Anywhere in the world, any type of organization, local, national, etc. I think it would be helpful to share and learn about organizations that are doing good things!

Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang has signed off on a decision for assistance in house building and land reclamation for residents in ethnic minority and mountainous areas.  Hanoi (VNA) – Deputy Prime Minister Tran Luu Quang has signed off on a decision for assistance in house building and land reclamation for residents in ethnic minority and mountainous areas. The assistance is meant to help with the implementation of the national target programme on socio-economic development in ethnic minority and mountainous areas for 2021 - 2030, in the first phase from 2021 to 2025. Accordingly, a maximum of 40 million VND (nearly 1,700 USD) from the central budget will be provided for each household to carry out site clearance, prepare housing and land infrastructure, or settlement. A maximum of 40 million VND for each household will be provided to build a solid house in line with local customs, and up to 22.5 million VND for each to conduct land reclamation for farming.  It also regulates that an average of 3 billion VND from the central budget will be given to help with the building of a concentrated water supply facility in ethnic minority and mountainous areas. The paving of roads towards communes' centre can receive support of about 1.6 billion VND for each kilometer, and the construction of a new market can receive financial aid of 4.4 billion VND, while the upgrading of an existing market will be given some 800 million VND. Meanwhile, local budgets will supply a minimum of 4 million VND for each household to carry out site clearance, prepare housing land infrastructure, or settlement. A minimum of 4 million VND will be dedicated to building a solid house in line with local customs. In addition to the aid from the central and local budgets, localities were also requested to mobilise capital from other legal sources for funding the works under the national target programme, according to the decision.

Wyoming’s ban on abortion pills would take effect in July, pending any legal action that could delay that.  The governor of the US state of Wyoming has signed a bill banning abortion pills in the state and also allowed a separate measure restricting abortion to become law without his signature. Governor Mark Gordon’s decision on Friday comes after the issue of access to abortion pills took centre stage this week in a Texas court. A federal judge there raised questions about a Christian group’s effort to overturn the decades-old United States’ approval of a leading abortion drug, mifepristone. The pills are already banned in 13 states with blanket bans on all forms of abortion, and 15 states already have limited access to abortion pills. Medication abortions became the preferred method for ending pregnancies in the US even before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, the ruling that protected the right to abortion for nearly 50 years. A two-pill combination of mifepristone and another drug is the most common form of abortion in the US. Wyoming’s ban on abortion pills would take effect in July, pending any legal action that could delay that. The implementation date of the sweeping legislation banning all abortions that Gordon allowed to go into law is not specified in the bill. In a statement, Gordon expressed concern that the latter law, dubbed the Life is a Human Right Act, would result in a lawsuit that will “delay any resolution to the constitutionality of the abortion ban in Wyoming”. He noted that earlier in the day, plaintiffs in a continuing lawsuit filed a challenge to the new law in the event he did not issue a veto. “I believe this question needs to be decided as soon as possible so that the issue of abortion in Wyoming can be finally resolved, and that is best done with a vote of the people,” Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement. ‘Health, not politics’ In a statement, Wyoming American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Advocacy Director Antonio Serrano criticised Gordon’s decision to sign the bill. “A person’s health, not politics, should guide important medical decisions – including the decision to have an abortion,” Serrano said. Of the 15 states that have limited access to the pills, six require an in-person physician visit. Those laws could withstand court challenges; states have long had authority over how physicians, pharmacists and other providers practise medicine. States also set the rules for telemedicine consultations used to prescribe medications. Generally, that means health providers in states with restrictions on abortion pills could face penalties, such as fines or licence suspension, for trying to send pills through the mail. Women have already been travelling across state lines to places where abortion pill access is easier. That trend is expected to increase. Since the reversal of Roe last June, abortion restrictions have been up to states, and the landscape has shifted quickly. Thirteen states are now enforcing bans on abortion at any point in pregnancy, and one more, Georgia, bans it once cardiac activity can be detected or at about six weeks’ gestation. Courts have put on hold enforcement of abortion bans or deep restrictions in Arizona, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. Idaho courts have forced the state to allow abortions during medical emergencies. Gordon, the Wyoming governor, said he would not back down in the fight against abortion. “I believe all life is sacred and that every individual, including the unborn, should be treated with dignity and compassion,” Gordon said in a letter on Friday evening to the secretary of state.

Members of the Youth League and students are “incensed by the US imperialists’ provocation,” the Korean Central News Agency has said Hundreds of thousands of young people in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have expressed willingness to enlist in the armed forces, the country’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Saturday. The outlet said this was due to aggressive US posturing toward North Korea, which was “reaching the limit that can no longer be tolerated.” The KCNA claimed that on Friday alone “over 800,000 Youth League officials and young students across the country ardently petitioned for enlistment and military service in the People’s Army.” According to the report, that number “continues to increase throughout the country.” The state-run outlet named Kim Il-sung University, Kim Chaek University of Technology, Hamhung University of Chemical Technology, and Nampo Normal University among the educational facilities where students have volunteered to serve in the military. The young people’s “zeal” comes at a time when American “war maniacs” as well as “their puppet traitors,” – an apparent reference to South Korea – were embarking on an effort to destroy the North, the agency said. The report accused the two allies of “aggressively violating” Pyongyang’s sovereignty and security interests “to the greatest extent in history.” On Thursday, North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un oversaw the launch of a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), saying the show of force was intended to “strike fear into enemies” and to “deter war,” as quoted by the KCNA. Pyongyang conducted three other ballistic missile tests earlier this week. Explaining the need for the uptick in testing, Kim cited American and South Korean “open hostility toward the DPRK” which has manifested itself in the two nations staging “reckless” and “large-scale” exercises on the Korean Peninsula. Pyongyang has repeatedly stated that it views such drills by Washington and Seoul as preparation for an attack. Codenamed ‘Freedom Shield,’ the maneuvers kicked off on Monday and are set to continue into next week. The two allies have described the drill as the largest of its kind in five years, and blamed the North for destabilizing actions they say warrant increased readiness. The US and South Korea have already held several other military exercises this year, some of them involving B-52H strategic bombers.

As far as territories, ProleWiki has the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, Wa State, and the South Yemen Movement. Which current things should we know more about?

 The unveiling of a monument honoring the legacy of the great Black abolitionist, Harriet Tubman, took place in the Black-majority city of Newark, New Jersey, on March 9. Named “Shadow of a Face,” taken from a 1962 Robert Hayden poem “Runaway Runagate,” the statue sits in the newly named Harriet Tubman Square, previously known as Washington Park. The statue replaces one paying homage to Christopher Columbus, the butcher of Indigenous peoples. That statue, along with hundreds more that glorified white supremacy, especially the Confederacy, were taken down when rebellions took place in response to the police lynching of George Floyd in May 2020 in Minneapolis. Nina Cooke John, the designer of the statue, stated in a press release, “Her heroism is recognized, and space is claimed for her story in this historic park, while her humanity is made accessible so that we can all be empowered by her deeds both great and small.” Tubman freed hundreds of enslaved people using the Underground Railroad.

