Fires charring range set up ranchers for hardship in US West
By MATTHEW BROWN and CHRISTOPHER WEBER

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Firefighters watch a hillside burn on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Wednesday, Aug 11, 2021, near Lame Deer, Mont. The Richard Spring fire was threatening hundreds of homes as it burned across the reservation. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)

LAME DEER, Mont. (AP) — Wildfires tearing through Montana and elsewhere in the U.S. West are devouring vast rangeland areas that cattle ranchers depend upon, setting the stage for a potential shortage of pasture as the hot, dry summer grinds on.

On the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, firefighters and local authorities scrambled to save hundreds of homes in the path of a fire that started Sunday and exploded across more than 260 square miles (673 square kilometers) in just a few days, triggering evacuation orders for thousands of people.

Some ranchers stayed behind to help fight it. Yet as flames charred mile after mile of rangeland and forest, they could do little to protect cattle pastures that are crucial to economic survival for families on the remote reservation.

As the fire raged across rugged hills and narrow ravines, tribal member Darlene Small helped her grandson move about 100 head of cattle to a new pasture, only to relocate them twice more as the flames from the Richard Spring fire bore down, she said Thursday. An extreme drought that’s blanketing the West has made matters worse by stunting vegetation untouched by fire.

“They’ve got to have pasture where there’s water. If there’s no water, there’s no good pasture,” Small said. Particularly hard hit were some ranchers already depending on surplus grass after a fire burned them off their normal pasture last year, she said.

Meanwhile, California’s Dixie Fire — which started July 13 and is the largest wildfire burning in the nation — threatened a dozen small communities in the northern Sierra Nevada even though its southern end was mostly corralled by fire lines.

The fire has burned 790 square miles (2,000 square kilometers), destroyed about 550 homes and nearly obliterated the town of Greenville last week. It was 30% contained.

The Montana blaze was primed over the last several days by swirling winds and hot temperatures. It has spread in multiple directions, torching trees and sending off embers that propelled the flames across the dry landscape.

The fire crept within about a mile (3.2 kilometers) of the eastern edge of the evacuated town of Lame Deer Wednesday night, Northern Cheyenne Tribe spokesperson Angel Becker said. It passed over a highway where officials had hoped to stop it, putting the southern portion of the reservation at increased risk, officials said.

As it closed in on the east side of town and a second fire ignited to the west, tribal officials late Wednesday urged residents who did not heed an earlier evacuation order to flee. Buses moved people to a school about 15 miles (24 kilometers) away and to a shelter set up on the nearby Crow Indian Reservation.

A tree goes up in flames as a wildfire burns on the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Wednesday, Aug 11, 2021, near Lame Deer, Mont. The Richard Spring fire was threatening hundreds of homes as it burned across the reservation. (AP Photo/Matthew Brown)

Lame Deer, a town of about 2,000 people, is home to the tribal headquarters and several subdivisions.

“We had some people who refused, but the majority of our elders and women and children definitely left with that last push,” Becker said.

With 40-foot (12-meter) flames visible from parts of Lame Deer, firefighters worked into early Thursday morning to keep the fire from destroying houses. None were reported lost, but officials continued assessing the damage. More than a dozen sheds and other outbuildings were lost, they said.

As smoke choked the air, rancher Jimmy Peppers sat on his horse east of town, watching an orange glow intensify over the site of his house as the night wore on.

“I didn’t think it would cross the highway, so I didn’t even move my farm equipment,” said Peppers, who spent the afternoon herding his cattle onto a neighbor’s pasture closer to town.

Also ordered to leave were about 600 people in and around Ashland, a small town just outside the reservation. It remained under an evacuation order, but officials said the danger appeared to have eased for now.

Around the perimeter of Lame Deer, crews were building fire breaks and conducting intentional burns — or “burnouts” — in hopes of lessening the amount of fuel available on the ground, fire spokesperson Jeni Garcin said. Officials were cognizant of the need to protect pastureland, she said.

“We fully recognize the value of grass around here,” Garcin said. “There’s enough lost in this fire that we will be very strategic about how we do any of these burnouts.”

Extreme drought conditions have left trees, grass and brush bone-dry throughout many Western states, making them ripe for ignition.

At the same time, California and some other states face flows of monsoonal moisture that were too high to bring real rain but could create thunderstorms that bring the risk of dry lightning and erratic winds.

In Northern California, a number of wildfires and the threat of more prompted three national forests to close down the Trinity Alps Wilderness Area, a 780-square mile (2,000-square kilometer) area of granite peaks, lakes and trails, into November.

Climate change has made the region warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists. The more than 100 large wildfires in the American West come as parts of Europe are also burning.

New research indicates wildfire smoke may be part of a vicious cycle making clouds rain less, which makes it hotter and plants drier and easier to catch fire.

Scientists flew a research plane into smoky skies six times in the U.S. West in 2018 and found five times the water droplets, but they were half the size, according to a study in Wednesday’s Geophysical Research Letters. The smaller droplets aren’t big enough to fall as rain, said study lead author Cynthia Twohy, a cloud physicist at NorthWest Research Associates.

This is not the main cause for the lack of rain, but “it could be a factor,” Twohy said. “The clouds are being affected. We saw that pretty clearly.”

The study has worrisome implications that drought and fire can cause more drought and fire.

The main cause of the drought — a huge factor in worsening wildfires — is natural weather changes with some possible climate change, said Park Williams a hydrology and fire scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn’t part of the research.

