Marcos presidency complicates US efforts to counter China

By DAVID RISING and JIM GOMEZ

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Presidential hopeful, former senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr., the son of the late dictator, gestures as he greets the crowd during a campaign rally in Quezon City, Philippines on April 13, 2022. Marcos Jr.'s apparent landslide victory in the Philippine presidential election is giving rise to immediate concerns about a further erosion of democracy in the region, and could complicate American efforts to blunt growing Chinese influence and power in the Pacific. 

(AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s apparent landslide victory in the Philippine presidential election is raising immediate concerns about a further erosion of democracy in Asia and could complicate American efforts to blunt growing Chinese influence and power in the Pacific.

Marcos, the namesake son of longtime dictator Ferdinand Marcos, captured more than double the votes of his closest challenger in Monday’s election, according to the unofficial results.

If the results stand, he will take office at the end of June for a six-year term with Sara Duterte, the daughter of outgoing President Rodrigo Duterte, as his vice president.

Duterte — who leaves office with a 67% approval rating — nurtured closer ties with China and Russia, while at times railing against the United States.

He walked back on many of his threats against Washington, however, including a move to abrogate a defense pact, and the luster of China’s promise of infrastructure investment has dulled, with much failing to materialize.

Whether the recent trend in relations with the U.S. will continue has a lot to do with how President Joe Biden’s administration responds to the return of a Marcos to power in the Philippines, said Manila-based political scientist Andrea Chloe Wong, a former researcher in the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs.

“On the one hand you have Biden regarding the geostrategic interests in the Philippines, and on the other hand he has to balance promoting American democratic ideals and human rights,” she said.

“If he chooses to do that, he might have to isolate the Marcos administration, so this will definitely be a delicate balancing act for the Philippines, and Marcos’ approach to the U.S. will highly depend on how Biden will engage with him.”

His election comes at a time when the U.S. has been increasingly focused on the region, embarking on a strategy unveiled in February to considerably broaden U.S. engagement by strengthening a web of security alliances and partnerships, with an emphasis on addressing China’s growing influence and ambitions.

Thousands of American and Filipino forces recently wrapped up one of their largest combat exercises in years, which showcased U.S. firepower in the northern Philippines near its sea border with Taiwan.

Marcos has been short on specifics about foreign policy, but in interviews he said he wanted to pursue closer ties with China, including possibly setting aside a 2016 ruling by a tribunal in The Hague that invalidated almost all of China’s historical claims to the South China Sea.

A previous Philippines administration brought the case to the tribunal, but China has refused to recognize the ruling and Marcos said it won’t help settle disputes with Beijing, “so that option is not available to us.”

Allowing the U.S. to play a role in trying to settle territorial spats with China will be a “recipe for disaster,” Marcos said in an interview with DZRH radio in January. He said Duterte’s policy of diplomatic engagement with China is “really our only option.

Marcos has also said he would maintain his nation’s alliance with the U.S., but the relationship is complicated by American backing of the administrations that took power after his father was deposed, and a 2011 U.S. District Court ruling in Hawaii finding him and his mother in contempt of an order to furnish information on assets in connection with a 1995 human rights class action suit against Marcos Sr.

The court fined them $353.6 million, which has never been paid and could complicate any potential travel to the U.S.

The United States has a long history with the Philippines, which was an American colony for most of the early 20th century before gaining independence in 1946.

Its location between the South China Sea and western Pacific is strategically important. And while the U.S. closed its last military bases on the Philippines in 1992, a 1951 collective defense treaty guarantees U.S. support if the Philippines is attacked.

The U.S. noted their shared history in its remarks on the election. “We look forward to renewing our special partnership and to working with the next administration on key human rights and regional priorities,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price told reporters in Washington.

Even though the Biden administration may have preferred to work with Marcos’ leading opponent, Leni Robredo, the “U.S.-Philippines alliance is vital to both nations’ security and prosperity, especially in the new era of competition with China,” said Gregory B. Poling, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“Unlike Leni, with her coherent platform for good governance and development at home and standing up to China abroad, Marcos is a policy cipher,” Poling said in a research note. “He has avoided presidential debates, shunned interviews, and has been silent on most issues.”

Marcos has been clear, however, that he would like to try again to improve ties with Beijing, Poling said.

“But when it comes to foreign policy, Marcos will not have the same space for maneuver that Duterte did,” he said. “The Philippines tried an outstretched hand and China bit it. That is why the Duterte government has reembraced the U.S. alliance and gotten tougher on Beijing over the last two years.”

Marcos Sr. was ousted in 1986 after millions of people took to the streets, forcing an end to his corrupt dictatorship and a return to democracy. But the election of Duterte as president in 2016 brought a return to a strongman-type leader, which voters have now doubled-down on with Marcos Jr.

Domestically, Marcos, who goes by his childhood nickname “Bongbong,” is widely expected to pick up where Duterte left off, stifling a free press and cracking down on dissent with less of the outgoing leader’s crude and brash style, while ending attempts to recover some of the billions of dollars his father pilfered from the state coffers.

But a return to the hard-line rule of his father, who declared martial law for much of his rule, is not likely, said Julio Teehankee, a political science professor at Manila’s De La Salle University.

“He does not have the courage or the brilliance, or even the ruthlessness to become a dictator, so I think what we will see is a form of authoritarian-lite or Marcos-lite,” Teehankee said.

The new Marcos government will not mean the end of Philippine democracy, Poling said, “though it may accelerate its decay.”

“The country’s democratic institutions have already been battered by six years of the Duterte presidency and the rise of online disinformation, alongside the decades-long corrosives of oligarchy, graft, and poor governance,” he said.

“The United States would be better served by engagement rather than criticism of the democratic headwinds buffeting the Philippines.”

Marcos’ approach at home could have a spillover effect in other countries in the region, where democratic freedoms are being increasingly eroded in many places and the Philippines had been seen as a positive influence, Wong said.

“This will have an impact on Philippine foreign policy when it comes to promoting its democratic values, freedoms and human rights, particularly in Southeast Asia,” she said. “The Philippines is regarded as a bastion of democracy in the region, with a strong civil society and a noisy media, and with Bongbong Marcos as president, we will have less credibility.”

WHITE SUPREMACIST AMERIKA
1 in 3 fears immigrants influence US elections: AP-NORC poll

By ANITA SNOW

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A migrant waits of the Mexican side of the border after United States Customs and Border Protection officers detained a couple of migrants crossing the US-Mexico border on the beach, in Tijuana, Mexico, Jan. 26, 2022. About 3 in 10 also worry that more immigration can cause native-born Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (AP Photo/Marco Ugarte, File)

PHOENIX (AP) — With anti-immigrant rhetoric bubbling over in the leadup to this year’s critical midterm elections, about 1 in 3 U.S. adults believes an effort is underway to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.

About 3 in 10 also worry that more immigration is causing U.S.-born Americans to lose their economic, political and cultural influence, according to a poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Republicans are more likely than Democrats to fear a loss of influence because of immigration, 36% to 27%.

Those views mirror swelling anti-immigrant sentiment espoused on social media and cable TV, with conservative commentators like Tucker Carlson exploiting fears that new arrivals could undermine the native-born population.

