USA

Indian Health Service head nominated amid tough challenges


This photo provided by Jared Touchin shows Navajo Nation health director Jill Jim, left, Navajo-area Indian Health Service director Roselyn Tso and Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez in Albuquerque, N.M., on July 29, 2019. President Joe Biden announced Wednesday, March 9, 2022, that he will nominate Tso to oversee the Indian Health Service.

 (Jared Touchin via AP) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

FELICIA FONSECA
Wed, March 9, 2022, 

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday he is nominating veteran health administrator Roselyn Tso to oversee the federal agency that delivers health care to more than 2.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

The selection of Tso to lead the Indian Health Services comes amid a push from tribal health advocates for stability in the agency. Acting directors have filled the role for years at the agency that's chronically underfunded and struggles to meet the needs of Indian Country.

Tso, an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation, most recently served as director of the agency's Navajo region, which stretches across parts of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. She began her career with the Indian Health Service in 1984 and held various roles in the agency's Portland, Oregon, area and at its headquarters in Maryland, the White House said.

Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said Tso is “exceptionally qualified” to lead the agency and pointed specifically to her work during the coronavirus pandemic, when the Navajo Nation had one of the highest per capita infection rates in the U.S.

“Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, her leadership, expertise and compassion have helped to reduce the spread of this modern-day monster and save lives,” Nez said in a statement.

Tso's nomination is subject to confirmation from the U.S. Senate. She holds a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies from Marylhurst University in Oregon and a master’s degree in organizational management from the University of Phoenix.

The Indian Health Service repeatedly has been the focus of congressional hearings and scathing government reports that seek reform. The agency runs two dozen hospitals and about 90 other health care facilities around the country, most of which are small and on or near Native American reservations.

Other hospitals and health care facilities are run by tribes or tribal organizations under contract with the agency.

The National Indian Health Board wrote to Biden last November, saying it was disappointed he had not made the nomination of an Indian Health Service director a higher priority, particularly because the coronavirus pandemic has disproportionately sickened and killed Native Americans.

Tribal members also have been hit hard as COVID-19 fueled America's drug crisis, and have some of the worst health disparities among other groups in the U.S.

The health board didn't specifically weigh in on Tso's nomination but recently outlined expectations for a new director. Among them are advocating for full and mandatory funding of the Indian Health Service, consulting with tribes in a meaningful way, investing long-term in public health infrastructure and keeping tribes up to date on agency actions and funding decisions.

This 34,000-Ton ‘Infinity Train’ Will Recharge Itself... With Gravity


Caroline Delbert
Wed, March 9, 2022

Photo credit: Fortescue Metals Group

An Australian-British partnership will build a renewable energy mine train.


Mine trains date back centuries and have controlled, specific applications.


Australia’s Fortescue bought a British F1 spinoff for their battery prowess.

An Australian mining company says it’s building a huge “Infinity Train” that will charge itself by moving downhill. It’ll carry heavy iron ore in one direction and use that weight and movement to charge the train for its return trip back to the mine.

“The Infinity Train has the capacity to be the world’s most efficient battery electric locomotive,” Fortescue CEO Elizabeth Gaines says in a March 1 press release. “The regeneration of electricity on the downhill loaded sections will remove the need for the installation of renewable energy generation and recharging infrastructure, making it a capital-efficient solution for eliminating diesel and emissions from our rail operations.”

Fortescue Metals Group, or FMG, is based in Western Australia with headquarters in Perth and enormous property holdings in the north of the state. It’s one of the largest producers of iron ore in the world. (Nearly 80 percent of Western Australia’s population lives in the Perth area, constituting about 8 percent of Australia’s total population; so only about 2 percent of Australia’s population inhabits the rest of the resource-rich state that occupies about 33 percent of the country’s total land area.)

FMG announced the Infinity Train as part of a joint project with recently acquired Williams Advanced Engineering (WAE), the Oxfordshire, England-based commercial arm of a well-known Formula One racing company. WAE builds batteries for electric vehicles, which FMG cites as one of the key reasons for the acquisition, as those batteries will power the Infinity Train. WAE has also worked on related projects, like designing the proprietary high-voltage battery system for a 290-ton hydrogen-powered mining truck, which will reportedly become the world’s largest electric vehicle once complete.

