Ida-driven rain, flooding claim over 40 lives in U.S. Northeast
Ida remnants dumped rain at sometimes unprecedented rates on Wednesday night in the U.S. Northeast, triggering floods pouring into subway stations and submerging homes and vehicles on highways.
Torrential rains, floods and tornadoes from storm Ida remnants claimed more than 40 lives across the northeast of the United States on Wednesday and Thursday.
Ida remnants dumped rain at sometimes unprecedented rates on Wednesday night in the region, triggering floods pouring into subway stations and submerging homes and vehicles on highways, videos on social media showed.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced on Thursday afternoon that 23 people died as a result of the storm, which made landfall in southern U.S. state Louisiana as a Category 4 hurricane on Sunday.
“The majority of these deaths were individuals who got caught in their vehicles by flooding and were overtaken by the water,” Murphy tweeted.
At least 12 people died in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio said.
Among them, four women, three men and a 2-year-old boy died in the basements of residential homes in separate flooding incidents in Queens, according to an NBC report, citing New York Police Department Commissioner Dermot Shea.
Many commuters were stranded overnight in New York subway stations, some sleeping on benches with service suspended and no way to get to their destinations, according to local media reports.
Central Park at New York City on Wednesday recorded 3.15 inches of rainfall in just one hour, surpassing the previous recorded high of 1.94 inches in one hour during Tropical Storm Henri on Aug. 21.
There were three people reported killed in Pennsylvania, one in Maryland and one in Connecticut. Authorities also located the body of a Virginia resident missing in flooding earlier this week.
In the Philadelphia area, some streets were swamped, delaying the city’s rail and bus services and causing thousands of rescues, according to a CNN report, citing state Emergency Management Agency Director Randy Padfield.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency early Thursday about an hour after New York City Mayor de Blasio declared one due to what he called a “historic weather event … with record breaking rain across the city, brutal flooding and dangerous conditions on our roads” as Ida remnants raced up the East Coast.
“There’s a lot of damage, and I made clear to the governors that my team at … FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) is on the ground and ready to provide all the assistance that is needed,” U.S. President Joe Biden said Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer Thursday stressed the need to spend more on infrastructure and climate change given the extreme flooding in the New York metropolitan area.
“When you get two record rainfalls in a week, it’s not just coincidence. Woe is us if we don’t recognize these changes are due to climate change,” said Schumer in a press briefing on Thursday morning.
Before moving to slam the U.S. Northeast, Ida had already wrecked widespread havoc in southern U.S. states Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving four people dead and hundreds of thousands of people with power outages.
Ida landed on Sunday, the 16th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s destructive strike, tying with 2020’s Hurricane Laura and the Last Island Hurricane of 1856 as the strongest ever to hit Louisiana. It was downgraded to a tropical depression on Monday afternoon and moved inland with torrential rain.
Vehicles are submerged on a waterlogged road in New York, the United States, Sept. 2, 2021.
Biden booster plan seen facing resistance from CDC panel, FDA
Medical experts who advise U.S. regulators on vaccines are chafing at what they perceive as political interference in the review process by the Biden administration.
Last month, the White House announced plans to begin distributing Covid-19 booster shots to Americans Sept. 20. However, the effort still needs the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to sign off. Members of a key panel that advises the CDC on vaccines have pushed back consideration of the plan to mid-September and said this week they were concerned that politics was getting ahead of the process.
It’s “very frightening to me that health-care providers are trying to do the best job that they can, and are taking guidance from HHS and the White House,” said Helen Talbot, a Vanderbilt University professor of medicine and member of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, in a meeting Monday.
Pfizer and BioNTech, makers of one of the two vaccines included in the booster plan, filed for authorization for the extra shot last month. Moderna Inc. applied for clearance late Wednesday.
Some short-term data from Israel supports the use of booster shots. Yet the public push by the White House to get a rollout underway has raised concerns the administration is rushing ahead without enough data and regulatory oversight, said Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Meanwhile, European health authorities said there’s no urgent need for wide use of boosters, although some countries are offering them.
“I would be very surprised if the CDC recommended a third dose of the vaccine to the general population,” said Offit, a former member of the CDC’s advisory panel of outside experts that evaluates vaccine data for the agency.
The committee originally planned to evaluate boosters at an Aug. 24 meeting that was postponed to Monday and delayed again to the middle of this month. Rather than an expected vote on the shots Monday, CDC’s Sara Oliver briefly set out guidelines for considering boosters, making clear that current vaccine regimens are safe and prevent hospitalizations and deaths.
Biden first described the booster plan in a statement signed by the top health professionals, including Walensky, medical adviser Anthony Fauci and FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock.
“They reviewed mountains and mountains of available data on vaccine effectiveness and made a clinical judgment that boosters would be needed,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday, asked about concern that the administration got ahead of the science. “Our responsibility and our objective is to save more lives, protect more people, and as soon as this data — the science — made clear that boosters would help do that, we wanted to put that information out to the public.”
The plan is for people to get boosters eight months after their second shots of either Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, which would put older people and health workers first in line. That would also defer boosters for younger, healthier adults — and debate over whether they should get them — by months.
While the Biden plan calls for boosters for everyone who’s received two shots of the messenger RNA vaccines, Oliver’s presentation pointed out that risks and benefits will vary by age.
The “policy for booster doses needs to take this benefit/risk balance into account,” slides from Oliver’s presentation said. It’s “critical to wait for additional safety data and regulatory allowance for booster doses.”
The FDA has also been under strain and scrutiny as it quickly reviewed Covid vaccines and treatments developed at top speed. Two top vaccine officials said that they would step down later this year, a possible sign of frustrations with the Covid vaccine effort that began when former President Donald Trump scolded the agency for not working fast enough to approve shots.
