Slovenia's women's football team write open letter over 'unprofessional environment'

Katie Gornall - BBC Sport
Wed, September 6, 2023 

Dominika Conc (right) made her international debut for Slovenia in 2010

Dominika Conc is tired.

Tired of how female footballers are treated, tired of the conditions she's forced to play in, and tired of fighting for even the smallest improvements.

But she will not stop.

Conc is the vice-captain of Slovenia's women's national team. In July, she and 30 of her team-mates wrote an open letter to the president of the Slovenian football federation (NZS) demanding the removal of head coach Borut Jarc and detailing allegations of bullying, sexism, body-shaming and inappropriate behaviour within the camp.

Training, she says, had become intolerable, also stating that the environment they found themselves in affected players' mental health.

"The environment was just very unprofessional," 30-year-old Conc tells BBC Sport. "Very inappropriate comments. Cussing towards us, sexist comments or homophobic things getting into our personal lives, which has nothing to do with the football pitch.

"Things were going on for the past five years. We had a respect-out-of-fear relationship before, you didn't say anything.

"A lot of players had to ask for help from the outside, from psychologists and other professionals."

Conc's words come at a time when the football world continues to reel from the aftermath of the Women's World Cup final, when Luis Rubiales - the president of the Spanish football federation - kissed forward Jenni Hermoso on the lips after Spain's victory over England.

The list of allegations in the Slovenian players' letter is extensive. They include claims of inappropriate comments from Jarc, that coaches smuggled alcohol into camps and openly drank during meals and after training sessions, and that players' personal lives and sexual orientation became a target for the staff.

It is also alleged that players were forced to play a Euro 2022 qualifier while ill with Covid-19, that they faced "demeaning treatment" regarding body weight, and had to fight to wear the same kit as Slovenia's men and have their names on the back.

Conc says she and her international team-mates had previously held a meeting with the football federation president and other officials, but came away feeling there was "no interest for the women's side".

"They didn't want to listen to us and they said it's none of our business," she says. "It is at that point we saw that no-one is listening to us. So we had to do something different.

"We decided to write things down and send them to the federation again and try to communicate about those things with them again in private, and what they did was they never responded to us."

So, Conc - who plays in midfield for Levante Las Planas in the Spanish top flight - and her team-mates went public, releasing their open letter.

Slovenia's head coach Jarc has since resigned, releasing a lengthy statement in which he said he "could no longer successfully continue my work as a selector under these circumstances".

He continued: "I wish to expressly deny any allegations that have been made against me personally. I would like to stress that I have always acted morally and in accordance with ethical principles."

But even after Jarc's departure, Conc isn't convinced the culture will change.

"He wasn't the only one like that," she says. "We just have a feeling that the federation have us because they have to have us.

"We have to fight for jerseys, for the names on the jerseys, for the same jerseys as the men. We're playing in the middle of the day, in the middle of the nowhere. No wonder no-one is coming to watch our games."

Slovenia are due to play in Uefa Women's Nations League qualifying this month, with matches against the Czech Republic and Bosnia and Herzegovina on 22 and 26 September respectively.

A large number of the team play their domestic football abroad. Defender Sara Agrez reached the Champions League final with Wolfsburg last season, while Lara Prasnikar starred for Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga. Conc herself has previously played for the likes of Valencia, AC Milan and Malaga.

"With pretty much nothing invested in us, we are already achieving things," says Conc.

But she adds that had Jarc still been in position, she and her team-mates would not have played their upcoming fixtures.

"We are expecting better, but it's hard to say because we don't know what they're going to do," she says.

"A lot of times they're just picking someone, putting that person there and it's someone who's never been around women's football, who doesn't know us and it's just hard. I feel like it's just not respectful towards us either."

In a statement to BBC Sport, the NZS denied the allegations, saying the issues raised in the letter had never been discussed with the president.

Since the letter was made public in July, the NZS said it had been investigating and was in the final stages of the preparation of a report containing "recommendations on making positive changes in the future".

It added: "The Slovenian FA has always up until this point and will continue to support the development of women's football up to a level that is reasonable and sustainable for the federation and the future of Slovenian women's football as a whole."

Iran journalist says was sexually assaulted during arrest

AFP
Wed, September 6, 2023 

After previous releases, Maroufian has defiantly posted pictures of herself without a headacarf in defiance of the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women (Alex MITA)

An Iranian journalist who interviewed the father of Mahsa Amini said she was sexually assaulted during her latest arrest and was now on hunger strike in prison, according to an audio message published Wednesday by several Persian media outlets and rights groups.

Nazila Maroufian, 23, has been repeatedly targeted by the Iranian authorities since she published an interview with Amjad Amini, whose daughter died in custody on September 16, 2022, sparking months of protests.

Rights groups have accused the Iranian authorities of stepping up an already intense crackdown to prevent the upcoming one-year anniversary of Amini's death being marked by new protests.

Maroufian, who rights groups say has now been arrested four times in recent months, was most recently detained in Tehran on August 30.

"I was sexually assaulted in a situation where I was in the worst possible state," she said in the audio message from Tehran's Evin prison published by media outside Iran including Iran International and Radio Farda as well as the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) and Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).

Maroufian, who is from Amini's hometown of Saqez in Kurdish-populated western Iran, said in her message that she was now on hunger strike to protest her situation and that of all women who are subjected to violence in police stations and prisons.

"This strike is for me but is also for all the women in dire conditions in Iran," she said in her message, which appeared to have been recorded during a phone call to her family which also shared pictures of bruises she allegedly sustained in the assault.

Reports earlier this week said she had also been jailed for one year on charges of "spreading propaganda" against Iran's Islamic system.

After previous releases, Maroufian has defiantly posted pictures of herself without a headscarf in defiance of the Islamic republic's strict dress code for women.

Mahsa Amini had been arrested for allegedly violating this code. Iranian authorities have indicated she died because of a health problem but, in his interview with Maroufian, Amjad Amini accused authorities of lying about the circumstances of his daughter's death.

Iran has reacted harshly to reporting inside the country on the Amini case.

The two women journalists who helped bring the story to the world's attention have now spent almost a year in Evin prison after their arrest in September.

Niloufar Hamedi reported for Iran's Shargh newspaper from the hospital where Amini languished in a coma for three days before she died, and Elahe Mohammadi, a reporter for the Ham Mihan newspaper, went to Saqez to report on Amini's funeral.

Both are now on trial on charges of violating national security, which they vehemently deny.

sjw/dv

Toyota Factories Shut Down When Company Runs Out of Disk Space

Victor Tangermann
Wed, September 6, 2023 

Disk Full

Japanese auto giant Toyota has had to shut down all of its factories in the country due to what the company claims to be a system malfunction triggered by "insufficient disk space."

In simple terms, the second-biggest carmaker in the world just had to grind production to a halt because it ran out of storage.

As The Guardian reports, the carmaker had to issue a stoppage on August 29 at all 14 of its Japan-based plants, representing roughly a third of its global production.

It's a major fumble that goes to show that even in Japan, a country often seen as a pioneer of cutting-edge technologies, minor glitches can cascade into company-wide chaos and bring down entire titans of industry.

Station Laggin

A maintenance procedure apparently caused the company's servers to break down when "data that had accumulated in the database was deleted and organized, and an error occurred due to insufficient disk space, causing the system to stop," Toyota said in a statement, as quoted by The Guardian.

As a result,  the company had to transfer the data to a server with sufficient capacity.

"We would like to apologize once again to our customers, suppliers, and related parties for any inconvenience caused by the suspension of our domestic plants," the company said in the statement.

The incident goes to show there are very real risks to Toyota's renowned and well-studied "just-in-time" production system, "in which each process produces only what is needed for the next process in a continuous flow," according to the company's website.

The company, however, was able to rule out one possible cause: it definitely wasn't a cyberattack. In other words, the company has nobody to blame but itself for the interruption.

Cleveland-Cliffs' bid to keep US blast furnaces smelting

U.S. Steel gets offer from Esmark, Okta stock rises on double upgrade: Trending ticker

Isla Binnie and Bianca Flowers
Tue, September 5, 2023 

High costs and environmental opposition have prevented the construction of blast

 furnaces at steel mills in the United States since 1980. Cleveland-Cliffs Inc CEO Lourenco Goncalves is on a mission to snap up all that are left.

Since joining the U.S. steelmaker in 2014 as part of an activist hedge fund's board takeover, Goncalves has made blast furnaces a hallmark of his strategy, positioning Cliffs as an outlier in an industry shifting towards cheaper and more environmentally friendly electric arc furnaces.

A 65-year-old Brazilian metallurgical engineer, Goncalves transformed Cliffs from an iron ore and coal miner into the largest supplier of steel to the automotive industry in North America by acquiring companies that own blast furnaces to smelt the pig iron it produces.

Now, he has his sights on acquiring U.S. Steel Corp, the other remaining U.S. blast furnace operator, which has been gradually moving into electric arc furnaces, known as mini-mills. Should his $7.3 billion cash-and-stock bid prevail, Cliffs would break into the world's top 10 steel producers, which are mostly from Asia.

Interviews with six people close to the companies and industry insiders, as well a review of regulatory filings, show Goncalves' bet on blast furnaces has yet to pay off, and its success hinges on pulling off the deal with U.S. Steel.

This is because blast furnaces operate around the clock and need more workers. They are more expensive to run when they have to be stopped and restarted to account for changes in demand, as often happens with the automotive sector.

To compensate for that cost, they need a dominant market share so they can charge more for their steel. To build a market position, Cliffs acquired AK Steel for $3 billion and ArcelorMittal's U.S. operations for $3.3 billion in 2020. Cliffs focused on dominating production of U.S.-made steel used in the external panels of cars, which require quality that electric arc furnaces currently cannot achieve.

"By increasing market share, Goncalves has a much more commanding position where he can charge more," said Josh Spoores, principal analyst at CRU Group, a business intelligence firm that provides analysis on global metals and mining.

Goncalves is also betting that producing iron ore in-house for blast furnaces, rather than sourcing scrap steel for electric arc furnaces, will give Cliffs a competitive edge. So far, the nimbler electric arc furnaces have remained cheaper to run, amid fluctuations in demand for steel.

Cliffs' gross margin was 11% last year, down from 35% in 2018, when it focused on iron ore production, according to LSEG data. This was well below Nucor Corp's and Steel Dynamics Inc's margins of 30% and 27.5%, respectively — two rivals that run exclusively on electric arc furnaces. It is also below U.S. Steel's 20.6% margin.

Goncalves has said profitability will improve as Cliffs gains scale, and projects $500 million in annual synergies from the potential U.S. Steel acquisition.

A Cliffs spokesperson said the company is innovating to meet clients' requirements and make U.S. steel competitive.

Focus on car makers

About two-thirds of U.S. steel comes from electric arc furnaces. While Nucor and Steel Dynamics also serve the car sector, they have mostly ceded the market for automotive bodies to Chinese competitors.

