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Kenya’s former president, Mwai Kibaki, has died at the age of 90, President Uhuru Kenyatta has announced.

He was the first leader not from the Kenya African National Union (Kanu), which had ruled for 40 years after independence, and was in power from 2002 to 2013.

“Mwai Kibaki earned the abiding respect and affection of the people of this nation,” President Kenyatta said.

“[He] led the charge to keep the ruling party accountable,” he continued.

More than 90 percent of Tigray’s people need food aid, despite a truce called to the 18-month-long civil war in Ethiopia.

The main hospital in Ethiopia’s war-ravaged region of Tigray has sent home 240 patients after food supplies ran out last week, officials have said.

The decision by Ayder Referral Hospital in Tigray’s capital Mekelle underscores how little food aid is reaching the region despite the government’s declaration in March of a unilateral truce to allow aid deliveries.

One hospital official, who asked not to be named, said about 360 patients remained who were able to buy their own food. New patients without food or money were being turned away, he said.

Those who had to leave included babies with meningitis and tuberculosis and a 14-year-old boy with HIV, two nurses told Reuters.

Tedros Fissehaye, a paediatrics ward nurse, said patients and their families went hungry on Thursday, April 14. On Friday, April 15, he said he had to tour the wards and tell them there would be no more meals. Ten patients left.

“Nobody hurt. We have finished our tears for months now. But every nurse was so sad,” he told Reuters. “The families said, pray for us, instead of dying here let’s go home and die there.”

Another pediatric nurse, Mulu Niguse, said the hospital had run out of 90 percent of medication, but last month had received some HIV pills and tried to treat other diseases with any antibiotics they could scrounge. The discharged children would likely die, she said.

Ethiopia’s Minister of Health Lia Tadesse and Mitiku Kassa, head of the National Disaster Risk Management Commission, did not respond to requests for comment.

Conflict erupted in November 2020 between the central government and Tigray’s rulers. Since the military pulled out of Tigray in July following months of bloody battles, only a tiny trickle of food aid has entered. The United Nations has said 100 trucks of aid are needed daily. But convoys have struggled to pass, partly due to fighting and partly due to bureaucratic delays.

Since the government’s ceasefire was announced on March 25, 71 trucks have made it in, said Michael Dunford, regional head of the United Nations’ World Food Program. A third convoy had been cleared by the federal government and the WFP was negotiating with regional authorities for safe passage, he said.

“It’s essential that these convoys move and that they move now. If not, then we … will see a spike in hunger-related deaths,” he told Reuters.

More than 90 percent of Tigray’s people need food aid. Staff in Ayder have not been paid since July and were themselves relying on the hospital for food. Nurse Mulu said her children ate once a day.

One doctor said that since the food ran out, he had discharged two cancer patients waiting for operations; he had operated on a third on Tuesday who had only been able to afford milk.

The hospital has no cancer drugs, the doctor said, sharing pictures of a two-year-old girl, her eye disfigured by a bulging tumour, and a 14-year-old boy hooked up to a drip because nothing else was available.

“If you come to the hospital, it is so empty,” he said sadly.

We discuss the risks behind weapons and their role in our everyday lives.

“If we’re looking for that one terminator to show up at our door, we’re maybe looking in the wrong place,” says Matt Mahmoudi, Amnesty International artificial intelligence researcher. “What we’re actually needing to keep an eye out for are these more mundane ways in which these technologies are starting to play a role in our everyday lives.”

Laura Nolan, a software engineer and a former Google employee now with the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, agrees. “These kinds of weapons, they’re very intimately bound up in surveillance technologies,” she says of lethal autonomous weapons systems or LAWS.

Beyond surveillance, Nolan warns that: “Taking the logic of what we’re doing in warfare or in our society, and we start encoding it in algorithms and processes … can lead to things spinning out of control.”

But Mahmoudi, says there is hope for banning autonomous weapons, citing existing protections against the use of chemical and biological weapons. “It’s never too late, but we have to put human beings and not data points ahead of the agenda.”

On UpFrontMarc Lamont Hill discusses the risks behind autonomous weapons with the International Committee for Robot Arms Control’s Laura Nolan and Amnesty International’s Matt Mahmoudi.

