PARIS: Anxiety is growing over the coronavirus threat for France’s overseas territories, located in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans thousands of kilometers from the mainland, with distance proving no protection for regions with fragile health infrastructure.
The “Outre-mer” or overseas departments, largely a legacy of the country’s colonial past, are considered fully integral to the nation, with inhabitants holding French passports, voting in national elections and sending MPs to the Paris parliament.
For many in France, they are best known as easily accessible and French-speaking destinations for holidays in areas resembling paradise. But the coronavirus crisis risks being even more grim there than on the mainland itself, where thousands have died from COVID-19.
There have so far been 13 coronavirus deaths in the overseas territories, mainly on the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Martin, as well as two victims on the Indian Ocean island of Mayotte.
But there is also rising concern about the disease’s spread on Reunion in the Indian Ocean, in French Guiana in South America, and on French Polynesia and New Caledonia in the Pacific.
France is now sending two helicopter carriers — the Mistral and the Dixmude — to the Caribbean and the Indian Ocean to bolster local hospitals and clinics that risk being overwhelmed if the number of cases rises further.
The Dixmude left its Mediterranean port Friday morning carrying medical equipment including hand gel and over one million surgical masks for the Antilles, the army said in a statement, though it is not expected to arrive until mid-April.
And while the two ships will provide logistical support, they will not be used as hospital ships to take patients on board.
“We are following the situation in the overseas territories very closely and we are aware of the fragilities,” government spokeswoman Sibeth Ndiaye said this week. “It is a major subject of concern, attention and mobilization.”
The remoteness of the territories, coupled with their high poverty and unemployment rates, risks turning any outbreak into full-blown epidemic that could quickly overwhelm health professionals.
A source close to discussions between government ministries on containing the crisis, who asked not to be identified by name, told AFP, “It is going to be a catastrophe.”
“We feel there is no pilot on board,” Gabriel Serville, an MP for French Guiana, told AFP. “I fear for the worst for a territory that is behind in health terms, with poor areas where social distancing is not possible.”
Mayotte, where 82 percent of the population lives under the poverty line, often in shanty towns without running water, is a particular source of concern. “There has been no organization or preparation,” said Mansour Kamardine, a rightwing MP on the island.
“It feels like we’re just making it up as we go along.”
On France’s Pacific island territory of New Caledonia, located east of Australia between New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, early spring is usually a time of celebration for the yam harvesting season. But there is no mood for — or possibility of — festivity.
Indigenous Melanesians, known locally as Kanaks and counting for 39 percent of the population, already have prevalent health issues, particularly diabetes and respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.
If the virus were to spread, the impact would be “devastating,” said Georges Mandaoue, a prominent local politician.
“I’ve put all tribal chiefs in charge of explaining the consequences of the virus and the measures to protect everyone,” he told AFP.
People are aware of the danger, Mandaoue said, for example cultivating fields while respecting security distances. “They go to the river but not to the sea anymore, and greet each other from far away, without handshakes,” he said.
The memory of previous epidemics such as leprosy remains vivid, as do scars from the arrival and colonization of the island by Europeans, who brought unknown diseases with them that decimated the local populations.
“We know that epidemics have happened before, that people had to isolate members of the tribe and not see them before the burial,” said Gilbert Assawa, a tribal chieftain.
Regularly scheduled passenger flights between Paris and the overseas territories have been suspended, though cargo transit is continuing.
Most of the regions have also imposed lockdowns similar to that of mainland France, and some have also decreed nightly curfews.
The government insists that everything is being done to maintain control of the situation.
“The systems that have been put in place in the overseas territories match the same criteria and organization as mainland France,” said Overseas Territories Minister Annick Girardin.
France’s COVID-19 crisis washes up in ocean territories
https://arab.news/cvqry
France’s COVID-19 crisis washes up in ocean territories
- There have been 13 coronavirus deaths in the overseas territories, mainly on the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe, Martinique and St. Martin, as well as two victims on Mayotte
- There is also rising concern about the disease’s spread on Reunion in the Indian Ocean, in French Guiana in South America, and on French Polynesia and New Caledonia in the Pacific
American Airlines jet collides with helicopter near Washington’s Reagan Airport
- A web camera shot from Kennedy Center in Washington showed an explosion mid-air across the Potomac around 2047 ET with an aircraft in flames crashing down rapidly
- There has not been a fatal US passenger airplane accident since February 2009, but a series of near-miss incidents in recent years have raised serious safety concerns
WASHINGTON: An American Airlines regional passenger jet and a US Army Black Hawk helicopter crashed into the Potomac River after a midair collision near Reagan Washington National Airport on Wednesday night, officials said.
