Kurdish militants suspend 'operations' after Turkey quake

Fri, 10 February 2023 


Kurdish militants from the outlawed PKK group announced a temporary halt in fighting to facilitate rescue work after the huge earthquake that struck southeastern Turkey and parts of Syria.

The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has been proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Ankara and its main Western allies for waging a brutal insurgency that has claimed tens of thousands of lives since 1984.

Ankara is also trying to ban a top opposition party that supports Kurdish causes over its alleged links to the militants.

But Monday's earthquake has reshaped the political landscape while claiming more than 21,000 lives -- more than 18,000 of them in Turkey.

It struck a multi-ethnic region that has witnessed some of the heaviest fighting between Turkish government forces and the PKK.

The group's co-leader Cemil Bayik told the PKK-linked ANF news agency that "thousands of our people are under the rubble" and urged a focus on recovery work rather than waging war.

"We call on all our forces engaged in military actions: stop the military actions in Turkey, in metropolises and cities," he said in comments published on the site late Thursday.

"We have decided to not conduct any operation as long as the Turkish state does not attack," he said.

Bayik said the pause in fighting would stay in place "until the pain of our people is relieved and their wounds are healed".

"Of course, the attitude of the Turkish state will also be decisive in our decision," he added.

- No Turkish response -

Government forces have used combat drones to push Kurdish fighters from Turkey's southeastern regions to the northern stretches of neighbouring Iraq.

Turkey is now conducting a low-scale war against the Kurds in northern Iraq and also fighting a separate Kurdish group in Syria that it views as a local branch of the PKK -- but which Washington has relied on to battle Islamic State jihadists.

PKK attacks peaked during a deadly wave of violence in 2015-2016 that followed a breakdown in peace negotiations with Ankara.

The group's founder Abdullah Ocalan has been in jail since being nabbed by Turkish intelligence in 1999 while he was in Nairobi.

Ocalan's jailing was followed by a brief unilateral ceasefire and then the start of formal truce talks in 2013.

The talks collapsed after the PKK killed two Turkish policemen in 2015.

Turkish officials did not respond to Bayik's comments.

The government has been trying to ban the Kurdish-backed Peoples' Democratic Party -- the Turkish parliament's third-largest -- over its ties to PKK.

Turkey's top court was considering whether to ban the party ahead of elections that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has proposed holding on May 14.

But most state institutions have suspended operations to focus on earthquake relief work.

Students walk out after told to limit Black History program

Thu, February 9, 2023

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — More than 200 students walked out of class at an Alabama high school after they say they were told by school leaders to omit certain relevant events from an upcoming student-led Black History Month program.

However, school officials have denied the allegations even while acknowledging the need for students' concerns to be heard.

Students told WBMA-TV they were ordered to leave out major historical moments, including slavery and the civil rights movement, from the program scheduled for Feb. 22 at Hillcrest High School in Tuscaloosa.

The students were told they “couldn’t talk about slavery and civil rights because one of our administrators felt uncomfortable,” said Black History Month Program board member J’Niyah Suttles, a senior who participated in Wednesday's walkout.

She said the the direction from a school administrator left her hurt.

“My protector from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. — for you to tell me I can’t talk about something that is dealing with my culture is very disturbing, it’s very confusing,” Suttles said.

Fellow Hillcrest senior Jada Holt expressed similar emotions.

“Why am I being censored about my culture, something that is rooted in me? Why can’t I talk about it? History is history and it’s already been made, and it can’t be erased,” she said.

Senior Jamiyah Brown, who helped put the program together, organized the walkout, which lasted about an hour.

“Without our history we are nothing. Without teaching our youth where we come from, how can we move forward?” Brown said.

Tuscaloosa County Superintendent Dr. Keri Johnson, in a statement, denied allegations that an administrator told the students to leave out historical elements.

“It is not true that faculty or staff told students that slavery or the civil rights movement could not be part of the program," Johnson said. “When several community members heard this and contacted Hillcrest High administration out of concern, administration explained to them that this was false information that was circulating.”

Johnson said the school system supports the students' right to peacefully demonstrate.

“A number of our Hillcrest High students have concerns about the culture within their school. We care deeply about our students, and it is important that their concerns are heard. We are putting together a plan to make sure our students feel heard, so that we know the right steps to put in place to ensure all students know that they are valued,” Johnson said.

The president of the Tuscaloosa Branch of the NAACP, Lisa Young, said the alleged direction was a disgrace.

“I don’t know how you can talk about Black history in this country without talking about slavery or the civil rights movement,” Young said.

She said she has asked to meet with Johnson but has yet to be given a date.

Young said she was “angry and part of me feels like we failed our students. We want to see what we can do to assist them, and make their school a safe place.”

Shooting uncovers 'plantation mentality' in a rich, liberal California enclave

Anita Chabria
Thu, February 9, 2023 

Crystal Avila, 11, sits in the room that she shares with two siblings and her parents, including her mother, Rocio, foreground, at a home in Half Moon Bay, Calif. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

The bloodstains that mark the violent deaths of Aixiang Zhang and her husband, Zhishen Liu, are still visible on the ground of the mushroom farm where they were shot last month — fading patches that will be gone with the next rain.

It's a sorrowful sight, that their lives could disappear so quickly and completely into the dirt and gravel of this lonely place.

But it is also hard, in a different way, to look at the inadequate housing just a few feet away where some of the workers here were living: thin-walled rooms on a concrete-block foundation that must be frigid in the thick fog that often wraps this coast; a bleak, shared kitchen with a table topped in stainless steel; a shared bathroom reached by crossing the cold concrete floor of a shed. There is nothing of comfort or warmth in it, nothing that feels like home here at Concord Farms.