This has given Cliffs an opening to serve U.S. car makers that find importing overseas steel expensive, especially following tariffs that former President Donald Trump implemented in 2018. While a few carmakers use aluminum for automotive bodies, most prefer high-grade steel from blast furnaces.

"Materially switching content isn't something these automakers do lightly. I don't think they're going to move away," said KeyBanc equity analyst Phil Gibbs.

Cliffs' devotion to blast furnaces, which are unionized unlike some electric arc furnaces, won it the support of United Steelworkers. The union's international president Thomas Conway said it's backing Cliffs' bid for U.S. Steel because of Goncalves' commitment to blast furnaces. He pointed to Cliffs adding 1,700 new jobs following its last two acquisitions.

Carbon emissions

Goncalves has said in interviews and earnings calls that criticism of blast furnaces' emissions ignores that electric arc furnaces cannot make the steel many car makers want.

"Try to build a car all with steel, flat-rolled steel produced in flat-rolled mini-mills. It doesn't work," Goncalves said on Cliffs' latest quarterly earnings call.

Nucor's and Steel Dynamics' carbon footprints are more than two-thirds smaller than Cliffs' and U.S. Steel's, their sustainability disclosures show.

Cliffs points to having reduced its emissions by 32% since 2017, ahead of a target to achieve this by 2030, primarily by using hot briquetted iron (HBI) in its blast furnaces. HBI is made with natural gas rather than coke from coal, resulting in fewer emissions.

Cliffs is also testing the use of hydrogen to reduce emissions, though the technology's commercially viability remains uncertain.

Last year, President Joe Biden's administration pointed to Cliffs' direct reduction steel plant in Toledo, Ohio, which cost $1 billion and makes HBI, as an example of "clean" U.S. manufacturing.

(Reporting by Isla Binnie in New York and Bianca Flowers in Chicago Editing by Greg Roumeliotis and Daniel Wallis)

'We're going to sink': hundreds abandon Caribbean island home

Juan José Rodríguez
Tue, September 5, 2023 

Hundreds are preparing to leave the Panamanian island of Carti Sugdupu in the face of rising sea levels (Luis ACOSTA)

On a tiny Caribbean island, hundreds of people are preparing to pack up and move to escape the rising waters threatening to engulf their already precarious homes.

Surrounded by idyllic clear waters, the densely populated island of Carti Sugtupu off Panama's north coast has barely an inch to spare with houses crammed together -- some jutting out into the sea on stilts.

The island's Indigenous community of fewer than 2,000 souls scrapes by without potable water or sanitation.

They live off fishing, the harvesting of starchy crops like cassava and plantain, traditional textile production and a bit of tourism.

It is not an easy life, with intense heat and a lack of public services adding to the discomfort of overcrowded conditions on an island the size of five football fields.

And now, climate change-induced sea level rise is threatening to make life even more difficult.

With homes already flooded on a regular basis, experts say the sea will engulf Carti Sugtupu and dozens of neighboring islands in the Guna Yala region by the end of the century.

Forty-nine of the isles are populated, and rest just a few feet (less than one meter) above sea level.

"We have noticed that the tide has risen," retired teacher Magdalena Martinez, 73, told AFP as she sat embroidering a brightly colored toucan onto a "mola" cloth traditional to the Guna people on Carti Sugtupu.

"We think we're going to sink, we know it's going to happen," she said.

Martinez is one of hundreds of inhabitants of the island expecting to move soon to a settlement on mainland Panama newly built by the government -- a move that may save the islanders, but puts at risk their culture and way of life.

"This will change our lifestyle quite a bit," said Martinez. But, she added, "it won't change our spirit, it won't change our habits."

"The fact is that with sea levels rising as a direct cause of climate change, almost all the islands are going to be abandoned by the end of this century," Steven Paton, a scientist at the Panama-based Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, told AFP.

- 'There is no room' -

On Carti Sugtupu, there is no drinking water, and residents have to go out in boats to collect it from rivers or buy it on the mainland.

Few have reliable electricity. Most residents receive a few hours of power per day from a public generator. A few have solar panels feeding their homes built of zinc and wood, with floors of dirt.

None have their own toilets, and residents have to visit communal cubicles at the ends of piers where wooden boards perched over the sea serve as latrines.

"There is no room to expand homes or for children to play," Human Rights Watch said in a recent report on the island.

"Floods and storms have made life even harder... affecting housing, water, health and education. Such extreme weather is only expected to become more common as the climate crisis accelerates," it said.

After years of promises and delays, the government has announced that by the end of this year or early 2024 it will be ready to move families to the mainland, a 15-minute boat ride away, where it has built a new neighborhood that includes a school.

"We are building 300 homes for 300 families, with an average of five people per family," Marcos Suira, national director of engineering and architecture at the Ministry of Housing and Territorial Planning, told AFP.

"It's a pilot plan."

Each family will have 300 square meters (3,200 square feet), including a two-bedroom house, drinking water and electricity, according to the government.

Resident teacher Braulio Navarro, 62, told AFP he has to cross the island every morning just to go to the toilet.

He cannot wait to move.

"I have no alternative but to go in search of a better quality of life," said Navarro.

"I know that there will be 24-hour electricity, there will be fans, air conditioning, there will be a great benefit for my family."

jjr/fb-mlr/nro

‘We are starving to death:’ Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh fear for future under blockade

Caolán Magee, CNN
Wed, September 6, 2023

Ani Kirakosyani found out she was pregnant a month after the blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh began.

In her village of Haterk, tucked in a valley between the Caucasus hills, food supplies ran out quickly and the shops started to close, Kirakosyani told CNN. The only food available was what she could pick from her garden, mainly tomatoes and beans.

