World
Xi takes firm line as China Communist Party marks centenary
China will not allow itself to be bullied and anyone who tries will face “broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,” President Xi Jinping said at a mass gathering Thursday to mark the centenary of the ruling Communist Party.
Wearing a grey buttoned-up suit of the type worn by Mao Zedong, Xi spoke from the balcony of Tiananmen Gate, emphasizing the party’s role in bringing China to global prominence and saying it would never be divided from the people.
Xi, who is head of the party and leader of the world’s largest armed forces also said China had restored order in Hong Kong following antigovernment protests in the semi-autonomous city in 2019 and reiterated Beijing’s determination to bring self-governing Taiwan under its control.
He received the biggest applause, however, when he described the party as the force that had restored China’s dignity and turned it into the world’s second largest economy since taking power amid civil war in 1949.
Read: At 100, China’s Communist Party looks to cement its future
“The Chinese people are a people with a strong sense of pride and self-confidence,” Xi said. “We have never bullied, oppressed or enslaved the people of another nation, not in the past, during the present or in the future.”
“At the same time, the Chinese people will absolutely not allow any foreign force to bully, oppress or enslave us and anyone who attempts to do so will face broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people,” Xi said.
Xi’s comments come as China is enmeshed in a deepening rivalry with the United States for global power status and has clashed with India along their disputed border. China also claims unpopulated islands held by Japan and almost the entire South China Sea, and it threatens to invade Taiwan, with which the U.S. has boosted relations and military sales.
Beijing also faces criticism that it is guilty of abusing its power at home, including detaining more than 1 million Uyghurs and and other Muslim minorities for political reeducation in the northwestern region of Xinjiang, and for imprisoning or intimidating into silence those it sees as potential opponents from Tibet to Hong Kong.
Thursday’s events are the climax of weeks of ceremonies and displays praising the role of the Communist Party in bringing vast improvements in quality of life at home and restoring China’s economic, political and military influence abroad. Those improvements coupled with harshly repressing opponents have helped the party hold power despite its 92 million members accounting for just over 6% of China’s population.
While the progress dates mainly from economic reforms enacted by Deng Xiaoping four decades ago, the celebrations spotlight the role of Xi, who has established himself as China’s most powerful leader since Mao. Xi mentioned the contributions of past leaders in his address, but his claims to have attained breakthroughs in poverty alleviation and economic progress while raising China’s global profile and standing up to the West were front and center.
Xi, 68, has eliminated limits on his time in office and is expected to begin a third five-year term as party leader next year.
In seeking to capture more gains for the party on the world stage, Xi is setting up China for a protracted struggle with the U.S., said Robert Sutter of George Washington University’s Elliot School of International Affairs.
“In foreign affairs it involves growth of wealth and power, with China unencumbered as it pursues its very self-centered policy goals at the expense of others and of the prevailing world order,” Sutter said.
While the party faces no serious challenges to its rule, the legitimacy of its rule has been undercut by past disasters such as the mass famine of the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Cultural Revolution’s violent class warfare and xenophobia, and the 1989 bloodshed at Tiananmen Square.
Read:India cranking up border infrastructure to narrow gap with China
The party’s official narrative glosses over past mistakes or current controversies, emphasizing development, stability and efficiency — including its success in controlling COVID-19 at home — in contrast to what it portrays as political bickering, bungling of pandemic control measures and social strife in multiparty democracies.
Xi’s comments Thursday on bullying, oppression and enslavement will elicit historical memories among Chinese of the the 19th century Opium Wars that led to foreign nations gaining special legal and economic privileges in China, as well as Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation of much of the country during the 1930s and 1940s.
Xi said those experiences had made the party’s rise to power inevitable as the only force truly able to rid China of foreign meddling and restore its global stature.
“History and the people chose the Communist Party,” Xi said.
Xi said the party would retain absolute control over its military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, which now has the world’s second-largest annual budget after the U.S. armed forces and has been adding aircraft carriers and sophisticated new aircraft, showcased in a flyover at the start of the ceremony featuring a squadron of China’s J-20 stealth fighters.
“We will turn the people’s military into a world-class military, with even stronger capabilities and even more reliable means to safeguard the nation’s sovereignty, security and development interests,” Xi said.
Thursday’s rally recalled the mass events at which Mao would greet hundreds of thousands of Red Guards in Tiananmen Square during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, a time many older Chinese would prefer to forget.
Yet it also portrayed a people strongly united behind the ruling party and its leader.
“After several generations of leaders, including President Xi, now (China) is advancing courageously and relentlessly on the path of socialism. So I think the Communist Party will be able to carry on for a thousand years, ten thousand years,” said Beijing resident Yang Shaocheng.
Events are being held across the country, including in Hong Kong, which is simultaneously holding commemorations of its 1997 handover from British to Chinese control.
Read:China's comical picture 'The Last G-7' raps Japan's Fukushima water
China has cracked down hard on freedom of speech and political opposition in the territory, while rejecting all outside criticism and sanctions imposed on its leaders.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam was among officials seated on Tiananmen Gate, while her deputy defended the national security law imposed by Beijing last year and said it would be used further in the coming year to ensure stability.
