Man Sends 4-Letter Message To Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott In MSNBC B-Roll Footage

Lee Moran

Sat, May 7, 2022, 

Blink and you may miss one protester’s blunt message to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on MSNBC.

A man wearing a t-shirt with the slogan “Fuck Greg Abbott” while carrying a sign that read “Abortion Saves Lives” appeared in B-roll footage that aired on Thursday’s broadcast of “The Last Word,” reported Mediaite.

The uncensored curse word flashed up on the screen as guest host Alicia Menendez discussed the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. Watch via Mediaite here.

Abbott last year signed legislation that effectively banned abortions in the state at six weeks. He later restricted access to abortion medication.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

Vaccine skeptics and anti-maskers who invoked 'my body, my choice' in the pandemic are now lining up to support the end of Roe v. Wade

Mia Jankowicz
Thu, May 5, 2022,

A pro-abortion demonstration on March 1, 1986.Cynthia Johnson/Getty Images

People against vaccine and mask mandates have argued that they impose on a person's bodily autonomy.

That rallying cry of "my body, my choice" was rooted in the abortion-rights battles of Roe v. Wade.

Yet those people against vaccine and mask mandates are now encouraging the potential demise of abortion rights.

The leak of the Supreme Court draft opinion that would end Roe v. Wade has been met with approval by many conservatives who championed the very same notion of bodily autonomy and personal choice throughout the pandemic.

Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, for example, urged the justices to move ahead with the decision on Tuesday.

Yet, while railing against vaccine mandates last June, he said that they ultimately mean that "personal autonomy means nothing. It is no longer your body, it is no longer your choice."

Bodily autonomy has become a familiar line of argumentation from anti-vaxxers, vaccine skeptics, and anti-maskers in recent years. "Medical freedom," "bodily autonomy" and "my body, my choice" became watchwords of an anti-vaccine movement turbocharged in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Leading anti-vaccine campaigners and conspiracy theorists — such as Erin Elizabeth and Sherri Tenpenny — have marshaled the cause of "bodily autonomy" over and over again. Both were infamously dubbed among the "Disinformation Dozen" by the Center for Countering Digital Hate. Tenpenny has called abortion "slaughter."

But the concept of personal control over what medical choices one takes gained prominence in the abortion-rights movement that led to the landmark 1973 judgment of Roe v. Wade. Then, it was applied to the decision of whether or not to bear a child to term.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott invoked that thinking last December when railing against vaccine mandates, telling Fox News' Sean Hannity the issue was about "whether or not somebody is going to have something put into their body that they do not want put into their body," Rolling Stone reported.

Yet in May that year Abbott imposed one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the US, banning abortions after six weeks even in the case of rape or incest.

He also called on the Supreme Court to follow through with the draft opinion, the Houston Chronicle reported.

"The conceptual inconsistency would be laughable if the issues weren't so crucially important," Prof. Timothy Caulfield, an expert in public-health ethics at the University of Alberta, told Insider.

"Their argument was often that it is an infringement on individual rights to, for example, ask someone to wear a mask during a pandemic," he said. "But this same community is totally fine restricting something a fundamental as reproductive autonomy. Huh?"

A woman holds a placard a protest against vaccine mandates in August 2021 in Edmonton, Canada.

Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Throughout the pandemic, this view was precisely mirrored — and inverted — by the vaccine skeptics.

"If you support a national vaccine mandate, but shout 'my body, my choice!' in support of aborting of a baby with its OWN AUTONOMOUSLY BEATING HEART … you might be an evil asshole," tweeted Steven Crowder, a conservative comedian, last September. On Tuesday, Crowder said that he "can't contain" his excitement at the Supreme Court decision.

Elizabeth, of the "Disinformation Dozen," made the same point in a Telegram post on the day of the leak.

"It is just so preposterous to me that the people saying 'my body my choice' are the same ones who demanded that we be vaccinated in order to go to our jobs or in order for our children to go to school," she said.

Prof. Tina Rulli, an ethicist at the University of California's philosophy department, told Insider: "The irony is that the exact reverse is true."
Competing claims

In a co-authored paper for the journal "Bioethics," Rulli and Prof. Stephen Campbell of Bentley University's philosophy department compared the competing claims of infringement on bodily rights brought about by the vaccine-skeptic and pro-life movements.

Even if one accepts the premise that a fetus has same human rights as a legal person — a far from universal view — the logic of "my body, my choice" is weaker when marshaled against vaccine mandates rather than forced birth, they wrote.

The paper argued that with abortion, the death of a fetus is a serious, intentional, moral decision made towards an identifiable being. By contrast, an unvaccinated person who caused someone else's COVID-19 death may never learn of it, and most likely didn't intend it, they wrote.

However, the harms caused to others by refusing to be vaccinated can extend to many people, and range from mild to multiple deaths — and getting jabbed is much less inconvenient than the burden of carrying to term and giving a lifetime of care to a child, the professors wrote.

"Pro-life advocates who believe that the 'sanctity of life' justifies the enormously burdensome costs of gestation mandates should have a very low tolerance for actions that pose a substantial risk of death to others when the costs of avoiding such risks are minimal," they wrote.

A vaccine mandate means that "worst case, you can't attend school or you lose your job," Rulli told Insider. "That's serious, but it's not a bodily imposition."

"Abortion restrictions, however, are true physical impositions; pregnant people are required to stay that way and give birth even at risk to their health," she said.

"[...] Being an anti-vaxxer who cares about bodily autonomy while also being pro-life makes no sense."

