Military takes UFOs seriously at congressional hearing: 

'We want to know what's out there'

Christopher Wilson

·Senior Writer

Tue, May 17, 2022, 

While the first congressional hearing on UFOs in more than 50 years didn’t reveal the existence of extraterrestrial life, it did affirm that the U.S. military is taking sightings of unknown craft seriously as a national security threat.

A House Intelligence Counterterrorism, Counterintelligence, and Counterproliferation Subcommittee hearing convened Tuesday morning with a 90-minute public session that was followed by closed-door testimony later in the day.

“Unidentified aerial phenomena [UAPs] are a potential national security threat, and they need to be treated that way,” Rep. André Carson, D-Ind., said at the beginning of the hearing, referring to the preferred technical term for unidentified flying objects, or UFOs.

“For too long, the stigma associated with UAPs has gotten in the way of good intelligence analysis,” he added. “Pilots avoided reporting or were laughed at when they did. DOD officials relegated the issues to the backroom or swept it under the rug entirely, fearful of a skeptical national security community.

“Today we know better,” Carson continued. “UAPs are unexplained, it’s true, but they are real. They need to be investigated, and any threats they pose need to be mitigated.”

The first congressional hearing on “unidentified aerial phenomena” in over 50 years was held on Tuesday. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The hearing — the first on the topic since 1966, when congressman and future president Gerald Ford held one after a sighting in Michigan — was less focused on concerns about alien invasion and more on intelligence lapses that could lead to other nations having unknown technology about which the U.S. is not aware. That push included making sure pilots feel comfortable reporting anything they see.

“The intelligence community has a serious duty to our taxpayers to prevent potential adversaries such as China and Russia from surprising us with unforeseen new technologies,” said Rep. Rick Crawford, R-Ark. “This committee has an obligation to understand what you are doing to determine whether any UAPs are new technologies or not — and if they are, where are they coming from?”

In November, the Pentagon announced the new Airborne Object Identification and Management Synchronization Group program to help with tracking. It followed a June 2021 report documenting 144 observations dating back to 2004.

“We know that our service members have encountered unidentified aerial phenomena, and because UAP pose potential flight safety and general security risks, we are committed to a focused effort to determine their origins,” Ronald Moultrie, undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, testified at the hearing. “We want to know what’s out there as much as you want to know what’s out there. We get the questions not just from you. We get it from family, and we get them night and day.”

Ronald Moultrie, the undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security, testifies on Tuesday. (Jose Luis Magana/AFP via Getty Images)

Scott Bray, deputy director of naval intelligence, said the Pentagon's database of unidentified objects has grown to “approximately 400 reports.” He said that while there had not been any collisions between military craft and UAPs, there had been at least 11 near misses. Bray said the military had not picked up communication signals from the objects, nor had it tried to begin communications with them.

“Generally speaking, it appears to be something that’s unmanned, appears to be something that may or may not be in controlled flight, so we have not attempted any communication with that,” he said, noting that the military had not fired on any UAP, nor had it come across any wreckage “that isn’t consistent of being with terrestrial origin.”

While Bray said that most of the sightings that were still unexplained could be attributed to a lack of data, he conceded, “There are a small handful of cases in which we have more data that our analysis simply hasn’t been able to fully pull together a picture of what happened.”

The American fascination with and military interest in UFOs are both decades old. In his opening remarks, Carson referenced the Air Force’s Project Blue Book, a classified program set up in 1952 that counted more than 12,000 UFO sightings over its 17-year existence, with hundreds still unexplained. A 2006 report of a disk hovering over O’Hare International Airport in Chicago was dismissed by the Federal Aviation Administration as a weather anomaly. The 1947 crash of a high-altitude balloon in Roswell, N.M., inspired generations of conspiracy theories about flying saucers. The unmanned craft was part of a top-secret program to monitor Soviet weapon tests.

Scott Bray, the deputy director of naval intelligence, plays a video of an unidentified aerial phenomenon during the congressional hearing on Tuesday. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

In a March 1966 letter to two fellow congressmen, Ford wrote, “In the firm belief that the American public deserve a better explanation than that thus far given by the Air Force, I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFO’s and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment on this subject.” The following month, Ford issued a statement saying that while some had “ridiculed” his call for a congressional investigation, they were a fraction of those who had given approval to look into a March event in which 40 people, including 12 police officers, claimed to have seen a cluster of UFOs.

In 2017, the New York Times published a story about how former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., had pushed for funding for the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which investigated unexplained aerial sightings. The program ran from 2007 to 2012.

“I’m not embarrassed or ashamed or sorry I got this thing going,” said Reid. “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service. I’ve done something that no one has done before.”

Microsoft Will Boost Pay and Stock Compensation to Retain Employees

Dina Bass
Mon, May 16, 2022,


(Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. plans to “nearly double” its budget for employee salary increases and boost the range of stock compensation it gives some workers by at least 25%, an effort to retain staff and help people cope with inflation.

The move will mainly affect “early to mid-career employees,” the software giant said in a statement Monday.

“As we approach our annual total rewards process, we are making a significant additional investment this year to compensate our employees globally,” the Redmond, Washington-based company said. “While we have factored in the impact of inflation and rising cost of living, these changes also recognize our appreciation to our world-class talent who support our mission, culture and customers, and partners.”

