Category: Legal-Judicial

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday issued guidelines for keeping children in school even if they are unvaccinated or partially vaccinated and have been exposed to someone with COVID-19.

During a virtual briefing by the White House COVID-19 response team, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said the test-to-stay protocol involves testing twice in a seven-day period anyone who has had close contact with someone infected with COVID-19. She said if exposed children meet certain criteria and continue to test negative, they can stay in school instead of quarantining at home.

Walensky said numerous jurisdictions have been experimenting with test-to-stay strategies. Some were testing every day, some every other day, and some twice a week. From those experiments, she said, the CDC will recommend no less than twice-weekly testing to adequately adhere to test-to-stay protocols.

The CDC also published studies conducted in the United States and internationally that looked at how COVID-19 is spread in schools, which helped form the basis for test-to-stay recommendations.

Walensky reported at least 39 U.S. states have more than 75 confirmed cases involving the omicron variant. She said the delta variant continues to circulate widely and remains the dominant strain in the United States, but omicron is spreading rapidly and is expected to become the dominant strain in the coming weeks.

The CDC director said omicron has been found among those who are vaccinated and boosted, and health officials believe these cases are milder or asymptomatic because of vaccine protection. “What we do know is we have the tools to protect ourselves against COVID-19,” she said.

White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Jeff Zients said the U.S. is fully prepared to confront the variant, with ample supplies of vaccines and boosters.

“This is not a moment to panic, because we know how to protect people,” Zients said. “And we have the tools to do it.”

Source: Voice of America

WASHINGTON —

First-time claims for U.S. unemployment compensation remained at a low level last week as employers retained their workers and searched for more as the United States continues its economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic.

The Labor Department said Thursday that 222,000 jobless workers made first-time claims for unemployment compensation, up 28,000 from the revised figure of 194,000 the week before, which was a 52-year low.

Even with the increase in claims last week, the figures from both of the last two weeks were well below the 256,000 total in mid-March 2020 when the pandemic first swept into the country and employers started laying off workers by the hundreds of thousands.

The declining number of claims for unemployment benefits shows that many employers are hanging on to their workers even as millions have quit jobs to move to other companies offering higher pay and more benefits.

Many employers are looking for more workers, even as about 7.4 million workers remain unemployed in the United States.

There are 10.4 million available jobs in the country, but the skills of available workers often do not match what employers want, or the job openings are not where the unemployed live. In addition, many of the available jobs are low-wage service positions that the jobless are shunning.

U.S. employers added 531,000 jobs in October, the biggest monthly gain in three months and the unemployment rate dropped to 4.6%. But the U.S. economy is still short more than four million jobs since February 2020. The November jobs figure is set for release on Friday.

The U.S. economic advance is occurring even as President Joe Biden and Washington policy makers, along with consumers, voice concerns about the biggest increase in consumer prices in three decades and supply chain issues that have curtailed delivery of some products to retail store shelves.

Source: Voice of America

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemned Thursday’s deadly terrorist attack on a UN-affiliated convoy in front of a school in Mogadishu, Somalia, said his deputy spokesman.

The secretary-general extended his deepest condolences to the families of the victims and wished a swift recovery to those injured. He called on the Somali authorities to bring those responsible to justice, said Farhan Haq, the deputy spokesman, in a statement.

The secretary-general expressed the full solidarity and support of the United Nations with the government and the people of Somalia in their fight against terrorism and violent extremism, said the statement.

At least eight people were confirmed dead and 17 others wounded in the suicide car bombing early Thursday. The police said the target was a convoy belonging to a security firm that guards UN personnel. Al-Shabaab militants have claimed responsibility for the attack.

Source: Nam News Network

Hundreds of Sudanese anti-coup demonstrators rallied Saturday to denounce a deadly crackdown that doctors say has left 40 people dead since last month’s military takeover. Mass protests are planned for Sunday.

The United States and the African Union condemned the deadly crackdown on protesters and called on Sudan’s leaders to refrain from the “excessive use of force.”

Sudan’s top general Abdel-Fattah Burhan on October 25 declared a state of emergency, ousted the government and detained the civilian leadership.

The military takeover upended a two-year transition to civilian rule, drew international condemnation and punitive measures, and provoked large protests.

Demonstrations on Wednesday were the deadliest so far, with a toll of 16 killed after a teenager who had been shot died, doctors said.

The independent Sudan Doctors Committee said the 16-year-old had been shot “by live rounds to the head and the leg.”

Hundreds of protesters rallied against the military in North Khartoum, putting up barricades and setting tires on fire, an AFP correspondent said. Other protesters took to the streets in east and south Khartoum, according to witnesses.

They chanted “no, no to military rule” and called for “civilian rule.”

During the unrest in North Khartoum, a police station was set on fire, the correspondent said.

Pro-democracy activists made calls on social media for mass anti-coup protests with a “million-strong march” to take place on Sunday.

Police station ablaze

Security forces and protesters traded blame for the torching of the police station.

Police spokesman Idris Soliman accused an unidentified “group of people” of setting it on fire.

