WWIII

Philippines says it did not surrender from Sabina Shoal

Beijing claims it “has indisputable sovereignty” over the disputed South China Sea shoal.

Jason Gutierrez
2024.09.16
Manila

This photo released by the Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) shows the BRP Teresa Magbanua as it arrives at a port in Puerto Princesa city, Palawan province, Philippines, Sept. 15, 2024.

 HO/Philippine Coast Guard/AFP

Filipino officials tried to reassure the Philippine public Monday that they had not surrendered Manila’s claim of sovereign rights over Sabina Shoal to China by withdrawing a coast guard ship from the disputed reef.

The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) said it pulled its ship out from the shoal’s waters over the weekend and sent it back to port because crew members needed medical care and repairs had to be done to the BRP Teresa Magbanua after a five-month deployment. 

Because of alleged harassment by Chinese ships at Sabina Shoal , the Philippine crew had to ration their food supply and eat rice porridge for weeks, a coast guard spokesman said. 

“We did not surrender [the Sabina Shoal]. It’s wrong to say we surrendered it,” said Commodore Jay Tarriela, the coast guard’s spokesman on the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), in defending the coast guard’s move. 

The PCG plans to dispatch a ship back to Sabina Shoal as soon as possible in order to guard the South China Sea reef that lies within Manila’s exclusive economic zone, he said.  

“The Philippine Coast Guard, together with the Armed Forces of the Philippines, will never abandon our sovereign rights over these waters,”  he told a news conference.

Philippine Coast Guard personnel carry a crew member off the BRP Teresa Magbanua after the vessel arrived at a port in Puerto Princesa city, Palawan province, Philippines, Sept. 15, 2024. [HO/Philippine Coast Guard/AFP]

Both China and the Philippines have contending claims over the shoal, which is located about 140 km (75.6 nautical miles) from the Philippine island of Palawan and about 1,200 km (647.94 nautical miles) from Hainan island, the nearest major Chinese landmass. The Philippines has sovereign rights to explore Sabina Shoal for natural resources because of its location within Manila’s 200-nautical mile EEZ. 

China refers to Sabina Shoal as Xianbin Jiao and the Philippines calls it Escoda Shoal. For Manila, the reef serves as a rendezvous point for resupply missions to nearby Second Thomas Shoal (Ayungin Shoal), where the Philippines keeps a World War II-era ship to serve as a military outpost and territorial marker.

The Teresa Magbanua, one of the coast guard’s largest and most modern ships, was deployed to Sabina Shoal in April amid reports that China may be trying to reclaim land there. In response, Beijing accused Manila of “illegally grounding” the BRP Teresa Magbanua to “forcibly occupy” the shoal.

In August, Manila claimed that Beijing had harassed its vessels at least five times in waters near the shoal.

Tarriela declined to say if another vessel had been deployed or was about to be sent to replace the Teresa Magbanua at Sabina Shoal. 

Since last month, the coast guard had difficulty resupplying the ship since due to alleged Chinese harassment in area waters, he said. 

In addition to crew members having to eat rice porridge for weeks, the ship’s desalination machine also broke down, forcing them to drink rainwater, according to Tarriela.

“When there is no rain, they even have to gather water from their air-conditioning units. Then they’re just going to boil it and that will be used for drinking,” said Tarriela.

Following Manila’s pullout of the BRP Teresa Magbanua, Beijing’s coast guard said on Sunday that China had “indisputable sovereignty” over Sabina Shoal.

Shades of Scarborough Shoal?

Some analysts believe that the Sabina Shoal situation is similar to what happened at Scarborough Shoal. The South China Sea atoll, approximately 222 km (120 nautical miles) west of the Philippine island of Luzon, is a rich fishing destination for Filipinos.

China took possession of the shoal in 2012, forcing the Philippines to file a lawsuit before a world court. Four years later, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague ruled in Manila’s favor and dismissed Beijing’s sweeping territorial claims over the South China Sea. Beijing has refused to acknowledge the ruling.

Map showing occupied or administered islands in the disputed South China Sea. [AFP]

Defense and security analyst Sherwin Ona said the government “should maintain a strong presence [in Sabina Shoal] to avoid a repeat of 2012.”

China is engaged in attrition, Ona told BenarNews on Monday. “They’re severely damaging our ships to limit our operational capability. The de facto control of the [Sabina Shoal] is the main goal.”

“They know that our resources are limited. The ramming incidents [in August] show the intention to incapacitate our capital ships,” said Ona, who teaches at Manila’s De La Salle University.

Security analyst Chester Cabalza, however, said it would be a mistake to describe the PCG’s action over the weekend as a retreat. It was necessary, he said, to allow tired coast guard personnel to “recharge.”