It’s hard to overstate how intertwined railroads and mining operations have become over the centuries. The first primitive rail transport in mines dates back to the 1500s, designed to carry ore, waste stone, and other materials out of the mines, while minimizing how much people had to work to push and control the carts. From there, the mine rail developed for hundreds of years as a specialized offshoot of other kinds of trains.

So how will FMG and WAE’s Infinity Train work? Like other rail transport innovators over the last 500 years, leadership at FMG has recognized that a mine train offers a unique situation that’s well-suited to new technology. That’s because a mine train only has to go back and forth over a relatively short distance, meaning its trips are very predictable, well-controlled, and use a specified amount of power every single time as long as the weight is about the same. It’s not like a passenger or freight train designed for use around the world.

Photo credit: Public Domain

The company’s founder, Andrew Forrest, cites gravitational energy as one piece of a global move away from fossil fuels and toward other sources of energy. That’s how the Infinity Train will work: the fully loaded 34,000-ton train will move slightly downhill on its own, and store this kinetic energy in batteries that will power the much lighter, emptied trains back up the incline to the mines. Forrest says the new train will also lower operating costs.

FMG says its current fleet has 16 total train sets that are each nearly two miles long with a capacity of over 34,000 tons each, per the press release. The trains use diesel and account for 11 percent of Fortescue’s total direct (or Scope 1) emissions. FMG’s stated public goal is to eliminate diesel from their operations and fully decarbonize by 2030. The Infinity Train is a key part of that plan.

Japanese firms say tanker pilot shows coal to hydrogen plan feasible


Tue, March 8, 2022, 6:04 AM·2 min read

TOKYO, March 8 (Reuters) - Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI) and other Japan-based firms said on Tuesday that a pilot project to transport hydrogen produced from brown coal in Australia to Japan in the world's first liquefied hydrogen tanker had proven technically feasible.

While hydrogen is widely touted as a fuel of the future with zero carbon emissions, it requires intensive energy input, with renewables to produce "green hydrogen". Critics say emissions from brown coal derived hydrogen are twice that of natural gas.

The A$500 million ($364 million) project, led by KHI and backed by the governments of Japan and Australia in an effort to cut carbon emissions, was originally due to ship its first cargo a year ago but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Electric Power Development (J-Power), which is in charge of producing the project's hydrogen, said it has tested using biomass with coal to help offset CO2 emissions while it aims to implement carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) in the future to make hydrogen that is completely CO2-free.

The KHI-built Suiso Frontier tanker eventually left Australia this year on Jan. 25 and arrived in Kobe, western Japan, a month later, the consortium said, adding it had unloaded its cargo of hydrogen by the end of February.

"The demonstration covered from production and transport to loading and storage proved that the technological foundations have been laid for the future use of hydrogen as an energy source in the same way as liquefied natural gas (LNG)," Motohiko Nishimura, KHI's executive officer, told reporters.

KHI aims to replicate its success as a major LNG tanker producer with hydrogen, which is seen as critical by Japan to decarbonise industries that rely on coal, gas and oil and to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, while Australia aims to become a major exporter of the fuel.

"Equipment and facilities that can be operated safely is also a game-changing technology for the clean energy business," KHI's Nishimura said.

In addition to KHI and J-Power, the consortium includes Shell's Japanese unit, Iwatani Corp, Marubeni , Eneos Holdings and Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha .

The partners did not disclose a cost structure for the project, saying it was aimed at proving feasibility and safety. KHI said it aims to build a much larger hydrogen vessel in mid-2020s and to commercialize the business in the early 2030s. ($1 = 1.3727 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Alexander Smith)

If U.S. reached a deal with Venezuela on oil, would it have an impact on gas prices?

Michael Wilner, Antonio Maria Delgado
Tue, March 8, 2022,

The United States is exploring a deal with Venezuela for oil amid soaring energy prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But that doesn’t mean Americans will see an immediate impact on gas prices at the pump, experts say.

Even if President Joe Biden chooses to ease sanctions on its oil sector, Venezuela won’t be able to turn the spigots back on overnight.

