‘Mommy, I Have Bad News’: For Child Migrants, Mexico Can Be the End of the Road

‘Mommy, I Have Bad News’: For Child Migrants, Mexico Can Be the End of the Road


Thousands of children, most from Central America, are making their way to the border, many hoping to meet parents in the United States. But for those caught in Mexico, there is only near-certain deportation.


CIUDAD JUÁREZ, Mexico — The children tumbled out of a white van, dazed and tired, rubbing sleep from their eyes.

They had been on their way north, traveling without their parents, hoping to cross the border into the United States.

They never made it.

Detained by Mexican immigration officers, they were brought to a shelter for unaccompanied minors in Ciudad Juárez, marched in single file and lined up against a wall for processing. For them, this facility about one mile from the border is the closest they will get to the United States.

“‘Mommy, I have bad news for you,’” one of the girls at the shelter, Elizabeth, 13, from Honduras, recalled telling her mother on the phone. “‘Don’t cry, but Mexican immigration caught me.’”

The children are part of a growing wave of migrants hoping to find a way into the United States. If they make it across the border, they can try to present their case to the American authorities, go to school and one day find work and help relatives back home. Some can reunite with parents waiting there.

But for those caught before crossing the border, the long road north ends in Mexico.

If they are from elsewhere in the country, as a growing number are because of the economic toll of the pandemic, they can be picked up by a relative and taken home.

But most of them are from Central America, propelled north by a life made unsustainable by poverty, violence, natural disasters and the pandemic, and encouraged by the Biden administration’s promise to take a more generous approach to immigration.

They will wait in shelters in Mexico, often for months, for arrangements to be made. Then, they will be deported.

The journey north is not an easy one, and the children who brave it have to grow up fast.

At the shelter, most of them are teenagers, but some are as young as 5. Traveling alone, without parents — in groups of children, or with a relative or a family friend — they may run into criminal networks that often take advantage of migrants, and into border officers determined to stop them. But they keep trying, by the thousands.

“There is a big flow, for economic reasons, and it will not stop until people’s lives in these countries improve,” said José Alfredo Villa, the director of the Nohemí Álvarez Quillay shelter for unaccompanied minors in Ciudad Juárez.

In 2018, 1,318 children were admitted into shelters for unaccompanied minors in Ciudad Juárez, the local authorities said. By 2019, the number of admissions had grown to 1,510 children, though it dipped to 928 last year because of the pandemic.

But in the first two and a half months of this year, the number has soared to 572 — a rate that, if kept up for the rest of the year, would far surpass 2019, the highest year on record.

When children enter the shelter, their schooling stops, the staff unable to provide classes for so many children coming from different countries and different educational backgrounds. Instead, the children fill their days with art classes, where they often draw or paint photos of their home countries. They watch television, play in the courtyard or complete chores to help the shelter run, like laundry.

The scene in Ciudad Juárez, across the Rio Grande from El Paso, in Texas, tells only one part of a larger story that is playing out all along the border’s nearly 2,000 miles.

Elizabeth, the 13-year-old from Villanueva, in Honduras, said that when the Mexican authorities detained her in early March, she thought of her mother in Maryland, and how disappointed she would be.

When she called from the shelter, her mother was ecstatic at first, thinking she had crossed, Elizabeth said; then, on hearing the news, her mother burst into tears.

“I told her not to cry,” Elizabeth said. “We would see each other again.”

The New York Times agreed to use the middle names of all unaccompanied minors interviewed to protect their identities. Their family circumstances and the outlines of their cases were confirmed by caseworkers at the shelter who are in touch with their relatives and with the authorities in their countries to arrange for their deportation.

If Elizabeth had made it across the river into Texas, her life would be different now. Even if apprehended by United States Customs and Border Protection, she would have been released to her mother and given a court date to present her asylum case.

The success of her asylum application would not be a given. In 2019, 71 percent of all cases involving unaccompanied minors resulted in deportation orders. But many never turn up for their hearings; they dodge the authorities and slip into the population, to live lives of evasion.

For the majority of children in the shelter, being caught in Mexico means only one thing: deportation to their home country in Central America.

About 460 children were deported from shelters in Juárez in the first three months of the year, according to Mr. Villa, the shelter director. And they often wait for months as Mexican officials routinely struggle to gain the cooperation of Central American countries to coordinate deportations, he said.