Since its implementation, large-scale demonstrations have been banned and a number of pro-democracy activists and journalists have been arrested, ceased public activities or left Hong Kong.
Despite the protest ban, a group of activists marched through part of Hong Kong on Thursday carrying a banner that called for the release of political prisoners.
Latest victims in condo tower collapse include 2 children
As more human remains emerged Wednesday from the rubble of the collapsed Florida condo tower, the dead this time included the first children, ages 4 and 10, a loss that the Miami-Dade mayor called “too great to bear.”
Mayor Daniella Levine Cava made the announcement nearly a week after the Florida building came crashing down. After some preliminary remarks at a media briefing, she took a deep breath to gather herself and stared down at her notes. She spoke haltingly and said the disclosure came with “great sorrow, real pain.”
“So any loss of life, especially given the unexpected, unprecedented nature of this event, is a tragedy,” she said. But the loss of children was an even heavier burden.
Miami-Dade police later identified the children as 10-year-old Lucia Guara and 4-year-old Emma Guara. The remains of their father, Marcus Guara, 52, were pulled from the rubble Saturday and identified Monday. The girls and their mother, Anaely Rodriguez, 42, were recovered Wednesday.
Read:Florida officials pledge multiple probes into condo collapse
Search crews going through the ruins found the remains of a total of six people Wednesday, bringing the number of confirmed dead to 18. It was the highest one-day toll since the building collapsed last Thursday into a heap of broken concrete. The number of residents unaccounted for stands at 145.
Earlier in the day, crews searching for survivors built a ramp that should allow the use of heavier equipment, potentially accelerating the removal of concrete that “could lead to incredibly good news events,” the state fire marshal said.
Since the sudden collapse of the 12-story Champlain Towers South last week in Surfside, rescuers have been working to peel back layers of concrete on the pancaked building without disturbing the unstable pile of debris.
Miami-Dade Assistant Fire Chief Raide Jadallah told family members of those missing that the ramp allowed rescuers to use a crane on sections that were not previously accessible. He said that improves the chances of finding new pockets of space in the urgent search for survivors.
“We hope to start seeing some significant improvement in regards to the possibility of (finding) any voids that we cannot see,” Jadallah said.
In an interview with Miami television station WSVN, state Fire Marshal Jimmy Patronis described the ramp as “a Herculean effort” that would allow crews “to leverage massive equipment to remove mass pieces of concrete,” which could lead to good results.
Patronis told The Associated Press that the ramp will permit heavy equipment to get closer to areas where debris needs to be cleared. The new equipment includes a so-called nibbler, a massive machine that has a scissors-like tool at the end of a long arm to cut through concrete and rebar.
Officials have been concerned an underground parking garage could collapse under the weight of heavy equipment, so they decided to build the makeshift limestone ramp, Patronis said. He said dogs are used to check for survivors in the area where the machine works, and then the nibbler is sent in.
Read:‘Our backyard’: Tragedy strikes home for Miami-Dade rescuers
“So you can really make some serious rapid headway just because of the sheer hydraulic forces this thing can exert versus a human being with hand tools,” Patronis said.
The cause of the collapse is under investigation. A 2018 engineering report found that the building’s ground-floor pool deck was resting on a concrete slab that had “major structural damage” and needed extensive repairs. The report also found “abundant cracking” of concrete columns, beams and walls in the parking garage.
Just two months before the building came down, the president of its board wrote a letter to residents saying that structural problems identified in the 2018 inspection had “gotten significantly worse” and that major repairs would cost at least $15.5 million. With bids for the work still pending, the building suddenly collapsed last Thursday.
Rescuers still faced enormous obstacles as they spent a seventh day searching for survivors. The pancake collapse of the building has frustrated efforts to reach anyone who may have survived in a pocket of space.
Officials were also worried about the possibility of severe weather interfering with search efforts. Crews have already had to deal with intermittent bad weather that caused temporary delays in the work, and they are now keeping an eye on a potential tropical storm in the Atlantic Ocean.
Gov. Ron DeSantis said some of the resources in Surfside might have to be removed in case the storms hit any part of Florida. “’Tis the season and you’ve got to be ready,” he said.
The possibility of severe weather prompted state officials to ask the federal government for an additional search and rescue team. Kevin Guthrie of the Florida Division of Emergency Management said the new team would be on hand if severe weather hits, allowing crews that have been working at the site for days to rotate out.
Authorities said it’s still a search-and-rescue operation, but no one has been found alive since hours after the collapse on Thursday.
Read:‘Excruciating:’ Florida collapse search stretches to Day 6
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden planned to travel to Surfside on Thursday.
“They want to thank the heroic first responders, search-and-rescue teams and everyone who’s been working tirelessly around the clock, and meet with the families” waiting for word of their loved ones, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
Miami-Dade Police Director Freddy Ramirez said he hopes Biden’s visit will be a morale booster for the devastated community.
“We’ve had several challenges from weather, sorrow, pain. And I think that the president coming will bring some unity here for our community, support, like our governor, our mayor, all of us together.”
Canadian Indigenous group says more graves found at new site
A Canadian Indigenous group said Wednesday a search using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families.
The latest discovery of graves near Cranbrook, British Columbia follows reports of similar findings at two other such church-run schools, one of more than 600 unmarked graves and another of 215 bodies. Cranbrook is 524 miles (843 kilometers) east of Vancouver.
