US launches first deportation flight to Cuba since COVID-19

The US anticipates an increase in arrivals across its southern border with Mexico as COVID-19 restrictions expire.

The United States has sent its first deportation flight to Cuba since 2020, months after the island nation agreed — for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic — to accept flights carrying Cubans caught at the US-Mexico border.

“On April 24, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement resumed normal removals processing for Cuban nationals who have received final orders of removal,” a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

The Cuban government confirmed the flight’s arrival, saying on Twitter it included 40 Cubans intercepted in boats and 83 detained at the US-Mexico border.

The Reuters news agency first reported late last year that Cuba agreed to give US authorities a new but limited tool to deter record numbers of Cuban border crossers.

After US President Joe Biden adopted more restrictive border security measures in January, the number of Cubans and other asylum seekers and migrants caught at the border plummeted.

However, the Biden administration is preparing for a possible rise in crossings with COVID restrictions at the US-Mexico border set to lift on May 11. The administration will say more about its preparations this week, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters on Thursday.

US and Cuban officials discussed migration issues earlier this month as the Biden administration braced for the end of COVID-era border restrictions that have blocked Cubans in recent months from crossing into the US from Mexico.

The US embassy in Havana resumed full immigrant visa processing and consular services in January for the first time since 2017 in a bid to stem record numbers of Cubans trying to enter the US from Mexico.

“The United States continues to encourage Cubans to use lawful processes,” the DHS spokesperson said on Monday.

The Biden administration in January began expelling Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans crossing the US-Mexico border under restrictions known as Title 42, while also opening new legal pathways for those groups.

SOURCE: REUTERS

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Venezuelan opposition leader Guaido expelled from Colombia

Juan Guaido says he was expelled hours after he arrived. Bogota says he arrived ‘irregularly’.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido says he was expelled from Colombia hours after he arrived in Bogota to try to meet participants of an international conference to discuss his country’s political crisis.

In a video posted on Twitter, Guaido said he entered Colombia on Monday trying to escape Venezuelan government persecution but that now he also felt he was being persecuted by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in Colombia.

“The persecution of the dictatorship, unfortunately, spread to Colombia today,” Guaido said on the video from inside an airplane. He added that he was on a commercial flight to the United States and he would say more on Wednesday.

Colombia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late on Monday in a press release that Guaido was “irregularly” in the country so immigration authorities escorted him to the international airport to take a plane bound for the US.

Foreign Minister Alvaro Leyva earlier said Guaido’s visit could face obstacles because “he entered [the country] in an inappropriate way, and in Colombia, we respect the law.”

Guaido announced his arrival earlier on Monday, ahead of the conference organised by Colombian President Gustavo Petro aimed at restarting talks to end Venezuela’s protracted political impasse.

Petro is acting as a mediator between Venezuela’s government and the opposition as he tries to unfreeze negotiations between the two sides that began in Mexico City in 2021 but reached an impasse in November.

Officials from about 20 countries, including the US, are expected to attend the conference on Tuesday. Neither Guaido nor Maduro are officially invited to attend.

“I have just arrived in Colombia, in the same way as millions of Venezuelans before me – on foot,” Guaido said in a statement, referring to the Venezuelans who have fled their country’s economic crisis.

“I hope the summit can guarantee that the Maduro regime will return to the negotiation table in Mexico and that a credible timeline can be agreed upon for free and fair elections to be held as a solution for the conflict,” he said.

Guaido, recognised in 2019 by more than 50 Western countries and their allies as Venezuela’s de facto leader, had hoped to hold meetings with officials attending the conference.

He had also called for a protest to be held on Bogota’s Plaza de Bolivar square, a short walk from the palace where the conference will be held.

He has opposed the lifting of sanctions against Venezuela proposed by the Colombian president.

Venezuela’s divided opposition voted to disband its symbolic “interim government” in January and replaced Guaido as the head of a parallel congress made up of opposition lawmakers.

Under Petro’s predecessor, right-wing president Ivan Duque, Colombia had been Guaido’s main regional backer and had broken diplomatic ties with Maduro’s government.

The left-wing Petro reversed this decision, taking up instead a leading role in a process aimed at ending Venezuela’s political crisis through negotiations.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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Mexico discovers 11,520 tequila bottles with liquid meth at port

Photos of the seizure show a sniffer dog alerting inspectors to cardboard boxes of glass bottles full of a brownish liquid.

