Citizenship Path for ‘Dreamer’ Immigrants in US Remains Uncertain

U.S. President Joe Biden on Sunday said he remained adamant about the need to create a pathway for U.S. citizenship for so-called Dreamer immigrants, but it “remains to be seen” if that will be part of a $3.5 trillion budget measure.

“There must be a pathway to citizenship,” Biden told reporters as he returned to the White House after spending the weekend at his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

Dreamers are immigrants brought to the United States as children who are protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Democrats hope to provide legal status to some immigrants in the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation measure they plan to pass with a simple majority, but details have not been released.

Asked if the reconciliation measure needed to include the pathway to citizenship, Biden said that “remains to be seen.”

Senate Democratic leaders have said the budget measure would open the door to legislation on climate measures, social spending, and extension of a child tax credit.

However, it remains unclear if the Senate parliamentarian, who decides which provisions may be included in a budget package, will approve inclusion of an immigration measure.

The DACA program, created by former President Barack Obama while Biden was vice president, faces new legal challenges.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen this month sided with a group of states suing to end the program, arguing that it was illegally created by Obama in 2012.

Biden last week vowed to preserve the DACA program and urged Congress to provide a path to citizenship.

DACA protects recipients from deportation, grants them work authorization and access to driver’s licenses, and in some cases better access to financial aid for education. It does not provide a path to citizenship. 
 

Jackie Mason, Comic Who Perfected Amused Outrage, Dies at 93

Jackie Mason, a rabbi-turned-comedian whose feisty brand of standup comedy led him to Catskills nightclubs, West Coast talk shows and Broadway stages, has died. He was 93. 

Mason died Saturday at 6 p.m. ET at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Manhattan after being hospitalized for more than two weeks, celebrity lawyer Raul Felder told The Associated Press. 

The irascible Mason was known for his sharp wit and piercing social commentary, often about the differences between Jews and gentiles, men and women and his own inadequacies. His typical style was amused outrage. 

“Eighty percent of married men cheat in America. The rest cheat in Europe,” he once joked. Another Mason line was: “Politics doesn’t make strange bedfellows, marriage does.” About himself, he once said: “I was so self-conscious, every time football players went into a huddle; I thought they were talking about me.” 

Religious roots

Mason was born Jacob Maza, the son of a rabbi. His three brothers became rabbis. So did Mason, who at one time had congregations in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Comedy eventually proved to be a more persistent calling than God.  

“A person has to feel emotionally barren or empty or frustrated in order to become a comedian,” he told The Associated Press in 1987. “I don’t think people who feel comfortable or happy are motivated to become comedians. You’re searching for something and you’re willing to pay a high price to get that attention.” 

Mason started in show business as a social director at a resort in the Catskills. He was the guy who got everybody up to play Simon Says, quiz games or shuffleboard. He told jokes, too. After one season, he was playing clubs throughout the Catskills for better money.  

“Nobody else knew me, but in the mountains, I was a hit,” Mason recalled.  

In 1961, the pint-sized comic got a big break, an appearance on Steve Allen’s weekly television variety show. His success brought him to The Ed Sullivan Show and other programs.  

He was banned for two years from the Sullivan show when he allegedly gave the host the finger when Sullivan signaled to him to wrap up his act during an appearance on Oct. 18, 1964.  

Mason’s act even carried him to Broadway, where he put on several one-man shows, including Freshly Squeezed in 2005, Love Thy Neighbor in 1996 and The World According to Me in 1988, for which he received a special Tony Award. 

“I feel like Ronald Reagan tonight,” Mason joked on Tony night. “He was an actor all his life, knew nothing about politics and became president of the United States. I’m an ex-rabbi who knew nothing about acting and I’m getting a Tony Award.”  

Mason called himself an observer who watched people and learned. From those observations he said he got his jokes and then tried them out on friends. “I’d rather make a fool of myself in front of two people for nothing than a thousand people who paid for a ticket,” he told the AP.  