Biden announced on Tuesday that the United States would ban the import of all Russian oil and gas over its war in Ukraine. Last year, the United States imported roughly 675,000 barrels of Russian oil a day — the equivalent of Venezuela’s entire production capacity.

And of the 600,000 barrels that Caracas is exporting already, almost all of it is committed to China, with about 10% going to Cuba, experts say. Venezuela produced closer to 800,000 barrels a day last year.

A team of U.S. officials visited Venezuela last weekend to discuss energy and other issues in the first diplomatic talks between the two countries in years.

A U.S.-led effort to pressure Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro through economic sanctions — particularly on the oil sector — has severely disrupted the country’s ability to ramp up production, experts said.

Venezuela is already producing near its maximum capacity, experts said, making it unlikely that a deal with Caracas would immediately help lower the price of gas at the pump for U.S. consumers. Oil prices are determined by global supply, not by the supply of one nation.

“If the sanctions are lifted — which I don’t think they will, but rather there will probably be licenses or some specific agreements granted — certainly Venezuela can redirect part of what it currently sends to China,” said Francisco Monaldi, an expert on Venezuelan energy at Rice University in Houston.

“There is little that it can increase further because its production capacity is almost at its limit. Perhaps it could supply another 100,000 barrels more,” Monaldi said. “But that is not going to alter oil prices, nor at the world level, because Venezuela is not going to add barrels, it can simply redirect.”

Guillermo Zubillaga, head of the Venezuelan working group at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, said in an interview that it will take time to reverse a 20-year effort to dismantle Venezuela’s production capacity.

Venezuela’s oil sector is also rife with corruption, Zubillaga noted.

“The challenges for Venezuela to increase production are huge,” he said. “It is very hard to reverse that in a couple of months for people to be able to see an impact at the gas pump.”

Chevron and Repsol, two large international oil companies, currently operate in the country.

Some U.S. refineries in the Gulf of Mexico were specifically designed to process the heavier oil that Venezuela produces, experts say.

Simon Henderson, director of the Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that renewed imports of Venezuelan oil to the United States would likely make an incremental, rather than significant difference in meeting U.S. demand.

“The answers are far from clear,” Henderson said. “Venezuela has the advantage of proximity – short and quick voyages – and our Gulf refineries like its otherwise unpopular heavy crude.”

A delegation of top U.S. officials visited Caracas over the weekend to discuss what the administration described as a range of matters – “including, certainly, energy security,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday.

Any deal to ease sanctions with the Maduro regime will take time, Psaki said.

“I think that’s leaping several stages ahead in any process,” she said. “There was a discussion that was had by members of the administration over the course of the last several days. Those discussions are also ongoing.”

Venezuela's Maduro says work agenda agreed with U.S. delegation


 Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and Russian 

Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov meet in Caracas

Mon, March 7, 2022, 

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro on Monday said he agreed an agenda for future talks with a U.S. delegation that he met on Saturday, the first high-level meeting between the two countries in years.

Officials from the two countries discussed easing oil sanctions on the South American country but made little progress towards reaching a deal, five sources familiar with the matter told Reuters on Sunday, part of U.S. efforts to separate Russia from one of its key allies.

"Last Saturday night a delegation from the government of the United States of America arrived in Venezuela, I received it here at the presidential palace," Maduro said in a broadcast on state media.

"We had a meeting, I could describe it as respectful, cordial, very diplomatic," he said.

The meeting lasted two hours, he said, without specifying the topics discussed or who the U.S. delegates were.

Sources previously told Reuters the U.S. delegation was led by Juan Gonzalez, the White House's top adviser on Latin America, U.S. Ambassador James Story, as well as Roger Carstens, the United States' presidential special envoy for hostage affairs.

Earlier, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the purpose of the trip was to discuss a number of issues, including "energy security" and the cases of nine U.S. citizens who are in prison in Venezuela.

The talks will continue, Maduro said, without offering a date.

"As I said to the (U.S.) delegation, I reiterate all our will so that from diplomacy, from respect and from the hope of a better world, we can advance in an agenda that allows well-being and peace," Maduro said.