HORRAY ANOTHER HOMOPHOBIC SECT OF WHITE PEOPLE

The new, more conservative Global Methodist Church just launched: Key takeaways from its start

Liam Adams, Nashville Tennessean
Fri, May 6, 2022, 

AVON, Indiana — A new Methodist denomination officially launched this month and many of its leaders met Friday to make key decisions for the denomination’s formation.

The new denomination, the Global Methodist Church, splintered from the United Methodist Church as part of a schism primarily over LGBTQ rights. The Global Methodist Church will be a home for Methodist churches that hold more “traditionalist” stances on sexuality and gender.

The Wesleyan Covenant Association — the main organization behind the formation of the Global Methodist Church — gathered its supporters and voting delegates here in the Indianapolis suburbs on Friday and Saturday to help the new denomination get off the ground.

Before the split, the UMC, with more than 6.2 million members in the U.S., according to 2020 data, was the largest mainline Protestant denomination in the nation. As of 2018, the denomination had more than 12 million members worldwide.

Here are key takeaways.

Related: Methodists focus on Easter amid denominational schism and the tough decisions ahead

Previously: A new Methodist denomination announced its official launch. How did we get here?
What is the significance of the event?

The Global Methodist Church launched earlier than originally expected, casting it in a state of flux right as churches are already joining. The churches joining are those that have left the UMC.

The Wesleyan Covenant Association, an advocacy group, is meeting partly to recommend policies the Global Methodist Church’s leadership can adopt to establish a doctrinal foundation.

The Wesleyan Covenant Association issued its recommendations through a series of votes cast by the group’s legislative assembly.

Delegates put their hands in the sky as to reach out as Rev. Dr. Carolyn Moore announces Friday, May 6, 2022, Jay Therrell, president of the WCA-Florida, as the new president of Wesleyan Covenant Association.

What did they decide on?

The Wesleyan Covenant Association legislative assembly voted for a new president and on four non-binding resolutions Friday.

The Rev. Jay Therrell, a Florida pastor, will lead the Wesleyan Covenant Association, replacing the Rev. Keith Boyette from Virginia. Boyette will take on a key leadership position in the Global Methodist Church.

"I am trusting in the amazing group...to get us across the Jordan and into where we need to be," Therrell told the audience Friday upon his election. "I’m really sure God is for us. We are going to get there. It will be soon."

Two of the four resolutions contained recommendations for the Global Methodist Church. One resolution forwarded along a catechism, or core denomination beliefs, and the other includes policies embodying traditionalist beliefs on sexuality and gender.

How did deliberations play out?

Each of the measures on Friday passed with more than 95% approval from the 235 delegates that comprise the Wesleyan Covenant Association's legislative assembly. The consensus contrasts with the division between this group and others within the UMC in years prior over topics like sexuality and gender identity.

The vote on the “sexual holiness” resolution followed a presentation by a task force that studied the topic and developed the recommendations included in the approved resolution. The delegates approved an amendment adding a recommendations for the development of resources for church leadership and laity promoting the idea that "a committed marriage between one man and one woman as the optimal environment for nurturing and raising children."

A man holds a book Friday, May 6, 2022, as delegates and others visit inside Kingsway Christian Church on Friday, May 6, 2022, to attend the Global Legislative Assembly of the Wesleyan Covenant Association being held in Avon, Ind.

What are the wider implications?

The Global Methodist Church’s temporary leadership body will now have to decide on whether to adopt the recommendations it received from the Wesleyan Covenant Association. If it does, it will be a significant development for the denomination.

But much else remains undetermined. Regional UMC conferences will determine this summer whether to approve requests by individual churches wanting to disaffiliate. Other major decisions await the approval of delegates at the UMC General Conference in 2024.

Liam Adams covers religion for The Tennessean. Reach him at ladams@tennessean.com or on Twitter @liamsadams.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Global Methodist Church launches, Wesleyan Covenant Association meets

FREEDOM FROMM RELIGION

What they wore: Clothes spotlight sex abuse in Amish, others

Exhibit confronts sex abuse among Amish and others
whether or not somebody is  sexually assaulted as a child.

PETER SMITH
Fri, May 6, 2022

LEOLA, Pa. (AP) — Clotheslines with billowing linens and long dresses are a common sight on the off-grid farms of Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, home to the nation's largest Amish settlement. For many tourists they're as iconic a part of Amish Country's bucolic scenery as the rural lanes and wooden bridges.

But for two days in late April, a clothesline with a different purpose was strung in a small indoor exhibit here. Hanging from it were 13 outfits representing the trauma of sexual assault suffered by members of the Amish, Mennonite and similar groups, a reminder that the modest attire they require, particularly of women and girls, is no protection.

Each garment on display was either the actual one a survivor wore at the time they were assaulted or a replica assembled by volunteers to match the strict dress codes of the survivor's childhood church.

One was a long-sleeve, periwinkle blue Amish dress with a simple stand collar. The accompanying sign said, “Survivor Age: 4 years old.”

Next to it was a 5-year-old's heavy coat, hat and long, hunter green dress, displayed above sturdy black shoes. “I was never safe and I was a child. He was an adult,” a sign quoted the survivor as saying. “No one helped me when I told them he hurt me.”

There was also an infant’s onesie.

“You feel rage when you get a tiny little outfit in the mail,” said Ruth Ann Brubaker of Wayne County, Ohio, who helped put the exhibit together. “I didn’t know I could be so angry. Then you start crying.”

