting for democracy. Going on strike was an agonizing decision; as a doctor, she believed in caring for those in need. However, doing so meant working for and legitimizing the generals who overthrew her government.
The solution was providing care in secret, says Zaw, whom the AP is identifying by a partial name to protect her from retaliation.
In February, she helped set up a clinic tucked away in another monastery in another part of Myanmar, with supplies donated from a COVID facility where she had previously volunteered. A generator keeps the equipment running during the frequent power cuts. Select contacts in nearby townships who know the clinic’s location direct the sick and wounded there.
Zaw fled the housing the government provides public doctors. She has since moved three times to avoid detection, and sent her family to a safehouse.
Now, she lives above the clinic, sleeping alongside seven other doctors and nurses on mats separated only by curtains. It has become too risky to leave the compound; she knows the soldiers are hunting for the clinic, and for her.
“Because of them, our hopes, our dreams, are hopeless,” she says. “Some of the medical students and some of our doctors are dying because of them.”
Sometimes, Zaw and her colleagues are tipped off by informants the night before a raid, giving them time to dismantle the clinic and hide the equipment. But on one recent day, they only had time to hide themselves. There was almost no warning, just the frantic shouts from the monks that the soldiers were already at the gate.
Zaw raced to a nearby building with her colleagues. Moments later, she watched through a window as soldiers stormed her clinic, frightening the patient she had just been treating for hypertension and diabetes. Normally shy and soft-spoken, she fought the urge to run out and hit them.
Volunteers told the soldiers that no government doctors were working there. The soldiers eventually left, and Zaw returned to her patient. She knows she was lucky that day, but she intends to keep treating the sick — even if her efforts end in her death.
“All people have to die one day,” Zaw says. “So I’m prepared.”
While some medics have gone underground, others have fled from the cities to the border areas.
Before the military takeover, it was difficult to persuade government doctors from the cities to work in states like Kachin, where ethnic armed groups have long battled the Tatmadaw, according to the founder of an underground clinic and medical training organization there. Since February, however, government doctors have come to Kachin to provide care and train others in emergency medicine, says the founder, who spoke anonymously to avoid retaliation. The group now has between 20 and 30 trainers.
Their clinic shifts locations constantly, sometimes operating out of a tent. The medics treat the injured from landmines, homemade bombs and battles with security forces.
READ: Resident: Junta burns Myanmar village in escalating violence
The fear of being discovered is intense; the founder frets over a new car parked in front of his house and new faces in the neighborhood. His wife packed emergency bags filled with clothing, supplies and cash. Security forces recently abducted someone in front of one medic’s home, he says, and were probably looking for the medic.
“Every day since I started doing this, I know my life is in danger,” he says.The war on medics is already taking a severe toll on those who need health care, especially the young.
Under a tarp in the jungle pounded by relentless rain, 20-year-old Naing Li stared helplessly at her firstborn child, just five days old. The newborn’s breathing had grown labored, and his tiny body felt like it was on fire.
She could do nothing. Her husband was back in their village in western Myanmar, near the embattled town of Mindat, fighting advancing soldiers. And there were no medics around to help — not here in the jungle where she had fled with her baby, and not in their village either.
The baby is among about 600,000 newborns who aren’t receiving essential care, putting them at risk of illness, disability and death, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency. A million children are missing out on routine immunizations. Nearly 5 million are not receiving Vitamin A supplements to prevent infection and blindness, and more than 40,000 are no longer getting treated for malnutrition.
At the same time, COVID is spreading rapidly along Myanmar’s porous border with Bangladesh, India and Thailand, alarming health experts.
“This has the potential to turn into a very big and very bad public health crisis,” says Alessandra Dentice, UNICEF’s Myanmar representative.
Naing Li and her baby had already survived one crisis — a difficult labor at home. They hadn’t been able to go to a hospital in nearby Mindat, where the military launched a bloody assault and declared martial law. The fighting closed the few private clinics that had remained open.
Little Mg Htan Naing was healthy when he entered into this chaotic world on May 16, looking like his mother. But five days later, in the jungle, the swaddled infant struggled to breathe.
