PAKISTAN

RIP

Nafis Sadik, women’s health and rights champion, dies at 92
By EDITH M. LEDERER


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Nafis Sadik, Pakistani candidate to the post of World Health Organization director general, briefs the media after her presentation at the WHO Executive Board at Geneva, Switzerland, on Jan. 26, 1998. Sadik, a Pakistani doctor who championed women's health and rights and spearheaded the breakthrough action plan adopted by 179 countries at the 1994 U.N. population conference, died four days before her 93rd birthday, her son said late Monday, Aug. 15, 2022. Omar Sadik said his mother died of natural causes at her home in New York on Sunday night. (AP Photo/Donald Stampfli, File)


UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Nafis Sadik, a Pakistani doctor who championed women’s health and rights and spearheaded the breakthrough action plan adopted by 179 countries at the 1994 United Nations population conference, died four days before her 93rd birthday, her son said late Monday.

Omar Sadik said his mother died of natural causes at her home in New York on Sunday night.

Nafis Sadik joined the U.N. Population Fund in 1971, became its assistant executive director in 1977, and was appointed executive director in 1987 by then Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar after the sudden death of its chief, Rafael Salas. She was the first woman to head a major United Nations program that is voluntarily funded.

In June 1990, Perez de Cuellar appointed Sadik to be secretary-general of the fifth U.N. International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, and she became the architect of its groundbreaking program of action which recognized for the first time that women have the right to control their reproductive and sexual health and to choose whether to become pregnant.

The Cairo conference also reached consensus on a series of goals including universal primary education in all countries by 2015 — a goal that still hasn’t been met — and wider access for women to secondary and higher education. It also set goals to reduce infant and child mortality and maternal mortality and to provide access to reproductive and sexual health services, including family planning.

While the conference broke a taboo on discussing sexuality, it stopped short of recognizing that women have the right to control decisions about when they have sex and when they get married.

Natalia Kanem, current executive director of the U.N. Population Fund, called Sadik a “proud champion of choice and tireless advocate for women’s health, rights and empowerment.”

“Her bold vision and leadership in Cairo set the world on an ambitious path,” a journey that she said continued at the 1995 U.N. women’s conference in Beijing and with adoption of U.N. development goals since 2000 that include achieving gender equality and many issues in the Cairo program of action.

Since Cairo, Kanem said, “millions of girls and young women have grown up knowing that their bodies belong to them, and that their futures are there to shape.”

At the Beijing women’s conference a year after Cairo, Sadik told delegates: “The first mark of respect for women is support for their reproductive rights.”

“Reproductive rights involve more than the right to reproduce,” she said. “They involve support for women in activities other than reproduction, in fact liberating women from a system of values which insists that reproduction is their only function.”

After her retirement from the Population Fund in 2000, Sadik served as special adviser to the secretary-general and special envoy on HIV/AIDS in Asia and the Pacific.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sadik will be remembered “for her significant contributions to women’s health and rights and population policies and for her tireless efforts to combat HIV/AIDS,” his spokesman said. “She consistently called attention to the importance of addressing the needs of women, and of involving women directly in making and carrying out development policy, which she believed was particularly important for population policies and programs.”

Born in Jaunpur in British-ruled India, Nafis Sadik was the daughter of Iffat Ara and Muhammad Shoaib, a former Pakistani finance minister. After receiving her medical degree from Dow Medical College in Karachi, she began her career working in women’s and children’s wards in Pakistani armed forces hospitals from 1954 to 1963. The following year she was appointed head of the health section of the government Planning Commission.

In 1966, Sadik joined the Pakistan Central Family Planning Council, the government agency responsible for carrying out the national family planning program. She rose to be its director-general in 1970.

She also served an internship in gynecology and obstetrics at City Hospital in Baltimore and continued her medical education at Johns Hopkins University.

Sadik is survived by her five children, 10 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

“Mummy loved how she lived: wide open, welcoming, wonderful, generous beyond belief, gracious, and giving — always and all ways giving,” Omar Sadik said. “Our home was not huge, but mummy always found a way to make it seem limitless and she somehow managed to accommodate absolutely anyone that needed a bed, a couch, a meal, or a family.”

“She transcended age and time and was as equally beloved by people much older than her, as she was by tiny little children — because they recognized her heart,” he said. “She fit more into one day, than most of us do probably in one year — she was incomparable and she was unmatched.”