The Lower Kootenay Band said in a news release that it began using the technology last year to search the site close to the former St. Eugene’s Mission School, which was operated by the Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s. It said the search found the remains in unmarked graves, some about 3 feet (a meter) deep.
Read:Unmarked graves found at another Indigenous school in Canada
It’s believed the remains are those of people from the bands of the Ktunaxa nation, which includes the Lower Kootenay Band, and other neighboring First Nation communities.
Chief Jason Louie of the Lower Kootenay Band called the discovery “deeply personal” since he had relatives attend the school.
“Let’s call this for what it is,” Louie told CBC radio in an interview. “It’s a mass murder of Indigenous people.”
“The Nazis were held accountable for their war crimes. I see no difference in locating the priests and nuns and the brothers who are responsible for this mass murder to be held accountable for their part in this attempt of genocide of an Indigenous people.”
From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society. Thousands of children died there of disease and other causes, with many never returned to their families.
Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations, with others operated by the Presbyterian, Anglican and the United Church of Canada, which today is the largest Protestant denomination in the country.
The Canadian government has acknowledged that physical and sexual abuse was rampant in the schools, with students beaten for speaking their native languages.
Last week the Cowessess First Nation, located about 85 miles (135 kilometers) east of the Saskatchewan capital of Regina, said investigators found “at least 600” unmarked graves at the site of a former Marieval Indian Residential School.
Last month, the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, were found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.
Prior to news of the most recent finding, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he has asked that the national flag on the Peace Tower remain at half-mast for Canada Day on Thursday to honor the Indigenous children who died in residential schools.
On Tuesday, it was announced that a group of Indigenous leaders will visit the Vatican later this year to press for a papal apology for the Roman Catholic Church’s role in residential schools.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Indigenous leaders will visit the Vatican from Dec. 17-20 to meet with Pope Francis and “foster meaningful encounters of dialogue and healing.”
After the graves were found in Kamloops, the pope expressed his pain over the discovery and pressed religious and political authorities to shed light on “this sad affair.” But he didn’t offer the apology sought by First Nations and the Canadian government.
Read:More than 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada
The leader of one of Canada’s largest Indigenous groups says there are no guarantees an Indigenous delegation travelling to the Vatican will lead to Pope Francis apologizing in Canada.
Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde confirmed that assembly representatives will join Metis and Inuit leaders making the trip to the Vatican in late December.
“There are no guarantees of any kind of apology″ from the pope, said Bellegarde.
“The Anglican Church has apologized,” he told a virtual news conference. “The Presbyterian Church has apologized. United Church has apologized.”
“This is really part of truth and part of the healing and reconciliation process for survivors to hear the apology from the highest position within the Roman Catholic Church, which is the pope.”
Louie said he wants more concrete action than apologies.
“I’m really done with the government and churches saying they are sorry,” he said. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
A papal apology was one of 94 recommendations from Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but the Canadian bishops conference said in 2018 that the pope could not personally apologize for the residential schools.
Since the discovery of unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools, there have been several fires at churches across Canada. There has also been some vandalism targeting churches and statues in cities.
Four small Catholic churches on Indigenous lands in rural southern British Columbia have been destroyed by suspicious fires and a vacant former Anglican church in northwestern B.C. was recently damaged in what RCMP said could be arson.
On Wednesday, Alberta’s premier condemned what he called “arson attacks at Christian churches” after a historic parish was destroyed in a fire.
“Today in Morinville, l’église de Saint-Jean-Baptiste was destroyed in what appears to have been a criminal act of arson,” Kenney said in a statement.
RCMP said officers were called to the suspicious blaze at the church in Morinville, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) north of Edmonton, in the early hours of Wednesday.
Read:Trudeau denounces truck attack that targeted Muslim family
Trudeau and an Indigenous leader said arson and vandalism targeting churches is not the way to get justice following the discovery of the unmarked graves.
“The destruction of places of worship is unacceptable and it must stop,” Trudeau said. “We must work together to right past wrongs.″
Bellegarde said burning churches is not the way to proceed.
“I can understand the frustration, the anger, the hurt and the pain, there’s no question,″ he said. ”But to burn things down is not our way.″
Hundreds of deaths could be linked to Northwest heat wave
The grim toll of the historic heat wave in the Pacific Northwest became more apparent as authorities in Canada, Oregon and Washington state said Wednesday they were investigating hundreds of deaths likely caused by scorching temperatures that shattered all-time records in the normally temperate region.
British Columbia’s chief coroner, Lisa Lapointe, said her office received reports of at least 486 “sudden and unexpected deaths” between Friday and Wednesday. Normally, she said about 165 people would die in the Canadian province over a five-day period.
“While it is too early to say with certainty how many of these deaths are heat related, it is believed likely that the significant increase in deaths reported is attributable to the extreme weather,” LaPointe said in a statement.
Many homes in Vancouver, much like Seattle, don’t have air conditioning, leaving people ill-prepared for soaring temperatures.
Read:Blackouts in US Northwest due to heat wave, deaths reported
“Vancouver has never experienced heat like this, and sadly dozens of people are dying because of it,” Vancouver police Sgt. Steve Addison said in a statement.