By the next morning, Naing Li was desperate enough to risk returning home for help. When she arrived, however, she found her husband, 23-year-old Naing Htan, struck in the back by shrapnel.
The couple could only watch as their son slipped away. At 11 a.m., Mg Htan Naing died in his mother’s arms.Men in Myanmar are not supposed to cry in front of others, but the father could not contain his grief.
“I cried out loud in agony even though I am a man,” he says.
Even if the couple had found a doctor in time, they likely would have faced the challenge of finding medicine. Healthcare workers interviewed by the AP said soldiers are blocking aid and have taken medical equipment and drugs from clinics during raids.
A Mindat resident, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, said she and her family stored medicine in preparation before the fighting broke out. But with water supplies cut and no way to properly clean themselves, they worry about diseases.
“It is very difficult here,” she says. “If we get sick, we cannot go to the clinic. We have to take whatever medicine we have at home.”
The collapse of the public hospital system has also put pressure on aid groups.
In Shan and Kachin states, Médecins Sans Frontières has taken on more than 3,045 patients who would otherwise have been treated under the government’s AIDS program. The clinics have been forced to cut the life-saving HIV/AIDS medicine they distribute to patients from three-month supplies to one.
Many aid groups have shut down or drastically scaled back operations. After the military takeover, aid groups stopped coming to a camp for 1,000 displaced people in Kachin state, a women’s advocate says. A weekly free government clinic closed.
Now, the children and elderly there are suffering from diarrhea and malnourishment. There is no one to perform surgeries or deliver babies. Food is scarce, and most people are relying on traditional medicines.
READ: Ousted Myanmar leader on trial; critics say charges bogus
“We are barely scraping by,” she says. “I feel death is just around the corner for us.”
For countless others, like Mg Htan Naing, death has already come. The baby’s parents buried him in their garden, then fled. His father blames his son’s death not on the doctors on strike, but on the soldiers who drove them from Mindat.
This is what haunts the country’s caretakers of the sick and wounded: The people they could have saved, if only they had not been under attack.
“Given the chance, we could have stopped bleeding, we could have saved the patients, we could have prevented deaths. It hurts,” says the Yangon doctor. “The people dying are not just nobodies. They are our country’s future generations.”
As Tokyo Olympics approach, virus worries rise in Japan
The pressure of hosting an Olympics during a still-active pandemic is beginning to show in Japan.
The games begin July 23, with organizers determined they will go on, even with a reduced number of spectators or possibly none at all. While Japan has made remarkable progress to vaccinate its population against COVID-19, the drive is losing steam because of supply shortages.
With tens of thousands of visitors coming to a country that is only 13.8% fully vaccinated, gaps in border controls have emerged, highlighted by the discovery of infections among the newly arrived team from Uganda, with positive tests for the highly contagious delta variant.
As cases grow in Tokyo, so have fears that the games will spread the virus.
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“We must stay on high alert,” Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters on July 1. Noting the rising caseloads, he said “having no spectators is a possibility.”
Seiko Hashimoto, president of the Tokyo organizing committee, agreed.
“It’s not that we are determined to have spectators regardless of the situation,” Hashimoto said Friday.
Organizers, the International Olympic Committee and others are expected to meet this week to announce new restrictions because of the fast-changing coronavirus situation.
Amid the criticism, Suga went to Tokyo’s Haneda international airport June 28 to inspect virus testing for arrivals. He vowed to ensure appropriate border controls as a growing number of Olympic and Paralympic athletes, officials and media begin entering Japan for the games.
On Monday, Tokyo confirmed 342 new cases, the 16th straight day of an increase. On Saturday, the capital reported 716 cases, highest in five weeks.
At a meeting of government advisers, experts warned of the possibility of infections exploding during the games, projecting daily caseloads exceeding 1,000. They said that would severely strain health care systems. In a worst-case scenario, there could be thousands of infections a day, causing hospitals to overflow, they said.
Ryuji Wakita, director-general of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases and the head of a government COVID-19 advisory board, urged tighter border controls to detect and isolate infected arrivals at airports to prevent infections from spreading from Tokyo to the suburbs.
