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Sunday’s vote makes Ecuador the first country to restrict fossil fuel extraction through the citizen referendum process.

Ecuadorians voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to reject oil drilling in a section of Yasuní National Park, the most biodiverse area of the imperiled Amazon rainforest.

Nearly 60% of Ecuadorian voters backed a binding referendum opposing oil exploration in Block 43 of the national park, which is home to uncontacted Indigenous tribes as well as hundreds of bird species and more than 1,000 tree species.

The Associated Press reported that “the outcome represents a significant blow to Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who advocated for oil drilling, asserting that its revenues are crucial to the country’s economy. As a result of the vote, state oil company Petroecuador will be required to dismantle its operations in the coming months.”

Yasunidos, the civil society group behind the referendum, celebrated the vote as “a historic victory for Ecuador and for the planet.” Drilling operations in Block 43, which began in 2016, currently produce more than 55,000 barrels of oil per day.

Most of Ecuador’s oil is located under the Amazon rainforest, whose role as a critical carbon sink has been badly diminished in recent years due to deforestation and relentless corporate plunder.

Sunday’s win was decades in the making. As The New York Times reported ahead of the vote, the referendum is “the culmination of a groundbreaking proposal suggested almost two decades ago when Rafael Correa, who was president of Ecuador at the time, tried to persuade wealthy nations to pay his country to keep the same oil field in Yasuní untouched. He asked for $3.6 billion, or half of the estimated value of the oil reserves.”

“Mr. Correa spent six years in a campaign to advance the proposal but never managed to persuade wealthy nations to pay,” the Times noted. “Many young Ecuadoreans, though, were persuaded. When Mr. Correa announced that the proposal had failed and that drilling would begin, many started protesting.”

Yasunidos ultimately collected around 757,000 signatures for the proposed ban on oil exploration in Yasuní — nearly 200,000 more than required to bring a referendum to a vote in Ecuador.

“The uncontacted Tagaeri, Dugakaeri, and Taromenane have for years seen their lands invaded, firstly by evangelical missionaries, then by oil companies,” said Sarah Shenker, head of the Survival International’s Uncontacted Tribes campaign, following the vote. “Now, at last, they have some hope of living in peace once more. We hope this prompts greater recognition that all uncontacted peoples must have their territories protected if they’re to survive, and thrive.”

Sunday’s vote makes Ecuador the first country to restrict fossil fuel extraction through the citizen referendum process, according to Nemonte Nenquimo, a Waorani leader.

“Yasuní, an area of one million hectares, is one of the most biodiverse places on Earth,” Nenquimo wrote in a recent op-ed for The Guardian. “There are more tree species in a single hectare of Yasuní than across Canada and the United States combined. Yasuní is also the home of the Tagaeri and Taromenane communities: the last two Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in Ecuador.”

“Can you imagine the immense size of one million hectares?” Nenquimo added. “The recent fires in Quebec burned a million hectares of forest. And so the oil industry hopes to burn Yasuní. It has already begun in fact, with the Ishpingo-Tambococha-Tiputini (ITT) oil project on the eastern edge of the park.”

Ecuadorians’ decision to reject oil drilling in the precious ecosystem drew applause from around the world.

“Historic and wonderful,” responded the climate group Extinction Rebellion Global. “Thank you and congratulations to the people of Ecuador for protecting their people, land, nature, future, and those of the rest of the world, too.

The Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative — a global campaign that works to accelerate the transition to renewable energy — added that “the historic vote sets a remarkable example for other countries in democratizing climate politics.”

This story has been updated to include a statement from Survival International.

International Chess Federation, FIDE, has released new guidelines targeting transgender players. The guidelines would strip trans men's titles, and potentially bar trans women from playing.

