CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M BIG PHARMA

India bars Marion Biotech from making drugs after cough syrup deaths in Uzbekistan

By Patrick Hilsman

Marion Biotech was barred from making drugs by the Indian Ministry of Health on Thursday after reports that 18 children in Uzbekistan died after consuming cough syrup manufactured by the company. Photo by Steffen Frank/Pixabay

Dec. 30 (UPI) -- Scandal-plagued Indian drug manufacturer Marion Biotech has been suspended from the Pharmaceuticals Export Promotion Council, also known as the Pharmexcil, the government-associated body that oversees pharmaceutical exports from India.

"The suspension of membership of Marion Biotech Pvt Ltd came into effect from December 29. The Pharmexcil has taken the decision after the company failed to reply to the council on a report on Uzbekistan's claim over the deaths of 18 children due to cough syrups of Marion Biotech Pvt Ltd," Pharmexcil director general Udaya Bhaskar said, according to the news agency ANI.

At least 18 children died after consuming Doc-1 Max, a cough syrup manufactured by Marion Biotech in India, the health ministry of Uzbekistan said Tuesday. The ministry said the batch of syrup consumed by the children contained ethylene glycol, a toxic substance.

The Indian Health Ministry barred Marion Biotech from producing medication on Thursday, until an investigation into the deaths is complete.

In addition to the deaths in Uzbekistan, 70 children died in Gambia after consuming a different brand of Indian-manufactured cough syrup earlier this year. The cough syrup that was responsible for the deaths in Gambia is suspected to have also contained ethylene glycol.

India is the worlds largest exporter of generic medication by volume.

Former software engineer charged for theft scheme inspired by 'Office Space' film

By Adam Schrader

Dec. 30 (UPI) -- A former Seattle software engineer has been charged with theft for a scheme to steal more than $300,000 from the online shopping company Zulily that was inspired by the 1999 black comedy film "Office Space."

Ermenildo Valdez Castro, 28, planned the scheme to steal shipping fees charged by his employer inspired by the plot of the Mike Judge film, according to police records obtained by KIRO and CNN.

In the film, which satirizes the office culture of a typical software firm in the 1990s, Ron Livingston's character Peter Gibbons undergoes personality-altering hypnosis that drives him into professional apathy. He conspires with two fellow disgruntled workers to steal from their employer in a series of microtransactions that divert fractions of pennies into a separate bank account.

Castro, who began working for Zulily in December 2018, allegedly started making changes to the online retail company's software earlier this year, according to police records.

His code allegedly applied a small percentage to Zulily customer checkouts and sent the shipping fees associated with those purchases to a bank account he controlled.

When Zulily began an internal investigation, Castro allegedly wrote a new code that double-charged some customers for shipping and sent the fees to Zulily and his separate account.

Castro allegedly planned the scheme in a OneNote document on his work laptop titled "OfficeSpace Project" and told police that his scheme was inspired by the film.

He was arrested by police in June but charges of theft in the first degree and identity theft in the first degree were not filed by prosecutors until Dec. 20, CNN reported.

Castro was fired from his job in June after members of the company's corporate security team found boxes that had contained stolen merchandise outside of his home.

Mallori Johnson: 'Kindred' captures heaviness of Octavia E. Butler's time-travel tale

By Karen Butler

Mallori Johnson stars in "Kindred. Photo courtesy of FX

NEW YORK, Dec. 27 (UPI) -- Actress Mallori Johnson said she always was keenly aware of the gravity anchoring her TV adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's 1979 novel Kindred, which follows Dana, a modern-day Black woman who time-travels to the Antebellum South.

All eight episodes of the series are streaming via FX on Hulu.

"There's this line that she says, 'It's almost like a video game.' There are these moments where it hits you what this is -- that people who looked like me truly experienced inhumane awful suffering, and I have to take that on and carry that in my body," Johnson recently said about playing Dana in a New York Comic Con panel discussion.