A reliable presence

His humor could leap from computers and designer coffee to then-Sen. John Kerry, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Donald Trump. He was able to articulate the average Joe’s anger, making the indignities of life seem funny and maybe just a little bit more bearable. 

“I very rarely write anything down. I just think about life a lot and try to put it into phrases that will get a joke,” he said. “I never do a joke that has a point that I don’t believe in. To me, the message and the joke is the same.”  

On TV, Mason was a reliable presence, usually with a cameo on such shows as 30 Rock or The Simpsons or as a reliable guest on late night chat shows. He performed in front of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II, and his show Fearless played London’s West End in 2012.  

He portrayed a Jewish ex-pajama salesman in love with an Irish-Catholic widow portrayed by Lynn Redgrave in a series called Chicken Soup in 1989, but it didn’t last. During the O.J. Simpson murder trial, the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Scottish service hired Mason as a weekly commentator. 

Mason’s humor sometimes went too far, as when he touched off a controversy in New York while campaigning for GOP mayoral candidate Rudolph Giuliani against Democrat David Dinkins, who was Black. Mason had to apologize after saying, among other things, that Jews would vote for Dinkins out of guilt.  

Felder, his longtime friend, told the AP that Mason had a Talmudic outlook on life: “That whatever you would say to him, he would start an argument with you.”  

He is survived by his wife, producer Jyll Rosenfeld, and a daughter, Sheba. 

South Africa Turmoil

On this edition of Encounter, Ambassador Michelle Gavin, senior fellow for Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Ambassador to Botswana, and Frans Cronje, CEO of the Johannesburg-based Institute of Race Relations, analyze with host Carol Castiel the political, economic and social situation in South Africa following the arrest and detention of former South African president Jacob Zuma given the protests, looting and violence which this incident triggered.  How did the celebrated multiracial democracy led by Nelson Mandela reach this critical juncture point, and what does the future hold for South Africa? 

59 Cuban Protesters Prosecuted So Far; Hundreds Were Arrested

Fifty-nine Cubans have been prosecuted so far for participating in unprecedented demonstrations against the government earlier this month, a senior official said Saturday.

The charges were minor, and the total number of people detained has not been released amid complaints from relatives seeking information about loved ones.

“Until yesterday, 19 judicial processes had reached the municipal courts of the country, cases involving 59 people accused of committing alleged crimes [during] these disturbances,” Ruben Remigio Ferro, president of the Supreme Court, told reporters.

On July 11 and 12, thousands of Cubans took to the streets, shouting “Freedom,” “Down with the dictatorship” and “We’re hungry” in the biggest protests since the revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power in 1959.

Hundreds of people were arrested and many face charges of contempt, public disorder, vandalism and propagation of the coronavirus epidemic for allegedly marching without face masks.

Independent observers and activists have published lists of those arrested with at least 600 names on them.

Ferro said a faster trial system was being used to prosecute the accused but made assurances that due process was being followed.

The rallies came as the country endures its worst economic crisis in 30 years, with chronic shortages of electricity, food and medicine amid an increase in COVID-19 cases.

Anyelo Troya, one of the creators of an anti-government rap song adopted by protesters, was sentenced to a year in prison Wednesday for “public disorder,” according to his family.

Unprecedented Olympics to Start with Socially Distanced Opening Ceremony

After a one-year pandemic delay, the Tokyo Olympics will formally get under way Friday, with an opening ceremony that will be scaled back but still celebratory.

The event will be held amid tens of thousands of empty seats in Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium, with only about 900 dignitaries and other officials attending because of COVID-19 precautions.

The opening ceremony, themed “United by Emotion,” may be one of the most normal elements of what figures to be the most unusual Olympic Games ever.

The ceremony will feature familiar elements such as fireworks, drones, musical performances and a torch-lighting ceremony. Athletes will also march and wave their countries’ flags during a socially distanced parade of nations, organizers say.

“A minimum of 1 meter and possibly 2 meters of social distancing is required, and they have to wear masks all the time,” said Hidemasa Nakamura, a Tokyo 2020 organizing committee official.

