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BlockFi Creditors Battle to Keep Their Details Secret

krisanapong detraphiphat

Jack Schickler
Wed, January 11, 2023

BlockFi creditors are seeking to keep their personal details secret, arguing in a Tuesday court filing that they will be at risk of hacks or identity theft if their names are revealed as part of bankruptcy proceedings.

Creditors of the bankrupt crypto lender are seeking to avoid a situation seen in the case of Celsius – where the financial details of hundreds of thousands of users were published as part of standard judicial procedure.

Andrew Vara, a U.S. Department of Justice official responsible for bankruptcy cases, argued in a separate Tuesday filing to the New Jersey bankruptcy court that “disclosure is a basic premise of bankruptcy law,” needed to avoid any suggestion of impropriety – echoing arguments he has previously made in the case of collapsed crypto exchange FTX.

A committee of BlockFi creditors said that giving away a valuable client list for free would reduce the value of the estate – and that publication would make them vulnerable to theft, noting that even experienced bitcoin developers such as Luke Dashr can be the subject of hacks.

In the case of FTX, the motion to publish the creditor list – which has been supported by media companies including Bloomberg and the New York Times – will be considered at a court hearing in Delaware later on Wednesday, Jan. 11, and judge Michael Kaplan is set to consider the BlockFi case at a Jan. 17 hearing.

Read more: Why Celsius Doxxed Hundreds of Thousands of Users

FTX Loan Wiped Out $800M in BlockFi Executives’ Equity, Court Filing Reveals



Jack Schickler
Thu, January 12, 2023 

Executives from bankrupt crypto lender BlockFi granted themselves pay rises of as much as $275,000 each, after they saw $800 million in their equity holdings wiped out because of a loan from collapsed crypto exchange FTX, a court filing shows.

A statement of financial affairs for BlockFi, which was filed Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey, contains thousands of pages of transactions that took place in the run-up to BlockFi's collapse. The firm had gross revenue of over $4 million for 2022 until its bankruptcy filing in November.

Last June, FTX offered BlockFi a $400 million loan, and Thursday's filing details the impact of the loan on 13 of BlockFi’s top executives.

“The massive impact of the FTX transaction on management equity led BlockFi’s board of directors to, among other things, increase base salaries and make retention payments for those that remained in the interest of retaining business critical knowledge and capabilities,” the filing stated.

Founder and CEO Zac Prince, for example, saw $413 million in equity value eliminated, and was compensated by a salary increase from $250,000 to $400,000, while Chief Operating Officer Flori Marquez saw a raise from $225,000 to $500,000, the filing said.

BlockFi lawyers have been at pains to stress that – unlike other crypto bankruptcy cases such as the one for lender Celsius Network – there were no last-minute panicky withdrawals by BlockFi senior executives before its collapse.

No member of the BlockFi management team withdrew any cryptocurrency from the platform after Oct. 14, the filing said, and the management team represented just 0.15% of the $7.7 billion in retail withdrawals over the year.

But the filings nonetheless reveal significant withdrawals made by senior management – including over $9 million taken out of the platform by Prince in April, which the filing said was to pay U.S. federal and state taxes, and his withdrawal of just over $870,000 in August.

Most transaction data is anonymized, with the court due to consider next week whether to unseal creditor information. In a parallel hearing Wednesday, a Delaware judge agreed FTX customer names can remain secret for three months.

CRIMINAL CRYPTO CAPITALI$M
A law firm involved in FTX's bankruptcy is under fire from 4 senators after an ex-customer noted that it earned $20 million from the crypto giant


Pete Syme
Wed, January 11, 2023

Elizabeth Warren and Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder, leaving Manhattan Federal Court in January.

Tom Williams-Pool/Getty Images; Fatih Aktas/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

An FTX customer filed an objection to law firm Sullivan & Cromwell acting as the crypto exchange's counsel.

The objection notes that FTX had already done business with the law firm to the tune of $20.5 million.

Now four senators including Elizabeth Warren have written to the judge with concerns about S&C.

Four US senators have raised concerns about the law firm handling FTX's bankruptcy case, Sullivan & Cromwell, due to the two companies' past relationship.

The bipartisan letter was sent on Monday by Democrats Elizabeth Warren and John Hickenlooper, and Republicans Thom Tillis and Cynthia Lummis, in response to a motion filed in the Delaware bankruptcy court on January 4.

An FTX customer called Warren Winter called on the court to disqualify Sullivan & Cromwell as the debtors' counsel, or otherwise "provide robust disclosures." According to his motion, which Insider has seen, FTX paid the law firm $20.5 million in fees and retainers before it filed for bankruptcy on November 11 last year.

That court filing also pointed out that FTX US's general counsel, Ryne Miller, was a partner at the same law firm which is now investigating possible wrongdoing at FTX.

Winter called Sullivan & Cromwell's appointment as FTX's counsel: "The most flagrant attempt by a fox to guard a henhouse in recent memory."

And now four senators have raised concerns about the law firm too, saying Sullivan & Cromwell "may well bear a measure of responsibility for the damage wrecked on the company's victims."

"Put bluntly, the firm is simply not in a position to uncover the information needed to ensure confidence in any investigation or findings," the letter added.

After FTX's collapse, Senator Warren wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, calling for regulation "before the next crypto catastrophe takes down our economy."

A spokesperson for Sullivan & Cromwell said that John J. Ray III, the former Enron CEO who is now in charge of FTX, has "decades of experience and success in matters similar to the current FTX situation and is supervising a broad team of sophisticated professionals, including conflicts counsel."

"S&C never served as primary outside counsel to any FTX entity. The firm had a limited and largely transactional relationship with FTX and certain affiliates prior to the bankruptcy, as is common, and is disinterested as required by the Bankruptcy Code."

FTX did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.


Letter From US Senators 'Inappropriate,' Won’t Sway Me, FTX Bankruptcy Judge Says

Jack Schickler

COINDESK
Wed, January 11, 2023 

A bipartisan letter from four U.S. senators is an “inappropriate” intervention in bankruptcy proceedings that won’t sway judicial decisions, Delaware Judge John Dorsey told a court hearing Wednesday.

The letter, from John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.) called for an independent examiner to be appointed to investigate the collapse of the crypto exchange.

The letter is an “inappropriate ex parte communication,” Dorsey said, using a legal term for court interventions that don't give all parties the chance to be represented.

“I will make my decisions on the matters referred to in the letter based only upon admissible evidence and the arguments of parties and interest presented in open court,” Dorsey said. The bankruptcy court judge added that the letter “will have no impact whatsoever on my decisions in this case which will only be based upon the facts and law presented by the parties."

The senators’ letter raised questions about ​​the ability of law firm Sullivan & Cromwell to impartially represent the crypto company's new executives. FTX filed for bankruptcy Nov. 11.

FTX finds over $5 billion in liquid assets, judge extends ruling keeping creditor names secret

Alexis Keenan and David Hollerith
Wed, January 11, 2023

A lawyer for FTX said Wednesday in a Federal bankruptcy hearing in Delaware that lawyers have located over $5 billion of cash, liquid cryptocurrency, and other liquid investments belonging to the company measured as of November 11, the date FTX filed for bankruptcy protection.

In a ruling from the bench, federal bankruptcy Judge John T. Dorsey granted FTX's motion to keep its customer's names under seal.

The $5 billion in newfound assets do not include crypto in custody with the Securities Commission of the Bahamas valued at approximately $425 million as of the company's petition date, the attorney added. "That position was valued at about $170 million at the end of 2022. It contains a large amount of FTT and is highly volatile," said Andrew Dietderich a partner at law firm Sullivan & Cromwell advising FTX.

FTX's total located assets were previously said to be around $1 billion on December 20, according to reporting from CoinDesk on what FTX's legal counsel said in a closed meeting with creditors.

The attorney said the FTX’s bankruptcy team is also, "underway on plans to monetize 300 other non-strategic investments with a book value of $4.6 billion."

The total amount of the shortfall between FTX's assets and the amount it owes customers and other creditors, however, is still "not yet clear," Dietderich added.

"We know what Alameda did with the money," Dietderich told the court about FTX's associated hedge fund that prosecutors have alleged illegally used FTX customer funds to carry out risky investments.

Dietderich also said the debtor bankruptcy team knows Bankman-Fried instructed FTX CTO Gary Wang to create the "Alameda backdoor." Previously mentioned in court filings, this secret feature allowed Alameda to borrow from customers on the exchange without their permission.

According to Dietderich, the size of Alameda's line of credit with FTX was $65 billion.

"It bought planes, houses, threw parties, made political donations, made personal loans to its founders. It sponsored the FTX Arena in Miami, a Formula One team, the League of Legends, Coachella, and many other businesses, events, and personalities. It gambled on cryptocurrency investments, often unsuccessfully."
Redacted creditor names

Also at issue during Wednesday's hearing was whether names and personally identifying information of FTX’s 9 million customers should be kept confidential while the company works to reorganize or sell the troubled firm.

"I'm going to overrule the objections and allow [the names] to remain sealed at this point," Judge Dorsey said following arguments from several parties. "But I'm not going to leave it open for [six months]. I'm going to...approve an order that extended it for three months."

In court, Dietderich revealed the company had identified more than 9 million customer accounts with about 120 billion associated transactions.

Kevin Cofsky of Perella Weinberg Partners testified that FTX's customer lists, including both names and contact information, are a key company asset.

"A significant component of the business is the customers themselves," Cofsky told Judge Dorsey, reasoning that the company would maintain more value it could pass on to creditors and prospective buyers if customers are protected from poaching by industry competitors.

“That will give buyers confidence that…what they are buying has value,” Cofsky told Judge Dorsey.

In a declaration filed in the proceedings, Cofsky added that customers would not have anticipated their private information being disclosed, explaining that "a hallmark feature of cryptocurrency is a holder's ability to remain anonymous to the public."

In early December, a group of media organizations including Bloomberg L.P., Dow Jones, The New York Times Company, and The Financial Times filed a motion to intervene in the bankruptcy proceedings to reject the request of the debtors to keep FTX creditor names private. Media companies indicated in their arguments the public's right to access the names.

The U.S. Trustee joined in the news organizations' arguments that FTX's customer names should be made public, given that bankruptcy proceedings usually require disclosure of creditor names and addresses.

Wednesday's hearing follows a Tuesday court filing in the bankruptcy of crypto lender BlockFi in which creditors asked their personal information remain under seal. The U.S. Trustee has objected to the motion, arguing that "disclosure is the basic premise of bankruptcy." The issue will be covered in a January 17 hearing.

Customers of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius, which includes hundreds of thousands of retail investors, had their information published in a publicly available court record at the beginning of October.

The court will have a status hearing Jan. 20 on the matter.

Sam Bankman-Fried's trading firm borrowed $65 billion from FTX via a 'secret backdoor' to fund donations and a luxury lifestyle, bankruptcy court hears

Pete Syme
Thu, January 12, 2023 

Sam Bankman-Fried arrives at Manhattan federal court on January 3.

Gotham/GC Images

Bankruptcy lawyers revealed Sam Bankman-Fried's Alameda had access to $65 billion from FTX.

The customer loans were made available via a backdoor created by FTX cofounder Gary Wang, they said.

The money was used for luxury purchases like planes, parties, and political donations.

Sam Bankman-Fried instructed his FTX cofounder Gary Wang to create a "secret" backdoor to enable his trading firm Alameda to borrow $65 billion of clients' money from the exchange without their permission, the Delaware bankruptcy court was told Wednesday.

Wang was told to create a "backdoor, a secret way for Alameda to borrow from customers on the exchange without permission," according to FTX's lawyer, Andrew Dietderich.

"Mr Wang created this back door by inserting a single number into millions of lines of code for the exchange, creating a line of credit from FTX to Alameda, to which customers did not consent," he added. "And we know the size of that line of credit. It was $65 billion."

The CFTC made similar allegations when it brought charges against Wang in December. But the value of that line of credit hasn't been revealed before now. The CFTC then described it as "virtually unlimited."

And in November, Reuters reported that SBF had moved $10 billion between the two companies, with a further $2 billion still unaccounted for.

Dietderich told the court that with the $65 billion back door, Alameda "bought planes, houses, threw parties, made political donations."

Sam Bankman-Fried is the second-highest donor to Democratic causes, but says he donated just as much to Republicans using "dark" money.

$256.3 million of Bahamian real estate was also registered in FTX's name – including 15 condos in the same building. Other court filings say FTX spent $6.9 million on "meals and entertainment" in just nine months.

The rest of the money went towards personal loans, sponsorships, and investments, according to Dietderich.

"We know that all this has left a shortfall, in value to repay customers and creditors," he added. That amount "will depend on the size of the claims pool and our recovery efforts."

The court heard how FTX had so far recovered $5 billion of cash, crypto, and securities, with "plans to monetize over 300 other non-strategic investments" worth $4.6 billion.

Bankman-Fried's attorney did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent outside normal working hours.

Sam Bankman-Fried launches Substack: ‘I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away’

Mary Ann Azevedo
Thu, January 12, 2023 

FTX founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried launched his own Substack newsletter today, in a very unusual move for someone who was recently arrested and is facing eight counts of U.S. criminal charges.

In a post titled “FTX Pre-Mortem Overview,” Bankman-Fried maintains his innocence surrounding the collapse and bankruptcy of FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange he founded in 2019 that went on to raise $2 billion in funding and achieve a valuation of a staggering $32 billion.

He wrote:

I didn’t steal funds, and I certainly didn’t stash billions away. Nearly all of my assets were and still are utilizable to backstop FTX customers. I have, for instance, offered to contribute nearly all of my personal shares in Robinhood to customers–or 100%, if the Chapter 11 team would honor my D&O legal expense indemnification.

When Bankman-Fried stepped down from FTX in November, Enron turnaround veteran John J. Ray III was appointed as the new CEO.

The 30-year-old former billionaire continues to insist that if he were not “forced” to declare bankruptcy that the company would have been able to repay all its customers. He wrote: “There were numerous potential funding offers–including signed LOIs post chapter 11 filing totaling over $4b. I believe that, had FTX International been given a few weeks, it could likely have utilized its illiquid assets and equity to raise enough financing to make customers substantially whole.”

On January 3, Bankman-Fried pled not guilty to all eight counts of criminal charges, which included wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to misuse customer funds, among others. Bankman-Fried could face up to 115 years in jail if convicted on all charges. His trial date has been set for October 2, 2023.

Last month, a U.S. judge released Bankman-Fried on a $250 million bail bond after he was extradited to America from the Bahamas. The bail package allowed Bankman-Fried to remain under house arrest at his parents’ home in Palo Alto, California.

In the Substack, Bankman-Fried went on to share what he described as “a record of FTX US’s balance sheet as of when I handed it off.”

