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Texas Republicans have proposed changes to the state’s strict abortion ban they say would make clear that doctors can terminate pregnancies for serious medical risks without having to wait until a patient’s condition becomes life-threatening.

The legislation comes in response to a ProPublica investigation last fall that revealed how three Texas women died after they did not receive critical procedures during miscarriages. The reporting added to the testimonies and reports of dozens of women denied care during pregnancy complications and led to a statewide reckoning on the dire effects of the law.

The bill, which will have its first committee hearing in the state Senate today, represents a remarkable reversal for Republican leaders who had for years insisted no changes were needed. It was written by state Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of the original ban who said just four months ago that exceptions for medical emergencies were “plenty clear.” Texas’ governor and lieutenant governor have signaled support for the bill.

It is part of a wave of legislation responding to public pressure after ProPublica’s reporting revealed preventable maternal deaths in states with abortion bans. Bills that have the most traction have been filed and championed by the same Republicans who passed the bans and they have earned a mixed reception.

A bill in Kentucky, for instance, has drawn alarms from critics who cast it as a Trojan horse. It creates modest exceptions to the state’s near-total ban while redefining abortion in a way that advocates fear could greatly restrict patients’ access to critical procedures even in emergencies. Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear vetoed the bill Tuesday, saying it failed to protect women or even clarify the state’s law, an action Republicans could vote to override this week.

The Texas bill however, has broader support and was written in consultation with Democrats, major anti-abortion groups, the Texas Hospital Association and the Texas Medical Association.

Some legal experts and reproductive health care advocates are calling it a significant step forward in a Republican-led state that has shown every sign of clamping down in support of its strict laws, even in the face of public outcry.

“We wish there was a lot more in the bill, but nothing that’s in the bill is bad,” said Bee Moorhead, executive director with Texas Impact, an interfaith-based coalition that sent 6,000 postcards to lawmakers, demanding change after ProPublica’s reporting.

“The basic point is that there are people who would die if this bill doesn’t pass, who would not die if it does pass,” she said.

The bill is intended to make it harder for prosecutors to win a case against a doctor who provided an abortion to a patient experiencing pregnancy complications. It no longer requires a patient’s condition to be “life-threatening.” Doctors can act if their “reasonable medical judgment” assesses a “serious risk to a major bodily function.” It also specifies that doctors do not need to wait until an emergency is “imminent” to terminate pregnancies.

“It goes a long way towards fixing the most serious problems with the Texas abortion law,” said Seth Chandler, a law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

Others are skeptical that the changes would go far enough to reassure risk-averse hospitals and doctors. While the bill attempts to mitigate the criminal risk for providers handling pregnancy complications, it leaves intact the most powerful deterrent: steep penalties of up to $100,000 in fines, 99 years in prison and loss of medical license for those who violate the law.

It also leaves open the question of what constitutes a “serious risk.” Doctors previously told ProPublica the ban’s unclear language and stiff penalties have led to delays in care. In response to ProPublica’s reporting on preventable maternal deaths in Texas, 111 Texas OB-GYNs signed a letter blaming the deaths on the ban and urging lawmakers to “do something to make sure this never happens again.”

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which has represented 20 women suing the state after they were denied abortions and faced health risks, opposes the bill. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists declined to comment on the bill. Many doctors are adopting a wait-and-see stance.

ProPublica parsed through the language and ran it by six legal experts and six doctors to assess how likely the legislation is to save lives. While some expressed tempered optimism that legislators recognizing there was a problem, most said broader changes would be needed to guarantee the protection of patients.

“Too Many Women Have Died”

Texas’ abortion laws are among the strictest in the country. While the current laws have exceptions, they are written in a way that requires a patient’s condition to be “life-threatening” before receiving an abortion.

The result: Some doctors and hospitals have held back on treatments, waiting for the fetal heartbeat to stop or for patients to wind up in undeniable distress.

ProPublica has investigated three cases in which women in Texas died after doctors delayed care during miscarriages, finding that doctors have failed to provide critical procedures or delayed them while taking extra steps to record documentation, even when there was no fetal heartbeat and a patient’s condition was urgent.

Josseli Barnica was 17 weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with an “inevitable” miscarriage at a Houston hospital in September 2021. Though her fetus was already pressing against her cervix, doctors waited 40 hours until the fetal heartbeat stopped to inducea delivery, putting her at serious risk of deadly infection. She returned to the hospital two days later with sepsis and died.

Nevaeh Crain, 18, also died from complications of sepsis after delays in care. In 2023, she was sent home from two hospitals while she showed signs of infection and then made to wait 90 minutes for a second ultrasound to confirm fetal demise as her organs were failing.

Sepsis has become a lot more common in these kinds of cases, ProPublica found, in a first-of-its-kind statewide analysis of hospitalizations for second-trimester pregnancy loss through 2023. After Texas banned abortion, sepsis rates spiked more than 50%.

In every preventable death in a hospital that ProPublica reported on, doctors did not perform procedures that are associated with abortion but are also critical for treating miscarriages.

As Porsha Ngumezi hemorrhaged in 2022, her doctor did not provide a dilation and curettage procedure, the standard way to empty the uterus that a dozen doctors told ProPublica would be the quickest way to stop the bleeding. She died, leaving behind a husband and two sons.

Supporters of the new legislation say it aims to prevent such outcomes.

Current law specifies that the woman must be suffering a “life-threatening” physical condition in order for doctors to intervene. The amendment strikes that phrase and says doctors can perform abortions if, using their reasonable medical judgment, they believe there’s a “serious risk of substantial impairment of a major bodily function” or “risk of death.” (Like federal law, Texas law defines major bodily functions as systems including the body’s reproductive, digestive, bowel, bladder, respiratory and neurological processes.)

The bill also states it should be viewed as consistent with recent rulings from the Texas Supreme Court, which state that the risk to a woman’s life or major bodily function does not need to be “imminent” for doctors to provide abortions under the law. That’s the most important change in the new bill, according to Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University. She credited ProPublica’s reporting with pushing lawmakers to act.

“I think the GOP in Texas has been shamed a little bit by those stories,” she said. “If nobody is telling the stories of people with wanted pregnancies who are dying and suffering severe harm they can pretend that isn’t happening.”

The bill says an abortion may also be performed for ectopic pregnancies and for removing “a dead unborn child” after a miscarriage. It removes the “affirmative defense” that applied to certain exceptions in the civil code. That part of the law puts the burden of proof on the doctor to show the abortion was necessary — similar to claiming self-defense in a homicide case.

It seeks to insulate medical staff from being accused of “aiding or abetting” an abortion — so nurses and other colleagues don’t need to be afraid they could be prosecuted for participating in an abortion or discussing it.

Another part of the proposal says that the physician should try to preserve the fetus’ life but does not need to “alter or withhold” medical treatment if that delay poses a greater threat to the woman’s life or a major bodily function.

That is meant to show doctors that they can provide abortions for cases with known risks such as pre-viable premature rupture of membranes, or PPROM, when a patient’s water breaks before viability, even if the patient is still stable, said Amy and Steve Bresnen, two lobbyists involved in negotiating the bill for Texas Campaign for Mothers. The nonprofit, which has powerful Republicans on its advisory board, is focused on reproductive health.

Other changes specify that it’s not a violation of the law if a doctor provides a treatment to a pregnant patient and the fetus dies accidentally in the process. The Bresnens say these changes are intended to reassure physicians they shouldn’t delay treatments for other conditions, like cancer, out of fear they could be blamed for harming the fetus.

All of this should add up to a wide buffer for doctors in Texas to provide the same standard of care that major medical organizations recommend, the Bresnens said, because the exceptions will rely on the doctor’s “reasonable” judgment.

For prosecutors, “proving that no other reasonable physician would have done this is a high, high burden,” Steve Bresnen said.

Texas state Rep. Ann Johnson, a Democrat who signed on as a co-author of the bill, believes the amendment would give “all the tools in the medical toolbox” back to physicians.

“Do not delay, do not alter your treatment. Do not second guess it. Do exactly what you need to do to protect this woman,” Johnson said in describing the proposal.

At a press conference last week, Texas state Rep. Charlie Geren, a Republican sponsoring the legislation in the House, said the bill was the most important he has ever carried and acknowledged the toll of the abortion ban he and his colleagues passed four years ago.

“Too many women have suffered, too many women have died — if one woman has died, it’s too many and more have,” he said. “I have friends whose wives can no longer conceive because of the problems they went through with their first pregnancy and the delay that doctors faced in addressing the problem.”

“They Don’t Want to Run the Risk”

But the law hasn’t changed in the one way doctors most want it to: It can still effectively send them to prison for life if found guilty of a violation.

“The criminalization of medical decision-making makes the stakes different than it has ever been,” said Tony Ogburn, an OB-GYN practicing in Texas. He was hopeful the bill might lead to some change, but warned, “I think people are still going to be overly cautious because of the severity of the potential outcome and the criminal penalties.”

ProPublica spoke with six OB-GYNs in the state who worried the amendments may not be enough to spur hospital systems to change their policies to make abortions more accessible for patients with medical risks. Besides leaving the threat of penalties in place, they noted that the amendment doesn’t explain what constitutes a “serious risk” to a major bodily function — the circumstance that would justify an abortion.

“It doesn’t really clear things up that much,” agreed Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law and leading historian of the U.S. abortion debate. ”Hospitals are not advising doctors not to intervene just because they don’t understand the law — it’s that they don’t want to run the risk.”

The bill directs the State Bar of Texas and the Texas Medical Board to create courses to educate lawyers and doctors about when they can provide abortions under the exceptions. Both declined to comment on specifics. Doctors said it will be crucial to see what guidance comes out of that effort.

In South Dakota, a similar directive resulted in the state medical board collaborating with a professional association of doctors devoted to anti-abortion causes.

In any case, the changes in Texas law would still apply only to the narrowest of cases. Many doctors noted that Republicans have so far rejected efforts to make a broader health exception in the bill or include exceptions for fetal anomalies, rape or incest. The law still explicitly says a medical emergency can’t be based on any diagnosis that patients may harm themselves — effectively a ban on mental health exceptions.

Competing bills filed by Texas Democrats that have included some of those provisions so far have not received support from Republicans. Several Democrats have also filed legislation to better examine how the state’s abortion ban is affecting the maternal health crisis following ProPublica’s reporting.

Texas state Sen. José Menéndez introduced legislation to allow the state committee investigating maternal deaths to review deaths due to abortion, or a miscarriage if an abortion procedure or medication was administered. Currently, state law prohibits the committee from studying such deaths.