The Japanese public is broadly opposed to holding the Games, fearing they will worsen Japan’s already deteriorating pandemic situation.

Tokyo on Thursday reported nearly 2,000 new COVID-19 infections – a six-month high for a city that is already under a state of emergency.

In the capital, public viewing areas have been canceled. Bars have been asked to not serve alcohol. The torch relay, an Olympic mainstay, was replaced by online lighting ceremonies.

So far, 87 people associated with the Olympics have tested positive for the virus. That includes several athletes, whose Olympic dreams were cut short. Still, organizers have played down fears of a cluster infection breaking out in the Olympic Village.

“There is no one place that has no virus cases. That is impossible. Therefore, some cases will emerge. What is important is the ability to identify positive cases quickly and isolate them, and we believe that this is implemented well to hold a safe and secure Games,” Nakamura said.

Though seemingly every Olympics sees public discontent, the Tokyo Games have been ridden by an impressive number of negative headlines.

Besides the COVID-19 fears, the Games also went massively over budget. Earlier this year, the head of the Tokyo organizing committee resigned following outrage over his comments that women talk too much.

This week, the opening ceremony director, Kentaro Kobayashi, was fired after footage emerged of him mocking the Holocaust in a 1998 comedy sketch.

The Games are so toxic that major sponsors are backing away. Earlier this week, Toyota, one of Japan’s most recognizable brands, announced it would not air any Olympics-related TV commercials in Japan and that its top officials would not attend the opening ceremony.

“As someone who’s studied the political history of the Olympics, these really jump out at some wild times in terms of Olympics land,” said Jules Boykoff, a former Olympic athlete and author of several books on the Games.

Despite the controversy, organizers hope that the focus will shift to sports once the competition begins.

According to Gracenote, a data analytics company, the United States is projected to lead all countries with 96 medals, including 40 gold medals. It would be the seventh consecutive Summer Olympics for the U.S. to lead the overall medal count.

In Wake of Defeat and Upheaval, Armenia Deals with its War Wounds

Armenia is struggling to leave behind its war in 2020 with neighboring Azerbaijan and the political turbulence that surrounded recent legislative elections.  With the social and political upheaval of the last several months now easing, the calm is allowing many Armenians to examine and deal with the war wounds that continue to fester, along with the pain of defeat and the losses that Armenia says amount to nearly 4,000 mostly young soldiers.  Roderick James narrates this report by Pablo Gonzalez in Yerevan and Ricardo Marquina in Moscow.

(Ricardo Marquina contributed to this video.)

Camera:  Pablo Gonzalez   

Produced by:  Ricardo Marquina, Henry Hernandez 

‘Moment of Truth’ Approaching for Crisis-Wracked Lebanon

The little girl wearing a red Mickey and Minnie Mouse tee-shirt was firm. “The rulers of this country are all trash,” she pronounced with indignation, and “they should resign; it would be better if someone from any other country came to rule us,” she told the host of a talk show on Lebanon’s MTV channel.

“We cannot get anything.  There is no medicine, no Internet, no fuel,” she said.

The audience applauded. The host sighed. 

Since Marita Derzeh’s pronouncements, made July 15, the plight of her small Mediterranean country has only worsened, and while the youngster’s comments might reflect the views more of her parents than herself, they aren’t out of place in a country that is losing patience with the everyday struggle just to get by. 

The Lebanese pound is now trading on the black market at 22,000 to the dollar, around 15 times the official rate of 1,500. The government is running out of hard currency to subsidize staple products, medicines and gas, and the most common sights in the country are miles-long lines of ill-tempered motorists to fill up tanks. Hospital directors say they are running out of medicine.  

Free fall

The World Bank has dubbed Lebanon’s economic free fall, which has seen the country’s currency lose 95% of its value against major foreign currencies since 2019, as one of the world’s worst financial crises in more than 150 years.

