Chris Hedges had an Emmy-nominated show on RT America – then YouTube deleted it without warning

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
April 01, 2022


YouTube has deleted the entire archive of “On Contact,” an Emmy-nominated television show by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges which was hosted on the Russian government-funded news channel RT America. We speak with Hedges, who connects the YouTube censorship of his show to a growing crackdown on dissenting voices in American media. “There’s less and less space for those who are willing to seriously challenge and question entrenched power,” says Hedges, who says “opaque entities” like YouTube shouldn’t have the power to take down outlets like RT America, despite the channel’s source of funding. “Are we better off not hearing what Russia has to say?” asks Hedges.



"Disappeared": Chris Hedges Responds to YouTube Deleting His 6-Year Archive of RT America Shows www.youtube.com

TranscriptThis is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

We spend the rest of the hour with Chris Hedges, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, who has just seen YouTube delete the entire archive of his Emmy-nominated television show On Contact, which he hosted for six years on RT America, a news channel funded by the Russian government that recently closed down. This comes as Britain announced Thursday new sanctions on 14 more Russian entities and people, including state media organizations behind RT and Sputnik and some of their senior figures, to target those who spread President Putin’s, what they called, quote, “fake news and narratives.” RT’s deputy editor-in-chief, Anna Belkina, told Reuters, quote, “With this action, the U.K. government has sounded the death knell for media freedom in Britain.” Belkina said Britain had tried to silence both RT and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
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For more, we’re joined in New York by Chris Hedges, who is just back from London as a guest at the wedding of the imprisoned WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, and his partner, now wife, Stella Moris. We’ll talk more about that in a minute. But first, Chris, you wrote a piece headlined “On Being Disappeared” about having your RT show’s archive completely deleted, saying, “If this happens to me, it can happen to you, to any critic anywhere who challenges the dominant narrative.” Chris Hedges, can you lay out what happened?

CHRIS HEDGES: There was no notice. There was no warning. There was no inquiry. It just vanished. It’s not surprising. I think if you go back and look at the 2017 director of national intelligence report, seven pages were devoted to RT. And while they accused RT of disseminating Russian propaganda, all the examples that they cited in that report were that RT was giving a voice to Black Lives Matter activists, anti-fracking activists, Occupy activists, third-party candidates — all of which was true. And so, I think this was the culmination. We expected it.


I was on your show, by the way, when they deleted Trump from the social media, and vigorously opposed it, not because I ever want to read another tweet by Donald Trump, but because we don’t want these opaque entities — and they know everything about us, we know nothing about them — to wield this kind of censorship. What I didn’t expect when I was arguing not to delete Trump from social media was that I would so quickly be one of the victims.

AMY GOODMAN: So, do you have any access to this archive?

CHRIS HEDGES: Through the — the RT.com On Contact site is still up. I don’t know how much longer. So we’ve copied them, so at least I’ll have them. But, no, off of YouTube. And you had hundreds of thousands of views for some of those shows. It’s all gone.


I want to stress that there wasn’t one show on Russia, and the few times that we ever mentioned Putin or Russia was not in very flattering terms. I remember the great investigative journalist Allan Nairn using RT — I’m sure, on purpose — to excoriate Russia for war crimes in Syria. But we broadcast it.

This was a show that, if we had a functioning public broadcasting system, would be on, probably late at night. I primarily interviewed authors — I’m an author myself, of course, have written 14 books — and intellectuals that I admire — Cornel West, Noam Chomsky, Slavoj Žižek. And it was erased for its content, I mean, not because it was Russian propaganda but — it wasn’t — but because there’s been such a marginalization of critics of anti-imperialism, anti-capitalism. I’m a very strong supporter, very public supporter, of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanction movement, which, of course, I think was the key issue that saw my great friend Cornel West denied tenure at Harvard.

The walls have just closed in, Amy, since I began as a reporter in Central America in the 1980s. There’s less and less space for those who are willing to seriously challenge and question entrenched power. I mean, you do it. Allan does that. But it’s become a pretty lonely profession. And, of course, Bob Scheer, who I write for Scheer Post, but he doesn’t have any money. He doesn’t have any advertisers — also true when he ran Ramparts. So, it’s becoming harder and harder. I’ve gone to Substack, like Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, ChrisHedges.substack.com. And if I can get enough subscribers, I will fund the column and fund the show myself. But that’s where we’re left at. And, of course, you pioneered that model for many of us.


AMY GOODMAN: And, Chris, if you were on RT America right now, if it existed, if DirecTV hadn’t canceled, taken RT America off, what would you be saying about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, I denounced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the inception, for the same reason I denounced our invasion and occupation of Iraq at the inception — for which, of course, I ran into conflict and had to leave The New York Times — because preemptive war, under post-Nuremberg laws, is a criminal war of aggression. And I was very clear about that. Now, RT went dark six days later. I don’t — I have hard time believing Moscow would have allowed me to publicly embrace that kind of critique and remain on the air. I mean, I don’t know. That’s conjecture. But, yes, I can’t — it would be deeply hypocritical to lambaste the United States for war crimes and not lambaste Vladimir Putin for war crimes — with this caveat: The invasion of Iraq, occupation of Iraq, was based on lies and fabrications.

I believe — I was in Europe in 1989 covering the revolutions in Eastern Europe. And this, of course, was — we assumed, naively, that NATO would be obsolete. NATO was created to prevent Soviet expansion in Eastern, in Central Europe. I saw the leaders of — Margaret Thatcher and the Reagan administration, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, all promise Gorbachev that NATO would not be expanded beyond the borders of a unified Germany. Then later, with the Clinton administration, after 13 or 14 states now, of course, have been integrated into NATO, the Clinton administration promised not to station troops. This was another violation. Russia has every right to feel threatened and baited. That doesn’t justify the war crime that they committed. I mean, they pulled the trigger. But again, this kind of understanding of the historical antecedents that led to the attack on the Ukraine — you’ve had Katrina on here. She, of course, knows Russia very well. That’s almost unheard of within the kind of cheerleading from the media, within the mainstream media.


AMY GOODMAN: Katrina vanden Heuvel, the publisher —

CHRIS HEDGES: Yeah.


AMY GOODMAN: — of The Nation. Chris, you wrote the award-winning book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. What does this war give Russia in terms of meaning?