"There were moments when I was like: 'Yeah, OK, I'm in my script. I'm doing my thing. I'm figuring out my circumstances.' And then, there were moments where I'm doing a scene and I'm like: 'Oh, my God. I can feel the presence of my ancestors here,'" she recalled.

"There was something in the land, particularly, because we were filming in Georgia. I would look down at the lake or I would touch the ground, and I could feel this heaviness. It's devastating."

Writer and executive producer Branden Jacobs-Jenkins confirmed the show was filmed on property most likely worked by Black slaves more than 200 years ago.

"There was a general sense of uncanniness always around us," Jacobs-Jenkins said about the African American members of the cast and crew.

"That's part of the tension of the show -- taking contemporary sensibilities and placing it back there and being forced to call into question the assumption of our superiority or our safety and security."

Jacobs-Jenkins pointed to Episode 2 in which Dana keeps forgetting it is not socially permissible to look White people in the eyes in this time and place.

"But that was a real thing," he emphasized. "That's a small thing, but a profound thing to see someone negotiate because we're just so used to being present with each other on equal terms."

Micah Stock, who plays Dana's White boyfriend, Kevin, acknowledged it is rare that an actor is offered an exciting role that also feels like "an awakening of sorts."

"The questions that Kindred asks, [Butler] was brave enough to ask decades before people were willing to do so," Stock said.

"In time-travel stories that we've seen before, people who travel back in time are like, 'I know exactly what to do.' What Octavia explored in her book and what Branden highlighted in his version was what would be the real response to this?" he said, referring to how Kevin eventually accompanies Dana on her trips to the past.

"Kevin fumbles and tries to respond to it the right way, the strongest way, but he sometimes fails because he is thrown into a situation that is unknowable and utterly terrifying."

Jacobs-Jenkins agreed this human authenticity gives even more dimension to the sci-fi-historical fiction story.

"The journey of Dana and Kevin trying to manage this drag is the source of a lot of strangeness and humor and absurdity in the show," he said, alluding to how Dana and Kevin try to pretend they belong in the past so they can help the people they meet there.

The showrunner said he regards himself as "the luckiest fan in history" because he was able to give a book that has meant so much to him "its next iteration."

"On some deeply nerd level, actually, I'm just interested in conversations with other fans," he said.

"There are really devotees who have been following and championing this work and really meditating about her legacy and her philosophy for so much of her life, a lot of creatives and activists, too. This is super-duper wild. This is not just a fan event, it is a literary event."

Johnson added: "I'm just proud to be a part of a project that gives Octavia Butler her flowers, which she never got while she was alive.

"That's such a wonderful and beautiful thing. She was one of the first African American women to create stories that were expansive for Black people, and that's something that I strive to do -- cultivate a world of possibility for us.

"We don't have to just watch our history, we can actually change it. I think that's what the story is for me, and I felt grateful."

Butler died in 2006 at age 58.

NASA: New topography satellite masts unfurl successfully

By Clyde Hughes

This illustration shows the SWOT spacecraft with its antenna mast and solar arrays fully deployed. Photo courtesy of NASA

Dec. 29 (UPI) -- NASA said on Wednesday that the large mast and antenna panels on its new Surface Water and Ocean Topography satellite successfully unfurled last week over a four-day process.

The satellite, also known as SWOT, was designed to capture precise measurements of the height of water in Earth's freshwater bodies and the ocean. It will also collect data on lakes and reservoirs larger than 15 acres and rivers wider than 330 feet across.

Two cameras aboard the satellite captured the mast and antenna panels being deployed. The masts unfolded from opposite sides of the spacecraft but the cameras stopped short of capturing the antennas at the ends of the masts being fully deployed.

NASA was able to confirm that task with telemetry data.

The satellite was jointly developed by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Études Spatiales, CNES, with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the British Space Agency.

A SpaceX 9 rocket blasted the satellite into space earlier this month.

"Once in orbit, SWOT will measure the height of water in freshwater bodies and the ocean on more than 90% of Earth's surface," NASA officials said earlier.