In their most extreme manifestation, those increasingly public views in the U.S. and Europe tap into a decades-old conspiracy theory known as the “great replacement,” a false claim that native-born populations are being overrun by nonwhite immigrants who are eroding, and eventually will erase, their culture and values. The once-taboo term became the mantra of one losing conservative candidate in the recent French presidential election.

“I very mch believe that the Democrats — from Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, all the way down — want to get the illegal immigrants in here and give them voting rights immediately,” said Sally Gansz, 80. Actually, only U.S. citizens can vote in state and federal elections, and attaining citizenship typically takes years.

A white Republican, Gansz has lived her whole life in Trinidad, Colorado, where about half of the population of 8,300 identifies as Hispanic, most with roots going back centuries to the region’s Spanish settlers.

“Isn’t it obvious that I watch Fox?” quipped Gansz, who said she watches the conservative channel almost daily, including the top-rated Fox News Channel program “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” a major proponent of those ideas.

“Demographic change is the key to the Democratic Party’s political ambitions,” Carlson said on the show last year. “In order to win and maintain power, Democrats plan to change the population of the country.”

Those views aren’t held by a majority of Americans — in fact, two-thirds feel the country’s diverse population makes the U.S. stronger, and far more favor than oppose a path to legal status for immigrants brought into the U.S. illegally as children. But the deep anxieties expressed by some Americans help explain how the issue energizes those opposed to immigration.

“I don’t feel like immigration really affects me or that it undermines American values,” said Daniel Valdes, 43, a registered Democrat who works in finance for an aeronautical firm on Florida’s Space Coast. “I’m pretty indifferent about it all.”

Valdes’ maternal grandparents came to the U.S. from Mexico, and he said he has “tons” of relatives in the border city of El Paso, Texas. He has Puerto Rican roots on his father’s side.

While Republicans worry more than Democrats about immigration, the most intense anxiety was among people with the greatest tendency for conspiratorial thinking. That’s defined as those most likely to agree with a series of statements, like much of people’s lives is “being controlled by plots hatched in secret places” and “big events like wars, recessions, and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people who are working in secret against the rest of us.”

In all, 17% in the poll believe both that native-born Americans are losing influence because of the growing population of immigrants and that a group of people in the country is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who agree with their political views. That number rises to 42% among the quarter of Americans most likely to embrace other conspiracy theories.

Alex Hoxeng, 37, a white Republican from Midland, Texas, said he found those most extreme versions of the immigration conspiracies “a bit far-fetched” but does believe immigration could lessen the influence of U.S.-born Americans.

“I feel like if we are flooded with immigrants coming illegally, it can dilute our culture,” Hoxeng said.

Teresa Covarrubias, 62, rejects the idea that immigrants are undermining the values or culture of U.S.-born Americans or that they are being brought in to shore up the Democratic voter base. She is registered to vote but is not aligned with any party.

“Most of the immigrants I have seen have a good work ethic, they pay taxes and have a strong sense of family,” said Covarrubias, a second grade teacher in Los Angeles whose four grandparents came to the U.S. from Mexico. “They help our country.”

Republican leaders, including border governors Doug Ducey of Arizona and Greg Abbott of Texas — who is running for reelection this year — have increasingly decried what they call an “invasion,” with conservative politicians traveling to the U.S.-Mexico border to pose for photos alongside former President Donald Trump’s border wall.

Vulnerable Democratic senators up for election this year in Arizona, Georgia, New Hampshire and Nevada have joined many Republicans in calling on the Biden administration to wait on lifting the coronavirus-era public health rule known as Title 42 that denies migrants a chance to seek asylum. They fear it could draw more immigrants to the border than officials can handle.

LOOK, LOOK, A FLOOD OF MIGRANTS!!! 

U.S. authorities stopped migrants more than 221,000 times at the Mexican border in March, a 22-year high, creating a fraught political landscape for Democrats as the Biden administration prepares to lift Title 42 authority May 23. The pandemic powers have been used to expel migrants more than 1.8 million times since it was invoked in March 2020 on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Newly arrived immigrants are barred from voting in federal elections because they aren’t citizens, and gaining citizenship is an arduous process that can take a decade or more — if they are successful. In most cases, they must first obtain permanent residency, then wait five more years before they can apply for citizenship.

Investigations have failed to turn up evidence of widespread voting by people who aren’t eligible, including by non-citizens. For example, a Georgia audit of its voter rolls completed this year found fewer than 2,000 instances of non-citizens attempting to register and vote over the last 25 years, none of which succeeded.

Blake Masters, a candidate for Senate in Arizona, is among the Republicans running for office this year who have played into anxieties about a changing population.

“What the left really wants to do is change the demographics of this country,” he said in a video recorded in October. “They want to do that so they can consolidate power so they can never lose another election.”

___

The AP-NORC poll of 4,173 adults was conducted Dec. 1-23, 2021, using a combined sample of interviews from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population, and interviews from opt-in online panels. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 1.96 percentage points. The AmeriSpeak panel is recruited randomly using address-based sampling methods, and respondents later were interviewed online or by phone.

Running an abortion clinic while waiting for court decision

By REBECCA SANTANA and LEAH WILLINGHAM

May 9, 2022

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The Women's Health Center of West Virginia Executive Director Katie Quiñonez poses for a photo in Charleston, W.Va., on Feb 25, 2022. Even if Roe vs Wade decision legalizing abortion is overturned, she is determined that the clinic stay open and continue providing resources like birth control, emergency contraception and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.

 (AP Photo/Chris Jackson)

The people who run America’s abortion clinics agree: There’s no job like it.

There are the clients -- so many of them desperate, in need, grateful. There are the abortion opponents -- passionate, relentless, often furious. And hovering over it all are legal challenges, and the awareness that your clinic may be just a judicial ruling away from extinction.

That reality became more urgent last week with a leaked, draft opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court suggesting a majority of justices support overturning the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision legalizing abortion. If that happens it could spell the end of abortion in about half the states.

The Associated Press talked with three women and one man who run abortion clinics in such states about their work. Some came to the work through personal brushes with abortion; for others it started as a job. For all, it has become a calling.

Kathaleen Pittman, director of the Hope Medical Group for Women, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, in Shreveport, La., Friday, April 15, 2022. Pittman knows the Supreme Court ruling could end abortion in her state. When the draft opinion leaked suggesting a majority of justices support overturning the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision legalizing abortion, Pittman says she had a “horrible feeling” in the pit of her stomach. 

(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

SHREVEPORT, LOUISIANA -- When Kathaleen Pittman was growing up in a small, conservative community in rural Louisiana, abortion was not openly discussed. When she started working at the Hope Medical Group for Women, she sat her mother down and told her.

“To my shock ... she told me then: ‘Women have always had abortions and always will. They need a safe place,’” she recalls. “That moment was kind of a watershed moment.”

She was not drawn to the work as an activist. The part-time job counseling women undergoing abortions was a good fit while she was trying to finish her master’s degree.

But she knew the fear some women feel with an unwanted pregnancy. When she was in her early 20s, a good friend asked for her help getting an abortion. At the time, in the early ’80s, the procedure was legal but they didn’t know where to find someone in northwestern Louisiana who performed it.