Mexican inspectors have intercepted 11,520 tequila bottles due for export that actually contained nearly 10 tonnes of concentrated liquid meth.

The discovery was made at the Pacific coast seaport of Manzanillo, the navy said on Monday. The bottles contained about 8,640kg (19,000 pounds) of methamphetamine.

Photos of the seizure show a sniffer dog alerting inspectors to cardboard boxes of glass bottles full of a brownish liquid, consistent with the colour of “añejo”, or aged tequila. The labels on the bottles were not visible.

Mexico is the world’s only producer of authentic tequila. While there have not been any reported instances of such bottles reaching consumers, ingesting the mixture would be incredibly dangerous.

Mexico has become a major producer of methamphetamine, and drug smugglers frequently are stopped at the border with liquid meth in their windshield washer fluid or other containers in their cars.

The liquid meth is then usually recovered by the smugglers and taken to facilities where the water is extracted and then returned to its usually crystal form.

SOURCE: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

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Pakistan confirms its first case of mpox

 A 25-year-old Pakistani man is diagnosed with the infectious viral disease, once known as monkeypox, after recently arriving from Saudi Arabia.

Islamabad, Pakistan – Pakistani health authorities have confirmed the first case of mpox in the country.

The infectious viral disease, earlier known as monkeypox, was found in a 25-year-old Pakistani man who recently arrived in Islamabad from Saudi Arabia.

Sajid Shah, a health ministry official, said the patient has been quarantined in a hospital in the capital and contact tracing has begun.

“As yet there is no evidence of localised transmission of mpox in Pakistan, and the risk of international spread of disease from Pakistan remains low,” Shah told Al Jazeera.

He added that an alert has been issued to all airports in the country and to provincial health departments to ensure “surveillance, contact tracing and rapid identification of suspected cases”.

Mustafa Jamal Kazi, a senior official in the ministry, said the patient was sent into isolation on April 21 after his arrival in Pakistan.

“As the patient was quite unwell, we sent him to quarantine in a hospital here and conducted tests to determine what was wrong with him,” Kazi told Al Jazeera.

He said after mpox cases were detected in other countries, Pakistan increased its vigilance at all its international airports and deployed health teams.

“We have trained staff deployed at the airports, and they have been provided required logistics support, such as gloves, disinfectants, masks, among others,” Kazi said. “WHO [World Health Organization] procedures and precautionary measures and ambulances have been deployed as well.”

According to the WHO, mpox is an infectious disease caused by the monkeypox virus. The disease can be transmitted from infected animals to humans or from infected people to other people through close contact and droplets. It can cause a painful rash, fever, sore throat and swollen lymph nodes.

A global outbreak of the disease was reported in May last year across Europe and North America.

According to the WHO, more than 87,000 confirmed cases of mpox have been detected globally since the beginning of last year and more than 120 people have died.

The United States leads the tally with more than 30,000 cases and 44 deaths.

The WHO said the global outbreak primarily affected gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men as the virus spread person-to-person through sexual networks.

However, while men who have sex with men are likely to be disproportionately affected, health officials stressed that anybody can contract mpox.

Shah said that since May, 22 samples from suspected cases in Pakistan were referred from different parts of the country and tests showed no sign of the virus.

“The health ministry is vigilantly monitoring the situation both at the national and global levels while keeping all the relevant stakeholders onboard for ensuring preparedness, timely response and containment of mpox cases in Pakistan,” he said.

The mpox virus was discovered in Denmark in 1958, and its first reported human case was a nine-month-old boy in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, according to the WHO.

The spread of the disease slowed with only sporadic cases found in Central and West Africa before an outbreak was reported in the US in 2003.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

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South Korea president opens US tour with NASA space centre visit

 President Yoon Suk Yeol’s six-day visit marks the 70th anniversary of the US-South Korean alliance, forged in 1953.

South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol has toured a NASA flight centre, as his country and the United States signed a joint statement to increase their collaboration in technology and space exploration.

“I’ve always believed that mankind’s future lies in space,” Yoon said on Tuesday in a speech from the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he was joined by US Vice President Kamala Harris.