In recent months, the discussion surrounding transgender participation in sports has intensified. Several sports organizations have ruled that transgender women cannot participate in their competitions. This trend has expanded beyond traditional sports like swimming, touching even disc golf and billiards, based on perceived “advantages” of transgender athletes. The reaction to trans people in competition has grown to include non-sporting contests like beauty pageants and Jeopardy! after seeing transgender success. Now, FIDE, the world’s foremost international chess organization, has introduced guidelines that would revoke titles from transgender men and bar many transgender women from competing, asserting that trans women "have no right to participate.”

The regulations, reported online by French transgender FIDE master, Yosha Iglesias, spell out a list of policy changes that apply to transgender competition in chess. Among the policy changes:

Transgender men must relinquish their women-category titles after transitioning.

Transgender women can keep their previous titles.

Transgender women have “no right to compete” in the women’s division.

Transgender women will be “evaluated” by the FIDE Council on if they will be allowed to compete in a process that may take up to 2 years.

FIDE can mark transgender players as “transgender” in their files.

Gender changes must be “comply with the player’s national laws” and may include birth certificate documents (despite many nations refusing to change transgender birth certificates)

See the main page on transgender participation from the organization:

The unveiling of these regulations drew widespread ridicule, with numerous individuals challenging the notion that transgender women possess a “natural advantage” in chess. According to the chess news site Chessbase, the women’s category in chess exists to encourage increased participation among women, not because women inherently perform at a lower level in the game. Thus, the typical arguments against transgender women competing don't hold water, as it's implausible to claim that transgender women have an unfair advantage.

This isn't the first instance of scrutiny regarding transgender participation in non-physical competitions. In 2022, transgender Jeopardy champion Amy Schneider set the record as the highest-winning woman in Jeopardy history. Following her success, several anti-trans voices online claimed she unfairly took the title from “real women,” suggesting that transgender women possess an inherent advantage in trivia over cisgender women.

The regulations are harmful and discriminatory towards transgender individuals. The logic behind revoking titles from transgender men transitioning from the women’s category is not explained anywhere in the document. Additionally, these rules would delay transgender women from competing for up to two years while their gender is examined, and could even prohibit them indefinitely. Given that the usual "unfair advantage" argument doesn't logically apply in this context, these regulations appear to unfairly target transgender individuals while sidestepping even the usual arguments against trans competition.

The enforcement of these policies remains unclear. Iglesias took to Twitter, asking, "Am I woman enough?" She listed the FIDE council members, sharing photos that depict the majority as older cisgender men, adding, "these people will decide." The documents don't specify how decisions regarding a transgender member's participation will be made. Until further clarity, transgender international chess players face uncertainty about their continued involvement in the sport.

In a hot afternoon in August, He Yuming, wearing her dad's big shirt and sweating profusely, sat down in a café and took out a neatly-folded handkerchief to wipe her sweat.

Everyday, He, beginning her sustainable journey in 2019, brings a reusable water bottle, tableware, portable charger, handkerchief, home-made lipstick and shopping bags in her small second-hand cross-body bag. The zero-waste kit can basically meet the needs of the day, so that she tries not to produce garbage.

In China, growing numbers of young people, with great respect for nature, are finding their ways to lower their carbon footprint. For those young nature-lovers, zero-waste is just a hobby, making them live with less and leading more fulfilling lives.

Su Yige, also named Yigedaizi on social media, labeling herself as "a hedonic environmentalist," is a lifestyle vlogger who shares her daily eco-friendly life and thoughts on environment protection on social media.

"Love myself and love our earth," she wrote on her YouTube profile.

She feels that "life without trace" will not sacrifice the quality of life and the pursuit of happiness, but, leave minimal impact on the environment.

Su's path on environment protection is also a teenagers' self-discovery journey. In her freshman year in university, Su was insecure about how she looked and how she dressed.

"Now, I really don't mind if people judge me on my clothes or my makeup. Instead, I would tell them that I truly didn't spend too much time on fashion or my outlook. What I love is the planet and nature," said Su.

For these nature lovers, environmental protection is just a hobby and a lifestyle.