Pittman dialed information. It took 20 minutes to find a doctor in nearby Arkansas. Her friend despaired.

“I’m sitting there watching her cry,” Pittman says.

Pittman was counselor, director of counseling and assistant administrator before becoming director of the clinic in 2010. The clinic has survived numerous efforts to restrict abortion, such as requirements for waiting periods or admitting privileges for doctors.

When she started working there, about 11 other clinics operated in the state, and some private doctors performed abortions. Now, Hope is one of three remaining.

To alleviate stress, she does needlepoint. She also texts other clinic administrators. A few times a month they gather on Zoom to compare notes or just to vent.

“It can be very isolating, particularly running a clinic in the South,” she says.

Pittman knows the Supreme Court ruling could end abortion in her state. When the draft opinion leaked, Pittman says she had a “horrible feeling” in the pit of her stomach. But then she took stock, and reminded herself that it was not final. For now, abortion is legal.

And as always, she focused on the women who walk past her office every day, after their appointments.

“They no longer look like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders,” she says.



The Women's Health Center of West Virginia Executive Director Katie Quiñonez walks through their recovery room in Charleston, W.Va., on Feb 25, 2022. Even if Roe vs Wade decision legalizing abortion is overturned, she is determined that the clinic stay open and continue providing resources like birth control, emergency contraception and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.

 (AP Photo/Chris Jackson)

CHARLESTON, WEST VIRGINIA -- Katie Quinonez had the first of her two abortions when she was 17, months after graduating from high school. She was in an emotionally abusive relationship with a man seven years her senior.

She wanted to attend college, have a career. “I didn’t want to be chained to this person for the rest of my life because of a mistake that I made in high school,” says Quinonez, now 31.

Ashamed to tell her mother, Quinonez worked at a pizzeria after school to save up for an abortion. Weeks passed; finally, Quinonez broke down and revealed her plight. Her mother was immediately supportive and helped her schedule an abortion appointment.

But by then, she was in her second trimester. The experience was traumatic. She remembers crying in pain as she walked out the door.

Shortly after she graduated college, she found out she was pregnant again, and was ashamed.

But this time, the experience was different. She had a supportive partner — now her husband — who went with her to a different clinic, the Women’s Health Center of West Virginia in Charleston. From the nurses who held her hand to the recovery room with big comfy chairs, it was an “affirming experience.”

“There was no judgment or shame,” she says.

It was that experience that led her to apply in 2017 as the center’s development director. By that time, it was the only clinic left in the state. She became the leader in January 2020.

It was, she says, her dream job.

Every day is a challenge. Bills to ban or limit abortion care are introduced every year. The clinic is nearly surrounded by anti-abortion activists: A pregnancy crisis center moved in next door, and a pro-life organization purchased land across the street and erected a large white cross.

But she and her staff see the clinic as a safe haven from those outside forces. Even if Roe is overturned, she is determined that the clinic stay open and continue providing resources like birth control, emergency contraception and testing and treatment of sexually transmitted infections.

And a clinic fund that pays for abortions for those who can’t afford them will continue to do that — and it will also help with the cost of traveling to states where the procedure will be legal.

“I know firsthand how critical being able to get the abortion that you need is,” she says.

HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA -- Dalton Johnson says his mother always thought he’d grow up to work in a dangerous job, perhaps join the FBI or the DEA. But his current line of work -- owning and operating the last abortion clinic in Huntsville, Alabama -- has come with its own threats and dangers.

In fact, when he and his then-partner, a Huntsville doctor, decided to open the clinic, his partner told him that it was hazardous work. The partner felt a responsibility to meet Johnson’s parents first to address any concerns and questions they might have about their son’s new business.

Johnson initially expected to spend a few years at the Alabama Women’s Center for Reproductive Alternatives and then move on to something else. But he quickly realized that this was what he was meant to do. He also realized that if he closed down, no one would take his place, and that weighed on him.

“I just really believed that ... we’re really helping women,” he says.

It took roughly two years to get the approvals to open the clinic. And the challenges have not stopped.

The clinic’s doctor -- who would become Johnson’s wife -- was arrested for Medicaid fraud, charges that were later dismissed. There were legal obstacles involving admitting privileges for doctors at the center and the clinic’s proximity to a school. Johnson has been the target of threats; he stepped down from the board of his church to protect it from harassment.

He says he’s also been accused of preying on the Black community -- an accusation that’s particularly galling because he is African American: “They’re pulling the race card on me,” he says, incredulously.

His wife has a ob/gyn practice that is located in a separate facility. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe and his clinic is forced to close, they’ll likely turn that space into another branch of his wife’s practice and transfer the staff there without having to lay anyone off.

But he’s worried about the effect on Alabama women of a loss of abortion services.

“It’s really just sad how so few people can make the choice for so many women,” he says.

 In this Feb. 20, 2013, file photo, Tammi Kromenaker, director of the Red River Women's Clinic, its in the waiting area of the facility in Fargo, N.D. Kromenaker has given over her entire adult life to helping women get abortions. And with the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion, she’s beginning to think the days of the Red River Women’s Clinic are numbered.

 (AP Photo/Dave Kolpack, File)

FARGO, NORTH DAKOTA -- Tammi Kromenaker has given over her entire adult life to helping women get abortions. And with the leak of the Supreme Court’s draft opinion, she’s beginning to think the days of the Red River Women’s Clinic are numbered.

“The writing has been on the wall for a long time, but I think now it’s in ink,” she says.

It wasn’t necessarily a career she foresaw growing up in a Catholic family in suburban Minneapolis, where she attended Christian music festivals with her boyfriend.

But during her freshman year in college in Fargo, a good friend got pregnant. Kromenaker remembers her immediate reaction: Her friend needed an abortion. She sent her money to help pay for it.

In a flash, her thinking had changed. “It was like night and day,” she says.

A professor recommended her for a part-time position at an abortion clinic. That turned into a fulltime job; then, when the Red River clinic opened in 1998, she moved there as the director. Finally, in 2016, she bought Red River -- now the only surviving abortion clinic in North Dakota.

The clinic sits right on the street, and even in frigid North Dakota winters protesters are outside, calling to the women and volunteers who escort them in. There’s never been any violence, she says, but one time a protester did get into the building. Kromenaker confronted him at the top of the stairs.

“I said, ‘You need to go,’” she recalls. “And he did.”

Kromenaker, 50, talked to the clinic staff about the draft Supreme Court opinion, emphasizing that it’s not yet final. And she took solace in a story of a woman who was doing a pre-abortion consultation and took time to tell the staff she’d seen the news and was grateful for the clinic.

Kromenaker worries about her staff if abortion is outlawed in the state. Most employees work there the one day a week they perform abortions, but there are a few fulltime employees. She hopes the draft leak will galvanize Americans to support abortion rights.

But if not, she’s prepared. No state line, she says, will prevent her from continuing her life’s work.

She plans to cross the Red River to Minnesota and open another clinic there.

___

Follow Santana on Twitter @ruskygal.