Image Credits: SBF Substack

He went on to say:

If FTX had been given a few weeks to raise the necessary liquidity, I believe it would have been able to make customers substantially whole. I didn’t realize at the time that Sullivan & Cromwell—via pressure to instate Mr. Ray and file Chapter 11, including for solvent companies like FTX US–would potentially quash those efforts. I still think that, if FTX International were to reboot today, there would be a real possibility of making customers substantially whole. And even without that, there are significant assets available for customers.

I’ve been, regrettably, slow to respond to public misperceptions and material misstatements. It took me some time to piece together what I could–I don’t have access to much of the relevant data, much of which is for a company (Alameda) I wasn’t running at the time.

This is not the first time the disgraced founder has taken to airing his thoughts publicly. In November, he said in a series of tweets that FTX International was looking to raise liquidity and was in talks with a “number of players.” Then in December, he talked from an undisclosed location in the Bahamas with reporter Andrew Ross Sorkin for a DealBook event, a discussion that his legal team “very much” did not approve of, he told Sorkin with a boyish grin.

Former FTX CEO SBF pleads not guilty to US criminal charges

India Moving Some Troops From Sinking Town Near China Border

petition seeks to halt construction of a hydroelectric project that it says is causing the sinking 

Sudhi Ranjan Sen
Thu, January 12, 2023 

(Bloomberg) -- India has relocated some troops from areas surrounding a sinking Himalayan town that’s near a disputed border with China, Army Chief Manoj Pande said.

Pande didn’t give details on how many soldiers would be moved away for safety but said over 20 military installations around the town of Joshimath in the northern state of Uttarakhand have sustained “medium to minor damage.”

“We remain prepared to relocate more units if required, but our operational preparedness remains intact,” Pande said in an annual address of the state of the army’s operations. “There has been no impact to our readiness.”

The gateway town for mountain expeditions and Hindu pilgrimage sites like Badrinath has seen rapid infrastructure growth plus massive tourist footfalls. This has, in turn, damaged its ecosystem and triggered frequent landslides and flash floods.

The area is a also a key Indian garrison center to defend a large portion of the disputed 3,488-kilometer (2,170-mile) border with China known as the Line of Actual Control. India has over 20,000 troops and military hardware including artillery and missile systems located in the area.

The Supreme Court of India is set to hear a plea from a local Hindu religious leader on Jan. 16 after cracks began to appear in more than 600 buildings in the tiny town. The petition seeks to halt construction of a hydroelectric project that it says is causing the sinking The crisis has reignited a decades-old development versus environment debate in the region.

While relief and rescue operations for affected families are underway, the lawsuit in India’s top court has sought legal intervention in halting work on a tunnel being built by state-run NTPC Ltd. for its nearby hydroelectric power project until it’s examined and approved by a panel of geologists, hydrologists and engineers.

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Bank to pay $31M redlining settlement, DOJ's largest ever


Justice Department  Redlining Assistant Attorney General of the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division Kristen Clarke, right, speaks next to United States Attorney Martin Estrada, of the California central division, while announcing the largest redlining case in American history during a news conference Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023, at the Second Baptist Church in Los Angeles. 

(AP Photo/Stefanie Dazio)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
KEN SWEET
Thu, January 12, 2023 

NEW YORK (AP) — The Justice Department accused Los Angeles-based City National Bank on Thursday of discrimination by refusing to underwrite mortgages in predominately Black and Latino communities, requiring the bank to pay more than $31 million in the largest redlining settlement in department history.

City National is the latest bank in the past several years to be found systematically avoiding lending to racial and ethnic minorities, a practice that the Biden administration has set up its own task force to combat.

The Justice Department says that between 2017 and 2020, City National avoided marketing and underwriting mortgages in majority Black and Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. Other banks operating in those neighborhoods received six times the number of mortgage applications that City National did, according to federal officials.

The Justice Department alleges City National, a bank with roughly $95 billion in assets, was so reluctant to operate in neighborhoods where most of the residents are people of color, the bank only opened one branch in those neighborhoods in the past 20 years. In comparison, the bank opened or acquired 11 branches in that time period. In addition, no employee was dedicated to underwriting mortgages at that one branch, unlike branches in majority white neighborhoods.

“This settlement should send a strong message to the financial industry that we expect lenders to serve all members of the community and that they will be held accountable when they fail to do so,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who leads the Justice Department's civil rights division, said in a statement.

Attorney General Merrick Garland has prioritized civil rights prosecutions since taking the helm at the Justice Department in 2021 and the department, in the Biden administration, has put a higher priority on redlining cases than under previous administrations.

The Biden task force includes the Justice Department as well as bank regulators like the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and is focused not only on explicit forms of redlining but also cases where computer algorithms may cause banks to discriminate against Black and Latino borrowers.

Despite a half-century of laws designed to combat redlining, the racist practice continues across the country and the long-term effects are still felt to this day. The average net worth of a Black family is a fraction of a typical white household, and homes in historically redlined neighborhoods are still worth less than homes in non-redlined communities.

As part of the settlement, City National will create a $29.5 million loan subsidy fund for loans to Black and Latino borrowers, and spend $1.75 million on advertising, community outreach and financial education programs to reach minority borrowers.

In a statement, City National said it disagreed with the Justice Department's allegations, but that it will “nonetheless support the DOJ in its efforts to ensure equal access to credit for all consumers, regardless of race.”

The Justice Department said City National cooperated as part of the redlining investigation and is working to resolve its issues in other markets, as well.

Clarke announced the settlement Thursday morning at a historic Black Baptist church in South Los Angeles that was an important force in the civil rights movement and has been the venue for speeches by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and others.

The settlement with City National is the largest settlement with the Justice Department. A settlement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development with Associated Bank in 2015 involved the bank making a commitment to make $200 million in increased lending in minority-majority neighborhoods, along with a $10 million subsidy fund similar to the one agreed to by City National.

___

AP Reporter Stefanie Dazio contributed to this report from Los Angeles.

Could China’s Yuan replace the U.S. dollar as the global dominant currency? How the Asian nation's trade supremacy is quickly boosting its reserve status

Vishesh Raisinghani
Thu, January 12, 2023 

Could China’s Yuan replace the U.S. dollar as the global dominant currency? How the Asian nation's trade supremacy is quickly boosting its reserve status

China’s economy has been immensely successful by most measures. Its gross domestic product (GDP) of $17.7 trillion is second only to the United States. It’s also the third-largest trading nation in the world — behind only the U.S. and E.U.

However, China’s currency — the renminbi — only accounts for 3% of global trade. Compare that to the 87% market share of the U.S. dollar.
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Despite its economic and political power, the country doesn’t dominate the global flow of fiat currency. 

Now, it’s looking to change that.

Here is China’s multitrillion, multidecade plan to replace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

How do currencies achieve reserve status?

Achieving reserve currency status isn’t a formal process. Instead, it’s like winning a popularity contest.

The most popular currency for global trade and cross-border commerce emerges as the de facto reserve currency. The “popularity” of a currency is simply based on the perception of security and resilience of the issuing country. This is the asset or currency that most central banks across the world prefer to hold in reserve, which is why the dominant asset earns the label of “reserve currency.”

Since 1450, there have been six major reserve currency periods. Portugal dominated the global reserves until 1530 when Spain became stronger. Currencies issued by the Netherlands and France dominated world trade for much of the 17th and 18th centuries. But the emergence of the British empire made the Pound Sterling the reserve currency until the end of the First World War.