"This information will provide insights into how the ocean influences climate change; how a warming world affects lakes, rivers and reservoirs; and how communities can better prepare for disasters, such as floods."

MEN DON'T HAVE BABIES

Women score higher for empathy than men in most countries

By Cara Murez, HealthDay News

A recent study measuring empathy found that females scored significantly higher than males, on average, in 36 countries. Females scored similarly to males in 21 countries. Photo by Sasin Tipchai/Pixabay

A new study confirms what many believe: Women tend to be better than men at imagining or understanding what another person is feeling or thinking.

Using a test that measures empathy, researchers evaluated more than 300,000 people in 57 countries around the world to come to that conclusion.

"Our results provide some of the first evidence that the well-known phenomenon -- that females are, on average, more empathic than males -- is present in a wide range of countries across the globe. It's only by using very large data sets that we can say this with confidence," said study author David Greenberg, from Bar-Ilan University in Israel.

The study was led by Cambridge University in England and included collaborators from Bar-Ilan and Haifa universities in Israel, as well as Harvard and Washington universities in the United States, and IMT School for Advanced Studies in Lucca, Italy.

RELATED If doctor says 'X', patients often hear 'Y', study suggests

The test used in the study is one of the most widely used for measuring empathy. It asks participants to choose a word best describing what a person in a photo is thinking or feeling just by viewing photos of the eye region of the face.

This new study found that females scored significantly higher than males, on average, in 36 countries. Females scored similarly to males in 21 countries.

In no country did males score significantly higher than females. This was true across the lifespan, from age 16 to age 70, in three independent datasets and in many different languages.

RELATED More U.S. women prefer working from home, survey finds

The test "reveals that many individuals struggle to read facial expressions, for a variety of reasons. Support should be available for those who seek it," said senior study author Simon Baron-Cohen, director of the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University.

Another finding was that what are known as "D-scores" -- the difference between a person's drive to systemize and their drive to empathize -- are a significant negative predictor of scores on this test. D-scores appear to play a more important role than sex in aspects of human cognition, according to the study.

"This study clearly demonstrates a largely consistent sex difference across countries, languages and ages. This raises new questions for future research about the social and biological factors that may contribute to the observed on-average sex difference in cognitive empathy," Dr. Carrie Allison, director of applied research at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge, said in a university news release.

The findings were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

More information

The Greater Good Science Center has more on types of empathy.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

US Census Bureau redefines meaning of ‘urban’ America

By MIKE SCHNEIDER

December 29, 2022

Tourists look out onto the city skyline from Christmas Tree Point on top of Twin Peaks in San Francisco, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2022. (Jessica Christian/San Francisco Chronicle via AP)

More than 1,100 cities, towns and villages in the U.S. lost their status as urban areas on Thursday as the U.S. Census Bureau released a new list of places considered urban based on revised criteria.

Around 4.2 million residents living in 1,140 small cities, hamlets, towns and villages that lost their urban designation were bumped into the rural category. The new criteria raised the population threshold from 2,500 to 5,000 people and housing units were added to the definition.

The change matters because rural and urban areas often qualify for different types of federal funding for transportation, housing, health care, education and agriculture. The federal government doesn’t have a standard definition of urban or rural, but the Census Bureau’s definition often provides a baseline.

“The whole thing about urban and rural is all about money,” said Mary Craigle, bureau chief for Montana’s Research and Information Services. “Places that qualify as urban are eligible for transportation dollars that rural areas aren’t, and then rural areas are eligible for dollars that urban areas are not.”

The Census Bureau this year made the biggest modification in decades to the definition of an urban area. The bureau adjusts the definition every decade after a census to address any changes or needs of policymakers and researchers. The bureau says it is done for statistical purposes and it has no control over how government agencies use the definitions to distribute funding.

There were 2,646 urban areas in the mainland U.S., Puerto Rico and U.S. islands on the new list released Thursday. Among them were three dozen new urban areas that were rural a decade ago.