Transgender treatment, doctors threatened by new Alabama law

By KIM CHANDLER


Dr. Hussein D. Abdul-Latif, left, and Dr. Morissa Ladinsky, two University of Alabama at Birmingham professors who treat patients with gender issues, speak during an interview in Birmingham, Ala., on Wednesday, April 13, 2022. (AP Photo/Jay Reeves)


BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Dr. Hussein Abdul-Latif spent the last week typing out prescription refills for his young transgender patients, trying to make sure they had access to their medications for a few months before Alabama made it illegal for him to prescribe them.

He also answered questions from anxious patients and their parents: What will happen to me if I suddenly have to stop taking testosterone? Should we go out of state for care?

A new state law that took effect Sunday makes it a felony, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for doctors to prescribe puberty blockers and hormones to trans people under age 19. A judge has not yet ruled on a request to block the state from enforcing the law.

The measure is part of a wave of legislation in Republican-controlled states focused on LGBTQ youth. Bills have been introduced to limit discussion of gender and sexual identity issues in younger grades or to prohibit kids from using school restrooms or playing on sports teams that don’t align with their sex at birth.

Abdul-Latif, a pediatric endocrinologist and co-founder of a clinic in Birmingham to treat children with gender dysphoria, said he is very discouraged by the Alabama law. He said it was already hard enough for families in this very conservative state to come to terms themselves with their children’s situations. They had already faced the social stigma and “the difficult decision of leaving their church family or being viewed less worthy,” he said.

But gradually, he said, trans kids became more visible and there was a greater openness in the state for them to come out.

“They always existed, but they often did not have the feeling of empowerment to come out, or come out to their physicians,” he said. “And now that they are, we’re hitting them back with legal action.”

Abdul-Latif notes that the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Pediatric Endocrine Society both endorse the treatments that clinics here and in other states are providing for transgender youth.

In contrast, “The state is not only saying I am criminal for prescribing those medications, but it’s saying that my organization of thousands of physicians, pediatricians and pediatric endocrinologists are maybe partners in that criminal enterprise,” he said.

Four Alabama families with transgender children have filed a lawsuit challenging the new state law as unconstitutional. The U.S. Department of Justice has joined the suit. A federal judge heard evidence this week on a request to block the state from enforcing the statute while the legal challenge goes forward. More than 20 medical and mental health organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have also urged the judge to block the law. A decision is expected sometime this week.

Alabama maintains the law is about protecting children. “The science and common sense are on Alabama’s side. We will win this fight to protect our children,” Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said last week.

Now that the law is in effect, families are wondering if they will have to move out of state and doctors are worried about what will become of their patients.

Abdul-Latif, who is originally from Jordan, and pediatrician Dr. Morissa Ladinsky both moved to Alabama years ago to work as instructors and physicians at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. In 2015, after seeing more families with kids identifying as trans and seeking help for gender-related issues, they decided to found a clinic to treat children with gender dysphoria. They now treat more than 150 young people who are transgender or gender diverse.

Ladinsky, who testified last week as a witness in the lawsuit, told The Associated Press that she felt like she was “walking in a nightmare” when the Alabama Legislature approved the ban. She says the measure is an unprecedented legislative overreach into the decisions of parents and the practice of medicine.

“This is the first time ever that I can remember, at least for pediatricians, that we are literally forced to choose between the Hippocratic Oath we took to ‘do no harm’ and never abandon our patients versus the facing of a potential felony conviction,” she said.

Ladinsky quickly agreed to co-found the gender clinic in Birmingham when Abdul-Latif approached her about it. She had moved to the city from a hospital in Cincinnati, Ohio, that had a pediatric gender health team, and was familiar with the treatments.

But that wasn’t all. She also had taken a route to work each morning that brought her by the spot where Ohio transgender teen Leelah Alcorn had stepped in front of an oncoming tractor-trailer in 2014. Leelah left a suicide note that read, “My death needs to mean something. ... Fix society. Please.”

Some of the children Abdul-Latif and Ladinsky have treated in the Birmingham clinic came to them after suicide attempts, the doctors said. One patient tried to kill themselves five times, he said. A 2021 survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization focused on suicide prevention efforts among LGBTQ youth, found that 52% of transgender and nonbinary youth seriously considered suicide in the past year, and 1 in 5 reported attempting suicide.

“In our minds, there is no doubt they saved my daughter’s life,” said David Fuller, whose daughter was among the first patients treated in Birmingham.

Jessica Fuller, now 22, was 16 when she first came to the clinic after telling her father that she was trans. “The dysphoria was awful and I was thinking about suicide more often than I wish to talk about,” Fuller wrote in an email.

She called the new Alabama law “a waste of time and money.”

“It’s terrifying not just for the kids but the doctors and nurses just trying to help kids not kill themselves,” she wrote. “Are you gonna arrest him for something so harmless?”

Abdul-Latif said he understands that some people may be skeptical over the medical treatments for transgender kids.

“But to make it into a law and make it into a felony — that is way beyond skepticism,” he said, adding that the law “basically closes ... a very important dialogue in the country about what is better and what is best for kids with gender dysphoria.”

“I welcome an argument. I welcome skeptical voices. I do not welcome imposing voices that leave no discussion,” he said.

David Fuller, a police sergeant in the city of Gadsden, said he’s angry that the law could lead to officers putting handcuffs on the people he calls heroes and credits with saving his child.

“I’m a police officer and I know what a crime is,” Fuller said. “I know what a criminal is. These people are not criminals. It’s political crap.”

PRISON NATION USA

Abuse-clouded prison gets attention, but will things change?

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and MICHAEL BALSAMO

May 4, 2022

 The Federal Correctional Institution is shown in Dublin, Calif., July 20, 2006. For months, inmates and staff say, their calls for help were ignored. And in this aging prison of deep despair — a place where sexual abuse has been rampant, authorities acted with utter indifference and the work force was deeply demoralized — the cries for help had been many and varied. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

DUBLIN, Calif. (AP) — For months, inmates and staff say, their calls for help were ignored. And in this aging prison of deep despair — a place where sexual abuse has been rampant, authorities acted with utter indifference and the workforce was deeply demoralized — the cries for help had been many and varied.

Just weeks earlier, an Associated Press investigation had revealed a culture of abuse and cover-ups that had persisted for years at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin, California, a women-only facility called the “rape club” by many who know it. Because of AP reporting, the head of the federal Bureau of Prisons had submitted his resignation in January. Yet no one had been named to replace him, so he was still on the job.

Now he was responding to the problems in Dublin — but only after an angry congresswoman had called him to complain.

So early March found the lame-duck administrator, flanked by a task force of senior agency officials, arriving at the prison after flying in to meet inmates and staff in person. According to Dublin inmates, this was how he faced them as he toured the facility:

“You wanted my attention,” Michael Carvajal said, “so here I am.”

___

‘TRUST HAS BEEN BROKEN’

“It’s horrible. It’s absolutely horrible. I’ve never experienced anything like this. In my career, I’ve never been part of a situation like this. This is really unprecedented.”

Those words, spoken about the troubled Dublin facility, come not from an activist or inmate advocate, not from any elected official, not from anywhere outside the prison walls. They come from Thahesha Jusino, its newly installed warden.