Israel rejects appeal to release Palestinian hunger striker
By EMILY ROSE

yesterday


Protesters gather with a Palestinian flag outside the hospital where Palestinian Khalil Awawdeh, pictured in the placards, a prisoner in Israel on hunger strike, is now clinging to life in Be'er Yaakov, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022. Arabic on the placard reads, "Freedom for Khalil Awawdeh." His family says Awawdeh has refused food to draw attention to his detention by Israel without trial or charge. 

(AP Photo/Tsafrir Abayov)

JERUSALEM (AP) — An Israeli military court on Monday rejected an appeal for release by a Palestinian prisoner whose health is deteriorating as he continues a 165-day hunger strike to protest being held without charge or trial, his lawyer said.

Khalil Awawdeh is one of several Palestinian detainees who have gone on prolonged hunger strikes over the years in protest of what is known as administrative detention. Israel says the 40-year-old father of four is a militant, an allegation Awawdeh denies through his lawyer.

The Islamic Jihad militant group demanded his release as part of an Egyptian-brokered cease-fire ending three days of heavy fighting in the Gaza Strip earlier this month but did not identify him as a member.

Israel says administrative detention is needed to keep dangerous militants off the streets and to hold suspects without divulging sensitive intelligence. Critics say the form of detention, which is almost exclusively used for Palestinians, denies them due process. Administrative detainees can be held for months or years without charge or trial.

Ahlam Haddad, a lawyer for Awawdeh, confirmed that the military court had rejected his appeal for release. He has not eaten during the strike, except for a 10-day period in which he received vitamin injections, according to his family.

Israel’s Shin Bet internal security service has not commented on his case.

Dr. Lina Qasem-Hassan, of Physicians for Human Rights Israel, visited him on Thursday at the hospital where he was transferred after his condition worsened. She said he weighed 42 kilograms (around 90 pounds), was handcuffed to a bed and surrounded by guards.

“He suffers from severe neurological symptoms and cognitive impairment, which might be irreversible,” the rights group said in a statement. “His life is in immediate danger.”

Israel is currently holding some 4,400 Palestinian prisoners, including militants who have carried out deadly attacks, as well as people arrested at protests or for throwing stones. Around 670 Palestinians are currently being held in administrative detention, a number that jumped in March as Israel began near-nightly arrest raids in the occupied West Bank following a spate of deadly attacks against Israelis.

Israel says it provides due process and largely imprisons those who threaten its security, though a small number are held for petty crimes.

Palestinians and human rights groups say the system is designed to quash opposition to Israel’s 55-year military occupation of lands the Palestinians want for a future state, which shows no sign of ending.

EXPLAINER: Tension between Nicaragua and the Catholic Church

By GABRIELA SELSER and MARÍA TERESA HERNÁNDEZ

August 14, 2022

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 A banner emblazoned with an image of Nicaragua's President Daniel Ortega is waved by an Ortega supporter in Managua, Nicaragua, April 30, 2018. Ortega’s opponents regularly compare him to dictator Anastasio Somoza for his authoritarian tendencies, and also accuse him of dynastic ambitions. (AP Photo/Alfredo Zuniga, File)

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Earlier this month Nicaragua shuttered seven radio stations belonging to the Catholic Church and launched an investigation into the bishop of Matagalpa, Monsignor Rolando Álvarez, accusing him of inciting violent actors “to carry out acts of hate against the population.”

This is not the first time President Daniel Ortega has moved aggressively to silence critics of his administration. In 2018 the government raided the headquarters of the newspaper Confidencial, led by journalist Carlos Fernando Chamorro, who is considered one of the most prominent critics of Ortega. Then, throughout 2021, authorities arrested seven potential presidential candidates for that year’s November elections.

Here’s a look at the fraught relationship between the church and the government amid a political standoff that’s now in its fifth year, with no end in sight.

WHO IS DANIEL ORTEGA?

Ortega, 76, is a former guerrilla with the leftist Sandinista National Liberation Front who helped overthrow dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979 and first served as president from 1985 until he left office in 1990 after being voted out.

He lost three more elections after that before returning to power in 2007. He won a fourth consecutive term in the 2021 ballot, which is widely discredited since he faced no real opposition.

Ortega’s opponents regularly compare him to Somoza for his authoritarian tendencies, and also accuse him of dynastic ambitions. His wife, Rosario Murillo, is his powerful vice president.