 LOS ANGELES (PAI)—At least 30,000 support staffers toiling for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) will stage a three-day strike March 21-23 to protest low pay, lack of respect, and their bosses’ labor law-breaking refusal to bargain. With support from the United Teachers of Los Angeles, an AFT affiliate, the cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, and special ed assistants—all members of Service Employees Local 99—will combine to shut one of the nation’s largest school systems down, in an effort to get district officials to move off the dime. “These are workers who have been treated as a second-class workforce by LAUSD for far too long,” Local 99 Executive Director Max Arias said in a statement as he was forced to file yet more labor law-breaking charges against the district. Prior to their planned forced strike, some 45,000 workers and their supporters marched through downtown Los Angeles the week of March 17 in a mass show of solidarity. And they’re drawing citywide support from other unions, both in the march and in tweets. And UTLA has already said its 30,000 teachers won’t cross the Local 99 picket line.  “We were deemed essential, and now we know the district is disrespecting and undervaluing our work,” Local 99 Communications Director Blanca Gallegos told KCAL TV on March 16. “These workers are making $25,000 a year” in average salary “and this is about those poverty wages.” Gallegos added many of the workers have kids in the L.A. schools, and Local 99’s fact sheet says many must take additional jobs to make ends meet in the high-cost L.A. metro area. The workers say the LAUSD is flush with cash and can afford their demands: A 30% pay raise over a four-year contract and a $2 hourly bonus for hazardous work, since the coronavirus pandemic still ravages greater L.A. The workers, like other legions of exploited low-wage workers nationwide—and, like most of them, women—demand “equitable wage increases, more full-time work, respectful treatment, and increased staffing levels for improved student services,” the union fact sheet says. LAUSD has a $14 billion annual budget and a $4.9 billion reserve fund. Local 99 says its wage demand would add about 7% to the budget “and bring them (workers) above the poverty line,” Gallegos said. The district offered 5% raises in the pact’s first three years, retroactive to July 2021, plus a 4% bonus in the third year and a final 5% bonus—but no raises—in the 2023-24 school year, the fact sheet adds. Last December, the school district forced Local 99 to declare an impasse in bargaining. Sessions began last April. A mediator was brought in to try to bring the two sides together, unsuccessfully. That led to a strike authorization vote in February, which passed 96% to 4%.  Throughout bargaining, including the runup to the strike authorization vote, the district subjected workers to harassment, spying, and intimidation. That forced Local 99 to file dozens of labor law-breaking—formally, unfair labor practices—charges with the state Public Employees Relations Board. “I’m ready to strike for the respect we deserve,” special ed assistant Janette Verbera told Local 99. “I am a single mother, and for the past 20 years I have worked two and sometimes three jobs just to support my family. “I’m exhausted and not just because I’m physically tired. It is debilitating to do a job day-in-and-day-out that I passionately love and be at a salary below the poverty wage level. How do we properly service our students when we are being overworked and underpaid and disrespected?” “Workers have been interrogated about what they discussed in union meetings, threatened with termination if they participate in a strike, and have been demoted and forced to take a pay cut for their union activity,” Local 99 Executive Director Arias added. A Local 99 bargainer received “a poor performance review for attending too many union meetings. “In some of the most egregious cases, food service workers were locked in a cafeteria to prevent them from voting on a strike and a special education assistant, six months pregnant, was threatened with arrest and had police called” into her school when she updated her colleagues on the negotiations, he noted.

 LANSING, Mich.—Michigan’s pro-worker Democratic sweep last November swept out the Wolverine State’s corporate Republican-passed right-to-work (for less) laws in March. Democratic legislative leaders, who took “trifecta” power in the election, made RTW repeal their #1 priority and won it 56-53 in the state House and 20-17 in the Senate on party-line votes. Then lawmakers, also on party-line votes, restored project labor agreements, too. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D), whose landslide win over a Trumpite foe produced the coattails that created the first completely Democratic control in Lansing in decades, is expected to sign both measures. The RTW repeal would be the first in a state in 60 years. Workers jammed the capitol rotunda in Lansing before the House votes, chanting “We are union, the mighty, mighty union,” and erupted into a minute-and-a-half of constant cheers, raised fists, and whoops in a corridor outside the state Senate chamber after the votes there. Right-to-work is a favorite Republican, radical right, and corporate cause, which seeks to strip workers and their unions of money and political power. PLAs set up both deadlines and worker protections on construction projects. Banning them is the top goal of the anti-worker Associated Builders and Contractors, an ersatz “grassroots” association of cut-rate non-union contractors. Started in the 1940s as a racist way to divide white from Black workers in the South, right-to-work spread to Michigan in 2012 after the 2010 Republican legislative sweep there and elsewhere. Given unions’ prominent role in Michigan, the RTW win particularly hurt there. So its repeal was especially gratifying to the state AFL-CIO and Michigan workers. And just to make sure the repeal sticks, lawmakers added some unrelated appropriations for education programs. Laws with money in them can’t be pushed into referendums. Others can. “Today, our pro-worker Democratic majority in the state House took historic action to undo the devastation caused by decades of attacks on workers’ freedom,” state AFL-CIO President Ron Bieber said after House passage. “Since 2012, thousands of Michigan workers, labor leaders, and organizers across the state have been mobilizing and laying the groundwork for this moment. We applaud the House’s swift action to undo the damage caused by Betsy DeVos”—a major Republican campaign cash contributor who became Donald Trump’s Education Secretary—and Republican Govs. “John Engler, Rick Snyder, and their worker suppression agendas. “Our legislative leaders are delivering on the promises they made and putting power back into the hands of Michigan workers.” “What choice do you have when the greedy corporations try to put employees against one another in a race to the bottom?” House Majority Leader Abraham Alyash, D-Hamtramck, asked his colleagues. “Why do folks in here sometimes get so angry that we’re trying to push people out of poverty?” “Union dues are an important stream of revenue that help pay for critical contract negotiations, staff, and support of members,” said Rep. Regina Weiss, D-Detroit, sponsor of RTW repeal. “When unions have decreased dues, they have less power to improve working conditions.”

The country is set to avoid a recession but Britons face the highest taxes since WWII, an official report shows Britons are facing the biggest decline in living standards since records began in the 1950s, and the highest taxes since the World War II as the economy grinds to a halt this year, the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) reported on Wednesday. According to the report, real household disposable income, a measure of real living standards, will drop by 5.7% over the financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24. “While this is 1.4 percentage points less than forecast in November, it would still be the largest two-year fall since records began in 1956-57,” the report said. A surge in energy and consumer goods prices triggered inflation, which currently stands above nominal wages and has led to a historic fall in disposable incomes, the OBR noted, adding that “this means that real living standards are still 0.4% lower than their pre-pandemic levels.” According to the forecast, living standards will not return to pre-pandemic levels until 2028 and the tax burden remains on course to be the highest since the Second World War. The UK “continues to see the tax burden reach a post-war high of 37.7% of GDP at the forecast horizon in 2027-28, including the highest ratio of corporation tax receipts to GDP since the tax was introduced in 1965,” the watchdog said. The British economy is expected to shrink by 0.2% this year despite claims by the government that the country is set to avoid a recession.

Moscow, Mar 15 (Prensa Latina) Russian forces today took control of the Zaliznyanskoye settlement and are expanding the encirclement of Artiomovsk in the Donetsk People's Republic, the head of the Wagner military company, Evgueni Prigozhin, said. ‘Wagner assault detachments are expanding the encirclement of Artiomovsk (Bakhmut for Ukrainians), after they liberated the small locality of Zaliznianskoye on Wednesday,’ Prigozhin reported on his Telegram channel. Artiomovsk is located in the part of the Donetsk People’s Republic controlled by Kiev and is an important transport center for supplying Ukrainian troops in Donbas. Over this important communications junction fierce battles have been raging since the summer of last year. On March 11, Prigozhin reported that Russian forces were 1.2 km from the administrative center of Artiomovsk, dominating all the surrounding heights. In the city there are, according to intelligence estimates, between 10,000 and 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers, who are in danger of being encircled by Russian units.

Settlements between the countries could be arranged in local currencies or gold, an African politician has suggested  The central banks of Russia and Zimbabwe should establish settlements in local currencies and look at opportunities for securing trade in gold reserves, the speaker of the Zimbabwean ruling party ZANU-PF, Christopher Mutsvangwa, told RIA Novosti on Wednesday. The southern African country has been under Western sanctions for 22 years, the official noted, adding that curbs imposed on Russia should not handicap trade between the two countries. Earlier this year, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov announced that Russia and countries in Africa were developing a cooperation strategy to replace the US dollar and the euro in settlements, adding that the parties were preparing documents on rearranging the mechanism of cooperation under Western sanctions. “Our banks should find a way to make the Russian ruble and the Zimbabwean dollar freely convertible. Also, our countries both have rich gold reserves. We are among the top seven countries in terms of gold mining, and production volumes are growing. We are now mining 35 tons per year, but we could mine all 50. So we could think about securing our trade in gold reserves,” Mutsvangwa suggested. The official went on to say that “nothing could derail” trade between Moscow and Harare, noting that China, India, and Middle Eastern nations were also moving towards abandoning the dollar in settlements. The politician also proposed establishing more banks that use alternative payment systems to replace the West’s SWIFT messaging system. He noted that trade in dollars was “a limiting factor” adding that Russia and African nations should set up “more banks outside of the US-run global SWIFT banking system.” Moscow has been steadily pursuing a policy of de-dollarization in foreign trade. In recent years, Russia and some of its trade partners, including India and China, have been ramping up the use of domestic currencies in mutual settlements in an effort to move away from the dollar and euro. Links to Russia’s new trade partners in African countries, including Zimbabwe, have been quickly taking shape in recent years. In 2019, Russia hosted the first Russia-Africa Summit, with participants outlining priority areas for economic cooperation, security, culture and science. The second summit is scheduled to take place in St. Petersburg in July.

