G7 nations to provide Vietnam with $15.5 billion to cut coal us

Workers walk near an excavator loading coal onto a truck at a coal port in Hanoi

Wed, December 14, 2022 
By Francesco Guarascio

HANOI (Reuters) -The Group of Seven (G7) industrialised nations will provide $15.5 billion to help Vietnam transition away from coal, the British foreign office said on Wednesday.

The deal, previously reported by Reuters, will be the third agreement of this type reached by G7 nations, as pressure mounts on rich, heavy-emitting nations to help poorer countries cope with climate change and transition to cleaner energy.

The group signed similar deals last year with South Africa and last month with Indonesia.

An initial amount of $15.5 billion in public and private finance will be disbursed over the next three to five years, the British foreign office said in a statement.

The deal will help Vietnam to peak its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, bringing forward a previous 2035 projection, limit its peak coal capacity to 30.2 gigawatts (GW) instead of an initially planned 37 GW, and source 47% of its power from renewable energy by 2030, the statement said.

"Today, Vietnam has demonstrated leadership in charting an ambitious clean energy transition that will deliver long-term energy security," U.S. President Joe Biden said in a statement.

The deal is backed by Denmark and Norway, who are not G7 members.

Vietnam, among the world's top 20 coal users, was initially slated to sign the "Just Energy Transition Partnership" with G7 nations at the global COP27 climate summit in November, but high-level talks stalled before the meeting.

To persuade Vietnam to back the offer, Western negotiators led by the European Union and Britain have repeatedly increased the amount of funding offered to Hanoi.

Half of the agreed $15.5 billion will come from the public sector and the rest from private investors, sources said, declining to be named because they were not allowed to speak to media.

A minor part of the funding will be grants, while most of the public investment will be loans, one of the sources said.

The G7's deal with Indonesia promised $10 billion in public funds to shut down coal plants there and bring forward the sector's peak emissions by seven years to 2030. South Africa was promised $8.5 billion.

Vietnam's Environment Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Francesco Guarascio @fraguarascio; additional reporting by Kate Abnett; Editing by Jason Neely and Edmund Blair)

Biden May Be About to Sign Off on a Huge Alaska Oil Drilling Project


Philip Elliott
Tue, December 13, 2022 

Alaska Climate Change Wildlife Oil Drilling Caribou BirdsScience

An oil pipeline stretches across the landscape outside Prudhoe Bay in North Slope Borough, AK on May 25, 2019. Credit - Bonnie Jo Mount—The Washington Post via Getty Images

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

When Joe Biden was a candidate to be his party’s nominee for President, he ran as one of the biggest foes of fossil fuels ever to make a credible run for the White House. He pledged to eliminate net carbon emissions by 2050, ween the country off dirty sources of energy and “end fossil fuel.” He canceled the high-profile Keystone XL pipeline, took millions of acres of possible drilling off the table by scrapping leases to oil and gas companies, and banned imports of Russian oil. He even threatened oil firms with a windfall tax and likened them to war profiteers.


Environmental groups went gaga over his rhetoric and action alike, buoying his political alliances and giving climate change activists heart after years of broken promises.

And yet, a unique alignment of political and geological confluences may spur Biden in the coming days to do something that will leave those same green allies seeing red.

Biden’s administration is nearing a final decision on a potentially game-changing oil and gas project that has now been under consideration across five presidencies. The proposed Willow project in the northeast section of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska would produce 180,000 barrels of oil each day, create $10 billion in tax and royalty revenues, and create 2,000 construction jobs and 300 permanent ones. The massive project would require as many as five drilling sites, a processing facility, 50 miles of new roads, seven bridges, and an airstrip.

Local groups, including those representing Alaska Natives, as well as labor unions and the state’s congressional delegation, have all championed the project as a source of good union jobs and money for Alaska’s North Slope.

But environmental groups and some Native American groups from the Lower 48 oppose the ConocoPhillips project, citing an Interior Department analysis that estimates it would emit at least 278 million metric tons of carbon dioxide over its lifetime and during construction. It also would endanger the local wildlife like polar bears. On Thursday, a coalition of environmental groups—represented by a PR firm with deep ties to the Biden Administration—plans to rally at Lafayette Square across from the White House before delivering another 90,000 comments in opposition to the proposal, which they liken to 76 coal plants running for a year. (Industry groups heartily reject this comparison, noting it compares a lifetime of direct and indirect emissions from Willow with one coal plant’s annual emissions.)
More from TIME

If they can’t kill it, the green groups are pushing a scaled-back project, one that would cut three of the proposed five drill sites and better protect calving grounds for the Teshekpuk Lake caribou.

A White House spokesman did not have an immediate comment.

The Willow proposal dates back to 1999, when the Clinton Administration signed the lease on Alaska’s North Slope. Oil wasn’t discovered there until 2017, and the Trump Administration quickly approved the project. Biden’s team seemed to agree with that thinking, at least until a judge said the environmental costs were not adequately considered and environmental groups separately sounded alarms. A Department of Interior draft impact study released in July appeared to game out how to move forward with the project, although supporters and opponents alike stressed that it was still very much in flux.

There’s good reason to suspect Biden is poised to make a decision on the Willow project. Because of Alaska’s treacherous conditions, much of the construction needs to happen during the winter months, when the roads are frozen and can accommodate heavy traffic. Warmer temperatures create messy roads that could pause work. In other words, if Biden doesn’t sign off on the project soon, it will languish for another year.

