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The Transportation Security Administration won’t enforce transit mask mandate

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The Transportation Security Administration won’t enforce transit mask mandate

The Transportation Security Administration won’t enforce the national mask mandate on planes and public transit for now after a federal judge voided it on Monday, according to an administration official. 

U.S. District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Tampa voided the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s requirement covering airplanes and other public transit, saying the mandate exceeded the authority of U.S. health officials, according to CBS NEWS.

That means the CDC’s public transportation masking order is not in effect at this time, and the TSA won’t enforce the requirement while federal agencies are reviewing the judge’s decision, the administration official said. The CDC still encourages masking on public transit. 

The mask requirement for travelers was the target of months of lobbying from the airlines, which sought to kill it. The carriers argued that effective air filters on modern planes make transmission of the virus during a flight highly unlikely. Republicans in Congress also fought to kill the mandate.

Critics have seized on the fact that states have rolled back rules requiring masks in restaurants, stores and other indoor settings, and yet COVID-19 cases have fallen sharply since the omicron variant peaked in mid-January.

“The CDC recommended continuing the order for additional time, two weeks, to be able to assess the latest science in keeping with its responsibility to protect the American people,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Monday afternoon. “So this is obviously a disappointing decision. The CDC continues recommending wearing a mask in public transit. As you know, this just came out this afternoon, so right now, the Department of Homeland who would be implementing and the CDC are reviewing the decision and of course the Department of Justice would make any determinations about litigation.”

The decision also said the CDC improperly failed to justify its decision and did not follow proper rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act.

“The court concludes that the mask mandate exceeds the CDC’s statutory authority and violates the procedures required for agency rulemaking under the APA,” the judge wrote. “Accordingly, the court vacates the mandate and remands it to the CDC.” 

The CDC recently extended the mask mandate, which was set to expire on April 18, until May 3 to allow more time to study the BA.2 omicron subvariant of the coronavirus that is now responsible for the vast majority of cases in the U.S.

The Trump-nominated judge also wrote that the court “accepts the CDC’s policy determination that requiring masks will limit COVID-19 transmission and will thus decrease the serious illnesses and death that COVID-19 occasions” but “that finding by itself is not sufficient to establish good cause.” 

S. Korea lifts most COVID precautions as new cases dip to two-month low

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S. Korea lifts most COVID precautions as new cases dip to two-month low

South Korea lifted almost all of its COVID-19 precautions on Monday in a major step towards a return to normal life as the Omicron variant recedes and daily infections retreated to a more than two-month low of fewer than 50,000.

A midnight curfew on restaurants and other businesses was scrapped, along with a cap of 10 people allowed to gather. From next week, people will be allowed to eat snacks in cinemas and other indoor public facilities such as stadiums.

People are still required to wear masks, however, with the government planning to review whether to lift a rule for masks outdoors in two weeks, according to Reuters.

Most staff at giant steelmaker POSCO (005490.KS) have returned to their offices this month, becoming one of the first major firms to bring people back.

LG Electronics (066570.KS) said it had reduced the proportion of employees working from home to 30% from 50% from Monday, while scrapping a limit on the number of people allowed in meetings.

Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) said it had yet to implement its back-to-office plan and the public sector is also awaiting new government guidelines.

The Bank of Korea, which has 30% of its head office staff working from home, is considering easing its guidelines, officials said.

The government had recommended workplaces with 300 or more employees adopt flexible working hours and have 10% of staff work from home.

The relaxation of the rules come as the number of coronavirus cases in South Korea fell to 47,743 on Monday, the lowest since Feb. 9, after hovering at more than 620,000 a day in mid-March.

Some rules, however, remain including mandatory quarantine for unvaccinated inbound travellers and negative PCR tests for the fully vaccinated.

South Korea has largely managed to limit deaths and critical cases through widespread vaccination, and it has scaled back the aggressive tracing and containment efforts that made it a mitigation success story from most of the first two years of the pandemic.