Attempts to reach the two officials — Marion Gruber, head of the regulator’s Office of Vaccines Research and Review, plans to retire on Oct. 31 and Philip Krause, deputy director for the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research — were unsuccessful. Acting FDA Director Janet Woodcock said in an email to staff that she was confident the agency’s vaccine evaluators would be able to continue working effectively.
Seen as a potential key step in controlling the coronavirus surge that’s been spurred by the delta strain, the need for and effectiveness of boosters are still being debated by public health officials and scientists. Booster advocates have said that breakthrough infections among the vaccinated show that the standard regimens aren’t sufficient to stop the spread of delta.
Booster shots have already begun in some communities. Almost a million Americans have received an additional vaccine dose since Aug. 13, according to CDC data. It’s unclear how many of those doses went to those with weak immune systems, for whom extra shots have already been recommended by the FDA and CDC.
William Schaffner, a Vanderbilt University infectious disease expert and non-voting ACIP member, said his internist is already giving out boosters to those over 70 on the basis of the White House statement. New York Governor Kathy Hochul has already pledged $65 million for local communities to set up facilities to administer Covid booster shots when they are approved.
But the vaccine panel is still waiting for more data to determine the best booster dose approach, said Camille Kotton, a CDC vaccine adviser. For now, the majority of vaccinated Americans are well protected against severe disease, despite the delta variant’s potency, said Kotton, who’s also clinical director of transplant and immunocompromised host infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Hospitalization rates, rather than just symptomatic infections, are likely to be a key factor in deciding how to roll out the extra doses, said Linda Eckert, an ACIP member and professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Washington in Seattle. However, hospitalization rates among most groups haven’t changed since the delta variant arose, she said.
During the Tuesday briefing, Walensky acknowledged that while data reviewed by the CDC advisers was currently insufficient, she was confident that there would be enough to support a recommendation prior to the start of the booster plan.
The panel “did not review international data that actually has led us to be even more concerned about increased risk of vaccine effectiveness waning against hospitalizations, severe disease and death — they will be reviewing that as well,” she said.
At least 17 dead as Hurricane Ida remnants spark floods in New York, New Jersey
The remnants of Hurricane Ida unloaded a historic deluge in New York City and the surrounding area Wednesday night, as officials and relatives of victims in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania said the storm was linked to at least 17 deaths.
President Biden said he has been in touch with the three states’ governors, and that federal emergency officials were on the ground and available to help. “My message to everyone affected is: We’re all in this together,” Biden said. “The nation is here to help. That’s the message I’ve been making clear to the mayors, governors, energy and utility leaders.”
The torrent left New York City largely at a standstill, with most subway service limited, delayed or suspended, and a citywide travel advisory in effect. The city is urging people to avoid non-emergency travel. Power was knocked out for more than 200,000 customers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. In a briefing, New York officials said the impact underscores the need for aggressive moves to shore up infrastructure as climate change drives record storms.
Authorities and relatives of victims in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania linked at least 17 deaths to the storm. In New York City, police officials said Thursday morning that at least nine people had been killed there. Most were found in homes after 911 calls about flooding, they said, and the police commissioner said one person was found in a car after a crash.
In New Jersey, a 70-year-old man from Clifton, N.J., died in Passaic after his vehicle sank under floodwaters, his family said. Four more people – a family of three adults and a neighbor – died at a complex of apartment buildings in Elizabeth, N.J., according to a spokeswoman for the city. She said those deaths were linked to the flooding, though exact causes had not been determined yet.
Most of New York City’s deaths as of Thursday morning were reported in Queens. The New York Fire Department found a 22-year-old man and a 45-year-old woman unconscious at the scene of a partial building collapse in Jamaica, Queens, on Wednesday night, where 12 units responded before midnight after receiving reports of a water leak and flooding in the home. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, according to the NYPD. The woman was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
In Flushing, Queens, police found a 50-year-old man, 48-year-old woman and 2-year-old boy unresponsive inside their home. All three were pronounced dead at the scene.
Police found an unresponsive 48-year-old woman in her home near Forest Hills, Queens, late Wednesday. They transported her to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. A 66-year-old man was found in Brooklyn and pronounced dead at the scene. Police said that shortly before midnight Wednesday, they responded to a 911 call about flooding in the Elmhurst area in Queens and found an 86-year-old woman who was pronounced dead at the scene.
During a briefing, Shea said a ninth New York City victim was found in the back seat of a car after a vehicle accident on the Grand Central Parkway. The police department said after the briefing that the incident remained under investigation.
Four people were found dead at a complex of apartment buildings in Elizabeth, N.J., said Kelly Martins, a spokeswoman for the city. They included a family of three – a 72-year-old woman, 71-year-old man and a 38-year-old man – along with a 33-year-old woman who was their neighbor, Martins said. The exact cause of death was not known late Thursday morning, Martins said, but it was “definitely linked to the flooding.”
In New Jersey, a 70-year-old man from Clifton, N.J., died in Passaic after his vehicle sank underneath the floodwaters, his family members confirmed to The Post. Firefighters rescued the man’s 66-year-old wife and 25-year-old son but were unable to reach the father in time, Passaic Mayor Hector Lora said early Thursday.
Lora said he talked to the family, who were “in complete shock.” “Having seen the impact of a storm no one expected that devastated the area the way that it did, I would not be surprised if we find additional bodies,” Lora said early Thursday.
The storm also battered Pennsylvania, causing flooding and knocking out power there.
