UK should make Hong Kong release of Jimmy Lai 'priority': son

Jurgen HECKER
Fri, 23 June 2023 

'The clock is ticking' for Jimmy Lai, says his son, Sebastien (Zoulerah NORDDINE)

The son of Jimmy Lai, a pro-democracy media tycoon jailed since 2020 in Hong Kong, has called on Britain to step up pressure for his father's release.

Jimmy Lai, a 75-year-old British citizen and founder of the now-shuttered tabloid Apple Daily, is awaiting trial for alleged "collusion with foreign forces" -- an offence under a security law Beijing imposed in 2020 to quell dissent in the wake of protests.

In an interview with AFP during a trip to Paris, his son Sebastien Lai said the British government needed to make his father's case "a political priority" in its dealings with China and the Hong Kong authorities over the former British colony.

"So long as you have a person like Jimmy Lai behind bars it can't be business as usual," he said.

In the latest twist in the Jimmy Lai case, a Hong Kong court last month dismissed his challenge of a ruling that banned a British lawyer from representing him, a decision that observers said illustrated Beijing's ability to trump Hong Kong courts despite the city's guarantee of judicial independence from the mainland.

Sebastien Lai, who is 28 and has worked for his family's property development business in Taiwan for the past three years, said Britain owed all its citizens protection, including his father.

"If they don't stand firm in the protection that this citizen is guaranteed, in a place that they do business with, then, to their great shame, what is the point of having a passport? What is the point of being a citizen?" he said.

Jimmy Lai is facing up to life in prison if convicted.

His trial, scheduled for December last year, was pushed to September.

At the start of this year, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak vowed that his government would resist any "undermining" of a deal guaranteeing Hong Kong citizens existing rights and freedoms for 50 years after Britain handed Hong Kong over to China in 1997.

But Sebastien Lai said London needed to do more. "I'm not asking for people to break my father out of prison or what not," he said.

"I'm asking the UK to speak out on my father's case, to put pressure on Hong Kong, because every single person in the free world sees this as something unacceptable."

- 'Clock ticking' -

Hong Kong's common law system, inherited from British colonial rule, is distinct from mainland China's. But Sebastien Lai said Hong Kong was now using it to justify its political actions.

"What the Hong Kong government is doing right now is using the UK legal system as a moral laundromat," Sebastien Lai said.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), a France-based media freedom body, has helped bring Jimmy Lai's case to global attention, including with a petition signed by 116 media leaders calling for his release.

On RSF's press freedom ranking of 180 states, Hong Kong is now number 140, a drop of 122 spots in 20 years, the organisation said.

Six other Apple Daily employees risk life in prison on the basis of the security law, according to RSF.

Jimmy Lai has been behind bars since December 2020 and has since been sentenced to more than seven years for unauthorised assembly and fraud.

"Under any legal system with a rulebook, he's not guilty," Sebastien Lai said.

"In the end this is about a man who gave up all that he's worked for, all the tangible stuff that he's worked for, for something intangible like liberty," he said.

Earlier this month, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of a petition caling for his release.

While campaigning for support in France, Sebastien Lai met with officials at the foreign ministry, Paris city hall and lawmakers from the Senate and National Assembly.

"France understands the struggle of a man who gave everything for liberty," he said, adding that his family had strong ties to France where Jimmy Lai got married.

Sebastien Lai said he last saw his father in August 2020, shortly before leaving Hong Kong. "He's 75. The clock is ticking."

jh/sjw/ach

EU visits Silicon Valley: Thierry Breton puts Twitter under 'stress test' over bloc's new law

Associated Press
Fri, 23 June 2023

A top European Union official is in Silicon Valley to check whether Twitter is ready to comply with the bloc’s tough new digital rulebook, a set of sweeping new standards that the world’s biggest online platforms all must obey in just two months.

European Commissioner Thierry Breton, who oversees digital policy, is the EU's point person working to get tech companies in line for the Digital Services Act, which will force companies to crack down on hate speech, disinformation, and other harmful material on their sites.

It takes effect on August 25 for the biggest tech platforms.

Twitter will respect EU laws to combat disinformation, Elon Musk says

The law, along with new regulations in the pipeline for data and artificial intelligence (AI), has made Brussels a trailblazer in the growing global movement to clamp down on Big Tech.

Breton tweeted about his meeting Thursday at Twitter headquarters to carry out a voluntary "stress test" to prepare for the new rules.

"The company is taking this exercise very seriously," he said, adding he had "constructive dialogue" with owner Elon Musk and new CEO Linda Yaccarino.

The mock exercise tested Twitter's readiness to cope with the DSA's requirements, including protecting children online and detecting and mitigating risks like disinformation, under both normal and extreme situations.

Despite Musk’s claims to the contrary, independent researchers have found misinformation - as well as hate speech - spreading on Twitter since the billionaire Tesla CEO took over the company last year.

Musk has reinstated notorious election deniers, overhauled Twitter’s verification system, and gutted much of the staff that had been responsible for moderating posts.

From AI to Twitter: What Elon Musk did and didn't discuss in his appearance at VivaTech in Paris

Last month, Breton warned Twitter that it "can’t hide" from its obligations after the social media site abandoned the bloc's voluntary "code of practice" on online disinformation, which other social media platforms have pledged to support.

Under the EU Digital Services Act, combating disinformation will become a legal requirement.

Musk has said Twitter will comply.

"If laws are passed, Twitter will obey the law," Musk told the France 2 TV channel this week when asked about the DSA.

Meetings with Meta and OpenAI

Breton's agenda on Friday includes discussions about the EU’s digital rules and upcoming artificial intelligence regulations with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company makes the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT.

The DSA is part of a sweeping update to the EU's digital rulebook aimed at forcing tech companies to clean up their platforms and better protect users online.

For European users of big tech platforms, it will be easier to report illegal content like hate speech, and they will get more information on why they have been recommended certain content.

Violations will incur fines worth up to 6 per cent of annual global revenue - amounting to billions of dollars for some tech giants - or even a ban on operating in the EU, with its 450 million consumers.

Breton also is meeting Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the dominant supplier of semiconductors used in AI systems, for talks on the EU's Chips Act to boost the continent's chipmaking industry.

The EU, meanwhile, is putting the final touches on its AI Act, the world's first comprehensive set of rules on the emerging technology that has stirred fascination as well as fears it could violate privacy, upend jobs, infringe on copyright, and more.

Final approval is expected by the end of the year, but it won’t take effect until two years later. Breton has been pitching a voluntary "AI Pact" to help companies get ready for its adoption.

AUSTRALIA
Infosys paid $16m to lobbying firm which Stuart Robert allegedly advised

Tory Shepherd

GUARDIAN AUSTRALIA
Fri, 23 June 2023

Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

Infosys paid $16m to Synergy 360, the company that reportedly sent profits to the trust of a company part-owned by former Coalition MP Stuart Robert, a parliamentary committee has heard.

The Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit (JCPAA) is investigating possible “tainted contracts” following allegations that Robert helped lobbying firm Synergy 360 and its client, Infosys, win government contracts.

The Infosys executive vice-president, Andrew Groth, said on Friday that his firm no longer engaged Synergy 360, had not been aware of anything untoward and that Synergy claimed they didn’t have to register as a lobbyist organisation.

Nine newspapers have reported the allegations and that Synergy 360’s co-owners, David Milo and John Margerison, are linked to Robert.