Still, these accommodations seem luxurious compared with those at the mushroom grower a few miles away, California Terra Garden, where a disgruntled worker began the shooting rampage that killed seven — three at Concord and four at Terra — on Jan. 23, possibly motivated by a $100 debt the employer had levied against him.

There, a colony of RVs, shacks and even a shipping container served as homes, tarps covering some to keep out the recent torrent of rain. The bathrooms are four port-a-potties, blue siding a splotch of color in a landscape of beaten-down squalor at the base of a flourishing grove of eucalyptus trees.

For decades, the housing we consider fair and livable for agricultural workers — even if we don't admit it — has hinged on what Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez describes as the "plantation mentality" of California's farming industry.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez stands near an area on a farm where a worker was killed by a mass shooter in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

"Workers are only here to work, and that's it," is how he described it, as we drove through this town where poverty and prosperity are neighbors but rarely mingle.

The Ritz-Carlton lords over a prime section of the beachfront bluffs here, barrel waves crashing against the sheer cliffs below, guests sipping $24 glasses of Paso Robles Cabernet. The world-famous Mavericks surf spot is minutes away.

Both are draws for the tech millionaires from Palo Alto, just over the Santa Cruz Mountains, who have turned this once-sleepy pit stop of farms into a place of trophy mansions and Teslas, snapping up land and driving up rents — but rarely venturing up the unpaved trails that lead to places like Terra Garden.

After the shooting, Gov. Gavin Newsom weighed in, calling housing at Terra Garden "deplorable." But he didn't call it surprising.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez stands near an area on a farm where a worker was killed by a mass shooter in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Because dilapidated, overcrowded housing for farmworkers has long been the norm, not the exception.

"Those conditions are well established and known," Newsom said, adding the issue is "complicated."

Sure, some of it is complicated. But some of it is not.

The simple truth is our entire system of agricultural production is based on giving workers as little as possible, under circumstances that make it hard if not dangerous to complain — whether that means being undocumented or just so poor the loss of even a day's work is devastating. Even the good actors, the growers who pay better wages and have modernized housing, often offer conditions most non-immigrant workers would refuse.

Vulnerable workers keep quiet because they know life can always get worse. Jimenez remembers being 4 years old, hiding in the Brussels sprouts while federal immigration authorities hovered in helicopters overhead.

Where it gets thorny, to Newsom's point, is why nothing changes: Those with the power to crack down on miserable housing often don't because they know there is no place for farmworkers to go.

"I understand there are laws," said Jimenez, as we bumped through town in his electric blue ’92 Chevy pickup, bay leaves from a recent vigil drying on the dashboard. The son of farmworkers, he lived in a house with 21 people as a kid, earned a master's degree and came back to fight.

But if the city of Half Moon Bay, the county of San Mateo and even the state of California close down subpar housing, red-tag it or enforce those laws that make it illegal to stuff humans in shipping containers and shacks with no running water or insulation, what happens to the workers, and their children?

Vanessa Rodriguez of the nonprofit Ayudando Latinos A Soñar distributes checks to farmworkers at a farm where a mass shooting happened in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Jimenez and other advocates had visited Terra Garden many times before. Two advocates had delivered plastic sheeting to cover the roofs just hours before the shooting.

Eight families, 27 people, were allegedly living there. Workers were making about $3,000 a month and paying $300 of that in rent.

Where would they have gone if their housing, pitiful as it was, was taken away in a town where market-rate studio apartments rent for more than $2,000 a month? Where the median home price is $1.2 million? Where the $300 hovels seemed like a reasonable offer, or at least an affordable one?

"We would be responsible for people being homeless, or moving into a worse situation," Jimenez said of that conundrum. "But it makes you think, is my solution better than the problem?"

Rocio Avila sleeps in a room smaller than the average prison cell.

She shares it with her husband, Roberto Hernandez, and their three children, paying $500 a month.

Rocio Avila watches her children Angel, 5, and Perla, 8, in the bedroom in their home in Half Moon Bay. The family of five sleeps in this bedroom. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

Perla, 8, and Angel, 5, wedge in with their parents on a queen-size bed. It's pushed into the corner, but it still takes up nearly the entire space, leaving only a narrow walkway wide enough to open the door.

Crystal Avila, 11, is Avila's eldest daughter. She's an artist with long pigtails and rosy cheeks who sleeps on the floor at the foot of the bed, a little nest between the frame and the closet, underneath a picture she drew of pink cherry blossoms.

"We have the privilege to have something other people don't," Avila told me when I visited her home this week. She is one of the lucky ones, she said. She has a home with running water and power, bathrooms inside and a stove that works.

Still, Avila is desperate for a bigger house, one where the kids can be free instead of trying to stay out of the way.

Crystal dreams of a big bedroom, with space for a desk — "living a good life," as she puts it.

That means knowing "where you're going to study. Where are you siblings going be, where your parents going to be? And, like, to be calm and know that you're in a safe place," she tells me.

Every fourth Friday, Crystal and her mom march in a vigil downtown for affordable housing. Avila isn't sure the town really cares.

"We are part of the community too," she said. "They know this, and they don't want Half Moon Bay to grow."

Every farmworker is in the same plight, in one way or another.

"Gloria" worked at one of the mushroom farms, but she doesn't want me to use her name. She rents a room for $1,200 a month in a two-bedroom house shared by 10 people, where she is not allowed to use the kitchen.

She buys all her food from the restaurant where she works nights.

She is trying to save money, $10,000, to bring her daughter from Mexico. They haven't seen each other in a year, a little death every day.

Angel Avila, 5, and is sister Perla, 8, play in a room they share with another sibling and their parents at home in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

But Gloria can never seem to get ahead, never save enough on her $15.50 minimum wage, in a place where it would take about $38 an hour to live an average life.