The clothes on display represented various branches of the conservative Anabaptist tradition, which include Amish, Mennonite, Brethren and Charity. Often referred to as the Plain churches, they emphasize separation from mainstream society, church discipline, forgiveness and modest dress, including head coverings for women.

It was part of a larger conference on awareness of sexual abuse in the Plain churches held April 29-30 at Forest Hills Mennonite Church in Leola and sponsored by two advocacy organizations: A Better Way, based in Zanesville, Ohio, and Safe Communities, of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Hope Anne Dueck, the executive director of A Better Way and one of the exhibit’s organizers, said many survivors report being told things such as “If you had been wearing your head covering, then you probably wouldn’t have been assaulted,” or “You couldn’t have been dressed modestly enough.”

“And as a survivor myself,” Dueck said, "I knew that that was not the truth.”

“You can be harmed no matter what you’re wearing,” she said. Those who contributed to the exhibit “were wearing what their parents and the church prescribed, and wearing them correctly, and were still assaulted.”

The exhibit was based on similar ones that have been staged at college campuses and elsewhere in recent years called “What Were You Wearing?” They show a wide range of attire with the aim of shattering the myth that sexual assault can be blamed on what a victim had on.

Current and former members of plain-dressing religious communities — not just the Anabaptists but others such as Holiness, an offshoot of Methodism with an emphasis on piety — agreed last year that it was time to hold their own version.

“At the end of the day, it was never about the clothes,” said Mary Byler, a survivor of child sexual abuse in the Amish communities where she grew up. Byler, who founded the Colorado-based group The Misfit Amish to bridge cultural gaps between the Amish and the wider society, helped to organize the exhibit.

“I hope it helps survivors know that they’re not alone," she said.

Survivors were invited to submit their outfits or descriptions of them. All but one provided children's attire, mostly girls and one boy, reflecting their age when they were assaulted. The lone adult outfit belonged to a woman who was raped by her husband shortly after giving birth, Dueck said.

Organizers plan to have high-quality photos made of the clothes to display online and in future exhibits.

Plain church leaders have acknowledged in recent years that sexual abuse is a problem in their communities and have held seminars to raise awareness.

But advocates say they need to do more, and that some leaders continue to treat abuse cases as matters of church discipline rather than as crimes to be reported to civil authorities.

Dozens of offenders from Plain church affiliations have been convicted of sexually abusing children in the past two decades, according to a review of court files in several states. Several church leaders have been convicted for failing to report abuse, including an Amish bishop in Lancaster County in 2020.

Researchers and organizers at the conference said they are surveying current and former Plain community members to gather concrete data on what they believe is a pervasive problem.

But the display made a powerful statement on its own, said Darlene Shirk, a Mennonite from Lancaster County.

“We talk about statistics ... but when you have something physical here, and because the dress is from the Plain community, it shouts, ‘Look, this is happening in our community!’” she said.

Advocates say that in the male-led Plain churches, where forgiveness is taught as a paramount virtue, people are often pressured to reconcile with their abusers or their children's abusers.

Byler said that in the 18 years since she reported her sexual assaults to civil authorities, she has heard more stories of abuse in the Plain churches than she can count. Survivors are often isolated from their communities and met with “very victim-blaming statements,” she said.

“Child sexual assault and sexual assault is something that happens ... inside of communities from every walk and way of life,” Byler said.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

The Ocean's Biggest Garbage Pile Is Full of Floating Life

Annie Roth
Fri, May 6, 2022

Scientists aboard a ship supporting Ben Lecomte's swim through the garbage patch sampled the water along the way, finding high concentrations of neuston, or organisms living at the water's surface. 

(Ben Lecomte via The New York Times)

In 2019, French swimmer Benoit Lecomte swam more than 300 nautical miles through the Great Pacific Garbage Patch to raise awareness about marine plastic pollution.

As he swam, he was often surprised to find that he was not alone.

“Every time I saw plastic debris floating, there was life all around it,” Lecomte said.

The patch was less a garbage island than a garbage soup of plastic bottles, fishing nets, tires and toothbrushes. And floating at its surface were blue dragon nudibranchs, Portuguese man-o-wars and other small surface-dwelling animals, which are collectively known as neuston.

Scientists aboard the ship supporting Lecomte’s swim systematically sampled the patch’s surface waters. The team found that there were much higher concentrations of neuston within the patch than outside it. In some parts of the patch, there were nearly as many neuston as pieces of plastic.

“I had this hypothesis that gyres concentrate life and plastic in similar ways, but it was still really surprising to see just how much we found out there,” said Rebecca Helm, an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina and co-author of the study. “The density was really staggering. To see them in that concentration was like, wow.”

The findings were posted last month on bioRxiv and have not yet been subjected to peer review. But if they hold up, Helm and other scientists say, it may complicate efforts by conservationists to remove the immense and ever-growing amount of plastic in the patch.

The world’s oceans contain five gyres, large systems of circular currents powered by global wind patterns and forces created by Earth’s rotation. They act like enormous whirlpools, so anything floating within one will eventually be pulled into its center. For nearly a century, floating plastic waste has been pouring into the gyres, creating an assortment of garbage patches. The largest, the Great Pacific Patch, is halfway between Hawaii and California and contains at least 79,000 tons of plastic, according to the Ocean Cleanup Foundation. All that trash turns out to be a great foothold for living things.

Helm and her colleagues pulled many individual creatures out of the sea with their nets: by-the-wind sailors, free-floating hydrozoans that travel on ocean breezes; blue buttons, quarter-sized cousins of the jellyfish; and violet sea-snails, which build “rafts” to stay afloat by trapping air bubbles in a soaplike mucus they secrete from a gland in their foot. They also found potential evidence that these creatures may be reproducing within the patch.

