STARVING 
Exam finds famed LA mountain lion may have been hit by car

This Nov. 2014, file photo provided by the U.S. National Park Service shows a mountain lion known as P-22, photographed in the Griffith Park area near downtown Los Angeles. The famous Hollywood-roaming mountain lion known as P-22 is drastically underweight and probably was struck and injured by a car, according to wildlife experts Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2022, who are giving him a health exam amid concerns about his behavior, including killing a leashed dog. 

(U.S. National Park Service, via AP, File)More


Tue, December 13, 2022

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The famous Hollywood-roaming mountain lion known as P-22 is drastically underweight and was probably struck and injured by a car, wildlife experts who conducted a health examination on the big cat said Tuesday.

The male cougar, whose killing of a leashed dog has raised concerns about its behavior, probably won't be released back into the wild and could be sent to an animal sanctuary or euthanized, depending on its health, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife said.

“Nobody is taking that kind of decision lightly,” spokesperson Jordan Traverso said during a videoconference. He added the agency understands “the importance of this animal to the community and to California," and “we recognize the sadness of it."

P-22 was captured and tranquilized on Monday in the trendy Los Feliz neighborhood near his usual haunt of Griffith Park, an island of wilderness and picnic areas in the midst of the Los Angeles urban sprawl.

State and federal wildlife officials announced last week that they were concerned the aging cat “may be exhibiting signs of distress” due in part to aging, noting the animal needed to be studied to determine what steps to take.

Tuesday's examination found the cat had an eye injury, probably received from being hit by a car and more tests would be conducted to determine if the animal suffered additional head trauma, said Deana Clifford, the senior wildlife veterinarian with the department.

A computerized tomography scan is scheduled for later this week to look into other possible chronic health issues that may have caused his decline, Clifford said.

P-22 was first captured in 2012 and fitted with a GPS tracking collar as part of a National Park Service study. The cougar is regularly recorded on security cameras strolling through residential areas near Griffith Park.

P-22 is believed to be about 12 years old, making him the oldest Southern California cougar currently being studied. Most mountain lions live about a decade.

“This is an old cat, and old cats get old-cat diseases,” Clifford said. “Any of us who had cats at home have seen this."

“We’re working through all of those issues and we’ll take a totality of the findings into account to try to make the best decision we can for the cat,” she said.

P-22 usually hunts deer and coyotes, but in November the National Park Service confirmed that the cougar had attacked and killed a Chihuahua mix that was being walked in the narrow streets of the Hollywood Hills.

The cougar also is suspected of attacking another Chihuahua in the Silver Lake neighborhood this month.

P-22 has lived much of his life in Griffith Park, crossing two major freeways to get there. He was the face of the campaign to build a wildlife crossing over a Los Angeles-area freeway to give big cats, coyotes, deer and other wildlife a safe path to the nearby Santa Monica Mountains, where they have room to roam.

Ground was broken this year on the bridge, which will stretch 200 feet (some 60 meters) over U.S. 101. Construction is expected to be completed by early 2025.

ZIONIST FASCISM
Israeli jurists warn against Ben-Gvir's bid for more powers over police


: Israeli far-right lawmaker Itamar Ben-Gvir holds a news conference ahead of Israel's election, in Jerusalem

Wed, December 14, 2022
By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Legal advisers to Israel's parliament and outgoing government on Wednesday criticised a bid by a far-right politician to give himself expanded powers as next police minister, warning that his proposed changes clashed with democratic principles.

Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party was promised the National Security Ministry, with authority over police, under a coalition deal with Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu.

Though Netanyahu's hard-right new government has yet to be finalised, Ben-Gvir has already submitted a bill that would amend police regulations. It would give him, as minister, greater control over the police chief and police investigations.


Ben-Gvir, who placed third in a Nov 1 election thanks in part to his law-and-order platform, has defended the bill as consolidating a chain of command between government and police.

But centre-left lawmakers have warned that the amendments could politicise criminal probes and prosecutions - and noted Ben-Gvir's record that includes 2007 convictions for incitement against Arabs and support for an outlawed Jewish militant group.

"The draft does not strike an appropriate balance ... between the powers of the minister and the professional independence of law enforcement bodies," Amit Merari, deputy attorney-general, told a parliamentary panel convened to discuss the bill after it passed its first reading on Tuesday.

"Taken together, the proposed directives have the potential to deal real and grave damage to the core principles of democratic rule in the State of Israel," she said, adding that any amendment should be sought after the government is sworn in.

A parliamentary legal adviser, Miri Frenkel-Shor, said the draft was inconsistent with principles set out by a state commission of inquiry that "police must be totally free in its investigations, with only the authority of the law above it".

Ben-Gvir has disavowed some of his past conduct. He says that, in cabinet, he will serve all of society. But he has also played down violence by Jewish settlers against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, and wants Israeli security forces to be freer to open fire when faced with Arab unrest.

Seeking to allay domestic and foreign concern at the far-right rise, Netanyahu - who has already served a record 15 years in top office - says he will ultimately set Israeli policy.

Yet the issue of police independence has also touched a nerve among Netanyahu's critics given his ongoing corruption trial, in which he denies all wrongdoing and accuses law-enforcement authorities of a politicised witch-hunt against him.

Addressing the parliamentary panel, Ben-Gvir called his bill "an historical correction that would be requisite for any democratic country". Sitting beside him, the Israeli police chief, Inspector-General Yaacov Shabtai, was more circumspect.

"We are not opposed to changes, but it is important that such dramatic changes be implemented through deep discussion," Shabtai said. "The police is not an army. The police interacts with civilians and not, like an army, with a designated enemy."

(Writing by Dan Williams, Editing by William Maclean)

Analysis-China's massive older chip tech build up raises U.S. concern


People visit a booth of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), at China International Semiconductor Expo (IC China 2020) following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak in Shanghai

Tue, December 13, 2022 
By Jane Lanhee Lee, Josh Horwitz and Alexandra Alper

OAKLAND, Calif./SHANGHAI/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - China’s largest chip maker SMIC is ramping up production of a decade-old chip technology, key to many industries' supply chains, setting off alarm bells in the United States and prompting some lawmakers to try to stop them.

The United States and allied nations could further step up restrictions if China announces a trillion yuan ($144 billion) support package for its chip industry, as Reuters exclusively reported on Tuesday, said TechInsights' chip economist Dan Hutcheson.

Starting with the Trump administration, the United States has been tightening the noose around China's high-tech ambitions. It cut off the world's largest telecommunications firm Huawei Technologies from the U.S. market and technologies, as well as cut off air supply to China's advanced chip making through a series of rules this year.

But why worry about older chip technology?

China, which in 2020 had 9% of the global chip market, has a track record of dominating key technologies by flooding the market with cheaper products and wiping out global competition, say China watchers.

They did it with solar panels and 5G telecom equipment, and could do it with older technology chips, said Matt Pottinger, former Deputy National Security Advisor of the United States during the Trump administration who has been studying chip policy at the Hoover Institution.

“It would give Beijing coercive leverage over every country and industry - military or civilian - that depend on 28 nanometer chips, and that's a big, big chunk of the chip universe," he said.

“28 nanometer” refers to a chip technology commercially used since 2011. It is still widely used in automotive, weapons and the explosive category of internet of things gadgets, said Hutcheson.

Hutcheson, who has been monitoring chip production capacity for four decades, said the concern is that Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp and other chipmakers in China could use government subsidies to sell chips at a low price. And a possible new round of financial support from Beijing would increase chip production even further.

“The Chinese could just flood the market with these technologies,” he said. “Normal companies can't compete, because they can't make money at those levels.”

U.S. LAWMAKERS PUSHING AGAINST SMIC

Those concerns have pushed some lawmakers to use legislation for setting the defense budget hold back SMIC.

While the measure is weaker than what was initially proposed, this week U.S. Senators are expected to pass the annual National Defense Authorization Act 2023 that includes a section barring the U.S. government from using chips from SMIC and two other Chinese memory chip makers. It is not clear what impact the restriction, which kicks in five years after it becomes law, will have on SMIC.

Founded in 2000 with backing from Beijing, SMIC has long struggled to break into the ranks of the world’s leading chip manufacturers.

But it is a giant in older technology, including chips that regulate power flows in electronics. And its revenue was close to $2 billion in the third quarter this year, roughly double the same period last year on the back of the global chip shortage.

SMIC FILLING SUPPLY GAP

With U.S. export controls making it impossible to produce advanced chips, SMIC is doubling down on mature technology chips and has announced four new facilities, or fabs, since 2020. When those come online, it would more than triple the company’s output, estimates Samuel Wang, Gartner chip analyst. He said there is a huge ramp up in new chip fabs across China.

“All this will start to have an impact from early 2024 and will be full blown by 2027,” said Wang, adding the chip supply increase will put downward pressure on chip prices.

The importance of older chip technology hit the industry in the face in 2021 as a shortage of those chips prevented manufacturing of millions of cars and consumer electronics.

Mark Li, Bernstein Research’s chip analyst in Asia, said the company is becoming a formidable competitor to Taiwan's UMC Microelectronics Corp and U.S.-headquartered GlobalFoundries Inc.

“SMIC has been much more willing to add capacity than other fabs at the low-end, and especially in this shortage we’ve seen in the past two years,” he says. “It’s not an issue now...but who knows, maybe in a few years there will be another shortage and capacity will be a big problem.”

($1 = 6.9430 Chinese yuan renminbi)

(Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee in Oakland, Calif and Josh Horwitz in Shanghai, and Alexandra Alper in Washington D.C.; Editing by Josie Kao)

WAIT, WHAT?
India's solar boom reverses gas momentum, cements coal use: Maguire


Men stand by a car near a coal-fired power plant in Shanghai

Tue, December 13, 2022 at 6:11 PM MST·3 min read
By Gavin Maguire

LITTLETON, Colo. (Reuters) -India's rapid advances in solar power production have been widely celebrated for showing how fast-developing economies can accelerate the decarbonisation of their energy systems without jeopardising economic growth.

But while the pace of India's solar rollout has been impressive, the advances have come mainly at the expense of natural gas - they have had little impact on the country's use of coal as the primary source of electricity.

Indeed, India increased the amount of electricity generated from coal in the opening 10 months of 2022 compared with the same period in 2021, and slashed gas-powered generation by nearly 40%, according to data from Ember.

This has resulted in a continuing climb in India's power sector emissions, even as solar's share of the country's electricity generation mix has more than doubled since 2019.

SOLAR SURGE

Between 2017 and 2021, India's solar power production capacity more than tripled, ranking third globally in terms of solar capacity additions during that window, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

And the country plans to more than double that solar capacity base again by 2025, leaving it highlighted by the International Energy Agency (IEA) as a key driver behind its recent dramatic upward revision to its global renewable energy supply outlook.

On paper, such rapid advances in green energy supplies should result in reduced pollution from the country's energy producers.

However, cumulative emissions from India's power sector have scaled new highs in the opening 10 months of 2022, topping 818 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and equivalent gases. That's up nearly 7% from the same period in 2021.

The main driver of the climb in power pollution has been a 7.7% climb in discharges from coal-fired generation, which accounted for 72% of the country's electricity and 97% of power sector emissions through October, Ember data shows.

GAS SQUEEZE

While coal's share of India's electricity mix has remained fairly flat at that elevated level, the share of gas-fired electricity has fallen sharply in 2022 to just 1.6%, the lowest since at least 2019.

Record high liquefied natural gas (LNG) prices were the main reason behind this downturn in gas use, as cost-conscious utilities balked at paying more than twice as much for spot LNG cargoes in 2022 as the 2021 average.

Reduced demand for LNG was also reflected in India's LNG import totals. These dropped by 16% through November from the same period in 2021, according to ship-tracking data by Kpler.

Those sharply lower LNG imports by India - the fourth largest importer in 2021 - freed up LNG cargoes for others in 2022, and helped alleviate the power crisis in Europe resulting from sharply lower Russian pipelined natural gas supplies amid the war in Ukraine.

However, for India's power producers, with limited options for generating baseload electricity, less gas simply meant they have had to burn more coal in 2022.

This is because while non-emitting solar power adds to overall electricity supplies during the day, India's overall grid requires a steady supply of baseload power at all times, and especially at night. This can be produced effectively by burning fossil fuels.

Natural gas had been expected to displace coal as that preferred baseload fuel over time in India, thanks to planned investments in gas import infrastructure and pipelines, as well as policy support to scale back use of high-polluting coal in power generation.

But the recent surge in gas prices is now threatening to not just stall, but reverse those trends, halting gas-related investments and supporting continuing reliance on coal.

Solar will remain the new fuel of choice for utilities developing additional power generation capacity in India, thanks to government subsidies and widespread support for green energy expansions.

But if global gas prices remain elevated throughout 2023, Indian electricity producers will continue to burn more coal than ever to generate baseload power, undermining the environmental benefits of record-setting renewable supply expansions.

(Reporting by Gavin Maguire; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)

MONOPOLY CAPITALI$M

Microsoft offered to share Activision’s crown jewel to move forward the $68.7 billion takeover

Ananya Bhattacharya
Wed, December 14, 2022

Some kind of antitrust warfare.

Microsoft is struggling to curry favor for its Activision Blizzard merger, with an offer to share the video game developer’s popular title Call of Duty with other platforms getting the cold shoulder from regulators.

Microsoft’s $68.7 billion push to buy Activision Blizzard, the maker of Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and mobile game Candy Crush, prompted concerns about competition and consumer choice related to titles becoming exclusive to Xbox and Game Pass, its subscription content and cloud-gaming business. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently sued to block the deal. Competition watchdogs in the EU and in the UK have both launched probes of their own.

The acquisition would make the Redmond-based software company the third-largest video game maker in the world after Sony and Tencent. But Microsoft has repeatedly said it won’t take the titles off the market. To prove it, the firm even offered to sign a legally-binding consent decree with the FTC to provide Call of Duty games to rivals including Sony, for a decade, Microsoft president Brad Smith said at the annual shareholder meeting yesterday (Dec. 13). But the FTC apparently shot it down.

“I’m disappointed that the FTC didn’t give us the opportunity to even sit down with the staff to even talk about our proposal, to even see if there was a solution there,” Smith said. “…If there’s one thing we all know, whether you’re a government, or a business, or a parent talking to your children, you will never solve a problem if you don’t try.”
Microsoft’s Call of Duty is coming to Nintendo Switch, but Sony rejected the offer

Microsoft has forged a 10-year-deal with Nintendo to make Call of Duty available on the Kyoto-based company’s consoles, including Switch, and committed to make the first-person shooter video game franchise available to Valve Software’s online gaming platform Steam. However, these are not key players that derive much traffic from the title. The partner Microsoft needs to bag is Sony.

But Sony has rejected the idea more than once.

Back in September, PlayStation chief Jim Ryan criticized Microsoft’s offer to keep Call of Duty on PlayStation for three years after the current agreement between Activision and Sony ends, calling it “inadequate on many levels.”

The offer of an additional seven years to make the wildly popular game available on Sony’s console, as well as its Game Pass-style subscription service PlayStation Plus, didn’t moved the needle. Sony didn’t accept the proposal.

While Microsoft downplays Call of Duty’s ability to impact the gaming industry’s makeup, Sony argues otherwise. In an Oct. 28 comment to UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Sony laid out various reasons why Call of Duty is different to the other games: It has the highest number of monthly active users among the top 10 gaming franchises in 2020 and 2021; it has a relentless release cycle; and it is unique among AAA games because of its popularity, loyalty, and the enormous resources Activision commits to developing the franchise.

“Call of Duty is not replicable. Call of Duty is too entrenched for any rival, no matter how well equipped, to catch up,” the Japanese company said.

Call of Duty, by the digits

425 million: Lifetime unit sales for the Call of Duty franchise.

$30 billion: Call of Duty series’ lifetime revenue.

125 million: Registered players for CoD: Warzone since its launch in March 2020.

650 million: Downloads Call of Duty: Mobile has generated since its launch in 2019.

3,000: People working on the Call of Duty franchise.

3-5 years: How long each release takes to develop

Over $300 million: Budget for each release
Microsoft’s take on the antitrust backlash, in the Microsoft president’s words

“The FTC’s case is really based on a market that they’ve identified that they say has two companies and two products, Sony PlayStation, and Microsoft Xbox. If you look at the global market, Sony has 70% of that market, and we have 30%. So the first thing a judge is going to have to decide is whether the FTC lawsuit is a case that will promote competition or is it really instead of a case that will protect the largest competitor from competition.” —Brad Smith during the Dec. 13 annual shareholder meeting
Related stories

🤝 Microsoft’s Activision deal put it back in the US’s antitrust crosshairs

🤖 Microsoft’s purchase of Activision Blizzard gives it the clear lead in the metaverse

🧹 Activision is clearing out problematic staff before Microsoft’s $70 billion takeover

Primatologist Jane Goodall Watched A Montage Of Trump And Her Analysis Was Something

Lee Moran

Wed, December 14, 2022 

Famed primatologist and environmental activist Jane Goodall hasn’t changed her opinion on former President Donald Trump.

In 2016, Goodall likened the then-presidential candidate’s behavior to the aggression displayed by a male chimpanzee.

Goodall echoed that view in a lengthy interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber that aired on Tuesday’s broadcast of “The Beat.”

Melber played Goodall a montage of Trump stalking behind Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during one of their 2016 presidential debates, hugging and kissing the American flag, and calling himself a “perfect physical specimen.”

“What do you see there?” Melber asked Goodall.

Goodall chuckled, then replied: “I see the same sort of behavior as a male chimpanzee will show when he is competing for dominance with another.”

“They’re upright, they swagger, they project themselves as really more large and aggressive than they may actually be in order to intimidate their rivals,” Goodall continued.

Goodall later lamented how the divisiveness created in America ― by Trump and others ―“is a tragedy” that “can have a ripple effect around the world.”

Watch Goodall’s Trump analysis from the 29:30 mark here:

Trump’s Badly Photoshopped NFTs Appear to Use Photos From Small Clothing Brands

Kyle Barr
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Several images of Trump in different poses, including one with his eyes on fire and another of him decked out in hunting outfit

Betcha couldn’t get enough of this mug, huh? Only thing is, this photoshop job seems to be very haphazardly edited using images taken directly from the internet.

Over the last 24 hours, fans of ex-President Donald Trump have sat huddled in their chairs, waiting with bated breath for a supposed announcement the once tweeter-in-chief promised would blow their socks off. He posted a video to his Truth Social page showing an image of him in a kind of superhero garb, sporting pecs he most certainly does not have, as laser beams shoot from his eyes. What could this mean? What apocalypse was coming?

On Thursday the grand surprise was finally revealed and it was nothing but another horrific NFT project that, in Trump’s words, featured “amazing ART of my Life & Career!” These “digital trading cards” are indeed just another cash grab NFT project, but the low quality images and the company in charge of the project are a more complicated enigma.

Each NFT sells for a total $99, and some are limited as single copies, while other NFTs are available in two, five, seven, or 10 copies. There are a total of 45,000 cards in the initial release, but even more, one big fan of Mr. Trump will be “guaranteed” a ticket to some future gala dinner with him, ostensibly at his Mar a Lago residence in South Florida. The auction even promised to pay for transportation. So yes, spend $4,455 and you too can have a sit down with the former president himself. Although we can guarantee you he will not look nearly as slim as he does in these trading cards.

The images were so lazy that based on reverse image searches they were edited photos scraped off the internet. It’s unclear if they were edited by hand or perhaps crafted using AI image generation, though the one image of Trump in hunter garb bears a very distinct resemblance to waders crafted by Banded, a hunting apparel company.

This image of a fake Trump in a hunting outfit seems to be an edited image of one company’s duck hunting gear.

Trump’s cowboy outfit appears to match a leather duster made by Scully Sportswear, a California-based costume and western garb shop.


The left image bears an obvious resemblance to this small California shop’s duster.

Gizmodo reached out to both companies to see if they had had any agreement with the NFT project to seemingly use their products, but we did not immediately hear back.


The whole thing is bizarre in so many different ways. In a video featuring Trump promoting the project, Trump claims he’s “better than [Abraham] Lincoln, better than [George] Washington.” He then says “each card comes with an automatic chance to win amazing prizes like dinner with me. I don’t know if that’s an amazing prize but it’s what we have.”

And while your first assumption would be that all this money would go toward supporting Trump’s reelection campaign, you would be wrong, at least according to the company’s page. NFT INT LLC, the company listed as hosting the NFT auction, wrote:

“These Digital Trading Cards are not political and have nothing to do with any political campaign. NFT INT LLC is not owned, managed or controlled by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization, CIC Digital LLC or any of their respective principals or affiliates. NFT INT LLC uses Donald J. Trump’s name, likeness and image under paid license from CIC Digital LLC, which license may be terminated or revoked according to its terms.”

Gizmodo reached out to NFT INT to get some better understanding of how this all came together, but we did not immediately hear back.

Things get even stranger when looking at the company that’s running the auction. The company, NFT INT LLC, lists its address to a kitschy strip mall in Utah that contains a few shops and restaurants, a dry cleaners, as well as a UPS store. As Gizmodo has previously reported, companies affiliated with attempts to buy Trump’s favored social media platform Truth Social have had similar arrangements by being based out of a UPS Store mailbox.

It’s even more unclear who is operating behind the scenes. Gizmodo found two companies called NFT INT registered in California and in Delaware, which, of course, neither are located in Utah. We reached out to the individual listed as the CEO of the California-registered NFT INT LLC who told us their company was not affiliated with this project.

The Salt Lake Tribune’s report on the NFTs confirmed the strangeness surrounding the UPS Store mailbox. The Tribune also noted that while the Twitter account for the NFT project lists Florida as its business residence, there are 20 businesses in Florida listing the Utah UPS mailbox as their residence.

So if you’re really into the idea of a Trump NFT, for some reason, just be aware the NFTs are “non-refundable” and “non-returnable.” Of course, you can just do what we did and right click and “save-as,” but that would defeat the purpose of digital scarcity, now wouldn’t it?

Update 12/15/2022 at 11:00 p.m. ET: This post was updated to include info about the California-based NFT INT LLC and add additional info from the Salt Lake Tribune.

She Went Undercover to a Crisis Pregnancy Center. They Told Her Abortion Is Reversible.

Kylie Cheung

JEZEBEL
Thu, December 15, 2022 

Screenshot: Mayday Health

In October, investigative reporter Olivia Raisner visited five anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers—clinics that often receive state funding, despite providing no medical services and pushing disinformation to dissuade pregnant people from choosing abortion—in Indiana. She entered each clinic armed with her pregnant friend’s urine, a button on her shirt that secretly doubled as a camera, and scheduled appointments. There, she declined to sign any paperwork that asked her not to record conversations to “make sure everything I did was legal,” Raisner told me in a phone interview. “The anti-abortion movement has been filming, not legally, for years now, and we don’t want to stoop to their level,” Raisner said.

On Thursday, Mayday Health posted a video capturing Raisner’s experiences at the CPCs. In one clip, after she turns in a positive pregnancy test and says she’s considering abortion, an employee immediately begins spewing a steady stream of easily disproven lies. The staffer warns Raisner, without any evidence, that “there’s been a lot of suicides” after abortion and that “it is a very common problem.” Ironically enough, research has shown that being denied an abortion negatively impacts someone’s mental health, and over 95 percent of people who have abortions don’t regret the decision. Nonetheless, the employee sternly claims that other mental health issues could arise, warning Raisner that having an abortion could even cause her to develop an eating disorder. She told Jezebel that several clinics said this.

The clinic worker featured in Mayday’s video specifically emphasized the (false) claim that if Raisner used medication abortion, she had the option to “reverse” the abortion through a special pill, via a dangerous, non-proven method called “abortion pill reversal.” Raisner told Jezebel that as medication abortion becomes more widely used, given its continued availability in all 50 states, anti-abortion activists are increasingly pushing this bogus, medically dangerous claim.

Even as Raisner had the facts going into the anti-abortion clinics, she said it still required significant effort to “keep my emotions and anger at bay” as clinic staff members lied to her face. “I knew that the longer I was able to stay in there, and really sell my story as a pregnant person, the more I would be able to record,” she explained. “I needed to show the interactions that are taking place countless times a day across the country, for all the pregnant people who go to these centers and don’t have the information.”



As Raisner explains in the video, it’s common for staff at crisis pregnancy centers to pose as actual doctors in order to push random, inaccurate medical claims about abortion—almost like anti-choice improv. The staffer Raisner interacts with proceeds to run through all the hits, including that abortion causes infertility (it doesn’t) and medication abortion pills are unsafe because of “high levels of estrogen and progesterone” (they don’t have either.) “They offer free ultrasounds, financial assistance, all the resources necessary, and make it very tempting to lean on them,” Raisner told Jezebel. “Unfortunately, we know they’re fake medical clinics whose only agenda is to spread lies, to shame people away from abortion.”

At the five clinics Raisner visited, she said it was as if all the employees were reading from the same pre-written “script,” with different anecdotes subbed in. “Conversations were almost identical—when I told them I was thinking about abortion, they all led with ‘suicide’ and the risk of that,” Raisner said. This sounds like the worst possible co-optation of heightened public awareness around mental health.

Advocates performing undercover sting operations around abortion aren’t uncommon—but famously, they’re more often perpetrated by anti-abortion activists going into abortion clinics and collecting and doctoring footage to galvanize cultural panics about “Planned Parenthood selling baby parts.” (The summer of 2015 feels like just yesterday.)

To prepare to perform her own undercover operation, Raisner researched local crisis pregnancy centers, made calls describing her made-up “situation,” and booked appointments. In advance of these appointments, she said she “practiced using this little remote control” to operate the button-camera and prepared questions that pregnant people typically ask—for example, about the safety of abortion and possible concerns. Of course, as Mayday Health’s video asserts, medication abortion results in fewer extreme complications than Tylenol.

Across the country, even before Roe v. Wade was overturned and several states immediately banned abortion, crisis pregnancy centers outnumbered actual abortion-providing clinics by a three-to-one ratio, and many centers receive state and federal funding. Further, because they aren’t actual health care centers, they aren’t bound to the same privacy standards set by HIPAA that actual health providers must abide by. Yet, they collect all of the same private and personal information that health providers do, with the freedom to share this information as they see fit.

Raisner told Jezebel that clinic staff took her driver’s license, her address, and asked about her job and her family and friends. “They very purposely try to identify other people in your life who could supposedly help you raise this baby,” she recalled. After she left the clinic saying she was unsure whether she’d get an abortion, CPC employees followed up several times and asked her to come back.

Crisis pregnancy centers have increasingly become a major surveillance apparatus for anti-abortion activists and even state governments that contract with anti-abortion clinics—with serious potential consequences when abortion and pregnancy loss are increasingly resulting in criminal charges.

Several victims of crisis pregnancy centers have told the Expose Fake Clinics campaign about similar experiences, including one who said that after she left a clinic, a CPC worker “began calling her almost daily and telling her that she would die, or end up in hell, or get very sick if she were to go through with the abortion.” Some said they were forced to sign contracts pledging to not have an abortion before leaving the clinic.

“They just want you to give birth, and they’ll say anything for that—they offered me money, gave me baby blankets, they invite the premise that they’ll be supporting me,” Raisner said. But it’s all just words. “It’s clear that that support really stops after that person gives birth.”

Closing of Jesuit abuse case left victims feeling betrayed, expert says

 Father Hans Zollner, the Vatican's Chair of the Steering Committee of the Centre for the Protection of Minors, looks on as he attends a news conference at the Pontificial Gregorian University in Rome

Wed, December 14, 2022 
By Philip Pullella

ROME (Reuters) -One of the Catholic Church's top sexual abuse experts has called for a review of how his own Jesuit order and the Vatican handled allegations against an internationally known priest and artist.

The case of Father Marko Ivan Rupnik has rattled the Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member, and prompted criticism of the Vatican doctrinal department for not pursuing it further.

"I can understand how victims feel betrayed," Father Hans Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the head of Rome's Gregorian University Centre for the study of abuse, told Reuters.

Following Italian media reports that Rupnik had sexually and psychologically abused nuns when he was their spiritual director in his native Slovenia three decades ago, Jesuit headquarters issued a statement on Dec. 2 saying he had been disciplined.

It said it had commissioned an unnamed, non-Jesuit to investigate Rupnik, 68, after the Vatican's doctrinal department received a complaint last year. No minors were involved in the alleged abuse.

The Jesuits gave the results of the investigation to the Vatican department, which closed the case in October, citing the statute of limitations, which automatically halts legal proceedings if they exceed a set time limit from when an alleged crime took place.

"I understand that legally speaking, the statute of limitations applies, but the legal question is not the only one," Zollner said in the offices of the anti-abuse centre. "This is why I ask why the statute was not lifted".

A Vatican source said the doctrinal department had lifted the statute in similar cases before.

Repeated attempts to reach Rupnik through his school for religious art in Rome were not successful and he did not return calls. The Vatican spokesman said he had no comment on the case.

EARLIER COMPLAINT

Father Arturo Sosa, the head of the Jesuit order since 2016, has defended its handling of Rupnik. "Any case like this is painful ... but we have not hidden anything," he told two Portuguese religious media outlets last week.

Sosa said the Jesuits had maintained restrictions against Rupnik even though the Vatican had closed the case "because we want to go further into the matter, to see how we can help everyone involved".

On Wednesday night, Sosa told reporters that Rupnik had incurred automatic excommunication on himself when he granted "absolution to an accomplice" in confession, referring to when a priest has sex with someone and then absolves the person of the sin. The excommunication was later lifted after Rupnik repented, Sosa said.

Rupnik, a mosaics master who has designed chapels around the world, including in the Vatican, is barred from hearing confessions or presiding at spiritual exercises.

Zollner said an alarm had been raised before 2021, referring to a complaint that he said the Jesuit order had received from a nun in 1998 when Rupnik was completing work on a Vatican chapel for Pope John Paul II.

"For the sake of transparency, we need to know who knew something, what and when, and what happened after that," Zollner said. "We could have found out about the different levels of responsibility, which could have prevented all of this," he said, referring to the 2021 complaint.

"I ask myself, and I ask my community, the Jesuits: Who could have known? Who did know? Who perceived something was wrong and did not go further?" Zollner said.

Asked about the 1998 complaint, Father John Dardis, the Jesuits' spokesman, told Reuters that the order had looked into reports about it but had found "nothing in the files".

Zollner said: "Probably we will never know. In most cases there are no documents."

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Rosalba O'Brien)

Jesuits admit artist excommunicated before new abuse claims

Arturo Sosa
Superior General of the Society of Jesus

- The closed Basilica of Lourdes is pictured May 8, 2020, in Lourdes, southwestern France. The Vatican came under pressure Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, to explain why it didn’t prosecute a famous Jesuit artist and merely let his order restrict the priest's ministry following allegations that he abused his authority over adult women. Mosiacs by Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik decorate several churches and chapels, including the Lourdes basilica. (AP Photo/Bob Edme, File)More


NICOLE WINFIELD
Wed, December 14, 2022 

ROME (AP) — The head of Pope Francis’ Jesuit religious order admitted Wednesday that a famous Jesuit priest had been convicted of one of the most serious crimes in the Catholic Church some two years before the Vatican decided to shelve another case against him for allegedly abusing other adult women under his spiritual care.

The Rev. Arturo Sosa, the Jesuit superior general, made the admission during a briefing with journalists that was dominated by the scandal over the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik and the reluctance of both the Vatican and the Jesuits to tell the whole story behind the unusually lenient treatment he received even after he had been temporarily excommunicated.

Rupnik is unknown to most Catholics but is a giant within the Jesuit order and the Catholic hierarchy because he is one of the church’s most sought-after artists. His mosaics depicting biblical scenes decorate the basilica in Lourdes, France, the Vatican’s own Redemptoris Mater chapel, the John Paul II institute in Washington and are due to grace the new basilica in Aparecida, Brazil.

The scandal involving Rupnik erupted last week when three Italian blogs — Silere non Possum, Left.it and Messa in Latino — began revealing allegations of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse against Rupnik by women at a Jesuit community with which he was affiliated in his native Slovenia.

The Jesuits initially responded with a statement Dec. 2 that confirmed a complaint had been received in 2021 but said the Vatican’s sex abuse office had determined that the allegations, dating from the 1990s in Slovenia, were too old to prosecute. The Jesuits said they decided nevertheless to keep in place “precautionary restrictions” on his ministry that prohibited him from hearing confessions, giving spiritual direction or leading spiritual exercises.

The statement posed more questions than it answered and entirely omitted the fact — first reported by Messa in Latino and later confirmed by The Associated Press — that Rupnik had been convicted and sanctioned by the Vatican after a 2019 complaint that he had absolved a woman in confession of having engaged in sexual activity with him.

The so-called absolution of an accomplice is one of the most serious crimes in the church’s canon law and brings with it automatic excommunication for the priest that can only be lifted if he admits to the crime and repents — something Rupnik did, Sosa said in response to a question from the AP.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "said it happened, there was absolution of an accomplice,” Sosa said. “So he was excommunicated. How do you lift an excommunication? The person has to recognize it and has to repent, which he did.”

Sosa had previously insisted the Jesuits weren't hiding anything else about Rupnik. Asked why the Jesuits hadn't revealed the confession-related conviction, Sosa said Wednesday that “they were two different moments, with two different cases.”

Sosa then contradicted the Jesuits’ earlier statement and said the restrictions on Rupnik’s ministry actually dated from that confession-related conviction, and not the 2021 allegations that the Vatican’s sex crimes office decided to shelve because they were deemed too old to prosecute.

There has been no explanation for why the office, which regularly waives statute of limitations for abuse-related crimes, decided not to waive it this time around, especially considering the previous conviction for a similarly grave offense against an adult woman. The office, now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is headed by a Jesuit, has a Jesuit sex crimes prosecutor and had as its No. 2 at the time someone who lived in Rupnik’s Jesuit community in Rome.

Sosa was asked what, if anything, Francis knew about Rupnik's case or whether he intervened. Sosa said he “could imagine” that the prefect of the dicastery, the Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, would have informed the pope of such a decision.

Officials at the Dicastery either didn’t respond to emails seeking comment or declined to comment, referring questions to the Vatican spokesman, who in turn referred questions to the Jesuits.

Exclusive-The global supply trail that leads to Russia’s killer drones


An undated handout image provided to Reuters by the Centre for Defence Reforms Ukraine shows a circuit board recovered in Ukraine from a Russian Orlan 10 drone

Thu, December 15, 2022 
By Stephen Grey, Maurice Tamman and Maria Zholobova

(Reuters) - The hundreds of Russian drones hovering ominously over the Ukrainian battlefield owe their existence to an elastic, sanctions-evading supply chain that often runs through a shabby office above a Hong Kong marketplace, and sometimes through a yellow stucco home in suburban Florida.

The "Sea Eagle" Orlan 10 UAV is a deceptive, relatively low-tech and cheap killer that has directed many of the up to 20,000 artillery shells that Russia has fired daily on Ukrainian positions in 2022, killing up to 100 soldiers per day, according to Ukrainian commanders.

An investigation by Reuters and iStories, a Russian media outlet, in collaboration with the Royal United Services Institute, a defence think tank in London, has uncovered a logistical trail that spans the globe and ends at the Orlan's production line, the Special Technology Centre in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Based on Russian customs filings and bank records, the investigation marks the first time a supply route for American technology has been traced all the way to a Russian manufacturer, whose weapon system is used in Ukraine.

The Special Technology Centre, which once made a variety of surveillance gadgets for the Russian government and now focuses on drones for the military, was first targeted by U.S. sanctions after President Barack Obama said it had worked with Russian military intelligence to try to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

The sanctions, which took effect in 2017, barred any American citizen or resident or U.S. company from supplying anything that might end up with the Special Technology Centre. In March of this year, the U.S. government tightened those restrictions by blocking all sales of any American products for any military end user, and effectively blocked all sales to Russia of high-technology items like microchips, communications and navigation equipment.

None of that has stopped the production of the Orlan drone.

The Special Technology Centre did not respond to a written request for comment. But one top scientist, who is also a major shareholder, said in an interview with Reuters that the company was experiencing a "high demand" for its drones.

Russia's Ministry of Defence did not respond to questions from Reuters about the impact of sanctions and its relationship to the Special Technology Centre.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, which enforces controls on the export of US technology, would not comment on its knowledge of the Special Technology Centre, or of U.S. parts supplying Russia's drone program.

In a statement to Reuters, a Commerce spokesperson said the department cannot comment on the existence or non-existence of investigations. The spokesperson added: "We will not hesitate to use all the tools at our disposal to obstruct the efforts of those who seek to support Putin's war machine."

Among the most important suppliers to Russia's drone program has been a Hong Kong-based exporter, Asia Pacific Links Ltd, which, according to Russian customs and financial records, provided millions of dollars in parts, though never directly. Many of the parts are microchips from U.S. manufacturers.

Asia Pacific's exports to Russia were primarily delivered to one importer in St. Petersburg with close ties to the Special Technology Centre, those customs records show. The import company, SMT iLogic, shares an address with the drone maker and has numerous other connections.

Asia Pacific's owner, Anton Trofimov, is an expatriate Russian who graduated from a Chinese university and has other business interests in China as well as a company in Toronto, Canada, according to his LinkedIn profile and other corporate filings.

According to public records, Trofimov is a resident of a modest East York neighborhood of Toronto. He did not respond to questions sent by email and LinkedIn. A woman who answered the door identified herself as Trofimov's wife and said she would pass along a message for him to contact Reuters. He never did.

The neighborhood is a world away from Asia Pacific's office in a shabby and narrow office building off a side alley and pedestrian market in Hong Kong's business district.

No one was at the Hong Kong office when a Reuters journalist visited recently. The company shares a partitioned room with three other tenants, according to the building's receptionist.

Despite appearances, business has boomed this year. In the seven months between March 1 and September 30, since Russia's February invasion, Asia Pacific increased its business sharply, exporting parts valued at about $5.2 million, up from about $2.3 million in the same period of 2021, making it iLogic's biggest supplier, according to Russian customs records. Many of the components were made by U.S. tech firms, the records also show.

Among the parts sent by Asia Pacific to iLogic in the same period of 2022 were $1.8 million of chips made by Analog Devices, $641,000 made by Texas Instruments, and $238,000 by Xilinx, according to the Russian customs data. The supplies also included model aircraft engines made by a Japanese company, Saito Seisakusho, that are used in the Orlan 10, as shown in photos of drones recovered in Ukraine. Saito said it was unaware of the shipments.

Asked about the shipments to Russia in recent months, Analog Devices didn't reply to emailed questions. Texas Instruments and AMD, the owner of Xilinx, said their companies had not directly shipped or approved shipments into Russia for many months and were complying with all U.S. sanctions and export controls.

AMD added that it requires its authorized distributors to implement end-use screening measures to track the potential sale or diversion of AMD products into Russia or restricted regions. "SMT iLogic and Asia Pacific Links are not authorized AMD distributors," AMD said.

THE SUPPLIER NEXT DOOR

Financial records provided by a Russian official and reviewed by Reuters show the Special Technology Centre relies on a number of suppliers, but most notably iLogic. According to a record of iLogic's own bank receipts and payments seen by Reuters, iLogic works almost exclusively for the drone maker.

Since 2017, iLogic has imported about $70 million of mostly electronic products into Russia, according to customs records. And according to financial documents examined by iStories and Reuters, nearly 80% of the company's income is from its business with the Special Technology Centre.

In turn, those same financial records show the Special Technology Centre's biggest customer is Russia's Ministry of Defence, which paid it nearly 6 billion rubles ($99 million) between February and August of this year. The examined records list all transfers to and from the company's bank accounts during that period.

Reached by phone, Alexey Terentyev, a top scientist and major shareholder at the Special Technology Centre, said the war has forced it to focus on making drones.

"Due to the high demand for Orlans, we do not have the resources to do something else now. The demand for it is much bigger than we can produce," he said.

U.S. sanctions had caused the company problems, he said, but it always found someone in the world to sell it what it needed. "Sanctions were imposed on us by one of the most powerful countries in the world," Terentyev said. "We should be proud of this."

Terentyev declined to say if iLogic was one of those suppliers. Asked about iLogic, he said, "You ask me about a company I don't know." Reminded that he was listed as one of iLogic's founders in Russian corporate records, he said that if his name showed up in documents, it was "likely correct" he was a shareholder. "Yes, I remember something," he said. But he could not recall what iLogic did. "I have lost connection with this company," he said.

Those corporate records show iLogic is based at the same St Petersburg office address as the Special Technology Centre. Russian corporate records show it was founded by Terentyev and other senior executives of the drone maker or their relatives.

In a brief telephone interview, Roman Agafonnikov, chief executive officer of the Special Technology Centre, said he didn't know anything about iLogic.

FLORIDA

On the coast of southeast Florida, living in a smart suburban house just behind a nature reserve, is another individual who has supplied Russia's drone program.

Igor Kazhdan, a 41-year-old U.S.-Russian citizen, owns a company, IK Tech, that sold about $2.2 million worth of electronics to Russia between 2018 and 2021, Russian customs records show, over 90% of which were sold to iLogic.

Russian custom records show that IK Tech sold iLogic about 1,000 American-made circuit boards between October 2020 and October 2021, at a time when federal law banned the supply, whether directly or via another company, of any such technology to the Special Technology Centre.

The boards, valued at about $274,000, were made by a California manufacturer, Gumstix. The California company told Reuters it is "very concerned" to hear of the shipments and would investigate. It said it does not have customers located in Russia nor any products or services intended for Russia, adding, "We will take all appropriate action to address any identified diversion of products from lawful end use."

Photos taken by Ukraine officials of the inside of a captured drone and seen by Reuters show a Gumstix board that is almost identical to the boards shipped by IK Tech. According to a list of components found on another drone supplied to RUSI and Reuters by the Ukrainian government, the board is part of the Orlan 10's control unit.

Kazhdan's activities drew the attention of U.S. authorities. Just two weeks before Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine and Orlan drones started buzzing overhead, federal agents arrested Kazhdan. He was later indicted on 13 counts of smuggling and evading export controls when selling electronic components to Russia between December 2021 and February 2022.

The indictment related to selling sophisticated amplifiers made by U.S.-based Qorvo that required an export license for Russia. It is not clear from court documents if U.S. authorities were aware of the ultimate destination of the products. The Qorvo amplifiers, which are often used in radar, communications and radio equipment, have been found in the radio communication circuits of Orlan drones, according to Ukrainian officials. In a statement to Reuters, Qorvo said the "declared destination" of the parts mentioned in the case was a distributor in Florida. It added: "Qorvo has never conducted business or had any relationship with IK Tech or Igor Kazhdan, and the Company's products were exported and used without our knowledge."

In November 2022, after Kazhdan pleaded guilty to two charges, a federal judge sentenced him to three years of probation, fined him $200 and ordered him to forfeit about $7,000. If convicted on all counts, Kazhdan could have faced 40 years in prison.

Speaking on the doorstep of his Dania Beach, Florida, home, Kazhdan, wearing a scruffy beard in shorts and short-sleeve shirt, said the scale of his exports to Russia was minimal compared to other companies when it was put to him that he may have been assisting Russia's drone program.

"I just don't think that whatever this is, it's a big deal that you should be writing this story," Kazhdan said. "This is just comical."

Beyond that, he would not speak about the case or his shipments to Russia.

At his November 2022 sentencing hearing, Kazhdan told the Southern Florida District judge that he started doing business with Russia after making contact with importers at a 2016 satellite conference. Soon after, the importers convinced him to skirt reporting and licensing requirements, he said.

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the case.

((This article was reported by Stephen Grey in London, Maurice Tamman in New York and Florida and by Maria Zholobova, a reporter for iStories; Additional reporting by James Pomfret in Hong Kong and Anna Mehler Paperny in Toronto; editing by Janet McBride))

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