Good morning.
Anthony Albanese has confirmed the Sydney Quad meeting will not go ahead, after the US president, Joe Biden, pulled out of his Australian visit to deal with domestic issues.
Early this morning Albanese was still hopeful the meeting with the leaders of India and Japan could proceed with a senior representative from the US, but hours later he confirmed the event was off. Instead, the Quad nations are expected to have a sideline meeting at the G7 summit in Hiroshima this weekend, with all four leaders still attending.
Biden has cancelled a planned visit to Australia and Papua New Guinea to focus on debt limit talks as Washington stares into the abyss of a potentially catastrophic default.
The move came as the president hosted a fresh round of talks with congressional leaders at the White House in an effort to break the deadlock – and faced criticism from his left flank over rumored concessions to Republicans.
When will the trip be rescheduled for? It is not known when Biden will be able to reschedule his Australia trip. The postponement, due to hostile negotiations with the Republican-heavy US Congress over the government’s debt ceiling, comes at a delicate time in the US’s engagement with the Pacific region. The visit was supposed to help cement the US’s renewed interest in the Indo-Pacific and help quell regional concerns over the Aukus agreement.
North Carolina bans abortion at 12 weeks, overriding Democratic governor’s veto
North Carolina has passed legislation banning most abortions after 12 weeks of pregnancy after the state’s Republican-controlled general assembly successfully overrode the Democratic governor’s veto yesterday evening.
The house completed the second and final part of the override with a vote of 72-48. The move is expected to deal a fresh blow to one of the last bastions of abortion access in the south, which has been significantly curtailed after the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last year.
Roy Cooper, a Democrat, had honored a vow he made to North Carolinians to protect reproductive rights by vetoing SB 20 during a public rally in Raleigh on Saturday, which was attended by thousands. But in separate votes yesterday, the state senate and house cleared the path to put new restrictions into place.
Cooper condemned the decision to override his veto and move forward with the ban, and said he would do “everything I can to protect abortion access in North Carolina because women’s lives depend on it”.
What does the legislation say? Last week, Republicans had rushed the bill through the house, drawing criticism from other legislators and abortion rights advocates. The 46-page bill, in addition to banning abortion after 12 weeks, extends the waiting period for people seeking abortions to 72 hours, requires providers to send sensitive information to the state department of health and human services, and requires clinics to obtain special licensing that would result in clinic closures throughout the state.
Court rules Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes must go to prison while she appeals against sentence
The Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes must begin serving her prison sentence while she appeals against her conviction on charges of defrauding investors in her failed blood-testing startup and must jointly pay $452m in restitution to the victims of her crimes, a court in San Francisco has ruled.
Holmes, who rose to fame after claiming Theranos’s small machines could run an array of diagnostic tests with just a few drops of blood, was convicted at a trial in San Jose, California, in 2022 and sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison.
She had asked the ninth US circuit court of appeals to pause her sentence on 25 April, two days before she was to report to prison. The court denied her bail application yesterday.
The judge will set a new date for Holmes, 39, to leave her home in the San Diego area and report to prison. In a separate ruling, Judge Edward Davila held Holmes jointly liable for the restitution payments and ordered her to pay the $452m with her former lover and top Theranos lieutenant, Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani.
Is Balwani in prison? Yes, he began a nearly 13-year prison sentence in April after being convicted on 12 counts of fraud and conspiracy last July. He was put in a southern California prison last month after losing a similar effort to remain free on bail while appealing against his conviction.
In other news …
New York’s state assembly is to consider legislation to stop registered charities sending tens of millions of dollars a year to fund illegal Israeli settlements. The state assembly member Zohran Mamdani has introduced the “Not on Our Dime!: Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence” Act to prohibit tax-deductible donations from being used to expel Palestinians from their land.
Kim Jong-un has inspected North Korea’s first military spy satellite and given the go-ahead for its “future action plan”, according to state media. Kim met the “non-permanent satellite launch preparatory committee” yesterday before viewing the satellite, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.
