More than 100,000 people protested Saturday across France against the government’s latest measures to push people to get vaccinated and curb rising infections by the delta variant of the coronavirus.

In Paris, separate protest marches by the far right and the far left wound through different parts of the city. Demonstrations were also held in Strasbourg in the east, Lille in the north, Montpellier in the south and elsewhere.

Thousands of people answered calls to take to the streets by Florian Philippot, a fringe far-right politician and former right hand of Marine Le Pen who announced earlier this month that he would run in the 2022 presidential election. Gathered a stone’s throw from the Louvre Museum, protesters chanted “Macron, clear off!” and “Freedom,” and they banged metal spoons on saucepans.

While Philippot has organized small but regular protests against the government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis, Saturday’s demonstration drew a larger and more diverse crowd of people broadly disaffected with politics: yellow vest activists angry over perceived economic injustice, far-right supporters, medical staff and royalists.

A shot? ‘Never’

They denounced the government’s decision on Monday to make vaccines compulsory for all health care workers, and to require a “health pass” proving people are fully vaccinated, have recently tested negative or have recovered from the virus in order to access restaurants and other public venues. President Emmanuel Macron’s government is presenting a draft law Monday to enshrine the measures.

“I will never get vaccinated,” Bruno Auquier, 53, a town councilor who lives on the outskirts of Paris. “People need to wake up,” he said, questioning the safety of the vaccine.

While France requires several vaccinations to enter public school, Auquier pledged to take his two children out of school if the coronavirus vaccine became mandatory.

“These new measures are the last straw,” Auquier said.

The government warned of the continued spread of the delta variant, which authorities fear could again put pressure on hospitals if not enough people are vaccinated against the virus. The pandemic has cost France more than 111,000 lives and deeply damaged its economy.

During a visit to a pop-up vaccination center in the southwest, Prime Minister Jean Castex exhorted the French to stick together in order to overcome the crisis.

“There is only one solution: vaccination,” he said, stressing it “protects us, and will make us freer.”

At the Paris protest, a manual worker in his 60s expressed bitterness about jobs in his sector being sent offshore. A 24-year-old royalist said he was there to demand “the return of God and the king.”

‘Going too far’

Lucien, 28, a retail shop manager, said he wasn’t anti-vaccine, but thought people should be able to do as they please with their own bodies.

“The government is going too far,” he said. His friend Elise, 26, said, “I am vaccinated against diphtheria, tetanus and polio. But the COVID vaccine is just too experimental.”

While a majority of French health care workers have had at least one vaccine dose, some are resisting the government’s decision to make vaccination compulsory for all staff in medical facilities.

At Saturday’s Paris protest, a 39-year-old green party supporter and hospital laboratory worker said she might resort to buying a fake vaccination certificate to avoid losing her job. A health care worker dressed as the Statue of Liberty called it “act of violence” to force people to get vaccinated.

In Montpellier, more than 1,000 people marched to the train station, chanting “Liberty!” and carrying signs reading “Our kids aren’t guinea pigs.” Security officials closed the main entrance to travelers and a dozen police officers took posts in front.

The Interior Ministry said 114,000 people took part in protests nationwide.

Overnight on Friday, vandals ransacked a vaccination center in the southeast. Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin asked prefects and police chiefs to reinforce security for elected officials, after several complained they had received threats in recent days over the latest anti-COVID measures.

Vaccine hesitancy is considered widespread in France, though it appears to have faded somewhat as 36 million French people have gotten coronavirus vaccine doses in recent months. Millions more have gotten injected or signed up for vaccinations since Monday’s announcement.

French health care workers have until September 15 to get vaccinated. The requirement for COVID passes for all restaurants, bars, hospitals, shopping malls, trains, planes and other venues is being introduced in stages starting Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the French government announced tightened border controls starting Sunday, but also said it would allow in travelers from anywhere in the world who have been fully vaccinated.

That now includes people who received AstraZeneca’s Indian-manufactured vaccine. The move came after a global outcry because the European Union’s COVID-19 certificate recognizes only AstraZeneca vaccines manufactured in Europe.
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Martine Moise, the wife of Haiti’s assassinated president who was injured in the July 7 attack at their private home, returned to the Caribbean nation on Saturday following her release from a Miami hospital.

Her arrival was unannounced and surprised many in the country of more than 11 million people still reeling from the assassination of Jovenel Moise in a raid authorities say involved Haitians, Haitian Americans and former Colombian soldiers.

