Israeli officials race to curb the spread of COVID-19 infections
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel, a world leader in coronavirus vaccinations, reported its highest daily infection rate in three months as it scrambles to contain the spread of the new delta variant.
Authorities are racing to vaccinate children and are considering tighter travel restrictions at the country’s main airport.
The Health Ministry on Thursday reported 307 new cases Wednesday, the highest in nearly three months and a rise from 293 newly diagnosed cases a day earlier.
The health ministry reportedly expects those numbers to jump in coming days, raising concerns that Israel is plunging back toward a crisis.
In recent months, Israel has reopened businesses, schools and event venues, lifting nearly all restrictions after it inoculated some 85% of the adult population.
It’s now seen as an early warning system of sorts for other nations.
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett on Tuesday announced a drive to inoculate thousands of children by midmonth.
In Israel, 5.1 million people, among its population of 9.3 million, have received the required double dose of vaccinations. Another 400,000 have received at least one dose.
Israel recorded its highest number of vaccinations of children this week and has reimposed a rule requiring people to wear masks indoors. Bennett for the first time appointed a coronavirus commissioner to manage arrivals at the main gateway into Israel, Ben Gurion International Airport, which he called “a huge national vulnerability.”
Calif. recall election: California on Thursday scheduled a Sept. 14 recall election that threatens to drive Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom from office, the result of a political uprising driven by widespread angst over coronavirus orders that shuttered schools and businesses.
The election in the nation’s most populous state will be a marquee contest with national implications, watched closely as a barometer of the public mood heading toward the 2022 elections, when a closely divided Congress again will be in play.
Slender Man case: A Wisconsin judge on Thursday ordered the release of a woman convicted of stabbing her classmate to please the Slender Man character in 2014.
Anissa Weier, 19, asked Waukesha County Judge Michael Bohren this year to release her from the Winnebago Mental Health Institute, arguing she was no longer a threat to anyone.
Bohren agreed during a hearing Thursday, though she won’t be released immediately. Bohren ordered the state to prepare a release plan. He gave state officials 60 days. Meanwhile, Weier will return to the mental health facility. A hearing is set for Sept. 10.
Weier and her friend Morgan Geyser lured classmate Payton Leutner into a Waukesha park in May 2014 following a sleepover. Geyser stabbed Leutner multiple times as Weier encouraged Geyser to inflict the injuries. All three girls were 12 years old at the time.
Upcoming space ride: Sixty years after acing astronaut tests but barred because she was a woman, Wally Funk will rocket into space
alongside Jeff Bezos in three weeks.
Bezos’ company Blue Origin announced Thursday that the pioneering pilot will be aboard the July 20 launch from West Texas, flying in the capsule as an “honored guest.” She’ll join Bezos, his brother and the winner of a $28 million charity auction as the first people to ride a New Shepard rocket.
At 82, she’ll be the oldest person to launch into space.
Funk was the youngest of the so-called Mercury 13 women who went through astronaut testing in the early 1960s, but never made it to space — or even NASA’s astronaut corps — because they were female. Back then, all of NASA’s astronauts were male military test pilots.
In a cosmic twist, she’ll beat the late John Glenn, who set a record at age 77 when flying aboard space shuttle Discovery in 1998.
Amsterdam apology: The mayor of Amsterdam apologized
Thursday for the extensive involvement of the Dutch capital’s former governors in the global slave trade, saying the moment had come for the city to confront its grim history.
Debate about the role of Amsterdam’s city fathers in the slave trade has been going on for years, but it has gained more attention amid the global reckoning with racial injustice that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“It is time to engrave the great injustice of colonial slavery into our city’s identity. With big-hearted and unconditional recognition,” Mayor Femke Halsema said. “Because we want to be a government for those for whom the past is painful and its legacy a burden.”
While apologizing, she also stressed that “not a single Amsterdammer alive today is to blame for the past.”
Brazilian evictions: Police started evicting several
hundred homeless families from a recently established tent city near Rio de Janeiro on Thursday, an event that underscored Brazil’s resurgent poverty during the pandemic.
Televised images showed residents blocking the entrance to the campsite with bonfires as police launched tear gas canisters and fired water cannons at the tents.
The forced removal in Itaguai followed a court decision in favor of the land’s owner, Brazil’s state-run oil company Petrobras. The residents had occupied the plot since May and baptized it the “First of May Refugee Camp.”
Shantytowns have emerged in several cities across Brazil, reflecting a surge of poverty after the government pared back one of the world’s most generous pandemic welfare programs. That left many exposed to soaring inflation as the nation’s weak job market has yet to show signs of recovery.
Xi’s warning: Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Thursday that anyone who tries to bully China “will face broken heads and bloodshed,” in a defiant speech hailing the country’s rise that elicited loud cheers from a carefully chosen crowd at a celebration of the centenary of the founding of the ruling Communist Party.
In unusually forceful language, Xi appeared to be hitting back at the U.S. and others that have criticized the rising power’s trade and technology polices, military expansion and human rights record.
In an hourlong speech in Beijing, he also said the nation must stick to its one-party rule, emphasizing the communists’ role in lifting China to global prominence.
China and the United States are increasingly at odds over the former’s claims to almost the entire South China Sea and to unpopulated islands held by Japan, an American ally.