The U.S. dollar displaced the pound just as America gained economic superiority over Britain. More than 75% of global transactions have been completed in U.S. dollars since 2008. The dollar also accounts for more than 60% of foreign debt issuance and 59% of global central bank reserves.

Although the dollar’s grip on all these markets and instruments has been gradually declining in recent years, no other currency comes close to these levels. The Chinese renminbi certainly isn’t a viable alternative, but geopolitical and macroeconomic trends support its rise to dominance.

China’s plan

Last year, Chinese leaders made it clear that they wanted to boost the renminbi’s profile as a reserve currency. China’s economy and trade flows are large enough to support such a move. However, the country now needs to convince foreign central bankers to start holding the Chinese Yuan (the principal unit of the renminbi) in reserve.

In July 2022, The People's Bank of China announced a collaboration with five nations and the Bank for International Settlements to achieve this. China, along with Indonesia, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chile would each contribute 15 billion yuan, about $2.2 billion, to the Renminbi Liquidity Arrangement.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Yuan has already become a de facto reserve currency in Russia. Russian leadership turned to China after facing sanctions from the West due to its invasion of Ukraine. Now, 17% of Russia’s foreign reserves are denominated in yuan. The yuan is also the third most demanded currency on The Moscow Exchange.

As these partnerships become stronger, the yuan’s status as a reserve currency could be further entrenched.

The global impact

Economists including Barry Eichengreen of the University of California Berkeley and Camille Macaire of France’s central bank published a paper analyzing the yuan’s potential as a reserve currency. The researchers argue that replacing the dollar isn’t going to be easy or quick. However, they found evidence that yuan reserves were steadily increasing in countries that had tighter trade relations with China.

This growing influence could make the yuan an alternative to the U.S. dollar in a “multipolar” world. In other words, China might chip away at the dollar’s influence over time. The study’s authors said the renminbi’s current position was similar to the U.S. dollar in the 1950s. Based on that comment, it could be just a few decades before the yuan gains parity.

If the forecasts are correct, long-term investors should consider some exposure to yuan-denominated assets and Chinese stocks with significant yuan earnings.

Numbers of refugees, asylum-seekers increase in Germany


A federal police officer guards an arrested migrant at a police station on the German border town with Poland in Frankfurt an der Oder, Germany, on Oct. 28, 2021. More than 244,000 people applied for asylum in Germany last year, and more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees came to the country looking for shelter from Russia's war, the government said Wednesday Jan. 11, 2023.

 (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)
ASSOCIATED PRESS

Wed, January 11, 2023 

BERLIN (AP) — More than 244,000 people applied for asylum in Germany last year, and more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees came to the country looking for shelter from Russia's war, the government said Wednesday.

The No. 1 country of origin for asylum-seekers was Syria, followed by Afghanistan, Turkey and Iraq. Ukrainian refugees don’t need to apply for asylum, because they immediately received temporary residency status.

Compared to 2021, the number of asylum-seekers went up last year by 27.9%. Especially during the last three months of 2022, numbers increased as asylum-seekers tried to reach Germany through the Balkan route.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's “war of aggression against Ukraine has triggered the largest flight movement in Europe since World War II," German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said, thanking Germans for welcoming refugees from Ukraine with overwhelming support.

“In other parts of the world, too, people are fleeing war and terror, as reflected in the significant increase in the number of asylum applications filed in 2022,” Faeser added.

She said that the government was trying to integrate those who arrive in Germany faster than in the past by offering language classes immediately, among other measures. The government is also trying to speed up deportations of those whose asylum pleas are rejected.

Post-Roe, is adoption a realistic alternative to abortion?

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor
Wed, January 11, 2023 

Five decades ago, Kathy Aderhold was told to keep a secret.

The nursing student hid the reason for her monthslong absence from siblings and friends. She couldn’t bring a camera where she went, she says, let alone her full name. The other girls called her Kathy H.

The secret weighed 6 pounds, 3 ounces when she opened her eyes to the world in the hospital wing of a Salvation Army maternity home in Omaha, Nebraska, in January 1972. For a few days after the birth of her daughter, Ms. Aderhold recalls being allowed to sit in a storeroom for one hour, away from the other mothers, and hold the soft-haired wonder she named Jessica Ann.

“Every day I told her I would find her again,” says Ms. Aderhold, who knew what came next.

Facing pressure from her Catholic family as an unwed 20-year-old, and without counseling about alternatives, Ms. Aderhold says she felt she had no choice but to “surrender” her baby to a Catholic organization for adoption.

Adoption was promoted as a way to save Ms. Aderhold, and other middle-class white women of her generation, from social shame. Instead, she says, secrecy and loss shattered her sense of self-worth.

Her story may seem far removed from adoption today, which Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito offers as an alternative to abortion in his opinion for Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. That June ruling ended women’s nearly 50-year right to abortion through Roe v. Wade, decided a year after Ms. Aderhold left the maternity home, childless.

According to the justice, Americans who support abortion restrictions note that “a woman who puts her newborn up for adoption today has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home.”

Yet, while abortion opponents hail adoption as a mutual blessing for parents on both sides, the number of families wanting to adopt has long outpaced the number of women who choose to relinquish. And despite an increasingly open process in which birth mothers have a say in choosing a “suitable home” for their child, adoption remains a rare choice for pregnant women.

Several adoption practitioners interviewed doubt the Dobbs decision will change this. But some see the fresh attention to infant adoption, where concerns about informed consent still exist, as an opportunity to further improve the process. Key changes that could better meet expectant mothers’ needs include enhanced transparency and openness, along with better representation and resources.

“Adoption is complicated, and it should not be seen as a simple solution to an unintended pregnancy,” says Janice Goldwater, founder and CEO of Adoptions Together, a nonprofit agency in Maryland. Beyond a one-time legal event, she adds, adoption has lifelong implications. “In a sense, we have to go against our biology,” she says. “We’re wired as living creatures to care for our young.”
Secrecy and the sexual revolution

While stigma associated with unplanned pregnancies outside marriage still lingers in some communities, the social push for secrecy has largely dissolved. White women were the primary ones pressured to relinquish their babies during what’s called the American “Baby Scoop” era – between the end of World War II through the early 1970s.

Ms. Aderhold remembers routing letters home to Shelby, Nebraska, through someone in California, so that no one in her small hometown could detect that she was just 100 miles east in Omaha in a maternity home she likened to a “jail.” As she waited out her pregnancy, she says a priest warned her she’d go to hell if she kept the child. (The Salvation Army, in whose facility she lived and gave birth, did not respond to requests for comment. The agency listed on Ms. Aderhold’s relinquishment record, which later “reorganized” as Catholic Social Services of Southern Nebraska, hasn’t offered adoption services since the ’90s, says executive director Katie Patrick.)

Over time, the sexual revolution reduced the emphasis on secrecy before and after birth, as stigma around pregnancy outside of marriage receded for well-off white women. For low-income women of color, a new stigma took hold, that of the “welfare queen.”

The end of the Baby Scoop era also coincided with a dramatic decline in relinquishment rates by never-married white women. A summary of research by Child Welfare Information Gateway offers “social acceptance of single parenthood” and a higher number of unmarried mothers in their 20s rather than their teens as possible reasons. Other researchers, including those at the Guttmacher Institute, attribute declines, in large part, to abortion.

Today, private domestic adoption in the United States – sometimes called infant adoption – is a complex institution subject to varying state laws. Families can match either through private, state-licensed agencies, or independently through self-matching or with the help of lawyers or unlicensed facilitators. It’s unclear how many infant adoptions are arranged outside traditional agencies, since the internet plays an outsize, untracked, and largely unsupervised role in expectant women and potential adoptive parents finding one another.