Elizabeth has no idea who will take care of her if she is sent back to Honduras. Her father walked out on the family when she was born, she said, and the grandmother she lived with is dying.

When Elizabeth’s mother left in 2017, it broke her, she said.

The mother had taken out loans to support Elizabeth. When loan sharks came after the family seeking repayment, she went to the United States to look for work, Elizabeth said.

“When my mother left, I felt my heart left, my soul,” she said, crying.

Elizabeth’s mother landed a good job in landscaping in Maryland, and wanted to spare her daughter the treacherous journey to the United States. But when the grandmother’s health left her unable to care for Elizabeth, it was the girl’s turn to say goodbye.

Elizabeth said she doubted whether she would ever see her grandmother again.

In early March, Elizabeth made it to the Rio Grande, on Mexico’s northern border. She began wading toward Texas when the local authorities caught her and pulled her out of the water.

Mexican immigration officials dropped her off at the Nohemí Álvarez Quillay shelter, which is named after an Ecuadorean girl who died by suicide at another shelter in Juárez in 2014 after being detained. She was 12, and on her way to reunite with parents who had lived in the Bronx since she was a toddler.

In mid-March, two weeks after her arrival, Elizabeth celebrated her 13th birthday at the shelter.

As shelter staff cut the cake for Elizabeth — the children are prohibited from handling sharp objects — three more children were dropped off by the immigration authorities, just hours after the eight who had arrived that morning. They watched cartoons as they waited for shelter officials to register them.

Elizabeth’s best friend since she arrived, Yuliana, 15, was by her side, apprehended by the Mexican authorities in December when she tried to cross the border carrying her 2-year-old cousin and tugging on the hand of her 4-year-old cousin. Yuliana is from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, one of the most violence-wracked cities in the world.

Both girls said they had seen a parent struggle to put food on the table before making the tough decision to migrate to the United States. And both felt that their failure to cross had upturned the tremendous expectations that had been placed on them: to reunite with a lonely parent, to work and to send money to family members left behind.

For the girls, home is not a place — Honduras or the United States. Home is where their families are. That is where they want to be.

“My dream is to get ahead and raise my family,” Yuliana said. “It is the first thing, to help my mother and my brothers. My family.”

The day she left San Pedro Sula to join her father in Florida, she said, her mother made her promise one thing.

“She asked me never to forget her,” Yuliana said. “And I answered that I could never, because I was leaving for her.”



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Italy Bans Cruise Liners From Venice Lagoon, With a Catch

Italy Bans Cruise Liners From Venice Lagoon, With a Catch


ROME — The coronavirus pandemic has kept most cruise ships docked. But the Italian government ruled this week that even when voyages resume, gigantic cruisers will no longer be permitted to pass Venice’s St. Mark’s Square and must find berthing outside its fragile lagoon.

Citing the need to protect the “artistic, cultural and environmental heritage of Venice,” the Italian cabinet passed a decree late Wednesday calling for “urgent provisions” to detour cruise activities and freight traffic. The government mandated that Venice’s port authority issue a public consultation — described as a “call for ideas” — to find alternative ports to handle large container ships and cruise ships over 40,000 tons and planned to build a terminal outside the lagoon.

Dario Franceschini, Italy’s culture minister, praised the decision on Thursday, citing the shock of visitors to Venice upon seeing cruise ships “hundreds of meters long and as tall as apartment buildings,” passing in front of St. Mark’s Square. He said the government’s decision had been influenced by UNESCO, the cultural protection agency of the United Nations, which had long called on Italy to reconcile the balancing of lagoon preservation with the economics of cruise and freight activity.

The government’s decision was welcomed by environmental associations that have been warning about the havoc that large ships have been wreaking on the Venetian lagoon as they make their way down the Giudecca Canal to dock at the city’s main passenger canal.

“We won: ‘big ships out of the lagoon’ it’s a law,” the No Big Ships Committee proclaimed on its Facebook page. After years of protests, marches, initiatives and trials against committee members, the government had sided with the voices of the city: “Big ships are not compatible with the Venetian Lagoon,” the committee wrote.

Their concerns rang loudest whenever ship-induced accidents shone a spotlight on the big ship issue, including a June 2019 accident when a cruise liner crashed into a smaller tour ship and a wharf on the Giudecca Canal.