“The Lebanon financial and economic crisis is likely to rank in the top 10, possibly top three, most severe crises episodes globally since the mid-nineteenth century,” it said in a recent report. And it largely blames the country’s sectarian political elites for the slow-motion crisis.

“This illustrates the magnitude of the economic depression that the country is enduring, with sadly no clear turning point on the horizon, given the disastrous deliberate policy inaction,” the bank said. It warned, “The social impact of the crisis, which is already dire, could rapidly become catastrophic.”

Ordinary Lebanese families have seen their purchasing power plummet and are desperate. 

And with more than half the population now living below the poverty line, the Crisis Observatory at the American University of Beirut reported this week that families would have to spend around five times the minimum wage just to put sufficient food on the table, never mind paying for utilities, gas and hard-to-find medicine. 

 
The observatory, set up to monitor Lebanon’s crisis, said the cost of food has soared by 700% over the past two years with increases quickening. “The price of a basic food basket increased by more than 50 percent in less than a month,” Nasser Yassin, head of the observatory told AFP Wednesday.

Moment of Truth

An international conference co-hosted by the U.N. and France, the country’s former colonial ruler, scheduled August 4 to discuss the crisis in Lebanon, might be the last chance to save the failing state of Lebanon from meltdown, warn French officials.  

The conference coincides with the first anniversary of the devastating Beirut port explosion, which left more than 200 people dead, about 6,500 injured, and flattened part of the Lebanese capital. Many blame Lebanese officials for storing hundreds of tons of highly explosive ammonium nitrate at the port, which ignited.

“The moment of truth is fast approaching,” a senior official at the French foreign ministry told VOA. “The politicians reform or they don’t; unless they do, there’s not much we can do to help pull the abyss,” he added. French officials are especially alarmed about the stability of Lebanon’s army, a key state institution that’s being relied on to maintain security and law and order in a country that’s on the brink of social explosion and breakdown.

Earlier this week the commanders of Lebanon’s army warned of mounting turmoil in the wake of last week’s resignation of Saad Hariri as Prime Minister-designate, a Sunni Muslim centrist. “The army is a deterrent to chaos,” General Joseph Aoun told his soldiers.  

 
Lebanon’s armed forces need an immediate injection of $100 million to cover the basic needs of its soldiers, according to Gen. Youssef Haddad. He has warned publicly that the country’s armed forces will be in “critical condition” by September and that, “if the army collapses, Lebanon will be lost.”

France, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have earmarked the country’s armed forces as the key institution to save. In Riyadh earlier in July, their diplomats discussed subsidizing the Lebanese Army with monthly allowances for 80,000 soldiers and officers, say Western and Arab diplomats. The average salary of a soldier was before the economic crisis worth around the equivalent of $800 a month, now it is about $80. 

Diplomats and analysts say the country’s brutal 1975-1990 civil war shows the danger, if the military were to falter. Marco Carnelos, a former Italian diplomat, says Lebanon is already a failed state. “But there is always further to fall, and Lebanon seems to be heading there,” he wrote in a commentary for the news site Middle East Eye, adding, “When will the world step in?”

He complains: “No western power other than France has yet dedicated to Lebanon the attention it deserves.” U.S. diplomats say the Biden administration also deserves credit for trying to get the international community to focus more on Lebanon and has warned not only of the mounting humanitarian crisis in the country but the danger of severe regional consequences.  

On Thursday, U.S. Secretary State Antony Blinken added his voice to the widespread dismay at the resignation of Saad Hariri, who said he was abandoning his efforts to form a government nine months after accepting the challenge because of political squabbling between Lebanon’s factions. The 51-year-old Hariri, who served as prime minister twice before, blames obstructionism by Lebanese President Michel Aoun, an ally of the radical Shi’ite movement Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran.

“Lebanon’s political class has squandered the last nine months,” Blinken complained in a statement. “The Lebanese economy is in free-fall and the current government is not providing basic services in a reliable fashion.” He added, “It is critical that a government committed and able to implement priority reforms be formed now.” 

Hassan Diab, the acting prime minister, told foreign diplomats last week, “Lebanon is a few days away from a social explosion.”