CHRIS HEDGES: Well, I just read The New York Times this morning, and they’re talking about Putin’s approval ratings going through the roof. That’s what war does. It unleashes all sorts of dark, toxic poisons, including the poison of nationalism, which we imbibed in Iraq and, I think, to a certain extent, are imbibing now, ignoring the two decades of egregious war crimes that we committed in the Middle East. The idea that somehow NATO is a defensive organization would be greeted with ridicule in countries like Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria or anywhere — or Libya or anywhere else. So, yeah, of course, every society is susceptible to that dark elixir. Russia is no exception. They’ve, of course, turned on their press, and they’re drinking deep from it. But we’re as guilty of that sin as the Russians.

AMY GOODMAN: What would you say to critics that say RT America, RT, was an outlet for Russian state propaganda, which is why it was targeted for removal by YouTube?


CHRIS HEDGES: Well, to a certain extent, that’s probably true. But are we better off not hearing what Russia has to say, not understanding why they think the way they do? I was a foreign correspondent for 20 years. My job was to be culturally, linguistically, historically, religiously literate, to step into the shoes of a Syrian or an Iraqi or a Palestinian — and, of course, I spent six years in Latin America and then, later, in Yugoslavia — and explain how the world looked from their vantage point, why they felt the way they did. And oftentimes the grievances they have are very legitimate. I certainly think that Putin’s complaints about the expansion of NATO have a great deal of credibility. It’s just a historical fact that the leaders of the West lied to Gorbachev, lied to Yeltsin and lied to Putin. That’s just historically true. We’re not a better world by shutting down these outlets and essentially living within our own echo chamber, especially when we wield the kind of military power that we do wield. And this gets into the whole collapse of foreign reporting. It’s kind of gone the way of the dinosaurs. But it’s extremely important, especially when you’re an imperial power.

MU5735

Voice recorder in Chinese crash comes to D.C. 

as U.S. investigators head to China

By Michael Laris

Today

Chinese and U.S. safety investigators have stepped up cooperation in their effort to determine what caused a Boeing 737 flown by China Eastern Airlines to crash last month, killing all 132 people on board.

The aircraft’s cockpit voice recorder, discovered at the mountainous crash site in the Guangxi province, has been transferred to a National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) facility in Washington, according to the agency. U.S. specialists are assisting investigators from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) as they attempt to glean crucial details about the run-up to the tragedy.

An NTSB crash-investigation team also left Friday headed for China to assist the investigation.

“Investigators will limit interactions with those outside of investigation similar to safety protocols at Beijing Olympics, which will allow them to begin work immediately without a quarantine,” the agency said.

Search finds 49,000 pieces of plane in China Eastern crash

Aviation safety experts said the type of Boeing aircraft that went down, the 737-800, is widely used globally and has had a strong safety record. China has also improved its safety record in recent decades. Its last major crash occurred in 2010, when pilots missed a runway in heavy fog, killing 44 people.

The CAAC said this week that it is continuing a nationwide inspection effort following the China Eastern crash “to further strengthen awareness of bottom lines and to troubleshoot safety hazards in the civil aviation field, so as to guarantee higher level safety of aviation operations and people’s lives.”

 Gays caught in the crossfire of Hungary election

04/02/2022 mediabest World News

Budapest: Among the political billboards and corflutes plastered on just about every lamppost and power pole along the bustling inner-city Budapest streets, one in particular catches the eye.

A contentious political advertisement in Budapest asking voters in Hungary to “protect children” by voting in Sunday’s referendum on gay and trans rights issues.Credit:Rob Harris

An attractive woman in her mid-30s with brown hair and blue eyes, hugs a young girl of about three or four. The sign, authorised by the government, simply says: “Let’s Protect Our Children”. It urges them to vote “no” on April 3 to halt what it says are attempts to force queer propaganda and gender reassignment on children.

The joke going around among the youth of Budapest is that the woman is actually a Russian, a nod at the closeness of Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party and its Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, to the Putin regime in Moscow and its own anti-LGBTQI+ laws.

Orban, the European Union’s longest-serving and most controversial leader, has put a battle against “gender insanity” and what he calls Brussels’ “woke” support for trans and gay rights at the heart of his re-election bid.

But even some rusted-on supporters privately concede it’s a highly cynical move. The referendum is being held on the same day as the general election to distract from domestic issues such as the government’s handling of the pandemic, rising inflation and the continued creep of Orban’s authoritarianism.

Despite sex-change treatment for minors already being illegal in Hungary, voters will be asked: “Do you support the promotion of sex reassignment therapy for underage children?”

Hungarians will also be asked whether they support the holding of sexual orientation workshops in schools without parents’ consent and whether media content that could affect sexual orientation should be shown to children without restrictions.

New domestic laws which already outlawed these scenarios are being challenged by the European Union. Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, has vowed to “use all her powers” to strike them down.

Visiting Eger, a regional city of about 50,000 people in northern Hungary, this week, Orban urged people to vote “no” in the name of “child protection”.

“If we go and vote ‘no’ four times, the referendum will settle this issue for a long time to come,” he says. “The father is a man and the mother a woman, and our children should be left alone.”

Orban says what was at stake in the referendum was “whether we will keep our common sense”, demanding teachers and schools not “re-educate our children”.

“Hungary is a free country where adults can decide how they want to live,” he says. “We don’t want to interfere in that.

“But children — that’s a red line,” he added, saying that “foreign fads” must not be allowed to make their way into schools.

But the Teachers’ Union, entangled in a long-running pay dispute, hit back on Friday, rejecting Orban’s claims.

A drag queen waves a rainbow flag outside Hungary’s parliament last year.Credit:AP

“There is no ‘gender insanity’ either in schools or kindergartens, so there is nothing that should be stopped, just as there is no education for gender reassignment,” it said in a statement. The referendum questions, according to the union, “lack any basis”.

In recent years Hungary has gained an international reputation as a country hostile to many minorities – whether it be Romani, pejoratively known as gypsies, Muslim asylum seekers or, lately, LGBTQI+ people.