She's back working at the farm during the day, though the shock is still clear in her eyes. She needs the money.

Maurilio Lopez Chavez understands that frustration.

His kids are with him — Leonardo, 1, and Sochi, 6.

Sochi dreams of being a chef, or maybe a doctor. But Lopez Chavez works at a flower farm, and the rain destroyed the roots of the dahlia crop. Now there are no flowers to harvest, no work, no money coming in.

He lives in an apartment that is owned by his employer. He pays $1,500 a month, what the owner says is a discounted rate good only as long as he remains employed at the nursery. But Lopez Chavez owes that amount, destroyed crop or not.

He can't get unemployment benefits because he is undocumented. He's come to Ayudando Latinos A Soñar, known as ALAS, a local nonprofit, for food and help. In a recent survey by UC Merced, more than 60% of farmworkers said they've had trouble paying for food since the pandemic hit.

"I don't care for myself," Lopez Chavez said as he waited for donated Safeway gift cards.

But the kids, they're hungry.

::

The predicament of farmworkers across California has grown worse in recent years.

The pandemic brought death, the crowded living conditions letting COVID-19 sweep through homes and workplaces. Yet in the Merced study, nearly a quarter of workers didn't know they had a right to paid sick leave.

Climate change has brought more extremes, fire and floods that leave workers picking strawberries in downpours and grapes in thick smoke. More than a third of respondents in the Merced study said they have trouble keeping their house warm enough or cool enough as weather becomes more severe.

Fifteen percent said they feel uncontrollable worry; 14% feel depressed or hopeless.

All of which makes me wonder: Would the system really fall apart if we demand better for workers, or if we supported them when they demand better for themselves? If we scrutinized labor conditions of America's farmworkers with the same urgency we use to ensure our mushrooms are organic, our coffee fair-trade and our chickens roaming free?

Farmworker Yesnia Garcia stands in her living room of her modular home on a farm in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

A few miles from Terra Garden, Yesenia Garcia lives in a cute, wood-sided modular home on Cabrillo Farms.

Flowers and vegetables are planted around its borders, and inside, laminate wood floors flow into a kitchen where glass tiles decorate the backsplash.

There are four bedrooms, two baths, and a washer and dryer that make her busy life as a working mother easier. A big television hangs on the wall of the living room, where her two sons' toy trucks are lined up next to the couch.

Garcia is on the newly formed San Mateo County Farmworker Advisory Commission, and this is the kind of housing she is fighting for.

Jimenez, the vice mayor, said the owners of Terra Garden are considering building something similar.

But it shouldn't take seven deaths to make us demand they do.

Activist and vice mayor Joaquin Jimenez checks on farmworkers in Half Moon Bay. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)

And that's the pain — the trauma and suffering of decades, not moments — the farmworkers of Half Moon Bay want you to remember when the next mass shooting tries to tear our attention away from this community.

Honor the dead.

But don't forget: Something needs to change for the living.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Renewables and nuclear are nearing a ‘tipping point’ and will make up more than 90% of new electricity demand in the next two years, IEA says


Zhou Mu/Xinhua via Getty Images

Tristan Bove
Wed, February 8, 2023 

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February and a global energy crisis sparked fears that clean energy and net-zero emission targets were being scrapped in the name of energy security. But as it turns out, the spike in fossil fuel use was just a blip, as the next few years are set to see low-carbon energy sources generate a record share of the world’s electricity.

After stalling in 2022 due to high prices and economic slowdowns, global electricity consumption is expected to return to growth in the coming years, increasing 3% faster than 2022 levels each year between now and 2025, according to a report by the International Energy Agency released Wednesday.

But even though consumption is rising, the energy transition isn’t losing a beat as fossil fuel use is expected to decline while renewable energy sources and nuclear power will fill more than 90% of the new demand. Clean energy sources including wind and solar are now expected to account for 35% of global power generation in 2025, up from 29% last year. Nuclear power, meanwhile, is set to grow nearly 4% annually between now and 2025.

The rise in global electricity demand over the next three years will be double the current electricity consumption of Japan, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a statement.

“The good news is that renewables and nuclear power are growing quickly enough to meet almost all this additional appetite, suggesting we are close to a tipping point for power sector emissions,” he said.

But even as countries in Europe and the Americas accelerate replacing power plants reliant on fossil fuels with renewable energy sources, it doesn’t mean the rest of the world is moving at the same pace. The IEA warned that countries with the fastest-growing economies and population sizes are still lagging far behind.

The energy transition is gathering steam

For a while last year, many people worried the war in Ukraine had irreparably delayed the world’s energy transition plans to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.

The invasion sparked a global natural gas supply crunch and threatened an energy crisis in many countries worldwide. Europe in particular was on red alert last year as natural gas supplies from Russia dried up, nuclear power plants remained idle for maintenance, and hot temperatures cut into hydropower’s ability to make up the difference.

The crisis led to record-high coal use on the continent in 2022, as Germany, the U.K., France and others reopened coal-fired power plants to beef up domestic energy production. Last March, UN Secretary General António Guterres warned the world’s more ambitious climate targets were on “life support” as the war risked derailing energy transition plans.

But warm winter temperatures and manageable energy demand ended up softening the blow, and Europe looks to be muddling through the energy crisis this year. With a renewed appreciation for the dangers of relying on external powers for energy, the EU announced a clean energy investment plan in May worth €210 billion ($225 billion) between 2022 and 2027. In the U.S., meanwhile, last year’s Inflation Reduction Act set aside $369 billion in climate and energy spending in the form of investments and tax exemptions.

