Red-Tailed Hawk Shot, On the Mend After Rescue in Oxford

By Jamie Ratliff • 

NBC Connecticut

Who shot a red-tailed hawk with nearly a dozen BBs, a pellet and an arrow?

BOYS

As that bird continues to recover, the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) is investigating who injured the federally-protected hawk.

It’s an image that’s almost hard to believe. A red-tailed hawk in Oxford is perched on a branch with a nearly two-foot arrow piercing its tail.

“The way most of our rehab patients come to us are from good samaritans seeing something, saying something,” said Christine Peyreigne, president of Christine’s Critters, a nonprofit wildlife rehabilitation organization.

And Christine said that’s what happened in this case, too. A neighbor spotted the bird and began reaching out to rescues and the state.

It took 12 days and multiple attempts, but a falconer contacted by Christine’s Critters finally managed to capture the bird of prey in late December. Christine’s mom, Betsy, rushed the bird to the vet.

“I literally drove to the vet with the bird under my arm,” said Betsy.

The bird couldn’t fit into a holding cage due to the protruding arrow.

X-rays show the older adult hawk had been shot with not just an arrow but nearly a dozen BBs and a pellet.

“This is somebody purposely trying to kill this bird. They weren’t trying to scare her off. They were trying to kill her,” said Betsy.

Department of Energy and Environmental Protection

After surgery, Christine brought the bird home and got to work getting her back to full health. With time and care, the hawk’s wounds are nearly healed, and it’s clear to see she’s got a big appetite and personality.

“She’s been a difficult rehab patient because she is so feisty. Typically the feisty patients are the survivors, and you think this bird was out in the wild for 12 days with an arrow through her. She’s feisty. She means business,” said Christine.

While the hawk recovers, DEEP is investigating. The federally-protected bird was found in the area of Thorson Road and North Mark Drive in Oxford. It’s illegal to take, injure or harass any bird of prey, and the agency said residents concerned about livestock should properly shelter them from the weather and predators.

“We want to enforce these laws. We want to protect these birds and make sure they are getting the justice they deserve,” said Christine.

Christine said that depending on weather and recovery, she’d like to release the hawk by mid-February. She hopes others understand why these birds are protected and how important they are.

“Raptors are our best friends. They are very good rodent control, and we want to protect them. We want to support them,” said Christine.

If you have any information on who may be responsible for shooting the red-tailed hawk, you’re asked to contact Connecticut State Environmental Conservation Police at 860-424-3333.

If you’d like to learn more about Christine’s Critters or donate, you can head here and here.

 

Japan, US urge world leaders to visit A-bombed Hiroshima, Nagasaki

January 21, 2022 (Mainichi Japan)

Peace Park in Nagasaki, on Nov. 16, 2021. (Mainichi)

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- Japan and the United States on Friday urged world leaders to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities destroyed by U.S. atomic bombings in World War II, as they aim to build momentum toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

"Recalling the visit by former President (Barack) Obama to Hiroshima, Japan and the United States call on political leaders, youth, and others to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki to raise and sustain awareness," the two governments said in a joint statement, referring to the former U.S. president's historic visit in 2016.

The move came after a U.N. conference to review the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, scheduled to be held Jan. 4 to 28 in New York, was put off amid the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus. The gathering has been repeatedly postponed from its original date in 2020 due to the pandemic.

A Japanese Foreign Ministry official told reporters that it was regrettable that the NPT talks were called off. "After consulting the U.S. side, we concluded that issuing this kind of statement now is the most effective way to maintain and increase the momentum" toward nuclear disarmament, the official said.

The statement was released ahead of an online meeting to be held later in the day between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who represents a constituency in Hiroshima and was foreign minister when Obama visited, and U.S. President Joe Biden. It will be the first summit of the two leaders since Kishida took office in October.

In April 2015, Tokyo and Washington issued a joint statement when the previous NPT review conference was taking place, but they did not make such a request for leaders to visit the western and southwestern Japan cities, where the world's first and second atomic bombs were dropped on Aug. 6 and 9, 1945.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "serve as stark reminders that the 76-year record of non-use of nuclear weapons must be maintained," the statement said, recognizing the NPT as "indispensable for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons and achieving their total elimination."

Japan also welcomed a joint statement issued earlier this month by the United Staes, Russia, China, Britain and France -- the five recognized nuclear powers -- which affirmed that a nuclear war must be avoided, and that such weapons should be limited to defensive purposes and to deter aggression.

The United States said it "was pleased to co-sponsor" a resolution with Japan adopted by the U.N. General Assembly last month.

The resolution, calling for the total elimination of nuclear weapons, was backed by the United States, Britain and France, while Russia and China opposed it.

In the statement, Japan and the United States noted China's "ongoing increase in its nuclear capabilities" and urged Beijing to "contribute to arrangements that reduce nuclear risks, increase transparency, and advance nuclear disarmament."

Japan and the United States also said they are "strongly committed to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement" of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles in line with U.N. Security Council resolutions.

The two nations urged Iran to "fully and immediately cooperate" with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. nuclear watchdog tasked with verifying Tehran's commitments under its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

USA
The nursing home staffing crisis right now is like nothing we've seen before

By Rhitu Chatterjee
Published January 20, 2022 

The omicron wave is hitting nursing homes hard, with infections among residents and staff reaching record highs in recent weeks.

There were more than 40,000 residents who tested positive last week, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost a 10-fold rise since November. Cases for staff hit a record high of more than 67,000 cases the first week of January, but started to decline last week.

"What we've learned with the pandemic is that when there are large [numbers] of COVID cases in the general population, COVID finds its way into skilled nursing facilities," says Mark Parkinson, President and CEO of the industry group American Health Care Association.

Deaths have also risen but nowhere near the months before Covid vaccines became available when nursing homes suffered terrible losses. Last week, there were 988 reported deaths among nursing home residents, only a fraction of the peak in deaths – over 6,000 – back in December, 2020.

"Largely because our resident population is so heavily vaccinated, we aren't seeing large numbers of deaths as we did much earlier during the pandemic," says Katy Smith Sloan, president and CEO of Leading Age, a group representing non-profit providers of long-term care for seniors.

That said, those numbers could still rise in the coming weeks.

"Older adults who live in nursing homes have underlying health conditions," says Smith Sloan. "They tend to be frail. They live in a nursing home because they need 24-7 nursing care. And we know from the beginning of this pandemic that that's the population that was most at risk and that hasn't changed."

But unlike the early waves of the pandemic, it's not the deaths among residents that have nursing homes most concerned. It's staff outages due to infection that is worsening the historic worker shortage that facilities were already grappling with.

Slow uptake of Covid-19 vaccines among staff has added another layer to this problem. Staff vaccination at nursing homes and long-term care facilities was slow to begin with, but has caught up somewhat to that of residents – nearly 84% of staff are now fully vaccinated compared to 87% of residents.