But even as environmentalists said they felt vindicated by the government’s decision, they expressed concerns about the government’s plans to temporarily detour cruise ships to the port of Marghera, the industrial hub on the lagoon, until the new mooring station outside the lagoon is built.

“This is the first time that a government has issued a formal decree banning ships from the lagoon, and this is without doubt enormously positive,” said Tommaso Cacciari, a spokesman for the No Big Ships Committee.

“But then the government messes up immediately after,” he said, because “it speaks of temporary solutions in Marghera.”

Mr. Cacciari said that such solutions could end up lasting years and that a terminal in Marghera would not be feasible because of logistical and environmental concerns.

The state of Venice’s fragile lagoon has increasingly come under scrutiny in recent years as violent storms and frequent floods have ravaged the city.

UNESCO said in an email that its World Heritage Committee had been in “constant dialogue with the Italian authorities to find a suitable solution.” The agency is considering adding Venice to its list of world heritage in danger, unless measures are taken for “significant and measurable progress in the state of conservation” .

The government had previously ruled that big ships had to find an alternative route to avoid fragile areas like the Venetian Lagoon. Other initiatives include a project for an offshore terminal and a permanent passenger terminal at the Lido entrance to the lagoon.

The Lido project was approved by several government committees but has languished at the infrastructure ministry. Cesare De Piccoli, a former lawmaker from Venice involved with the project, said he that had not been informed about the reasons for the limbo but that the latest decision to ban ships from the lagoon was “politically important.”

Given his own experience, Mr. De Piccoli expressed skepticism but said he planned to re-pitch the Lido project as part of the call for ideas.

“After all, it’s already been approved,” he said.

Critics said the decision to detour ships to Marghera, even if temporary, went against the spirit of the government decree.

Some were concerned that the canal used by freight ships, which was built in the 1960s, was both too narrow and shallow to handle current big ships. The recent Suez Canal episode “should provide ample warning,” said Senator Mauro Coltorti, the president of the Senate transport and public works commission.

Others feared that spending millions on a passenger terminal risked making it permanent.

Still others worried that the canal leading to Marghera would have to be enlarged to accommodate large ships, “which would be a kick in the stomach” to environmental initiatives, said Maria Rosa Vittadini, a retired professor at the University of Venice.

Cinzia Zincone, the commissioner for the port authority that oversees the port of Venice, said the canal required maintenance, as its banks were eroding and “important sediment” was sinking into the canal. “We can’t permit this to continue because it negatively impacts on the environment,” she said.

Some Venetians wondered how international cruise ship travelers would feel about docking in Marghera, which is unequivocally not scenic. “You’re going to have tourists that think they’re going to see St. Mark’s but find themselves in front of an oil refinery,” Mr. De Piccoli said.



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BBC’s John Sudworth Leaves China, Citing Growing Risks

BBC's John Sudworth Leaves China, Citing Growing Risks


At times, the propaganda campaign zeroed in on Mr. Sudworth, a longtime BBC correspondent who won a George Polk Award last year for his reporting on the internment camps in Xinjiang. The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China said on Wednesday that Chinese state media had posted videos of Mr. Sudworth online using footage obtained from police cameras.

Last month, The Global Times, a state-backed nationalist tabloid, published a widely circulated article attacking Mr. Sudworth for his Xinjiang reporting and accusing him of being an “anti-China” journalist backed by “foreign forces,” including the United States.

“In the past few years, the BBC and their China correspondent, John Sudworth, have been doing their best to demonize China as a cruel country without human rights by distorting the situation in Xinjiang,” said the article. “But today, their ‘crazy’ distortions have been exposed — the truth is that they are the clowns who violate human rights.”

Before the recent propaganda campaign, Mr. Sudworth had been repeatedly issued shortened journalist visas of as little as one month for nearly three years, part of an ongoing effort by the Chinese government to punish news organizations for coverage it perceives to be overly critical. Most resident foreign journalists are typically granted one-year visas.

In September, two Australian journalists fled China following a five-day diplomatic standoff that began when Chinese state security officers paid them unannounced visits, prompting fears that they would be detained. Australian news outlets now no longer have any correspondents on the ground in China at a time of fast-deteriorating relations between the two countries.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China, whose members include many journalists working there, voiced concerns on Wednesday about the “increasing frequency of erroneous claims by Chinese state and state-controlled entities that foreign correspondents and their organizations are motivated by anti-China political forces to produce coverage that runs counter to the Communist Party’s official line.”