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Weber reported from Los Angeles.

More than 9,000 anti-Asian incidents since pandemic began

By TERRY TANG

FILE - In this March 31, 2021, file photo, Jen Ho Lee, a 76-year-old South Korean immigrant, poses in her apartment in Los Angeles with a sign from a recent rally against anti-Asian hate crimes she attended. A new report released Thursday Aug. 12 has found the frequency of anti-Asian incidents, from taunts to outright assaults, reported in the United States so far this year seems poised to surpass last year despite months of political and social activism. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)


The frequency of anti-Asian incidents — from taunts to outright assaults — reported in the United States so far this year seems poised to surpass last year despite months of political and social activism, according to a new report released Thursday.

Stop AAPI Hate, a national coalition that became the authority on gathering data on racially motivated attacks related to the pandemic, received 9,081 incident reports between March 19, 2020, and this June. Of those, 4,548 occurred last year, and 4,533 this year. Since the coronavirus was first reported in China, people of Asian and Pacific Islander descent have been treated as scapegoats solely based on their race.

Lawmakers, activists and community groups have pushed back against the wave of attacks. There have been countless social media campaigns, bystander training sessions and public rallies. In May, President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, expediting Justice Department reviews of anti-Asian hate crimes and making available federal grants. Those supporters should not feel discouraged because the data hasn’t shifted much, Stop AAPI Hate leaders said.

“When you encourage hate, it’s not like a genie in a bottle where you can pull it out and push it back in whenever you want,” said Manjusha Kulkarni, co-founder of Stop AAPI Hate and executive director of the Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council. “There’s too much perpetuating these belief systems to make them go away.”

Several factors contributed to the data, from an increase in incidents to a greater desire to report, according to Kulkarni. As the economy opened up more in the past few months, it meant more public interactions and opportunities to attack, she said. Also, a bump in reporting typically occurs after a high-profile incident like the March 16 Atlanta-area spa shootings that left six Asian women dead.

“There, too, is where we saw some that were incidents that had taken place weeks or months before, but they just were either not aware of our reporting center or didn’t take the time to report,” Kulkarni said.

The reports aggregated by Stop AAPI Hate are from the victims themselves or someone reporting on their behalf, like an adult child. Overall, the report found verbal harassment and shunning — interactions that don’t qualify legally as hate crimes — make up the two largest shares of total incidents. Physical assaults made up the third. But their percentage of the incidents this year increased from last year — 16.6% compared to 10.8%.

More than 63% of the incidents were submitted by women. Roughly 31% took place on public streets, and 30% at businesses.

Many Asian Americans and others blame former President Donald Trump for ratcheting up the danger by talking about the virus in racially charged terms. While Biden has demonstrated allyship, there is concern that a U.S. investigation into the origins of COVID-19 could lead to more hostility and treatment of Asian Americans as enemy foreigners.

“We understand that other nation-states are competitors to the United States, and a number of them do have authoritarian regimes,” Kulkarni said. “But the ways in which we talk about the people and the ways in which blame is assigned somehow looks different for communities of color than it does for, say, the Russian government or the German government.”

Many of the headline-making attacks over the past year and a half have been against elderly Asian people on both coasts. In most of those cases, a senior was beaten, kicked, shoved or even stabbed out of nowhere. Several such incidents have been caught on video.

A U.S. Census survey released earlier this month found Asian American households were twice as likely as white households to admit they didn’t have enough food throughout the pandemic because they were afraid to go out — not due to affordability or transportation issues. In contrast, other racial groups’ households said they were experiencing food insecurity because of the pandemic. Asian American respondents didn’t say specifically if it was fear of racial attacks that kept them at home.

Anni Chung, president and CEO of San Francisco-based Self-Help for the Elderly, says the seniors they help were hit by a “second virus that is a hate virus.” The nonprofit provides food and programs to more than 40,000 older adults in the Bay Area, most of them Asian. The organization went from transporting a pre-pandemic load of 400 meals daily to over 5,000 per day. Last year, they gave out 963,000 meals overall compared with 436,000 typically.

“Sometimes when we talk to seniors, they say this hatred drove them to be stuck in their house even worse than the pandemic,” Chung said.

For them, the fear is more than a headline but something in their own backyard.

“One of our clients was on the bus. Right before the man got off the bus, he just punched her,” Chung said. “She said no one — not the bus driver and a number of Chinese on the bus — went to her care.”

Giving into that fear means seniors have missed important things like doctor’s appointments or exercise routines at the park. So, in June, with some funding from the city, Self-Help for the Elderly expanded a volunteer escort service to accompany seniors on errands or outings around Chinatown and other neighborhoods. It had more than 200 requests that month.

The onslaught of verbal and physical assaults has drawn more skepticism than sympathy from some. Peter Yu, a Republican U.S. Senate candidate in Colorado who is also Chinese American, came under fire last month for characterizing anti-Asian hate crimes as exaggerated.

“I would welcome him to look at the data and see there has been a significant increase,” Kulkarni said. “This may be a situation when people refuse to see racism or misogyny. I think they’re just really refusing to see reality and how unfortunately, in the U.S, we have allowed those forces to prevent people from living their lives.”