However, staff are still far behind in receiving boosters. Only 30% have received their boosters – that's less than half the number of residents who are boosted.

And the staffing situation is affecting the care residents are receiving.

"We are certainly seeing a huge increase in the number of calls from residents who are saying that they are not being changed, they're not receiving their meals on time," says Laurie Facciarossa Brewer, the Long-Term Care Ombudsman in New Jersey. "That happens when you don't have enough staff."

In recent days, Brewer's office has received complaints that facilities have one nursing assistant taking care of more than 50 residents.

"The state mandated staffing ratio in New Jersey is one certified nursing assistant for eight residents on the day shift," says Brewer. "So clearly, people are not going to be getting the care they need under those types of conditions where you have double-digit numbers of residents per certified nursing assistant. That's just an impossible job for that nurse aide."

She says things aren't that dire in every long-term care facility, but it's happening in more places than she's seen since the early days of the pandemic.

New Jersey is one of several states that has teams from the National Guard helping nursing homes and other long-term care facilities due to the dire worker shortage.

Workers are feeling "moral distress," says Susan Reinhard, executive director of the AARP's Public Policy Institute.

"If you have too many people to care for, you're going to feel moral distress," she says. "Like 'I'm not doing my best.' 'I can't do the best job I've been trained to do, that I want to do.' 'I'm not meeting the needs of those that I'm supposed to be caring for.' That is really devastating personally, just day after day."

These conditions are fueling more burnout. And many nursing homes are shutting down under the pressure.

Smith Sloan says she heard of two of her organization's members closing the first week of January. "I think there were five (closures) the week before," she says. "And I think we're going to see more of that."

Many facilities are responding by closing wings and reducing the number of new patients they accept. That in turn is having an impact on hospitals and family caregivers.

For one, hospitals are getting backed up because they can't discharge patients that need to go to a skilled nursing facility or a nursing home. \

"It starts backing up all along the chain," says Dr. David Kim, who leads the Physician Enterprise at Providence, a health system based in Renton, Wa. "And then you start seeing it come out with long wait times, E.R. patients in hallways, waiting rooms, because they're not ready to go home, but they can't get a bed."

Data from Careport, a company that connects patients in over 1000 hospitals to long-term care facilities shows that the average length of stay at hospitals for patients getting discharged to skilled nursing facilities is up 21% in the last four weeks compared to 2019.

And the average hospital stay for patients getting discharged to home health is up 14% during the same period of time. "That's not an insignificant trend," says Dr. Lissy Hu, founder and CEO of Careport.

"We're also starting to see more families start to pull patients out of nursing homes."

And it's putting enormous pressures on families who are now the primary caregiver for their elderly loved ones, she adds, especially because home health agencies are also grappling with dire worker shortage.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Commentary: The prime culprit behind debt traps

Should those Western countries truly care about the developing world, just demonstrate the sincerity to offer unflagging support long craved by the indebted countries, instead of playing the old trick of "Chinese debt trap." Or at least, stay out of the way of those genuinely lending a helping hand.

(Xinhua) , January 21, 2022

BEIJING, Jan. 20 (Xinhua) -- In his bestseller Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, John Perkins expounded how he was employed by a U.S. company to talk world leaders into accepting substantial infrastructure loans. If a hit man is completely successful, he said, "the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to default on its payments after a few years."

This has revealed the tip of the iceberg in regards to the excessive debts inflicted globally by the United States, intentionally or not, along with some other Western countries and financial institutions. Usually, it started with low interest rates mainly because Washington preferred so, which increased developing countries' dependency on Western markets, but then turned ugly when borrowing costs ran so high that debtors found themselves trapped. Fundamentally, this is the U.S. financial hegemony at play, in the form of its dollar's dominance.

Among the victims last century were Africa and Latin America. In the 1970s, many Latin American countries borrowed from a large group of creditors led by U.S. commercial banks with near-zero real rates of interest, with the encouragement of the U.S. government, for economic development. The debts therefore skyrocketed.

Years later, however, the United States and Europe tightened their monetary policies, with commercial banks beginning to shorten re-payment periods and charge higher interest rates for loans. Latin American debtors soon found their burdens unsustainable, and what followed was a debt crisis so severe and protracted that the entire 1980s earned the cautionary moniker "The Lost Decade."

History has repeated itself more recently. When the United States cheered in mid-2010s its economic recovery from the 2008 global financial crisis and set off to end its quantitative easing stimulus program, the rates increased sharply, once again adding to the emerging markets' debt burdens. Worse still, less-developed countries have been sidelined by the United States in attracting international finance as Washington has sucked in external debts and given other fund seekers a bumpy ride.

Take Sri Lanka and Malaysia. Their debt problems arose mainly from Western-dominated financial markets, among others, said a report of Chatham House, a British think tank. In the face of the conundrums, emerging markets were not given so many choices to find way out. Sri Lanka by the mid-2000s could get few concessional loans, other than from China, said a Hong Kong University of Science and Technology report. It had to secure high-interest commercial loans, mainly from U.S. and British banks, and issue expensive international sovereign bonds, mostly bought by Americans.

Until today, Western players still take up a large share of developing countries' foreign debts. According to a report by Jubilee Debt Campaign, a British charity, 32 percent of African government external debt is owed to private lenders and 35 percent to multilateral institutions, with 55 percent of external interest payments to private creditors. It is those who keep lecturing on the debt issue that caused the debt problem in Africa, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi once said.

For developing countries, sustainable development is the healthy and effective way to unravel the knot of heavy debt burdens. This is what China has been helping these countries to achieve in recent years.

With the provision of loans to address infrastructure gap at home, these developing countries can have jobs and revenues created, and loans turn out to be a catalyst for sustainable growth rather than a burden. Thus, these loans are readily taken up by developing countries disenchanted with loan schemes devised by the U.S.-led Western elites.

Of the Chinese loans on the African continent between 2000 and 2015, around 40 percent paid for power projects, and 30 percent went to transport infrastructure, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at the Johns Hopkins University (JHU).

To further ease the debtors' pressure, China has been actively promoting debt relief by means of debt restructuring, suspension and alleviation. China has been supporting the move to ease African countries' debt burden and actively implementing the G20 Debt Service Suspension Initiative for Poorest Countries, and has the highest deferral amount among G20 members. After the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, China had announced the write-off of 15 African countries' debt in the form of interest-free government loans that were due to mature by the end of 2020.

The JHU researchers have also documented 16 cases of debt restructuring worth 7.5 billion U.S. dollars in 10 African countries between 2000 and 2019, and found that China wrote off the accumulated arrears of at least 94 interest-free loans amounting to more than 3.4 billion dollars. China has played a significant role in helping African countries manage their debts, according to the research.

