Trump administration to deport man to Haiti who has never been there | US news | The Guardian

Paul Pierrilus, a man due to be deported from the US to Haiti – a country he has never lived in According to his sister, Neomie, he was seized when he went to an immigration office on Federal Plaza in Manhattan on 11 January, for what he thought would be a routine visit. “He went there for the appointment and while he was there, he was detained, and he was informed that they have documents stating that he’s a Haitian citizen,” Neomie Pierrilus said. She said their parents were Haitian but never applied for Paul’s Haitian citizenship. “We don’t really understand how documents were obtained to say that my brother was a citizen of Haiti. “My brother has never even been to Haiti,” she said. “He has the bare minimum of the language, he doesn’t know the culture, he doesn’t know anyone there. So my brother cannot go there.” Neomie Pierrilus supplied copies of emails last year from the then Haitian ambassador, Hervé Denis, confirming that her brother was not a Haitian citizen. Nor did Paul’s birth in Saint Martin confer French citizenship, making him stateless. Guerline Jozef, head of the community group Haitian Bridge Alliance, said that the intense level of political violence in Haiti represented a serious threat to Pierrilus’s life. “Sending him to Haiti, first of all, is no

Source: Trump administration to deport man to Haiti who has never been there | US news | The Guardian

Michelin awards star to vegan restaurant for the first time in France

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Restaurant ONA in the city of Ares rewarded after initially struggling to get funding to open its doors

A vegan restaurant in south-west France has won a Michelin star, the first for an establishment serving only animal-free products in France.

Claire Vallee runs the restaurant ONA – which stands for Origine Non Animale – in the city of Ares, near Bordeaux, which she launched in 2016 thanks to crowdfunding from supporters and a loan from a green bank.

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RIP – Former USC and Rams great Jon Arnett dies at 85 – San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Arnett, who went by the nickname “Jaguar Jon”, was the second overall pick by the Los Angeles Rams in the 1957 NFL Draft, going four spots ahead of running back Jim Brown.

He made the Pro Bowl in each of his first five seasons in the NFL, with his best season coming in 1958 when he reached career highs in rushing yards (683), receiving yards (494) and touchdowns (seven). He earned All-Pro honors for that 1958 season as he led the NFL in punt return yardage.

He still holds the Rams’ record for longest kickoff return (105 yards) and still ranks in USC’s top 25 for rushing yards (1,898) and punt and kickoff returns.

Source: Former USC and Rams great Jon Arnett dies at 85 – San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Mater Dei’s Bruce Rollinson decries football game that was played in spite of health guidelines – San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Rollinson does not want Mater Dei players taking part in club football.

“I have publicly stated and written to our (team’s) parents that I am adamantly opposed to club football, for the dangers of it and the poor coaching,” he said.

“Let’s say there are 30 kids on each team, and I’m going low with that number here, and 40 adults that come in contact with them and the coaches,” Rollinson said. “To me that is a super-spreader event. And those kids who then come back to our practice are endangering me and (assistant coach) Eric Johnson and (Oregon-committed receiver) Kyron Ware-Hudson and everyone else because they did something they shouldn’t do and they’re bringing it back to us.”

Source: Mater Dei’s Bruce Rollinson decries football game that was played in spite of health guidelines – San Gabriel Valley Tribune

The Coronavirus Is Evolving the Same Mutations Around the World

For most of 2020, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 jumped from human to human, accumulating mutations at a steady rate of two per month—not especially impressive for a virus. These mutations have largely had little effect.

But recently, three distinct versions of the virus seem to have independently converged on some of the same mutations, despite being thousands of miles apart in the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Brazil. (A mutation is a genetic change; a variant is a virus with a specific set of mutations.) The fact that these mutations have popped up not one, not two, but now three times—that we know of—in variants with unusual behavior suggests that they confer an evolutionary advantage to the virus. All three variants seem to be becoming more common. And all three are potentially more transmissible.

“Anytime when you have mutations that come up independently of each other in multiple places, it’s really a sign,” says Vineet Menachery, a coronavirus researcher at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Now scientists are scrambling to figure out if and how these mutations might give the viruses an edge.