It wasn’t always the case. Hungary led many Western nations – including all Australian states – by decriminalising homosexuality in 1961. Sexuality-based discrimination is outlawed by Hungarian law. Gays are welcome in the military. Civil partnerships became legal in 2009 but in 2012 – under Orban – marriage was defined as between a man and woman for the first time in law.

And in Budapest, a cosmopolitan and progressive city, gay nightlife is much like that of Paris, Barcelona or Berlin, although in recent times Western tourists have been advised to keep overt displays of public affection to a minimum.

In May 2020, during the height of the pandemic, Hungary ended legal recognition of trans people. The following November it amended the constitution to ensure homosexual and trans couples could not adopt children.

Laws were later passed banning the depiction of homosexuality or gender reassignment to minors in school education program and media content.

Tamas Dombos, a board member of the Hatter Society, Hungary’s oldest LGBTQI+ rights organisation, says it was clear the referendum was being used as a distraction by Orban’s government to shore up core support and “reframe” domestic politics.

“As a central theme in the election campaign it is good for them politically,” he says. “With their core electorate, this topic flies well.”

Dombos says despite the government’s narrative, promoted in state-friendly media and on billboards, support for LGBTQI+ communities was actually growing in Hungary. In July last year tens of thousands of people attended Budapest’s Pride Festival march.

Demonstrators march during Budapest’s 2021 Pride Festival.Credit:Getty Images

A recent poll by Amnesty International found 73 per cent of Hungarians reject the government’s narrative regarding LGBTQI+ people, putting acceptance at a historic high.

But he says the campaign was “encouraging certain segments of the population to feel entitled to express negative, homophobic views”.

“The number of hate crimes reported to my NGO has increased significantly. We have had some awful stories relayed to us.”

Dombos says recently a lesbian couple kissing in the street were pushed in front of a moving car by a man after he angrily confronted them. Another couple with a rainbow flag in the window of their apartment block had homophobic slogans painted on their door in the middle of the night.

Maria Kristofy, known to her friends as Kymi, is an out-and-proud 72-year-old lesbian. Having been married to a man for 25 years and had three children, she “came out” at 47 and in her 50s joined the volunteers at the Labrisz Lesbian Association.

“The problem for me when I was married was what to do about it. There was no information, nothing, about homosexuality. I’d go to the library to look for novels.

“Now, we see more people out in the open,” she tells The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. “But on the other side, the right wing is also more and more aggressive.”

Mária Kristófy came out later in life.

A retired classical singer from Budapest, who for years toured concert halls across Europe with the Hungarian Radio Choir, Kristofy says she knows many “rainbow families” who have left Hungary for Berlin or London because they feel unwelcome in their own country.

The referendum is valid only if more than half of all voters take part and will be successful if more than half of all participants answer “yes” or “no” to the questions.

Kristofy says her group, and others, believe their best chance of frustrating the referendum is to urge people to cast invalid votes – marking both answers for each question.

“I think, for many years, Hungarians want to live in a tolerant society. It was bad under socialism for a long time, but it is now looking like getting just as bad again,” she says.

“It used to be ‘if you are not with us, you are against us’ … Now it’s like ‘if you’re not with us, you are the enemy’. And that is not right. Everyone knows someone who is LGBT and this is causing much hurt.”

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What sanctions could P&O Ferries face?

Criminal and civil investigations have been launched by the Insolvency Service into the circumstances surrounding P&O’s decision to make the seafarers redundant on March 17

P&O is facing a criminal investigation (PA)

FRI, 01 APR, 2022 - 21:32
HELEN WILLIAM, PA

The kind of sanctions P&O Ferries could face for sacking 800 workers without notice is still unclear, lawyers and trade unions have said.

Criminal and civil investigations have been launched by the Insolvency Service into the circumstances surrounding P&O’s decision to make the seafarers redundant on March 17.

A legal duty for P&O to hold consultations on the redundancies and whether the firm gave the British Secretary of State due notice about its plans are among the areas that could be investigated.

The Insolvency Service said that “as these are ongoing investigations, no further comment or information can be provided at this time”.

Peter Hebblethwaite answers questions in front of the Transport Committee and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee (House of Commons/PA)

No one knows what sort of fine or the scale of the sanction the firm could face but what is clear is the company is “banged to rights” on its failure to consult, according to the TUC.

P&O Ferries chief executive Peter Hebblethwaite told a joint hearing of the Commons’ business and transport committees that his company broke the law by not consulting with trade unions before sacking workers.

He has also said that all vessels involved were registered outside the UK and the relevant authorities in each case had been notified.

Employment lawyer Anita North, of Simpson Millar, said: “They could be investigated for not notifying the Secretary of State about the fact they were going to make the redundancies but there are provisions in the legislation which say that the requirement depends on what the obligations are of the port in the country that the ship is registered.

Since these ships are registered outside of Britain, the obligation therefore falls with the jurisdiction of where they were registered.

On whether directors could be held liable, she said: “It is not clear there has been any wrongdoing or any financial dishonesty.

“There is no suggestion of actual director dishonesty to give grounds for a criminal investigation. It is immoral I think, but ultimately there are no laws to say you cannot dismiss your employees without notice.

“There are laws to say you should consult before you do that and if you don’t employees can claim a protective award but there are no sanctions as such that can be taken against individuals.”

A demonstration against the dismissal of P&O workers takes place outside the Port of Liverpool (Pete Byrne/PA)


The TUC said it sees the dismissal of the 800 seafarers as an attempt by P&O Ferries to “bypass” employment laws as bosses have “sought to impose the changes rather than negotiate them”.

The union organisation said the plan was to replace seafarers on union-negotiated wages with low-paid agency staff thanks to gaping holes in the minimum wage rules as they apply to overseas workers on non-UK flagged vessels.

P&O may be investigated for failing to notify the British Government in time but it is difficult to find previous examples of employers who have been hit with a punitive fine, Ms North and the TUC said.

Companies can also face having to pay affected workers maximum protective awards of 90 days’ pay.

It is possible that P&O may have simply priced in the potential cost of such an award in its offer to dismissed seafarers, the TUC suggested.

Ms North added: “I think it is part of a director’s duties to think about the financial viability of the company and do everything it can to ensure it does not go under but that should not just be from a personal point of view – there should be more consideration of how the decision being taken by the board affects the employees and not just the balance sheet.”