Her predecessor, Ray J. Garcia, is one of five Dublin employees who have been charged since last June with sexually abusing inmates.

“We’ve really lost a lot of credibility through all of this, which is understandable, because it’s appalling what has happened,” Jusino said in an interview with the AP.

This story is based on interviews with more than a dozen people familiar with the visiting task force’s work, the prison’s operations and the abuse crisis. They include current and former inmates, employees, lawyers, government and union officials. Many spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation or because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The AP visited Dublin, about 21 miles (34 kilometers) east of Oakland, during the same time as the task force’s visit, the week of March 7. Lawmakers, disturbed by reports of abuse, also traveled there shortly after. Carvajal and some task force members returned to Dublin in April. In one sign of progress, the agency replaced both of the prison’s associate wardens.

Carvajal, a Trump administration holdover, submitted his resignation Jan. 5 but said he would stay on until a successor is named. He joined the task force for the first three days of its weeklong first visit to Dublin.

But even as the task force was arriving, and as scrutiny from the outside appeared finally to be at hand, things did not seem to be proceeding in a positive direction.

Officials moved inmates out of the special housing unit so it wouldn’t look as full when the task force got there. And they lied to Carvajal about COVID-19 contamination so inmates in a certain unit couldn’t speak to him about abuse.

Those who managed to get to Carvajal didn’t hold back. In one emotional scene, a woman who said she was abused by prison officials tearfully confronted him in a recreation area as he and members of the task force were meeting with inmates.

The woman shared graphic details of her alleged abuse. She spoke for about 15 minutes and grew increasingly upset, calming down only after prison officials brought her tissues. She was eventually taken out of the room and brought to a prison psychologist, where she was offered immediate release to a halfway house.

She objected. She wanted to wait so she could tell her story publicly to congressional leaders expected at the prison. But people at the prison say she wasn’t able to thoroughly express her concerns.

Bureau of Prisons and Justice Department officials told the woman that because she was a potential witness, she couldn’t talk about the investigation, the people said. The woman was moved to a halfway house soon after the tour.

In another charged moment, a group of Dublin workers lashed out at Carvajal for putting Garcia in charge of a women’s prison when he’d already had a reputation in prison circles as a misogynist.

“You created this monster,” one worker told Carvajal. Asked another: “Why did you create this toxic environment? Why did you pick Garcia as the warden?”

Garcia is accused of molesting an inmate on multiple occasions from December 2019 to March 2020 and forcing her and another inmate to strip naked so he could take pictures while he made rounds. Investigators said they found the images on his government-issued cellphone. His lawyer refused an interview request.

Garcia is also accused of using his authority to intimidate one of his victims, telling her that he was “close friends” with the person investigating staff misconduct and boasting that he could not be fired. He has pleaded not guilty.

Carvajal promoted Garcia from associate warden to warden at Dublin in November 2020, after Garcia’s alleged misconduct but before the agency said it knew about it. Carvajal told the workers that if he had known about Garcia’s reputation or alleged abuse, he would’ve chosen a different warden.

Speaking to inmates about Garcia, however, Carvajal said something a bit different — that he believed in “innocent until proven guilty.”

___

AN UNEASY HISTORY

FCI Dublin is one of just six women-only facilities in the U.S. federal prison system. As of Wednesday, Dublin had about 785 inmates, many serving sentences for drug crimes.

It opened in 1974 as a federal youth center in which men and women ages 18 to 26 lived in a campus-like setting. The concept was later abandoned.

In 1977, the Bureau of Prisons converted the facility into a traditional adult prison — first for female inmates like the high-profile heiress Patty Hearst and then, in 1980, for men and women. It went back to being a women’s prison in 2012.

Throughout FCI Dublin’s existence, it has been troubled by sexual abuse.

In 1996, three female inmates sued the Bureau of Prisons, alleging they were “sold like sex slaves” by correctional officers who placed them in a male unit, unlocked their cells and allowed male inmates to rape them. No one was arrested; the agency agreed to settle the lawsuit for $500,000.

Separately, in the late 1990s, four officers were charged with engaging in sexual conduct with inmates. And in the early 2010s, about a dozen Dublin employees were quietly removed for sexually abusing inmates. None was arrested, according to a person working there at the time. One worker was allowed to retire after videotapes were found in his locker of him having sex with inmates.

More recently, two of the five employees charged since last June with sexually abusing inmates have pleaded guilty, and the investigation continues: On March 20, a food service foreman was arrested for allegedly touching an inmate’s breasts, buttocks and genitals in October 2020.

Since March, nine other workers have been placed on administrative leave by the Bureau of Prisons. New inmate sexual abuse and staff employment discrimination complaints were filed during the task force’s visit. FBI agents conducted searches at the prison and an employee’s home in mid-April, and at least six internal affairs investigators have been on site investigating claims.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco, who is being briefed regularly on issues in the beleaguered federal prison system, said the Justice Department was committed to “holding BOP personnel accountable, including through criminal charges.” Said Monaco: “Staff misconduct, at any level, will not be tolerated, and our efforts to root it out are far from over.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland, asked about Dublin at a U.S. Senate budget hearing Tuesday, said it was Monaco’s idea — not Carvajal’s — to form a task force “to investigate and determine the procedural failures” at the prison. He cited the prosecution of accused employees, an ongoing internal investigation and the selection of Jusino as warden as steps toward improving conditions.

“This is another really terrible set of events,” Garland said.

Justice Department spokesperson Kristina Mastropasqua said the task force that visited Dublin had reported allegations of misconduct to the prison system’s internal affairs office, where investigators “opened a case file for each allegation.”

Also during the task force’s visit, numerous complaints were filed by inmates and staff members alleging sexual harassment, misconduct and violations of the Prison Rape Elimination Act and federal Equal Employment Opportunity laws.

How many complaints were received? Asked by the AP, the Bureau of Prisons said it couldn’t say.

___

REAL CHANGE, OR PERFORMANCE?

For all the disturbing details the March task force took in, it was hardly the whole truth — partly because inmates and prison workers do not trust the leadership and refused to speak candidly, and partly because officials hid some of Dublin’s problems.

Inmates who’d been in the special housing unit for disciplinary issues were returned to the general population so the place wouldn’t look nearly as full. Officials also lied to Carvajal and told him he couldn’t visit a particular housing unit where inmates wanted to talk to him about abuse. They claimed, falsely, that it was contaminated with COVID-19.

Carvajal did seem taken aback by the lack of security cameras in critical areas — an issue the prison’s union had been raising for six years — and pledged to speed the process for installing them.

Though Dublin does have some cameras, there were none in some of the hallways and rooms that Carvajal toured, including areas where some inmates were sexually abused. Several times the director asked, “Where are the cameras?”

On a recent afternoon, inmates from Dublin’s minimum-security prison camp could be seen congregating on a walking track outside the prison’s fences with no visible supervision and no perimeter cameras. The Bureau of Prisons has faced scrutiny in the last few years after dozens of inmates escaped from its prisons, with many simply walking away from low-security areas.

“Making infrastructural improvements, such as adding additional cameras, to protect the safety and security of inmates and staff is a priority,” the Bureau of Prisons said in response to questions about Carvajal’s visit.