Under Ortega, Nicaragua has cultivated strong ties to allies Cuba and Venezuela, two staunch foes of the U.S. government.

HOW DID THE UNREST BEGIN?

A social security reform in 2018 triggered massive protests backed by businesspeople, Catholic leaders and other sectors. The government’s response was a crackdown by security forces and allied civilian militias in which at least 355 people were killed, about 2,000 hurt and 1,600 jailed, according to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

Political stability has never fully returned.

Months before last year’s vote, a poll found that support for five opposition candidates put Ortega’s re-election in real doubt. Within weeks all five were arrested, along with two other potential candidates. Authorities accused them of responsibility for the 2018 unrest, saying it was tantamount to a “terrorist coup” attempt purportedly backed by Washington

“Ortega decided to suppress any possibility of losing. ... And that meant arresting everyone,” political analyst Oscar Rene Vargas told The Associated Press back then.

WHAT ROLE HAS THE CHURCH PLAYED?

Nicaragua is predominantly Catholic, and the church was close to the Somozas from the 1930s until the 1970s, when it distanced itself from politics after many abuses were attributed to the dictatorship. The church initially supported the Sandinistas after Somoza’s ouster, but that relationship frayed over time due to ideological differences. Under Ortega, Catholic leaders have often backed the country’s conservative elite.

When the protests first erupted, Ortega asked the church to serve as mediator in peace talks, though they ultimately failed.

The Nicaraguan church has been notably sympathetic toward the protesters and their cause. In April 2018, Managua’s cathedral sheltered student demonstrators and was a place for collecting food and money to support them.

Figures such as Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes and Managua Auxiliary Bishop Silvio Báez have been outspoken in rejecting violence. Brenes called the demonstrations justified, and Báez rejected any political decision that would harm the people. Báez left the country in 2019 at the Vatican’s request, a transfer that was lamented by the opposition and celebrated by the ruling Sandinistas.

Ortega has responded by accusing some bishops of being part of a plot to overthrow him and calling them “terrorists.”

In March the papal nuncio in Managua, Monsignor Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, who participated as a mediator and lobbied for the release of jailed government opponents, was forced by Ortega’s administration to leave the country in what the Vatican called an “unjustified decision.”

WHAT ABOUT THE LATEST CHURCH-STATE CONFLICT?

The church radio stations were shuttered by the government Aug. 1, and police investigating Álvarez, the Matagalpa bishop, accused him of “organizing violent groups.”

Álvarez has called for profound electoral reform to “effectively achieve the democratization of the country” and also demanded the release of some 190 people he considers political prisoners. Last month he staged a fast in protest of what he called persecution against him.

Since Aug. 3, authorities have confined Álvarez to the episcopal complex where he lives. After six days without making public statements, he reappeared Thursday in a live social media broadcast at a Mass, accompanied by six priests and four lay people who are also unable to leave the complex.

The Archdiocese of Managua has expressed support for Álvarez. The conference of Latin American Catholic bishops decried what it called a “siege” of priests and bishops, the expulsion of members of religious communities and “constant harassment” targeting the Nicaraguan people and church.

On Saturday, hundreds of Nicaraguans attended a Mass under a heavy police presence after the government prohibited a religious procession in Managua.

Church leaders announced a day earlier that the National Police had banned the planned procession for Our Lady of Fatima for reasons of “internal security.” Instead, the church called the faithful to come peacefully to the cathedral.

HAS THERE BEEN ANY RESPONSE FROM THE VATICAN?

For almost two weeks, the Vatican was publicly silent about the investigation of Álvarez. The silence drew criticism from some Latin American human rights activists and intellectuals.

On Friday, Monsignor Juan Antonio Cruz, the Vatican’s permanent observer to the Organization of American States, expressed concern about the situation and asked both parties to “seek ways of understanding.”

Cruz’s remarks came during a special session of OAS in which its Permanent Council approved a resolution condemning Ortega’s government for the “harassment” and “arbitrary restrictions imposed on religious organizations and those that criticize the government.”

Cruz said the Holy See wishes to “collaborate with those who are committed to dialogue as an indispensable instrument of democracy and guarantor of a more humane and fraternal civilization.”

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Associated Press writers Nicole Winfield at the Vatican and Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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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.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M OLD SCHOOL
7 accused in $1.2M extortion scheme at Puerto Rico docks

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — Federal authorities on Monday arrested seven people including a union leader and various dock workers accused in a $1.2 million extortion scheme that targeted shipping companies.