Faced with declining placements through adoption agencies, including prominent religious ones, many have scaled back their adoption services or stopped them entirely in recent years. Michigan-based Bethany Christian Services, a large evangelical organization, announced a reduction to its domestic infant adoption programs in the spring. According to a spokesperson this month, the decision to pause the intake of families at many of its locations remains in place despite the overturning of Roe.

Whether arranged through agencies or independently, some 25,700 private domestic adoptions took place in 2019, estimates the advocacy and membership organization National Council For Adoption in Alexandria, Virginia. That includes adoptions by relatives but excludes those by stepparents and is not limited to infants. NCFA research counts nearly 6,100 fewer in 2020, as the pandemic began, though changes to methodology make those figures hard to compare with prior years.

Unlike international adoption or adoption from state-run foster care, private domestic adoption rates haven’t been consistently tracked by the federal government, and the data NCFA collects from states varies widely.

“It’s hard to overstate how little we know, really, about private adoption in this country,” says Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies abortion and adoption.

Yet, however many adoptions occur annually and however mainstream the process has become, it remains the “first choice for very, very few women, whether or not they actually end up relinquishing,” says Dr. Sisson. Still, she estimates that the overturning of Roe could mean up to some 10,000 more private, infant adoptions a year. Comparatively, there were 930,160 abortions in 2020 counted by Guttmacher, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

“It grew truly into an incredible relationship”

Adoption professionals who resist one-to-one comparisons of adoption and abortion argue that relinquishing parental rights isn’t a reproductive decision but a parenting one. And though a birth mother’s desire for continued contact with her child may evolve over time, research suggests it can help her process grief.

Every family situation is unique, but “the data is pretty overwhelmingly clear that maintaining contact has benefits for everyone that’s involved,” says Ryan Hanlon, president and CEO at NCFA.

Open adoptions, today considered the norm, can range from semi-open with limited contact through a third party, to fully open arrangements with visits. But no level of openness can be guaranteed.

Jess Nelson in Michigan has seen both the precariousness and value of open adoptions. In 2011, when she became pregnant in her early 20s while finishing college, Ms. Nelson turned to adoption after it became too late for her to access an abortion.

“I chose adoption so that I wouldn’t have to struggle being a single mom,” she says. “I wanted more for her life than I could give her at the time.”

Ms. Nelson’s agency didn’t provide post-placement support, she says, and the adoptive family effectively closed what had been discussed as an open adoption involving text and Facebook messages. Within the same month that the adoption was finalized, the family sent her a Christmas card, she recalls, then never contacted her again.

But Ms. Nelson has also witnessed the power of the alternative.

When she later became pregnant unexpectedly in 2017, she “self-matched” with an adoptive family through a friend of a friend, outside of an agency. She also found a counselor to help her work through her grief and trauma. Her second adoption remains open through regular communication and visits, she says. She has joined the adoptive family for a few holidays, including Christmas morning.

“It grew truly into an incredible relationship,” says Ms. Nelson, who works as a community manager at PairTree, an adoption startup based in Seattle, where she supports expectant mothers who create adoption plans.

The extent to which agreements outlining contact after placement are legally enforceable is hard to pin down. About half of states have some provision for enforceability, according to NCFA tracking as of July 2021, but the specifics vary widely.

Abrazo Adoption Associates, a Texas agency that specializes in open adoptions, has a voluntary, customizable post-placement contact agreement for defining how, when, and with whom outreach is permitted between adoptive and birth families. But the document, which parents on both sides sign, underscores that such contact is a “privilege,” not necessarily a right (as some Texas law firms also note), regarding private adoptions in the state.

“In an open adoption, there has to be a certain level of accountability,” says Elizabeth Jurenovich, founder and executive director of Abrazo. “There has to be a willingness on [both sides] to put the child’s best interests at the heart of everything that’s done,” she says.

The prospect of openness wasn’t a make-or-break factor for Keshia Allsup when she chose adoption. But the Texan in her early 20s says it did ease the placement process.

In the summer of 2021, Ms. Allsup juggled work in food service while raising two kids under the age of 3 on her own. Finding herself unexpectedly pregnant, she couldn’t imagine affording time off with a third baby – much less diaper money.

“I knew that I would not be able to give him the life he deserves,” she says.

Ms. Allsup is against abortion, with limited exceptions, so didn’t consider it for herself. Through an online search, she chose Abrazo Adoption Associates, because the nonprofit agency mostly serves infertile adults and she wanted to help someone who couldn’t birth a child on their own. Though leaving the hospital without the baby was hard, she considers her unplanned pregnancy a “blessing.”

“Maybe not for me, but for somebody else it was a blessing,” she says.
Transparency before, during, and after adoption

Angie Swanson-Kyriaco found herself unexpectedly pregnant in 1997. She says she was underemployed and dealing with an abusive partner, and abortion was logistically not an option.

She thumbed through the Yellow Pages and found a local adoption lawyer, who helped her connect with the adoptive parents she ultimately chose. But she says the attorney ended up representing both her and the adoptive family, though she didn’t pay any of those legal fees.

“I didn’t have an advocate for me and my child, because the focus goes to the prospective adoptive parents and their needs,” says Ms. Swanson-Kyriaco, executive director of MPower Alliance, a San Francisco-based support network for birth parents. Her organization offers grants for mental health counseling, education, and financial emergencies – examples of post-placement support that other professionals would like to see expanded.

The frequency of dual representation in adoption today is unknown, but the Academy of Adoption & Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (AAAA) is clear in its Birth Parent’s Bill of Rights: “You have the right to be represented by your own attorney at no cost to you.”

But it’s impossible to ensure birth mothers receive independent counsel.

“That’s the problem. … We can’t help something we don’t know anything about,” says New Jersey attorney Deb Guston, adoption director at AAAA.

In light of ongoing concerns about the potential for coercion – including the legal and ethical minefield around what expenses hopeful adoptive parents can cover for an expectant woman – birth mother advocates say education and transparency are key.

Part of that transparency has come from birth mothers, or “first” mothers, themselves, who have gained visibility over decades of going public with their adoption stories. Advocacy and support groups like Concerned United Birthparents, which emerged in the ’70s, have encouraged that community.

“Maybe the hardest part of all was that for 35 years, I was in emotional isolation,” says CUB board member and activist Leslie Pate Mackinnon, a first mother herself, living in Asheville, North Carolina. “I didn’t know there was another woman out there who had been through what I’d been through.”

She’s among the critics who see adoption leaving expectant mothers open to intimidation, because of their often-desperate situations. So is Renee Gelin, whose regret over having placed her second child for adoption led her to co-found Saving Our Sisters. It works to help expectant mothers choose family preservation over adoption, she says, by connecting them with resources – like education about their rights and financial aid averaging $2,500 – through a national network of volunteers.

“There’s a lot of people who make a lot of money, you know, separating mothers and their babies instead of supporting them. … We are filling that gap,” says Ms. Gelin, the nonprofit’s president, based in the Tampa, Florida, area.

Many expectant mothers decide to shoulder the challenges of parenting rather than give up their parental rights, because they’re attached to their child, notes Laura Sullivan, program director at the Choice Network agency in Ohio, which serves around 300 pregnant women a year and facilitates about 15 adoptions annually. Despite new abortion restrictions across the country, Ms. Sullivan says she is still referring interested clients to abortion funds and clinics as part of Choice Network’s options counseling.