"I don't care if I can influence anyone. I like environment protection just like some other people love basketball or pop singers," Su said to CGTN.

Deeply influenced by her family's living habits, He was instilled with eco-friendly awareness and respect for nature since childhood.

In 2019, He began her minimalist lifestyle journey — getting rid of the things she didn't need and focusing on things that really matter. Several months later, she realized that sustainability might be a better choice since it is about being a more conscious consumer and making decisions that doesn't damage the environment.

Then, He meticulously upgraded aspects of her existence to lead a more sustainable and less-carbon-consuming life by opting for consciously made, compostable and long-lasting, zero-waste daily items.

The first step was to change her shampoo and conditioner to shampoo bar soap and use reusable cups when ordering milk tea.

When talking about her next ecological footprint, He said she will be more eco-friendly on more occasions.

"I have many small goals. Next, I hope I can reduce the use of disposal napkins and plastic bags when buying vegetable or meat," He said.

"We don't need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly," Su shared her favorite quotes in her video.

"When I started embrace sustainable lifestyle in Canada, many people thought I was a Japanese student since there were few Chinese people would choose such lifestyle," she said to CGTN.

Then she searched online and found that all the contents about sustainable lifestyle on social media in China were advocated by local government or non-profits organizations.

"It is not because no one in China likes this way of life, but because no one knows such lifestyle is possible," she said. Then she started her vlog journey on social media.

To help more nature-lovers find people sharing the same interests, Su established an online group named "life without trace," which has attracted over 30,000 members online.

In her group, the most active topics of discussion are reduction in the use of plastics, environmental protection life in university dormitories and how to grow vegetables at dormitories.

In Beijing, there is a group of thousands of people who keeping picking up garbage every week.

"There is a constant flow of garbage, and there is no end to picking them up,”Zhang Yashi, 36, the founder of Plogging Beijing, said. "I hope that I can influence more people to realize that the environment needs to be maintained through activities like this."

To them, plogging, an act of picking up litter while jogging, is just simplicity and a desire to make a positive difference.

AIPAC's Super PAC has already raised nearly $9 million to spend on the upcoming 2024 Democratic primaries.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is gearing up to spend heavily on the 2024 elections and target lawmakers who are critical of Israel in the Democratic primaries.

Recently Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus’ donated another $1 million to AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project (UDP). Marcus is a GOP mega-donor (he donated $7 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign), but UDP is the political action committee AIPAC has used to intervene in Democratic primaries. Marcus’s donation brings UDP’s war chest to nearly $9 million with a little over a year until the 2024 elections.

UDP typically runs ads targeting incumbents or progressive challengers who have criticized Israel or supported policies designed to hold the country accountable. They never mention Israel in the ads they bankroll, as support for the country has declined among Democratic voters in recent years.

AIPAC is reportedly eyeing a number of progressive incumbents to target in 2024. The Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports that the lobbying group is in talks with Minneapolis council member LaTrisha Vetaw to potentially run against Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) in Minnesota’s 5th district. Since she was elected to the House in 2018, pro-Israel groups have been trying to oust Omar over her advocacy for Palestinian rights. AIPAC secretly spent $350,000 on Omar’s primary in 2022, backing centrist Don Samuels. Samuels came close to delivering a shocking upset, with Omar prevailing by just 2,500 votes. After the election, Samuels criticized pro-Israel groups for not investing more money in his campaign.

“[AIPAC] acknowledged they missed an opportunity last cycle but have said that, based on their internal assessment, Don has reached his capacity,” a Democratic operative privy to the discussions told Kassel.

AIPAC is also courting Westchester County executive George Latimer to run against Rep. Jamaal Bowman in New York’s 16th district. “If George Latimer runs he will be a formidable candidate — even more so if he’s well-funded,” Democratic strategist Chris Coffey told Kassel. “If he doesn’t run, it’s harder. Not impossible but harder. In the last cycle, Bowman was able to convince enough pro-Israel voters that he wasn’t extreme. That’s not the feeling now.”