(Reporting by Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas; writing by Oliver Griffin; editing by Richard Pullin)

French far-right presidential candidate offers limited welcome to Ukrainians, says Arab refugees still unwelcome


 French far-right presidential candidate Zemmour at the 58th International Agriculture Fair in Paris  

 HE IS OF BOTH JEWISH AND ARAB ORIGIN

HE IS BOTH AN ANTI-SEMITE AND AN ISLAMOPHOBE

FRENCH NATIONALIST ISOLATIONIST

Tue, March 8, 2022,


PARIS (Reuters) - A French far-right presidential contender, on the back foot over past support for Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Ukrainians with family links to France should be given visas, unlike those fleeing conflicts in Arab Muslim nations.

Zemmour warned an "emotional response" risked unleashing a flood of refugees across Europe after the European Union agreed to give Ukrainians who flee the war the right to stay and work in the 27-nation bloc for up to three years.

The United Nations says more than 2 million Ukrainians have already fled the country.

Zemmour applauded Britain's more stringent approach. Britain on Monday rejected calls to ease visa requirements for Ukrainian refugees.

"If they have ties to France, if they have family in France...let's give them visas," Zemmour told BFM TV.

A writer and polemicist who has previous convictions for inciting racial hate, said it was acceptable to have different rules for would-be asylum seekers from Europe and those from Arab Muslim nations.

He describes France as a once-great nation now in decline, its Christian civilisation hollowed out by the growing influence of Islam and immigration.

"It's a question of assimilation," Zemmour said. "There are people who are like us and people who unlike us. Everybody now understands that Arab or Muslim immigrants are too unlike us and that it is harder and harder to integrate them."

"We are closer to Christian Europeans."

In September 2020, Zemmour tweeted that he favoured a "Russian alliance" and that Moscow was "the most reliable ally, even more than the United States, Germany or Britain." He has condemned Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's assault on Ukraine -- which Moscow describes as a 'special operation to de-Nazify its neighbour -- and public disgust over the cross-border exodus of Ukrainian citizens has hurt Zemmour in the polls.

Zemmour's support has fallen by 3 to 4 points to about 12% in voter surveys taken since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Europe's open-arm welcome to fleeing Ukrainians contrasts with the reluctance to accept large numbers of refugees from conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, with some Arab refugees complaining of double standards.

(Reporting by Richard Lough in Paris and Alexandre Minguez in Perpignan; Editing by Jon Boyle)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Samsung may face investigation in Korea over Galaxy S22 performance claims


Cherlynn Low/Engadget

Jon Fingas
·Reporter
Tue, March 8, 2022

Samsung may be in legal trouble following worries that it's throttling app performance. Sources for The Korea Herald claim South Korea's Fair Trade Commission is "expected" to investigate Samsung over allegations it violated advertising law when marketing the Galaxy S22 phone series. While the company claims the S22 has the "best performance ever," its Game Optimizing Service limits speed to both preserve battery life and prevent overheating — and you can't currently override it.

The regulatory crackdown might not be Samsung's only problem. Yonhap News Agency claims Galaxy S22 owners in South Korea are preparing a class action lawsuit against the company for distorting the phone's capabilities. They feel "cheated" and are asking for 300,000 won (about $243) in compensation per person, according to the news outlet.

Recently, Samsung promised a GOS update that will give users control over throttling. However, the tech firm has denied reports it's slowing down general apps like Netflix and TikTok, not just games. Some also say it's removing speed caps for benchmarks like 3DMark and GeekBench, providing an unrealistic view of the Galaxy S22 in synthetic tests.

We've asked Samsung for comment. Performance throttling is a common practice for smartphones, as mobile processors can't always run at full speed for sustained periods. The concern, however, is that Samsung is throttling more aggressively while giving users no say in the matter, much like Apple did during its "batterygate" scandal. There's no guarantee Samsung will face penalties or do more than release its planned update, but the story is a familiar one so far.

Massive meteor crater discovered beneath Greenland's ice much older than thought

By Katie Hunt, CNN - Yesterday 
© Pierre Beck/University of Copenhagen

The age of a 31-kilometer (19-mile) wide meteorite crater discovered under a kilometer of Greenland ice had long puzzled scientists.

The Hiawatha crater was exceptionally well preserved despite glacier ice being incredibly effective at erosion. Its state fueled talk that the meteorite might have hit as recently as 13,000 years ago.