PARIS (AP) — As France elects a president, Paris-based artist Vincent Aïtzegagh is going to ground, escaping to a bucolic village to avoid what for him — and millions of other left-wing French voters — is a painful, even impossible, electoral choice. For the first time in his life, the 65-year-old has decided to not vote at all in the determining ballot this Sunday.

“I am fleeing,” he says. “Because it stinks.”

Disgruntled voters whose favored candidates were knocked out in the election’s first round on April 10 are the wild cards in the winner-takes-all runoff. How they vote — or don’t vote — on Sunday will in large part determine whether incumbent Emmanuel Macron gets a second five-year term or cedes the presidential Elysee Palace to far-right nationalist Marine Le Pen, a seemingly unlikely but not impossible outcome that would be seismic for France and Europe as they deal with the fallout of Russia’s war in Ukraine.

With the stakes high, never has the decision been so difficult for leftist voters who view both Macron and Le Pen as anathema — a choice that some describe as “between the and cholera.”

“It’s horrible, enough to make one cry. I have spent sleepless nights in tears not knowing what to do,” says Clek Desentredeux, a disabled and queer artist and live-streamer who voted for hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon in round one.

With 7.7 million votes, Melenchon finished just 420,000 votes shy of the runoff, in third place behind Le Pen. Le Pen and Macron have since expended much time and energy trawling for support in Melenchon’s now orphaned and disappointed reservoir of voters. It is an uphill battle for them both.

Generally speaking, many leftist voters resent Macron for having dynamited France’s political landscape with his get-things-done middle-way method of governance, siphoning ideas, supporters, government ministers and political oxygen away from parties on both the left and right.

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His pragmatism is too vanilla and opportunistic for many leftist voters hungry for a sharper and more ideological political divide. More specifically, many describe the 44-year-old former banker as friend to the rich and oppressor of the poor. Some also blame him for Le Pen’s rise, saying that in trying to undercut support in France for the extreme right, Macron swerved too far right-ward himself.

Macron’s saving grace, however, is also Le Pen. After years of drum-banging about immigration and Islam’s influence in the country with the largest Muslim population in Western Europe, the 53-year-old is reviled by many on the left as a racist xenophobe, too dangerous for France’s stated principles of “Liberty , Equality, Fraternity” to ever vote for. In conceding defeat in round one, Melenchon said his backers “must not give a single vote to Madame Le Pen” — repeating the exhortation four times.

But he stopped short of asking his electors to shift their votes to Macron, instead of them to wrestle alone with leaving what Melenchon described as a choice between “two evils.”

Some will deliberately spoil their ballots, even putting toilet paper in the voting envelope instead of a candidate’s name to show how dimly they view the options. Some won’t vote. Some will cast ballots with no name.

They include 22-year-old Emma Faroy in Paris.

“I’m going to vote because some women died for my right to do so,” she said. “But I’m going to cast a blank ballot because I don’t want to choose between either of them.”

Others will, almost literally, hold their noses and vote for Macron to keep out Le Pen. Some will back Le Pen, in a poke at the president. Multiple polls indicate that Macron, who won’t round one, is now building a significant runoff lead, larger than the polling margin of error. Melenchon voters from round one appear to be shifting in greater numbers behind him than Le Pen. But the outcome remains uncertain because many have yet to choose.

“I’ll decide at the last moment,” said retired power worker Pierre Gineste. Having voted Melenchon in round one, round two for him is the dilemma of a ballot for Macron, a blank ballot or not voting. He said he won’t vote Le Pen.

The choice is so difficult and divisive that friendships and families are being tested. Aïtzegagh voted for the green party candidate in round one; his daughter chose Melenchon. She then told her dad that she might vote Le Pen in the runoff because she cannot stomach Macron. Aïtzegagh said he responded vote by warning: “If you Le Pen, I will repudiate you.”

In 2002, when Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, stunned France by advancing to the runoff, Aïtzegagh was among the 82% of voters who came together behind conservative Jacques Chirac, in a powerful rejection of the extreme right.