Oregon health officials said more than 60 deaths have been tied to the heat, with the state’s largest county, Multnomah, blaming the weather for 45 deaths since temperatures spiked Friday. At least 20 deaths in Washington state have been linked to the heat, a number that was expected to rise.
The heat wave was caused by what meteorologists described as a dome of high pressure over the Northwest and worsened by human-caused climate change, which is making such extreme weather events more likely and more intense. Seattle, Portland and many other cities broke all-time heat records, with temperatures in some places reaching above 115 degrees Fahrenheit (46 Celsius).
While the temperatures had cooled considerably in western Washington, Oregon and British Columbia by Wednesday, interior regions were still sweating through triple-digit temperatures as the weather system moved east into the intermountain West and the Plains.
Amid the dangerous heat and drought gripping the American West, crews were closely monitoring wildfires that can explode in the extreme weather.
Read:Northwest US faces hottest day of intense heat wave
Heat warnings were in place for parts of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana as well as Saskatchewan and southern Alberta, where “a prolonged, dangerous, and historic heat wave will persist through this week,” Environment Canada said.
“The temperatures recorded this week are unprecedented — lives have been lost and the risk of wildfires is at a dangerously high level,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said.
In Oregon, the Multnomah County medical examiner blamed 45 heat deaths on hyperthermia, an abnormally high body temperature caused by a failure of the body to deal with heat. The victims ranged in age from 44 to 97.
The county that includes Portland said that between 2017 and 2019, there were only 12 hyperthermia deaths in all of Oregon.
“This was a true health crisis that has underscored how deadly an extreme heat wave can be, especially to otherwise vulnerable people,” Dr. Jennifer Vines, the county’s health officer, said in a statement.
The King County medical examiner’s office, which covers an area including Seattle, said on Wednesday that a total of 13 people had died from heat-related causes. In neighboring Snohomish County, three men — ages 51, 75 and 77 — died after experiencing heatstroke in their homes, the medical examiner’s office told the Daily Herald in Everett, Washington, on Tuesday. Four deaths have also been linked to heat in Kitsap County, west of Seattle.
In western Washington, the Spokane Fire Department found two people dead in an apartment building Wednesday who had been suffering symptoms of heat-related stress, TV station KREM reported.
Read:UN: Don’t forget to save species while fixing global warming
The heat led a power company in Spokane to impose rolling blackouts because of the strain on the electrical grid. Avista Utilities says it’s trying to limit outages to one hour per customer.
Heather Rosentrater, an Avista vice president for energy delivery, said the outages were a distribution problem and did not stem from a lack of electricity in the system.
Renee Swecker, 66, of Clayton, Washington, visited a splashpad fountain in downtown Spokane’s Riverfront Park with her grandchildren Wednesday, saying they “are going everywhere where there is water.”
“I’m praying for rain every day,” Swecker said.
Bill Cosby freed from prison, his sex conviction overturned
Pennsylvania’s highest court threw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction and released him from prison Wednesday in a stunning reversal of fortune for the comedian once known as “America’s Dad,” ruling that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby.
Cosby, 83, had served nearly three years of a three- to 10-year sentence after being found guilty of drugging and violating Temple University sports administrator Andrea Constand at his suburban Philadelphia home in 2004. He was the first celebrity tried and convicted in the #MeToo era.
The former “Cosby Show” star was arrested in 2015, when a district attorney armed with newly unsealed evidence — the comic’s damaging deposition in a lawsuit filed by Constand — brought charges against him days before the 12-year statute of limitations was about to run out.
But the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said Wednesday that District Attorney Kevin Steele, who made the decision to arrest Cosby, was obligated to stand by his predecessor’s promise not to charge Cosby, though there was no evidence that promise was ever put in writing.
Justice David Wecht, writing for a split court, said Cosby had relied on the previous district attorney’s decision not to charge him when the comedian gave his potentially incriminating testimony in Constand’s civil case.
The court called Cosby’s subsequent arrest “an affront to fundamental fairness, particularly when it results in a criminal prosecution that was forgone for more than a decade.” It said justice and “fair play and decency” require that the district attorney’s office stand by the decision of the previous DA.
The justices said that overturning the conviction, and barring any further prosecution, “is the only remedy that comports with society’s reasonable expectations of its elected prosecutors and our criminal justice system.”
He was promptly set free from the state prison in suburban Montgomery County and returned to his home with no immediate comment.
His appeals lawyer, Jennifer Bonjean, said Cosby should never have been prosecuted. “District attorneys can’t change it up simply because of their political motivation,” she said, adding that Cosby remains in excellent health, apart from being legally blind.
Also read: Cosby in cuffs: TV star gets 3 to 10 years for sex assault
In a statement, Steele said Cosby went free “on a procedural issue that is irrelevant to the facts of the crime.” He commended Constand for coming forward and added: “My hope is that this decision will not dampen the reporting of sexual assaults by victims. ... We still believe that no one is above the law — including those who are rich, famous and powerful.”
Constand and her lawyer did not immediately return messages seeking comment.
“FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted — a miscarriage of justice is corrected!” the actor’s “Cosby Show” co-star Phylicia Rashad tweeted.