“We’re running out of time to be able to do construction this winter,” says Nagruk Harcharek, the new president of Voice of the Arctic Inupiat, a regional council advocating for North Slope communities. “A lot of the construction on the North Slope requires the winter season for ice roads. And if we get too far into February, they’ll have to put it off until next year.”

That would mean delayed—if not totally unrealized—revenue for local governments and allies, the kind of money that proponents say could prove transformative for a region that isn’t exactly teeming with new opportunities. “We want to be able to live in the communities that we have so that we can then practice our subsistence culture and be able to go out and hunt in our lands that we grew up on,” Harcharek told me last week. “I remember growing up as a kid, we used to have honey buckets and we’d have to haul those out. Now we can flush our toilets.”

Biden, coming off a less-disappointing-than-expected midterm election season, may be better positioned to disappoint environmental groups than at any point in his presidency. The 2022 elections are barely in his rearview mirror, the 2024 races are still distant, and he can afford to take some incoming criticism from his friends. His allies are bracing for a potential decision, even if they still defend his broader environmental record as one to celebrate.

Playing into Biden’s decision-making here is the different promises he made as a candidate. While waging rhetorical war on the fossil fuel industry, he also vowed to listen to local communities, including Alaska Natives. As President, he promised to consider Native Americans’ requests and pledged to make sure they were on equal footing. So it’s hard for him to ignore that Alaska Natives are overwhelmingly in support of the project. Within days of her taking office over the summer, Rep. Mary Peltola—the first Alaska Native elected to serve in Congress and a Democrat—urged the Interior Department to approve the project as a way to demonstrate “the Administration’s commitment to addressing inflation, high energy costs, the need for greater energy security, and environmental justice initiatives.”

Ultimately, this is going to be Biden’s call, and his most enviro-minded advisers may have to calibrate their ambitions for scaling back the nation’s reliance on fossil fuels as energy prices remain high and the demand for cheap and easy power is not fading.

Biden’s campaign rhetoric won over younger voters and green ones, too. But the trail is one thing, and the art of governing is another one altogether. In that, Biden may have to compromise his own aspirations and accept a new oil drilling regime in a state already threatened mightily by climate change. It is unlikely to be a good look among the green activists, but Biden simply may be out of ways to dodge on this one.


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IT'S A PARKING LOT IN SPACE

Unexplained leak from docked Soyuz spacecraft cancels Russian ISS spacewalk


A stream of particles, which NASA says appears to be liquid and possibly coolant, sprays out of the Soyuz spacecraft on the International Space Station

Wed, December 14, 2022 
By Steve Gorman

(Reuters) -A routine spacewalk by two Russian cosmonauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) was called off as it was about to begin after flight controllers noticed a stream of liquid spewing from a docked Soyuz spacecraft, a NASA webcast showed.

The spray of fluid, which was visible in NASA's live video feed as a torrent of snowflake-like particles emanating from the rear section of the Soyuz MS-22 capsule, was described by a NASA commentator as a coolant leak.

NASA said none of the seven members of the current International Space Station (ISS) crew - three Russian cosmonauts, three U.S. NASA astronauts and a Japanese astronaut - was ever in any danger.

The mishap occurred just as two of the cosmonauts, crew commander Sergey Prokopyev and flight engineer Dimitri Petelin, were suited and preparing for a planned spacewalk to move a radiator from one module to another on the Russian segment of the ISS.

An official for Russia's mission control operations near Moscow was heard telling Prokopyev and Petelin in a radio transmission that their spacewalk was being canceled while engineers worked to determine the nature and origin of the leak.

The NASA commentator on the livestream, Rob Navias, broadcasting from NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, also said the spacewalk was called off because of the leak, which he said began about 7:45 p.m. EST (0145 GMT Thursday).

Navias said the Soyuz craft arrived at the space station in September, bringing Prokopyev, Petelin and U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio to the ISS, and has remained attached to the Earth-facing side of the orbital laboratory.

The spacewalk planned for Wednesday was postponed once before, in late November, because of faulty cooling pumps in the cosmonauts' spacesuits, Navias said.

The spacewalk was to be the 12th this year at the ISS and the 257th in the history of the 22-year-old platform for assembly, maintenance and upgrade work, according to NASA.

Navias said it was too soon to know what implications the leak might have for the integrity of that spacecraft, and whether it might pose any difficulties for returning crew to Earth at the end of their mission.

Five other spacecraft are parked at the space station - two SpaceX capsules (a Crew Dragon and Cargo Dragon), a Northrop Grumman Cygnus space freighter and two Russian resupply ships, Progress 81 and Progress 82.

The ISS, spanning the length of a U.S. football field and orbiting some 250 miles above Earth, has been continuously occupied since 2000, operated by a U.S.-Russian-led partnership that includes Canada, Japan and 11 European countries.

(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Joey Roulette in Washington. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

Ancient Galaxies Revealed by Webb Unveil Clues About What Happened Just After The Big Bang


Jeffrey Kluger
Tue, December 13, 2022 a

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden Discusses New James Webb Space Telescope

The main mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md in 2016. Credit - Getty Images; 2016 Getty Images

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has ticked a lot of boxes in the near year it’s been aloft. Fly safely to its appointed spot in space 1.6 million km (1 million mi.) from Earth? Check. Successfully deploy its mirror, scientific instruments, and tennis court-sized sun shield? Check. Begin returning eye-popping images like none ever seen before? Check.