Latef last year, the conversation over the Ukraine War’s consequences for the energy transition began to shift, and the IEA predicted in October that the drop in Russian fossil fuel exports and the increased investment in renewable power would expedite changes in most of the world.

“Energy markets and policies have changed as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, not just for the time being, but for decades to come,” Birol said at the time.
The energy outliers

But while the war has expedited renewable energy’s ramp-up in many countries, some outliers still reliant on fossil fuels remain. The bad news is that these outliers are set to be some of the world’s biggest economies for years to come.

Asia will account for half of the world’s electricity demand by 2025, according to the IEA, and more than 70% of the growth in demand over the next three years is set to come from China, India, and Southeast Asia. All three of those regions are lagging behind Europe and the Americas when it comes to renewable energy displacing fossil fuels.

Electricity demand in China alone is set to exceed consumption in Europe, India, and the U.S. combined, accounting for one third of global use in 2025. China’s huge energy demand means that despite generating more renewable energy than any other nation, it still posted record-high output from coal and gas last year and has announced plans to increase coal production through 2025 to increase energy security.

Electricity generation from fossil fuels is set to plateau between now and 2025, according to the IEA, as reductions in coal and gas use in the West will be offset by ramp-ups in Asia and the Middle East. With China’s energy usage set to bounce back from a COVID-induced low last year, the direction its energy market takes will play a critical role in the energy transition.

“Developments in China, where more than half of the world’s coal-fired generation occurs, will remain a key factor,” the IEA said.

Medication abortion could get harder to obtain – or easier: There's a new wave of post-Dobbs lawsuits on abortion pills


Naomi Cahn, Professor of Law, University of Virginia

 and Sonia Suter, Professor of Law, George Washington University
Thu, February 9, 2023 

Legal battles are being waged over mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion.

  Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the United States.

Typically, patients take a two different pills: first mifepristone, then misoprostol.

Even though this option has been legally available for more than two decades, two recent events have raised legal questions about it. First, the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health ruling overturned the constitutional right to abortion recognized in 1973 in Roe v. Wade. Second, in January 2023, the Food and Drug Administration decided that certified U.S. pharmacies could sell mifepristone by prescription.

The result is a raft of new legal battles over access to medication abortion.

Some congressional lawmakers seek to protect the right to access the pills through pharmacies and telehealth in states where abortion remains legal. At least three lawsuits are pending, and some states that have banned abortion altogether or have restricted access to it are vowing to block the new federal rules. South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, for example, has threatened to prosecute any pharmacist who sells the pills in her state.

As experts on reproductive health and justice, we’re trying to untangle when and where mifepristone might be available and what these contradictory trends signal.

Prescribing abortion drugs

Who has the authority to determine when, how or whether abortion medication can be prescribed and sold?

Under its long-held, congressionally granted authority to regulate pharmaceutical products, the FDA approved mifepristone in 2000 after an extensive review demonstrated that the drug was safe and effective for early pregnancy termination.

From the beginning, the sale of mifepristone was tied to several safety requirements known as a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy. Initially, the drug had to be dispensed by certified medical providers in person.

But in late 2021, the FDA concluded that was no longer necessary for patient safety. Today, the pill, in its original or generic form, is approved for use up to 10 weeks’ gestation and can be dispensed by a certified prescriber or pharmacy.

Recent lawsuits challenge the scope of the FDA’s authority to regulate the sale of mifepristone.

In one, GenBioPro, a drug company that makes generic mifepristone, sued officials in West Virginia, claiming that the state’s abortion ban impedes its sales. GenBioPro argues that the ban contradicts FDA’s approval of and safety requirements for mifepristone, setting up a conflict between federal and state law.

In short, the drugmaker argues that the federal regulations override West Virginia’s abortion restrictions. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, however, plans to defend the abortion ban vigorously because “the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that regulating abortion is a state issue.”

Protesters in Raleigh, N.C., object to the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling on June 25, 2022. Peter Zay/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

In another pending lawsuit, Bryant v. Stein, obstetrician-gynecologist Amy Bryant sued officials in North Carolina on similar grounds. Although North Carolina has not banned abortion, it imposes a number of restrictions, including a 72-hour waiting period before accessing medical or surgical abortions.

Bryant argues that the restrictions exceed the FDA requirements for dispensing mifepristone and are therefore preempted by federal law.

There is limited precedent in this area.

In one case, the manufacturer of an opioid – Zohydro – challenged a Massachusetts ban of the drug, even though the FDA had approved it. The federal court ruled for the manufacturer because the ban would “obstruct the FDA’s Congressionally-given charge.”

That 2014 opinion might suggest that GenBioPro will succeed. On the other hand, a court might distinguish the two cases: Massachusetts banned Zohydro on public health grounds, which is squarely within the FDA’s authority, while West Virginia bans abortions on moral grounds – to protect fetal life – which is outside the FDA’s purview.

In the North Carolina case, the state does not ban mifepristone; it just imposes more restrictions than the FDA requires. Therefore, it is uncertain whether the Zohydro reasoning would be adopted.

A 2008 Supreme Court case, however, might be relevant.

In Wyeth v. Levine, a drugmaker claimed that FDA labeling requirements for a drug made by Wyeth, which was used to prevent allergies and motion sickness, preempted Vermont’s stricter labeling requirements. The Supreme Court rejected that argument. It concluded instead that allowing states to require stronger warnings didn’t interfere with Congress’ purpose in entrusting the FDA with drug labeling decisions.

Wyeth is not precisely like Bryant, however.

Whereas Wyeth dealt with labeling requirements, Bryant deals with regulations that affect access to a drug. Nevertheless, the Wyeth precedent could allow a court to permit states to impose stronger restrictions on access to mifepristone – as long as they fall short of banning the drug outright.

Until now, most abortion drugs have been dispensed in person at clinics. 

Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Banning mifepristone

Another pending lawsuit may threaten the FDA’s authority to authorize any sales of mifepristone in the United States.

In Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, a group of abortion opponents asked a U.S. district court in November 2022 to force the FDA to stop allowing mifepristone sales anywhere in the United States. The lawsuit argues that the FDA “chose politics over science” and “exceeded its regulatory authority” in various ways, including allegedly disregarding “substantial evidence” that medication abortion is riskier than surgical abortions.

The consequences could be quite significant, and the issue could even end up on the Supreme Court’s docket in the future. Nevertheless, there are compelling legal reasons why this lawsuit should fail.



Some of the same organizations have tried to challenge the FDA’s approval of mifepristone before – without success. And in 2008, the Government Accountability Office found no irregularities in the FDA’s approval and oversight of mifepristone.

In contradiction to the plaintiffs’ safety argument, numerous studies have shown mifepristone to be a safe and effective drug.

Nevertheless, U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who sits in Amarillo, Texas, and is hearing this case regarding whether the FDA should rescind its approval of mifepristone, has not been supportive of reproductive rights in the past. Thus, it is possible that the court could try to stop the FDA from allowing mifepristone to be sold in that part of Texas or even, possibly, across the entire nation.

If the court prevents the sale of mifepristone nationwide, medication abortions would only be possible with the other pill, misoprostol, which is also approved for other purposes. Recent data suggests that this one-drug approach to medication abortions may safely and effectively induce abortion.
Pills in interstate commerce

In addition to questions of whether the FDA’s authority can override state-imposed abortion restrictions, there’s a second issue concerning the ability to sell the pills through interstate commerce.

As the Supreme Court has explained, the Constitution grants Congress the authority to regulate “things in interstate commerce,” as well as “those activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.”

Thus, in the GenBioPrio lawsuit pending in West Virginia, the company argues that state efforts to restrict sale of the pill are unconstitutional.

An organization that opposes abortion filed a lawsuit in a court located in Amarillo, Texas, that seeks to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.

Don & Melinda Crawford/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Mailing abortion pills

Many people are also taking abortion pills they get through the mail. In response to that trend, 20 Republican state attorneys general recently threatened pharmacies with “legal consequences” if they mail and distribute mifepristone.

An 1873 law, the Comstock Act, is central to the issue of whether it is legal to mail abortion pills. That law makes it a crime to use the mail for any “lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article” as well as any “article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use of apply it for producing abortion.”

When the Comstock Act was enacted, of course, modern delivery services like FedEx and UPS did not exist. But the law also prohibits any “express company” from engaging in the same acts.

The U.S. Postal Service asked the Justice Department whether abortion pills can be mailed under the Comstock Act, and it responded with a carefully worded 21-page opinion in late December 2022. The opinion concludes that mailing the abortion pills is not illegal so long as the sender “lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully.”

As the opinion pointed out, recipients could use the drugs for a variety of reasons that would be legal in every state. For example, the combination can “treat a miscarriage,” and misoprostol can prevent and treat gastric ulcers.

Regardless of how Judge Kacsmaryk rules, we expect to see medication abortion remain available in states that don’t have abortion bans. But we also are certain that legal challenges over abortion access will continue.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Naomi Cahn, University of Virginia and Sonia Suter, George Washington University.

Read more:

What the FDA’s rule changes allowing the abortion pill mifepristone to be dispensed by pharmacies mean in practice – 5 questions answered


Abortion pills are safe to prescribe without in-person exams, new research finds

‘Most disrespectful bill.’ MO lawmakers push to ban teachers from discussing LGBTQ identity


Jeff Roberson/AP


Kacen Bayless
Tue, February 7, 2023 

In front of a packed Missouri Senate hearing room on Tuesday, Michael Lundgren told Missouri lawmakers that when he came out as gay, he turned to his teachers.

They supported and encouraged him to speak with his mother, who was struggling to accept him.

“My teachers are the reason my relationship with my mom is stronger than ever,” Lundgren, 22, a St. Louis County resident, told the Missouri Senate Education and Workforce Development Committee. “When I needed them most, I had teachers who listened, supported and encouraged and they helped me rebuild my relationship with the person I love most in this world.”

Lundgren urged the committee to vote against a bill that would ban teachers from discussing gender identity or sexual orientation at any grade level, no matter the class subject.


The bill, filed by state Sen. Mike Moon, an Ash Grove Republican, goes further than Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation signed into law last year. The Florida law bans instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in kindergarten through third grade. The Missouri bill does not specify a grade level.

During the hour-long hearing, supporters argued that the legislation would protect kids from having inappropriate classroom conversations with their teachers about sex. They said the bill was intended to leave those discussions to parents and mental health providers.

“I did not know what my teacher’s gender identity was, nor did I care. I was there to learn math, science, history or English,” Andy Wells, president of the Missouri chapter of No Left Turn in Education, told the committee. The national group has rallied against classroom instruction it considers too progressive. “Can we get back to basic — teaching students the subjects they’re supposed to be learning?”

But opponents of the legislation say it would prohibit LGBTQ teachers from discussing their spouses because it could indicate their sexual orientation. They say it could also ban books from being taught if they include LGBTQ characters or topics, and forbid discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation in health classes.

“Should this legislation pass, thousands of families like mine across the state will seriously consider leaving the state,” said Katy Erker-Lynch, executive director of PROMO, an LGBTQ advocacy group. “I think that’s exactly what this bill intends. To instill fear. To censor. To have a chilling effect.”