But like France and other international donors, the Biden administration is conditioning support for an IMF bailout of Lebanon on the formation of a pro-reform government and the implementation of financial and economic changes. They say without them the state will continue to slide toward failure.

Western diplomats say the August 4 conference in Paris will likely focus on two key areas: how to use both carrots and sticks to cajole the country’s political elites to agree on reforms, and if that fails, how to mitigate the humanitarian crisis and maintain the stability of the country’s armed forces.

This report includes information from AFP.

Angry Indian Farmers to Protest Near Parliament

Indian farmers, protesting over three new farm laws they say threaten their livelihoods, will start a sit-in near parliament in the center of the capital New Delhi in a renewed push to pressure the government to repeal the laws.

In the longest-running growers’ protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, tens of thousands of farmers have camped out on major highways leading to New Delhi for more than seven months.

As India’s monsoon session of parliament began this week, some protesting farmers tried to march towards the main government district, but they were stopped by police just miles from parliament.

On Thursday, 200 protesters will gather at Jantar Mantar, a large Mughal-era observatory in central New Delhi that doubles up as a protest site for causes of all manner.

“Throughout the monsoon session of parliament, 200 farmers will go to Jantar Mantar every day to hold farmers’ parliament to remind the government of our long-pending demand,” said Balbir Singh Rajewal, a leading farmers’ leader.

The monsoon session of parliament will end in early August. After extended negotiations, Delhi police have agreed to let 200 farmers gather during the day at Jantar Mantar, but protesters need to follow coronavirus guidelines issued by the Delhi Disaster Management Authority, a government statement said.

In late January, thousands of angry farmers clashed with police after driving their tractors into security barriers. One protester was killed, and more than 80 police officers were injured across the city.

Farmers say the laws favor large private retailers who, prior to the new laws, were not permitted to procure farm goods outside government-regulated wholesale grain markets.

The government says the laws, introduced in September 2020, will unshackle farmers from having to sell their produce only at regulated wholesale markets.

It argues farmers will gain if large traders, retailers and food processors can buy directly from producers. 

Is Polarized America Primed for a Breakout Third Party?

The ouster of Republican Liz Cheney from her leadership position in the House of Representatives could provide fertile ground for the emergence of an alternate party, according to political scientist Bernard Tamas.  

“I would say that the time is basically ripe for a third-party challenge, and, largely, the reason is because of the level of polarization in American politics, especially the movement to the right by the Republican Party,” says Tamas, an associate professor at Valdosta State University in Georgia and the author of The Demise and Rebirth of American Third Parties.  

But even if a third party were to emerge, Tamas says, the history of American politics suggests it could be short-lived and enjoy limited success at the polls.

House Republicans stripped Cheney, from Wyoming, of her post as conference chair after she publicly broke with former President Donald Trump, rejecting his baseless claims of widespread fraud in the November 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.     

“If you look at the two parties right now, what the Democrats do is much more with opposition is kind of integrate them. … It’s very much of a big net strategy,” Tamas says. “But the Republicans have been moving more and more towards pushing out moderates and pushing out anyone who challenges former President Trump.” 

And those circumstances, he says, are historically consistent with other times when third parties have emerged in the United States.  

Third-party disrupters 

The Populist Party, which championed poor farmers, emerged in the 1890s and was gone by 1900. During its brief time, however, it posed enough of a threat to Democrats that the party eventually adopted some of the Populist Party’s ideals.   

In 1912, the more progressive wing of the Republican party, led by former President Teddy Roosevelt, split with the Republican Party to form the Progressive Party. Roosevelt went on to win a bigger share of the popular vote than William Taft, the Republican nominee, but both lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. While the division hurt Republicans at the polls, the move did eventually push the Republican Party more to the center. 

It is the fear of splitting the vote that can work against third-party candidates, which helps the two major parties retain their dominance in politics.  