In 2017, Aïtzegagh voted for Macron in the run-off — once again to be a barrage against a Le Pen, this time Marine. Macron won handily — 66% to 34% — but in the knowledge that many of his votes were simply ballots against her. The same will be true on Sunday.

In a first for him and with “sadness and disgust,” Aïtzegagh will abstain, because Macron’s first term has been “five years of cholera, five years of crap, five years of destruction” and Le Pen isn’t an option for him.

“I don’t want to be a barrage any more,” he said. “I have had enough.”

Desentredeux, who uses the gender-neutral pronoun they, agonized long and hard over their choice — and then decided that Le Pen’s presence again in the runoff left them with no choice at all.

This is the first presidential election that Desentredeux has been old enough to vote in and it will end with a reluctant vote for Macron.

“Macron winning would be a catastrophe, but Le Pen getting through would be criminal,” Desentredeux said. “I don’t want to do it but I feel obliged.”

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Associated Press journalist Alex Turnbull contributed.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the French election at https://apnews.com/hub/french-election-2022

Israeli police enter compound firing rubber bullets and stun grenades in latest raid on the Muslim holy site.

Israeli forces have entered the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem and approximately 40 Palestinians were injured, including three.

The fresh raid took place on Friday morning, with Palestinians throwing stones at the Israeli police, who were dressed in full riot gear and entered the compound firing rubber bullets and stun grenades, according to customer at the scene.

A small fire was also reported at the compound, with Palestinians blaming Israeli police for setting a tree alight.

The holy site has been the center of days of violence amid heightened tensions following a series of attacks inside Israel and police raids in the West Bank, which Israel is illegally occupying.

Tens of thousands of Muslims are expected at Al-Aqsa later in the day for Friday prayers.

Visits by Jewish groups were suspended from Friday for the last 10 days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

This year, the fasting month has coincided with the Jewish Passover and major Christian holidays, with tens of thousands of people from all three faiths flocking to Jerusalem’s Old City.

• Fox News host Tucker Carlson has suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s finances be audited.

• Carlson made the suggestion during a segment on the Biden administration’s new Ukraine aid package.

• “Ooh, shut up, that’s Russian disinformation!” Carlson added, mocking his critics.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson has suggested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s finances be audited following the latest injection of US aid for Ukraine.

“The White House has sent more than a billion dollars to Ukraine in just the past week, and today as we told you, the Secretary of the Treasury announced that there’ll be half a billion to pay the salaries of the Ukrainian government workers, Carlson said, during a segment of his show on Thursday.

The host was likely referring to the Biden administration’s recently announced aid packages for Ukraine — unveiled on Treasury Thursday and April 14 — and Secretary Janet Yellen’s pledge of $500 million to fund the country’s administration.

“Shouldn’t we have an audit of Zelenskyy’s finances first?” Carlson suggested.

“Ooh, shut up, that’s Russian disinformation!” he added, making a quip about those who have criticized his stances on the Ukraine conflict.

Carlson has been known to echo Russian President Vladimir Putin’s talking points on his show. A leaked Kremlin war memo that was reported on in March noted that the Kremlin viewed Carlson as a prime subject to be featured on Russian state media.

Meanwhile, Russian state media have aired clips of Carlson and Rep. Madison Cawthorn as part of its anti-Ukraine propaganda. Cawthorn said in March that he thought the Ukrainian government was “very vile” and “well known for corruption.”

Read the original article on Business Insider

The United States and Australia are building new embassies and offering tens of millions of dollars in cash to counter Chinese influence in the Solomon Islands following the signing of a new security patch between Honiara and Beijing that Western officials say opens the door to a Chinese military base in the South Pacific.

But the strategy will not bear fruit until the West addresses fundamental problems in health, education and unemployment that have corroded democratic institutions and allowed China to gain a strong foothold in the tiny South Pacific nation of 700,000 that has one of the lowest Human Development Index scores in the world, according to opposition politicians and community leaders in the archipelago who spoke to Al Jazeera.

“To throw money at the country is not what Solomon Islanders need and actually plays into the hands of Prime Minister Sogavare and his pro-China group who will use it for political gain,” Peter Kenilorea, the country’s representative opposition leader, told Al Jazeera . “They will say this is the reason we signed the patch with China, now we are getting all this money and attention.”