China's actions, however, have been ignored by the U.S.-led Western world, which contributed little to debt relief of developing countries in such difficult times. Instead, they fabricated the so-called debt traps to stigmatize China and the Belt and Road Initiative. Their ploy aims to maintain their financial hegemony and obstruct the common development of China and other countries along the Belt and Road.

Should those Western countries truly care about the developing world, just demonstrate the sincerity to offer unflagging support long craved by the indebted countries, instead of playing the old trick of "Chinese debt trap." Or at least, stay out of the way of those genuinely lending a helping hand. 

(Web editor: Xia Peiyao, Liang Jun)

Rio Tinto shares plunge as Serbia pulls plug on $2.4 bln lithium project

CONTRIBUTOR
Sonali Paul 

Reuters
PUBLISHED

JAN 20, 2022

CREDIT: REUTERS/DAVID GRAY
The mine is Rio's only lithium project and the company Rio, builds its battery materials business for $825 million, as it looks to build its battery materials business.

MELBOURNE, Jan 21 (Reuters) - Shares in Rio Tinto tumbled on Friday after Serbia revoked its lithium exploration licences over environmental concerns, hurting the Anglo-Australian miner's ambition to become Europe's largest supplier of the metal used in electric vehicles.

The move by Serbia comes as the Balkan country approaches a general election in April, and as relations between Belgrade and Canberra have soured after Sunday's high-profile deportation of tennis star Novak Djokovic from Australia over the latter's COVID-19 entry rules.

It is also a major setback for Rio RIO.L, RIO.AX, which was hoping the project would help make it one of the world's 10 biggest producers of the lithium, a key ingredient in batteries and much in demand in the electric vehicle boom.

The mine is Rio's only lithium project and the company announced just a month ago a deal to buy second lithium asset for $825 million, as it looks to build its battery materials business.

Rio's shares fell as much as 4.8% in the Australian stock market, its worst intra-day drop since August 2021. The benchmark index was down 2.1% at 0324 GMT.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic told a news conference in Belgrade that the government's decision came after requests by various green groups to halt the $2.4 billion Jadar lithium project that was planned to start production in 2027.

Australia's foreign ministry has no immediate comment on the decision.

Rio said it was "extremely concerned" by Serbia's decision and was reviewing the legal basis for it.

"The level of opposition to it (Jadar) has really ratcheted up over the last six months," said Credit Suisse analyst Saul Kavonic.

"We've been highlighting for a while now there would be about $2 a share at risk if the (Serbian) government cancels it," Kavonic said.

Thousands of people blocked roads last year in protest against the government's backing of the project, demanding Rio Tinto leave the country and forcing the local municipality to scrap a plan to allocate land for the facility.

Earlier this week, Rio had pushed back the timeline for first production from Jadar by one year to 2027, citing delays in key approvals.

LITHIUM SHORTAGE TO WORSEN

At full capacity, the Jadar mine was expected to produce 58,000 tonnes of refined battery-grade lithium carbonate per year, making it Europe's biggest lithium mine by output.

"There aren't that many projects like Jadar, and the Western world is not going to have its own supply chain if these are not developed," Sam Brodovcky, Standard Chartered's head of global metals and mining M&A.

"There will be an even greater shortage of lithium and other critical and battery materials."

Experts said the world's shortage of lithium had been forecast to last for another three years at least, but with the cancellation of the Jadar project, the shortfall will now last for several years.

"We're at the point now where lithium supply is going to set the pace of electric vehicle rollout," Kavonic said.

Robust global demand for the metal far outstripping supply growth has pushed lithium prices to a record in recent years.

Lithium futures LTHc1, which started trading on the CME in May last year, have jumped 171% to a record $38 per tonne on Thursday, according to Refinitiv data.

In China, cash prices of lithium hydroxide monohydrate AM-LIOH0008-LHM are trading around a record 262,500 yuan ($41,387.47) per tonne, up by more than 400% from a year ago.

Its state planner said on Friday that restrictions on purchases of new energy vehicles including EVs will be gradually removed in a "vigorous" push to promote "green consumption," a move likely to further increase demand for lithium.

($1 = 6.3425 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Benchmark lithium hydroxide prices surge to record highs on global demand boomhttps://tmsnrt.rs/3GJNHky

(Writing by Praveen Menon; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Serbia scraps planned Rio Tinto lithium mine after protests

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Trying to defuse large protests by environmentalists, Serbia’s populist government said Thursday that it was canceling all licenses for mining giant Rio Tinto to open a lithium mine in the Balkan country.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

“We have fulfilled all the requests of the environmental protests and put an end to Rio Tinto in the Republic of Serbia,” Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said in a televised address. “Everything is finished. It’s over.”


Used in batteries for electric cars, lithium is considered one of the most sought-after metals of the future as the world shifts to more renewable energy sources.

For several weekends, thousands of demonstrators in Belgrade and other Serbian towns have blocked main roads and bridges to protest the planned mine in western Serbia, despite an intimidation campaign by authorities. Opponents say the project would cause severe environmental damage.

The protests posed the biggest challenge yet to the increasingly autocratic rule of President Aleksandar Vucic, who has denounced the road blockades as illegal and claimed they are being financed from abroad to destabilize the country.

Brnabic said all the licenses granted to Rio Tinto, which has been exploring mining possibilities in the country for about two decades, were provided by the previous, pro-Western government.

But Serbia's independent media allege that the main contracts with Rio Tinto were signed with the current right-wing leadership. Critics argued that by sidelining Rio Tinto, the government is doing damage control ahead of April general elections.

Earlier Thursday, Rio Tinto in a statement expressed “concern” over reports that the project would be scrapped.

The company said any decision should be accompanied by “discussion and dialogue based on facts.” It added that it is dedicated to developing the project in accordance with Serbian and international regulations.

“We are not afraid of Rio Tinto,” Brnabic said. “We are here for our people and our country. They can do whatever they think they should do. This is the final decision of the government of the Republic of Serbia. "

It is widely believed that Serbia, which formally seeks European Union membership but instead has been forging close ties with Russia and China, may want to hand over the lithium mining to China by sidelining Rio Tinto from the project in which it has pledged to invest $2.4 billion.

Throughout its almost 150-year history, Rio Tinto has faced accusations of corruption, environmental degradation and human rights abuses at its mining sites.

Environmentalists are also upset at the Serbian government’s lack of response to rising pollution in the country.

___

Jovana Gec contributed to this story.

Dusan Stojanovic, The Associated Press

Hia-Ced O'odham woman acquitted in border wall protest

Amber Ortega was responding to a spiritual call from her ancestors, who were urging her to Quitobaquito Springs in southern Arizona to hold ceremony. She faced federal misdemeanor charges for the act.