“This change in definition is a big deal and a substantial change from the Census Bureau’s long-standing procedures,” said Kenneth Johnson, a senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire. “It has significant implications both for policy and for researchers.”

Under the old criteria, an urbanized area needed to have at least 50,000 residents. An urban cluster was defined as having at least 2,500 people, a threshold that had been around since 1910. Under this definition, almost 81% of the U.S. was urban and 19% was rural over the past decade.

Under the new definition, hammered out after the 2020 census, the minimum population required for an area to be considered urban doubled to 5,000 people. Originally, the Census Bureau proposed raising the threshold to 10,000 people but pulled back amid opposition. The new criteria for urban areas shift the urban-rural ratio slightly, to 79.6% and 20.4%, respectively.

In 1910, a town with 2,500 residents had a lot more goods and services than a town that size does today, “and these new definitions acknowledge that,” said Michael Cline, North Carolina’s state demographer.

With the new criteria, the distinction between an urbanized area and an urban cluster has been eliminated since the Census Bureau determined there was little difference in economic activities between communities larger and smaller than 50,000 residents.

Of the 50 states, California was the most urban, with 94.2% of its population living in an urban area. Vermont was the most rural, with almost 65% of its population residing in rural areas.

For the first time, the Census Bureau is adding housing units to the definition of an urban area. A place can be considered urban if it has at least 2,000 housing units, based on the calculation that the average household has 2.5 people.

Among the beneficiaries of using housing instead of people are resort towns in ski or beach destinations, or other places with lots of vacation homes, since they can qualify as urban based on the number of homes instead of full-time residents.

“There are many seasonal communities in North Carolina and this change in definition to housing units may be helpful in acknowledging that these areas are built up with roads, housing, and for at least one part of the year, host many thousands of people,” Cline said.

Housing, instead of population, is also going to be used for density measures at the level of census blocks, which typically have several hundred people and are the building blocks of urban areas. The Census Bureau said using housing units instead of population will allow it to make updates in fast-growing areas in between the once-a-decade censuses.

But there’s another reason for switching to housing units instead of population: the Census Bureau’s controversial new tool for protecting the privacy of participants in its head counts and surveys. The method adds intentional errors to data to obscure the identity of any given participant, and it is most noticeable in the smallest geographies, such as census blocks.

“The block level data aren’t really reliable and this provides them an opportunity for the density threshold they picked to be on par with the population,” said Eric Guthrie, a senior demographer in the Minnesota State Demographic Center.

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Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter: @MikeSchneiderAP

New York OKs human composting law; 6th state in US to do so

By MAYSOON KHAN

This 2019 photo shows Howard Irwin Fischer in Vermont. Fischer is one supporter who sees human composting as an eco-friendly way to return his remains to the earth as fresh, fertile soil when he dies. (Randee Fischer via AP)

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — Howard Fischer, a 63-year old investor living north of New York City, has a wish for when he dies. He wants his remains to be placed in a vessel, broken down by tiny microbes and composted into rich, fertile soil.

Maybe his composted remains could be planted outside the family home in Vermont, or maybe they could be returned to the earth elsewhere. “Whatever my family chooses to do with the compost after it’s done is up to them,” Fischer said.

“I am committed to having my body composted and my family knows that,” he added. “But I would love for it to happen in New York where I live rather than shipping myself across the country.”

Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul signed legislation on Saturday to legalize natural organic reduction, popularly known as human composting, making New York the sixth state in the nation to allow that method of burial.

Washington state became the first state to legalize human composting in 2019, followed by Colorado and Oregon in 2021, and Vermont and California in 2022.

For Fischer, this alternative, green method of burial aligns with his philosophical view on life: to live in an environmentally conscious way.

The process goes like this: the body of the deceased is placed into a reusable vessel along with plant material such as wood chips, alfalfa and straw. The organic mix creates the perfect habitat for naturally occurring microbes to do their work, quickly and efficiently breaking down the body in about a month’s time.

