The Week - USA (2021-11-26)

8 NEWS The world at a glance ...

Kalisz, Poland

Hate on the march: Three people

have been arrested in connection

with an anti-Semitic demonstration

in Poland last week where hundreds

of far-right activists chanted “Death to

Jews!” Protesters who marched through the

city of Kalisz on Poland’s Independence Day

shouted that LGBTQ people and “Zionists”

were “enemies of Poland,” and burned a book meant to represent a

medieval document about the rights of Poland’s Jews. Anti-Semitic

slogans were also chanted at a much larger Independence Day

march in Warsaw. Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski had obtained

a court order halting the march, but the right-wing government

overruled the court, saying Polish patriotism was at stake. Polish

Interior Minister Mariusz Kaminski called the anti-Semitic displays

“shameful and scandalous”; Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid

said they reminded “Jews all over the world of the power of hate.”

Liverpool, U.K.

Hero cabbie: A British cabdriver was being

hailed as a hero this week after he apparently

locked a suspected terrorist in his taxi as the

man’s homemade bomb exploded. Emad Al

Swealmeen had asked cabbie David Perry

to take him to Liverpool Women’s Hospital.

Surveillance footage shows smoke billowing

from the taxi as it approaches the hospi-

tal, and Perry jumping out of the driver’s

door just seconds before the car bursts into

flames. Al Swealmeen, 32, died in the blast, and Perry was treated

in the hospital for burns and shrapnel wounds. Authorities said Al

Swealmeen, a Jordanian who converted to Christianity in 2017, had

been denied asylum in the U.K. and had a history of mental illness.

Vienna

Unvaxxed confined to home: Austria has put its approximately

2 million unvaccinated citizens under lockdown for 10 days, say-

ing they can leave home only for essential activities such as work

or grocery shopping. The country is suffering its worst-ever Covid

wave, with some 12,000 new cases being registered every day, and

its vaccination campaign has slowed to a crawl. About 65 percent

of Austrians are fully inoculated, one of the lowest rates in Western

Europe. In Salzburg, where hospitals

are overflowing, authorities have set up

a triage team to ration care for patients.

Neighboring Germany has imposed a

similar lockdown for the unvaccinated

in Berlin and resumed free testing for

Covid nationwide, and the Netherlands

and Czech Republic are also consider-

ing such measures.

Havana

Crushing dissent: Cuban authorities launched an

intimidation campaign and flooded the streets with

security forces this week to prevent a planned repeat

of this summer’s mass anti-government demonstra-

tions. After pro-democracy activists applied for

permission to march—something allowed under the

constitution—the government deployed the military,

the police, and special units known as Black Berets

to patrol Havana and other major cities, and pre-emptively

barricaded many opposition members in their homes. Cubans who

voiced support for the march were interrogated and fired from their

jobs, while the few who braved the streets to protest were quickly

arrested. Playwright and opposition leader Yunior García,

prevented from joining the march, displayed a white rose in

his window, a symbol of Cuban resistance.

Zapopan, Mexico

‘Narco queen’ busted: Mexican security forces have arrested

Rosalinda González Valencia, the wife of Mexico’s most

wanted man, Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes. El

Mencho heads the brutal Jalisco New Generation

Cartel, a criminal enterprise that spans the globe and

smuggles vast quantities of the synthetic opioid fen-

tanyl into the U.S. each year. González is accused of

running the cartel’s finances. She is a “narco queen,”

said former DEA official Mike Vigil. “She has all

of the keys, all of the confidence of El Mencho, all

of the information, and was responsible for laun-

dering the cartel’s money.” Two of the couple’s

children are currently in prison in the U.S.

Agassiz, British Columbia

Relentless rain: A massive rescue oper-

ation was launched in the Vancouver

region this week, after torrential rains

caused mudslides that trapped hun-

dreds of Canadians in their cars. Some

300 people stranded overnight outside

the town of Agassiz were ferried to

safety in military helicopters. Among

them was Cory Lysohirka, who was driving home with his wife

and two kids when the road was swamped by water. “You could

see the waterfall coming,” he said. “I really thought: ‘Is this the

day I am done?’” All 7,000 residents of the city of Merritt, some

170 miles northeast of Vancouver, were ordered to evacuate after

flooding overwhelmed three bridges on the Coldwater River and

disabled the city’s wastewater-treatment plant.

Re

ute

rs^

(^2 )

,^ Tw

itte

r,^ R

eu

ter

s^ (^2

),^ T

wi

tte

r

González

Devastating floods

Burning taxi

Police check vaccine records.

Anti-Semites burn a book.

Troops on the streets