AFP

US border guards on horseback acted in an unprofessional manner toward Haitians trying to enter the country, but did not strike migrants with their reins, an official investigative released Friday found.

Photos of guards seeking to tackle migrants near Del Rio, Texas last year sparked a firestorm of criticism. In one shot, an agent on horseback grabbed a man by his shirt, while another shows him holding a group at bay by twirling his reins.

“A careful review and analysis of videos photos and eyewitness accounts” found “no evidence Border Patrol agents involved in this incident struck any person with their reins, intentionally or otherwise,” Customs and Border Patrol Commissioner Chris Magnus told a news conference, presenting the findings of the probe.

But “several agents engaged in unprofessional or dangerous behavior, including one instance in which an agent used denigrating and offensive language,” he said in a statement.

“Failures to maintain command and control over Horse Patrol Units, lack of appropriate policies and training, and the overall chaotic nature of the situation at Del Rio at the time contributed to the incident,” he said.

Customs and Border Protection said that “discipline has been proposed in the cases of four agents.”

In the immediate aftermath of the September 2021 confrontation, President Joe Biden described the agents’ conduct as “outrageous” and said: “I promise you: those people will pay.”

President Joe Biden said Friday that federal legislation offered the fastest route to restoring US abortion rights and urged voters to elect pro-choice legislators in upcoming elections in defiance of an “out of control” Supreme Court.

Under pressure to take a tougher line on defending women’s reproductive rights, Biden signed an executive order aimed at shoring up access to abortion after what he described as the court’s “terrible, extreme” decision to remove the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

But the president, whose room for manoeuvre on the issue is limited, said the most effective response would be made through the ballot box in the November mid-term elections by handing him firm control of the legislature.

“Vote, vote, vote,” he said in an appeal particularly aimed at American women.

“The fastest route to restore Roe is to pass a national law codifying Roe, which I will sign immediately upon its passage at my desk. We cannot wait,” Biden said, referring to the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling that established the right to abortion.

If Republicans were to take control of Congress, he also vowed to veto any effort to pass a federal ban on abortion.

“We cannot allow an out of control Supreme Court working in conjunction with extremist elements of the Republican Party to take away freedoms and our personal autonomy,” he said.

Biden has been criticized from within his own Democratic Party for perceived inaction since the Supreme Court ruling on June 24.

After the ruling, several states have banned or severely restricted abortion and others are expected to follow suit. 

– ‘Not nearly enough’ –

Many Democrats, often speaking anonymously in the press, have complained that Biden and his team have failed to respond adequately to the bombshell judgment by the Supreme Court.

Seeking to recover, Biden on Friday signed an executive order designed to protect women’s sensitive health-related data and “fight digital surveillance related to reproductive health care services.”

Advocacy groups are warning of the risks posed by women’s online data such as their geolocation and apps that monitor their menstrual cycles, which they say could be used to go after women who have had abortions.

Biden’s order also seeks to protect mobile clinics deployed to the borders of states that have banned abortion.

The administration wants to guarantee access to contraception and abortion medication and set up a network of volunteer lawyers to help women on abortion issues, the White House said.

“The executive actions being undertaken are needed first steps, but it’s not nearly enough,” said Women’s March director Rachel O’Leary Carmona in a statement.

“I call on the administration to recognize the true emergency we are in. Get creative. Get caught trying.  Don’t let norms, or decency, or ‘tradition’ stand in your way. Lives are on the line.”

But Biden cannot do much to battle the Supreme Court, or the states hostile to him when he lacks a solid majority in Congress.

So he is calling on Americans to turn out in droves and vote Democrat in the midterm elections.

The goal is to codify the right to abortion as a federal law, which would nullify state decisions to ban the procedure.

Many Democrats fear this drive to get out the vote will flop. Biden is now an unpopular president and Americans’ biggest worry these days is sky-high inflation. 

And beyond the abortion issue some Democrats wonder if Biden, 79, a centrist who shuns headline-grabbing action, has the ability to take on an aggressively conservative American right in an era of acute political tension.

All he has to do is look at press editorials of recent days, including in news outlets seen as sympathetic.

“Is Joe Biden the wrong president at the wrong time?” read a headline Thursday in The Washington Post, while The Atlantic magazine asked “Is Biden a Man out of Time?”

NASA said Friday the first cosmic images from the James Webb Space Telescope will include unprecedented views of distant galaxies, bright nebulae, and a faraway giant gas planet.

The US, European and Canadian space agencies are gearing up for a big reveal on July 12 of early observations by the $10 billion observatory, the successor to Hubble that is set to reveal new insights into the origins of the universe.

“I’m looking very much forward to not having to keep these secrets anymore, that will be a great relief,” Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSI) that oversees Webb, told AFP last week.

An international committee decided the first wave of full-color scientific images would include the Carina Nebula, an enormous cloud of dust and gas 7,600 light years away, as well as the Southern Ring Nebula, which surrounds a dying star 2,000 light years away.