“I am furious to hear this news,” actor Amber Tamblyn, a founder of Time’s Up, an advocacy group for victims of sexual assault, said in a Twitter post. “I personally know women who this man drugged and raped while unconscious. Shame on the court and this decision.”
In sentencing Cosby, the trial judge had ruled him a sexually violent predator who could not be safely allowed out in public and needed to report to authorities for the rest of his life.
Four Supreme Court justices formed the majority that ruled in Cosby’s favor, while three others dissented in whole or in part.
Peter Goldberger, a suburban Philadelphia lawyer with an expertise in criminal appeals, said prosecutors could ask the Pennsylvania Supreme Court for reargument or reconsideration, but it would be a very long shot.
“I can’t imagine that with such a lengthy opinion, with a thoughtful concurring opinion and a thoughtful dissenting opinion, that you could honestly say they made a simple mistake that would change their minds if they point it out to them,” Goldberger said.
Even though Cosby was charged only with the assault on Constand, the judge at his trial allowed five other accusers to testify that they, too, were similarly victimized by Cosby in the 1980s. Prosecutors called them as witnesses to establish what they said was a pattern of behavior on Cosby’s part.
Cosby’s lawyers had argued on appeal that the use of the five additional accusers was improper.
But the Pennsylvania high court did not weigh in on the question, saying it was moot given the justices’ finding that Cosby should not have been prosecuted in the first place.
In New York, the judge at last year’s trial of Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, whose case helped sparked the #MeToo movement in 2017, let four other accusers testify. Weinstein was convicted and sentenced to 23 years in prison.
Also read: Cosby prosecutor asks for 5 to 10 years in prison
In May, Cosby was denied parole after refusing to participate in sex offender programs behind bars. He said he would resist the treatment programs and refuse to acknowledge wrongdoing even if it meant serving the full 10 years.
Prosecutors said Cosby repeatedly used his fame and family man persona to manipulate young women, holding himself out as a mentor before betraying them.
The groundbreaking Black actor grew up in public housing in Philadelphia and made a fortune estimated at $400 million during his 50 years in the entertainment industry that included the TV shows “I Spy,” “The Cosby Show” and “Fat Albert,” along with comedy albums and a multitude of television commercials.
The suburban Philadelphia prosecutor who originally looked into Constand’s allegations, Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor, considered the case flawed because Constand waited a year to come forward and stayed in contact with Cosby afterward. Castor declined to prosecute and instead encouraged Constand to sue for damages.
Questioned under oath as part of that lawsuit, Cosby said he used to offer quaaludes to women he wanted to have sex with. He eventually settled with Constand for $3.4 million.
Portions of the deposition later became public at the request of The Associated Press and spelled Cosby’s downfall, opening the floodgates on accusations from other women and destroying the comic’s good-guy reputation and career. More than 60 women came forward to say Cosby violated them.
The AP does not typically identify sexual assault victims without their permission, which Constand has granted.
Cosby, in the deposition, acknowledged giving quaaludes to a 19-year-old woman before having sex with her at a Las Vegas hotel in 1976. Cosby called the encounter consensual.
On Wednesday, the woman, Therese Serignese, now 64, said the court ruling “takes my breath away.”
“I just think it’s a miscarriage of justice. This is about procedure. It’s not about the truth of the women,” she said. She said she took solace in the fact Cosby served nearly three years: “That’s as good as it gets in America” for sex crime victims, she said.
Virus infections surging in Africa’s vulnerable rural areas
For Pelagia Bvukura, who lives in a rural part of north-central Zimbabwe, COVID-19 had always been a “city disease,” affecting those in the capital, Harare, or other, distant big towns.
“There was no virus for us. We only used to hear it was in Harare or other towns or when city people died and we buried them here,” she said recently, referring to the custom in Zimbabwe where those who move to the city often are buried at their family’s rural home.
That is changing now. A new surge of the virus is finally penetrating Africa’s rural areas, where most of the continent’s people live, spreading to areas that once had been viewed as safe havens from infections that hit cities particularly hard.
Read:Fearing COVID, struggling Malawian women forgo prenatal care
With facilities in the countryside ill-prepared to fight the coronavirus, residents like Bvukura worry that the next graves being dug could be for their neighbors — or even themselves.
Her village of Zvimba, 110 kilometers (68 miles) from Harare, has yet to record a major spike in infections, but it sits in a province that is the current epicenter of the virus.
“It is now on our doorsteps. It’s scary. We don’t know how to protect ourselves. We have never dealt with such a problem before,” she said.
Like many here, she wasn’t wearing a mask and is yet to be vaccinated.
Africa has recorded over 5.3 million cases and is experiencing the worst of a wave driven by more contagious and deadlier variants. The continent recorded a 39% increase in new cases in the week from June 14-20, according to the World Health Organization.
With homesteads spaced far apart, few visitors and rare public gatherings, rural areas appeared so insulated that they drew some people from cities to escape both infection and economic hardship.
“It was a dangerous, false sense of security. Now a tragedy is unfolding,” said Dr. Johannes Marisa, president of the Medical and Dental Private Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association in Harare.
The delta variant that has devastated India has been detected in at least 14 African countries including Congo, Mozambique, Namibia, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe, and not just in the cities.
