“As we have noted for years, in jurisdictions where we are not allowed to assume custody of aliens from jails, our officers are forced to make at-large arrests of criminal aliens who have been released into communities,” he said. “When sanctuary cities release these criminals back to the street, it increases the occurrence of preventable crimes, and more importantly, preventable victims.”
But Gil Kerlikowske, the former commissioner of C.B.P., which oversees tactical units along the border, said sending the officers to conduct immigration enforcement within cities, where they are not trained to work, could escalate situations that are already volatile. He called the move a “significant mistake.”
“If you were a police chief and you were going to make an apprehension for a relatively minor offense, you don’t send the SWAT team. And BORTAC is the SWAT team,” said Mr. Kerlikowske, who is a former chief of police in Seattle. “They’re trained for much more hazardous missions than this.”
It was a gun-wielding BORTAC agent who, in April 2000, seized Elian Gonzalez — a Cuban boy who was embroiled in an international asylum controversy — from his uncle’s arms after agents had forced their way into the home where the boy was staying.
The Border Patrol squads will be charged with backing up ICE agents during deportation operations and standing by as a show of force, the officials said.
ICE agents typically seek out people with criminal convictions or multiple immigration violations as their primary targets for deportation, but family members and friends are often swept up in the enforcement net in what are known as “collateral” arrests, and many such people could now be caught up in any enhanced operations.
ICE leadership requested the help in sanctuary jurisdictions because agents there often struggle to track down undocumented immigrants without the help of the police and other state and local agencies. Law enforcement officers in areas that refuse to cooperate with ICE and the Border Patrol — which include both liberal and conservative parts of the country — often argue that doing so pushes undocumented people further into the shadows, ultimately making cities less safe because that segment of the population becomes less likely to report crimes or cooperate with investigations.
For the past week, Republicans in the state Senate have pushed forward with an audit of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County, a massive undertaking that has pleased Trump and his supporters while stirring outrage among Democrats, who have sought to stop the effort.
Here are five things to know about the audit of the 2020 election results:
Why is this happening?
The audit is the latest effort by Trump loyalists in the state to call the results of the 2020 presidential election into question, even after multiple audits since November determined that vote was tallied accurately.
What’s different this time, however, is that the audit is being carried out by the state Senate itself. Republican state senators used their subpoena power to demand that election officials hand over all of Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots, as well as its voting machines and voter registration information.
Despite legal efforts by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to block the subpoenas, a judge declared the demands valid and directed officials to hand over the requested materials. State senators are conducting a hand count of the ballots, as well as an examination of the voting machines and voter data.
The state Senate’s audit is widely viewed as a political exercise, intended to placate Trump’s supporters, many of whom remain convinced that the 2020 election was stolen from the former president. In fact, no evidence has been uncovered that backs up those claims.
Who’s behind it?
Arizona state Senate Republicans have hired a little-known Florida-based firm called Cyber Ninjas to run the audit, a decision that critics say is a red flag.
Cyber Ninjas has no experience in elections, and its website describes it as specializing in “all areas of application security, ranging from your traditional web application to mobile or thick client applications.”
Democrats have also raised concerns about past tweets from the company’s chief executive, Doug Logan, spreading conspiracy theories about a stolen election in Arizona. Those tweets were deleted earlier this year.
Cyber Ninjas isn’t the only firm involved in the audit. The state Senate has also hired Wake Technology Services Inc. to conduct the hand count of the ballots. The company previously conducted a hand count of the vote in Fulton County, Pa.
While part of the audit is being financed by taxpayer money, the effort also has some prominent backers. One America News Network, the pro-Trump cable channel that has been livestreaming the audit, has started to fundraise for the effort.
What are Trump and Democrats saying?
The audit has so far proven polarizing.
Trump has repeatedly praised the undertaking as a valiant effort to root out voter fraud and malfeasance, echoing the same baseless claims he has made about the election results for months. In several statements issued through his leadership PAC, Save America, he’s cast the audit as a popular effort while maligning Democrats for fighting it.
“Incredible organization and integrity taking place in Arizona with respect to the Fraudulent 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump said in a recent statement. “These are Great American Patriots, but watch, the Radical Left Democrats ‘demean and destroy campaign’ will start very soon.”
Democrats and elections experts have expressed grave concern about the audit, arguing in particular that the process has so far lacked transparency and warning that partisan elected officials may be sacrificing accuracy and security in favor of speed and political convenience.
Critics have also raised concerns about the audit’s potential effects on voter privacy and the security of their ballots. A group of election security and administration experts sent a letter to the Justice Department on Thursday asking federal officials to dispatch monitors to the audit site.
State Democrats in Arizona, meanwhile, are suing to halt the audit. A judge agreed to do so last week if the plaintiffs posted a $1 million bond, though the Democrats in the lawsuit refused. A new judge took over the case this week after the previous judge recused himself.
Has the audit found any fraud?
That’s still unclear, but it’s highly unlikely that the audit will uncover the scale of mass voter fraud that Trump and his allies have alleged. Again, previous audits of the vote in Maricopa County determined that the vote was counted accurately and that the voting machines used had not been tampered with.
And while no state legislature has gone as far as Arizona’s in examining Trump’s claims of fraud, several have conducted their own hearings and reviews on the allegations. None, however, have uncovered credible evidence to back up the allegations.
Cyber Ninjas has agreed to release a report of the audit within 60 days.
What are the implications of the audit?
The audit isn’t going to be used to reverse the election results in Arizona. It can’t be, and state senators have said as much.
The election results were certified by state officials months ago, effectively solidifying Biden’s win in Arizona. What’s more, both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate signed off on the Electoral College vote in January, two weeks before Biden took office.
Instead, Republicans in the Arizona state Senate say that the audit is simply a means of restoring voters’ confidence in the elections process and is necessary to help them decide whether to craft changes to the state’s election laws — something that GOP-controlled legislatures in other states have either already done or are working toward in the wake of the 2020 election.