Another bill seeks to compel the state committee to report its findings to the CDC’s federal program tracking causes of maternal mortality. Both bills are currently pending in committee and have not been scheduled for a hearing.

Meanwhile, Texas Republicans continue to crack down on abortion in other ways. Another Republican bill filed by Hughes this session is aimed at stopping the flow of abortion pills through the mail as well as restricting online information about the procedure. And last week, the state charged a midwife and an associate with illegally providing abortions.

“I don’t think [the amendment] solves the larger problem of who can have an abortion and when they can have an abortion, and that it’ll be done in a timely manner for all those that need it,” Ogburn said. “There’s a lot of variables, which is why it’s really hard to legislate health care, and I think those decisions could be left to patients and their doctors.”

Ziva Branstetter contributed reporting. Mariam Elba contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Kavitha Surana and Cassandra Jaramillo.

Behind the headlines and all the public huffing and puffing we find several caveats; other countries doing the “heavy lifting” are not named; a plan must be developed; a month long pause in the fighting must precede the deployment of troops; to succeed the effort must have “strong US backing.” This is not understated because Lord Dannet, former head of the Army told the BBC “the UK military was ‘so run down’ it could not lead any mission in Ukraine.” And we read that in Germany, soldiers are practicing with broomsticks painted black instead of with rifles. Finally, no mention is made of the fact that Russia has already ruled out Europe’s participation in any peace deal. Other than that the proposal is good to go.

What all this means is that war mongering European leaders (plus many Democrats, liberals and putative leftists here) are ‘willing’ to send soldiers to their deaths in the war in Ukraine that’s already lost. This is reminiscent of when George W. Bush introduced his national security strategy in 2002 with the phrase “coalition of the willing” — before the US invaded Iraq.

I’ve thought long and hard about why European leaders are incapable of working toward peace. Have these characters totally lost touch with reality? Is it because they can’t admit, even to themselves, that the UK/US used Europe for its own ends and otherwise doesn’t give a whit about the Continent? Is it because they can’t acknowledge this because, as part of the pro-war Atlanticist Establishment, they’ve been absolutely complicit in America’s predatory behavior — and have constantly lied about it? Is it because the European ruling class benefits from their own MIC? Shares in European defense giants soared to record highs today.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Gary Olson.

But the claim is false. The U.S. has never made such a proposal. Experts warn that AI responses are not always accurate.

The claim was shared by an X user on Jan. 12 who said China rejected a U.S. proposal at the U.N. to label scammers in Myanmar as terrorists, following the recent high-profile abduction and subsequent rescue of Chinese actor Wang Xing.

Wang was rescued after being lured to Thailand under the pretense of a film role and subsequently trafficked to a scam center in Myanmar. Following his return to China on Jan. 11, Wang revealed in a live stream that approximately 50 other Chinese victims were freed from the same facility.

The X user cited a response from AI chatbot “Duobao” as evidence that the U.S. has proposed calling the scam operators “terrorists.”

Duobao is an advanced artificial intelligence chatbot developed by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

Launched in August 2024, Doubao has rapidly become China’s most popular AI application, boasting 51 million monthly active users as of November 2024.

(X)

But the claim is false.

Keyword searches found no official or credible reports to show that the U.S. made such a proposal at the U.N.

A review of minutes of the U.N. Security Council meetings in 2024 also found no such discussion.

Duobao response

AFCL asked Doubao a question about the purported U.S. proposal.

The AI chatbot responded: “There is currently no firm information confirming the U.S. made such a proposal nor that China or any other country vetoed it.”

(Duobao)

AI systems reflect the material used to “train” them, experts say.

“Doubao is a large-scale language model trained using similar methods and facing similar problems as ChatGPT,” said Hsin-Min Wang, an information science researcher at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.

AFCL has previously reported that Chat GPT is not always credible, as it responds to prompts based on probability calculations after being trained with large amounts of online text.

Ethan Tu, the founder of Taiwan AI Labs, previously told AFCL that AI learns the bias and ideas from the assorted texts of the collected corpus it is being fed for language training.

“Its output reflects the cultural ideas found in the market it was trained in.”

Translated by Shen Ke. Edited by Taejun Kang.

Asia Fact Check Lab (AFCL) was established to counter disinformation in today’s complex media environment. We publish fact-checks, media-watches and in-depth reports that aim to sharpen and deepen our readers’ understanding of current affairs and public issues. If you like our content, you can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Dong Zhe for Asia Fact Check Lab.

Pro-independence fighters in the Indonesian-ruled West Papua region have proposed the terms of release for the New Zealand pilot taken hostage almost 18 months ago.

The armed faction of the West Papua National Liberation Army (TPNPB) kidnapped Phillip Merhtens, a 38-year-old pilot working for the Indonesian internal feeder airline Susi Air, in February last year after he landed a small commercial plane in a remote, mountainous area.

The group has tried to use Mehrtens to broker independence from Indonesia.

• READ MORE: West Papua rebels propose terms for release of New Zealand pilot Phillip Mehrtens
• Other NZ kidnapped pilot reports

It is now asking the New Zealand government, including the police and army, to escort the pilot and for local and international journalists to be involved in the release process.

Both Foreign Affairs and the minister’s office say they are aware of the proposed plan.

In a statement, they say their focus remains on securing a peaceful resolution and the pilot’s safe release.

“We continue to work closely with all parties to achieve this and will not be discussing the details publicly.”

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

The Guardian reports that Indonesian human rights advocate Andreas Harsono, who covers the country for Human Rights Watch, said the proposal was “realistic”, despite Indonesia’s ongoing restriction on reporters and human rights monitors in the region.

“The top priority should be to release this man who has a wife and kids,” The Guardian quoted Harsono as saying.

West Papua’s armed group issued a proposal to release a New Zealand hostage, asking more than a dozen foreign journalists and rights monitors to be present in Wamena and Jayapura to witness the process https://t.co/4LAYNiipaL pic.twitter.com/yhRKYsX605

— Andreas Harsono (@andreasharsono) September 17, 2024

For the attention of NZ govt:

As the Liberation Army announced that they would release pilot Phillip Mehrtens soon, 2 military helicopters were spotted in Kenyam today.

The Liberation Army claimed there had been an airstrike this morning.

This jeopardizes the release process. pic.twitter.com/uq8IGOMh4A

— Veronica Koman 許愛茜 (@VeronicaKoman) September 16, 2024

Sebby Sambom, the TPN-PB spokesman, and Terianus Satto, a general affairs chief of the armed group, state that they issued a proposal to release the New Zealand pilot unconditionally but need witnesses to secure the release in West Papua pic.twitter.com/dg8InXQo6h

— Andreas Harsono (@andreasharsono) September 18, 2024

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

This story was produced in collaboration with Sahan Journal, a nonprofit newsroom dedicated to covering Minnesota’s immigrants and communities of color. Sign up for Sahan’s free newsletter to receive stories in your inbox.

The excitement that Abdinoor Igal felt after buying a five-bedroom house in a new development in a suburb south of the Twin Cities was short-lived.

At the time, it was the realization of a long-held dream — a spacious, modern home for his wife and seven children to call their own. And Igal, a 37-year-old long-haul trucker, had saved for a house for years.

But like many practicing Muslims, he had avoided paying or profiting from interest as a matter of faith, and therefore did not want to get a traditional mortgage. So in 2022, when he heard there was a new, interest-free way to buy a house using a financial instrument called a contract for deed, he jumped at the chance.

But less than two years later, Igal’s dream collapsed. After struggling to make the nearly $5,000 payments each month, last fall he put the family’s belongings in storage and handed the keys to the house, which he had agreed to pay more than $700,000 for, back to the seller. He sent his family to live temporarily in Kenya, where he owns another home and the cost of living is much lower. Meanwhile, he sleeps in the cabin of his semitruck.

Igal said he lost everything he put into the deal, one made directly between a buyer and seller without a bank’s involvement. The total: $170,000, including a $73,000 down payment. He walked away with nothing.

“They really took a very big advantage of me and my family,” said Igal, who first shared his story with ProPublica and Sahan Journal anonymously in 2022. “They make us, like, homeless.”

This week, two Minnesota state lawmakers are introducing legislation that would overhaul contract-for-deed law in the state to try to prevent the same dramatic loss from happening to other homebuyers.

State Sen. Zaynab Mohamed and Rep. Hodan Hassan, both Democrats representing parts of south Minneapolis, are behind the legislation. Mohamed introduced her bill on Monday, while Hassan expects to introduce hers later this week. The legislation follows the introduction of a federal contract-for-deed reform law by Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., and Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., this month.

Together, the state measures would enact a raft of new requirements for “investor sellers” using contracts for deed and provide buyers more ways to recoup their losses in the case of a default or bad faith on the part of the seller. Both Mohamed and Hassan are Somali and said they had heard stories of contracts for deed going wrong for constituents and members of their community.

“It could be my mother, it could be my sister,” said Hassan. “Those people are from my community, and some of them are vulnerable because they don’t understand the system and they don’t speak the language.”

The legislation is in part a response to a 2022 Sahan Journal and ProPublica investigation about potentially predatory uses of contracts for deed in Minnesota’s Somali community. The news organizations found a rising market in Minnesota for home sales using contracts for deed and complaints from buyers that they’d agreed to unfavorable terms they didn’t understand.

In recent years, real estate investors have promoted contracts for deed as an interest-free purchase agreement by first buying houses using traditional mortgages, then reselling them to contract buyers — often for tens of thousands of dollars above market price in place of any interest.

The deals were frequently fast-tracked and conducted without the involvement of a lawyer and without an inspection or appraisal of the property. Despite being marketed as interest free, deals like the one Igal signed also ultimately included interest payments at rates higher than the market, according to the contract. If a buyer defaults on a payment, they can be evicted in as little as 60 days.

Proponents of contracts for deed say the arrangements are a way for someone who otherwise couldn’t be approved for a mortgage to become a homeowner. Mohamed agreed that, when promoted honestly, contracts for deed can be “a beautiful process,” but she emphasized that too many sellers are taking advantage of buyers in the Somali community.

“You have to make sure that they have integrity in that process and an understanding that you can’t take advantage of these communities,” Mohamed said.