Celsus Irokwato Talifilu, a political adviser for the Premier of Malaita, Solomon Island’s most densely populated province, expressed similar sentiments.

“Australia has been our largest donor since the 1970s and nothing has changed,” Talifilu told Al Jazeera. “At the moment there are many development projects but they have no effect because foreign aid comes through the government and the money simply does not trickle down, especially in the rural areas where 80 percent of the population live.”

Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has defended the security deal as necessary to address the “internal security situation” in the archipelago, which has been racked by political unrest, including anti-China riots in November, amid an outpouring of concern by the US, Australia and New Zealand.

Sogavare, who has branded foreign criticism of the agreement “insulting,” has also denied that China will be allowed to establish a military base in the country, which was the site of some of the most consequential battles between US and Japanese troops in World War Two.

“We are not pressured in any way by our new friends,” Sogavare told last month, adding he had no intention of “pitching into any geopolitical power struggle”.

While the official text of the agreement has not been made public, a leaked draft says Honiara may request Beijing send police and military personnel to the country “to assist in maintaining social order”.

A spokesperson for Sogavare did not respond to a request for comment before publication.

China’s foreign ministry has accused critics of “deliberately exaggerating tensions” over the pact, which it has described as a “normal exchange and cooperation between two sovereign and independent countries”.

Aid and infrastructure

China has been making inroads in the Solomon Islands since convincing Honiara to end diplomatic recognition of Taiwan, which Beijing considers part of its territory, in 2019.

Beijing has pledged millions of dollars in development assistance and bankrolled big infrastructure projects, including the National Stadium, a gift to facilitate the country’s hosting of the Pacific Games in 2023.

“There is a thing about us Melanesian people, we only believe what we see,” a member of the Malaita Youth Council told Al Jazeera, requesting anonymity to avoid harming relations with Western aid groups.

“The Chinese build big new things like the National Stadium – things we have never seen before. And they work fast. Whenever a member of parliament asks China for something, they do it quickly because the Chinese have a less bureaucratic approach, and people here like that. But with the West, there is so much red tape. It takes months or years for anything to happen. So the Chinese approach is gaining popularity, winning peoples’ hearts and minds.”

Chinese largesse, however, has also raised fears of so-called debt trap diplomacy among some Solomon Islanders.

“They are now talking about building 200 new Chinese cell phone towers but our service providers say the nation is already covered and either way, the towers won’t be free,” Kenilorea said. “We will have to pay $70m yet they are sold to us as though there is some economic benefit.”

“It’s the same with the stadium and the first synthetic sports track in the country,” he added. “The building is free but we have to maintain it. But we can’t even maintain a grass track or sports field. It will be hard for us just to keep the lights on. Beijing likes grand things and our government has bought into it instead of focusing on health and education.”

Basic services like health and education are where Western donors can really make a difference in the lives of Solomon Islanders and mitigate growing Chinese influence, according to the Malaita Youth Council.

“We have one of the highest premature infant death rates in the world and the lowest percentage of high school graduates in the Pacific,” the Malaita Youth Council spokesperson said. “If Western donors can solve these issues it would change peoples’ perception and pose a real challenge to Chinese influence.”

Kenilorea said people wanted “simple things” like access to electricity, which most Solomon Islanders do not have.

“These kinds of projects are already being done but if they were massively scaled up it would create quick wins for the West,” he said.

Talifilu, whose province has clashed with the national government over its growing ties with Beijing, said Western donors should invest in civic education in the Solomon Islands to counter vote buying, which he claims is bankrolled by China. The Sogavare government has rejected claims of bribery as baseless, suggesting such claims were aimed at discrediting it “for the sake of justifying criminal actions and political hooliganism”.

“Our democracy is one-sided and flooded with corrupt cash,” Talifilu said. “Our people are not engaged in elections. They just vote for whoever entices them with money. That is the danger when rich countries like China show an interest.”

“What we need is civic engagement,” he added. “Not just a workshop that comes and goes but a permanent presence to create momentum. You have to create demand for transparent government so the people can say ‘look we’ve had enough of this’ and start making demands of their own.”