Yet it also comes with the risk of eroding faith in Arizona’s elections.
Democrats and voting rights advocates have warned that the audit has put ballots at risk of being tampered with. What’s more, the catalyst for the audit — Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud and malfeasance — have stirred suspicions that Republicans may be trying to discredit unfavorable election results.
El presidente sirio Bashar al Asad descartó en entrevista con la BBC que su gobierno vaya a unirse a la coalición que combate a Estado Islámico y negó que sus fuerzas ataquen a civiles indiscriminadamente.
El exdirector del Fondo Monetario Internacional Dominique Strauss-Kahn compareció este martes por primera vez ante un tribunal francés, acusado de ayudar a conseguir prostitutas para fiestas sexuales. Enfrentamientos en Haití entre manifestantes que protestaban por el alto costo del combustible y la policía dejaron varios heridos en la capital, Puerto Príncipe.
El gobierno de Perú anunció el cierre por 180 días de la Dirección Nacional de Inteligencia para reestructurar el organismo que fue vinculado con el espionaje a políticos de la oposición y miembros del ejecutivo.
Científicos descubrieron que el centro de la Tierra está formado por dos partes compuestas de cristales de hierro, pero con diferentes estructuras y actividad.
Demonstrators gather during a protest vigil outside of the Planned Parenthood of Metropolitan Washington, D.C., Carol Whitehill Moses Center in January. | Zach Gibson/Getty Images
A drip, drip, drip of state restrictions has made abortion harder to obtain.
Abortion is still legal in the United States, but for women in vast swaths of the country it’s a right in name only.
Six states are down to only one abortion clinic; by the end of this week, Missouri could have zero. Some women seeking abortions have to travel long distances, and face mandatory waiting periods or examinations. On top of that, a new wave of restrictive laws, or outright bans, is rippling across GOP-led states like Alabama and Georgia.
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Both sides of the abortion battle are focused on the future of Roe v. Wade, but opponents have already won the ground game over the past decade, chipping away at abortion access.
The Supreme Court’s new conservative majority, about to wrap up its first term, has not yet taken up a case challenging Roe. Just this week it declined to reinstate an Indiana law, signed by Mike Pence when he was governor, that would have banned abortion on the basis of gender, race or fetal disability. But that’s no guarantee the court won’t take another look at the landmark 1973 abortion rights ruling.
But even without the high court, GOP-backed laws have added restrictions and obstacles, whittling away access. Since the start of the Trump administration, hostility to abortion in general and Planned Parenthood in particular has only intensified in statehouses around the country.
“We celebrate freedom in America. But I believe that my choice ends when another life begins,” Louisiana state Rep. Valarie Hodges said just before a fetal “heartbeat” abortion bill passed there.
Years of piecemeal state laws have left their mark. Mandatory waiting periods, travel, missed work and lost wages all make getting an abortion more expensive and more difficult, particularly for low-income women. Doctors and clinic staff have to face protesters, threats, proliferating regulations and draining legal challenges; clinics have closed. In remote parts of the midwest and south, women may have to travel more than 300 miles to end a pregnancy.
“This is a moment of seeing how all of these laws fly in the face of medicine and science and go against what we in the medical profession know, which is that any restriction on medical care by politicians will endanger people’s health,” Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen, a physician herself, said in an interview.
It’s intensified of late. Republicans in Alabama and other states have raced to enact laws that would almost completely ban abortion, sometimes without exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape or incest. Eight states have enacted laws which, if allowed to go into effect, would ban abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, as early as the sixth week of pregnancy, when many women don’t even know they are pregnant. (Missouri’s variant is eight weeks.) Alabama has gone even further, granting “personhood” and legal rights from conception.
Those laws may eventually reach the Supreme Court and test Roe, the 1973 decision that recognized women’s right to abortion. But those statutes aren’t what’s crimping access nationwide right now. That’s happened through a drip, drip, drip of lower-profile efforts that have created obstacles for pregnant women and led to a dwindling supply of doctors trained and willing to perform abortions.
Many of those laws were promoted as attempts to make abortion safer — though courts often disagreed and threw them out as unconstitutional barriers. Now, abortion opponents are openly talking about ending the practice altogether.
“The strategy used to be death by a thousand cuts,” said Colleen McNicholas, a physician based in St. Louis who also provides abortions in Kansas and Oklahoma. “They’re no longer pretending things are to promote the health and well-being of women, which is what we used to hear all the time. Now they’re being very bold and upfront.”
“It doesn’t change the fact that for many Americans, particularly for women in the middle [of the country] and the South, abortion is inaccessible,” she added.
Data from the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, shows that 788 clinics in the U.S. provided abortion services in 2014 — a drop of 51 clinics over three years. Since 2013about 20 clinics have closed just in Texas.
Further, one in five women would have to travel at least 43 miles to get to a clinic, according to a Guttmacher analysis from October 2017. In North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming, at least half of the women between 15 and 44 years old lived more than 90 miles from a clinic.
Six states — Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota and West Virginia — have only one clinic left that performs abortions, according to a recent analysis from Planned Parenthood and Guttmacher. Lawmakers in many of those states have pursued limits in when abortion can be allowed — such as fetal heartbeat laws or 15-week bans, though the laws have been blocked in court. Four of those states have also passed so-called trigger laws that would ban abortion immediately should the Supreme Court overturn Roe.
In Missouri, the sole clinic, which is in St. Louis, could close this week. On the surface, it’s a dispute with the state health department over licensing, safety and regulation, but the showdown comes just days after state lawmakers passed a ban on abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest.
“States have been marching down this path for a number of years. The restrictions that have passed previously have set the stage for the bans this year,” said Elizabeth Nash, Guttmacher’s senior state issues manager. “It’s counseling, it’s waiting periods, it’s abortion coverage in your health plan. It’s limits on abortion providers, such as unnecessary clinic regulations.”