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Tang reported from Phoenix and is a member of The Associated Press’ Race and Ethnicity team. Follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/ttangAP

NY let childhood sex abuse victims sue; 9,000 went to court

By MICHAEL HILL

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FILE — In this Oct. 1, 2020 file photo, a man walks by the offices of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, on New York's Long Island. In New York on Saturday, Aug. 14, 2021, the window closes for filing of civil lawsuits in order to allow victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue churches, hospitals, schools, camps, scout groups and other institutions and people they hold responsible for enabling pedophiles or turning a blind eye to wrongdoing. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File )


ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — For two years, New York temporarily set aside its usual time limit on civil lawsuits in order to allow victims of childhood sexual abuse to sue churches, hospitals, schools, camps, scout groups and other institutions and people they hold responsible for enabling pedophiles or turning a blind eye to wrongdoing.

That window closes Saturday, after more than 9,000 lawsuits were filed, a deluge whose impact may be felt for many years.

Four of the state’s Roman Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy partly as a result of litigation unleashed by the state’s Child Victims Act. Thousands of new allegations against priests, teachers, scout leaders and other authorities have intensified the already harsh light on institutions entrusted with caring for children.

And survivors of abuse have been given an outlet for their trauma and a chance at accountability once thought long lost.

“This has, ironically, been a very healing experience for me on a personal level,” said Carol DuPre, 74, who sued the Roman Catholic diocese in Rochester, saying she was molested by a priest as a teen in the early 1960s as she counted offerings and typed up bulletins after church services.

She put the events “in a storehouse in her mind,” but it still haunted her for decades. When the chance came to file a suit, it was an easy decision.

“The idea of confronting it, talking about it and dealing with it is internally setting me free.”

New York is among a number of states that have in recent years established windows allowing people to sue over childhood abuse no matter how long ago it took place. Similar windows were opened in New Jersey and California.

Ordinarily, courts put deadlines on suing because of the difficulty in holding a fair trial over incidents that happened many years ago. Witnesses die or move away. Records are lost. Memories fade. But lawmakers believed that, despite those hurdles, victims deserved an opportunity for justice and might feel emboldened now to speak up about things they’ve kept to themselves for many years.

New York’s one-year window was originally supposed to end Aug. 14, 2020, but it was extended twice amid concerns that the coronavirus pandemic and resulting court disruptions were keeping survivors from coming forward.

Barring another extension, electronic filings will be accepted until midnight Saturday, according to a state courts spokesperson.

The tsunami of litigation surprised even some of the lawyers who work regularly with alleged abuse victims.

“We thought maybe we get one hundred cases or a couple hundred cases and here we are,” said attorney James Marsh, whose firm has filed about 800 cases. “We woefully miscalculated the interest there.”

Plaintiffs’ lawyers said potential clients were still coming forward as the deadline neared, some gaining the strength after seeing stories of others filing suits. Attorney Jeff Anderson said some survivors wait until the last minute because of the difficulty of coming forward.

And some will not have gained the strength to come forward before the window closes, said attorney Mitchell Garabedian.

“A court deadline that’s been publicized encourages many victims and survivors to come forward,” Garabedian said. “But to other victims and survivors, it’s meaningless.”

Some have struggled over whether to publicly expose old wounds.

“It was not an easy decision,” said Donna Ashton, a 56-year-old Rochester-area woman who filed a lawsuit in June claiming she was abused as a teen by the musical director at a Baptist church. “You have to unearth and relive the trauma that you had when you were a young person.”

She married the man at age 19 after what the lawsuit said was manipulation, grooming and abuse. The church has disputed the allegations.

“I had children with him and I had to make sure that that was OK with them and that they were OK with me coming forward with this,” she said.

Thousands of the cases filed in New York involve religious institutions, according to court data.

Experts caution it’s too early to estimate liability for church-related entities in the state. Though Anderson, who calls New York the “main battleground,” expects it to be in the billions of dollars.

The Diocese of Rockville Centre on Long Island cited the “severe” financial burden from litigation when it became the largest diocese in the United States to declare bankruptcy last October. Half of New York’s eight Roman Catholic dioceses have filed for bankruptcy, starting with the Diocese of Rochester in 2019.

“Whatever financial pain the Church suffers as a result of this crisis pales in comparison to the life-altering suffering of survivors,” Dennis Poust, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference, said in an email.

Poust said bishops are focused now on resolving the civil claims in a way that satisfies those who have been harmed while preserving the church’s charitable, educational and sacramental ministries.

The bankruptcies allow dioceses to consolidate victims’ lawsuits and negotiate with the claimants as a single class.

For instance, the Boy Scouts of America sought bankruptcy protection in February 2020 and last month reached an $850 million agreement with attorneys representing tens of thousands of victims of child sex abuse.

Attorneys see the closing window as the start of another intense phase as individual cases are considered and bankruptcies proceed. The cut-off for new Child Victims Act filings could lead to resolutions because defendants will now know how many claims they are dealing with.

“It’s still early in the process because the window hasn’t closed yet,” Anderson said. “And once it does, we’ll see more progress.”

Some Afghans blame neighboring Pakistan for Taliban gains

By KATHY GANNON

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FILE - In this Nov. 19, 2020 file photo, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, right, and Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan stand before a joint news conference at the Presidential Palace in Kabul, Afghanistan. As the Taliban swiftly capture territory in Afghanistan, many Afghans blame Pakistan for the insurgents’ success, pointing to their use of Pakistani territory in multiple ways. Pressure is mounting on Islamabad, which initially brought the Taliban to the negotiating table, to get them to stop the onslaught and go back to talks. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul, File)

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — When Wahab disappeared from his home in Afghanistan to sign on for jihad, it was in neighboring Pakistan that he got his training.

