World

The United States announced Friday it was lifting a public health order imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic that required the immediate expulsion of migrants arriving at the southern border.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s so-called Title 42 public health order would be lifted next month.

Republican lawmakers condemned the move, arguing that it will lead to a surge in arrivals, but it was welcomed by migrant advocates.

“Title 42 remains in place until May 23 and, until then, DHS will continue to expel single adults and families encountered at the Southwest border,” Mayorkas said in a statement. 

Title 42, which was put in place in March 2020 by former president Donald Trump, required the expulsion of unauthorized single adults and family units arriving at US land borders — not letting them apply for asylum — to protect against the spread of Covid-19.

“After considering current public health conditions and an increased availability of tools to fight Covid-19… the CDC Director has determined that an Order suspending the right to introduce migrants into the United States is no longer necessary,” the CDC said.

Mayorkas said more border agents were being deployed to “process new arrivals, evaluate asylum requests, and quickly remove those who do not qualify for protection.”

“We will increase personnel and resources as needed and have already redeployed more than 600 law enforcement officers to the border,” he said.

Migrant advocates had argued that Title 42 was becoming outdated as the pandemic eased and an affront to international conventions allowing people to claim asylum.

With the lifting of Title 42, “DHS will process individuals encountered at the border pursuant to Title 8, which is the standard procedure we use to place individuals in removal proceedings,” Mayorkas said. 

“Nonetheless, we know that smugglers will spread misinformation to take advantage of vulnerable migrants,” he said.

“Let me be clear: those unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States will be removed.”

Crossings from Mexico have been surging in recent weeks and Republican lawmakers have warned of a “humanitarian disaster.”

– ‘Frightening decision’ –

“The border crisis is about to get a whole lot worse,” House Republicans tweeted after the announcement of the termination of Title 42.

“Worst domestic news today: the Biden Administration will admit double or more the number of ‘undocumented’ immigrants at the border,” said Republican Senator Mitt Romney.

“Best GOP political news today: the same as above. (Arizona, Nevada, and more Dem senators will lose their elections).”

Border guards expelled illegal migrants 1.7 million times in the last fiscal year — the highest number ever recorded and four times the number of expulsions posted in Trump’s last year in the White House, when numbers were down in part because of the pandemic.

President Joe Biden’s own Democratic Party has been divided over plans to loosen restrictions at the border.

Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia called the move a “frightening decision.”

“Title 42 has been an essential tool in combatting the spread of Covid-19 and controlling the influx of migrants at our southern border,” Manchin said.

The lifting of Title 42 was welcomed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

“The new order is a huge step forward in the fight to ensure that people fleeing violence and persecution will once again be able to seek safety in this country, as our laws require,” said Jonathan Blazer, director of border strategies at the ACLU.

“Title 42 has been misused for over two years to illegally shut down asylum at the southern border and send thousands of people directly back into harm’s way,” Blazer said. 

According to advocacy organization Human Rights First, Title 42 expulsions had led to nearly 10,000 reports of kidnap, torture, rape and other violent attacks against people blocked in or sent back to Mexico.

NASA on Friday begins a critical two-day-long test of its giant Space Launch System (SLS) rocket complete with a mock countdown, as the agency gears up to return humans to the Moon.

Known as the “wet dress rehearsal,” it is the final major test before the Artemis-1 mission this summer: an uncrewed lunar flight that will eventually be followed by boots on the ground, likely no sooner than 2026. 

“It is our last design verification prior to our launch,” senior NASA official Tom Whitmeyer said in a call with reporters this week.

Data collected from the test will be used to finalize a date for Artemis-1 — NASA had said May could be the first window, but later now seems likely.

It is called a “wet” dress rehearsal because super-cooled liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen will be loaded into SLS from ground systems, just as they would be in a real launch.

The 322 feet (98 meters) tall rocket — expected to be the most powerful in history at the time it is operational — was rolled out to Launch Complex 39B at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida around two weeks ago.

The test begins at 5:00 pm Eastern Time (2100 GMT) with a “call to stations,” as members of the launch control team arrive at their firing rooms and start a countdown of more than 45 hours.