The Washington Post said multiple bodies had been pulled from the water. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said on social media that “we know there are fatalities,” though he did not say how many.
An American Airlines source told Reuters that 60 passengers, along with two pilots and two crew members were scheduled to be on the flight. Three soldiers were aboard the helicopter, a US official said.
There has not been a fatal US passenger airplane accident since February 2009, but a series of near-miss incidents in recent years have raised serious safety concerns.
NBC reported that four people had been pulled alive from the Potomac River.
A web camera shot from the Kennedy Center in Washington showed an explosion mid-air across the Potomac around 2047 ET with an aircraft in flames crashing down rapidly.
The US Federal Aviation Administration said a PSA Airlines regional jet collided midair with the helicopter while on approach to Reagan.
PSA was operating Flight 5342 for American Airlines, which had departed from Wichita, Kansas, according to the FAA.
Police said multiple agencies were involved in a search and rescue operation in the Potomac River, which borders the airport.
Dozens of police, ambulance and recuse units, some ferrying boats, staged along the river and raced to positions along the tarmac of Reagan airport. Live TV images showed several boats in the water, flashing blue and red lights.
The airport said late on Wednesday that all takeoffs and landings had been halted as emergency personnel responded to an aircraft incident.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was gathering more information on the incident.
American Airlines said on social media that it was “aware of reports that American Eagle flight 5342, operated by PSA, with service from Wichita, Kansas (ICT) to Washington Reagan National Airport (DCA) has been involved in an incident.”
American Airlines said it would provide more information as it became available to the company.
Over the last two years, a series of near-miss incidents have raised concerns about US aviation safety and the strain on understaffed air-traffic-control operations.
FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker stepped down on Jan. 20 and the Trump administration has not named a replacement — or even disclosed who is running the agency on an interim basis.
The last deadly major crash involving a commercial airliner in the US was in 2009, when 49 people aboard a Colgan Air flight crashed in New York state. One person also died on the ground.
Passenger jet with 64 aboard collides with Army helicopter while landing at Reagan Airport near DC
ARLINGTON: A jet carrying 60 passengers and four crew members collided Wednesday with an Army helicopter while landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, prompting a large search-and-rescue operation in the nearby Potomac River.
There was no immediate word on casualties or the cause of the collision, but all takeoffs and landings from the airport were halted as helicopters from law enforcement agencies across the region flew over the scene in search of survivors. Inflatable rescue boats were launched into the Potomac River from a point along the George Washington Parkway, just north of the airport, and first responders set up light towers from the shore to illuminate the area near the site of the collision.
President Donald Trump said he had been “fully briefed on this terrible accident" and, referring to the passengers, added, “May God Bless their souls.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said the midair crash occurred around 9 p.m. EST when a regional jet that had departed from Wichita, Kansas, collided with a military helicopter on a training flight while on approach to an airport runway. It occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.
Investigators will try to piece together the aircrafts' final moments before their collision, including contact with air traffic controllers as well as a loss of altitude by the passenger jet.
American Airlines Flight 5342 was inbound to Reagan National at an altitude of about 400 feet and a speed of about 140 miles per hour when it suffered a rapid loss of altitude over the Potomac River, according to data from its radio transponder. The Canadian-made Bombardier CRJ-701 twin-engine jet, manufactured in 2004, can be configured to carry up to 70 passengers.
A few minutes before landing, air traffic controllers asked the arriving commercial jet if it could land on the shorter Runway 33 at Reagan National and the pilots said they were able. Controllers then cleared the plane to land on Runway 33. Flight tracking sites showed the plane adjust its approach to the new runway.
Less than 30 seconds before the crash, an air traffic controller asked the helicopter if it had the arriving plane in sight. The controller made another radio call to the helicopter moments later: “PAT 25 pass behind the CRJ.” Seconds after that, the two aircraft collided.
The plane’s radio transponder stopped transmitting about 2,400 feet short of the runway, roughly over the middle of the river.
Video from an observation camera at the nearby Kennedy Center showed two sets of lights consistent with aircraft appearing to join in a fireball.
The collision occurred on a warm winter evening in Washington, with temperatures registering as high as 60 degrees Fahrenheit, following a stretch days earlier of intense cold and ice. On Wednesday, the Potomac River was 36 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National Weather Service reported that wind gusts of up to 25 mph were possible in the area throughout the evening.
