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Puerto Rico's "control" board sent a letter to current Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla and incoming Governor Ricardo Rossello stating areas for fiscal plan review and that debt restructuring talks are moving forward. The Financial Oversight and Management Board of Puerto Rico begins conversations with creditors this week.
Puerto Rico's "control" board sent a letter to current Governor Alejandro Garcia Padilla and incoming Governor Ricardo Rossello stating areas for fiscal plan review and that debt restructuring talks are moving forward. The Financial Oversight and Management Board of Puerto Rico begins conversations with creditors this week.
"It's critical the board is moving forward with the process to restructure Puerto Rico's debt," said Jubilee USA Executive Director Eric LeCompte. LeCompte testified to the board in November and suggested the debt be reduced by as much as 60 percent. "I'm encouraged by statements from board members that a deep reduction of Puerto Rico's debt is needed."
The oversight board and debt restructuring process for the US territory are products of Congressional action this past summer. The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act also temporarily prevents debt collection lawsuits against the heavily indebted island. Unless a formal debt restructuring process moves forward by February, the moratorium on lawsuits will expire.
"If talks between creditors and Puerto Rico fail to achieve a deep cut in the debt, the oversight board needs to authorize the formal court arbitrated restructuring process," noted LeCompte. "Solving this crisis starts with restructuring the debt. Creating economic conditions for growth depends on a deep cut of the island's debt."
Jubilee USA Network is an interfaith, non-profit alliance of religious, development and advocacy organizations. We are 75 U.S. institutions and more than 750 faith groups working across the United States and around the globe. We address the structural causes of poverty and inequality in our communities and countries around the world.
(202) 783-3566
"If legislators were trying to trap men in states where they couldn't get healthcare, we would never hear the end of it," said one advocate.
Nearly two years after it was first proposed by Republican lawmakers, an Idaho law that, as one rights advocate said, essentially "traps" people in the state to stop them from getting abortion care, was permitted to go into effect on Monday after a federal appeals court ruling.
The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Idaho can prohibit people from "harboring or transporting" a minor who needs to leave the state to obtain an abortion, which is still legal in the surrounding states of Oregon, Washington, and Montana.
The law, originally proposed as House Bill 242, makes the so-called crime of "abortion trafficking" punishable by two to five years in prison, even if the pregnant person obtains an abortion in a state where the procedure is legal.
The law was blocked in its entirety in late 2023 by a judge who found it violated First Amendment rights, because it also included a ban on "recruiting" teenagers to obtain abortion care across state lines.
The appeals court on Monday found that the "recruitment" portion of the law did violate the constitutional right to free speech because it could be applied to anything "from encouragement, counseling and emotional support; to education about available medical services and reproductive healthcare; to public advocacy promoting abortion care and abortion access."
"Encouragement, counseling and emotional support are plainly protected speech under Supreme Court precedent," wrote Judge M. Margaret McKeown, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton, in the majority opinion.
"Republicans want to scare anyone who might help teens access abortion—whether it's a beloved grandmother or a local abortion fund."
Wendy Heipt, an attorney representing the Northwest Abortion Access Fund and the Indigenous Idaho Alliance as well as a lawyer and advocate who sued the state over the law, said the portion of the ruling regarding "recruitment" was a "significant victory for the plaintiffs, as it frees Idahoans to talk with pregnant minors about abortion healthcare."
But Jessica Valenti, a writer and advocate who writes the Substack newsletter Abortion, Every Day, said efforts to establish traveling for abortion care as a crime should be "front page news every single day."
"If legislators were trying to trap men in states where they couldn't get healthcare, we would never hear the end of it," wrote Valenti.
Republicans in Idaho have pushed the law as one that would "stop adults from taking minors across state lines for abortions without parental permission," Valenti added. "In truth, the law criminalizes helping a teenager obtain an abortion in any capacity—anywhere."
She continued that the ban's "sweeping language... could send someone to prison as a 'trafficker' for lending a teen gas money."
"That's the point, of course: Republicans want to scare anyone who might help teens access abortion—whether it's a beloved grandmother or a local abortion fund," wrote Valenti. "They're targeting the helpers."
Tennessee Republicans have also passed an "abortion trafficking" law, but a court blocked it from being enforced in September, with U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger writing that the state had "chosen to outlaw certain communications in furtherance of abortions that are, in fact, entirely legal."
"It is, therefore, a basic constitutional fact—which Tennessee has no choice but to accept—that as long as there are states in which abortion is permissible, then abortion will be potentially available to Tennesseans," added Trauger.
Republicans in Mississippi, Alabama, and Oklahoma have introduced similar legislation, while Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall has suggested states can restrict pregnant residents' travel.
Valenti wrote that Monday's ruling "is not just about Idaho" and that laws barring travel for abortion care will not "stop with teenagers."
"Young people are the canaries in the coal mine," she wrote. "What happens to them today comes for us all tomorrow."
"The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow," said the deputy director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
A top official at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization said Monday that food availability across Gaza has reached "an all-time low" under Israel's suffocating blockade, which has heavily restricted the entrance of lifesaving humanitarian assistance and plunged the enclave into famine.
"Food supply has sharply deteriorated," FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol said at a conference in Cairo, Egypt. "The window of opportunity to deliver assistance is now, today, not tomorrow. Food, medicine, and fuel are self-evident priorities, but we must also prioritize the ability to grow food locally where it is needed most to ensure survival."
Bechdol's grim assessment came weeks after the Biden administration pressured Israel to improve conditions on the ground in Gaza, which has been utterly devastated by more than a year of bombing.
Aid organizations say that far from improving, Gaza's humanitarian crisis has only gotten worse since the Biden administration threatened to cut off the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel. Last month, the U.S. effectively dropped its pressure campaign by concluding that Israel was not violating international law by blocking American humanitarian assistance.
Most of Gaza's population is currently experiencing "high levels of food insecurity," according to the latest Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) figures, and the "risk of Famine persists across the whole Gaza Strip."
"The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop."
In addition to obstructing aid deliveries, Israeli forces have decimated Gaza's agricultural infrastructure and cropland, repeatedly attacked aid workers, and facilitated the looting of humanitarian supplies, fueling desperation among Gaza's starving population. Last week, as The Associated Pressreported, "two children and a woman were crushed to death... as a crowd of Palestinians pushed to get bread at a bakery in the Gaza Strip amid a worsening food crisis in the war-ravaged territory."
Amina Mohammed, the U.N.'s deputy secretary-general, said at the Cairo conference on Monday that "conditions for Palestinians in Gaza are appalling and apocalyptic," with malnutrition running "rampant" and famine "imminent."
"In the past four months alone, nearly 19,000 children were hospitalized due to acute malnutrition—nearly double the cases in the first half of the year," Mohammed said. "In the face of the gigantic needs, humanitarian aid is—outrageously—being blocked. This flies in the face of the clear requirements under international humanitarian law to respect and to protect civilians and to ensure their essential needs are met."
"It's past time for an immediate cease-fire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages," she added. "The catastrophe in Gaza is nothing short of a complete breakdown of our common humanity. The nightmare must stop. We cannot continue to look away."
Israeli airstrikes killed nearly a dozen people in southern Lebanon on Monday, heightening fears that a tenuous cease-fire agreement is on the verge of collapse.
The Israeli military on Monday carried out a series of airstrikes in southern Lebanon, killing nearly a dozen people and further imperiling a fragile cease-fire agreement that Israel has been accused of violating dozens of times since the deal took effect last week.
Israel's latest strikes came after Hezbollah fired a pair of projectiles in the direction of Israeli-occupied territory known as Shebaa Farms. Israel's military, which condemned the Hezbollah attack as a violation of the cease-fire deal, said the projectiles did not cause any casualties, as they fell in open areas.
The Israeli outlet Ynetreported that Israel "acted against alleged Hezbollah violations without consulting the international committee tasked with monitoring compliance under the agreement."
CNNnoted Monday that Hezbollah's projectile fire was a response to "repeated Israeli strikes that have hit Lebanon daily since Thursday, the day after the cease-fire came into force." A United Nations peacekeeping source told the outlet that Israel has violated the cease-fire deal "about 100 times."
About the Lebanon ceasefire Biden is so proud of — CNN just reported that "Israel has violated that ceasefire about 100 times." pic.twitter.com/w172R5VrQM
— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) December 2, 2024
In a statement, Hezbollah accused Israel of "firing on civilians" and launching "airstrikes in different parts of Lebanon, which led to the death of citizens and the injury of others, in addition to the continued violation of Lebanese airspace by hostile Israeli aircraft reaching the capital Beirut."
The cease-fire deal brokered by France and the United States includes a 60-day period during which Israel must halt "offensive military operations against Lebanese targets" and withdraw its forces from southern Lebanon. The agreement was announced after weeks of relentless Israeli bombings and ground attacks in Lebanon that killed thousands of people and displaced more than a million.
The U.S., Israel's main ally and weapons supplier, assured Israel that a cease-fire agreement would not limit its ability to attack Lebanon whenever it perceives a threat, calling into question the deal's legitimacy.
Asked about alleged violations of the cease-fire agreement, U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told reporters Monday that "the cease-fire is holding" and the Biden administration is examining potential violations in partnership with the government of France.
"Ultimately, what we don't want to see is the cease-fire break down, and we have not seen the cease-fire break down," Miller said.
But the Biden administration has reportedly told Israel privately that it is "concerned" the cease-fire deal could collapse.
"The Israelis have been playing a dangerous game in recent days," an unnamed U.S. official told Axios.
One Israeli official, according toAxios, "admitted that the current situation could lead to the collapse of the cease-fire but stressed it will depend on how Hezbollah responds" to Israel's latest round of airstrikes.