The 20-year-old was recruited by childhood friends and was taken to a militant outpost in Parachinar, on Pakistan’s rugged mountainous border with Afghanistan. There, he underwent training, preparing to fight alongside the Afghan Taliban, a relative told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of fear of reprisals from militants and government security agents.

As the Taliban swiftly capture territory in Afghanistan, many Afghans blame Pakistan for the insurgents’ success, pointing to their use of Pakistani territory in multiple ways. Pressure is mounting on Islamabad, which initially brought the Taliban to the negotiating table, to get them to stop the onslaught and go back to talks.

While analysts say Pakistan’s leverage is often overstated, it does permit the Taliban leadership on its territory and its wounded warriors receive treatment in Pakistani hospitals. Their children are in school in Pakistan and some among them own property. Some among Pakistan’s politicians have rebranded the insurgents as “the new, civilized Taliban.”



Ismail Khan, a powerful U.S.-allied warlord, who is trying to defend his territory of Herat in western Afghanistan from a Taliban onslaught, told local media recently the war raging in his homeland was the fault of Pakistan.

“I can say openly to Afghans that this war, it isn’t between Taliban and the Afghan Government. It is Pakistan’s war against the Afghan nation,” he said. “The Taliban are their resource and are working as a servant.”

Pakistan has tried unsuccessfully to convince Afghans they don’t want a Taliban government back in Afghanistan. They say the days of Pakistan seeing Afghanistan as a client state, to provide so-called “strategic depth” against its hostile neighbor India, is a thing of the past.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan has told every public and private forum that Pakistan wants peace in Afghanistan, has no favorites in the battle and is deeply opposed to a military takeover by the Taliban.

The country’s powerful army chief has twice walked out of meetings with the Taliban, frustrated at their intransigence and infuriated by what he sees as the Taliban’s determination to return to full power in Afghanistan, according to senior security officials familiar with the meetings. The officials spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they had no authority to discuss the meetings.

Still, Afghans are unconvinced. Even the international community is skeptical. The United Nations last week rebuffed Pakistan’s request to address a special meeting on Afghanistan to again give its side.

The criticism is fueled by images of slain Taliban fighters being buried in Pakistan at funerals attended by hundreds, waving the group’s flags. Last year, Prime Minister Khan called Osama bin Laden a martyr in a speech to Parliament, seen as a nod to militants.

When the Taliban were battling Afghan security forces in an assault on the Afghan border town Spin Boldak, wounded insurgents were treated at Pakistani hospitals in Chaman. The Taliban took the town and still hold it.

A doctor in Chaman told the AP he treated dozens of wounded Taliban. Several were transferred to hospitals in the Pakistani city of Quetta for further treatment, he said. Quetta is also where several in the Taliban leadership reportedly live, as well as in the Arabian Sea port city of Karachi. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

In thousands of madrassas, or religious schools, around Pakistan, some students are inspired to jihad in Afghanistan, according to analysts as well as Pakistani and international rights groups.

Their recruitment largely goes on unhindered, interrupted occasionally when a local news story reports bodies of fighters returning from Afghanistan. Last month, Pakistani authorities sealed the Darul-Aloom-Ahya-ul Islam madrassa outside Peshawar after the body of the cleric’s nephew returned home to a hero’s burial. The madrassa had operated freely for decades, even as the cleric admitted he sent his students to fight in Afghanistan.

One of Wahab’s cousins, Salman, went from a madrassa in Pakistan to join the Pakistani Taliban several years ago. Wahab was inspired to join the militants by propaganda videos purporting to show atrocities against Muslims by foreign troops. He ran away from his home in Afghanistan’s border regions earlier this year, but his family was able to track him down in Pakistan and bring him home before he became a fighter, his relative said.

In mosques and on the streets in Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, militants preach jihad and raise money, the relative said, though they are less aggressive in recruiting because of Pakistani military operations in the area in recent years.

Still, Amir Rana, executive director of the independent Pakistan Institute of Peace Studies, said that unless Pakistani authorities adopt a “zero tolerance” for jihadis, the country will forever face international criticism and suspicion. “Justifying it has to stop,” he said.

In response to AP’s request for comment, a senior security official acknowledged that sympathies for extremists exist in conservative Pakistan. He said it began with a U.S.-backed program to motivate Afghans to fight the Soviets in the 1980s, which glorified jihad and portrayed the occupying troops as “godless communists.” He said Pakistan is firm it doesn’t want a Taliban-only government in Kabul, saying it would fan extremism.

Two security officials denied that jihadi groups in the border region receive any official help. They said a nearly completed fence being built by Pakistan along the long border with Afghanistan will stop the smuggling of fighters across. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment.

Pakistan has its own concerns, accusing Afghanistan of harboring militants opposed to the Islamabad government. Pakistani security officials say their country’s rival India is allowed by Kabul’s intelligence agency to stage covert attacks against Pakistan using militants in Afghanistan. In the last six months, they say more than 200 Pakistani military personnel have been killed by insurgents crossing the border,

The border, known as the Durand Line, speaks to the deeply troubled relationship between the two neighbors. To this day, Afghan leaders do not recognize the Durand Line and claim some Pakistani areas dominated by ethnic Pashtuns as Afghan territory, Pashtuns on both sides of the border share tribal links, and Afghan Pashtuns form the backbone of the Taliban.