Nearly 87% of the 52 million population are fully vaccinated, with 64% having also had a booster, according to Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency data.

In line with the easing of the rules, companies are gradually returning to their offices.

US envoy vows ‘strongest possible deterrent’ over North Korea weapons tests

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US envoy vows ‘strongest possible deterrent’ over North Korea weapons tests

The United States and South Korea would maintain the “strongest possible joint deterrent” over North Korea’s “escalatory actions”, the U.S. envoy on North Korea said on Monday, amid concerns that Pyongyang was preparing to resume nuclear testing.

According to Reuters, U.S. Special Representative Sung Kim and his deputy, Jung Pak, met South Korean officials, including nuclear envoy Noh Kyu-duk, after arriving in Seoul early on Monday for a five-day visit.

The U.S. envoy has repeatedly offered to re-engage with North Korea, but Pyongyang has so far rebuffed those overtures, accusing Washington of maintaining hostile policies such as sanctions and the military drills.

Kim was also expected to meet with the transition team for President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol, who takes office in May.

A spokesperson for the team said there was no meeting confirmed between Yoon and Kim, but Yoon’s foreign minister nominee, Park Jin, said he planned to meet Kim.

Kim also said at his talks with Noh that Washington looks forward to working closely with Yoon’s team.

“It is extremely important for the United Nations Security Council to send a clear signal to the DPRK that we will not accept its escalatory tests as normal,” Kim told reporters after his talks with Noh.

Kim was referring to North Korea by its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“We agreed on the need to maintain the strongest possible joint deterrent capability on the peninsula,” he said.

Kim also said the allies would “respond responsibly and decisively to provocative behaviour,” while underlining his willingness to engage with North Korea “anywhere without any conditions.”

Kim’s arrival coincided with the start of a nine-day annual joint military drill by U.S. and South Korean troops.

The exercise consists of “defensive command post training using computer simulation” and will not involve field manoeuvres by troops, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Sunday.

North Korea has condemned the joint drills as rehearsals for war, and they have been scaled back in recent years amid efforts to engage Pyongyang in diplomacy, and because of COVID-19 restrictions.

On Saturday, North Korea test fired what state media said were missiles involved in delivering tactical nuclear weapons. 

Shanghai quarantine: 24-hour lights, no hot showers

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Shanghai quarantine: 24-hour lights, no hot showers

Beibei sleeps beside thousands of strangers in rows of cots in a high-ceilinged exhibition center. The lights stay on all night, and the 30-year-old real estate saleswoman has yet to find a hot shower, accoding to AP.

Beibei and her husband were ordered into the massive National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai last Tuesday after spending 10 days isolated at home following a positive test. Their 2-year-old daughter, who was negative, went to her grandfather, while her nanny also went into quarantine.

The 420,000-square-meter (4.6 million-square-foot) exhibition center is best known as the site of the world’s biggest auto show. Other quarantine sites include temporary prefabricated buildings.

Residents of other facilities have complained about leaky roofs, inadequate food supplies and delays in treatment for medical problems.

“We haven’t found a place with a hot shower,” Beibei said. “Lights are on all night, and it’s hard to fall asleep.”

A video obtained by AP showed wet beds and floors due a leaky roof in a different facility in a prefabricated building.

“Bathrooms are not very clean” at the NECC, Beibei said. “So many people use them, and volunteers or cleaners can’t keep up.”

The convention center, with 50,000 beds, is among more than 100 quarantine facilities set up in Shanghai for people such as Beibei who test positive but have no symptoms. It is part of official efforts to contain China’s biggest coronavirus outbreak since the 2-year-old pandemic began.

Residents show “no obvious symptoms,” Beibei, who asked to be identified only by her given name, told The Associated Press in an interview by video phone.

“There are people coughing,” she said. “But I have no idea if they have laryngitis or omicron.”