Three storm-related deaths were being investigated Thursday in Montgomery County, Pa., according to Valerie Arkoosh, chair of that county’s board of commissioners. During an online briefing, she said that two of the deaths were believed to be due to drowning and the third was due to structural damage the storm caused in Upper Dublin Township, which is north of Philadelphia.
The county was deluged by up to 6 to 10 inches of rain, prompting a flash flood emergency. Upon issuing the warning, the National Weather Service reported that more than 30 high-water rescues were ongoing.
“Many people in Pennsylvania are hurting,” Gov. Tom Wolf (D) said during a news briefing. “We experienced a historic storm here, all across the commonwealth.”
In remarks Thursday, Biden said his team told governors in states harmed most by Ida and the resulting tropical storm that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is available to provide as much as assistance as possible. He spoke ahead of his Friday trip to Louisiana, where the hurricane first made landfall this week.
Top Biden adviser Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana lawmaker, will also be taking a lead in helping residents in his home state recover from the storms due to his familiarity working on the issue. And Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has been called upon to use tools such as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to continue gas flow to the pumps to get critical supplies to the region.
The president pointed out that Dan Griswold, the current director and administrator of FEMA, was previously the chief federal response officer after 2012’s Hurricane Sandy.
In a news conference Thursday, state and local leaders in New York pointedly underlined the role of climate change in the historic storm, vowing to learn from this event and shore up infrastructure ahead of future storms.
“This is the first time we’ve had a flash flood event of this proportion,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, D, said. “We haven’t experienced this before but we should expect it the next time.”
She called for an “after-action report” on the state’s preparedness ahead of this storm.
“What did we know? When did we know what we had? What information did we have? Were there any intelligence failures in terms of our preparedness?” she said. “I know I deployed resources yesterday morning, but we did not know that between 8:50 and 9:50 p.m. last night, that the heavens would literally open up and bring Niagara Falls-level water to the streets of New York. Could that have been anticipated? I want to find out.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said repeated record downpours in the area make it clear: “Global warming is upon us.”
The rain came as the remnants of Hurricane Ida interacted with a frontal system over the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. Ahead of the deluge, the Weather Service had declared a rare “high risk” of excessive rainfall from southern and eastern Pennsylvania through New York City into Connecticut.
Ida made landfall midday Sunday near Port Fourchon, La., as a Category 4 hurricane, slamming into New Orleans, knocking out electricity for more than 1 million people in the area, dropping tornadoes along its path and killing at least seven people in three states. The storm weakened as it made its way north, but it packed enough strength to inundate Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
Flooding from Hurricane Ida killed a family of three, including a small child, who rented a basement in a multifamily brick house at the bottom of a hill in Flushing. On Thursday, police had cordoned off the house and officers and firefighters were seen occasionally entering the building.
“That family was trapped and were killed, including a 2-year-old … it’s just devastating,” said Jimmy Van Bramer, the city councilman who represents the district, standing on the sidewalk outside the row of brick houses. “We clearly need an investigation into this particular location, if anything could have been done. It begs the question: What do we need to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?”
Floodwater appears to have been trapped where the hill meets an embankment for the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. “The water levels in the neighborhood rose to really frightening levels, flooding all of these basements,” Van Bramer said.
Geetha Kuttikan said this was unlike anything she’d experienced in her 31 years in the neighborhood. “We could not even look outside” during the storm, she said. The water in her house rose above her ankles, she said.
The extreme precipitation hit New York City just after it recorded more than 10 inches of rainfall in August, about a half-foot above normal.
The torrent penetrated major transportation hubs, with video showing flooding at Newark Liberty International Airport and a wall of gushing water at the 28th Street subway station in New York.
Amtrak said Thursday morning that it was canceling all service between Washington, D.C., and Boston for the rest of the day, cutting off a key transportation route across the Northeast. The rail operator had previously canceled some trains earlier Thursday and said it was having crews go out to inspect damage from the storm.
When Hurricane Sandy hit New York in 2012, the newly opened South Ferry subway station was flooded. It took five years for the station to be repaired and upgraded. On Thursday morning, it was once again only partially operational.
People looking to head uptown were told that the 1 Train was out of service for most of Lower Manhattan. One tourist who approached an information booth to figure out the best route to the Upper East Side was offered a curt recommendation from an employee: “Take the bus.”
Janno Lieber, acting chief executive of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said in a statement that Wednesday was a “historic and challenging night.”
“Torrential rains caused massive amounts of water to enter subways and flood roads, creating severe disruptions to service,” he said, adding that the agency was focused on helping evacuate people.
Flooding also obstructed transportation in New Jersey, where all NJ Transit rail service, except the Atlantic City Rail Line, remained suspended as of Thursday.
New York City’s Central Park received 7.13 inches of rain Wednesday, its fifth-wettest day on record. Between 9 and 10 p.m., 3.15 inches fell, the greatest amount in a single hour ever observed in the city. Newark had 8.41 inches of rain, its wettest day on record; 3.24 inches fell in a single hour. These rainfall amounts are expected to occur only once over a 200- to 500-year period.
The downpour in New York City caused at least two partial building collapses in Queens late Wednesday. In the Ridgewood neighborhood, 12 FDNY units also responded to a single-story storefront at about 10:15 p.m. after the Fire Department received reports of a roof collapse.
After the other partial collapse in Jamaica, Queens, that killed two people, several units remained at the scene in the early hours Thursday, according to Gilbert Dofredo, who lives two houses down from that home. Dofredo, 80, did not see the collapse but told The Washington Post that the whole street is flooded and at least a dozen homes have water in their basements. He said the water is knee-high in his home.