“When a voter enters a voter booth, they have to make a calculation, and they may prefer somebody who they don’t think is going to win, and it makes no sense to throw away your vote,” says Alexander Cohen, an assistant professor of political science at Clarkson University in New York. “And the people who donate money to campaigns, the people who operate in politics, they, in turn, recognize that this is a pattern and so they very seldom throw their support behind a third-party candidacy, because it’s not going to succeed.” 

Deeply entrenched 

Cohen says it’s difficult to transition away from a two-party system without fundamentally changing the structure of government, as well as rules for campaigns and campaign finance.  

“In America, the two parties have spent a lot of time and energy, and written laws that favor their own continuation and make it very difficult for third parties to emerge,” Cohen says. “In some states, there are laws that mean that third parties require more signatures to get on the ballot than the major parties, for whom it’s automatic. So, the two major parties don’t want competitors, and they’ve designed a system that further makes it difficult.” 

It’s possible that a third-party candidate could prove victorious in smaller local elections, according to Cohen, but he says the two-party system is here to stay in the more significant contests.  

“You’ll note that Liz Cheney isn’t leaving the Republican Party. As soon as she does, she’s done in politics,” he says. “The players who you would most expect to say, ‘I’m stepping away, we’re creating a new movement,’ aren’t doing so because they know that is not the way to get their policies represented.” 

Tamas agrees that it is unlikely that third parties will ever consistently win key elections. Their key influence, he says, has always been through disruption that leads to more moderation in the major parties. 

“Compared to most other countries, third parties (in the U.S.) are weak, so this leaves open one particular strategy that they have, which is to attack one of the parties, disrupt the politics, temporarily, and with the expectation that this is not going to have a permanent position in politics,” says Tamas. “It’s going to be just creating a course correction.” 
 

Many Tanzanians Still Resisting COVID-19 Preventive Measures

Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan has moved away from her predecessor’s pandemic denial to urge social distancing, handwashing and mask-wearing.  But as the third wave of coronavirus sweeps across Africa, it seems the measures are being ignored by most of the public. Charles Kombe reports from Dar es Salaam.

Thai Government’s Bungled Vaccine Rollout Unites Historically Divided Public in Anger

Anger is building at the administration of Thailand Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-O-Cha for a slow COVID-19 vaccine rollout, which has left just 5% of Thais inoculated amid the deadliest wave of the coronavirus pandemic to hit the country, and as health officials warn the worst is yet to come.

Thailand reached a record caseload of 11,305 Tuesday, adding scores to the grim death toll — 3,408 since April — in a kingdom that had won praise for snuffing out the pandemic in earlier rounds.

The resurgence since April has revived the political challenge to Prayuth, who seized power in a 2014 coup, and who last year survived months of raucous pro-democracy protests, smothering the movement with legal charges and a heavy police response.

Even senior medical experts now concede the kingdom was caught flat-footed by the latest wave of infections and has overseen a sluggish vaccine rollout, with only an estimated 3.5 million of its 70 million population fully vaccinated so far.

“We ordered vaccines too slowly,” Prasit Watanpana, dean of faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital who also holds an unpaid board position with Siam Bioscience — a company owned by Thailand’s powerful monarch that holds the local license to make the AstraZeneca vaccine — said Sunday in a Clubhouse chatroom. 

“We thought we had everything under control.”

Back to the streets

As the surging virus threatens a government pledge to reopen the kingdom to key tourists by October, protesters are back on Bangkok’s streets.

More than 1,000 people on Sunday defied a near-complete lockdown of the capital and an emergency order banning gatherings of five or more people to demand the government resign.

Protesters burning effigies of Prayuth near Government House were met by tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets fired by riot police.

The demonstrators say the fumbled vaccine rollout is the ultimate example of Prayuth’s anemic administration of the country.

They also want the government to shift money from its defense budget and to buy mRNA vaccines to replace the Chinese-made Sinovac — which is widely seen as inferior inside Thailand.

“COVID has exposed the Thai governing system: hierarchy, nepotism, patronage,” Attapon Buapat, a pro-democracy protest leader told VOA news.