Read More
Criminal inquiry into P&O Ferries launched

Climate activists plan daily protests after blocking 10 UK oil terminals


By Andrew MacAskill and Muvija M

© Reuters/ANDREW BOYERS Just Stop Oil activists protest at the Esso Birmingham fuel terminal, in Birmingham

LONDON (Reuters) -Hundreds of climate change protesters blocked oil terminals across Britain on Friday with some supporters climbing on top of oil tankers as part of their campaign to force the government to end its reliance on fossil fuels.

© Reuters/ANDREW BOYERS Just Stop Oil activists protest at the Esso Birmingham fuel terminal, in Birmingham

Extinction Rebellion, which caused days of traffic chaos in central London three years ago, and another group called Just Stop Oil blocked refineries around London, Birmingham, and Southampton.

© Reuters/ANDREW BOYERS Just Stop Oil activists protest at the Esso Birmingham fuel terminal, in Birmingham

Exxon Mobil said work should resume at its oil terminals soon after temporarily suspending operations at four sites because of the protests.

Police in Essex, just east of London, said they were dealing with three incidents and 13 people had been arrested.

The protests began on the same day that people in Britain saw the largest hike in the cost of energy in decades due to record global gas prices, and as the government prepares to outline new ways to meet the country's energy needs.

Extinction Rebellion said it plans to increase the pressure on the government with daily protests in London, which are due to begin on April 9. The group said it aims to cause enough disruption "to create a tipping point moment".

© Reuters/ANDREW BOYERS Just Stop Oil activists protest at the Esso Birmingham fuel terminal, in Birmingham

"We will be more disruptive than ever, and we will be impossible to ignore," Andrew Smith, a spokesman for the group, told journalists.

Extinction Rebellion wants an emergency response from governments and a mass move away from polluting industries to avert the worst scenarios of global warming devastation outlined by scientists.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government plans to publish its new energy strategy next week. It is expected to boost its domestic supplies in an effort to shield Britain from a surge in prices caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

© Reuters/ANDREW BOYERS Just Stop Oil activists protest at the Esso Birmingham fuel terminal, in Birmingham

Britain has committed to reaching a net zero goal for carbon emissions by 2050.

But those plans have come under pressure following the Ukraine crisis, with the government saying it would step up domestic production of oil and gas after announcing it would phase out imports of Russian oil by the end of 2022.

The protests on Friday saw the involvement of Just Stop Oil, which describes itself as a coalition of groups working together to bring an end to the exploration, development, and production of fossil fuels.

© Reuters/JOHN SIBLEY Extinction Rebellion activists protest at Esso West London Terminal

Last month, an Everton-Newcastle Premier League soccer match was held up for several minutes after a protestor wearing a t-shirt with the words "Just Stop Oil" tied himself to a goal post.

© Reuters/JOHN SIBLEY Extinction Rebellion activists protest at Esso West London Terminal

(Editing by William Schomberg, William Maclean and Frances Kerry)

Scientists decode entire human genome at last



AP
Fri Apr 1, 2022 


Scientists say they have finally assembled the full genetic blueprint for human life, adding the missing pieces to a puzzle nearly completed two decades ago.

An international team described the first-ever sequencing of a complete human genome – the set of instructions to build and sustain a human being – in research published Thursday in the journal Science. The previous effort, celebrated across the world, was incomplete because DNA sequencing technologies of the day weren't able to read certain parts of it. Even after updates, it was missing about 8% of the genome.

"Some of the genes that make us uniquely human were actually in this 'dark matter of the genome' and they were totally missed," said Evan Eichler, a University of Washington researcher who participated in the current effort and the original Human Genome Project. "It took 20-plus years, but we finally got it done."

Many — including Eichler's own students — thought it had been finished already. "I was teaching them, and they said, 'Wait a minute. Isn't this like the sixth time you guys have declared victory? I said, 'No, this time we really, really did it!"


Scientists said this full picture of the genome will give humanity a greater understanding of our evolution and biology while also opening the door to medical discoveries in areas like aging, neurodegenerative conditions, cancer and heart disease.

"We're just broadening our opportunities to understand human disease," said Karen Miga, an author of one of the six studies published Thursday.

The research caps off decades of work. The first draft of the human genome was announced in a White House ceremony in 2000 by leaders of two competing entities: an international publicly funded project led by an agency of the U.S. National Institutes of Health and a private company, Maryland-based Celera Genomics.


The human genome is made up of about 3.1 billion DNA subunits, pairs of chemical bases known by the letters A, C, G and T. Genes are strings of these lettered pairs that contain instructions for making proteins, the building blocks of life. Humans have about 30,000 genes, organized in 23 groups called chromosomes that are found in the nucleus of every cell.

Before now, there were "large and persistent gaps that have been in our map, and these gaps fall in pretty important regions," Miga said.

Miga, a genomics researcher at the University of California-Santa Cruz, worked with Adam Phillippy of the National Human Genome Research Institute to organize the team of scientists to start from scratch with a new genome with the aim of sequencing all of it, including previously missing pieces. The group, named after the sections at the very ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, is known as the Telomere-to-Telomere, or T2T, consortium.

Their work adds new genetic information to the human genome, corrects previous errors and reveals long stretches of DNA known to play important roles in both evolution and disease. A version of the research was published last year before being reviewed by scientific peers.

"This is a major improvement, I would say, of the Human Genome Project," doubling its impact, said geneticist Ting Wang of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who was not involved in the research.

Eichler said some scientists used to think unknown areas contained "junk." Not him. "Some of us always believed there was gold in those hills," he said. Eichler is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports The Associated Press's health and science department.

Turns out that gold includes many important genes, he said, such as ones integral to making a person's brain bigger than a chimp's, with more neurons and connections.

To find such genes, scientists needed new ways to read life's cryptic genetic language.

Reading genes requires cutting the strands of DNA into pieces hundreds to thousands of letters long. Sequencing machines read the letters in each piece and scientists try to put the pieces in the right order. That's especially tough in areas where letters repeat.

Scientists said some areas were illegible before improvements in gene sequencing machines that now allow them to, for example, accurately read a million letters of DNA at a time. That allows scientists to see genes with repeated areas as longer strings instead of snippets that they had to later piece together.