“Firemen are here, and they are pumping out the water from the basements right now,” he said. “I’m still waiting for them to pump my water from my basement.”
Dofredo, who has lived on his street for nearly 43 years, said the road has flooded several times in the past. “It’s because the block is a basin,” he said, noting that over the past year, the city has been rehabilitating the storm sewers. “I think it’s even worse than before,” he said.
The remnants of Hurricane Ida knocked out power for more than 200,000 customers in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and Connecticut. The system uprooted trees, swamped buried power lines and inundated city streets.
New York’s power grid, though, appeared to withstand the barrage. Utilities in the region reported that most outages occurred in the suburbs, including around Philadelphia, northwest New Jersey and Westchester County, N.Y. Already Thursday morning, crews appeared to be making significant progress restoring service.
As of 10 a.m. Thursday, a site that tracks electricity outages said about 95,000 customers were without power in Pennsylvania, 62,000 in New Jersey, 37,000 in New York state and 16,000 in Connecticut.
FirstEnergy spokesman Chris Hoenig said about 21,400 customers in Pennsylvania and 33,600 in New Jersey were without power as of 3:45 a.m. Thursday. Teams were assessing storm damage in New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania, Hoenig said, so they could estimate service repair times.
Con Edison crews were working to restore power to more than 21,000 customers in New York, the company’s outage maps reported Thursday morning. More than 16,000 of those customers lost power in Westchester County, north of the Bronx, when the storm swept through the area after midnight. Portions of the Bronx and Staten Island were also among the areas hardest hit, according to Con Edison. In New Jersey, Atlantic City Electric crews were assessing power outages affecting more than 1,800 people.
In the past two weeks, New York City has had three of its top 20 heaviest one-hour downpours on record; four of the top 20 have come this year. On Aug. 21, it received 1.69 and 1.84 inches in back-to-back hours. Another top-20 one-hour rainfall occurred on July 8, when 1.54 inches fell in a single hour.
Russia internet censor threatens Google, Apple over a Putin opposition app
Russia Internet censor threatened Thursday to fine Google and Apple if they dont remove an app built by opposition leaders that encourages voters to cast ballots against the party of President Vladimir Putin, saying the companies are interfering in the nations electoral processes.
The move follows weeks of private demands by the censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, to both companies, ahead of legislative elections that begin Sept. 17. Neither company has removed the app, the latest skirmish in an increasingly intense battle over the availability of potent technological tools – most of them American-made – for political organizing in Russia.
Russian advocates of Internet freedom denounced the move as part of Putin’s intensifying crackdown against political opponents, such as jailed anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, whose allies created the app.
But the battle pitting government forces against Silicon Valley underscores the increasingly perilous waters tech companies must navigate worldwide as their services become ever more important to political campaigns. That includes the United States, where leaders of both major parties for years have sought to shape how policies are established and enforced – all the while complaining that the scales are tilted against them.
The Russian threat, of course, is far more stark, with authority residing overwhelming in the hands of Putin, a former intelligence officer who has amassed unrivaled power since first taking office in 1999. He and his allies have proven adept at exploiting online tactics at home and abroad to manipulate politics – as they infamously did in the U.S. election in 2016 – while also using censorship and other legal tools to throttle critics, political debate and independent journalists within Russia.
“The authorities’ demand to remove the app from AppStore and Google Play Store is more evidence of the current scorched-earth policy to kill any opposition thought, word, movement or competition. It is clear that it is illegitimate, unauthorized, anti-constitutional,” said Artem Kozlyuk of the group Roskomsvoboda.
Navalny and his allies have made liberal use of U.S.-based Internet services in their opposition to the government, exposing government corruption on YouTube, denouncing inhumane prison conditions on Instagram and rallying support for opposition legislative candidates on iPhone and Android apps.
But this adept use of technology has generated an equally aggressive backlash from Russia’s government censors, who’ve demanded wide-ranging takedowns of opposition material online on the grounds that it is “extremist.” Russian censors have blocked 49 Navalny-linked websites, throttled Twitter for failing to delete content Russia deems illegal, and repeatedly fined on Google and others for refusing to store users’ data on servers based within Russia.
Roskomnadzor also has called on YouTube to remove Navalny’s channel, with 6.5 million subscribers, and demanded that other platforms disable the accounts of Navalny and associates. Censors have threatened to block YouTube altogether at a time when Navalny’s channel still pumps out damaging exposés of public corruption even as the platform restricts some content on pro-Kremlin channels.
That’s put Silicon Valley in the middle of a pitched political battle in a country that’s both increasingly authoritarian and an important market for the companies.
Thursday’s order to Google and Apple focused on an app built by Nalvany’s political allies to help opposition voters know how to cast their ballots in this month’s legislative elections, while also highlighting the group’s anti-corruption campaigns. The government ordered the two companies to block distribution of the app last month.
Google took no apparent action. Apple, however, forwarded an Aug. 16 email from Roskomnadzor to a Navalny aide, urging him to contact the censor to resolve the matter, according to a copy of the communication obtained by The Washington Post.
Navalny’s team replied to Apple a few days later, calling the government demand “an illegal and arbitrary act of censorship” that was part of a “campaign of political repression.” But the opposition heard nothing back from the company for several days. During this time, Apple’s App Store stopped providing updates to the app, raising fears among opposition figures that it might get pulled from the store altogether, said opposition and digital rights activists with direct knowledge of the events.
Apple did not remove the app and resumed updating it Monday, shortly after opposition leaders made another plea to Apple through a human rights group acting as an intermediary. But the episode, not previously reported, underscored the high stakes surrounding access to social media and other technological tools. Opposition activists have few other means to reach voters; traditional news and information channels are tightly controlled by Putin’s government.