Carina Nebula is famous for its towering pillars that include “Mystic Mountain,” a three-light-year-tall cosmic pinnacle captured in an iconic image by Hubble.

Webb has also carried out a spectroscopy — an analysis of light that reveals detailed information — on a faraway gas giant called WASP-96 b, which was discovered in 2014.

Nearly 1,150 light-years from Earth, WASP-96 b is about half the mass of Jupiter and zips around its star in just 3.4 days.

Next comes Stephan’s Quintet, a compact galaxy 290 million light years away. Four of the five galaxies within the quintet are “locked in a cosmic dance of repeated close encounters,” NASA said.

Finally, and perhaps most enticing of all, Webb has gathered an image using foreground galaxy clusters called SMACS 0723 as a kind of cosmic magnifying glass for the extremely distant and faint galaxies behind it. 

This is known as “gravitational lensing” and uses the mass of foreground galaxies to bend the light of objects behind them, much like a pair of glasses.

Dan Coe, an astronomer at STSI, told AFP on Friday that even in its first images, the telescope had broken scientific ground.

“When I first saw the images… of this deep field of this galaxy cluster lensing, I looked at the images, and I suddenly learned three things about the universe that I didn’t know before,” he said.

“It’s totally blown my mind.”

Webb’s infrared capabilities allow it to see deeper back in time to the Big Bang, which happened 13.8 billion years ago, than any instrument before it.

Because the Universe is expanding, light from the earliest stars shifts from the ultraviolet and visible wavelengths it was emitted in, to longer infrared wavelengths — which Webb is equipped to detect at an unprecedented resolution.

The US economy added far more jobs than expected in June and wages rose, adding fuel to worries about accelerating inflation, but giving President Joe Biden a reason to cheer.

Biden has seen his approval ratings plummet as Americans face the worst inflation surge in more than 40 years, but after the latest data Friday, he underscored the rapid jobs recovery in the wake of the pandemic.

But the closely-watched Labor Department report gave few indications the economy is slowing, which likely cements the central bank’s resolve to continue its aggressive interest rate hikes.

US employers added 372,000 net new jobs last month, nearly 100,000 more than economists forecast, and the unemployment rate held steady at 3.6 percent for the fourth month, the Labor Department reported.

The economy gained 2.74 million jobs in the first half of the year, more than most full years dating back to 2000.

“We have more Americans working today in the private sector then any day under my predecessor. More today than any time in American history … at a time when our critics said the economy was too weak,” Biden said at the White House.

He acknowledged that “Families are facing the cost of living crunch,” but said “today’s economic news confirms the fact that my economic plan is moving this country in a better direction.”

But with firms struggling to fill open positions and many potential workers staying on the sidelines, wages have been pushing higher, which economists fear could provoke a wage-price spiral.

– War on inflation –

The report showed average hourly earnings rose again to secure a 5.1 percent increase over the past 12 months, though that was slightly slower than in May and below the 5.6 percent peak in March.

And the share of adults in the labor force was little changed, but Diane Swonk of Grant Thornton noted that the number of people prevented from looking for work or working less due to the pandemic is rising, which could be holding back an influx of workers.

The data will provide little comfort to the Federal Reserve, which has declared war on inflation and launched a series of interest rate hikes to try to cool demand.

Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Raphael Bostic said the strong labor market is a good thing, but he stressed that he is “fully supportive” of another super-sized increase in the benchmark borrowing rate later this month, matching the three-quarter percentage point hike in June.

“We’re starting to see those first signs of slowdown, which is what we need because what we have right now is a great imbalance between supply and demand that’s driving the inflation,” Bostic said on CNBC.

That imbalance will have to come into alignment “if we’re going to get that inflation under control.”

The Fed’s efforts to tamp down price pressures has fueled fears it will push the world’s largest economy into recession.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell has argued that the strong US job market means the economy is well-positioned to withstand the rapid ramp up in borrowing rates, although he and other policymakers acknowledge the process may inflict some pain.

Biden said job growth is likely to slow in coming months following the rapid rebound, but “No country is better positioned than America to bring down inflation, without giving up all of the economic gains we have made over the last 18 months.”

– ‘Fanciful’ recession fears –

Total nonfarm employment remains just slightly below the pre-pandemic level in February 2020, but the private sector has recovered fully and has more jobs than before Covid-19 hit, according to the report.

Big gains in the month came in the health care and leisure and hospitality sectors, while retail rebounded after a big decline in May, the data showed. Manufacturing added 29,000 positions.

“June’s strong job growth, especially in the teeth of high inflation, shows that the expansion remains on solid ground,” said Robert Frick, corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union.

Strong consumer demand has anchored the post-pandemic recovery and defied expectations of a slowdown, but economists still believe job creation will start to slow.

Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics said the recent data “support our view that talk of the economy being in recession right now is fanciful.”