Researchers also had to overcome another challenge: Most cells contain genomes from both mother and father, confusing attempts to assemble the pieces correctly. T2T researchers got around this by using a cell line from one "complete hydatidiform mole," an abnormal fertilized egg containing no fetal tissue that has two copies of the father's DNA and none of the mother's.

The next step? Mapping more genomes, including ones that include collections of genes from both parents. This effort did not map one of the 23 chromosomes that is found in males, called the Y chromosome, because the mole contained only an X.

Wang said he's working with the T2T group on the Human Pangenome Reference Consortium, which is trying to generate "reference," or template, genomes for 350 people representing the breadth of human diversity.

"Now we've gotten one genome right and we have to do many, many more," Eichler said. "This is the beginning of something really fantastic for the field of human genetics."

Two alleged Lapsus$ teens appear in London court

Written by AJ Vicens
APR 1, 2022 | CYBERSCOOP

Two of the teenagers arrested last week for their alleged role in the Lapsus$ cyber extortion group appeared in a London court Friday to formally face multiple charges.

The unidentified teens, aged 16 and 17, are both charged with three counts of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to impair the reliability of the data, one count of fraud by false representation and one count of unauthorized access to a computer with intent to hinder access to data. The 16-year-old faces an additional count of causing a computer to perform a function to secure unauthorized access to a program, according to a statement from City of London Police Detective Inspector Michael O’Sullivan.

The pair were released on bail, the BBC reported.

The court appearance comes about a week after the City of London Police arrested seven people aged 16 to 21 in connection with an investigation into Lapsus$, a prolific cybercrime group that successfully breached major companies such as Microsoft, Okta, Ubisoft, Nvidia and others in recent months.

Just before the arrests, Bloomberg reported that a 16-year-old living in his mother’s house in Oxford, England was involved with some of the group’s major hacks. The group had also posted a message to its Telegram channel a day before the arrests that “a few of our members has (sic) a vacation until 30/3/2022.”

On March 29 the group posted another message to the channel saying “we are officially back,” and posted a screenshot that appeared to data that appeared to be associated with Globant, an Argentina-based international IT and software development firm. The group claimed to have roughly 70 gigabytes of files.

On March 31 the company admitted it had suffered a data breach affecting a “limited section of our company’s code repository.”

V FOR VICTORY

Amazon workers at New York warehouse vote to form company's first US union


By Sara Ashley O'Brien, 

CNN Business
April 1, 2022

(CNN Business)Amazon (AMZN) warehouse workers at a facility in New York City have voted to form the first US union in the tech giant's 27-year history, marking a stunning victory for a bootstrapped effort led by a fired employee.

In a closely watched election, workers at a Staten Island, New York, facility known as JFK8 voted in favor of forming a union with a newly-established organization called Amazon Labor Union (ALU), which was started by current and former warehouse employees.

There were 2,654 votes in favor of unionizing and 2,131 votes against it by the end of the second and final day of public vote counting on Friday. Out of approximately 8,325 eligible voters, 4,785 votes were counted and another 67 were challenged. Seventeen ballots were voided.

The parties have five business days to file any objections.

Amazon union vote in Alabama is too close to call

In a statement after the vote, Amazon indicated that it is exploring various legal channels to fight the results. "We're disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees," Amazon said in the statement. "We're evaluating our options."

The staggering result could prove to be a milestone moment for Amazon and the broader labor movement in the United States. The union vote has the potential to upend how Amazon, the country's second largest private employer, engages with some members of its vast workforce. It could also add fuel to organizing both within the company's own sprawling empire, where some efforts are already underway such as at an Amazon Fresh store in Seattle, as well as at other companies across the country.

The outcome was hailed by advocacy groups, large labor unions and the White House, with press secretary Jen Psaki telling reporters Friday that President Joe Biden was "glad to see workers ensure that their voices were heard." John Logan, professor of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, called the ALU win a "jaw-dropping result." He added: "There really is no bigger prize for unions than winning at Amazon."

Shortly after the tally was complete, Christian Smalls, the president of ALU who is largely the face of the organization, joined a crowd of other ALU organizers and members of other labor groups that had gathered in downtown Brooklyn to celebrate the win. Sipping from a bottle of champagne and wearing pants emblazoned with the brand name "Billionaire Boys Club," Smalls gave a brief history of his contentious relationship with the company.

"Two years ago, my life changed forever," said Smalls, who was fired from his job at the facility in March 2020 after leading a walkout to protest pandemic related health and safety concerns. (Smalls says he was retaliated against; Amazon says he was terminated for violating its policy that required him to quarantine after being notified of a possible Covid-19 exposure.) "I only wanted to do the right thing and speak up for workers behind me," he said

In his speech, he also mentioned a widely reported suggestion by an Amazon executive in 2020 to disparage Smalls as "not smart or articulate." At the time, the executive said his comments were "personal and emotional," and that he'd allowed his emotions to "get the better of me."

"It's not about me. Amazon tried to make it about me from day one," Smalls said. "It's always going to be Amazon versus the people and today, the people said they wanted a union."

At the gathering, some handed out fliers that read, "Vote Yes For The Union. Despite what Amazon tells you, the union isn't some outside organization. It's a legal recognition of our right to have a say at work — as a group instead." Members of another pro-labor group held a large sign that read: "Amazon and Starbucks: Stop Union Busting! Recognize the union and negotiate now!"

The results of a separate do-over election at a facility in Bessemer, Alabama were too close to call. A total of 875 workers at the facility voted for joining a union and 993 voted against it, according to the tally, which was also conducted on Thursday. But another 416 ballots were challenged. The National Labor Relations Board expects to hold a hearing on the matter in the next few weeks to determine whether any of the challenged ballots will be opened and counted.

A bootstrapped push succeeds while an established union stumbled

Both union efforts were borne out of worker frustrations with Amazon's treatment of workers amid the pandemic and were also motivated in part by increased national attention to racial justice issues and labor rights. But there are key differences between the two.

The Alabama effort was done in coordination with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), an 85-year-old labor union, which has organized tens of thousands of workers. By contrast, the Staten Island push is not aligned with an existing labor union but rather is trying to create its own.

A demonstrator during the vote count to unionize Amazon workers outside the National Labor Relations Board offices in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Friday, April 1, 2022.