“We just got word: AIPAC is at it again. They’re trying to recruit an establishment executive to run against my brother in The Bronx, Jamaal Bowman,” wrote Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a recent fundraising email. “We know what comes next. AIPAC won’t wait much longer to start funneling dark money against Jamaal and ramping up attacks against our movement.”

Bowman joined Omar as one of the only lawmakers to vote against a recent House resolution declaring that Israel is “not a racist or apartheid state.” They also both boycotted Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s recent address to congress.

AIPAC’s gargantuan budgets put progressive groups that work on elections in a challenging position. In July, the organization Justice Democrats (who have backed prominent progressive congress members like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Ayanna Pressley) laid off nine of its 20 staff members.

Justice Democrats has supported some of the only congress members willing to call for Israel to be accountable for its action. The group’s super PAC spent over $1 million helping to elect Summer Lee in Pennsylvania’s 12th district last election. AIPAC spent more than $4 million backing her opponent, former GOP staffer Steve Irwin. Irwin lost by less than a point.

AIPAC called Lee “anti-Israel” because she condemned the country’s brutal attack on Gaza in May 2021. Since being elected, she signed onto Rep. Betty McCollum’s historic bill defending the rights of Palestinian children and called for the Biden administration to ensure that U.S. taxpayer money isn’t used to expand illegal settlements. She also voted against the apartheid resolution and skipped Herzog’s speech.

Kassel’s report notes that Edgewood council member Bhavini Patel has been raising money to run against Lee, but whether AIPAC will support her remains unclear.

The organization’s executive director Alexandra Rojas told HuffPost that the group has had to adapt to primaries becoming more expensive and criticized Democratic leadership over its failure to act on the issue.

“It is unfortunate that after years of grumbling to the press on the paramount importance of protecting incumbents, Democratic leadership has seemingly turned its back on ours — allowing outside groups like AIPAC to target them with multimillion-dollar primary challenges,” she told the website.

Many haven’t just turned their back on their issue. Despite AIPAC supporting dozens of Republicans who refused to certify President Joe Biden’s election victory, many Democratic lawmakers continue to accept the group’s money and embrace their anti-Palestinian agenda.

Last week House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) and Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) led a delegation of 24 House Democrats to Israel on a trip organized by AIPAC. “With this trip, House Democrats reaffirm our commitment to the special relationship between the United States and Israel, one anchored in our shared democratic values and mutual geopolitical interests,” said Jeffries in a statement. On the subject of settler violence against Palestinians, Jeffries claimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “doesn’t condone violence, no matter where it originates. And I take him at his word.”

“This, of course comes against a backdrop of Israeli soldiers protecting settlers as they attack Palestinian villages, towns, and farmlands, and an enormous escalation, even by Israel’s standards, in the level of direct state violence against Palestinians,” notes Mitchell Plitnick.

The progressive Jewish group IfNotNow recently launched a campaign calling on Democratic candidates to reject endorsements and financial contributions from AIPAC.

“Our Jewish and American values demand that we speak up and take action in defense of freedom, human rights, and communal well-being,” reads an open letter to congressional candidates from the group. “We envision a thriving future for all here in the United States and in Israel-Palestine where everyone enjoys equality, justice, and freedom. AIPAC has demonstrated time and again that it is actively opposed to these basic values. We ask you to uphold these values by committing to reject AIPAC’s endorsement and contributions.”

JVP Action, who backed Omar and other Israel critics during the 2022 primaries, told Mondoweiss that AIPAC is spending big money because they know support for Israel is declining among voters. “As we head into the 2024 cycle, the Democratic voter base is significantly more sympathetic to Palestinians and more critical of the Israeli government — and at an unprecedented rate. AIPAC understands that the rapidly growing progressive movement is a direct threat to its racist and warmongering agenda, so it is already making plans to flood Democratic primaries with money in an attempt to oust the progressive incumbents who stand up for Palestinian human rights,” said the group in a statement. “Palestinian rights and accountability for the Israeli government will be a central issue in the Democratic primaries this cycle, and JVP Action will be mobilizing our massive base of Jews and allies to get Democrats to dump AIPAC. We’ll be protecting — and growing — the number of members of Congress who understand that all people, no exceptions, deserve freedom.”