Roskomnadzor reacted Thursday, threatening fines if Apple and Google did not remove the app from their online stores. In a statement quoted by the Russian news agency Interfax, the censor said that “it has demanded that the AppStore and Google Play stop distributing the application of an organization that has been branded as extremist and banned in Russian territory.”
The report said the companies could be subject to “initial fines” of 4 million rubles, about $55,000. Though a pittance to two of the world’s richest, most profitable companies, most technology companies seek to strike a balance between complying with local laws and hewing to their own global standards regarding access to information.
The increasingly aggressive actions by the censors has opposition figures and digital rights activists worried that still more action, including possible cyberattacks, could be coming ahead of the three-day election for members of the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. They also expressed concern about the possibility of localized Internet blackouts near the election to hobble political organizing, and they complained that a copyright lawsuit filed this week is a thinly veiled effort to attack the Nalvany app through other means.
Russia’s censorship office did not reply to a request for comment. Apple and Google declined to comment about government demands that the apps be removed.
Russia’s battle to quash the app is a key part of its election strategy – and also a potential watershed battle in its efforts to control the Internet and hinder the spread of dissent and democratic ideas, say government critics.
“They made it very clear that the single most important thing for them in regard to this upcoming election is to block this technology because it’s the only thing that could prevent their plans of ensuring an entirely predictable and submissive Duma from being elected,” said Leonid Volkov, a senior adviser to Navalny.
Russian authorities have tried to block opposition access to Internet services before. For two years, Russian authorities tried but failed to block the messaging app Telegram for refusing to share encryption keys with Russian security services. Russian independent media, activists and opposition figures continue to thrive on Telegram news channels. A company spokesman did not reply to a request for comment.
The Russian state, meanwhile, has used social media, particularly Facebook, to spread disinformation about Navalny and his organization, Volkov said.
With the Duma election two weeks away, most opposition candidates who could pose a real threat to Putin’s governing party, United Russia, have been barred by the government from running. Authorities barred a prominent independent election observer group, as well, and video surveillance in voting stations has been canceled.
These flaws leave no doubt about a victory for United Russia, critics say. But a variety of conditions have weakened the party’s support, including long-simmering anger over increases to the pension age, rising food prices, pervasive corruption, inequality, the pandemic and raging wildfires in Siberia and elsewhere.
Despite assurances of likely electoral victory, the Russian censorship office has sent takedown requests to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and TikTok over allegedly extremist and illegal content. Chinese-owned TikTok removed large amounts of anti-government content, winning praise from Russian government officials, Bloomberg News reported in April. The company and its parent, ByteDance, did not respond to requests for comment.
Vladislav Zdolnikov of GlobalCheck, which monitors Internet accessibility in Russia, said government efforts to restrict global technology giants were gaining speed as it worked to build a “sovereign Internet,” capable of disconnecting from the global Web, following the example of China’s Great Fire Wall. Russia was able to disconnect its Internet from the global Web during tests in July, Russian media reported, offering little detail of the scope of the exercise.
Navalny was poisoned in Tomsk, Siberia, last year while visiting the city to publicize his “Smart Voting” campaign, of which the app that censors are seeking to block is a key part.
Zdolnikov said authorities also are disrupting the app using “Deep Packet Inspection” technology, which allows granular analysis of Internet flows and the blocking of objectionable content. He predicted authorities would redouble their efforts to hobble the app during the three days of voting that begin in two weeks.
“I am sure that [government censors] will be blocking the app 24/7, and I believe that it will not be working stably,” said Zdolnikov. “For the three days of the election there will be interruptions, and the app may be accessible 20 percent or 30 percent of the time.”
U.S. could work with Taliban against terrorists, Pentagon says
The top U.S. military official said it is “possible” the United States will coordinate with the Taliban in the fight against the Islamic State, although he declined to make predictions about potential collaboration with Afghanistans new rulers, who could announce a new government as early as Thursday.
“We don’t know what the future of the Taliban is, but I can tell you from personal experience that this is a ruthless group from the past, and whether or not they change remains to be seen,” Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Wednesday. “In war, you do what you must,” he added, even if it is “not what you necessarily want to do.”
American commanders worked with the Taliban to facilitate the evacuation of more than 124,000 people from Afghanistan in recent weeks. Both the United States and the Taliban share a common threat in the Islamic State, which was responsible for an attack outside Kabul airport last week that killed 13 U.S. service members and more than 170 civilians.
Britain will have to engage with the Islamist militants who now control Afghanistan even if it does not intend to recognize the Taliban for now, its top diplomat said on Thursday.
“We need to adjust to the new reality,” British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told reporters in a news conference with his counterpart in Qatar. “We will not be recognizing the Taliban in the foreseeable future but there is an important scope for engagement and dialogue.”
“I think there are some early tests for the Taliban,” he added. One of those tests, he said, will be the Taliban’s assurance that it will allow foreigners and Afghans wishing to leave safe passage out of the country, now that the last U.S. troops who held Kabul airport have left.
More than 120,000 people boarded U.S., British and other evacuation flights out of the city after the Taliban’s swift advance. But many more awaiting rescue remain – including Afghans who guarded the U.K. embassy and a few hundred British nationals.
The Biden administration has faced criticism for the chaotic evacuation and withdrawal after nearly two decades of war in Afghanistan. So have British officials, chief among them Raab who was vacationing on a Greek island when the capital fell.
The British minister said on Thursday that governments needed to engage directly with the Taliban to make sure aid workers could still operate there to avoid “a humanitarian disaster,” as well as to pressure the militants to stick to their promise that their rule will be less repressive this time around.