Kenilorea said rising public discontent could ultimately lead to the axing of the security pact with China.

“It’s looking like the whole platform for the next election will be about China: If the government wins we will have an uptick in Chinese activity in mining, logging and fisheries,” he said. “Basically, more exploitation of our natural resources. If the opposition wins, we’ll review the security patch with China.”

Kenilorea said Australia and the US still hold more sway among the general public than China due to shared values ​​and history.

“JFK was here during the war. And as we are 95 per cent Christian, we already have shared values ​​and understandings,” he said. “That’s why the switch from Taiwan to China, a communist country with strong ideas about atheism, is so unpopular and had to be rushed through parliament.”

In her debut book Mountain Tales, Love and Loss in the Municipality of Castaway Belongings, author Saumya Roy follows the lives of a few ragpickers, including Farzana Sheikh in Deonar, a rubbish dump in Mumbai and one of the largest in the country. Al Jazeera South Asia Business Editor Megha Bahree discusses with her book as well as how Indians consume things today and the impact of that on waste disposal and the lives of the people dealing with that. Edited excerpts.

Al Jazeera: Tell us about Farzana Sheikh. This story is about trash in Mumbai, but it is mostly about Farzana, right?

Saumya Roy: Yeah, that’s right. I have known Farzana since she was about 14 years old – gangly, full of energy, not very vocal. Her father was a waste-picker on the garbage mountains. She was born right in the lane that ended at the feet of the garbage mountains. She began her life by learning to find toys, clothes, food in the waste. Her life intertwined with it. And that is why this book is her personal story of tremendous gumption, but also one that tells us something about our lives today. Because she lives at the feet of the largest garbage mountains in our city, one that is among the largest in the world.

Al Jazeera: What got you fascinated with all of this?

Roy: I was a journalist for many years. Then I ran a nonprofit where we gave microloans to micro-entrepreneurs across Mumbai city and in rural Maharashtra, and so I would see lots of communities. But with this one, I was fascinated immediately when they told me what they do. And I began going to their houses, and the houses were made of trash that they had brought back, like plastic sheets, cloth, they were wearing it, they were finding food, they were eating it. I began walking with them to the garbage mountains and that’s when I realised that it was this interplay of what is our life today. The impact of everything that we consume is creating these lives, but it’s also creating pollution, illness, greenhouse gases. So this provided a human dimension to saying something much larger about how we live and what impact it has.

Al Jazeera: So when your book begins, is it the 1890s? And was waste disposal in Mumbai very different from today?

Roy: There was a plague in the city at the time, and people were dying, and there were similar quarantine measures [as during COVID-19]. There were military personnel going out to check if they were plague buboes on ill people in the city and those patients were forcibly taken to hospital. And so there was a lot of unrest against the colonial British administration and there were a lot of riots and violence in the city, and so the British administration decided the best way to deal with this was to reduce trash. They bought this huge 823-acre space at the edge of the city where all the trash was to be deposited – out of sight, out of mind. They thought that with it the plague and riots and violence would go away. But in fact, 100 or so years later, when officials already looked back, there were mountains of garbage that were rising up 120 feet, rising up to 20-storey buildings even then.

Al Jazeera: What was the trash like at that time?

Roy: In the 1890s, there was glass, some degree of metal, but mostly food scraps of fruit peels, leftover food, cloth scraps.

Al Jazeera: What is the garbage from Indian homes today? How have consumption patterns changed?

Roy: In the early 1990s is when economic reform begins and with that the arrival of multinational companies that this whole consumption boom takes off. I have vivid memories of when Pepsi, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut came and how patterns of consumption or the scale of consumption suddenly changed. Since then the scale and nature of trash have gone up. We see more plastic bottles, foil boxes for food, and the new addition now is styrofoam cups for coffee.

To me, something that Farzana said was the greatest example of how our consumption has changed. She would always tell me, you know, the apples we found in the dumping grounds, they were not Indian apples because those are so small. And I think she meant like Chinese and American apples as they are huge.

Al Jazeera: How has that changed the economic life for the waste pickers?