It’s still early, and data on the variant in Brazil are particularly sparse. In addition to sharing certain mutations, though, these variants simply have a large number of mutations, some unique to each variant. Gaining a whole suite of mutations quickly should be a very uncommon event. But with the virus so widespread right now, very uncommon events will happen—and will happen more than once. The usual two-per-month mutation rate may undersell how the coronavirus can mutate in unusual situations. “It’s a little bit of a wake-up call,” Kristian Andersen, a microbiologist at Scripps Research, told me.

[Read: The coronavirus is evolving before our eyes]

The role of each individual mutation is still unclear, but a particular mutation in the spike protein called N501Y is noteworthy because all three variants have it. The spike protein is how the coronavirus enters cells, and N501Y is in an especially important region called the receptor-binding domain, which latches on to the cell. An N501Y mutation may make the spike protein stickier, allowing it to bind to and enter cells more readily. Such a virus could become more transmissible. On the plus side, however, the mutation doesn’t seem to affect immunity from vaccines.

Here’s how to read the names of the mutations, by the way: Proteins are made up of building blocks called amino acids. N501Y means that the 501st amino acid was originally an N, which stands for the amino acid asparagine, but has been changed to a Y, which stands for tyrosine.

N501Y is not unique to these three variants, though; it’s been found in a number of sequences around the world. What is unusual about these three variants is that they also have an additional constellation of other mutations in other parts of the virus. A change in a variant’s behavior, such as increased transmissibility, is probably “due to not just one mutation, but multiple mutations,” says Emma Hodcroft, a molecular epidemiologist at the University of Bern. The U.K. variant has more than a dozen other mutations, which have not been scrutinized as much as N501Y. But the variant’s increased transmissibility is looking more certain: It’s growing more prevalent not just in the U.K., but also in Ireland and Denmark, two other countries that regularly sequence large numbers of samples. The CDC recently warned that it’s likely to become the dominant variant in the United States by March.

(Scientists have given all three variants more specific names, but they have not, alas, standardized them yet. The U.K. variant is also known as B.1.1.7, and 20I/501Y.V1, and VOC 202012/01. The South Africa variant is sometimes called B.1.351 or 20C/501Y.V2. The Brazil variant is known as P.1 and 20J/501Y.V3.)

The South Africa and Brazil variants also have a second and third mutation in common in the spike’s receptor-binding domain: E484K and K417. Scientists know a little bit more about the E484K mutation. It switches a negatively charged amino acid for a positively charged one; it’s like flipping a magnet. This likely changes the spike protein’s shape as it is binding to a cell, but this change seems to work in synergy with the N501Y mutation, Andersen said. These mutations, possibly along with others, may make the virus better at binding to cells.

[Read: Why aren’t we wearing better masks?]

But the South Africa and Brazil variants might have an additional advantage. A recent study suggests that viruses with the E484K mutation might be better at evading antibodies from the blood plasma of recovered COVID-19 patients. Some viruses with this mutation could become a little better at reinfecting people or even infecting vaccinated people.

This one mutation alone is unlikely to render immunity from previous infections or vaccines totally ineffective, though. With current vaccines, “you have more than enough antibody, and even if you cut that amount in half, you still have more than enough antibody to control the virus,” Menachery told me. “If the new variant reduces the efficacy … by 50 percent, you still have a lot of protection there.” Studies are ongoing to figure out exactly how much this mutation affects vaccines, but it does suggest that vaccine makers might need to update their shots if more mutations like E484K accumulate over a period of years. This is already done every year with the flu shot, and the current mRNA COVID-19 vaccines can be updated especially quickly, in as little as six weeks, according to the manufacturers.

Scientists now wonder whether the variants in South Africa and Brazil are spreading precisely because they have this slight advantage in overcoming previous immunity. Both variants were originally found in parts of the countries that have had high levels of COVID-19 infection—especially in Manaus, Brazil, where an especially large proportion of people have already had the virus. (One December study says 76 percent, which is probably an overestimate, but the region’s high COVID-19 death toll suggests that it indeed had a huge outbreak in 2020.) The South Africa variant is becoming dominant in the country; the situation in Brazil is less clear because less data exist, but Manaus is currently experiencing another big surge of COVID-19. Menachery said he doesn’t think previous immunity is necessarily a reason for these variants to become more common, especially because South Africa isn’t as close to herd immunity. Better transmissibility is already an advantage.