After meeting with the British diplomat, Qatar’s foreign minister said the Gulf state was talking to the Taliban and Turkey about the reopening of Kabul airport, though it remained unclear when that would happen. “We will remain hopeful that we will be able to operate it as soon as possible.”
In other developments, a former U.S. official, international soccer players, U.S. allies and a military veteran have joined forces to try to evacuate young female Afghan soccer players, their coaching staff and their families from Afghanistan.
The group of 133 Afghans, which includes infants, has been seeking to escape the country out of fear of Taliban persecution, according to the Associated Press. The Taliban has banned women from playing sports in the past, although the militants now insist that women’s rights will be ensured within an Islamic framework. The players are between 14 and 16 years old.
The group has failed to escape Afghanistan at least five times, including when an Islamic State bombing attack outside Kabul’s airport last week prevented the Afghans from boarding a plane, the AP reported. Now, they are moving from location to location, to avoid the Taliban. Their lack of passports or other documentation has hampered their efforts to leave the country.
Robert McCreary, a former White House official during the George W. Bush administration who is working to extract group, said he hopes to create a “protective bubble” around the Afghans. He said he has urged the Taliban to help them leave. Australia, France and Qatar have offered to help as well.
Farkhunda Muhtaj, the Afghan women’s soccer team captain now residing in Canada; Kat Khosrowyar, an Iranian American who coached Tehran’s U-19 women’s team; and Julie Foudy, former captain of the U.S. women’s national soccer team, have signed up for the effort.
The Biden administration has pledged to persuade the Taliban to provide safe passage to stranded American citizens and vulnerable Afghans hoping to leave.
“The only thing that they had done wrong in the eyes of the Taliban . . . is the fact that they were born girls and . . . had the audacity to dream,” said Nic McKinley, a CIA and Air Force veteran who is also involved.
Facebook helped a group of Afghan journalists – along with its employees – flee to Mexico before the last U.S. troops pulled out of Afghanistan this week.
The Afghans – 175 Facebook employees, activists, journalists and their families, including 75 children – landed in Mexico City on Tuesday, according to Mexico’s Foreign Ministry.
“In the process of assisting Facebook employees and close partners leave Afghanistan, we joined an effort to help a group of journalists and their families who were in grave danger,” a Facebook spokesman said Thursday. “The journalists have been welcomed in Mexico.”
Facebook declined to give further details on the evacuation effort, citing security reasons.
Taliban militants driving American Humvees showcased a lineup of weapons they captured during their blitz across the country at a parade in Kandahar celebrating the withdrawal of U.S. troops.A helicopter with a black-and-white Taliban flag hanging from its side cruised over scores of supporters in the country’s second biggest city. A man waved to them from the sky.
Fighters with heavy machine guns stood atop military vehicles left behind after 20 years of war. Dozens of men watched on both sides of the road, some saluting the militants as they passed by.
A fleet of armored SUVs drove in a single file on a highway outside Kandahar, in Agence France-Presse photos on Wednesday from Afghanistan’s south, the Taliban’s traditional heartland.
The parade comes after Taliban fighters entered a hangar at Kabul airport on Monday night, posing with helicopters minutes after the last U.S. troops took off from the tarmac.
In the weeks since their conquests, Taliban fighters have flaunted the millions of dollars worth of U.S. weaponry they captured, though experts say it’s not clear if they can maintain and use equipment such as helicopters.
Celebratory gunfire erupted in the sky over the capital after the final aircraft left, ending a chaotic evacuation of more than 110,000 people.
In the days after the U.S. pullout, videos on social media showed Taliban fans carrying coffins wrapped in American, British and French flags at a mock funeral in the eastern city of Khost.
Large crowds were out in the streets for Wednesday’s show of force in Kandahar province, where the Taliban formed in 1994 before later ruling the country for five years until 2001.
Now that they are back in power, the militants must contend with governing a country of 39 million facing a wave of displacement and cut off from key sources of funding.
Taliban fighters on Humvee vehicles parade along a road to celebrate after the United States pulled its troops out of Afghanistan, in Kandahar on Sept. 1, 2021.
[Singapore] Greater vaccine manufacturing capacity ahead of pandemics is key: Tharman Shanmugaratnam
SINGAPORE – To overcome the fragmented global health security system, a new global mechanism is needed to mobilise and govern health financing.
How to do this without adding to the complexity and fragmentation of the system is an important challenge that can be overcome, said Senior Minister and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies Tharman Shanmugaratnam on Wednesday (Sept 1).
Mr Tharman, who is also chairman of the Group of 30, a global council of economic and financial leaders, was speaking on the topic Resolving Today’s Global Health Crisis And Avoiding Future Pandemics at a virtual discussion organised by European economic think-tank Bruegel.
Other panellists included Indonesian Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati, Bruegel director Guntram Wolff, Wellcome Trust director Jeremy Farrar, and Centre for Global Development executive vice-president and senior fellow Amanda Glassman.
They discussed, among other issues, the recommendations of the Group of 20 (G-20) High Level Independent Panel (HLIP) on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which Mr Tharman co-chairs with World Trade Organisation director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and former United States Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers.
The panel in July released its recommendations – including setting up a US$10 billion (S$13.5 billion) Global Health Threats Fund with contributions from the international community, as well as an inclusive G-20-plus board comprising health and finance ministers – which are now being actively considered ahead of the G-20 ministerial meetings and summit in October.
Noting the sharp deterioration in global trust and increase in protectionism since the pandemic started, Mr Tharman said the world does not have a system that can adequately supply – on a global scale and within a short time – the vaccines, therapeutics or protective equipment the world needs.