Analysts say Islamabad has fueled extremist sentiment and worked with militants when it was in its interests. It was during the long fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that Pakistan’s powerful intelligence agency developed deep ties with many of the most radical of Afghans, including the notorious Haqqani group, arguably the strongest faction among the Afghan Taliban.

“Islamabad does wield extensive leverage over the Taliban,” said Michael Kugelman, deputy director of the Asia Program at the Washington-based Wilson Center. “But the Taliban, which is fighting a war it believes it’s winning, has the luxury of resisting Pakistani entreaties to ease violence and commit to talks.”

“For the Taliban, the calculus is simple: Why quit when you’re ahead?”

Australia chides China over journalist’s yearlong detention

By ROD McGUIRK

FILE - In this Aug. 12, 2020, file photo, Cheng Lei, a Chinese-born Australian journalist for CGTN, the English-language channel of China Central Television, attends a public event in Beijing. The Australian government says Friday, Aug. 13, 2021, it remains seriously concerned about the welfare of Chinese-born Australian journalist Cheng Lei on the first anniversary of her detention in China. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — The Australian government said Friday that it remained seriously concerned about the welfare of a Chinese-born Australian journalist a year after she was first detained in China.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne used the first anniversary of Cheng Lei’s detention on Aug. 13 to tell China that Australia expected “basic standards of justice, procedural fairness and humane treatment to be met, in accordance with international norms.”

“The Australian government remains seriously concerned about Ms. Cheng’s detention and welfare and has regularly raised these issues at senior levels,” Payne said in a statement.

“We are particularly concerned that one year into her detention, there remains a lack of transparency about the reasons for Ms. Cheng’s detention,” she added.

In February, China formally arrested the 46-year-old journalist for CGTN, the English-language channel of China Central Television, on suspicion of illegally supplying state secrets overseas.

The allegations, which could result a penalty of life in prison or even death, are highly unusual for an employee of a media outlet tightly controlled by China’s ruling Communist Party.

Cheng’s two children, aged 10 and 12, live with their grandmother in the Australian city of Melbourne.

The National Press Clubs of the United States and Australia as well as the reporter’s former CGTN colleagues and friends have recently written open letters calling for her immediate release.

“Cheng Lei’s yearlong detention is an assault on journalism and on human rights. Cheng is a single mother of two. Her children have been living with their grandmother in Australia without knowing if they will ever be reunited with their mother,” a U.S. National Press Club statement said.

“China has tried to make Cheng disappear, but the world has not forgotten about her or the several dozen other reporters unjustly jailed in China,” the statement added.

Worsening bilateral relations since Australia called for an independent investigation into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic are suspected by many to be the cause of Cheng’s arrest.

A month before Cheng was detained, Australia warned its citizens of a risk of arbitrary detention in China. China dismissed the warning as disinformation.

Before the last two journalists working for Australian media in China left the country in September, they were questioned by Chinese authorities about Cheng.

Australian Broadcasting Corp. reporter Bill Birtles and The Australian Financial Review’s Michael Smith were told they were “persons of interest” in an investigation into Cheng.

Australia has criticized China for charging Chinese Australian spy novelist Yang Hengjun with espionage. He has been detained since January 2019.

Australian Karm Gilespie was sentenced to death in China last year, seven years after he was arrested and charged with attempting to board an international flight with more than 7.5 kilograms (16.5 pounds) of methamphetamine. Some observers suspect that such a severe sentence so long after the crime was related to the bilateral rift.

Cheng was an anchor for CGTN’s BizAsia program. She was born in China and worked in finance in Australia before returning to China and starting a career in journalism with CCTV in Beijing in 2003.

Phoenix police chief suspended over dismissed protest cases

PARANOID CONSPIRACY THEORY VS FREE SPEECH

By JACQUES BILLEAUD

FILE - In this June 18, 2019, file photo, Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams addresses the audience at a community meeting in Phoenix. Williams has been given a one-day suspension after lawyers hired by the city issued a report that heavily criticized her agency's role in a now-discredited gang case file against demonstrators at a protest against police brutality. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin, File)


PHOENIX (AP) — Phoenix Police Chief Jeri Williams was given a one-day suspension after lawyers hired by the city issued a report that heavily criticized her agency’s role in a now-discredited gang case against demonstrators last fall at a protest against police brutality.

The report released Thursday said the decision to charge 15 protesters with assisting a street gang was made without seeking input from Phoenix police’s gang enforcement unit. It also said the agency didn’t have credible evidence to support the claim that the protesters were members of an anti-police gang called “ACAB,” meaning “All Cops Are Bastards.”

Concluding that ACAB is a slogan rather than a group, the outside lawyers said they “found no credible evidence to support the assertion that ACAB is a criminal street gang, that it organized the protest of October 17, or was prone to violence.”

The gang charges were later dismissed at the request of prosecutors. The city is asking the Arizona Attorney General’s Office to investigate any criminal matters arising from the report.

Three assistant chiefs were removed from those roles, and a sergeant at the center of the report was put on administrative leave.

The report came a week after the U.S. Department of Justice announced a widespread investigation of the Phoenix Police Department to examine whether officers have been using excessive force and abusing people experiencing homelessness.

The probe also will examine whether police have engaged in discriminatory policing practices and will work to determine if officers have retaliated against people engaged in protected First Amendment activities. The police force has come under fire in recent years for its handling of protests and the high number of shootings.

