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Sipping coffee at a sidewalk cafe in upscale Houston Heights, Evelyne Marcks shakes her head at the Texas governor's decision to scrap a mask-wearing mandate before the Covid-19 pandemic is under control.
"I don't know who he is trying to please," she said, sitting at a table at the Central City Co-Op, "but it's certainly not people like us from the big cities."
<p>"He probably wants to please the right-wing people who live in places where, to be honest, there's no need for a mask," she added, referring to the roughly four million Texans who live in rural areas.</p><p>But some restaurant owners and clients in the state's largest city, Houston, were perplexed by or even against Governor Greg Abbott's recent decision to drop the mask mandate "and open Texas 100%" beginning Wednesday.</p><p>"We will continue to ask our customers to mask up," said Jessica Navas, an owner of the Central City Co-Op, which also sells fresh vegetables from area farms.</p><p>A fervent defender of eating locally and responsibly, Navas added that the Co-Op's mask requirement "will continue so long as CDC guidelines recommend it."</p><p>The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website currently recommends that "people wear masks in public settings, at events and gatherings, and anywhere they will be around other people."</p><p>Not far from the Co-Op, at the Taco Stand and Burger Joint on Shepherd Drive, Houston Heights' central avenue, owner Matthew Pak has taken a similar stance.</p><p>- 'No-win situation for restaurants' -</p><p>"We are not going to change anything that we are doing," he said.</p><p>"We are going to require all our staff and customers to wear masks, continue sanitizing, keeping everything extra, extra clean, social distancing as much as we can enforce."</p><p>Those precautions will probably not end soon, he said.</p><p>"There's only a low percentage that have the vaccine" so far, Pak noted. "I mean, none of my staff has vaccine."</p><p>So far, some 4.1 million Texans -- 14.2 percent of the population -- have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine.</p><p>That figure is about two percentage points below the national average, owing partly to the severe disruptions of the recent historic cold wave in the state.</p><p>Farther down the avenue, before an enormous Texas flag painted on the corrugated metal wall of Piper's BBQ & Beer, co-owner Richard Orozco ponders the position the governor has put him in.</p><p>"It's really a no-win situation for the restaurants," he said.</p><p>"If we choose to enforce the mask policy, there's going to be vocal critics about that. If we say no mask, there'll probably be even more vocal critics," he noted. "It really puts us in a tough spot."</p><p>He and his partners finally decided to let customers decide whether to wear a mask.</p><p>At Angela's Oven, in a quieter, residential part of the neighborhood, owners reached the same conclusion.</p><p>The bakery caters to an affluent and international clientele, part of the gentrification transforming parts of northern Houston.</p><p>Alex Harsema-Mensonides, a Dutch national who works in the natural gas industry, sips on a hot espresso. Angela's bread and croissants "remind me of my vacations in France," he says.</p><p>Before the pandemic struck, the bakery had indoor seating for a few customers.</p><p>Owner Angela, who would not provide her last name, foresees no early return to that practice.</p><p>"I think our employees will probably (continue to) wear a mask," she said. As for her customers, "I think we'll give them their choice -- but we still social distance."</p><p>© 2021 AFP</p>
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The United States will "do what's necessary" to defend itself, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said Sunday, days after rockets hit an Iraqi base hosting coalition troops, further escalating US-Iran tensions on Iraqi soil.
Austin told ABC News that the US is still "developing intelligence" on who was behind the attack, which saw around 10 rockets slam into the sprawling Ain al-Assad military base in Iraq's western desert on March 3.
<p>No US service members were injured, but an American civilian contractor suffered a cardiac episode while sheltering and died shortly after, the Pentagon has said. </p><p>Austin said Washington was urging Iraqi authorities to move quickly to investigate who was behind the attack, the fourth in recent weeks targeting locations where US forces operate.</p><p>"We want to make sure that again, we understand who's responsible for this. The message to those who would carry out such an attack is you know expect us to do what's necessary to defend ourselves," he said on ABC News' "This Week."</p><p>"We'll strike if that's what we think we need to do at a time and place of our own choosing."</p><p>Wednesday's attack came five days after the US retaliated to earlier assaults, bombing a border depot in Syria which the Pentagon said was used by Iran-backed Iraqi armed militia that have been tied to the rocket attacks.</p><p>Observers say the rockets may be Tehran's way of pressuring Washington, which under President Joe Biden is offering to revive the Iran nuclear deal abandoned by his predecessor Donald Trump in 2018.</p><p>Biden has also said the United States is working to identify those responsible, and "will make judgements from that point."</p><p>Austin was asked if Iran had been given the message that any further retaliation was not an escalation.</p><p>"I think Iran is -- is fully capable of assessing, you know, the strike and our activities and they'll draw their own conclusions," he said.</p><p>"But what they should draw from this again is that we're going to defend our troops and our response will be thoughtful, it will be appropriate. We would hope that they would choose to do the right things."</p><p>Ain al-Assad hosts Iraqi forces and US-led coalition troops helping fight the Islamic State group.</p><p>Tensions between Washington and Tehran peaked in January 2020 after a US drone strike on Baghdad killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and top Iraqi paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.</p><p>In response, Iran launched ballistic missiles on Ain al-Assad and Arbil, wounding dozens.</p><p>Over the next 10 months, dozens of rockets and roadside bombs targeted Western security, military and diplomatic sites across Iraq -- some of them deadly.</p><p>The attacks came to a near-complete halt in October following a truce with the hardliners, but they have resumed over the past three weeks.</p>
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Former president Donald Trump made a less-than-triumphant return to New York City.
The twice-impeached one-term president arrived at Trump Tower just before 9 p.m. Sunday in a black SUV, and a lone supporter was across the street with some members of the media, reported the New York Post.
<p>The New York City police department last month began removing some of the barriers set up in front of the building that had been set up when Trump was inaugurated.</p><p>It's not clear why Trump returned to his former residence and flagship real estate property.</p><p>The Queens native and lifelong New Yorker switched his residency to his Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida, and he faces investigations of his business affairs by the Manhattan district attorney and New York state attorney general.</p>
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