In addition to contending with cost-of-living increases and a tight Seattle housing market, Microsoft is locked in a fierce battle for talent with companies like Amazon.com Inc., Google and Facebook owner Meta Platforms Inc., as well as startups. Fields like cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, the metaverse and cloud computing have been especially competitive. Moreover, the pandemic has led many workers to relocate and reconsider employment options.

“Time and time again, we see that our talent is in high demand because of the amazing work that you do,” Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in a memo that was obtained by Bloomberg.

Microsoft’s salary package is composed of base salary, bonus and stock. The changes will apply to a substantial part of the company’s workforce, which stood at 181,000 as of June 30, 2021.

The stock increase will apply to employees at Level 67 in the company’s internal scale, or below, Nadella said. Level 67 is the last tier before an employee is made a company partner, putting them in a higher pay scale. The salary budget increases will vary by country and “the most meaningful increases will be focused where the market demands.”

The company didn’t discuss pay figures, so it’s hard to tell what the new compensation levels will translate to in dollar figures. But the Glassdoor website estimates that a new graduate working as a software engineer at Microsoft makes about $163,000.

Cross-town rival Amazon.com Inc. in February said it would more than doubling the maximum base salary it pays employees to $350,000 from $160,000 to cope with a competitive labor market.

Microsoft announced the changes as it nears the end of the fiscal year ending June 30. For the current fiscal year, the company had already put in place higher budgets for promotions and a special stock award meant to “recognize exceptional impact and support retention of our most competitive talent pools,” Nadella wrote.

Insider reported the company was considering the increases last week.

Chinese plane crash that killed 132 caused by intentional act: US officials

GIO BENITEZ, JOSH MARGOLIN and AMANDA MAILE

Tue, May 17, 2022

The China Eastern Airlines plane crash that killed 132 people is believed to have been caused by an intentional act, according to U.S. officials who spoke to ABC News.

The Boeing 737-800 passenger jet was flying from Kunming to Guangzhou on March 21 when it plunged into a mountainous area in Guangxi, China. All 123 passengers and nine crew members were killed.

MORE: 2nd black box found as investigators search for answers in China plane crash

The Wall Street Journal was first to report the news.

The officials who spoke to ABC News point to the plane's flaps not being engaged and landing gear not put down. The near-vertical descent of the plane, they believe, would've required intentional force.

PHOTO: In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, workers search through debris at the China Eastern flight crash site in Tengxian County in southern China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, March 24, 2022. (Lu Boan/AP, FILE)

The plane slammed into the ground with such force that it created a 66-foot deep hole in the ground, according to Chinese officials.

Investigators also looked into one of the pilots' personal lives and background and believe he may have been struggling through certain issues right before the crash, ABC News has learned.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said all information on the investigation will come from their counterparts in the Civil Aviation Administration of China, but regulators and Boeing have not flagged any mechanical issues. Sources said Chinese investigators also haven't flagged any mechanical issues.

MORE: Black box analyzed for pilots' actions in China Eastern Airlines crash

"The NTSB will not be issuing any further updates on the CAAC's investigation of the China Eastern 5735 crash," the NTSB said in a statement. "When and whether CAAC issues updates is entirely up to them. And I haven't heard anything about any plans for them to do so."

The first black box, the cockpit voice recorder, was found on March 23, while the flight data recorder was found on March 27.

Early data showed the airliner plunged from 29,000 feet to 8,000 feet, leveled off and then went into a freefall. One video showed the plane nose-diving into the ground.

ABC News' Mark Osborne contributed to this report.

Chinese plane crash that killed 132 caused by intentional act: US officials originally appeared on abcnews.go.com

UPDATE 5-China Eastern crash probe eyes intentional action - sources

Tue, May 17, 2022,
(Adds social media action in China, no immediate China Eastern comment)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON, May 17 (Reuters) - Investigators probing the crash of a China Eastern Airlines jet are examining whether it was due to intentional action taken on the flight deck, with no evidence so far of a technical malfunction, two people briefed on the matter said.

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier Tuesday that flight data from one the Boeing 737-800's black boxes indicated that someone in the cockpit intentionally crashed the plane, citing people familiar with U.S. officials' preliminary assessment.

Boeing Co, the maker of the jet, and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) declined to comment and referred questions to Chinese regulators.

The Boeing 737-800, en route from Kunming to Guangzhou, crashed on March 21 in the mountains of Guangxi, after a sudden plunge from cruising altitude, killing all 123 passengers and nine crew members aboard.

It was mainland China's deadliest aviation disaster in 28 years.

The pilots did not respond to repeated calls from air traffic controllers and nearby planes during the rapid descent, authorities have said. One source told Reuters investigators were looking at whether the crash was a "voluntary" act.

Screenshots of the Wall Street Journal story appeared to be censored both on China's Twitter-like platform Weibo and messaging app Wechat on Wednesday morning. The hashtag topics "China Eastern" and "China Eastern black boxes" are banned on Weibo, which cited a breach of relevant laws, and users are unable to share the story in group chats on Wechat.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China said on April 11 in response to rumours on the internet of a deliberate crash that the speculation had "gravely misled the public" and "interfered with the accident investigation work."

China Eastern did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday. The Wall Street Journal said the airline had said in a statement that no evidence had emerged that could determine whether or not there were any problems with the accident aircraft. The Chinese Embassy declined to comment.

The 737-800 is a widely flown predecessor to Boeing's 737 MAX but does not have the systems that have been linked to fatal 737-MAX crashes in 2018 and 2019 that led to a lengthy grounding of the MAX.

China Eastern grounded its entire fleet of 737-800 planes after the crash, but resumed flights in mid-April in a move widely seen at the time as ruling out any immediate new safety concern over Boeing's previous and still most widely used model.

In a summary of an unpublished preliminary crash report last month, Chinese regulators did not point to any technical recommendations on the 737-800, which has been in service since 1997 with a strong safety record, according to experts.

NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a May 10 Reuters interview that board investigators and Boeing had traveled to China to assist the Chinese investigation. She noted that the investigation to date had not found any safety issues that would require any urgent actions.

Homendy said if the board has any safety concerns it will "issue urgent safety recommendations."

The NTSB assisted Chinese investigators with the review of black boxes at its U.S. lab in Washington.

Shares of Boeing closed up 6.5%.

A final report into the causes could take two years or more to compile, Chinese officials have said. Analysts say most crashes are caused by a cocktail of human and technical factors.

Deliberate crashes are exceptionally rare. Experts noted the latest hypothesis left open whether the action stemmed from one pilot acting alone or the result of a struggle or intrusion but sources stressed nothing has been confirmed.

In March 2015, a Germanwings co-pilot deliberately flew an Airbus A320 into a French mountainside, killing all 150 on board.

French investigators found the 27-year-old was suffering from a suspected "psychotic depressive episode," concealed from his employer. They later called for better mental health guidelines and stronger peer support groups for pilots. (Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington, Tim Hepher in Paris and Abhijith Ganapavaram in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Stella Qiu in Beijing; Editing by Leslie Adler, Marguerita Choy and Richard Pullin)

Abortion: the story of suffering and death behind Ireland's ban and subsequent legalization


Gretchen E. Ely,

 Professor of Social Work and Ph.D. Program Director, 

University of Tennessee

THE CONVERSATION
Mon, May 16, 2022

The death of Savita Halappanavar in an Irish hospital in 2012 after she was denied an abortion during a miscarriage caused outrage across Ireland. 

AP Photo/Shawn Pogatchnik

If the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion in the U.S., the nation may find itself on a path similar to that trod by the Irish people from 1983 to 2018. A draft decision signed by the majority of conservative justices was leaked in May 2022, and indicates the court may do just that.

Abortion was first prohibited in Ireland through what was called the Offenses Against the Person Act of 1861. That law became part of Irish law when Ireland gained independence from the U.K. in 1922. In the early 1980s, some anti-abortion Catholic activists noticed the liberalization of abortion laws in other Western democracies and worried the same might happen in Ireland.

Various Catholic organizations, including the Irish Catholic Doctors’ Guild, St. Joseph’s Young Priests Society and the St. Thomas More Society, combined to form the Pro Life Amendment Campaign. They began promoting the idea of making Ireland a model anti-abortion nation by enshrining an abortion ban not only in law but in the nation’s constitution.

As a result of that effort, a constitutional referendum passed in 1983, ending a bitter campaign where only 54% of eligible voters cast a ballot. Ireland’s eighth constitutional amendment “acknowledges the right to life of the unborn and [gave] due regard to the equal right to life of the mother.”

This religiously motivated anti-abortion measure is similar to religiously oriented anti-abortion laws already on the books in some U.S. states, including Texas, which has a ban after six weeks of pregnancy, and Kentucky, which limits private health insurance coverage of abortion.

What happened over the 35 years after the referendum passed in Ireland was a battle to legalize abortion. It included several court cases, proposed constitutional amendments and intense advocacy, ending in 2018 with another referendum, re-amending the Irish constitution to legalize abortion up to 12 weeks gestation.
Real-life consequences

Even before 1983, people who lived in Ireland who wanted a legal abortion were already traveling to England on what was known as the “abortion trail”, as abortion was also criminalized in Northern Ireland. In the wake of the Eighth Amendment, a 1986 Irish court ruling declared that even abortion counseling was prohibited.

A key test of the abortion law came in 1992. A 14-year-old rape victim, who became pregnant, told a court she was contemplating suicide because of being forced to carry her rapist’s baby. The judge ruled that the threat to her life was not so great as to justify granting permission for an abortion. That ruling barred her from leaving Ireland for nine months, effectively forcing her to carry the pregnancy to term.

On appeal, a higher court ruled that the young woman’s suicidal thoughts were in fact enough of a life threat to justify a legal termination. But before she could have an abortion, she miscarried.

The case prompted attempts to pass three more amendments to Ireland’s constitution. One, declaring that suicidal intentions were not grounds for an abortion, failed. The other two passed, allowing Irish people to travel to get an abortion, and allowing information to be distributed about legal abortion in other countries.

Emergency treatment

Even with these adjustments, the Eighth Amendment sometimes restricted the ability of medical professionals to offer patients life-saving care during a pregnancy-related emergency.

In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, age 31 and 17 weeks pregnant, went to a hospital in Galway, Ireland. Doctors there determined that she was having a miscarriage. However, because the fetus still had a detectable heartbeat, it was protected by the Eighth Amendment. Doctors could not intervene – in legal terms, ending its life – even to save the mother. So she was admitted to the hospital for pain management while awaiting the miscarriage to progress naturally.