In a case that has shocked many in Japan, a member of the Ugandan team tested positive upon arrival June 19 at Narita International Airport and was quarantined there. The rest of the nine-member team was allowed to travel more than 500 kilometers (300 miles) on a chartered bus to their pre-Olympics camp in the western prefecture of Osaka.
Days later, a second member of the team from East Africa tested positive for the virus, forcing seven town officials and drivers who had close contact with them to self-isolate. The team itself is isolating at a hotel. Health officials said both infected Ugandans had the delta variant.
On Saturday, an athlete from Serbia also tested positive, causing the cancelation of his team’s training in the central city of Nanto. The government also has acknowledged that four other people arriving for the Olympics tested positive after entering the country earlier this year.
Experts say the cases show that Japan’s border health controls can be easily breached.
“There will be more people coming in. … We should use this as a lesson so that similar problems won’t be repeated elsewhere in Japan,” Osaka Gov. Hirofumi Yoshimura told a recent regional governors’ meeting where leaders adopted an urgent request for tighter border controls.
Read:It’s Olympic month for Japan
Under revised guidelines on health measures sent to 530 municipalities hosting Olympic training, airport officials will isolate an entire group if any member tests positive, and they will stay at designated facilities until the athletes’ village opens July 12. Hosting towns can request guests to stop training and isolate themselves until they clear contact tracing and virus tests.
Dozens of municipalities in Japan have canceled their hosting arrangements because of virus worries, and many of them decided to use those facilities as vaccination sites.
In Tokyo, infections are spreading among the young and middle-aged who are largely unvaccinated. The more serious cases requiring hospitalization are gradually replacing the elderly, 26% of whom are now fully vaccinated, according to experts.
Japan’s fully vaccinated rate of 13.8% is slightly above the world average of 11.3% but low compared with 47.4% in the United States and 49.5% in the U.K., according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Our World in Data.
Adding to the worries is uncertainty about Japan’s vaccination campaign.
Workplace inoculations began in mid-June, with thousands of companies applying to vaccinate employees. But the government then indefinitely halted taking new applications for workplace and large-scale vaccination sites due to tight vaccine supplies.
“The progress exceeded our expectations,” said vaccinations minister Taro Kono, noting that daily shots have likely reached 1.2 million or more. He said Japan will receive only one-third of the Pfizer-BioNTechPfizer vaccine supply it had hoped to receive by late July.
“Confusion is spreading across Japan,” because of this slowdown, said Kamon Iizumi, the Tokushima governor who also heads the National Governors’ Association.
A vaccination center in Kagawa had to suspend shots for 30,000 people, and plans were put on hold for 6,500 companies in Gifu, in central Japan. Other areas including Osaka, Kobe and parts of Tokyo also were forced to suspend planned vaccinations from this week.
“What a disappintment,” said Yukio Takano, head of Tokyo’s Toshima district. “We have worked so hard to accelerate the rollouts and now we have to put on the brakes. ... What was the rush for?”
Japan began vaccinating medical workers in mid-February and the elderly in mid-April. Despite initial delays due to bungled reservations and shortages, the pace picked up in mid-May when vaccine imports stabilized and staff was secured to meet a primary target of fully vaccinating all 36 million elderly by the end of July.
Suga set up military-run mass vaccination centers in late May and added workplace and college campus venues to accelerate the progress.
On June 21, Japan eased its third state of emergency to less-stringent measures that focused on shorter operating hours at bars and restaurants in Tokyo and other metro areas until July 11.
Read:Tokyo shapes up to be No-Fun Olympics with many rules, tests
Experts suggest, however, that a resurgence might require another emergency declaration during the Olympics. If so, organizers may have to reconsider their current limit of 10,000 people or 50% capacity at venues to perhaps barring all spectators.
Kengo Sakurada, president of Sompo Holdings and the head of an influential business lobby, said on June 30 that the current vaccination rate is not enough to hold a safe Olympics.
He said he supports having no spectators for events because the damage from a worse outbreak would be far greater.
“I would take the safer option,” he said.
Plane with 28 on board missing in Russian Far East region
A plane with 28 people on board went missing in the Russian Far East region of Kamchatka on Tuesday, local officials said.