“I wasn’t surprised,” said Andre Boustany, a researcher with the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California. “We know this place is an aggregation area for drifting plastics, so why would it not be an aggregation area for these drifting animals as well?”

Little is known about neuston, especially those found far from land in the heart of ocean gyres.

“They are very difficult to study because they occur in the open ocean and you cannot collect them unless you go on marine expeditions, which cost a lot of money,” said Lanna Cheng, a research scientist at the University of California, San Diego.

Because so little is known about the life history and ecology of these creatures, this study, though severely limited in size and scope, offers valuable insights to scientists.

But Helm said there is another implication of the study: Organizations working to remove plastic waste from the patch may also need to consider what the study means for their efforts.

There are several nonprofit organizations working to remove floating plastic from the Great Pacific Patch. The largest, the Ocean Cleanup Foundation in the Netherlands, developed a net specifically to collect and concentrate marine debris as it is pulled across the sea’s surface by winds and currents. Once the net is full, a ship takes its contents to land for proper disposal.

Helm and other scientists warn that such nets threaten sea life, including neuston. Although adjustments to the net’s design have been made to reduce bycatch, Helm believes any large-scale removal of plastic from the patch could pose a threat to its neuston inhabitants.

“When it comes to figuring out what to do about the plastic that’s already in the ocean, I think we need to be really careful,” she said. The results of her study “really emphasize the need to study the open ocean before we try to manipulate it, modify it, clean it up or extract minerals from it.”

Laurent Lebreton, an oceanographer with the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, disagreed with Helm.

“It’s too early to reach any conclusions on how we should react to that study,” he said. “You have to take into account the effects of plastic pollution on other species. We are collecting several tons of plastic every week with our system — plastic that is affecting the environment.”

Plastic in the ocean poses a threat to marine life, killing more than 1 million seabirds every year, as well as more than 100,000 marine mammals, according to UNESCO. Everything from fish to whales can become entangled, and animals often mistake it for food and end up starving to death with stomachs full of plastic.

Ocean plastics that do not end up asphyxiating an albatross or entangling an elephant seal eventually break down into microplastics, which penetrate every branch of the food web and are nearly impossible to remove from the environment.

One thing everyone agrees on is that we need to stop the flow of plastic into the ocean.

“We need to turn off the tap,” Lecomte said.

© 2022 The New York Times Company

Emperor Penguin at serious risk of extinction due to climate change

Fri, May 6, 2022
By Lucila Sigal

(Reuters) - The emperor penguin, which roams Antarctica's frozen tundra and chilly seas, is at severe risk of extinction in the next 30 to 40 years as a result of climate change, an expert from the Argentine Antarctic Institute (IAA) warned.

The emperor, the world's largest penguin and one of only two penguin species endemic to Antarctica, gives birth during the Antarctic winter and requires solid sea ice from April through December to nest fledgling chicks.

If the sea freezes later or melts prematurely, the emperor family cannot complete its reproductive cycle.

"If the water reaches the newborn penguins, which are not ready to swim and do not have waterproof plumage, they die of the cold and drown," said biologist Marcela Libertelli, who has studied 15,000 penguins across two colonies in Antarctica at the IAA.

This has happened at the Halley Bay colony in the Weddell Sea, the second-largest emperor penguin colony, where for three years all the chicks died.

Every August, in the middle of the southern hemisphere winter, Libertelli and other scientists at Argentina's Marambio Base in Antarctica travel 65 km (40 miles) each day by motor bike in temperatures as low as -40 degrees Celsius (-40°F) to reach the nearest emperor penguin colony.

Once there, they count, weigh, and measure the chicks, gather geographical coordinates, and take blood samples. They also conduct aerial analysis.

The scientists' findings point to a grim future for the species if climate change is not mitigated.

"[Climate] projections suggest that the colonies that are located between latitudes 60 and 70 degrees [south] will disappear in the next few decades; that is, in the next 30, 40 years," Libertelli told Reuters.

The emperor's unique features include the longest reproductive cycle among penguins. After a chick is born, one parent continues carrying it between its legs for warmth until it develops its final plumage.

"The disappearance of any species is a tragedy for the planet," said Libertelli. "Whether small or large, plant or animal - it doesn't matter. It's a loss for biodiversity."

The emperor penguin's disappearance could have a dramatic impact throughout Antarctica, an extreme environment where food chains have fewer members and fewer links, Libertelli said.

In early April, the World Meteorological Organization warned of "increasingly extreme temperatures coupled with unusual rainfall and ice melting in Antarctica" - a "worrying trend," said Libertelli, since the Antarctic ice sheets have been depleting since at least 1999.

The rise of tourism and fishing in Antarctica has also put the emperor's future at risk by affecting krill, one of the main sources of food for penguins and other species.

"Tourist boats often have various negative effects on Antarctica, as do the fisheries," said Libertelli.

"It is important that there is greater control and that we think about the future."

(Reporting by Lucila Sigal; writing by Isabel Woodford and Brendan O'Boyle; edited by Nicolás Misculin and Richard Pullin)

Mexico closes US gravel quarry that had been pressured




MARK STEVENSON
Fri, May 6, 2022, 12:18 PM·3 min read

MEXICO CITY (AP) — The Mexican government said Friday it has closed a limestone gravel quarry owned by a U.S. company, a move likely to add fuel to an ongoing trade dispute with the firm.