Related: Labor orders investigation into government contracts linked to Stuart Robert

Robert, a close friend of former prime minister Scott Morrison, has denied any wrongdoing. He has previously rejected any “implied imputation” that he had influenced procurement, declaring he had “zero involvement” and that departmental procurement was conducted with the “highest levels of probity”.

Robert announced his retirement from the Gold Coast seat of Fadden in May. A byelection will be held on 15 July.

On Thursday, Shorten said in parliament that in November he had updated the house on reports in Nine newspapers “alleging Mr Stuart Robert used his status as a federal MP to help Canberra lobbying firm Synergy 360 sign up corporate clients with a promise of helping them navigate government bureaucracy and parliament and meet key decision-makers, including Coalition ministers”.

“The initial report detailed how Mr Robert personally intervened in contracts worth $274m awarded to Indian software giant Infosys,” he said.

“Flowing from these disturbing revelations, Services Australia and the NDIS investigated potentially tainted contracts linked to Synergy 360.”

Shorten said a review by former public servant Dr Ian Watt found 19 of 95 procurements “had real deficiencies”.

Since then, he said, the JCPAA heard evidence from Margerison that he had “instructed his accountant to direct Synergy 360 profits derived from commonwealth contracts to a trust to which Mr Robert was a beneficiary”.

Related: Stuart Robert told lobbyist not to donate to Angus Taylor fundraising group as ‘it will be declared and it will hurt you’

Anyone with a direct or indirect financial interest in government contracts cannot sit as a senator or MP under the constitution, Shorten said, adding that it was not clear “if that threshold has been breached”.

Groth told the committee Infosys paid Synergy 360 about $16m over five years for a range of projects. Most of the money was for core work, while 15% was for sales support and 15% was for “success fees”. The company no longer awarded success fees, he said.

He met with Robert 11 times, he said on Friday, and that was because the MP had asked to be kept updated on the progress of a specific project to upgrade the information technology systems at Services Australia while he was the government services minister.

Infosys was selected after a 14-month procurement process, Groth said.

The committee asked him about Shorten stating in parliament that MPs using a public office to “enrich private mates” was corruption, which sparked a debate among MPs about who the accusation was aimed at.

“My response is that at Infosys our code of conduct, dealing with integrity, with transparency, is absolutely core to our business,” Groth said. “That’s the way we operate. I’m not aware of anything that departs from that.”

Guardian Australia contacted Synergy 360 and Robert’s office for comment.

Why some doctors stay in US states with restrictive abortion laws and others leave

Fri, June 23, 2023



Dr. Kylie Cooper chokes up thinking about the patients she left behind in Idaho.

One who often comes to mind is Kayla Smith.

Smith said she chose to end a desperately wanted pregnancy last year after discovering her fetus had potentially deadly heart defects and other problems. But Idaho banned nearly all abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, so Smith had to go to Washington state. Cooper felt “deeply saddened” she couldn’t care for her the way she normally would have.

And this is one of the reasons Cooper, a maternal-fetal specialist, moved in April to Minnesota, which has broad abortion rights.

“Obviously it was a very difficult decision for me and my family," she said. But they needed to be “where we felt that reproductive health care was protected and safe.”

Post-Roe, many maternal care doctors in restrictive states face the same stark choice: Stay or go? They must weigh tough questions about medical ethics, their own families and whether they can provide the best care without risking their careers or even winding up in prison. They know a lot is at stake for patients, too, due to current and projected widespread maternal care shortages in the U.S.

Some doctors make a different choice than Cooper. OB-GYN Dr. Alecia Fields moved back to her native Kentucky around the time news first leaked about the Supreme Court’s ruling. She practices in a conservative rural county and can no longer provide abortions part-time in Louisville like she once did.

Fields feels an intense connection to her state and hopes to foster change from within. Plus, she said, “there's a big need for providers in general in terms of reproductive health care.”

Nationally, 44% of counties had low or no access to obstetric providers, according to a 2022 March of Dimes report based on data gathered before the Supreme Court ruling. That figures jump to more than 50% in Kentucky, Idaho and some other states with restrictive abortion laws.

Federal projections show a widening gulf between supply and demand for OB-GYNs nationally through 2035. And among the 24 states that have taken steps to restrict abortion, all but Ohio will see an even bigger need by then, according to The Associated Press' analysis of the federal data.

Abortion restrictions, combined with the challenges of practicing in rural areas, threaten to expand so-called “maternal care deserts," said Dr. Amy Domeyer-Klenske, who chairs the Wisconsin section of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

This won't just affect people seeking abortions, said McKay Cunningham, who teaches reproductive rights and constitutional law at the College of Idaho. “It has ramifications that really just affect every woman, every family, that wants to have children.”

STAYING IN KENTUCKY

As the midday sun glistened on Lake Cumberland, Fields knelt down to feed her backyard chickens. She and her husband, who is a stay-at-home dad, bought a house and barn on three acres to raise their two little boys.

That’s how Fields, 36, grew up — shuttling from her parents’ house in Lexington to her grandparents’ house in the country. “You could just run and go anywhere and play anywhere,” she said. “Everybody kind of knew each other, came over for Sunday dinners and it just had a real warm feeling to it.”

At the University of Kentucky and later in medical school, Fields became an advocate for reproductive rights. She served on the board of Medical Students for Choice and learned abortion care during her residency in Rochester, New York. When she worked at a health center in Indianapolis, she drove to Louisville monthly to provide abortions at Planned Parenthood.

Then last spring, she got a job offer from a health center in Somerset, Kentucky. It was a chance to serve a county where nearly 1 in 5 people live in poverty and some drive an hour or two for care.

But Fields said the abortion decision leak brought up “a lot of fears” and made her wonder: “What is this going to mean on the ground? Am I going to be criminalized?”

She decided to risk it.

Now, she tries to provide the best care possible given the limitations. She said her goal is to “create a really safe space that’s very open-ended,” where patients can share whether their pregnancies are planned, how they feel about them and what they want to do. If necessary, she can point them toward information on out-of-state abortion providers and travel funds. She can also prescribe birth control and offer permanent sterilization — something more of her patients are seeking.

And if an emergency puts a mother’s life in danger, abortion is allowed. “The hard thing is, waiting until that moment puts the patient at a lot of risk,” Fields said.

Despite constraints on her practice, patients regularly thank Fields at the clinic or when she bumps into them at Walmart. One expressed her gratitude publicly on Facebook, describing how she hemorrhaged while delivering her baby — and Fields saved them both.

Fields displays her love for Kentucky on her dining room shelves, where she's placed a wooden cutout and colorful picture in the shape of the state, a horse statue and the framed saying “home sweet home.” She envisions staying for a long time and caring for generations of local families.

“I want to be settled,” she said. “To kind of put down roots and build on them.”

LEAVING IDAHO

Cooper, like Fields, wanted to practice where she was needed and “make a huge impact."

She moved to Boise in 2018, and the job proved extremely rewarding. She handled the toughest cases, shepherding some women through loss and helping others welcome healthy babies despite serious pregnancy complications. She made deep connections with patients, families and coworkers.

Her family loved Idaho. She and her husband, also a stay-at-home dad, lived in a great neighborhood and had a group of friends. The kids, 9 and 6, did well in school.

“We just had a good life,” Cooper, 39, said. “We had no plans to leave.”

That changed after Idaho banned abortion. Under state law, doctors who perform the procedure can be charged with a felony and have their medical license revoked.

For some of Cooper’s patients, abortion was the best option and the only way to preserve life and health.

“The idea of not being able to help them the way that I should was just was terrifying,” she said.

