routinely amplifies Russian claims about the war with Ukraine and about secret biological weapons research, as part of its own information battle with the United States that began with the debate over the spread of Covid-19.

China’s heavily censored internet, which aggressively stifles unwelcome political opinions, has also freely circulated conspiracy theories about a possible American role in the spread of monkeypox, as Bloomberg reported.

Russia’s efforts to push the claims about biological weapons come from an old Russia propaganda playbook, adapted to the age of social media.

Researchers at the RAND Corporation called the Russian strategy a “fire hose of falsehood,” inundating the public with huge numbers of claims that are designed to deflect attention and cause confusion and distrust as much as to provide an alternative point of view.

died on Tuesday, that it would hurt newly warming relations with the West.

Russia’s propaganda model today has been adapted to take advantage of “technology and available media in ways that would have been inconceivable during the Cold War,” according to the RAND study.

Despite “a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions” and a disregard of consistency, the strategy can often be persuasive to some, especially those who have preconceived biases, one of the authors, Christopher Paul, said in an interview.

“There are still people who believe the C.I.A. caused AIDS in Africa, even though that idea has been thoroughly debunked,” Mr. Paul said. “Not many, but some.”

Like many disinformation campaigns, Russia’s accusations on occasion have a passing relationship to facts.

Even before the war in Ukraine, Russia raised alarms about U.S. efforts to establish closer defense and research ties with several of Russia’s neighbors, including other former republics of the Soviet Union.

invoked a special session was in 1997, when Cuba accused the United States of spraying a plume of insects over the country’s crops, causing a devastating infestation.

The proceedings were not public, but several nations later submitted written observations about Cuba’s claims and the United States’ rebuttal. Only North Korea supported Cuba’s claim. Eight countries — Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Japan, the Netherlands and New Zealand — concluded there was no link. China and Vietnam said it was impossible to determine. (Russia submitted no response.)

“There’s a big silent majority that just wants to sit on the fence,” Dr. Lentzos said. “They don’t really want to take a side because it could hurt their interests either way. And so the big question is not ‘Do these guys believe it, or not?’ It’s to what extent are they motivated to act on it and speak out.”

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Border Patrol: 9 Migrants Die Crossing Swift Texas River

The CBP said U.S. crews rescued 37 others from the river and detained 16 more, while Mexican officials took 39 migrants into custody.

Officials on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border searched for more victims Saturday after at least nine migrants died while trying to cross the rain-swollen Rio Grande river, a dangerous border-crossing attempt in an area where the water level had risen by more than 2 feet in a single day.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Mexican officials discovered the victims near Eagle Pass, Texas, on Thursday, following days of heavy rains. U.S. officials recovered six bodies, while Mexican teams recovered three, according to a CBP statement. It is one of the deadliest drownings on the U.S.-Mexico border in recent history.

The river, which was a little more than 3 feet deep at the start of the week, reached more than 5 feet on Thursday, and the water was flowing five times faster than usual, according to the National Weather Service.

“There was much more water in the river after that rain, and there was more rain upstream, which adds to the flow,” said NWS meteorologist Bob Fogarty.

The CBP said U.S. crews rescued 37 others from the river and detained 16 more, while Mexican officials took 39 migrants into custody.

CBP did not say what country or countries the migrants were from and did not provide any additional information on rescue and search operations. Local agencies in Texas that were involved have not responded to requests for information.

The Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, is fast becoming the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Agents stopped migrants nearly 50,000 times in the sector in July, with Rio Grande Valley a distant second at about 35,000. Eagle Pass is about 140 miles southwest of San Antonio.

The area draws migrants from dozens of countries, many of them families with young children. About six of 10 stops in the Del Rio sector in July were migrants from Venezuela, Cuba or Nicaragua.

The sector, which extends 245 miles along the Río Grande, has been especially dangerous because river currents can be deceptively fast and change quickly. Crossing the river can be challenging even for strong swimmers.

In a news release last month, CBP said it had discovered bodies of more than 200 dead migrants in the sector from October through July.

This year is on track to break last year’s record for the most deaths on the U.S.-Mexico border since 2014, when the U.N. International Organization for Migration began keeping track. The organization has tallied more than 4,000 deaths on the border since 2014, based on news reports and other sources, including 728 last year and 412 during the first seven months of this year, often from dehydration or drowning. June was the fourth-deadliest month on record, with 138 fatalities.

The Border Patrol has not released official tallies since 2020.