“Alarmingly, Chinese authorities have also shown a greater willingness to threaten journalists with legal measures, proceedings that could subject them to exit bans, barring them from leaving China,” the club added.

Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.





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London Police Officer Convicted of Membership in Neo-Nazi Group

London Police Officer Convicted of Membership in Neo-Nazi Group


LONDON — An officer in London’s main police force was convicted on Thursday of being a member of a banned neo-Nazi group, the police said. The conviction was the first time a British police officer had been convicted of a terrorism offense, the BBC and other British news organizations reported.

Benjamin Hannam, 22, a probationary police officer who applied to the Metropolitan Police in London in 2017 and joined it in early 2018, was found guilty of membership in an outlawed organization — the neo-Nazi group National Action — as well as two counts of fraud by false representation and two counts of possession of information likely to be of use to a terrorist, the police said in a briefing.

The fraud charges related to lying about his membership on his job application and police vetting forms for his position, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

His conviction comes as concerns are rising over the infiltration of right-wing groups in police forces, and as the Metropolitan Police are under pressure for policing tactics. In the United States, the police killings of Black people have put a focus on racism within police forces. In Germany, there is concern that right-wing groups have infiltrated the police, with officers on forces across the country found to have used racist and far-right chat groups.

“Benjamin Hannam would not have got a job as a probationary police constable if he’d told the truth about his membership of a banned far-right group,” said Jenny Hopkins, of the Crown Prosecution Service, in the agency’s statement.

“His lies have caught up with him,” she said. “And he’s been exposed as an individual with deeply racist beliefs who also possessed extremist publications of use to a terrorist.”

Prosecutors said that Mr. Hannam had posted comments about National Action on an online message board and sought to recruit others to the group, and that he had attended events even after the group was barred. He was shown in a propaganda video for the group, which was used as evidence. National Action, which praised the murder of a British lawmaker, Jo Cox, was deemed a terrorist organization and outlawed in December 2016, and prosecutors said it “espoused homophobia, anti-Semitism, and racism and promoted violence and interracial hatred.”

The trial began in March, but the court had banned reporting of its details to avoid a risk of biasing future jurors in a separate case against Mr. Hannam, according to the local news media. The restrictions were lifted after Mr. Hannam pleaded guilty to possessing an indecent image of a child, which was to have been the subject of the second trial.

Mr. Hannam, who in court denied being a member of the group, attended a National Action meeting in 2016 and continued to participate in gatherings over the next year, according to the police briefing. The police also found evidence that he had visited sites about the group’s ban in Britain and moved files about the group onto a USB stick, which meant he was aware of the group’s illegality, they said.

Also discovered in his files was a manual on how to use a knife to seriously injure or kill someone and a document written by Anders Behring Breivik, a right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage in Norway in 2011, prosecutors said.

During the trial, Mr. Hannam said that he was interested by the “look and aesthetic of fascism,” but that he was not a racist and had challenged other group members when they made racist remarks, according to the BBC.

Police forces across Europe are struggling to identify infiltration by right-wing extremists and Britain is not immune to that, said Professor Alberto Testa, a professor of applied criminology at the University of West London who has studied far-right groups. “I do not see this as very surprising.”

The far-right movement was fragmented, he said, and extremist groups often continued meeting even when banned. He added that officers could be radicalized after joining a police force. “Declaring a group outlawed does not mean it will be destroyed,” he said.

To combat this, police forces need better training on recognizing the terminology and symbols of far-right groups, he said, and should have people on their selection panels trained to spot far-right extremists.

The Metropolitan Police have faced accusations of racism and discriminatory practices, and the force said in November that it would recruit more minority officers in order to be more representative. Officials in Britain have expressed concern about a rise in right-wing extremism during the pandemic.

Mr. Hannam’s affiliation with National Action was unearthed after anti-fascists leaked data from Iron March, a neo-fascist online forum that experts have linked to terrorist attacks in Western countries.