“If it’s a retreat for the Philippines, why would we dare to return?” said the analyst at International Development and Security Cooperation, a Manila think-tank, arguing that compared to 12 years ago, Manila could now read “Beijing’s art of deception.”

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READ MORE

To guard against Chinese buildup, Philippines will not leave Sabina Shoal

Philippine coast guard rejects China’s ‘illegal stranding’ claim

Manila accuses Beijing of island building in South China Sea

 Research shows brain synchronization between humans and dogs

By Pooja Toshniwal Paharia

Reviewed by Danielle Ellis, B.Sc.

Sep 16 2024

Study reveals how mutual gazing and petting synchronize human and dog brains, while autism-related gene mutations in dogs reduce this connection. 

Study: Disrupted Human–Dog Interbrain Neural Coupling in Autism-Associated Shank3 Mutant Dogs. Image Credit: sergey kolesnikov/Shutterstock.com

In a recent study published in Advanced Science, researchers studied cross-species interbrain connections between dogs and humans. They also investigated whether autism-related gene abnormalities in dogs impede social interaction between human-dog pairs.

Background

The human-dog connection has developed with time, with dogs tamed for their protective and hunting capacities. They have become valuable members of households, offering companionship and emotional support. Interspecies partnerships generate mutual benefit but seldom approach the extent of communication between humans and dogs. Dogs can read, comprehend, and react to various human emotions and linguistic signs via facial expressions, behaviors, and voice tones. However, the brain mechanisms underlying interspecies social communication remain unknown.

About the study

In the present study, researchers investigated the brain processes enabling human-dog communication. They explored the influence of autism-related gene alterations in dogs on social interactions between the two species.

Non-invasive wireless electroencephalograms (EEG) concurrently detected brain activity in beagles (research canines) and humans during social interactions. To validate the findings, researchers assessed interbrain correlations between different areas of the brain under three situations. The situations included no social interactions in separate spaces, with social interaction in one room and without social engagement in one room. Social interactions included petting and mutual gazing.

Researchers compared interbrain coupling during complete social interactions (mutual gaze + petting) to partial social interactions (mutual gaze or petting alone) to evaluate the synergistic effects of mutual gaze and petting on interbrain coupling. They also investigated brain activity associations between dogs and human participants from different trials and recorded the brain activities of the two species during social interactions for five days to evaluate the impact of social familiarity on interbrain neural coupling.

Subsequently, researchers conducted an additional five-day investigation to assess the durability or changes in interbrain interactions across prolonged periods. Linear regressions investigated the association between the duration of social interactions and interbrain activity. Generalized partial directed coherence (GPDC) algorithms assessed the directionality of interbrain activity coupling.

Researchers developed an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) model for dogs with SH3 and multiple ankyrin repeat domain 3 (Shank3) mutations using Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)-associated protein 9 (Cas9) genome editing.

Behavioral studies such as the three-chamber test and human-dog interaction experiments revealed autism-like symptoms in the mutants. Over five days, researchers explored the interbrain neuronal connection between mutant canines and humans. Theta/beta wave ratios (TBR) indicated attention problems in the mutants during the social interactions between humans and dogs.

Researchers also explored the effects of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), a psychedelic, on brain function. They delivered a single dosage of 7.5 μg/kg bodyweight of LSD intramuscularly and observed its effects after 24 hours.

Results

Petting and mutual gazing resulted in interbrain synchronization in the parietal and frontal areas of the brain during human-dog interactions, respectively. These brain areas are involved in joint attention. The interbrain association in these brain areas of dogs and humans caused by mutual gazing or stroking alone was much lower than that during combined social interactions, including petting and mutual gazing.

Over five days, the synchronization intensity increased as the human-dog dyad became more familiar. Linear regression analyses revealed a strong positive association between social contact time, interbrain activity correlations, and GPDC values. After a week of social contacts, logistic growth curve regressions revealed that interbrain correlation in the frontal and parietal areas had plateaued. 

Interbrain correlations between humans and dogs in various sessions were much lower than in the same interaction sessions. The findings demonstrate that reciprocal involvement between dogs and humans is vital for interbrain neural connections. During the human-dog social interactions, the human takes the lead, and the dog follows. The mutant canines displayed lower attention and eliminated interbrain connections. A single dosage of LSD corrected the problems.

Conclusions

The study found that interbrain neural synchronizations between family dogs and human beings are identical to those observed during human-human interactions. The frontoparietal network is essential for interbrain activity coordination and sensory information attention. Dogs with Shank3 mutations demonstrated poor brain circuitry and attention, comparable to those with ASD. A single dosage of LSD restored reduced interbrain connection and joint attention in the mutant dogs, indicating that LSD may improve social impairment in ASD patients.