The Environment Department said Friday it closed the quarry owned by Vulcan Materials near Playa del Carmen, on the Caribbean coast. Parts of the quarry have been excavated below the water table, and the department said the mining threatened water quality and subsoil conditions.

But the timing of the move raised questions: Vulcan has been operating the quarry for around three decades, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador had recently threatened the company.

López Obrador wants the water-filled quarry to be used as a theme park to rival the nearby XCaret park. He also wants Vulcan to build a cruise ship dock at a freight terminal it operates on the coast. He has pressured the Alabama-based aggregates company to sell the property to the government, or open a water park itself.

Vulcan issued a statement Thursday saying it “strongly believes that this action by the Mexican government is illegal."

“The Company has the necessary permits to operate and intends to vigorously pursue all lawful avenues available to it in order to protect its rights and resume normal operations,” it said.

The company's property includes several adjoining sites; some have have already been quarried, and others haven't. In late 2018 the company filed for an arbitration panel under the old North American Free Trade Agreement, after Mexico refused to allow quarrying at some of the sites.

The company said a decision is expected in the second half of 2022. The Environment Department said the company is seeking about $1.5 billion in damages.

The Mexican government originally said a tentative agreement had been reached with Vulcan Materials, and the company said it was willing to open a water park and cruise ship facility. But it has no experience at doing either, and would really just like to continue mining gravel.

López Obrador wants the gravel to use as ballast for another of his signature projects, the Maya Train, a 950-mile (1,500- kilometer) rail line that will run in a rough loop around the Yucatan Peninsula, connecting Caribbean coast resorts with archaeological sites inland.

Controversially, and with no environmental studies, the president decided to cut down a swath of low jungle between Cancun and Tulum, near the quarries, to build the train line. He has raised the possibility that the future water park could be a stop on the train line.

The project needs huge amounts of gravel ballast to spread between rail ties to stabilize them, and it also needs a seaport like the one Vulcan has to get rails, cars and other train-building materials into the jungle.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/05/mexican-tourist-train-raises-fears-for.html

López Obrador has often used pressure and threats in a bid to get private and foreign companies to shore up his infrastructure plans and projects — state-run ports, terminals and rail lines that could become white elephants unless the private sector boosts them with real traffic.

Earlier this week, his administration announced it would force about 20% of the flights using Mexico City's International Airport to move to the Felipe Angeles terminal north of the city, — a project pushed by López Obrador that has struggled to attract flights and passengers because of its distance from the city.

Moreover, it was inaugurated before rail and road links were completed, making it hard to get to. Passengers and airlines have avoided switching to the new airport, which currently handles only about six flights per day.

Sri Lankan protesters undeterred 

by state of emergency

Sat, May 7, 2022,

STORY: Protesters waved flags and chanted slogans outside President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office and the official residence of his elder brother, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, demanding the government to step down over a worsening economic crisis.

Some were seen carrying out a mock funeral procession for the prime minister.

Details of the latest emergency regulations were not yet made public, but previous emergency laws have given greater powers to the president to deploy the military, detain people without charge and break up protests.

On Friday, police fired tear gas at dozens of demonstrators outside parliament, the latest in more than a month of sporadically violent anti-government protests amid shortages of imported food, fuel and medicines.

 

Sri Lanka president declares state of emergency after day of protests

Fri, May 6, 2022
By Uditha Jayasinghe and Alasdair Pal

COLOMBO (Reuters) -Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency on Friday following a day of anti-government strikes and protests over a worsening economic crisis.

The measure, which drew immediate criticism from opposition leader Sajith Premadasa and from Canada's ambassador, is effective immediately and was taken in the interests of public security, a government notice said.

Police earlier fired tear gas at dozens of demonstrators outside parliament, in the latest in more than a month of sporadically violent anti-government protests amid shortages of imported food, fuel and medicines.

Hit hard by the pandemic, rising oil prices and government tax cuts, Sri Lanka has been left with as little as $50 million in useable foreign reserves, the finance minister said this week.

Details of the latest emergency regulations were not yet made public, but previous emergency laws have given greater powers to the president to deploy the military, detain people without charge and break up protests.

His order must be approved by parliament within 30 days.

Calling on Rajapaksa to resign, Premadasa said the state of emergency "runs counter to seeking any solution to the crisis".

Canada's ambassador to Sri Lanka, David McKinnon, said the decision was unnecessary.

"Over the past weeks, the demonstrations across Sri Lanka have overwhelmingly involved citizens enjoying their right to peaceful freedom of expression, and are a credit to the country’s democracy," he said.

'SICK AND TIRED OF POLITICIANS'

Hundreds of university students and other protesters gathered on Friday on the main road to parliament where they had started a sit-in on Thursday.

Some hung underwear on barricades as an insult to the political leadership.

"We are here because we are sick and tired of politicians lying to us. We want the president and this government to go home," said Purnima Muhandiram, a 42-year-old advertising professional.

Thousands of shops, schools and businesses closed earlier on Friday as public and private sector workers went on strike, demanding the president and the government step down for their handling of the island's worst financial crisis in decades.

Commuters were left stranded as private bus and train operators joined the strike.

Healthcare workers also joined the strike, though emergency services remained operational.

Rajapaksa has refused to step down, repeatedly calling for a unity government led by him, but opposition leaders plan to move a no-confidence motion against the president and the government next week.

Rajapaksa previously declared a state of emergency on 1 April but rolled it back after five days.