 A team of reporters at The State, a newspaper based in Columbia, South Carolina, recently released a damning exposé of a healthcare crisis. The 29203 zip code in Richland County, central South Carolina, was found to have a diabetic amputation rate of 9.96—the highest among 120 other zip codes analyzed in Deep South states with populations greater than 10,000. Poor, Black and diabetic—more likely to lose limbs Nationally, amputations are at epidemic levels. Zip-codes with high percent of poor, Black residents had the highest rate of diabetes-related amputations. A Dartmouth Institute study in 2014 found that diabetic amputations are three times higher in Black than in white patients, with the rural South seeing even higher rates. Mortality rates from diabetes are also much higher for Blacks than whites. Amputations and increased mortality are related. In addition to being subjected to a traumatic, painful and disabling surgery, 50-80% of diabetics with below-the-knee amputations die within 5 years. South Carolina ranks as the eighth state in the country with the highest prevalence of diabetes. This disease and its complications are geographically clustered in poor, predominantly Black counties. For some time the highest amputation rates have been in rural areas and the infamous “corridor of shame,” the area surrounding the I-95 corridor where rates of poverty are highest and where education, healthcare and other public services are the most neglected. It is also the region with the highest percentage of Black people in the state. Conditions that set the stage for amputations “It didn’t have to be this way,” said the opening sentence of the The State’s report. Many cases of diabetes can be prevented with education and proper nutrition. And for those who develop the disease, amputations of toes, feet and legs can be avoided in most cases if diabetes is adequately managed with regular monitoring of blood glucose levels, regular checkups, access to proper medication and its correct administration, healthy eating and regular exercise. Like the 29203 zip-code in this state, many poor areas with many diabetics areas are food deserts. Supermarket redlining policies incentivize grocery stores to invest in wealthy white neighborhoods. This leaves poor neighborhoods to rely on convenience stores and Dollar Generals for food, places where fruit, vegetables, low-fat protein sources and whole grains are not generally or consistently available. People living in dilapodated neighborhoods do not have many options for exercising. Nearby trails, paved sidewalks and well-lit streets are often absent. This is a direct result of the lack of infrastructure investment in poor and predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods. Similarly, healthcare is out of reach for many low-income communities in the Deep South. In the 29203 zip code roughly half of the residents have no health insurance coverage at all. Private health insurance is too expensive and generally tied to employment. The Affordable Care Act passed under the Obama administration sought to expand Medicaid, but since then the Supreme Court mandated that states had the option to opt-out. Many Deep South state governments opted out of the Medicaid expansion leaving millions of working-class people uninsured to this day. Uncontrolled diabetes among the patient population is also very much a result of widespread ignorance about risk factors for the disease and the disease process. Not a few of those living in zip code 29203 didn’t know that they had diabetes until it was so advanced that they needed an amputation. This could be corrected at the community level through mass public health education, but an underfunded public health system rules out this option. This system of privatized healthcare does not emphasize preventative and primary care, which is not profitable. It disproportionately focuses on emergent care, which brings in the dollars. As a consequence, there is no community health education in the geographic areas mentioned. There is a shortage of facilities, medical specialists, specialty surgeons and medical equipment in many counties in the Deep South, particularly rural ones, to treat diabetes and its complications. Patients in rural areas often must travel hundreds of miles to access specialized care. Procedures like angioplasty, which widens plaque-clogged arteries and can save limbs, continue to be inaccessible. In fact, there have been many scientific advances in care for those who have diabetes. But with thirty million people without any health-care coverage and others paying high insurance premiums before they can get care, these advances are not available to everyone. Meanwhile giant pharmaceutical companies have jacked up the price of insulin which is vital to the survival of many people with diabetes. Some 14 percent of people who use insulin in the U.S. must spend at least 40 percent of their post-subsistence income — what is left after paying for food and housing — on insulin. So 1.3 million people in the U.S. ration insulin, due to high cost. So the disease advances, especially among the oppressed. These factors in combination have a detrimental toll on health as a whole, increasing the risk not only for diabetes but also for obesity, hypertension and cardiovascular diseases. The same counties in the “corridor of shame” with the highest rates of diabetic amputations also have the highest rates of other diseases. Capitalism is the disease These healthcare inequities cry out to be addressed. However, capitalism—the economic system in the United States— upholds the rule of corporate boards, and CEOs who always put profits over human lives. As a result, the United States continues to produce and reproduce health disparities based on race, class and income. There is another way. Profits don’t have to drive the economy. Under socialism, an economic system which puts meeting human needs first, the criminal system of for-profit healthcare and private insurance companies is outlawed. Health care is guaranteed to all as a human right. This is the case in Cuba. Healthcare there is administered by the government. There are no profit driven HMOs, pharmaceutical companies or for profit hospitals. Even though Cuba is a poor country subjected to a punishing U.S. economic embargo, because it has the political will to deliver healthcare to its population as their human right it has become a global leader in the holistic management of diabetes. Cuba has achieved the lowest diabetes mortality rate in Latin America, according to the Pan-American Health Organization. The Cuban medical system is tailored first to prevent diabetes, and then to identify people with diabetes before the disease advances, and treat it immediately. While for-profit companies in the U.S. price-gauge for insulin, this essential medication is free in Cuba. What of diabetic amputations, which are on the rise in the U.S., especially in communities of color? Cuba’s state-owned biopharmaceutical industry has created the drug Heberprot-P, and made it free to all who need it. This is the only drug in the world capable of enhancing the healing of diabetic foot ulcers, a chronic diabetic wound that increases the risk of limb amputation. With this medication Cuba has reduced amputations in diabetics by 71%. The tens of thousands of people who lose their limbs to diabetic amputations in the United States would benefit from this medication. But the U.S. embargo of Cuban products prohibits the importing Heberprot-P, denying Americans with diabetes from benefiting from this medication. This key medication will only be made available here with a struggle. Its time to fight to outlaw medical profiteering, to end punishing U.S. embargos and share medical advances from other countries and to put people before profits.

 Hanoi (VNA) – The Hanoi People’s Council has approved, in principle, the construction of Thuong Cat bridge across the Red River, connecting Bac Tu Liem and Dong Anh districts. The bridge, which has a length of 820m and a width of 33m, is expected to ease traffic congestion and boost the socio-economic development of the capital city. With a total estimated cost of nearly 8.3 trillion VND (351 million USD), the construction is scheduled to be done in four years, from 2023 to 2027. To ensure a well-coordinated traffic system, the council has also approved the construction of a belt road connecting Thuong Cat Bridge to National Highway No 32 with a total investment of 1.5 trillion VND. The road is expected to open to traffic in 2026. Thuong Cat is one of the 10 new bridges spanning the Red River under Hanoi’s transport plan for the 2015-2030 period.

Diplomatic ties with Taiwan have become a flashpoint in Central America, where Beijing is looking to deepen links.  Honduras President Xiomara Castro has said she wants her country to open official diplomatic ties with China, in a move that would end its official relationship with the self-ruled island of Taiwan. Castro, who said during her election campaign in 2021 that she would switch ties to Beijing before later backtracking, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday night that she had instructed her foreign minister to begin the process of recognising the People’s Republic of China. end of list The move was “a sign of my determination to comply with the Government Plan and expand borders freely,” she wrote. “We have to look at things very pragmatically and seek the best benefit for the Honduran people,” Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Reina later told local television, according to the Reuters news agency. Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said it had expressed serious concern to the Honduran government and urged it to consider its decision carefully and not “fall into China’s trap.” While Xiomara did not mention Taiwan in her tweet, China does not allow countries to maintain formal relations with Taipei if they recognise Beijing. Analysts said Honduras move was not unexpected given Xiomara’s campaign comments and recent discussions with China about financial assistance – in February Reina announced Beijing would provide the funding for another dam along the Patuka River. “I think we are somewhat prepared, so I don’t think it’s going to be a big issue,” Yao-yuan Yeh, the director of the Taiwan and East Asia Studies Programme at the University of St Thomas in Texas told Al Jazeera. “But it could cause the public in Taiwan to have a little panic since we’ve been abandoned by another country again.” China has been trying to deepen links with Taipei’s remaining allies since Tsai Ing-wen was first elected president of Taiwan in 2016. Several countries, including the Solomon Islands, have made the switch. In Central America, a region that the United States has long seen as within its sphere of influence, Nicaragua broke off diplomatic relations with Taiwan in 2021. If Honduras does switch, only Belize and Guatemala will formally recognise Taiwan, which will be left with just 13 formal diplomatic allies around the world, compared with 22 when Tsai took office. “Central American recognition of Taiwan is a legacy of the Cold War,” Bruno Binetti, a PhD candidate at the London School of Economics and an expert in China relations in Latin America, told Al Jazeera in emailed comments. “Much has changed since then, including China’s spectacular economic rise. Decades ago Taiwan was actually a more appealing economic partner than China. That’s ancient history, Taiwan just can’t compete with China’s huge market.” ‘Borrowed time’ Tsai, viewed by Beijing as a ‘separatist’, has previously accused China of ‘dollar diplomacy‘ over the issue of diplomatic recognition, which has also seen Taiwan, formally known as the Republic of China (ROC), excluded from international bodies such as the World Health Assembly and International Civil Aviation Organisation. “When it comes to diplomatic allies, it seems Taiwan is on borrowed time,” said Sana Hashmi, a visiting fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation in Taipei. “Since 2016, this has been China’s mission to shrink Taiwan’s international space and punish Taiwan.” The ROC government was established in Taipei at the end of China’s civil war in 1949 when the Communists established the People’s Republic of China in Beijing. The government in Beijing claims democratic Taiwan as its own territory, with no right to state-to-state ties, and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve its goals. Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin American Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, DC, noted that China had long been cultivating closer relationships with countries in Central America. “Castro backed off on the idea of dropping Taiwan after she took office. In that sense, this decision is surprising. But maybe it shouldn’t be,” Freeman said in an email. “For years, China has been expanding its footprint in Central America, while U.S. administrations – Republican and Democrat – have worked intensively with governments in the region on migration, but only sporadically on other issues. Now, the bill is coming due for the lack of high-level attention.” The manoeuvring for influence is taking place amid rising tensions between Beijing and Taipei, and a deterioration in the relationship between the US and China. As Pacific nations have peeled away from Taiwan, and after the Solomon Islands signed a security pact with China, the US has stepped up engagement in the region. US President Joe Biden last year hosted Pacific leaders at the White House for what was billed as an unprecedented summit that ended with generous US pledges of assistance and a commitment to tackling climate change — an existential issue for many Pacific states. Last month, the US reopened its embassy in Solomon Islands, which had been closed in 1993. China’s interest in the region has also raised concern in nearby Australia and New Zealand, as well as within Pacific nations. Last week, the outgoing leader of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), one of the world’s tiniest countries, accused China of bribing officials and making “direct threats” against his personal safety in relation to its efforts to secure control of Taiwan. Panuelo, who will leave office in May, said China was trying to interfere in the FSM to ensure that the country would align with Beijing, or remain neutral, in the event of a war over Taiwan. The FSM, which is home to fewer than 115,000 people and located about 2,900km (1,800 miles) northeast of Australia, is independent but receives financial assistance and defence guarantees from the US under a so-called compact of free association.

 Havana, March 14 (ACN) The director of Mexico’s Institute of Social Security Zoe Robledo announce on Tuesday the increase in the hiring of Cuban doctors. During a press conference given on Tuesday by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, Robledo explained that the number of Cuban doctors to Mexico will double the nearly 600 specialists already working in that country, according to PL news agency. In May 2022, Cuba and Mexico signed a health accord including the training of medical professionals, research, vaccines, drugs and the hiring of Cuban doctors by Mexico.

 HAVANA, Cuba, Mar 14 (ACN) Cuban authorities and institutions congratulate today the country's media workers, on the occasion of the Press Day, which evokes the creation of the newspaper Patria, considered a paradigm of revolutionary journalism. Miguel Diaz-Canel, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) and President of the Republic, stressed that the national press, with ethics and truth as principles, honors every day the publication founded on March 14, 1892 by national hero Jose Marti. On Twitter, the president wished happy day to the press professionals, and said that in Cuba that profession fights against inefficiency and brakes to development, while recognizing the effort and results. Meanwhile, the President of the National Assembly of People's Power, Esteban Lazo, highlighted in his congratulations the loyalty of the press workers to Marti's legacy and their dedication to the homeland and the Cuban people. For his part, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero said on the same social network that the professionals of the press sector exercise their work with passion and honor. The journalists' guild closes today the day of celebrations for its day, with the closing of the 2nd International Colloquium Patria, the presentation of the Jose Marti and Juan Gualberto Gomez National Journalism Awards, and a political-cultural event on the steps of the University of Havana.

 Preliminary statistics disclosed past December suggested that hate crimes dropped, but the FBI admitted these data were incomplete because several police departments including New York and California had not yet reported their numbers to federal government. According to the FBI, 12,411 individuals were reportedly victims of hate crimes in 2021 – 64.5% of whom were reportedly targeted because of their race or ethnicity, while 15.9% were targeted for their sexual orientation and 14.1% for their religion. The number of hate crimes reported increased from 8,120 in 2020 to 9,065 in 2021. During the year of analysis, hate crimes were most often fueled by prejudice against African-Americans, homosexuals, Jews and Asians, officials posited. Recent surges in hate crimes include a wave of attacks on Asians during the Covid-19 pandemic, increased anti-Semitic threats, and a mass shooting at a nightclub attended by members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender community in Colorado.

“Lien Xo” - the first Russian film about the Vietnam War - has started shooting at the Military Aviation and Space Defense Academy (VKS) named after Zhukov in Tver.  The film tells the work of Soviet military experts who arrived in Vietnam in 1965. The script is based on the memories of Soviet missile officers who were called in to train the Vietnamese soldiers to work on the S-75 Dvina air defence systems. The prototypes of the main characters were Soviet officers Fyodor Ilinykh and Boris Mozhaev. The systems, used during the war in Vietnam, were capable of helping against single targets and clusters, and low-flying and high-speed targets. They were also used to suppress the operation of anti-radar missiles such as Shrike. Veterans of the air defense forces who participated in the military operations of the Soviet Union also attended the film-making team. At the academy, filmmakers shot instructional videos to assist participants in the filming process for later production.

A sculpture featuring Underground Railroad conductor Harriet Tubman has been unveiled in the US  A towering monument to black abolitionist Harriet Tubman was unveiled in downtown Newark, New Jersey on Thursday in newly-renamed Harriet Tubman Square. Titled ‘Shadow of a Face’, the sculpture replaces a statue of Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, which was removed in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter protests. The two-part monument celebrates Tubman’s “compassion, courage, bravery, service to others, her patriotism, and her commitment to family, faith, fortitude, and freedom,” the former slave’s three-times great-niece Michele Jones Gavin said in a statement accompanying the piece’s unveiling. Fronted by a gray stone wall with Tubman’s face roughly sculpted in relief, the monument includes an inner wall of steel panels engraved with information about her life, the Underground Railroad, civil rights activism in Newark, and black liberation, with an audio component featuring locals sharing their “stor[ies] of personal liberation.” Behind the stone piece rises a 25-foot wire outline of a woman with thick ropes trailing off behind the sculpture. Nina Cooke John, the monument’s designer, said the design was meant to connect “current-day Newark stories” with that of the abolitionist heroine, whom she called “not very well known.” Born into slavery in the early 1800s in the slave state of Maryland, Tubman escaped her captivity but subsequently returned south on more than a dozen perilous trips in the decade before the Civil War to help others reach freedom. She became known as the 'conductor' of the Underground Railroad, a secret network of safe houses and hidden trails that ferried runaway slaves north to freedom. The city of Newark removed the statue of Christopher Columbus from what was then known as Washington Park in the middle of the night in June 2020, supposedly to protect it from vandalism as rioters ostensibly incensed by the death in police custody of George Floyd toppled statues of white men from bygone eras across the nation. However, Mayor Ras Baraka later admitted the statue’s removal was part of a “movement to remove symbols of oppression and white supremacy,” outraging Italian-American groups that had already complained that despite gifting it to the city in 1927, they had no say in its removal. Tubman is also slated to replace former President Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill, which would make her the first black person and first woman to appear on American paper currency (Supreme Court Justice Susan B. Anthony and Native American guide Sacagawea have both appeared on dollar coins).

The Biden administration has approved a massive bailout for all depositors with the failed Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), announcing on Sunday evening that they would be able to withdraw all their money when trading begins today. The decision came at the end of a weekend of frantic discussions involving the Treasury Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the US Federal Reserve after the bank was taken over the FDIC on Friday following a $42 billion bank run the previous day. The immediate issue confronting the regulators was what would happen to the money of those holding more than $250,000 in their deposits not covered by federal insurance schemes. In the end, they decided they took the decision to “protect the assets of tech firms, venture capitalists, and other rich people in California,” to cite the words of the Washington Post. Fed officials would not provide a figure for the bailout operation but indicated that it would be sufficient to cover trillions of dollars of requests. In her appearance on Face the Nation on Sunday morning, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen foreshadowed the decision saying that there would not be a bailout of large banks, but “we are concerned about depositors, and we’re focused on trying to meet their needs.” The decision, which was announced before the opening of Asian markets, was taken to avoid a “systemic” collapse of the financial system. Regulators also announced similar measures for deposits with the Signature Bank of New York, which they closed on Sunday, and in a further extension of bailout measures, said it was creating a new lending facility for the country’s banks. It came in response to a campaign by politicians of both parties to protect the financial interests they represent. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic congressman from California, tweeted that all deposits over the $250,000 limit had to be honored. “If depositors lose confidence on the safety of their deposits over $250K then we are in trouble.” Republican senator Mitch Romney said depositors should “recover and have access to their deposits in order to meet their payrolls, pay their suppliers and to prevent contagion.” Major financiers also heavily intervened. Billionaire hedge fund investor Bill Ackman warned of a run on all but the biggest banks if a takeover of SVB were not organised and the government stopped short of guaranteeing all depositors. “The unintended consequences of the [government’s] failure to guarantee SVB deposits are vast and profound and need to be considered and addressed before Monday. Otherwise, watch out below,” he tweeted. The Wall Street Journal cited the comments of one investment manager who said the “big question” was how the FDIC and the Fed made uninsured depositors at SVB whole or close to whole. If this were not “handled well, there’s a systemic risk that uninsured depositors will flee small banks.” And not just small ones; SVB had been at the centre of Silicon Valley financial operations for 40 years. A joint statement by the Treasury Department and the FDIC said that the action had been taken to “strengthen public confidence in our banking system.” In fact, rather than increasing confidence, it will reinforce the conclusion already being drawn by wide sections of the population that the banking system is a house of cards, operated by and for the ultra-wealthy whose interests the government will protect no matter what the cost. The decision not only covers the banks directly involved. It implies that there is a blanket guarantee for all deposits in the US banking system. Like all banking and financial failures, the demise of SVB had its own individual characteristics and it appears that those on the inside had some knowledge of what was coming. It has been revealed that SVB chief executive officer Greg Becker sold $3.6 million worth of the bank’s shares less than two weeks before the disclosure of the losses that led to its collapse. The share sale on February 27 was the first time Becker had sold shares in the company for more than a year. Individual circumstances aside, there is no getting away from the fact that the demise of SVB was the outcome of policies initiated by the Fed and the speculation they have produced which all but transformed the US financial system into a kind of giant Ponzi scheme, dependent on the continued inflow of money, liable to an implosion once that stopped. The injection of $4 trillion into the financial system after the March 2020 crisis at the start of the pandemic produced a flood of money into the high-tech start-up sector in Silicon Valley for which SVB was one of the major banks. With more money on its hands than it really knew what to do with, as customer deposits surged from $102 billion to $189 billion in 2021, SVB sought to park the money in US treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities, supposedly the safest assets in the world. But the financial landscape has changed dramatically in the last year as the Fed has started to aggressively hike interest rates in a bid to suppress the upsurge of the working class for wage rises in order to counter the highest inflation rate in four decades. As a result of the rate hikes, the book value of the SVB’s asset holdings went down—bond prices and interest rates have an inverse relationship. According to a post by economic historian Adam Tooze on his Chartbook site, “At a rough guess SVB suffered a loss of at least $1 billion every time interest rates went up by 25 basis points (a rise of 0.25 percentage points) and the Fed has hiked by 450. So if they had to sell their ‘safe’ portfolio of bonds they would actually suffer a huge loss.” SVB had a very heavy dependence on investment in government debt but its activities were part of a much broader process. According to Tooze, following the inflow of money by the Fed in response to the pandemic, there was a 44 percent increase by banks in their holdings of bonds, rising to $5.5 trillion, with the FDIC reporting that unrealised losses on securities reached $689.9 billion in the third quarter of last year, up from $469.7 billion in the second. Viewing the events of the past 12 months, one can see the development of a gathering financial crisis on a scale larger than anything that has gone before. Interest rate rises on the scale and the pace of those being undertaken by the Fed take time to fully work their way through the financial system. Their initial effects were seen in the outlying regions, the crypto market. It experienced significant problems last year, leading to the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s company, FTX, and the bringing of criminal charges against him. The key feature of the FTX operation was that while it was based on a fiction, the crypto model had many similarities to areas of the more regular financial system, above all the dependence on the continued inflow of cheap money in the high-tech sector. The collapse of FTX led last week to the liquidation of Silvergate Bank, which had been heavily involved in Bankman-Fried’s operations. Silvergate’s fall in turn appears to have been at least one of the concerns about SVB, leading to the run which brought about its collapse. The big question now is how far and how fast will this process continue to run? In its semi-annual report to Congress earlier this month, the Fed reported that large banks “continue to have ample liquidity to meet severe deposit outflows.” Even if the generous assumption is made that this is accurate, it only raises another question: Where the line is drawn, because just days after the report was issued, the 16th largest bank in the US failed. There are hundreds of US banks which do not fall into the category of “large” but which play a significant role in key areas of the economy as did SVB. In his testimony to Congress, Fed chair Powell said “American banks are strongly capitalised,” a statement now exposed as a fiction with the second largest collapse in US history. In her television comments yesterday, Yellen was desperate to maintain the illusion, saying the banking system was “really safe and well capitalised” as well as “resilient.” Americans, she said, need to feel confident it could meet the needs of households and businesses and that “depositors don’t have to worry about losing access to their money.” One gets the sense that the capitalist financial authorities are caught up in the world of their own illusions. Having created the conditions which have led to the eruption of a new crisis, because of their response to earlier ones—the global financial crisis of 2008 and the market freeze of March 2020—they are now grappling with forces out of their control, and whatever may be the effect of their short-term actions, the longer-term consequences, as events have revealed, will only deepen the historic crisis of the system over which they preside.

Regulators shut down Signature Bank after its shares plunged in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s failure  New York-based Signature Bank was shut down by US regulators on Sunday, becoming the third failure in the country’s banking industry in less than a week. According to a joint statement from the Federal Reserve, US Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the lender “was closed by its state chartering authority.” The statement from the regulators was issued to announce a new emergency program to protect depositors of failing banks. They explained that they would make a “systemic risk exception” for both Signature and Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), a tech and start-up focused lender that was shut down following a bank run last week, allowing the clients of both banks to have full access to their deposits. “[SVB] depositors will have access to all of their money starting Monday, March 13… We are announcing a similar systemic risk exception for Signature Bank… all depositors of this institution will be made whole. As with the resolution of Silicon Valley Bank, no losses will be borne by the taxpayer,” the regulators said, adding that they would use the FDIC’s deposit insurance fund to fully protect all depositors, both insured and uninsured. Signature was a big lender to the crypto industry. As of December 31, it had $110.4 billion in total assets and $88.6 billion in total deposits, according to a securities filing. New York state officials said the move to close the bank was made “in light of market events” in a bid to protect bank clients and the financial system. In the wake of SVB’s collapse last week, Signature also saw its shares plunge following deposits outflows. The collapse of Signature is the third significant failure in the US banking industry within the past week. California-based, crypto-focused Silvergate was the first to announce its impending liquidation last Wednesday, followed by the SVB implosion on Friday – the largest US bank collapse since the financial crisis of 2008. Bank failures sparked concerns over the health of the entire US banking system, with many other lenders seeing their stocks plunge.

 Manuel, a 22-year-old Tseltal campesino, is a native of Ricardo Flores Magón autonomous Zapatista rebel municipality, Good Government Junta Rebel Thought, Caracol IX, Nuevo Jerusalén, located in the official municipality of Ocosingo. *The oral trial hearing was scheduled for this March 7. Therefore, they demanded that the Prosecutor’s Office dismiss the accusation against the Maya Tseltal, because it was based on a set-up. However, that did not happen. The Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas Human Rights Center (Frayba) demanded the immediate release of Manuel Gómez Vázquez, a support base of the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN, Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional), who has been arbitrarily deprived of his freedom for 2 years and 3 months in the State Social Reinsertion Center for the Sentenced (CERSS) No. 16 in Ocosingo. An armed civilian group and community authorities illegally arrested Manuel on December 4, 2020. He was tortured and suffered cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The next day, he was handed over to the Municipal Public Security Secretariat and investigative police from the Indigenous Justice Prosecutor’s Office, under the State Attorney General’s Office (FGE). He was made available to the Control Court and the Court of Prosecution for the Ocosingo Judicial District on December 9, 2020, added the Frayba Center.  Between December 4 and 5 of that year, in the El Censo ejido [1], in Ocosingo, a series of violent acts took place that resulted in 4 people dead. Therefore, the Human Rights Center affirmed that the Office of the Prosecutor of Indigenous Justice did not carry out a diligent and scientific investigation, charging Gómez Vázquez with homicide, although at the time of the events he was at home with his family. Manuel is being judicially criminalized along with his family, for being part of the EZLN support base, since the Prosecutor’s Office lacks evidence to accuse him, Frayba said. To the contrary, Frayba indicated that in a way the Prosecutor’s Office fabricated evidence, since the alleged witnesses do not appear to testify, which has resulted in the Oral Trial hearing being postponed on two occasions. In addition, there are no autopsies for the homicides and the State Judiciary has exceeded the preventive detention that in no case shall exceed two years. Finally, they made a call to the individuals, collectives, as well as national and international organizations, to be in solidarity and demand that the FGE and the State Judicial Power immediately release the EZLN support base. [1] El Censo has been anti-Zapatista since the early days of the EZLN. An armed civilian group, the Opddic, was born in the communities of El Censo and Taniperla (Ocosingo), on the periphery of the Montes Azules Biosphere Reserve, in the Tseltal Jungle area. Hermann Bellinghausen explains the history in La Jornada, February 27, 2007.