“Missouri is the first and other states could be next,” Planned Parenthood’s Wen said on a recent call with reporters.
The ramifications of the anti-abortion movement’s sustained assault against Planned Parenthood are perhaps no clearer than in Texas, where lawmakers have passed dozens of restrictive laws, including mandatory ultrasounds, waiting periods and state funding restrictions.
The Supreme Court overturned another set of Texas restrictions in 2016 — but not before about 20 clinics shut down, many of which were never able to reopen. Providers retired, staff found other jobs and clinics had to start from scratch to get licensed and staff up. “All of those things take time and a significant amount of money,” said Kari White, an associate professor in Health Care Organization and Policy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an investigator with the Texas Policy Evaluation Project.
Even though Texas permits abortions until 20 weeks — itself a cut-off point that conflicts with Roe v. Wade, although it hasn’t yet come to the Supreme Court — abortion access has sharply declined. That scenario is likely to play out in other conservative states, even if they don’t go as far as Georgia or Alabama.
More than half of Texas’ 41 abortion clinics closed or stopped performing abortions after the state passed legislation in 2013 that bundled several onerous restrictions, according to research from the Texas Policy Evaluation Project. The average distance a woman had to travel one way for an abortion jumped to 35 miles from 15 miles. In rural parts of the state, drives of 100 miles or more to access care are not uncommon, according to the group.
The evaluation project found that while the number of abortions overall declined after the Texas law went into effect, the number of second-trimester abortions rose as women were forced to wait and travel longer distances. Currently only about 22 abortion providers, mostly in urban areas, are operating in Texas, a state with roughly 6.3 million women of reproductive age.
Low-income women are disproportionately affected by abortion restrictions, said Kamyon Conner, executive director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, which helps women who can’t afford an abortion, which costs between $500 and $10,000 dollars depending on the point in pregnancy. The nonprofit was part of a group that challenged dozens of Texas abortion restrictions in court.
Calls to the group’s hotline have tripled over the past few years to 6,000 in 2018, but it only funded about 1,000 women last year, she said. Some of those women are undocumented immigrants, some are incarcerated and others have children but cannot afford to raise more.
Other costs mount — both in money and time, Conner said. Because Texas has a 24-hour waiting period between an initial consult and the abortion, women miss work and may have to pay for hotel rooms.
“There are fewer clinics to provide the services,” said Conner. “The few clinics that are left are in very high demand.”
Telemedicine could plug some gaps in care for women seeking abortion medication, instead of a surgical abortion. But there too access varies widely by geography. Some states ban telemedicine-facilitated abortions. Elsewhere, providers are using video-chat technology to dispense the medication. Seventeen states require licensed abortion providers to be physically present when administering abortion medication, which effectively is a ban on telemedicine, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Abortion medication is approved for use up to ten weeks into pregnancy, but under current FDA rules can only be dispensed at certain medical facilities, including abortion clinics.
Alternatives are being tested. In one FDA-reviewed study, clinicians can mail abortion medication directly to patients after a video chat. Study participants can go to any clinic for their screening and ultrasound, send the results to a participating abortion provider, and then video chat with that provider. If appropriate, the provider can decide to dispense the medication to the patient’s address, and the patient can take it at home.
Under this system, women don’t have to travel several hours just to pick up the abortion pills, Erica Chong, director of Gynuity Health Projects, told POLITICO. The Gynuity study has enrolled about 360 people across eight states since 2016; it builds on recent research concluding that telemedicine-facilitated medical abortions are just as safe for patients as the ones administered in-person.
Because it’s been reviewed by the FDA, the Gynuity trial is exempt from the dispensation limitation. The study operates in Maine, New York, New Mexico, Hawaii, Colorado, Oregon, Washington and Georgia. Gynuity’s trial in Georgia began a few weeks ago, shortly before the state passed its “fetal heartbeat” law.
“With a lot of these bans, there’s going to be a long legal battle,” Chong said, explaining that she didn’t expect the new Georgia law, which bans abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected at about six weeks, to affect the study in that state just yet. But she noted that the recent spate of early abortion bans have alarmed patients, who are unsure whether their appointments are still legal.
Gynuity’s goal is to convince the FDA that dispensing abortion medication directly to women’s homes, or even to retail pharmacies, is safe and effective, and that restrictions on its dispensation should be eased, Chong said.
Outside the Gynuity trial, some providers across the country let patients drive to the facility closest to them and video chat a clinician located at another site. Planned Parenthood, for instance, lets patients in 14 states virtually consult with clinicians based elsewhere. Yet in many cases, the clinician must watch the patient ingest the pill on screen to comply with federal restrictions limiting where the medication can be dispensed. Women might still have to travel across state lines to access these services — and many don’t even realize these options exist.
“How’s a woman in Alabama going to know to go to a Georgia clinic to find services?” Chong said.
Miembros de una milicia cercana a un influyente diputado afgano, decapitaron a cuatro combatientes afiliados al grupo yihadista Estado Islámico (EI) en una región inestable de Afganistán. y exhibieron sus cabezas en una carretera muy frecuentada, informaron este domingo las autoridades locales.
Según Haji Zahir, vicepresidente del parlamento afgano, el EI había decapitado a cuatro milicianos allegados a él, por lo que se actuó en represalia. “¿Si a usted lo decapitan, o decapitan a sus hijos, espera que le obsequiemos flores a sus verdugos?”, exclamó en una conferencia de prensa. “No se lanzan flores durante una guerra. La gente muere”, subrayó.
“Ellos (los combatientes del EI) eran criminales, entonces tendrían que haber sido juzgados”, explicó, por su parte, el gobernador del distrito, Haji Ghaleb.
El EI, controla grandes territorios en Siria e Irak y en los últimos meses logró implantarse en la provincia de Nangarhar tras expulsar a los rebeldes talibanes, para quienes esta región es uno de sus feudos.
En Afganistán, el EI ha logrado atraer a numerosos talibanes decepcionados con la dirección de su movimiento.
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El “ghosting” es algo a lo que cada vez más gente ha de hacer frente. (Foto: ThinkStock)
Quizás te ha pasado alguna vez: conoces a alguien, intercambias números de teléfono, tienes varias citas, empiezas una relación, todo parece ir bien y de repente… silencio.
Sin previo aviso, esa persona deja de contestar tus mensajes de texto y tus llamadas. Simplemente desaparece de tu vida sin dar ningún tipo de explicación.
Si has vivido algo parecido has sido víctima de lo que en inglés llaman ghosting, palabra que se traduciría como “hacerse el fantasma” y que ha ido ganando popularidad en los últimos tiempos, siendo elegida como uno de los vocablos de 2015 por el diccionario británico Collins.
El acabar una relación de la noche a la mañana, cortando todo tipo de comunicación, no es nada nuevo, aunque según los expertos las nuevas tecnologías han hecho que ahora sea una práctica más común.
En una época en la que muchas relaciones de pareja empiezan a través de páginas de internet y de aplicaciones para celulares, el ghosting es algo a lo que cada vez más personas deben hacer frente.
Los expertos en psicología advierten que el ghosting tiene consecuencias tanto para quien lo sufre como para quien lo practica.
Image copyright Getty Images
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Los adolescentes crecen pensando que no responder a un mensaje es algo normal. (Foto: ThinkStock)
El primero ve su autoestima dañada y tiene que atravesar el periodo de duelo que conlleva el fin de una relación, sin tener todas las respuestas sobre los motivos de la ruptura.
El segundo, si se trata de una relación consolidada, tendrá que hacer frente a los remordimientos y al sentimiento de culpa por haber dejado a alguien de esta manera.
Los expertos sostienen que en algunos casos los que practican el ghosting tienen miedo al conflicto, evitando a toda costa los enfrentamientos, incluyendo el tener que decirle a alguien a la cara que se quiere poner fin a una relación.
En una encuesta que realizó en 2014 en Estados Unidos la compañía YouGov para el sitio Huffington Post, el 11% de los participantes dijo haberle hecho ghosting a alguien y un 13% haber sido víctima de esta práctica.
La revista Elle llevó a cabo una encuesta similar entre sus lectores: un 26% de las mujeres y un 33% de los hombres admitieron tanto haber sido víctimas del ghosting como el haberlo llevado a cabo.
Image copyright Getty Images
Image caption
El “ghosting” tiene consecuencias para el que lo sufre y para el que lo practica. (Foto: ThinkStock)
Parece que en la era de aplicaciones como Tinder y Grindr, el estar ocultos tras las pantallas de nuestros teléfonos hace que nos resulte más sencillo el acabar nuestras relaciones sin dar ningún tipo de explicación.
“Deshacernos de la gente”
Sherry Turkler, profesora de sociología de Instituto Tecnológico de Massachusetts (MIT, por sus siglas en inglés) aseguró en una reciente entrevista con el Huffington Post que “el ghosting es algo casi único del mundo online“.
“Con las nuevas tecnologías nos hemos acostumbrado a deshacernos de la gente simplemente no respondiendo. Y eso empieza con los adolescentes, que crecen con la idea de que es posible que le envíen a alguien un mensaje de texto y que no reciban nada por respuesta”.
Según Turkle, “eso tiene serias consecuencias, porque cuando nos tratan como si pudiéramos ser ignorados, empezamos a pensar que eso está bien y nos tratamos a nosotros mismos como personas que no han de tener sentimientos”.
“Y al mismo tiempo tratamos a los demás como personas que no tienen sentimientos en este contexto, por lo que empieza a desaparecer la empatía”.
Image copyright Ayush
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Algunos culpan del “ghosting” a las aplicaciones para encontrar pareja.
La psicoperapeuta estadounidense Elisabeth J. LaMotte cree que para mucha gente hoy en día el decir adiós o acabar con una relación es incómodo y “lo evitamos en muchas esferas, particularmente en el campo del amor”.
“Pasamos mucho tiempo socializando a través de las nuevas tecnología y compartiendo nuestra vida privada en las redes sociales y cada vez nos sentimos más incómodos con el contacto interpersonal“, asegura LaMotte en conversación con BBC Mundo.
“Ello hace que acabar con una relación sea más complicado, porque cada vez tenemos menos práctica en hacerlo“.
“Experiencia dolorosa”
Según LaMotte, “cuando se analiza la psicología de los que practican el ghosting, en algunos casos uno ve que han sido heridos por gente que consideran más importantes que ellos mismos y que han sufrido rupturas de relaciones que no han procesado correctamente”.
“Incluso en ocasiones no son conscientes del daño que causan“, afirma la experta.
“Para la persona víctima del ghosting, puede ser una experiencia muy dolorosa. El rechazo causa dolor. Y el ghosting es un rechazo vago que hace que el proceso de duelo de la ruptura se alargue”.
Image copyright Thinkstock
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Para la persona víctima del “ghosting”, puede tratarse de una experiencia muy dolorosa.
Según LaMotte, “al principio la gente pasa por un proceso de negación y busca excusa para explicar la situación, como que la otra persona ha perdido el teléfono o ha tenido una emergencia”.
“Cuando son conscientes de la realidad, tienen que hacer frente al dolor de saber que el otro no se tomó la molestia de dignificar la relación y decir adiós”.
LaMotte cree que, a veces, el final de una relación es el momento más importante, ya que “es una oportunidad para el crecimiento emocional”.
La experta aconseja que “si alguien ha sufrido varias experiencias de ghosting, examine sus elecciones de pareja”, ya que considera que “hay que respetarse a uno mismo y no caer una y otra vez en el mismo patrón”.
Evitar el conflicto
Image copyright SPL
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El que la relación no tenga un cierre convencional resulta difícil.
Maya Borgueta, psicologa de la organización californiana Lantern, sostiene que el ghosting “está relacionado con el querer evitar el conflicto“.
“Se quiere evitar el sentirse incómodo porque, por ejemplo, tu pareja se enfade o se ponga a llorar”, le dice Borgueta a BBC Mundo.
“Obviamente el ghosting ha existido desde el inicio de los tiempos, pero no hay duda de que la tecnología y el tipo de comunicación impersonal a la que estamos acostumbrados a través de internet o de las aplicaciones móviles han hecho que sea más común”, apunta la experta.
“Realmente puede llegar a ser muy doloroso, porque cuando nos dejan así a menudo seguimos conectados con esas personas en redes sociales como Facebook, Twitter o Instagram”.
“Así te das cuenta de que esa persona no se está comunicando contigo y continúa con su vida como si no pasara nada. Ello hace que el proceso de duelo sea más complicado”.
Image copyright iStock
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El “ghosting” puede reforzar las inseguridades que uno tiene y puede afectar relaciones futuras.
Borgueta cree que el ghosting “puede reforzar las inseguridades que uno tiene y puede afectar relaciones futuras“.
“También puede tener efectos psicológicos negativos en la persona que lo practica, que puede tener un gran sentimiento de culpa y vergüenza, sintiendo que no pueden manejar los momentos difíciles de una relación”.
Según Borgueta, aunque duela, las víctimas de ghosting “deben asumir que quizás nunca tendrán el cierre deseado para esa relación”.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday sidestepped a major new challenge to abortion rights by declining to hear Alabama’s bid to revive a Republican-backed state law that would have effectively banned the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The justices left in place a lower court ruling that struck down the 2016 law, which would have criminalized a method called dilation and evacuation that is the most common type of abortion performed during the second trimester of a pregnancy.
The law in question is different than an even more strict Alabama measure signed by Republican Governor Kay Ivey in May. The new law, also facing a legal challenge, would ban nearly all abortions in the state, even in cases of rape and incest.
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote an opinion agreeing with the court’s decision not to hear the issue now but making clear that he would vote to uphold such laws.
“The notion that anything in the Constitution prevents states from passing laws prohibiting the dismembering of a living child is implausible,” Thomas wrote.
The Alabama law was one of a growing number passed by Republican legislators at the state level imposing a variety of restrictions on abortion.
“While we are pleased to see the end of this particular case, we know that it is nowhere near the end of efforts to undermine access to abortion,” said Andrew Beck, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, which challenged the law.
Related: Stars slam new Alabama abortion bill
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“Politicians are lining up to do just what Alabama did – ask the courts to review laws that push abortion out of reach and harm women’s health, with the hope of the getting the Supreme Court to undermine, or even overturn, a woman’s right to abortion,” Beck added.
The lower court found that Alabama’s law was an infringement on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion recognized in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. A ruling by the conservative-majority Supreme Court upholding the Alabama measure could have chipped away at the Roe decision, which legalized abortion nationwide.
In the method targeted in the Alabama law, sometimes called D&E, a woman’s cervix is dilated and the contents of the uterus removed. Alabama calls this method “dismemberment abortion.”
Anti-abortion proponents had hoped the case would present an opportunity to make inroads at the Supreme Court following the retirement last year of Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was pivotal in defending abortion rights. President Donald Trump, who vowed before the 2016 election to appoint justices who would overturn the Roe ruling, named conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy.
The Supreme Court has a 5-4 conservative majority but has sent mixed messages on abortion in recent months.
Most recently, the court on May 28 refused to consider reinstating Indiana’s ban on abortions performed because of fetal disability or the sex or race of the fetus while upholding the state’s requirement that fetal remains be buried or cremated after the procedure is done.
In February, the court blocked a Louisiana law imposing strict regulations on abortion clinics from going into effect. An appeal is pending in that case.
The Supreme Court on Dec. 10 declined to take up another abortion-related case when it rebuffed two other conservative-leaning states – Louisiana and Kansas – that moved to deny public funding to Planned Parenthood.
Anti-abortion activists hope the high court will be more receptive to abortion restrictions following Kennedy’s departure. Many liberals have expressed concern that Kavanaugh, who joined the court in October, will be more hostile to abortion rights and could support the overturning of Roe.
The Supreme Court in 2016 on buttressed constitutional protections for abortion rights in a ruling in which Kennedy joined the four liberal justices, throwing out a Texas law imposing difficult-to-meet requirements on abortion clinics and abortion doctors.
With Kennedy gone, conservative states are debating and in some cases enacting laws that are in direct conflict with the Roe v. Wade precedent.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham)
The governor’s office had estimated earlier Saturday afternoon that some 2,000 people were under evacuation orders due to the fire.
Officials said thunderstorms and unpredictable winds in the area have made it difficult to determine the trajectory of the fire, which is burning in Klamath National Forest near the Oregon border.
“We still have thunderstorms in the area and that means lightning and erratic winds. I don’t believe that we’re expecting much precipitation,” said Caroline Quintanilla, a public information officer for the Klamath Nation Forest, on Saturday afternoon. “The dry lightning is of concern.”
The fire was 1% contained by Saturday evening, and fire weather warnings were in effect for the area Sunday and Monday.
“It has been a crazy time period,” said Yreka resident Kiko Gomez, speaking by phone on Saturday afternoon. “I’m feeling a bit nervous, not only for myself but others.”
Gomez, who left Yreka on Saturday evening, said that after living in the area for over a decade, this is the closest a fire has ever been.
In a sign of its extreme behavior, the wildfire sent a 50,000 foot pyrocumulonimbus cloud — a plume generated by intensely burning fires — into the air, pushing smoke high above the clouds, climate scientist Daniel Swain noted on Twitter.
Siskiyou County Supervisor Brandon Criss, whose district is east of Yreka, said he has friends in the city packing and getting ready to leave. He said he could smell the thick smoke at his home in Dorris, just south of the Oregon border.
“The fire has grown exponentially over the last short while,” he said. He added the Board of Supervisors will likely declare a state of emergency in the county during its meeting on Tuesday.
No information is available on the cause of the fire. The state of emergency declaration from Newsom’s office will help cut red tape and speed resources to the region, including potentially from other states.
Remarkable satellite imagery this AM in NorCal/OR. #McKinneyFire exploded last night, generating massive pyrocumulonimbus cloud ~50,000 ft tall (!!). You can see smoke at two different heights: most in troposphere, but some (possibly) injected into stratosphere (!). #CAwx#CAfirepic.twitter.com/Ri7IKcsnk8
The area around the fire was under a fire weather watch through Monday as lightning was expected over dry vegetation. Two additional fires in Siskiyou County — the China 2 and Evans fires — are also prompting evacuation warnings for over 200 residents. The two blazes merged earlier today and have burned more than 300 acres.
Crews from multiple agencies are battling the flames. Firefighters from the U.S. Forest Service are currently in charge, but a California Incident Management Team, which coordinates agencies like the Forest Service and Cal Fire, was scheduled to take over Sunday morning.
Siskiyou County Supervisor Ed Valenzuela, who represents Mount Shasta, said even though he is miles away from the blaze, he can see the clouds of smoke from his backyard.
“Hopefully with the weather moderating they can get a handle on it,” he said. “This is not the first rodeo. We’ve gone through fires.”
The fight to keep TikTok alive in the U.S. has been a confusing geopolitical battle, and it got more confusing on Wednesday morning after Maria Bartiromo, a news anchor with Fox Business, stated that Oracle chief Larry Ellison told her Masayoshi Son of Softbank would be on the board of TikTok.
Ellison, who has appeared on Mornings with Mariabefore and was scheduled to appear on Wednesday but backed out, apparently told Baritromo earlier this week that four out of the five TikTok board seats will be filled by Americans, and “the fifth one is likely going to be Japanese, Masa Son,” said Baritromo.
That is not true, a source close to the negotiations tells Forbes. “Even the Oracle folks have no idea why Larry Ellison would have said that or why Maria would say that, but no, Masayoshi Son will not be on the board,” the source says.
TikTok and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment. A representative for SoftBank declined to comment.
The lapse in communication between ByteDance, the Beijing-based owner of TikTok, and Oracle, has become a theme in the unprecedented negotiations to make the hugely popular social app a U.S.-based company. These efforts were sparked by President Donald Trump, who threatened to ban the social media app in August over security concerns that the Chinese government would use TikTok to spy on American citizens. He gave ByteDance until September 15 to give up control of its U.S. operations.
In the weeks following Trump’s order, various companies were thrown out as buyers, with Oracle and Microsoft coming out as the top contenders. Two days before the deadline, Microsoft released a statement that ByteDance had declined its offer to buy the company’s U.S. operations.
Though Oracle won over Microsoft, critics soon pointed out that Oracle’s plan for a “partnership” with TikTok would not be a full sale, thus not meeting President Trump’s requirements for the deal. On September 19, Oracle and Walmart announced it would be acquiring 20% of TikTok Global, a new parent company of TikTok which would be responsible for all of the app’s services in the U.S., and well as most of the world. As part of the deal, Oracle would become TikTok’s cloud provider. The White House gave its blessing on the deal.
Two days after that announcement, however, ByteDance and Oracle came out with contradictory statements about who would be in charge of TikTok Global. ByteDance said TikTok Global would be a “100 percent” fully owned subsidiary, while Ken Gleuck, a executive vice president at Oracle, said ByteDance would have no ownership in TikTok Global. It remains unclear who will ultimately own TikTok—and, apparently, who will serve on its board.
“There has just been a lot of silliness around all this,” the source said to Forbes.
El periodista Pedro Canché visitó al ex gobernador de Quintana Roo, Roberto Borge, preso en Panamá, donde espera ser extraditado a México.
En su sitio, Pedrocanche.com detalla el encuentro que duró unos minutos; este es un fragmento de la crónica:
Le dicen “El Ciervo”. Pertenecía a una pandilla en el barrio de Curundu. Asesinó a un rival y tiene una condena de 40 años. Se acerca a barrer él aérea de la mesa de madera despintada donde nos sentamos a esperar a Borge. Es el encargado de organizar las visitas.
“Que venga Roberto”, grita y uno de sus muchachos se va al edificio de tejas rojas. Es muy servicial y se dice “entregado al señor”. Entona unos himnos religiosos.
-¿Que tal se porta Roberto Borge, el mexicano?
“Está en el lugar del general Manuel Antonio Noriega, en la enfermería(Noriega salió de esta carcel el 17 de Enero de 2017 para un arresto domiciliario y murió apenas el 30 de Mayo reciente de un tumor maligno en el cerebro). Colabora bien. Está cumpliendo con barrer y lavar las celdas del baño y enfermería. Ya hizo amigos ahí y pidió que lo cuidaran”.
-¿Y es bueno con la escoba Roberto?
“Si, lavar los baños le cuesta pero está aprendiendo. ¿Y usted de que le toca? Oiga lo vamos a poner a jugar futbol o basquetbol pues se la pasa encerrado y no quiere salir al patio”.
Roberto Borge cruza la pequeña cancha de futbol. Y mueve la cabeza por todos lados tratando de hallar un rostro conocido.
“El Ciervo” se retira pues le ha llegado su hijo a visitarlo. Lleva 10 años en el Renacer y su muchacho ya está en la adolescencia.
Borge busca a su amigo. Igual anda descontrolado.
-Hola Roberto Borge, soy yo el que vino a visitarlo. Venga acá.