Now, the Webb has delivered on its biggest promise to date. According to a new, not-yet peer-reviewed paper on the pre-publication website arXiv, and presented on Dec. 12 at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Webb’s mission control, the telescope has spotted and confirmed the four oldest galaxies ever seen—galaxies which date back an average of just 400 million years (some even earlier) after the Big Bang, which occurred 13.8 billion years ago.


“This is the way the galaxies would have appeared 13.4 billion years ago,” says lead author Brant Robertson, professor of astronomy and physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “[With Webb] you can rewind the clock and see them as they were back then. That’s what we’re trying to do by taking these observations: we’re looking back in time.”

The new findings show not only that galaxies started forming as early as 325 million years after the Big Bang, but that there are likely ones that are older still—bringing astronomers closer to discovering the actual birth date of the very first galaxies.

Read more: The James Webb Telescope Team: Innovator of the Year 2022

This discovery is the result of work conducted by the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), an international team of more than 80 astronomers from 10 countries who used 10 days of observation to study a deep field of 100,000 galaxies first imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2010. Apparent size, faintness, and distance of many of the galaxies suggested that they were fantastically old, but Hubble, which sees principally in visible light, didn’t have the instrumentation to image them clearly or determine their age. That’s because visible light from so far away can’t easily penetrate the intervening dust of interstellar space. Infrared radiation, however, cuts right through the dust. This allows Webb— a telescope which detects energy in that frequency—to see as far as 13.6 billion light-years distant.

Using two instruments aboard the Webb—the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec)—Robertson and his colleagues focused on four galaxies that appeared especially small, faint, and distant, studying what is known as their red shift. As objects move toward us in space, the wavelength of light they emit is compressed, shifting it to the bluer end of the visible spectrum. As objects move away from us, the wavelength is stretched, shifting it toward the red end. The redder an object appears, the more distant and old it is in our still-expanding universe.

Red shift is a tricky thing to measure, because it has no particular units like inches or nanometers. Instead, it is just a number that indicates how stretched the wavelength of the light is. An object like Jupiter, which is pretty much stationary in the sky relative to Earth, has a red shift of zero. The higher the number, the greater the movement of an object away from Earth. The cosmic background radiation, a burst of universe-wide energy that was released just 380,000 years or so after the Big Bang has a red shift of about 1,100.

“For most galaxies,” says Robertson, “the highest red shifts [or the oldest galaxies] we had spectra for were at six, seven, or eight.”

Against those relatively modest standards, the four galaxies Robertson’s team imaged blew the doors off the old record, weighing in with red shifts of 10.38, 11.58, 12.63, and 13.2. Those numbers put the galaxies on a continuum from about 450 million years after the Big Bang—13.35 billion years ago—to 325 million years after the Big Band, or 13.475 billion years ago.

“These are well beyond what we could have imagined finding before [Webb],” said Robertson in a statement accompanying the release of the paper.

Read more: Scientists Learn More About the History of Stars in Latest Webb Telescope Images

The galaxies are impressive by dint their age, but not by dint of their size and mass. “The Milky Way is a few tens of billions of times the mass of the sun in stars,” says Robertson. “These galaxies are 100 million to a billion times the mass of the sun in stars.”

The explanation for that is a straightforward one. Astronomers don’t yet know exactly when the first dust and gas began to accrete into galactic clouds, and stars then accreted within them, but the newly measured quartet emerged very early in that process. “The universe just wasn’t building big galaxies at that point,” Robertson says. “There was not a lot of time [for larger galaxies to form].”

The team not only measured the mass of the galaxies, but also used the NIRSpec to determine their chemical makeup. As would be expected for galaxies so early in their development phase, the principle components were hydrogen and helium, without enough time for the early stars within them to have developed heavier elements. “They are relatively metal-poor,” says Robertson, “with fewer heavy elements compared to the sun.”

The findings as a whole, promise still bigger discoveries—and still older galaxies—to come in the 20-some years Webb is expected to remain operational. “For us, this really was a paradigm shift in the way we were thinking about the high-red shift universe,” says Robertson. “Because we know for certain that there are some galaxies to be studied only a couple of hundred million years after the Big Bang.”

Unilever says litigation with Ben & Jerry's board has 'been resolved'


Ben & Jerry's, a brand of Unilever, is seen on display in a store in Manhattan, New York City

Thu, December 15, 2022 
By Richa Naidu and Jessica DiNapoli

LONDON (Reuters) -Unilever said on Thursday that its litigation with the independent board of Ben & Jerry's over the sale of its Israeli ice cream business has "been resolved".

The company did not provide details of how the litigation had been resolved.

Unilever in June sold its Ben & Jerry's ice cream business in Israel and the West Bank to its local licensee, Avi Zinger, for an undisclosed sum. The next month, Ben & Jerry's filed a lawsuit against a Unilever subsidiary to try to block the sale.

The Vermont-based ice cream brand said last year it no longer wanted to sell its products in the occupied West Bank because it was inconsistent with its values. Ben & Jerry's products have been for sale in Israel for decades.

In an updated lawsuit filed in September, Ben & Jerry's said it was seeking damages and wanted the trademarks returned. The company also asked a judge to stop Zinger from selling the ice cream in the West Bank.

Ben & Jerry's declined to comment and Ben & Jerry's independent board did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"I am pleased that the litigation between Unilever and the independent Board of Ben & Jerrys has been resolved," Avi Zinger said in a statement on Thursday.

