India: Afghan consul quits after reports of gold smuggling

AN AFGHAN AFFECTATION

Afghanistan's diplomat Zakia Wardak said she was stepping down as the consul-general in Mumbai because of organized attacks against her. Her statement made no mention of the alleged gold smuggling accusations.

India has been cautiously engaging with the Taliban regime, despite the lack of official diplomatic ties 

(file photo)Image: Dinesh Joshi/AP Photo/picture alliance

An Afghan diplomat in India, who said she was the only woman in the country's diplomatic service, resigned from her role on Saturday.

In a statement posted to X, formerly Twitter, Zakia Wardak wrote that she "faced waves of organized attacks aimed at destroying" her.




Wardak said the attacks have impacted her ability to work and have "demonstrated the challenges faced by women in Afghan society who strive to modernize and bring positive changes amidst ongoing propaganda campaigns."

"It has become increasingly clear that the public narrative is unfairly targeting the only female representative within this system," she wrote in the statement.

Wardak was appointed consul-general of Afghanistan in Mumbai before the Taliban seized power in 2021. It was not immediately clear whether she was indeed Afghanistan's only female diplomat in office.

The statement made no mention of reports published in Indian media last week, which indicated that Wardak had been detained on suspicion of trying to smuggle gold.

Afghanistan: Girls still banned from secondary school  02:18

According to those reports, Wardak was briefly detained at Mumbai's international airport on allegations of smuggling 25 bricks of gold, each weighing 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds), from Dubai.

The Taliban seized power in August 2021 after US-led international troops withdrew from Afghanistan. Since then, the Taliban leadership has imposed a hardline interpretation of Islam, curtailing women's access to education and public spaces, as well as their right to travel both within Afghanistan and abroad.

No country has formally recognized the Taliban government.

rm/dj (AP, dpa)

Revealed: Pennsylvania has investigated more than a dozen UFO incidents in the past decade

Peter Hall, Pennsylvania Capital-Star
May 4, 2024 

The March 2023 conjunction of Jupiter and Venus photographed from the International Space Station. The appearance of the two planets close together in the sky prompted multiple UFO reports in Lebanon County, according to records from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency. (NASA photo)

Mysterious lights following a motorist on a dark country road, a saucer-shaped craft hovering over a suburban subdivision, and a flaming orb falling into the woods are among phenomena Pennsylvania residents have reported to authorities, state records show.

After the head of the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) casually mentioned during a legislative hearing earlier this year that the agency tracks UFO sightings, the Capital-Star obtained records showing PEMA has investigated more than a dozen such events in the last decade.

“We take all reports and we share it with the appropriate agencies to be able to investigate,” Padfield told members of the state House Appropriations Committee in February.

Often dull and tedious, state budget hearings nonetheless are a chance for the Legislature to grill administration officials about how they plan to spend the taxpayers’ money.

The cabinet secretaries flesh out the details of the governor’s budget proposal but deliver few bombshells. Every once in a while, however, an answer prompts lawmakers to look up from their stacks of white papers with surprise and demand more.

It was thus as Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency Director Randy Padfield fielded a question from state Rep. Ben Waxman (D-Philadelphia) about potential threats to the state’s nuclear power plants from drones and unmanned aerial vehicles.


“We have had reports of unidentified flying objects in the past,” Padfield said before quickly moving on to the role of the Federal Aviation Administration in regulating drones.


“So, wait. Run that back again. What did you say about UFOs?” House Appropriations Committee Chairperson Jordan Harris (D-Philadelphia) asked when Padfield had finished his answer.

Padfield replied that PEMA occasionally gets reports of lights in the sky from county 911 centers and upon investigation authorities can attribute them to astronomical or earthly sources, such as helicopter traffic around the Pennsylvania National Guard base at Fort Indiantown Gap.

“Most of them are unfounded, or they’re attributable to some other mechanisms,” Padfield concluded, prompting another follow up from Harris.

“So, what about the un-most?” Harris asked. “You’re talking like ET phone home or something?”

Padfield conceded that some sightings are “undefined” and are difficult to understand unless the person reporting the phenomenon gets pictures but everything is passed along to the appropriate agencies.

Not satisfied with Padfield’s answer, the Capital-Star filed a right-to-know request with PEMA seeking records of unidentified flying objects and aerial phenomena and, for good measure, “encounters with unknown beings including those of suspected extra-terrestrial or cryptozoological nature.”

PEMA responded, perhaps appropriately, on April 1, with 40 pages of records on UFO reports passed to the Commonwealth Watch and Warning Center, which receives reports of certain events from county emergency dispatch centers and distributes them to appropriate state and federal agencies.



The records PEMA provided in response to the right-to-know request go back to 2013, when the agency received a half-dozen UFO reports.

Padfeild said during the budget hearing that some sightings are easily explained. That was the case last year when multiple people called 911 in Lebanon County to report suspicious lights and a hovering object that made no sound.


One caller in Bethel Township reported that the lights had followed his wife from Hamburg in Berks County to their home and that the object was stationary in the sky above their house. Another in the city of Lebanon reported seeing an oval shape that changed colors from gray to black to transparent and all she could see were the object’s lights.

Those calls happened on March 1, 2023, which was the height of a convergence of Jupiter and Venus in the night sky, when the planets appeared to almost merge into a single point of light. The spectacular astronomical event had been widely reported in the news, PEMA’s records noted.

Stan Gordon, a Westmoreland County resident who operates a 24-hour UFO, bigfoot and cryptid reporting hotline, said he regularly receives reports from across the state. Gordon said he became fascinated with UFOs as a kid in the 1950s. He describes himself as the principal investigator of Pennsylvania’s most famous UFO case.

In 1965, residents across six states saw a fireball cross the sky. Residents of Kecksburg said they saw an object shaped like an oversized acorn make a controlled crash into the woods not far from where Gordon lived. Four years later, Gordon set up his hotline.

“It’s never stopped ringing,” Gordon said, adding that the number of cases, including reports of unexplained objects in broad daylight and at close range, has increased in recent years.

Many are resolved with a little bit of research, he said. “We’ve always taken these cases very open mindedly. We approach them scientifically.”

Starlink satellites, which are launched dozens at a time from a single rocket, appear as a train of lights in the early evening sky and have prompted many recent reports. High altitude balloons and plumes of rocket exhaust and other space research activities also look unusual but are attributable to human activity, Gordon said, adding that he has never seen a UFO himself.

Other reports are less easily explained.

On Sept. 21, 2023, a Shermans Dale man reported a UFO with eight vertical lights he described as white, yellow, and a hint of green hovering about 200 feet above the road near a Perry County gas station. The man attempted to take a video with his cellphone before the lights disappeared but he later discovered the video had not been saved, the PEMA records say.

A Lower Saucon Township man called the Northampton County 911 center Dec. 19, 2021, to report a flying saucer with seven or eight lights on its underside over his development. Police responded but it’s unclear from the records whether they took any action. PEMA provided the caller with contact information for Gordon’s hotline, the records say.

Montgomery County authorities investigated after an Upper Pottsgrove Township man reported a glowing orb about the size of a small aircraft fell from the sky on Sept. 15, 2014. The object, which he described as orange and yellow fire-colored, floated behind the treeline and did not reappear. An officer who responded reported seeing flashes in the area but no other suspicious activity.

“There are a lot of cases that are very, very detailed that are not easy to explain away,” Gordon said.

Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kim Lyons for questions: info@penncapital-star.com. Follow Pennsylvania Capital-Star on Facebook and Twitter.

Teens see social media algorithms as accurate reflections of themselves, study finds

The Conversation
May 1, 2024 

Young Girl on Cell Phone

Social media apps regularly present teens with algorithmically selected content often described as “for you,” suggesting, by implication, that the curated content is not just “for you” but also “about you” – a mirror reflecting important signals about the person you are.

All users of social media are exposed to these signals, but researchers understand that teens are at an especially malleable stage in the formation of personal identity. Scholars have begun to demonstrate that technology is having generation-shaping effects, not merely in the way it influences cultural outlook, behavior and privacy, but also in the way it can shape personality among those brought up on social media.

The prevalence of the “for you” message raises important questions about the impact of these algorithms on how teens perceive themselves and see the world, and the subtle erosion of their privacy, which they accept in exchange for this view.

Teens like their algorithmic reflection

Inspired by these questions, my colleagues John Seberger and Afsaneh Razi of Drexel University and I asked: How are teens navigating this algorithmically generated milieu, and how do they recognize themselves in the mirror it presents?

In our qualitative interview study of teens 13-17, we found that personalized algorithmic content does seem to present what teens interpret as a reliable mirror image of themselves, and that they very much like the experience of seeing that social media reflection.

Teens we spoke with say they prefer a social media completely customized for them, depicting what they agree with, what they want to see and, thus, who they are.
If I look up something that is important to me that will show up as one of the top posts [and] it’ll show, like, people [like me] that are having a nice discussion.

It turns out that the teens we interviewed believe social media algorithms like TikTok’s have gotten so good that they see the reflections of themselves in social media as quite accurate. So much so that teens are quick to attribute content inconsistencies with their self-image as anomalies – for instance, the result of inadvertent engagement with past content, or just a glitch.

At some point I saw something about that show, maybe on TikTok, and I interacted with it without actually realizing.

When personalized content is not agreeable or consistent with their self-image, the teens we interviewed say they scroll past it, hoping never to see it again. Even when these perceived anomalies take the form of extreme hypermasculine or “nasty” content, teens do not attribute this to anything about themselves specifically, nor do they claim to look for an explanation in their own behaviors. According to teens in our interviews, the social media mirror does not make them more self-reflective or challenge their sense of self.

One thing that surprised us was that while teens were aware that what they see in their “for you” feed is the product of their scrolling habits on social media platforms, they are largely unaware or unconcerned that that data captured across apps contributes to this self-image. Regardless, they don’t see their “for you” feed as a challenge to their sense of self, much less a risk to their self-identity – nor, for that matter, any basis for concern at all.


The human brain continues to develop during adolescence.

Shaping identity


Research on identity has come a long way since sociologist Erving Goffman proposed the “presentation of self” in 1959. He posited that people manage their identities through social performance to maintain equilibrium between who they think they are and how others perceive them.

When Goffman first proposed his theory, there was no social media interface available to hold up a handy mirror of the self as experienced by others. People were obligated to create their own mosaic image, derived from multiple sources, encounters and impressions. In recent years, social media recommender algorithms have inserted themselves into what is now a three-way negotiation among self, public and social media algorithm.

“For you” offerings create a private-public space through which teens can access what they feel is a largely accurate test of their self-image. At the same time, they say they can easily ignore it if it seems to disagree with that self-image.

The pact teens make with social media, exchanging personal data and relinquishing privacy to secure access to that algorithmic mirror, feels to them like a good bargain. They represent themselves as confidently able to tune out or scroll past recommended content that seems to contradict their sense of self, but research shows otherwise.

They have, in fact, proven themselves highly vulnerable to self-image distortion and other mental health problems based on social media algorithms explicitly designed to create and reward hypersensitivities, fixations and dysmorphia – a mental health disorder where people fixate on their appearance.

Given what researchers know about the teen brain and that stage of social development – and given what can reasonably be surmised about the malleability of self-image based on social feedback – teens are wrong to believe that they can scroll past the self-identity risks of algorithms.


U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy discusses the harms teens face from social media.
Interventions



Part of the remedy could be to build new tools using artificial intelligence to detect unsafe interactions while also protecting privacy. Another approach is to help teens reflect on these “data doubles” that they have constructed.

My colleagues and I are now exploring more deeply how teens experience algorithmic content and what types of interventions can help them reflect on it. We encourage researchers in our field to design ways to challenge the accuracy of algorithms and expose them as reflecting behavior and not being. Another part of the remedy may involve arming teens with tools to restrict access to their data, including limiting cookies, having different search profiles and turning off location when using certain apps.

We believe that these are all steps that are likely to reduce the accuracy of algorithms, creating much-needed friction between algorithm and self, even if teens are not necessarily happy with the results.

Getting the kids involved

Recently, my colleagues and I conducted a Gen Z workshop with young people from Encode Justice, a global organization of high school and college students advocating for safe and equitable AI. The aim was to better understand how they are thinking about their lives under algorithms and AI. Gen Zers say they are concerned but also eager to be involved in shaping their future, including mitigating algorithm harms. Part of our workshop goal was to call attention to and foster the need for teen-driven investigations of algorithms and their effects.

What researchers are also confronting is that we don’t actually know what it means to constantly negotiate identity with an algorithm. Many of us who study teens are too old to have grown up in an algorithmically moderated world. For the teens we study, there is no “before AI.”

I beleve that it’s perilous to ignore what algorithms are doing. The future for teens can be one in which society acknowledges the unique relationship between teens and social media. This means involving them in the solutions, while still providing guidance.

Nora McDonald, Assistant Professor of Information Technology, George Mason University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

‘What is a fact?’ A humanities class prepares STEM students to be better scientists

The Conversation
May 1, 2024 

Scientists (Shutterstock)



Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Title of course

What Is a Fact?

What prompted the idea for the course?

With all the conspiracy theories floating around in 2020 when COVID-19 hit, I wanted to help my students learn to identify and deal with them. I was also concerned about political propaganda. And in my STEM-heavy school, I wanted to showcase what humanities scholars can do. So I created this class, which is distilled humanities for freshmen. Almost every student so far has been a science, technology, engineering and math major.


What does the course explore?

We start with a week called What Is Data? In Latin, “data” just means “things that are given.” Data can be in the form of measurements: “This bowlful of water weighs x.” But data can also mean “it reminds me of my grandma.” How can you tell when something could be meaningful, or whether it’s just nonsense?

A later class that students find especially interesting is on apophenia, the tendency to see patterns where there aren’t any, like the man in the Moon, or constellations of stars.



Conspiracy theories connect a lot of dots, but that doesn’t make them right. Screenshot of a meme

Why is this course relevant now?

A fact is an interpretation of data. In physics class, you learn how to interpret physics data, find patterns, relate those patterns to other ones, and produce facts about them. If your argument hangs together logically, your interpretation can appear in the journal Nature Physics.

Humanities classes, however, prepare you to understand what facts are, period – whether they’re based on biology or on the Bible, nutrition science or novels.

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

One critical lesson is that many big conspiracy theories such as QAnon are about jumping to conclusions as quickly as possible. Being a good student and a good scholar means accepting that what you’re examining might not be meaningful or might not indicate a pattern. What we’re exploring here is how not to jump to conclusions. And this lesson applies as much to stuff in the real world as it does to lab work.
What materials does the course feature?

We watch YouTuber hbomberguy debunking global warming denialism. We read Kurt Gödel on how logical systems must always be flawed. We read poems and stories, introducing science majors to interpreting artistic data, a process every bit as rigorous as interpreting scientific data.

What will the course prepare students to do?

Without the kinds of critical thinking this course teaches, scientists can be susceptible to propaganda and unable to share their ideas effectively, whether it’s in the media or to their colleagues, friends and family.

Students learn to look at the world with fresh, skeptical eyes. They learn to identify illogical arguments and rhetorical strong-arm tactics. In the Middle Ages, humanities – grammar, logic, rhetoric – prepared you to do science. What Is a Fact? is like that, helping students see how collecting data and being skeptical don’t stop once you’ve left the lab. A questioning, open-minded attitude is an essential life skill.


Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair of English, Rice University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Plummeting balance in federal crime victims fund sparks alarm among states

Jennifer Shutt, 

States Newsroom
May 4, 2024 

Police Tape (AFP)

WASHINGTON — States and local organizations that aid victims of sexual assault and other crimes are raising the alarm about a multi-year plunge in funds, a major problem they say Congress must fix soon or programs will be forced to set up wait lists or turn victims away altogether.

Affected are rape crisis centers, domestic violence shelters, child advocacy centers and more that serve millions of Americans and can’t necessarily rely on scarce state or local dollars to keep the doors open if federal money runs short.

The problem has to do with a cap on withdrawals from the federal crime victims fund, put in place by Congress years ago in an earlier attempt at a solution.

Under the cap, how much money is available every year is determined by a complex three-year average of court fees, fines and penalties that have accumulated — a number that has plummeted by billions during the past six years. The fund does not receive any taxpayer dollars.


National Children’s Alliance CEO Teresa Huizar said in an interview with States Newsroom that child advocacy centers, which help connect children who have survived sexual or domestic abuse to essential services, have no fat left to trim in their budgets.

“What children’s advocacy centers are really looking at now are a set of extremely hard choices,” Huizar said. “Which kids to serve, which kids to turn away? CACs that have never had to triage cases previously, now will have to. CACs that have never had a waitlist for mental health services will now have long, lengthy waitlists to get kids in for therapy.”

“I mean, imagine being a kid who’s been sexually abused and being told you’re going to have to wait six months to see a counselor,” Huizar added. “It’s terrible.”

New Hampshire Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, chairwoman of the spending panel that sets the cap every year based on the dwindling revenue, and Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, the subcommittee’s ranking member, both indicated during brief interviews with States Newsroom that a fix is in the works, but declined to provide details.

“There is an effort to address that and we’re in the process of doing that, but in the meantime there’s not as much money there,” Shaheen said.
Fund goes up and down by billions every year

Congress established the crime victims fund in 1984 when it approved the Victims of Crime Act. Its funding comes from fines, forfeited bonds and other financial penalties in certain federal cases.

The money flowing into the fund fluctuates each year, making it difficult for the organizations that apply for and receive grant funding to plan their budgets. Congress hoped to alleviate those boom-and-bust cycles by placing the annual cap on how much money can be drawn from the crime victims fund.

But that cap has sharply decreased recently, causing frustration for organizations that rely on it and leading to repeated calls for Congress to find a long-term solution.

The cap stayed below $1 billion annually until fiscal year 2015, when it spiked to $2.3 billion before reaching a high of $4.4 billion in fiscal year 2018.

The annual ceiling then dropped by more than $1 billion, starting the downward trend, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service and data from the Department of Justice.

The cap was set at $2 billion in fiscal year 2021 before rising to $2.6 billion in fiscal 2022 and then dropping to $1.9 billion in fiscal 2023.

Congress set the cap on withdrawals at $1.2 billion for fiscal 2024 when it approved the latest round of appropriations in March, and states and localities have reacted with concern at the prospect of such a dramatic cut. In Iowa, for example, where the state receives $5 million a year, the potential loss of funding posed a major question as legislators wrote their budget for judicial services.

Rep. Brian Lohse, R-Bondurant, said on the House floor before the end of session that lawmakers may have to step in with funding next year if the federal shortfall isn't fixed.

“It’s our intention that if the federal government doesn’t come through, that we will provide emergency funding as quickly as possible when we convene next January,” Lohse said. “So I hate to say it’s a ‘wait and see what happens,’ but that, at this point, is where we’re at. And we’re very hopeful the federal government will come through and replace the funding that they had promised.”

A better fix sought

Congress approved legislation in 2021 to increase the types of revenue from federal court cases moving into the crime victims fund, but advocates say a longer-term answer is needed.

Huizar said the National Children’s Alliance and prosecutors, as well as organizations that combat domestic and sexual violence, have been urging Congress to fix the funding stream or supplement it to provide stability and consistency.

“Now is the time for Congress to turn urgent attention to this issue if they do not want the safety net for kids and families and serious crime victims to just fall apart,” Huizar said.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers — Reps. Stephanie Bice, R-Okla., Jim Costa, D-Calif., Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., Nathaniel Moran, R-Texas and Ann Wagner, R-Mo. — have introduced legislation that would move unobligated funds collected from entities that defraud the federal government under the False Claims Act to the crime victims fund. The act is a main tool the federal government uses to fight fraud.

That bill is not a long-term solution, but a “temporary infusion of resources,” according to a summary released by lawmakers.

As for the Senate appropriators, Moran said he and others on the spending subcommittee “are waiting for the Judiciary Committee’s examination of the issue, so that we can take the authorizers’ suggestions and take them into account when we appropriate.”

Josh Sorbe, a spokesperson for the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Illinois Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, wrote in a statement the “sustainability of the CVF is extremely important, as evidenced by Senator Durbin’s work on the VOCA Fix that passed in 2021, and we continue to work with our colleagues and survivor advocates and service providers to examine further ways to strengthen the CVF.”

Shaheen’s office did not provide details about what changes may be in the works, following multiple requests from States Newsroom.
Should taxpayer dollars be tapped?

National District Attorneys Association President Charles Smith said his organization supports the House bill, but noted one problem with the short-term fix is that the crime victims fund would be last in line to get the additional revenue.

“I believe that the government gets their money first, the whistleblower second and then we’re in kind of third place there,” Smith said.

One struggle over the fluctuating revenue and available funding, Smith said, is debate about whether taxpayer dollars should be used to offset low balances.

“We need to set a number that everybody’s happy with, so to speak, and fund it through these available sources,” Smith said. “But if there’s a deficit, there needs to be some mechanism in place for it to come out of the general fund.”

The crime victims fund is essential for witness coordinators and victims assistance coordinators in prosecutors’ offices as well as other services for people who survive crimes.

“They’re critical for the well-being of the victim and a lot of times they are critical for the witness even showing up and testifying,” said Smith, who also is the state’s attorney for Frederick County, Maryland.

The organizations that support crime victims, like child advocacy centers, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers, are crucial to prosecutors, Smith said.

“Not only are we directly impacted by a loss of staffing and loss of resources, but a lot of the partner agencies that we rely on collaborating with are going to be hurt as well,” Smith said of the reduction to the funding cap.
‘Real alarm’ in states

Karrie Delaney, director of federal affairs for the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, said the slowdown of court cases during the COVID-19 pandemic and the last administration not prosecuting as many corporate cases has impacted the fund more than usual.

RAINN is the country’s largest anti-sexual-violence organization. It operates the National Sexual Assault Hotline (800-656-HOPE) alongside local organizations and runs the Defense Department’s Safe Helpline. It “also carries out programs to prevent sexual violence, help survivors, and ensure that perpetrators are brought to justice,” according to its website.

“I think what’s important from RAINN’s perspective is the actual impact that those fluctuations have on the survivors that we support and organizations and service providers across the country,” Delaney said.

When the federal cap decreases, she said, organizations that support crime victims often turn to state and local governments to make up the gap. And a lot of the times there aren’t enough funds to do that.

“What we’ve seen across the states is real alarm that the cuts coming down are not just impacting the ability of these organizations to offer certain services, but to really keep their doors open,” Delaney said.

Child advocacy centers, domestic violence shelters and rape crisis centers, Delaney added, are the “real boots on the ground organizations that are helping people in times of very active crisis that are at risk of seeing their programs drastically cut to the point where service is placed in jeopardy.”

If you are a victim of crime, there are toll free, text and online hotlines available. A list from the Office for Victims of Crime is here. You can also find help in your state here.

Iowa Capital Dispatch is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on Facebook and Twitter.

Feds accuse Texas prison agency of discriminating against employee for wearing a headscarf

William Melhado, 

The Texas Tribune
May 4, 2024 1

Photo by Ye Jinghan on Unsplash

The U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit Friday accusing the Texas Department of Criminal Justice of discriminating against one of its former employees based on her religious beliefs.

The federal lawsuit, filed in the Southern District of Texas, alleges that the state agency denied Franches Spears religious accommodations by refusing to allow the non-uniformed employee to wear a head covering, according to court documents.

“Employers cannot require employees to forfeit their religious beliefs or improperly question the sincerity of those beliefs,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “This lawsuit is a reminder to all employers of their clear legal obligation to offer reasonable religious accommodations. In our country, employers cannot force an employee to choose between their faith and their job.”

The lawsuit alleges the Texas prison agency’s refusal to accommodate Spears’ religious practice violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“TDCJ does not comment on pending litigation, but the agency respects the religious rights of all employees and inmates,” Hannah Haney, the agency’s deputy director of communications, told The Texas Tribune in a statement.

In July 2019, Spears was hired to work as a clerk at the Pam Lychner State Jail, a TDCJ facility in Humble, northeast of Houston.

In line with her Ifa beliefs, Spears began wearing a headscarf to work in September 2019. Ifa, a West African religion, dictates that some of its practitioners cover their “head with a head dressing during periods of religious ceremony, mourning, or to protect her spiritual power,” the complaint read.

Shortly after Spears began wearing the covering, she met with Human Resources Specialist Elizabeth Fisk to explain the religious significance behind the head dressing. According to the complaint, Fisk responded to Spears’ by saying, “Basically you just pray to a rock.”

Fisk told Spears that she could either remove her headscarf and continue working or go home until the agency decided on her religious accommodation request. TDCJ placed Spears on unpaid leave, according to court filings.

“TDCJ further questioned the sincerity of Spears’s faith when Bailey mailed a letter demanding documentation or a statement from a religious institution pointing to the specific Ifa belief or doctrine that supported the necessity of Spears’s head covering,” the complaint read, referring to testimony from TDCJ’s Religious Accommodation Coordinator Terry Bailey.

While TDCJ was considering Spears’ request for religious accommodation she received a “salary warrant letter” from the agency in November 2019. She understood the letter as a termination notice demanding the return of TDCJ property, like identification cards and keys, in order to receive her final paycheck.

In February 2020, Spears filed a complaint against TDCJ with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The federal agency found reasonable cause that TDCJ discriminated against Spears and attempted to resolve the issue through mediation. When that failed, the EEOC referred the case to the DOJ.

The complaint asks TDCJ to compensate Spears for lost wages and other damages related to the incident. Additionally, the Justice Department wants the Texas agency to institute religious accommodation policies.

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2024/05/03/justice-department-tdcj-discrimination-lawsuit/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Mass fish die-off in Vietnam as heatwave roasts Southeast Asia

Agence France-Presse
May 1, 2024 

This a fisherman collects dead fish from a reservoir in southern Vietnam after a mass die-off in the midst of a heatwave (STR)

Hundreds of thousands of fish have died in a reservoir in southern Vietnam's Dong Nai province, with locals and media reports suggesting a brutal heatwave and the lake's management are to blame.

Like much of Southeast Asia -- where schools have recently been forced to close early and electricity usage has surged -- southern and central Vietnam have been scorched by devastating heat.

"All the fish in the Song May reservoir died for lack of water," a local resident in Trang Bom district, who identified himself only as Nghia, told AFP.

"Our life has been turned upside down over the past 10 days because of the smell."

Pictures show residents wading and boating through the 300-hectare Song May reservoir, with the water barely visible under a blanket of dead marine life.

According to media reports, the area has seen no rain for weeks, and the water in the reservoir is too low for the creatures to survive.
A
Reservoir management had previously discharged water to try to save crops downstream, Nghia said.

"They then tried to renovate the reservoir, bringing in a pump to take the mud out so that the fish would have more space and water," he said.

However, the efforts did not work, and shortly afterwards many of the fish died, with local media reports suggesting as many as two hundred tonnes' worth may have perished.


Tuoi Tre newspaper reported that the firm in charge of managing the lake had begun dredging in early 2024, initially planning to release extra water into the reservoir for the fish.

"But owing to an unrelenting heatwave, the investor released the water into the downstream area, leading to the water level going down. As a result, fish died en masse," the newspaper reported.

The reservoir is the water source for crops in Trang Bom and Vinh Cuu districts of Dong Nai province.

Authorities are investigating the incident, while working to quickly remove the dead fish.

"We hope authorities will do their best to improve the situation," Nghia said.

- Southeast Asia bakes -

According to weather forecasters, temperatures in Dong Nai province, 100 kilometres west of Ho Chi Minh City, reached around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in April, breaking the record high temperature recorded in 1998.

The soaring temperatures are also impacting neighbouring Cambodia, where the high could reach 43 on the mercury.

On Wednesday Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet ordered schools to consider closing to protect teachers and students from the heat, and put officials on stand-by in case of water shortages.

It follows the education minister on Tuesday ordering establishments to shorten morning classes and delay afternoon ones in an attempt to avoid the worst of the midday heat.

Hang Chuon Naron said the measures were "to prevent risks and to avoid illnesses that would harm the health" of students and teachers.

Meanwhile, in Thailand, electricity usage surged to new records on Tuesday as temperatures in northeastern province Udon Thani broke 44C.

Heatwave hammers Thailand’s stinky but lucrative durian farms


AFP
May 4, 2024

Among Thailand's most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent durian has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years - Copyright AFP Lillian SUWANRUMPHA
Watsamon Tri-Yasakda and Sarah Lai

Clambering hand-over-hand, sweat dripping into his eyes, a durian labourer expertly slices a cumbersome fruit from a tree before tossing it down to land with a soft thump in his colleague’s waiting arms some 15 metres (50 feet) below.

Among Thailand’s most famous and lucrative exports, the pungent “king of fruits” is as distinctive in its smell as its spiky green-brown carapace, and has been farmed in the kingdom for hundreds of years.

But a vicious heatwave engulfing Southeast Asia has resulted in smaller yields and spiralling costs, with growers and sellers increasingly panicked as global warming damages the industry.

“This year is a crisis,” durian farmer Busaba Nakpipat told AFP bluntly.

The weather-beaten 54-year-old took over her parents’ farm in eastern Chanthaburi province — Thailand’s durian heartland — three decades ago.

“If the hot weather continues to rise in the future, it’ll be over,” she said. “Farmers wouldn’t be able to produce durian anymore.”

Durian season usually lasts from March until June, but the soaring temperatures — which in her province have hovered around 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for weeks — and subsequent drought have shortened the harvest.

Busaba said the heat causes the durian, which is graduated by weight and size, to ripen faster so it does not grow to its fullest — and most valuable — size.

“The quality of the durian won’t meet the standard,” she said.

And not only is she getting less money for the crop, Busaba’s operational costs have risen.

Since March a drought has sucked water from the wells, so to keep her precious durian trees alive Busaba is forced to bring in thousands of litres by truck.

“We have to buy 10 water trucks for 120,000 litres of water for one-time watering the whole 10-rai (1.6 hectares) of our farm,” she said, repeating the process every other day, at a cost of thousands of dollars.

“We have prayed for rain,” she said. “But there was no rain.”


– This year, less –


Thailand’s durian exports are worth billions and are the kingdom’s third most valuable agricultural product — behind rice and rubber.

But in the nearby durian market, anxiety is running high among stall-holders, many of them with family businesses going back generations.

Siriwan Roopkaew, manning her mother’s stall, said the lack of water has impacted the size of the fruit, but for now prices remain high thanks to demand from China.

Around 95 percent of Thaliand’s durian exports are to China, which shipped nearly $4.6 billion worth of the love-it-or-hate-it fruit from the kingdom in 2023, according to data from Beijing’s commerce ministry.

But the weather is threatening Thailand’s dominance.

In May Chinese state media reported an almost 50 percent rise in durian imported from Vietnam, citing heat and drought in Thailand.

“Hot weather means there will be less durian. Even this year, there is less durian,” Siriwan, 26, said.

“Normally, my stall would be full of durian by now.”

While farmers worried about water, she said, sellers like her family were more concerned about the knock-on economics.

“Less durian means our earnings are less,” she said, “so it’d be hard for us to live the whole year.”

Meanwhile, back at the farm, Busaba sighed as she considered the months ahead.

“The future of durian, it’s over if there’s no water,” she said.

Nepal battles raging wildfires across the country

Agence France-Presse
May 2, 2024 

A wild fire burns near the village of Lubhu in Lalitpur district, on the outskirts of Kathmandu, overnight on May 1, 2024 

(PRAKASH MATHEMA/AFP)

Firefighters and local residents battled a massive wildfire on the outskirts of Nepal's capital Thursday as the Himalayan republic endures a severe fire season authorities have blamed on a heatwave.

Nepal sees a spate of wildfires annually, usually beginning in March, but their number and intensity has worsened in recent years, with climate change leading to drier winters.

Emergency crews worked through the night to fight the blaze which engulfed a forested area in Lalitpur, on the southern periphery of the Kathmandu valley.

More than 4,500 wildfires have been reported this year across the country, nearly double compared to last year according to government data but less than the worst fire season on record in 2021.

"Wildfires have increased in an unimaginable ratio, and the season is expected to last for a month more," Sundar Prasad Sharma of the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority told AFP.

"It is challenging to put out fires because of our difficult terrain," he added.

Environment ministry spokesman Badri Raj Dhungana said the increase in the number of wildfires this year was because of a lengthy drought and heatwave conditions in Nepal's southern plains.

"Generally, wildfires peak late April but this year they are still increasing because of rising temperatures," he said.

Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing heatwaves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.

Large swathes of South and Southeast Asia have sweltered through a heatwave since last month, with the El Nino phenomenon also driving this year's exceptionally warm weather.

Temperatures have risen above 40 degrees Celsius in the Buddhist pilgrimage city of Lumbini and other parts of the south, with more hot weather forecast in the days ahead.

More than a hundred schools in the southern city of Butwal were closed on Thursday for two days out of fears the heatwave would impact the health of students.

Morocco's farming revolution: defying drought with science

Agence France-Presse
May 2, 2024 

The International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) has sought to develop drought-resistant breeds of cereals to combat years of dryness in Morocco (FADEL SENNA/AFP)

In the heart of sun-soaked Morocco, scientists are cultivating a future where tough crops defy a relentless drought, now in its sixth year.

"Look at these beautiful ears of wheat," said Wuletaw Tadesse Degu, the head of wheat breeding at the International Center for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA).

"The difference in quality between our field and others is striking," he said, pointing towards a lush expanse in Marchouch, south of Rabat, that stood in stark contrast with the barren lands elsewhere.

By 2040, Morocco is poised to face "extremely high" water stress, a dire prediction from the World Resources Institute, a non-profit research organization.

Figures from the North African country's central bank paint a grim picture.

Cultivated areas across the kingdom are expected to shrink to 2.5 million hectares in 2024 compared with 3.7 million last year, with cereal yields more than halving to 25 million quintals (2.5 million tonnes) over the same period.

"It has become essential to use resilient seeds and to employ them as quickly as possible," said Tadesse, whose centre recently inaugurated a plant gene bank.

- Adapted genotypes -

Tadesse's mission is to develop genotypes that not only withstand drought and heat but also yield abundantly.

Last year, while the nation struggled, Marchouch achieved a yield of four tonnes per hectare with just 200 millimeters of rainfall.

Controlled irrigation and strategic sowing techniques are behind this agricultural revolution.

Looking to maximize production, farmers are experimenting with planting times and judicious irrigation.

Even a scant 10 millimeters of water, carefully applied, transformed barren soil into thriving fields.

Barley, too, has seen a resurgence, with yields jumping from 1.5 to two tonnes per hectare last year, thanks to climate-smart genotypes, said Miguel Sanchez Garcia, a barley specialist at ICARDA.

The centre, which operates in 17 countries in Africa and Asia, says it has developed 30 "elite lines" of grain.

Most of them are produced in Morocco by breeding genotypes of wild wheat with different ancestors, said ICARDA genetics researcher Ahmed Amri.

- 'Slow system' -

Moroccan agricultural authorities approved six new wheat and barley varieties last year, but bureaucratic hurdles loom large.

Approval processes drag on, impeding the timely dissemination of new varieties to farmers, researchers at the center said, resulting in a five-year journey from approval to market-ready seeds.

"The certification system takes too long and should be revised quickly," said Moha Ferrahi, head of genetic resources conservation and improvement at the National Institute of Agricultural Research.

Ferrahi also pointed to the lack of engagement from private companies and farmers who opt for "foreign seeds to have a quicker return on investment while these seeds are not adapted to the climate of Morocco".

Yet many see room for improvement, even in a drought-hit country where the average citizen consumes about 200 kilograms of wheat per year — significantly above the world's average, according to official figures.

"Unlike countries like Egypt or Ethiopia, Morocco has chosen to liberalize its market," said researcher Amri, meaning that authorities have no control over what varieties farmers select.

But Amri remains convinced that, coupled with the national agricultural program, the widespread adoption of resilient varieties will help offset mounting losses.