However, the crater, which is one of the world's largest, has now been definitively dated -- and it is much, much older. In fact, it slammed into the Earth just a few million years after dinosaurs went extinct, about 58 million years ago.

"Dating the crater has been a particularly tough nut to crack, so it's very satisfying that two laboratories in Denmark and Sweden, using different dating methods arrived at the same conclusion. As such, I'm convinced that we've determined the crater's actual age, which is much older than many people once thought," said Michael Storey, head of geology at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, in a news release.

When the asteroid hit, the Arctic was covered in balmy rainforest with temperatures of around 68 degrees Fahrenheit (20 degrees Celsius). Local inhabitants would have included crocodiles, turtles and primitive hippo-like animals, said Storey, who was an author of a new paper on the crater published in the journal Science Advances.

The Hiawatha impact crater could swallow up Washington DC and is larger than about 90% of the roughly 200 previously known impact craters on Earth.


© Joe MacGregor/University of CopenhagenThe researchers collected sand and rock samples in Greeland to determine when the meteor hit.

It's not yet known whether the meteor that struck Greenland disrupted the global climate in the same way the 200-kilometer wide asteroid that created the Chicxulub crater in Mexico -- that doomed the dinosaurs -- did some 8 million years earlier. But the Greenland meteorite would have devastated plant and animal life in the immediate region.

To date the glacier, researchers collected sand and rocks from rivers flowing from the glacier. Those samples would have been heated by the meteor impact. They were dated using techniques that detect the natural decay of long-lived natural radioisotopes contained in the rock.

Crystals of the mineral zircon contained in the rock were dated using uranium-lead dating. The uranium isotopes start decaying as zircon crystallizes, transforming into lead isotopes at a steady and predictable rate. The technique pointed to a date of about 58 million years ago.

The grains of sand were heated with a laser, and the researchers measured the release of argon gas, which is produced from the decay of the rare but naturally occurring radioactive isotope of potassium, known as K-40.

"The half-life of K-40 is exceptionally long (1,250 million years) which makes it ideal for dating deep-time geological events like the age of the Hiawatha asteroid," Storey said.

The technique suggested a similar time frame for the meteor strike.

"It is fantastic to now know its age. We've been working hard to find a way to date the crater since we discovered it seven years ago," said coauthor Nicolaj Krog Larsen, a professor at the GLOBE Institute at the University of Copenhagen, who first discovered the crater.


© NASA/John SonntagThe Hiawatha impact crater is covered by the Greenland Ice Sheet, which flows just beyond the crater rim, forming a semi-circular edge. Part of this edge, seen in the top of the photograph, and a tongue of ice that breaches the crater's rim are shown in this photo taken during a NASA flight in April.

Union matchmakers a turn-off, say Chinese web users as birth rate debate heats up


National People's Congress (NPC) second plenary session in Beijing

Wed, March 9, 2022, 
By Brenda Goh and Albee Zhang

SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Proposals for matchmaking committees within unions and a drive to encourage more graduate students to have babies triggered a frosty reception on social media, as officials brainstormed ways to raise China's plunging birth rate.

In all, delegates to China's annual meeting of parliament submitted more than 20 suggestions for ways to produce more children in a country that did not scrap a decades-long policy restricting couples to a single offspring until 2016.

The plan from a Communist Party secretary at a pharmaceutical firm in Hubei province for "marriage committees" within trade unions to provide matchmaking services, was widely criticised on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter.

"Marriage is for happiness, not to meet goals," said one critic.

Also panned was another suggestion that masters and doctoral students should be encouraged to marry and reproduce.

"So I'm studying a masters to birth a baby for you? Why not establish a school (for this), where people can graduate once they've given birth to enough," wrote one user in a post that got about 5,000 likes.

The steep decline in China's birth rate to last year's record low, fuelled in part by the high cost of raising children in cities, has been met with growing alarm by officials.

Last year, China announced that couples could have up to three children, in a major shift, but the decision was met with doubts over whether it would make much difference and questions on what supportive measures would be rolled out.

Other proposals submitted to the National People's Congress, which started on Saturday and finishes on Friday, focused on ways of alleviating pressures facing families and working women.

They included preferential tax policies, waiving kindergarten fees for a third child, and penalties for employers who discriminate against parents with multiple children.

