Category: World

New Delhi
CNN
 — 

The Indian maker of a cough syrup linked to at least 18 deaths in Uzbekistan has halted production after an investigation by drug regulators, India’s health minister said Friday.

Uzbekistan’s health ministry said the cough syrup, Doc-1, manufactured by the Indian pharmaceutical company Marion Biotech, had contained ethylene glycol, a toxic solution.

The Uzbek ministry said seven employees have been dismissed due to negligence and that all relevant documents have been given to law enforcement for an investigation. The ministry also said the cough syrup was incorrectly used by parents.

On Friday, Indian heath minister Mansukh Mandaviya tweeted that all Marion Biotech’s manufacturing activities at their headquarters in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh had been stopped as of Thursday evening “while further investigation is ongoing,” following an inspection by India’s drug regulatory agency.

Marion Biotech could not be immediately reached for comment.

Hasan Harris, Marion Biotech’s legal head, told Indian news agency ANI: “We await the reports, the factory was inspected. We’ve halted production of all medicines.” As of Friday, the company’s website was not operational.

In a statement Tuesday, Uzbekistan said the Doc-1 Max syrup was incorrectly used by parents as an anti-cold remedy on their own or on the recommendation of pharmacy sellers and this resulted in respiratory distress in children who consumed the medication.

The Uzbek health ministry said in its statement that the deceased children had taken 2.5-5ml of the drug at home for 2-7 days, which exceeds the standard dose of the drug for children, prior to being admitted to the hospital. All children had been given the drug without a doctor’s prescription, the ministry added.

It remains unclear how many of the children consumed the cough syrup tainted with ethylene glycol, or had been given more than the standard dosage, or both.

The ministry said it had withdrawn all tablets and syrups of the drug from pharmacies across the country and said that 7 responsible employees have been dismissed from their positions “due to negligent and careless attitude to their duties.” It also said disciplinary measures are being applied against a number of specialists, but it did not specify who or what those measures would be.

Ethylene glycol is commonly found in anti-freeze used in motor vehicles. If ingested, it can damage the brain, lungs, liver and kidneys, and can lead to death.

CNN
 — 

A 24-year-old man was killed and nine others were injured in a shooting in Mobile, Alabama, Saturday night, according to local police, just blocks from where people had gathered for the city’s New Year’s Eve celebration.

Officers responded to a report of shots fired in the 200 block of Dauphin Street around 11:14 p.m. CT, the Mobile Police Department said in a news release.

When officers arrived, they found an “unknown subject” had shot a 24-year-old man, who was pronounced dead at the scene, the release said.

Nine other victims, ranging in age from 17 to 57, also suffered gunshot wounds and were taken to local hospitals “with injuries ranging from non-life-threatening to severe,” according to the release.

Police have taken a suspect, a man, into custody in connection with the shooting.

“The subject is receiving medical treatment and, upon release, will be transported to Metro Jail and charged with murder,” Mobile Police Cpl. Katrina H. Frazier said.

It’s unclear what motivated the shooting, which happened as crowds were in the downtown area for the MoonPie Over Mobile event.

“This is an active investigation,” Mobile Police said in the release. “We will provide updates as details become available.”

The Border Patrol had more than 2.2 million encounters with illegal crossers between ports of entry on the Southwest border in fiscal 2022.   

A recent report from the DHS Inspector General indicates that most of the illegal crossers are not put in detention facilities or expelled under Title 42, but rather are processed for outcomes allowing them to be released into the United States to wait for immigration hearings. This has overwhelmed the immigration courts.  

The immigration court backlog was 1,262,765 cases at the end of fiscal 2020, which was the last full fiscal year of the previous administration. Under the current administration, it has risen to 2,023,441 cases as of the end of November 2022.  

ICE DEPORTATIONS REMAINED WELL BELOW TRUMP-ERA LEVELS IN FY 2022, AMID HISTORIC BORDER CRISIS

Almost 800,000 of them have submitted asylum applications and are waiting for an asylum hearing. The average wait from when an application is filed to when an applicant’s case will be heard is 1,572 days, or 4.3 years.  

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been criticized for lack of border enforcement.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Moreover, many others have been allowed to enter the United States to wait for an asylum hearing but have not filed an asylum application yet. And the number of asylum seekers is likely to increase greatly when Title 42 is terminated. 

The administration seems to want to deal with this problem by finding faster ways to adjudicate the applications instead of admitting fewer asylum seekers to give the immigration court a chance to catch up. 