In another new report on police actions after a protest, the law firm hired by the city also examined a “challenge coin” circulating among Phoenix officers that depicted a gas mask-wearing demonstrator getting shot in the groin with a pepper ball and contains a vulgar comment about his injury.

The image on the police souvenir closely resembled a protester who was shot with a pepper ball during a 2017 protest outside a rally held by then-President Donald Trump in downtown Phoenix. Video of the encounter, which also showed the protester kicking a smoke canister back at police officers, became viral on social media.

The lawyers said they couldn’t determine who created the coin, but noted it was circulated among officers in late 2017, while they were on city property and on the clock. A second slogan on the coin was supportive of Trump. Internal investigations are being conducted into the circulation of the coin.

In an interview, City Manager Ed Zuercher, who disciplined Williams, acknowledged that the reports portray Phoenix police as having a problem with protesters who are exercising their free-speech rights. He said Williams will reemphasize that the agency is committed to protecting those rights.

Zuercher defended his decision to suspend Williams for only one day, noting the reports found the police chief wasn’t aware of the gang charges until after they were filed and didn’t learn of the challenge coin’s existence until she was asked about it in a deposition in August 2019. The deposition was part of a lawsuit that alleged Phoenix police violated the free-speech rights of the protesters outside the 2017 Trump rally.

Zuercher said the chief is now holding employees accountable for their actions. “She is from the community,” Zuercher said. “And she is the right chief to continue reforming this department.”

The city’s outside lawyers concluded the decision to charge protesters was made by Phoenix police and prosecutors at the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.

“We further found that police and prosecutors ignored expert-established criteria for identifying true criminal street gangs, and similarly ignored established protocol for processing the gang classification,” the report said. “Instead, police began considering anti-police protestors generally as ‘criminal street gangs’ based upon statements by a source of highly questionable credibility.”

The police department didn’t respond to a request for comment on the reports.

“In these cases, we made mistakes,” County Attorney Allister Adel said of the gang cases. “As an agency charged with doing justice, we must be willing to admit this. And, moreover, we must be willing to correct them.”

 

Hungry ghost festival

RowenCreator

August 9, 2021

Hungry Ghost festival

8th of August 2021 is the 1st day of the chinese Lunar calendar.

it is also about hungry ghost festivals......

Card: 5 of pentacles

Artist Cleo Lim

Country: Singapore

Festival of the Hungry ghosts

Zhong Yuan Jie (中元节); hungry ghost festival, falls on the middle of the seventh month of the Lunar calaendar. In Singapore, the first; seventh; fifteenth and last day of the month are significant.

According to history the festival have been celebrated as early as 1873 and another native malay name for the festival is Sumbayang Hantu (praying to the Ghosts).

The Origins of the hungry ghost festival is mainly a Chinese festival which have both buddhist and Taoists religions basis.

The Focus of the Taoist is that one this month wandering souls should be appeased. Whereas in the Buddhist teaching; it is on filial piety.

In the Taoist beliefs; there are three main deities, the Tian Guan Da Di, heavenly king, who accords merits, the Di Guan Da DI, Earthly king, who accords sins and crimes; and the Shui Guan Da Di, the king of the water realms, who helps mortals avoids dangers.

On the 15th day of the 1stlunar month is the birthday of the Tian Guan Da DI

On 15th day of the tenth lunar month is the birthday of the Shui Guan Da Di

On 15th day of the Seventh lunar month is the birth day of Di Guan Da Di

On Zhong Yuan Jie, the Di Guan Da Di will be on earth to record the sins and bad deed of men.

It is similarly during this month that the gates of hell are open and the realms of the hungry ghosts are close to the realms of the human. Hence on the first day, devotees will burn offerings to the ghosts and to avoid trouble rom them.

Buddhists, on the other hand, have traditionally celebrated the Hungry Ghost Festival as the Yu Lan Pen (盂兰盆) Festival. Yu Lan Pen is a transliteration of the Sanskrit name for the Buddhist Ullambana Festival. Yu lan means to “hang upside down” in Chinese, while pen in this context refers to a container filled with food offerings.7 Yu lan pen thus refers to a container filled with offerings to save one’s ancestors from being suspended in suffering in purgatory.8 The festival, which originated from the story of Mu Lian, commemorates his filial piety towards his mother.9 The legend is also believed to be the origin of the Chinese custom of making offerings and praying for one’s ancestors during this annual festival.
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The Five of pentacles is a time of need and a time for reflection on what are needs and what are desires.

The Art portrayal is an abstract art which shows the paper offerings which are burnt during the Chinese hungry ghost festivals.

The orange flames and the smoke, beyond the human eyes, various shapes and sizes of ghosts come to feast. Yearly due to their desire for an end to the suffering of being ghost and also for the attempt to transcend their current existence to a higher plane of existence.

Similar the worries of material wealth and comfort confront us daily.

It makes us think of the current state and unable to focus on what is our purpose and truths of what we can achieve later in life.

Should we be hungry ghosts roaming the world only seeking for material comfort?

Or rather should we worry on other matters in life?

Editor’s note

We should never lose sight of our true goals in life. Many trials and challenges will face us.

Like worries of money, worries of health, worries of food. We should not drown in worries and forget that salvation is in sight.

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Lawsuit: US withholding wildfire fuel break information

By SCOTT SONNER

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Conservationists are accusing federal land managers of illegally withholding information about environmental assessments used to justify plans to create fuel breaks to slow wildfires by clearing forests and shrubs across six western states with little if any public oversight.

The Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act in federal court in Reno this week against the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

A lawyer for the group says he’s disappointed the Biden administration is continuing the “obstructionist tactics” of the Trump administration, which first announced the plans last year.

The center is seeking more details about potential projects on federal rangeland across 348,000 square miles (901,300 square kilometers) — an area twice as big as the states of New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio combined.

The government announced plans in November 2020 to begin mapping out the fuel breaks in Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Idaho and Utah.

Fuel breaks involve clearing extended stretches of vegetation to slow the progress of fires. The bureau has said that assessments of more than 1,200 fuel breaks dating to 2002 found that 78% helped control wildfire and 84% helped change fire behavior.

The new lawsuit filed Monday says the blueprint adopted in environmental impact statements approved in January allow the activity to occur in an area that is home to at least 25 threatened or endangered species “with minimal public notice and no formal opportunities for public comment.”

The Center for Biological Diversity first filed a FOIA request for the plan’s supporting data in March with the bureau, which is overseen by the U.S. Interior Department.

“Unless enjoined and made subject to a declaration of the Center’s legal rights by this court, BLM will continue to violate the Center’s right to timely determination under FOIA,” the lawsuit states.

Scott Lake, a staff attorney for the center, says the agency is months late in responding to the FOIA requests “so it appears they’ve quite determined to keep this information secret.”

“It’s dismaying to see the government continue to prioritize secrecy over transparency, especially in the management of public lands, where transparency should be a no-brainer,” Lake said in an email to The Associated Press.

“And it’s unfortunate to see this administration continue the obstructionist tactics of the last one,” he said.

Tyler Cherry, the Interior Department’s press secretary, said in an email to AP on Thursday the department had no immediate comment. Neither did the bureau, an agency spokesperson said.

The Bureau of Land Management’s fuel break plan doesn’t authorize any specific projects. Instead, its analysis can be used to OK treatments for projects involving prescribed fires, fuel breaks and other measures to prevent or limit massive blazes that have worsened in recent decades.

As wide as 500 feet (152 meters), the breaks would be established along roads and federal rights-of-way. If all 11,000 miles (17,700 km) envisioned are finished, the breaks cumulatively would stretch the equivalent distance between Seattle and South Africa.

Extreme drought conditions have left trees, grass and brush bone-dry throughout many Western states, making them ripe for ignition. Climate change has made the region warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.

The center filed a notice of intent to sue over the fuel break plans in January along with the Sierra Club, Western Watersheds Project and Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.

They said the bureau had failed to consult with the Fish and Wildlife Service regarding impacts to threatened and endangered aquatic species as required by the Endangered Species Act.

THIRD WORLD USA 

Ruling helps protect homeless people from having cars towed

By GENE JOHNSON

FILE - In this Oct. 30, 2017, file photo, Stanley Timmings is seen through the door of the RV where he was living with his girlfriend on the streets of Seattle. The Washington Supreme Court issued a key decision on Thursday, Aug. 12, 2021, protecting people who are living in their vehicles from having them towed. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)


SEATTLE (AP) — Washington’s Supreme Court issued a key decision Thursday that helps protect people living in their vehicles from having them towed, in a case that drew widespread attention amid Seattle’s housing crisis.

The justices held that it was unconstitutionally excessive for Seattle to impound a homeless man’s truck and require him to reimburse the city nearly $550 in towing and storage costs. Further, the court said, vehicles that people live in are homes and cannot be sold at a public auction to pay their debts — eliminating a financial incentive for towing the cars in the first place.

“It’s a big step forward,” said Jim Lobsenz, a lawyer who represented Steven Long, the homeless man who challenged his truck’s impoundment in 2016. “The ruling says you have to take into account the financial resources of poor people before you impose these fines and costs.”

The decision is one of the first by a state high court to interpret a 2019 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that says state and local governments — not just the federal government — must abide by the Constitution’s ban on excessive fines, said Bill Maurer, an attorney with the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice.

“What’s important about today’s decision is it sets out a way for a court to decide whether a fine is excessive ... and adopts the analysis that you have to look at the circumstances of the defendant,” Maurer said. “A $500 fine to Bill Gates — he’s probably got that in his couch. To someone who’s living in his truck, it’s ruinous.”

Long was 56, working part time as a janitor and living in his old pickup truck when police had it towed because it was parked in an unused, city-owned, gravel lot for more than three days.

He spent the next three weeks living outdoors — without his tools, sleeping bag and nearly all of his other possessions, which were in the vehicle. He had been trying to save for an apartment but couldn’t work without his tools.

A city magistrate waived his $44 fine for the parking violation but required Long to reimburse the city for some of the impoundment costs. The magistrate let him retrieve the truck just before it was to be sold at auction and put him on a $50-a-month payment plan.

In a unanimous decision, the high court said the truck’s impoundment and the payment plan violated the U.S. Constitution’s ban on excessive fines, set out in the Eighth Amendment. The justices also found that Long’s truck constituted a homestead, and thus he would be entitled to protection from having it sold to pay his debts.

“It is difficult to conceive how Long would be able to save money for an apartment and lift himself out of homelessness while paying the fine and affording the expenses of daily life,” Justice Barbara Madsen wrote.