The King of Jordan approved a cybercrime bill that will crack down on online speech deemed harmful to national unity, a bill opposition lawmakers and human rights groups have warned against.

King Abdullah II gave his approval on Saturday with the bill now slated as law and set to take effect one month after it is published in the state newspaper Al-Rai, which is expected on Sunday.

The legislation will make certain online posts punishable with prison time and fines.

Posts that could be targeted include those seen as “promoting, instigating, aiding, or inciting immorality”, demonstrating “contempt for religion”, or “undermining national unity”.

The bill will additionally target those who publish names or pictures of police officers online and outlaws certain methods of maintaining online anonymity.

On Tuesday, the Senate passed the bill after amending it to allow judges to choose between imposing prison time and fines, rather than ordering combined penalties.

Jordan’s lower house of parliament passed it last month.

Before the parliament’s vote, 14 rights groups, including Human Rights Watch, said in a joint statement the law is “draconian”.

“Vague provisions open the door for Jordan’s executive branch to punish individuals for exercising their right to freedom of expression, forcing the judges to convict citizens in most cases,” it said.

The United States, a key ally and Jordan’s largest donor, also criticised the law.

The measure is the latest in a number of crackdowns on online speech in the kingdom, including social media blackouts. In December, it blocked the TikTok app after users shared live videos of worker protests.

Human Rights Watch said in a 2022 report authorities increasingly target protesters and journalists in a “systematic campaign to quell peaceful opposition and silence critical voices”.

Tunisian president Kais Saied has launched an authoritarian clampdown on opposition parties and media while inciting hatred against African migrants. But EU officials seem happy to embrace Saied as another thuggish border guard for Fortress Europe.

On Friday, July 14, a crowd gathered outside the front gate of the Tunisian journalists’ union headquarters amid the colonial-era French buildings in downtown Tunis. Activists, most of them old hands in the struggle who know each other, milled around the gates, chatting together with placards in hand, awaiting direction as they prepared to protest.

Later, they started down one of the main avenues, blocking traffic as they chanted militant slogans in Arabic and French. The emergency action was small and called in response to weeks of racist violence against sub-Saharan African migrants in Tunisia by citizen vigilantes, most flagrantly in the country’s second-largest city, Sfax.

The Tunisian military went on to expel the migrants to a military zone in open desert on the Tunisian border with Libya and Algeria. They were left without water or food in heat well over 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

The protest of perhaps a hundred people was the most recent action called by a newly formed Anti-Fascist Front. The Front had already called a much larger solidarity demonstration in February, after Tunisia’s autocratic president Kais Saied made a nationally televised speech propagating his own version of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory.

At the time, Saied had claimed that black migrants from sub-Saharan Africa were part of a “criminal plan to change the composition of the demographic landscape in Tunisia” by making it a “purely African” country. The president accused the migrants of violence and criminality, and his speech immediately set off a wave of violence against black people in Tunisia. It was just one of Saied’s many conspiratorial proclamations about purported enemies — “known parties” whom he never names, whom he charges with attempting to undermine Tunisia from within and without.

These proclamations are meant to distract the Tunisian masses from the real problems facing the country: crumbling infrastructure and public services, basic supply shortages, massive inflation, escalating police violence, drought and wildfires made worse by the impact of climate change, the ripping away of civic freedoms, and Tunisia’s subordinate role in the global economic system.

https://jacobin.com/2023/08/kais-saied-tunisia-authoritarianism-european-union-border-security-migration/

With its wine-hued head, cream-colored body, and its wings striped in black and chestnut brown, Kaempfer’s woodpecker makes quite an impression. Yet, despite its conspicuous looks, the bird has managed to evade detection for almost a century.