He was arrested in March 2020 after the police linked his online profile for the forum to his identity, Richard Smith of the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command said on Thursday, adding that Mr. Hannam had been “radicalized and seduced online by this toxic ideology.” He is due to be sentenced this month.

“The public expect police officers to carry out their duties with the very highest levels of honesty and integrity,” Mr. Smith said. But Mr. Hannam, he said, “showed none of these qualities.”



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Vaccine ‘Fiasco’ Damages Europe’s Credibility

Vaccine ‘Fiasco’ Damages Europe’s Credibility


“This has been catastrophic for the reputation of the European Union,” said Mark Leonard, the director of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

At the start of the crisis, as nations erected borders and hoarded protective equipment, masks and gowns, there was a huge desire for European cooperation, he said, “not because people liked the E.U. or its institutions, but because they were so absent.”

But the question now, he said, is buyer’s remorse. “The E.U. waded into an area with no expertise and competence and put a spotlight on itself,” he said. “In the minds of many who look at the U.K. and U.S. and Israel, they think we’re doing badly because of European cooperation, and that will have a corrosive impact in other areas.”

Timothy Garton Ash, a professor of European studies at the University of Oxford, said that the “fundamental legitimacy” of the bloc came less from its democratic institutions, which are weak, than from its performance, which is how it will be judged. Its real legitimacy, he said, “is what it delivers for Europeans.”

But the bloc’s other major initiative, a groundbreaking pandemic recovery fund, has yet to be put in place and is dwarfed by American stimulus packages.

While national leaders commonly take credit for every success and blame the Commission for every failure, the pandemic has displayed the vulnerabilities of a bureaucracy with weak and divided leadership. An effort by the Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, a medical doctor, to enhance her power and profile by grabbing vaccine procurement from member states has proved disastrous.



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The State of Summer Vacation

The State of Summer Vacation


With Covid vaccinations underway, many people are wondering about travel.

The C.D.C. has recommended that Americans, even those who have been fully vaccinated, not travel yet. Case numbers have been rising in the U.S., and variants are spreading. But the reality is that many people who have received the vaccine are booking flights and trips again.

Though this summer likely won’t see travel at prepandemic levels, and many places remain closed, “bookings for almost everything are up,” Tariro Mzezewa, a Times reporter who covers travel, told me.

“Travel will go beyond the road trips of last summer,” she says. “Vaccinated people will be more comfortable being around other people.”

Expect to show some sort of proof — either of a negative test or of vaccination — when traveling. “You should be planning on showing your negative test or staying home if you don’t have one,” Tariro says.

The European Union, for example, has announced plans for the Digital Green Certificate, a so-called vaccine passport that countries can use to verify a person’s health status and allow free travel across the bloc.

The concept of a vaccine passport isn’t new: To travel to certain countries, for example, you already need inoculations against yellow fever and other diseases.

The travel industry and tech companies have been working on ways to streamline digital credentials for years, and during the pandemic some have started to repurpose that technology to show proof of vaccination. “It isn’t far off in the future,” Tariro says.

Countries are approaching travel differently. The Biden administration has said that it will leave the development of a vaccine passport in the U.S. to the private sector. At least 17 initiatives are underway, The Washington Post reported.

“Some think a coordinated, nationwide vaccine passport system could help us get back to a semblance of normal life and speed up economic recovery,” Rebecca Heilweil wrote in Recode. “But this seems unlikely.”

In Israel, a possible vision of the postpandemic future is on display. More than half of Israelis have received both vaccine shots, and cases have dropped by 90 percent. The economy has reopened with help from a “Green Pass,” an entry ticket to society.

The pass isn’t being widely used for international travel — Israel is still closed to foreign visitors out of fear of variants — but it offers access to restaurants, concerts and more. Newspapers and commercials in Israel are already advertising summer getaways for the fully vaccinated in countries that have agreed to take them, including Greece, Cyprus and Georgia, according to Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem.

If you’re looking for more answers about vaccine passports, read Tariro’s article. And here’s what you need to know about the simple white cards you get after receiving a vaccine.

  • At least 55 of America’s largest corporations, including FedEx and Nike, paid no federal taxes last year on billions of dollars in profits, a study found.

  • Nancy Reagan waged a private campaign to help end the Cold War, the Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty writes in an excerpt from her forthcoming book about the former first lady.

  • Easter is more than a celebration of spring, Esau McCaulley, a biblical scholar, writes in The Times.