Martine Moise disembarked the flight at the Port-au-Prince airport wearing a black dress, a black bulletproof vest and a black face mask. Her right arm was in a black sling as she slowly walked down the steps of what appeared to be a private plane. She was greeted by interim Prime Minister Claude Joseph and other officials.

Earlier this week, she tweeted from the Miami hospital that she could not believe her husband was gone “without saying a last word. This pain will never pass.”

On Friday, government officials announced that Jovenel Moise’s funeral would be on July 23 in the northern Haitian city of Cap-Haitien and that his wife was expected to attend.

Group: Let chosen PM form government

Earlier Saturday a key group of international diplomats issued a statement urging Ariel Henry, the designated prime minister, to form a government following Moise’s killing.

Joseph has been leading Haiti with the backing of police and the military even though Moise had announced Joseph’s replacement a day before he was killed.

Joseph and his allies argue that Henry was never sworn in, though he pledged to work with him and with Joseph Lambert, the head of Haiti’s inactive Senate.

The statement was issued by the Core Group, which is made up of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the U.S., France, the European Union and representatives from the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

The group called for the creation of “a consensual and inclusive government.”

“To this end, it strongly encourages the designated Prime Minister Ariel Henry to continue the mission entrusted to him to form such a government,” the group said.

U.S. officials could not be immediately reached for comment. A U.N. spokesman declined comment except to say that the U.N. is part of the group that issued the statement. An OAS spokesman said: “For the moment, there is nothing further to say other than what the statement says.”

Henry and spokespeople for Joseph did not immediately return messages for comment.

Robert Fatton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia, said the statement was very confusing, especially after the U.N. representative had said that Joseph was in charge.

The question of who should take over has been complicated by the fact Haiti’s parliament has not been functioning because a lack of elections meant most members’ terms had expired. And the head of the Supreme Court recently died of COVID-19.
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Raul Castro was among thousands who attended a government-organized rally in Havana on Saturday to denounce the U.S. trade embargo and reaffirm their support for Cuba’s revolution, a week after unprecedented protests rocked the communist-run country.

Government supporters gathered on the city’s seafront boulevard before dawn to wave Cuban flags and photos of late revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. The latter retired as Communist Party leader in April but promised to continue fighting for the revolution as a “foot soldier.”

The rally was a reaction to demonstrations that erupted nationwide last Sunday amid widespread shortages of basic goods, demands for political rights and the island nation’s worst coronavirus outbreak since the start of the pandemic.

The government admitted some shortcomings this week but mostly blamed the protests on U.S.-financed “counter-revolutionaries” exploiting economic hardship caused by U.S. sanctions.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who also heads the Communist Party, told the crowd that Cuba’s “enemy has once again thrown itself into destroying citizens’ sacred unity and tranquility.”

He said it was no small matter to call a rally as the country saw increasing numbers of COVID cases: “We convened you to denounce once more the blockade, the aggression and terror.”

‘Revolution will continue’

Authorities said similar rallies were held nationwide.

“This revolution will continue for a long time,” said Margaritza Arteaga, a state social worker who attended the rally in Havana.

Workers had been convened by neighborhood block committees, known as the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, she said, and a state bus had picked her up at 4 a.m.

Shortly before the rally in Havana officially began, authorities removed a man shouting anti-government slogans including “freedom” from the crowd.

The number of those detained during or after protests has grown as new reports trickle in amid irregular outages in internet and messaging applications on the island, where the state has a monopoly on telecommunications.

The latest tally from exiled rights group Cubalex put those detained at 450, although some have since been released. Activists have accused authorities of repression as some videos have emerged on social media of police beating protesters.

The government has not yet given official figures for those detained although it has said it arrested those it suspected of instigating unpatriotic unrest or of carrying out vandalism. State television has broadcast images of people looting Cuba’s controversial dollar stores and overturning empty police cars.
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Temple elephants in southern India’s Kerala state began their monthlong wellness camp at Vadakkunnathan temple, Saturday, July 17. 

Eating fruits, rice sweet balls, and other items, the elephants were seen happily interacting with people. 

The elephants are ritualistically relieved from daily chores for a monthlong restorative treatment called Aanayoottu, beginning from Saturday. 