 The findings point to possible interbrain neural activity biological markers for autism spectrum disorder diagnosis and the development of designed non-hallucinogenic LSD analogs to address social deficiencies. Further research into brain coupling may improve the knowledge of the neurological mechanisms that underpin social interactions between regularly developing humans and those with mental illnesses like ASD.

Journal reference:

• Wei Ren, Shan Yu, Kun Guo, Chunming Lu, and Yong Q. Zhang. Disrupted Human-Dog Interbrain Neural Coupling in Autism-Associated Shank3 Mutant Dogs, Adv. Sci. 2024, 2402493, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/advs.202402493 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202402493?utm_campaign=publicity

A Boy And His Dog (1975) Official Trailer

NEBULOUS AND DUBIOUS CLAIMS

TikTok's future in US hangs in balance as court to hear appeal against ban

RED SCARE REDUX

TikTok will argue in federal court that a US law requiring the app to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban is unconstitutional. The law, signed by President Biden, cites national security concerns, but TikTok claims it violates free speech rights. The case may reach the US Supreme Court.


Democratic President Joe Biden, whose vice president Kamala Harris is running against Trump, signed the law that gives TikTok until January to shed its Chinese ownership or be expelled from the US market. (Photo: AFP)

Agence France-Presse
Washington,UPDATED: Sep 16, 2024 12:38 IST
Posted By: Girish Kumar Anshul

In Short

TikTok challenges US law requiring divestment from Chinese ownership

Law gives TikTok until January 2025 to comply or face US ban

Case may reach Supreme Court, with decision expected in coming months

TikTok will attempt to convince a federal court on Monday that a law requiring the video-sharing app to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States is unconstitutional.

The fate of Americans' access to TikTok has become a prominent issue in the country's political debate, with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump opposing any ban of the wildly popular app.

Democratic President Joe Biden, whose vice president Kamala Harris is running against Trump, signed the law that gives TikTok until January to shed its Chinese ownership or be expelled from the US market.

ByteDance, TikTok's parent company, has stated it has no plans to sell TikTok, leaving the app's legal appeal -- focused on US guarantees for free speech -- as its only optionfor survival.

A ban would likely provoke a strong response from the Chinese government and further strain US-China relations.

A three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit will hear arguments from TikTok, ByteDance, and a group of users. They will primarily contend that the law violates free speech rights.

The judges will decide the case in the coming weeks or months, but regardless of their decision, the case is likely to reach the US Supreme Court.

"There is no question: the Act will force a shutdown of TikTok by January 19, 2025," TikTok's appeal stated, "silencing those who use the platform to communicate in ways that cannot be replicated elsewhere."

TikTok also argued that even if divestiture were possible, the app "would still be reduced to a shell of its former self, stripped of the innovative and expressive technology that tailors content to each user".

TikTok asserts that "the Constitution is on our side", as it pushes for a ruling that would favour the app and its 170 million American users.

The US government counters that the law addresses national security concerns, not speech, and that ByteDance cannot claim First Amendment rights in the United States.

"Given TikTok's broad reach within the United States, the capacity for China to use TikTok's features to achieve its overarching objective to undermine American interests creates a national-security threat of immense depth and scale," the US Justice Department wrote in its filing.

The US argues that ByteDance could and would comply with Chinese government demands for data about US users, or yield to Chinese government pressure to censor or promote content on the platform.

'VOTE FOR TRUMP'

TikTok first faced scrutiny under former president Trump's administration, which tried unsuccessfully to ban it.

That effort was halted when a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump's move, citing in part the potential infringement of free speech rights.

Trump has since changed his position.

"For all of those that want to save TikTok in America, vote for Trump," he said in a video post last week.

In a measure of the app's popularity, Biden's reelection campaign created a TikTok account earlier this year.

Biden has since stepped aside from his reelection bid, but Harris, running in his place, also maintains a presence on the app, having embraced social media as a means to communicate with younger voters.

The new effort signed by Biden was designed to overcome the previous legal hurdles Trump faced, but some experts believe the US Supreme Court will have difficulty allowing national security considerations to outweigh free speech protections.

Much of the US side's national security arguments are sealed, which "complicates efforts to evaluate" them, said professor Carl Tobias of the University of Richmond School of Law.

"However, the US Supreme Court has generally been very cautious about accepting national security arguments when government regulation restricts First Amendment rights, especially involving the internet," he added.

First conviction under Hong Kong's security law for wearing 'seditious' T-shirt

FUCK THE STATE!

September 16, 2024 

Members of League of Social Democrats hold banner outside the West Kowloon Magistrates' Courts in Hong Kong, May 30, 2024, ahead of verdicts in national security case. The banner reads "Exercising Constitutional rights is not a crime."
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HONG KONG —

A Hong Kong man on Monday pleaded guilty to sedition for wearing a T-shirt with a protest slogan, becoming the first person convicted under the city's new national security law passed in March.

Chu Kai-pong, 27, pleaded guilty to one count of "doing with a seditious intention an act."

Under the new security law, the maximum sentence for the offense has been expanded from two years to seven years in prison and could even go up to 10 years if "collusion with foreign forces" was found involved.

Chu was arrested on June 12 at a MTR station wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times” and a yellow mask printed with “FDNOL”- the shorthand of another slogan, "five demands, not one less.”

Both slogans were frequently chanted in the huge, sometimes violent, pro-democracy protests in 2019 and June 12 was a key kick-off day of the months-long unrests.

Chu told police that he wore the T-shirt to remind people of the protests, the court heard.

Chief Magistrate Victor So, handpicked by the city leader John Lee to hear national security cases, adjourned the case to Thursday for sentencing.

Hong Kong was returned from Britain to China in 1997 under Beijing's promise of guaranteeing its freedoms, including freedom of speech, would be protected under a "one country, two systems" formula.

Beijing imposed a national security law in 2020 punishing secession, subversion, terrorism or collusion with foreign forces with up to life in prison, after the months-long protests in the financial hub.

In March 2024, Hong Kong passed a second new security law, a home-grown ordinance also known as "Article 23" according to its parent provision in the city's mini constitution, the Basic Law.

Critics, including the U.S. government have expressed concerns over the new security law and said the vaguely defined provisions regarding "sedition" could be used to curb dissent.

Hong Kong and Chinese officials have said it was necessary to plug "loopholes" in the national security regime.

 

Second Invincible-class Submarine Returns to Singapore

'EVERYBODY NEEDS THEIR OWN SUBMARINE'

HAGBARD CELINE

Invincible class submarine RSS Singapura at Changi Naval Base. (Sigapore MoD photo)

On September 13, 2024, Singapore Ministry of Defence announced that the second Invincible-class submarine, arrived at Changi Naval Base.

Naval News Staff  16 Sep 2024

Singapore MoD press release

The homecoming ceremony for the Republic of Singapore Navy’s (RSN) Invincible-class submarine, Invincible, was held earlier today [Ed. note:  September 13, 2024] at RSS Singapura – Changi Naval Base. Fleet Commander RADM Kwan Hon Chuong, senior RSN officers and submariners were present to witness the homecoming ceremony.

Launched in Kiel, Germany on 18 February 2019, Invincible is one of the four Invincible-class submarines designed for operations in Singapore’s shallow and busy tropical waters.  Custom-built for Singapore’s needs, these submarines possess state-of-the-art capabilities, including high levels of automation, significant payload capacity, enhanced underwater endurance, and ergonomics optimised for the Asian physique. Their induction into the RSN will further enhance its capability to safeguard Singapore and protect its vital sea lines of communication.

Invincible is expected to be commissioned in the coming weeks. The project development for our two other submarines, Illustrious and Inimitable, is progressing well in Germany, and they are expected to return to Singapore by 2028.

– End –

About Invincible-class submarines

RSN infographic

Invincible is the first of four customized submarines designed for operations in Singapore’s shallow and busy tropical waters. Named Invincible, Impeccable, Illustrious and Inimitable, the new submarines will form the strategic edge of Singapore’s defence. The submarines are expected to be delivered from 2021 onwards and will replace the current ex-Royal Swedish Navy Archer– and Challenger-class submarines, which the RSN has operated for over two decades.

Displacing 2,200 tons (submerged), these submarine will have a speed in excess of 15 knots underwater. They are 70 meters long and 6.3 meters in diameter. Their armament will be deployed from 8 533mm torpedo tubes. Type 218SG are based on TKMS Type 214, with elements from the Type 212A (such as the X ruder section).

The Invincible-class submarines are equipped with significantly improved capabilities. They are being fitted with Air Independent Propulsion systems based on Fuel Cell technology, which will allow the submarines to stay submerged about 50% longer. They are also carrying a combat system designed by both Atlas Elektronik and ST Electronics.

ASIATIC STALINIST MONARCHISM

A union leader freed from prison vows to continue a strike against Cambodia's biggest casino

A Cambodian union leader freed from prison after serving time for her part in a strike against the country’s biggest casino has vowed to continue the labor action until justice is done

By HENG SINITH 

Associated Press 

and 

SOPHENG CHEANG

 Associated Press
September 16, 2024

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia -- A union leader freed from prison Monday after serving time for her part in a strike against Cambodia’s biggest casino has vowed to continue the labor action until justice is done.

Chhim Sithar was sentenced in May 2023 to two years' imprisonment for incitement to commit a felony, including time served before her conviction, in connection with the strike against the NagaWorld casino, the longest such labor action in the country's history.

She had been leading a strike of hundreds of workers that began in December 2021 to protest mass layoffs and alleged union-busting at the casino in the capital, Phnom Penh, and was arrested and charged after a January 2022 demonstration of dismissed employees who were demanding to be rehired.

NagaWorld in late 2021 had fired 373 employees during financial struggles related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking to The Associated Press at her home shortly after her release, Chhim Sithar vowed to continue leading the strike.

"About our advocacy fighting for union rights at NagaWorld, we will continue holding strike action until we get a solution. That’s the position we have determined since the first strike,” Chhim Sithar said, sitting on the floor surrounded by relatives.

“Unfortunately, as of today, after nearly three years, our workers have still not gotten justice. Therefore, as long as there’s no justice, our struggle continues,” she said.

After Chhim Sithar’s arrest, some dismissed workers continued to hold regular protests, appealing for her release and to get their jobs back. However, the Ministry of Labor and Vocational Training announced in December 2022 that more than 200 others had accepted compensation under the labor law and dropped their demands.

“Despite relentless efforts by authorities to suppress the strike — including sexual harassment, physical assaults, and judicial harassment — the LRSU strike continues in Phnom Penh,” the Cambodian human rights organization LICADHO noted Monday.

NagaWorld is owned by a company controlled by the family of late Malaysian billionaire Chen Lip Keong. The company received its casino license in 1994 and the property is a huge integrated hotel-casino entertainment complex.


Previous labor union actions in Cambodia were usually at factories in outlying areas or in industrial estates in other provinces. The protest by the NagaWorld workers in the capital was unusually high-profile and drew police action that was sometimes violent.

Last year, the U.S. State Department named Chhim Sithar among 10 recipients of its annual Human Rights Defender Award. She was described by the then-U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia W. Patrick Murphy as “a courageous and tenacious labor union leader who peacefully advocates for the rights of Cambodian workers.”

Cambodia’s government has long been accused of using the judicial system to persecute critics and political opponents. Prime Minister Hun Manet succeeded his father last year after Hun Sen ruled for four decades, but there have been few signs of political liberalization.

DESANTISLAND

Florida homeless law: Orlando Sentinel survey shows cities and counties making scant progress

Ryan Gillespie
Orlando Sentinel (TNS)

Central Florida leaders are on the hunt for more shelter beds for people who sleep on sidewalks, under highway overpasses and in the woods. But with less than three weeks until a new state homelessness law goes into effect, they’re not making progress nearly as quickly as that law suggests they should.

The Orlando Sentinel surveyed numerous local governments across the region over the past week, asking how they plan to comply with the state’s mandate to adopt and enforce camping bans in public spaces by Oct. 1. Local leaders have acknowledged that means the region will need many more shelter beds. But few of the city and county officials who responded to the Sentinel’s inquiry as yet have concrete plans to build them.


Siting shelters remains difficult, with a planned open-access shelter running into a buzz saw of opposition last week in Orlando, which already is home to most of the region’s facilities and services for the homeless. And that creates a conundrum because without beds to offer, local governments will come under pressure to arrest those sleeping outside. For now, officials responding to the Sentinel survey expressed little inclination to make such arrests.


In Orange County alone, 759 people slept outside on a single night in January, with half of those residing in the downtown Orlando area, according to this year’s point-in-time homeless count. That number is expected to climb. The region’s roughly 1,100 shelter beds are full every night, and the bulk of them are in Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood, west of I-4.

“We know we need hundreds” more beds, said Martha Are, the CEO of the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida. “Realistically we probably need a thousand.”

The new law does allow counties to put such beds in special permanent encampments as well as shelters — but the rules for such encampments are strict and costly, and no Central Florida government has said they have plans for such a setup.

Besides Orlando, Orange County has the firmest plans to move forward of any agency responding to the Sentinel. This week, county leaders added $10 million in funding to homeless agencies to its upcoming budget, Mayor Jerry Demings said. Those new dollars are expected to bolster efforts to fund additional shelter beds, in locations as yet unidentified but ideally on the east and west end of the county, where a sizable number of people sleep in encampments in the woods.


In an interview, Demings said he tasked the county’s real estate office to look for potential shelter sites in areas that won’t impact neighborhoods.

“I suspect that through contracted services it may be multiple shelters that we’ll be housing those to fill in the gap,” he said. “We’ll come out soon with a very detailed plan.”

Demings equivocated, however, when asked about a specific idea favored by city leaders to repurpose the county-owned Work-Release Center just south of downtown Orlando into a shelter.

An Orlando official pitched the county last year on temporarily using it as a shelter while the Salvation Army Men’s Shelter and the Christian Service Center’s day services center were under renovation. Ultimately, the two sides didn’t move forward with that plan due to the expense of the necessary renovations. But the two governments have also had talks about using it as a longer-term solution.

“It was designed as a correctional facility, not as a shelter,” Demings said. “Yes, there’s space there. Is it the best space, the most appropriate place? We’re still evaluating that.”

Orlando has had its own trouble finding a new site for a shelter. Earlier this month, city leaders revealed a proposal to invest $7.5 million into a 24-hour low-barrier shelter in West Lakes, with 250 beds. The city intended to enter a lease, and potentially purchase a 21,000-square-foot building on West Washington Street, which they considered to have the bones of an ideal shelter.

However, neighborhood outcry led to the apparent shelving of the plan.

“We’ve heard the residents loud and clear and we continue to look elsewhere,” said Lisa Portelli, a senior adviser on homelessness to Mayor Buddy Dyer.


Dyer for more than a year has called on the region to get more aggressive in finding shelter space outside of his city’s limits. Of the regions roughly 1,167 beds, nearly 1,000 of them are in Parramore. The latest proposed shelter, while outside of the neighborhood, is only a few blocks west of it.

“If the City of Orlando is baring the burden of most of the Central Florida region, it feels like the city is saying ‘District 5, we’re appointing you to be the area that bears the burden on behalf of the city, which is bearing the burden on behalf of the region,” said Keeyon Upkins, who lives nearby.


Dyer said it is time for Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties to more aggressively pursue shelters rather than just rely on the city’s capacity.

“We call it a regional approach … but it always ends up being a city approach,” he said. “Everybody is not just downtown in Parramore. There are people in east Orange County, west Orange County, and Osceola County, which I know have major issues along the 192 corridor.”

The Sentinel’s survey suggests Dyer’s wish for efforts beyond Orlando will not soon come true. The vast majority of other cities responding said they don’t intend to build shelter beds.

For example, in Seminole County, Altamonte Springs City Manager Frank Martz said he believes the county should take the lead on shelter discussions.

“Since all city residents are also county residents and pay the same county taxes that those living outside of cities, a resident living in a city shouldn’t have to fund this twice or should we create multiple housing authorities,” he said in an email. “We don’t have that expertise. Therefore, we believe this should be a county-wide initiative and we have encouraged that discussion.”


Seminole County officials didn’t answer questions about their plan.

In Osceola County, where there are no general population shelter beds, there are few signs that county leaders are on the verge of changing that. That county also didn’t respond to the Sentinel’s survey questions.

Will Cooper, the Chief Operating Officer of The Hope Partnership, said Osceola County has had representatives at meetings of a regional task force to build open-access shelters, but he hasn’t heard of a plan to construct one there.

“I have not heard any talk from the county level about funding or creating any sort of emergency shelter,” he said. “I think if we’re going to be a true regional response, then each jurisdiction in the region needs access to services. … I do think Osceola County needs shelter and can’t just rely on the City of Orlando’s shelter capacity.”

Many local officials expect Jan. 1 to be the day when the law’s impacts become more understood: At that point, the law allows residents, businesses and the state’s attorney general to file lawsuits against governments who don’t clear makeshift encampments within five days of a complaint.

Without available shelter beds for the people who reside in those encampments, it’s not clear where they could be taken other than to jail. Orange County leaders this week also discussed creating a “homeless court,” which could provide an alternative to jailing people perhaps by sending them to drop-in locations, Spectrum News 13 reported.

But Demings said local leaders who are part of a task force grappling with the enforcement issue — including police, prosecutors and the chief judge — have said they don’t support arresting people for being homeless.


“Here our sheriffs and our police chief … have committed that they won’t simply arrest people who are homeless,” he said. “Who they will arrest are people who may be homeless and commit crimes.”

(Natalia Jaramillo, Martin Comas and Stephen Hudak of the Sentinel staff contributed.)

©2024 Orlando Sentinel. Visit orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Copyright 2024 Tribune Content Agency.

Illegal monopoly?


ALEXANDRIA (AP) – It happens in milliseconds, ideally, as you browse the web. Networks of computers and software analyse who you are, what you are looking at and buy and sell the advertisements you see on web pages.

The company that most likely determines which ads you get, and how much an advertiser paid to get on your screen, is Google.

In fact, the United States (US) Justice Department and a coalition of states said Google’s dominance over the technology that controls the sale of billions of Internet display ads every day is so thorough that it constitutes an illegal monopoly that should be broken up.

A trial under way in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, will determine if Google’s ad tech stack constitutes an illegal monopoly. The first week has included a deep dive into exactly how Google’s products work together to conduct behind-the-scenes electronic auctions that place ads in front of consumers in the blink of an eye.

Online advertising has rapidly evolved. Fifteen or so years ago, if you saw an Internet display ad, there was a pretty good chance it featured people dancing over their enthusiasm for low mortgage rates, and those ads were foisted on you whether you were looking at real estate or searching for baseball scores.

Now, the algorithms that match ads to your interests are carefully calibrated, sometimes to an almost creepy extent.

Google, for its part, said it has invested billions of dollars to improve the quality of ads that consumers see, and ensure that advertisers can reach the consumers they’re seeking.

The Justice Department contends that what Google has also done over the years is rig the automated auctions of ad sales to favour itself over other would-be players in the industry, and also deprived the publishing industry of hundreds of millions of dollars it would have received if the auctions were truly competitive.

Government witnesses have explained the auction process and how it has evolved over the years in detail at the Virginia trial.

In the government’s depiction, there are three distinct tools that interact to sell an ad and place it in front of a consumer. There’s the ad servers used by publishers to sell space on their websites, particularly the rectangular ads that appear on the top and right-hand side of a web page. Ad networks are used by advertisers to buy ad space across an array of relevant websites.

And in between is the ad exchange, which matches the website publisher to the would-be advertiser by hosting an instant auction.

Publishers naturally want to receive as high a price as possible for their ad space, but testimony at trial has shown that didn’t always happen due to the rules Google imposed.

For years, Google gave its ad exchange, called AdX, the first chance to match a publisher’s proposed floor price. For instance, if a publisher wanted to sell a specific ad impression for a minimum of 50 cents, Google’s software would give its own ad exchange the first chance to purchase. If Google’s ad exchange bid 50 cents, it would win the auction, even if competing ad exchanges down the line were willing to pay more.

Google said the system was necessary to ensure ads loaded quickly. If the computers entertained bids from every ad exchange, it would take too long.

Publishers, dissatisfied with this system, found a workaround to conduct the auctions outside of Google’s purview, a process that became known as “header bidding”. Internal Google documents introduced at trial described header bidding as an “existential threat” to Google’s market share.

Google’s response relied on its control of all three components of the process.

If publishers conducted an auction outside Google’s purview but they still used Google’s publisher ad server, called DoubleClick For Publishers, that software forced the winning bid back into Google’s Ad Exchange.

If Google was willing to match the price that publishers had received under the header-bidding auction, Google would win the auction.

Professor Ramamoorthi Ravi, an expert at Carnegie Mellon University, said rules imposed by Google failed to maximise value for publishers and “seem to have been designed to advantage Google’s own products”.

Publishers could stop using Google’s ad exchange entirely, but at trial said they were reluctant to do so because then they would also lose access to Google’s huge, exclusive cache of advertisers in its Google Ads network, which was only available through Google’s ad exchange. Google, for its part, said it hasn’t run auctions this way since 2019, and that in the last five years Google’s share of the display ad market has begun to erode.

It said that tying its buy side, sell side and middleman products together helps them run seamlessly and quickly, and minimises fraudulent ads or malware risks.

Google also said its innovations over the last 15 years fuelled the improvements in matching online ads to consumer interests. Google said it was at the forefront of introducing “real-time bidding,” which allowed an advertiser selling shoes, for instance, to be paired up with a consumer whose online profile indicated an interest in purchasing shoes.

Those innovations, according to Google, allowed publishers to sell their available ad space at a premium because the advertiser would know that the ad was going to the eyeballs of someone interested in their product or service.

The Justice Department said that even though Google no longer runs its auctions in the ways described, it helped Google maintain its monopoly in the ad tech market in the years leading up to 2019, and that its existing monopoly allows Google to keep up to 36 cents on the dollar of every ad purchase it brokers when the transaction runs through all of its various products.

The Virginia trial comes just a month after a judge in Washington ruling that Google’s search engine also constitutes an illegal monopoly. No decision in that case has been made on what, if any, remedies the judge will impose.

 

Opposition Leader: Netanyahu’s ‘Zero Government’ Dragging Israel to ‘Endless War’

September 16, 2024

 

in News, Gaza

 

Israeli opposition leader Yair Golan on Sunday, 16 September 2024 called the governing coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a “zero government” that is dragging Israel to an “endless war.”

In a statement on X, Golan, who heads the Labour Party, called on the Israelis to stage daily protests against the Israeli government.“Only continuous popular pressure will bring down this government,” he added.

The opposition leader said Sunday’s missile attack was a “reminder of the right-wing government’s ongoing failure.”