Smalls previously told CNN Business that ALU is running on "pennies compared to other campaigns," garnering $100,000 in donations raised through pages on GoFundMe, a crowdfunding platform.

He has sought to differentiate his organizing effort from the one in Bessemer, stating that having an independent union led by current and former employees of the facility "was working and resonated with the workers." (ALU has also garnered enough signatures for an NLRB election at a nearby Amazon facility in Staten Island later this month.)

The two union pushes are also unfolding in two very different parts of the country. The RWDSU drive occurred in Alabama, a right-to-work state, where union membership is low. New York, on the other hand, has the second highest union membership in the nation. Amazon's starting wage for workers of at least $15 an hour also fares differently in Alabama where the minimum wage is $7.25, compared to New York City's $15.

"They're enormously important elections. [Amazon] is a company that is not just retail, it is not just logistics, it cuts across almost every sector of the economy," Logan said.

"I think lots of pro-union Amazon workers will take inspiration from this. There's nothing exceptional about Staten Island to suggest that you can win at Amazon there but not somewhere else," Logan said, "All of a sudden, organizing at Amazon no longer seems futile."

Logan credits the initial RWDSU Bessemer drive one year ago, which was celebrated by a number of celebrities and politicians alike, with broadly creating "energy and enthusiasm amongst young people interested in organizing themselves." While the results of that election favored Amazon, a do-over was called for after the company was deemed to have illegally interfered. (An Amazon spokesperson called the decision "disappointing" at the time.)

Labor experts have repeatedly said that organizing Amazon workers is an incredibly difficult task given current labor law and the company's opposition to such efforts. Amazon's anti-union campaigns included signage inside its warehouses, text messages, and meetings that workers were required to attend before the election periods kicked off.

"In both cases, it's a David and Goliath situation. They're up against a very powerful, determined opponent," Ruth Milkman, a labor sociologist at City University of New York, previously told CNN Business. "In both cases, it's a very heavy lift because of Amazon's resources and determination to stamp out any unionization efforts."

Amazon has previously said its "employees have always had the choice of whether or not to join a union" and that it is focused on "working directly with our team to make Amazon a great place to work."

For more on the biggest and most important technology companies of our time, watch Land of the Giants: Titans of Tech on CNN+. This exclusive new series investigates the complicated history and meteoric rise of Meta (formerly Facebook), Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google.

Catherine Thorbecke and Clare Duffy contributed to this report

Amazon Union Scores Unexpected Win in New York Election, a First in the US

In a six-day election, warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to join the Amazon Labor Union.


Laura Hautala

CNET  
April 1, 2022

Amazon Labor Union organizer Chris Smalls at an Amazon facility in Staten Island, New York. The union became the first to win an election at a US Amazon facility on Friday.

Getty Images

In a first for the Amazon's US facilities, warehouse workers in Staten Island, New York, have voted in favor of joining a union. The union's win, if certified by the federal labor board, adds momentum to an organizing movement that's been gaining steam around the country.

The tally of 2,654 yes votes to 2,131 no votes came after six days of in-person voting at the warehouse and an intense campaign. In the leadup to the vote, the union filed complaints to the National Labor Relations Board alleging that Amazon engaged in unfair labor practices.

The Amazon Labor Union, a new group that was formed by current and former Amazon workers, emerged from workers' efforts to demand better COVID-19 protections in 2020. The group eventually began an organizing bid after some workers involved in planning walkouts were disciplined or fired. That included fired worker Chris Smalls, who caught the attention of Amazon's top leadership. In a memo that was later leaked, Amazon's general counsel, David Zapolsky, said the company should try to make him the face of the movement because he's "not smart or articulate."

In a tweet Friday, Smalls said Amazon got what it hoped for. "Amazon wanted to make me the face of the whole unionizing efforts against them.... welp there you go!" he wrote, addressing the comments to Zapolsky and Jeff Bezos.

Separately, a vote on unionization at an Amazon facility in Alabama failed on Thursday, though the result could be affected when hundreds of challenged ballots are resolved.

Amazon said in a statement that it's disappointed with the results of the Staten Island vote: "We believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees."

The statement went on to say that Amazon would evaluate its options for filing objections to the election based on "inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB." Amazon didn't respond to a follow-up question from CNET about what that alleged influence involved.

"The NLRB is an independent federal agency that Congress has charged with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act," said NLRB spokesperson Kayla Blado in a statement. "All NLRB enforcement actions against Amazon have been consistent with that Congressional mandate."

At a briefing with reporters, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said President Joe Biden "was glad to see workers ensure their voices are heard with respect to important workplace decisions." She added, "He believes that every worker in every state must have a free and fair choice to join a union and the right to bargain collectively with their employer."

The Staten Island victory defied predictions of labor experts, who noted before the election that the union only secured support from 30% of workers when they formally requested a union election. Amazon expressed skepticism that the workers' group had even achieved that benchmark but agreed to move ahead with the election. ALU also won in the face of Amazon's extensive campaign urging workers to vote no, including mandatory meetings with consultants describing downsides to unions and messages sent to phones and posted around work spaces.

"It's very, very difficult to win in any circumstances, and especially against an employer with unlimited resources," said Rebecca Givan, an associate professor of labor relations at Rutgers University.

A new union strategy

Connor Spence, vice president of membership at ALU, said turning in signatures from just over 30% of workers was a strategic move. By the time organizers got 50% of signatures, many of the people who signed on would likely have stopped working at the facility because turnover is so high. Instead, the union's team of about 20 core organizers worked to file for an election as quickly as possible and focus on the existing group of workers while they were still employed at the warehouse.

"That's the only strategy that will work at Amazon," Spence said, adding it was especially true for a union with limited resources.

A single unionized warehouse is unlikely to have an effect on customer experience or Amazon's bottom line. Still, it could inspire further organizing, said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester, which is one reason for Amazon's aggressive approach.

"It's been something that Amazon has been advocating against for a long time," she said.

The company is also facing higher labor and logistics costs at a time of rising wages, after having spent the pandemic growing its capacities with new facilities that need staffing.

Amazon has said it thinks unions will get in the way of communication between managers and workers, slowing things down. The company spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants in 2021, according to a report Thursday from HuffPost. It's not known how much the company has spent so far this year fighting organizing drives at Staten Island as well as in Bessemer, Alabama, where a separate union drive culminated in a vote that was also counted Thursday.