Modern Love: Was it fear of commitment, or was it something more complicated?

Lives Lived: Bibian Mentel was a six-time Dutch snowboarding champion when she lost a leg to cancer. She was soon back on the slopes, competing against able-bodied snowboarders, and she won a gold medal seven months after her surgery. Mentel has died at 48.

The most noteworthy thing about this season of Major League Baseball, which began yesterday, is that it’s somewhat normal. After the pandemic forced major changes last year, including a 60-game schedule, the league is returning to a standard 162 games and fans are back in the stands.

Here are three things to watch for this year.

Lots of home runs. For the past five years, home runs have been flying into the stands in record numbers, and pitchers aren’t happy. To address it, the league has introduced a baseball that is less springy. Still, during spring training, batters hit it out of the park at the highest rate yet, according to The Ringer.

The best get better. The Los Angeles Dodgers have been to three of the last four World Series, and won it last year. And they seem to keep getting stronger: Over the winter they added pitcher Trevor Bauer, who won the National League Cy Young Award last year. Bill Plaschke of The Los Angeles Times has high expectations: “This season they’re going to be the best team in baseball history.”

Pandemic disruptions. The league has already postponed a game because of Covid — the opening day matchup between the Mets and the Nationals. As the season goes on, expect the virus to complicate things: Players could miss days, and teams may have to reschedule games.

For more: Tyler Kepner, a Times baseball writer, explains where all 30 teams stand. — Tom Wright-Piersanti



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Coronavirus Testing Declines May Mask the Spread in Some States

Coronavirus Testing Declines May Mask the Spread in Some States


Declines in coronavirus testing in many states in the South and the Great Plains are making it harder to know just how widely the virus may be spreading in those states, even as restrictions are lifted and residents ease back into daily life, experts say.

States in both regions are reporting few new cases relative to their population, compared with harder-hit states like Michigan or New York. But they are also testing far fewer people.

Kansas, for example, is now testing about 60 people a day for every 100,000 in population, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, and Alabama only a bit more. The picture is similar in Iowa, Mississippi and elsewhere.

By contrast, New York is averaging 1,200 tests a day per 100,000, and Rhode Island 1,677 per 100,000.

Testing has been falling in Kansas since Jan. 1, even though hospitalizations were at their highest level of the pandemic then, according to Tami Gurley, co-chair of the virus task force at the University of Kansas Medical Center. The state is now doing fewer tests relative to its population than any state except Idaho.

The tests they are doing in these low-rate states are finding virus.

Twelve percent of Kansas’ coronavirus tests are coming back positive. Alabama’s positivity rate is 12.8 percent. The rate in Idaho is 27.3 percent, the highest in the country. In New York, it’s just 3.5 percent.

So in the states that are doing relatively little testing, it’s possible that their daily case counts are low in part because asymptomatic or mild-symptom cases are going undetected.

Ms. Gurley says she is closely following hospitalizations, as a better indicator of the spread of the virus than new-case reports.

“We think that people are more focused on getting vaccines than getting tested,” she said. “It certainly makes it harder to figure out where we are going. We feel like we are at the point of another uptick in cases.”

Many states in the South and Midwest have relaxed their restrictions, including mask mandates, even though the national data signals that another surge in cases may be coming, according to Edward Trapido, an epidemiologist and associate dean for research at the Louisiana State University School of Public Health.

And many states are shifting resources away from testing to bolster vaccination efforts and meet President Biden’s goal of making all adult Americans eligible for a shot by May 1.

As a result, Dr. Trapido said, in many places these days, only the sickest patients are seeking out a coronavirus test.

“As vaccines have become widespread, people are becoming comfortable about not being tested,” he said. “There is a natural experiment going on. It’s a battle between getting people vaccinated and keeping the percent positive low. When I see a slight change in the curve upward, I get alarmed.”

Ms. Gurley said the shift in emphasis away from testing and toward vaccination may stem in part from widespread public fatigue with pandemic precautions and the political imperative in many states to reopen swiftly.

If all you want to do is prevent deaths from the virus, that may make sense, she said, but “if your end goal is to prevent spread, then we need more testing.”