U.S. Attorney Stephen Muldrow said the scheme began in 2005 and affected local and foreign commerce, including shipping between Puerto Rico and the U.S. and British Virgin Islands.

He said suspects at three docks in the capital of San Juan are accused of illegally extorting small shipping companies and threatened to stop loading and unloading goods if a monthly fee wasn’t paid. The fee demanded varied by weight and sometimes ranged from $10,000 to $20,000 a month, Muldrow said.

The indictment states that the shipping companies were charged a monthly fee in exchange for supposedly being allowed to use longshore workers who were not unionized. However, there were no labor unions representing employees of shipping companies operating at the piers where the alleged extortions occurred, officials said.

The suspects face charges including conspiracy to violate the RICO Act, commit extortion and money laundering.

“Breaking the law cannot be the way to do business in Puerto Rico,” said Joseph González, FBI special agent in charge of the San Juan office.

Local and federal authorities were part of the five-year investigation, with some wearing shirts at a press conference that read “Pier Pressure” in reference to the operation.

Pay pushes Venezuelan teachers to protest, consider quitting

By REGINA GARCIA CANO 

yesterday

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A teacher holds a sign that reads in Spanish: "Living wage now!" during a pro-government protest by public workers demanding the government pay their full benefits and respect collective bargaining agreements in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)


CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Public school teachers across Venezuela had planned to use their annual vacation bonus to buy uniforms for their children, waterproof leaky roofs, get new prescription glasses or fix the pair barely held together by adhesive tape.

Some expected to get $100, while others calculated a little more or less depending on their years of service and advanced degrees, though only a small number thought they would get around $200.

The government, however, paid them only a tiny fraction of that.

So, a few days into their long break, teachers have been marching by the thousands around the country, threatening to strike when school resumes or possibly even to abandon their profession.

“Right now, I don’t even have a pencil for my children to start classes in September,” said Florena Delgado, who teaches first and fifth grades at two schools in one of the lowest-income neighborhoods of the capital, Caracas.

She also makes cake toppers, creates balloon decorations and sells clothes to supplement her government pay. Unless something changes, “I don’t plan to join classes, and well, let it be what God wants,” she says.

In response to the unrest, the government announced Friday through a lawmaker that it will pay the bonus in full this week. But Venezuela’s teachers are long accustomed to seeing televised economic promises that aren’t kept, so they are waiting until they get their money before changing course.

Elementary and high school educators in the crisis-wrecked country on average earn about $50 a month, ranking among the lowest paid in Latin America. The government pays them a vacation bonus in a single payment at the end of every school year in July.

The National Budget Office based this year’s bonus on the $1.52 monthly minimum wage of 2021 instead of the $30 rate that took effect in April. The government also paid teachers only 25% of the unexpectedly low bonus and did not set a date to disburse the rest.

The budget office defended the calculation, arguing that a new labor agreement has not been signed. But by Friday, National Assembly member Orlando Pérez, who is president of one of the country’s teachers unions, said the government will pay teachers their full bonus as required by Venezuela’s labor law, which sets them based on the latest salaries.

Outside the offices of the Ministry of Education, teachers and college professors, who also earn meager wages and feel short-changed over their vacation bonus, have demanded the dismissal of the agency’s leader. Some teachers said they didn’t even get the 25% payment.

Protesting teachers have been joined by other workers, including the traditionally government loyalists at the state-owned oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela. Red T-shirts long associated with the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela were in abundance at one protest, in which workers from the health, cement and electric sectors expressed support for the teachers’ demands.

President Nicolás Maduro has not commented on the teachers’ complaints, angering some of them.

“He is a worker; he was a worker. He should remember that he comes from the very bottom” of the social ladder, elementary school teacher Leinni Carreño said of Maduro, who once was a bus driver and union member.

Teachers and professors work two, three or even four jobs, but their multiple paychecks sometimes are not enough to cover the basic food basket, which last month cost $392. Many teach under borderline hazardous conditions as pests, mold, filth and mosquito-attracting standing water are ever-present at schools.

Physics, chemistry and biology labs are long gone, and thieves took advantage of unsupervised schools during the pandemic to strip the buildings of copper wires and steal computers and other equipment.