Thailand’s richest conglomerate, which operates convenience stores, is among one of Sinovac’s shareholders, via a stake in another company, adding to widespread mistrust of the brand.

Meanwhile, local production of Astra-Zeneca has been inexplicably delayed despite its royal backing, threatening agreements to distribute the vaccine across Southeast Asia.

“It’s been exhausting fighting with the government this past year… but it’s worth it, because people are starting to wake up now,” protest leader Attapon said of a growing consensus among citizens historically divided along pro and anti-establishment lines.

‘Work for your people’

Analysts say the resurgent caseloads have moved older conservatives to find rare common cause with the pro-democracy camp.

“While the young protesters did not broaden their reform movement to include older demographics, the pandemic is doing it for them,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, a political analyst at the Institute of Security and International Studies Faculty of Political Science Chulalongkorn University. 

“The Prayuth government’s pandemic mismanagement is broadening the kinds of grievances we saw last year. It is building up into a political maelstrom.”

The vaccine fiasco has created a torrent across Thai social media, reaching millions of people trapped at home, many unable to register for an inoculation because of shortages and government websites and apps crashing under the burden of massive public demand.  

Health authorities said Tuesday the government has signed a belated deal with Pfizer to procure 20 million doses by the end of this year—and double that amount in 2022.

“I assure you that the government has never sat around when it comes to procuring the vaccines,” embattled Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said on his official Facebook page after the Pfizer deal was penned.

“Rest assured that it’s our policy to procure vaccines of good quality by our set timeline.”

But government blame is mounting with each passing day, as Thais increasingly feel they are fighting the pandemic alone.

“I am lucky to be standing here while many of my countrymen cannot travel,” Thai filmmaker Apichartpong Weerasethakul said in his acceptance speech in Cannes, where he won the Jury Prize for Memoria.

“Many of them suffer greatly from the pandemic with the mismanagement of resources, health care, and vaccine accessibility,” he said, urging the Thai government to “please wake up, and work for your people — now.”

Rockets Hit Afghan Capital as President Gives Eid Speech

At least three rockets landed Tuesday in the Afghan capital ahead of a speech by President Ashraf Ghani marking the start of the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, the interior ministry said. 

The rockets, fired about 8 a.m., were heard across the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses the presidential palace and several embassies, including the U.S. Embassy. 

“Today the enemies of Afghanistan launched rocket attacks in different parts of Kabul city,” said interior ministry spokesman Mirwais Stanikzai. 

“All the rockets hit three different parts. Based on our initial information, we have no casualties. Our team is investigating,” Stanikzai added. 

Minutes after the attack, Ghani began an address to the nation in the presence of some of his top officials. 

Rockets have been aimed at the palace several times in the past, the last being in December. 

The attack coincides with a sweeping Taliban offensive across the country as foreign forces wind up a troop withdrawal scheduled to be complete by August 31. 

Rural Teacher Declared President-elect in Peru

Rural teacher-turned-political novice Pedro Castillo on Monday became the winner of Peru’s presidential election after the country’s longest electoral count in 40 years. 

Castillo, whose supporters included Peru’s poor and rural citizens, defeated right-wing politician Keiko Fujimori by 44,000 votes. Electoral authorities released the final official results more than a month after the runoff election took place in the South American nation. 

Wielding a pencil the size of a cane, symbol of his Peru Libre party, Castillo popularized the phrase “No more poor in a rich country.” The economy of Peru, the world’s second-largest copper producer, has been crushed by the coronavirus pandemic, increasing the poverty level to almost one-third of the population and eliminating the gains of a decade.  

The shortfalls of Peru’s public health services have contributed to the country’s poor pandemic outcomes, leaving it with the highest global per capita death rate. Castillo has promised to use the revenues from the mining sector to improve public services, including education and health, whose inadequacies were highlighted by the pandemic.  

“Those who do not have a car should have at least one bicycle,” Castillo, 51, told The Associated Press in mid-April at his adobe house in Anguía, Peru’s third poorest district. 