But North Khartoum’s resistance committee claimed the police were responsible.

“Police forces withdrew from the station … and after, members of the police carried out acts of sabotage,” it said in a statement.

“We accuse clearly and explicitly the military establishment for causing this chaos,” added the committee, part of the informal groups that emerged during 2018-2019 protests that ousted president Omar al-Bashir in April 2019.

Most of those killed on Wednesday were in North Khartoum, which lies across the Nile River from the capital, doctors said.

On Saturday, Sudanese authorities said an investigation into the killings would be launched.

Dozens mourned

Dozens of protesters also rallied Saturday to mourn the latest deaths, demanding a transition to civilian rule.

Protesters also took to the streets of Khartoum’s twin-city Omdurman to denounce the killings, chanting “down with the (ruling) council of treachery and betrayal.”

Police officials deny using any live ammunition and insist they have used “minimum force” to disperse the protests. They have recorded only one death, among demonstrators in North Khartoum.

On Friday, police forces sporadically fired tear gas until late at night to disperse demonstrators who had rallied in North Khartoum, witnesses said.

The Sudanese Professionals Association, an umbrella of unions that were instrumental in the months-long demonstrations that led to Bashir’s ouster, said security forces have also “stormed homes and mosques,”

An AFP correspondent said police forces also frisked passers-by and checked identification.

‘Abuses and violations’

The U.S. and African Union denounced the deadly crackdown.

“We call for those responsible for human rights abuses and violations, including the excessive use of force against peaceful protesters, to be held accountable,” U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

“In advance of upcoming protests, we call on Sudanese authorities to use restraint and allow peaceful demonstrations.”

The African Union, which suspended Sudan after the coup, condemned “in the strongest terms” Wednesday’s violence.

AU Commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat called on Sudan’s authorities “to restore constitutional order and the democratic transition” in line with a 2019 power-sharing deal between the military and the now-deposed civilian figures.

The Committee to Protect Journalists called for the release of reporters detained Wednesday while covering anti-coup protests, including Ali Farsab.

“Sudanese security forces’ shooting and beating of journalist Ali Farsab make a mockery of the coup government’s alleged commitment to a democratic transitional phase in the country,” said the CPJ’s Sherif Mansour.

Sudan has a long history of military coups, with rare interludes of democratic rule since independence in 1956.

Burhan insists the military’s move “was not a coup” but a step “to rectify the transition” as factional infighting and splits deepened between civilians and the military under the now-deposed government.

He has since announced a new ruling council in which he kept his position as head, along with a powerful paramilitary commander, three senior military figures, three ex-rebel leaders and one civilian.

But the other four civilian members were replaced with lesser known figures.

Source: Voice of America

NAIROBI, KENYA — This week, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta signed a new law that will give a half-million refugees in the country an opportunity to earn a living, instead of depending on the aid agencies that assisted them for three decades.

Victor Odero is a policy and advocacy adviser at the International Rescue Committee. He says the law will help aid agencies to focus more on creating opportunities that can improve the lives of the refugees.

“What stands out for me, and I suppose for humanitarian and also development and private sector actors, is that for the first time we see in legislation provisions that allow refugees to become self-reliant, which is very important because over the last couple of decades refugees have been wholly reliant on humanitarian assistance. I think this bill presents an opportunity for us to shift from this and to focus, to enable and empower refugees to become self-reliant,” he expressed.

The refugee bill allows refugees to get education, jobs and integrate into Kenyan society.

Siad Tawane came to the Dadaab refugee camp as a toddler. He is a university graduate. The 34-year-old tells VOA the law can help him and other professionals in the camp to work in other parts of the country to sustain their lives.

“We are very much hopeful that refugees will get access to several opportunities such as work permits because that has been one of the things that we have been asking ourselves; Why the government of Kenya is not giving us the work permit for refugees to work elsewhere, not only in the camps? Some of us are educated, some of us have some skills and if they get the opportunity to move to form the camps and to move to other parts of Kenya. We are very hopeful we can deliver very many things, and we can earn a living.”

Kenya hosts one of the largest refugee populations in Africa. Most of the refugees live in two big camps – Dadaab, which borders Somalia, and Kakuma, which borders South Sudan.

The Kenyan government has said it will close the camps next year.

The United Nations World Food Program (WFP) says it has not been able to provide a full food ration to refugees since 2018, and last month it was forced to cut rations another 20 percent.

Twenty-seven-year-old Aza Nsabimana lives in the Kakuma refugee camp. She says getting employment and other opportunities can help her overcome the food shortage experienced in the camps.

“Here in the camp, our needs are too much. There are those who are jobless, and the food we are given in the camp is not enough for two months. And if you are jobless, life becomes hard for you. If they can get those opportunities to work for themselves, it can help so much.”

In September, the WFP said it needs $40 million to feed refugees in Dadaab and Kakuma camps for six months.

The aid agencies in Kenya have argued refugees can contribute a lot to Kenya’s economy and social fabric if given opportunities instead of remaining in the camps.

Source: Voice of America