California police are seeking the assailant who severed a homeless man’s hand with a sword. Investigators with the police department’s robbery-homicide unit have yet to arrest anyone over the incident in Riverside, a city about 50 miles south-east of Los Angeles.
A bizarre exchange with reporters has raised new questions about the return of Dianne Feinstein, California’s senior senator who has been absent from Washington for months due to shingles. The 89-year-old legislator insisted she had been working when questioned by reporters yesterday.
Democrats have moved to expel George Santos from Congress. The New York Republican won election in November last year but his résumé has been shown to be largely made up and his campaign finances and past behaviour, some allegedly criminal, have been scrutinised in tremendous detail.
Stat of the day: Plastic pollution could be slashed by 80% by 2040, UN says
Global plastic pollution could be slashed by 80% by 2040, according to a report from the UN Environment Programme (Unep). The changes needed were major, but were also practical and affordable, the agency said. The first step was to eliminate unnecessary plastics, such as excessive packaging, the report said. Then next steps were to increase the reuse of plastics, such as refillable bottles, boost recycling and replace plastics with greener alternatives. Such a shift, driven by government policies and changes in the plastic industry, would mean plastic pollution would drop to about 40m tons in 2040, rather than 227m tons if no action were taken. The changes would bring benefits worth trillions of dollars between now and 2040, the report said, by reducing the damage caused by plastics to health, the climate and the environment.
Don’t miss this: How mifepristone became a target of the US anti-abortion movement
The future of mifepristone, a crucial abortion drug, is currently under question as US courts consider a challenge brought by anti-abortion groups. Considering medication is the most common US abortion method, it is the most significant reproductive rights case to make its way through the courts since Roe v Wade was overturned in 2022. The groups suing the Food and Drug Administration over its approval of the drug claim that the drug poses a threat to women and girls – contrary to scientific consensus – and should never have been approved by the FDA more than two decades ago. The FDA vehemently stands by its approval of the pill, with the Biden administration emphasizing the agency’s rigorous safety reviews of the drug. So what’s the story of the drug, and how did we get here?
… or this: The women wearing ‘subway T-shirts’ over outfits to avoid creepy stares
New Yorkers love to shed their winter layers as soon as the first signs of spring hit the city. But for women who take advantage of sundress season, the much-anticipated warm weather can also bring unwanted attention. Not that it should. There is little evidence that harassment or assault is motivated by what a victim wears, and clothing is never a justification for cat-calling. Still, anyone who does not want to risk it may use the subway shirt, which is also known colloquially as an “outfit dampener”.
Everyone has a subway shirt in their closet: a baggy, shapeless cover-up meant to divert eyeballs away from the body. “It’s an oversized shirt we wear over cute outfits so strange men don’t bother you on the train,” one creator wrote on TikTok. “Just know if you see me in a white button down, the real fit is underneath,” another woman commented.
Climate check: Cop28 host UAE’s approach is ‘dangerous’, says UN’s former climate chief
The United Arab Emirates’ approach to the Cop28 climate summit it will preside over in November is “very dangerous” and a “direct threat to the survival of vulnerable nations”, according to the UN’s former climate chief. Christiana Figueres, who was pivotal to the delivery of the landmark Paris climate agreement in 2015, also said the country holding the presidency of the UN summit could not put forward its own position and had to be neutral. The UAE is a big oil and gas producer, and the designated president of the Cop28 summit is Sultan Al Jaber, who is also the head of the UAE’s national oil and gas company, Adnoc. Figueres was responding to a speech by Al Jaber in which he said: “We must be laser focused on phasing out fossil fuel emissions, while phasing up viable, affordable zero-carbon alternatives.” That was widely interpreted to mean using carbon capture and storage technology to capture CO2 emissions, and not completely phasing out fossil fuels themselves.
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