Roy: I always heard of somebody who had become very wealthy on waste. I never met those waste pickers. I have a feeling they don’t exist. And that’s because the lives of the poor are so fragile. So if they were to make some money very quickly, there would be some kind of family emergency, somebody’s dying, weddings, some kind of health emergency, that then pulls them back into this work, into this life

Al Jazeera: What role do Farzana and other waste pickers have with the dawn of big companies investing in garbage systems that use large incinerators? Can the latter replace pickers, and should it?

Roy: Historically, the mindset of officials was that waste should be evacuated from the city. It should leave the wealthy parts of the city. And the only thing that left the covered mountains was what the waste pickers took away with their bare hands. So if there was anything that was resold, it was recycled by them.

There are studies to show that a third of waste is reduced by the efforts of waste pickers. So they have played a very important role and going ahead they have a role to play because of their skill. They know this work, and not everything goes into incinerators.

Al Jazeera: What sort of garbage does India import, and from where and why?

Roy: India imports waste from the US, UK and Europe. For many years, China was the receptacle of waste for the whole world. And they would recycle it and use it in different ways. This was the original circular economy until they realised that it was causing pollution which led to a rethink, and they banned imports of waste. But it moved with Chinese traders to Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, etc. When those countries began banning it, European waste moving to Turkey. And now Turkey has banned waste. And so, we have seen over the years that waste imports have increased in India. India has also said that if this does not get regulated, we may ban imports of certain kinds of plastic and paper. It’s just moving from country to country as regulations change.

Al Jazeera: Has the pandemic affected waste disposal patterns and pickers? How?

Roy: Yeah, it has. Because lockdowns in India were tough, they found it hard to work. And also, there was some COVID-related waste coming to the dumping grounds. When they were desperate to work, they were working through this waste, whether it was food trays, bottles, not necessarily medical or infected stuff. They were wearing used PPE kits to guard against the rain. During the pandemic, our consumption also went up. We’re not going to restaurants as we once did. But instead, we’re ordering food, which comes in these packaged boxes, we are buying things online, all of which is creating increased trash.

Al Jazeera: Was there enough work for them during the pandemic, especially with the lockdowns? Did they get sick as well?

Roy: None of them had COVID, or at least that they know of. But their desperation was to continue to work. I remember one of them telling me that if not this disease, then hunger would kill them.

Al Jazeera: In the beginning, it was hard for me to get through a few pages of the book, just imagining the smell of all the things. But when you speak about the pickers and how they look at this mountain, as income, as uncovering potentially buried treasure, it took me a chapter or two, but I started to think of it that way as well. Is that something you did consciously?

Roy: I thought of it as this sort of interplay of life and death as it were. And that is how this place presented itself to me in a way. It is a dumping ground and people think of it as a place of blight. But when you talk to waste pickers, they tell you, it’s a place of opportunity. A place where you’re just one handful away from finding a treasure, where you could nearly get rich on something somebody forgot. I first got to know about the garbage dump from the waste pickers, and they never told me this was a horrible place to work. They thought it was great. They had wonderful memories of birthday parties, romances, summer treats and that was the interplay that had to be shown. It would be incorrect to fetishise it and say this was a wonderful place, because it was not.

Al Jazeera: What, if anything, is being done to lift pickers out of poverty and move the country towards a more sustainable, humane and equitable waste disposable culture?

Roy: The Indian government has announced a large, about $13bn, plan to remediate for various air pollution-related measures, one of which includes the remediation on what the prime minister called moving the mountains of garbage. They did say that it would create opportunities for people who lived off the garbage mountains, but it’s not clear yet what those opportunities are for waste pickers. I think policymakers look at it from two perspectives. One is how quickly can we get the waste out? And secondly, from the slight technical perspective of how quickly can we incinerate, turn it to ash, reduce it to zero. But what is the impact on air, on water pollution? What is the impact on the quality and length of the life of waste pickers, on people who live around these garbage mountains? There’s no point having, say, a biomedical waste incinerator if that is affecting the health of people who live around. That is also a measure by which waste management needs to be evaluated.

Al Jazeera: What do the waste pickers want?