State Sen. Greg Razer, a Kansas City Democrat and Missouri’s only openly gay state senator, agreed and said the legislation seeks to get rid of people like himself.

“This is the most disrespectful bill I’ve ever seen in my seven years in this building,” he said.

The Senate committee adjourned Tuesday without a decision. The legislation could be brought up for a vote at a future hearing.

Tuesday’s hearing, which became tense at times, came as Missouri Republicans have proposed at least 27 anti-LGBTQ bills this session. The Show-Me state is behind only Oklahoma, which had 32 bills filed as of Feb. 7, according to a legislation tracker from the ACLU.

Separately on Tuesday, the Missouri Senate Emerging Issues Committee was holding a hearing over a bill filed by state Sen. Mike Cierpiot, a Lee’s Summit Republican, that would ban Missourians from being able to change their birth certificate if they change their sex without having surgery.

California faces threat from the type of back-to-back mega-earthquakes that devastated Turkey


Rong-Gong Lin II
Wed, February 8, 2023 

The mega-quakes in Turkey this week showcase how a magnitude 7.8 quake could trigger a magnitude 7.5 aftershock on a different fault, with 60 miles of distance between the epicenters.

A similar seismic scenario could occur in California.

Mega-quakes that could rupture the southern San Andreas fault from near the Mexican border through Los Angeles County and beyond could trigger major aftershocks and shake cities as far away as Sacramento and San Francisco, according to documents and interviews.

In a U.S. Geological Survey report published in 2008 detailing a hypothetical magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Southern California, scientists said a plausible aftershock scenario included a magnitude 6.95 quake that would shake Sacramento and Modesto three days after the mainshock, endangering the stability of the levees, which are crucial for maintaining flood control and water movement from the northern Sierra Nevada to cities across the state.

Distant sizable aftershocks have occurred in California before.

The great 1906 earthquake, best known for destroying much of San Francisco, also triggered quakes much farther away on the same day, said seismologist Lucy Jones, a research associate at Caltech. They included a magnitude 5.5 in Santa Monica Bay and a magnitude 6 in the Imperial Valley, near the Mexican border, Jones said.

Supersized earthquakes are more likely to cause supersized aftershocks — and they can happen much farther away than more modest quakes.

For instance, the great 1906 earthquake ruptured a vast swath of the northern San Andreas fault, from Humboldt County near Eureka, through the San Francisco Bay Area and approaching San Benito County, east of Monterey.

The length of the ruptured fault — nearly 300 miles — is important.

Earthquake scientists say that a subsequent quake that is generated "one ruptured fault length" away from the mainshock can be considered an aftershock.

That means the Santa Monica Bay quake, roughly 250 miles from the southernmost end of the ruptured San Andreas fault, would be considered an aftershock of the 1906 San Francisco quake.

In addition, subsequent earthquakes a distance of roughly four times that of the ruptured fault length of the mainshock are considered "triggered" quakes.

So the fault length that ruptured in the Turkey quake — about 125 to 185 miles long — would produce a higher chance of follow-up earthquakes as far as 620 miles from the mainshock fault's ruptured length, according to Jones.

"So out to something like 1,000 kilometers [620 miles], we have an increased chance of having earthquakes," Jones said. "We aren't going to see it everywhere 1,000 kilometers away, but we're going to see it."

It's therefore plausible that a magnitude 8.2 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault, rupturing from near the Mexican border, through Los Angeles County and ending in Monterey County, could result in a subsequent earthquake in San Francisco, Jones said.

A plausible magnitude 8.2 earthquake on the San Andreas fault involves the rupture of more than 300 miles of fault, from the Mexican border through Los Angeles County to Monterey County. (Angelica Quintero and Maneeza Iqbal / Los Angeles Times)

"If we get the bigger rupture, and it extends north to Parkfield [in Monterey County] — then all of the Bay Area's within one fault length," Jones said.

Simulations of huge quakes in California show how aftershocks can occur far from the mainshock. Large aftershocks can occur for months, years and even decades in a broad region, with a mega-quake potentially ushering in a generation of heightened seismic activity.

Another plausible scenario: A magnitude 7.8 earthquake on the southern San Andreas fault, rupturing near the Mexican border to Lake Hughes near Santa Clarita spurs a magnitude 7.2 aftershock on the Cucamonga fault, rupturing between the Cajon Pass and Monrovia.

"This event would cause substantial further damage throughout the San Gabriel Valley, perhaps increasing the financial losses and deaths by 20% to 30%," the U.S. Geological Survey said in the 2008 report.

A magnitude 7.71 aftershock could affect communities such as Palm Springs, Palm Desert, Rancho Mirage, Coachella, Thermal, Mecca, Imperial Valley, Brawley and El Centro. Significant damage could extend to San Diego and Imperial counties.

And a magnitude 7 earthquake rupturing 52 miles of the Hayward fault east of San Francisco could produce significant, damaging aftershocks farther away from the hardest shaken areas beneath Oakland, Berkeley, Hayward and Fremont. One scenario includes a magnitude 6.4 earthquake in Cupertino, in the heart of Silicon Valley, more than five months after the mainshock, a USGS report said.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

States push to enshrine protections for tribal children



- Participants listen during a rally in support of three-year-old baby Veronica, Veronica's biological father, Dusten Brown, and the Indian Child Welfare Act, in Oklahoma City on Aug. 19, 2013. Montana is one of a handful U.S. states considering legislation this year to ensure other Native American children don't have to endure similar experiences by including provisions of the U.S. Indian Child Welfare Act in state law. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File)

AMY BETH HANSON
Tue, February 7, 2023

HELENA, Mont. (AP) — Leo Thompson received plenty of love, food and shelter from the non-Native American family who raised them, but missed out on any exposure to their Indigenous culture, heritage, ancestors and community.