She was already having to run some cases by hospital attorneys and feared she might soon be forced to choose between her patients’ welfare and her own. If she went to prison, she realized, her children might go years without a mom. And the family’s income would disappear.

All she and her husband would talk about, she said, “was abortion care and my job and just all the stress of it.”

A new poll by KFF, a nonprofit that does health care research, found 61% of OB-GYNs in states with abortion bans say they are very or somewhat concerned about their own legal risk when making decisions about patient care and whether abortions are necessary.

One of Cooper's colleagues in Idaho also decided to leave, surveyed other maternal care professionals and found dozens more were considering moving out of the state within the next year.

Cooper's family is now settling into a new house in Minnesota. They're still unpacking. They’re figuring out new schedules and looking for new friends. “Basically,” Cooper said, “we’re trying to find what we had in Idaho.”

She said she still worries a lot about her former patients, over which "lots of tears were shed and still are.”

Smith misses Cooper just as much. The doctor cried with her when she chose to end her second pregnancy after realizing halfway through that her fetus likely wouldn’t live. And Cooper helped her cope with the loss of baby Brooks, who lived a few moments after induced labor.

When Smith learned Cooper was leaving, she stopped by her office to thank her for everything and give her flowers and a hug.

“I’m just really sad. She was so kind. She changed our lives,” said Smith, who is also considering moving away. “I don’t blame her for leaving. But it sucks for everyone here.”

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Laura Ungar, The Associated Press

Opinion
A year ago Roe v Wade was overturned. Grieve for the new America

Moira Donegan

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, 23 June 2023 

Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

That it has only been a year since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and ended the federal right to an abortion feels absurd, almost impossible. How horribly and dramatically our country has changed since then. In a span of just 12 months, thousands of lives have been permanently changed – dreams dashed, intentions scuttled, childhoods abruptly ended, talents and potential suppressed, health risked, and the self-determination of pregnant women snatched from them by a body of unelected jurists who believe that their own sentiments are more important than those women’s dignity.

The decision unleashed atrocities and morbid perversions of medical ethics that have rapidly become routine. Women experiencing miscarriages now wait around in emergency rooms and parking lots, unable to receive treatment until they sicken to the point where sufficiently brutal health outcomes (life-ending or life-altering, depending on the state) become a certainty. Other women, and no small number of girls, now gestate and give birth to infants conceived by their rapists – their coaches, abusive boyfriends, acquaintances, priests, fathers. Still others are forced into torturously monstrous exercises in medical futility, their bodies commandeered and used by the state to birth babies without lungs or heads.

Any one of these scenarios is the stuff of a horror movie, episodes of legally mandated medical sadism that makes a mockery of the principles of liberty, equality, privacy or due process. But the anti-choice movement also seems to be determined to bring an end to free speech: when an Indiana doctor, Caitlin Bernard, spoke to the media about performing an abortion on a raped 10-year-old girl who had had to flee Ohio for the procedure, Indiana state Republicans set about a year-long campaign of harassment and intimidation meant to punish her for speaking publicly about the reality that their policies had created.

All of this was predictable. All of it was, in fact, predicted by the pro-choice movement, whose size, institutional knowledge and internal variance did not earn it respect from either the Democratic establishment or the movement left. And it was all predicted, too, by the anti-choice movement, one of the largest and best-funded hate campaigns in the nation’s history, whose habitual bad faith and single-minded commitment to ensuring women’s suffering ushered in the human rights catastrophe of the post-Dobbs era entirely on purpose.

The Dobbs decision itself was not a surprise. Republicans held a commanding six-three supermajority on the court, ever since the appointment of the arch-conservative and devout Catholic justice Amy Coney Barrett, and the plaintiffs in Dobbs, the case that provided the court the excuse to end Roe, had revised their filings to ask for a more extreme ruling as soon as she was confirmed. Activists in the anti-choice movement, and the Republicans who do their bidding, dispensed with pretense and began introducing the bills they really wanted. Laws that criminalized women for seeking abortions were introduced; laws eliminating the fig-leaf “rape, incest and life of the mother” exemptions that the anti-choice set had long hid behind passed, and are now standard.

None of the ensuing atrocities should have come as a surprise to anyone with an interest in women’s rights, because they were not a surprise: they were the anti-choice movement’s design. Even the opinion itself leaked ahead of time, with a draft of Samuel Alito’s rambling, contemptuous and ahistorical opinion published in Politico a month before the formal ruling.

Still, the Biden administration was inexplicably and unforgivably flat-footed in the response, seemingly caught off-guard by an outcome that they had been warned about more than a month in advance. Members of the administration seemed, if anything, a bit irritated by the demand for action, and it emerged just days after the Dobbs decision went into effect that the Biden administration was in fact planning to appoint Chad Meredith, an anti-choice lawyer, to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench. The nomination was only dropped after an outcry from an irate nation.

For months, it seemed a victory when the clearly indifferent Biden so much as said the word abortion. When the decision came down, the Biden administration had no interest in using executive power to help women exercise their rights, and no plan to restore access, to redignify American women, or to mitigate the unspeakable harm that was coming. They still don’t.

For months, abortion flickered in and out of legality in many states, like a fluorescent light with a moth caught in it, as lawsuits ascended through the courts and judicial stays either permitted or prohibited women from exercising authority over their own lives. But in the 13 states with so-called trigger laws – enacted by anti-choice Republicans in drooling anticipation of the day the court overturned Roe – the Dobbs decision meant that abortion was banned immediately. In these states, abortion providers rushed to perform as many procedures as they could before the bans went into effect, while women wept on the phone lines and in the waiting rooms, like passengers awaiting the last plane out of a war-torn country.

This was the stuff of another horror movie: the dwindling hours, the ticking minutes, that separated these women from a world where they were full citizens, endowed with the dignity to determine their own family futures and sexual lives, and one where they were transformed in law into something else, something lesser. Now, a new and chaotic legal regime has emerged, where women are full citizens in some states, something more like children in others. It is not a situation that will hold. The anti-abortion movement, and the Republicans who serve it, has every intention of pursuing a national ban, and all the resources needed to achieve it in our lifetimes.

Amid all the brutality, all the horrific medical emergencies, all the women sickening to the brink of death, all the girls forced to remain pregnant with the children of their rapists while still children themselves, there is one central feature of Dobbs and its aftermath that hangs over every crude discussion of gestational limits and unspeakably vulgar argument over rape exemptions, this is the elephant in the room: that history does move backwards, that America does not advance all of its peoples steadily toward inclusion and justice, and that Dobbs diminished the citizenship of half of America because of their sex. It came as women attained new heights of education and achievement – it aims to reverse them. It came as trans people achieved new levels of visibility and acceptance as their true selves – it aimed to shove them back into a social role determined by their sex assigned at birth.

Dobbs created a two-tiered class of American citizenship: one for those who are trusted to plan their families and control their bodies, because they are male, and one for those who are not, because they are female. It is a generational tragedy.

This is not the kind of thing we are accustomed to memorializing in America: the lost dreams, the ruined health, the unwritten novels and symphonies, the early deaths, the searing and profound humiliation. We do not like to dwell on our failures, our violences, our ignoble reversals. But it is worth dwelling on this one today. Take a moment to remember the women who have been denied abortions since Dobbs – those who are hurt and threatened by their pregnancies, and those who simply do not want them – and grieve for them. Grieve, and wonder about what other lives they might have led, if they had a choice.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist

Heartache, horror, hope: my year reporting on abortion while pregnant


LONG READ

Poppy Noor

THE GUARDIAN
Fri, 23 June 2023 

I was six weeks and two days gone when I found out I was pregnant. I had just gotten back from covering the US midterms in such a sickeningly frantic way that I hadn’t had time to think about the changes going on in my body, but the signs were there: a creeping nausea that felt like seasickness, breasts as sore as swollen pimples, sheer exhaustion that willed me into bed for three days upon my return.