But seven weeks later, not one new camera has been installed.

Precisely what actual progress the task force’s visit produced — and who ultimately had access to its members while they were there — is not entirely clear.

Susan Beaty, a lawyer for Dublin inmates, said advocates had information to share with the task force but were shut out of the visit. Beaty said several abused inmates were immigrants and that predatory prison employees were targeting women facing deportation.

The Bureau of Prisons “is never proactive. They’re reactive. They’re only doing this because Congress is on their ass and they know they have to act,” Dublin union president Ed Canales said.

Canales said the prison’s staff was “not impressed” with the visit and wasn’t expecting any changes, in part because some senior managers who ignored or encouraged abuse are still working at the prison.

Beaty said correctional officers staged a charade during the visit, exhibiting their best behavior while the task force was present and cursing at inmates as soon as the visitors left the room.

Some inmates saw the task force’s visit not as an actual, good-faith way to fix Dublin but as window-dressing ahead of U.S. Rep Jackie Speier’s return to the prison with two other members of Congress on March 14.

One inmate asked: “Is this just for show so that you can say you came before the Congress comes back?” Observed another: “It is just as I thought. The task force was here to head them off and tell them that they were on top of issues that were raised.”

___

CONGRESS IS WATCHING

Congress has been increasingly critical of the Bureau of Prisons, an agency plagued by myriad problems in recent years, including many revealed by AP reporting.

The bureau formed its Dublin task force after the AP investigation in February revealed a toxic culture of sexual misconduct and cover-ups at the prison. Carvajal announced the task force in an internal memo on March 2, just days before its work began. But he did not disclose it publicly until the AP asked about it.

Carvajal wrote that the group — 18 women, including a warden and officials from human resources and internal affairs — was being sent to “observe and assess the climate of the institution” and “assist the agency in redressing identified issues and increasing performance.”

Speaking to inmates, Carvajal acknowledged that pressure from Congress prompted him to act.

He said Speier, D-Calif., had called him after she visited Dublin in the wake of the AP’s reporting. Speier, Carvajal said, was upset with how inmates were being treated and complained that prison officials stonewalled her when she tried to speak with them directly.

Dublin’s union and inmate advocate groups said the bureau and Justice Department had ignored their earlier cries for help. The union said it had been begging agency leaders to visit Dublin since FBI agents raided the former warden’s office last July.

In February, more than 100 inmate advocacy organizations sent a letter to the Justice Department calling for “swift, sweeping action” to address abuse at Dublin, including an independent investigation and the release of victimized inmates to prevent further trauma, but never got a response.

Speier and Reps. Karen Bass and Eric Swalwell, two other California Democrats, visited the facility after the task force and said they were encouraged by its work but still had concerns, including a lack of adequate medical and psychological services at the facility.

They applauded recommendations to add more security cameras and a dedicated email address for inmates to report abuse. They also called for special training for employees in women’s prisons.

“There is literally a culture there that is toxic and one that needs to be addressed,” Speier said in an interview.

Bass, Speier and Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced legislation last month to improve the treatment of women in federal prisons such as Dublin, including providing adequate medical care and examining efforts to retain female officers.

Among other things, the Women in Criminal Justice Reform Act would require minimum standards of care and conditions for federal prison facilities where women are held, temporary release of inmates for medical services such as care from a sexual assault nurse examiner and training for federal prison workers in trauma-informed screening and care.

Each one of those changes would improve conditions at Dublin. Together, they could begin to overhaul it entirely.

___

WILL ANYTHING HAPPEN?

As the crisis continues at Dublin, questions remain about whether the Bureau of Prisons is serious about fixing it — or even capable of doing so. And the wake of the task force’s visit offers little in the way of optimism.

After the visitors left in March, Dublin officials started enforcing more exacting prison uniform rules and cracking down on inmates’ few luxuries.

Blankets, issued to keep inmates warm in drafty cells, were confiscated. Robes purchased from the prison commissary were banned. Inmates were told to wear bras, cover their bodies and avoid tight pants. Some felt they were being punished to keep prison workers from leering at them.

Inmate advocates say the task force ignored them entirely. Local union officials, seeing the whole trip as a smokescreen to placate Congress, said they’d been begging agency leaders to visit for months, to no avail. Prison workers came away from the week doubting anything would change.

Does the new person in charge offer any hope? Perhaps it’s too soon to tell. Jusino, Dublin’s first permanent warden since Garcia was put on administrative leave prior to his arrest, started a week before Carvajal and the task force arrived.

The daughter of a former federal prison warden, she has worked in federal prisons since 1998. She was an associate warden at two prisons and was the warden at a federal prison in Victorville, California, about 71 miles northeast of Los Angeles, before being assigned to Dublin.

She is adamant that change will come — that it must.

“The trust has been broken with our inmate population, which is beyond unacceptable. It’s been broken with our staff, and it has been broken with the public,” Jusino says. “We need to show that we’re committed to this.”

___

On Twitter, follow Michael Sisak at http://twitter.com/mikesisak and Michael Balsamo at http://twitter.com/MikeBalsamo1 and send confidential tips by visiting https://www.ap.org/tips/

Brazilian groups want direct access to U.S. forest funding

By FABIANO MAISONNAVE

FILE - Indigenous people take part in a march during the 18th annual Free Land Indigenous Camp, in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, April 13, 2022. Brazilian environmental and Indigenous organizations, together with some companies, are in a letter released late Monday, May 9, urging the United States to come through with promised funding for forest protection and to deal directly with people who live in the forest, have protected it and “are directly affected by the escalating deforestation.” 

(AP Photo/Eraldo Peres, File)


RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazilian environmental and Indigenous organizations, together with some companies, are urging the United States to come through with promised funding for forest protection and deal directly with people who live in the forest, have protected it and, they say, “are directly affected by the escalating deforestation.”

More than 330 organizations and companies signed a letter released late Monday ahead of a hearing scheduled for Thursday in the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee to discuss a bill introduced in November by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. The bill, known as Amazon21, would create a $9 billion fund administered by the U.S. State Department to finance forest conservation and natural carbon absorption in developing countries.

In the letter, the signatories say passage of the measure would be a sign that President Joe Biden is keeping a pledge he made last year at the international climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, to contribute up to $9 billion to fight deforestation. Hoyer introduced Amazon21 following the pledge.

The bill’s chances for passage in the U.S. Senate as well as the House are uncertain as the Congress and Biden administration focus on military support for Ukraine and domestic elements of Biden’s climate agenda remain stalled. Still, the letter notes that the bill targets a main source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Brazil holds about two-thirds of the Amazon rainforest, the world’s largest such tropical forest and an enormous carbon sink. There is widespread concern that its deforestation will release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, further complicating hopes of arresting climate change. Worse, that could push it past a tipping point after which much of the forest will begin an irreversible process of degradation into tropical savannah.

Signatories of the letter include the Brazilian Coalition on Climate, Forests and Agriculture, an enormous umbrella organization with members ranging from WWF Brazil to the giant meat producer JBS. The Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon also signed on.