With the SLS rocket and Orion crew capsule fixed on top powered on, teams will proceed to load 700,000 gallons (3.2 million liters) of propellant, and practice procedures such as pauses in countdown and other checks.

They won’t actually ignite the rocket’s RS-25 engines, which were tested previously. Instead they will halt the countdown about 10 seconds before liftoff, in order to simulate a “scrub,” when launch is aborted due to technical or weather related issues.

The fuel will be drained, and a few days later SLS and Orion will be rolled back to the vehicle assembly building to carry out checks on how everything went.

Test milestones will be posted on NASA’s blog for the Artemis mission, but the agency won’t let the public listen to live internal audio, as it did in the past for Space Shuttle missions. 

Whitmeyer explained this was because certain key information, including timing sequences, could assist other countries looking to develop long range missiles. 

“We’re really, really super sensitive to cryogenic launch vehicles that are of this size and capability, (and) are very analogous to ballistic type capabilities that our countries are very interested in,” he said, but added that the agency could re-evaluate the position in future.

Street protests gripped Sri Lanka Friday as demonstrators blocked main roads across the country, a day after hundreds tried to storm the president’s home in anger over an unprecedented economic crisis.

The South Asian nation is facing severe shortages of essentials, sharp price rises and crippling power cuts in its most painful downturn since independence from Britain in 1948.

Towns and cities across the country faced a fresh wave of protests Friday, according to police and local officials.

In the capital Colombo, dozens of rights activists carried handwritten placards and oil lamps while demonstrating at a busy intersection on Friday evening.

“Time to quit Rajapaksas,” said one placard. “No more corruption, go home Gota,” said another — referring to President Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

In the highland town of Nuwara Eliya, activists blocked the opening of a flower exhibition by Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa’s wife, Shiranthi, police said.

The southern towns of Galle, Matara and Moratuwa also saw anti-government protests, and similar demonstrations were reported in the northern and central regions. All held up traffic on main roads.

– ‘Lunatic, go home’-

Thursday night’s unrest outside the president’s private home saw hundreds of people demand he step down.

People chanted “lunatic, lunatic, go home”, before police fired tear gas and used water cannon.

The crowd turned violent, setting ablaze two military buses, a police jeep, two patrol motorcycles and a three-wheeler. They also threw bricks at officers.

At least two protesters were wounded in police firing but it was not clear whether officers used live ammunition or rubber bullets. Four people were injured when a security vehicle ran over them.

Police said 53 protesters were arrested, but local media organisations said five news photographers were also detained and tortured at a local police station, a charge the government said it will investigate.

An overnight curfew was lifted early Friday morning, but the police and military presence was beefed up across the country as social media posts urged residents to demonstrate peacefully outside their homes.

– ‘Terrorists’ –

Two government ministers said a major intelligence failure had placed the lives of the president and his wife in danger on Thursday.

“Both the president and his wife were at their home when the protests were going on,” Health Minister Keheliya Rambukwella told reporters in Colombo, discounting earlier claims that they were away at the time.

“We had information of a demonstration, but nothing suggesting that it could turn violent. This is a major intelligence failure.”

Transport Minister Dilum Amunugama said “terrorists” were behind the unrest.

Rajapaksa’s office said Friday that the protesters wanted to create an “Arab Spring” — a reference to anti-government protests in response to corruption and economic stagnation that gripped the Middle East over a decade ago.

A common theme of demonstrations was a demand for all members of the powerful Rajapaksa family to quit.

One of the president’s brothers, Mahinda, serves as prime minister while the youngest, Basil, is finance minister. His eldest brother and nephew also hold cabinet positions.

Sri Lanka’s predicament has been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, which torpedoed tourism and remittances.

Many economists also say the crisis has been exacerbated by government mismanagement and years of accumulated borrowing.

– Record inflation –

The latest official data released Friday showed inflation in Colombo hit 18.7 percent in March, the sixth consecutive monthly record. Food prices soared a record 30.1 percent.

Colombo imposed a broad ban on imports in March 2020 in a bid to save foreign currency needed to repay nearly $7.0 billion this year to service its $51 billion debt.