The court said it did not mean to imply that officials can never impound a vehicle, as cities and counties have an interest in keeping their streets clear, but it noted that “the offense of overstaying one’s welcome in a specific location is not particularly egregious.” The court also said officials should inquire about a person’s ability to pay at impoundment hearings.

Lobsenz said vehicles in such cases are typically sold at auction because their owners can’t afford to pay the impoundment fees. The towing company gets a cut of the sale price, and the city gets the rest. Often, the cars are purchased by “vehicle ranchers,” who then rent them back to the prior owner.

But if cities or towing companies can’t sell them at auction, he said, there’s little point in having them impounded: “What are they going to do with it? We won’t have towing companies profiting off the misery of people who can’t afford to pay.”

Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes said in a statement that the ruling will have “wide reaching implications for how Mayors and City Councils from every Washington city respond to people living in their vehicles on public property.”

Municipal organizations, including the International Municipal Lawyers Association, had urged the court to side with the city.

“There is no reasonable or reliable process for municipalities to individually evaluate the owner of each vehicle subject to impoundment to attempt to determine that owner’s ability to pay,” the group wrote in a friend-of-the-court brief. “Moreover, the result would create a means to avoid parking regulations that would essentially allow persons to live, indefinitely, on municipal property with no recourse for the public.”

Seattle argued that while homelessness is an urgent problem, the city must be allowed to enforce its parking laws evenly.

The three-day rule is meant to ensure that people don’t store junked vehicles on public streets, Seattle’s lawyers said. The city has suspended enforcement of the law amid the COVID-19 pandemic and is instead collecting waste from RVs being used as homes.

The city also portrayed Long as obstinate, arguing that while he claimed the truck was inoperable, he managed to drive it to a friend’s home 20 minutes away after picking it up from the tow company. He could have avoided having it impounded by simply moving it one block away during the week before it was towed, the city said.

But in a court brief, civil liberties organizations described requirements that people move their vehicles from street to street as part of “a long history of unconstitutional policies and practices that have primarily excluded and displaced Black, Indigenous, and other communities of color impacted by poverty.”

Long, who is Native American, continues to live in the region — in a different truck.

“It’s great I could help other people living in their vehicles,” he said Thursday in a statement released by his lawyer. “This decision certainly will help a lot of people.”

New Zealand loses its precious ‘Rings’ series to Britain
By NICK PERRY

FILE - In this Oct. 26, 2012, file photo, some of the costumes, props and memorabilia created for the "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit" movies are displayed in a mini-museum at Weta Cave in Wellington, New Zealand. New Zealand has long been associated with "The Lord of the Rings" but with the filming of a major new television series suddenly snatched away, the nation has become more like Mordor than the Shire for hundreds of workers. (AP Photo/Nick Perry, File)

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — New Zealand has long been associated with “The Lord of the Rings” but with the filming of a major new television series suddenly snatched away, the nation has become more like Mordor than the Shire for hundreds of workers.

In a major blow to the nation’s small but vibrant screen industry, Amazon Studios announced Friday it would film the second season of its original series, inspired by the books of J.R.R. Tolkien, to Britain.

“The shift from New Zealand to the U.K. aligns with the studio’s strategy of expanding its production footprint and investing in studio space across the U.K., with many of Amazon Studios’ tentpole series and films already calling the U.K. home,” the company said in a statement.

The move came as a blow to many in New Zealand. The production is one of the most expensive in history, with Amazon spending at least $465 million on the first season, which just finished filming in New Zealand, according to government figures.

The series employed 1,200 people in New Zealand directly and another 700 indirectly, according to the figures.

“This is a shock to everyone,” said Denise Roche, the director of Equity NZ, a union representing performers. “I really feel for all the small businesses, the tech people who invested in this for the future. Nobody had any inkling.”

Roche said people feel let down by Amazon, although she added that the industry was resilient.

Amazon said the as-yet untitled series takes place on Middle-earth during the Second Age, thousands of years before the events depicted in Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” books and the subsequent films directed by Peter Jackson.

Filming began last year but was delayed due to the coronavirus. Post-production on the first season will continue in New Zealand through June before the show premieres on Prime Video in September next year.

The move to Britain comes just four months after Amazon signed a deal with the New Zealand government to get an extra 5% rebate on top of the 20% — or $92 million — it was already claiming from New Zealand taxpayers under a screen production grant.

Many locations around the world compete for productions by offering similar, generous rebates.

At the time of the deal, New Zealand’s Economic Development Minister Stuart Nash said the production would bring economic and tourism benefits to the country for years to come and create “an enduring legacy for our screen industry.”

Nash said Friday the government had found out only a day earlier that Amazon was leaving and he was disappointed by the decision. He said the government was withdrawing the offer of the extra 5%.

Amazon said it no longer intended to pursue collecting the extra money. But it will still walk away with at least $92 million from New Zealand taxpayers.

“The international film sector is incredibly competitive and highly mobile. We have no regrets about giving this production our best shot with government support,” Nash said. “However, we are disappointed for the local screen industry.”

New Zealand became synonymous with Tolkien’s world of orcs, elves and hobbits after Jackson directed six movies in the South Pacific nation. “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy and “The Hobbit” trilogy combined grossed nearly $6 billion at the box office.

When Amazon Studios first announced it would film in New Zealand, it said the pristine coasts, forests, and mountains made it the perfect place to bring to life the primordial beauty of early Middle-earth.

The large ensemble cast includes Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Morfydd Clark, Ismael Cruz Córdova, Sophia Nomvete and Lloyd Owen.