Sociology professor Erly Ruiz earns about $90 a month. So, he also delivers goods around Caracas on his bike, works at a facility that produces blackberry wine and rents sound equipment. If his side hustles go well, his total income can reach about $400. He had earmarked his expected vacation bonus for an electrical home repair.

His budget is so tight, his friends gave him their leftovers from his birthday celebration last month.

“For a week straight, I was able to eat protein every day at least once a day,” Ruiz said after biking to deliver cat litter to a customer. “That week was the only week this entire year that I was able to eat protein regularly.”

Professors and teachers alike have abandoned the teaching ranks since the country’s economic and political crisis began last decade. The Venezuelan Federation of Teachers estimates 50% of the country’s 370,000 teachers have left classrooms since 2017. They are among the more than 6 million Venezuelans who have migrated to other countries.

Even those who are still teaching don’t always fulfill their duties due to transportation, health, pay and other challenges. Some live so far away from the schools they are assigned to that their commute by public transportation eats up their salary.

Call center supervisor Jonás Nuñez sympathizes with the education workers. He was an elementary school teacher for 14 years but quit in 2020.

“The economic situation was what led to everything changing because I have a daughter, I have a family. So (the salary) no longer covered the expenses,” Ruiz said. “I miss it because you learned a lot from the children who were with you.”

Teachers have threatened strikes in the past, but this time anger accumulated throughout the pandemic as they were forced to attempt to educate students with limited or no internet access, had to cope with a collapsed health care system and saw prices for basic goods soar amid Venezuela’s unrelenting runaway inflation.

Opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who is recognized by the U.S. and several other nations as Venezuela’s legitimate leader, has expressed support for the teachers and professors. But he and the opposition parties have little impact on Maduro, whose regime controls all government institutions.

Delgado, who works a shift at one school in the morning and another shift at a different school in the afternoon, wants to keep teaching to be a role model for her students, but the discontent over the vacation bonus and regular pay is growing.

“There are many children who really need someone to guide them, to be there for them, who can really help them,” Delgado said. “It’s hard when you walk into a classroom and see that there are children who go to school just because they give them food.

“At school, you see that there are children who don’t have notebooks, who don’t have pencils because their parents are in the same situation as the teachers looking for a living, and they work day and night.”

Alabama company charged with violations in worker’s death

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama company has been charged with willfully violating federal safety rules in the death of a worker who was pulled into a machine and fatally injured, authorities said Monday.

ABC Polymer Industries, which has a plant in the Birmingham suburb of Helena, was accused of two misdemeanor counts in the 2017 death of Catalina Estillado, court records showed.

The company makes flat plastic sheets on an assembly line that pulls material through multiple sets of large, spinning rollers, according to a statement by prosecutors.

ABC Polymer typically operated the machine without a required safety guard being engaged, the statement said, and Estillado was pulled into the spinning rollers and killed after being assigned to use a hand tool to cut away tangles.

The protections were required by the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration, prosecutors alleged, but the company failed to use them despite knowing workers had been injured multiple times before.

The misdemeanor offense is the only federal criminal charge involving such workplace safety violations, prosecutors said.

An attorney for ABC Polymer Industries on Monday did not immediately return an email to The Associated Press seeking comment on the charges, which could result in a fine of as much as $500,000.

Ruling after a nonjury trial, a Shelby County judge in June awarded $3 million to Estillado’s husband, Crescendio Pablo, who filed a wrongful death lawsuit after she was killed. The company has said it would appeal the verdict to the Alabama Supreme Court.

Massachusetts art museum workers schedule 1-day strike

NORTH ADAMS, Mass. (AP) — Unionized workers at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, frustrated with the progress of contract negotiations, have authorized a one-day strike for later this week.

The workers at the North Adams museum, commonly referred to as MASS MoCA, have scheduled a strike and picket outside the museum from 8 a.m. until 6 p.m. Friday, according to a statement Monday.

“We have asked our members to strike because Mass MoCA has not bargained in good faith on a fair contract for the employees who make it so successful,” Maro Elliott, the museum’s manager of institutional giving and a member of the union’s negotiating committee, said in a statement. “We want an agreement with Mass MoCA that will create a more accessible, equitable and just workplace.”

The union, affiliated with the United Auto Workers Local 2110, represents about 100 full- and part-time workers, including curators, educators, administrative staff, visitors services, custodial and other workers.