“We believe that adoption can’t be a wholehearted and ethical choice that a woman makes unless all options are available to her,” she says.
A friendship

The only option Ms. Aderhold felt she had at the Nebraska maternity home five decades ago was to relinquish her child. But Ms. Aderhold, now based in Colorado, never let go of her daughter emotionally. Decades after giving birth, she searched for her for months, eventually cold-calling her in the late ’90s.

Kathy H. had kept her promise to Jessica Ann.

Except her name is Corry Key.

The women met at the Denver International Airport the following winter. Asked to describe the encounter in separate interviews, both choose the same word. “Surreal.”

Dr. Key grew up in what she calls a “wholesome” Catholic home, as an animal lover who eventually became a veterinarian. She says she was raised fully aware of being adopted and recognizes she may be “lucky” for generally not having felt compelled to find a genetic “missing piece.” Now with children of her own and living in Dardanelle, Arkansas, she says she was also concerned how her parents would feel if they learned she was searching.

“I’ve always had a very positive feeling about adoption because of being adopted, and that’s why I have my whole life been very pro-life,” says Dr. Key, who is Catholic.

That’s tough for Ms. Aderhold, who supports abortion rights but says abortion was “not ever in the picture” for her in the early ’70s. Her experience not only soured her perception of adoption, but made her leave her Catholic faith. Yet despite their differing views, both agree their friendship is upheld by mutual respect and love.

Ms. Aderhold, who became a nurse and midwife and raised two children, has shared openly about her experience for years, served on adoption-related boards, and spoken with media. Now retired, she serves as a “search angel,” applying her skills in genetic genealogy to help others find long-lost relatives.

In her Denver home, opposite the front door hangs a painting.

“It’s really special to me,” says Ms. Aderhold, pausing at the frame.

In muted hues, a woman cradles an infant. Eyes are closed as they embrace.

Dr. Key says she bought it as a gift, recognizing “she missed out on a lot of that with me.”

Related stories

Talk of prosecuting women for abortion pills roils antiabortion movement

Caroline Kitchener and Ellen Francis
Wed, January 11, 2023 

The Justice Department issued a legal opinion that the U.S. Postal Service may deliver abortion pills to people in states that have banned or restricted the procedure. 

(Allen G. Breed/AP)

Alabama's attorney general became the most prominent Republican official yet to suggest that pregnant women could be prosecuted for taking abortion pills, saying in recent days that a state ban targeting those who facilitate abortions does not preclude the state from seeking to penalize women under other existing laws.

The comment reflects a simmering divide within the antiabortion movement, which has long sought to treat women seeking abortions as "victims" and not as targets for punishment.

In the wake of the June Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, movement leaders promised that women had nothing to fear - even as Republican leaders in more than a dozen states in the South and Midwest moved aggressively to enact strict abortion bans, though almost always targeting providers rather than patients.

Alabama's near-total ban, which took effect soon after the Supreme Court ruling, exempts abortion seekers from prosecution, including penalties only for those who help people obtain abortions. In his statement, Attorney General Steve Marshall's office suggests that pregnant women could still be prosecuted under a separate 2006 state law that has been used to punish women for drug consumption during pregnancy.

The abortion ban "does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law - which the Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed protects unborn children," Marshall's office said in a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday. It was first reported Saturday by 1819 News.

Underscoring the tensions surrounding the issue, a spokesman for Marshall issued a subsequent statement in response to The Post that appeared to back away from endorsing the prosecution of abortion seekers. "The Attorney General's beef is with illegal providers, not women," said Cameron Mixon, Marshall's deputy communications director, in response to a request to interview Marshall.

Marshall's statement comes at a moment of turmoil for the antiabortion movement, with many Republicans still reeling from a 2022 midterm election where voters turned out in droves to support abortion rights a few months after the high court's ruling. As Congress and state legislatures convene for the new year, some lawmakers are urging caution on the abortion issue, while others press for further restrictions.

The rise of abortion pills has been a particular sore point for many antiabortion advocates, frustrated that the fall of Roe has not succeeded in halting abortions in states where the procedure is banned. Galvanized by a recent decision by the Food and Drug Administration to allow retail pharmacies to dispense abortion pills in states where abortion is legal, as well as an emerging network distributing abortion pills illegally, some hard-line Republicans are seeking ways to further crack down on the procedure.

Marshall's office issued the statement amid questions about the FDA's decision, invoking a state law that had been passed to protect children from the risks of home-based methamphetamine labs. Prosecutors have applied these kinds of laws to pregnant women who have taken drugs or exposed their fetuses to drugs.

Laws targeting women for taking drugs during pregnancy date to the 1980s and '90s, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis who specializes in abortion issues and the author of the upcoming book "Roe: The History of a National Obsession." At the time, she said, the antiabortion movement was looking for ways to establish various laws that treated a fetus as a person.

"The basic premise is something like child abuse or child neglect - but it applies to what happens during pregnancy rather than after," Ziegler said.

Roe prevented these laws from being applied to abortion, Ziegler said. But now that Roe has been overturned, she added, prosecutors could hypothetically use them to target pregnant women in Alabama who seek out abortion pills.

"The fact that it's not just a high-profile politician saying this, but a prosecutor, someone who has the ability to prosecute you," she said. "That's a big deal."

While the Alabama law does not apply to legally prescribed medications, Ziegler said she expects that the attorney general and prosecutors could claim that prescriptions aren't valid for drugs that are illegal within state lines.

In addition, many pregnant women are obtaining abortion pills without prescriptions.

Even if prosecutors do not actually bring charges under the law Marshall referenced, abortion providers worry that his statement could have a chilling effect, making women think they could be prosecuted.

"It's a scare tactic," said Robin Marty, the director at West Alabama Women's Center, a health clinic that provided abortion services before the ban took effect. Marshall "is going to scare some people out of obtaining medication or leaving the state and there is no prenatal care available for these people."

National antiabortion groups were quick to distance themselves from Marshall's statement, reiterating that they are focused on prosecuting the people who are distributing abortion pills illegally.

Comments like Marshall's "lead to confusion about what the pro-life movement's goals and objectives are," said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, a leading national antiabortion group. "We're focusing on the cartel. We're focusing on the manufacturers and the distributors of these dangerous drugs."

A woman seeking an abortion, Hawkins added, is the "second victim of the abortion industry."

Marshall, 58, is a staunch abortion opponent. Within hours of the Supreme Court decision, he had announced that abortion was no longer legal in Alabama, declaring his state "a protector of unborn life." Since June, he has continued to push for antiabortion policies, suggesting that those who help Alabama women obtain out-of-state abortions could be prosecuted under state law.

He won his election in November by more than 30 points, making Marshall one of several antiabortion Republicans to secure easy reelection in conservative states.

Marshall also responded this week to a legal opinion issued by the Justice Department, which said that the U.S. Postal Service may deliver abortion pills to people in states that have banned or restricted the procedure.

In his statement, Marshall maintained this would not affect Alabama. "Elective abortion - including abortion pills - is illegal in Alabama. Nothing about the Justice Department's guidance changes that," his office said. "Anyone who remotely prescribes abortion pills in Alabama does so at their own peril: I will vigorously enforce Alabama law to protect unborn life."

Many state legislatures will be looking to further restrict abortion pills during their 2023 sessions. In Texas, lawmakers are considering a variety of creative and extreme proposals, including one that would require internet providers to block abortion-pill websites in the same way they can target child pornography.