The U.S. Army described the helicopter as a UH-60 Blackhawk based at Fort Belvoir in Virginia. A crew of three soldiers were onboard the helicopter, an Army official said. The helicopter was on a training flight.
The crash is serving as a major test for two of the Trump administration’s newest agency leaders. Pete Hegseth, sworn in days ago as defense secretary, posted on social media that his department was “actively monitoring” the situation that involved an Army helicopter. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, just sworn in earlier this week, said in a social media post that he was “at the FAA HQ and closely monitoring the situation.”
The airport was to remain closed until 5 a.m. Friday.
Located along the Potomac River, just southwest of the city. Reagan National is a popular choice because it’s much closer than the larger Dulles International Airport, which is deeper in Virginia.
Depending on the runway being used, flights into Reagan can offer passengers spectacular views of landmarks like the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the National Mall and the U.S. Capitol. It’s a postcard-worthy welcome for tourists visiting the city.
The incident recalled the crash of an Air Florida flight that plummeted into the Potomac on January 13, 1982, that killed 78 people. That crash was attributed to bad weather.
The last fatal crash involving a U.S. commercial airline occured in 2009 near Buffalo, New York. Everyone aboard the Bombardier DHC-8 propeller plane was killed, including 45 passengers, 2 pilots and 2 flight attendants. Another person on the ground also died, bringing the total death toll to 50. An investigation determined that the captain accidentally caused the plane to stall as it approached the airport in Buffalo.
Trump issues orders to promote school choice, end “anti-American” teaching
- Order prioritizes federal funding for school choice programs
- Second order aims to block federal funding related to “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology” in schools
President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed executive orders to promote parental choice in school selection and end federal funding for curricula that he called the “indoctrination” of students in “anti-American” ideologies on race and gender.
The two directives, which come a week after Trump was sworn into his second term of office, are in keeping with his campaign promise to remake the country’s education system in line with a rigorous conservative agenda that Democrats say could undermine public schools.
The first order directs the Department of Education to issue guidance on how states can use federal education funds to support “choice initiatives,” without providing further details.
“It is the policy of my Administration to support parents in choosing and directing the upbringing and education of their children,” the president said in the order. “Too many children do not thrive in their assigned, government-run K-12 school.”
His second directive aims to stop schools from using federal funds for curriculum, teacher certification and other purposes related to “gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology.”
“In recent years, however, parents have witnessed schools indoctrinate their children in radical, anti-American ideologies while deliberately blocking parental oversight,” it reads.
Trump and his allies throughout the campaign have accused public schools of teaching white children to be ashamed of themselves and their ancestors due to the country’s history of slavery and discrimination against people of color.
The second order, without evidence, claims that teachers have been “demanding acquiescence” to concepts of “white privilege” or “unconscious bias” and thereby promoting racism and undermining national unity.
The executive order will have a “chilling effect” on subjects related to race and ethnicity in schools, said Basil Smikle Jr., a political strategist.
“I would imagine that it would restrict the kind of reading materials that are even available to students outside of the classroom,” he said.
Although that order does not invoke the term “critical race theory” by name, it employs the language often used by CRT opponents to criticize teaching about institutional racism.
A once-obscure academic concept, the theory has become a fixture in the fierce US debate over how to teach children about the country’s history and structural racism. An academic framework most often taught in law schools but not in primary and secondary schools, it rests on the premise that racial bias — intentional or not — is baked into US laws and institutions.
Conservatives have invoked the term to denounce curricula they consider too liberal or excessively focused on America’s history of racial discrimination. Supporters say understanding institutional racism is necessary to address inequality.
Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University, said the order came as no surprise.
“As a candidate, he said there was radical indoctrination of students,” she said. “He’s making sure to frighten students and educators across the country so they can’t teach the real history of the United States.”
It was not clear how the order issued on Wednesday would affect how the history of race relations is taught in American schools. During his inaugural address last week, Trump criticized education that “teaches our children to be ashamed of themselves — in many cases, to hate our country.”
SCHOOL CHOICE
The first order also directs the US Department of Education to prioritize federal funding for school choice programs, a longstanding goal for conservatives who say public schools are failing to meet academic standards while pushing liberal ideas.
Many Democrats and teachers’ unions, on the other hand, say school choice undermines the public system that educates 50 million US children.
Federal test scores released by the National Assessment of Educational Progress on Wednesday underscored the challenge faced by educators in the wake of widespread learning loss during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The scores showed that one-third of eighth graders tested below NAEP’s “basic” reading level, the most in the test’s three-decade history, while some 40 percent of fourth-graders also fell below that basic threshold.