Yoon underscored his vision for transforming South Korea into “one of the world’s top five leaders in space technology”, with plans to reach the moon for “resource extraction” by 2032 and land astronauts on Mars by 2045.

In her remarks, Harris called the US-South Korean alliance “a linchpin of security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific and around the world”.

She credited the alliance with tackling “some of the most important and pressing issues of our time”, including the two countries’ “collective defence in the face of aggression and provocation”, a seeming reference to North Korea and its recent missile tests.

Harris also addressed a shared commitment to confronting the climate crisis. “Together our nations have built and placed satellites in orbit that can track air pollution in North America and Asia,” she said.

“Today I have also directed the National Space Council, which I lead, to expand this network to ensure that it also covers the southern hemisphere, specifically the continent of Africa and South America. This cannot be a global initiative if any nations around the world are excluded.”Yoon’s visit to the space flight centre — one of NASA’s original research hubs — marked the first leg of a six-day US tour, which will include a formal White House visit on Wednesday with his US counterpart, President Joe Biden.

The trip marks the South Korea’s first state visit to Washington, DC, in nearly 12 years and the first state visit from an Indo-Pacific leader during Biden’s term in office.

Yoon’s tour is also timed to the 70th anniversary of the 1953 Mutual Defense Treaty, which established the two countries’ alliance. He spent part of Tuesday visiting the Arlington National Cemetery — a memorial site largely for military personnel — as well as the Korean War Memorial with Biden.

While in the US, Yoon is expected to push for greater economic cooperation with Washington. Before his initial meeting with Biden on Tuesday, he called for the countries’ bond to “leap into a new phase” and “evolve into a supply chain and future-oriented, innovative-technology alliance”.

His trip coincided with several high-profile deals between US and South Korean industries.

On Monday, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos announced his company would invest $2.5bn in South Korean programming after a meeting with Yoon. And on Tuesday, the US carmaker General Motors announced it would partner with Samsung SDI to construct a $3bn electric vehicle battery plant in the US.

In addition to economic ventures, the US has teased “major deliverables” to be announced during the formal visit on Wednesday, including “with respect to the threat” North Korea poses.

“This visit, of course, also comes at a critical moment, as North Korea continues to develop its nuclear and missile capabilities,” US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters on Monday. “The two leaders will have a chance to consult closely on that.”

Sullivan’s statement comes as the US continues to wrestle with the fallout from the release of classified documents online, some of which purport to show the Biden administration spying and putting pressure on South Korea to supply ammunition destined for Ukraine.

Those documents appeared to signal strain between the two allies, though US officials have been quick to affirm that relations with South Korea are “ironclad”.

The US and South Korea are both part of the non-binding NASA Artemis Accords, a multilateral agreement to collaborate on crewed missions to the moon.

The agreement signed on Tuesday at the Goddard space centre is slated to reinforce that commitment, as well as broker collaboration across spaced-based communication, navigation and technology.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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Portugal should take ‘responsibility’ for slavery, president says

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is the first Portuguese leader to suggest an apology for his country’s key role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Portugal’s President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said his country should take responsibility and apologise for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, the first time a Portuguese leader has suggested offering a national apology.

From the 15th to the 19th century, 6 million Africans were kidnapped and forcibly transported across the Atlantic by Portuguese vessels and sold into slavery, primarily to work on plantations in Brazil.

Rebelo de Sousa said on Tuesday that the country should go beyond just an apology, though he did not offer any specifics. The president was speaking at Portugal’s annual commemoration of the 1974 “Carnation” revolution, which toppled the country’s dictatorial Estado Novo system.

“Apologising is sometimes the easiest thing to do: you apologise, turn your back and the job is done,” the president said, adding that Portugal should “assume responsibility” for its past to build a better future.

Rebelo de Sousa made his remarks after Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was in Portugal on his first visit to Europe since assuming office, addressed the Portuguese parliament. Brazil gained independence from Portugal in 1822.

He said the colonisation of Brazil also had positive factors, such as the spread of Portuguese language and culture.

“(But) on the bad side, the exploitation of Indigenous people… slavery, the sacrifice of the interests of Brazil and Brazilians,” he said.

Brazil’s human rights minister, Silvio Almeida, said Rebelo de Sousa had taken an “extremely important” step.