I had reasoned this was a normal response to a week spent shuttling across hundreds of miles, working 21-hour days on the abortion beat in the fury of election season.

Related: Tracking where abortion laws stand in every state

If I had wanted an abortion at that stage of my pregnancy, I would have already lost that right in 15 US states. On 24 June 2022, five months before I discovered my pregnancy, the US supreme court had undone the constitutional right to abortion, curtailing the rights of some 22-million women of reproductive age as easily as untying a shoelace.

An influx of bans and restrictions quickly followed suit. Old laws sprang back into action, some of which had been written in the Victorian era – before women had the right to vote or had a legal protection against being raped within marriage. New laws were introduced, too, although their content – including murder charges for people who have abortions, and allowing members of the public to track anyone down like a bounty hunter, clearing the way for them to sue for “aiding and abetting” abortions – felt equally antiquated.

I’ve driven across America’s varied terrain as a reporter throughout this tidal wave, bearing witness to a monumental assault on women’s rights. I have faced, head on, the fury that comes from anti-abortion extremists for daring to write about abortions. And I have seen the dogged organization and jubilance of those who have protected abortion rights in their states after months of pounding on doors, rain or shine.

None of it has changed the way I’ve reported the news. It’s our job as journalists to see what is happening, not what we want to see. But covering this beat, especially while pregnant, has changed my depth of vision. To see this assault up close and personal is to see it for what it is: not a journey to protect life; but to stifle, suppress and suffocate freedom.

•••

I am not one of those people who loves the experience of being pregnant. I’m not excited about birth; I don’t believe it will be magical. I’ve been lucky enough to be healthy throughout my pregnancy but I miss being able to put my own socks on and being able to bend over with ease; I miss playing sports; I miss getting a full night’s sleep.

I have, at the best of times, felt complicated emotions when it comes to learning to love the thing inside me, and all the changes in my body that come with it. I’m a fiercely independent person, and I have a tendency towards wanting to control my body and what happens to it. I’ve often fixated on the idea that I can undo bad experiences in my life by bolstering my health. In that vein, I have raced in a mini-triathlon, learned to do clap pushups and lifted heavy weights at the gym.

Early in pregnancy, as double the amount of blood began to flood my body like an enemy army, ramping up my blood pressure, I felt I no longer knew myself. I felt trapped in my new body, denied all my usual escape routes. I realized I wouldn’t be able to compete in the New York City half marathon, an event I was looking forward to. I was used to running regularly, now speed-walking to the station felt like a humiliatingly difficult ordeal. My old stress relievers became suddenly out-of-bounds.

These are all small things. But small details about a person matter. Small things make a person who she is, and influence how she interacts with a life-changing, all-consuming, body-throttling experience like pregnancy.

Here in America, where abortion is now banned or severely restricted in 20 US states every person I report on is as complicated as me.

•••

It’s July, and I am hurtling across Kansas City in a rental car covering a monumental vote. In just a few days, Kansas will be the first state to directly ask its people if they want to protect abortion rights under the new status quo.

Republicans are wide-eyed and hopeful: recent polls suggest people in Kansas, a ruby-red midwestern state, have far more complicated feelings about abortion restrictions than the rest of the country. While lots of American voters do not want more abortion restrictions, in Kansas, in 2022, polling analysis by the New York Times suggests they might be equally split. Nonetheless, it is currently a safe haven for abortion rights in the midwest, where a slew of bans have come down since Roe was overturned. If voters restrict abortion rights in the coming week, a refuge for millions who want access to abortion may soon be lost.

Supporters of Value Them Both, a constitutional amendment that would remove language guaranteeing the right to an abortion from the Kansas state constitution, rally in Shawnee, Kansas, on 30 July 2022. 

Photograph: Caitlin Wilson/AFP/Getty Images

I found Christy McNally – a former science teacher, a grandmother and dog lover – through a friend of hers who was working at the Johnston county Republican party. McNally is soft-spoken and sweet. She is the kind of person you feel would stop to pick up a stranger in the middle of a storm and take them where they needed to go.

One night, before we speak on the phone, she sends me a photo of her meeting Bill Clinton in 1996. Back then, she was lobbying for an abortion bill aiming to criminalize doctors for performing a dilation and extraction procedure. These procedures are a rarity in the grand scheme of abortion care, because most abortions happen in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, when simpler, less invasive options are available. Dilation and extraction in the third trimester, which anti-abortion advocates often reference, accounts for less than 1% of abortions each year and is used primarily in cases where the pregnancy is incompatible with life or puts the pregnant person at risk.

The language used by the National Right to Life Committee around that bill in the 1990s was deliberately emotive and included a newly invented term: “partial-birth abortion”.

Despite the fact these abortions are most commonly performed at a time when the scientific consensus agrees fetuses feel no pain, and often when life is not viable outside the womb, lobbyists switched to a graphic depiction of the procedure, which requires forceps to pass a fetus through the birth canal, in an attempt to foster anti-abortion sentiment.

People outside the US often ask me how a country shifts to having no federal right to abortion. This is how: by evoking emotion that humanizes the fetus at all costs – often on shaky scientific grounding – while diminishing the humanity of the person delivering it. Eventually, these ideas are repeated enough, and become part of the mainstream. Today in America, federal judges refer to “unborn children”, “killing” and “personhood” when talking about abortion care even in the earliest stages of pregnancy.

In 1996, the bill McNally lobbied Clinton over had no chance of passing. But in 2022 that rhetoric – of broken limbs, fetal pain and the murderous intent of those who perform and seek out abortions – already sat comfortably in the US vernacular.

It is also this language that activates a lot of the anti-abortion advocates I have met during my reporting, who do not see themselves as radical. McNally tells me she believes abortions should be allowed in medical emergencies (she has a friend whose fetus had no skull). She also supports exceptions for rape and incest. When I probe, I can see McNally is conflicted on abortion: there are very particular, intimate circumstances where the case for abortion has won her over, but mostly, outright bans are appealing to her. To me, she most wants to talk about abortions in the third trimester – the most unusual, and incredibly rare type of abortion – as do most anti-abortion advocates I speak to.

But the vast majority of bills that have been passed since Roe v Wade was overturned don’t target late-term abortions. Almost every single ban is instead a full ban on abortion with limited exceptions.

Those limited exceptions are rarely enacted, because doctors are too scared to intervene. I have talked to women who were denied abortions after they were told their fetuses had no skulls – precisely because of the types of restrictions that would surely come if this referendum in Kansas were to pass.

Related: Days of desperation: the diary of a woman forced to flee Texas for an abortion

Perhaps most American people, including Republicans, know and care about this. In August 2022, 59% of Kansans voted to protect abortion rights in a state where, just a decade earlier, the abortion doctor George Tiller had been murdered. At the watch party on the night of the vote, the room interrupted in cheers, screams and tears as the result was read out.

Nearing the end of the night, I noticed an older man happily perched on the corner of the stage, cradling his drink and looking a little giddy. His name was James Quigley. He was a 72-year-old Republican and a retired doctor, and he looked like he wanted to have his say.

“Abortion is a much more nuanced issue than anti-choice individuals would have you think,” Quigley told me.

“It is deeply personal, sometimes tragic, but also sometimes a liberating decision – and we should trust women, their physicians, and their God on that.”

•••

At some point during my pregnancy, I realized that I was no longer considered a full, complete, messy human – one with autonomy, quirks and desires. At best, what I wanted was important only in proportion to my ability to protect my pregnancy. At worst, people saw me as a container for a child.

I was frequently advised that from now on, I should not “take any risks”, which, of course, is ridiculously unhelpful advice. “I just don’t see why you would [take any],” one friend told me – seemingly unaware that to leave your house in the morning is a risk. To drive at 28mph on a stressful day when you’re late for an appointment, instead of at 25mph, is a risk. Going for a run is a risk – but so is choosing to forgo exercise.

I have found being treated like a child in this way difficult. I don’t have to listen to any of these people, but the experience of constantly being told what to do is tiring; usually becoming an adult means we get to make our own calculations over what’s best for us, pregnant or not.

For many pregnant people in America, this is no longer the case. By accident of birth, circumstance, or both, they live in a state that now limits their opportunity to end a pregnancy. If they’re rich, and unafraid, they might travel for care. But often, they don’t have the money, or can’t get the time off work, or can’t spend the numerous days and thousands of dollars to travel to another state for care. Their personhood has been reduced beyond all measure, in defense of the potential person living inside them.

In March, I reported on the case of a South Carolina woman who was arrested a year after allegedly taking pills to end her pregnancy. On the police report, her offense was listed simply as: “abortion”.

Pregnancy now converts legal behavior for everyone else, into a potential charge of child abuse, or child neglect, or attempted murder just for women – as the CEO of a charity explained it to me at the time.

It is hard for me not to feel that viscerally, in a context where I have sometimes had to decide whether it’s worth it for me to go to report in a state with a total abortion ban, where I know miscarriage could make me a crime suspect, or result in me being denied healthcare. Other people don’t get to make that choice, they just live there.

In a country where drinking alcohol, overexerting yourself in a yoga class, or hanging out the top of a truck while someone drives fast is not a crime, it could become illegal just for pregnant people. Teenagers whose grade point averages don’t satisfy judges are told they are too immature to have abortions; but not to raise a child. This is not rhetoric: politicians have spoken brazenly about manipulating laws not meant for abortion to police proper conduct in pregnancy since Roe was overturned.

Reporting on this while pregnant means I’ve sometimes found it hard not to feel anger when I should have been feeling happy. At our first ultrasound appointment, at six weeks and five days, I struggled to feel joy when the nurse played the “fetal heartbeat” to me and my husband.

Watching the zigzags bounce up and down on the screen in a dimly lit room, and seeing my husband’s face light up, I suddenly felt indignant. At that point, our “baby” was barely a yolk sac and some villi. Still, in many places it had more rights than me.

Reporting on this while pregnant means I’ve sometimes found it hard not to feel anger when I should have been feeling happy

“That’s not actually a heartbeat, you know?” I told my husband as soon as the nurse left the room. I felt like a killjoy. This was supposed to be an intimate moment. But all I could think about was the many US states that had brought “fetal heartbeat bills” in recent years. Those were now a legal reality, banning abortions at a point when I did not yet know I was pregnant.

At six weeks, a fetus has not yet developed a heart. It has developed a small cluster of cells that may eventually turn into a heart – if the pregnancy is healthy – and the noise is the electrical activity coming from those cells. This is amazing, sure, but it’s not a heartbeat. There is no heart, no chambers, no blood pumping.

In these early stages of pregnancy – between four and 12 weeks – pregnancy tissue removed in an abortion looks, first, like something that comes out of your nose; then tiny little egg whites; then more like a sprawling jellyfish. I know this because I worked with doctors to publish photos of what pregnancy tissue looks like after it’s extracted in an abortion before 12 weeks of pregnancy. I have seen early abortions performed at a clinic, and looked at the tissue directly after.

Still, to point out what early abortion tissue looks like is often met with rage, sometimes with confusion and disbelief. In a way, I understand this. I wanted to report this story precisely because it goes against the grain of the pregnancy images we are shown. So many pregnancy images show the fetus through a microscope, or make it seem more humanized: when you look at images of early fetal development online, or even scientific imagery provided in textbooks, the depictions are very human-like. Even the perspective on an ultrasound can be misleading, highlighting the fetus in black and white so features are more visible, and showing the growing form in contrast to the tiny surrounding container of the amniotic sac.

After I published this story, angry readers sent me ultrasound images; graphic descriptions of what fetuses look like in miscarriage; and videos of early fetal development under microscope. Some sent me the Guardian’s own coverage of Lennart Nilson’s photos of the earliest stages of life, taken in 1965. That imagery shows a nascent embryo, which first forms around 11-12 weeks, at a time when, if you view the fetus through a macro lens, you will see the early beginnings of a trunk and head developing.

These are all different perspectives of life – neither I nor any single person can determine which is right. Different perspectives don’t have to discount one another. Sometimes, they just add to the knowledge we draw upon to make decisions about the world. I see it as my job as a journalist to give people more of this information, so they can make more informed decisions.

I understand that images are incredibly powerful; I often come back from my scans feeling bursts of excitement; rare moments when I feel ready. I also understand the way in which personifying my pregnancy helps me to connect with it. Early on, my husband and I debated for a long time whether or not to find out the sex. Still feeling detached and confused about the changes going on inside me, I reasoned that knowing more might help me to feel more connected. It has.

Later in my pregnancy, I have paid attention to when the little kicks come – sometimes after I eat raspberries, or drink orange juice, or when I have a chocolate bar. “He loves sugar!” I tell my husband – although I actually have no idea what the correlation is.

I have also reported on the stories of people who do not feel this way about kicks or scans. One woman, Samantha Casiano, told me every new kick was a reminder of the inevitable moment when her baby would die, after she was refused an abortion in the state of Texas, despite her pregnancy not being viable.

I can imagine how the descriptions of whether her fetus is now the size of a mango, or a cantaloupe, might bring on horror and fear. I can’t imagine what it must be like to be bombarded with this imagery after being told you no longer have agency over your own body.

Carrying many perspectives can be helpful. It’s not my job to tell you what to believe, or even what to feel – just to let you know that these images are factual, and the lens you choose to put on them is yours, not mine.

•••

When I think about the decisions a person who wants an abortion has to make in places where it is banned, I think about the hormones that have cascaded through my body like a tornado during pregnancy.

One day was so bad I had to call my friend to come over and console me while I cried for hours in my living room. That was a day when every decision I made felt certain to result in the sky falling in on me: the offending decision was over whether to buy a more expensive bar of soap, that smelled nicer.

One day, I cried after a friend gave me a batch of her maternity clothes. I was in my 16th week of pregnancy, and increasingly feeling like nothing was my own. I wanted to go home to London. I worried about losing my career. I was watching my body balloon up in real time, and worried about looking at myself after pregnancy and not knowing who I was any more.

Recently, when I couldn’t sleep at 4am, I read a book about the first month postpartum. The author used the word “capacious” to describe the vagina after birth. Even though I knew the word, I felt a need to Google it. “She rummaged in her capacious handbag,” was the sentence example returned to me in the search. I cried again.

The changes the body goes through during pregnancy are not small. But in an abortion context obsessed with a very particular kind of religious morality, the changes a body goes through in a pregnancy sometimes feel like an afterthought.

When 22-year-old Chloe tells me about being forced to deliver a baby at 37 weeks that did not go on to live, I feel a crushing sense of empathy for her. It is her struggles with her body image that she finds difficult, precisely because it is seen as so unimportant.

In an abortion context obsessed with a very particular kind of religious morality, the changes a body goes through in a pregnancy sometimes feel like an afterthought

“I’ve gained a ton of weight. And you know, I don’t know what to do about it,” she told me in a recent phone call. “If I ask anybody for help, people will probably just tell me, you should go work out. It sucks, a lot,” she says.

•••

On a reporting assignment last winter, I sat in a doctor’s office nextdoor all day while they saw clients. One woman came in, her face flooded with tears, already knowing the doctor couldn’t help – the state had a total ban. The woman was too poor to afford another child, and too poor to travel out of state to get an abortion.

This is not unusual, the doctor told me: people still need abortions all the time. The conflict for the doctor has become what to do. Help, and you risk losing your license, or going to jail. Don’t help, and the patient might be failed at a time when one doctor’s decision could change their lives forever.

An unoccupied recovery area, left, and an abortion procedure room are seen at a Planned Parenthood facility in Tempe, Arizona. Photograph: Matt York/AP

One doctor told me about a single weekend during which she saw two infected pregnant women on her emergency shift when she checked in. One had gone into sepsis; the second patient eventually hemorrhaged, although she did not die. The doctors, one on the prior shift, and one at another hospital, had ignored them both – too scared to intervene, because administering an abortion was legally risky.

They are not wrong to be scared. I’ve documented the consequences for doctors who stick their heads above the parapet: one was fined thousands for speaking out about a 10-year-old rape victim forced to travel to her state for care, another was publicly chased from her job.

Working on those stories, I’m often told by people denied abortions that they feel America should be described as pro-birth, rather than pro-life. States have no intention of cleaning up the mess after an abortion has been denied, just to stop it happening in the first place.

This exact scenario unfolded for Samantha Casiano, the Texas woman who was forced to deliver her baby with ancephaly. Her baby was breech – for which people are often offered a C-section, to reduce pain and severe complications. Casiano was not offered this, and found the entire birthing experience traumatic. “Your baby is going to pass away so we don’t need to do all that,” the doctors told her.

“I felt degraded,” Casiano told me. “There was a lot of things I felt like wouldn’t have happened in a normal pregnancy, but with me, it’s like they were like, ‘OK, let’s just get this over with,” she said.

She was made to carry the pregnancy for 13 weeks, knowing her daughter wouldn’t survive – just so, in her eyes, the doctors could “get it over with”.

Mostly, the impacts of abortion bans don’t fall on people who are sick; or who have wanted pregnancies; or medically complicated pregnancies. They fall on people who want abortions because giving birth doesn’t fit with school work, with work-work, with raising the children they already have. They fall on people with few economic options, further entrenching inequality along race and class lines. Sometimes, they fall on people in domestically violent relationships. Other times, on people who know they won’t make good parents.

These are all complicated reasons why someone might not be ready to have a child. In America, they aren’t good enough reasons to justify an abortion, but what happens after the abortion is denied?

•••

I recently moved back to England to give birth and be closer to family for a while. Here, I have often felt that people like to exaggerate America’s differences with the UK, because it helps deflect from our own very sordid political realities. “At least we’re not America,” people often say with a wink and a nod, often bypassing shattering political moments like Brexit, the story of a young Black boy being murdered, or our own legacy of slavery.

These are the assurances I am sure people may feel reading this article: that the rest of the world is nothing like America when it comes to abortion.

That may be true, but our prime minister has abstained every time he has been asked to vote on abortion since he became an MP; this includes voting to stop protesting outside of abortion clinics and to legalize abortion in Northern Ireland. In the UK, our chancellor of the exchequer has called to cut the time that abortions are legal in half, from 24 weeks to 12. Our health minister said that protesters outside clinics could just be trying to “comfort” women.

This is the UK, too: where a woman was this month sentenced to two years in prison for taking abortion pills after the legal limit.

As I write this, two weeks before my due date, I don’t know whether to feel hope or despair. Nor do I know what to make of America’s complicated abortion landscape, where people have repeatedly shown at the ballot box that they do not want abortion restrictions; that they are willing to oust politicians who want to bring them; and that they will continue to find innovative ways to continue to protect abortion.

It’s a strange dynamic to see play out in a country where people are so obsessed with freedom. Because this is, at its core, an issue of freedom, as well as an issue of equality and fairness. When you curtail abortion – whether it is an abortion you agree with or not – you fundamentally alter someone’s right to make choices about their own chequebooks, their bodies and their families.

I’m glad I had a choice, but I still burn with rage at how normal it has become in America for people not to.

Indian opposition parties agree to work together to defeat governing party in next elections


India Opposition Unity

In this photo provided by Bihar state Chief Minister's Office, leaders of India’s 17 opposition parties attend a meeting in Patna, India, Friday, June 23, 2023. The leaders decided to sink their differences and put up a united fight in the next national elections to deny Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party a third consecutive term in 2024.

 (Bihar state Chief Minister's Office via AP)

ASHOK SHARMA
Fri, June 23, 2023

NEW DELHI (AP) — Leaders of 17 Indian opposition parties agreed Friday to set aside their differences and put up a united fight in next year's national election in an attempt to deny Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist party a third consecutive term.

They said they plan to meet again next month to formulate a strategy for running joint candidates against the governing Bharatiya Janata Party's nominees in constituencies across the country. That would prevent the BJP from benefitting from a splintering of votes among multiple opposition candidates.

Nitish Kumar, an opposition leader and chief minister of eastern Bihar state, said the parties will work on a common manifesto stating their economic and other priorities.

Rahul Gandhi, a key leader of the opposition Congress party, accused Modi of weakening the country's democratic institutions and curbing freedom of speech.

"We all stand united. We may have small differences, but we have decided to work together with flexibility and we will protect the ideology we share,” he said.

Several of the opposition leaders said Modi is trying to galvanize Hindu voters by remaining silent on attacks by Hindu nationalists on Muslims and other religious minorities. Hindus comprise 80% of India’s 1.4 billion people, Muslims 14% and Christians 2.3%.

Since taking power in 2014, Modi’s party has gained ascendancy in most Hindu-dominated areas in north and central India and is trying to achieve a foothold in the east and south to win a third term.

But its recent defeats in elections in northern Himachal Pradesh and southern Karnataka states have raised hopes among opposition parties, many of which are regional groups, of successfully challenging Modi if they work together.

Opposition parties successfully banded together to defeat then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her Congress party in 1977 elections held after she imposed emergency rule in 1975.

“There are many hurdles to cross before a proper opposition united front can take shape,” said Arti Jerath, a political analyst and columnist. “But I think the compulsions for the opposition parties to present a united challenge to Modi are very, very big because in the last four years they have all faced harassment from federal investigative agencies and the BJP has played politics with all of them to break these parties and harass their leaders.”

"If they don’t put up a united challenge to Modi and somehow stop him from coming back, they all know it is going to be the end of the road for them because the BJP will not really allow any of these opposition parties, particularly the Congress, to survive,” he said.

The BJP has dismissed the opposition talks as a “futile exercise.”

India’s government to hold rare talks with opposition amid uproar over Modi’s absence in violence-hit Manipur


Shweta Sharma
Fri, 23 June 2023 





India’s minister of home affairs will hold a rare all-party meeting on Saturday to discuss the spiralling ethnic violence in the northeast state of Manipur with opposition political parties.