In June, 53 migrants were found dead or dying in a tractor-trailer on a back road in San Antonio in the deadliest documented tragedy to claim the lives of migrants smuggled across the border from Mexico.

Some of the busiest crossings on the border — including Eagle Pass and Yuma, Arizona — were relatively quiet two years ago and now largely draw migrants from outside Mexico and Central America’s ‘Northern Triangle’ countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Mexico has agreed to take migrants from the ‘Northern Triangle’ countries, as well as its own nationals, if they are expelled from the United States under Title 42, the pandemic rule in effect since March 2020 that denies rights to seek asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

People from other countries are likely to be released into the United States on humanitarian parole or with notices to appear in immigration court because the U.S. has difficulty flying them home due to costs, strained diplomatic relations or other considerations. In the Border Patrol’s Del Rio sector, which includes Eagle Pass, only one of every four stops in July were processed under the pandemic rule, compared to about half across the rest of the border, according to government figures.

Venezuelans were by far the most common nationality encountered by Border Patrol agents in the Del Rio sector in July, accounting for 14,120 of 49,563 stops, or nearly three in 10. They were followed by Cubans, who were stopped 10,275 times, and then by Mexicans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans and Colombians, in that order.

As more people crossed into South Texas in the 2010s, Brooks County became a death trap for many migrants who tried walking around a Border Patrol highway checkpoint in the town of Falfurrias, about 70 miles north of the border. Smugglers dropped them off before the checkpoint and made arrangements to pick them up on the other side, but some perished on the way from dehydration.

The Baboquivari Mountains in Arizona and ranches in Texas’ Brooks County still draw Border Patrol agents and grief-stricken families hoping to rescue migrants or, if not, find corpses, but the deceptively strong currents around the Texas towns of Eagle Pass and Del Rio have become increasingly dangerous as the area has become one of the most popular spots to enter the United States illegally.

Not all victims are migrants. In April this year, the body of a Texas guardsman was recovered from the Rio Grande. He had jumped in to try to help a migrant who was struggling in the water.

 Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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Venezuelan Migrants Faced Dangerous Journey To Flee Country

Hundreds of asylum-seeking migrants continue arriving in New York City in what has become a crisis in the big apple.

Michel, a Venezuelan migrant, says leaving Venezuela with his wife and five children was not an easy decision. 

“When you make the decision to leave your country, it is not easy for us. It is not easy,” said Michel.  

Francelys Guedez says she didn’t want to see her 12 year-old son continue living under a dictatorship in Venezuela. 

“I don’t want the dictatorship that exists in my country to live,” said Guedez. 

Michel Sagues is a Venezuelan migrant. 

“I regretted it after being there,” said Sagues. 

For Sagues, the dangers he and his family could encounter on their journey gave them pause about leaving Venezuela. But home was too far away to turn back, and the future of his 20-month-old son was in his hands. 

All of these parents are bound by the same conviction: their love for their children. 

And they are some of more than 6,300 migrants seeking asylum in New York City in recent weeks.

“They already asked me for some documents, I think for registration,” said Sagues. 

Michel says he started the process of enroll his five children in school. 

But for all of the migrants, language is a major obstacle. 

NEWSY’S AXEL TURCIOS: How was the process when you tried to enroll your child in school?

MICHEL SAGUES: To be honest, it was a bit complicated because the school district doesn’t have many people on staff who speak Spanish. I think one of the staff got kind of annoyed because he couldn’t understand me, and I wasn’t able to understand him. 

The New York City Department of Education announced Project Open Arms, a support plan for asylum-seeking families. 

It’s a program that allocates more bilingual staff to help these migrants enroll their children in schools. 

However, Murad Awawdeh, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, says the Department of Education needs to do more. 

“We need them to take this on more aggressively to ensure that the students are not just getting the basic educational supports in school, but that they’re also getting the services in school that are going to help them continue to succeed in the educational environment,” said Awawdeh. 

The migrants are being bused to New York City from the Texas-Mexico border by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. 

Abbott has acknowledged it’s a protest against what he calls President Joe Biden’s out-of-control border policies overwhelming Texas communities. 

And it’s targeting Democratic city mayors like Eric Adams in New York City. 

“Texas Gov. Abbott is using asylum seekers as political pawns in his efforts to build his own profile across the nation and also to get his poll numbers to increase in the state of Texas,” said Awadeh. 

Most of the migrants are from Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Cuba and crossed the Darién Gap, a lawless stretch of dangerous, mountainous rainforest standing across Colombia and Panama.  