(Reporting by Uditha Jayasinghe and Alasdair Pal; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Frances Kerry and John Stonestreet)

Diplomats concerned by state of emergency in Sri Lanka


Sri Lankan police officers walk past a closed restaurant during a country wide strike in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Friday, May 6, 2022. Protesters have hung undergarments near Sri Lanka’s Parliament while shops, offices and schools closed and transport came to a near standstill amid nationwide demonstrations against the government over its alleged inability to resolve the worst economic crisis in decades. 

(AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena) 


KRISHAN FRANCIS
Fri, May 6, 2022, 11:55 PM

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Diplomats and rights groups expressed concern Saturday after Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared a state of emergency and police used force against peaceful protesters amid the country's worst economic crisis in recent memory.

The economic and political situation has triggered protests across the Indian Ocean island nation demanding the resignation of Rajapaksa and his powerful ruling family.

Rajapaksa issued a decree declaring a public emergency on Friday. He invoked sections of the Public Security Ordinance that allow him to make regulations in the interests of public security and preserving public order, and for the maintenance of essential supplies.

Under the emergency regulations, Rajapaksa can authorize detentions, seize possession of property and search any premises. He can also change or suspend any law.

U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka Julie Chung tweeted Saturday that she is “concerned” by the state of emergency, adding that “the voices of peaceful citizens need to be heard.”

“And the very real challenges Sri Lankans are facing require long term solutions to set the country back on a path toward prosperity and opportunity for all. The SOE (state of emergency) won’t help do that,” Chung added.

Canadian envoy David McKinnon said Sri Lankans have a right to peaceful protest under democracy and that it is “hard to understand why it is necessary, then, to declare a state of emergency.”

The declaration of emergency came on the same day that shops, offices, banks and schools closed across the country heeding calls for a shutdown in protest against the president and his family. Trade unions have warned of continued strikes from May 11 if they do not resign by then.

The government said Saturday the emergency was declared to create political stability so that reforms can be implemented to help resolve the economic crisis.

It also said the emergency status would help create necessary conditions for negotiations with the International Monetary Fund and other agencies and countries for financial assistance and debt restructuring.

“The emotive protests organized in the capital and many parts of the country have become a threat to public safety,” a government statement said, adding that continued protests will only aggravate the economic difficulties.

Sri Lanka is near bankruptcy. It announced it is suspending repayment of its foreign loans and its usable foreign currency reserves have plummeted below $50 million. The country has $7 billion in foreign loan repayments due this year out of $25 billion to be repaid by 2026. Its total foreign debt is $51 billion.

Police used tear gas and a water cannon twice Friday at protesters near the Parliament who were criticizing lawmakers for not ousting the president and his government, whom they say are responsible for the economic crisis. Protesters are angry that lawmakers elected a government-backed deputy speaker of Parliament by a large majority when the protesters say they should be voting Rajapaksa’s government out of power.

Police first fired tear gas at a student-led protest that began Thursday after the election of the deputy speaker in what was seen as a key victory for the governing coalition. Separately, police dispersed more protesters with tear gas Friday night, also near Parliament.

The rights group Amnesty International said protests have been peaceful and the authorities have unlawfully restricted the right to freedom of peaceful assembly.

Protesters have vowed to continue their demonstrations despite the emergency law, while an occupation of the entrance to the president's office continued for a 29th day Saturday.

UPDATES

Musk's $44 billion Twitter buyout challenged in shareholder lawsuit

By Jonathan Stempel - Yesterday 

(Reuters) - Elon Musk and Twitter Inc were sued on Friday by a Florida pension fund seeking to stop Musk from completing his $44 billion takeover of the social media company before 2025.

In a proposed class action filed in Delaware Chancery Court, the Orlando Police Pension Fund said Delaware law forbade a quick merger because Musk had agreements with other big Twitter shareholders, including his financial adviser Morgan Stanley and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, to support the buyout.

The fund said those agreements made Musk, who owns 9.6% of Twitter, the effective "owner" of more than 15% of the company's shares. It said that required delaying the merger by three years unless two-thirds of shares not "owned" by him granted approval.

Morgan Stanley owns about 8.8% of Twitter shares and Dorsey owns 2.4%.

Musk hopes to complete his $54.20 per share Twitter takeover this year, in one of the world's largest leveraged buyouts.

He also runs electric car company Tesla Inc, leads The Boring Co and SpaceX, and is the world's richest person according to Forbes magazine.

Twitter and its board, including Dorsey and Chief Executive Parag Agrawal, were also named as defendants.

Twitter declined to comment. Lawyers for Musk and the Florida fund did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit also seeks to declare that Twitter directors breached their fiduciary duties, and recoup legal fees and costs. It did not make clear how shareholders believed they might be harmed if the merger closed on schedule.

On Thursday, Musk said he had raised around $7 billion, including from sovereign wealth funds and friends in Silicon Valley, to help fund a takeover.

Musk had no financing lined up when he announced plans to buy Twitter last month.

Some of the new investors appear to share interests with Musk, a self-described free speech absolutist who could change how the San Francisco-based company moderates content.

Florida's state pension fund also invests in Twitter, and Governor Ron DeSantis said this week it could make a $15 million to $20 million profit if Musk completed his buyout.

In afternoon trading, Twitter shares were down 60 cents at $49.76.