The bills, if approved by the state Legislature and signed by the governor, would impose regulations on investor-sellers — people that, for at least a year, have not owned or lived in the home they are trying to sell. The bill would prohibit investor-sellers from “churning” properties, or rapidly entering and canceling contracts with multiple buyers, a tactic that unscrupulous sellers can use to collect large down payments without ever losing ownership of the property. Homeowners who bought their home through a contract for deed from someone found guilty of churning or failing to make any of the new required consumer protection disclosures can recover the payments they made, minus the “fair rental value” of the home, as well as the cost of any improvements they made.

The bill gives homebuyers 10 days after receiving all disclosures to cancel their contract. And homeowners who cancel their contract within four years of buying their home can recover a portion of their down payment. If they default, they must receive a 30-day notice from the seller and have 90 days to catch up on their payments before eviction.

Hassan said she was surprised by the balloon payments, which can amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars, that are common to contracts for deed.

“That was the shocker for me, the amount of money that goes as a down payment that people are expected to come up with, and then comes the balloon payments that are expected to be paid. I’m like, this makes no sense,” she said. “That’s setting up people for failure.”

The proposed law would require not only that the balloon payment schedule be included in the paperwork, but also that all disclosures must be written in the language that was used to negotiate the deal; if a Spanish-speaking real estate broker set up the sale, for instance, the disclosures must be written in Spanish.

The bill is expected to be first heard in the Minnesota Senate’s Housing and Homelessness Prevention Committee this month.

Igal said in an interview from the road in North Dakota that he had hoped he could get out of the contract with his seller, a company called Banken Holdings LLC, without losing everything. Chad Banken, the company owner, did not respond to a request for comment.

According to his contract, if Igal had managed to make it to the end of his five-year term, he still would have owed over $500,000 for the balloon payment. But Igal said this payment schedule had never been explained to him properly before he signed the contract.

Now, Igal said he hopes to save enough money to send for his family before the beginning of the next school year. If he can accomplish that, he said they will go back to living in a rental apartment. Even though it’s been decades since he first came to the U.S. as a refugee, Igal said he feels like he is starting over from “zero.”

Still, he said he feels good that his story may prevent other families from suffering a similar fate.

“My family already broke down. We are already separate, living in two countries,” he said. “If what I started helps families stay together, I’m happy with that.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Jessica Lussenhop, ProPublica, and Joey Peters, Sahan Journal.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

A bipartisan group of six U.S. representatives has introduced a bill that would prohibit insurers and their intermediaries from levying fees on doctors for paying them electronically. The legislation comes in the wake of a ProPublica investigation that detailed the toll of such fees, which add up to billions of dollars that could be spent on care but are instead funneled to insurers and payment processors.

The charges are akin to having an employer deduct 1.5% to 5% to provide a paycheck electronically if an employee prefers to receive a payment directly into their bank account rather than via a paper check. Yet that’s the choice many insurers are increasingly forcing on doctors.

“We don’t tolerate paying fees to receive direct deposit of a paycheck, likewise, doctors and patients should not be forced to pay predatory fees on electronic payments on essential health services,” the bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina, said in a statement announcing the legislation. Murphy’s bill would effectively force the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal government’s chief regulator on health care payments, to prohibit the fees.

As it happens, that would bring the giant agency back to its original position. CMS prohibited fees for electronic funds transfers until it was lobbied by a payment processor called Zelis. The agency changed its position in 2018, then went even further in 2022, explicitly stating that such fees are not prohibited. A spokesperson for CMS said the agency does not comment on proposed legislation. Zelis did not reply to a request for comment on Murphy’s bill, but the company previously told ProPublica that its services remove “many of the obstacles that keep providers from efficiently initiating, receiving, and benefitting from electronic payments.”

CMS’s about-face was detailed in copious internal records meticulously collected by a New York City urologist, Dr. Alex Shteynshlyuger, who has made it his mission to fight the costly fees. His crusade now appears to have found a sympathetic ear in Congress: Like Shteynshlyuger, Murphy is a urologist, and he co-chairs the House GOP Doctors Caucus. Three Democrats and two Republicans thus far have signed on as co-sponsors of his bill.

The proposed legislation has the backing of the American Medical Association, whose policymaking body voted last month to adopt a new resolution opposing “growing and excessive” fees on electronic funds transfer payments. Shteynshlyuger, who has spent six years trying to convince CMS to ban the fees, introduced a proposal at New York state’s medical society that then made its way to the AMA. He said of the new federal bill: “I’m happy that the legislators got involved.”

Administrators at small medical clinics are hoping the bill will bring them relief from the fees, which are “doing nothing for us but costing us money,” said Rebecca Hamilton, who manages an arthritis and rheumatology clinic in Wichita, Kansas.

Often, it’s independent clinics like Hamilton’s that suffer the most from such fees, since medical practices collect the vast majority of their revenues through EFT payments, according to the Medical Group Management Association. The winners are the recipients of the fees: large insurers and payment processors like Zelis.

One form of electronic fee is not addressed by Murphy’s bill: charges for use of so-called virtual credit cards, which Shteynshlyuger has also been campaigning against. Virtual credit cards are temporary card numbers that are typically used for one payment. Fees for VCC use run as high as 5% versus a typical 2.5% for other kinds of electronic payments.

ProPublica’s investigation showed how Matthew Albright, a lobbyist for Zelis, used a combination of cajoling, argument and the threat of litigation to get CMS to withdraw a 2017 notice prohibiting fees for electronic payment. CMS had posted the notice, which was based on a federal rule from 2000, on its website after hearing complaints from doctors. Internal CMS emails detailed how Albright repeatedly demanded that CMS withdraw and revise the notice, and when CMS ultimately refused, a law firm representing Zelis threatened to sue the agency. Within days, CMS removed the notice. It later stated that fees are allowed.

CMS previously told ProPublica that it reversed its position because it concluded that it had no legal authority to “flat-out prohibit fees.”

Albright, like CMS, has changed his public position on the fees. Before he joined Zelis, Albright worked for the federal agency, where he wrote the rules implementing electronic health care payments. Shortly after his time at CMS, at a 2015 conference for health care business managers in Las Vegas, Albright expressed unequivocal opposition to fees for electronic payments. When Albright outlined the agency’s rules, audio of the event shows, the mere mention of virtual credit cards prompted some members of the audience to cry, “Evil!” Albright asked if that sentiment was unanimous, prompting a wave of yeses.

Before he became an industry lobbyist, Matthew Albright expressed opposition to electronic payment fees at a conference in Las Vegas in 2015.

Laughter ensued, and Albright, who has a master’s degree in divinity, joked that he was preaching to the choir. His sermon? “What other industry does not get paid for the services they’re doing, and when they do get paid, they have to pay for getting paid? What other industry, right? It’s ridiculous!”

Reached by telephone for comment, Albright said, “I can’t speak to you.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Cezary Podkul.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

A bipartisan group of six U.S. representatives has introduced a bill that would prohibit insurers and their intermediaries from levying fees on doctors for paying them electronically. The legislation comes in the wake of a ProPublica investigation that detailed the toll of such fees, which add up to billions of dollars that could be spent on care but are instead funneled to insurers and payment processors.

The charges are akin to having an employer deduct 1.5% to 5% to provide a paycheck electronically if an employee prefers to receive a payment directly into their bank account rather than via a paper check. Yet that’s the choice many insurers are increasingly forcing on doctors.

“We don’t tolerate paying fees to receive direct deposit of a paycheck, likewise, doctors and patients should not be forced to pay predatory fees on electronic payments on essential health services,” the bill’s lead sponsor, Republican Rep. Greg Murphy of North Carolina, said in a statement announcing the legislation. Murphy’s bill would effectively force the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the federal government’s chief regulator on health care payments, to prohibit the fees.

As it happens, that would bring the giant agency back to its original position. CMS prohibited fees for electronic funds transfers until it was lobbied by a payment processor called Zelis. The agency changed its position in 2018, then went even further in 2022, explicitly stating that such fees are not prohibited. A spokesperson for CMS said the agency does not comment on proposed legislation. Zelis did not reply to a request for comment on Murphy’s bill, but the company previously told ProPublica that its services remove “many of the obstacles that keep providers from efficiently initiating, receiving, and benefitting from electronic payments.”

CMS’s about-face was detailed in copious internal records meticulously collected by a New York City urologist, Dr. Alex Shteynshlyuger, who has made it his mission to fight the costly fees. His crusade now appears to have found a sympathetic ear in Congress: Like Shteynshlyuger, Murphy is a urologist, and he co-chairs the House GOP Doctors Caucus. Three Democrats and two Republicans thus far have signed on as co-sponsors of his bill.

The proposed legislation has the backing of the American Medical Association, whose policymaking body voted last month to adopt a new resolution opposing “growing and excessive” fees on electronic funds transfer payments. Shteynshlyuger, who has spent six years trying to convince CMS to ban the fees, introduced a proposal at New York state’s medical society that then made its way to the AMA. He said of the new federal bill: “I’m happy that the legislators got involved.”

Administrators at small medical clinics are hoping the bill will bring them relief from the fees, which are “doing nothing for us but costing us money,” said Rebecca Hamilton, who manages an arthritis and rheumatology clinic in Wichita, Kansas.

Often, it’s independent clinics like Hamilton’s that suffer the most from such fees, since medical practices collect the vast majority of their revenues through EFT payments, according to the Medical Group Management Association. The winners are the recipients of the fees: large insurers and payment processors like Zelis.

One form of electronic fee is not addressed by Murphy’s bill: charges for use of so-called virtual credit cards, which Shteynshlyuger has also been campaigning against. Virtual credit cards are temporary card numbers that are typically used for one payment. Fees for VCC use run as high as 5% versus a typical 2.5% for other kinds of electronic payments.

ProPublica’s investigation showed how Matthew Albright, a lobbyist for Zelis, used a combination of cajoling, argument and the threat of litigation to get CMS to withdraw a 2017 notice prohibiting fees for electronic payment. CMS had posted the notice, which was based on a federal rule from 2000, on its website after hearing complaints from doctors. Internal CMS emails detailed how Albright repeatedly demanded that CMS withdraw and revise the notice, and when CMS ultimately refused, a law firm representing Zelis threatened to sue the agency. Within days, CMS removed the notice. It later stated that fees are allowed.

CMS previously told ProPublica that it reversed its position because it concluded that it had no legal authority to “flat-out prohibit fees.”

Albright, like CMS, has changed his public position on the fees. Before he joined Zelis, Albright worked for the federal agency, where he wrote the rules implementing electronic health care payments. Shortly after his time at CMS, at a 2015 conference for health care business managers in Las Vegas, Albright expressed unequivocal opposition to fees for electronic payments. When Albright outlined the agency’s rules, audio of the event shows, the mere mention of virtual credit cards prompted some members of the audience to cry, “Evil!” Albright asked if that sentiment was unanimous, prompting a wave of yeses.

Before he became an industry lobbyist, Matthew Albright expressed opposition to electronic payment fees at a conference in Las Vegas in 2015.

Laughter ensued, and Albright, who has a master’s degree in divinity, joked that he was preaching to the choir. His sermon? “What other industry does not get paid for the services they’re doing, and when they do get paid, they have to pay for getting paid? What other industry, right? It’s ridiculous!”

Reached by telephone for comment, Albright said, “I can’t speak to you.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Cezary Podkul.

“The new geopolitical axis, consisting of Iran, the Kremlin, Pyongyang and Beijing, brings with it many new challenges, including sanctions targeting lawmakers who oppose authoritarian regimes, digital attacks on their online and mobile networks, and malicious intent on social platforms attack and damage,” said Lord David Alton who was among several British MPs who put forward the training proposal to the Speaker of the House of Lords and the Speaker of the House of Commons.

“It’s a combination of intimidation, silencing and coercion. Add to this the fact that agents from hostile countries such as China have been revealed to be operating within Parliament.”

The proposal, drafted by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), mandates that all lawmakers and personnel receive mandatory digital and operational security training on a regular basis, as well as the publication of a list of those who have failed to complete the training. 

IPAC is an international cross-party group of legislators working towards reform on how democratic countries approach China.

It also recommends that relevant departments provide basic network security tools, such as VPNs, password management tools and screen protectors; regularly issue warnings to MPs about new phishing, malicious applications and other network attacks; and establish mechanisms to allow MPs to report information leakage and other situations, and assist in subsequent crisis management.

The proposal came after the director of MI5 and other intelligence chiefs from the Five Eyes Alliance issued a public warning about China’s espionage practices. 

“I don’t think [British] MPs were very security conscious before because the foreign interference activities that have emerged in recent years are actually very new,” Glacier Kwong, head of Hong Kong security policy at IPAC, told RFA Cantonese. “I don’t think they have had much contact with Chinese or Russian interference in the past.”

She believes that as the U.K. general election approaches, foreign spies will become more active in their attempts to collect intelligence and influence policy formulation. And activities such as disinformation wars and flooding the social platforms of parliamentarians with spam messages will also become more prevalent, she said.

“As there are going to be new tactics, there are going to be more foreign interventions, and with the general election coming up, there are going to be more of these interventions, so the relevant departments are going to have to enhance their countermeasures,” Kwong added. 

Translated by RFA staff. Edited by Elaine Chan.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Amelia Loi for RFA Cantonese.

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Members of Congress on Thursday introduced sweeping legislation that aims to reduce the country’s stillbirth rate, tackling gaps in research, data and awareness as well as authorizing tens of millions of dollars in new funding.

If passed, the Stillbirth Health Improvement and Education (SHINE) for Autumn Act of 2023 would be the most comprehensive federal stillbirth law on record. Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., who introduced the bill in the House, called it “the first step in the right direction” to help prevent stillbirths and ensure healthy pregnancies.

As a mother, grandmother and co-chair of the Maternity Care Caucus, Kim said she understands the challenges firsthand. She said that when one of her daughters lost a baby a few years ago, the doctor’s response was, “It happens.”

“These experiences have made me want to be a part of the solution,” she said. “I want us to have more information and make sure things are better for my grandkids. We should be able to prevent the preventable.”

Every year in the U.S., more than 20,000 pregnancies end in stillbirth, the death of an expected child at 20 weeks or more. Research shows as many as 1 in 4 stillbirths may be preventable, a figure that jumps to nearly half as the due date nears. But for years, the U.S. stillbirth crisis has been overlooked.

ProPublica has reported extensively on the devastating effects of stillbirth on families and the country’s failure to prevent, prioritize and raise awareness around stillbirth. Stark racial disparities underscore the crisis, as Black women are more than twice as likely to have a stillbirth as white women. But government officials, doctors and researchers often cite the dearth of research, data and autopsies as barriers to change.

Kim and other lawmakers lauded ProPublica’s reporting for bringing the stillbirth crisis to the forefront and revealing shortcomings in how the nation’s health care system was combating stillbirths.

“ProPublica’s work has been so important for shedding light on the challenges related to stillbirth, amplifying the stories of mothers and women whose voices have not been heard, and highlighting the gaps in our stillbirth-related data and where the United States stands compared to other countries,” said Kim, who was not involved in last session’s legislation.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., introduced legislation in the Senate last year with Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., but it did not pass. They joined forces again to reintroduce a measure on Thursday. Booker said the growing list of bipartisan cosponsors and the relentless work of advocates makes him optimistic that it will pass this session.

“Sadly, despite staggering statistics, stillbirth remains one of the most underfunded and understudied public health issues in the United States. This legislation would provide long-overdue resources towards research and data collection,” said Booker, adding that he was “incredibly grateful” to ProPublica for raising awareness and giving a human face to the ongoing crisis, which has been “critical” to garnering support for the legislation.

The SHINE for Autumn Act is named after the daughter of New Jersey maternal health advocate Debbie Haine Vijayvergiya. Autumn Joy was stillborn 12 years ago this month.

“This is life-saving, historic, monumental legislation,” Haine Vijayvergiya said. “I’ve been waiting and working so hard all these years, knocking on doors and screaming from rooftops trying to get someone’s attention, trying to find anyone who can help to elevate the sense of urgency around this issue.”

She teared up as she expressed gratitude to the lawmakers who listened and signed on to the legislation. She’s now turning her attention to getting the bill passed, which means a steady stream of meetings and calls.

“ProPublica has helped to shine the very brightest light,” she said. “I don't think we’d be where we are today without the help of ProPublica.”

The bill marks the second time this month that federal lawmakers have introduced stillbirth legislation. The Maternal and Child Health Stillbirth Prevention Act specifically adds stillbirth prevention to the list of federal funding programs earmarked for mothers and children.

The SHINE for Autumn Act would authorize a total of $45 million in federal funding over the next five years for the various programs. That includes building a partnership between federal and state agencies to focus on collecting better data on stillbirths and risk factors, as well as building capacity at the local level to assess and standardize that data. It also seeks to develop and make educational awareness materials publicly available. Many women interviewed by ProPublica said they didn’t know they were at risk until they delivered their stillborn baby.

In addition, the bill paves the way for a perinatal pathology fellowship program to help provide additional training for fetal autopsies. In 2020, autopsies were conducted or planned in less than 20% of stillbirths, according to data from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which also shows that the cause of death is not determined in about one-third of stillbirths.

Rep. Dave Joyce, R-Ohio, Rep. Kathy Castor, D-Fla., and Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., are all cosponsors in the House. Kelly, who co-chairs the Maternity Care Caucus with Kim, said the federal government has a major responsibility when it comes to ensuring maternal and newborn care, and part of that includes addressing the alarming racial disparities in maternal mortality and stillbirth.

“Stillbirth is a deeply painful experience for many mothers, and another area (of) health care where Black women feel a disproportionate burden,” she said. “By shedding light on this issue and directing more resources and more awareness to supporting moms and babies, we can improve outcomes across the board.”

Key medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, have also backed the legislation. Dr. Tony Sciscione, president of the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, said preventing stillbirths is crucial.

“One of the most difficult things that maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists do is comfort families as they try to understand why their baby was stillborn,” he said. “For patients and clinicians, there are far too many questions and far too few answers.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Duaa Eldeib.

Amid a growing wave of Republican attacks on transgender rights—including a recently passed U.S. House bill targeting trans youth—a pair of progressive congressional lawmakers on Thursday prepared to reintroduce a resolution codifying protections for transgender Americans.

The revived Transgender Bill of Rights—introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and co-sponsored by dozens of congressional Democrats—comes a day ahead of International Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31. According to Jayapal's office, the measure "provides a comprehensive policy framework to provide protections for transgender and nonbinary people, ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to thrive, regardless of their gender identity or expression."

Jayapal, who co-chairs the Transgender Equality Task Force and whose daughter is trans, said in a statement: "Day after day, we see a constant onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation coming from elected officials. Today we say enough is enough."

"Day after day, we see a constant onslaught of anti-trans rhetoric and legislation coming from elected officials."

Markey asserted that "on this and every International Transgender Day of Visibility, we are reminded of our moral obligation to defend the fundamental rights of trans people against the violence, discrimination, and bigotry that too often mark their lived experience in our country."

"Lives are at stake. The health, safety, and freedom of trans people are at stake," he added. "Congress must take a stand in the face of dangerous, transphobic attacks waged by far-right state legislatures and once again reaffirm our nation's bedrock commitment to equality and justice for all."

According to Jayapal's office, "in 2023 alone, there have been more than 450 anti-LGBTQ+ bills proposed in both state and federal legislature, jeopardizing the safety and mental health of LGBTQ+ youth and trans youth in particular."

"Trans Americans are also four times more likely than cisgender peers to be victims of violent crime and more than 40% have attempted suicide," the congresswoman's office added.

State laws targeting transgender people include—but are not limited to—bans on lifesaving gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth and on trans students from participating on sports teams or using the bathrooms that match their gender identity; and prohibition of public drag shows.

Common Dreamsreported Thursday that West Virginia and Kentucky are the latest states to ban gender-affirming care for trans minors.

Meanwhile, the Kansas House of Representatives on Wednesday approved a bill which would bar transgender individuals from entering single-sex spaces including bathrooms, domestic violence shelters, and prison wards, while labeling intersex people as disabled.

No state is safe from at least the introduction of transphobic legislation, including California, where a Republican state lawmaker earlier this month proposed a bill that would force schools "out" transgender students to their parents under the pretext of boosting parental rights and helping children.

Not content with banning gender-affirming healthcare in their own state, a bill passed earlier this month by Idaho's Republican-controlled House of Representatives included a provision that criminalizes parents or guardians who allow their children to travel outside the state to receive such care.

At the federal level, anti-trans legislation includes the Parents Bill of Rights, passed last week by the Republican-controlled House in a 213-208 vote along party lines.

Among other things, the Transgender Bill of Rights calls on the federal government to amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to explicitly include gender identity and to codify the U.S. Supreme Court's Bostock v. Clayton County ruling, which affirmed that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act protects LGBTQ+ employees from discrimination.

Biden continued:

As kids, they deserve what every child deserves: the chance to learn in safe and supportive schools, to develop meaningful friendships, and to live openly and honestly. As adults, they deserve the same rights enjoyed by every American, including equal access to healthcare, housing, and jobs and the chance to age with grace as senior citizens. But today, too many transgender Americans are still denied those rights and freedoms. A wave of discriminatory state laws is targeting transgender youth, terrifying families and hurting kids who are not hurting anyone. An epidemic of violence against transgender women and girls, in particular women and girls of color, has taken lives far too soon. Last year's Club Q shooting in Colorado was another painful example of this kind of violence—a stain on the conscience of our nation.

The president highlighted how his administration "fought to end these injustices from day one":

On my first day as president, I issued an executive order directing the federal government to root out discrimination against LGBTQI+ people and their families. We have appointed a record number of openly LGBTQI+ leaders, and I was proud to rescind the ban on openly transgender people serving in the military. We are also working to make public spaces and travel more accessible, including with more inclusive gender markers on United States passports. We are improving access to public services and entitlements like Social Security. We are cracking down on discrimination in housing and education. And last December, I signed the Respect for Marriage Act into law, ensuring that every American can marry the person they love and have that marriage accepted, period.

"There is much more to do," Biden added. "I continue to call on Congress to finally pass the Equality Act and extend long-overdue civil rights protections to all LGBTQI+ Americans to ensure they can live with safety and dignity."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Declaring that homelessness and housing insecurity is the result of "a structural failure of a country that has refused to make safe and affordable housing a priority," U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Grace Meng on Wednesday reintroduced the Housing is a Human Right Act and called on the federal government to provide $300 billion to end the crisis facing unhoused people.

The legislation would invest more than $200 billion in affordable housing and support services, $27 billion annually for services for unhoused people, and $100 million per year for community-driven alternatives to people experiencing homelessness.

Other funds would go to support communities at heightened risk for homelessness.

"Housing is a human right, and nobody in the world should be without a place to call home, especially not in America," said Meng (D-N.Y.). "This is an issue that impacts individuals for a number of reasons and sometimes isn't fixed with just a physical roof above a person's head."

The bill was reintroduced as real estate website Realtor.com released an analysis showing that even for people who have a place to live, housing is becoming more precarious across the United States.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recommends that people spend less than 30% of their income on housing, but eight of the country's top 50 metropolitan areas now have "a rent share higher than 30% relative to the median household income," including Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and San Diego.

Even in more affordable cities renters are spending more, with the average monthly rent in Cincinnati, Ohio costing 19.4% of the average monthly income—up from 18.4% last year. In Birmingham, Alabama, renters spend an average of 22.2% of their income on housing.

"As costs have risen and the minimum wage has stagnated, it would take the average minimum wage worker more than 96 hours of work per week to afford a two-bedroom rental," noted Jayapal (D-Wash.).

The shrinking stock of affordable housing is linked to the crisis of homelessness, which more than half a million people in the U.S. experienced in 2022—up by 3% from 2020.

"The crisis of housing instability is one that can be fixed by investing in housing infrastructure and supportive services for vulnerable communities," said Jayapal.

The legislation has been co-sponsored by Democratic lawmakers including Reps. Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, James McGovern of Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

The $200 billion proposed investment included in the bill would go toward McKinney-Vento Emergency Solutions Grants, which fund engagement with people experiencing homelessness and improve emergency shelters; and Continuum of Care grants, which help rehouse people who have faced homelessness.

The legislation would also:

• Create a new grant program to invest in humane infrastructure, providing municipalities with $6 billion a year through a flexible program that will allow them to address their most urgent housing needs to keep people in stable housing and support those experiencing homelessness;
• Incentivize local investments in humane, evidence-based models to support people experiencing homelessness, including alternatives to criminalization and penalization;
• Provide $10 billion for Federal Emergency Management Agency food and shelter grants while improving grants to better represent high rates of homelessness and income inequality; and
• Authorize $100 million in grants to public libraries to provide assistance and tailored supports to persons experiencing homelessness.

"In the richest country in the world, it is a moral imperative that we take this issue head-on," said Jayapal. "Housing is a human right—and every person deserves to have a safe place to call home."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

Declaring that homelessness and housing insecurity is the result of "a structural failure of a country that has refused to make safe and affordable housing a priority," U.S. Reps. Pramila Jayapal and Grace Meng on Wednesday reintroduced the Housing is a Human Right Act and called on the federal government to provide $300 billion to end the crisis facing unhoused people.

The legislation would invest more than $200 billion in affordable housing and support services, $27 billion annually for services for unhoused people, and $100 million per year for community-driven alternatives to people experiencing homelessness.

Other funds would go to support communities at heightened risk for homelessness.

"Housing is a human right, and nobody in the world should be without a place to call home, especially not in America," said Meng (D-N.Y.). "This is an issue that impacts individuals for a number of reasons and sometimes isn't fixed with just a physical roof above a person's head."

The bill was reintroduced as real estate website Realtor.com released an analysis showing that even for people who have a place to live, housing is becoming more precarious across the United States.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recommends that people spend less than 30% of their income on housing, but eight of the country's top 50 metropolitan areas now have "a rent share higher than 30% relative to the median household income," including Miami, Los Angeles, New York, and San Diego.

Even in more affordable cities renters are spending more, with the average monthly rent in Cincinnati, Ohio costing 19.4% of the average monthly income—up from 18.4% last year. In Birmingham, Alabama, renters spend an average of 22.2% of their income on housing.

"As costs have risen and the minimum wage has stagnated, it would take the average minimum wage worker more than 96 hours of work per week to afford a two-bedroom rental," noted Jayapal (D-Wash.).

The shrinking stock of affordable housing is linked to the crisis of homelessness, which more than half a million people in the U.S. experienced in 2022—up by 3% from 2020.

"The crisis of housing instability is one that can be fixed by investing in housing infrastructure and supportive services for vulnerable communities," said Jayapal.

The legislation has been co-sponsored by Democratic lawmakers including Reps. Jamaal Bowman of New York, Cori Bush of Missouri, James McGovern of Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan.

The $200 billion proposed investment included in the bill would go toward McKinney-Vento Emergency Solutions Grants, which fund engagement with people experiencing homelessness and improve emergency shelters; and Continuum of Care grants, which help rehouse people who have faced homelessness.

The legislation would also:

• Create a new grant program to invest in humane infrastructure, providing municipalities with $6 billion a year through a flexible program that will allow them to address their most urgent housing needs to keep people in stable housing and support those experiencing homelessness;
• Incentivize local investments in humane, evidence-based models to support people experiencing homelessness, including alternatives to criminalization and penalization;
• Provide $10 billion for Federal Emergency Management Agency food and shelter grants while improving grants to better represent high rates of homelessness and income inequality; and
• Authorize $100 million in grants to public libraries to provide assistance and tailored supports to persons experiencing homelessness.

"In the richest country in the world, it is a moral imperative that we take this issue head-on," said Jayapal. "Housing is a human right—and every person deserves to have a safe place to call home."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

As evidence mounts that facial recognition technology is racially biased and has led to wrongful arrests of people in the U.S., Sen. Ed Markey and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Tuesday reintroduced their legislation to impose sweeping prohibitions on the use of the technology by federal agencies and entities that receive federal funding.

The Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act of 2023 would prohibit federal agencies from using facial recognition as well as biometric technology, including "voice recognition, gate recognition, and recognition of other immutable physical characteristics," according to Markey.

The Massachusetts Democrat has in recent months called on federal agencies including the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to stop using such surveillance mechanisms to identify people who may have committed crimes, warning the TSA last month that a recent federal study found "Asian and African-American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men by facial recognition technology."

The use of facial recognition stands "in the way of progress and perpetuate[s] injustice," said Markey in a statement.

"The year is 2023, but we are living through 1984. The continued proliferation of surveillance tools like facial recognition technologies in our society is deeply disturbing," said Markey. "Biometric data collection poses serious risks of privacy invasion and discrimination, and Americans know they should not have to forgo personal privacy for safety."

In addition to imposing a strict ban on the use of facial recognition and biometric technologies by federal entities, said Markey, the legislation would:

• Condition federal grant funding to state and local entities, including law enforcement, on those entities enacting their own moratoria on the use of facial recognition and biometric technology;
• Prohibit the use of federal dollars for biometric surveillance systems;
• Prohibit the use of information collected via biometric technology in violation of the law in any judicial proceedings;
• Provide a private right of action for individuals whose biometric data is used in violation of the act and allow for enforcement by state attorneys general; and
• Allow states and localities to enact their own laws regarding the use of facial recognition and biometric technologies.

In Maryland, Alonzo Sawyer was recently arrested near Baltimore for assaulting a bus driver and stealing their phone, despite the fact that he was home at the time of the attack and his wife confirmed his alibi. An intelligence agency used facial recognition technology to match Sawyer to CCTV footage from the bus.

Sawyer was just the latest Black American man to be arrested after being misidentified using facial recognition technology.

Those wrongful arrests are "why I have long called on government to halt the deployment of facial recognition technology," said Jayapal. "This legislation will not only preserve civil liberties but aggressively fight back against injustice by stopping federal entities from irresponsibly using facial recognition and biometric surveillance tools."

"Facial recognition has continued to harm vulnerable communities and erode our privacy, making this legislation more important than ever," said Caitlin Seeley George, campaigns and managing director for digital rights group Fight for the Future, which supports an outright ban on law enforcement use of the technology. "We cannot afford to wait any longer to put this invasive technology in check, and any lawmaker who claims to care about privacy and justice must prove it by supporting this legislation."

As they introduced the bill, Markey and Jayapal were joined by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren(D-Mass.), and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Reps. Ayanna Pressley(D-Mass.), Rashida Tlaib(D-Mich.), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), Jamaal Bowman(D-N.Y.), and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

As Common Dreamsreported Tuesday, a lawsuit filed by the ACLU unveiled a "major investment" by the FBI in the development of facial recognition software.

"This sweeping government surveillance software is a nightmare for our privacy rights," said the ACLU Tuesday. "Lawmakers need to close the door on government abuse of this technology now, before it's too late."