The signers say they want the bill to ensure “transparent and straightforward financing” that deals directly with Indigenous people and others who traditionally have conserved the forest and whose livelihoods are directly affected by forest felling.

The State Department usually manages relationships on a nation to nation basis, but Amazon21 specifies there can be forest agreements with “subnational” actors.

“There are many ways to do international cooperation,” André Guimarães, a spokesperson for the coalition, said by phone. “You can make a check to a partner government, create a financial mechanism that supports initiatives and projects, work with subnational governments or create financial mechanisms.”

The question of who would control the funds is sharper now in Brazil because the current administration of President Jair Bolsonaro supports neither protection for the Amazon rainforest nor indigenous autonomy. During his presidency, Amazon deforestation hit a 15-year high, which followed a 22% jump from the prior year, according to official data published in November. The Brazilian Amazon lost an area of rainforest roughly the size of the U.S. state of Connecticut in just the 12 months preceding July 2021.

Guimarães said the letter is not a reaction to far-right Bolsonaro, whose environmental policies have received extensive criticism. But he indicated Bolsonaro would take a dim view of the fund, having referred in the past to imperialist forces trying to take over the Amazon.

In 2019, during his first year in office, Bolsonaro also undermined the largest international cooperation effort to preserve the Amazon rainforest, the Norwegian-backed Amazon Fund, by dissolving the steering committee that selects projects to finance.

That fund was designed so that the more Brazil reduced deforestation, the higher the donations. Norway provided more than 90% of the money, some $ 1.2 billion.

Since then, the Amazon Fund has supported only projects approved before Bolsonaro was elected. Norway and Germany have stopped contributing.

The letter was sent to Hoyer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

Oh, rats! As New Yorkers emerge from pandemic, so do rodents

By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN

May 8, 2022

A rat crosses a Times Square subway platform in New York on Jan. 27, 2015. 

So far this year, people have called in some 7,100 rat sightings — that’s up from about 5,800 during the same period last year, and up by more than 60% from roughly the first four months of 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. 

(AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — They crawled to the surface as the coronavirus pandemic roiled New York City, scurrying out of subterranean nests into the open air, feasting on a smorgasbord of scraps in streets, parks and mounds of curbside garbage. As diners shunned the indoors for outdoor dining, so did the city’s rats.

Now city data suggests that sightings are more frequent than they’ve been in a decade.

Through April, people have called in some 7,400 rat sightings to the city’s 311 service request line. That’s up from about 6,150 during the same period last year, and up by more than 60% from roughly the first four months of 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.

In each of the first four months of 2022, the number of sightings was the highest recorded since at least 2010, the first year online records are available. By comparison, there were about 10,500 sightings in all of 2010 and 25,000 such reports in all of last year (sightings are most frequent during warm months).

Whether the rat population has increased is up for debate, but the pandemic might have made the situation more visible.

With more people spending time outdoors as temperatures grow warmer, will rat sightings further surge?

“That depends on how much food is available to them and where,” said Matt Frye, a pest management specialist for the state of New York, who is based at Cornell University.

While a return to pre-pandemic routines “is exciting after two years of COVID-imposed lifestyle changes,” Frye said in an email, “it also means business as usual for rat problems that are directly tied to human behavior.”

Rats have been a problem in New York City since its founding. Every new generation of leaders has tried to find a better way of controlling the rodent population, and struggled to show results.

When Mayor Eric Adams was borough president of Brooklyn, he annoyed animal rights activists — and upset the stomachs of some journalists — by demonstrating a trap that used a bucket filled with a vinegary, toxic soup to drown rats lured by the scent of food.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio spent tens of millions of dollars on efforts to reduce the rat population in targeted neighborhoods through more frequent trash pickup, more aggressive housing inspections, and replacing dirt basement floors in some apartment buildings with ones made of concrete.

The city also launched a program to use dry ice to suffocate rats in their burrows, once demonstrating the technique for reporters at an event where workers chased — but never caught — one of the fleeing critters.

During a recent news conference in Times Square, Adams announced the city’s latest effort: padlocked curbside trash bins intended to reduce the big piles of garbage bags that turn into a buffet for rodents.

“You’re tired of the rodents, you’re tired of the smell, you’re tired of seeing food, waste and spillage,” the mayor said.

Rats not only strike fear among the easily squeamish, they can also be a public health concern.

Last year, at least 13 people were hospitalized — one died — because of leptospirosis, a condition that attacks the kidneys and liver. Most human infections are associated with rats.

As some cities consider making outdoor dining permanent — an option born of necessity during the pandemic — they are mindful of a further swelling of the rat population. Even before the pandemic, experts noticed a rise in rat populations in some of the country’s largest cities.

Rats can survive on less than an ounce of food a day and rarely travel more than a city block to find food, according to rat scholars.

Some New York City restaurants erected curbside sheds to allow COVID-wary diners to eat outside. But unfinished meals left at tables have sometimes drawn brazen four-legged leftover bandits — a la Pizza Rat, who gained fame in 2015 after a video went viral showing the rodent dragging a slice of pizza down a flight of subway stairs (debates raged at the time about whether the video was staged).

As fewer people used the subways, there were fewer morsels on which to feast in tunnels.

“What happened during the pandemic was that your restaurants shut down,” said Richard Reynolds, whose rat-hunting group for years periodically takes out teams of dogs to sniff out — and kill — vermin. “When outside dining came along, there was food again.”

In planter boxes outside dining sheds, rats lie in wait for any fallen crumb. They lurk in storm drains ready to lunge.

It’s the stuff of nightmares for Brooklyn resident Dylan Viner, who recently accidentally hit a dead rat with his bicycle. In recent months, he and friends have noticed a rise in the number of rats out in the open.

“I’ve always had a phobia of rats. I’m not squeamish about snakes or bugs — but rats, there’s something about them,” said Viner, a transplant from London, who likes to keep his distance from the vermin. “It’s OK seeing them around the subway tracks. It’s when you see one jump out in front of you and dash from a trash can to a dumpster or a restaurant ... that’s when it makes you feel a bit squeamish.”

He recalled taking a recent walk in the West Village, where a stride landed on one of the creatures.

“I screamed and ran,” he recounted. The rat might have squealed, too.

“Mine was so loud,” he said, “that it’s hard to know if it was mine or the rat’s.”

 

 

  

BOY HOWDY DO THEY
Space telescope in home stretch of tests; early pics impress

By MARCIA DUNN

This combination of images provided by NASA on Monday, May 9, 2022, shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy of the Milky Way, seen by the retired Spitzer Space Telescope, left, and the new James Webb Space Telescope. The new telescope is in the home stretch of testing, with science observations expected to begin in July, astronomers said Monday.

 (NASA/JPL-Caltech, NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI via AP)


CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA’s new space telescope is in the home stretch of testing, with science observations expected to begin in July, astronomers said Monday.

The James Webb Space Telescope beamed back the latest test pictures of a neighboring satellite galaxy, and the results are stunning when compared with images taken by NASA’s previous infrared observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope.

Each of the 18 mirror segments on the new telescope is bigger than the single one on Spitzer.