The workers, citing low pay and job insecurity during the coronavirus pandemic, formed the union early last year, joining the staff of other renowned museums who have unionized, including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The museum will remain open during the one-day strike, with managers filling in at key posts, a spokesperson said.

“While we respect our employees’ right to strike as a means of expressing their views, we are also disappointed in their decision, given the positive and collaborative environment that we have worked to foster during our collective bargaining process with the UAW,” museum spokesperson Jenny Wright said in an email.

The average wage for unionized workers at the museum is $17.30 per hour, according to the union. The union wants a minimum hourly rate of $18 in a contract’s first year and raises over the next two years bringing that to about $20 per hour. The museum is offering a $16 per hour minimum with no guaranteed increases in 2023 and 2024, the union said.

In a social media post, the union asked people planning to visit the museum on Friday not to cross the picket line and to reschedule their visits. The union has also filed unfair labor practice charges against the museum with the National Labor Relations Board, citing what it calls “bad faith bargaining.”

Norway hits export record amid soaring gas prices
yesterday

FILE - The Ekofisk oil field off the North Sea in Norway, Oct. 24, 2019. Norway’s exports have reached a record in July that is driven mainly by higher natural gas prices. The Scandinavian country’s statistics agency on Monday, Aug. 15, 2022 said Norwegian exports reached 229 billion kroner ($24 billion) last month. Norway is a major producer of offshore oil and gas. 

(Carina Johansen/NTB Scanpix via AP)


STOCKHOLM (AP) — Norway’s exports reached a record in July, driven mainly by natural gas prices that have soared since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The Scandinavian country’s statistics agency on Monday said Norwegian exports reached 229 billion kroner ($24 billion) last month, 0.4% higher than the previous record set in March this year.

Norway’s trade surplus of 153.2 billion kroner ($15.8 billion) also was the highest on record.

Norway, a major producer of offshore oil and gas, has seen energy exports surge as European countries scramble to find alternatives to Russian energy in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

Since the invasion, the EU has approved bans on Russian coal and most oil to take effect later this year, but it did not include Russian natural gas because the 27-nation bloc depends on gas to power factories, generate electricity and heat homes.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin has weaponized gas exports to pressure the bloc into reducing its sanctions over the war in Ukraine or to push other political aims. The EU has been left scrambling to fill gas storage ahead of winter, when demand rises and utility companies draw down their reserves to keep homes warm and power plants running.

Statistics Norway said natural gas exports reached 128 billion kroner ($13.2 billion) in July, more than four times higher than in the same month last year.

Jon Olav Roerhus, senior adviser for external trade at Statistics Norway, said reductions in Russian gas deliveries to Europe through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline contributed to soaring gas prices last month, which were “the main reason for the exceptionally high export value we are now experiencing.”

At a one-day meeting of the five Nordic leaders in Oslo, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said: “We must phase out Russian gas as soon as possible.” She said Europe is “facing a challenging fall.”

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said the Nordic countries also should focus on renewable energies, including wind and solar.

“We all struggle with increased energy prices,” said Gahr Støre, whose country and Iceland are not EU members.

“As we enter the cold winter, our populations have to understand what is at stake,” Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin.

Higher fish and metals exports also contributed to Norway’s surge in exports.

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Follow all AP stories on developments related to the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine.

U$A
Court: State can’t tax tribal lands that change hands
yesterday

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The state can’t impose property taxes on tribal lands that have changed hands without congressional approval, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

The decision from a three-judge panel from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals marks another chapter in a lawsuit four Chippewa tribes from northern Wisconsin filed in 2018.

The Lac Courte Oreilles, the Lac du Flambeau, the Red Cliff and the Bad River sued after the state imposed property taxes on land within their reservations. Such land is immune from state property taxes under an 1854 treaty, but the state argued that the land is eligible because tribal members sold it to non-American Indians before the land was were sold back to tribal members.

The three-judge panel affirmed that the land isn’t taxable without congressional approval, saying only Congress can diminish tribes’ sovereignty and the treaty is best read to promise tax immunity even for reacquired lands.

The U.S. accused a Chinese MIT professor of spying. Now cleared, he helped discover what may be the ‘best semiconductor material ever found’

Nicholas Gordon

Tue, August 16, 2022 

A team of researchers has discovered what the Massachusetts Institute of Technology calls the “best semiconductor material ever found," even better than silicon, the material used in just about every computer chip on earth.

