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AMSTERDAM, March 2 (Reuters) – The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor on Wednesday said he would immediately open an investigation into possible war crimes committed in Ukraine, following requests to do so by an unprecedented number of the court’s member states.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has yet to overthrow the government in Kyiv but thousands of people are believed to have been killed or injured, according to officials in both countries and the United Nations. read more

“Active investigations formally commence in Ukraine upon receipt of referrals by 39 state parties”, prosecutor Karim Khan tweeted.

The referrals by member states fast-track an investigation as it allows the prosecutor to skip having to seek approval of the court in The Hague, shaving months off the process. The prosecutor had already said on Monday that he would seek court approval into allegations of war crimes in Ukraine. read more

The prosecutor’s office would start collecting evidence for “any past and present allegations of war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide committed on any part of the territory of Ukraine by any person”, Khan said in a statement.

Following the Russian annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and the subsequent fighting in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian government forces, Ukraine accepted ICC jurisdiction for crimes against humanity and war crimes committed on its territory since the end of 2013.

In December 2020 the prosecutor’s office announced it had reason to believe war crimes and other crimes were committed during the conflict in eastern Ukraine, but a request for a full investigation was not filed.

Russia is not a member of the ICC and rejects its jurisdiction.

The court can investigate allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on Ukraine territory regardless of the nationality of the suspected perpetrators.

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/war-crimes-court-prosecutor-opens-ukraine-investigation-statement-2022-03-02/

Fifty more migrants arrived outside Vice President Kamala Harris’s residence in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, days after two buses carrying asylum seekers arrived at her Naval Observatory home from Texas earlier this week.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s Press Secretary Renae Eze confirms to ABC News 50 migrants were dropped off at the Vice President’s Naval Observatory residence Saturday after a long bus ride from Texas.

Abbott said he sent two buses of migrants to Harris’s residence on Thursday.

“We’re sending migrants to her backyard to call on the Biden Administration to do its job & secure the border,” he tweeted at the time.

Abbott and other Republican leaders from border states have been sending migrants to Democratic-led cities for months, calling it a protest of President Joe Biden’s immigration policies amid an influx of migrants at the southern border.

Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis escalated the scheme this week by dropping off approximately 100 migrants outside Harris’s Washington home and on Martha’s Vineyard, the island just south of Cape Cod where former President Barack Obama has a residence.

The moves sparked national attention, and outrage from the White House and Democrats who said the lawmakers were using migrants as political pawns. Republicans have cheered the move, arguing the Biden administration should do more to secure the border.

Some Democratic lawmakers said they received no prior warning the migrants were going to be arriving.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker said the state has since offered voluntary transportation of the migrants off of Martha’s Vineyard to a temporary shelter at Joint Base Cape Cod.

One Venezuelan immigrant, Victor, told ABC News’ Armando Garcia that he was there when someone was asking migrants to sign their name on a list to get a seat on the plane. He did not sign up because the offer sounded too suspicious and because it did not align with his plans to eventually get to New York City.

Victor said he feels for the people that were duped into taking those flights, but he understands why they took that risk.

“It’s complicated because they tell you you’ll have everything you want, but when they arrived people were basically lost,” he said.

The White House said FEMA administrators have been meeting with city officials on site to coordinate available federal support, but have largely dodged questions on how to improve the immigration system — stating they inherited a broken process from the Trump administration.

President Joe Biden criticized the migrant drop-offs as “simply wrong.”

“It’s un-American, it’s reckless and we have a process in place to manage migrants at the border,” he said at a gala for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. “We’re working on making sure it’s safe and orderly and humane. Republican officials should not interfere with that process by waging these political stunts.”

DeSantis on Friday also said more migraine drop-offs were coming.

“I have $12 million for us to use and so we are going to use it and you’re gonna see more and more. I’m going to make sure that we exhaust all those funds,” he said at a press conference.

Editor’s Note: A previous version of the story said that the migrant buses came from El Paso. The governor’s office later clarified that the migrant buses to the vice president’s residence were sent from Texas, but not El Paso.

ABC News’ Quinn Owen contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/texas-gov-abbott-sends-50-migrants-vp-harris/story?id=90070912

A person in the stands wears a mask before Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the first pitch, at a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the New York Yankees, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Seattle. Fauci is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Ted S. Warren/AP


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Ted S. Warren/AP

A person in the stands wears a mask before Dr. Anthony Fauci threw out the first pitch, at a baseball game between the Seattle Mariners and the New York Yankees, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022, in Seattle. Fauci is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Ted S. Warren/AP

President Joe Biden said in a 60 Minutes interview Sunday that the COVID-19 pandemic is a thing of the past.

“The pandemic is over,” he said. “We still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over. If you notice, no one’s wearing masks. Everybody seems to be in pretty good shape, and so I think it’s changing, and I think [the Detroit Auto show resuming after three years] is a perfect example of it.”

The National Institutes of Health defines a pandemic as “an epidemic of disease, or other health condition, that occurs over a widespread area (multiple countries or continents) and usually affects a sizable part of the population.”

So are we really in the clear?

Globally, there have been about 612 million cases of coronavirus. The number of new daily cases peaked in January for many countries, including the U.S. (806,987), France (366,554) and India (311,982), according to Our World in Data, an international organization of scientists.

We’ve come a long way since then – on Saturday, there were about 493,000 cases worldwide – but there are still thousands of cases being detected every day, and many estimates could be off, as many cases are going unreported.

From Aug. 16 to Sept. 17, there were 19.4 million new cases worldwide, with some of the most significant increases happening in Japan (29%), Taiwan (20%) and Hong Kong (19%). The U.S. had a 3% increase in cases during that time period, equivalent to 2.5 million incidents.

In Japan, there is a daily cap on the number of people who can arrive in the country and individual tourist visits have been banned, though those guidelines are expected to be reversed soon. Additionally, on Sep. 7, the country lifted its requirement to take a test within 72 hours of landing in Japan, as long as you are vaccinated, according to Nikkei.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has also eased up on COVID-19 restrictions, such as issuing the same guidance to both vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans and shortening the quarantine period from 10 days to five. Though, it has not publicly declared the end of the pandemic.

Source Article from https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123767437/joe-biden-covid-19-pandemic-over