Although proposals submitted by ordinary delegates at the rubber-stamp parliament are largely symbolic, they allow matters of public concern to be discussed and in theory will also be considered by policy-making committees.

Many Weibo users took the opportunity to criticise the historic tactics China had taken to control population growth.

"This is crazy, when it was the time of family planning there was forced sterilisation and abortion," said one user whose comment received over 2,000 likes. "Now they want three children. Are women just machines?"

(Reporting by Brenda Goh in Shanghai and Albee Zhang in Beijing; Additional reporting by Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Tony Munroe and John Stonestreet)

CAN'T GET NO RESPECT
Saudi Arabia and UAE leaders ‘decline calls with Biden’ amid fears of oil price spike

Edward Helmore
Tue, March 8, 2022, 

Photograph: Apu Gomes/AFP/Getty Images

The de-facto leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have declined to arrange calls with US president Joe Biden in recent weeks as the US and its allies have sought to contain a surge in energy prices caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to the Wall Street Journal, citing Middle East and US officials, both Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan have been unavailable to Biden after US requests were made for discussions.

“There was some expectation of a phone call, but it didn’t happen,“ a US official said of a plan for Saudi Prince Mohammed and Biden to speak. “It was part of turning on the spigot [of Saudi oil].”

Related: How the US ban on Russian oil risks splitting the west’s response

Last week, OPEC+, which includes Russia, declined to increase oil production despite western entreaties.

But reports of frigid communications with Saudi Arabia come as the Biden administration seeks to increase oil supply after formally banning Russian oil imports on Tuesday, pushing oil prices to $130 a barrel, the highest level in 14 years.

However, the US has for the first time in years opened up diplomatic channels with Venezuela, a Russian ally and which has the world’s largest oil reserves. Venezuela has now released at least two Americans from jail in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the Biden administration in a possible prelude to increasing production to ease the price surge.

Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia have chilled during the Biden administration over American policy in the Gulf region.

Issues include the revival of the Iran nuclear deal; lack of US support for Saudi intervention in Yemen’s civil war and its refusal to add Houthis to its list of terrorist groups; US help with a Saudi civilian nuclear program; and legal immunity for Prince Mohammed, who is facing lawsuits over the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit-team in its Istanbul consulate four years ago.

During Biden’s election campaign he vowed to treat the kingdom as a “pariah” state, saying there is “very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia.”

Earlier this week, White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said there were no plans for the Biden and Prince Mohammed to talk soon, and no plans for the president to travel to Riyadh.

Yousef Al Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the US, confirmed strained relations between the two countries. “Today, we’re going through a stress test, but I am confident that we will get out of it and get to a better place,” Al Otaiba predicted.

The two Gulf nations are regarded as the only global suppliers with capacity to pump more oil to ease the price surge.

Related: How important is Russian oil and how high could prices go?

Senior US officials with the national security council and state department had reported travelled to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi in recent weeks to make direct US representations.

The Journal, however, reported that Biden had spoken with Prince Mohammed’s 86-year-old father, King Salman, on 9 February. On the call they affirmed their countries’ strategic and economic partnership. The UAE’s ministry of foreign affairs said Biden and Sheikh Mohammed call would be rescheduled.

LGBTQ RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS

STATE TERRORISM

Texas loses appeal over investigation of trans teen's family

ANDREW DeMILLO

Wed, March 9, 2022, 

A Texas court on Wednesday tossed out the state's appeal of an order preventing child welfare officials from investigating the parents of a transgender teenager over gender-confirming care the youth received.

The Texas 3rd Court of Appeals dismissed Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton's appeal of the temporary order a judge issued last week halting the investigation by the Department of Family and Protective Services into the parents of the 16-year-old girl.

The court ruled that the judge's temporary order was not appealable.

The parents sued over the investigation and Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that officials look into reports of such treatments as abuse. The lawsuit marked the first report of parents being investigated following Abbott’s directive and an earlier nonbinding legal opinion by Paxton labeling certain gender-confirming treatments as “child abuse.”

The appeals court's decision clears the way for the judge to hold a hearing on whether to issue a broader temporary order blocking enforcement of Abbott’s directive.

