Day: October 18, 2021

As a legal battle plays out in the courts, the Biden administration has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block a Texas law that bans most abortions in the state.

The Justice Department asked the high court Monday to reverse a decision by an appeals court that allows the law to remain in effect while litigation over the policy continues. 

The Republican-backed law bans abortions once cardiac activity has been detected in an embryo, which typically occurs at six weeks, a point when some women are not aware they are pregnant.

The law also allows members of the public to sue people who may have facilitated an abortion after six weeks. 

The Supreme Court has already ruled on the issue once before in a lawsuit filed by abortion providers. In a 5-4 vote last month, the court allowed the law to remain in effect as the legal battle over it continues.

The Supreme Court, however, has not yet ruled on the constitutionally of the Texas law. 

The high court became more conservative under former President Donald Trump, who appointed three justices to the nine-seat bench. Conservatives now hold a 6-3 majority.

The court’s handling of the abortion issue is being closely watched since it allowed the restrictive Texas law to take effect last month. Later in September, the court announced it would hear arguments in December in a case that directly challenges Roe v. Wade, the decades-old ruling that gives women the right to an abortion.

The court scheduled oral arguments for December 1 to hear a case concerning a Mississippi state law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

The case asks justices to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that allows women to have abortions in most circumstances. Roe v. Wade establishes a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion before a fetus is viable, typically around 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The court’s latest actions have fueled speculation that a majority of the justices could be inclined to formally curtail abortion rights.

A poll released by Monmouth University last month found that 62% of Americans believe abortion should either always be legal or be legal with some limitations. Twenty-four percent said it should be illegal except in rare circumstances such as rape, while 11% said it should always be illegal. 

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters. 

 
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The United Nations announced Monday that a nationwide house-to-house polio vaccination campaign in conflict-torn Afghanistan will recommence next month and hailed the new Taliban government for agreeing to lift a ban on such drives.

Afghanistan is one of two countries in the world, along with neighboring Pakistan, where the highly infectious and incurable disease continues to cripple children.  

Officials on both sides documented only one infection each so far in 2021 of the wild poliovirus Type 1 (WPV1), the lowest-ever transmission seen at the same time in Pakistan and Afghanistan, compared to 84 and 56 cases respectively last year.  

The house-to-house Afghan anti-polio campaign due to start November 8 is aimed at reaching around 10 million children under the age of 5 across the country, including more than 3 million in remote and previously inaccessible areas, according to the World Health Organization and U.N. children’s agency UNICEF.

The Taliban, who regained power in August, banned door-to-door vaccinations in April 2018 in areas under their control as they waged insurgent attacks against the ousted Western-backed Afghan government and international forces.

“Over this 3-and-a-half-year period, there were approximately 3.3 million children, some of whom could never be reached — or some of them inconsistently reached — with vaccination because of this ban,” Dr. Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, told VOA.

He explained that the Taliban had seen polio teams’ house-to-house movement as a security risk for their fighters in the wake of the nature of the conflict at the time.  

“They have now the controlling authority across the country, and there is not much active conflict right now. So, they (Taliban) have decided to continue their support for polio eradication and specially vaccination through house-to-house vaccination,” the WHO official said.

Jafari recalled the polio eradication program started in Afghanistan in the 1990s when the Taliban were in government and hailed the Islamist group for being supportive of the anti-polio efforts from the outset.  

He stressed the need for aggressively implementing the anti-polio campaign, saying the low number of cases offer a “truly unique opportunity” to eradicate the virus from Afghanistan.

Jafari underlined the economic importance of the house-to-house campaign, saying it will be the first major mobilization of Afghan health workers for delivery of a nationwide vaccination service since the Taliban takeover of the country.

“In the current situation of real economic challenges, where many workers and people have not been paid their salaries, this campaign will be one activity in which a large number of the workforce will actually participate in vaccine delivery and will get paid for it,” he said.  

WHO officials said a second campaign in Afghanistan, due to begin in coordination with a campaign in Pakistan in December, has also been agreed to.

Jafari cautioned that it is too early for both countries to celebrate that they are nearing polio eradication. He noted there are still several million children in Afghanistan who have not been administered polio drops in recent years, and there are areas in Pakistan where children still need to be inoculated against the virus.

“We have an unprecedented epidemiological opportunity right now to succeed in final polio eradication in both countries. The progress is encouraging, but it is very fragile, and both countries still have to work very hard. This is not a time to be complacent,” Jafari said.

 
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After Cyclone Idai hit in 2019, some Zimbabweans turned to activities like illegal gold panning to survive. Now Voluntary Service Overseas, an international development charity, is giving them a new option – bee keeping. As Columbus Mavhunga reports from the town of Chimanimani, life has turned sweet for one Zimbabwean because of the honey from his bees. Camera: Blessing Chigwenhembe.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will travel Monday to Lake Mead to promote the Biden administration’s climate crisis strategy and urge passage of a major infrastructure plan.   

The man-made reservoir near the gambling and tourist destination city of Las Vegas, Nevada, is a major source of water for seven Western U.S. states and northern Mexico. Harris will hear from local, state and federal officials on the declining water levels at Lake Mead, the largest in the U.S. by volume, which provides drinking water and electricity for more than 40 million people across the region.   

The U.S. government in August declared the first-ever water shortage at Lake Mead, which has fallen to record lows amid a decades-long drought in the Western U.S. The shortage has forced officials to impose water rationing next year for Nevada, the neighboring state of Arizona and Mexico. 

With the trip to Lake Mead, Harris plans to promote a $550 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, an agreement reached earlier this year between President Joe Biden and a bipartisan group of senators. The investment includes tens of billions of dollars to shore up the nation’s water infrastructure and protect communities against the impact of climate change, including lingering heat waves and droughts.  

The infrastructure plan has been approved by the U.S. Senate, but is stalled in the House over intense and increasingly bitter negotiations over funding for the president’s Build Back Better plan, which would provide a significant boost to the nation’s social safety net.   

Some information for this report came from the Associated Press. 
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Facebook says it plans to hire 10,000 workers in the European Union over the next five years to work on a new computing platform.

The company said in a blog post Sunday that those high-skilled workers will help build “the metaverse,” a futuristic notion for connecting people online that encompasses augmented and virtual reality.

Facebook executives have been touting the metaverse as the next big thing after the mobile internet as they also contend with other matters such as antitrust crackdowns, the testimony of a whistleblowing former employee and concerns about how the company handles vaccine-related and political misinformation on its platform.

In a separate blog post Sunday, the company defended its approach to combating hate speech, in response to a Wall Street Journal article that examined the company’s inability to detect and remove hateful and excessively violent posts.
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