First described by ornithologist Emil Kaempfer in the mid-1920s in the Brazilian state of Piauí, east of Tocantins, it was initially thought to be a subspecies of the rufous-headed woodpecker (Celeus spectabilis). But differences in habitat, behavior and plumage led some ornithologists to conclude they were looking at a new species. They didn’t have the chance to confirm it, however: with no further sightings of the bird recorded, they thought that Kaempfer’s woodpecker had disappeared.

It wasn’t until the early 2000s that a fresh look at the differences between the two woodpecker species showed that Kaempfer’s woodpecker was indeed a distinct species endemic to Brazil. Then, in 2006, biologist Advaldo Prado captured a live individual in Tocantins, showing that scientists previously had just been looking in the wrong place.

Tulio Dornas, an ornithologist from the Federal University of Tocantins who has studied the species’ ecology and distribution, said an error in the early records may have contributed to the confusion. Kaempfer’s original specimen, he said, “was collected at the extreme edge of the Cerrado, during an expedition to the Caatinga, so ornithologists back then wrongly assumed it was a bird from that biome,” Dornas told Mongabay.

Yet even in the Cerrado, finding the bird can be a challenge, he added. The species thrives in the gallery forests that line the riverbanks of the Cerradão, a type of dry forest within the savanna ecosystem. They’re particularly fond of shaded areas with mature taboca bamboo plants (Gauda paniculata), which host the woodpecker’s main food source: ants. Reliant on only a few ant species that nest within the bamboo, the woodpeckers flit between thickets, drilling holes into the shoots to extract their prey.

As researchers narrowed down the bird’s habitat and intensified their search, sightings began to be reported from several Brazilian states, including Goiás, Matto Grosso, Maranhão and Piauí, indicating that while the woodpecker was rare, it wasn’t as endangered as previously thought. As a result, its conservation status on the IUCN Red List improved from critically endangered to vulnerable.

But with about 47% of the Cerrado’s original cover lost to agriculture, the habitat of Kaempfer’s woodpecker remains under pressure; today, it’s either severely fragmented or at imminent risk of agricultural conversion. As more details about the species came to light, concern about its future has also increased.

“We couldn’t find it in a single protected area, be it a national or state park, anywhere in Brazil,” Dornas said.

David Vergara-Tabares, a researcher at Argentina’s National Research and Scientific Training Council (CONICET) who has studied land-use impacts on woodpeckers globally, said the situation facing Kaempfer’s woodpecker isn’t uncommon in the region.

“Protected areas cover less than 10% of the regions where these birds are found in South America,” he told Mongabay. “Approximately a quarter of woodpecker species’ distribution ranges are affected by agriculture and urbanization. It’s a problem that has been worsening in recent years.”

https://news.mongabay.com/2023/08/to-safeguard-a-rare-brazilian-woodpecker-an-ngo-bought-out-its-habitat/

edited with link to : https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15818 venezuelanalysis for less MSM perspective

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Recent arrest of 33 men increases criticism of President Nicolas Maduro’s overtures to anti-LGBTQ religious groups.

It was an otherwise ordinary night at the Avalon Club, a bar and sauna popular with the LGBTQ community in Valencia, Venezuela’s third-largest city.

Music was playing, drinks were flowing and guests were enjoying the accommodations, which included a restaurant, smoking room and massage parlour.

But that evening, on July 23, police would burst into the club, propelling the venue and its patrons into the national spotlight — and sparking questions about LGBTQ discrimination in Venezuela.

Patrons would later recount how the police arrived shouting, “Hands up!”

“I was having a drink with some of my best friends,” one guest, Ivan Valera, later told local media. “I thought it was a joke.”

But the officers proceeded to round up the 33 men in the establishment and hold them in the sauna’s locker rooms.