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U.K. Reports More Blood-Clotting Cases in People Who Received AstraZeneca Shot

U.K. Reports More Blood-Clotting Cases in People Who Received AstraZeneca Shot


Britain reported 30 cases of extremely rare blood clots in people who had received the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, the same sort of events that have prompted some European countries to restrict use of the shot in certain at-risk age groups.

The reports represented 25 more cases than Britain’s medicines regulator had previously received, going some way toward addressing a mystery that has hung over safety concerns about the vaccine: why Britain had not observed the same phenomenon that has been seen in continental Europe, driving countries including France, Germany and Sweden to stop giving the shot to younger people, who are believed to be at higher risk from the rare clotting events.

Britain’s medicines regulator said that it had received reports of no such clotting cases in people who had received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The clotting cases have generated concern because, scientists said, they were somewhat unusual. They involve blood clots combined with unusually low levels of platelets, a disorder that can lead to heavy bleeding.

The clotting events that have drawn the most concern, known as cerebral venous sinus thrombosis, entail clots in the veins that drain blood from the brain, a condition that can lead to a rare type of stroke. Those represented 22 of the 30 clotting cases that Britain reported this week.

But it is not clear whether any of the cases are linked to the vaccine. And even if they are, British and European regulators have said they were so rare that the vaccine should continue to be used.

On Thursday, Germany’s immunization commission, the STIKO, recommended that anyone younger than 60 who received an initial vaccination with AstraZeneca be given either Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna shots as their second vaccine doses.

In reporting its updated case count, Britain’s medicines regulator said that “the benefits of the vaccines against Covid-19 continue to outweigh any risks, and you should continue to get your vaccine when invited to do so.” The European Union’s medicines regulator has also recommended that countries continue to use the AstraZeneca vaccine. Both agencies are continuing to investigate.

Scientists said on Friday that the overall risk of the particular clotting events that have drawn concern was extremely low: roughly one case in 600,000 recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Britain. And it is difficult to know how common the cases are in the general population, given that it can be hard to diagnose. Scientists have said that case counts would inevitably rise among vaccinated people as doctors began looking more closely for the condition.

David Werring, a professor at University College London’s Institute of Neurology, said that the unusual presentation of the cases in vaccinated people was creating concern about possible links with the shot.

But, he said, “The key thing to remember is how rare these brain clots are, and how powerful the proven benefit of vaccination is against Covid.” He added that doctors and people who had received the AstraZeneca vaccine should be on the lookout for symptoms of the clotting events, like severe headaches or signs of a stroke.

“More research is urgently needed,” he said.

Melissa Eddy contributed reporting.



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Taiwan Train Crash Kills At Least 36 People, Injuring Dozens

Taiwan Train Crash Kills At Least 36 People, Injuring Dozens


TAIPEI, Taiwan — The train, cruising in and out of mountain tunnels along Taiwan’s east coast, was packed with people rushing to see family and friends on the first day of a long holiday weekend.

Then, according to survivors’ accounts, it was jolted by a heavy crash, flew off the rails and slammed into the walls of a tunnel.

The derailment of the eight-car Taroko Express train on Friday morning was the worst such disaster in Taiwan in four decades, killing at least 51 people, including two train drivers, and injuring around 150 others, the authorities said.

Investigators are still trying to determine why the train crashed as it was traveling from near Taipei to the eastern coastal city of Taitung. But initial reports indicated that it had either collided with a construction vehicle that rolled down a slope onto the track, or was hit by the falling truck just as it passed.

By Friday evening, rescue workers had freed dozens of passengers who had been trapped in the wreckage, but were struggling to get to several train cars that were deep inside the tunnel. Local news footage showed one worker using an electric circular saw to cut through one of the twisted carriages.

Video footage posted online showed rescuers carrying injured passengers out on stretchers as other survivors emerged from the tunnel walking on the roofs of the train’s cars, some rolling suitcases. Several passengers described smashing the windows of the carriages with their luggage to escape.

A passenger surnamed Wu told Taiwan’s official Central News Agency that the last thing he remembered before passing out was a loud crash. When he regained consciousness, the train was shrouded in darkness and he and several passengers used the light from their cellphones to see. They tried to help the other injured survivors, he said, but it took them an hour to find their way out of the train.

“I’m already safe, but I didn’t dare to look at the crash scene,” he said. “Many bodies were lying there.”