Over the course of three days, as her pain increased and signs of infection grew, she and her husband pleaded with hospital officials to terminate the pregnancy because of the health risk. The request was denied because the fetus still had a heartbeat.

By the time the fetal heartbeat could no longer be detected, Halappanavar had developed a massive infection in her uterus, which spread to her blood. After suffering organ failure and four days in intensive care, she died.

This was likely not the only time someone had suffered, or even died, as a result of being denied abortion in Ireland. But the publicity surrounding the case prompted a new wave of activism aimed at repealing the Eighth Amendment. In 2013, the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act was signed into law, which did not fully repeal the Eighth Amendment but legalized abortions that would protect the mother’s life.

It is estimated that about 170,000 people traveled from Ireland to seek a legal abortion between 1980 and 2018.

In 2018, a referendum repealing the Eighth Amendment passed overwhelmingly by a margin of 66% to 34%. As a result of the repeal, legal abortions are now allowed during the first trimester, with costs covered by the public health service.

A similar situation in the US

As a social work professor who researches reproductive health care, I see many parallels between what happened in Ireland between 1983 and 2018 and the present U.S. situation.

People in the U.S. are already traveling long distances, often to other states, in a manner similar to the Irish abortion trail.

In both the U.S. and Ireland, the people who need help paying for abortions are mostly single people in their 20s who already have an average of two children, according to research I conducted with some abortion funds, which are charitable organizations that help people cover often-unaffordable abortion expenses.

In contrast to the United States, Ireland is moving away from political control over private life. If Roe is reversed and abortion is criminalized in much of the U.S., pregnant people could face decades of forced pregnancy, suffering and even death – as was the case in Ireland prior to 2018.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Gretchen E. Ely, University of Tennessee.

Read more:

US Senate to vote on abortion rights bill – but what would it mean to codify Roe into law?

Religious beliefs give strength to the anti-abortion movement – but not all religions agree

Gretchen E. Ely has previously received research funding from the Society of Family Planning, the National Network of Abortion Funds, and inroads: The International Network for the Reduction of Abortion Discrimination and Stigma. Dr. Ely also serves on the community board for the Planned Parenthood affiliate in Knoxville, TN.

Dirty liberal pipe-dream: 3 myths about electric cars




Some people raised questions about how electric vehicles would fare when stuck in a traffic jam in the snow (AFP/Angela Weiss)

Roland Lloyd Parry with AFP bureaus
Mon, May 16, 2022

Sceptics say that far from helping save the planet, electric cars are a liberal pipe-dream whose environmental benefits are exaggerated.

But even if there is no such thing as an all-green car, studies show that battery-powered ones cause fewer harmful greenhouse gas overall than their petrol-driven ancestors.

AFP Fact Check examined three common claims about them.

'Coal-powered'

"Coal Powered Electric Cars.... Helping liberals pretend they are solving a make-believe crisis," reads a text shared on Facebook, with a photo of cars plugged in at a charging station.

The humorous meme implies that electric cars do not help lower climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions because coal is burned to feed the electricity grid.

The US Environmental Protection Agency has a calculator tool on its website to compare a petrol car's emissions with those of an electric one depending on where it is charged.

It calculates that an electric car charged in St Louis, Missouri -– part of the subregion that relies the most on coal –- on average will produce 247 grams of carbon dioxide per mile, lower than the average 381 grams of a gasoline vehicle.

Experts at Carbon Brief agree an electric car's emissions depend on what region or country it is charged in.

They would be higher in Poland or in an Asian country where more coal is burned than in France, where most electricity comes from nuclear power.

Overall, the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) found electric cars are lower-emitting than their petrol-driven equivalents across their life cycle, from mining components to recycling.

An electric car is also much more efficient in its use of energy than a petrol-powered one, according to the US Department of Energy and other sources.

'200 tonnes of earth'

Making the vehicles' batteries is an energy-intensive process that includes mining and trucking raw materials, assembly in factories, and shipping worldwide. Recycling them is costly.

Another viral text shared on Facebook claimed that 500,000 pounds (227 metric tonnes) of earth are dug up to extract the metals for one electric car battery.

The estimate appeared to originate from a 2020 analysis by the Manhattan Institute, a climate-sceptic research group.

Several experts consulted by AFP said the figures were misleading. Peter Newman, professor of sustainability at Australia's Curtin University, judged it a "gross exaggeration" and said the quantity mined would vary depending on geography and the type of battery.

Mining has other impacts not immediately related to the global climate. About 70 percent of cobalt -- a battery ingredient -- comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, where use of child labour in mines has been documented.

Access to the ingredients also raises strategic supply concerns, with many of the raw materials held by China, according to the International Energy Agency.

Georg Bieker, a Berlin-based researcher at the ICCT, said the environmental damage from oil-drilling made gasoline production no better.

The risk of devastation driven by greenhouse gas emissions, projected in recent reports by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, would be even worse.

"It is correct to demand improvements, e.g. as considered by voluntary standards in the industry and by mandatory due diligence requirements that are foreseen in the upcoming EU battery regulation," he said.

"In any case, it's clear that the social and environmental impact of global warming is catastrophic, at a different scale than the mining of battery raw materials."

