Category: Regions

Supreme Court Won’t Hear Challenge to Restrictive Arkansas Abortion Law

The Supreme Court refused on Monday to hear a challenge to an Arkansas law that could force two of the state’s three abortion clinics to close.

The law concerns medication abortions, which use pills to induce abortions in the first nine weeks of pregnancy. The law, enacted in 2015, requires providers of the procedure to have contracts with doctors who have admitting privileges at a hospital in the state.

The law is quite similar to one in Texas that was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2016.

Writing for the majority in the 5-3 decision, Justice Stephen G. Breyer said the Texas law, which required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, placed “a substantial obstacle” in the path of women seeking abortions and amounted to an “undue burden on abortion access” in violation of the Constitution.

Judges considering laws restricting access to abortion, Justice Breyer added, must make a cost-benefit calculation, weighing the burdens a law imposes on abortion access against the benefits it confers.

Judge Kristine G. Baker, of the Federal District Court in Little Rock, blocked the Arkansas law, saying its medical benefits were few at best and outweighed by the burdens it imposed. The law, she wrote, quoting an earlier decision, was “a solution in search of a problem.”

But a unanimous three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, in St. Louis, vacated that decision, saying that Judge Baker had not specified how many women would be affected.

Arkansas has three abortion clinics. One, in Little Rock, offers both medication and surgical abortions. The others, in Little Rock and Fayetteville, offer only medication abortions.

In its appeal to the Supreme Court, the local Planned Parenthood affiliate said it contacted every qualified doctor it could identify. No one of them, the group said, was willing to enter into the contract required by the law. This was unsurprising, Judge Baker found, as doctors in Arkansas who perform abortions “risk being ostracized from their communities and face harassment and violence toward themselves, their family, and their private practices.”

Arkansas officials told the Supreme Court that Planned Parenthood had not tried hard enough or told the doctors how much it was willing to pay.

If the law were to go into effect, Planned Parenthood said, only surgical abortions would be available in Arkansas. “This will particularly affect women who strongly prefer medication abortion,” the group told the Supreme Court, “including those who find it traumatic to have instruments placed in their vaginas because they are victims of rape, incest, or domestic violence, as well as women for whom medication abortion is medically indicated and safer than surgical abortion.”

In their Supreme Court brief in the case, Planned Parenthood of Arkansas & Eastern Oklahoma v. Jegley, No. 17-935, Arkansas officials responded that “there is no right to choose medication abortion.”

They added that their state’s law was not as onerous as the one from Texas, which required abortion providers to have admitting privileges. “Arkansas law only requires medication abortion providers to have a contractual relationship (to ensure follow-up treatment if needed) with a physician that has admitting privileges,” the officials’ brief said.

The law would effectively require women to travel long distances to obtain even the abortion procedure that remained available, Planned Parenthood told the justices. Women in Fayetteville, for instance, would have to make a 380-mile round-trip journey, twice, as Arkansas law also requires an in-person counseling session 48 hours before an abortion.

“Inability to travel to the sole remaining clinic in the state will lead some women to take desperate measures, such as attempting to self-abort or seeking care from unsafe providers,” Judge Baker wrote.

Medication abortions are considered quite safe. One study found that six of every 10,000 women who used the procedure experienced complications requiring hospitalization.

Since women typically take the second drug in the two-pill regimen at home, which may not be near the clinic, it is not clear that having a doctor on contract would make them safer than simply visiting an emergency room, Judge Baker wrote.

“Emergency room physicians are well qualified to evaluate and treat most complications that can arise after a medication abortion,” she wrote, adding that the relevant medical issues are “identical to those suffered by women experiencing miscarriage, who receive treatments in hospitals every day through emergency physicians.”

May 29, 2018
As Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Wed, a New Era Dawns

In the knight’s stalls supporting Ms. Markle, beneath rows of medieval swords and helmets, sat a constellation of American celebrities, among them Oprah Winfrey who, with a great gift for openness and emotional candor, has become an icon for black women.

There were the Hollywood and humanitarian megacelebrities George and Amal Clooney, and the tennis star Serena Williams. A gospel choir sang the Ben E. King song “Stand By Me,” and the couple exited to the rousing civil rights anthem “This Little Light of Mine.”

In short, it was not your average royal wedding. Among the throngs who filled the streets of Windsor on Saturday were black women who had flown in from Houston and Atlanta, moved, sometimes to tears, to see a woman of color so publicly adored.

“One of the children of slaves is marrying a royal whose forerunners sanctioned slavery; the lion is lying down with the lamb,” said Denise Crawford, a court stenographer from Brooklyn.

“I just want to be here to observe the changing of the guard and the changing of the British Empire,” she said. “Today is a day that history will never forget.”

