A section of US President Donald Trump’s much-vaunted border wall between the US and Mexico has blown over in high winds, US Border Patrol officers have been reported as saying.
The steel panels, more than 9m high, began to lean at a sharp angle on the border between the Californian town of Calexico and Mexicali in Mexico amid gusts on Wednesday.
The section of wall was under construction at the time, with concrete anchors being put in place, but the strong winds blew the panels over onto the Mexican side of the border before the concrete had cured, the reports said.
Photo: AFP
“Luckily, Mexican authorities responded quickly and were able to divert traffic from the nearby street,” Border Patrol agent Carlos Pitones said, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The panels were being retrieved from the Mexican side and re-erected, Pitones said.
“CBP [Customs and Border Protection] will work with the construction contractor to mitigate the impact of high winds as construction continues,” Pitones said.
The section of the wall is part of a wider construction effort by the Trump administration to enhance the more than 3,000km-long border barrier with Mexico.
Building a new wall was a major part of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and he has threatened to call a national emergency to obtain the US$5.7 billion in federal funds he claims is needed to build his “beautiful” wall.
However, he has backtracked on the scale of his ambitions to build a concrete wall, instead focusing on building a barrier where there is currently nothing on the border.
“The barrier or the wall can be of steel instead of concrete if that works better,” Trump said earlier this month.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS