Canada's Sikhs are grateful - and afraid - after Trudeau's India allegations

Updated Sat, September 30, 2023 

A sign outside the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple is seen after the killing on its grounds in June 2023 of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in Surrey

By Steve Scherer

OTTAWA (Reuters) -Canadian Sikhs are grateful to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for giving voice to their fears and standing up to India at the risk of severe backlash from New Delhi, which he said could be linked to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader.

The Indian government considered Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian citizen who was shot to death in June in British Columbia (BC), a terrorist because of his advocacy for Khalistan, an independent Sikh state.

India forcefully denied its involvement in Nijjar's murder, which took place in the parking lot of a Sikh temple in Surrey, BC. But Canadian Sikhs are unconvinced, and the minority who are active proponents of Khalistan are afraid.

"There's a lot of fear," said Sentokh Singh, who was among the small group who protested in front of the Indian High Commission (embassy) in Ottawa this week. "That's why we are here today."

Both countries expelled diplomats in a tit-for-tat retaliation after Trudeau's bombshell announcement last week, but India has gone further, issuing a travel warning and halting visa issuance to Canadians.

Trudeau's move risks derailing a strategic economic and political shift many Western countries are making towards India to counter China. It also distracted attention from his push to address cost-of-living concerns, which have weighed heavily on his popularity in opinion polls.

Canada is home to about 770,000 Sikhs, the highest population outside the northern Indian state of Punjab, and the Indian government has for decades expressed its displeasure with some community members' outspoken support for Khalistan.

Sikhs punch above their weight in Canadian politics. They have 15 members in the House of Commons, more than 4% of the seats, mostly from key battlegrounds in national elections, while comprising only about 2% of the Canadian population.

Furthermore, one member is Jagmeet Singh, leader of the opposition New Democrats, a left-leaning party that is supporting the Trudeau's minority government.

"In political terms, this is no-brainer: You got to get out ahead of the story and you got to express outrage," said Fen Hampson, professor of international affairs at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Trudeau's "unsubstantiated allegations" seek to shift focus away from "Khalistani terrorists and extremists who have been provided shelter in Canada," India's foreign ministry said.

Canada says Sikhs have a right to peaceful protest and there has been no evidence of violence, terrorist activity or wrongdoing.

'RELIEF'

A friend of Nijjar's, Gurmeet Singh Toor, is an active member of the same temple and a Khalistan supporter. He was told in August by the federal police that his life might be "in peril", according to a document he was given by police that provided no details about the potential threat.

The RCMP would not corroborate the document, saying it could increase the risk to the individual who received it.

An insurgency seeking a Sikh homeland of Khalistan killed tens of thousands in the 1980s and 1990s and was crushed by India. It has almost no support in Punjab today.

However, on Friday hundreds of Sikh activists staged a demonstration outside the Golden Temple in Amritsar, in Punjab, demanding punishment for the Nijjar's killers.

Mukhbir Singh, a member of the Ottawa Sikh Society, said Canadian Sikhs' views on Khalistan vary and everyone should be able to express their own opinion. He said Trudeau is sticking up for Canadian democratic values.

"Prime Minister Trudeau has taken a stance" to make "paramount" the safety of its citizens, he said, even though the Canadian government does not support Khalistan. "In Canada, we have the right to express our opinions even if they don't align with the opinions of the government."

Trudeau, the longest serving progressive leader in the G7 group of wealthy nations, is trailing badly in opinion polls. As he rolls out a series of measures to address cost-of-living concerns and try to claw back support, the tensions with India have interfered with attempts to communicate those new policies, senior officials in Ottawa said.

Suk Dhaliwal, a Sikh Liberal member of parliament for Surrey, told Reuters he is not a Khalistan separatist, but a Canadian, and Canadians have a right to protest peacefully. He said his constituents have suspected since June the involvement of the Indian government in the murder.

"The community feels a bit relieved now that at least there is someone who has shown leadership to bring this message forward," Dhaliwal said.

(Reporting by Steve Scherer; Additional reporting by Wa Lone in Toronto; Editing by Denny Thomas and Daniel Wallis)

India’s foreign minister accuses Canada of having ‘permissive attitude towards terror’

Arpan Rai

Sat, September 30, 2023 

India’s foreign affairs minister has accused Canada of creating a “climate of violence” and an “atmosphere of intimidation” against Indian envoys working in Ottawa amid tensions between the nations continuing to spiral over the murder of a Sikh separatist leader.

The comments come as there seem to be no signs of thawing in Indo-Canadian relations after prime minister Justin Trudeau earlier this month accused government agents of India of being involved in the murder of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, who India had labelled a “terrorist”.

On Friday evening in Washington, Indian foreign minister S Jaishankar came down heavily on Canada even as he said India would be open to looking at evidence.

“Because there is freedom of speech, to make threats and intimidate diplomats, I don’t think that’s acceptable,” Mr Jaishankar said.

Canada has a “permissive attitude towards terrorists, extremists, and people who openly advocate violence”, he said in response to a question at an event in the Hudson Institute.

“They have been given operating space in Canada because of the compulsions of Canadian politics,” he said.

He said Delhi views Canada as a country where “organised crime from India has mixed with trafficking in people, secessionism, violence, terrorism”.

Ottawa has not issued a response to Mr Jaishankar’s remarks, which were made about the presence of Sikh separatist groups abroad that advocate for a separate homeland from India’s Punjab state called Khalistan – something that has not gone down well with New Delhi.

The minister, however, claimed the Narendra Modi administration is not shutting doors on Canada over the recent charges claiming India’s involvement.

“If there is a requirement for us to look at something, we are open to looking at it. But, I then expect somewhere, some pointer, something for me to look at,” he said.

Mr Trudeau, who is yet to publicly share any evidence, said last week he shared the “credible allegations” with India “many weeks ago”.

The issue of the separatist Khalistan movement has been a persistent thorn in the diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Earlier this month, Mr Trudeau sent shockwaves after he alleged Indian agents may have had a role in the June murder of Sikh separatist leader and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

India had labelled Nijjar an “independent terrorist” before he was killed.

While New Delhi dismissed the allegations of its involvement in the murder as absurd, reports claimed intelligence was shared between Canada and its Five Eyes allies on the matter and also shared with Indian officers during the G20 summit.

Washington has urged India to cooperate with Canada in the murder probe.

The demand for Khalistan has surfaced many times in India, most prominently during a violent insurgency in the 1980s and 1990s, which had paralyzed Punjab for over a decade.

India has dubbed the Khalistan movement a security threat.

Extremists ‘given operating space in Canada,’ says Indian minister

Vedika Sud, Sahar Akbarzai and Chris Lau, CNN
Fri, September 29, 2023 

Drew Angerer/Getty Images

An Indian minister has accused Canada of giving “operating space” to terrorists and extremists, as he rejected claims by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the Indian government may have played a role in the assassination of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil.

“The Canadian (prime minister) made some allegations initially privately, and then publicly. And, our response to him, both in private and public, was that what he was alleging was not consistent with our policy,” India’s Minister of External Affairs Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said during a discussion at the Hudson Institute in Washington D.C. on Friday.

The minister said India was “open to” further examine the event if the Canadian government “had anything relevant and specific they would like us to look into,” but added that the row between the countries preceded Trudeau’s allegations.

Relations between the two nations took a nosedive last week after Trudeau claimed his authorities had been investigating “credible allegations” of a potential link between “agents of the government of India” and the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, an outspoken supporter of the creation of Khalistan – a separate homeland for the Sikhs that would include parts of India’s Punjab state.

India considers calls for Khalistan a grave national security threat. However, it has vehemently denied Trudeau’s claims, calling them “absurd and motivated,” and the growing spat has seen both countries expel each other’s diplomats.

But Jaishankar said on Friday that the differences went back further than the row over Nijjar’s death. He said the Indian government had long accused Canada of inaction in dealing with Sikh separatist extremism aimed at creating a separate Sikh homeland.

He said India believes Canada has a “very permissive Canadian attitude towards terrorists, extremist people who openly advocate violence.”

Those individuals “have been given operating space in Canada because of the compulsions of Canadian politics,” Jaishankar added.

Nijjar’s death shocked and outraged the Sikh community in Canada, one of the largest outside India and home to more than 770,000 members of the religious minority.

A number of groups associated with the idea of Khalistan are listed as “terrorist organizations” under India’s Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), though several Sikh organizations abroad have accused the Indian government of falsely equating them with terrorism.

Nijjar’s name appears on the list of UAPA terrorists and in 2020, the Indian National Investigation Agency accused him of “trying to radicalize the Sikh community across the world in favor of the creation of Khalistan.”
The US position

Jaishankar met US Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the State Department on Thursday.

The two diplomats made no comments during a brief photo-op ahead of the meeting. However, a State Department spokesman said Friday that Blinken urged his Indian counterpart to cooperate fully with the ongoing Canadian investigation into the killing.

The US ambassador to Canada confirmed that intelligence gained by the “Five Eyes” network, which includes the US, Canada, Britain, New Zealand and Australia, led to Canada’s public accusation that the Indian government may have played a role in the death of Nijjar.

At a different press conference Friday, Blinken said that those responsible for the murder of a Sikh activist in Canada “need to be held accountable.”

“We have engaged with the Indian government and urged them to work with Canada on an investigation, and I had the opportunity to do so again in my meeting yesterday with Foreign Minister Jaishankar,” said Blinken at a press conference with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, US Trade Representative Katherine Tai, Mexican Foreign Secretary Alicia Barcena and Economy Minister Raquel Buenrostro.

Blinken said he hopes “our friends in both Canada and India will work together to resolve this matter.”

Jaishankar also noted he had spoken with both US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken about the matter.

“They obviously shared US views and assessments on this whole situation,” Jaishankar said. “So I think hopefully we both came out of those meetings better and forward.”

“Today, I’m actually in a situation where my diplomats are unsafe going to the embassy, or to the consulate in Canada. They are publicly intimidated. And that has actually compelled me to temporarily suspend even visa operations in Canada,” the minister added.

Canadian police have not arrested anyone in connection with Nijjar’s murder.

But in an August update, police released a statement saying they were investigating three suspects and issued a description of a possible getaway vehicle, asking for the public’s help

US Federal agency sues Chipotle after a Kansas manager allegedly ripped off an employee's hijab

CLAIRE RUSH
Updated Sat, September 30, 2023

 On Wednesday, Sept. 27, 2023, a federal agency sued the restaurant chain Chipotle, accusing it of religious harassment and retaliation after a manager at a Kansas location forcibly removed an employee's hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women. 

(AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

A federal agency has sued the restaurant chain Chipotle, accusing it of religious harassment and retaliation after a manager at a Kansas location forcibly removed an employee's hijab, a headscarf worn by some Muslim women.

In a lawsuit filed Wednesday, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleged that in 2021, an assistant manager at a Chipotle in Lenexa, Kansas, repeatedly harassed the employee by asking her to show him her hair, despite her refusal. After several weeks, the harassment culminated in him grabbing and partially removing her hijab, according to the complaint.

The manager's “offensive and incessant requests” that she remove her hijab, and his attempt to physically take it off, were “unwelcome, intentional, severe, based on religion, and created a hostile working environment based on religion," the complaint alleged.

Chipotle's chief corporate affairs officer, Laurie Schalow, said the company encourages employees to report concerns, including through an anonymous hotline.

"We have a zero tolerance policy for discrimination of any kind and we have terminated the employee in question,” she said in an emailed statement.

The harassment began in July 2021, when the manager began asking the employee, who was 19 at the time, to remove her hijab because he wanted to see her hair. According to the complaint, he demanded to see her hair at least 10 times over the course of one month. She refused on every occasion, saying she wore it because of her religious beliefs.

The employee complained to another supervisor that the incidents made her uncomfortable, but no further action was taken against the manager, the complaint said. One night during closing in August 2021, the manager allegedly reached out and pulled her hijab partially off her head.

The following day, the employee gave her two weeks' notice. Chipotle didn't schedule her for any shifts during those two weeks even though other non-Muslim employees who submitted their notice continued to be scheduled for work during that time, the complaint alleged.

The lawsuit claims that Chipotle violated federal civil rights law protecting employees and job applicants from discrimination based on religion, race, ethnicity, sex and national origin.

In its suit, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said it wants Chipotle to institute policies that provide equal employment opportunities for employees of all religions and pay damages to the employee.


‘This Is Trump Country’: Black Former Employee at Florida Waste Management Company Alleges Co-Workers Taunted Him with Stuffed Monkey, Used Racial Slur

Taylor Ardrey
Fri, September 29, 2023 

The US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued a waste management company after Black and Haitian American employees alleged they were subjected to a hostile work environment.

The EEOC filed the lawsuit on behalf of the employees of Waste Pro of Florida. It was filed on Tuesday, Sept. 26.

EEOC filed a lawsuit against Water Pro of Florid after Black employees alleged that they were exposed to a hostile work environment discrimination. (EEOC Lawsuit)

Fednol Pierre, who served as a welder and worked at the Jacksonville location, said he was continuously harassed by his colleagues, according to the lawsuit. His co-worker, identified as William Watts, allegedly called him the N-word, said to go back to Haiti, adding that “there is no need for you here.” He was also told to “go back on the banana boat” and “this is Trump country,” according to the claim obtained by Atlanta Black Star.

Pierre expressed his concerns to his supervisor, but the lawsuit alleged no disciplinary action was taken. In March 2022, less than a year after working at the location, he was approached by a supervisor who told him Watts and another co-worker named Mr. Shuman used racially offensive language when talking about him. He reported the harassment again, which was sent through human resources and prompted an investigation.

Pierre continued to report his experience and expressed that he feared retaliation from his co-workers amid the probe into his claims. The lawsuit stated that when the company didn’t take action, he requested to work at a later time. However, he “still had to work with Mr. Watts and Mr. Shuman for an hour each day.”

According to court records, he also requested that it is not disclosed that he reported the racial discrimination claims, but Watts was informed anyway by regional HRM Risner. Risner also announced that there would be a staff meeting to address Pierre’s concerns after the investigation was concluded.

“Before the staff meeting, [Pierre] and another Black employee discovered a stuffed monkey carrying an American flag in Mr. Pierre’s work area. Mr. Pierre immediately reported the monkey incident to management and demanded the stuffed monkey be removed and that management review video footage and conduct an investigation into the matter; however, no corrective action was taken before the staff meeting,” the filing said.

The harassment from Watts and Shuman continued, the lawsuit alleged. Pierre felt like he was slighted, ignored, and given the most challenging tasks. He decided to quit about two weeks later.

The lawsuit is seeking, in part, punitive damages for Black and Haitian American employees due to the “malicious and reckless conduct” of the company.

Opinion

A democratic nation has been allowed to die – the UN has failed once more

Geoffrey Robertson
Sat, September 30, 2023 

Resident flee: The siege of Stepanakert was Guernica writ small 

- DAVID GHAHRAMANYAN/REUTERS

It happened quickly, the final invasion, and with hundreds of Orthodox Christians killed by the aggressors. Armenia, led by a one-time human rights lawyer, had no alternative but to save thousands of its people from death by surrendering their enclave at Nagorno-Karabakh to the brutal forces of Ilham Aliyev, dictator of Azerbaijan.

It was Russia, once again, that was principally to blame: it was given by a foolish UN Security Council the duty to keep the peace, but when Armenia condemned the invasion of Ukraine, Putin in revenge withdrew all protection of Nagorno-Karabakh and let the Azerbaijan army off its leash.

120,000 citizens are now at its mercy, being forced either to abandon their ancestral homes or else live under a tyranny that has fomented hatred against them for many years.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a small, mountainous country in the clouds, settled by Armenians for many centuries. It was the first in 301 AD to adopt Christianity.

Hundreds of Orthodox churches, and their ancient mysterious tombstones (many now defaced or demolished by the aggressors), attract visitors from Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, who take the 6 hour road trek via Mount Ararat to Stepanakert, centre of the Karabakh’s democracy that was this week snuffed out. The trip is only 20 minutes by air from a modern airport. But planes have not flown for years because the Azeri government threatens to shoot them down.

The country fell to Russia in the early nineteenth century, and the demographic evidence from the first census of that time proves that it was all-Armenian and the area should have been allocated to this state when Stalin divided the territory in 1920. Instead, he gave it to Azerbaijan, and the mistake was not rectified until a civil war after the collapse of the USSR.

The Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh – still the great majority of the population – voted first to join with Armenia (the wiser course) but then (courageously as they thought) opted for independence. The war had commenced with pogroms by Azeris in Sumgait and Baku. But in time a local Karabakh defence force took the upper hand. Fighting was brutal. With ethnic hate on both sides. The siege of Stepanakert during which Azeri forces killed several thousand in bombings of schools and hospitals, was Guernica writ small. The people only survived because of supplies brought on a narrow road - a humanitarian corridor - from Armenia, which Azerbaijan closed earlier this year.

Nagorno-Karabakh won the war by 1994 and declared, like Kosovo, its right to self-determination. For the next quarter-century it governed itself with help from Armenia. It did so, reasonably enough, with fair elections and democratic institutions like an independent judiciary - as I found when investigating the situation in the country for a court case in 2014. It was not, as many news reporters said last week, a country of “Armenian separatists” but of an Armenian people whose ancestors had lived in these highlands for centuries and who had fought for, and won, for a quarter of a century, the right to resist a brutal dictator. But there were many Azeri provocations at the border - the “line of control”.

The Security Council, quite absurdly, entrusted the enclave security to Russia which did not take its duties seriously and in 2020 the war broke out again. Armenia voted at the UN to condemn Russia for attacking Ukraine and in consequence Putin determined to end all support for it and to take revenge. The last straw came this month, when Armenia joined the International Criminal Court (ICC) which is prosecuting Putin for kidnapping Ukrainian children. Last week the Kremlin carpeted the Armenian ambassador and made what it described as a “harsh protest”: it threatened to withdraw its security mandated protection for Nagorno-Karabakh. When it did so, Azerbaijan invaded.

How should the UK react? Aliyev, like Putin, is guilty of the international crime of aggression, and this country should denounce this violation. Russia, too, should be condemned for betraying the duty imposed on it by the Security Council. We should certainly offer to take some of the many thousands of refugees: they are innocent victims of an international double-cross. They have every reason to fear persecution if they stay where they belong. Their political leaders are already being arrested.

As for the United Nations, Nagorno-Karabakh will be remembered as yet another reason why it is no longer fit for purpose. That purpose, its Charter reminds us, is to “save succeeding generations from the scourge of war,” yet it cannot expel Russia (even were Putin to use nuclear weapons) which would veto its own expulsion, and it cannot even expel Azerbaijan for aggression (because Russia would veto the necessary Security Council recommendation).

The only way forward is to replace the United Nations, because its Security Council is not fit for purpose. It is incapable of reform, because Russia and China will veto reform. ‘Security” will only come from an international representative body with the moral, military, economic power to deter authoritarian aggression.

Geoffrey Robertson AO KC is a former UN war crimes judge and author of An Inconvenient Genocide: Who Now Remembers the Armenians?

 Abortion restrictions repel graduating OB-GYNs from conservative states, report shows

Adrianna Rodriguez, USA TODAY
Fri, September 29, 2023


A survey found new doctors are changing their plans to practice in states with abortion restrictions after the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that preserved abortion as a constitutional right for nearly 50 years.

Researchers from the University of Utah School of Medicine received responses from nearly 350 graduating obstetricians and gynecologists from training sites in 37 states. Findings showed more than 17% of residents said the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision changed their practice and fellowship plans.

Residents who had intended to practice in abortion-restrictive states before the decision were eight times more likely to change their plans after the decision than new doctors who wanted to practice in states that protected abortion, according to the report published Thursday in Obstetrics & Gynecology, the official journal of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Experts say the findings add to growing evidence of a medical brain drain in states with a conservative majority, where abortion laws are not only driving established doctors away but also deterring new talent.

The trend will exacerbate maternal mortality rates in areas of the country where maternity care is limited, also known as maternity care deserts, said the study’s lead author Dr. Alex Woodcock, a complex family planning fellow at the University of Utah School of Medicine.

“We're going to see medical students and residents and physicians continue to leave these spaces because they don’t feel like they can practice the full spectrum of care that they spent their life learning how to do,” said Dr. Leilah Zahedi-Spung, an OB-GYN in maternal-fetal medicine and complex family planning in Denver, who is unaffiliated with the study.

Before the Dobbs decision, maternal death rates were 62% higher in states that restricted abortion compared with states where there was access, according to a report from the Commonwealth Fund. Experts worry providers will continue to leave, driving up mortality rates.

“It’s only going to get worse,” said Zahedi-Spung, who recently left Tennessee, a state with one of the strictest abortion bans, due to the Dobbs decision. “We’re going to watch so many more pregnant people die, unfortunately.”

In follow-up interviews, survey participants said they would consider returning to conservative states if the hospital guaranteed legal protection for their practice and offered more money, according to Woodcock. They’d also wanted to see health care systems take a definitive and public stance on abortion.

“Applicants don’t want to apply to hospitals in restrictive states and hear silence on what those places are doing in terms of advocacy efforts,” she said.

Follow Adrianna Rodriguez on X, formerly Twitter: @AdriannaUSAT.

Health and patient safety coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Masimo Foundation for Ethics, Innovation and Competition in Healthcare. The Masimo Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Abortion: New doctors avoid conservative states, survey shows

US

Supreme Court approval rating mired near record low: Gallup

Lauren Irwin
Fri, September 29, 2023 


The Supreme Court’s approval rating is mired in a near-record low, according to a new survey.

With the Supreme Court set to begin its new term next week, the Gallup poll found Americans tend to view the court in a negative light.

The court’s approval rating fell to its lowest point in September 2021 after it declined to block a controversial Texas abortion law, which later led to the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

“With the Supreme Court preparing to begin a new term, Americans’ approval of the high court and their trust in it remain near their historically lowest points, and the public is divided over whether its ideology is about right or too conservative,” the report said.

Currently, 41 percent of respondents approve of how the Supreme Court is handling its job, which remains near levels seen over the past two years. Fifty-eight percent disapprove of how the court is handling its job, the latest survey found.

Forty-nine percent of respondents say they have trust in the judicial branch, up from a record low of 47 percent a year ago. According to Gallup, trust in the Supreme Court averaged 68 percent before 2022.

In 2022, a record 42 percent of respondents said the court was “too conservative.” It was the first time since 1993 that a majority of Americans didn’t deem the court “about right,” the survey giant noted. Now, 42 percent say it’s “about right,” while 39 percent see it as too conservative and 17 percent see it as too liberal.

Currently, 23 percent of Democrats approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing, while 56 percent of Republicans approve. Forty percent of independents said they approve.

“Given Democrats’ widespread belief that the Supreme Court is too conservative, their low approval rating of the court is not surprising,” Gallup reported in its release. “Their approval rating of the court fell 25 percentage points to 25% after the Dobbs decision and dropped further to a new low of 17% two months ago, but has risen slightly to 23% in the latest poll.”

The survey of 1,016 adults, conducted Sept. 1-23, has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

The Supreme Court will begin its next term on Monday, Oct. 2. It has a 6-3 conservative majority and plans to hear six cases in its first week back.

French police are being accused of systemic discrimination in landmark legal case

ANGELA CHARLTON
Fri, September 29, 2023 


Police take on protesters during a march against police brutality and racism in Marseille, France, on June 13, 2020. France’s highest administrative authority held a landmark hearing over accusations of systemic discrimination in identity checks by French police. Local grassroots organizations and international rights groups filed France’s first class-action lawsuit targeting the nation’s police force. 

(AP Photo/Daniel Cole, File)

PARIS (AP) — France’s highest administrative authority held a landmark hearing Friday over accusations of systemic discrimination in identity checks by French police. Victims are not seeking money, but a ruling to force deep reforms within law enforcement to end racial profiling.

Local grassroots organizations and international rights groups allege that French police target Black people and people of Arab descent in choosing who to stop and check. They filed France's first class-action lawsuit against police in 2021, and the case reached the Council of State on Friday.

The government has denied systemic discrimination by police, and has said that police officers are increasingly targeted by violence.

A decision is expected in the coming weeks.

“This was a big step in a battle that I hope we will win one day,’’ said Achille Ndari, who attended Friday's hearing and who is among those whose personal accounts informed the lawsuit.

He said he was targeted by a rough police ID check for the first time during his first year of law school, and that it made him cry in his bed. Ndari, who is Black, said it shook his confidence in himself, his identity and France’s system of law and order.

Now a street performer in Paris, he described his awe after attending Friday’s hearing, and the feeling that the experiences of people like him were finally heard.

“It’s not everyone who has the chance to go to such a place'' as hallowed as the Council of State, he said. “Now there will always be a trace of our suffering, our invisible, silent suffering.’’

Police officers who corroborate accounts of discriminatory checks are among people cited in a 220-page file submitted by the groups’ lawyers to the Council of State.

Critics have said such ID checks, which are sometimes rough and often carried out multiple times on the same person, can mark young people for life and worsen the relationship between police officers and residents of many low-income neighborhoods.

The hearing comes amid lingering anger over the killing of a 17-year-old of North African origin by police during a traffic stop in June. Nahel Merzouk's death in the Paris suburb of Nanterre unleashed protests that morphed into nationwide riots. Tens of thousands of people marched last weekend around France to denounce police brutality and racism.

The case heard Friday focuses on ID checks, and was initiated by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Open Society Justice Initiative and three grassroots organizations that work with young people. The NGOs took the case to the Council of State after the government failed to meet a deadline to respond to the class-action suit.

French courts have found the state guilty of racial profiling in identity checks in the past, but the case heard by the Council of State is different in that it is seeking reforms instead of damages.

The groups that filed the lawsuit want to require police to record data about identity checks and to abolish preventive ID checks; limits on checks targeting children; new training for police; and an independent mechanism to lodge complaints against police.

“We hope this hearing will bring recognition by the law of the injustice that young people of color in French cities face every day. To be stopped by police in the middle of the street for no reason; to be spread-eagled, to have your ID checked, to be frisked in front of everyone,″ Issa Coulibaly, head of community youth group Pazapas, said in a statement by the Open Society Justice Initiative.

Coulibaly, a Black man in his 40s, has described being subjected to numerous undue ID checks starting when he was 14.


French court should reject lawsuit on police racial profiling, adviser says

Layli Foroudi
Fri, September 29, 2023 

A view shows the Conseil d'Etat, France's highest administrative court, in Paris

By Layli Foroudi

PARIS (Reuters) - An adviser to France's top administrative court urged it on Friday to reject a class action lawsuit against the state alleging police inaction on racial profiling, saying the government could not be held at fault over a lack of reform.

Six human rights groups petitioning the Conseil d'Etat (State Council) argued the police discriminate against young Arab and Black men during routine patrols. The case asks the council to require concrete reforms from the government.

If successful, the landmark petition could open the way for similar broad legal challenges in a country where activism has traditionally taken the form of direct protest, and where class actions only became possible in 2014 and remain rare.

At Friday's hearing, the adviser, public rapporteur Esther de Moustier, said judges did not have the power to impose legislative changes and that the state could not be held "at fault" if policy measures had not brought results.

The State Council, of which the public rapporteur is a member, is not bound by such opinions but follows the adviser's lead in most cases.

A decision in the case is expected in the coming weeks.

A lawyer for the rights groups, which include Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, urged the council not to follow the recommendation.

Rejecting the case would be like saying that "the pain exists, but the doctor doesn't want to intervene," said the lawyer, Antoine Lyon-Caen.

The rights groups' case is supported by statements from 40 victims as well as police.

The government and police are under scrutiny after an officer shot dead Nahel, a teenager of North African descent, during a traffic stop in June, bringing long-simmering resentment among urban immigrant communities to the boil.

Lawyer Slim Ben Achour, who has defended racial profiling victims in cases where the state was found to be at fault, said if the court rejects this type of class action "it will be catastrophic and an important indicator for what is happening in this country".

(Reporting by Layli Foroudi; editing by Rami Ayyub)

Los Angeles city and county to spend billions to help homeless people under lawsuit settlement

ROBERT JABLON
Thu, September 28, 2023 

 People line up along temporary tents to partake in a free Thanksgiving meal provided by the Union Rescue Mission as the Los Angeles Skid Row district annual feast hosts thousands of homeless and others in need, in downtown Los Angeles, on Nov. 24, 2022. Los Angeles County and city will spend billions of dollars to provide more housing and support services for homeless people under a lawsuit settlement approved Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, by a federal judge.

 (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Los Angeles County and city will spend billions of dollars to provide more housing and support services for homeless people under a lawsuit settlement approved Thursday by a federal judge.

The county ends more than two years of court battles over LA's response to the homelessness crisis by agreeing to provide an additional 3,000 beds by the end of 2026 for people with mental health and drug abuse issues.

It was the last piece in a series of commitments that were hammered out after a lawsuit was brought in 2020 by the LA Alliance for Human Rights, a coalition that includes businesses, residents, landlords, homeless people and others who alleged that inaction by both the city and county created a dangerous environment.

“All told, we're looking at some 25,000 new beds for unhoused people and a total of over $5 billion ... just to implement these three agreements,” alliance spokesperson Daniel Conway said.

U.S. District Judge David Carter had rejected earlier settlement proposals offering far fewer beds.

Conway said the final deal was historic and “will stand the test of time” because it includes court enforcement requirements.

It will serve as "a blueprint for other communities looking to address homelessness humanely and comprehensively,” Conway said.

The new agreement sets up a commitment to provide hundreds of new beds each year through 2026 but doesn't include specifics on funding, although earlier this year the county and city both passed budgets that together include some $1.9 billion to fight homelessness.

California is home to nearly a third of the nation’s homeless population, according to federal data. About two-thirds of California’s homeless population is unsheltered, meaning they live outside, often packed into encampments in major cities and along roadways.

During the court case, the city had contended that the county, which operates the local public health system, was obligated to provide services and housing for people who are homeless or have substance abuse issues but was failing.

Now, both governments will partner in an effort that “stands to help more unhoused Angelenos in the city come inside and receive care,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement.

“It took a long time and a lot of hard work from many people to get to this point, but this is finally an agreement we can be proud of,” county Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn said in a statement. “This is an achievement that will mean real care and housing for thousands of people who are struggling with mental illness and addiction.”

LA has one of the nation's largest unhoused populations. Those living on the streets, in shelters or in vehicles has ballooned in recent years.

A federally required January count estimated that on any given night there were more than 75,500 unhoused people in the county, with well over 46,000 of them in the LA city limits. About a third of them said they had substance abuse issues.

Since 2015, homelessness has increased by 70% in the county and 80% in the city.

Homeless populations, once mainly confined to Skid Row, are now found in nearly all parts of the city. Encampments have cropped up in Hollywood, pricey West Los Angeles and within sight of Los Angeles City Hall.

Bass made dealing with the homelessness crisis a priority in her mayoral campaign. On her first day in office last December, she declared a state of emergency over the issue.

However, a nonprofit group called Fix the City filed a lawsuit Monday against the emergency declaration, calling it a “vast and illegal expansion of mayoral power.”

The group, which has battled the city over its approach to dealing with development issues, contends that Bass's efforts under the emergency to fast-track construction of affordable housing has circumvented necessary public input and planning review, including eliminating competitive bidding for some projects.

Judge approves L.A. County deal for 3,000 mental health and substance use treatment beds

Doug Smith
Fri, September 29, 2023

U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, 79, pauses in front of the Midnight Mission while leading a tour of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles on Friday. After retired judge Jay C. Gandhi was appointed to monitor Los Angeles County's settlement of the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights case, Carter challenged Gandhi to prove his passion for the job by meeting him on Skid Row. Gandhi showed up at 6:30 a.m. Friday for the tour.

 (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

A federal judge signed off Thursday on Los Angeles County's commitment to produce 3,000 new mental health and substance use treatment beds, settling a 3½-year lawsuit that alleged city and county officials had done little to address homelessness, while adding language to ensure the agreement was transparent and effectively monitored.

"This is an extraordinary step forward," U.S. District Judge David O. Carter said. "It's going to save a lot of lives."

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, City Council President Paul Krekorian and Board of Supervisors Chair Janice Hahn, attending the hearing at Carter's invitation, praised the agreement.

"We are all now aligned," Hahn told the judge. "The stars are aligned with 3,000 beds. This is a solid proposal. We will make it happen."

After twice rejecting proposed settlements between Los Angeles County and the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group representing primarily downtown business and property owners, Carter ended the case in characteristically disruptive style, accepting the latest proposed settlement only after inserting his own wording and requiring the parties to accept or reject his additions, "yes or no."

The earlier proposals had started at 300 beds and then been raised to 1,000.

Bass, who told the court 3,000 beds would make a significant difference, said after the hearing that the starting figure of 300 had shocked her and that adding a zero was the right solution.

The settlement "is a floor, not a ceiling," Carter said, dictating his amendment to an aide who wrote it by hand on a copy of the agreement projected on a screen. While significant, it "does not solve homelessness," he said.

Expressing displeasure at the lack of transparency he said he has observed in the distribution of funds for services, Carter inserted language requiring invoices for the services that would be rendered under the agreement to be made public.

Carter leads a tour of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles on Friday. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

That added transparency was welcome, said plaintiff's attorney Elizabeth Mitchell of Umhofer, Mitchell & King.

"It’s so difficult to hold the providers accountable, the county accountable when you don’t have transparency," she said. "I think overall we’re very happy with it."

Carter said that in his visits to Skid Row service centers he has seen people leave waiting rooms after growing impatient, but suspects they were included in the agency's billings even though they received no services.

He said it was unlikely voters would approve new taxes — which would undoubtedly be required for the county to meet its obligations — if they were not confident the money was being spent efficiently.

The decision brings an end to a saga that has seen Carter alternately praise and berate public officials, hold court on the streets of Skid Row during the coronavirus pandemic, render a visionary ruling to end homelessness on Skid Row — only to have it overturned on appeal — and squeeze more and more money from a reluctant county.

The city had settled its side of the case in earlier agreements that committed it to produce close to 20,000 new beds of either interim or permanent housing.

Among his interjections Thursday, Carter raised multiple reservations about the nomination of retired Judge Jay C. Gandhi as a monitor to ensure compliance with the agreement. Though he called Gandhi a friend, Carter questioned his commitment to the case and the $200,000 annual fee proposed for him.

Carter gives Thee Big Mama, right, a comforting hug before leading an early morning tour of Skid Row in downtown Los Angeles on Friday. Thee Big Mama used to live homeless in Skid Row but now has housing. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

He instructed the aide to strike a paragraph that described Gandhi as "material to brokering the Settlement Agreement" and having "a meaningful background in the case."

That statement, he said, was false. Gandhi had worked briefly on the case, he said, whereas special master Michele Martinez and another U.S. district judge, Andre Birotte Jr., had worked with the parties on the agreement some days until 2 a.m.

Carter also objected to the proposal to set Gandhi's annual fee at $200,000 while Martinez would receive only $50,000. He characterized the differential as gender discrimination.

"He can work for free or he can work for the same salary as Michele Martinez," Carter said.

Hahn told the court that the supervisors had already approved the amount for Gandhi's fee but that she thought the terms could be adjusted so the money would be equally divided between the two.

The handwritten addition published with the agreement Thursday afternoon read, "The monitor must be willing to take to the streets, and learn from the community, not the bureaucracy, and has an absolute fiduciary duty to the court."

In a closing gesture to impress on all parties his determination to ensure compliance, Carter announced that he would be on the streets of Skid Row at 6:30 a.m. Friday and advised Gandhi to be there too to show his passion for the job.

The case, filed in March of 2020, took several turns.

In May 2020, Carter ordered the city and county to find shelter for the thousands of people living near freeway overpasses, underpasses and ramps.

That decision was eventually vacated when the city and county agreed to construct new forms of shelter for 6,700 people within 18 months, and fund homeless services for the people who ended up staying in these locations after they were built.

In 2021, Carter granted a preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs telling the city and county to offer every homeless person on Skid Row housing or shelter within the year.

In a sharp rebuke to Carter, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in overturning the decision that he failed to follow basic legal requirements, using “novel” legal theories that no one had argued, and ruled on claims that no one had alleged and on evidence that was not before him.

Carter, left, and retired Judge Jay C. Gandhi, right, speak with Paula Chatman, 58, who has been homeless in Skid Row for the last 40 years, in downtown Los Angeles on Friday. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

In April of 2022, the city reached its own settlement in which it agreed to open enough beds over the next five years to accommodate 60% of the city’s unsheltered population in each City Council district.

The exact number of beds required, based on the results of the 2022 point-in-time homeless count, is estimated to be about 13,000 beds.

The county and L.A. Alliance for Human Rights continued negotiating and came up with an agreement late last year that provided 300 new mental health and substance use beds, and supportive services for city-financed interim and permanent housing. It also called for the expansion of mental health outreach by adding 11 new multidisciplinary teams, which include physical and mental health practitioners, bringing the total to 34 and nearly doubling its Homeless Outreach and Mobile Engagement Teams, which focus on severe mental illness, to 10. It did not include continuing oversight by a court monitor.

Pushed by Carter to do better, the parties came back in April with the 1,000-bed commitment and an agreement by the county to fund 450 new subsidies for beds at board and care homes “frequently utilized by individuals with serious mental illness who are at risk of homelessness” — only to have the judge reject it again.

A county petition to the 9th Circuit for an order for Carter to accept that agreement was denied, leading to the prospect of a trial neither side wanted. To forestall it, they returned Monday with the terms the judge wanted.

Times researcher Scott Wilson contributed to this report.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

US appeals court blocks venture capital fund's grant program for Black women

Nate Raymond
Updated Sat, September 30, 2023 

FILE PHOTO: Black women-owned venture capital fund to respond to conservative activist's lawsuit

By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) -A federal appeals court on Saturday blocked a venture capital fund from moving forward with a program that awards funding to businesses run by Black women in a case by the anti-affirmative action activist behind the successful U.S. Supreme Court challenge to race-conscious college admissions policies.

The Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote granted a request by Edward Blum's American Alliance for Equal Rights to temporarily block Fearless Fund from considering applications for grants only from businesses led by Black women.

Blum's group asked the court to do so while it appealed a judge's Tuesday ruling denying it a preliminary injunction blocking Fearless Fund from moving forward with its "racially exclusive program." Grant applications were due Saturday.

The judges in the majority, U.S. Circuit Judges Robert Luck and Andrew Brasher, agreed with Blum's group that Fearless Fund's "racially exclusionary" grant program likely violated Section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, a Civil War-era law that bars racial bias in contracting.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash earlier this week concluded that under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment's free speech protections, Fearless Fund had a right to express its belief in the importance of Black women to the economy through charity.

But the appeals court's majority, comprised of two appointees of Republican former President Donald Trump, said the First Amendment "does not give the defendants the right to exclude persons from a contractual regime based on race."

Blum in a statement said his group was "gratified that the 11th Circuit has recognized the likelihood that the Fearless Strivers Grant Contest is illegal." Defense lawyers said they planned to seek further appellate review.

"We remain committed to defending our clients’ meaningful work," said Jason Schwartz, a lawyer for Fearless Fund.

Fearless Fund describes itself as "built by women of color for women of color."

The lawsuit is one of three that Blum's Texas-based group has filed since August challenging grant and fellowship programs designed by the venture capital fund and two law firms to help give Black, Hispanic and other underrepresented minority groups greater career opportunities.

A different group founded by Blum, who is white, was behind the litigation that led to the June decision, powered by the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority, declaring unlawful race-conscious student admissions policies used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

According to the Fearless Fund, businesses owned by Black women in 2022 received less than 1% of the $288 billion that venture capital firms deployed.

The fund aims to address that disparity, and counts JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and MasterCard as investors. It has invested nearly $27 million in 40 businesses led by minority women since its founding in 2019.

It also provides grants, and Blum's lawsuit took aim at its Fearless Strivers Grant Contest, which awards Black women who own small businesses $20,000 in grants and other resources to grow their businesses.

The fund argued Blum was trying to "turn a seminal civil rights statute on its head" by suing it under a Civil War-era law enacted to protect formerly enslaved Black people from racial bias.

U.S. Circuit Judge Charles Wilson, an appointee of Democratic former President Bill Clinton, in a dissenting opinion on Saturday called it a "perversion" of Congress' intent to use that law against a remedial program like Fearless Fund's.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi, Andrea Ricci and Leslie Adler)

Federal court temporarily blocks race-based grant program

Olivia Alafriz

POLITICO
Sat, September 30, 2023 

Charles Krupa/AP photo

A federal appeals court on Saturday temporarily blocked a grant program for Black women-owned businesses.

American Alliance for Equal Rights, a nonprofit backed by conservative legal activist Edward Blum, sued the Atlanta-based Fearless Fund in August, alleging that the venture capital fund’s grant program violated the 1866 Civil Rights Act’s “guarantee of race neutrality” in making “contracts” by discriminating against other races.

The lawsuit follows a Supreme Court decision in June that struck down race-based affirmative action in higher education after challenges brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a group also backed by Blum.

After a district court judge in Georgia refused to issue an injunction earlier this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit granted the injunction in a 2-1 decision on Saturday. Robert Luck and Andrew Brasher, both appointed by former President Donald Trump, were in favor. Charles Wilson, appointed by former President Bill Clinton, dissented.

The targeted program intends to support Black women-owned businesses by awarding grants and providing mentorship and business support services — however, in the Saturday opinion, the judges said that it was “substantially likely” that the program was illegal.

Blum has filed similar suits against several businesses that he says use the same kind of racial classifications previously used in higher education admissions — such programs are likely the next target for conservative legal activism.

‘We Won the First Round’: Federal Judge Denies Conservative Activist Behind SCOTUS’ Affirmative Action Reversal Request to Block Venture Fund for Black Women-Owned Businesses


Niko Mann
Fri, September 29, 2023 

A federal judge denied a request to block a small venture capital fund from providing grants to Black women starting their own businesses.

U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash denied the request on Sept. 26, which was made by conservative activist Edward Blum and his nonprofit American Alliance for Equal Rights.

Blum filed a federal lawsuit claiming that the Fearless Fund Management violated the Civil Rights Act of 1866 because only Black women are eligible for the $20,000 grants. According to Reuters, Thrash denied the request for an injunction pending an appeal in a federal court in Atlanta.”

Conservative Edward Blum attacks a venture capital fund that provides grants to Black women. (Photo: MSNBC/ YouTube screenshot)

“Blum sought an injunction to block the Fearless Fund from awarding grants for what he called a “racially exclusive program.”

The fund was reportedly created in 2019 by entrepreneur Arian Simone, executive Ayana Parsons, and “The Cosby Show” actress Keshia Knight Pulliam to provide funding for women of color. It offers grants to women-owned and women-led businesses.

Blum’s group filed an emergency appeal on September 23, requesting that the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals block the fund from selecting a grant recipient. However, the judge ruled that the Fearless Fund’s grant program is a form of speech protected by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

The Washington Post shared a statement from Arian Simone and Ayana Parsons following the ruling, highlighting the significant barriers women of color continue to face in accessing capital. In 2022, businesses owned by Black women received less than one percent of the $288 billion invested by venture capital firms.

The statement read, “Women of color continue to face significant barriers in obtaining access to capital. We are very pleased with the court’s decision to deny the plaintiffs’ attempt to shut down our grant program and look forward to continuing to advance our critical mission.”

The Rev. Al Sharpton was in Atlanta to support the Fearless Fund and spoke in front of the courthouse after the ruling. Sharpton emphasized that the fund is not discriminatory and was created to combat discrimination against women of color. “We won the first round,” he said.

Simone also spoke out following the decision and expressed her gratitude to those in attendance.

“Along with my partner Ayana Parsons, we have founded the nation’s first venture capital fund that is created by women of color for women of color,” she said. “And we will continue to operate the nation’s first venture capital fund that is built by women of color for women of color.”

Sharpton shared a video on social media with the caption, “We came to ATL to stand against those who seek to undo generations of hard-won civil rights because this country needs to move forward on equality – not backward… Today, I’m proud to have stood with #FearlessFund in that courtroom as the judge denied the preliminary injunction.'”



Blum is the founder of Students for Fair Admissions, the group that filed a lawsuit against affirmative action policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race can no longer be considered in college admissions, effectively ending affirmative action in college admissions.

Blum, a white conservative who has faced criticism for his stance, is also involved in a lawsuit against two law firms that provide grants for Black, Hispanic, and underrepresented minorities in terms of career opportunities. Blum alleges that these firms discriminate against white candidates.

“Excluding students from these prestigious fellowships based on their race is unfair, polarizing, and illegal,” said Blum.

The Fearless Fund is represented by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, and civil rights attorney Ben Crump.”

Georgia federal judge rejects conservative activist group’s effort to halt grant funding for Black women

Isabel Rosales and Jaide Timm-Garcia, CNN
Tue, September 26, 2023 

Shuran Huang/The Washington Post/Getty Images

A federal judge in Atlanta has denied a conservative group’s request for an injunction to stop a Black women-owned venture capitalist firm from awarding grants exclusively to Black women entrepreneurs.

The American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER ) had argued that the Fearless Fund’s grant program amounted to racial discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1866.

Judge Thomas Thrash, Jr., Senior U.S. District Judge of Northern District of Georgia, denied the group’s request for a preliminary injunction to halt the firm’s grant selection process while the lawsuit goes to trial, saying the case was a matter of free speech and charitable donations fall under the purview of the First Amendment.

“The judge’s ruling today tells me that there are people in this world who respect progress and allow people to express their freedom of speech, and we are so grateful,” Fearless Fund co-founder and CEO Arian Simone told CNN. “It’s encouraging to know that laws are still in place to protect us.”

AAER told CNN they are “disappointed” with the court’s denial and have appealed the decision.

“Our nation’s civil rights laws do not permit racial distinctions because some racial groups are overrepresented in various endeavors, while others are under-represented,” said AAER founder Edward Blum in an email response to CNN.

Blum is the same conservative activist behind Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court case whose June ruling dismantled affirmative action in college admissions.

Fearless Fund is an Atlanta-based company that was started in 2019 to break down the barriers Black women face trying to secure resources and funding for growing their business. Their website lists corporate giants including Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Fifth Third Bank and Mastercard as partners. Fearless Fund runs a separate non-profit organization called the Fearless Foundation, where it gives charitable donations and grants to women of color entrepreneurs, according to co-founder and COO Ayana Parsons.

Simone said the venture capitalist firm is the first of its kind “built by women of color, for women of color.”

“Women of color are the least funded but the most founded,” said Simone, adding that Black women statistically make up the majority of small business owners, but receive the least amount of funding compared to other demographics.

It was one of Fearless Foundation’s grants, the Strivers Grant Contest, which exclusively awards Black women entrepreneurs up to $20,000, that was the target of AAER’s complaint.

In early August, Blum filed a lawsuit on behalf of AAER against the Fearless Fund and its foundation. The group argued that their members, un-named in the lawsuit, were excluded from the program because they weren’t Black, and faced “additional harm” from the illegal act of racial discrimination, AAER’s attorneys stated in the court hearing.

Blum told CNN that “venture capital funding gaps between the races is never a legal or moral justification to exclude certain men and women from public programs by race or ethnicity.”

He added that AAER “believes it is legally permissible to provide benefits to businesses and individuals who are under-resourced but those benefits must be made available to all races and ethnicities.”

During closing remarks, Judge Thrash said his understanding was that the Fearless Fund is trying to get a message across that Black women lack access to capital funds, a problem they recognize and are trying to address.

“The Plaintiff wants them to communicate a different message,” Thrash said. “That’s not the way it works.”

AAER’s attorneys declined to comment after the hearing.

The lawsuit caught the attention of civil rights activist and leader Rev. Al Sharpton, who said he views it as evidence the fight over affirmative action is expanding beyond school grounds. In a news release on Monday, Rev. Sharpton said that the case could have larger consequences for DEI initiatives across corporate America and could pave the way for future lawsuits “targeting race-conscious diversity programs … across all kinds of public and private sectors.”

In the month after the Supreme Court’s landmark affirmative action decision, conservatives put top Fortune 100 companies on notice. Thirteen Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to top companies including Apple, Google, Netflix and others, arguing the court’s ruling on affirmative action also applied to employers.

“[We] write to remind you of your obligations as an employer under federal and state law to refrain from discriminating on the basis of race, whether under the label of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ or otherwise,” the letter read. “Treating people differently because of the color of their skin, even for benign purposes, is unlawful and wrong. Companies that engage in racial discrimination should and will face serious legal consequences.”

Outside the federal courthouse after the judge denied AAER’s motion, Sharpton stood with Simone and Parsons, the Fearless Fund co-founders.

“We won the first round but the fight is not over … we’re going to keep on fighting, and we’re going to fight wherever this reactionary group raises his [sic] head,” he told the crowd of supporters and media gathered.

Parsons told CNN that she believes the lawsuit is bigger than the Fearless Fund, venture capital or corporate America.

“I’ve been a corporate executive my entire career, and yes diversity, equity and inclusion is under attack,” she said. “I hope that the American people understand the magnitude of this lawsuit and how it impacts and affects all of us.”

She said Fearless Fund is not afraid of what comes next in the legal process, but emphasized her belief that this is an attempt to dismantle the economic freedom and progress being made in the country.

“This is about anything that is race-conscious decision making and trying to include those that have long been excluded,” Parsons said.

As a Black business owner, Sophia Danner-Okotie said she couldn’t get a loan despite showing proof of growth and contract opportunities she had lined up with retailers.

“We’re definitely under-funded and it’s felt – it’s felt hard,” she told CNN. Danner-Okotie said she has received a $10,000 grant from the Fearless Foundation.
“Not being able to go to a bank and get funding - that kills your courage sometimes, that kills your ambition,” she said. “So Fearless Foundation stepping in and saying, ‘We’re going to help you with this mission. We believe in what you’re doing, and we want to help you grow this business.’ That was a boost to my business and ego as well.”

This is not the end of the line for AAER’s lawsuit. While Judge Thrash denied a preliminary injunction to pause the grant program, the case itself continues in the Northern District.

 CNN news

The high-tech hunt for one of the world's most elusive sharks

Dino Grandoni,Photos and videos by Greg Lecoeur, 

(c) 2023, The Washington Post
Fri, September 29, 202

 

OFF THE COAST OF CORSICA - Nicolas Tomasi has never laid eyes on it. He has worked these waters for years without seeing one but has heard the tales from old-timers - of a patient predator, hiding under the sand off this French island's shores, waiting for the right moment to strike.

The angel shark does not want to be found. But it can hide no longer.

Subscribe to The Post Most newsletter for the most important and interesting stories from The Washington Post.

On a hot August afternoon, Tomasi lowered a long, plastic tube attached to a weight over the edge of a dinghy and into the indigo water.


With the push of a few buttons, an electric pump began sucking up a small portion of the Mediterranean Sea - and with it, the ocean's secrets.

The thin stream of siphoned water looked ordinary, but floating in it were microscopic particles laden with DNA from dozens of ocean animals. If an angel shark was below, this device could detect it.

Today, said Tomasi, a project manager with the Natural Marine Park of Cap Corse and Agriate, we can find rare sea life "sans avoir à plonger." Without having to dive.

This is environmental DNA, or eDNA, a revolutionary technology that is helping scientists detect the treasure trove of genetic information animals leave in their wake and understand the breadth of life on Earth like never before.

Before, biologists had to drag nets through the sea or run electric currents through the water to incapacitate and count animals. Now, they can tally biodiversity simply by sampling water, soil or even air for the DNA animals shed in their environments daily.

Around the world from the Arctic to the Amazon, eDNA is rewriting the way biologists do conservation, allowing them to spot invasive pests entering ecosystems before anyone has seen them and to follow animals' migration fueled by climate change without deploying an army of people to track them.

But the most promising place for deploying eDNA may be Earth's oceans, where many species remain unknown and many threats, such as warmer waters and ocean acidification, are mounting.

In the case of France's elusive angel shark, eDNA helped scientists rediscover an animal many thought to be lost for good, and gave ocean managers key information about where it lives so that they can protect it.

"They are always surprised that from a sample of water, you can detect the species," said Stéphanie Manel, a professor at the École Pratique des Hautes Études who was showing Tomasi how to collect DNA.

"But this is DNA," she said. "DNA is there. So it's not magic."

Her ambitions extend beyond the angel shark. Her goal is nothing short of "a map of the biodiversity in the Mediterranean."

- - -

Fallen angel

It used to be easy to find an angel shark.

A 19th century zoologist in the British Isles wrote it "haunts our coasts in abundance." Once widespread from Scandinavia to the Western Sahara, it was so plentiful in Europe's seas that the crystal-blue water off Nice in the French Riviera is named Baie des Anges, or the Bay of Angels.

With a flattened body and eyes on top of its head, the common angel shark, or squatina squatina, lies on the bottom of the ocean, burying its body in the sand. For hours it waits in shallow waters until - whoosh! - it pops its head up, opens its jaws and sucks an unsuspecting fish into its mouth.

For as long as humans have known about the shark, they have exploited them. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder lauded its rough skin for its ability to polish ivory and wood.

But it was the advent of modern fishing that really did the carnivorous fish in. That lie-and-wait strategy for ambushing prey also made it easy for fishermen to scoop it up in trawls scraping the sandy sea bottom, even when trying to catch other fish.

Slow to grow and reproduce, the fish's population plummeted and the Mediterranean lost a key predator. Today, the common angel shark is no longer common, with the International Union for Conservation of Nature listing the species as critically endangered.

By 2015, its last stronghold appeared to be the Canary Islands off northwestern Africa. The shark had disappeared everywhere else. Or so scientists thought.

But locals in Corsica knew better. "I've seen the bite," Sébastien Leccia said. As a teenager, he remembered a man showing him a scar on his arm. "We knew," said Leccia, now an official with the Office of the Environment of Corsica. "But it wasn't studied."

Until in 2019, a fisherman shared pictures of the odd, flat fish caught off the northeastern coast with biologists. Some were juveniles, suggesting a hidden shark nursery. Another series of photos from a diver further confirmed Corsica's angel sharks were no myth.

But those fleeting images only painted a partial picture. Where else around Corsica did the angel shark swim? Did these sharks stay put, or mingle around the Mediterranean? In 2020, during covid lockdowns, the sharks started "to come back to the shore," said David Mouillot, a University of Montpellier professor collaborating with Manel. Had the decline in beach and boat activity during the pandemic made angel sharks less shy?

"We don't know whether it's covid, climate" or something else, he said.

For the past several years, Manel and Mouillot's team have been siphoning water along the Corsican coast to find its genetic finprint and map its whereabouts. In late August, a 56-foot trimaran named the Victoria IV cut a course along the island's northwestern shoreline to continue the search.

After dropping the tube into the blue water on that hot August afternoon, the eDNA team waited as a pump whooshed water through a fist-sized amber capsule. Inside, an accordion-shaped filter collected tiny DNA-laden particles.

After half an hour running the pump, Tomasi snapped on rubber gloves and poured a bottle of clear solution into the amber capsule, preserving the genetic material so it could be sent to a lab onshore.

There, the snippets of DNA would be multiplied using a polymerase chain reaction, or PCR - a technique also used for detecting covid in humans - and then compared to DNA from a database to see what species were swimming below. The plunging cost of analyzing DNA over the past decade opened the door for this work.

So far, the team has used eDNA to find at least seven spots along the Corsican coast where angel sharks were still patrolling, according to a paper the team published in May. But more may be lurking undetected.

"Because it is endangered, the DNA is rare," Manel said.

- - -

'A young science'

Manel first got interested in eDNA after geneticists found invasive frogs in French wetlands. Much of the first eDNA work, in fact, was done in freshwater ecosystems, where DNA lingers in abundance.

More recently, scientists have refined ways of extracting strands of genetic material from saltwater, soil and air. Depending on conditions, DNA can last for days in the ocean after an animal has shed it.

"When we started nobody believed it would work," Mouillot said of their marine eDNA work as the boat chugged along Corsica's rocky coast lined with modern steel wind turbines and medieval stone towers once used to watch for pirates.

"Everyone thought we are crazy. It's a waste of money."

In the Mediterranean, the team was on the lookout for another invader: the rabbitfish.

The rabbitfish doesn't look much like a rabbit. But it shares with its land counterpart one crucial and devastating trait: It reproduces like crazy, overwhelming ecosystems. The fish has infiltrated the eastern Mediterranean through the Suez Canal, one of some 3,500 harmful invasive species costing society more than $423 billion a year. It hasn't been spotted near Corsica. But it's only a matter of time, scientists say.

"It's inevitable at some point," said Rick Stewart-Smith, a marine biologist from the University of Tasmania in Australia who joined Manel and Mouillot on the Victoria IV.

But biologists are doing more than just tracking endangered and invasive species. Today they use eDNA to diagnose infections in insects and reconstruct entire food webs by combing through feces.

"We got to the point where we could detect one or two molecules," said Colin Simpfendorfer, a shark scientist at James Cook University in Australia conducting his own eDNA work. "That's how powerful those sorts of techniques can become."

"What eDNA can deliver for conservation is massive," he said. "It is revolutionizing a lot of the work that we do."

Yet the field is still new, and going through growing pains.

DNA is the blueprint for life, made up of four bases - adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine - strung together in an order distinctive to every type of organism. To match DNA collected from the environment to a specific species, researchers must check samples against a reference database.

Yet the databases available right now are incomplete and disjointed. To confirm that particular sequence of A's, T's, G's and C's came from angel sharks, for instance, Manel and Mouillot's team had to test their method on angel shark tissue provided by fishers in Corsica and by an aquarium in Spain.

There is also a lack of standardization for filtration methods as well as a lack of communication with other scientific disciplines, said Louis Bernatchez, editor in chief of the scientific journal Environmental DNA. Many of the scientists sampling tissue from animals and sequencing DNA don't focus on the parts of the genome that eDNA methods are good at detecting.

"It's still a young science," said Bernatchez, a professor at Laval University in Canada. "It just keeps improving."

Then there are the privacy concerns. Wild animals aren't the only ones shedding DNA everywhere. Humans do, too. Spikes in the viral genetic signatures in sewer water, for instance, are allowing health officials to predict covid outbreaks.

In a paper this year, University of Florida biologist David Duffy and colleagues showed sleuths can recover medical and family information from genetic traces left in the environment by humans, suggesting one day police departments and insurance companies may be able to spot genetic disorders and surveil populations using eDNA.

"Essentially what we have shown is that humans are not really very different," Duffy said. "The same technologies that can allow us to recover a tiger's DNA from the environment actually can recover human DNA as well."

- - -

Going deep

And eDNA still can't capture some vital information. It can't say much yet about the quantity or body size of fish - though researchers are working on linking the amount of DNA they find in the water to the abundance of a species. And there are other fish that don't shed a lot of DNA to begin with, making eDNA detection difficult.

Some fish "don't piss a lot," Stewart-Smith said. "They don't have soft skin or mucus."

Finding some creatures requires taking a plunge. Stewart-Smith bobbed his head up and down and side to side, letting out big puffs of glistening air bubbles from his scuba gear. In one hand he held a pencil and in the other, a piece of special waterproof paper.

Swimming along a 50-meter tape measure laid along the seafloor, he counted every rainbow wrasse, painted comber and other vibrant fish he could spot. His colleague Graham Edgar passed him going the opposite direction, snapping pictures of the seafloor.

Once Stewart-Smith got to the end of the tape measure, he spun around to swim the line again - this time gently brushing away seagrass with his hand and plunging headfirst into crevices to get a better look at the life on this stretch of rocky seafloor near the small island of Giraglia at the northern tip of Corsica.

In one of the cracks he spotted a cardinal fish, a neon-orange animal that looks like a living piece of gummy candy.

"Nothing out of the ordinary," Stewart-Smith, who is also co-founder of the Reef Life Survey, said back aboard the Victoria IV.

This is a tried-and-true method for surveying sea life. For the past 16 years, the Reef Life Survey has trained professional scientists and amateur divers alike to conduct underwater surveys the same standardized way. Their catalogues, which include not only the species but also the abundance and body sizes of different reef fish at thousands of sites around the world, has provided marine managers with crucial baseline data.

This old-school approach can complement eDNA analysis. Visual surveys, for instance, aren't very good at spotting sea creatures swimming in deep waters or hiding under rocks. And other fish simply flee at the first sight of divers.

"The first thing to recognize when you're surveying marine life is that no method is perfect," said Edgar, also a University of Tasmania marine biologist.

Back on the deck, the pair enter data into their laptops. No angel sharks. No fish, in fact, bigger than 6 inches. In other areas off the coast of Corsica where Stewart-Smith went diving, fish were also small and skittish, a sign of overfishing even in areas that are supposed to be protected. Both eDNA and visual surveys can let government agencies know if fishing restrictions are working, or being ignored by poachers.

"They were all very shy," he said. "If it's meant to be no entry, the fish are telling me no."

- - -

One last look

As the Victoria IV clipped up a stretch of dry coastline, Mouillot drew in a breath of ocean air. "I'm very excited to swim," he said. "Do you smell the angel shark?"

Sure, eDNA is the shiny new technology. But there is nothing quite like seeing a shark face to face.

Snapping on flippers and swim caps, Moullot and Manel plunged into the water near a smattering of beachgoers enjoying the last days of summer. This sandy cove is near one of the spots the eDNA team had detected the shark in two years ago.

To find an angel shark, look for its silhouette. Often, the only thing to see is its outline in the sand. "You don't see the angel shark," said Jose A. Sanabria-Fernandez, another reef diver looking for the shark. "You see the shape of the angel shark."

The pair swam at a brisk pace along the coast, overhead strokes and eyes down, scanning for the outline of the shark under the sand. After several minutes of searching, Mouillot stopped.

"Many beautiful fish," he said, bobbing in the water. "But no angel shark."

The eDNA samples collected on the trip may reveal the sharks once they are analyzed in the coming weeks. But he and Manel care about more than just the angel shark. Their latest survey involves an eDNA method called metabarcoding that can detect not just one species, but whole groups of animals.

"People need to be aware that you need to protect species," Manel said. "The angel shark is maybe an emblematic species."

The pair want not just to measure biodiversity but bolster it, by someday moving some of Corsica's sharks to the French mainland coast and giving Nice's Baie des Anges its angels back.

Mouillot acknowledged the political and legal hurdles. "It's a very controversial idea," he said.

"It would be the greatest challenge of the end of my career," he added, "because it means that we can reverse the decline of biodiversity."

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

Charlotte company agrees to pay $218 million for bribing foreign government officials
Gavin Off
Fri, September 29, 2023 

A Charlotte-based chemical manufacturing company agreed to pay more than $218 million in penalties following federal investigations that found the company spent years bribing foreign government officials in return for business, a U.S. Justice Department release said.

Albemarle Corporation agreed to the payment after admitting to Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigators that its third-party agents conspired to bribe officials in Vietnam, Indonesia and India for business with the countries’ state-owned oil refineries, the release said. The schemes took place between 2009 and 2017 and violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Albemarle was named a Fortune 500 company this year.

“Albemarle earned nearly $100 million by participating in schemes to pay bribes to government officials in multiple countries,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in the department’s release.

According the the Justice Department:

• Albemarle Corporation got contracts at two state-owned oil refineries in Vietnam after an intermediary sales agent sought higher commissions to pay bribes to Vietnamese officials.

• The company used a third-party intermediary to secure business with Indonesia’s state-owned oil company even after an intermediary told Albemarle that it would have to pay bribes for the business ties.

• Albemarle used a third-party to “corruptly retain catalyst business with India’s state-owned oil company by avoiding Albemarle being blacklisted,” the government release said.

“Corruption has no borders, but neither does justice,” said Dena King, U.S. attorney for the Western District of North Carolina in the department’s press release. “Companies are expected to adhere to the same ethical and legal standards whether they are doing business on U.S. soil or overseas.”

In a statement, Albemarle said: “The actions taken by a limited number of former employees and third-party sales representatives happened years ago ... Those responsible for these past actions were held to account and separated years ago.”

The statement said Albemarle’s payment resolved the self-reported investigation and the company has since changed how it monitors third parties.

In addition to the $218 million payment, Albemarle has agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department in any current or future investigations related to its business dealings.