The most startling moments came with the sermon by the Most Rev. Michael Curry, the Chicago-born bishop of the Episcopal Church. Bishop Curry, in the great tradition of black preachers, delivered a loose, improvisational sermon that began as a meandering discourse but built to a passionate, shouting climax, name-checking Martin Luther King Jr. and slave spirituals along the way.

“I’m talking about some power, real power,” he boomed. “Power to change the world. If you don’t believe me, well, there were some old slaves in America’s Antebellum South who explained the dynamic power of love and why it has the power to transform.”

At one point, seemingly sensing the passage of time, he said, “We’re going to sit down; we gotta get y’all married.”

He punctured the hallowed, starchy decorum of the day, visibly shocking some members of the royal family. Some suppressed giggles. Zara Tindall, a granddaughter of the queen, looked as if she might fall off her chair.

The episode delighted viewers on social media.

“A black reverend preaching to British royalty about the resilience of faith during slavery is 10000000% not what I thought I was waking up for, the royal wedding is good,” Elamin Abdelmahmoud, social media editor at Buzzfeed, wrote on Twitter.

When the couple stepped out of the church and into the sunshine, a jolt went through the crowd, which cheered their first kiss as husband and wife.

For Britons, there was a sense of an old heartbreak being mended. Many people here feel a special affection for Harry, who was only 12 when his mother, Princess Diana, died in a car crash. On the day of the funeral, Harry was made to walk behind her coffin, and much of the country watched as his face crumpled.

“He was such a young boy,” said Christine Janetta, 57, one of the charity workers invited to greet the couple from the lawn on the grounds of Windsor Castle. “We’ve all been very protective of Harry, because we saw that little boy with his broken heart.”

Ms. Janetta said she was devoted to Princess Diana, and that she thought it would have given her a sense of deep relief to see her sons happily settled. “He’s just his mum,” she said. “He is a carbon copy of his mum. Just look at the smile.”

Harry’s popularity helped give him the power to stretch the bounds of convention by marrying Ms. Markle, an American of mixed race. The decision may have a lasting effect on British society, which has been swept by a wave of anti-immigrant feeling. But it has not made things easier for the couple.

As the wedding approached, British newspapers swung the klieg lights of their attention to Ms. Markle’s estranged half siblings, who said scathing things about a bride whom few Britons knew. More damaging were insistent approaches to her father, Thomas Markle, a retired Hollywood lighting director who declared bankruptcy years ago and now lives alone in Mexico.

A week before the ceremony, The Daily Mail reported that Mr. Markle had colluded with a photographer to stage seemingly candid pictures. With that, Mr. Markle dropped out of the wedding in disgrace, leaving Ms. Markle with only one blood relative, her mother, to attend the ceremony at her side.

On Saturday, royal fans embraced the couple unreservedly. People had camped out all night, huddling in blankets and clutching hot-water bottles, in hopes of making eye contact when the couple left the chapel. Along the main street of Windsor, people leaned precariously from windows.

Many of those lining the streets said they liked the change the couple represents.

“It’s very good for the monarchy that Meghan Markle is a divorcée,” said Christel Funten, a nanny, had traveled from Paris to attend the celebration. “It breaks a taboo. It’s magnificent.”

Charlotte Osborn, a Londoner, said the wedding showed how far the country had come since 1936, when King Edward VIII chose to abdicate the throne so that he could marry Wallis Simpson, a divorced American.

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“It’s a modern version of Wallis Simpson, where it all ends sensibly, rather than in disaster,” she said.

Any royal wedding is theater, and this one did not disappoint. The dim vaulted opening of St. George’s Chapel, whose construction was finished in the reign of King Henry VIII, was so densely crowded with meadow flowers that it felt as if you were stepping into a wonderland. A palace spokesman described the floral style as “cascading hedgerow,” and it filled the chapel with the smell of growing things.

Harry arrived at the chapel on foot, walking beside his brother, Prince William, in the doeskin frock coat of the Blues and Royals, the regiment he joined after graduating from military school. Harry took his place in the chapel and shifted in his seat nervously, trying to catch Ms. Ragland’s eye.

Ten minutes later, Ms. Markle stepped from a Rolls-Royce Phantom 4, in the company of two small pageboys in military dress. Her dress, with a flowing train 16 feet long, was dazzling pure white, wide-necked and minimal, leaving her collarbones bare, à la Audrey Hepburn.

The dress, which had been the subject of agitated speculation for weeks leading up to the wedding, was designed by Clare Waight Keller, the first female artistic director at the French fashion house Givenchy.

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Seven tiny bridesmaids and pageboys trailed behind her, holding the edges of her 16-foot veil. As she approached the altar, she gave a quiet “Hi” to Harry. He flushed and, when she stood opposite him, added, “You look amazing.”