The newly reintroduced legislation demonstrates that "Markey understands Congress should not be using federal funds to underwrite the use of technologies that threaten our most sacred civil rights and civil liberties," said Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel for the organization. "The ACLU applauds Sen. Markey's leadership on this issue and thanks all the members of Congress who join him in safeguarding our freedoms against the prying eyes of unchecked government surveillance."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

The Global Shield is a joint initiative by the G7, a political forum consisting of the world’s most industrialized countries, and the V20, which is represented by the finance ministers of 58 of the countries most vulnerable to climate change. The German government has committed roughly $175 million to the effort, which intends to address loss and damage through insurance programs and social security schemes. Denmark, Ireland, Canada, and France have also contributed about $42 million to the initiative.

The least-industrialized countries in the world have argued that they’ve done little to cause climate change but are the most affected by climate-fueled disasters, like the recent floods in Pakistan that left a third of the country underwater. (The V20’s website points out that it represents nearly 20 percent of the global population but only 5 percent of global emissions.) For this reason, developing countries have called on wealthy nations to set up a fund to pay for the loss and damage climate change has already caused and will cause in the future — in effect, for a form of climate reparations. The success of COP27 could rest on whether wealthy nations, whose early industrialization is disproportionately responsible for the climate change that has occurred so far, answer the call.

“The Global Shield is long overdue,” Ken Ofori-Atta, Ghana’s finance minister, said at the press conference announcing the Global Shield’s launch at COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. “It has never been a question of who pays for loss and damage, because we in the V20 are already paying for it.”

Given the lack of momentum on direct funding to address loss and damage, the Global Shield is the first systematic and substantive effort by wealthy nations that responds to the call for climate reparations. While proposals for a separate, formal U.N. mechanism that would provide direct loss and damage funding are still under negotiation, some countries such as Ireland, Austria, and New Zealand have made symbolic pledges of a few million dollars to show their support for the cause. The United States, which has historically refused to acknowledge the issue, has staunchly opposed a separate fund for loss and damage. On Saturday, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said that a financing mechanism for loss and damage is “just not happening.” However, the U.S. is a member of the G7 and hence a part of the Global Shield consortium.

While there are few details yet on exactly how the Global Shield will work, German federal development minister Svenja Schulze said the program will include insurance programs, social security schemes, early warning systems, and other financial assistance arranged in advance before disaster strikes. Bangladesh, Costa Rica, Fiji, Ghana, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Senegal will be the first recipients of “Global Shield packages,” according to a press release.

Advocates for loss and damage warned that insurance schemes like those promised by Global Shield are an insufficient solution to loss and damage, and they worried that such programs will distract from the demand for separate direct funding. The Global Shield is an expansion of the InsuResilience Global Partnership, a program spearheaded in 2015 by the German government that primarily provides insurance schemes to countries in the Global South. 

InsuResilience and other insurance programs that have been championed by wealthy nations have been inadequate to meet the scale of loss and damage that people in climate-vulnerable countries are facing, advocates told Grist. Asking people in the developing world to pay for insurance when they’ve done little to cause the climate crisis is fundamentally unfair, they said. 

“If you’re a rich country who is on the hook for paying for this, it very cleverly redirects the responsibility for dealing with climate loss and damage onto vulnerable people,” said Julie-Anne Richards, an independent consultant and expert with the Loss and Damage Collaboration, an advocacy group. “Rich countries can turn around and go, ‘Well, the problem is you didn’t prepare well enough. You don’t have insurance.’”

Harjeet Singh, head of global political strategy at the Climate Action Network, an international coalition of more than 1,800 environmental groups, said that in past years wealthy nations have used insurance programs to distract from the demand for direct loss and damage funding. He is wary of the announcement, given the lack of more concrete detail about how the Global Shield, which was earlier floated in June at the G7 leaders summit, will deliver financial support to those in need.

“The phrase is very fancy: ‘Global Shield,’” he said. “But what’s inside is unclear to many.”

Schulze was quick to address such concerns at the press conference on Monday. “It is not a kind of tactic to avoid formal negotiations on loss and damage,” she said. “The Global Shield also isn’t the one and only solution for loss and damage — certainly not. We need a broad range of solutions and respective funding for tackling loss and damage.”

The international community has been kicking around the idea of an insurance scheme to help countries vulnerable to climate change since at least the early 1990s, when island nations proposed an insurance pool to protect low-lying countries from sea level rise. Over the years, the World Bank, United Nations, and various countries have created risk pooling programs such as the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility, the African Risk Capacity, and the Pacific Catastrophe Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative. These programs are subsidized by wealthy nations and other donors and allow countries in the Caribbean, Africa, and the Pacific to secure coverage for disasters such as drought, flooding, and hurricanes. 

These sorts of insurance can be purchased by governments to protect their people against disasters, and by individuals to protect their property. Premiums are typically subsidized to make them affordable. There are two main types of climate disaster insurance: indemnity insurance and parametric insurance. The former involves purchasing policies that cover specific perils over specific periods of time and are paid out depending on the scale of losses when a disaster strikes. These are similar to the insurance policies purchased by U.S. homeowners.

In the case of parametric insurance, on the other hand, insurers identify specific climatic conditions that trigger payouts to policyholders. When specific predetermined thresholds describing the level of flooding or drought or other disasters are met, insurers disburse funds no matter the scale of the damage on the ground. The upshot of this is that the long and cumbersome process of filing a claim and verifying the damage is avoided, resulting in quicker payouts. But in countries in the Global South, where historical climatic and environmental data isn’t as readily available, insurers have struggled to define the best parameters — such as wind speed, rainfall, or days without rain — that trigger payouts. As a result, even when an expensive climate-driven disaster strikes, insurers sometimes don’t pay because the parametric thresholds weren’t met.

For example, the government of Malawi paid $4.7 million for drought insurance through the African Risk Capacity for the 2015-2016 agricultural season. But when erratic rains resulted in a prolonged drought and more than $350 million in damages, the insurance program found that the thresholds for the number of people affected by the drought were not met, and that it didn’t trigger a payout. After sustained media coverage and outrage over the decision, the African Risk Capacity eventually reassessed its modeling and provided $8.1 million in payouts — a small fraction of the need. Similarly, after Hurricanes Irma and Maria made landfall on Antigua and Barbuda in 2017 and caused $136 million in economic damage, the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility paid out $6.8 million — 5 percent of the damages. 

One research paper that studied the African, Caribbean, and Pacific insurance programs concluded that while “to some extent it is possible to address the weaknesses of parametric risk pooling schemes, it seems equally clear that it is impossible to fully remedy them.” 

According to InsuResilience’s annual report, it has “enabled access to financial protection for over 350 million people in vulnerable countries,” but it’s unclear how the program is counting those who are protected and whether payouts after disasters have met their needs. Singh, the advocate with the Climate Action Network, said the program counts an entire family as protected if one member has insurance for even one of a slew of climate perils.

“The starting point has to be whether people who are being affected are getting adequate support or not,” said Singh. “If they’re not getting it, then whatever we have is inadequate.”

In an emailed statement in response to questions about InsuResilience’s effectiveness, a spokesperson for the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development confirmed that the number of policyholders is multiplied by the average household number to calculate beneficiaries. The spokesperson defended the estimate saying that InsuResilience “sets strong qualitative standards” and that the program “ensure[s] that products are indeed fit for purpose to provide effective protection for an entire household.”

Even those working with InsuResilience have been quick to acknowledge its shortcomings. Colin McQuistan, the head of climate resilience at Practical Action, a charity in the U.K., has been helping develop a pilot program in Nepal to insure farmers against flooding in partnership with InsuResilience. The program only protects paddy farmers during the monsoon season, even though rice is just one of multiple crops that farmers in the region cultivate.

“Attempting to suggest that the insurance product is protecting those farmers is ridiculous, because it’s pretty clear it’s only protecting that one crop to that one hazard,” said McQuistan.  

Currently, just 10 percent of the program’s budget can be used to subsidize the insurance premium, but McQuistan hopes that in future years additional government subsidies will lower the cost further. Securing useful climate data for the region has also been a challenge, McQuistan added. The group used rainfall and river flow data for the Karnali River to develop the product, but recently some of the farmers were affected by floods from another nearby river.

“There’s still a lot of work needed to develop the thresholds and triggers for a parametric insurance product in rivers where we don’t have sufficient historical data,” he said. 

Aside from overcoming such technical challenges, the Global Shield’s success will depend on the amount of money that it is able to raise from wealthy nations and other donors. At the press conference, Schulze said the $175 million pledged by Germany was “just a start, a sort of seed money” and that the initiative will “need substantial additional funding over time.”

At a separate press conference, Rachel Cleetus, a policy director at the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists, said that the scale of funding for the Global Shield “is completely off.”

“Countries are putting money in the millions and the needs, they have admitted, are rising into the billions and trillions,” she said. “[The Global Shield] is not a substitute for a loss and damage finance facility.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Facing a call for climate reparations, wealthy nations propose an insurance scheme on Nov 14, 2022.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Naveena Sadasivam.

To help address the nation's housing crisis while at the same time confronting Wall Street greed, three California members of Congress on Saturday touted new legislation to target rent-gouging in the U.S. by private equity firms and investment giants who have gobbled up huge numbers of single-family home and residential units in the years since the 2008 financial crash.

"Wall Street should not be any family's landlord."

Co-authored by Democratic Reps. Ro Khanna, Katie Porter, and Mark Takano, the Stop Wall Street Landlords Act aims to "deter future institutional investments" in the Single Family Residential (SFR) market by ending taxpayer subsidies to profit-seekers as a way to help struggling families battling housing costs amid rising inflation.

If enacted into law, the proposal would impose "a tax on existing and future acquisitions of SFRs" by large institutional investors, a statement from the lawmakers explains. The legislation would also prohibit federal lending institutions Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Gennie Mae from purchasing and securitizing mortgages held by Wall Street firms who leverage their size and ability to purchase large numbers single family homes with debt in order to turn around and rent them out for exorbitant profit—a tactic that by itself pushes rental prices ever higher.

Private equity firms and Wall Street rarely if ever strayed into the single-family housing market prior to the 2008 crash, but the market exploded when large firms were given access to trillions in low- or zero-interests dollars over the last decade and as regulators at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) offered subsidies via federal programs such as Fannie and Freddie. In 2015, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was among those blowing the whistle by telling HUD that it had no business colluding with Wall Street in such a way.

"These Wall Street investors made money by crashing the economy, got bailed out and now they're back to feed at the trough again, scooping up these loans at rock-bottom prices so that they profit off them a second time—and it is up to us to stop that!" Warren said to a cheering crowd during a Washington, D.C. rally in 2015.