CARINA DOMINGUEZ
23 HOURS AGO
The waters of Quitobaquito in southern Arizona have attracted diverse visitors for thousands of years. (Photo: Jared Orsi, CC BY-ND - courtesy The Conversation)
Carina Dominguez
Indian Country Today

A Hia-Ced O’odham woman was found not guilty Wednesday on federal misdemeanor charges stemming from an incident that occurred along the border wall construction on her tribe’s ancestral land.

In September 2020 Amber Ortega and Nellie Jo David rushed to Quitobaquito Springs, “without hesitation” to protect the sacred area from border wall construction in southern Arizona.

Hia-Ced O'odham woman Amber Ortega, left, was acquitted of federal charges. Her and Nellie Jo David, right, were arrested in September 2020 after holding ceremony at Quitobaquito Springs while border wall construction attempted to tear through the area. (Photo by Carina Dominguez, Indian Country Today)

“They called it a protest but what we were doing was far beyond that we were answering a call that came through from our ancestors. The timing wasn't calculated. We were there. We had been there and it was without hesitation,” Ortega said.

Both women faced what they said were trumped-up federal charges for praying at the site which they had been doing long before construction reached the spring.

David said the legal system purposefully wanted her to “have such a traumatic experience that it's going to scare other people that even think of doing the same thing we did.”

For that reason, David took a plea deal last year while Ortega was waiting on the acquittal that was announced on Wednesday.


Isabel Garcia updates Supporters of Amber Ortega
Attorney and human rights activist Isabel Garcia speaks to a crowd outside of the Tucson federal courthouse with updates on Amber Ortega's case on Nov. 4, 2021. (Courtesy of Luke Salcido)
Ortega’s acquittal came after a magistrate judge reversed her previous ruling that Ortega couldn’t use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act as her defense.

Ortega’s lawyer asked the court to reconsider the ruling last month, the judge ultimately decided the prosecution imposed a substantial burden on her exercise of religion.

SEE: MOTION FOR RECONSIDERATION

The Arizona Daily Star reported that Ortega spoke to supporters outside the federal courthouse in Tucson after the verdict was read.

“This is our land, and our ways are not wrong,” Ortega said. “We, today, again defended our culture, our ways, our songs, our locations, our mountains, our sacred sites. Today was a victory for our people.”

Ortega was charged with misdemeanors interfering with an agency function and violating a closure order after she refused to leave a construction site in September 2020 in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, about 150 miles southwest of Tucson, where contractors were building more than 40 miles of 30-foot-tall steel border wall.

The Hia-Ced O’odham are a part of the Tohono O’odham Nation, the second largest tribe by geographic area in the U.S. with 2.8 million acres, 75 miles of it along the southern border.

Ortega says the border has negatively impacted O’odham people, who used to traverse across the villages throughout the Sonoran desert before the border crossed them.

“The border wall did effectively stop traditions that have been happening for thousands and thousands of years,” Ortega said.

She was compelled to act because she didn’t want to see the history of destruction continue.

“There's an underlying generational hurt that we are dealing with because we are well aware that our sites exist and our culture exists, our language, our songs, our prayers, our ceremonies, what locations mean something to us,” Ortega said. “That border severed ties with traditional traveling routes…sacred connections to our history, it's our history that exists in those lands and along that border.”

Tohono O’odham Nation Chairman Ned Norris Jr. issued a statement on Wednesday’s ruling in the case.

“Construction of the border wall inflicted permanent damage to Quitobaquito Springs and other sacred sites for the O’odham. We appreciate that the court corrected its earlier error and recognized that protesting this great harm met the requirements for defense under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. This desecration should not have happened and can never be allowed to happen again. The Nation will continue to advocate for stronger legal protections of sacred places for the O'odham and all tribes.”





House Natural Resources Committee Chair Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat from Arizona, said he supports Ortega’s actions against the “construction of an illegal, wasteful border wall and the Trump administration’s abuse of power in order to protect a sacred site integral to the Tohono O’odham Nation.

Ortega said there's a history of abuses in that area “done specifically to O’odham.”

“It’s in our history, we are abused by law enforcement. It's a known fact, and there's no justice for that,” Ortega said.


The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Indian Country Today is a nonprofit news organization. Will you support our work? All of our content is free. There are no subscriptions or costs.

BY CARINA DOMINGUEZ
Carina Dominguez, Pascua Yaqui, is a correspondent and producer for Indian Country Today. Previously she worked for CBS Television Network. Carina’s work has appeared in news outlets like The Arizona Republic, The Billings Gazette, Casper Star-Tribune, The Tucson Sentinel, Navajo-Hopi Observer and CBS News. CarinaDominguez@indiancountrytoday.com, Twitter: @Carinad7, Instagram: @CarinaNicole7

Planning is Power: How Planning Shaped Colonial Realities in Occupied Palestine

Huda Shaka, Jeddah.
6 December 2021

Around the world, urban planning is inextricably linked to both historic and current power structures. Urban planning in Palestine over the past century is no exception. Perhaps what differentiates Palestine today is the ongoing settler colonialization.Urban planning often serves existing power structures to the detriment of the marginalized and as such has been used as a tool for racial segregation and discrimination in many contexts. As UCLA Professor Ananya Roy puts it: “Urban planning has repeatedly produced segregation and displacement”. Much has been written, for example, on the discriminatory urban planning practices in the United States and their impact on exacerbating racial injustices against African Americans, in particular.

Yet, even as a planning professional of Palestinian origin who has visited the occupied West Bank many times and witnessed and experienced the discrimination against Palestinians there firsthand, the extent of the influence of planning policy was not obvious to me until I began researching it. Spatial planning policies, systematically introduced and enforced over the past century first by the British Mandate and then the Israeli government, have been instrumental in creating the unjust physical realities experienced by Palestinians today.

Below, I provide a glimpse of this planning history, which is vitally important to understanding today’s reality. I do this by highlighting excerpts from some of the research and scholarly work on this topic. The rest of this essay is organized mostly chronologically to address each of the key periods of the past century, with a final section focusing on the city of Jerusalem.

While this essay focuses on the planning history, I have provided brief commentary and infographics connecting to the wider context and broader history. For further reading on this history as told and experienced by the occupied (not the occupier), I recommend sources like Decolonise Palestine and Palestine Remembered. For a visual representation of how the creation of the State of Israel physically transformed Palestinian cities and villages, I highly recommend this excellent project by Visualizing Palestine.


Planning during the British Mandate (1920 – 1947)

After the defeat of the Ottomans in World War I, Palestine came under the control of the British government. As Martin Crookston, a contemporary British planner, describes in this review, the plans developed by the British under this mandate did not even record all the existing Palestinian villages, let alone plan for their development or expansion to meet the future needs of the indigenous population (as is normal practice). What is even more shocking is that these plans are still in use today by the Israeli government.