“We are starting to see an upward trend in the rural and marginalized areas,” said Edward Simiyu, Uganda country director of the charity group Mercy Corps, in a statement earlier in June.
In Zimbabwe, three of the four districts under strict lockdown and declared as epicenters of the outbreak are in the predominantly rural Mashonaland West province, which recorded over half of the 801 cases reported last weekend. Other hot spots also are largely rural, a first for this country.
“We are going to see a lot of deaths, especially arising from rural areas. COVID-19 is now coming from the rural areas,” said Marisa, attributing the spike to “a high degree of complacency,” a lack of information and few vaccinations, with urban areas prioritized.
Read:In poorest countries, surges worsen shortages of vaccines
The virus can also spread at funerals when city dwellers return to visit rural relatives.
“I was at a funeral in a rural area recently and people were surprised to see me wearing a mask,” he said.
Rural areas are ill-equipped to deal with the surge, and urban health care facilities are under strain in treating an increasing number of people from the countryside. Zimbabwe’s major referral hospital, Parirenyatwa in Harare, is prioritizing beds for COVID-19 patients.
“Parirenyatwa is almost full. These are not people from Harare. Health facilities in rural areas are miserable, so all those people are being referred to city hospitals,” Marisa said.
In Mozambique’s remote Tete province, a hotbed of infections where the delta variant was recorded, President Filipe Nyusi expressed worry.
“We don’t have many beds. … We don’t have many health staff in Tete either,” Nyusi said.
Because health care facilities in the countryside in places like Uganda are more poorly staffed than those in urban areas, “a penetration of COVID-19 infections in these rural and vulnerable regions is likely to be devastating, … risking more people slipping deeper into poverty, further worsening social inequities, divisions, and conflict,” said Simiyu of Mercy Corps.
Rural residents are finding it difficult to get vaccinated because of weak public health systems and vaccine distribution problems. Only 1% of Africa’s 1.3 billion people have been vaccinated, according to the WHO and the Africa Centers for Disease Control.
The Zvimba Rural District hospital only had just a small number of coronavirus vaccines, reserved for second doses, its staff said.
But even after the vaccine becomes available, “the ability of health systems to absorb those doses and get them distributed — particularly in rural communities — is the next huge problem on the horizon,” said Sean Granville-Ross, Africa regional director for Mercy Corps, in an interview with The Associated Press.
“There’s a risk vaccines could sit spoiling in warehouses across African capitals if countries aren’t ready to hit the ground running with mass vaccination campaigns, including in the hardest-to-reach rural areas where health infrastructure is already weak, as is trust in public health systems,” Granville-Ross said.
Read:‘This IS INSANE’: Africa desperately short of COVID vaccine
Those in rural areas who are desperate for the vaccines, including the elderly, live far from hospitals and clinics.
Matrida Tendayi, who is 100 years old, said she is too frail to walk to the nearest clinic in Dema, a rural area about 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Harare, even if a vaccine was available.
“I have been waiting and waiting,” she said. “But they are not coming.”
Australia official urges against AstraZeneca
The top health official in Australia’s Queensland state is advising adults under age 40 not to take the AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine because of the risk of a rare blood clotting disorder, even though the Australian government is making those shots available to all adults.
Read:Australia battles several clusters in new pandemic phase
Queensland Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young said Wednesday that younger adults should wait for the scarce Pfizer vaccine to become available. Young says that with only 42 coronavirus cases active in Queensland, AstraZeneca is not worth the risk for younger adults.
The federal government decided Monday to make AstraZeneca available to all adults as concerns grow about clusters of the delta variant of the coronavirus, which is thought to be more contagious.
Read:Australian court upholds ban on most international travel
Australian authorities still say Pfizer is the preferred option for people younger than 60.
At 100, China’s Communist Party looks to cement its future
For China’s Communist Party, celebrating its 100th birthday on Thursday is not just about glorifying its past. It’s also about cementing its future and that of its leader, Chinese President Xi Jinping.
In the build-up to the July 1 anniversary, Xi and the party have exhorted its members and the nation to remember the early days of struggle in the hills of the inland city of Yan’an, where Mao Zedong established himself as party leader in the 1930s.
Dug into earthen cliffs, the primitive homes where Mao and his followers lived are now tourist sites for the party faithful and schoolteachers encouraged to spread the word. The cave-like rooms feel far removed from Beijing, the modern capital where national festivities are being held, and the skyscrapers of Shenzhen and other high-tech centers on the coast that are more readily associated with today’s China.
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Yet in marking its centenary, the Communist Party is using this past — selectively — to try to ensure its future and that of Xi, who may be eyeing, as Mao did, ruling for life.
“By linking the party to all of China’s accomplishments of the past century, and none of its failures, Xi is trying to bolster support for his vision, his right to lead the party and the party’s right to govern the country,” said Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.
This week’s celebrations focus on two distinct eras — the early struggles and recent achievements — glossing over the nearly three decades under Mao from the 1950s to 1970s, when mostly disastrous social and economic policies left millions dead and the country impoverished.