Since surprising Peruvians and observers by advancing to the presidential runoff election, Castillo has softened his first proposals on nationalizing multinational mining and natural gas companies. Instead, his campaign has said he is considering raising taxes on profits because of high copper prices, which exceed $10,000 per ton. 

Historians say he is the first peasant to become president of Peru, where until now, Indigenous people almost always have received the worst of the deficient public services even though the nation boasted of being the economic star of Latin America in the first two decades of the century. 

“There are no cases of a person unrelated to the professional, military or economic elites who reaches the presidency,” Cecilia Méndez, a Peruvian historian and professor at the University of California-Santa Barbara, told a radio station. 

Fujimori, a former congresswoman, ran for a third time for president with the support of the business elites. She is the daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori.  

Hundreds of Peruvians from various regions camped out for more than a month in front of the Electoral Tribunal in Lima, Peru’s capital, to await Castillo’s proclamation. Many do not belong to Castillo’s party, but they trust the professor because “he will not be like the other politicians who have not kept their promises and do not defend the poor,” said Maruja Inquilla, an environmental activist who arrived from a town near Titicaca, the mythical lake of the Incas. 

Castillo’s meteoric rise from unknown to president-elect has divided the Andean nation deeply. 

Author Mario Vargas Llosa, a holder of a Nobel Prize for literature, has said Castillo “represents the disappearance of democracy and freedom in Peru.” Meanwhile, retired soldiers sent a letter to the commander of the armed forces asking him not to respect Castillo’s victory.  

Fujimori said Monday that she will accept Castillo’s victory, after accusing him of electoral fraud without offering any evidence. The accusation delayed his appointment as president-elect as she asked electoral authorities to annul thousands of votes, many in Indigenous and poor communities in the Andes.  

“Let’s not put the obstacles to move this country forward,” Castillo asked Fujimori in his first remarks in front of hundreds of followers in Lima. 

The United States, European Union and 14 electoral missions determined that the voting was fair. The U.S. called the election a “model of democracy” for the region. 

Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University, told a radio station that Castillo is arriving to the presidency “very weak,” and in some sense in a “very similar” position to Salvador Allende when he came to power in Chile in 1970 and to Joao Goulart, who became president of Brazil in 1962.  

“He has almost the entire establishment of Lima against him,” said Levitsky, an expert on Latin American politics.  

The president-elect has never held office. He worked as an elementary school teacher for the last 25 years in his native San Luis de Puna, a remote village in Cajamarca, a northern region. He campaigned wearing rubber sandals and a wide-brimmed hat, like the peasants in his community, where 40% of children are chronically malnourished. 

In 2017, he led the largest teacher strike in 30 years in search of better pay and, although he did not achieve substantial improvements, he sat down to talk with Cabinet ministers, legislators and bureaucrats.  

Over the past two decades, Peruvians have seen that the previous political experience and university degrees of their five former presidents did not help fight corruption. All former Peruvian presidents who governed since 1985 have been ensnared in corruption allegations, some imprisoned or arrested in their mansions. One died by suicide before police could take him into custody. The South American country cycled through three presidents last November. 

Castillo recalled that the first turn in his life occurred one night as a child when his teacher persuaded his father to allow him to finish his primary education at a school two hours from home. It happened while both adults chewed coca leaves, an Andean custom to reduce fatigue.  

“He suffered a lot in his childhood,” his wife, teacher Lilia Paredes, told AP while doing dishes at home. The couple has two children. 

He got used to long walks. He would arrive at the classroom with his peasant sandals, with a woolen saddlebag on his shoulder, a notebook and his lunch, which consisted of sweet potatoes or tamales that cooled with the hours. 

Castillo said his life was marked by the work he did as a child with his eight siblings, but also by the memory of the treatment that his illiterate parents received from the owner of the land where they lived. He cried when he remembered that if the rent was not paid, the landowner kept the best crops. 

“You kept looking at what you had sown, you clutched your stomach, and I will not forget that, I will not forgive it either,” he said.