That executive order also directs US states on how they could use block grants to support alternatives to public education, such as private and religious schools.
US education is primarily funded via states and local taxes, with federal sources accounting for about 14 percent of the funding of public K-12 schools, according to Census data.
Trump’s order could affect some $30 billion to $40 billion in federal grants, estimated Frederick Hess, an education expert at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.
“This stuff is directionally significant,” said Hess, adding that Trump’s directive represented “the most emphatic support for school choice we’ve ever seen at the federal level.”
The first order also calls for allowing military families to use Pentagon funds to send their children to the school of their choosing. It also mandates that Native American families with students in the Bureau of Indian Education be allowed to use federal funds in selecting their schools.
A number of Republican-leaning states have in recent years adopted universal or near-universal school choice policies, paving the way for vouchers or other methods that allocate taxpayer funds for homeschooling or private tuition.
Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, said that Trump’s executive order is aimed at sending “an aggressive statement about his position on vouchers” even if his power to reallocate funds is limited.
Cowen said the bigger potential financial impact on education lies with a bill reintroduced in Congress this week that would create a federal school voucher program with an estimated $10 billion in annual tax credits.
Rohingya refugees stranded on boat off Indonesia
- Authorities block migrants from disembarking at tourist beach ‘in case they escape’
JAKARTA: At least 75 Rohingya refugees including four children were stranded aboard a migrant boat off the coast of western Indonesia on Wednesday after authorities blocked them from landing at a tourist beach.
Security officers prevented the Rohingya from disembarking at Leuge beach in Aceh province and ordered them to stay aboard the boat. Police were deployed to monitor the beach, while local residents took photos of the boat and provided the refugees with food.
“For now, they are not allowed to disembark, considering today is a public holiday. Many tourist activities are taking place ... there are concerns that they might blend in with the crowd and escape,” local official Rizalihadi said.
“The temporary policy is for them to remain on the boat while waiting for representatives from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration to arrive.”
The Muslim minority Rohingya are persecuted in Myanmar, and thousands risk their lives each year on long and dangerous sea journeys to Malaysia or Indonesia.
Meta agrees to pay $25 million to settle lawsuit from Trump after Jan. 6 suspension
WASHINGTON: Meta has agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump against the company after it suspended his accounts following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to three people familiar with the matter.
It’s the latest instance of a large corporation settling litigation with the president, who has threatened retribution on his critics and rivals, and comes as Meta and its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, have joined other large technology companies in trying to ingratiate themselves with the new Trump administration.
The people familiar with the matter spoke on the condition of anonymity Wednesday to discuss the agreement. Two people said that terms of the agreement include $22 million going to the nonprofit that will become Trump’s future presidential library and the balance going to legal fees and other litigants.
Zuckerberg visited Trump in November at his private Florida club as part of a series of technology, business and government officials to make a pilgrimage to Palm Beach to try to mend fences with the incoming president. At the dinner, Trump brought up the litigation and suggested they try to resolve it, kickstarting two months of negotiations between the parties, the people said.
Meta also made a $1 million donation to Trump’s inaugural committee and Zuckerberg was among several billionaires granted prime seating during Trump’s swearing-in last week in the Capitol Rotunda, along with Google’s Sundar Pichai, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who now owns the platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Ahead of Trump’s inauguration, Meta also announced that it was dropping fact-checking on its platform — a longtime priority of Trump and his allies.
Trump filed the suit months after leaving office, calling the action by the social media companies “illegal, shameful censorship of the American people.”
Twitter, Facebook and Google are all private companies, and users must agree to their terms of service to use their products. Under Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, social media platforms are allowed to moderate their services by removing posts that, for instance, are obscene or violate the services’ own standards, so long as they are acting in “good faith.” The law also generally exempts Internet companies from liability for the material that users post.
But Trump and some other politicians have long argued that X, formerly known as Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms, have abused that protection and should lose their immunity — or at least have it curtailed.
The Meta settlement comes after ABC News agreed last month to pay $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library to settle a defamation lawsuit over anchor George Stephanopoulos’ inaccurate on-air assertion that the president-elect had been found civilly liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.
The network also agreed to pay $1 million in legal fees to the law firm of Trump’s attorney, Alejandro Brito.
The settlement agreement describes ABC’s presidential library payment as a “charitable contribution,” with the money earmarked for a non-profit organization that is being established in connection with the yet-to-be-built library.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report on the settlement.