In remarks posted online Saturday, Khanna said there may have been a time following the 2008 financial crash where it made sense for private entities to step in to buy residential units as a way to stabilize the housing market, but that in the decade since it has become clear that Wall Street investors have exploited government policies and a lack of oversight to fleece millions of renters who find themselves at the mercy of a housing crisis they did nothing to create and have no way to combat.

Khanna said that with 25 percent of single-family homes in the U.S. being bought up by profit-seeking investors, these firms are "hurting the American dream of home ownership" and the economy overall.

"We need to stop the financialization of housing," Khanna said. "Americans aren't serfs. We're not suppose to pay money to Wall Street to go live in a home. What we need is more American families to own their own homes."

"When I was on the front lines of the foreclosure crisis, I saw firsthand how corporate special interests take advantage of families to line their pockets," said Congresswoman Porter in a statement. "The Stop Wall Street Landlords Act promotes affordable homeownership, so that our kids can live in the same communities they grew up in. I am proud to work with Representatives Khanna and Takano to hold Wall Street accountable."

Takano said, "Wall Street should not be any family's landlord."

“As the housing crisis continues to plague the country, America's middle class is acutely feeling the constraints of our nation's low housing stock and increasing prices," added Takano. "Meanwhile, wealthy investors drive these costs up by monopolizing ownership of single-family residences. The Stop Wall Street Landlords Act takes the urgent steps needed to keep corporate investors out of the single-family housing market."

According to Khanna, "Low- and middle-income families in my district and across the country are being pushed out because of profiteering and unfair practices by large corporate landlords. This legislation will help level the playing field and put a stop to rent gouging in America."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jon Queally.

Rep. Ro Khanna announced Sunday that he is teaming up with Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal on a bill to block all U.S. weapons sales to Saudi Arabia in response to Saudi-led OPEC's newly announced decision to slash oil production, driving up gas prices across the globe.

In an op-ed for Politico, Khanna (D-Calif.), Blumenthal (D-Conn.), and Yale School of Management professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld argued that OPEC and Russia's move to cut oil production by two million barrels per day starting in November will "worsen global inflation, undermine successful efforts in the U.S. to bring down the price of gas, and help fuel Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine."

"The Saudi decision was a pointed blow to the U.S., but the U.S. also has a way to respond: It can promptly pause the massive transfer of American warfare technology into the eager hands of the Saudis," the trio wrote. "That is why we are proposing bicameral legislation in the Senate and House on Tuesday that will immediately halt all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia."

"For several years now, our colleagues have been considering similar proposals, but those measures haven't passed," they added. "Due to intense bipartisan blowback to Saudi's collusion with Russia, we think this time is different. Based on our conversation with colleagues, our legislation is already garnering bipartisan support in both chambers."

According to one estimate, the U.S. agreed to sell roughly $64.1 billion worth of weapons—averaging over $10 billion a year—to Saudi Arabia between 2015 and 2020.

Arms sales to the Saudis, the largest purchaser of U.S. weaponry, have continued under the Biden administration despite its pledges to end the war on Yemen and render the oil kingdom a "pariah" over its assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

In the wake of OPEC's announcement of a production cut aimed at propping up oil prices, calls for an end to U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia intensified, with Khanna and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) leading the chorus.

"We must end OPEC's illegal price-fixing cartel, eliminate military assistance to Saudi Arabia, and move aggressively to renewable energy," Sanders wrote in a social media post on Wednesday.

The Biden administration and Democratic leaders have said they're exploring a range of responses to OPEC's decision, but it's unclear whether an end to military assistance to the Saudis is actively being discussed at the highest levels.

In their op-ed on Sunday, Khanna, Blumenthal, and Sonnenfeld noted that some members of Congress are proposing "extending domestic antitrust laws to international commerce" while others are calling for the revival of "a GOP initiative to withdraw U.S. troops from Saudi Arabia."

"A simpler, far more urgent move to fortify U.S. national security would be to pause all U.S. military supplies, sales, and other weapons aid to Saudi Arabia," Khanna, Blumenthal, and Sonnenfeld argued. "This includes the controversial, new, and hastily planned Red Sands testing facilities in Saudi Arabia."

"U.S. military collaboration with the Saudi regime is more extensive than many realize, but that also gives the U.S. significant economic and security leverage over Riyadh," they added. "Today, Saudi Arabia is hugely dependent on U.S. defense assistance, purchasing the vast majority of its arms from the United States... Saudi can do little to respond to this proposed legislation other than come back to the table and negotiate with the U.S. in good faith."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

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A bipartisan group of senators announced a bill this week aimed at curtailing the risk of improper influence when companies do work for both the federal government and businesses or other clients. Under the legislation, federal agencies would require prospective contractors to disclose business relationships with “public, private, domestic, and foreign entities” that might pose a conflict of interest.

Existing federal rules already require the disclosure of actual or potential conflicts, which U.S. government agencies rely on to determine whether the situation can be mitigated or should disqualify a company from working on a given project. But most attention has focused on conflicts arising from work on different federal government projects. The question of how the existing rules apply to a contractor’s corporate clients is an issue that has received scant attention until recently, experts in contracting law say, and the new legislation seeks to remove any ambiguity around whether companies have to disclose possible conflicts arising from private-sector work.

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In a press release, the bill’s sponsors cited a ProPublica report on the consulting giant McKinsey & Company and its work for the Food and Drug Administration. For over a decade, starting in 2008, McKinsey brought in tens of millions of dollars advising the division of the FDA responsible for drug regulation on a range of matters that directly affected the pharmaceutical industry, such as overhauling drug-approval processes and assessing tools used to monitor drug safety.

Yet the consultancy, which is known for maintaining a veil of secrecy around its client list, never disclosed to the FDA that other McKinsey consulting teams were simultaneously working for some of the country’s largest pharmaceutical companies. McKinsey’s commercial clients at the time included companies, such as Purdue Pharma and Johnson & Johnson, that were responsible for manufacturing and distributing the opioids that decimated communities nationwide. In some instances, McKinsey consultants working for drugmakers even helped their clients ward off more robust FDA oversight. According to the sponsors of the new bill, “This has called into question whether consultants from McKinsey were providing biased advice to the FDA, and whether that advice was influenced by their relationship with the drug makers whose business practices are a root cause of the opioid epidemic.”

McKinsey’s extensive consulting for opioid makers began to emerge in 2019, when ProPublica first reported on it. Among the firm’s engagements was to help Purdue Pharma “turbocharge,” in McKinsey’s words, sales of the company’s flagship painkiller, the highly addictive OxyContin. Last year, McKinsey paid nearly $600 million to settle legal claims related to its opioid work, acknowledged in a statement that its efforts for Purdue “fell short” of the firm’s own standards and pledged not to take on opioid-related projects going forward. Also last year, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform launched an investigation into McKinsey’s role in the opioid epidemic and its potential conflicts of interest.

“We have directly seen the danger that conflicts of interest can pose in government contracting, such as when the consulting firm McKinsey worked for opioid manufacturers at the same time it was working for the FDA on opioid-related projects,” Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., one of the bill’s sponsors, said in the press release announcing the legislation. “Our bipartisan bill would help ensure that companies that enter into a contract with the government are acting in the best interest of the American people.”

The other sponsors of the legislation, which is titled the Preventing Organizational Conflicts of Interest in Federal Acquisition Act, are Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa; and Gary Peters, D.-Mich., who chairs the Senate body considering the bill, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee.

McKinsey spokesman Neil Grace contended in a statement to ProPublica that the firm was under no obligation to disclose its work for drug companies. (McKinsey is a sponsor of ProPublica events.) “Since McKinsey has not advised the FDA on regulatory policy or on specific pharmaceutical products, our consulting engagements with pharmaceutical companies did not create a conflict of interest with McKinsey’s consulting work for the FDA,” Grace said. “Given the absence of a conflict of interest, there was no requirement for any McKinsey disclosure.”

There’s no evidence that McKinsey consultants working at the FDA took steps to benefit the firm’s commercial clients. Yet existing federal procurement rules require contractors to disclose relationships that present not only actual but also potential conflicts of interest, as well as “the existence of any facts that may cause a reasonably prudent person to question the contractor’s impartiality because of the appearance or existence of bias.” Those rules were incorporated into McKinsey’s FDA contracts, which ProPublica obtained after filing a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act.

A spokeswoman for the FDA, Lauren-Jei McCarthy, declined to comment. The agency previously told ProPublica that it takes its “role awarding contracts seriously” and works “to ensure the agency maintains high standards of integrity” under federal procurement rules. Last fall, an FDA official wrote in a response to inquiries from Hassan that the agency was not aware of McKinsey’s work for opioid companies until news reports on the subject emerged.

Jessica Tillipman, an assistant dean and government procurement law expert at George Washington University Law School, called the legislation a welcome development. As government contractors have merged in recent decades, the industry has grown more concentrated, increasing the risk of conflicts of interest, and the federal contracting industry, Tillipman said, could use clearer guidance on disclosure requirements tied to the private-sector work of government contractors.

“Any attempt to address these growing problems is a good thing,” Tillipman said, “and important to ensuring that we reduce these risks in the government procurement system.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Ian MacDougall.

On March 26, members of parliament with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) proposed a number of amendments to the country’s real estate, finance, and tax laws; one of those amendments would impose prison terms of up to three years for the publication of “false news” that intentionally harms a private company’s income or reputation, according to reports.

Those convicted could face one to three years in prison along with fines to be set by a judge, according to those reports. As of Thursday, members of parliament were continuing to debate the amendments, according to the legislature’s website.

“Turkish authorities should ensure that steps taken to make the country more attractive for foreign investment do not come at the expense of journalists’ freedom to report on economic issues,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “The proposed amendment barring ‘false news’ about private companies is an obvious attempt to scare journalists and restrict reporting on corruption and malpractice, and it should not become law.”

The AKP and its allied National Movement Party control the necessary majority in the legislature to pass the amendments; if passed by the parliament, they will be enacted if President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signs them into law within 15 days.

On March 16, Turkey’s finance minister promised to “take down” bureaucratic hurdles that have restricted foreign investment in the country, in an effort to improve the country’s economic performance, according to news reports.

CPJ emailed the Turkish president’s office and AKP member of parliament Abdullah Güler, the first lawmaker to sign on to the amendments, for comment but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

On February 23, the Commission of Justice and Human Rights unanimously approved a bill that would amend several articles of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the penal code regarding “effective collaborators,” according to media reports and a statement by the Lima-based regional group Institute of Press and Society (IPYS). An “effective collaborator” is someone who agrees to provide evidence for the prosecution in return for judicial lenience, although they are not always subject to the criminal investigation or proceeding, according to the Peruvian Prosecutor’s Office.