The shutdown of Shanghai, which confined most of its 25 million people to their homes, is testing patience of people who are increasingly fed up with China’s “zero-COVID” policy that aims to isolate every case.

“At the beginning people were frightened and panicked,” Beibei said. “But with the publication of daily figures, people have started to accept that this particular virus is not that horrible.”

Beibei was told she was due to be released Monday after two negative tests while at the convention center.

Most of Shanghai shut down starting March 28. That led to complaints about food shortages and soaring economic losses.

Anyone who tests positive but shows few or no symptoms is required to spend one week in a quarantine facility. Beibei said she had a stuffy nose and briefly lost part of her senses of taste and smell, but those symptoms passed in a few days.

On Monday, the government reported 23,460 new cases on the Chinese mainland — only 2,742 of which had symptoms. Shanghai accounted for 95% of the total, or 22,251 cases, including 2,420 with symptoms.

The city has reported more than 300,000 cases since late March. Shanghai began easing restrictions last week, though a health official warned the city didn’t have its outbreak under control.

At the convention center, residents are checked twice a day for fever and told to record health information on mobile phones, according to Beibei.

Most pass the time by reading, square dancing, taking online classes or watching videos on mobile phones.

Ukrainian Prime Minister “Mariupol besieged but not fallen”

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Ukrainian Prime Minister “Mariupol besieged but not fallen”

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Sunday in an exclusive interview with ABC “This Week” that the besieged city of Mariupol has not yet fallen despite Russian demands that Ukrainians surrender.

“There [are] still our military forces, our soldiers, so they will fight until the end,” Shmyhal told “This Week” Anchor George Stephanopoulos.

Mariupol is a strategic city for Russia because it would allow Russian forces in the south to connect with troops in the Donbas region. It would also give Russia a key port.

Shmyhal said even though the city remains in Ukrainian control, its residents are suffering.

The Russian Defense Ministry warned that the military would kill any remaining Ukrainian fighters who did not surrender before the overnight deadline.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday that Russia is regrouping and repositioning forces to the east, warning that “a big Russian offensive” is expected in the Donbas region in southeastern Ukraine.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow last week. Nehammer was the first European leader to do so since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Stephanopoulos asked Shmyhal about the Austrian chancellor’s assessment that Putin believes he is winning the war. “Has the tide turned?” he asked.

Shmyhal replied that only one big city “is under control of Russian military forces. But all of the rest of the cities are under Ukrainian control.”

“They have no water, no food, no heat, no electricity,” Shmyhal said. “They ask all of our partners to support and help stop this humanitarian catastrophe.”

During a virtual address overnight, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia’s actions in Mariupol were “just inhuman.”

“Russia is deliberately trying to destroy everyone who is there in Mariupol,” Zelenskyy said.

On Saturday, Russia continued attacks across Ukraine, including in the capital, Kyiv. The Ukrainian president’s office reported missile strikes and shelling in eight regions across the country.

Teen killed by shelling deeply mourned

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Teen killed by shelling deeply mourned

The mother and grandmother of a 15-year-old Ukrainian boy could not hold back their tears. Their anguish filled the cramped hallway as they knelt over the teen’s body, reported by AP.

Artem Shevchenko was killed by shelling in Kharkiv, a partially blockaded northeastern city where Russian shelling has increased in recent days. Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv is only 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the Russian border.

Nine civilians died and more than 50 people were wounded Friday in the attack on one of Kharkiv’s residential areas, the Ukrainian president’s office reported.

“Please open your eyes, my bunny. Please,” Nina Shevchenko pleaded, captured in a moving Associated Press video in which she mourns her son.

The boy’s grandmother arrived as people came to take his body away.

“Let me see him! My baby. My golden sunshine!” the grandmother cried. “My dear sunshine. We just spoke today. My dear, why should I live, if you are gone? I lived for you. My sunshine. Curse them all! They should not find any place, neither on Earth, nor in heaven.”

“I lived for you,” Nina Shevchenko told her son.