Aanayoottu means feeding the elephants with specially prepared food, which is known for its high medicinal value. This medicinal concoction is regarded as vital for enhancing the well-being of elephants. 

The formulation is administered to the animals to protect and improve their health during the monsoon months when they are not taken for any temple processions, of which they are an essential part, and are provided with full rest. 

(Reuters)  
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Forces in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region have released about 1,000 government soldiers captured during recent fighting, the head of its ruling party said, as both sides prepared for a showdown over contested land in the west of the region.

Debretsion Gebremichael, leader of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), told Reuters by satellite phone late Friday they have released 1,000 low-ranking soldiers. “More than 5,000 [soldiers] are still with us, and we will keep the senior officers who will face trial,” he said.

He said the soldiers had been driven to Tigray’s southern border with the Amhara region on Friday, but he did not say who received them or how the release was negotiated.

Reuters could not independently confirm his account. A military spokesman said he was not immediately available to comment Saturday, and the spokesman for the Amhara regional administration said he had no information on the release.

Officials in Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s office and a government taskforce on Tigray did not answer calls seeking comment.

Fighting broke out in Tigray in November when the government accused the TPLF of attacking military bases across the region, which the party denied. The government declared victory three weeks later when it took control of the regional capital, Mekelle, but the TPLF kept fighting.

In a dramatic turn, the TPLF retook Mekelle and most of Tigray at the end of June, after the government pulled out its soldiers and declared a unilateral cease-fire.

The TPLF vowed to keep fighting, however, until it had regained control of disputed territory in the south and west of Tigray that was seized during the fighting by the government’s allies from Amhara.

Abiy said this week that the military would repel any TPLF threat, effectively abandoning the self-declared truce. Amhara and three other regions said they were mobilizing forces to support the national army in its fight against the TPLF.

Thousands of people have died in the fighting; around 2 million have been displaced and more than 5 million rely on emergency food aid.

On Friday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry issued a statement accusing aid groups of arming rebels.

“Some aid agencies have been actively engaged in a destructive role. We have also confirmed that they have been using aid as a cover and are arming the rebel groups to prolong the conflicts,” it said.

The statement did not identify the groups and there was no immediate response from the agencies that operate in Tigray. The United Nations humanitarian organization OCHA did not respond to a request for comment.

The U.N. has said desperately needed aid is being blocked at checkpoints as convoys travel through government-held territory. Ethiopian authorities say the aid needs to be checked.
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Rescue workers searched flood-ravaged parts of western Germany for survivors on Saturday as water levels remained high in many towns and houses continued to collapse in the country’s worst natural disaster in half a century.

At least 133 people have died in the flooding, including some 90 people in the Ahrweiler district south of Cologne, according to police estimates on Saturday. Hundreds of people are still missing.

Around 700 residents were evacuated late on Friday after a dam broke in the town of Wassenberg near Cologne, authorities said.

Over the past several days the floods, which have mostly hit the states of Rhineland Palatinate and North Rhine-Westphalia, have cut off entire communities from power and communications.

The flooding has also hit parts of Belgium and the Netherlands. At least 20 people have died in Belgium.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Armin Laschet, state premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, were scheduled to visit Erftstadt, one of the hardest hit towns, on Saturday.

Laschet is ruling CDU party’s candidate in September’s general election. The devastation of the floods could intensify the debate over climate change ahead of the vote.

Scientists have long said that climate change will lead to heavier downpours. But determining its role in these relentless downpours will take at least several weeks to research, scientists said on Friday. 
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Pope Francis cracked down Friday on the spread of the old Latin Mass, reversing one of Pope Benedict XVI’s signature decisions in a major challenge to traditionalist Catholics who immediately decried it as an attack on them and the ancient liturgy.

Francis reimposed restrictions on celebrating the Latin Mass that Benedict relaxed in 2007 and went further to limit its use. The pontiff said he was acting because Benedict’s reform had become a source of division in the church and been exploited by Catholics opposed to the Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that modernized the church and its liturgy.

Critics said they had never witnessed a pope so thoroughly reversing his predecessor. That the reversal concerned something so fundamental as the liturgy, while Benedict is still alive and living in the Vatican as a retired pope, only amplified the extraordinary nature of Francis’ move, which will surely result in more right-wing hostility directed at him.

Francis, 84, issued a new law requiring individual bishops to approve celebrations of the old Mass, also called the Tridentine Mass, and requiring newly ordained priests to receive explicit permission to celebrate it from their bishops, in consultation with the Vatican.