Under the proposed changes in the bill, anyone who reveals, even partly, the identity of an “effective collaborator” or the content of their testimony faces a prison sentence of between four and six years.

“The Peruvian Congress must reject this bill about ‘effective collaborators,’ as it risks criminalizing reporting based on leaked information from informants cooperating in criminal investigations,” said Natalie Southwick, CPJ’s Latin America and the Caribbean program coordinator, in New York. “A blanket prohibition on the publication of information stemming from the testimonies of informants, which can be of clear public interest, is incompatible with freedom of the press.” 

In the past, informants’ testimonies have been leaked to journalists who then undertake their own investigations, according to Adriana León, director of Information Freedoms at IPYS, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app. León added that these testimonies were essential for the investigative reporting done by the Peruvian press in uncovering corruption in the country, especially in the well-known Lava Jato/Odebrecht and Montesinos cases.

The proposal is now ready for debate and vote before the plenary session of Congress, which could happen at any time now, according to León.

CPJ contacted the Peruvian Congress for comment by email, but the request went unanswered.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

But labor officials and former SEZ workers say the measure may not be enough to stop employers from abusive practices, in part because Lao authorities have little power to operate in the SEZ.

The new procedures established by the provincial SEZ Management Office in northwestern Laos require all SEZ employers and workers to sign labor contracts that ensure workers have a safe workplace, insurance benefits and fair wages. They also forbid forced labor and require regular monitoring and reporting of work and living conditions to the management office.

“The workers must be registered and accepted by a company or sent to the SEZ by an employment placement agency,” an official from the Special Economic Zone Management Office of Bokeo province told RFA on Thursday.

“All Lao, Chinese, Burmese and Thai workers must come in through the proper channel,” said the official, who declined to give his name in order to speak candidly. “If they want to work here, they must go by the rules.”

After employers and workers sign labor contracts, authorities in the SEZ will issue a Smart Card to the workers that shows their identity and the name of their employer, the source said. Every worker who has a card will be registered with the province’s management office. The new regulations took effect on Tuesday.

Workers in the SEZ said they remain skeptical that the new regulation will stop employers from holding female workers against their will, demanding exorbitant sums for housing and food, and forcing some workers into prostitution to pay their debts.

Local Lao authorities recently rescued several women who had gone to SEZ after being promised jobs as barmaids or “chat girls” who recruit investors online. But hundreds remain trapped inside the zone by their employers, despite wanting to leave.

Lao authorities cannot easily enter the Chinese-run zone, which operates largely beyond the reach of the Lao government. Rescues have taken place only after the women provided proof of their identity and endangerment to a special provincial task force.

A former SEZ worker whose employer prevented her from leaving said that signing a contract is not an effective solution to the problem, and that once signed, it might not be enforceable.

If Lao authorities do not have more power in the SEZ to monitor worker conditions, inspect work premises, and reinforce labor laws, then abuses like the denial of benefits or, worse, human trafficking, will continue, she said.

“The contract will make no difference,” said the former SEZ worker from the country’s capital, who declined to give her name out of fear for her safety. “I’ve been there, physically detained. I had no freedom at all.

“As we know, in the SEZ, Lao police have no right to do anything at all,” she said.

A better solution

A woman from the country’s capital Vientiane, who used to work as an online chat girl in a call center in the Golden Triangle SEZ and was pushed into prostitution when she could not make her sales quota, said the new labor contract requirement is not a failproof safeguard against abuse.

She noted that women in SEZ often have to fulfill ambitious sales quotas that are difficult if not impossible to meet as they pile up “debts” for food and housing.

“The contract must be fair and must clearly state that the worker will have basic rights, freedom, and social welfare benefits. Everything must be transparent,” she said.

“If you get a good job, it might be worth spending all the money [to pay the recruiter’s fee], but if you get a bad job like in my case, the employer wouldn’t provide food and water,” she said. “You’d have to pay for everything, and the cost of living here is expensive. In a case like this, you’d be heavily indebted [to the employer].”

An official from the Prosecutor’s Office of Bokeo province told RFA on Tuesday that a mandatory labor contract might not be the best solution.

“With so many young women and men being trafficked and recruited to work in the SEZ, our authorities now want to help or rescue them, but they can’t because they have no right to enter the SEZ. Our rules and laws are not applicable in there,” he said.

A better solution would be for the Lao government to give more power to the Lao police and various governmental and outside groups to monitor the zone and crackdown on human trafficking and forced labor there, said the official who declined to give his name.

“Up to now, no government agency has monitored and checked on labor abuse in the SEZ,” he said. “The SEZ has become an unforbidden zone plagued with human trafficking, forced labor and other serious crimes.”

Earlier in February, RFA reported that at least 19 Lao women had been rescued by police from the SEZ, eight of whom had escaped through a fence before being helped by police. The rest of the women had filed complaints with Lao authorities and formally requested their help, so that police could enter the SEZ and free them.

Reported by RFA’s Lao Service. Translated by Max Avary. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Day 2 of former white cop, Derek Chauvin’s murder trial for killing black man George Floyd.
• International leaders call for coordinated pandemic response.
• World Health Organization releases report of coronavirus origins, urges more studies.
• California lawmakers propose bill for public banking in the state.
• Fresno’s diverse Tower District fights for its life.
• Protests spread in United Kingdom over gender-based violence and police bill.
• House Judiciary Subcommittee holds hearing on wrongful convictions and reforms to prevent them.

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Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• The murder trial of white policeman who killed black man, George Floyd, begins with disturbing video.
• COVID-19 infections and deaths on the rise, President Joe Biden urges safety precautions.
• Police release video of officers threatening 5 year old boy with a beating, after he walks out of school.
• 10 years after Arab Spring, movement has dwindled in Middle East, but remains alive in Tunisia.
• New York lawmakers reach deal to legalize recreational marijuana.
• California lawmakers introduce Millionaire Tax to curb economic inequality.
• Environmental groups sue Kern County’s oil and gas drilling plans.

Photo screenshot of cellphone video of Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck, killing him.

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Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Democrats acquiesce to moderate and Republican demands to limit $1,400 pandemic relief payment.
• Party line tie vote of HHS Secretary nominee, Xavier Becerra, California Attorney General.
• House Democrats poised to pass For the People Act to protect and expand voting rights.
• Senate testimony: Pentagon limited and delayed National Guard’s deployment during pro-Trump insurrection at capitol.
• Federal authorities warn of right wing attack March 4th at capitol to inaugurate Donald Trump.
• California Senate Democrats propose bill to seal criminal records after 2 years of no convictions.
• California snowpack much lower than average, on pace for another critically dry year.

Photo of March on Washington, 1963. By Unseen Histories on Unsplash.

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Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• President Joe Biden pushes teachers to return to classroom amidst pandemic at townhall.
• Conservative talk radio host, Rush Limbaugh, dead at 70 years old.
• Anger mounts over power outages in Texas after massive storm system hits state.
• White House COVID-19 Taskforce says Biden administration making progress in fighting pandemic.
• United Nations cites inequity in coronavirus vaccinations, urges global equitable access.
• Two new vaccination sites open in Oakland and San Francisco.
• New York sues Amazon, alleges failure to protect workers during pandemic.
• California lawmakers introduce legislation to ban fracking in state by 2027.
• House subcommittee holds hearing on legislation to study reparations for descendants of slaves.

Photo from House hearing on reparations.

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Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• House lawmakers reprimand Republican Marjorie Greene for endorsing violence against Democrats.
• President Joe Biden announces foreign policy, slams Russia and calls for end to Saudi led Yemen war.
• Progressives call on President to issue “national climate emergency.”
• Senate committee discusses energy policy in era of climate change.
• 50 Democrats call on President to forgive up to $50,000 in federal student debt.
• San Francisco City Attorney defends lawsuit to reopen schools.
• State lawmakers propose reform to unemployment system after audit finds delays and fraud.
• Yosemite National Park opens to public after wind and snow storms.

Photo from the House of Representatives.

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Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• House lawmakers reprimand Republican Marjorie Greene for endorsing violence against Democrats.
• President Joe Biden announces foreign policy, slams Russia and calls for end to Saudi led Yemen war.
• Progressives call on President to issue “national climate emergency.”
• Senate committee discusses energy policy in era of climate change.
• 50 Democrats call on President to forgive up to $50,000 in federal student debt.
• San Francisco City Attorney defends lawsuit to reopen schools.
• State lawmakers propose reform to unemployment system after audit finds delays and fraud.
• Yosemite National Park opens to public after wind and snow storms.

Photo from the House of Representatives.

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• President Donald Trump at odds with another coronavirus Task Force member: Dr. Debra Birx.
• California coronavirus infections down, deaths up, including Fresno teen death.
• Lawmakers remain at odds, make slow progress on next coronavirus relief bill.
• California coronavirus relief bills include a millionaires tax and renter protections.
• New York prosecutor claims criminal conduct in request for President Trump’s tax records.
• Isaias strengthens to hurricane, heads towards Carolinas.
• Proposed legislation would force cell phone towers have 48 hours of power storage.

Photo from Mike Licht, 2017 Tax March, Washington DC.

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• Funeral held for George Floyd, the black man killed by white police officer.
• California lawmakers take knee and 9 minutes of silence for George Floyd.
• Senate Democrats urge Republicans to take up police brutality and COVID-19 bills.
• World Health Organization warns spike in Coronavirus infections.
• SF Supervisors propose to ban police use of weapons like teargas on protesters.
• SF District Attorney extends victims compensation to victims of police brutality.

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• President Donald Trump pressures congress to approve nominees during pandemic.
• President Trump faces backlash for halting World Health Organization funding.
• New York now requires face masks, could last up to 18 months.
• Senate Democrats propose $30 billion coronavirus testing bill to reopen economy.
• California to give undocumented immigrants coronavirus economic relief payments.
• Black religious leaders condemn disporportions in black coronavirus deaths.
• Coalition of homeless advocates urges state/local officials to commandeer hotels.
• San Francisco Supervisors and Mayor at odds over locating homeless in hotels.

The post President Trump faces backlash for halting W.H.O. funding; Senate Democrats propose $30 billion coronavirus testing bill to reopen economy; San Francisco Supervisors and Mayor at odds over locating homeless in hotels – April 15, 2020 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.