A Finnish developer has unveiled a game in which players control military drones and carry out attacks on Russian forces The ongoing military conflict in Ukraine is being used as the backdrop for a new video game developed by Finnish studio Rockodile, which has launched a crowdfunding campaign to fund the project. The game, titled ‘Death From Above’, is being advertised as an “easy-to-pick-up arcade drone warfare game,” which allows players to take on the role of a Ukrainian military drone operator fighting against Russian troops. Players will be tasked with dropping bombs on Russian servicemen and equipment, salvaging “precious hardware,” such as stolen washing machines, and restoring crucial communication lines disrupted by the conflict, according to the game’s Kickstarter crowdfunding page. The studio has vowed to donate 30% of net proceeds from Steam sales of the game to Ukrainian charities and commit a further 70% of net proceeds after the developer breaks even. It’s noted that none of the funds raised through Kickstarter will be donated to charity and will only be used to improve and expand the game, “making it bigger and better looking.” The game’s director, Hendrik Lesser, said ‘Death from Above’ was originally intended to be a simulation game which involved mini-games involving operating drones, transferring cargo and racing. However, the scope of the project and the team have expanded in the past six months, and the studio has also partnered up with Gis Arta – a Ukrainian developer of military software used to control and coordinate drones and artillery in combat scenarios. The game is expected to be released on Early Access on Steam in the coming months, regardless of the results of the Kickstarter campaign, the developers said. However, those who donate to the campaign can get bonuses following the official launch. Those who donate a minimum of €3 will unlock the ‘Mass Mobilization’ tier and receive a wallpaper that the developers hope will remind players of “the fun and excitement” they experienced in game. Those who pledge €18 will unlock the “Art of Propaganda” tier and be gifted with three caricatures of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Moscow, meanwhile, has repeatedly decried the “unprecedented level of Russophobia” detected in numerous countries amid the Ukraine conflict. In some parts of the UK, for example, hate crimes and violent assaults against Russians have more than doubled over the past year, according to a Sky News report earlier this month.

Biden administration’s approval of Willow project in northwestern US state draws condemnation from environmental groups.  The United States has approved a contentious oil-and-gas drilling project in the northwestern state of Alaska, drawing condemnation from environmentalists who say the move flies in the face of President Joe Biden’s climate pledges. The US Department of the Interior announced on Monday that it had approved a scaled-back version of ConocoPhillips’s $7bn Willow project on Alaska’s petroleum-rich North Slope. ConocoPhillips had sought to build up to five drill sites, dozens of kilometres of roads, seven bridges and multiple pipelines. The Interior Department approved the project with three drill pads after saying last month that it was concerned about its greenhouse gas impacts, cutting the size of the company’s proposal by 40 percent by denying two requested drill pads. That would reduce the project’s freshwater use and prevent the development of 18km (11 miles) of roads, 32km (20 miles) of pipelines, and 54 hectares (133 acres) of gravel, the department said on Monday. “The actions will create an additional buffer from exploration and development activities near the calving grounds and migratory routes for the Teshekpuk Lake caribou herd, an important subsistence resource for nearby Alaska Native communities,” it said in a statement. The decision comes despite an aggressive 11th-hour campaign from opponents who say the development of the three drill sites conflicts with Biden’s highly publicised efforts to fight climate change and rapidly shift to cleaner sources of energy. “The harmful effects of President Biden’s decision cannot be overstated,” Sierra Club Executive Director Ben Jealous said in a statement. “Willow will be one of the largest oil and gas operations on federal public lands in the country, and the carbon pollution it will spew into the air will have devastating effects for our communities, wildlife, and the climate. We will suffer the consequences of this for decades to come.” Willow’s fate has been closely watched by Alaska officials, the oil and gas industry, and environmental groups, and the Biden administration’s decision is not likely to be the last word, with litigation expected from environmentalists. The project, located in the federally designated National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, enjoys widespread political support in the state. Alaska Native state lawmakers recently met with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to urge support for Willow. But environmental activists have promoted a #StopWillow campaign on social media, seeking to remind Biden of his pledges to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions and promote clean energy. Christy Goldfuss, a former official in President Barack Obama’s White House who now is a policy chief at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said she was “deeply disappointed” at Biden’s decision to approve Willow. The NRDC estimates that the project would generate planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to more than one million homes. “This decision is bad for the climate, bad for the environment and bad for the Native Alaska communities who oppose this and feel their voices were not heard,” Goldfuss said. Monday’s approval came after the Biden administration on Sunday announced new protections for Alaskan land and water. It said it would make nearly 1.2 million hectares (3 million acres) of the Beaufort Sea in the Arctic Ocean “indefinitely off limits” for oil and gas leasing, building on an Obama-era ban and effectively closing off US Arctic waters to oil exploration. It also issued protections for 5.2 million hectares (13 million acres) of “ecologically sensitive” special areas within Alaska’s petroleum reserve.

The Isn'treal army says ‘gunmen opened fire’ at an army position west of Nablus, with their soldiers responding with ‘live fire’.  The Isn'treal military says its forces shot and killed three Palestinian men who opened fire on soldiers in the occupied West Bank, the latest bloodshed in a year-long wave of violence in the region. The Palestinian Ministry of Health said the men were killed on Sunday by Isn'treal fire near the city of Nablus and identified them as Jihad Mohammed al-Shami, 24, Uday Othman al-Shami, 22 and Mohammed Raed Dabeek, 18. The Isn'treal army said “gunmen opened fire” at an army position near the Jit junction west of Nablus, with the soldiers responding with “live fire”. “Three armed gunmen were neutralised during the exchange of fire and an additional armed gunman surrendered himself to the forces,” the army said in a statement, noting that none of the Isn'treal soldiers was wounded. The soldiers, members of the elite infantry Golani reconnaissance unit, confiscated three M-16 rifles and a pistol used by the Palestinians, the army said. The Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an armed offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, claimed the men who were killed as members. Ongoing violence Tensions between Isn'treal forces and settlers on one side and Palestinians on the other have escalated over the past year. Isn'treal forces have arrested thousands of Palestinians in the West Bank and killed more than 200 Palestinians, civilians as well as fighters. More than 40 Isn'trealis and foreign nationals have died in attacks by Palestinians over the same period. On Friday, an Isn'treal settler shot dead a Palestinian man near an illegal settlement in the northern occupied West Bank. A day before, a Hamas gunman opened fire in Tel Aviv, wounding three people, one of them critically, before being killed by police and passersby. The group said the attack was a response to an Isn'treal raid killing three Palestinian fighters in the West Bank earlier that day. Isn'treal raids have become deadlier this year since a new far-right government came into power, empowering settler groups in the occupied West Bank, who recently rampaged through the town of Huwara in an attack that has been labelled a “pogrom”. Isn'treal settlements, illegal under international law, house between 600,000 and 750,000 Isn'treal settlers across the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, despite Palestinians seeking the land as part of a future state. The United States defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, expressed concerns about Jewish settler violence against Palestinians while on a visit to Isn'treal on Thursday. In a joint news conference with his Isn'treal counterpart Yoav Galant, Austin said Washington’s commitment to Isn'treal’s security was “iron-clad” but warned against acts that could trigger more insecurity.

Monuments to “aggressors” may need to be taken down as “offensive,” new Welsh government guidance reportedly states UK monuments erected to celebrate “older white men” can be taken down or relocated in order not to offend the public, according to new Welsh government guidance cited by the Telegraph on Saturday. The newspaper said the document is expected to be finalized this month. The guidance claims monuments “can be offensive to people today who see them in a different light,” including as “aggressors who conquered peoples to expand the British Empire.” The document reportedly argues that existing memorials project the “perception that the achievements that society considers noteworthy are those of powerful, older, able-bodied white men.” According to the Telegraph, the statues of general Arthur Wellesley and admiral Horatio Nelson, hailed for their victories against Napoleon, could fall under this rubric. Both commanders have been accused by activists in the past of enabling colonialism and slavery. The guidance advises authorities and other public institutions to “take action” to set “the right historical narrative,” according to the newspaper. The options laid out include the destruction and relocation of “offensive and unwanted items.” Officials are also recommended to “discretely box monuments or enclose them creatively in new artworks,” as well as removing the names of streets and buildings that the public finds inappropriate. Multiple statues have been toppled or defaced in Britain since 2020, when anti-racism protests and riots broke out in the US and other Western countries. The outrage was initially sparked by the killing of an African American man named George Floyd by the Minneapolis police. Activists have insisted that some monuments glorify shameful parts of British history. In 2020, they tore down the statue of merchant, politician, and slave-trader Edward Colston in Bristol. The monument to Winston Churchill in London’s Parliament Square was vandalized the same year during a Black Lives Matter protest. The attacks on memorials prompted backlash from some government officials. Robert Jenrick, then the communities secretary, described the activists in 2021 as “a baying mob” trying to “edit or censor the past.”

“We can all learn from” Beijing when it comes to the environment, the US energy secretary has said US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said on Friday that the US can “learn from what China is doing” to combat climate change. Granholm’s praise stands in contrast to the Biden administration’s recent rhetoric towards Beijing. In an interview at the South By Southwest festival in Texas on Friday, Granholm told journalist Wajahat Ali that China has been “very sensitive” on climate issues, and has “invested a lot in their solutions, to achieve their goals.” “We’re hopeful that, you know, we can all learn from what China is doing,” she added. Such praise for Beijing has become increasingly rare from President Joe Biden’s cabinet. Once slammed by Republicans for being “soft” on China, tensions with Beijing have dramatically escalated since Biden took office. The US leader has repeatedly suggested that he would back Taiwan’s independence movement with military force, while allocating nearly $10 billion in next year’s military budget to strengthen the US presence in the Pacific. Meanwhile, Biden has threatened sanctions over Beijing’s alleged support for Russia, and has recently banned the Chinese-developed TikTok app from government devices. The freeze in relations between Washington and Beijing has also directly affected climate policy, with China suspending bilateral talks on greenhouse gas reduction following a visit to Taiwan by then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last August. Republicans attacked Granholm over the interview. Texas Rep. Austin Pfluger accused her of “outwardly siding with China against American energy producers,” while Iowa Rep. Ashley Hinson called China “the world’s top polluter” and demanded that the Biden administration “stop taking China’s lies at face value and hold them accountable.” China is the world’s top carbon dioxide emitter, releasing more Co2 every year than the next five nations combined. However, although China hit a new record for coal production last year, it also invested $546 billion in clean energy, nearly four times the amount invested by the US. China also accounted for more than 90% of the world’s low-carbon manufacturing in 2022, according to research from Bloomberg published in January.

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Silicon Valley Bank, servicing high-tech start-ups as well as their investors, was shut down yesterday in the second biggest bank failure in US history. With $209 billion of assets, the SVB demise has been eclipsed only by the failure of Washington Mutual in 2008 at the start of the global financial crisis.  Less than 18 months ago, SVB had a market value of $44 billion. Now it is in the hands of receivers at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) which moved in after an attempted $2.5 billion capital raising failed. On Thursday, the SVB chief executive was reassuring customers and investors that despite its problems the bank was on a sound financial footing. All to no avail. SVB was no small operation. It was the sixteenth largest bank in the US and deeply integrated into Silicon Valley high-tech, serving around half of all new start-ups funded by venture capital investors. The extent and rapidity of the collapse was highlighted by a senior executive at a multi-billion venture capital fund who commented to the Financial Times: “SVB’s 40 years of business relationships supporting Silicon Valley evaporated in 14 hours.” SVB’s failure is a direct product of the interest rate hikes by the US Federal Reserve, instituted at the fastest pace in 40 years, in a bid to crush the growing wages upsurge of the working class in the face of the highest inflation rate in four decades. As money poured into the high-tech sector as a result of the Fed’s previous ultra-easy monetary policies, SVB sought to find a safe haven for its extra cash holdings by investing in supposedly safe US Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities. A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article on the SVB demise began by posing the question of how it was that a bank, which had bought some of the safest assets in the world, could have failed in just two days? It noted that the bank’s securities portfolio rose from about $27 billion in the first quarter of 2020 to around $121 billion at the end of 2021. This increase was the direct result of the Fed’s massive $4 trillion injection into the financial system after the market freeze of March 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But as the Fed started lifting interest rates last year and the yields on Treasury bonds, and other debt increased, their market value fell—yields and bond price move in opposite directions—and SVB incurred significant losses. It has been calculated that it has suffered a $15 billion loss on the $91 billion worth of long-dated securities which it held. The other major factor was the change in money flows. Instead of receiving new money from investors, trying to get in on the ground floor for the next high-tech rocket, many of SVB’s clients began to make withdrawals as they burned through cash. The collapse sent a shock wave through similar banks and the banking system more broadly. Trading in the banking groups PacWest, Western Alliance and First Republic was suspended for a period as their shares experienced sharp falls because they were seen to be similar to SVB. First Republic shares ended the day 15 percent down and the fall in the other two was 38 percent and 21 percent respectively. First Republic issued a statement pointing to its “continued safety and stability and strong capital and liquidity positions.” Such statements essentially mean nothing because if any bank says otherwise, or even indicates all is not well, it can trigger a collapse. And the market has reason to question the position of First Republic. Its latest annual reports disclosed a significant gap between the market value of its assets, mostly loans, and their book value. The WSJ reported that the market value of its “real estate secured mortgages” was $117.5 billion as of the end of last year, compared to their book value of $136.8 billion. “The fair-value gap of that single asset category was larger than First Republic’s $17.4 billion of total equity,” the article noted. It said the total value of the company’s financial assets was $26.9 billion less than was shown on the balance sheet, adding that a spokesman for the company had refused to comment on the divergence. There are likely to be significant immediate follow-on effects from the FDIC takeover of SVB. Deposits of up to $250,000 are federally insured. But the vast majority of SVB customers fall well beyond that category with the bank reporting at the end of last year that out of $173 billion in total domestic deposits $151 billion were uninsured. As it became clear the bank was facing major problems on Thursday, investors tried to get their money out and place it elsewhere. Silicon Valley start-up companies are facing major problems as a result of the collapse with one industry representative tweeting it was an “extinction level event.” Such is the significance of the SVB collapse and its possible effects on the banking sector, which has experienced falls on Wall Street in the past few days, that the US Treasury Department issued a statement saying it had met with top officials from the Federal Reserve, the FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which all have some role in overseeing the banks, to discuss the situation. The statement said Treasury secretary Janet Yellen expressed “full confidence in the banking regulators” and noted that the banking system “remains resilient.” Of course, it could not really say anything else. But all manner of issues remain. New regulations, put in place after the 2008 crisis, failed to prevent the market freeze of March 2020 for which financial regulators, nearly three years on, have failed to provide an explanation, much less a solution. Moreover, the massive injection of money by the Fed in response to that event, some $4 trillion, which fuelled a new round of unprecedented speculation in all financial markets, has created the conditions for a new crisis as interest rate hikes continue.