An Antonov An-26 plane with 22 passengers and six crew members, flying from the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to the town of Palana, missed a scheduled communication, local emergency officials said. The plane also disappeared from radar, the local transport ministry.
Read: Philippine military plane crashes, 31 dead, 50 rescued
The plane belonged to a company called Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise. The plane has been in operation since 1982, Russian state news agency Tass reported. The company’s director, Alexei Khabarov, told the Interfax news agency that the plane was technically sound.
An investigation has been launched, and a search mission is underway. Media reports have suggested the plane may have crashed into the sea, but there has been no official confirmation of that yet. Two helicopters and an airplane have been deployed to inspect the missing plane’s route, local officials said.
The state RIA Novosti news agency reported that several ships have also been searching for the plane. The town of Palana is located on the coast of the Okhotsk Sea.
The plane was on approach for landing when contact was lost about 10 kilometers (six miles) away from Palana’s airport. The head of the local government in Palana, Olga Mokhireva, was aboard the flight, spokespeople of the Kamchatka government said.
Read: Philippine military plane crashes, 17 dead, 40 rescued
In 2012, an Antonov An-28 plane belonging to Kamchatka Aviation Enterprise crashed into a mountain while flying from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsk and coming in for a landing in Palana. A total of 14 people were on board and 10 of them were killed. Both pilots, who were among the dead, were found to have alcohol in their blood, Tass reported.
Japan searches for 24 unaccounted for in mudslide; 4 dead
Rescue workers dug through sludge and debris Monday looking for more than 20 people who may be trapped after a torrent of mud, trees and rocks ripped with a roar through a Japanese seaside resort town, killing at least four people.
Atami Mayor Sakae Saito said 24 people were still unreachable Tuesday morning, after the city late Monday released the names of more than 60 registered residents who were unaccounted for and the majority of them responded for the contact request. Officials were double checking the number because many of the apartments and houses in Atami are second homes or vacation rentals.
Initially, 147 people were unreachable, but officials confirmed many safely evacuated or were simply not at home. In addition to the four people found dead, officials said 25 people have been rescued, including three who were injured.
The disaster is an added trial as authorities prepare for the Tokyo Olympics, due to start in less than three weeks, while Japan is still in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, with cases steadily climbing in the capital and experts suggesting a need for another state of emergency.
Read:Japan searches for dozens missing in resort town mudslide
Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga told reporters that rescue workers are doing their utmost “to rescue those who may be buried under the mud and waiting for help as soon as possible.” Three coast guard ships, and six military drones were backing up hundreds of troops, firefighters and others toiling in the rain and fog.
The landslide occurred Saturday after days of heavy rain in Atami, which like many seaside Japanese towns is built into a steep hillside. It tore through the Izusan neighborhood, known for its hot springs, a shrine and shopping streets. The town has a registered population of 36,800 and is about 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Tokyo.
Shizuoka Gov. Heita Kawakatsu, who inspected the area Monday where the mudslide was believed to have started, said rain soaked into the mountainside apparently weakening the ground under a massive pile of soil at a construction site that then slid down the slope.
The prefecture is investigating. Media reports said a planned housing development in the area was abandoned after its operator ran into financial problems.
Witnesses described a giant roar as a small stream turned into a torrent, and bystanders were heard gasping in horror on cellphone videos taken as it happened.
Read:2 dead, 20 missing after mudslide rips through Japan town
Naoto Date, an actor who was visiting Izusan, was awakened by sirens. His neighborhood is now awash in muddy water with rescuers wading through knee-deep sludge. Just blocks from his home, some houses have been completely washed away, with only their foundations still visible. Mangled traffic signs stick out from the mud. At the seafront, he saw cars floating along with debris from destroyed homes.
“I grew up here, and my classmates and friends live here. I’m so sad to see my neighborhood where I used to play with my friends is now destroyed,” Date told The Associated Press by videocall from his home in Atami.
While Date’s mother, who was staying next door, has moved to a hotel along with other evacuees, the actor said he was staying away from evacuation centers because he is concerned about the coronavirus.
The Izusan area is one of 660,000 locations in Japan identified as prone to mudslides by the government, but those designations are not widely publicized and public awareness is low. Early July, near the end of Japan’s rainy season, is often a time of deadly flooding and mudslides, and many experts say the rains are worsening due to climate change.