Throughout her pregnancy, Kirakosyani could not attend her hospital consultations as public transport was cancelled due to fuel shortages – instead she walked for miles to the local medical clinic, which did not have the capacity to detect early problems with her pregnancy, she said, speaking to CNN by telephone.

Kirakosyani is one of the 120,000 inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh – known as the Republic of Artsakh by locals – a disputed territory home to a majority ethnic Armenian population that is internationally recognized as being a part of Azerbaijan. The region has been blockaded since December 2022, when the only road connecting the landlocked region to the outside world, the Lachin corridor, was blocked by “eco-activists” backed by the Azerbaijani government, which has since installed a military checkpoint along the corridor. This prompted the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) to warn of the risk of genocide against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh.

Six months into her pregnancy, Kirakosyani felt a pain in her abdomen and was taken to the hospital. On the way, the ambulance had to stop and collect six other patients, as the driver had to ration its fuel. When Kirakosyani finally arrived in hospital, she was told her pregnancy was in jeopardy and she would have to give birth three months early.

Her husband was away working with the military, and he could not get fuel to make the 100-mile car ride to support her in the hospital. She was alone when the doctors told her she had had a stillbirth brought on by malnutrition and stress, she said.

“If not for the blockade, I would be playing with my child today,” Kirakosyani told CNN.

According to statistics provided exclusively to CNN by the Ombudsman of the Artsakh Republic – a public official who monitors protection of human rights by state and local self-government bodies – the number of recorded miscarriages has increased fourfold from this time last year.

And, as shortages of food, fuel and medicines caused by the months-long blockade take an increasing toll on the region’s population, officials there have reported the first death from malnutrition on August 15, according to Gegham Stepanyan, the ombudsman of Artsakh, who CNN reached by phone.

International media have been refused entry into the territory since the blockade was imposed.

The Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, a bipartisan US congressional body, has scheduled a Wednesday hearing on the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh.
‘The road of life’

The Lachin corridor is known locally as “the road of life,” as 90% of the food consumed in Nagorno-Karabakh previously came into the region from Armenia via that route, according to figures provided by the elected president of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which was previously the only NGO allowed to bring humanitarian aid across the Lachin corridor, last delivered desperately needed food supplies to the region on June 14, according to an ICRC press release from August 18.

In August, UN experts urged Azerbaijan to end “the dire humanitarian crisis” in the enclave by lifting the blockade, while former International Criminal Court chief prosecutor Luis Moreno Ocampo said there was “reasonable basis to believe that genocide is being committed against Armenians.”

Responding to Ocampo’s comments, a lawyer hired by Azerbaijan called the claim of genocide “a groundless and very dangerous allegation.”

Artsakh President Arayik Harutyunyan, who was elected in 2020, told CNN by email: “Azerbaijan has blockaded the Republic of Artsakh with the ultimate goal of committing genocide against our people.”

Asked by CNN for comment, the Armenian government shared remarks made by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in a cabinet meeting, in which he said: “Azerbaijan is subjecting the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to genocide by subjecting them to starvation.”

CNN reached out to the Azerbaijani foreign ministry for comment but has not heard back.

As food, medicine, water and fuel are prevented from entering the territory, local supplies are dwindling. According to the administration for the Artsakh Republic, dairy products, cereal, fish, chicken, cooking oil, sugar, salt, fruit and vegetables, as well as fuel and hygiene products, are unavailable inside the territory.

Empty shelves are seen inside the Supermarket Titan in Stepanakert. 

(Photo provided by the office of the Ombudsman of the Artsakh Republic.) 

- Mary Asatryan

Max Mkhitaryan, a shopkeeper, took CNN on a video tour of his shop in the capital, Stepanakert.

He told CNN that before the blockade he had received most of his produce from Armenia. The only things now left on the shelves were packets of bread, locally produced honey, and a few bottles of vodka. With most shelves empty, he says he can now only serve one in 10 customers.

“Before I used to serve 250 customers per day – now I can barely serve my family. I only have one week left until the shop closes and I am jobless,” he told CNN.

Outside his shop, queues for bread meander through the unkempt streets. Garbage collections are regularly postponed due to fuel shortages, while in the local pharmacy, supplies are rapidly diminishing.

The fuel shortages also mean electricity is rationed, with power cuts for eight hours each day, and drinking water is no longer treated, leading to a spike in related illnesses, according to Stepanyan.

Inside a pharmacy on Baghramyan Street, near Stepanakert Medical Centre. 

(Photo provided by the office of the Ombudsman of the Artsakh Republic.) - Mary Asatryan

According to the enclave’s administration, 95% of residents are suffering from malnutrition and hidden hunger, a term referring to a lack of essential vitamins and minerals.

As winter beckons and the harvest season approaches without fuel to collect the crops, those trapped in Nagorno-Karabakh fear their cries are being ignored.
‘Ethnic cleansing’

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been engaged in a tug of war over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This power vacuum was filled by nationalism, and violence against ethnic minorities quickly followed. Both Armenians in Azerbaijan and Azeris in Armenia claim they were ethnically cleansed, leaving sectarian scars on the minds of generations – on either side of their disputed border.

In the early 1990s, Armenian forces took control of large swaths of territory in and around Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan, backed by Turkey, in turn seized control over large parts of those territories during a six-week war in 2020 that claimed thousands of lives.

A fire burns in a hardware store after a rocket attack caused the building to catch fire on October 3, 2020 in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh. - Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images

The separatist territory was left with the main city of Stepanakert and a few surrounding towns, as well as a population still reeling from the losses of the bloody 2020 conflict, which was followed by sporadic skirmishes along the border. Amid the latest flare-up of tensions, Baku claims it will fully retake and integrate the territory into Azerbaijan – while ethnic Armenians refuse to be uprooted from a region they claim is their homeland.