"There is no change to the agreement I made with Unilever earlier in the year. I look forward to continuing to produce and sell the great tasting Ben & Jerry’s ice cream under the Hebrew and Arabic trademarks throughout Israel and the West Bank long into the future."

(Reporting by Richa Naidu; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Barbara Lewis)

GOOD NEWS

Previously extinct bird, gecko populations from the Galapagos Islands have reappeared

JULIA JACOBO
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Two species that were previously extinct on the Galapagos Islands have reappeared a decade after an invasive predator population was eradicated, showing how impactful restoring and re-wilding ecosystems can be for addressing some of the world's environmental and biodiversity crises, according to scientists.

Locally extinct cactus finches and geckos are now "thriving" in their restored habitats, according to biologists who recently traveled to the Rabida and Pinzon islands in the Galapagos to monitor the wildlife recovery 10 years after the removal of an invasive rodent species, according to Island Conservation, a nonprofit organization that focuses on preventing extinctions by removing invasive species from islands.

MORE: Galapagos giant tortoise has so much sex he retires after saving his species

There have been frequent sightings of the cactus finches on Pinzon Island, a species considered extinct from the region for more than four decades.

A healthy population of geckos, known only from subfossil records dating back more than 5,000 years, have recolonized Rabida Island. Scientists believe that they were likely present but in such small numbers that they weren't able to track the populations, Paula Castano, native species manager at Island Conservation, told ABC News.

PHOTO: A Cactus Finch. (Island Conservation)

Scientists have also documented the presence of Galapagos rails, known locally as pachays, an endemic bird never before reported on this island, on the upper part of Pinzon Island. The researchers believe the rails could have migrated from Santiago Island, another island in the Galapagos, and has now found Pinzon Island to be the ideal habitat to establish itself now that the invasive predatory species is gone.

MORE: Tortoise thought to be extinct for more than 100 years discovered in Galapagos Islands

For decades, perhaps even centuries, invasive rodents such as the black rat and the Norwegian rat, devoured native species and destroyed the natural ecosystems on Pinzon and Rabida Islands, located in the center of the Galapagos archipelago.

The first known black and Norwegian rats likely arrived in the Galapagos beginning in the 1500s, when pirates and buccaneers would travel and move between the islands, Castano said. Additional rodents likely traveled with Charles Darwin when he arrived on the islands in 1835, Castano added.

"And at that time, nobody was paying attention to if these animals were establishing and causing any problems to these native and endemic species," she said. "But, it has caused a lot of damage."

PHOTO: A healthy population of geckos, known only from subfossil records dating back more than five thousand years, have recolonized Rabida Island. (Island Conservation)

Therefore, many of the native species did not have the mechanisms to cope with the threat, Castano said.

The rodents were removed with the use of anticoagulant rodenticides, a process that took years to implement in order to protect native species, Castano said.

MORE: World's largest bee photographed after vanishing for decades

On Nov. 21, a technical team led by park rangers from the Galapagos National Park Directorate and Island Conservation, with support from the Jocotoco Foundation and the University of Idaho, carried out an ecological evaluation to record plant and animal recovery on the Galapagos Islands.

The team will use the data they collected to determine the degree of ecological restoration that the two islands currently maintain by comparing it to data collected prior to removal of the invasive rodents.

The stability of the islands’ natural ecosystems has experienced "much positive change" following the removal of the invasive rodents, including a return of ecosystem processes that provide a safe habitat for native plants and animals -- much of them either existing in low populations or considered locally extinct, the nonprofit announced in a press release on Wednesday.

PHOTO: A Little vermillion flycatcher. (Island Conservation)

Every time an ecosystem loses a species it becomes imbalanced, highlighting the importance of conservation and maintenance of invasive species, Castano said.

"The management measures implemented on these islands in recent decades have been effective and today we can see the results," said Danny Rueda Cordova, director of the Galapagos National Park, in a statement. "The islands have once again become the habitat of endemic species of great importance to the ecosystem.”

Local communities are also rooting for the sustainability of the islands, because their livelihoods rely heavily on the tourism industry and conservation efforts, Castano said.

In recent years, the giant tortoise, thought to be extinct for more than 150 years, has returned to nest on Pinzon Island, Cordova said.

"Because of our work to remove invasive rodents, the population now reproduces naturally without human intervention," he said.

Report: Native Hawaiians hit by missing and murdered scourge

A new report says the scourge of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada and the U.S. mainland also has been devastating for Native Hawaiian girls and women

ByJENNIFER SINCO KELLEHER

 Associated Press
December 14, 2022

Makanalani Gomes, of AF3IRM, a feminist and decolonization organization, holds a fist in the air as she discusses a report on missing and murdered Native Hawaiian women, Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2022 in Honolulu. 

(AP Photo/Jennifer Sinco Kelleher)
The Associated Press

HONOLULU -- The average profile of a missing child in Hawaii: 15 years old, female, from the island of Oahu and Native Hawaiian. That's according to a report released Wednesday that says much more disaggregated racial and gender data is needed to combat the scourge of missing and murdered Native Hawaiian women.

Key findings of the report, the first of its kind released by a task force created by the state Legislature last year to investigate the issue, include that more than a quarter of missing girls in Hawaii are Native Hawaiian and that members of the U.S. military play an outsized role in the sexual exploitation of children in the state.