Jaison Manrrique crossed the region with his five-year-old daughter and wife.

“As a father I never thought to put my daughter through those conditions, sleeping on the bank of a river without knowing if in the early morning the water level was going to rise and drag us,” said Manrrique.  

According to UNICEF, at least 5,000 children entered the jungle between January and June 2022. 

“In the group that came behind us, there were many women, and they were all raped. Even 13-, 14-year-old girls who came in the group were raped. The men in the group were beaten,” said Guedez.  

After crossing the Mexico border into Texas, the migrants say they were seeking asylum, which allows them to legally stay in the U.S. before seeing a judge.

Immigration Attorney Isadora Velazquez says these migrants go through a process called “credible fear interview.” 

“They determined that this person could qualify for potential asylum. This may also apply to parents that come with their children and even if they have removal orders their children may qualify for a benefit. They don’t want the child to be at burden so the parent might be allowed in,” said Velazquez. 

The immigration attorney says having an asylum claim doesn’t give them automatic benefits.  

“When they do file property, they still have to wait 150 days to get a chance to apply for the work permit. Once they apply for a work permit the average wait is at least three months,” said Velazquez. 

Without a work permit, they can not legally work in the country.

In the meantime, five-year-old Jaisbeli Manrrique knows what she wants. 

She wishes to go to school and learn English. 

Source: newsy.com

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129 More Migrants Arrive In New York City From Texas

The New York City mayor’s office says 129 people arrived at the Port Authority Bus Terminal Wednesday looking for asylum in the U.S.

Dozens of migrants continue to arrive in Washington D.C. and New York City by bus, being shipped from Texas by Gov. Greg Abbott as a protest to what he has called President Joe Biden’s “irresponsible open border policies.” 

Visibly exhausted, dozens of migrants — adults, children, babies — waited for help at a bus station in midtown Manhattan after the three-day, hundreds-of-miles-long trip.

Most of them are from Venezuela, Cuba, Colombia, Haiti or West Africa.

Pedro Gutierrez is one of the thousands. He arrived in Manhattan last week. He says it took him almost two months to make it to the U.S.-Mexico border after he left Venezuela. He described crossing a jungle where he feared for his life, witnessing death, abuse and robberies to migrants.

Gutierrez planned for Miami, Florida to be his destination, but authorities in Texas told him he was going to get the help in New York to travel to south Florida.

A week later, however, he’s still in New York.

Manuel Castro, commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, says the mayor is concerned about the treatment migrants are receiving on these long trips.

“Gov. Abbott is weaponizing the situation, and he’s using human beings to make a political statement,” Castro said. “We were learning that there’s armed security on these buses. Apparently, the state of Texas has hired a private security firm. People need to be treated with dignity, with humanity.”

Castro says the Texas governor’s move is meant to keep migrants from hopping off the buses before they arrive in New York.

The New York City mayor accuses the Texas authorities of forcing migrants into the “Big Apple” when in some cases their final destination is another state.

“They’re asked to sign these documents under duress that say that they want to come to New York and that they waive certain rights, and people don’t know exactly what they’re signing off,” Castro said.

In Texas, the governor’s office says the migrants are traveling to New York voluntarily. However, Gov. Abbott also recently announced he was busing migrants from the Mexican border to New York City in what he calls a response to the Biden administration’s open border policies overwhelming Texas communities. The migrants are receiving food, clothing, medical care and legal assistance.

“It’s very devastating to see small kids making long journeys to the border and then from the border to be bused this way, very troubling,” said Alexander Rapaport, executive director of Masbia Relief Team. “Some people came without any shoes, just barefoot.”

The migrants released from federal custody after they crossed the border were able to avoid deportation — for now. They are given paperwork allowing them to remain in the U.S. and ordering them to appear before a judge to make their case for asylum.

Castro told Newsy they have assembled a group of immigration lawyers ready to assist the migrants. 

Some of them have upcoming court appearances in other states and were brought to New York City instead, so if they decide they want to remain in the state, they have to change their court dates. But for those who will continue their journey, local organizations are offering financial support to purchase their travel tickets.

Source: newsy.com

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Lightning Sets Off Fire At Cuban Oil Tank Farm, Dozens Hurt

By Associated Press
August 6, 2022

The accident comes as Cuba struggles with fuel shortages.

Lightning struck a crude oil storage tank in the city of Matanzas, causing a spreading fire that led to four explosions which injured nearly 80 people and left 17 firefighters missing, Cuban authorities said Saturday.