“The only time they acknowledged my heritage was when they’d make passive comments like, ‘Oh, you know, you’ve always liked that Native American stuff,'" said Thompson, who lives in Missoula, Montana. “That stuff that they so casually referred to is not casual at all. It’s the practices of my ancestors. It’s the very same culture that’s healed my soul. Reconnecting with my heritage as an adult has been a long and arduous journey.”

Montana is one of a handful U.S. states — along with Wyoming, Utah and North Dakota — considering legislation this year to keep more Native American children from enduring similar experiences by including provisions of the U.S. Indian Child Welfare Act in state law.

The states are driven by concerns that Supreme Court challenges have put the federal law in jeopardy. During a hearing last year, the justices seemed likely to leave in place most of the law that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption proceedings involving Native children. The law also requires child welfare agencies to provide services to help Native families move toward reunification.

Ten other states have similar laws in place, including New Mexico, whose law took effect this year, and they too could be affected, depending on how the justices rule. Most federally recognized tribes want the act upheld, fearing that an adverse ruling could dismantle a whole range of federal laws based on their political relationships with the U.S. government.

Thompson, who uses she/they pronouns, shared their story during a recent legislative hearing on a bill sponsored by Montana Democratic Rep. Jonathan Windy Boy.

The federal Indian Child Welfare Act was passed by Congress in 1978 in response to the alarming rate at which Native American and Alaskan Native children were taken from their homes by public and private agencies. From 1887-1969, Native children were placed in boarding schools that used abusive practices to assimilate them into white society. Many were adopted by non-Native families, often depriving them of their tribal and cultural heritage.

The law has helped change that, but there is still work to do.

In Montana, nearly 11% of all children are Indigenous but they made up 37% of those in foster care in 2021, according to the National Indian Child Welfare Association. About 9% of North Dakota children are Indigenous, but account for 44% of the children in foster care, the association said.

“I have witnessed and experienced the benefits of keeping a child within the care of their family where he stays connected, rooted and knows who he is and where he comes from,” Sharen Kickingwoman, with the ACLU of Montana. testified. “We know from our experiences and research that affirming Indigenous identity, especially for youth, is some of the strongest things you can do to enhance resilience amidst adverse childhood experiences.”

Wyoming’s effort is furthest along, having passed the Senate 20-11. In Utah, tribes and statewide officials support the proposal, yet lawmakers held it in a legislative committee during the final week of January amid questions about whether it was needed yet and despite a request by Navajo Nation leaders to pass it.

Bills in Montana and North Dakota have had committee hearings but no votes, while a South Dakota bill was rejected this week.

One aspect of the case awaiting a Supreme Court ruling argued that the Indian Child Welfare Act amounts to federal overreach, and that such protections should be enacted in state law. Another argument is the act provides race-based protections that violate the equal protection guarantee in the Constitution. Native Americans argue the measure is a government-to-government agreement between the U.S. and sovereign tribal nations that, like the U.S., determine citizenship in ways that aren't based on race.

No one testified against the proposed policy during a Montana hearing, while supporters testified about the importance of family relationships within tribes.

Kickingwoman, a member of the Gros Ventre and Blackfeet nations, said Native societies are built around kinship. Kickingwoman said she’s been honored to provide guardianship to many of her relatives, including her cousin's son, who she said by mainstream society's standards would be considered a distant relative," but to her is a son.

“A lot of our extended families and friends are close kin in relation to us,” she said. “What may be on paper seen as a second or third cousin really is a brother or sister, maybe a niece or a nephew.”

Keegan Modrano, a policy director with the ACLU of Montana who is Muscogee Creek, also was raised by a non-Native family, and was therefore deprived of being raised with their cultural practices, language or people.

“I can not fully ever completely express the incompleteness I feel living my life,” Modrano told the committee.

“My younger self wants nothing more than a Native father figure in my life. My younger self wants nothing more than a Native mother, for cousins and kin, aunties and uncles," they said. "I cannot rest and I will fight every day so that no other Indian child feels that loss or experiences child removal or the foster care system.”

The World's Largest Carbon Capture Plant Gets a Second Chance in Texas



Kevin Crowley
Wed, February 8, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- Owners of the world’s largest carbon capture facility plan to restore operations at the $1 billion plant three years after it shut down, providing a test case for a nascent industry that experts believe is essential in achieving climate goals.

JX Nippon aims to restart the Petra Nova facility in Texas after NRG Energy Inc. finishes repairs on the coal-fired power unit to which it is connected, the company said in an emailed response to questions. NRG said it’s scheduled to complete the work in June.

The resumption would mark a significant step forward for US carbon capture, providing a new lease of life for a project that critics saw as one of the industry’s highest-profile failures. The Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act provides major tax incentives to boost development of the technology that would scrub emissions from burning fossil fuels. Some environmentalists contend that even if it works, carbon capture extends the life of oil and gas extraction. Supporters say there’s no other viable option to decarbonizing high-polluting industries.

Petra Nova, which cost $1 billion to build including $195 million from the US government, shipped carbon it captured from burning coal to an oil field operated by Hilcorp Energy Co., where it was used to extract crude through a process called enhanced oil recovery. In that process, the carbon dioxide acts like soap to squeeze out oil and is then stored in reservoirs deep underground.

During its three years of operation it was the world’s largest post-combustion carbon capture plant by tons captured annually, according to NRG.

But the system faltered in 2020 after plunging oil prices and crude production “made the project economics challenging,” NRG said in a statement. NRG sold its 50% stake in Petra Nova to JX Nippon for $3.6 million at the end of last year, making the Japanese company its sole owner.