With other parts of the country expecting heavy downpours, authorities were urging people near hillsides in areas at risk to use caution. Public broadcaster NHK carried a program Monday about risk factors and warning signs that might precede a landslide.
Read:Companies give vaccines to workers, boosting Japan’s rollout
A year ago, flooding and mudslides triggered by heavy rain in Kumamoto and four other prefectures in the Kyushu region in southern Japan left nearly 80 people dead. In July 2018, hillsides in crowded residential areas in Hiroshima collapsed, leaving 20 dead. In 2017, mudslides and flooding in the Kyushu region killed 40.
Miyoko Okamoto, an employee at a care home for the elderly, said the mudslide came close to but narrowly missed her house. She and her son ran out of the house, while her husband, a community association leader, escorted neighbors to safer ground.
Okamoto said she hasn’t been back home since fleeing because she is helping residents at the care home. “We were lucky to have survived, and that’s most important,” she said.
But her neighbor is still looking for his wife. “They are good friends of ours,” she said, “and that pains my heart.”
Rural Kentucky health officials press on, one shot at a time
John Rogers waited months after becoming eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine. It was only after talking with friends that the 66-year-old retiree from rural Spencer County, Kentucky, was persuaded to get the shot.
“They said, ‘You know, the vaccine may not be 100%, but if you get COVID, you’re in bad shape,’” Rogers said. “You can die from it.”
With the nation falling just short of President Joe Biden’s goal of dispensing at least one shot to 70% of all American adults by the Fourth of July, public health officials in places like Spencer County have shifted the emphasis away from mass vaccination clinics toward getting more information out in a more targeted way about the benefits of getting inoculated.
Health departments have offered the vaccine at concerts, parades and fairs and plan to make it available at back-to-school events. They have encouraged local doctors to raise the issue with patients and promoted shots by way of printed materials and social media.
Read:Vaccination 'most patriotic thing', COVID not yet finished: Biden
The hope is that word of mouth will ease fears and misperceptions about the vaccine and change people’s minds, one person at a time if necessary.
That’s especially important in places like Spencer County, an area of rolling green hills and farmland southeast of Louisville, where the state reports that about 22% of eligible adults are at least partially vaccinated. Public health officials there think the numbers are improving and may already be higher.
Biden administration officials are increasingly turning their attention nationwide to some 55 million unvaccinated adults seen as persuadable, a group they have dubbed the “movable middle.”
Many of those being targeted are under 30, an age group that has an especially low vaccination rate. But they also include people like Rogers, who said many people in his community are hesitant to get shots because “they just don’t trust the government.”
Rogers, who worked for a packaging supplier in nearby Shelbyville, said he shook off the skepticism and is now looking forward to a summer of “things going back to normal as they can be.”
Nationally, resistance to getting vaccinated tends to run higher in conservative and rural parts of the country. Overall, 49% of all Kentuckians have received at least one dose, compared with about 55% nationwide.
Stephanie Lokits, who oversees vaccination efforts in the county for the public health department, has watched immunizations slow since a peak in March, when clinics drew hundreds of residents. Now only 10 to 20 trickle through a weekly vaccine clinic held in the county seat of Taylorsville, a town of 1,600 with an old theater, a courthouse, some empty storefronts and a few small businesses slowly finding their way out of the pandemic.
Read:Biden urges shots for young adults as variant concern grows
While Kentucky has seen a decline in cases in the past seven weeks, nearly all confirmed infections and deaths reported in the past month have been in unvaccinated residents.
“I think that the philosophy that we have really tried to go by is that every single shot that we can get administered to a person is a positive thing,” Lokits said. “I think that’s kind of the place where a lot of health departments and a lot of providers are at.”
Lauren Slone, a nurse practitioner leading the vaccine effort at a community health center in Taylorsville, said she has learned through conversations with her patients that misconceptions about long-term effects pose real problems.
She has found that most people she talks to eventually get vaccinated. The challenge, she said, is “getting people to talk to me about it in the first place.”
While appointments in the center aren’t filling up as quickly as she would like, Slone thinks an effort to distribute information at local middle and high schools led to more vaccine appointments.