Luis – who asked to be identified by his first name only, to protect his privacy – told Al Jazeera that the police said they were conducting a “routine inspection”.

“At that moment I was calm,” he said. “I simply thought that it was a normal police procedure.”

But then the officers took Luis and the other men to police headquarters in Los Guayos, a municipality adjacent to Valencia. The men were not told what crime they were being charged with, Luis said. On the contrary, they were told they were “witnesses”.

“That’s when I began to question what was happening,” Luis told Al Jazeera. “Because why are we going as witnesses? Witnesses to what?”

Only after he was forced to give up his mobile phone and have his picture taken did Luis realise he was under arrest.

“[The police] said I have the right to a phone call,” said Luis. “That’s when I started to feel disoriented, like, what’s happening? They didn’t even tell us we were arrested

Being gay is not a crime in Venezuela. But the men were eventually charged with “lewd conduct” and “sound pollution” among other counts. The police offered images of condoms and lubricant as evidence for the supposed crimes.

In addition, the men’s photos were leaked to local media, where they were accused of participating in an “orgy with HIV” and recording pornography. Some of the men, like Luis, had not previously gone public with their sexuality.

But the backlash to the mass arrest was swift. Protests broke out in Caracas and Valencia, with demonstrators calling for the men’s release. The hashtag #LiberanALos33, or “Free the 33”, also went viral on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

Thirty of the men were ultimately released on “conditional parole” after 72 hours in custody. The other three — the owner of the Avalon Club and two massage specialists — were let go 10 days after their arrest.

The Public Ministry of Venezuela and the Valencia Police did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/8/10/mass-arrest-at-lgbtq-club-in-venezuela-prompts-outcry-over-discrimination

In the case of the 33 men from the Avalon Club, Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab has recommended the charges be dropped.

But the experience has shaken Luis’s hopes for the future of the LGBTQ community in Venezuela.

Ask any new mom, and they’ll tell you that NFL games aren’t an ideal environment for breastfeeding. But now, one forward-thinking team has made that a problem of the past: The New England Patriots have transformed 75% of their stadium’s seating into private breastfeeding pods.

Amazing! Whether you’re a Patriots fan or not, you simply can’t deny that this franchise cares about pumping in privacy!

For decades, breastfeeding at a Patriots game meant doing so out in the open surrounded by screaming, beer drunk fans, and occasionally looking up to see your infant attempting to latch onto your bare breast on the stadium’s jumbotron. Thankfully, those days are over, because this upcoming NFL season marks the debut of Gillette Stadium’s tens of thousands of private breastfeeding pods that have replaced the majority of each section’s regular seating, so that up to 49,000 new moms have access to a discreet, free-standing space to breastfeed or pump during Patriots games. Each breastfeeding pod contains a TV live-streaming the game, as well as a retractable window slot in the pod’s wall, through which lactating mothers can purchase hot dogs and soft drinks from stadium vendors so they won’t have to miss a second of the live New England football experience in order to nurse their infant.

The Patriots’ thoughtful gesture to the new mothers and wet nurses of their fanbase doesn’t stop there: The six-time Super Bowl winning franchise is also offering branded breastfeeding merchandise, including privacy nursing covers bearing text “This Breastmilk Is Reserved For Patriots Fans Only,” silicone pumps in the shape of New England mascot Pat Patriot, and breastmilk storage bags bearing the face of fan-favorite players and Head Coach Bill Belichick.

Name one other NFL team going this far out of their way to accommodate moms…we’re waiting!

Well, the Patriots have officially raised the bar for how NFL franchises can show their support for new moms. Let’s hope other teams follow in New England’s footsteps, because this is how feminist-minded football is done!

The move by the Biden administration protects nearly a million acres of Indigenous land from future uranium mining.

President Biden on Tuesday designated a new national monument on lands near the Grand Canyon, shielding the area from future uranium mining and protecting nearly a million acres of land sacred to more than a dozen tribes.

Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, which translates to “where tribes roam” and “our footprints” in the Havasupai and Hopi languages, is the fifth national monument President Biden has designated during his time in office, and contains diverse ecology including federally protected species like California condors and a dozen plants found nowhere else on Earth. The region is also rich in uranium, where it has been mined since the 1950s when it was used primarily for developing nuclear weapons. Today, uranium from the Grand Canyon is used for nuclear energy plants and power reactors in submarines and naval ships.

“Over the years, hundreds of millions of people have traveled to the Grand Canyon, awed by its majesty. But few are aware of its full history,” said Biden. “From time immemorial, over a dozen tribal nations have lived, gathered, and prayed on these lands. But some one hundred years ago they were forced out. That very act of preserving the Grand Canyon as a national park was used to deny Indigenous people full access to their homelands.”

Indigenous nations and environmental groups have fought to protect the area from uranium mining since at least 1985, citing potential risks to sources of drinking water, including ongoing contamination of the sole source of water for the Havasupai reservation — one of the most isolated communities in the United States and reachable by an eight-mile hike from the rim of the Grand Canyon.

On Monday, Republican leaders in Arizona voted to formally oppose the monument’s designation, calling the move a federal land grab. More than 80 percent of land in Arizona is federally controlled, including 21 Indian reservations, and both state and local officials fear Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni will decrease the amount of land available for sale to private individuals.

“With global climate the way it is and with global politics the way it is, is it really the smartest thing to do — from a national security standpoint and an energy standpoint — to forever lock off the richest uranium mining deposits in the whole country,” said Travis Lingenfelter, Mohave County District 1 supervisor. The new monument will overlap with about 445,000 acres in Mohave County.

Representative Bruce Westerman, an Arkansas Republican and chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, joined Lingenfelter in his opposition of the designation.

“This administration’s lack of reason knows no bounds, and their actions suggest that President Biden and his radical advisers won’t be satisfied until the entire federal estate is off limits and America is mired in dependency on our adversaries for our natural resources,” Westerman said in a statement, adding that Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni would leave the U.S. reliant on countries like Russia for uranium.

“I have a thousand-plus acres of private land included in this,” said Chris Heaton, a local landowner with claims to property that predate Arizona statehood in 1912. “This is a problem. They are coming after our private land and private water rights.”

According to the White House, the new monument will only include federal lands, and not state or private lands, and will not affect property rights.

In 2012, a 20-year ban on uranium mining was enacted by then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. However, the new designation will not have an impact on mining claims that predate that ban, and two operations within the monument’s boundaries, including one approved by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2022, will continue to operate.

The designation of the Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukven National Monument comes during President Biden’s three-state tour to discuss his environmental agenda and successes, which include $370 billion in tax incentives for wind, solar, and other renewable energy sources that he signed into law last year.

Iraq's official media regulator on Tuesday ordered all media and social media companies operating in the Arab state not to use the term "homosexuality" and instead to say "sexual deviance," a government spokesperson said and a document from the regulator shows.

The Iraqi Communications and Media Commission (CMC) document said that the use of the term "gender" was also banned. It prohibited all phone and internet companies licensed by it from using the terms in any of their mobile applications.

A government official later said that the decision still required final approval.

The regulator "directs media organisations ... not to use the term 'homosexuality' and to use the correct term 'sexual deviance'," the Arabic-language statement said.

A government spokesperson said a penalty for violating the rule had not yet been set but could include a fine.

Iraq does not explicitly criminalise gay sex but loosely defined morality clauses in its penal code have been used to target members of the LGBT community.

Major Iraqi parties have in the past two months stepped up criticism of LGBT rights, with rainbow flags frequently being burned in protests by Shi'ite Muslim factions opposed to recent Koran burnings in Sweden and Denmark.

More than 60 countries criminalise gay sex, while same-sex sexual acts are legal in more than 130 countries, according to Our World in Data.