The end result is a heaping cubic yard of nutrient-dense soil amendment, the equivalent of about 36 bags of soil, that can be used to plant trees or enrich conservation land, forests, or gardens.

For urban areas such as New York City where land is limited, it can be seen as a pretty attractive burial alternative.

Michelle Menter, manager at Greensprings Natural Cemetery Preserve, a cemetery in central New York, said the facility would “strongly consider” the alternative method.

“It definitely is more in line with what we do,” she added.

The 130-acre (52-hectare) nature preserve cemetery, nestled between protected forest land, offers natural, green burials which is when a body can be placed in a biodegradable container and into a gravesite so that it can decompose fully.

“Every single thing we can do to turn people away from concrete liners and fancy caskets and embalming, we ought to do and be supportive of,” she said.

But not all are onboard with the idea.

The New York State Catholic Conference, a group that represents bishops in the state, has long opposed the bill, calling the burial method “inappropriate.”

“A process that is perfectly appropriate for returning vegetable trimmings to the earth is not necessarily appropriate for human bodies,” Dennis Poust, executive director of the organization, said in a statement.

“Human bodies are not household waste, and we do not believe that the process meets the standard of reverent treatment of our earthly remains,” he said.

Katrina Spade, the founder of Recompose, a full-service green funeral home in Seattle that offers human composting, said it offers an alternative for people wanting to align the disposition of their remains with how they lived their lives.

She said “it feels like a movement” among the environmentally aware.

“Cremation uses fossil fuels and burial uses a lot of land and has a carbon footprint,” said Spade. “For a lot of folks being turned into soil that can be turned to grow into a garden or tree is pretty impactful.”

___

Maysoon Khan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Maysoon Khan on Twitter at: twitter.com/MaysoonKhan.

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M;ENABLERS 
Banks seek to quash women’s lawsuits in Jeffrey Epstein case


 In this Aug. 16, 2019, file photo, the logo for JPMorgan Chase & Co. appears above a trading post on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in New York. Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase are asking a federal court to throw out lawsuits that claim they helped Jeffrey Epstein abuse young women and maintain his sex-trafficking ring. The banks argue they provided routine services to Epstein, and the lawsuits fail to show that they were part of Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking ring. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan Chase are asking a federal court to throw out lawsuits that claim the big banks should have seen evidence of sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein, the high-flying financier who killed himself in jail while facing criminal charges.

The banks said in filings late Friday they didn’t commit any negligent acts that caused harm to the women who filed the lawsuits and that the lawsuits failed to show that they benefitted from Epstein’s sex trafficking.

The filings in federal district court in New York came about a month after two women who were both identified as Jane Doe sued the banks and the government of the U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein had a home on a small island that he owned.

The lawsuits, which seek class-action status to represent other Epstein victims, claim that the banks knowingly benefitted from Epstein’s sex trafficking and “chose profit over following the law” to earn millions of dollars from the financier.

They suggested that the banks should have steered clear of Epstein after his 2006 arrest in Florida — he eventually pleaded guilty to state charges of soliciting prostitution — and fallout from a federal investigation and news coverage.

“Without the financial institution’s participation, Epstein’s sex-trafficking scheme could not have existed or flourished,” the lawsuits claim.

JPMorgan Chase said Friday that the Jane Doe in its case “is entitled to justice ... But this lawsuit against JPMC is directed at the wrong party, is legally meritless, and should be dismissed.”

Deutsche Bank said it provided “routine banking services” to Epstein from 2013 to 2018, and the lawsuit “does not come close to adequately alleging that Deutsche Bank ... was part of Epstein’s criminal sex trafficking ring.”

Brazil will have first Indigenous woman chief for key post

By FABIANO MAISONNAVE

December 30, 2022

Brazil's newly-named Minister of Indigenous Peoples Sonia Guajajara attends a meeting where Brazil's President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva announced the ministers for his incoming government, in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. Lula will be sworn-in on Jan. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Brazil’s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Thursday that Sônia Guajajara will head up a new Ministry of Indigenous Peoples, with a mandate to oversee policies ranging from land demarcation to health care.