Roy: They don’t know any life other than this. I followed them for eight or nine years. And the only people who left the garbage mountains were one or two characters who passed away, and one of whom is in jail. The others are continuing to work. It is hard to leave. They’re also not equipped, don’t have a great education, to take on those jobs in shining India. One picker tried to take a job as a cab driver with ride-hailing company Ola. But he could not follow directions on the screen and was rejected. So many of them have made attempts to leave and take jobs in the gig economy, but have not been able to hold on to those jobs. Waste pickers live very insecure, difficult, unhealthy lives. And so it’s important to create opportunities for them, to make them capable of taking those opportunities.

Philadelphia is ending its indoor mask mandate, city health officials said Thursday night, abruptly reversing course just days after people in the city had to start wearing masks again amid a sharp increase in infections.

The Board of Health approved Thursday to rescind the mandate, according to the Philadelphia health department, which released a statement that cited “decreasing hospitalizations and a leveling of case counts.”

The mandate went into effect Monday. Philadelphia had ended its earlier indoor mask mandate March 2.

The health department did not release data to back up its reversal on masking, saying more information would be provided Friday. But the acting health commissioner, Dr. Cheryl Bettigole, told the Board of Health at a public meeting Thursday night that hospitalizations had unexpectedly gone down 25% in a matter of days.

“We’re in a situation that we really had not anticipated being in this soon but it is good news,” she said, according to a transcript of the meeting. “So I’m really very happy … to say it appears that we no longer need to mandate masks in Philadelphia and that we can actually move to simply a strong recommendation.”

Philadelphia had become the first major US city to reinstate its indoor mask mandate, but faced fierce blowback as well as a legal effort to get the mandate thrown out. Few masks were worn at the Philadelphia 76ers’ home playoff game on Monday, even though they were required under city rules.

City officials said the mandate would be lifted Friday morning.

When the city announced April 11 that mandatory masking was coming back, Bettigole said it was necessary to forestall a potential new wave driven by an omicron subvariant. She said Philadelphia had crossed the threshold of rising cases at which the city’s guidelines call for people to wear masks indoors.

“If we fail to act now, knowing that every previous wave of infections has been followed by a wave of hospitalizations, and then a wave of deaths, it will be too late for many of our residents,” Bettigole said at the time.

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Cases and hospitalizations continued to rise at least through Monday, when the health department reported 82 patients in the hospital with COVID-19 — up nearly 80% from a week earlier — with confirmed cases up 58% over that same span to 224 per day. Those numbers were still a fraction of what the city endured during the wintertime omicron surge.

Bettigole told the Board of Health on Thursday night that hospitalizations had since drifted down to 65.

The restaurant industry had pushed back against the city’s reimposed mask mandate, saying workers would bear the brunt of customer anger over the new rules.

Several businesses and residents filed suit in state court in Pennsylvania seeking to overturn the renewed mandate. The Board of Health’s vote to rescend the mandate came after board members met in private to discuss the lawsuit.

“We were very pleased to see Philadelphia make the correct decision to rescind the mask mandate,” said the plaintiffs’ lawyer, Thomas W King III, who was among those involved in last year’s successful legal challenge to the statewide mask mandate in schools.

Shortly before news broke that the mandate was ending, the issue came up during Thursday night’s debate between the three leading candidates seeking the party’s nomination for Pennsylvania’s open US Senate seat. Notably, two of them, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta of Philadelphia, came out against the mandate.

“We have to move past COVID,” said Fetterman, adding that “we have to live with this virus, and I don’t believe going backwards with a mask mandate or with closures is appropriate.”

US Rep. Conor Lamb of suburban Pittsburgh said he hated wearing masks, but thought Philadelphia officials were “trying to do what’s best for everybody.”

Most states and cities dropped their masking requirements in February and early March following new guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that put less focus on case counts and more on hospital capacity and said most Americans could safely take off their masks.

The Justice Department, meanwhile, said it is appealing a judge’s order that voided the federal mask mandate on planes and trains and in travel hubs. The CDC asked the Justice Department to appeal the decision handed down by a federal judge in Florida earlier this week.

A selection of the week’s best photos from across the continent and beyond:

Images subject to copyright.