Harry has decided to wear a wedding ring — a break from tradition not just for the royal family but for British aristocrats in general. Asked whether they would support the couple in their marriage, the guests said, “We will.”

As a bride, Ms. Markle stood apart from Diana, a 20-year-old who nearly disappeared inside pouffes of meringue, and from Kate Middleton, now the Duchess of Cambridge, a school friend who had known William for 10 years at the time of their marriage, and was well known to the British public.

Mesha Griffin, an African-American schoolteacher from Washington, had flown to Britain alone, just to be present on the day of Ms. Markle’s wedding.

“She is owning her heritage,” Ms. Griffin said of the bride. “She is going to impact history in a way we saw with Princess Diana, not in a disrespectful way. She will respectfully change history.”/NYTimes

May 21, 2018
Once Hated by U.S. and Tied to Iran, Is Sadr Now ‘Face of Reform’ in Iraq?

BAGHDAD — Iraqis are still haunted by memories of black-clad death squads roaming Baghdad neighborhoods a decade ago, cleansing them of Sunnis as the country was convulsed by sectarian violence.

Many of the mass killings in the capital were done in the name of Moktada al-Sadr, a cleric best remembered by Americans for fiery sermons declaring it a holy duty among his Shiite faithful to attack United States forces.

The militia he led was armed with Iranian-supplied weapons, and Mr. Sadr cultivated a strong alliance with leaders in Tehran, who were eager to supplant the American presence in Iraq and play the dominant role in shaping the country’s future.

Now, the man once demonized by the United States as one of the greatest threats to peace and stability in Iraq has come out as the surprise winner of this month’s tight elections, after a startling reinvention into a populist, anticorruption campaigner whose “Iraq First” message appealed to voters across sectarian divides.

The results have Washington — and Tehran — on edge, as officials in both countries seek to influence what is expected to be a complex and drawn-out battle behind the scenes to build a coalition government. Mr. Sadr’s bloc won 54 seats — the most of any group, but still far short of a majority in Iraq’s 329-seat Parliament.

Even before final results were announced early Saturday, Mr. Sadr — who did not run as a candidate and has ruled himself out as prime minister — had made clear whom he considers natural political allies. At the top of his list is Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, the moderate Shiite leader who has been America’s partner in the fight against the Islamic State and whose political bloc finished third in the vote.

Pointedly absent from Mr. Sadr’s list of potential partners: pro-Iranian blocs, as he has insistently distanced himself from his former patrons in Iran, whose meddling he has come to see as a destabilizing force in Iraq’s politics.

Early Sunday morning, the prime minister met with Mr. Sadr in Baghdad. They discussed forming a government, and aides from both sides said the men saw eye to eye on prioritizing the fight against corruption.

While Mr. Sadr has all the momentum going into negotiations over the governing coalition, there is no guarantee his bloc will be in power. And it is too early to tell what the election may mean for Iraqi stability or American national security goals.

But the upset has clearly weakened the sectarian foundation of Iraq’s political system — and helped transform Mr. Sadr’s image from the paragon of a militant Shiite into an unexpected symbol of reform and Iraqi nationalism.

As the head of the Sairoon Alliance for Reform, Mr. Sadr presides over an unlikely alliance that pairs his pious, largely working-class Shiite base with Sunni business leaders, liberals and Iraqis looking for relief from the country’s long-simmering economic crisis.

For those joining the alliance, it was important to be convinced that Mr. Sadr’s shift from Shiite firebrand to Iraqi patriot was sincere, and likely to last.

Late last year, the cleric began reaching out to groups outside his base with an offer to form a new political movement, and the country’s embattled leftists and secularists — once his staunch enemies — faced a moment of reckoning.

They remembered how a rogue Shariah court he had established passed sentences on fellow Shiites deemed too submissive toward the American occupation of Iraq. And they recalled the countless Iraqis killed in battles between the country’s security forces and Mr. Sadr’s militia.

But a ragtag group of communists, social democrats and anarchists have come to embrace Mr. Sadr as a symbol of the reform they have championed for years — an image that the cleric has burnished, seeing it as the best path to political power.

“Let me be honest: We had a lot of apprehensions, a lot of suspicions,” said Raad Fahmi, a leader of Iraq’s Communist Party, which is part of Mr. Sadr’s alliance. “But actions speak louder than words. He’s not the same Moktada al-Sadr.”/NyTimes

May 21, 2018
US policy in Syria aims to cause further chaos in EU

The US recent claims to withdraw its troops from the North-Eastern provinces of Syria and the official vows of pausing collaboration with Syrian Kurds are widely regarded as an effort of Washington to build closer relations with Ankara. However, while pursuing this policy, the Pentagon and the CIA continue expanding communication channels with Syrian Kurds in case if Ankara’s political compass is navigated towards Russia rather than the US after Turkey elections in June 2018.