“We continue to suffer in Brazil the effects of a legacy of slavery,” Almeida said in a statement.

“Recognising the exploitation of millions of enslaved people for more than 300 years is a step towards moving towards a less unequal society.”

The Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights told Portugal in 2021 that it should do more to face up to its colonial past and role in the transatlantic slave trade as a way to combat contemporary racism and discrimination in the country.

“It is important to shed light on the historically repressive structures of colonialism, ingrained racist biases and their present-day ramifications”, Commissioner Dunja Mijatović said at the time, noting that including such history in school curricula would be useful.

Little is currently taught in Portugal’s schools about the country’s central role in the slave trade.

From the 16th century, Portugal established sugar plantations – then the world’s most prized commodity – in Brazil, using slaves who were shipped across the Atlantic from the west coast of Africa.

The transatlantic slave trade became an extremely lucrative international enterprise involving all of Europe’s colonising power, with the British, Dutch, French and Spanish joining Portugal in the trade in people.

Paula Cardoso, founder of the Afrolink online platform for Black professionals in Portugal, said the president’s remarks were “symbolic” but important as they brought the issue to the table.

“(But) I would have liked to hear something more concrete from the president,” Cardoso told Reuters. “To have some impact, these reflections… have to be accompanied by measures and commitments.”

Reparations and public policies to fight inequalities caused by Portugal’s past are essential, Cardoso said.

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

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South Africa backtracks on quitting ICC, blames communications error

The ruling ANC says South Africa’s withdrawal had been raised at a weekend meeting of its executive council but the country remains a signatory to the court.

South Africa is not planning to quit the International Criminal Court (ICC) as suggested earlier by President Cyril Ramaphosa, his office says, citing a communication error from his ruling ANC party.

Hours earlier, Ramaphosa had said the African National Congress had decided to withdraw South Africa from the court, which last month issued an arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The ICC warrant means South Africa – due to host this year’s BRICS summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – would have to detain Putin on arrival.

“The presidency wishes to clarify that South Africa remains a signatory” to the ICC, Ramaphosa’s office said on Tuesday in a late-night statement.

It said the “clarification follows an error in a comment made during a media briefing held by the governing African National Congress”.

The ANC had earlier told journalists that the issue of South Africa withdrawing from the ICC had been raised at a weekend meeting of its national executive council.

Then, when questioned by a journalist during a joint news conference with visiting Finnish President Sauli Niinisto, Ramaphosa said the ANC “has taken that decision that it is prudent that South Africa should pull out of the ICC”.

The presidency said “regrettably” Ramaphosa had “erroneously affirmed a similar position” to the ruling party.

In another statement Tuesday night, the ANC said an “unintended impression may have been created that a categorical decision for an immediate withdrawal had been taken. This is not so.”

It said the executive committee, the party’s supreme decision-making body, had discussed the “unequal” and “often selective application of international law by the ICC”.

The arrest warrant against Putin followed accusations that the Kremlin unlawfully deported Ukrainian children.

On whether South Africa would arrest Putin, Ramaphosa said, “That matter is under consideration.” But ANC Secretary General Fikile Mbalula earlier declared, “Putin can come anytime in this country.”

Pretoria has close ties with Moscow, which date back decades to when the Kremlin supported the ANC’s fight against apartheid.

The continental powerhouse has refused to condemn the invasion of Ukraine, which has largely isolated Moscow on the international stage, saying it wants to stay neutral and prefers dialogue to end the war.

South Africa has “adopted this stance of being non-aligned to ensure that we are able as a country to play a role in helping conflict to come to an end,” Ramaphosa said.

He said he had spoken to Putin several times about the need for negotiations.

Ramaphosa, who last year blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine, said he respected Finland’s recent decision to join the military alliance.

“It’s within Finland’s right to decide to join NATO. We respect that and we accept that,” said Ramaphosa as he hosted his Finnish counterpart, who is in South Africa for a three-day state visit.

South Africa made an attempt to pull out of the ICC in 2016 after a dispute a year earlier when then-Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited the country for an African Union summit. It refused to arrest him despite him being the subject of an ICC arrest warrant for alleged war crimes.

That decision to pull out was revoked when a domestic court ruled such a move would have been unconstitutional.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES

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