While mainstream antiabortion groups have steered clear of prosecuting pregnant women who use abortion pills, they are eager to crack down on those involved in pill networks. Texas Right to Life, the largest antiabortion group in the state, has created a team of advocates assigned to investigate citizens who might be distributing abortion pills illegally.

Hawkins said she has started meeting with Republican attorneys general to discuss the best ways to halt the flow of abortion pills.

Hawkins said if she were a prosecutor, she would focus on the people who are mailing the pills, which she described as "a much better use of resources."

"That's where you are going to see the most impact made."

- - -

The Washington Post's Perry Stein, Frances Stead Sellers and Rachel Roubein contributed to this report.

Alabama AG Attempts to Walk Back Comment About Prosecuting People Who Take Abortion Pills

Susan Rinkunas

JEZEBEL
Thu, January 12, 2023 

Photo: Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty (Getty Images)

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) told AL.com on Tuesday that women and pregnant people who use abortion pills in the state could be prosecuted. Marshall said he would pursue such cases not under Alabama’s abortion ban, but under a “chemical endangerment” law that was never intended to apply to pregnant people.

It marked the first time Marshall had targeted pregnant people, rather than abortion providers or helpers, the outlet noted. His statement is a big deal and, accordingly, the original story spread like wildfire; it’s been shared more than 6,000 times.

But on Wednesday, the AG’s office seemingly wanted to clarify those remarks. When the Washington Post sought an interview with Marshall, his deputy communications director Cameron Mixon declined to make him available and told the paper: “The Attorney General’s beef is with illegal providers, not women.”

The Post characterized this response as Marshall “appear[ing] to back away from endorsing the prosecution of abortion seekers”—but Marshall didn’t say that. Rather, Mixon’s statement is only clarifying in the sense that it shows Marshall wants to threaten women and pregnant people with prosecution so that they snitch on the doctors and activists who provide abortion pills to people in states with bans.

Anti-abortion groups swear up and down that they don’t want to prosecute people who have abortions. Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told the Post that statements like the one Marshall issued “lead to confusion about what the pro-life movement’s goals and objectives are...We’re focusing on the cartel. We’re focusing on the manufacturers and the distributors of these dangerous drugs.”

But as Robin Marty, director of operations at West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, pointed out on Twitter, all Marshall did was say the quiet part out loud: States need to weaponize the threat of criminalization if they want to prevent self-managed abortions with pills.

“The Attorney General is clearly trying to evoke the pre-Roe days when women were interrogated in hospitals and forced into giving up the names of their illegal providers with threat of arrest or exposure,” Marty told Jezebel in a statement. “Without this weapon, there’s no ability to arrest anyone over an illegal abortion and no real way to stop someone from just ordering pills, receiving them at home, and taking care of themselves. Marshall needs a threat to give this ban teeth, since providers like us have been following the law explicitly. There’s nothing that frightens him more in this situation than women having autonomy and power.”

Marty told the Post that Marshall’s original comment is intended to scare people out of obtaining abortion pills. While WAWC no longer provides abortions because of the state’s ban, the clinic remains open to provide other reproductive services, including caring for people following miscarriages or self-managed abortions.

Alabama AG says women could be prosecuted for taking abortion pills



Nathaniel Weixel
Wed, January 11, 2023 

Alabama’s attorney general said medication abortion remains illegal in the state despite recent Biden administration moves to expand access to the drugs, and indicated that a law regarding the chemical endangerment of a child could be used to prosecute women who use abortion pills.

Alabama’s near-total abortion ban, which took effect immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, targets abortion providers and exempts people who receive abortions from being prosecuted.

In a statement to The Hill, a spokesman for state Attorney General Steve Marshall (R) said individuals could instead face charges under Alabama’s chemical endangerment law, which was passed in 2006 to protect children from exposure to chemicals and fumes from home meth labs.

Prosecutors have since extended the law so it applies to pregnant people who took any drugs while pregnant or exposed their fetuses to drugs.

“The Human Life Protection Act targets abortion providers, exempting women ‘upon whom an abortion is performed or attempted to be performed’ from liability under the law,” Marshall’s office said in a statement emailed to The Hill Wednesday. “It does not provide an across-the-board exemption from all criminal laws, including the chemical-endangerment law — which the Alabama Supreme Court has affirmed and reaffirmed protects unborn children.”

Alabama law says a person commits the felony of chemical endangerment of a child if that person “knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally causes or permits a child to be exposed to, to ingest or inhale, or to have contact with a controlled substance, chemical substance, or drug paraphernalia.”

The Biden administration earlier this month moved to make abortion pills available to patients with a prescription in retail pharmacies in states where abortion is legal. Previously, physicians could only prescribe the pills in person.

In a separate but related move, the Justice Department said the U.S. Postal Service is legally allowed to deliver prescription abortion drugs, even in states that have curtailed access to abortion.

In the opinion, the Justice Department wrote that even in a jurisdiction with restrictive abortion laws, individuals can still lawfully use the drugs mifepristone and misoprostol because there are no prohibitions on abortions necessary to preserve the life of the pregnant person.

Republican-led states have been moving to limit or even completely ban access to the drugs, and advocates have been concerned the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe will embolden even more states to crack down. There has been a growing effort to circumvent the laws by mailing the drugs, often from overseas, directly to people seeking them.

But that theory has not been tested, and it’s unclear if a person who gets the pills by mail and uses them to induce abortion in a state where it is illegal would be protected.

Marshall said the administration’s efforts have no impact in Alabama.

“Promoting the remote prescription and administration of abortion pills endangers both women and unborn children. Elective abortion—including abortion pills—is illegal in Alabama. Nothing about the Justice Department’s guidance changes that,” Marshall wrote in a statement. “Anyone who remotely prescribes abortion pills in Alabama does so at their own peril: I will vigorously enforce Alabama law to protect unborn life.”

 The Hill.

Long life, good education, but no jobs? Kerala model faces test.



Howard LaFranchi

CSM
Wed, January 11, 2023

Over the past half-century, the so-called Kerala model of development has helped transform a poverty-stricken state in southern India into a bastion of economic and social well-being.

From a foundation of equity and inclusion, Kerala built what experts describe as one of the developing world’s first safety nets, and has repeatedly ranked high above the rest of India on the Human Development Index, despite low per capita income. Literacy rates, life expectancy, and human rights records in Kerala state resemble that of developed nations.

It’s a story of transformation and human progress that many Keralites relate with pride – yet increasingly with criticism as well.

“I have witnessed the many improvements that came with the model we followed,” says Jose Dominic, a local business leader who started out as an accountant and built CGH hotels, one of the country’s top hospitality and tourism enterprises. “It’s something Keralites can be proud of, but we must recognize it was a transformation of the 20th century. … In many ways Kerala is not keeping up.”

Indeed, Kerala today is known more for low job growth, high out-migration of its educated young people, and a hostile environment for the private sector, the main driver of growth in India. Foxconn, which manufactures iPhones for Apple in China, came to look at Kerala for a new iPhone plant that will create 30,000 jobs. But the tech manufacturer opted instead for neighboring Tamil Nadu, where it recently opened the first phase of its new India operations.

Of all the challenges facing Kerala today, Mr. Dominic and many other Keralites believe the most important test will be whether the state can adapt its development model to the 21st century to ensure new generations find the same prosperity Keralites built in the past.

“The big issue today for Kerala is this: Can we afford to preserve the benefits of our model,” he says from his spacious home in the business capital of Kochi, “while decentralizing our economy and freeing up the private sector to create jobs so people can stay here?”