“Instead of closing battlefronts, this zero government is pulling us into endless war, eternal internal conflict, and an abyss,” he added.

The Yesh Atid Party led by opposition leader Yair Lapid also called in a statement for the resignation of the Netanyahu government, calling it a “government of national disasters.

”According to Haaretz newspaper, the debris from the interceptor missiles fell on a train station on the outskirts of Modi’in in central Israel, causing damage. A fire also broke out in an open area in Kfar Daniel in central Israel due to additional falling debris.

Yemen’s Houthi group has been targeting ships that are Israeli-owned, flagged, operated, or heading to Israeli ports in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden with missiles and drones in solidarity with Gaza, which has been under a devastating Israeli onslaught since 7 October 2023.

Shortlink for this post: https://daysofpalestine.ps/?p=56753

NOT THE FIRST

How The Taliban Are Weaponizing Religion Against Women – OpEd

PATRIARCHY IS WEAPONIZATION

A group of women in Afghanistan wearing burqas. Photo Credit: Nitin Madhav (USAID), Wikimedia Commons

 September 16, 2024  

By Ali Khan Bangash

Afghanistan, once again under Taliban control, has become a prison for its women. In the three years since the Taliban’s return to power, they have unleashed a wave of repressive laws that target women specifically. The latest decrees, issued by the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, are aimed at further erasing women from public life. Banned from raising their voices in public, reciting the Quran in the open, or even looking at men who are not their husbands or relatives, Afghan women are subjected to a regime that seeks to control every aspect of their lives.

The Taliban’s latest measures represent a significant escalation in their assault on women’s rights. These rules are not entirely new—they reflect long-standing practices rooted in the group’s interpretation of Islamic law. However, by formalizing these restrictions, the Taliban have made it clear that any hope for a more moderate government has been extinguished.

In urban centers like Kabul, where women once had relative freedom, the Taliban’s morality police are now omnipresent. Women are watched constantly, punished for minor infractions, and even dispersed from public spaces on Fridays, supposedly to allow men to attend prayers without distraction. Women are no longer seen on television or in public office, and their voices, once part of Afghanistan’s vibrant social fabric, have been silenced.

For women like Meena, who runs secret classes for girls, this crackdown feels like the final nail in the coffin of their dreams. “Three weeks ago, I was still hopeful that the Taliban may change and remove the restrictions on girls’ education,” she said. “But once they published their Vice and Virtue law, I lost all hope.” Many families, once willing to defy the Taliban by sending their daughters to secret schools, have now been forced to pull them out. The fear of being caught, of facing the wrath of the morality police, has become too great.

The Taliban’s actions are driven by a distorted interpretation of Islam, one that is rooted more in centuries-old Pashtun cultural norms than in the teachings of the Quran. Women’s rights activists and scholars argue that the Quran does not prohibit women from being educated or participating in public life. Yet the Taliban continue to use religion as a justification for their oppressive rules, presenting themselves as protectors of Islamic values while denying women their basic human rights.

The international community’s response to this repression has been muted at best. While foreign governments and human rights organizations have condemned the Taliban’s actions, their words have done little to change the situation on the ground. For Afghan women, the silence of the world is a betrayal. “The world has moved on from Afghanistan,” said Meena. “The Taliban will keep using religion as a weapon against women. To them, seeing the hair of a girl is a sin, but starving your country is not.”

The Taliban’s reign of control extends far beyond education and public life. They have imposed strict dress codes on women, who are now required to cover not just their heads but the lower half of their faces as well. Violating these rules can lead to severe punishment, enforced not only by male officers but also by female members of the morality police. These female officers, recruited from conservative rural areas, often show even more zeal in enforcing the Taliban’s rules than their male counterparts. For women like Sajia, a former university student, this crackdown feels like history repeating itself. She remembers the Taliban’s rule in the 1990s, when women were banned from education and public life. Now, she sees the same restrictions being imposed once again. “The entire country has turned into a graveyard for women’s dreams,” she said..

As the Taliban seek international recognition and access to frozen Afghan Central Bank reserves, women’s rights have become a bargaining chip in negotiations with foreign governments. Yet Afghan women remain skeptical that the Taliban will ever truly change. For them, the past three years have shown that the regime’s commitment to gendered oppression is unwavering. The international community must not turn a blind eye to the suffering of Afghan women. This is not just a local issue—it is a global human rights crisis. Afghan women need more than words of condemnation from world leaders; they need concrete action. If the world remains silent, the Taliban’s war on women will continue unabated, and half of Afghanistan’s population will be rendered invisible.

Ali Khan Bangash

Ali Khan Bangash is a student of MPhil in International Relations at Quaid Azam University Islamabad.