“The map below indicates in yellows circles the villages. But the Plans did not record all the villages in 1940s Palestine; so these yellow circles do not represent a complete picture of rural settlement even then. There was intended to be a layer of more local planning below these ‘regional’ plans, but it never really happened, or only to a tiny extent. In the whole of Mandate Palestine, some 900 Arab villages saw only 25 outline plans prepared for them – eight of them in what is now the West Bank.”

A British Mandate Plan for part of Historic Palestine (1947). Source: Martin Crookston (2017) Echoes of Empire: British Mandate planning in Palestine and its influence in the West Bank today, Planning Perspectives, 32:1, 87-98, DOI:10.1080/02665433.2016.1213183

Furthermore, as is typical with the international transfer of planning expertise, British planners brought with them planning solutions which may have worked in Britain but did not necessarily work in Palestine. Crookston elaborates below:

“The echoes of empire ring down to the present in other ways in the Mandate Plans, too… Importing a ‘solution’ intended to tackle the sprawl that was stretching along the radial roads of UK cities, the plans declared wide building-lines to set development well back from primary roads. These are now cited as reasons for demolitions. And the regional plans’ zoning of areas for only a few main uses (roads, an agricultural zone, development zones, nature/forest reserves, and beach reserves) has become a tool for hyper-restriction of natural village expansion.”

In other words, British planning policies which were meant to restrict linear sprawl of town and cities in 20thcentury Britain were imposed on Palestinian villages and are now being used as legal justification for restricting the natural growth of these villages. Critically, the same planning policies were not applied to the Jewish colonies being set up by international Zionist organisations to accommodate hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants, who came mostly from Europe and the United States with no immediate ties to the land of Palestine. Not only were these colonies permitted, but they were also allowed to grow and develop without planning requirements or restrictions.

Rassem Khamaisi, professor at the University of Haifa, describes this dichotomy in applying planning policies as follows in his paper on the British Mandate and the control of Palestinians:” The Arabs were subject to restrictive statutory and physical planning, and land surveys were used as a tool for confiscating their land, particularly in situations of ethnic conflict.

By comparison, new Jewish colonies and towns were rapidly developing to absorb largescale Jewish immigration that came to Palestine, especially after the Second World War. The Mandate planning institutions did not involve approved structure plans for the Jewish agriculture colonies. Besides which, most employees in the Planning Adviser’s office and in the district commissions were Jewish, and some of them paid more attention to the Jewish towns plans than to the implementation of the Mandate policy.”

The Creation of the State of Israel over Palestinian villages (1948 – 1967)

Between 1947 and 1948, to enable the creation of a Jewish state, 750,000 Palestinians were made to flee their homes through violent assaults first by militant Jewish groups and then by the newly formed Israeli state. This moment in history had a significant impact on all aspects of life for Palestinians, including the strength and connectivity of their cities. The quote below is from another work by Khamaisi focusing on the major Palestinian urban centers and how they were affected by the creation of the State of Israel.

“In 1947, the United Nations Assembly partitioned Palestine into two states, Arab and Jewish, under Resolution 181. The War of 1948 between the Arabs and the Jewish, as an aftermath of this resolution, lead (sic) to the establishment of a viable, functional sovereign Jewish state with Tel-Aviv its urban core. This urban core began to develop in the 1930’s even though the Israelis aspired to establish Jerusalem as its Political core after the War of 1948, and according to the Rhodes ceasefire agreement of 1949. The Arab Palestinian state failed to establish, with Palestinian territory outside the Israeli state fragmented into two units lacking territorial continuity. As a result of this war, known as “Nakba” [disaster] to the Palestinians, and territorial fragmentation, the normal growth of Palestinian cities and towns changed in the wake of the establishment of the State of Israel. Israel divided Mandate Palestine under Jordanian rule (West Bank, “WB”) and Egyptian administration (Gaza Strip, “GS”). Between 1948-1967 the Palestinians lost their urban centers in territories within the newly established Israel proper, and the urban centers outside Israel’s borders, ruled by foreign Arab States, remained relatively small and dependent on the Jordanian core and the Egyptian core, Amman and Cairo, respectively. Jerusalem, which had previously functioned as the

Palestinian core, was divided into West Jerusalem, under the sovereignty of the State of Israel, while East Jerusalem was under Jordanian sovereignty and dependent on Amman.” The catastrophic loss of the Nakba was also felt, perhaps even more painfully, in Palestinian villages, hundreds of which were wiped off the map:

“After May 15th 1948 the War expanded and Israeli forces took over portions of the territory that was set aside for the establishment of a Palestinian state through the Partition Plan and expelled much of the population that lived in these areas. By the end of the war approximately 750,000 Palestinians had been made refugees and between 500 and 600 Palestinian villages had been depopulated. Many of these communities were later destroyed.”
— Source: https://www.afsc.org/resource/palestinian-refugees-and-right-return

To cover the traces of these acts of ethnic cleaning, many of the sites of the destroyed villages were later designated by Israeli authorities as nature reserves or cultural sites:

“The razed grounds of 182 erstwhile Palestinian villages — almost half of the villages depopulated by Israel in 1948 — are today included within the boundaries of Israeli nature and recreation spaces: mainly national parks, nature reserves and Jewish National Fund (JNF) forests and parks. Most of the Palestinian villages were intentionally destroyed by Israel during and after the 1948 war or gradually dilapidated due to lack of official care as they were not considered heritage sites worthy of preservation. However, many of the villages were centered on ancient ruins, whose historical value led in some cases to declarations of national parks on the grounds of former villages. Similarly, villages near a natural spring were later classified by Israel as nature reserves or recreation areas; and, lastly, one of the goals behind the planting of some of the JNF forests in Israel — later turned into recreational areas — had been to obscure the remains of destroyed Palestinian villages.”
—Source: https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/232332

The multiple layers of colonisation and appropriation involved in such acts of forestation over ruined villages are described piercingly by Liat Berdugo in her essay reflecting on the tree she planted as a child in Jerusalem at the age of six:

“So the planting of forests is a politically charged endeavor that links ecology and aesthetics to cultural survival. It is a way for Israeli Jews to say ‘we are here’… But more than that: it is a strategy for expropriating land. Prior to the declaration of Israeli statehood, the leaders of KKL-JNF [Kayemeth Le’Yisrael, also known as the Jewish National Fund] saw afforestation as ‘a biological declaration of Jewish sovereignty’ that could be used to set up ‘geopolitical facts’.”

She goes on to describe:

“A half-century later, it remains a public secret that at least 46 KKL-JNF forests are located on the ruins of former Palestinian villages. American Independence Park, where the names of foreign donors are etched on the Wall of Eternal Life, is superimposed on the villages of Allar, Dayr al-Hawa, Khirbat al-Tannur, Jarash, Sufla, Bayt ‘Itab, and Dayr Aban, which were captured, ‘depopulated’ of their 4,000 inhabitants, and razed by Israeli state actors in 1948.”