In July, scientists from MIT, the University of Houston, and other institutions announced they had proved that cubic boron arsenide performs better than silicon at conducting heat and electricity, opening up new possibilities for smaller and faster chips. The team includes China-born professor Gang Chen, the former head of MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering, who was the subject of a yearlong investigation by the Department of Justice before the agency dropped espionage charges because of lack of evidence.

It could be decades before semiconductors based on cubic boron arsenide are used in commercially available chips—if they prove viable at all. But ultimately, the new material may help designers overcome the natural limits of current models to make better, faster, and smaller chips, and its discovery is the kind of research the U.S. risked missing out on with a now-disbanded crackdown on experts like Chen.

Cubic boron arsenide

Despite its ubiquity in the chip industry, silicon is not the best semiconductor out there. For one, it doesn’t conduct heat very well, meaning chips and consumer devices often need to include expensive cooling systems or risk overheating.

According to the July study, cubic boron arsenide conducts heat 10 times better than silicon. “Heat is a major bottleneck for electronics,” Chen said in a press release accompanying the study, calling the new material a potential “game changer.”

The study also revealed that cubic boron arsenide is better than silicon at conducting both electrons and its positively charged counterpart, the “electron hole.” The latter is an especially glaring weakness of silicon, limiting the speed of silicon-based semiconductors.

Chip designers are starting to bump up against the natural limits of silicon in their quest for smaller and faster chips. Researchers are publicly talking about the end of Moore’s Law, the 1975 prediction by Intel cofounder Gordon Moore that the number of transistors in a chip would double every two years, which has been a guiding star for the semiconductor industry ever since.

Researchers are exploring ways to squeeze more speed out of new computers through new materials for chips or new technologies like quantum computing. Materials like cubic boron arsenide—assuming they can be commercialized—might help designers keep making even smaller and faster computer chips.

But there’s still a long way to go until cubic boron arsenide can be used outside of the lab. The material has been made only in small batches, and researchers needed special equipment to study its properties, according to MIT.

“Silicon is the workhorse of the entire industry,” Chen said in the release, noting that scientists have spent decades developing procedures to purify silicon to the levels needed for chip manufacturing, reaching 99.99999999% purity or the so-called ten-nines level. But Chen said that if future research could overcome the barriers to industrial production, cubic boron arsenide could become “a promising candidate for next-generation electronics.”

Spying charges dropped

The study is also a significant change in fortune for one of its prominent authors, Chen, who was a high-profile target of a Trump-era initiative to investigate accusations of Chinese espionage.

The U.S. Department of Justice, through a program called the China Initiative, accused dozens of Chinese and Chinese American academics of hiding their ties to Chinese institutions in order to share advanced technologies with Beijing.

Authorities arrested Chen, who was born in China and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 2000, in January 2021. He was accused of failing to disclose ties to Chinese institutions on grant applications to the Department of Energy. “This was not just about greed, but about loyalty to China,” then–U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Andrew Lelling alleged at the time.

The scientific community, especially at MIT, strongly criticized the arrest. MIT faculty, in an open letter, wrote that “the defense of Professor Chen is the defense of the scientific enterprise that we all hold dear—we are all Gang Chen.”

The Department of Justice, under the Biden administration, dropped charges against Chen in January 2022 after DOE officials revealed that Chen was never required to make the disclosures he was accused of omitting. In a statement released when the charges were dropped, Chen accused the DOJ of continuing to bring “unwarranted fear to the academic community.”

A month after dropping Chen's case, the DOJ disbanded the China Initiative. "We helped give rise to a harmful perception that the department applies a lower standard to investigate and prosecute criminal conduct related to [China] or that we in some way view people with racial, ethnic, or familial ties to China differently,” said Assistant Attorney General for National Security Matthew Olsen at the time.

Scientists also argued that investigations like the one into Chen dissuaded academics—particularly those from China—from moving to the U.S., denying the U.S. the opportunity to benefit from their research. "It's scaring away talent," one MIT faculty member told WBUR in February.

Experts have pointed to the lack of skilled scientific and technical expertise as a major constraint on the U.S. drive to restore its prominence in research and development, including rebuilding its domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry. One study estimated that the U.S. would need to increase its chipmaking workforce by 50% to displace Asia as the center for chip manufacturing—talent that would need to come from overseas, including China.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com