An attorney for the parents said at a court hearing last week that he has heard of at least two other families facing DFPS abuse investigations for gender-confirming care. A Dallas-area family said the department is investigating them, The 19th, a nonprofit news organization, reported Wednesday.

Texas Children's Hospital has announced it will stop providing hormone therapies for transgender youth because of the governor's order.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the family by the American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal. The groups also represent a clinical psychologist who has said the governor’s directive is forcing her to choose between reporting clients to the state or losing her license and other penalties.

The ACLU urged courts to halt the “egregious government overreach" of the investigations.

“This crisis in Texas is continuing every day, with state leaders weaponizing the Department of Family and Protective Services to investigate families, invade their privacy, and trample on the rights of parents simply for providing the best possible health care for their kids under the guidance of doctors and medical best practices," Brian Klosterboer, ACLU of Texas attorney, said in a statement.

The governor’s directive and Paxton’s opinion go against the nation’s largest medical groups, including the American Medical Association, which have opposed Republican-backed restrictions on transgender people filed in statehouses nationwide. A federal judge last year blocked an Arkansas law prohibiting gender-confirming care for minors, and the state is appealing that decision.

President Joe Biden last week condemned Abbott’s directive and announced steps his administration was taking to protect transgender youth and their families in the state.

AMERIKAN  FASCISM 

Idaho bill would make medical treatment for trans youth punishable by life in prison

Wed, March 9, 2022


Idaho's state House of Representatives has approved the most far-reaching bill yet to criminalize medical treatments for transgender youth, a measure that threatens anyone who facilitates that treatment - or even helps a minor travel to another state to receive gender-affirming care - to be sentenced to life in prison.

The measure, approved Tuesday on a mostly party-line vote, adds medical care for transgender youth to a section of Idaho law already on the books that bans female genital mutilation.

It adds language making it a felony either to perform gender-affirming surgery on transgender youth or to provide medication meant to block or delay the onset of puberty.

The existing law already makes a felony of anyone who takes a child from Idaho to another state for the purpose of female genital mutilation; the new language would add transporting someone across state lines for gender-affirming medical care to the felony list.

Similarly, the new language would make either providing gender-affirming medical care or transporting a child to another state to receive that care a felony punishable by up to life in prison.

"This bill is about protecting children, which is a legitimate state interest. We do that all of the time," the bill's lead sponsor, state Rep. Bruce Skaug (R), said on the House floor. "We need to stop sterilizing and mutilating children under the age of 18. This bill is not about the adults or adult trans community at all. It is about children."

Skaug compared transgender medical treatment to allowing children to get tattoos or drink alcohol.

But transgender rights advocates point to specific provisions that include medicine meant to block or delay puberty as evidence that the bill goes far beyond a ban on surgery. Trans children are at far higher risk of suicide and suicidal ideation than cisgender children - a risk that can be significantly lowered with gender-affirming health care, according to a recent study.

Groups like the American Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics have opposed less far-reaching measures that have been introduced in other states in recent months.

"These bills do nothing to invest and protect Idaho youth and families, and Idahoans deserve better," said Chase Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice at the American Civil Liberties Union. "Criminalizing health care for transgender adolescents is counter to science, medicine and ethics and we stand ready to fight any attack on transgender youth and their families."

One Republican, state Rep. Fred Wood (R) - the only physician serving in the state House - voted with Democrats against the bill.

The bill moves to the state Senate, where Republicans also hold an overwhelming majority. But Idaho's state Senate, considered the more centrist of the two legislative bodies, has often clashed with the House in recent years, making its passage far from certain.

The state Senate has passed a bill to end this year's session on Friday, March 25.

Idaho's bill is one of dozens of measures related to transgender youth that have been introduced in Republican-led legislatures across the country this year, and 25 that target medical treatment for transgender people specifically. Legislators in Tennessee, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Alabama, Arizona, Kansas, Iowa, Wisconsin, Kentucky and New Hampshire are all considering multiple bills related to transgender medical care.

It is not certain that those measures will stand up to scrutiny. Strangio, of the ACLU, pointed to an Arkansas law that was blocked by a judge earlier this year. A Texas judge last week put on hold a state agency's move to investigate the mother of a transgender girl under orders from Gov. Greg Abbott (R).