Ronald Suny, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan, told CNN: “Now that it has won the 2020 war with Armenia, Azerbaijan’s ultimate goal is to drive the Armenians of Artsakh out of Azerbaijan.

“Rather than use direct violence, which would incite opposition from abroad… Baku is determined to make the Armenians’ lives impossible, starve them out, and pressure them to leave,” he said.

To make matters more complicated, Azerbaijan – a one-party state headed by President Ilham Aliyev for the past two decades – has offered to supply the breakaway region via a crossing at the nearby Azerbaijani city of Aghdam.

“Given Azerbaijan’s genocidal intentions and their systematic state policy of long-standing anti-Armenian hatred, our people hold legitimate concerns about the safety of any products originating from Azerbaijan,” Harutyunyan, the elected Nagorno-Karabakh leader, told CNN

“Instead of feigning attempts to deliver humanitarian assistance, Azerbaijan must unblock the Lachin corridor,” he said.

As the blockade carries on with no end in sight, Peter Stano, an EU foreign affairs spokesperson, told CNN of his “deep concern over the serious humanitarian situation” and called for the full resumption of traffic through the Lachin corridor, including medical evacuations and humanitarian supplies.

A United States State Department spokesperson told CNN by email: “We urge the government of Azerbaijan to restore free transit of commercial, humanitarian, and private vehicles through the Lachin corridor expeditiously.”

But Harutyunyan told CNN he was “disappointed with the reactions of the EU and the US so far” and argued the “reasons behind the European and American inaction and failures are purely geopolitical.”

“These reasons include energy reliance on Azerbaijan,” he added.

Bread queues form outside a bakery in Tumanyan Street, Stepanakert. 

(Photo provided by the office of the Ombudsman of the Artsakh Republic.) - Mary Asatryan

According to Reuters, the European Union agreed in July 2022 to double gas imports from Azerbaijan by 2027.

Meanwhile Russia, which brokered the ceasefire in 2020, has peacekeepers along the Lachin corridor but has refrained from intervening further.

CNN has reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry but has yet to hear back.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a briefing on August 2 that Russia dismissed any claim of inaction against the Russian peacekeepers “as counterproductive and non-reflective of their real contribution to the effort to stabilize the situation on the ground.”

Artyom Tonoyan, a professor of global studies at Hamline University in the United States, told CNN that the Russians, who usually exert influence over the Caucasus, are “so engaged with Ukraine they do not have the willpower to mitigate the conflict.”
‘Running out of hope’

As co-ordinated international action to end the blockade appears unlikely anytime soon, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh are left focusing on short-term solutions: gathering firewood, collecting water and foraging for food.

A water tank is seen on Azatamartikneri Street, Stepanakert.

 (Photo provided by the office of the Ombudsman of the Artsakh Republic.) - Mary Asatryan

This time last year, Anahit Gharaghazaryan, a schoolteacher and mother of three, told CNN she was preparing lessons for her pupils as they return from the summer holidays.

Next week was meant to be her five-year-old son’s first day of school. Instead, she is wondering how he will survive the winter.

According to a report given to CNN by Stepanyan, doctors consider it unacceptable for children to continue their studies after suffering malnutrition, while a lack of public transport and an inability to access stationery, books and clothing make it impossible for children to attend school this year.

At a UN Security Council meeting in August, the Deputy Foreign Minister of Armenia, Vahe Gevorgyan, warned that Azerbaijan’s blockade “has impacted 2,000 pregnant women, around 30,000 children, 20,000 older persons, and 9,000 persons with disabilities.”

“If the blockade does not end soon – more people will starve. I cannot sleep thinking about how I will feed my three sons,” Gharaghazaryan said. “We are all running out of hope. How many more people will have to die before the world takes notice?”

 CNN

Unreasonable? Israel's judicial overhaul dismays environmentalists

Ari Rabinovitch
Thu, September 7, 2023 


Judicial changes would constrain Supreme Court in future

*

Ministers exempted from impact of 'unreasonableness clause'

*

Environmentalists used clause to hold government to account

*

Government says it wants courts out of politics, not neutered

JERUSALEM, Sept 6 (Reuters) - When a forgotten explosives cache blew up in June on an Israeli site earmarked for a beachfront apartment complex, it left a big crater but caused little other damage because the Supreme Court had prevented any building work from ever starting.

The court blocked construction on the site of a former munitions factory over what it saw as shortcomings in an official environmental survey, after petitioners sought a ruling based on a clause that gave Israeli judges power to step in when actions by the government or ministers were deemed unreasonable.

The Supreme Court may not find it so easy to act in future after the Israeli government's judicial overhaul, which has sparked protests at home and criticism from Western allies abroad. Under the changes passed so far, the government and ministers are now exempt from judicial oversight based on the so-called "reasonableness clause".

Advocacy groups say this deprives them of a mechanism they had often used to push for action by the authorities on environment issues, ranging from challenging environmental surveys to cleaning up contaminated drinking-water wells or tackling pollution at the Tel Aviv central bus stop.

"It's a fatal blow to our ability to act on behalf of the public," said Amit Bracha, executive director at Adam Teva V'Din (Israel Union for Environmental Defense), or ATD, a group that joined the petition to block work on the coastal development in Herzliya, near Tel Aviv, where the explosion erupted on June 22.

A parliamentary committee said the blast was caused by three tonnes of explosives that had been buried and forgotten in the decades since the factory was removed.