The crash occurred around 9:30 a.m. in a tunnel just north of the city of Hualien near Qingshui Cliff, a destination popular among tourists who flock to see towering mountains and crystal-blue waters. Friday was the annual Tomb Sweeping Day holiday, a time when Taiwanese often travel. A railway official told Taiwan’s United Daily News that the train had 374 seats and was near capacity.

The Taroko Express train is one of the fastest to traverse Taiwan’s east coast and typically travels at around 80 miles per hour. In interviews with local news outlets, survivors described the train as being crowded, with many passengers standing during the journey. Some said in video interviews that the carriages they were in had filled with smoke, and that they could see passengers who had been rendered unconscious and trapped.

The death toll makes the train crash one of the worst disasters that Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, has faced since she took office in 2016. Within hours of the crash, Ms. Tsai said the government had fully mobilized rescue services. Later, she vowed to conduct a thorough investigation into the cause of the collision.

“We pray for the victims to rest in peace and for the injured to recover as soon as possible,” she said at a news conference late Friday afternoon.

In the last major train accident, in 2018, 18 people were killed and 170 others injured after a train derailed in northeast Taiwan’s Yilan County on a coastal route popular with tourists. Taiwanese investigators later found that the train had been going too fast and that the driver had manually disabled a system designed to prevent it from exceeding safe speeds.

Train accidents are still fairly rare in Taiwan. The last crash of a similar scale took place in 1981, when a train collision in the island’s northwest killed 31 people.

A railway official said they believed the driver of the construction vehicle parked on a slope near the entrance of the tunnel and may have forgotten to engage the emergency brake, causing the truck to roll down and hit the train just as it was passing, according to the Central News Agency. The driver is not believed to have been in the truck at the time.

A cellphone video filmed by a passenger and posted on social media showed what appeared to be a yellow trailer lying on its side next to the derailed train at the entrance to the tunnel.

“Our train crashed into this truck,” said the passenger in the video. He panned the camera to show a grassy slope beside the tunnel. “The truck rolled down, and now the whole train is twisted.” Local media outlets published a photo showing a single truck door lying on the grass.

The police took the operator of the construction vehicle in for questioning, according to a police official in Hualien County who was reached by phone.

Lin Chia-lung, Taiwan’s transportation minister, told reporters at the crash site on Friday that while he had done his best to strengthen accountability and reform the railway system following the 2018 disaster, “clearly the speed and results of the reforms were not enough.”

“I am responsible, and I should take responsibility,” Mr. Lin said.

Wei Yu-ling, secretary-general of Taiwan Rail Union, said in an interview that she expected the government to conduct a thorough investigation into Friday’s crash, which comes not long after a maintenance train hit and killed two railway workers and injured another in Taitung County in eastern Taiwan.

The recent accidents, she said, “exposed the inner problems of the Taiwan Railways Administration from top to bottom.”

Photos of Friday’s crash circulating online indicated the damage was severe. One image posted by United Daily News, a Taiwanese news outlet, showed what appeared to be the train’s mangled control car on its side in the dark tunnel. The train’s conductor told a local television station that he had been on one end of the train when he felt what seemed like the emergency brakes being applied and a sudden jolt.

“Many people were stuck under the chairs and piles of bodies,” a woman surnamed Wu told ET Today, a Taiwanese news station, in a televised interview from the hospital where she had been treated for light injuries. “At the beginning I could hear them crying for help, but then maybe they fell asleep or something. Also I saw many children, so pitiful, so pitiful.”

Most train service along Taiwan’s eastern routes has been suspended until Sunday morning, causing travel delays for many at the start of a long holiday weekend. Tomb Sweeping Day, an ancient Chinese festival also known as Qingming, is a time in which the living pay respect to their ancestors by tidying their graves and burning paper offerings.

A woman who was traveling back home with her husband to sweep the family tombs in Taitung told local reporters at the site of the accident that she had been asleep in the seventh carriage when the train crashed, throwing her to the floor. The woman’s shirt was bloodied, and a plaid scarf had been tied around her head to stem the bleeding.

“We’ve always tried to take the train whenever possible,” she said, as rescue workers in yellow hard hats worked behind her. “We never thought something like this would happen.”

Joy Dong reported from Hong Kong.



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Brookfield Renewable, Plug Power partner on hydropower-fueled hydrogen plant




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