Texas drops Covid restrictions amid wave of reopenings around US

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued the most sweeping rollback of coronavirus restrictions of any U.S. state on Tuesday, lifting a mask mandate and saying most businesses may open at full capacity next week.

Abbott's executive order comes as many U.S. states and major cities see a sharp decline in coronavirus infections and hospitalisations begin to ease the unprecedented lockdowns put in place a year ago.

"It is now time to open Texas 100%," Abbott, a first-term Republican, told a news conference. He said the order would take full effect on March 10.

The order lifts all mask requirements statewide and forbids local authorities from penalising residents who do not wear a face covering. It removes all restrictions on businesses in counties without a high number of hospitalisations.

Local officials can still apply limits to businesses where hospitalisations remain high, according to the order, but were prohibited from mandating that they operate at less than 50% capacity.

The governor said he was able to lift the restrictions because Texas, the third most-populous U.S. state, had administered nearly 5.7 million vaccine shots to its 29 million residents.

According to Abbott's office, by the end of March every senior who wants a vaccine would be able to get one.

The decision puts Texas in conflict with U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat who has urged Americans to keep taking COVID-19 precautions, including wearing masks, until vaccinations have fully tamped down the virus.

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In remarks at the White House on efforts to step up vaccine production, Biden did not mention Texas. But the president appeared to be referring to Abbott's executive order when he urged Americans to continue wearing face protection. "Now is not the time to let up," he said. "I've asked the country to wear masks for my first 100 days in office. Now is not the time to let our guard down. People's lives are at stake."

Referring to Abbott's order on masks, White House COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt told CNN: "I hope the governor rethinks this. It's only a small piece of cloth that's needed. I don't think it affects the economy of the state."

As of Tuesday, 35 U.S. states, along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, still mandate that residents wear face masks in public. Mississippi also lifted its face-covering order on Tuesday.

More than 51 million Americans, or 15% of the total U.S. population, have been given at least one vaccine dose, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Biden said on Tuesday that through an agreement for Merck & Co Inc to help make rival Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine, his administration had secured enough for every adult in the United States to be inoculated by the end of May.

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COVID-19 infections have plummeted in recent weeks across much of the world, including the United States.

According to a Reuters tally, roughly 68,240 new cases have been reported on average each day this week, or 27% of the peak daily average reached on Jan. 7. The United States has recorded 28,681,793 infections and 513,721 coronavirus-related deaths since the pandemic began.

In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that effective immediately, bars, restaurants and other businesses can increase indoor capacity to 50% and remain open until 1 a.m.

"We have made incredible progress in recent weeks and months, and I thank our business community for their ongoing commitment to saving lives,” Lightfoot said in a written statement.

Saint-Senier-de-Beuvron, population 350, is none too thrilled to have been picked as a ground station for Musk’s Starlink project for broadband from space.

“This project is totally new. We don’t have any idea of the impact of these signals,” said Noemie Brault, a 34-year-old deputy mayor of the village just 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the majestic Mont Saint-Michel abbey on the English Channel.

“As a precaution the municipal council said no,” she explained.

Musk, founder of SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla, plans to deploy thousands of satellites to provide fast internet for remote areas anywhere in the world.

It’s a high-stakes battle he is waging with fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos of Amazon as well as the London-based start-up OneWeb.

Antennas on the ground will capture the signals and relay them to individual user terminals connected by cable.

Starlink’s contractor had already secured French regulatory approval to install nine “radomes”—three-metre-tall (10-feet) globes protecting the antennas—in Saint-Senier, one of four sites planned for France.

In December, Saint-Senier issued a decree to block construction on the field.

But the refusal was based on a technicality, and the contractor, Sipartech, told AFP that it plans to refile its request, which the council will likely be unable to block.

“That worries us because we have no data” on the eventual effects of the signals on the health of humans or animals, said Brault, herself a farmer.

“And when you hear that he wants to implant a chip in people’s brains, it’s frightening,” she said, referring to Musk’s Neuralink project.

‘Not technophobes’

François Dufour, a Greens council member and retired farmer, said he believes residents had reason to worry.

“The risks from electromagnetic waves is something we’ve already seen with high-voltage power lines, which have disturbed lots of farmers in the area,” he said.

Besides, “social networks, internet, they exist already—why do we need to go look for internet on the moon?” he said.

France’s national radio frequency agency ANFR, which approved Starlink’s stations, says they present no risks to residents, not least because they will be emitting straight up into the sky.

There are already around 100 similar sites across France dating from the first satellite launches from 50 years ago, it adds.

That hasn’t convinced Jean-Marc Belloir, 57, who worries that his cows will start producing less milk.

“On our farm, we’re always online. My cows are linked up; my smart watch warns me when they’re going to calve,” Belloir said. “But when you see the range of these antennas, there has to be some research” on the potential impacts.

Still, he baptised his latest calf “SpaceX du Beuvron,” combining Musk’s firm with the name of the creek that runs through his village.

As men in Hollywood and other prominent industries in the United States tumbled from their perches in rapid succession after hundreds of women began coming forward in 2017 with stories of abuse under the #MeToo hashtag, women in France also began opening up about their experiences with sexual harassment and violence.

The movement soon had a French equivalent, #BalanceTonPorc (Squeal on your pig), a hashtag launched in October 2017 by New York-based French journalist Sandra Muller. A month later, thousands of women were in the Place de la République in Paris and in other cities protesting violence against women.

“It was very powerful,” said Léa Bages, a consultant who specializes in gender relations, noting that the demonstrators were of all ages and from all sectors of society.

Unlike in the US, though, where a year after the #MeToo hashtag first went viral more t