“I thought, you know, one way to get adults in is when teenagers know about it,“ Slone said. ”If your teenager asks to get it, then maybe that encourages you a little bit as well.”
A June drive-thru clinic held after the information push was well-attended by young adults. That’s another good sign, Slone said. Only one-third of Kentuckians 18 to 29 have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, compared with 83% of residents 65 and up.
Read:Biden promotes milestone of 300M vaccine shots in 150 days
Still, getting the word out can be harder in a rural county, because some residents aren’t on social media or don’t have consistent access to the internet. And in spread-out, sparsely populated places like Spencer County, some people may not feel the need to get the vaccine as quickly, said district health department director Roanya Rice.
Also, Spencer County has lower cases per-capita than neighboring counties and the state as a whole, meaning the threat can seem far away to some.
Rogers, now fully vaccinated, is enjoying the freedom to take off his mask for good, eat at a restaurant or visit with relatives without worrying.
“I waited a long time,” he said. “I should have gotten it a long time ago.”
US left Afghan airfield at night, didn’t tell new commander
The U.S. left Afghanistan’s Bagram Airfield after nearly 20 years by shutting off the electricity and slipping away in the night without notifying the base’s new Afghan commander, who discovered the Americans’ departure more than two hours after they left, Afghan military officials said.
Afghanistan’s army showed off the sprawling air base Monday, providing a rare first glimpse of what had been the epicenter of America’s war to unseat the Taliban and hunt down the al-Qaida perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks on America.
The U.S. announced Friday it had completely vacated its biggest airfield in the country in advance of a final withdrawal the Pentagon says will be completed by the end of August.
“We (heard) some rumor that the Americans had left Bagram ... and finally by seven o’clock in the morning, we understood that it was confirmed that they had already left Bagram,” Gen. Mir Asadullah Kohistani, Bagram’s new commander said.
Read: US vacates key Afghan base; pullout target now 'late August'
U.S. military spokesman Col. Sonny Leggett did not address the specific complaints of many Afghan soldiers who inherited the abandoned airfield, instead referring to a statement last week.
The statement said the handover of the many bases had been in the process soon after President Joe Biden’s mid-April announcement that America was withdrawing the last of its forces. Leggett said in the statement that they had coordinated their departures with Afghanistan’s leaders.
Before the Afghan army could take control of the airfield about an hour’s drive from the Afghan capital Kabul, it was invaded by a small army of looters, who ransacked barrack after barrack and rummaged through giant storage tents before being evicted, according to Afghan military officials.
“At first we thought maybe they were Taliban,” said Abdul Raouf, a soldier of 10 years. He said the the U.S. called from the Kabul airport and said “we are here at the airport in Kabul.”
Kohistani insisted the Afghan National Security and Defense Force could hold on to the heavily fortified base despite a string of Taliban wins on the battlefield. The airfield also includes a prison with about 5,000 prisoners, many of them allegedly Taliban.
The Taliban’s latest surge comes as the last U.S. and NATO forces pull out of the country. As of last week, most NATO soldiers had already quietly left. The last U.S. soldiers are likely to remain until an agreement to protect the Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport, which is expected to be done by Turkey, is completed.
Meanwhile, in northern Afghanistan, district after district has fallen to the Taliban. In just the last two days hundreds of Afghan soldiers fled across the border into Tajikistan rather than fight the insurgents.
“In battle it is sometimes one step forward and some steps back,” said Kohistani.
Read: US hands Bagram Airfield to Afghans after nearly 20 years
Kohistani said the Afghan military is changing its strategy to focus on the strategic districts. He insisted they would retake them in the coming days without saying how that would be accomplished.
On display on Monday was a massive facility, the size of a small city, that had been exclusively used by the U.S. and NATO. The sheer size is extraordinary, with roadways weaving through barracks and past hangar-like buildings. There are two runways and over 100 parking spots for fighter jets known as revetments because of the blast walls that protect each aircraft. One of the two runways is 12,000 feet (3,660 meters) long and was built in 2006. There’s a passenger lounge, a 50-bed hospital and giant hangar-size tents filled with supplies such as furniture.