JX Nippon’s goal is to obtain further technical knowledge of the carbon capture process and help Eneos Holdings Inc., its Tokyo-based parent, become carbon neutral by 2040, spokesman Hoshina Tatsuro said by email. Petra Nova’s feasibility depends mainly on the price of oil, he said.

Carbon capture is seen by some as a vital tool to limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels because it enables the use of fossil fuels while removing their emissions. However, compared to other low carbon technologies like wind and solar power, it’s still in its infancy due to high cost and technical difficulty.

Energy modelers forecast that US carbon capture will rise tenfold to to 200 million metric tons by 2030, as emitters are encouraged by IRA tax breaks as well as pressure from customers and regulators. But even that lofty target is far from the 6.2 billion metric tons required to be captured if the world is to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord, according to the International Energy Agency.

Advocates claim Petra Nova was a technical success. The plant, located in greater Houston, captured 92.4% of the carbon dioxide from gas processed from the coal unit and demonstrated that a commercial-scale project can be built, former owner NRG said in a report sponsored by the Department of Energy.

However, the report also revealed that the amount of carbon captured in the first two years of operation “fell well below expectations” due to extensive downtime of various system parts.

NRG’s decision to sell at a fraction of its cost suggests the plant was either difficult to run or uneconomic, said David Schlissel, a director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an environmental research group. In any case, the facility’s purported climate benefits are undermined by the fact that it was used to extend the life of an oil field.

“You’re producing more oil, and burning that oil which produces CO2,” he said. “The end result offsets some if not all of the CO2 you’re capturing.”

BEING USED FOR ENHANCED OIL EXTRACTION

Carbon capture too expensive, takes too long to build: Report



Thu, February 9, 2023

CALGARY — By betting it can solve its emissions problem with carbon capture and storage, Canada's oil and gas industry risks saddling itself with expensive stranded assets, a new report argues.

The report, released Thursday by the International Institute for Sustainable Development — a Winnipeg-based think-tank that focuses on climate and sustainable resource development — concludes carbon capture and storage technology costs too much and takes too long to build to have any hope of helping industry meet Canada's 2030 emissions reductions target.

Calling the technology "expensive, energy intensive (and) unproven at scale," the report urges the federal government not to put any more public money into the oil and gas industry for carbon capture deployment.

"The application of CCS does not align with the time scale or ambition necessary for limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C," the report states.

"The opportunity cost of investing in CCS and the risk of stranded assets for Canada’s oil and gas sector will intensify as global climate ambition ratchets up and demand for oil and gas declines."

Carbon capture and storage is a technology that captures greenhouse gas emissions from industrial sources and stores them deep in the ground to prevent them from being released into the atmosphere.

The technology has existed for decades, but it's expensive and has been slow to scale up. There are currently just seven CCS projects currently operating in Canada, mostly in the oil and gas sector, and only 30 commercial-scale CCS projects in operation globally.

Still, the oil and gas industry has high hopes for the technology, with a number of new projects in the planning stage in Canada. Most notably, the Pathways Alliance — a consortium of the country's six largest oilsands companies — has proposed a major carbon capture and storage transportation line that would capture CO2 from oilsands facilities and transport it to a storage facility near Cold Lake, Alta.

While a final investment decision has not been made, the project is estimated to cost $16.5 billion and is the centrepiece of the Pathways group's total $24.1-billion pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from oilsands production by 22 million tonnes by 2030.

"The oil sector in Canada has been identifying CCS as the major component of its plan to bring down emissions," said Angela Carter, co-author of the IID report.

"In fact, some industry representatives, they frame CCS as the only option to make the kind of large inroads that are needed to reduce emissions in the oil and gas sector. It's very much like the industry is putting all of its eggs in the basket of CCS."

In a recent op-ed, James Millar — president and CEO of the International CCS Knowledge Centre in Regina, Sask. — argued that carbon capture is a way for Canada to "have its environmental cake, and eat it too."

Millar said the wide-scale deployment of carbon capture technology will allow for a transition to net-zero "while maintaining the viability of industries that have long sustained communities and workforces across the country."

"To build this capacity, industry is looking for strong signals that investments in CCS and other emissions reduction technologies align with Canada’s low-carbon future," Millar said.

"Wider investment in CCS requires clear policy providing long-term certainty on carbon pricing, along with other mechanisms that will ensure Canada remains an attractive location (especially when compared to the United States) to undertake multi-billion-dollar projects."

Carter said this kind of continued lobbying by industry for more government funding and regulatory support for carbon capture projects, above and beyond the investment tax credit announced in last year's federal budget, is problematic.

She pointed out the seven CCS projects currently operating in Canada capture just 0.5 per cent of national emissions, and that ramping that up to significant levels by 2030 would require massive government subsidies.

"CCS has been over-promised and under-delivered," she said, adding a more cost-effective use of public funds would be to encourage near-term emissions cuts through regulations, such as the federal methane rules currently under development.

Government should also be focusing on energy efficiency and electrification, as well as planning for a long-term decline in oil and gas production, Carter said.

In a report published last August, BMO Capital Markets argued that government can and must do more to get carbon capture projects up and running in this country.

The report said the Inflation Reduction Act south of the border ensures roughly two-thirds of carbon capture project costs (capital and operating costs) are covered by the U.S. government.

By comparison, the BMO report said, the investor tax credit announced by the Canadian federal government in 2022 would cover less than 15 per cent of the proposed Pathways Alliance carbon capture project's total costs by 2050.

"We believe the U.S. policy advancement further underscores the need for substantially more robust policy incentives to bolster Canada's competitive position in the decarbonization race," the BMO report stated.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 9, 2023.

Amanda Stephenson, The Canadian Press