Under the new law, bishops must also determine if the current groups of faithful attached to the old Mass accept Vatican II, which allowed for Mass to be celebrated in the vernacular rather than Latin. These groups cannot use regular churches; instead, bishops must find alternate locations for them without creating new parishes.

In addition, Francis said bishops are no longer allowed to authorize the formation of any new pro-Latin Mass groups in their dioceses.

Francis said he was taking action to promote unity and heal divisions within the church that had grown since Benedict’s 2007 document, Summorum Pontificum. He said he based his decision on a 2020 Vatican survey of all the world’s bishops, whose “responses reveal a situation that preoccupies and saddens me, and persuades me of the need to intervene.”

The pope’s rollback immediately created an uproar among traditionalists already opposed to Francis’ more progressive bent and nostalgic for Benedict’s doctrinaire papacy.

“This is an extremely disappointing document which entirely undoes the legal provisions,” of Benedict’s 2007 document, said Joseph Shaw, chairman of the Latin Mass Society of England and Wales.

While Latin celebrations can continue, “the presumption is consistently against them: bishops are being invited to close them down,” Shaw said, adding that the requirement for Latin Masses to be held outside a parish was “unworkable.”

“This is an extraordinary rejection of the hard work for the church and the loyalty to the hierarchy which has characterized the movement for the Traditional Mass for many years, which I fear will foster a sense of alienation among those attached to the church’s ancient liturgy,” he said.

Benedict had issued his document in 2007 to reach out to a breakaway, schismatic group that celebrates the Latin Mass, the Society of St. Pius X, and which had split from Rome over the modernizing reforms of Vatican II.

But Francis said Benedict’s effort to foster unity had essentially backfired.

The opportunity offered by Benedict, the pope said in a letter to bishops accompanying the new law, was instead “exploited to widen the gaps, reinforce the divergences, and encourage disagreements that injure the Church, block her path, and expose her to the peril of division.”

Francis said he was “saddened” that the use of the old Mass was accompanied by a rejection of Vatican II itself “with unfounded and unsustainable assertions that it betrayed the Tradition and the ‘true Church.’”

Christopher Bellitto, professor of church history at Kean University, said Francis was right to intervene, noting that Benedict’s original decision had had a slew of unintended consequences that not only created internal divisions but temporarily roiled relations with Jews.

“Francis hits it right on the head with his observation that Benedict’s 2007 loosening of regulations against the Latin rite allowed others to use it for division,” he said. “The blowback proves his point.”

The blowback was indeed fierce, though it’s also likely that many will simply ignore Francis’ decree and continue as before with sympathetic bishops. Some of these traditionalists and Catholics already were among Francis’ fiercest critics, with some accusing him of heresy for having opened the door to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

Rorate Caeli, a popular traditionalist blog run out of the U.S., said Francis’ “attack” was the strongest rebuke of a pope against his predecessors in living memory.

“Francis HATES US. Francis HATES Tradition. Francis HATES all that is good and beautiful,” the group tweeted. But it concluded: “FRANCIS WILL DIE, THE LATIN MASS WILL LIVE FOREVER.”

Messa in Latino, an Italian traditionalist blog, was also blistering in its criticism.

“Mercy always and only for sinners (who are not asked to repent) but no mercy for those few traditional Catholics,” the blog said Friday.

For years, though, Francis has made known his distaste of the old liturgy, privately labeling its adherents self-referential naval gazers who are out of touch with the needs of the church. He has cracked down on religious orders that celebrated the old Mass exclusively and frequently decried the “rigidity” of tradition-minded priests who prioritize rules over pastoral accompaniment.

Traditionalists have insisted that the old liturgy was never abrogated, and that Benedict’s 2007 reform had allowed it to flourish.

They point to the growth of traditionalist parishes, often frequented by young, large families, as well as new religious orders that celebrate the old liturgy. The Latin Mass Society says the number of traditional Masses celebrated each Sunday in England and Wales had more than doubled since 2007, from 20 to 46.

But for many, the writing was on the wall as soon as Francis stepped out onto the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica after his 2013 election without the ermine-trimmed red velvet cape that was preferred by Benedict and is a symbol of the pre-Vatican II church.

The restrictions went into immediate effect with its publication in Friday’s official Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. 
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