Signalling an acknowledgement of the situation turning out of control in the state, the home affairs minister said the meeting will be held at 3pm local time in capital Delhi.

Under the grip of unprecedented violence for nearly two months, Manipur has seen more than 100 deaths and 40,000 people have been displaced in clashes between the majority Meitei and Kuki communities.


Houses, churches, temples, shops and businesses have been torched amid widespread violence in the state raging over the demand of Meiteis to seek tribal status for access to economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education.

The opposition Congress party has called out prime minister Narendra Modi for his absence from the scheduled high-level meeting as he wrapped up his state visit to the US from where he will embark on his maiden state visit to Egypt.

Rahul Gandhi, opposition leader of Congress, said: “Manipur has been burning since 50 days, but the prime minister remained silent.”

“An all-party meeting was called when the prime minister himself is not in the country! Clearly, this meeting is not important for the prime minister,” he said.

A member of the Kuki tribe cries during a sit in protest against the killing of tribals in their northeastern home state of Manipur 

(Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

The announcement by the home ministry came hours after Congress Parliamentary Party chair Sonia Gandhi released a video message raising concerns over “unprecedented violence” in Manipur.

“From nearly 50 days we have witnessed a great human tragedy in Manipur,” she said.

“The unprecedented violence that has devastated the lives of people in your state (Manipur) and uprooted thousands has left a deep wound in the conscience of our nation.”

Chief of opposition party All India Trinamool Congress, Mamata Banerjee, said it is “too late now” but she will be sending her representative to the meeting.

“I had also written a letter that I want to visit Manipur for peace purposes. I got a reply yesterday, after the all-party meeting was called. I will be sending Derek O’Brien in that meeting," she told ANI.

Indian Army personnel patrol during a combing operation at Kanto Sabal village near Imphal

 (AFP via Getty Images)

It is rare for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to consult the opposition on governing matters. It was the government’s first outreach across the political spectrum in the remote hilly state of Manipur.

It comes amid the government’s efforts to break the deadlock in the negotiation between two warring groups. Mr Shah, who is responsible for matters of internal security and domestic police, visited the state for four days last month to meet a cross-section of people.

But his visit yielded no breakthrough.

Following the initial wave of extensive clashes between 3 to 5 May, Manipur has been gripped by a second wave of violence involving arson and shootings, primarily occurring in the regions situated between the Kuki-dominated hills and the Meitei-dominated valley.

The most severe incident during this recent surge was on the night of 13 June in Aigejang village, located in Manipur’s Kangpokpi district, where nine individuals were killed in gunfire and arson.

Mr Modi, who has promised his efforts to restore peace in Ukraine during his visit to meet Joe Biden, has remained silent on unabating violence in the state with opposition raising questions on his “stoic silence”.

Ten leaders of oppositions parties in Manipur submitted a letter three-page memorandum to Prime Minister’s Office to request a meeting with him before his state visit to the US.

In Manipur, people raised posters showing Mr Modi’s face with the words: “Still missing. Have you seen this man? Status: blind and deaf.”

Microsoft-Activision merger: US court hearing begins over biggest ever tech deal

Sky News
Fri, 23 June 2023 


Microsoft's record takeover bid for video games giant Activision Blizzard has gone before a US federal court.

The Windows and Xbox maker wants to buy the company best known for the Call Of Duty, Warcraft, and Diablo franchises for $69bn (£54.2bn). It would be the largest tech acquisition ever.

But the UK competitions watchdog blocked it in April over concerns it would hurt competition in cloud gaming, and America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said it would give Microsoft's platforms an unfair edge over rival PlayStation as they would secure exclusive access to Activision's popular games.


Microsoft now has a five-day legal hearing to make its arguments to the FTC - and the case has already brought everything from Indiana Jones to sci-fi role-playing games into the focus of a courtroom.

Here are the key moments from day one - and what's to come later.

Call Of Duty 'could have skipped Xbox'

Call Of Duty, the long-running military shooter franchise, is one of the biggest prizes at stake for Microsoft if the acquisition goes through. The most recent entry in the series raked in $1bn in just 10 days.

But Microsoft's Sarah Bond told the hearing on Thusday that the latest Xboxes risked missing out on the series, as Activision wanted a fresh deal that gave it a greater share of revenue earned by Xbox versions of the games.

She said: "It was clear Call Of Duty would be on PS5. That would not have been good if it was not also on Xbox."

Microsoft vows that under its ownership, Call Of Duty would remain on PlayStation, where the series sells most, but Sony claims its platform would eventually lose out.

Microsoft thinks new consoles are five years away

Gamers face a long wait for the next generation of consoles, if Microsoft's prediction is correct.

In court documents, the company says it doesn't expect the next Xbox or PS6 until 2028. This came up because Microsoft says it has offered Sony a 10-year deal for Call Of Duty, meaning it would appear on its next console.

A 2028 release would mean eight years after the launch of the current systems, the PS5 and Xbox Series X and S, which both released during the pandemic in late 2020.

Supply chain issues meant they have been hard to find until relatively recently, and demand remains strong.

Indiana Jones and the exclusivity deal

Never mind his new film, Indiana Jones is now making headlines thanks to video game deal-making.

An Indy game has been in the works at developer MachineGames for several years now. The team is part of the Bethesda Softworks company, which was bought by Microsoft for $7.5bn in 2020.

Speaking on Thursday, Bethesda's Pete Hines revealed the game is Xbox and PC exclusive, even though the initial agreement with franchise owner Disney (before Microsoft's acquisition) would have seen it release elsewhere.

But Hines also spoke to the benefits of being able to concentrate on fewer consoles, saying Bethesda's upcoming science-fiction epic Starfield, one of the most anticipated of 2023, would not be releasing as soon as September if a PS5 version had also been made.

PlayStation and Xbox bosses up next

Friday will see PlayStation chief Jim Ryan and his Xbox counterpart Phil Spencer go head-to-head (no, not in a Zuckerberg vs Musk-style cage fight).

Spencer will be giving evidence live at the hearing, while Ryan will appear in a pre-recorded video.

It means he won't face potentially awkward questions about an email revealed at Thursday's hearing, in which he seemed to contradict his public stance by saying he's "pretty sure" Call Of Duty will remain on PlayStation.

Still to come between now and the trial's final day next week are the likes of Activision Blizzard and Microsoft chiefs Bobby Kotick and Satya Nadella.

BERDACHE

Long heritage of Native Hawaiian gender-fluidity showcased in Las Vegas drag show


Sat, June 24, 2023 


LAS VEGAS (AP) — Drag queens donning the white, red and blue of the Hawaiian flag shimmied across the stage to a throbbing techno remix of “Aloha Oe,” a song composed by Hawaii's last reigning monarch. Spectators roared as a performer shook her hips in a Tahitian-style dance.

All were “mahu” — a Hawaiian term for people with dual male and female spirit and a mixture of gender traits.

They starred in a drag show this week called “Mahu Magic” on the sidelines of a Native Hawaiian convention in Las Vegas to remind the world of the respected place gender-fluidity has held in Hawaiian culture for hundreds of years, while also making a foray into the national conversation about transgender rights.

“It's a little different from other drag shows because this one has a very specific purpose," Hinaleimoana Wong-Kalu, who is mahu, a community leader and a master teacher of hula and chanting, told the audience midway through the event.