“Please open your eyes,” she said, touching his face before paramedics and neighbors took the boy away in a body bag. A seven-month-old baby was also killed in the shelling.

“What did this guy do to them (Russians)?” asked Sergey Kirichenko, a friend of the wounded man.

“With whom should we make peace?” Kirichenko asked. “With these monsters?”

The Russian Defense Ministry said Russian military strikes in the Kharkiv region “liquidated a squad of mercenaries from a Polish private military company” of up to 30 people and “liberated” an iron and steel factory in the southern Ukrainian port of Mariupol.

The claims could not be independently verified.

In another building’s hallway, a young girl broke down in tears as she recounted the horror of the attack and how she was saved only when “some woman, God bless her, covered me with her body.”

Outside, bloodied people lay in pain on the streets, where ambulances arrived to treat them.

Amid burned-out cars and debris, a man who had helped his friend into an ambulance spoke out against Russian forces, whose invasion sparked a war in his country.

Dozens of people still missing as South Africa floods death toll rises to 443

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Dozens of people still missing as South Africa floods death toll rises to 443

Rescuers searched for dozens of people still missing in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) province on Sunday after heavy rains in recent days triggered floods and mudslides that have killed more than 440 people.

“We are traumatised by the sight of rain,” Mjoka, 47, told Reuters, adding that her home had been badly damaged.

According to Reuters, the floods have left thousands homeless, knocked out power and water services and disrupted operations at one of Africa’s busiest ports, Durban. A provincial economic official estimated the overall infrastructure damage at more than 10 billion rand ($684.6 million).

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s office said late on Saturday he had delayed a working visit to Saudi Arabia to focus on the disaster. Ramaphosa will meet cabinet ministers to assess the response to the crisis.

KZN Premier Zikalala told a televised briefing that the floods were among the worst in his province’s recorded history.

“We need to summon our collective courage and turn this devastation into an opportunity to rebuild our province,” he said. “The people of KwaZulu-Natal will rise from this mayhem.”

The province’s premier, Sihle Zikalala, said the death toll had risen to 443, with a further 63 people unaccounted for.

In some of the worst-affected areas, residents said they were terrified by the thought of more rain, which was forecast to fall on Sunday. Some faced an agonising wait for news of missing loved ones.

“We haven’t lost hope. Although we are constantly worried as (the) days continue,” Sbongile Mjoka, a resident of Sunshine village in the eThekwini municipality whose 8-year-old nephew has been missing for days.

In a nearby semi-rural area, three members of the Sibiya family were killed when the walls of the room where they slept collapsed and 4-year-old Bongeka Sibiya is still missing.

“Everything is a harsh reminder of what we lost, and not being able to find (Bongeka) is devastating because we can’t grieve or heal. At this stage we are left feeling empty,” Lethiwe Sibiya, 33, told Reuters.

Tensions flare as Israeli police enter Al-Aqsa Mosque again

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Tensions flare as Israeli police enter Al-Aqsa Mosque again

Israeli police have entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound as worshippers gathered for early morning prayers, two days after detaining hundreds at the site in another raid at the mosque.

Israeli authorities said they entered the compound on Sunday to facilitate routine visits by far-right Jews to the holy site and that Palestinians had stockpiled stones and set up barriers in the compound.

The police cleared Palestinians out of the sprawling esplanade outside the mosque, while dozens remained inside.

Palestinian medical workers said at least 19 people were injured. Three people were transferred to the hospital after being beaten or hit by rubber-coated bullets, according to The Palestinian Red Cross. The organisation said it was prevented from accessing the compound but managed to assist the injured near Bab al-Asbat.

N. Korea celebrates founder with dance, music

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N. Korea celebrates founder with dance, music

North Korea celebrated the 110th anniversary of the birth of late founder Kim Il Sung on Friday with fireworks and an evening gala in Pyongyang’s main square, with thousands of people in colourful traditional dress singing and dancing, reported by Reuters.