Diesel shortages have sparked outrage across Sri Lanka in recent days, causing protests at empty pumps.

Since Thursday, diesel has been unavailable at stations across the island, according to officials and media reports. 

The state electricity monopoly said it was enforcing a daily 13-hour power cut from Thursday — the longest ever — because it did not have diesel for generators.

Several state-run hospitals, facing shortages of life-saving medicines, have stopped routine surgeries.

The government has said it is seeking a bailout from the International Monetary Fund while asking for more loans from India and China.

IMF spokesman Gerry Rice told reporters in Washington on Thursday that talks should begin “in the coming days”, with the president’s youngest brother, finance minister Basil Rajapaksa, expected in the US capital.

Pope Francis apologised Friday to indigenous people for abuse committed at church-run residential schools in Canada, and said he hoped to visit the country in July.

“I ask for God’s forgiveness for the deplorable conduct of these members of the Catholic Church,” he said, telling Indigenous delegations at the Vatican it caused him “pain and shame”.

Numerous investigations into the former residential schools are underway across Canada after the discovery of mass unmarked graves, with more than 4,000 children believed to be missing, according to authorities.

Francis said he heard “stories of suffering, deprivation, discriminatory treatment and various forms of abuse” during meetings this week with survivors from the First Nations, Metis and Inuit groups.

“I join the Canadian bishops in asking you for forgiveness,” he said.

The 85-year old pontiff added; “I hope” to travel to Canada for the country’s St Anne’s Feast Day on July 26.

– ‘Historic and meaningful’ – 

The president of the Metis National Council, Cassidy Caron, told journalists after the meeting that the pope’s words were appreciated.

“His apology is absolutely historic and so meaningful to so many people. This opens the doors for us to continue on our healing journey and continue to fight for action,” she said, adding that survivors “deserve justice.”

“I now look forward to his coming to Canada where he can deliver this heartfelt apology directly to our survivors and their families,” she said.

Gerald Antoine, regional chief of First Nations, said Friday was “the day we had been waiting for”.

“We accept this apology as a gesture of good faith,” he said.

Francis heard first-hand this week of centuries of abuse committed at the schools, and the delegations had pressed him for an apology for a scandal that rocked the Catholic Church.

Some 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were enrolled from the late 1800s to the 1990s in 139 residential schools across Canada, as part of a government policy of forced assimilation.

They spent months or years isolated from their families, language and culture, and many were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers.

Pope Francis on Friday slammed the “ideological colonisation” of which “so many children have been victims”.

“Your identity and culture have been wounded, many families have been separated,” he said.

He described as “chilling” the “unresolved traumas that have become intergenerational traumas”.

Thousands are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect. More than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered since May 2021 at the schools.

A truth and reconciliation commission concluded in 2015 the failed government policy amounted to “cultural genocide”.

In January, Canada announced a $31.5 billion agreement to reform its discriminatory child welfare system and compensate Indigenous families who suffered because of it.

Two women that survived the Russian airstrike on a theatre sheltering civilians in Ukraine’s besieged city of Mariupol earlier this month told AFP about the “horror” they endured. 

Viktoria Dubovytskaya was inside the Mariupol drama theatre when it was hit on March 16. Maria Kutnyakova — who left the theatre to get water the day of the shelling — witnessed the strike from outside, while her mother and sister were still in the building.

The two residents of the besieged port city are now refugees on the other side of Ukraine, in the western city of Lviv, where they spoke to AFP about the minutes before and after the bombing, which Kyiv blames on Russia. 

Mariupol has suffered near total destruction since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. 

An estimated 160,000 people remain trapped in the southeastern city, with many left without food in the cold. 

– Theatre refuge –

Looking to escape the shelling and bombing, hunger and cold, Viktoria Dubovytskaya had taken refuge in the theatre on March 5 with her two young children. 

She thought she could then find an evacuation convoy to join with her two-year-old daughter Anastasia and six-year-old son Artyom.

The day the drama theatre was shelled began calmly.

The two children were playing near their mother when the bomb crashed into the building.

Dubovytskaya was thrown against the wall and injured her face. She immediately heard her son scream, but not her daughter.    