The birth of the Kerala model

As India marked a decade as an independent nation in 1957, many in the former crown jewel of British colonies seemed to have little to celebrate. Yes, India was a democracy, but millions of Indians were poor and illiterate, focused day to day on staving off hunger and unable to give much thought to building a better future.

That same year, one Indian state stood out – even drawing the alarmed attention of the Central Intelligence Agency in Washington. Kerala, home to the storied Malabar Coast and once the production end of the spice trade that enriched Europe, became one of the first places in the world to bring a communist government to power through elections.

Kerala’s voters were not attracted by the notion of revolution, historians and political scientists say, but rather by a vision of economic and social development based on universal education, public health, and equity of economic opportunity across castes and religions.

What would come to be known as the Kerala model of economic and social development was born.

Ensuing decades of leftist rule stuck to the model, as Keralites elected governments alternating between the Communist Party (Marxist) and the traditional leftist Congress Party – or what some describe as steady “left or left-of-left” governance. For Brown University sociologist and India expert Patrick Heller, what took hold in Kerala was not so much classic communist rule but “social democratic governance in a third-world setting.”

Although it helped put the state on the map, some worry Kerala has outgrown its model.

“India is young, but Kerala is turning old, and I worry that unless we open the doors to a vibrant economy with jobs for our young people we will end up with an old population living off remittances,” says Mr. Dominic. “That is not a model for Kerala or India.”

Ongoing exodus

There are signs that Kerala’s leftist political leaders recognize the state has deep economic problems – including a crushing debt built up over years of paying for the safety net. Even some of Kerala’s communist leaders acknowledge that the vaunted model needs to change to survive.

Still, for many Keralites, change is not happening fast enough. Welder Shelju Josh plans to take his skills to New Zealand, where his Keralite wife is already working as a nurse.

“Yes I hear about Kerala changing to allow more jobs, but what I see is everyone I know looking to go to another country,” says Mr. Josh.

“Kerala is home but there are no good jobs here,” adds the young father, “so how can you stay?”

Vinod Mathew, a Malayalee (as Keralites call themselves) and longtime economics analyst, says the loss of the Foxconn plant and other blows to Kerala’s self-image may be the jolt the state needs to refashion its model for the 21st century.

“Malayalees have long seen education as their passport to economic freedom,” he says. “But we haven’t continued to move forward, especially in the quality of higher education. Now most families will now beg, borrow, or steal to send their children abroad.”

Indeed some streets in Kochi, Kerala’s largest city and business capital, are crowded with recruitment agencies using giant billboards to attract college students to higher education opportunities in Europe or high-tech jobs in the United States.

Mr. Mathew cites as a product of the Kerala model his mother, who despite having no money growing up was able to rise all the way to a postgraduate degree in social work to fulfill her dream of assisting Kerala in its march forward in living standards and well-being.

“Those kinds of life stories were more the norm in her era,” he says. “Over time we got complacent with the good thing we have, and we forgot to look out at the world and see the change.”

Now, he adds, “young Malayalees with ambitions like my mother had are dreaming of opportunity anywhere but here.”

Indeed, more than 4 million Keralites are estimated to have left for the Gulf alone over the past two decades, while others seek work in Europe, the United States, and even other Indian cities.

Possibility of progress

Of course, there are still examples of the Kerala model at work.

On a recent day in the capital of Trivandrum, a team of seamstresses was busy assembling uniforms for a nearby martial arts school and mass-producing cloth bags to meet new demand created by Kerala’s recent ban on plastic bags.

They work for Needle Touch Garments, a small sewing business that used a $2,400 loan from Kudumbashree, a government program that aims to expand women’s access to the economy, to increase staff and purchase new sewing machines.

“I used to stitch for my own family and sometimes for neighbors, but now with this I’m also fulfilling a dream of helping other women improve their lives and conditions for their families,” says Needle Touch founder Maya Redi, who has a masters degree in commerce.

Kudumbashree’s new young director, Jafir Malik, says that over three decades the organization has assisted hundreds of thousands of Keralite women enter the workforce. But he recognizes that Kudumbashree’s focus on microfinancing for individual women’s small businesses and skills-building classes in talents like sewing is no longer meeting Kerala’s needs.

“That approach worked well in the past, but with the changing times we realize that the small-scale units won’t meet the needs of large enterprises or our goal of helping more women improve their lives,” Mr. Malik says.

Under his direction, Kudumbashree has shifted to focus on three new priorities: boosting the skills of younger women, helping meet the employment needs of large companies, and working more with disadvantaged communities such as disabled people and trans women.

Over the last three years, Kudumbashree has trained 74,000 women in new skills including tech-manufacturing assembly and understanding software. “Of those, 65,000 got jobs allowing them to build their lives here in Kerala,” Mr. Malik says.

The changes reflect both Kudumbashree’s and the state government’s recognition that the model that helped make Kerala an example for India has failed to evolve with a changing national and global economy, he says.

At the same time, Mr. Malik insists that the image of a failing Kerala that is hidebound, unfriendly to business, and unattractive to its young people “has also not kept up with the reality.”

As evidence, he points to a recent survey gauging the ease of doing business in Indian states which found that Kerala is moving up. “For a long time Kerala was stuck at 28 of the 30 states,” he notes, “but it’s now nearing the top 10. That’s real progress.”

Afghanistan: Deadly suicide bombing outside foreign ministry

Thu, January 12, 2023 

Kabul's police said five people were killed but another Taliban official put the number of dead at 20

A suicide bomb attack outside the Afghan foreign ministry in Kabul has caused heavy casualties.

Police said at least five civilians had been killed but another Taliban official put the toll as high as 20.

The local offshoot of the Islamic State group, known as Isis-K, claimed it carried out the attack.

It comes after recent blasts targeting foreign interests. Several countries, including Turkey and China, have embassies in the area.

The attack took place about 16:00 local time (11:30 GMT) when the bomber tried, but failed to enter the ministry building itself, the Taliban said.

"I saw the man blowing himself up," said Jamshed Karimi, a driver who was waiting outside the ministry.

Mr Karimi told AFP that he saw a man holding a bag and with a rifle slung over his shoulder walk past. "He passed by my car and after a few seconds there was a loud blast."

The building itself did not appear to be badly damaged. At the nearby interior ministry, window panes were also shattered by the explosion.

But the Italian humanitarian agency, Emergency NGO in Kabul said it had received more than 40 wounded people and the casualty numbers were continuing to rise.

Kabul police described the attack as cowardly, adding in a statement that the perpetrators would be held accountable.

Isis-K said in a post on Telegram that the blast killed at least 20 people. It also said "several 'diplomatic' employees" were among the dead, in a claim that could not be independently verified.

Afghan journalist Aisha Ahmad later tweeted that her uncle, a senior diplomat, was killed in the blast.

"Words cannot express my sorrow," she said.

Earlier reports had suggested a Chinese delegation was due to hold talks with the Afghan officials inside the foreign ministry building at the time of the attack.

But a senior official in the prime minister's office told AFP that no foreigners were present.

When asked about the attack, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said China "strongly condemns" it and expressed hopes that the Afghan government could protect citizens from all countries, including Chinese nationals.

A string of attacks has targeted foreigners or foreign interests in recent months, at a time when the Taliban is trying to attract investment from neighbouring countries.

Afghanistan has been rocked by dozens of blasts since the Taliban seized power last year, mostly claimed by Isis-K.

Correspondents say that the Taliban tend to underplay casualty figures in such incidents.