Video shows suspect setting Toronto-area barbershop on fire
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
At a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, DC, on Sunday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. likened vaccine policies in the U.S. to the actions of a totalitarian state, even suggesting Anne Frank was in a better situation when she was hiding from the Nazis.
"Even in Hitler Germany (sic), you could, you could cross the Alps into Switzerland. You could hide in an attic, like Anne Frank did," said Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine advocate, in a speech at the Lincoln Memorial. "I visited, in 1962, East Germany with my father and met people who had climbed the wall and escaped, so it was possible. Many died, true, but it was possible."
Kennedy's historically inaccurate anti-Semitic remark ignores the fact that Frank and some six million other Jews were murdered by Nazis. Frank, who was a teenager at the time, hid in an attic in the Netherlands, not Germany, before she was caught and was sent to a concentration camp, where she died.
The Auschwitz Memorial responded to Kennedy in a statement on Twitter, saying, "Exploiting of the tragedy of people who suffered, were humiliated, tortured & murdered by the totalitarian regime of Nazi Germany - including children like Anne Frank - in a debate about vaccines & limitations during global pandemic is a sad symptom of moral & intellectual decay."
The son of former Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy has a long history of spreading vaccine misinformation.
While there is no national vaccine mandate covering all Americans, various cities around the country, including Washington, have required proof of vaccination for access to many restaurants, bars, gyms and other private businesses. The federal government mandated vaccines for federal workers, but a federal judge in Texas blocked the administration from enforcing it on Friday. The administration's attempt to mandate vaccines for large businesses was blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month, although it allowed a vaccine mandate for certain health care workers to go into effect nationwide. Some businesses have voluntarily mandated vaccines.
Sunday's event, billed as a protest against vaccine mandates, featured speakers repeatedly spreading misinformation about vaccines and showcased several bigoted comparisons to the Holocaust. At least one man was seen displaying a yellow Star of David, which Jews were required by law to wear as an identifier in Nazi Germany.
While language referencing totalitarianism was common throughout the speeches, references to the Holocaust were found largely on signs, one of which read, "Make the Nuremberg Code great again!" and another read, "Bring back the Nuremberg Trials." The Nuremberg Code delineated "permissible medical experiments" on human subjects and stated that such experiments must be for the good of society and satisfy moral, ethical and legal concepts. The code was established during the prosecution of German doctors who subjected Jews to torturous medical experiments.
Another sign with clear anti-Semitic sentiments read, "Corrupt, N.I.H., Big Pharma Mafia, Big C.D.C. Cartel; Big Fraud Media: Your circumcision is dividing America! You all have foreskin-blood stained money in your thug hands!!"
Other attendees donned attire and held signs that promoted former President Donald Trump or that attacked President Joe Biden. Many also wore shirts with "Defeat the Mandate," the name of the event. Organizers secured a National Park Service permit for up to 20,000 people for the event. Protesters started at the Washington Monument and marched to the Lincoln Memorial, where speakers addressed the crowd.
CNN's Joe Johns spoke to three women -- Kim Cogswell, Christina Patterson and Erin Nichols -- who traveled from Pennsylvania and Maryland to Washington for what two of them said was their first-ever large-scale protest. They said the lack of freedom is their biggest frustration with vaccine mandates, though none would say confidently they thought the vaccines were safe.
Cogswell said she is a health care worker, "so that has brought me out here due to the issues that I've had with my job and my current vaccination status." Asked what kind of issues, Cogswell said, "Multiple issues with HR and doctors treating me differently and discriminating against me because of my, my choices."
Patterson said she works in the school system but says she hasn't faced personal backlash at work for not being vaccinated.
The three vaccines available in the United States are safe and effective at preventing severe COVID-19 illness and death. They were studied in large clinical trials that included thousands of people, and more than 210 million people in the United States have been fully vaccinated since the vaccines were authorized for emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the benefits of vaccination outweigh the risks, and it continues to monitor for potential safety issues. Some people experience brief, mild side effects such as headache, muscle pain and swelling at the injection site after vaccination, the CDC says, but serious complications are rare.
In November, the CDC reported that unvaccinated adults had 13 times the risk of testing positive for COVID-19, and 68 times the risk of dying from COVID-19 compared with adults who are fully vaccinated and boosted.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.
Video of a suspect lighting a Richmond Hill barbershop on fire earlier this week has been released by police.
A New Brunswick woman suffering from sarcoidosis, a disease that limits your lung capacity, is in need of a double lung transplant.
The adorable trio of child actors from the 1993 classic comedy 'Mrs. Doubtfire,' which starred the late and great Robin Williams, are all grown up and looking back on their seminal time together.
York Regional Police say they are continuing to search for a suspect in an auto theft investigation who was captured on video running over a police officer in Toronto last month.
TD Bank Group could be hit with more severe penalties than previously expected, says a banking analyst after a report that the investigation it faces in the U.S. is tied to laundering illicit fentanyl profits.
A Chinese truck driver was praised in local media Saturday for parking his vehicle across a highway and preventing more cars from tumbling down a slope after a section of the road in the country's mountainous south collapsed and killed at least 48 people.
A source close to singer Britney Spears tells CNN that the pop star is 'home and safe' after she had a 'major fight' with her boyfriend on Wednesday night at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood.
Pius Suter scored with 1:39 left and the Vancouver Canucks advanced to the second round of the NHL playoffs with a 1-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Friday night in Game 6.
Quebec Premier François Legault reiterated that the pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University must be dismantled while police remain 'on the lookout for new developments.'
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.
Since 1932, Montreal's Henri Henri has been filled to the brim with every possible kind of hat, from newsboy caps to feathered fedoras.
Police in Oak Bay, B.C., had to close a stretch of road Sunday to help an elephant seal named Emerson get safely back into the water.
Out of more than 9,000 entries from over 2,000 breweries in 50 countries, a handful of B.C. brews landed on the podium at the World Beer Cup this week.
Raneem, 10, lives with a neurological condition and liver disease and needs Cholbam, a medication, for a longer and healthier life.