'Stuck in snow'

After a snowstorm stranded hundreds of motorists in Virginia in January, users on Facebook shared posts warning that electric vehicles would run out of power and make the traffic jam even worse.

"All those people would be stuck in freezing temperatures without a heated vehicle. And all the cars would be stuck unable to move because you can't bring a charging station to them," read the text.

"All those electric cars would become roadblocks to the gasoline powered vehicles."

Several fact-checking organisations scrutinised the claim. They found there was no evidence that electric cars would fare worse in a storm.

Studies such as one published in 2015 by the American Chemical Society have found that electric vehicles do consume energy less efficiently when driving in the cold.

However various experts said that if stuck in a storm, an electric vehicle would consume less power than a gasoline one, which would have to keep its engine running to power the heating.

British consumer affairs magazine Which? tested an electric SUV by simulating a traffic jam, with the car's radio, air conditioning, seat-heating and headlights on, plus a tablet device plugged in playing a film.

That used up a negligible two percent of the battery, or eight miles' worth of range, in an hour and a quarter - admittedly in summer conditions.

rlp/mh/yad

Student protest as discontent rises over China's zero-COVID
 

 

KEN MORITSUGU and DAVID RISING
Tue, May 17, 2022

BEIJING (AP) — Administrators at an elite Beijing university have backed down from plans to further tighten pandemic restrictions on students as part of China’s “zero-COVID” strategy after a weekend protest at the school, according to students Tuesday.

Graduate students at Peking University staged the rare, but peaceful protest Sunday over the school’s decision to erect a sheet-metal wall to keep them further sequestered on campus, while allowing faculty to come and go freely. Discontent had already been simmering over regulations prohibiting them from ordering in food or having visitors, and daily COVID-19 testing.

A citywide lockdown of Shanghai and expanded restrictions in Beijing in recent weeks have raised questions about the economic and human costs of China’s strict virus controls, which the ruling Communist Party has trumpeted as a success compared to other major nations with much higher death tolls. While most people have grumbled privately or online, some Shanghai residents have clashed with police, volunteers and others trying to enforce lockdowns and take infected people to quarantine centers.

Many of the Peking University students protesting Sunday outside a dormitory took cellphone videos as Chen Baojian, the deputy secretary of the university’s Communist Party committee, admonished them through a megaphone to end the protest and talk with him one-on-one.

“Please put down your mobile phones, protect Peking University,” he said, to which one student yelled: “Is that protection? How about our rights and interests?”

The crowd of about 200 clapped and cheered as a half dozen protesters broke through the sheet-metal barrier behind Chen.

The phone videos were quickly shared over social media, but just as quickly removed by government censors. Some supportive comments remained, though many were also taken down, while some videos remain on Twitter, which is blocked in China.

“Peking University students are great!” wrote one person on the popular social media platform Weibo. “Fight for rights. A single spark can start a prairie fire.”

The Communist Party moves quickly to quash most activism and any sign of unrest, which it sees as a potential challenge to its hold on power. Peking University is among a handful of elite institutions that have played prominent roles in political movements including the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution and the student-led 1989 pro-democracy protests centered on Beijing’s Tiananmen Square that were crushed by the army.

Following the protest, university leaders met with student representatives and agreed to remove the sheet-metal barrier, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday.

One graduate student who took part in the protest, who did not want her name published due to possible repercussions, said the wall had been taken down a short time later, and that other concessions were made to the students, including organizing free supermarket deliveries.

“We achieved our goals Sunday night,” said the student, who said she had been confined to the university's Wanliu residential compound for 7 days before the protest.

The compound is about 5 kilometers (3 miles) southwest of the main Peking University campus, housing young professors and graduate students. It also has a gym, a supermarket and other facilities.

Authorities have tightened restrictions on access to campuses and monitoring of classroom instruction and student life, making such protests extremely rare. In 2018, police detained students at schools including Peking University who had sought to form an alliance with protesting factory workers, displaying their refusal to tolerate even mild attempts at political activism.

As most other countries in the world have begun to ease restrictions and gradually open back up, China has stuck tenaciously to its zero-COVID policy.

The strict lockdowns with most public areas closed down have played havoc with employment, supply chains and the economy in general, and are becoming increasingly hard on people as the highly transmissible omicron variant proves more difficult to stop.

In Beijing, authorities on Tuesday restricted more residents to their homes in a now 3-week-long effort to control a small but persistent COVID-19 outbreak in the Chinese capital.

Seven adjoining areas in the city's Fengtai district were designated lockdown zones for at least one week, with people ordered to stay at home in an area covering about 4 kilometers by 5 kilometers (2.5 miles by 3 miles). The area is near a wholesale food market that was closed indefinitely on Saturday following the discovery of a cluster there.

The added restrictions come as Shanghai, China’s largest city, slowly starts to ease a citywide lockdown that has trapped most of its population for more than six weeks.

China recorded 1,100 new cases on Monday, the National Health Commission said Tuesday. Of those, about 800 were in Shanghai and 52 were in Beijing. The daily number of new cases in Shanghai has declined steadily for more than two weeks, but authorities have been moving slowly to relax restrictions, frustrating residents.

In Beijing, the number of cases has held steady but new clusters have popped up in different parts of the city. City spokesperson Xu Hejian said that Beijing's top priority is to screen people related to the cluster at the wholesale food market and isolate those who test positive. A second wholesale food market in Fengtai district was shut down Tuesday.

Most of Beijing is not locked down, but the streets are much quieter than usual with many shops closed and people working from home.

___

Rising reported from Bangkok. Associated Press researcher Chen Si in Shanghai and news assistant Caroline Chen in Guangzhou, China, contributed to this report.

Tuesday, May 17, 2022, in Beijing.

 (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)

Iraq balks at greater Chinese control of its oilfields

Iraqi Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar walks during a Lukoil 

energy event, in Baghdad

Mon, May 16, 2022
By Sarah McFarlane and Aref Mohammed

LONDON/BASRA (Reuters) - Iraq's oil ministry thwarted three prospective deals last year that would have handed Chinese firms more control over its oilfields and led to an exodus of international oil majors that Baghdad wants to invest in its creaking economy.

Since the start of 2021, plans by Russia's Lukoil and U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil to sell stakes in major fields to Chinese state-backed firms have hit the buffers after interventions from Iraq's oil ministry, according to Iraqi oil officials and industry executives.

Selling a stake to a state-run Chinese company was also one of several options being considered by Britain's BP, but officials persuaded it to stay in Iraq for now, people familiar with the matter said.

China is Iraq's top investor and Baghdad was the biggest beneficiary last year of Beijing's Belt and Road initiative, receiving $10.5 billion in financing for infrastructure projects including a power plant and an airport.

But when it comes to further Chinese investment in major oilfields, Baghdad has drawn a line in the sand.

Iraq's government and officials at state-run firms are concerned that further consolidation of fields in the hands of Chinese companies could accelerate an exodus of Western oil companies, a total of seven Iraqi oil officials and executives with companies operating in Iraq told Reuters in interviews.

Supported by state-run oil company officials, Iraq's Oil Minister Ihsan Abdul Jabbar dissuaded Lukoil last year from selling a stake in one of the country's largest fields, West Qurna 2, to Chinese state firm Sinopec, three people familiar with the matter said.

Iraqi officials also intervened last year to stop Chinese state-backed firms buying Exxon's stake in West Qurna 1 and to persuade BP to stay in Iraq rather than offloading its interest in the giant Rumaila oilfield to a Chinese company, people familiar with the matter said.

Combined, Rumaila and West Qurna produce about half of the crude coming out of Iraq, which sits on the fifth-largest oil reserves in the world.

Iraq's oil ministry did not respond to requests for comment about the deals or the minister's role in any interventions.

The government worried that China's dominance could make Iraq less attractive for investment from elsewhere, two government officials said.

China's strengthening relationship with Iran has helped its position in Iraq due to Tehran's political and military influence there, but the oil ministry is wary of ceding more control over the country's key resources, some officials said.

"We don't want the Iraqi energy sector to be labelled as a China-led energy sector and this attitude is agreed by government and the oil ministry," another Iraqi official said.

RISKY STRATEGY

The interventions over BP, Exxon and Lukoil's positions in Iraq come after British oil major Shell decided in 2018 to withdraw from Iraq's vast Majnoon oilfield.

The interventions also mark a shift in stance after Chinese companies won most energy deals and contracts awarded over the past four years. Iraqi oil officials said Chinese firms have accepted lower profit margins than most rivals.

"All the rules regarding tenders were formulated jointly by the Chinese and Iraqi sides and were conducted under transparent and fair principles," said state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) in an emailed statement.

Pushing back against further Chinese investment is a risky strategy, though, as there's no guarantee others will step up and the government needs billions of dollars to rebuild the economy after the Islamic State insurgency was defeated in 2017.

Over the past decade, oil revenue accounted for 99% of Iraq's exports, 85% of the country's budget and 42% of its gross domestic product, according to the World Bank.

While oil majors jostled to get access to Iraq's vast oilfields after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, they are increasingly focused on the energy transition and more profitable plays elsewhere. They also want better terms to develop fields, oil executives said.

China is among the biggest buyers of Iraq's crude and Chinese state firms have built up a dominant position in its oil industry.

But when Lukoil notified the government last summer that it was considering selling some of its stake in West Qurna 2 to Sinopec, the oil minister intervened, people familiar with the matter said.

It has not previously been reported that Sinopec was the potential buyer of Lukoil's stake. The Chinese company did not respond to a request for comment.

To encourage Lukoil to stay, Iraq offered a sweetener, a person with direct knowledge said.

A few months after Lukoil signalled it was considering a sale, Baghdad finally approved its plan to develop a field known as Block 10, where the Russian company had discovered an oil reservoir in 2017. Afterwards, Lukoil dropped the idea of selling its stake in West Qurna 2, the source said.

Lukoil did not respond to a request for comment.

BP AND EXXON

Over the past few years BP has also spoken to the government about its options - including leaving Iraq altogether - before settling on spinning off its stake in Rumaila into a standalone company last year, two people familiar with the matter said.

Oil minister Abdul Jabbar led efforts to convince BP not to leave as the government was concerned its partner in the field, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), would buy BP's stake, the people said. Baghdad was also keen to keep such a high-profile international oil major in the country, they said.

BP declined to comment.

When Exxon flagged its intention to leave Iraq in January 2021, meanwhile, U.S. officials told Exxon they were unhappy with the prospect of the biggest U.S. oil major pulling out – for reasons that echoed Iraqi concerns.

State department officials said Exxon's departure could create a vacuum for Chinese companies to fill, a person familiar with the conversations said. U.S. officials then asked Exxon what it would take to stay in Iraq, the person said, declining to give further details.

A State Department spokesperson said: "We regularly engage with our Iraqi counterparts on fostering an environment conducive to private sector investment."

Exxon had signed an agreement for the sale of its interest in West Qurna 1 to CNOOC and PetroChina, the listed arm of CNPC, people familiar with the matter said.

Neither CNOOC nor CNPC responded to requests for comment about the deals.

Exxon's stake was valued at $350 million to $375 million, said people familiar with the matter. Iraq has veto power over oilfield deals, however, and did not approve the transaction.

Exxon filed for arbitration with the International Chamber of Commerce against Basra Oil Co., arguing that it had followed the terms of its contract for West Qurna 1 and had a good deal on the table, people familiar with the matter said.

The oil ministry then took the unusual step of trying to broker a deal on Exxon's behalf. The ministry offered Exxon's stake to other Western companies including Chevron Corp.

No one was interested. Rather than let the stake go to the Chinese companies, Baghdad said the state-run Iraq National Oil Company (INOC) would take it instead, though INOC is still in the process of being revived after being defunct for many years.

"(Exxon) will continue to work closely and constructively to reach an equitable resolution," said a spokeswoman.

SERVICE CONTRACTS

Iraq's oil industry is mostly based on technical service contracts between the state-backed Basra Oil Co. and foreign companies that are repaid costs plus a fee per barrel to develop fields, while Iraq retains ownership of the reserves.

Oil majors typically prefer deals that allow a share in profits rather than a set fee.

The priority for Chinese firms, however, is achieving secure oil supplies to feed China's growing economy, rather than returns for investors, said a Chinese oil executive with direct knowledge of CNPC's global investments.

There are some signs, however, that Iraq is attempting to make its terms more appealing.

France's TotalEnergies signed a $27 billion deal in September that included payment of 40% of revenue from one field. The deal has stalled, however, due to disputes over terms and it still needs approval from some Iraqi government agencies, Reuters reported in February.

TotalEnergies said it was fully committed to the project.

One oil company executive said they were sceptical Iraq would introduce more attractive terms. But unless they improve significantly, analysts say it is hard to imagine Iraq will be able to stem the exodus as the energy transition accelerates.

"Many of the energy majors are looking at the carbon emissions, their ability to generate cash flows if commodity prices are low, and they're looking at improving returns," said Ian Thom, research director at consultancy Wood Mackenzie. "As the priorities of the energy companies are changing, the relative attractiveness of Iraq is changing."

(Reporting by Sarah McFarlane in London, Aref Mohammed in Basra and the Iraq bureau; Additional reporting by Aizhu Chen in Singapore; Editing by Simon Webb and David Clarke)

Sony PlayStation Staff Outraged Over CEO’s Abortion Rights Stance In Email About Cats

Jazmin Tolliver
Mon, May 16, 2022,

Employees at Sony Group Corporation say they are outaged over an email the head of PlayStation sent encouraging staff to “respect differences of opinion” regarding abortion rights before launching into five ill-timed paragraphs about his two cats’ first birthdays.

In the email staff received on Thursday that was shown to Bloomberg, PlayStation CEO Jim Ryan begins his message by acknowledging the recently leaked Supreme Court opinion that was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed the right to an abortion.

Ryan remained neutral on his stance over abortion rights in the email to employees, noting that the company’s community are “multi-faceted and diverse, holding many different points of view.”

He went on to say, “we owe it to each other and to PlayStation’s millions of users to respect differences of opinion among everyone in our internal and external communities. Respect does not equal agreement. But it is fundamental to who we are as a company and as a valued global brand.”

The company leader then suddenly switched topics, telling his employees he “would like to share something lighthearted to help inspire everyone to be mindful of having balance that can help ease the stress of uncertain world events.”

Jim Ryan, Sony Interactive Entertainment president and chief executive officer, received backlash after sending employees an email asking them to “respect differences of opinion” around abortion rights before concluding the ill-received message with paragraphs about his cats' birthdays.

 (Photo: PATRICK T. FALLON via Getty Images)

He then dove into a story about the recent first birthdays his two cats celebrated.

Gushing over his furry friends, Ryan boasted about getting birthday cakes for his cats, described the noises they made and even revealed his dreams of owning a dog one day.

Ryan never took a concrete stance on abortion rights in the correspondence. He did go into detail about pets, declaring that “dogs really are man’s best friend, they know their place, and perform useful functions like biting burglars and chasing balls that you throw for them.”

Employees at multiple PlayStation studios expressed being put off by the tone of the email, according to internal company discussions viewed and reported on by Bloomberg.

Some female employees wrote that they felt their rights were disrespected by the message. Another employee shared they’d “never been so mad about a cat birthday before.”

Though PlayStation hasn’t taken public a stance on abortion rights, other companies in the video game industry have.

Notably, Bungie Inc, the developer of the Destiny game and a company that Sony agreed to buy earlier this year for $3.6 billion, blasted the government’s decision as “a direct attack on human rights” in a blog post last week. The post was met with positive reactions on social media.