“It is meant to reinstate the rightful place that mahu have between kane and wahine,” Wong-Kalu said, using the Hawaiian words for man and woman. The crowd erupted in raucous cheers and applause.

Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp, an ethnohistorian who identifies as mahu and queer, said mahu also can include people who would be nonbinary, would define themselves as third gender and those attracted to someone of the same gender.

“That’s what mahu does — mahu offers a space between the concepts of male and female,” Manalo-Camp said.

The Hawaiian language makes it easier to inhabit that spot because it doesn’t have gendered pronouns. In the Western context, Wong-Kalu uses “she” and “her” but prefers the word “o ia,” which is a Hawaiian language pronoun used for all people.

“It doesn’t matter whether you’re coming from male to female or female to the male, and it doesn’t matter what your physical articulation is,” Wong-Kalu said. “We have elements of both. Sometimes we completely walk away from one and walk to the other. Sometimes we stay in the middle.”

The “Mahu Magic” show on Tuesday was sponsored by the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, a nonprofit organization better known for administering rent relief and job training programs. The council normally holds its conventions in Hawaii but met in Nevada for the first time — coincidentally during Pride month — in an acknowledgement that more than half of all Native Hawaiians now live outside the islands.

Council CEO Kuhio Lewis said he wanted to shine a spotlight on gender-fluidity for those who have lost touch with Hawaiian culture because they've had to leave the islands due to rising housing costs and gentrification.

Some Native Hawaiian families now have two or three generations born outside Hawaii and need help connecting to their homeland, Lewis said.

But he also aimed to reach Native Hawaiians who have drifted from their culture in a Hawaii that's increasingly shaped by continental U.S. influences. About one-third of the 1,200 attendees flew to Las Vegas from Hawaii, while the remainder already lived outside the state.

“Unless we do something to honor, to recognize who we are, we’re going to lose our identity,” Lewis said.

A panel discussion addressed how traditional roles of mahu have evolved over time. More broadly, the convention featured workshops on topics like hula, Hawaiian language and affordable housing.

One dancer in “Mahu Magic” wore a white pantsuit, cape and towering feather headdress while lip-synching to “Sky” by Sonique. A trio danced hula to the modern favorite “Hawaii Calls" in halter-top gowns featuring red and white hibiscus flowers.

All 10 performers live as women. Many other drag shows feature men who live as men but dress as women for the show.

Mahu often have had important roles in Native Hawaiian culture as teachers, healers and keepers of knowledge and traditions.

One story reflecting this history is that of four mahu healers who visited Waikiki from Tahiti more than 500 years ago. Hawaiians placed four boulders on the beach to honor them, which are still visible today.

Despite these deep roots, mahu awareness in Hawaii has faded during centuries of foreign influence. Christian missionaries who first arrived in 1820 taught Hawaiians to shun anything deviating from clearly defined male and female roles. In 1893, businessmen backed by the U.S. government overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy and a few years later prohibited the teaching of Hawaiian language in schools. The U.S. annexed Hawaii in 1898, making it a territory.

Leikia Williams, the drag show's producer and a performer, said mahu was a derogatory word when she was growing up in Honolulu in the 1980s. She remembers people saying, “Stop acting mahu."

The support of her “drag house,” consisting of elder mahu and fellow mahu sisters, helped her cope. Williams said her house mother taught her and her sisters to “be who we want to be; be who we are, especially in public. To keep our heads held high.”

There's more understanding today. Even so, a 2018 state report found transgender youth in Hawaii are three times more likely to consider suicide and make a suicide plan than their peers whose gender matches the one usually associated with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Increasingly, anti-LGBTQ+ language has flowed into Hawaii from states that have enacted laws to keep transgender children off girls sports teams and block them from receiving gender-affirming medical care.

Republican lawmakers introduced a bill at the Hawaii Legislature this year that would have required “separate sex-specific athletic teams or sports” in schools. The measure didn't get a hearing in either the House or Senate, which are both dominated by Democrats.

Lawmakers overwhelmingly passed legislation enabling the state to replace marriage certificates for people who change their gender or sex. Gov. Josh Green, a Democrat, on Friday indicated he would either sign the bill or let it become law without his signature.

Wong-Kalu said influence from the continental U.S. exacerbates anti-mahu views in Hawaii and highlighting mahu during the Las Vegas event was important in countering the prejudice.

“This, for me, is about decolonizing our people to the degree that we understand our rightful place in our own home, of which we still do not have,” Wong-Kalu said.

Eight performers at “Mahu Magic” were Native Hawaiian and two were of Samoan ancestry, which Lewis said was fitting because the conversation about mahu is also one for broader Oceania. Other parts of Polynesia, such as Samoa and Tonga, have concepts similar to mahu. The Tahitian language even uses the same word.

Mahu also is similar to the term “two-spirit” used by Native Americans, Alaska Natives and First Nations communities in Canada for people who combine traits of men and women.

Williams related how performances can change minds. She shared how she can sense at drag shows when straight men in the audience are uncomfortable with mahu. But that changes when she takes the microphone. Afterward, those same men thank her, offer food and help carry her bags.

“That’s educating people and letting them know that we’re real," Williams said. “We’re human. We’re here.”

___

McAvoy reported from Honolulu.

Audrey Mcavoy And Ty O'neil, The Associated Press

‘Swampy’ river creature found hidden among tree roots turns out to be a new species


Aspen Pflughoeft
Thu, June 22, 2023 

Wading into a shallow river in the country of Georgia, scientists scanned the water for movement. Hidden among the tree roots, they caught a “yellowish” creature. It was a new species.

Researchers were surveying a section of the Alazani River, according to a study published May 30 in Biodiversity Data Journal. Using electric fishing devices, they temporarily stunned several fish and scooped the animals from the water.

Initially, researchers identified the fish as a known species of freshwater goby. “Gobies are small-sized fish that mostly inhabit saline and brackish waters,” the study said.

But when the researchers tested the fish’s DNA, the results indicated they’d captured an unknown species. The fish from the Alazani River had between 3.5% and 4.8% genetic divergence from the region’s known goby fish, the study said.

Closer analysis of the fish’s scale patterns and body proportions confirmed the genetic analysis, researchers said. This was a new species.

The new species was named Ponticola alasanicus, or the Alazani goby, after the river where it was discovered, the study said.

The Alazani goby is “relatively short,” reaching about 3 inches in length, researchers said. The fish has a “yellowish-gray” coloring “with dark brown and black blotches” down its body. Photos show an Alazani goby swimming in an aquarium.

A Ponticola alasanicus, or Alazani goby, swimming in an aquarium. Photo from Epitashvili, Japoshvili and Mumladze (2023)

Over a two year span, researchers found 20 Alazani gobies in Tsitsmatiant Psha, a tributary of the Alazani River running near Shakriani, Kakheti, the study said. The fish were typically found by “submerged trees and roots” in “swampy” parts of the river.

Researchers classified the Alazani goby as a vulnerable species due to its limited range, the “extensive use of pesticides and fertilizers” in the surrounding area and “frequent” illegal fishing, the study said.

“Diversity of freshwater organisms in (Georgia) remains poorly studied, including fishes,” researchers said. “It is expected that the fish diversity in Georgia is much higher.”

The research team included Giorgi Epitashvili, Bella Japoshvili and Levan Mumladze.

Shakriani, Kakheti, is about 70 miles northeast of Tbilisi, the country’s capital. Georgia is situated at the intersection of eastern Europe and western Asia. The country borders Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Turkey.