Similar studies have shown that Indigenous women in Canada and the U.S. mainland are murdered or go missing at rates disproportionate to their size of the population. While the disturbing trend held for Native Hawaiian girls, a comparable, reliable statistic for Native Hawaiian women eluded the task force because of lacking data, said Nikki Cristobal, the report's principal investigator. The task force was created amid renewed calls for people to pay more attention to missing and killed Indigenous women and girls and other people of color after the 2021 disappearance of Gabby Petito, a white woman, triggered widespread national media coverage and extensive searches by law enforcement. Petito’s body was later found in Wyoming.

One of the difficulties in addressing the issue, is that determining the true scale can be difficult because many cases have gone unreported or have not been well-documented or tracked. Public and private agencies also don’t always collect statistics on race. And some data groups together Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders, making it nearly impossible to identify the degree to which Hawaii’s Indigenous people are affected. About 20% of the state’s population is Native Hawaiian.

Several states formed similar panels after a groundbreaking report by the Urban Indian Health Institute found that of more than 5,700 cases of missing and slain Indigenous girls in dozens of U.S. cities in 2016, only 116 were recorded in a Justice Department database.

Wyoming’s task force determined that 710 Indigenous people disappeared in that state between 2011 and September 2020 and that Indigenous people made up 21% of homicide victims even though they make up only 3% of the population. In Minnesota, a task force led to the creation of a dedicated office to provide ongoing attention and leadership on the issue.

Agencies such as the state, police departments and the military need to do better at collecting and retaining disaggregated data, Cristobal said.

“Native Hawaiian women and girls are displaced not only through violence, but also through data collection across departments and across islands,” she said.

One of the more disturbing findings of the report was the role of servicemembers in the abuse of children. Publicly available data in 2022 showed that 38% of those arrested for soliciting sex online from law enforcement posing as a 13-year-old during undercover operations were active-duty military personnel, the report said.

In response to a request for comment on the findings, a Department of Defense duty officer said late in the day Wednesday that the message was being forwarded to the right person.

Violence such as “selling and buying girls for sex on military bases, hotels, game rooms, massage parlors and in our own communities," impact Native Hawaiians at much higher rates than other populations, Cristobal said.

The findings are startling but not new, said Khara Jabola-Carolus, executive director of the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women and the task force's co-chair.

“Instead, it vindicates and validates what Native Hawaiians, sex trafficking and gender-based violence service providers and feminist activists have been saying all along and have been told that they were exaggerating or manipulating facts or just simply providing an anecdote,” she said.

HAWAII'S SILENT SCREAMS: Shocking report reveals horrific truth behind missing and murdered native women

By Meenakshi Sengupta

Dec 15, 2022

Mary Johnson, an Indigenous woman, went missing in 2020 and is yet to be found (FBI)

HAWAII, US: The ‘Missing and Murdered Native Hawaiian Women and Girls’ (MMNHWG) report, published on December 14, provides new insight into a growing problem in the islands. The average profile of a missing child from the island of Oahu and Native Hawaiian is "15-year-old, female,” according to the report. The report also reveals "indigenous women and girls, including Native Hawaiians, experience violence at much higher rates than other populations in the United States." They are 10 times more likely to be murdered than women from other ethnic groups.

According to the shocking report, 43% of sex trafficking victims are Kānaka Maoli girls, who are trafficked in Waikīkī, O‘ahu. The report also contains worrying statistics from law enforcement operations. For example, it states 38 percent of those arrested for “soliciting sex from a thirteen-year-old online through Operation Keiki Shield are active-duty military personnel.” Besides, "25 percent of the offenders arrested in March 2019 operation, which was not a 'military op' and which was the only documented non-military Operation Keiki Shield operation on O‘ahu since 2019, were military men," the report adds. 

Nikki Cristobal, the MMNHWG report’s principal investigator, said that there have been similar studies that show indigenous women in Canada and the US mainland are murdered or go missing at rates disproportionate to the size of the actual population. She added that a comparable, reliable statistic for Native Hawaiian women ignored the task force, which was created after people demanded more attention to missing and killed indigenous women and girls and other people of color after the 2021 disappearance of Gabby Petito, because of a lack of data, as per The Seattle Times.

Primary causes and challenges

The outlet states that the biggest challenge is that many cases don't get reported, and those that do are not well-documented or tracked. Moreover, public and private agencies don’t always collect statistics on race. The lack of disaggregated data is complicated by the inconsistencies in racial definitions when race data is collected. The Seattle Times reports that about 20 percent of the state’s population is Native Hawaiian.

Kerri Colfer, who is Tlingit and the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center’s senior native affairs adviser, said she has come across situations where law enforcement officers have victim-blamed Native women and were not prompt enough to investigate or declare them missing. She said, “That often means that the families end up leading the searches for their missing relatives before law enforcement even tries to get involved. And obviously, that is retraumatizing for families,” according to The Guardian

What's the cause? 

A lack of coverage. Dr Patty Loew, professor at Northwestern University’s journalism school and director of its Center for Native American and Indigenous Research, said the lack of coverage is driven by many factors, including the misclassification of Native women. He told The Guardian, "I think news prefers people that sort of stay within the system and people of color who are assimilatory and want equal rights – that’s something we understand. But I think reporters don’t really understand sovereignty, and people who have a political identity that exists outside the mainstream.”