“Standing up for reproductive choice and liberty is not a difficult decision to make,” Bungie said in the post.

This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.

5 Other Rights That Could Be Struck Down If Roe V. Wade Is Overturned

Christopher Rhodes
Mon, May 16, 2022,


The United States is still reeling in the aftermath of the leaked draft ruling from Justice Samuel Alito on behalf of the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, indicating that the court will likely strike down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that guaranteed abortion rights across the country. Such a decision would leave abortion law up to individual states, and several states already have legislation in place that would ban the procedure outright. As Democratic efforts to codify abortion rights at the federal level stall and protests continue against the upcoming decision, the move on abortion has opened up debates about other rights that could be scaled back or eliminated in light of the expected Supreme Court decision. Here are five additional rights that could soon be restricted.

Outlawing in vitro fertilization

In the decades since Roe v. Wade was decided, in vitro fertilization (IVF), has been developed as a common approach to dealing with infertility. The process, which involves the creation of multiple fertilized embryos — many of which are ultimately discarded — may be disrupted or even outlawed in states that pass very strict anti-abortion laws. Several states, including Louisiana, are proposing laws that define embryos as people and equate their destruction with murder. As one Twitter user noted, “the fetal personhood laws like this one, which we are about to see all over the place, will criminalize IVF too.”

Restricting contraception

The Roe v. Wade ruling rested in part on the idea that various parts of the U.S. Constitution imply certain rights that are not spelled out in the document, such as a right to privacy. Most endangered would be emergency contraception, such as the morning after pill, which many conservatives lump together with abortion. However, the denial of a right to privacy could allow other forms of contraception — such as IUDs, birth control pills or condoms — to be restricted or even banned by states. In a recent interview, Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves would not rule out a contraception ban in his state.

Reversing same-sex marriage

The decision to undermine a right to privacy potentially calls into question the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, in which the Supreme Court decided 5-4 to extend recognition of same-sex marriages to the entire country. Before this ruling, the marriage issue had been fiercely contested across the country, with conservatives and LGBTQ+ advocates clashing politically in many states.


Though the Obergefell case seemed to put the issue to rest, the Supreme Court reversing its view on privacy and overturning settled laws like Roe opens up the possibility that same-sex marriage will be the next target. President Joe Biden recently said “it’s not just the brutality of taking away a woman’s right to her body” at a Democratic fundraiser, adding that the Alito decision “basically says there’s no such thing as the right to privacy.” The president signaled a warning, stating “mark my words: They are going to go after the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage.”
Undermining interracial marriage

It’s not just same-sex marriage that could be reconsidered in the wake of the court’s ruling. Some experts have speculated that the Supreme Court might reconsider the case Loving v. Virginia, which struck down the remaining laws that banned interracial marriage. Overturning Loving would be both more difficult legally — since laws that discriminate based on race are much harder to justify — and out of line with the 90 percent of the population that approves of interracial marriage. Nevertheless, one Senator, Mike Braun (R-IN), has already stated that the issue should be left up to states, a view that his office later attempted to walk back as a misunderstanding.

Striking down the Affordable Care Act

In 2012, Chief Justice John Roberts, generally a conservative vote among the justices, sided with the court’s liberals to uphold the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. This ruling has long angered conservatives, including those sitting on the court. Since that ruling, three Trump-appointed conservatives have joined the court.

Now that there is a 6-3 conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, rulings like Alito’s abortion opinion can come down without Roberts’ support. The same five justices preparing to overturn Roe could therefore revisit the health care case. Attorney Amee Vanderpool tweeted this concern, posting that after the Roe ruling, “next comes every other established right that the conservative majority finds abhorrent, including Obamacare.”

If the leaked Supreme Court opinion turns out to be the final decision on Roe v. Wade, the full impact of this change might not be known for years. Nevertheless, this ruling is likely to create a legal atmosphere that is more restrictive of many rights that have been recognized or extended over several decades.

ALSO

INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE

Interracial marriage is a marriage involving spouses who belong to different races or racialized ethnicities.

In the past, such marriages were outlawed in the United States, Nazi Germany and apartheid-era South Africa as miscegenation. In 1960 interracial marriage was forbidden by law in 31 U.S. states. It became legal throughout the United States in 1967, following the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States under Chief Justice Earl Warren in the case Loving v. Virginia, which ruled that race-based restrictions on marriages, such as the anti-miscegenation law in the state of Virginia, violated the Equal Protection Clause (adopted in 1868) of the United States Constitution.^[1][2]

Interracial marriage - Wikipedia

INTERFAITH MARRIAGE

Interfaith marriage, sometimes called a "mixed marriage", is marriage between spouses professing different religions. Although interfaith marriages are most often established as civil marriages, in some instances they may be established as a religious marriage. This depends on religious doctrine of each of the two parties' religions; some prohibit interfaith marriage, and among others there are varying degrees of permissibility.

Several major religions are mute on the issue, and still others allow it with requirements for ceremony and custom. For ethno-religious groups, resistance to interfaith marriage may be a form of self-segregation.

In an interfaith marriage, each partner typically adheres to their own religion. One issue which can arise in such unions is the choice of faith in which to raise the children.

Interfaith marriage - Wikipedia