The prime minister's office and ministries involved in the inquiry said they were not responsible. The government, in its case to the court, said the national planning board that oversaw the survey had sufficient "evidentiary basis" when initially approving the beachfront development plan.

Officials at the national planning board could not immediately be reached for further comment.


CHECK AND BALANCE

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition of nationalist and religiously conservative parties say the judicial overhaul is necessary to prevent political overreach by unelected judges.

Opponents say the changes emasculate the judiciary's role to provide a vital check and balance in Israel's political system, a country with a single parliamentary chamber, a largely ceremonial presidency and no constitution.

"It may be possible for the courts to sort of do acrobatics and find other language and other doctrines to achieve similar results," said ATD Chairman Barry Levenfeld, a partner at Israeli law firm Arnon Tadmor Levy.

But he said "the most appropriate way, is to use the doctrine of reasonableness."

The 15-judge Supreme Court will hear an appeal on Sept. 12 against this amendment.

Activists said the clause was particularly useful for small environmental advocacy groups with limited resources when seeking to challenge the government.

In another case, ATD raised a petition over the government's handling of contaminated drinking-water wells. It was launched before the judicial overhaul and sought a ruling based on the application of the reasonableness clause. The court ordered the government to present a timeline within 90 days to address the issue and said further decisions could follow.

But the clause has also been a lightning rod for political disputes.

In January, the Supreme Court ordered Netanyahu to remove a newly-appointed minister, Aryeh Deri, from government over past tax offences, saying most of the court's judges "determined that this appointment is extremely unreasonable". The court also cited other legal grounds. He was removed the same month.

ENVIRONMENT AGENDA

The government insists it is not trying to prevent the Supreme Court or its judges from oversight of the government's work, but says it simply wants to keep it out of politics.

"The court, on this issue (of the reasonableness clause), will continue to supervise the government's work, to strike down illegal decisions. But the court can't set policy instead of the ministers," Idit Silman, minister of environmental protection, told reporters in August.

But activists say the coalition government, which alongside Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party includes ultra-orthodox parties, has already pushed environment issues down its agenda.

One of the government's first actions was to repeal a tax on single-use plastics, which are particularly widely used by ultra-orthodox Jews whose families are typically large and so they often turn to disposable tableware.

The government, which was sworn into office in December, has also softened clean air regulation, giving energy grid operators extra leeway to burn coal if needed, and has not passed a climate law, which would bring ministries in line with long-term emissions targets, despite pledging to do so within six months.

The prime minister's office and environmental protection minister's office declined to comment for this article.

"On top of all this incompetence and neglect, they cancelled the reasonableness clause, which is a primary and critical tool for the court to be able to protect the environment and protect the public," said Yorai Lahav Hertzanu, an opposition parliament member.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; Editing by Edmund Blair)

Rishi Sunak urged to raise India detention of British man

Damian Grammaticas - Political correspondent
Wed, September 6, 2023 

Jagtar Singh Johal (right) arrives at court in India in November 2017

A cross-party group of MPs are calling on Rishi Sunak to intervene in the case of a British man who is facing the death penalty in India.

More than 70 MPs signed a letter urging the PM to call on Narendra Modi to "immediately release" campaigner Jagtar Singh Johal, when he travels to Delhi for the G20 leaders' summit.

They say Mr Johal has been "arbitrarily detained" for over five years.

The PM's spokesperson would not confirm or deny if the case would be raised.

Mr Johal, who is now 36, comes from Dumbarton in Scotland. He was a blogger and campaigner for Sikh human rights, which are said to have brought him to the attention of the Indian authorities.

He travelled to India in October 2017 to get married. The campaign group Reprieve says that while he was out shopping with his wife, he was hooded, bundled into a car by men in plainclothes, "severely tortured", and made to sign blank pieces of paper.

UK accused of tip-off that led to Brit's torture

Scot held in India faces murder conspiracy charge

Brit 'tortured to sign blank confession' in India

Tory MP David Davis told the BBC that "the first duty of a state should be to prevent a citizen getting harmed", and that if a citizen had been harmed and subjected to injustice, "the government should be raising the most serious protests".

He added: "That does not seem to be happening at the moment and that is a failure of the Foreign Office to do its most fundamental duty."

In their letter, the MPs say that "upon his arrest, Jagtar's interrogators electrocuted him, and threatened to douse him in petrol and set him alight. To make the torture stop, Jagtar recorded video statements and signed blank pieces of paper."

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said he had been targeted "because of his activism writing public posts calling for accountability for alleged actions committed against Sikhs by the authorities".

The MPs' letter says the UN Working Group "concluded that Jagtar's continued detention...lacks any legal basis".

Almost six years on, Mr Johal remains in prison in India. He faces eight charges of conspiracy to murder, linked to political violence in India. His family say court proceedings have started but been adjourned repeatedly.

His brother Gurpreet Singh Johal, who is a lawyer and Labour councillor in Dumbarton, told the BBC: "The fear for the family is that false allegations have become false charges, which could become a false conviction and result in the death penalty."

He said both former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Theresa May had discussed the case with India's prime minister, and said "it would be very difficult for Rishi Sunak not to raise the case... if Rishi Sunak doesn't, the question will be 'why didn't you?'.

Gurpreet Singh Johal has criticised the UK government's response to his brother's case

"Given Rishi Sunak has a good relationship with the Indian prime minister it shouldn't be a hard ask. Almost six years have elapsed, no evidence has been produced against Jagtar. These are just charges alleged against him, and it should be innocent until proven guilty."