The case of Mary Johnson

The disappearance of Tulalip tribal member Mary Johnson received very little attention. She was last seen on November 25, 2020, and was reported missing on December 9, 2020, by her estranged husband. There has been no update about her whereabouts so far. Nona Blouin, Johnson’s older sister, told CNN in 2021, "If that was a little White girl out there or a White woman, I’m sure they would have had helicopters, airplanes and dogs and searches – a lot of manpower out there – scouring where that person was lost. None of that has happened for our sister.”

The disparity

Commenting on the tremendous publicity of cases like Petito, including Natalee Holloway and Laci Peterson, journalist Mara Schiavocampo said, “This actually has real-life implications for women of color. Why? This makes them less safe because perpetrators, predators, know that if you want to get away with murder, you seek the victim that no one is going to look for.”

The Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center reports that white people are more likely to have an article written about them while they are still alive. Approximately 76 percent of articles written about white victims are published while the victim is still alive, but 42 percent of articles written about indigenous victims come out after they are found dead.

THE PURPOSE OF SEX MAGICK

What is Pansexuality? 

Plus 8 Signs You Might Be Pansexual

Story by Natalie Harmsen • Slice TV


Curly-haired women holding the pansexual pride flag© Pexels

When it comes to sexuality, there are a number of ways people can identify. While you might understand what it means to be heterosexual, bisexual or asexual, one of the lesser-known terms is pansexuality. Read on to learn more about the term, what it means to be pansexual and signs you may want to consider if you’re figuring out your sexuality and think you might be pansexual.

See also: LGBTQ2S+ terms you keep hearing and what they mean.

What does ‘pansexuality’ mean?

If you’re unfamiliar with the term pansexuality, a person who is pansexual is attracted to all genders, whether the attraction is romantic or sexual.

According to scholar Ayisigi Hale Gonel, the term pansexual comes from the Latin root “pan,” meaning “all,” and is defined by an attraction to individuals of all genders and sexes (or, as Dan Levy so succinctly put it in an episode of Schitt’s Creek: “I like the wine and not the label”). It’s not that you’re attracted to every single person you meet if you’re pansexual, but rather it’s possible for you to find people of any gender desirable.

How can you tell if you’re pan? Trying to figure out your sexuality is a journey that is ongoing how you identify may change over time. If you’re questioning whether you’re pansexual, we’ve rounded up some signs that could be useful to help you figure it out.

You may also like: Asexuality vs. aromanticism – what you need to know.

You’re attracted to who people are on the inside

It might seem obvious, but if you’ve found yourself attracted to people of all genders, there’s a good chance you might be pansexual. This doesn’t mean you’re attracted to everyone, but instead, that you could potentially see yourself with someone, regardless of their gender or identity. Schitt’s Creek star Emily Hampshire, who is pansexual, opened up about her attraction to others in Passport Magazine, explaining, “I don’t fall for people because of their bodies — I fall for them because of who they are.”

Related: 11 celebrities who are owning their pansexual identity.



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The bisexual label doesn’t really fit you

According to a study from the Graduate Journal of Social Science, pansexuality differs from bisexuality because the understanding of attraction is not limited to social constructs of men or women. People who identify as pan aren’t only attracted to those two genders, although some of them may have identified as bisexual first, before realizing that the pansexual label fits them better. Bella Thorne is one example – after learning what pansexuality was, the star felt it was a better fit than identifying as bisexual. “You like what you like,” she told Good Morning America.

See also: 21 sex myths everyone thinks are true.

You might not identify as cisgender

While this isn’t the case for all pansexual individuals, many people, such as Miley Cyrus and Madison Bailey, are both cisgender and pansexual – in fact, one study from The Journal of Sex Research found that people adopting queer and pansexual identities were more likely to be non-cisgender. Again, this doesn’t mean every non-cis person identifies as pansexual, but according to the research, it tends to be more common.

You may also like: 10 signs you’re probably asexual.



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You’ve been attracted to someone without knowing their pronouns or sexual orientation

Without assuming someone’s gender, if you’ve found yourself attracted to someone without knowing how they identify, you likely have the potential to be attracted to different genders. That potential indicates that someone’s gender likely isn’t a factor when it comes to your attraction.

Related: 11 ways to be a respectful LGBTQ2S+ ally.

You see gender and attraction as being fluid

This might not be true for all pansexual people, but in a study from Sexual and Relationship Therapy, participants who used pansexual as a term or identity allowed “enough openness in terms of self and in terms of attraction to others that the fluidity of gender and erotic desire itself became a central feature organizing their identities.” In other words, for pansexual people, fluidity often matters when it comes to how they identify.

See also: Celebrity coming out stories that will make you cry tears of pride.



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You see pansexuality as being inclusive

In a study from the Journal of Bisexuality, some people conflated being bisexual with being pansexual. However, because pansexuality involves the ability to be attracted to any person, it’s often seen as being more inclusive. If you’re leaning towards the label because you feel it better captures the variety of people you’re attracted to, it’s a sign it might be a good fit for how you want to express yourself.

Related: 10 different LGBTQ2S+ Pride flags and the meaning behind them.

You don’t identify as onmisexual

Although the terms are similar, pansexual people can be attracted to anyone regardless of their gender, while omnisexuals can potentially have a preference while still being attracted to people across the gender spectrum. According to clinical sex therapist Casey Tanner, “Pansexuality is more gender-blind, while with omnisexuality, gender influences the type or strength of attraction to each gender.”

See also: LGBTQ2S+ celebs leading the way for positive representation.