“The Day of the Sun” is North Korea’s biggest annual public holiday. Kim, who died in 1994, founded the authoritarian regime now led by his grandson, Kim Jong Un.

This year’s holiday marks 110 years since Kim Il Sung was born on April 15, 1912, and North Korea typically stages bigger celebrations on every fifth and tenth anniversary.

Earlier in the week, Kim Jong Un gifted new apartments to some of his loyal elites, including the country’s most famous TV presenter, and attended the opening of a major public housing project.

International monitors had said commercial satellite imagery showed preparations for a military parade in the run-up to the holiday, but there was no confirmation of a parade happening as of Friday evening.

The celebrations come after North Korea resumed testing in March of its largest intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), for the first time since 2017, and officials in Seoul and Washington say there are signs it could soon resume nuclear weapons tests too. Major weapons tests are sometimes timed for key holidays. 

State media aired live footage of the gala in Kim Il Sung square after sundown on Friday, but gave no sign of an anticipated military parade.

Other earlier events included concerts, art exhibitions, and ideological seminars. A light festival opened in downtown Pyongyang, with dancing fountains and decorated boats on the Taedong River, state news agency KCNA said.

The festival “artistically depicted” Kim Il Sung’s native home and “the sacred mountain of revolution, Mt Paektu,” KCNA said. Residents could take photos in front of arches lit with phrases such as “Pyongyang Is Best” and “We Are the Happiest in the World.”

Some overseas dance groups from Russia, Romania, Austria, and Laos performed via video, KCNA said, but with cross-border travel still largely banned as an anti-pandemic measure, there were no reports of outside foreigners visiting.

North Korea’s economy has been battered by the border closures and international sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes, and aid organisations have warned of potential humanitarian crises.

S. Korea to remove most virus restrictions as omicron slows

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S. Korea to remove most virus restrictions as omicron slows

Accordingn to AP, South Korea will remove most pandemic restrictions, including indoor gathering limits, as it slowly wiggles out of an omicron outbreak officials say is stabilizing.

People will still be required to wear masks indoors, but authorities could remove an outdoor mask mandate if the coronavirus further slows over the next two weeks, Health Minister Kwon Deok-cheol said in a government briefing Friday.

Starting next week, authorities will remove a 10-person limit on private social gatherings and lift a midnight curfew at restaurants, coffee shops and other indoor businesses. Officials will also remove a ban on large political rallies and other events involving 300 or more people.

Omicron has forced South Korea to abandon a stringent COVID-19 response based on mass laboratory tests, aggressive contact tracing and quarantines to focus limited medical resources on high-risk groups, including people 60 and older and those with preexisting medical conditions.

Starting in late May, officials will remove a mandatory seven-day quarantine period for COVID-19 patients and allow them to receive treatment at hospitals and local clinics just like other illnesses.

The country had already eased quarantine restrictions and stopped requiring adults to show proof of vaccination or negative tests when entering potentially crowded spaces like restaurants so that more public and health workers could respond to rapidly expanding at-home treatments. More than 900,000 virus patients have been asked to isolate at home to save hospital space.

People will be allowed to eat inside movie theaters, religious facilities, bus terminals and train stations starting on April 25.

The new measures were announced as the country reported 125,846 new cases of the coronavirus, continuing a weekslong downward trend after infections peaked in mid-March. The country’s one-day record was 621,187 on March 17.

While health workers reported 264 virus-related deaths in the latest 24 hours, more than half of the country’s 2,800 COVID-19 intensive care units remained available.

Kwon pleaded that people remain vigilant against the virus, saying officials will be forced to tighten social distancing again if the pandemic brings another huge wave of infections.

He said it has become difficult to prolong social distancing rules, considering people’s fatigue and frustration with extended restrictions and the toll on the service sector economy. Social distancing measures have become less effective as tools to slow transmissions because omicron has been so much more contagious than previous variants of the virus, said Son Youngrae, another Health Ministry official.

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