Firefighters and other specialists were still trying to quell the blaze at the Matanzas Supertanker Base, which began during a thunderstorm Friday night, the Ministry of Energy and Mines tweeted.

The official Cuban News Agency said the lightning strike set one tank on fire and the blaze later spread to a second tank.

The Facebook page of the provincial government of Matanzas said the number of injured had reached 77, while 17 people were missing. The Presidency of the Republic said the 17 were “firefighters who were in the nearest area trying to prevent the spread.”

The accident comes as Cuba struggles with fuel shortages. There was no immediate word on how much oil had burned or was in danger at the tank farm, which stores oil used to fuel electricity production.

“I was in the gym when I felt the first explosion. A column of smoke and terrible fire rose through the skies,” resident Adiel Gonzalez told The Associated Press by phone. “The city has a strong smell of sulfur.”

Authorities said the Dubrocq neighborhood closest to the fire was evacuated, while Gonzalez added that some people decided to leave the Versailles district, which is a little farther from the tank farm.

There were many ambulances, police and fire engines, he said.

Matanzas, which has about 140,000 inhabitants, is 62 miles from Havana, on Matnzas Bay.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel traveled to the area of the fire early Saturday, officials said.

Local meteorologist Elier Pila showed satellite images of the area with a dense plume of black smoke moving from the point of the fire westward and reaching east to Havana.

“That plume can be close to 150 kilometers long,” Pila wrote on his Twitter account.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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U.S. To Issue ID Cards To Migrants Awaiting Deportation Proceedings

By Associated Press
August 5, 2022

The Biden administration is seeking $10 million for the so-called ICE Secure Docket Card to replace paper and help people follow their court hearings.

U.S. immigration authorities are planning to issue photo ID cards to immigrants in deportation proceedings in a bid to slash paper use and help people stay up-to-date on required meetings and court hearings, officials said.

The proposal from Immigration and Customs Enforcement is still being developed as a pilot program, and it was not immediately clear how many the agency would issue. The cards would not be an official form of federal identification, and would state they are to be used by the Department of Homeland Security.

The idea is for immigrants to be able to access information about their cases online by using a card rather than paper documents that are cumbersome and can fade over time, officials said. They said ICE officers could also run checks on the cards in the field.

“Moving to a secure card will save the agency millions, free up resources, and ensure information is quickly accessible to DHS officials while reducing the agency’s FOIA backlog,” an ICE spokesperson said in a statement, referring to unfulfilled public requests for agency documents. Homeland Security gets more Freedom of Information Act requests than any other federal agency, according to government data, and many of those involve immigration records.

The proposal has sparked a flurry of questions about what the card might be used for and how secure it would be. Some fear the program could lead to tracking of immigrants awaiting their day in immigration court, while others suggest the cards could be advertised by migrant smugglers to try to induce others to make the dangerous trip north.

The Biden administration is seeking $10 million for the so-called ICE Secure Docket Card in a budget proposal for the next fiscal year. It was not immediately clear if the money would cover the pilot or a broader program or when it would begin.

The administration has faced pressure as the number of migrants seeking to enter the country on the southwest border has increased. Border Patrol agents stopped migrants more than 1.1 million times from January to June, up nearly one-third from the same period of an already-high 2021.

Many migrants are turned away under COVID-19-related restrictions. But many are allowed in and either are detained while their cases churn through the immigration courts or are released and required to check in periodically with ICE officers until a judge rules on their cases.

Those most likely to be released in the United States are from countries where expulsion under the public health order is complicated due to costs, logistics or strained diplomatic relations, including Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.

At shelters, bus stations and airports along the U.S.-Mexico border, migrants carefully guard their papers in plastic folders. These are often the only documents they have to get past airport checkpoints to their final destinations in the United States. The often dog-eared papers can be critical to getting around.

An immigration case can take years and the system can be confusing, especially for immigrants who know little English and may need to work with an array of government agencies, including ICE and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which issues work permits and green cards. U.S. immigration courts are overseen by the Justice Department.

It was not clear whether Homeland Security’s Transportation Security Administration would accept the cards for airport travel or whether private businesses would consider it valid.

The United States doesn’t have a national photo identification card. Residents instead use a range of cards to prove identification, including driver’s licenses, state ID cards and consular ID cards. What constitutes a valid ID is often determined by the entity seeking to verify a person’s identity.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.

Source: newsy.com

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