To that end, a spectacular outdoor gala attended by Xi in Beijing on Monday night relived the Long March of the 1930s — a retreat to Yan’an that has become of party lore — before moving on to singing men holding giant wrenches and women with bushels of wheat. But it also focused on the present, with representations of special forces climbing a mountain and medical workers battling COVID-19 in protective gear.
The party has long invoked its history to justify its right to rule, said Joseph Fewsmith, a professor of Chinese politics at Boston University.
Shoring up its legitimacy is critical since the party has run China single-handedly for more than 70 years — through the chaotic years under Mao, through the collapse of the Soviet Union and through the unexpected adoption of market-style reforms that over time have built an economic powerhouse, though millions remain in poverty.
Many Western policymakers and analysts believed that capitalism would transform China into a democracy as its people prospered, following the pattern of former dictatorships such as South Korea and Taiwan.
The Communist Party has confounded that thinking, taking a decisive turn against democracy when it cracked down on large-scale protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 and quashing any challenges to single-party rule in the ensuing decades — most recently all but extinguishing dissent in Hong Kong after anti-government protests shook the city in 2019.
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Its leaders have learned the lesson of the Soviet Union, where the communists lost power after opening the door to pluralism, said Zhang Shiyi of the Institute of Party History and Literature.
Instead, China’s newfound wealth gave the party the means to build a high-speed rail network and other infrastructure to modernize at home and project power abroad with a strong military and a space program that has landed on the moon and Mars. China is still a middle-income country, but its very size makes it the world’s second-largest economy and puts it on a trajectory to rival the U.S. as a superpower.
In the meantime, it has doubled down on its repressive tactics, stamping out dissent from critics of its policies and pushing the assimilation of ethnic minorities seeking to preserve their customs and language in areas such as Tibet and the heavily Muslim Xinjiang region. While it is difficult to gauge public support for the party, it has likely been boosted at least in some quarters by China’s relative success at controlling the COVID-19 pandemic and its standing up to criticism from the United States and others.
“We have never been so confident about our future,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told journalists on a recent trip to the party’s historic sites in Yan’an.
Tiananmen Square, where Mao proclaimed the founding of communist China in 1949, is no longer a home for student protesters with democratic dreams. On Thursday, the plaza in the center of Beijing will host the nation’s major celebration of party rule. While most details remain under wraps, authorities have said that Xi will give an important speech.
The anniversary marks a meeting of about a dozen people in Shanghai in 1921 that is considered the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party — though it actually started in late July. The festivities will likely convey the message that the party has brought China this far, and that it alone can lift the nation to greatness — arguing in essence that it must remain in power.
Xi also appears to be considering a third five-year term that would start in 2022, after the party scrapped term limits.
The centennial is at once a benchmark to measure how far the country has come and a moment for Xi and the party to move toward their goals for 2049, which would mark the 100th year of communist rule, said Alexander Huang, a professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan. By then, Xi has said, the aim is basic prosperity for the entire population and for China to be a global leader with national strength and international influence.
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“Whether they can achieve that goal is the biggest challenge for the Chinese leadership today,” he said, noting growing tensions with other countries, an aging population and a young generation that, as elsewhere, is rejecting the grueling rat race for the traditional markers of success.
Still, the party’s ability to evolve and rule for so long, albeit in part by suppressing dissent, suggests it may remain in control well into its second century. The party insists it has no intention of exporting its model to other countries, but if China continues to rise, it could well challenge the western democratic model that won the Cold War and has dominated the post-World War II era.
“In the United States, you only talk, talk, talk,” said Hua of the Foreign Ministry. “You try to win votes. But after four years, the other people can overthrow your policies. How can you ensure the people’s living standards, that their demands can be satisfied?”
North Korea’s Kim berates officials for ‘grave’ virus lapse
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un berated senior ruling party and government officials for their failures in the fight against the coronavirus, which created a “huge crisis” for the country, state media reported.
The alleged “grave incident” in North Korea’s pandemic fight was not specified in the report Wednesday from the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
North Korea has claimed to have had no cases of coronavirus infections throughout the pandemic, despite testing thousands of people and sharing a porous border with its ally and economic lifeline China, where the first COVID-19 cases were confirmed in late 2019.
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KCNA said Kim made the comments during a Politburo meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party that he called to discuss the anti-virus failures. It said Kim criticized senior officials for supposed incompetence, irresponsibility and passiveness in planning and executing anti-virus measures amid a lengthening pandemic.
“In neglecting important decisions by the party that called for organizational, material and science and technological measures to support prolonged anti-epidemic work in face of a global health crisis, the officials in charge have caused a grave incident that created a huge crisis for the safety of the country and its people,” the KCNA paraphrased Kim as saying.
Read: State media: Kim has plans to stabilize N. Korean economy
While North Korea has told the World Health Organization it has not found a single coronavirus infection after testing more than 30,000 people, experts widely doubt its claim of a perfect record, considering the country’s poor health infrastructure and ties to China.
From the start of the pandemic, North Korea described its anti-virus efforts as a “matter of national existence,” banned tourists, jetted out diplomats and severely curtailed cross-border traffic and trade. The lockdown has further strained an economy already battered by decades of mismanagement and crippling U.S.-led sanctions over the country’s nuclear weapons program.