Guajajara was elected to Congress in October. She is widely known as the leader of the main umbrella group for Brazil’s many Indigenous tribes and is a member of the Amazon Guajajara. This year she made Time Magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

“This is more than a personal achievement,” Guajajara said. “It is a collective achievement of the Indigenous peoples, a historic moment of reparation in Brazil.” The creation of the ministry is “a confirmation of Lula’s commitment to us,” she said in a tweet.

Lula promised to create the Indigenous cabinet department during his presidential campaign. On Jan. 1 he returns to power, having previously governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010.

The appointment of Guajajara to such a post marks a 180 degree turn from Brazil’s current government. Outgoing president Jair Bolsonaro, defeated in October, is an opponent of Indigenous rights and land with a record of racist statements. In 1998, when he was still a fringe lawmaker, he spoke in Brazil’s Congress praising the U.S. Cavalry for having “decimated its Indians” and regretted Brazil had not done the same.

Bolsonaro’s promises to develop the Amazon and his defanging of environmental law enforcement led to a surge of illegal loggers, miners and land robbers into Native territory in Brazil. According to local Indigenous organizations, some 20,000 illegal gold miners now operate illegally in Yanomami tribal territory alone.

Guajajara fiercely opposed attempts to legalize these policies, and that opposition was largely successful. She also experienced the murders in 2019 and 2020 of five fellow tribe members who fought against illegal loggers.

After the official announcement of her appointment and 15 others in the capital of Brasilia Thursday, several Indigenous organizations, among them the Coordination of the Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, congratulated her in social media for the nomination.

An organization of officials who work in Indigenous affairs also congratulated the future minister and the Indigenous social movement in general for the nomination.

The lands where Brazil’s Indigenous peoples live constitute one of the world’s most important carbon sinks. The Amazon rainforest acts as a buffer against climate change by absorbing large amounts of carbon dioxide.

About 13% of Brazil’s territory is demarcated as Indigenous areas, roughly the size of Colombia. Most of it is in the Amazon and covered by tropical rainforest.

Brazil’s Lula picks Amazon defender for environment minister

By FABIANO MAISONNAVE

December 29, 2022

1 of 11

Brazil's President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and newly-named Environment Minister Marina Silva, smile during a meeting where he announced the ministers for his incoming government, in Brasilia, Brazil, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. Lula will be sworn-in on Jan. 1, 2023. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres)

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) —

Brazil´s President-elect Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced Thursday that Amazon activist Marina Silva will be the country´s next minister of environment. The announcement indicates the new administration will prioritize cracking down on illegal deforestation even if it means running afoul of powerful agribusiness interests.

Both attended the recent U.N. climate conference in Egypt, where Lula promised cheering crowds “zero deforestation” in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a key to fighting climate change, by 2030. “There will be no climate security if the Amazon isn’t protected,” he said.

Silva told the news network Globo TV shortly after the announcement that the name of the ministry she will lead will be changed to the Ministry of Environment and Climate Change.

Many agribusiness players and associated lawmakers resent Silva. That stems from her time as environment minister during most of Lula’s prior presidency, from 2003 to 2010.

Lula also named Sonia Guajajara, an Indigenous woman, as Brazil’s first minister of Indigenous peoples, and Carlos Fávaro, a soybean producer, as agriculture minister.

Silva was born in the Amazon and worked as a rubber tapper as an adolescent. As environment minister she oversaw the creation of dozens of conservation areas and a sophisticated strategy against deforestation, with major operations against environmental criminals and new satellite surveillance. She also helped design the largest international effort to preserve the rainforest, the mostly Norway-backed Amazon Fund. Deforestation dropped dramatically.

But Lula and Silva fell out as he began catering to farmers during his second term and Silva resigned in 2008.

 Brazil's Marina Silva, a former environment minister, speaks during a session at the Brazil Pavilion at the COP27 U.N. Climate Summit, Nov. 12, 2022, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. Brazil's President-elect Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva named Silva as environment minister for his incoming government, indicating he will prioritize cracking down on illegal deforestation in the Amazon. 

(AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File)

Lula appears to have convinced her that he has changed tack, and she joined his campaign after he embraced her proposals for preservation.

“Brazil will return to the protagonist role it previously had when it comes to climate, to biodiversity,” Silva told reporters during her own appearance at the U.N. summit.

This would be a sharp turnabout from the policies of the outgoing president, Jair Bolsonaro, who pushed for development in the Amazon and whose environment minister resigned after national police began investigating whether he was aiding the export of illegally cut timber.

Bolsonaro froze the creation of protected areas, weakened environmental agencies and placed forest management under control of the agriculture ministry. He also championed agribusiness, which opposes the creation of protected areas such as Indigenous territories and pushes for the legalization of land grabbing. Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon reached a 15-year high in the year ending in July 2021, though the devastation slowed somewhat in the following 12 months.

In Egypt, Lula committed to prosecuting all crimes in the forest, from illegal logging to mining. He also said he would press rich countries to make good on promises to help developing nations adapt to climate change. And he pledged to work with other nations home to large tropical forests — the Congo and Indonesia — in what could be coordinated negotiating positions on forest management and biodiversity protection.

As environment minister, Silva would be charged with carrying out much of that agenda.

Silva is also likely to face resistance from Congress, where the farm caucus next year will account for more than one-third of the Lower House and Senate.

Two lawmakers allied with Lula who come from the nation’s agriculture sector told The Associated Press before the announcements they disagree with Silva’s nomination given the conflict of her prior tenure. They spoke on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisals.

Others were more hopeful. Neri Geller, a lawmaker of the agribusiness caucus who acted as a bridge to Lula during the campaign, said things had changed since Silva’s departure in 2008.

“At the time, Marina Silva was perhaps a little too extremist, but people from the agro sector also had some extremists,” he said, citing a strengthened legal framework around environmental protection as well. “I think she matured and we matured. We can make progress on important agenda items for the sector while preserving (the environment) at the same time.”

Silva and Brazil stand to benefit from a rejuvenated Amazon Fund, which took a hit in 2019 when Norway and Germany froze new cash transfers after Bolsonaro excluded state governments and civil society from decision-making. The Norwegian Embassy in Brazil praised “the clear signals” from Lula about addressing deforestation.

“We think the Amazon Fund can be opened quickly to support the government’s action plan once the Brazilian government reinstates the governing structure of the fund,” the embassy said in a statement to the AP.

The split between Lula and Marina in his last administration came as the president was increasingly kowtowing to agribusiness, encouraged by voracious demand for soy from China. Tension within the administration grew when Mato Grosso state’s Gov. Blairo Maggi, one of the world’s largest soybean producers, and others lobbied against some of the anti-deforestation measures.

Lula and Silva were also at odds over the mammoth Belo Monte Dam, a project that displaced some 40,000 people and dried up stretches of the Xingu River that Indigenous and other communities depended upon for fish. Silva opposed the project; Lula said it was necessary to meet the nation’s growing energy needs and hasn’t expressed any regret since, despite the plant’s impact and the fact it is generating far below installed capacity.

After Silva resigned, she quit Lula’s Workers’ Party and became a fierce critic of him and his successor, Dilma Rousseff. Silva and Lula didn’t begin to reconcile until this year’s presidential campaign, finding common cause in defeating Bolsonaro, whom they deemed an environmental villain and would-be authoritarian.

Caetano Scannavino, coordinator of Health and Happiness, an Amazon nonprofit that supports sustainable projects, said Silva “grew to become someone larger than only an environment minister.”

“This is important, as the challenges in the environmental area are even greater than two decades ago,” Scannavino said, citing growing criminal activities in the Amazon and increasing pressure from agribusiness eager to export to China and Europe. “Silva’s success is Brazil’s success in the world, too. She deserves all support.”

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AP writer Carla Bridi contributed from Brasilia and Diane Jeantet from Rio de Janeiro.