He added: "It should be very easy to call for Jagtar's release. The UK did it, rightfully so for Nazanin [Zagari-Ratcliffe] and Anousheh [Ashouri] in Iran previously."

Asked if Mr Sunak would raise the case, the prime minister's official spokesperson said: "I am not going to pre-empt what they will or won't discuss."

In response to further questions, the spokesman said the government had raised concerns relating to Jagtar with the Indian government "on more than 100 occasions".

He said they included consular access, judicial process and reports of torture.

He said the family was receiving consular assistance and that Foreign Office Minister Lord Ahmad had met them recently.

However, in a letter sent to Gurpreet Singh Johal in July and seen by the BBC, Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said he had decided it was best not to press India over the issue.

Mr Cleverly wrote: "I do not consider that calling for Jagtar's release would result in the Indian authorities releasing him. Indeed I fear this could impact the co-operation we depend on... to conduct consular visits, resolve welfare concerns and attend court hearings."

That has angered both Mr Davis and Mr Johal's family. Gurpreet Singh Johal said: "It's saying basically 'I'm not going to do it and I'd rather have him rot in jail', that's the impression I get."

Mr Davis said it set "a terrible precedent" and "it encourages more governments to be prickly about complaints".

Gurpreet Singh Johal said he believed the UK's reluctance to speak up about the case now was connected to Mr Sunak's desire to sign a trade deal with India.

"Their focus appears to be that India are an up-and-coming country and they want this trade deal signed off with them, and they are putting trade over human rights," he said.

Mr Davis said he was clear a trade deal should come second to legal rights of a British citizen.

He added: "You don't have to be Palmerston to understand that the rights of a British citizen are the paramount concern of a British government and we do not accept torture as the price of a trade deal. Full stop."

UAW makes contract counteroffer to Ford; Stellantis to make offer


David Shepardson
Wed, September 6, 2023 

OTO: UAW President Shawn Fain chairs the 2023 Special Elections Collective Bargaining Convention


(Reuters) -The United Auto Workers (UAW) union on Wednesday made a labor contract counterproposal on economic issues to Ford Motor, while Chrysler parent company Stellantis planned its counteroffer this week.

Talks are heating up ahead of the expiration on Sept. 14 of the current four-year labor agreements covering 146,000 workers at the Detroit Three automakers. The UAW has said 97% of members voted in favor of authorizing a strike if agreement is not reached.

"They chose to follow the same path they have in the past, which is delay, delay," UAW President Shawn Fain told CNBC Wednesday night. "They waited now until the last eight days to want to start talking -- so we've got a lot of work to do."

Last week, Ford said it had offered a 9% wage increase through 2027, much less than the 46% wage hike being sought by the union. The UAW expects to receive a proposal from General Motors on Thursday, a source told Reuters, who spoke on condition of anonymity. GM confirmed it will meet with the UAW Thursday but declined to provide any details.

Stellantis said on Wednesday it intends to give the UAW a counter offer on the union's economic demands by the end of the week.

Ford said Wednesday it continues to negotiate with the UAW but declined comment on details of the talks.

Last week, the UAW filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against GM and Chrysler-parent Stellantis, saying they refused to bargain in good faith.

The union's demands include a 20% immediate wage increase followed by four 5% annual wage hikes, defined-benefit pensions for all workers, 32-hour work weeks and additional cost of living hikes.

The UAW also wants all temporary workers at U.S. automakers to be made permanent, enhanced profit sharing and the restoration of retiree health-care benefits and cost-of-living adjustments.

The UAW said Ford wants no cap on temporary workers and that those workers would not participate in profit sharing, would earn less than 60% of the top wage rate for permanent workers and receive inferior health-care benefits.

Ford said it would boost starting pay for temporary workers to $20 an hour, up 20%, and offer permanent employees $12,000 in cost-of-living adjustments over the contract.

The UAW said Ford's profit-sharing formula change would have cut payouts by 21% over the last two years, while Ford said it was offering a $5,500 signing bonus upon the contract's ratification for permanent and temporary workers.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; editing by Jonathan Oatis and David Gregorio)

UAW chief: Union to strike any Detroit automaker that hasn't reached deal as contracts end next week

TOM KRISHER
Updated Wed, September 6, 2023 



United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain is interviewed, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023, in Detroit. Fain, who won the UAW’s presidency this spring in the first direct election by members, says the union plans to go on strike against any Detroit automaker that doesn't have an agreement by the time contracts expire next week. 

(AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

DETROIT (AP) — The head of the United Auto Workers warned Wednesday that the union plans to go on strike against any Detroit automaker that hasn't reached a new agreement by the time contracts expire next week.

“That’s the plan,” President Shawn Fain responded when asked if the union would strike any of the companies that haven’t reached a tentative deal by the time their national contracts end.

A strike against all three major automakers — General Motors, Stellantis and Ford — could cause damage not only to the industry as a whole but also to the Midwest and even national economy, depending on how long it lasted. The auto industry accounts for about 3% of the nation's economic output. A prolonged strike could also lead eventually to higher vehicle prices.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Fain left open the possibility of avoiding a strike. He acknowledged, more explicitly than he has before, that the union will have to give up some of its demands to reach agreements. Contracts with the three companies will all expire at 11:59 p.m. Sept. 14.

“There’s a lot of back and forth in bargaining," he said, "and naturally, when you go into bargaining, you don’t always get everything you demand. Our workers have high expectations. We made a lot of sacrifices going back to the economic recession.”