The case is Orlando Police Pension Fund v Twitter Inc et al, Delaware Chancery Court, No. 2022-0396.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Howard Goller and Mark Potter)

Florida pension fund sues Elon Musk over Twitter deal


SOPA Images via Getty Images

Amrita Khalid
·Contributing Writer
Fri, May 6, 2022,

Elon Musk's $44 billion buyout of Twitter is facing its first legal challenge. A Florida pension fund is suing Musk and Twitter, arguing that the deal can't legally close until 2025 due to the billionaire's stake in the platform. The proposed class-action lawsuit — filed today by the Orlando Police Pension Fund in the Delaware Chancery court— also declares that Twitter’s board of directors breached its fiduciary duties by allowing the deal to go through. In addition to Musk and Twitter, the lawsuit also named former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, current Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and the company’s board as defendants.

In a message to Engadget, Tulane Law School’s Professor Ann M. Lipton says the lawsuit raises "some very novel issues" under Delaware corporate law. Under a law known as Section 203, shareholders who own more than 15 percent of the company can’t enter a merger without two-thirds of the remaining shares granting approval. Without this approval, the merger can’t be finalized for another three years.

The fund’s lawyers state that Musk initially owned roughly 10 percent of Twitter’s shares, which would seemingly not make Section 203 applicable. But, the fund argues, Musk formed a pact with Morgan Stanley (which owns 8.8 percent of shares) and former CEO Jack Dorsey (who has 2.4 percent) to advance the deal. The combined stake of these parties allegedly makes Musk and his allies in the takeover deal an "interested shareholder" under Section 203 — which, if the court agrees with the underlying reasoning presented in the case, means the merger must either be delayed or get approval shareholders representing at least two-thirds of the company's ownership.

“Section 203 is not often litigated, and so the issue of whether Musk's relationship with these parties actually counts for statutory purposes is an unsettled question and it will be interesting to watch how it unfolds,” wrote Lipton.

More details of Musk’s highly complex $44 billion buyout of Twitter have been made public since the social media platform accepted the billionaire’s offer last month. The New York Times reported that Musk promised investors returns of nearly five to ten times their investments if the deal went through. Parts of the deal are being scrutinized, including its reliance on foreign investors and whether Musk bought shares in the company specifically to influence its leadership. But antitrust experts say the merger is unlikely to be blocked by the FTC. The agency will decide in the next month whether to quickly approve the merger or launch a lengthier investigation.

Analysis-Musk's new Twitter funding could draw TikTok-like U.S. scrutiny


Fri, May 6, 2022
By Echo Wang

(Reuters) - Elon Musk's decision to accept some foreign investors as part of his $44 billion buyout of Twitter Inc runs the risk of inviting the kind of regulatory scrutiny over U.S. national security that social media peer TikTok faced, legal experts say.

Musk disclosed on Thursday that Saudi Arabia's Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Qatar's sovereign wealth fund and Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange founded by Chinese native Changpeng Zhao, were part of a group of investors that will help him fund the acquisition of Twitter.

This could give the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) an opening to scrutinize the deal for potential national security risks, six regulatory lawyers not involved in the transaction and interviewed by Reuters said. CFIUS is a panel of government agencies and departments that reviews mergers and acquisitions for potential threats to U.S. security.

"To the extent that Musk's proposed acquisition of Twitter includes foreign investment, it very well could fall under CFIUS jurisdiction," said Chris Griner, chair of law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP's national security practice.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Treasury Department, which chairs CFIUS, declined to comment on whether the national security panel planned to scrutinize Musk's Twitter deal.

Spokespeople for Musk, bin Talal, Qatar and Binance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Former President Donald Trump's administration turned to CFIUS in 2020 in a bid to force TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance to divest the short video app. His successor Joe Biden abandoned that effort after ByteDance agreed to changes on how the data of U.S. users are stored and protected.

The regulatory lawyers interviewed by Reuters said the risk of CFIUS blocking Musk's deal is small because he will control Twitter under the proposed takeover and the foreign investors are acquiring relatively small stakes.

They added that their assessment would change were Musk to give the foreign investors influence over the company, through a seat on its board or other means.

The risk is not negligible, however, given that the business of handling personal data by social media companies such as Twitter is typically viewed as critical infrastructure by CFIUS, the lawyers said.

"One of the items that's considered sensitive personal data, is non-public electronic communications. So that would be email, messaging or chat communications between users. Twitter allows you to do that," law firm Vinson & Elkins LLP partner Richard Sofield said.

One area of potential scrutiny for CFIUS, the lawyers said, could be Musk's business dealings with foreign governments hostile to free speech or keen to overtake the United States technologically. Tesla Inc, the electric car maker he leads, relies heavily on China, for example, to manufacture and sell its vehicles.

China blocked Twitter in 2009 but many Chinese officials have been active on the social media platform. Some of them have complained that the company's efforts to restrict misinformation have targeted them unfairly.

"One of the considerations would be whether or not there will be an opportunity for China to leverage its business activity in order to achieve a desired outcome," Sofield added.

BROADCOM PRECEDENT

There is precedent for CFIUS shooting down a deal based on the risk that an acquirer's business ties could compromise them, the lawyers said. Trump blocked chip maker Broadcom Inc's $117 billion acquisition of U.S peer Qualcomm Inc 2018 after CFIUS raised concerns about the deal.

Broadcom was a publicly listed company with U.S. shareholders that was headquartered in Singapore, but the White House fretted that Broadcom's relationship with "third-party foreign entities" would set the U.S. back in its technology race with China.

Nevena Simidjiyska, a regulatory lawyer at law firm Fox Rothschild LLP, said it was possible CFIUS would look into whether Musk or other U.S. investors in the Twitter deal can be influenced by foreign entities in a similar way.