[Read: The next phase of vaccination will be even harder]

But others sketched this plausible, though still hypothetical, scenario: The variants may have evolved in immunocompromised patients who were infected with the virus for months. Normally, Hodcroft says, “your immune system is going to town on it. It’s really trying to beat it up.” But immunocompromised patients mount weaker immune responses. “It becomes almost like a training course for how to live with the human immune system,” she says. That may be why these variants have so many new mutations at once, as if a year or two of evolution has been compressed into months. This is probably quite rare, but with tens of millions of infections around the globe, rare things will show up.

A variant could emerge, then, from the training ground of a chronic infection, with mutations that make the virus better at binding to cells and thus more transmissible. This may be what happened with the U.K. variant. It could also emerge slightly more capable of reinfection. This may be what’s happening in Brazil, where there are already two documented cases of reinfection with the new variant. In a place where many people have already been infected with COVID-19, a variant that is just a little better at evading preexisting immunity will have an advantage. These reinfections might not be serious, and they still might not be the norm, but over time, that variant will win out. The coronavirus is in a constant arms race against our immune system. It will keep evolving.

That means our vaccines may need to evolve with it. But the United States is sequencing only a tiny percentage of its COVID-19 cases. (Standard COVID-19 diagnostic tests probe a few regions of the virus genome, but they don’t sequence the whole thing.) “San Diego is one of the places in the country we’re doing well, and we’re sequencing 2 percent of cases. It’s laughable compared to the U.K. and Denmark,” Andersen said. “And we need to change that.” The sequencing data, when they are collected, are fragmented across individual labs all over the country. What the U.S. needs, Andersen said, is a federal mandate for genomic surveillance. That’s the only way for the U.S. to keep abreast of an ever-changing virus.

San Antonio shatters record for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 – ExpressNews.com

In a month filled with grim milestones, San Antonio hit another one Monday, with area hospitals caring for 1,520 patients with COVID-19 — 253 more than the record set this summer, when state leaders shut down bars and mandated masks to stave off the virus.

Health officials fear the worst is yet to come. A scientific model developed to forecast the coronavirus’ spread predicts that area hospitals could be inundated with as many as 1,900 patients within the next week if the most dire scenario unfolds.

Source: San Antonio shatters record for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 – ExpressNews.com

Rep. Steve Cohen Says He Saw Lauren Boebert Giving Tour Before Capitol Riot Day

Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) said Monday that he saw QAnon-curious freshman Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) leading a “large group” through a tour of the Capitol in the days before the riots. Cohen said he does not know whether anyone in the crowd later took part in the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Democrats have alleged that a GOP colleague gave a “reconnaissance” tour of the Capitol the day before the mob stormed the building. Over the weekend, Boebert denied she was the member—even though no one had accused her by name—saying she did not guide “any outside groups of ‘insurrectionists.’”

Speaking on CNN Monday, Cohen—who is on the Judiciary Committee—said that Rep. John Yarmuth had “refreshed my recollection yesterday” that they had seen Boebert “taking a group of people for a tour sometime after the 3rd and before the 6th.” Boebert has not yet publicly responded to Cohen’s comments.

Source: Rep. Steve Cohen Says He Saw Lauren Boebert Giving Tour Before Capitol Riot Day

Pressure on Ted Cruz Grows as Third Texas Newspaper Calls for Him to Resign

El Paso Times became the latest Texas newspaper to call for Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) to step down from the Senate at the weekend over his objections to the president election results, and his role in the “Stop the Steal” campaign.

Releasing an op-ed on Saturday, the newspaper’s editorial board said Cruz had to be “held accountable” for his actions ahead of the Capitol riots on January 6, and argued that his contesting of the election contributed to an “insurrection” at the Capitol.

The Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News delivered similarly strong verdicts on the senator in the wake of the Capitol riots earlier this month, with both calling for the Republican to leave the upper chamber.

Source: Pressure on Ted Cruz Grows as Third Texas Newspaper Calls for Him to Resign

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