In the interview, Fain did report some progress in the negotiations, saying the union will meet Thursday with GM to hear the company’s response to the UAW’s economic demands. In addition, discussions are under way with Ford on wages and benefits. Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, has yet to make a counteroffer on wage and benefit demands, he said.

Stellantis said it will give the union a wage-and-benefit counteroffer by the end of the week, while Ford said it has a strong track record of creative solutions with the UAW. GM confirmed that it would meet Thursday with union representatives but wouldn't comment further.

Last week, the union filed charges of unfair labor practices against Stellantis and GM, and it said Ford's economic offer fell far short of its demands.

Marick Masters, a business professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said he thought Fain's latest remarks suggest “that he is opening up to the realities of bargaining” as the strike deadline nears.

“As you get close to the deadline," Masters said, "you begin to realize the importance of trying to resolve a problem rather than make a point. Strikes are painful, especially for workers, and also for companies.”

Fain's willingness to acknowledge publicly that he isn't going to achieve all the union's demands shows there is more flexibility in his approach than previously thought, Masters said.

Some signs of movement in the negotiations have emerged, raising the possibility, Masters said, that an agreement might be reached with one automaker that would set the pattern for the others.

“I think if they can avoid having to go out on strike and the pain that occurs and still get a very good bargain, I think they’ll be better off,” he said.

The union’s demands include 46% across-the-board pay raises, a 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay, restoration of traditional pensions for new hires, union representation of workers at new battery plants and a restoration of traditional pensions. Top-scale UAW assembly plant workers make about $32 an hour, plus annual profit sharing checks.

In his remarks to the AP, Fain argued that worker pay isn’t what has driven up vehicle prices. The average price of a new car has leaped to more than $48,000 on average, in part because of still-scarce supplies resulting from a global shortage of computer chips.

“In the last four years, the price of vehicles went up 30%," he said. “Our wages went up 6%. There were billions of dollars in shareholder dividends. So our wages aren’t the problem.”

While saying a strike by up to 146,000 members against all three major automakers is a real possibility, Fain said the union doesn't want to strike and would prefer to to reach new contracts with them.

Biden to Cancel Arctic Oil Drilling Rights Sold by Trump

Jennifer A. Dlouhy and Ari Natter
Wed, September 6, 2023 





(Bloomberg) -- The Biden administration is taking steps to thwart oil development in remote reaches of Alaska by canceling leases to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and setting up plans for more conservation in the state’s petroleum reserve.

The moves come in the wake of the administration’s controversial decision to approve ConocoPhillips’s 600-million-barrel Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. The initiatives announced Wednesday target territory in northern Alaska, long prized for its oil and gas potential — but also for its rich habitat, home to waterfowl, caribou, polar bears and other wildlife.

“As the climate crisis warms the Arctic more than twice as fast as the rest of the world, we have a responsibility to protect this treasured region for all ages,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

The Interior Department is canceling leases sold in a January 2021 auction of parcels in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain that was mandated by Congress, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said Wednesday. In 2017, Congress mandated two sales of Coastal Plain leases by the end of next year, to pay for tax cuts.

“No one will have rights to drill for oil in one of the most sensitive areas on Earth,” Haaland told reporters.

Haaland said the cancellation comes after the department found the Trump administration’s environmental review of the 2021 sale of leases in ANWR’s Coastal Plain was inadequate and not legally defensible. Biden had earlier ordered the suspension of those leases while Interior reviewed the sale.

The affected leases are held by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the state’s economic development agency. Another lease sold in the auction had already been forfeited by Regenerate Alaska Inc.

Although it would take years to develop the leases and produce any oil and gas from the tracts, the moves appear to run counter to Biden’s earlier demands that US oil companies boost output. And the announcement is set to follow Saudi Arabia’s decision to prolong a million-barrel-a-day oil supply curb into December that sent the global oil benchmark above $90 a barrel.

However, the development is consistent with the Biden administration’s push to protect 30% of land and waters by 2030 — as well as the president’s promises to combat climate change. The International Energy Agency has warned the world must forsake developing new oil and gas fields to avert the most catastrophic consequences of global warming and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.

Oil industry leaders and their allies on Capitol Hill blasted the action, saying it further deters investment in new energy production. “This industry needs clear, consistent policies in place to support the long-term investment needed to produce affordable, reliable energy, but the Biden administration instead continues to send the wrong signals,” said Holly Hopkins, the American Petroleum Institute’s president of upstream policy.

Alaska’s congressional delegation cast the moves as irresponsible, with Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski saying they represented “incoherent energy policy.”

Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice, praised the decision to cancel the refuge leases, saying it “undoes an egregious attack on this cherished place” that “will help to vindicate the rights of indigenous people and protect vital habitat.”

The agency also is moving to strengthen protections for roughly 13 million acres (52,600 square kilometers) in the 23-million-acre National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. A proposed rule by the agency would establish an outright prohibition on any new leasing in 10.6 million acres, or more than 40%, of the NPR-A. The agency also aims to allow the designation of special protected areas in the NPR-A at least every five years, with safeguards meant to ensure they cannot be easily undone.

“Oil and gas drilling in the Arctic Refuge is incompatible with the long-term survival of the Arctic, the Gwich’in Nation’s way of life, and life as we know it,” said Sierra Club executive director Ben Jealous. “By protecting these landscapes and canceling these leases, the White House has made it clear they will take bold action to avert climate catastrophe.”

The initiative will not affect existing leases in the reserve, including at ConocoPhillips’ Willow project. Yet the effort is likely to inflame tensions with oil industry leaders and their allies on Capitol Hill, who argue the administration is unfairly constraining energy development in the Indiana-sized reserve set aside for oil supply needs roughly a century ago.