“That kind of supply chain had to be invented in the middle of a pandemic, and when you start in the middle of a pandemic, it takes a long time,” he said, adding that this is a new public policy challenge.
“You’re not going to be able to change nation-state democracies in either the rich world or the rest of the world… They will give extra attention to their own, everywhere in the world. But we do want to tackle the pandemic everywhere because it’s in everyone’s interests.
“How we reconcile these two objectives, and avoid the tension between the two leading to what we saw in the last year and a half… is by building up global supply capacity in advance of a pandemic, not in the middle of one.”
This means having an ever-ready manufacturing capacity of multiple vaccine candidates. But without knowing which vaccine will be successful, the private sector has no commercial incentive to make advance investments, he said.
“It requires public investment together with the private sector… so that we have an over-supply of capacity in advance of a pandemic.”
International R&D is also needed in new, lower-cost and modular manufacturing technologies that will allow for interchangeable manufacturing facilities – so that if one vaccine is not going to work out, repurposing can be quickly done to manufacture the successful vaccine at scale.
This requires global capacity and global financing that will be everyone’s interests, added Mr Tharman. “That’s the only way we’re going to bring trust back.”
Dr Sri Mulyani, whose country has just begun to ease restrictions following a surge in cases in July, said Covid-19 is a “perfect example” of a global problem without borders.
“The virus is changing, and its mutations are also overwhelming all countries, regardless of whether (their people) are vaccinated or not,” she said.
Indonesia will hold the presidency of the G-20 in 2022, taking over from Italy.
Dr Sri Mulyani added that global collaboration and coordination are essential, and so are good national health systems that provide access to large segments of the population.
There is also a need for countries to discuss how to set up early warning systems for future pandemics, she said, adding that this can be tricky, as it involves sensitivities over sovereign jurisdiction.
“There is always a tense relationship between sovereignty versus the global governance that needs to be established – whether it exists in the form of resources, the governance or decision-making process, or information sharing, but failure to do that will lead to catastrophic damage, as we can see from this pandemic.”
Wellcome Trust’s Mr Farrar said pandemics can no longer be considered a purely health-related issue, as they lead to economic disruption in the form of opportunity loss in education, trade, and travel.
“We are living in a new era of politics where your domestic agenda and international agenda are absolutely, intricately linked.
“Sometimes, as with Covid-19, that will pull you in different directions – where your domestic political agenda may be, for instance, to offer vaccines to your population before anybody else. But your international commitment, and actually your enlightened self-interest, would be to offer those vaccines around the world as well.
“This is also true of climate change, energy and clean water access, and many issues we face in the 21st century. And I don’t think international financial and other multilateral institutions have really grasped this challenge,” Mr Farrar said.
Taliban calls for peaceful solution of Panjshir standoff
A Taliban senior leader said that the Taliban in spite of deploying troops around Panjshir would continue dialogue, urging the people of Panjshir to help stabilize peace and security in the country.
ATaliban senior leader Mullah Amir Khan Mutaqi has stressed for peaceful solution of the standoff in Afghanistan’s Panjshir province, urging the people of Panjshir to help stabilize peace and security in the country.
“Panjshir as a part of Afghanistan deserves to live in peace. The Islamic Emirate has declared general amnesty and there is no reason to fight. War is enough, let’s stop fighting and live in peace,” Mutaqi said in a message on Wednesday posted in Taliban’s Twitter account.
Panjshir is the only province among Afghanistan’s 34 provinces which has remained out of Taliban’s control since the fall of major cities including capital Kabul.
Since Monday, there are reports of skirmishes between Taliban forces and the anti-Taliban fighters in areas bordering Panjshir valley.
Ahmad Masoud, the son of late anti-Taliban resistance leader Ahmad Shah Masoud, who is leading an anti-Taliban resistance in Panjshir valley, has reportedly said that he is going to find negotiated solution for the standoff, though in the meantime, ready for defending the valley.
Mutaqi in his message said that the Taliban in spite of deploying troops around Panjshir would continue dialogue.
Military vehicles run in Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of northern Balkh province, Afghanistan, Aug. 31, 2021.
The number of Covid-19 cases in Southeast Asia crossed 10.14 million, with 73,964 new cases reported on Wednesday, higher than Tuesday’s tally of 76,800. Asean also saw an additional 2,189 deaths, increasing from Tuesday’s 1,236 and taking total coronavirus deaths to 225,346 so far.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo said on Tuesday that his country would receive an additional 331 million doses of Covid-19 vaccines through to the end of the year.
To date, at least 35.85 million people in the country have received two shots of vaccines, while 63 million have had their first dose, according to the Health Ministry.
The second wave of Covid-19 triggered by the Delta variant is easing in Indonesia, with declining infection and bed occupancy rates.
Meanwhile, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said on Tuesday that the kingdom has seen a dramatic drop in new cases and deaths, especially in the capital Phnom Penh and its adjacent Kandal province, where herd immunity has been achieved.
He asked his education minister to consider reopening schools in non-infectious locations, especially in rural areas, which have been closed since February after the third Covid-19 wave hit.
So far some 10.7 million people, or 66.8 per cent of the country’s population, have received at least one vaccine dose, while 8.45 million have received both required shots.
Covid-zero wavers in Australia as Melbourne sets vaccine target
Australias Covid-Zero policy is under renewed pressure after a second state indicated it was abandoning attempts to eliminate the highly-contagious delta variant.
Melbourne set a 70% first-dose vaccination rate target to begin easing its Covid-related restrictions — some of the toughest in the world — on Wednesday, as Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, previously a strong proponent of Covid-Zero, laid out a roadmap to reopening the state.