“It’s not until you actually see the kind of image that it delivers that you really internalize and go ‘wow!’” said University of Arizona’s Marcia Rieke, chief scientist for Webb’s near-infrared camera. “Just think of what we’re going to learn.”

Launched last December, the $10 billion Webb is the largest and most powerful astronomical observatory ever sent into space. It will seek light emitted by the first stars and galaxies close to 14 billion years ago, and keep a sharp lookout for possible signs of life.

Scientists are keeping the identity of Webb’s first official target a secret.

Positioned 1 million miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Earth, Webb is considered the successor to the aging Hubble Space Telescope.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

THEY BOYCOTTED RUSSIA
Donors fall well short of UN target for Syria aid

RUSSIA SHOULD PAY REPARATIONS TO KURDS
By LORNE COOK

1 of 6

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, center red tie, and the attending dignitaries of the meeting, Supporting the future of Syria and the region, pose for the group photo at the European Council building in Brussels, Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Olivier Matthys)


BRUSSELS (AP) — International donors on Tuesday pledged $6.7 billion to help Syrians and neighboring countries hosting refugees but fell well short of a U.N. target for assistance to millions of people from conflict-torn Syria who rely on aid to survive.

European Union Neighborhood Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi acknowledged that the war in Ukraine and the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic weighed heavily on donors’ economies.

Still, “donors are sending now a very strong signal to Syria and this region that we are ready to do even more than before,” he said.

The United Nations had been seeking $10.5 billion for 2022. It says that 14.6 million people in Syria rely on aid – 1.2 million more than in 2021 – and that over 90% of Syrians live in poverty. About 3.9 million people in Syria go hungry every day.

It’s the second year in a row that pledges have not lived up to expectations. Last year, the EU, the United States and other nations pledged $6.4 billion, with the U.N asking for $10 billion to meet vital needs.

Earlier, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is making the plight of poverty-stricken Syrians far worse. Borrell said that 60% of Syria’s population “suffer food insecurity, and barely know where the next meal is going to come from.”

“The Russian war will increase food and energy prices and the situation in Syria will become worse,” he said.

Borrell said the 27-nation bloc would provide an additional 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) for Syria this year, bringing the annual total to 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion). He said the EU would also provide 1.56 billion euros ($1.65 billion) next year. The U.S. pledged over $800 million.

Borrell vowed that the EU would maintain sanctions against Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government and stressed that there can be no normalized relations until Syrian refugees are “safe to go back home.”

Food prices around the world were already rising, but the war in Ukraine — a major wheat supplier — has made things worse. The impact is worsening the plight of millions of Syrians driven from their homes by the country’s 11-year war. Many rely on international aid to survive.

The war in Ukraine has also created a whole new group of refugees. European nations and the U.S. have rushed to help more than 5.5 million Ukrainians who have fled to neighboring countries, as well as more than 7 million displaced within Ukraine’s borders.

Half of Syria’s pre-war population of 23 million people was displaced by the conflict.

Aid agencies had hoped to draw some of the world’s attention back to Syria at Tuesday’s conference, which was hosted by the EU. The funding also goes toward aid for the 5.7 million Syrian refugees living in neighboring countries, particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Non-EU country Norway pledged 1.5 billion kroner ($156 million) for 2022 

Imogen Sudbery, from the International Rescue Committee aid group, urged the EU to do more, noting that “even if donors pledge the same as previous years, they will not fill this alarming and rapidly increasing funding gap.”

Syria’s foreign ministry criticized the Brussels event, saying neither the Syrian government nor its ally Russia are taking part in it. It said the conference is being organized by countries that are imposing sanctions on the “Syrian people” and blocking reconstruction.

“Countries organizing or participating in this conference occupy or support the occupation of part of the Syrian territories and loot the resources of the Syrian people,” the ministry said. The term “occupation” was a reference to hundreds of U.S. troops present in oil-rich eastern parts of Syria.

Borrell said Russia was not invited due to the war in Ukraine.

“We are inviting those partners who have a genuine, a real interest to contribute to peace in the world,” he said. The U.N. decided not to co-host this year’s conference because the EU refused to invite Russia.

___

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut and Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen, Denmark, contributed to this report.

SEE

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/05/after-eu-shuns-russia-will-moscow-shut.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/05/syrians-in-desperate-need-of-aid-hit.html

CIA FAILED TO PREDICT IRANIAN REVOLUTION, 9/11

US intel questioned for misjudging Afghanistan, Ukraine

By NOMAAN MERCHANT

DIA Director Lt. General Scott Berrier testifies during a Senate Armed Services hearing to examine worldwide threats on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, May 10, 2022.

 (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top U.S. intelligence officials were questioned Tuesday about why they misjudged the durability of governments in both Afghanistan and Ukraine, and whether they need to reform how intelligence agencies assess a foreign military’s will to fight.

U.S. intelligence believed the U.S.-backed Kabul government would hold out for months against the Taliban and thought Russian forces would overrun Ukraine in a few weeks. Both assessments were wrong. The U.S. and Western allies are now rushing to aid Ukraine’s resistance against Russia in what has turned into a grinding, violent stalemate.

“What we missed was the will to fight of the Ukrainians...and we also missed that in Afghanistan,” said Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee. He added, “I realize will to fight is a lot harder to assess than number of tanks or volume of ammunition or something. But I hope the intelligence community is doing some soul-searching about how to better get a handle on that question.”

President Joe Biden’s administration disclosed in advance Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions to invade Ukraine, a public campaign that it says built support for crushing sanctions on the Russian economy and military support from NATO members. Top U.S. officials have gone to Kyiv to meet with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and pledged more military and intelligence support.

Avril Haines, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said that “will to fight” and “capacity to fight” in tandem were difficult to predict. The National Intelligence Council, a group of advisers that reviews the agencies as a whole, is studying the issue, she said.

“The two of them are issues that are, as you indicated, quite challenging to provide effective analysis on,” Haines told King. “And we’re looking at different methodologies for doing so.”

The U.S. might have done more before the invasion to assist Zelenskyy had lawmakers believed Kyiv had more of a chance, King said. And after predictions that the Taliban would be held back as long as a year after the American withdrawal, the coalition-backed government “lasted minus-two weeks,” King noted, a reference to the Taliban overrunning Kabul before the withdrawal formally ended.

The U.S. was forced to negotiate with the Taliban to evacuate of thousands of American citizens and Afghan allies fighting huge crowds to secure space on evacuation flights. An attack at the Kabul airport killed 13 U.S. troops and at least 170 Afghan civilians.

King raised his voice to cut off Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, after Berrier said he believed the intelligence agencies had done “a great job.”

“General, how can you possibly say that when we were told explicitly, Kyiv would fall in three days and Ukraine would fall in two weeks?” he said. “You’re telling me that was accurate intelligence?

U.S. intelligence believed before the war Russia’s forces were so much larger and more powerful than Ukraine’s that “it wasn’t going to go very well for a variety of factors,” Berrier said.

He testified Tuesday that “there was never an intelligence community assessment that said the Ukrainians lacked the will to fight.” That appears to contradict his statement from Senate testimony in March, when Berrier said he “questioned their will to fight. That was a bad assessment on my part because they have fought bravely and honorably and are doing the right thing.”