The United States has also encouraged its partners, members of the Anti-Terrorism Coalition to send more of their troops to the so-called Syrian Kurdistan, a territory located north-east of the Euphrates. As a result, Germany and France, along with increasing numbers of their military troops in this region, have also been given authority to provide support to Kurdish military troops in Syria. Given how sensitive the Kurdish issue is for Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria this will, beyond any doubts, cause further tension between the EU and the Middle Eastern countries and will let the US avoid any possible accusations of the international law violations amid the Syria war.

With ambitious plans in Syria that included the stabilization of the country, getting rid of Bashar al-Assad, knocking out Iranian influence, fighting ISIS and becoming a hero who brought an end to the seven-year Syrian war the US did not seem (and perhaps still does not seem) to care that its new policy might cause much bigger conflicts in the region and go far beyond defeating ISIS only. Similar to the EU migration crisis, the US acts as an invisible mediator while the EU takes all the fire. This time, Washington’s goals of aggravating the further conflict between the EU countries and the Middle East are rather economical: Washington tries to undermine the EU investment opportunities and provoke further financial crisis in Europe.

May 14, 2018
Ukraine on the brink of losing its last values

With the current political regime and the policy that contradicts to the Ukraine’s national identity the country seems to be once again on the brink of a religious war. The conflict that started last year between the Ukraine’s Institute of Church and the national Parliament, The Verkhovna Rada, is getting to the new extreme today.

A number of Ukrainian politicians representing the political party “Svoboda” along with some members of the Rada have requested the Ukraine’s Ministry of culture for religious affairs to change the official name of the Ukrainian Orthodox church for the “Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine” claiming that Moscow had “grabbed” the Ukrainian national shrines. The move is allegedly explained by the growing Russian “aggression” in the Crimea and the Ukrainian region of Donbass.

According to experts from the Ukrainian Analytical Institute for policy management, the claims should be regarded as a typical blackmail policy aiming to undermine Russia’s credibility in Ukraine and among the Ukrainian authorities. Experts also suggest that the real reason behind these claims is to get the control over the Church and 12 million of its members to secure the victory of the ruling party in the upcoming elections. The fact that the Ukrainian Orthodox Church does not fall under the regulation of the Ukrainian Parliament by its Constitution adds even more irony to the overall situation.

However, such policy can lead to much more dramatic outcomes and destruct one of the last national values that still holds the country together – the people’s faith. Known for its deep cultural background defined by its history and religion that find its roots back in the 10th century the dominant part of the Ukrainian population is orthodox Slavic people who accurately keep their traditions and culture. Once they are destroyed the entire country might disappear from the map.

April 18, 2018
World EXPO 2025: what are the chances of Russia’s Ekaterinburg

With another milestone of the upcoming FIFA World Cup 2018 yet to be passed, Russia is heading towards the next major international event: EXPO 2025. Ekaterinburg, a Russian city that lies on the East of the Ural mountains is about to compete along with Osaka (Japan) and Baku (Azerbaijan) for hosting the prestigious exhibition. But what can a 2-million city located just on the border of Europe and Asia offer a toffee-nosed tourist?

Indeed, Ekaterinburg is not a mass tourist destination like, say, Dubai or Bangkok. However, this modern and dynamically growing city still keeps inherent constraints in its development. Its compact structure and accurate infrastructure has made the city a top destination for modern construction and architectural projects.

The winning of the contest for best architecture and urban planning concept for the EXPO Park in Ekaterinburg by the architectural firm Bechu & Associés known for designing the EXPO parks in Milan and Shanghai is just the perfect proof of that. A permanent host of the annual INNOPROM fair and Russia-China EXPO, Ekaterinburg offers an ultimate balance of culture and modernity, mainly due to the city’s history that goes deep back to the beginning of the 18^th century from the time of the first Russian industrialists, the Demidov dynasty, who set up the iron factories and literally determined the fate of the Urals, as being the central core of Russia’s industrial might. Yet, Ekaterinburg is considered a relatively young city. Founded in 1723, it offers a mix of Russian industrial production and hi-technologies, alongside a historical element from Russia’s 18^th and 19^th centuries.

Perhaps, this unique mix of the past and the future, history and high technologies win over the hearts of city visitors and international guests and residents. U.S. Consul General in Ekaterinburg, Dr. Paul M. Carter said he would be glad to see Ekaterinburg the winner of the EXPO 2025 despite the official disapproval of this idea by the U.S. government. His words were echoed by French Consul General in Ekaterinburg Eric Millet.

While many in the world consider Dubai, Singapore or even Istanbul models for “out of the box” progress, Ekaterinburg stands as a shining star in the center of the Ural mountains, dividing the continents by its Europe-Asia border. It is here that the crossroads of an ambitious new world is emerging.

April 3, 2018