"CFIUS may determine that even U.S. investors in Twitter fall under CFIUS review if they are controlled by foreign parties," Simidjiyska said.

Musk's Twitter deal does not face the most common type of regulatory risk seen in mergers and acquisitions — pushback from antitrust regulators. The world's richest man has no media holdings, and regulatory experts have said they do not expect the deal to face significant antitrust scrutiny.

(Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Additional reporting by Alexandra Alper in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Lincoln Feast)

ONTARIO
Former staffer fired after convoy donation sues Ford government, media


Protesters gather near Ottawa's Parliament Hill, on February 12, 2022.

 REUTERS/Lars Hagberg

Adrian Humphreys - Yesterday 

National Post

A former senior Ontario government spokeswoman said she was fired from her job within minutes of being outed as a convoy protest donor, even though she was a loyal soldier for the government.

Marion Isabeau Ringuette claims she was wrongfully axed as director of communications for Ontario’s solicitor general for Premier Doug Ford’s “personal political gain” — allowing him to show public opposition to the convoy — in a lawsuit against Ford, his chief of staff, the Ontario government, Toronto Star Newspapers Limited and two journalists.

In her statement of claim, Ringuette says she was promoted to her job in February 2020 and was a rarity in Ford’s government: a fully bilingual political staffer.

None of the allegations in the statement of claim have been tested in court.

She said she followed government directives, including canceling travel plans to visit family in Texas for the 2021 Christmas holidays in keeping with Ford’s policy against travel during COVID-19 restrictions.

On Feb. 5, Ringuette donated $100 to the protest, called the Freedom Convoy, after a group of truckers and others opposed to vaccine mandates and other grievances rolled into Ottawa the week before. The protest became increasingly controversial during its occupation of city streets.

Her lawsuit says her donation was made when there was no government policy against the protest and a day before the city of Ottawa declared a state of emergency. The province didn’t take a position against the convoy protest until Feb. 10, making her private donation legal and not against government policy, according to her claim.

“Ms. Ringuette had every expectation that her donation would be private and confidential,” her suit says.

GiveSendGo began hosting the protest’s fundraising after it was banned from the more mainstream site GoFundMe. The GiveSendGo site was hacked on Feb. 13.

The hack was openly declared as an activist attack and a database of information entered by donors was made publicly available.

It included information on 92,844 donations totalling more than $8.4 million, such as the name, email address, amount given, postal code, country, and Internet Protocol address of the donor, and how the payment was made. The leaked data did not include credit card numbers.

GoFundMe suspends truckers convoy fund at $10 million, some donors receive refunds

GiveSendGo co-founders blame government for not telling them it had issues with 'Freedom Convoy' blockades

It allowed analysts, news organizations and critics to look at where the protest’s money was coming from.

The data unveiled names behind the donations, some of whom were prominent or had jobs making their support publicly awkward.

Ringuette was one of them.

Her $100 donation was made under the initials, M.R., but the leaked data included a personal email address containing her name.

A journalist made the connection to Ringuette.

On Feb. 15, Charles Pinkerton, interim editor of QP Briefing, a publication focusing on Ontario politics owned by the Toronto Star, called Ringuette on her cell phone, her claim says. She didn’t answer. He then texted her, but she ignored the text. He then emailed both her work and personal email addresses asking her to confirm her job with the government and her donation to the convoy, her claim says.

A similar email was sent to the premier’s office.

Within minutes she was called by her immediate supervisor, David Garland, who asked if she had donated to the convoy. She said she had.

“The premier’s office wanted to fire her,” she was told, according to her claim. Garland said he would try to intervene but called back several minutes later and said she had been fired “because they wanted to be seen as acting ‘quickly,’” according to the claim.

Someone from Ford’s office came onto the line and confirmed she was fired with 16 weeks of severance, she claims.

The government then replied to Pinkerton’s email saying Ringuette was no longer working for the government, her claim says.

Ringuette’s lawsuit says the government’s response confirmed her identity as a donor, allowing public disclosure of her personal information.

Pinkerton and Andrew Takagi, a reporter at QP Briefing, shared the byline on a Feb. 15 story on qpbriefing.com with the headline “Senior staffer of solicitor general out of job after donating to ‘Freedom Convoy’.” They also co-authored a story repeating the information on iPolitics.ca.

Ringuette’s suit against the two journalists and their employer claims they “acted in callous disregard” for her privacy and the damage the “politically controversial” information would have on her career.

The suit also accuses Ford and his chief of staff, James Wallace, of acting in bad faith.

“A provincial election was imminent and Premier Ford’s decision to terminate Ms. Ringuette’s employment was based on his and his campaign team’s belief that it would benefit him politically to, finally, oppose the Freedom Convoy,” the suit alleges.

Ringuette seeks $450,000 from the government and its officials for wrongful dismissal, in addition to a joint claim against all defendants for $1.5 million for invasion of privacy, public disclosure of private fact, damage to reputation and emotional distress.

The National Post contacted the premier’s office, the Toronto Star and Queen’s Park Briefing for comment, but received no replies by press time.

Some news stories on the donors treated the data in aggregate or anonymous form. Others revealed names if they could confirm the identity, or if the donor acknowledged they made it. This included National Post and some other Postmedia newspapers.

For news organizations, it was usually reserved for government officials, civil servants, or publicly prominent people, in a bid to hold institutions and public figures to account. Some business owners also received coverage.

After the names became public, through news stories or on social media, several people lost or left their jobs. At least one person was publicly misidentified, an Alberta judge who shares a name with a donor.