Kohistani said the U.S. left behind 3.5 million items, all itemized by the departing U.S. military. They include tens of thousands of bottles of water, energy drinks and military ready-made meals, known as MRE’s.
“When you say 3.5 million items, it is every small items, like every phone, every door knob, every window in every barracks, every door in every barracks,” he said.
The big ticket items left behind include thousands of civilian vehicles, many of them without keys to start them, and hundreds of armored vehicles. Kohistani said the U.S. also left behind small weapons and the ammunition for them, but the departing troops took heavy weapons with them. Ammunition for weapons not being left behind for the Afghan military was blown up before they left.
Afghan soldiers who wandered Monday throughout the base that had once seen as many as 100,000 U.S. troops were deeply critical of how the U.S. left Bagram, leaving in the night without telling the Afghan soldiers tasked with patrolling the perimeter.
“In one night, they lost all the goodwill of 20 years by leaving the way they did, in the night, without telling the Afghan soldiers who were outside patrolling the area,” said Afghan soldier Naematullah, who asked that only his one name be used.
Within 20 minutes of the U.S.’s silent departure on Friday, the electricity was shut down and the base was plunged into darkness, said Raouf, the soldier of 10 years who has also served in Taliban strongholds of Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
Read:Biden vows 'sustained' help as Afghanistan drawdown nears
The sudden darkness was like a signal to the looters, he said. They entered from the north, smashing through the first barrier, ransacking buildings, loading anything that was not nailed down into trucks.
On Monday, three days after the U.S. departure, Afghan soldiers were still collecting piles of garbage that included empty water bottles, cans and empty energy drinks left behind by the looters.
Kohistani, meanwhile, said the nearly 20 years of U.S. and NATO involvement in Afghanistan was appreciated but now it was time for Afghans to step up.
“We have to solve our problem. We have to secure our country and once again build our country with our own hands,” he said.
Tropical Storm Elsa moving across west Cuba, then to Florida
Tropical Storm Elsa swept over western Cuba near Havana with strong rain and winds Monday night, and forecasters said it would move on to the Florida Keys on Tuesday and Florida’s central Gulf coast by Wednesday.
The storm was passing over mainly rural areas to the east of Havana after making landfall near Cienega de Zapata, a natural park with few inhabitants.
Read: Tropical Storm Elsa nears Cuba amid fears of flooding
By evening, Elsa had maximum sustained winds of 50 mph (85 kph). Its core was about 30 miles (30 kilometers) east of Havana and moving to the northwest at 13 mph (20 kph).
“The wind is blowing hard and there is a lot of rain. Some water is getting under the door of my house. In the yard the level is high, but it did not get into the house,” Lázaro Ramón Sosa, a craftsman and photographer who lives in the Zapata Swamp, told The Associated Press by telephone.
Sosa said he saw some avocado trees fall nearby.
Read: Hurricane Elsa races toward Haiti amid fears of landslides
Though Havana was expected to miss the brunt of the storm, many people in the capital were staying in place.
“For now, I staying at home. We have to wait for the night and see exactly what happens,” Aida Herrera, who lives next to the Malecon boulevard facing the sea, told AP.
Elsa had spent Sunday and much of Monday sweeping parallel to Cuba’s southern coast before heading on to land, sparing most of the island from significant effects.
As a precaution, Cuban officials had evacuated 180,000 people against the possibility of heavy flooding from a storm that already battered several Caribbean islands, killing at least three people.
The U.S. National Hurricane Center said the storm was expected to move back over the sea before midnight Monday and then head for Florida. Tropical storm warnings were posted for the Florida Keys from Craig Key westward to the Dry Tortugas and for the west coast of Florida from Flamingo northward to the Ochlockonee River.
Elsa was a Category 1 hurricane until Saturday morning, causing widespread damage on several eastern Caribbean islands Friday as the first hurricane of the Atlantic season. The storm caused the deaths of one person on St. Lucia and of a 15-year-old boy and a 75-year-old woman in separate events in the Dominican Republic.
Elsa is the earliest fifth-named storm on record and also broke the record as the tropic’s fastest-moving hurricane, clocking in at 31 mph Saturday morning, said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane researcher at the University of Miami.