In the Alabama election, workers voted not to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. However, the results can't be finalized until more than 400 challenged ballots are resolved.

ALU secured an early lead when counting began Thursday at the NLRB office in Brooklyn, New York, widening to more than 300 votes by the end of the day. Counting resumed Friday morning. A separate warehouse in Staten Island has also petitioned for a union vote.

Spence, ALU's vice president of membership, said the union is still getting used to the feeling of victory.

Still, he said, "Failure was never an option."

First published on April 1, 2022 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out after Amazon workers win historic first union vote
Jon Skolnik, Salon
April 01, 2022

Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez speak about the importance of a Green New Deal at a town hall organized by the Sunrise Movement.

(Rachael Warriner / Shutterstock.com)

Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, R-N.Y., is in hot water for promoting an employee-led organizing effort at Amazon after critics noted that she backed out of a speaking engagement with those same employees during a union rally last summer.



The spat played out over Twitter on Thursday, when the Amazon Labor Union, which recently held a successful union vote at an Amazon facility in New York City's Staten Island, revealed that it was winning by 400-vote margin.


About an hour later, Ocasio-Cortez expressed solidarity with the union. But that comment did not sit well with some leftist commentators, including most notably, Krystal Ball, a host of the "Breaking Points" podcast.



"Here's the guy who organized the union drive talking about how you left them high and dry," Ball responded, tweeting a video of her interview with Amazon labor organizer Christian Smalls. "These are your constituents and you couldn't be bothered to show up until they're on the cusp of victory."

For his part, Smalls also piled on Ocasio-Cortez, who represents parts of Queens and the Bronx.

"So what exactly is the insinuation here?" the progressive lawmaker shot back. "That we are secretly in the tank for Amazon? That we're 'sellouts' despite leading congressional investigations into Amazon, taking huge blowback to call out the scam HQ2 deal, meeting with workers in our district warehouses? It's reaching."


RELATED: Biden just backed a union drive in Alabama but didn't mention Amazon. Here's why that's a good thing

The exchange appears to stem from an incident last August when Ocasio-Cortez was slated to appear for a speech at a rally held by the Amazon Labor Union. Before the event, however, the progressive lawmaker unexpectedly canceled her appearance over "scheduling conflicts" and "security concerns."

"Security was an issue as well. 2021 included a lot of high level threats on my life, which limited what activities I was able to do, especially those outside," as Ocasio-Cortez explained over Twitter. "The combination of that + when we are able to get resources/time to secure them creates scheduling + logistical conflicts."


On Friday, the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island officially voted to unionize, marking one of the biggest labor victories in modern American history. According to the National Labor Relations Board, the union vote won by more than 10 percentage points with 2,654 votes for the Amazon Labor Union and 2,131 against. The Staten Island facility, which employs roughly 6,000 workers, is now the first Amazon facility in the company's history to join a union.

During the leadup to the union drive, Amazon aggressively fought to stamp out the organizing effort, posting anti-union signage in its facility, holding mandatory weekly meetings about the alleged ills of unionization, and hiring a Democratic consultancy to advise them on various union avoidance tactics.

RELATED: Amazon election: Why union votes are so tough for labor to win


The Amazon Labor Union was led by Smalls, a former Stand Island Amazon worker who alleges he was fired back in 2020 for organizing protests against the company's non-observance of social distancing amid the spread of COVID-19.

"I say what I say and that's what got me here," Smalls told Bloomberg before the election. "The same thing with the union: It represents what the workers want to say."



On Friday, the House of Representatives opened a federal probe into Amazon's unfair labor practices. Leaders of the inquiry, which includes Ocasio-Cortez, have demanded that the company hand over documents related to its labor policies and procedures, particularly when it comes to severe weather events like the Illinois tornado that ripped through an Amazon warehouse back in January, killing six workers who were told to stay despite fearing for their safety. She also joined Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., in a letter to Amazon demanding more information about its worker safety protocols.

CAPITALIST CRIES CROCODILE TEARS

 'Dreadful!' CNBC's Jim Cramer bitterly complains about historic union win at Amazon warehouse
Brad Reed
April 01, 2022

Jim Cramer (CNBC/screen grab)


CNBC host Jim Cramer does not appear enthused about the historic win for organized labor that occurred on Friday when an Amazon warehouse in State Island voted to unionize.

While discussing the victory on CNBC, Cramer complained that Amazon will no longer be allowed to order their workers at the State Island warehouse to show up whenever they're needed.

"If you can't tell your employees when they work, then you're really not able to have much of an ability to move product," he said. “The unions will be in charge of time that you need to work, and that would be dreadful!"

Cramer did acknowledge unions do exist in other companies and that those companies are still profitable, but he then pivoted back to griping about unions being able to set schedules for workers.

"No one wants to work certain shifts," he said. "So you can just say, 'Listen I'm not going to work that shift.' And Amazon would not be able to say, 'Yes you must work it!' So that's what's at stake with unions."

Cramer also added that "one reason why Amazon works so well is that people must work when Amazon says you must work."

Watch the video below.

PROGRESSIVES NEED TO PRIMARY THEM
Vulnerable Democrats warn Biden about reopening asylum

Fri, April 1, 2022,



PHOENIX (AP) — The Biden administration's decision to end sweeping asylum limits at the border this May satisfied demands by prominent Democrats eagerly awaiting the end of a program created by Donald Trump in the name of public health.

But it creates thorny political challenges for border-region Democrats who face the likely prospect of an increase in migrants who have for two years been denied the chance to seek asylum in the United States.

In unusually harsh critiques of a president from their own party, some of the congressional Democrats with the toughest reelection prospects are warning that the administration is woefully unprepared to handle the situation. Previous rises in migration have strained law enforcement agencies and nonprofits on the border trying to provide security and shelter.

“This is a crisis, and in my estimation, because of a lack of planning from the administration, it’s about to get worse,” said Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona.

Kelly and fellow Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema met Wednesday with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to press their case for the administration to better plan and coordinate a response. Last week, they wrote to President Joe Biden urging him to delay ending the pandemic rules until his administration is “completely ready to execute and coordinate a comprehensive plan that ensures a secure, orderly, and humane process at the border.”