Read: China: US should push North Korea diplomacy, not pressure
Kim during a political conference earlier this month called for officials to brace for prolonged COVID-19 restrictions, indicating that the country isn’t ready to open its borders anytime soon despite its economic woes.
The North’s extended border controls come amid uncertainties over the country’s vaccination prospects. COVAX, the U.N.-backed program to ship COVID-19 vaccines worldwide, said in February that the North could receive 1.9 million doses in the first half of the year, but the plans have been delayed due to global shortages.
Blackouts in US Northwest due to heat wave, deaths reported
The unprecedented Northwest U.S. heat wave that slammed Seattle and Portland, Oregon, moved inland Tuesday — prompting a electrical utility in Spokane, Washington, to resume rolling blackouts amid heavy power demand.
Officials said more than a half-dozen deaths in Washington and Oregon may be tied to the intense heat that began late last week.
The dangerous weather that gave Seattle and Portland consecutive days of record high temperatures exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.7 degrees Celcius) was expected to ease in those cities. But inland Spokane saw temperatures spike.
The National Weather Service said the mercury reached 109 F (42.2 C) in Spokane— the highest temperature ever recorded there.
Read:Northwest US faces hottest day of intense heat wave
About 9,300 Avista Utilities customers in Spokane lost power on Monday and the company said more planned blackouts began on Tuesday afternoon in the city of about 220,000 people.
“We try to limit outages to one hour per customer,” said Heather Rosentrater, an Avista vice president for energy delivery.
She said about 2,400 customers were without power as of shortly after 2 p.m. Tuesday, mostly on the north side of the city, and those customers had been alerted about the planned outage. About 21,000 customers were warned Tuesday morning that they might experience an outage, she said.
Avista had to implement deliberate blackouts on Monday because “the electric system experienced a new peak demand, and the strain of the high temperatures impacted the system in a way that required us to proactively turn off power for some customers,” said company president and chief executive Dennis Vermillion. “This happened faster than anticipated.”
Rosentrater said the outages were a distribution problem, and did not stem from a lack of electricity in the system
Meanwhile, authorities said multiple recent deaths in the region were possibly related to the scorching weather.
The King County Medical Examiner’s office said two people died due to hyperthermia, meaning their bodies had became dangerously overheated. The Seattle Times reported they were a 65-year-old Seattle woman and a 68-year-old Enumclaw, Washington, woman.
The heat may have claimed the life of a worker on a nursery in Oregon, the state’s worker safety agency, known as Oregon OSHA, said on Tuesday.
The man who died was from Guatemala and had apparently arrived in the United States only a few months ago, said Andres Pablo Lucas, owner of Brother Farm Labor Contractor that provided workers for the nursery, including the man who died.
The man, whose name was not disclosed, died at Ernst Nursery and Farms, a wholesale supplier in St. Paul, 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of Salem, on Saturday amid sweltering temperatures. An Oregon OSHA database listed the death as heat-related.
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“The employee was working on a crew moving irrigation lines. At the end of the shift he was found unresponsive in the field,” said agency spokesman Aaron Corvin.
Speaking in Spanish, Pablo Lucas said when workers gathered together shortly after noon on Saturday, they noticed one of them was missing. They began searching and found his body. Pablo Lucas said he didn’t remember the man’s name.
Pablo Lucas said the laborers often have the option to start working near sunrise when it is cooler and can stop around midday, but some want to stay regardless of the heat.
“The people want to work, to fight to succeed,” he said. “For that reason, they stay.”
Officials in Bremerton, Washington, said heat may have contributed to four deaths in that Puget Sound city. But Vince Hlavaty, Bremerton’s medical officer, told the Kitsap Sun that firefighters cannot say definitively whether the heat was the cause of death.
In Bend, Oregon, authorities said the deaths of two homeless people in extreme heat may have been weather-related.
The United Farm Workers urged Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to immediately issue emergency heat standards protecting all farm and other outdoor workers in the state with a strong agricultural sector. The state’s current heat standards fall short of safeguards the UFW first won in California in 2005 that have prevented deaths and illnesses from heat stroke, the union said in a statement.
Unlike workers in California, Washington state farm workers do not have the right to work shade and breaks amid extreme temperatures.
“I was off today so I was helping distribute water and information to the cherry harvesters,” said Martha Acevedo, a wine grape worker from Sunnyside, Washington, said in a union statement. “They were struggling. No shade, not even cold water.”
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Seattle was cooler Tueday with temperatures expected to reach about 90 F (32.2 C) after registering 108 degrees F (42 Celsius) on Monday — well above Sunday’s all-time high of 104 F (40 C). Portland, Oregon, reached 116 F (46.6 C) after hitting records of 108 F (42 C) on Saturday and 112 F (44 C) on Sunday.
President Joe Biden, during an infrastructure speech in Wisconsin, took note of the Northwest as he spoke about the need to be prepared for extreme weather.
“Anybody ever believe you’d turn on the news and see it’s 116 degrees in Portland Oregon? 116 degrees,” the president said, working in a dig at those who cast doubt on the reality of climate change. “But don’t worry -- there is no global warming because it’s just a figment of our imaginations.”
The heat wave was caused by what meteorologists described as a dome of high pressure over the Northwest and worsened by human-caused climate change, which is making such extreme weather events more likely and more extreme.