ACLU: 911 children split at border since 2018 court order
SAN DIEGO — More than 900 children, including babies and toddlers, were separated from their parents at the border in the year after a judge ordered the practice be sharply curtailed, the American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday in a legal attack that will invite more scrutiny of the Trump administration’s widely criticized tactics.
The ACLU said the administration is separating families over dubious allegations and minor transgressions including traffic offenses. It asked a judge to rule on whether the 911 separations from June 28, 2018, to June 29 of this year were justified.
In June 2018 — days after President Donald Trump retreated amid an international uproar — U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw ordered that the practice of splitting up families at the border be halted except in limited circumstances, like threats to child safety. The judge left individual decisions to the administration’s discretion.
Since then, a parent was separated for having damaged property valued at $5, the ACLU said. A 1-year-old was separated after an official criticized her father for letting her sleep with a wet diaper.
In another case, a 2-year-old Guatemalan girl was separated from her father after authorities examined her for a fever and diaper rash and found she was malnourished and underdeveloped, the ACLU said. The father, who came from an “extraordinarily impoverished community” rife with malnutrition, was accused of neglect.
Seoul: North Korea launched 2 short-range ballistic missiles
SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles off its east coast Wednesday in defiance of U.N. resolutions, South Korea’s military said, less than a week after Pyongyang’s first weapons tests in more than two months.
Observers say the launches were aimed at ramping up pressure on the United States to make concessions as the two countries are struggling to resume diplomacy on the North’s nuclear weapons program.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement the missiles were launched from the town of Wonsan, a regular launch site on the North’s eastern coast. It said both missiles were believed to have flown about 155 miles at a maximum altitude of 19 miles and that South Korean and U.S. militaries were trying to find more details of the launches.
“The North’s repeated missile launches are not helpful to an effort to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula and we urge (North Korea) to stop this kind of behavior,” a Joint Chiefs of Staff statement said.
Six days earlier, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles that Seoul officials say flew 600 kilometers (370 miles) before landing at sea.
Trump ‘rodent’ tweets ring true at Kushner-owned apartments
BALTIMORE — Davon Jones doesn’t have to look far to see the irony in President Donald Trump’s tweets that Baltimore is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” His apartment owned by the president’s son-in-law has been invaded by mice since he moved in a year ago.
“I don’t know how they come in,” Jones says. “Every time I catch them, they come right back.”
Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm owns thousands of apartments and townhomes in the Baltimore area, and some have been criticized for the same kind of disrepair and neglect that the president has accused local leaders of failing to address. Residents have complained about mold, bedbugs, leaks and, yes, mice — plenty of mice. And they say management appears in no hurry to fix the problems.
“They don’t care,” says Dezmond James, who says he has spotted as many as three mice a week since he moved in to the Commons at White Marsh in suburban Middle River four years ago.
James says he sees a massive contradiction in Trump’s much-publicized tweets laying the blame for Baltimore’s poverty, crime and rodent problems on frequent antagonist Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings. Trump, he said, should look more at what he — and specifically Kushner — could do about it.
Congo officials say 2nd Ebola case confirmed in city of Goma
KINSHASA, Congo — Officials in Congo on Tuesday said a second Ebola case had been confirmed in Goma, the city of more than 2 million people whose first confirmed case in this yearlong outbreak was reported earlier this month.
There appeared to be no link between the man’s case and the previous one in Goma, Jean-Jacques Muyembe, a local Ebola response coordinator, told reporters. He arrived on July 13 from a mining area in northeastern Congo’s Ituri province and started showing symptoms on July 22. He is now isolated at an Ebola treatment center. Ebola symptoms can start to occur between two and 21 days from infection, health experts say.
Goma is on Congo’s heavily traveled border with Rwanda and has an international airport. For months health officials had feared that an Ebola case would be confirmed there. Days after the first Goma case was announced, the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak a rare global emergency.
This has become the second-deadliest Ebola outbreak in history, with more than 1,700 people killed despite the widespread use of an experimental but effective Ebola vaccine. Containing the outbreak faces unprecedented challenges amid attacks by rebel groups and resistance by wary community residents in a region of Congo that had never experienced an Ebola outbreak before.
Muyembe and other officials on Tuesday sought to reassure both Goma residents and neighboring countries that measures were being taken to strengthen surveillance for Ebola at border posts and elsewhere. Neighboring Rwanda, Uganda and South Sudan began vaccinating health workers weeks or months ago. WHO says the risk of regional spread remains “very high.”