Regional areas of Victoria could exit lockdown as early as next week, he added. Still, Andrews didn’t specify a date when stay-at-home orders would be removed for metropolitan Melbourne.
The Covid-Zero strategy has seen Australia rely on closed international borders, rigorous testing and lockdowns to eliminate community transmission, earning it the nickname “Fortress Australia” and raising questions about how long it could afford to remain isolated not just from the world but across state borders. Victoria joins neighboring New South Wales in shifting toward a reopening that will see more than half the nation’s population learn to live with the virus, rather than seek to eliminate it.
The 70% threshold will allow rules limiting residents to an area within five kilometers of their homes to extend to 10, and see three hours of daily outdoor exercise permitted instead of the current limit of two, Andrews said. Playgrounds will reopen late Thursday, he said.
He said the state — which recorded two deaths and 120 new virus infections overnight — could reach the inoculation target around September 23. Some 35% of Victorians over age 16 are fully vaccinated, and 56% have had their first dose.
“I much prefer to be here announce that we’re opening up,” Andrews said. Regarding a full lifting of the lockdown, he added that there would “be a time for that, but it simply can’t be before” at least 70% of people are fully vaccinated.
Australia has imposed restrictions ranging from stay-at-home orders to the closure of venues on its residents more frequently than any other country outside of China during the pandemic, according to Bloomberg analysis of Oxford University’s Stringency Index, which assesses how many times nations see significant upward changes in the severity of their lockdowns.
Victoria’s announcement was criticized by peak employer lobbyist Ai Group, which contrasted Andrews’ incremental easing with the bid outlined by New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian earlier Wednesday seeking to reopen Sydney’s international border by November.
“Our two largest states need to get on the same page as soon as possible and this will be best achieved by Victoria raising its aspirations for Covid freedom,” Ai Group’s chief executive, Innes Willox, said in an emailed statement. “If the aim is to shutter many more businesses in the state, Victoria is moving in the right direction.”
Roughly half of Australia’s population remains under stay-at-home orders. Melbourne has seen six lockdowns numbering a total of 213 days since the pandemic began, while Sydney has been under similar restrictions for more than two months and residents of Canberra, the national capital, are following such measures through September 17.
The outbreak started in Sydney in mid-June, when an unvaccinated chauffeur became infected while transporting international flight crew.
Australia’s sluggish vaccine rollout, one of the slowest in the developed world, has picked up speed since the outbreak. But its slowness has forced health authorities to continue to resort to lockdowns until immunization rates catch up, even as nations like the U.S. and U.K. return to relative normality.
New South Wales recorded four deaths and 1,116 new infections on Wednesday as authorities focus on inoculations as a pathway to removing restrictions. More than 22,500 people have been infected in the state, mostly in Sydney, since the outbreak started.
“The escape of the delta variant before vaccinations reached herd-immunity levels is a major disaster for Australia,” said Bloomberg Economics’s James McIntyre. “The recalibration of restriction thresholds — and sharper focus on vaccination rollout — offers a glimmer of hope that the full reopening of the economy may eventuate sooner than anticipated, albeit with significant damage in the meantime.”
EU mulls 300 million euros to accept refugees amid Afghan strife
The European Union has floated a plan to spend 300 million euros ($355 million) to resettle about 30,000 refugees inside the bloc in a bid to avert a migration crisis following the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
The European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, made the proposal to EU ambassadors at an Aug. 26 meeting on Afghanistan, according to a diplomatic note seen by Bloomberg. The commission added that additional funds could be made available.
An EU spokesperson said the funding isn’t limited to Afghan refugees, but EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson said Tuesday that she plans to convene a high-level resettlement forum this month to address the Afghan situation. Specific resettlement pledges would have to made by individual EU governments.
The EU is eager to avoid a repeat of the 2015 refugee crisis caused by the Syrian war when more than a million migrants entered the bloc. The EU will focus on development aid, including support for refugees in Afghanistan’s neighbors like Pakistan and Tajikistan to prevent migration flows from reaching the EU, according to the note.
“The EU will engage and strengthen its support to third countries, in particular the neighboring and transit countries, hosting large numbers of migrants and refugees,” according to a statement after a Tuesday emergency meeting of EU home affairs ministers in Brussels. “The EU will also cooperate with those countries to prevent illegal migration from the region.”
An email seeking comment from the commission wasn’t immediately returned.
Support for refugees is a fraught topic in the bloc, with several member states firmly opposed to accepting any migrants. Janez Jansa, prime minister of Slovenia, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, said on Twitter last month that Europe shouldn’t open any humanitarian migration corridors for Afghanistan to avoid the “strategic mistake” of 2015.
Even though about 500,000 people have been displaced in Afghanistan this year, flows of people into neighboring countries have been muted, according to the note, which added there had been no significant movements toward the EU.
The EU has currently suspended development aid to Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover of the country but has earmarked about 1 billion euros under its current budget, according to the note. These funds would be conditional on a number of factors, including allowing safe passages, the respect of human rights, fighting terrorism and the creation of an inclusive government, the note said.
The number of those fleeing Afghanistan is expected to rise, according to the note, with officials agreeing on the need for security checks and to address the risk of irregular migration and human smuggling. Officials also highlighted the risks posed by Afghanistan becoming a haven for terrorists, the dangers posed by the large amounts of weapons left behind by the U.S. and the Taliban becoming an inspiration for extremist movements and disinformation, including in the EU.
Vehicles are submerged on a waterlogged road in New York, the United States, Sept. 2, 2021.
Military vehicles run in Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of northern Balkh province, Afghanistan, Aug. 31, 2021.
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