Sinema and Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn sent a similar letter to Mayorkas on Thursday. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, another top target for Republicans, were critical of the decision Friday.

Migrants have been expelled from the U.S. more than 1.7 million times under public health powers invoked in March 2020 that are designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration announced plans Friday to end Title 42 authority — named for a 1944 public health law — by May 23. Near the height of the omicron variant in late January, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had extended the order to this week.

The announcement comes after mounting pressure from many prominent Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, to end a Trump-era program they cast as an excuse to wriggle out of obligations under U.S. law and international treaty to protect anyone fleeing persecution.

Kelly, Sinema and other skeptical Democrats say the emergency powers must go away eventually, but they say the federal government has failed to develop and share plans to minimize the impact on communities near the border and the local religious and nonprofit groups that help migrants there.

“I’ve worked really hard to make it very clear to them that this situation is unacceptable, and they seem to get the message,” Kelly added. “It’s more challenging to get them to turn this into an actionable plan.”

Kelly, elected from once-solidly conservative Arizona, is among the most vulnerable Democrats in the Senate. He’s aggressively targeted by Republicans in what is already a tough year for Democrats who are fighting to hold onto their razor-thin majority in the Senate.

Kelly declined to discuss the impact of the decision on his tough reelection campaign, saying he’s focused on his job as senator.

“They know the realities of Arizona and its history, especially as a border state,” Mike Noble, a Phoenix-based pollster who used to consult for Republican campaigns but now focuses on nonpartisan polling, said of Arizona's senators. “If they want to maintain their seats, they have to be tough on immigration, and if not, they could find themselves out of a job.”

Republicans see rising numbers of migrants as a winning issue with swing voters, particularly in border states like Arizona. An AP-NORC poll conducted in January found just 39% of Americans approve of how Biden is handling immigration. Eighty-seven percent of Republicans said they disapprove, but so did 34% of Democrats.

“The entire country sees the failure of the Biden administration and the laughing matter that this is to Kamala Harris, the self-appointed czar,” said Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, the co-chair of the Republican Governors Association, which raises money to elect GOP governors. “They’re gonna pay a hell of a price at the ballot box in November. In every state.”

In Texas, Democratic Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, both of whom represent border districts, joined Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation this week in expressing concern about ending Title 42.

“I did tell the White House, you understand that there will be vulnerable Democrats,” Cuellar said. “They acknowledge those concerns. But I think the White House has been under tremendous pressure by the immigration activists. They’re very vocal.”

Encapsulating internal divisions among Democrats, Cuellar’s primary opponent, immigration attorney Jessica Cisneros, said on Twitter that Cuellar’s support for keeping Title 42 amounts to “cruel and inhuman treatment of people whose stories and families resemble our own.”

Advocates for immigrants and refugees in Arizona say it’s long past time for the Biden administration to stop using public health rules to prevent people from claiming asylum.

Arizona’s senators seem to be looking at the border issue through a national political lens, said Joanna Williams, executive director of the Kino Border Initiative, which works in the twin border towns of Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Mexico.

“They are underestimating Arizonans,” Williams said. “We really have a community of hospitality that can arise to the occasion and help people. The senators need to listen to what people here are saying. This isn’t Texas.”

Alex Miller, director of asylum seekers and families for the International Rescue Committee in Arizona, said with coronavirus positivity rates among new arrivals now at less than 1% “the justification for closing the border is gone.”

“There is just no excuse for denying people fleeing from terrible abuse from getting asylum,” she said. “We have a moral responsibility to help these people.”

___

Associated Press writers Emily Swanson and Nomaan Merchant in Washington contributed.

Jonathan J. Cooper And Anita Snow, The Associated Press

Migrant caravan clashes with authorities in southern Mexico

Online News EditorApril 1, 2022

 

By Juan Manuel Blanco

Mexico City, Apr 1 (EFE).- Hundreds of migrants set off on foot from the southeastern Mexican border city of Tapachula on Friday with the goal of reaching this capital and regularizing their status, but they clashed with federal authorities soon after embarking on their trek.

That new contingent of men, women and children, dubbed the “Migrant Way of the Cross” since the date of their departure was just days before the start of Easter Week, started off at around 7 am from that city in Chiapas state near the Guatemalan border, where thousands of migrants have been stranded for weeks or even months.

TIRED OF WAITING

Carlos Riquelme, a Salvadoran man, told Efe he is fed up with trying to obtain a residency permit through the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance (Comar) or the National Institute of Migration (INM).

He said he has spent three years in Tapachula – denounced by migrant activists as a “city-prison” – and that when Comar finally ruled on his asylum request the response was negative.

The Central American said he had joined an earlier migrant caravan but was detained by immigration authorities.

“They didn’t even deport me back to my country. They left me in Mexico,” Riquelme said, adding that he wants to reach a region of Mexico with more job opportunities but that this will be his final attempt.

Venezuela’s Ivel Antonio Martinez said for his part that the economic situation in Tapachula is challenging.

He added that the migrants would welcome the protection of federal authorities along the route. “We don’t want violence or confrontation. We want peace and free passage.”

CLASHES WITH AUTHORITIES

On the first stretch of their planned 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) journey, the migrants walked from Tapachula to the village of Viva Mexico some 8 kilometers (5 miles) away.

The members of the migrant caravan clashed with INM and National Guard personnel at the first checkpoint they came upon in Viva Mexico, but they managed to break through the security barricade set up by those federal authorities.

Some 150 National Guard members were present during that initial confrontation.

The INM’s delegate in Chiapas, Paola Lopez Rodas, urged migrants to return and regularize their status but her petition was ignored.

Many of the migrants were knocked to the ground during the clash, some of them women and children, but no arrests were made and they continued to make their way along Chiapas’s coastal highway.

Some 7 km further along, the migrants encountered a veritable wall of federal agents and some even hurled rocks in their direction.

Several migrants were arrested at that juncture, although the caravan continued on with a reduced contingent, Efe observed.

MIGRANT WAVE

The region is experiencing a record flow of migrants trying to make their way to the US, whose Customs and Border Protection agency intercepted a record 1.7 million undocumented migrants trying to enter the country illegally in the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2021.