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Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

US bankruptcy court approves $121M clergy abuse settlement

December 29, 2022

FArchbishop John C. Wester, head of the Archdiocese of Santa Fe, N.M., talks to reporters on Nov. 29, 2018, in Santa Fe. A federal bankruptcy judge has approved a $121 million reorganization plan for one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. as it tries to stem financial losses from clergy abuse claims that date back decades. The Archdiocese of Santa Fe announced the outcome Thursday, Dec. 29, 2022. In a statement, Wester said he hopes the agreement will bring a measure of justice and relief to victims. (AP Photo/Susan Montoya Bryan, File)


ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — A federal bankruptcy judge on Thursday approved a $121 million reorganization plan for one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. as it tries to stem financial losses from clergy abuse claims that date back decades.

The Archdiocese of Santa Fe in New Mexico said U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David T. Thuma confirmed the agreement during a hearing in which he commended the parties for working through what had been an arduous process.

In a statement, Archbishop John C. Wester thanked the panel of abuse survivors who represented fellow survivors in their claims against the archdiocese. He described it as challenging work as the group continued to deal with the aftermath of their own abuse.

“While I hope and pray that the bankruptcy outcome will bring a measure of justice and relief to the victims of clergy sexual abuse, I realize that nothing can ever compensate them for the criminal and horrendous abuse they endured,” Wester said

He also pledged that the archdiocese will remain vigilant in upholding its zero tolerance policy by promptly responding to allegations and cooperating with local authorities.

The global priest abuse scandal has plunged dioceses around the world into bankruptcy and has cost the Roman Catholic Church an estimated $3 billion or more.

Aside from providing monetary payments to nearly 400 claimants, the terms of the settlement in New Mexico require the establishment of a public archive of documents showing how decades of abuse occurred around the state.

The result of nearly four years of legal wrangling, the reorganization plan effectively halted more than three dozens civil lawsuits in state court that alleged abuse of children by clergy and negligence by church hierarchy. Court records show the accusations dated from the 1940s to the 2010s.

The plan calls for the archdiocese, aided by contributions from parishes, to put up $75 million toward the total settlement fund, the Albuquerque Journal reported. Insurance companies agreed to pay $46.5 million.

In a side agreement, five religious orders that faced pending lawsuits will pay an additional $8.4 million to be shared by certain claimants. The orders include the Servants of the Paraclete, which ran a now-defunct treatment center for troubled priests and was accused of furnishing the archdiocese with priests and other clergy who preyed on children and teens.

Archdiocese attorney Thomas Walker said that of 376 survivor claimants who cast ballots on the plan, four voted to reject and three did not indicate acceptance or rejection. At least two-thirds of the abuse survivors who filed claims had to approve the plan.

Albuquerque attorney Brad Hall said his legal team has dealt with more than 250 clergy abuse survivors over the decade leading up to the bankruptcy filing in December 2018 and have talked with family members of others who had heart-wrenching stories.

“As for the actual survivors, it is our hope that some small compensation, however inadequate it might feel like to some of them, will help with a sense of closure and some accountability,” Hall said.

The archdiocese sold numerous properties to come up with the final negotiated contribution, including the archbishop’s house in Albuquerque. The archdiocese also took out a mortgage on the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe.

Terence McKiernan, president of the nonprofit BishopAccountability.org, told the Journal that other dioceses in similar bankruptcy actions have had more survivor claimants and paid out less. He described settlement amounts during the mid-1990s as “terribly unfair.”

McKiernan said a key part of the settlement plan is the disclosure of documents, with redactions, by the archdiocese that will help the public understand how the clergy sexual abuse crisis occurred in New Mexico.

The archdiocese has said the document disclosure to a special library archive at the University of New Mexico will be unprecedented.

“It is highly significant that documents are included in such a massive way to be made available to everyone who wants to read them. It’s utterly remarkable,” said McKiernan, “It’s going to change our understanding (of the crisis) in a major way.”