For instance, on May 28, 2021, the administration announced a new Dedicated Docket which is supposed to expeditiously and fairly make decisions on the immigration cases of newly arrived families who are apprehended between ports of entry at the Southwest Border. INA §1325(a) provides that such entries are crimes subject to imprisonment for up to two years. 

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says in the announcement that, “Families who have recently arrived should not languish in a multi-year backlog; today’s announcement is an important step for both justice and border security.”  

The immigration court backlog was 1,262,765 cases at the end of fiscal 2020, which was the last full fiscal year of the previous administration. Under the current administration, it has risen to 2,023,441 cases as of the end of November 2022.  

He is referring to newly arriving families, not the families who already are languishing in the multi-year backlog. 

The announcement concludes that while “the goal of this process is to decide cases expeditiously, fairness will not be compromised.” 

Dedicated Dockets are not new or fair. 

The Obama and Trump administrations also had Dedicated Dockets for newly arriving migrants to prevent them from having to wait a long time for a hearing. 

The Vera Institute of Justice claims that as prior efforts to use expedited dockets have demonstrated, Dedicated Dockets do not provide due process. Court records for a two-year period during the Obama administration show that it was rare for an unrepresented family in Dedicated Docket proceedings to file the papers needed to seek asylum or other forms of relief from deportation. Only 1 in 15 (6.5 percent) managed to do this without representation. 

According to a recent TRAC report, more than 110,000 cases have been assigned to the current administration’s Dedicated Docket, and nearly 40,000 of them have been completed. The vast majority (83%) of the completed cases were closed within 300 days from the date of receiving a Notice to Appear in removal proceedings.  

But a price must be paid for doing this. Georgetown Law School Professor Paul Schmidt points out that when Dedicated Docket judges are not available to hear cases on the general docket, it places extra burdens on their judicial colleagues who are handling the general docket cases. 

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And taking judges away from the general docket to serve on the Dedicated Docket also reduces the number of judges who are available for doing cases that would reduce the backlog.  

TRAC found that only 34% of the families whose cases have been completed had representation, and few families without representation have been able to complete the paperwork required for filing an asylum application.  

Overall, only 2,894 out of 39,187 families who had hearings in fiscal 2022 were granted asylum. The cases in which asylum was granted represent just 7.4% of the completed cases. 

The Vera Institute of Justice would address this problem by providing representation for every migrant in Dedicated Docket proceedings.  According to the Institute, “No immigrant should be forced to go through immigration court proceedings without legal defense.”  

Is that even possible?  And if it is possible, who is going to pay for it?  INA §1229a(b)(4), which provides that migrants have the “privilege of being represented” in removal proceedings, specifies that it must be “at no expense to the Government.” 

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Frankly, I think the main problem is that the administration is flooding our already overwhelmed immigration court with a tsunami of illegal crossers who claim that they are asylum seekers. 

The attempt to relieve the immigration court’s backlog crisis with a Dedicated Docket didn’t work for the Obama administration and it isn’t working for the current administration either.

CNN
 — 

An earthquake struck Northern California Sunday morning for the second time in less than a two-week span, according to the US Geological Survey.

The 5.4 magnitude earthquake occurred about 30 miles south of Eureka and was centered about 9 miles southeast of Rio Dell, the USGS said. The earthquake was a shallow one, occurring at a depth of about 17.3 miles, according to preliminary information from the agency.

Rio Dell Mayor Debra Garnes said the quake shook her house.

“It was crazy. The earthquake felt more violent this time,” Garnes told CNN. “It was shorter, but more violent. My refrigerator moved two feet. Things came out of the refrigerator. There’s a crack in my wall from the violence of it.”

Garnes said a neighbor’s house also had a crack in the wall from the quake.

This is the second earthquake to strike the Northern California region in less than a month. A 6.4 earthquake that shook the region on December 20 left two people dead. Garnes said 27 homes were red-tagged – meaning they were unsafe due to damage – and 73 homes yellow-tagged in Rio Dell from that quake.

“We are kind of starting over – we had moved from our response to recovery, and now we are basically in both,” Garnes told CNN’s Pamela Brown Sunday. “We have to be back in response because the southern end of town really took it hard this time.”

The mayor said 30% of the town’s water is shut down and the town lost “pockets” of power. There is a 35-foot crack in one of the town’s main roads, she said.

Some homes and buildings that were damaged in the December quake were damaged more Sunday and some may have to be torn down, Garnes said.

But the mayor said there has been a “tremendous response from the community,” in the form of state and local agencies as well as aid from neighboring towns.

“Literally everyone is trying their best to help us get through this,” Garnes said.

As of Sunday morning, the USGS said the latest quake is a green pager, indicating there were no estimated fatalities and very low estimated economic losses.