Trastabilló con la grava suelta. El tipo se pone pálido. Cambian sus facciones. Está sorprendido. No esperaba verme ahí. Aprieta las mandíbulas. El rostro sin afeitar se pone colorado. El gobernador que me puso en la carcel por sus caprichos de dictador ahí estaba… derrotado.
Nunca lo había visto en persona, ni antes ni después del encarcelamiento a la que fui sometido en su gobierno. Nunca le había visto el rostro. Su cara me recordó a Buzz, el personaje del infinito y más allá de la caricatura infantil Toy Story.
-Vamos a platicar. Esto no es nada personal. Es un trabajo periodístico. Dígame cómo está.
“Yo esperaba a Fabián (Vallado, ex secretario privado de Borge y ex delegado de la Sedesol en Quintana Roo). No quiero platicar con nadie. Contigo no. Qué haces aquí”.
-¿Te gustó la torta del Trapiche? Le digo mientras observo el polo color celeste y el pantalón de mezclilla que le traje ayer.
-Por cortesía creo que podremos charlar unos minutos por lo menos. Intento convencerlo.
Hay dos guardias que vigilan la interacción de los visitantes y los presos. A ellos se dirige Borge una vez recuperada la compostura. Aún cree tener el mando. Lo soberbio lo tiene a flor de piel.
“Guardias desalojen al periodista por favor. Manden a desalojar a esta persona”.
El guardia a quien se dirigió, un soldado panameño le dijo: ” Si usted manda a desalojar a sus visitas entonces no permitiremos que lo visiten. ¿Cómo sabremos que visitas quiere y cuál no? Y sabe señor aquí la visita se le respeta. Está en su derecho de no aceptarlo. Pero aquí no desalojamos a nadie.
Borge apresura el paso por la pequeña reja y le dice algo a dos de sus compañeros que se le acercaron y voltean a verme.
Parado contemplo cómo se escabulle por la cancha de futbol. Presuroso va cuesta arriba a su celda en la enfermería…
In a Saturday statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused an NPR host and veteran reporter of lying, being an example of the “unhinged” media, and misidentifying Bangladesh as Ukraine on a map.
On Friday, NPR’s “All Things Considered” host Mary Louise Kelly interviewed Pompeo, and asked him questions about the United States’ support for Ukraine and the ouster of former US ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.
But Kelly said that after the interview, Pompeo yelled at her for asking the questions on Ukraine in his office, cursed her out, and asked her if she could identify the country of Ukraine on a map.
In his Saturday statement, Pompeo said that Kelly “lied to me, twice” last month and on Friday in “agreeing to have the post-interview conversation off the record,” but did not deny that he cursed and yelled at her.
In a Saturday statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused an NPR host and veteran reporter of lying, being an example of the “unhinged” media, and misidentifying Bangladesh as Ukraine on a map.
But Kelly said that after the interview, Pompeo yelled at her for asking the questions on Ukraine in his office, cursed her out, and asked her if she could identify the country of Ukraine on a map.
“I was taken to the Secretary’s private living room where he was waiting and where he shouted at me for about the same amount of time as the interview itself,” Kelly recounted after the interview. “He was not happy to have been questioned about Ukraine.”
“He asked, ‘Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?'” she added. “He used the F-word in that sentence and many others.”
Kelly added that Pompeo asked his aides to bring a blank map into his office and told her to point to Ukraine, saying, “people will hear about this.”
In his Saturday statement, Pompeo said that Kelly “lied to me, twice” last month and on Friday in “agreeing to have the post-interview conversation off the record,” but did not deny that he cursed and yelled at her and said that Americans didn’t care about Ukraine, which he is set to visit on January 30.
His statement continued, “it is shameful that this reporter chose to violate the basic rules of journalism and decency. This is another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this administration.”
As NPR’s media correspondent David Folkenflik noted, however, the State Department’s own transcript of the interview both shows that Pompeo “did not contradict” Kelly when she confirmed that she would ask him about Ukraine.
And while he asked to talk to her without a recorder on after the interview, he did not specify that their conversation would be off the record and thus un-reportable, a key distinction from simply asking her not to record it.
Pompeo ended his statement by saying: “It is worth noting that Bangladesh is NOT Ukraine,” seemingly implying that Kelly misidentified Bangladesh as Ukraine on the map he brought into the office.
Kelly, a highly-respected veteran foreign correspondent and national security reporter who has reported from Russia, Iraq, and North Korea, additionally holds a master’s degree in European studies from Cambridge University, making it highly unlikely that she would confuse Ukraine and Bangladesh, located in southeast Asia.
Folkenflik added: “if he wants to accuse distinguished NPR host and correspondent of lying, he should produce additional evidence. This administration often has estranged relationship with fact and truth.”
In a statement to Insider, NPR’s senior vice president for news Nancy Barnes defended Kelly, saying, “Mary Louise Kelly has always conducted herself with the utmost integrity, and we stand behind this report.”
One of Italy’s most popular travel destinations is under water after it was hit by the highest tide in 50 years.
Flooding in Venice hit the second-highest levels ever recorded in history, and the historic canal city braces for yet another wave on Wednesday.
Venice’s Mayor Luigi Brugnaro blamed climate change for the “dramatic situation” and called for a speedy completion of a long-delayed project to construct off-shore barriers.
“Now the government must listen,” he said on Twitter. “These are the effects of climate change… the costs will be high.”
According to the Sun,exceptionally high tides that produce major flooding occur every four years. However, the city usually experiences minor flooding about four times a year.
Brugnaro also tweeted various photos that showed historic tourist attractions under water such as St. Mark’s Square, which was one of the worst hit areas. Photos surfaced of shopkeepers struggling to minimize the damage as water poured into their stores.
Brugnaro also noted that St. Mark’s Basilica had suffered major damage from the high levels of water, raising new concerns for the mosaics and other artworks. According to the BBC, this is the sixth time the basilica flooded in 1,200 years with four of those times occurring within the past 20 years.
Photos on social media showed a city ferry, taxi boats and gondolas grounded on walkways flanking canals.
The high-water mark hit 74 inches late Tuesday, meaning more than 85 percent of the city was flooded. The highest level ever recorded was 76 inches during infamous flooding in 1966.
Officials projected a second wave as high as 63 inches at midmorning Wednesday.
One person, a man in his 70s, died on the barrier island of Pellestrina, apparently of electrocution, said Danny Carrella, an official on the island with 3,500 inhabitants.Media outletsreport that a second man was found dead in his home. He said the situation there remained dramatic, with about three feet of water still present due to broken pumps.
The deal also includes exemptions to the global minimum tax for firms with certain amounts of payroll and “tangible assets,” or physical structures, in those countries. Those ideas make sense in principle, because the purpose of the agreement is to discourage “artificial” tax shifting of profits on paper. But in the long-run, some tax experts say, it could provide an avenue to maintain relatively lower taxes on corporations. The agreement sets out a 10-year period to adopt the measure, another concession to nations worried that implementing it more quickly could disrupt private industry.
I have agreed to stay on as Secretary through Wednesday, April 10th to assist with an orderly transition and ensure that key DHS missions are not impacted.
However sudden the news felt, it was a long time coming, ABC News White House Correspondent Tara Palmeri tells us on “Start Here.”
“It was always known that President Trump was not happy with Nielsen,” Palmeri says. “It was a matter of not if it will happen, but when it will happen.”
2. Tourist trap?
An American tourist and her Congolese tour guide are safe and in “good health” after they were kidnapped in Uganda and a $500,000 ransom was demanded, police said.
Police & its sister security agencies have today rescued Ms.Kimberley Sue, an American tourist together with her guide who were kidnapped while on an evening game drive at Queen Elizabeth National park.The duo are in good health & in the safe hands of the joint security team.
A spokesperson for Wild Frontiers Uganda told ABC News a ransom was paid — it’s unclear exactly how much or by whom — raising concern over whether doing so may encourage more kidnappings, Senior Foreign Correspondent Ian Pannell reports from Queen Elizabeth National Park.
“They want tourists to come back, they want them to see that this is a safe place, that it’s an unprecedented event,” Pannell says on today’s podcast. “If money’s changing hands in exchange for foreign tourists, then that potentially endangers others.”
(Martin Zwick/Reda & Co/UIG via Getty Images, FILE) The Crater Area in Queen Elizabeth National Park with view of the Rwenzori Mountains in Uganda, East Africa in this Sept. 18, 2016.file photo.
3. Fungus among us
A deadly, drug-resistant fungus has broken out in healthcare facilities — and it’s spreading.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention described Candida auris as a “serious global health threat” that can cause bloodstream infections and is difficult to identify with standard technology. More than 587 cases have been confirmed in the U.S., mostly in New York City, New Jersey and Chicago, according to the CDC.
“What we’ve learned is, this microbe, Candida auris, is resistant to the typical cleaning agents that hospital and health care facilities often use,” says infectious disease specialist Dr. Todd Ellerin. “If we don’t change the way we clean rooms, then the Candida will hang out there. It could potentially infect the next person that enters the room.”
4. Tangled with weed
Some immigrants fear careers in the legal cannabis industry have hurt their chances for full citizenship.
“I was led down a path to confess in my [citizenship] interview that I broke the law, that I willingly had known that I had broken the law,” Oswaldo Barrientos, who worked at a marijuana dispensary in Colorado, tells ABC News.
Because marijuana remains illegal under federal law, a related job may disqualify someone from lawful residency, ABC News’ Clayton Sandell explains on “Start Here.”
“It’s legal on one level,” he says, “and illegal on another.”
(ABC News) Denver Mayor Michael Hancock listens during a meeting about immigration problems stemming with legal marijuana jobs.
‘Leaving only a human skull and a pair of pants’: Lions feast on a suspected poacher killed by an elephant.
‘John asked co-workers to take pictures of him’: A man accused of murdering his elderly mother asks colleagues to help with his alibi.
‘We are pleased to be able to reach resolution in this matter’: Motel 6 agrees to pay $12 million after illegally sharing the personal information of 80,000 customers with U.S. immigration officials.
From our friends at FiveThirtyEight:
Willians Astudillo is a baseball enigma: While he looks something like Bartolo Colon, he’s hitting like Ty Cobb.
Doff your cap:
The U.S. Postal Service said it will honor George H.W. Bush by releasing a commemorative stamp on June 12, which would’ve been the former president’s 95th birthday.
The stamp features a portrait of Bush painted by Michael J. Deas from a 1997 photograph taken by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders.
As many states move toward reopening after a horrific April that saw nearly 60,000 deaths because of the coronavirus, a new report offers a stark warning: A group of experts has concluded the pandemic could last as long as two years, until 60% to 70% of the population is immune.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is scheduled to leave the White House on Friday for the first time in a month to travel to Camp David, one day after the expiration of federal social distancing guidelines.
Our live blog is being updated throughout the day. Refresh for the latest news, and get updates in your inbox with The Daily Briefing.
Here are the most important developments Friday on the coronavirus pandemic.Scroll down for the latest updates.
Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, suggested social distancing could continue in some form through the summer as the White House quietly allowed official guidelines to expire. Meanwhile, a new report warns the pandemic could last up to two years, until the world hits the threshold for herd immunity.
Trump said Thursday he’s seen evidence suggesting the new virus originated in a Chinese virology lab. The president didn’t provide the evidence, but his top national intelligence official said the virus was not man-made or genetically modified, as scientists have concluded. The intelligence community “will continue to rigorously examine” the virus’ origin, the national intelligence director’s office said.
Some positive news today: If you’re a fan of “Parks and Recreation,” then you must catch the show’s quarantine special. It’ll make you laugh, cry and sing for Lil Sebastian.
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