Berdugo also implicates the Israeli legal system which rejects claims of Palestinians to village sites after they have been forested:

“And the Israeli courts have determined that when a forest is grown on expropriated land, Palestinians who return to that land are trespassing. In 2010, the Supreme Court rejected a petition by Palestinian refugees from the village of al-Lajjun to reclaim land in the Megiddo forest, ruling that afforestation justified Israeli control under the Land Acquisition Law of 1953.”


Planning during the military occupation of the West Bank (1967 – 1994)

Planning process in Palestinian centres

In 1967, Israel occupied the remainder of historic Palestine (the West Bank and Gaza). As an occupying power, Israeli authorities now had direct control over planning laws in these areas.

Rassem Khamaisi describes how the Israeli state took away agency and representation in planning from the indigenous Palestinian population through the issuance and implementation of Military Order (MO) 148 which transferred planning powers from local village councils to commissions appointed by the Israeli military:


“The MO no. 418 also abolished the local planning commission in village councils, later establishing six Regional Rural Planning Committees (RRPC). It also granted the Military Commander the authority to appoint members of the HPC [Higher Planning Commission] and RRPC. Under the MO, the HPC was also authorized to set up subsidiary or ad hoc committees as it deemed necessary. Once the MO had been issued and implemented, the Palestinians were robbed of all authority and responsibility in the planning institutions; their presence in the province and RRPC, or in the sub-commission of the HPC, was merely formal. The ‘responsible’ in charge set up the HPC and appointed Jewish members with no Palestinian representation.”

In this new planning system, most Palestinian applications for detailed plans or building permits were rejected on the pretence of protecting agricultural land or lack of sufficient land ownership documentation. This is captured in numbers by Khamaisi:


“Thus, obtaining a building permit was a very complicated and serious process, which decreased the number of building permits issued to the Palestinians. For example, in the period between 1 January 1988–1 September 1988, the number of applications submitted was 994, but the number of permits given was only 221. It is worth mentioning that in the period between 15 November 1986 and 28 September 1987 no permits at all were issued by the local committees.”

Establishment of new Jewish settlements

The HPC prepared regional plans for the West Bank in the early 1980s with multiple colonial objectives including limiting the development of Palestinian villages, severing connectivity of Palestinian cities, and most importantly enabling the establishment of Israeli settlements in the West Bank with full spatial segregation from Palestinians. In Khamaisi’s words:

“To amend the Mandate plans in the regional tier, the HPC prepared two regional plans covering part of the West Bank. The first, called the ‘Partial regional plan no. 1/82, amendment to regional plan RJ-5’, emerged in 1982. This plan covered an area of about 45 km2, around the three sides of Jerusalem, forming a belt around Jerusalem in the area of the West Bank. Plan no. 1/82 determined five main land-use zones (agriculture, nature reserve, future development, reserved area and built-up village areas). An analysis of the goal containing proposals of land use and regulations, leads to the conclusion that this plan intended to prevent the securing of building permits in agricultural zones according to the Mandate plans, and to limit Palestinian development in villages and in congested built-up areas. However, the areas designated for future development were selected for the creation or expansion of Jewish settlements.

The second plan, issued in 1984, was called the ‘Regional partial outline plan for Roads – Order no. 50’. This plan created a dual road system in the West Bank, the main user of the one being Palestinian, and the other, Jewish. The plan proposed a large set-back (200–300 m) in order to limit Palestinian development…”
— Source: Rassem Khamaisi (1997) Israeli use of the British Mandate planning legacy as a tool for the control of Palestinians in the West Bank, Planning Perspectives, 12:3, 321-340, DOI:10.1080/026654397364672]



Planning in the West Bank after the Oslo Accords (1995 – today)

The Oslo Peace Accords signed in 1993 were expected to transfer control of the West Bank, including planning powers, to the Palestinians. The reality was markedly different, with the West Bank being divided into three zones (A, B, C). Area A (covering 18% of the West Bank) is administered by the Palestinian Authority and Area B (covering 22% of the West Bank) is under joint Palestinian-Israeli control. Area C, the largest of the zones covering approximately 60% of the area of the West Bank, is under exclusive Israeli administration including planning control. In Area C, planning restrictions on Palestinians have increased compared to the pre-Oslo era, with even less construction permitted. Simultaneously, the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank continues.

The Israeli NGO Bimkom – Planners for Planning Rights describes this juxtaposition of planning powers between Palestinians and the occupying State of Israel in their 2008 report:


“The two sides in this conflict do not have equal power. The Israeli Civil Administration enjoys substantial statutory and legal powers, and the average Palestinian citizen has no practical possibility of successfully challenging its decisions. Even according to the official position of the Israeli government, Area C is under temporary belligerent occupation and is not part of the sovereign State of Israel. This status implies that the powers of the Israeli authorities in the area to impose restrictions on Palestinian development and building are extremely restricted compared to those of a sovereign government. Nevertheless, the Civil Administration severely restricts Palestinian development in Area C, arguing that the future of this area remains to be determined in negotiations for a permanent agreement. At the same time, Israel continues to permit extensive construction in the settlements scattered throughout Area C, as if this construction does not establish facts on the ground and does not have grave ramifications for any future agreement.”

Source: The Prohibited Zone: Israeli planning policy in Palestinian Villages in Area C, Bimkom, June 2008

Jerusalem

The Israeli planning interventions in the city of Jerusalem, particularly after the 1967 war, offer a rich albeit disheartening case study of planning as a tool for segregation. Some of the injustices have risen to the world scene earlier this year as Palestinian families in neighbourhoods such as Sheikh Jarrah fight illegal dispossession from their homes. Jonathan Rock Rokem has written extensively on this topic, terming Jerusalem as a “Contested City”. Below are excerpts from a 2012 paper on the politics of urban planning in the city:


“Israel, with the Ministry of Interior and the Jerusalem Municipality as its main legislative arms, has been responsible for urban planning and policy for the last 45 years, keeping a clear separation between Israeli and Palestinian living areas clearly visible in the location of disconnected living areas in the map below, dating from 2008.”




“In more details, over the last 46 years, Israel has used its military might and economic power to relocate borders and form boundaries, grant and deny rights and resources, shift populations, and reshape the Occupied Territories for the purpose of ensuring Jewish control. In the case of East Jerusalem, two complementary strategies have been implemented by Israel: the construction of a massive outer ring of Jewish neighborhoods which now host over half the Jewish population of Jerusalem, and the containment of all Palestinian development, implemented through housing demolitions, legally banning Palestinian construction and development, and the prevention of Palestinian immigration to the city.”