At least two people have died and some 25 million people in California are under either emergency evacuation and/or flash flood warnings after an atmospheric river storm delivered heavy rain and snow to many parts of the state beginning on Thursday evening and through Friday. As of this writing 34 counties are under a state of emergency, and forecasts estimate that rain will continue throughout the weekend.  The storm, known as a “Pineapple Express,” due to is origins in the warm Pacific waters off the coast of Hawaii, has produced wind gusts in excess of 50 miles per hour and heavy rains leading to the downing of trees and power lines, flooding roads and multiple roof collapses. Despite the fact that the storm was predicted more than a week in advance, hardly any preparations were made by the state or federal governments to protect the population from the deluge. In the town of Soquel, home to 10,000 people in Santa Cruz County, hundreds of families are trapped after the main road through the Santa Cruz Mountains washed out, forcing its closure. “It’s horrible,” Heather Wingfield, a teacher who has a farm in Soquel, told reporters with the Associated Press. “Hopefully no one has a medical emergency.” Kathryn Chandler, a Soquel resident, told the San Francisco Chronicle in an interview Friday, “My whole family lives up there.” Chandler was attempting to return home Friday, only to find the road had been destroyed. Local officials told the paper they “hoped” to have a “temporary road” built within 24 hours. In Oakland, California, it is believed the storm played a major role in the partial collapse of a Peet’s Coffee distribution center early Friday morning. One worker, 57-year-old Martin Gonzalez, was killed in the collapse while another worker was sent to the hospital. The collapse is believed to have occurred around 3:15 a.m., according to the Oakland Fire Department. In a statement issued Friday, Peet’s Coffee spokesperson Mary O’Connell said Gonzalez had been employed with the company “for more than a decade, I think 17 years,” and that the death of the “beloved, liked, well-respected employee ... it is really, really a shock for the employees, for all of us.” O’Connell said that the worker was a “team lead” and had arrived for work at 3:00 a.m., the beginning of his shift. Had the roof collapsed 45 minutes later, O’Connell said it could have landed on as many as 70 people. “The break room is right in that area as well,” she said. “It’s where people started their day. He was there getting ready for the day. It’s unbelievable.” Hours earlier, Thursday night in rural Pioneer, California, roughly about 60 miles east of Sacramento, the roof of the local Dollar General store collapsed while four workers were inside the building. According to the Amador Fire Protection District, miraculously no workers were injured. The department said the building was a “total loss.” The fire department did not name a cause of the collapse, but photos posted online show piles of snow surrounding the building and a thick layer of snow on top of the buckling structure.

Layoffs jumped more than five times in February from a year earlier, an outplacement firm reports American employers announced 77,770 job cuts in February, marking a 410% increase from the same month last year, executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas has revealed. According to the report issued earlier this week, February’s total was the highest for the month since 2009, when 186,350 job cuts were recorded. However, the figure was down 24% on the 102,943 cuts announced in January. So far this year, employers have announced plans to eliminate 180,713 jobs, up 427% from the 34,309 cuts announced in the first two months of 2022, the study showed. It is reportedly the highest January-February total since 2009. “Certainly, employers are paying attention to rate increase plans from the Fed. Many have been planning for a downturn for months, cutting costs elsewhere,” the company’s senior vice president, Andrew Challenger, stated. “If things continue to cool, layoffs are typically the last piece in company cost-cutting strategies.” The report indicated that technology companies axed the most jobs last month, with the figure hitting 21,387. The tech sector has announced 35% of all job cuts in 2023. “Right now, the overwhelming bulk of cuts are occurring in technology. Retail and financial are also cutting right now, as consumer spending matches economic conditions. In February, job cuts occurred in all 30 industries Challenger tracks,” Andrew Challenger added. Meanwhile, the study showed hiring was down, with companies having announced plans to recruit 28,830 workers in February, a decline of 87% in annual terms.

In the first lawsuit of its kind since Roe v. Wade was overturned, a husband seeks damages from women who allegedly helped his ex-wife obtain the medications to terminate her pregnancy. A Texas man is suing three women who he claims assisted his ex-wife in terminating her pregnancy under the state’s wrongful death statute, the first such case brought since the state’s near-total ban on abortion last summer. Marcus Silva is represented by Jonathan Mitchell, the former solicitor general of Texas and architect of the state’s prohibition on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park. The lawsuit is filed in state court in Galveston County, where Silva lives. Silva alleges that his now ex-wife learned she was pregnant in July 2022, the month after the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and conspired with two friends to illegally obtain abortion-inducing medication and terminate the pregnancy. The friends texted with the woman, sending her information about Aid Access, an international group that provides abortion-inducing medication through the mail, the lawsuit alleges. Text messages show they instead found a way to acquire the medication in Houston, where the two women lived. A third woman delivered the medication, the lawsuit alleges, and text messages indicate that the wife self-managed an abortion at home. The defendants could not immediately be reached for comment. Silva and his wife divorced in February and have two daughters, the lawsuit said. The lawsuit relies heavily on screenshots from a group chat the ex-wife had with two friends seemingly seeking to help her terminate her pregnancy. Her friends expressed concern that Silva, her soon to be ex-husband, would “snake his way into your head.” “I know either way he will use it against me,” the pregnant woman said, according to text messages attached to the complaint. “If I told him before, which I’m not, he would use it as [a way to] try to stay with me. And after the fact, I know he will try to act like he has some right to the decision.” “Delete all conversations from today,” one of the women later told her. “You don’t want him looking through it.” The lawsuit alleges that assisting a self-managed abortion qualifies as murder under state law, which would allow Silva to sue under the wrongful death statute. The women have not been criminally charged. Mitchell and Cain intend to also name the manufacturer of the abortion pill as a defendant, once it is identified. “Anyone involved in distributing or manufacturing abortion pills will be sued into oblivion,” Cain said in a statement. Texas’ abortion laws specifically exempt the pregnant person from prosecution; the ex-wife is not named as a defendant. Silva is asking a Galveston judge to award him more than $1 million in damages and an injunction stopping the defendants from distributing abortion pills in Texas.

 Pyongyang, Mar 10 (Prensa Latina) More than 110 bombs, shells, mines, grenades and other explosives of U.S. manufacture have been discovered since the beginning of the construction of houses in the region of Hwasong, it was revealed. According to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Security Directorate, its troops in Pyongyang city managed to find and remove all the devices without incident. During the Korean War (1950-1953), the U.S. Army dropped more than 428,000 bombs on Pyongyang and other cities on more than 1,400 occasions and as a result many of these explosives are still buried throughout the country without exploding.

One in five female students has been affected, according to a Pentagon report Reports of sexual assault at US military academies jumped significantly during the 2021-22 school year, the Associated Press revealed on Friday, citing a report based on the findings of an anonymous survey. The survey found an 18% increase in student-reported sexual assaults compared with the previous year, according to the Pentagon report obtained by AP, with one in five female students saying they had experienced unwanted sexual contact. The increase was driven mostly by the US Naval Academy, where reports of assaults almost doubled in 2022 with 61 cases, compared to 33 cases the previous year. “It’s unclear whether the phasing out of Covid-19-related restrictions contributed to the increase” the AP said, noting that the naval school is “directly adjacent to bars in downtown Annapolis, Maryland.” The report also noted that respondents cited alcohol as a key factor in over half of the assaults and recommended additional policies on student drinking. The Air Force Academy in Colorado reported 52 cases, the same as the previous year, while the US Military Academy at West Point in New York reported 42, down from 46 and marking the only decrease. The Pentagon conducts the surveys anonymously to get “a more accurate depiction” of the problem, given that sexual assault is an underreported crime, AP said. The data also included cases where civilians, active-duty troops and prep school students reported being assaulted by a student at the academies. The study also encouraged students to report unwanted sexual contact prior to beginning studies, with 16 saying their assault happened before enrolling. “All together, the total number of reported assaults with any connection to a student was 206 — about 28% higher than last year’s total of 161,” according to AP. In 2021, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that combating sexual misconduct in the US armed forces was one of his “top priorities.” Reports of assaults dropped that year amid shortened school terms due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The latest statistics come after reports of sexual assault at the US Merchant Marine Academy earlier this month. According to a CNN report on Wednesday, a “culture of fear” at the school has made victims reluctant to report their assailants and trigger an investigation.

Ramallah, Mar 10 (Prensa Latina) The Isn'treal forces on Friday killed a 16-year-old boy near the town of Qalquilia in the northern West Bank, so the toll of Palestinians assassinated surged to 80 in 2023. Palestinian Health Ministry reported that the boy, Amir Mamoun Odeh, was first transferred to a public hospital in the city with a severe chest wound, where he was pronounced dead. The occupation regime confirms its criminal trend by targeting children and civilians, the governmental Fatah movement condemned. Thousands of people mourned Odeh in a funeral procession that started at the Darwish Nazzal Hospital and then at the Abu Obeida Mosque to the local commentary. Hours earlier, an Isn'treal settler assassinated a suspected Palestinian attacker, identified as Abdul-Karim Badie Sheikh, 21, as he attempted to enter the Ma’ale Shomron settlement in the territory. Following these incidents, Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh accused Isn'treal for his forces´ constant crimes committed against Palestinian youth. Shtayyeh called on the international community, especially the United States, to put pressure on Isn'treal. According to official data, 80 Palestinians, including 14 minors and one woman, have been killed by the Isn'treal forces and settlers since the beginning of the year.