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Your ideal partner doesn’t have a specific gender

When you try to picture who you dream of ending up with, that person doesn’t necessarily look like a Hollywood star such as Michael B. Jordan or Megan Fox. Maybe you envision yourself with different people, or you can’t picture one person at all. Whatever the case, being open to different people and not being tied to one idea of who you want to end up with could indicate a possibility that you’re open to all genders.

BAPHOMET 

TRANS RIGHTS ARE WORKERS RIGHTS

3 sue to strike Georgia ban on transgender care for workers

JEFF AMY
Wed, December 14, 2022 

ATLANTA (AP) — Two state employees and a public school media clerk are suing the state of Georgia, saying state health insurance illegally discriminates by refusing to pay for gender-transition health care.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Atlanta on Wednesday by Micha Rich, Benjamin Johnson and an anonymous state employee suing on behalf of her adult child.

They argue Georgia's State Health Benefit Plan, which insures more than 660,000 state government and public school employees and retirees, is breaking federal law.

“The exclusion not only harms the health and finances of transgender people seeking gender dysphoria treatment, it also reinforces the stigma attached to being transgender, suffering from gender dysphoria and seeking a gender transition,” the lawsuit argues. “The exclusion communicates to transgender persons and to the public that their state government deems them unworthy of equal treatment.”

The plaintiffs said the rule should be overturned and they should be repaid for the money they spent on procedures not covered by insurance. They have also requested money damages and attorneys’ fees.

The Department of Community Health, which administers the plan, declined comment, according to spokesperson Fiona Roberts.

The lawsuit cites a 2020 Supreme Court ruling that treating someone differently because they are transgender or gay violates a section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex. The plaintiffs in that case included an employee of Georgia's Clayton County.

The suit also argues that Georgia's actions violate the 14th Amendment right to equal protection, and that in the case of Johnson, violate federal prohibitions against sex discrimination in education.

It's the fourth in a line of lawsuits against Georgia agencies to force them to pay for gender-confirmation surgery and other procedures. State and local governments have lost or settled the previous suits, changing rules to pay for transgender care.

The University System of Georgia paid $100,000 in damages in addition to changing its rules in 2019 when it settled a case brought by a University of Georgia catering manager. A jury in September ordered Houston County to pay $60,000 in damages to a sheriff’s deputy after a federal judge ruled her bosses illegally denied the deputy health coverage for gender-confirmation surgery.

The Department of Community Health, which also oversees the State Health Benefit Plan, agreed to change the rules of Georgia’s Medicaid program in April to settle a lawsuit by two Medicaid beneficiaries.

The lawsuit comes as some other states seek to ban all gender-confirming care for children. Georgia could consider such a ban next year.

The plaintiffs include three transgender men. Micha Rich is a staff accountant at the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts. Benjamin Johnson is a media clerk with the Bibb County School District in Macon. The mother of the third man, identified only as John Doe, is a Division of Family and Children Services administrative support worker in suburban Paulding County and covers the college student on her insurance.

All three were assigned as women at birth but transitioned after therapy. All three were seeking top surgery to reduce or remove breasts. All three appealed their denials and won findings from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission that Georgia was discriminating against them. The U.S. Department of Justice also started an investigation.

“They did not accept our invitation to negotiate an end to their discrimination without litigation — and, plainly, they didn’t remove the exclusion,” wrote David Brown, legal director for Transgender Legal Defense & Education Fund, which is representing the plaintiffs..

In the meantime, Rich paid $11,200 for his surgery in 2021 and later declared bankruptcy. The Paulding County family paid $8,769 for John Doe's surgery and is still repaying loans. Both Rich and Doe also say the state also owes them for testosterone prescriptions. Johnson dropped his state insurance and bought coverage elsewhere, having surgery in September.

“My employer should not be able to deny me health care because of who I am,” Rich said in a statement. “For years, I had to put off living my life fully while I waited to have the medical treatments that my doctors and I knew I needed.”

In question are two health plans paid for by the state but administered by Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare.

The lawsuit states insurers told the department in 2016 that transgender exclusions were discriminatory. It also says a state lawyer told health plan leadership in July 2020 that a court would likely find the rule illegal.

“Yet the defendants have knowingly and intentionally maintained the exclusion year after year, long after it became plain — and the SBHP itself concluded — that doing so is unlawful discrimination," the lawsuit states.

A recent court ruling found a similar ban in North Carolina to be illegal. The state is appealing. A Wisconsin ban was overturned in 2018. West Virginia and Iowa have also lost lawsuits over employee coverage, Brown said, while Florida and Arizona are being sued.

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Follow Jeff Amy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/jeffamy.

Puerto Rican independence bill goes to U.S. House vote on Thursday



Wed, December 14, 2022 at 5:03 PM·2 min read
By Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Puerto Ricans could move a step closer to a referendum on whether the island should become a U.S. state, an independent country or have another type of government when the House of Representatives votes Thursday on a bill outlining the process.

A House committee approved the Puerto Rico Status Act on Wednesday, paving the way for the full House vote.

The legislation lays out terms of a plebiscite as well as three potential self-governing statuses - independence, full U.S. statehood or sovereignty with free association with the United States. The latter is in place in Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands.

Puerto Rico, which has about 3.3 million people and high rates of poverty, became a U.S. territory in 1898. Activists have campaigned for greater self-determination including statehood for decades.

There have been six referendums on the topic since the 1960s, but they were nonbinding. Only Congress can grant statehood.