“Up until today, planning and development in Jerusalem has been officially determined by the last statutory authorized master plan dating from 1959. The 1959 “[The] Scheme, prepared at the time when Jerusalem was a divided city, includes only the Western part of the pre-1967 Israeli Jerusalem. Therefore, it has little relevance in determining planning and development in the current conditions. This means that without an updated master plan, for almost 50 years, the Municipality, the Ministry of Interior, and other government departments have shared the development and planning without an overall legally binding document.”

“Since 1967, the policy employed by the Jerusalem municipality has been affected by the Israeli national political discourse. The principal Israeli policy has been “reunifying” Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty while the Palestinian Eastern population sees the integration of East Jerusalem as illegal “annexation.” In ethnically divided cities, urban planning policy can take a major role in enhancing spatial and social division (Bollens 2000). The unequal funding of urban planning and construction projects between the Eastern and the Western parts has resulted in a city split into two distinct growth poles, with the crossover parts and old border areas remaining mainly neglected division points between the two sides.”

Source: Rock, J; (2012) Politics and Conflict in a Contested City: Urban Planning in Jerusalem under Israeli Rule. Bulletin du Centre de recherche français à Jérusalem, 23

What now?

Around the world, urban planning is inextricably linked to both historic and current power structures. Urban planning in Palestine over the past century is no exception. Perhaps what differentiates Palestine today is the ongoing settler colonialization. Unlike other settler colonialization “projects” (e.g., in the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa), the Israeli colonial regime is still formally in power today and continues to perpetrate injustices at every scale against the occupied Palestinian population. As I have attempted to argue in this essay, spatial planning policy has been an important tool in creating today’s inhumane reality affecting millions of Palestinians on the ground and in the diaspora.

Where do we go from here? The first objective is obvious: ending the colonial project in Palestine. After that point, there will be decades of injustices and abuses to rectify, including the legacy challenges of the planning system, in order to plan for just and liveable cities for all people on that land.

Until then, as built environment professionals, it is important that we denounce the fundamentally unjust systems governing the urban context in Palestine and elsewhere, and continue to work towards rectifying this. For professionals interested in working in Palestine, being fully aware of the colonial planning power dynamics and their impacts is essential to making informed decisions on the projects in which we chose to be involved and the stakeholders and communities we chose to include.

Huda Shaka
Jeddah

On The Nature of Cities

Penn pledges to work with NCAA, support transgender swimmer

Pennsylvania's Lia Thomas is shown during the playing of the national anthem before a swim meet, Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022, in Philadelphia. The NCAA has adopted a sport-by-sport approach for transgender athletes, bringing the organization in line with the U.S. and International Olympic Committees. NCAA rules on transgender athletes returned to the forefront when Penn swimmer Lia Thomas started smashing records this year.(AP Photo/Chris Szagola) | Photo: AP

 January 20, 2022 

PHILADELPHIA (AP) - The University of Pennsylvania said it will work with the NCAA under its newly adopted standards for transgender athletes.

Swimmer Lia Thomas, who competed for the men's team at Penn before transitioning, has qualified to compete in March at the 2022 NCAA swimming and diving championships. She is set to race in the women's 200-yard, 500-yard and 1,650-yard freestyle.

"Penn Athletics is aware of the NCAA's new transgender participation policy," the Ivy League school said Thursday in a statement. "In support of our student-athlete, Lia Thomas, we will work with the NCAA regarding her participation under the newly adopted standards for the 2022 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championship."

Under the new guidelines, approved by the NCAA Board of Governors on Wednesday, transgender participation for each sport will be determined by the policy for the sport's national governing body, subject to review and recommendation by an NCAA committee to the Board of Governors.

When there is no national governing body, that sport's international federation policy would be in place. If there is no international federation policy, previously established IOC policy criteria would take over.

"Approximately 80% of U.S. Olympians are either current or former college athletes," NCAA President Mark Emmert said in a statement announcing the guidelines. "This policy alignment provides consistency and further strengthens the relationship between college sports and the U.S. Olympics."

The NCAA policy is effective immediately, beginning with the 2022 winter championships. Penn did not immediately respond to requests for comment on how the policy would affect Thomas.

NCAA rules on transgender athletes returned to the forefront when Thomas started smashing records this year. She was on the men's team her first three years, but after transitioning she moved to the women's team.

The Board of Governors is suggesting NCAA divisions allow for additional eligibility if a transgender student-athlete loses eligibility based on the policy change. That flexibility is provided they meet the NCAA's new guidelines.

SEXIST LAW WHAT ABOUT TRANSBOYS
Indiana Looks to Become Tenth State to Restrict Transgender Girls in School Sports

BY AYUMI DAVIS ON 1/20/22 

An Indiana bill that would prohibit transgender women and girls from female school sports teams will be considered by the House education committee.

The proposal, House Bill 1041, bans those listed as biologically male at birth from participating in a female athletic team or sport. It would require grievance procedures for violations to be established at school corporations, public schools, certain private schools, state educational institutions, certain private colleges and universities, and certain athletic associations, according to the proposal.

The proposal also allows for civil action should someone violate the provisions and schools would not be subject to liabilities for complying with it.

The House education committee is scheduled to hear the bill, authored by Republican Rep. Michelle Davis of Greenwood, on Monday, committee chair Rep. Bob Behning of Indianapolis said Wednesday, according to The Associated Press.

Behning said the proposal "deserves discussion," AP reported. He noted that a "majority of House Republicans support the bill."

"It's just, how do we make sure that we're ... playing fairly in terms of athletics," Behning said, according to AP.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana released a statement Thursday on their website in opposition to the bill. The statement says the bill singles out transgender kids by banning them from participating in sports, "sending them the message that they are not worthy of the same kinds of opportunities as their classmates."

"Transgender people have the right to participate in sports consistent with who they are, just like anyone else," the ACLU of Indiana says in the statement. "Denying this right is unconstitutional and blatant discrimination."

The ACLU of Indiana urges lawmakers to "stop these attacks" on transgender children, according to the statement.

The Indiana proposal banning transgender girls from female school sports teams would also allow for civil action should someone violate the provisions and schools would not be subject to liabilities for complying with it. 

If the bill were to pass, Indiana would become the 10th state to ban transgender athletes from school sports. Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Montana, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Texas all have laws prohibiting transgender athletes from school sports, according to The New York Times. However, federal judges have halted the laws in West Virginia and Idaho, AP reported. The U.S. Department of Justice has also challenged bans in other states.

Several other bills exist in the Indiana Legislature regarding limitations on transgender people. House Bill 1399 would prohibit people from changing the gender on their birth certificate and the permanent record made from it. House Bill 1348 would make it a misdemeanor for people to enter restrooms not aligning with the biological gender.

Senate Bill 402 would change Indiana law to say that identifying a child by their biological sex is not child abuse or neglect. There is also another bill authored by Davis, House Bill 1121, that would mandate health care professionals report certain information involving gender transitioning to the state health department, which would then compile the data annually into a report for the general assembly.