“It was the most frightening moment, when you think that she’s not there anymore,” the 24-year-old recalled, two weeks on, as she held her daughter in a shelter in Lviv.

“You hope that maybe she is without arms or legs, but at least alive.”

According to satellite images of the theatre and witness testimony collected by AFP, the word “deti” (“children” in Russian) had been painted in large white letters in front and behind the theatre.

Authorities said 1,000 people were inside the theatre at the time of the strike, mostly women and children.

It is still unknown how many people were killed in the strike. 

Mariupol city hall put the figure at 300, citing witnesses. 

“Everyone knew that there were children in the theatre, even my husband whom I could not contact because there was no reception,” said Dubovytskaya.

Her husband was working in neighbouring Poland when Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine. He came to pick them up in Mariupol after the strike.

“I was going there and I did not know if they were alive or not, but I had hope,” Viktoria’s husband Dmitry told AFP.  

– ‘Miraculously’ survived – 

Like Dubovytskaya, Maria Kutnyakova, a communications manager at a start-up in Mariupol, also hoped to join a humanitarian convoy at the drama theatre with her mother and sister. 

The family had run out of food and water after a strike on March 10 took out most of their apartment’s kitchen and bathroom, as well as killing a neighbour. 

The theatre was meant to be a starting point for evacuations via an official humanitarian convoy. 

It also became a rallying point for individuals hoping to try their luck in their own convoys, according to the two Mariupol residents. 

Russia alleges that the theatre had housed soldiers from the nationalist Azov battalion. 

But the two witnesses told AFP that no soldier was in the theatre at the time of the airstrike. 

“The soldiers came once a day to announce if there would be a humanitarian convoy and then left immediately,” said Viktoria Dubovytskaya. 

She specified that only once, four Ukrainian soldiers spent the night there, after a nearby bombing. 

On March 16, Maria, her sister and her mother moved to the third floor of the theatre, due to a lack of space on the lower floors and in the basement.

When she went to get water from her uncle in the next building, she heard a plane flying and then the bomb being dropped. 

“When I came closer, I saw that the theatre did not have a roof anymore. The debris and wounded were there,” she said, still in shock, now speaking from a theatre in Lviv where she is taking refuge after a three-day journey out of Mariupol. 

When she went inside the bombed theatre, she heard desperate calls of first names in the rubble, of people looking for their loved ones. 

To find her mother and sister, the 30-year-old screamed out their last name.

They had “miraculously” survived.

– ‘Common grave’ –

Both the women got stuck in the theatre after the strike. 

“Outside, the Russians continued to shoot and inside, the building was burning,” said Kutnyakova. 

She then ran to another improvised shelter and the local philharmonic nearby. It was also bombed the same evening.

Homeless and without shelter, the family decided to embark on a risky journey “to finally be in a place where the ceiling won’t fall on our heads.”

It was on the way out of Mariupol that Dubovitskaya saw the extent of the city’s destruction. 

She said bodies lay in the rubble, sometimes small wooden crosses planted in the ground. 

“When people find their loved ones, they just bury them wherever then can. Sometimes where roses used to bloom,” she said. “The city is now a common grave for everyone.”

Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov was permitted to leave the country and has travelled to Berlin, his team told AFP on Friday. 

The 52-year-old is known for his daring films and plays that have earned him the ire of conservatives. 

He was convicted in 2020 of embezzling funds at Moscow’s Gogol Centre theatre and barred from leaving the country, which his supporters say was revenge for his critiques of authoritarianism and homophobia.

But he was recently informed that, having served half his sentence, he would be permitted to travel. 

“I left Russia since I’ve got an opportunity to do it legally. In Europe I have few important meetings concerning my future projects,” Serebrennikov said in a statement to AFP by email. 

His team did not say whether he planned to return to Russia. 

Serebrennikov is due to soon begin rehearsals for a German opera, “Der Freischutz”, in Amsterdam. 

He is also due to open the Avignon Festival in France this summer with a new play based on “The Black Monk”, a short story by Anton Chekhov. 

The travel ban meant Serebrennikov was unable to attend the Cannes Film Festival last year where his film “Petrov’s Flu” was competing for Palme d’Or.