"After 124 years of colonialism Puerto Ricans deserve a fair, transparent, and democratic process to finally solve the status question," Representative Nydia Velazquez, a Democratic cosponsor of the bill, said on Twitter.

The Caribbean island's citizens are Americans but do not have voting representation in Congress, cannot vote in presidential elections, do not pay federal income tax on income earned on the island and do not have the same eligibility for some federal programs as other U.S. citizens.

If the bill passes the House, it will need 60 votes in the closely divided Senate and Democratic President Joe Biden's signature to become law.

The legislation has the support of lawmakers of both parties and Puerto Rican officials.

But time is running out as lawmakers have a full agenda before a vacation at the end of next week. A new Congress with a Republican-controlled House will be sworn in on Jan. 3, at which point any legislative process would have to start over.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton in Washington; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

With the clock ticking, Puerto Rico status bill faces uncertain prospects


Rafael Bernal

The Hill
Wed, December 14, 2022 

A bill to allow Puerto Ricans an open vote on their status is up in the air, as competing political forces from San Juan to Washington wrestle over a dying deal that months ago was hailed as a generational breakthrough.

The Puerto Rico Status Act cleared the House Natural Resources Committee in July, raising hopes among supporters that it would quickly receive a House vote and go to the Senate.

The bill has sat on the back burner for months, and now its proponents face a choice between a likely symbolic House floor vote and a full reset as Republicans take over that chamber.

At the bill’s core is a deal between Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) and Resident Commissioner Jenniffer González-Colón (R-P.R.) to hold a binding referendum for Puerto Ricans to choose between statehood, independence, or independence followed by free association with the United States.

That deal — a historical first between people who represent opposite ends of the Puerto Rican political spectrum — was brokered by outgoing Majority Leader Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), for whom the bill is a legacy item.

But as the last chance for the bill to see a House floor vote approaches, new pressure points are breaking out and putting the vote at risk.

For one, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), who played a role in negotiations in Velázquez’s corner, has irked González by proposing amendments perceived as poison pills by many of the bill’s supporters.

That’s led to recriminations from González against Ocasio-Cortez.

“We arrived at agreements, and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t respect or validate or validate those agreements, after having been there for two press conferences — I think that’s an intention to water down the project so nothing is passed,” González-Colón told The Hill last week.

“It’s sad for a person who lives in New York, who doesn’t live in Puerto Rico, keeps in suspense 3.2 million U.S. citizens who live on the island, in a permanent colony,” she added.

Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response that if González “has something real to say she can tell me in person.”

Still, the bill’s key proponents are pushing for a vote despite the infighting.

“We finally have real momentum to bring this bill to the floor. Yes, of course we should still pass it out of the House during this Congress. It’s critical to move this bill as far as we can. Americans in Puerto Rico deserve nothing less,” said Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.), a statehood supporter who backed González in negotiations.

And many statehood proponents outside of Congress are eager to see the bill pass, if only to keep the status conversation alive.

“There’s an opportunity for the broader American public to be aware of this as an issue that needs to be addressed, and so that people in Puerto Rico as well as stateside Puerto Rican voters, can know that Congress is really interested in doing something about this,” said George Laws García, executive director of the Puerto Rico Statehood Council.

But some in the statehood movement are getting cold feet, arguing that the bill’s core deal could lead voters astray.

The bill allows for a self-executing, binding referendum — if the bill became law the referendum would go ahead as a matter of federal law — that would give Puerto Ricans the opportunity to choose between statehood, independence and independence followed by free association with the United States.

Under the bill, most Puerto Ricans would keep their U.S. citizenship under any of the choices, a provision that many detractors say might not be enforceable.

The bill also lacks detail on a number of issues, like the language of business in Puerto Rican courts and schools if statehood were to win.

“I think it’s a missed opportunity, not because it’s a bad bill, it just has incomplete information in the process that led to it. Again, so rushed, no hearings, no complete discussion on amendments, really has brought us here. So maybe that’s a recognition that they just rushed it through in a bad way,” said Federico de Jesús, the chief lobbyist for Power 4 Puerto Rico.

But for some statehood proponents, offering U.S. citizenship with the two forms of independence was a mistake.

“The practical effect of that is you can have many young people, particularly followers of Bad Bunny, who might believe that utopia. It’s not that free association or independence will win, it’s that it will take votes away from statehood,” said Andrés Córdova, a law professor at Inter American University of Puerto Rico.

Rapper Bad Bunny has come out as a top voice against statehood, essentially arguing that joining the United States in full would harm Puerto Rico’s national identity.

And two prominent supporters of statehood who requested anonymity to speak frankly told The Hill the political timing no longer made sense for passage of the bill.

Those statehooders said a bill passed by an outgoing Democratic House majority was more likely to alienate Republicans than keep the issue alive in Washington, all the while agreeing with Córdova that the bill’s concessions unnecessarily weaken the argument for statehood.

Still, the bill’s proponents want to see a House floor vote, regardless of its slim prospects in the Senate, among other things to prove that the United States is moving in the right direction to respect the right to self determination for its colonized citizens and nationals.

“You know, there’s slim prospects in the Senate, always. We passed a bill, as you recall some years ago, at my instance when I was majority leader the first time. That bill passed the House, it did not get consideration in the Senate. I think the bill has greater prospects in the Senate today. But at bottom is the principle that Americans and our country support, and that is the self-determination of peoples,” Hoyer told reporters Tuesday.

“It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing. I want to do the right thing,” added Hoyer.