"Even introducing these bills, even bringing these bills up, and then contributing to that sense that trans people have, that their own communities are attacking them and trying to ostracize them, that has a very negative and frightening effect on youth," Kit Malone, an advocacy strategist for the ACLU of Indiana, said, according to The Indianapolis Star, "and we see it every year."

U.S. charges Belarus with air piracy in Ryanair flight diversion to arrest journalist

U.S. officials say they have jurisdiction in the case because American citizens were aboard the flight.

Belarusian dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich attends a news conference at the National Press Center of Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Minsk, Belarus, on June 14, 2021.Ramil Nasibulin / BelTA Pool via AP file


Jan. 20, 2022
By The Associated Press

NEW YORK — U.S. prosecutors charged four Belarusian government officials on Thursday with aircraft piracy for diverting a Ryanair flight last year to arrest an opposition journalist, using a ruse that there was a bomb threat.

The charges, announced by federal prosecutors in New York, recounted how a regularly-scheduled passenger plane traveling between Athens, Greece, and Vilnius, Lithuania, on May 23 was diverted to Minsk, Belarus by air traffic control authorities there.

“Since the dawn of powered flight, countries around the world have cooperated to keep passenger airplanes safe. The defendants shattered those standards by diverting an airplane to further the improper purpose of repressing dissent and free speech,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a news release announcing the charges.

Ryanair said Belarusian flight controllers told the pilots there was a bomb threat against the jetliner and ordered it to land in Minsk. The Belarusian military scrambled a MiG-29 fighter jet in an apparent attempt to encourage the crew to comply with the flight controllers’ orders.

The journalist and activist who was arrested, Raman Pratasevich, ran a popular messaging app that helped organize mass demonstrations against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The 26-year-old Pratasevich left Belarus in 2019 and faced charges there of inciting riots.

In August, U.S. President Joe Biden levied new sanctions against Belarus on the one-year anniversary of Lukashenko’s election to a sixth term leading the Eastern European nation — a vote the U.S. and international community said was fraught with irregularities.

Widespread belief that the 2020 vote was stolen triggered mass protests in Belarus that led to increased repressions by Lukashenko’s government on protesters, dissidents and independent media. More than 35,000 people were arrested and thousands were beaten and jailed. The protests lasted for months, petering out only when winter set in.

Those charged in court papers Thursday were identified as Leonid Mikalaevich Churo, director general of Belaeronavigatsia Republican Unitary Air Navigation Services Enterprise, the Belarusian state air navigation authority; Oleg Kazyuchits, deputy director general of Belaeronavigatsia; and two Belarusian state security agents whose full identities weren’t known to prosecutors.

U.S. prosecutors described the defendants as fugitives and said they were facing charges of conspiring to commit aircraft piracy, which carries a mandatory minimum sentence of 20 years in prison.

Messages seeking comment were sent to the Belarusian embassy in Washington and the country’s U.N. mission in New York; their phones rang unanswered Thursday evening.

U.S. officials say they have jurisdiction in the case because American citizens were aboard the flight.

After the episode last year, the European Union swiftly banned Belarusian airlines from using airspace and airports in the 27-nation bloc, urged EU-based carriers to avoid flying over Belarus and imposed sanctions on some Belarusian officials. EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the plane incident amounted to a “hijacking.” Lithuania told all incoming and outgoing flights to avoid neighboring Belarus, while Ukraine’s leader moved to ban Ukrainian flights via the neighbor’s airspace.

But Belarus’ key ally Russia offered support, arguing that Belarus acted in line with international procedures for bomb threats and saying the West reacted rashly. Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed Lukashenko for talks days after the incident and nodded in sympathy as Lukashenko fulminated about the EU sanctions, saying the bloc was trying to destabilize his country.

Judge sides with Alaska attorney who alleged wrongful firing

FILE - Former Alaska Assistant Attorney General Elizabeth Bakalar speaks a news conference on Jan. 10, 2019, in Anchorage, Alaska, after she sued the state. A federal judge on Thursday, Jan. 20, 2022, ruled that Bakalar was wrongfully terminated by the then-new administration of Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy for violating her freedom of speech rights. (AP File Photo/Mark Thiessen, File) | Photo: AP


By BECKY BOHRER
Updated: January 20, 2022 

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) - A U.S. judge sided Thursday with an attorney who alleged she was wrongly fired by the state of Alaska over political opinions expressed on a personal blog.

U.S. District Court Judge John Sedwick ruled that Elizabeth Bakalar's December 2018 firing violated her free speech and associational rights under the U.S. and state constitutions.

According to Sedwick's decision, Bakalar was an attorney with the Alaska Department of Law who handled election-related cases and was assigned to advise or represent state agencies in high-profile or complex matters. She began a blog in 2014 that focused on issues such as lifestyle, parenting and politics but began blogging more about politics and then-President Donald Trump after his 2016 election. She also commented about Trump on Twitter, with her name listed as the Twitter handle, the order says.

Shortly after Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy's election in 2018, the chair of his transition team and later his chief of staff, Tuckerman Babcock, sent a memo to a broad swath of state employees requesting they submit their resignations along with a statement of interest in continuing to work for the new administration. The request was derided by attorneys for Bakalar and others as a demand for a "loyalty pledge."

"To keep their jobs employees had to actually offer up a resignation with an accompanying statement of interest in continuing with the new administration and then hope that the incoming administration would reject the resignation," Sedwick wrote.

Babcock said he fired Bakalar because he considered the tone of her resignation letter to be unprofessional, the order says. But Sedwick said Babcock did not accept the resignation of an assistant attorney general who used the same wording he had found objectionable when used by Bakalar.

While every lawyer in the Department of Law received the memo, just two - Bakalar and another attorney who had been critical of Trump on social media - had their resignation letters accepted, according to Sedwick's decision.

Sedwick said given Bakalar's position "and the public nature of her political commentary, it would not have been unreasonable for state officials to consider her speech a disruption to the Division of Election's operations, warranting adverse employment action. Indeed, this was a growing concern to her supervisors within Department of Law."

But the defendants, "who made the decision to fire Plaintiff without consultation, failed to show that they had any awareness of this particular concern, or that they acted in response to it rather than a dislike of her personal views," he wrote.

Babcock said he had not sought advice from anyone outside of Dunleavy and his immediate staff, according to Sedwick's order.

Sedwick instructed attorneys to confer and identify any remaining issues for litigation.

Brewster Jamieson, an outside attorney representing the state, Babcock and Dunleavy in the case, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment. Babcock is no longer with the administration.

Mark Choate, an attorney for Bakalar, said his side would seek damages and an order that would bar any similar memos being sent in the future.

In October, Sedwick sided with two psychiatrists who had declined to submit resignation letters and alleged wrongful firing.