The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) said it will maintain the prevailing rate of appreciation of its exchange rate-based policy band known as the Nominal Effective Exchange Rate, or S$NEER.

The width and the level at which the band is centred did not change.

“Barring any further global shocks, the Singapore economy is expected to strengthen in 2024, with growth becoming more broad-based. MAS core inflation is likely to remain elevated in the earlier part of the year, but should decline gradually and step down by Q4, before falling further next year,” MAS said in a statement.

Maybank economist Chua Hak Bin said the central bank is maintaining the current tightening bias as both core and headline inflation gauges are above 3% and historical comfort zones.

Core inflation in December was 3.3% year-on-year, slowing from its peak of 5.5% early last year.

MAS said core inflation is projected to ease to an average of 2.5–3.5% for 2024 after rising in the current quarter because of a 1 percentage point sales tax hike from January that MAS said will have a “transitory impact”.

Gross domestic product (GDP) was up 2.8% on a yearly basis in the fourth quarter of last year, according to advance estimates published by the trade ministry in early January.

GDP for the full year of 2023 was 1.2%, and the trade ministry projects GDP to grow by 1-3% in 2024.

“Prospects for the Singapore economy should continue to improve in 2024,” said the MAS, although both upside and downside risks to the inflation outlook remain.

OCBC economist Selena Ling said that suggests the MAS is on an extended policy pause for now.

“April monetary policy is likely another hold and the earliest window for an easing could only come later in the year when core inflation eases more convincingly,” she said.

The MAS policy decision on Monday was the first under its new review schedule, in which the central bank will make policy announcements every quarter instead of semi-annually.

The central bank left monetary policy unchanged in April and October last year, reflecting growth concerns, having tightened policy at five consecutive reviews prior to that.

As a heavily trade-reliant economy, Singapore uses a unique method of managing monetary policy, tweaking the exchange rate of its dollar against a basket of currencies instead of domestic interest rates like most other countries.

Source: Reuters

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Climate change influences the frequency and intensity of wildfires in many areas of the United States. Trees remove carbon from the atmosphere, so tree planting can mitigate climate change. However, managing forests to prevent large destructive fires can involve thinning and prescribed burning, which releases a portion of forest carbon. To complicate matters further, large fires themselves can release significant carbon.

John W. Coulston and colleagues analyzed data from more than 130,000 national forest inventory plots to project how recent legislation to increase fire management and tree planting in the United States could affect the country’s forest carbon sequestration 30 years into the future, given various fuel management, climate, economic, and energy use scenarios. The research is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.

Fuel reduction activities could remove 194–288 million metric tons of carbon from western forests over the next 10 years. However, fuel management can also increase annual net carbon sequestration rates over the long term, both because trees in thinned stands can grow larger faster and because avoided fires reduce overall emissions.

By 2050, fuel management could actually increase annual carbon sequestration over business as usual. This increase is modest, however, and the projected cumulative 2022–2050 carbon sequestered under fuel management scenarios is 200–310 million metric tons less than business as usual.

All wood removed during fuel management was assumed to be an emission for the purposes of the analysis, but the authors note that wood product innovation could change that picture by allowing carbon removed from forests to be stored in durable wood products.

Source : Phys

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When South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk-yeol, entered office last year, the odds rose that a frostier bilateral relationship with China might take hold. After all, Yoon on the campaign trail talked tough on China, and conservative South Korean politicians typically deepen the US alliance and are suspicious of Chinese support to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea). Even despite the growing closeness of DPRK-China ties, Yoon has been able to effectively manage his government’s relationship with Beijing, potentially setting a template for how other small and medium-sized nations might do the same.

Yoon’s Carrots and Sticks ApproachIndeed, as I have previously argued, Yoon and his government, to some extent, have taken a harder line on China. For example, Yoon became the first South Korean leader to attend the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit, during which he criticized not only Russia, but China as well. In April, before his state visit to Washington for a summit at the White House with President Joe Biden, Yoon railed against any “attempt to change the status quo by force” in the Taiwan Strait. He further offered that South Korea would cooperate with the international community to prevent such an outcome. Yoon’s comments predictably angered China and sparked a monthslong diplomatic tit-for-tat that stretched into the summer.As part of that summit, Biden and Yoon jointly issued the “Washington Declaration,” which includes measures to enhance extended deterrence, such as the establishment of a nuclear consultative group, the exchange of nuclear-related information and visits by nuclear-powered military assets like the B-52 and submarines, which could be leveraged not only for a North Korea, but China-related contingency as well.But Yoon has simultaneously tried to keep an even hand in dealing with Beijing. For instance, when then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited South Korea after her highly controversial visit to Taiwan to meet President Tsai Ing-wen, Yoon was nowhere to be found. The presidential office said he was on a five-day vacation and had no plans to meet with Pelosi, though he eventually did hold a last-minute phone call with her. His administration has also treaded softly in the country’s debut Indo-Pacific strategy statement in December, referring to China as a “key partner” with which Seoul “will nurture a sounder and more mature relationship as we pursue shared interests based on mutual respect and reciprocity, guided by international norms and rules.”Such moves have probably contributed to a gradually stabilizing and normalizing of the South Korea-China relationship. For example, this week, South Korea resumed trilateral talks with China and Japan, a mechanism that had been dormant since 2019. This foreign ministers-level meeting is paving the way for a trilateral summit soon. In a surprising new pact that goes into effect in May, Beijing relented to Seoul this month and will mandate that its fishing boat (and presumably fishing militia forces) keep their trackers on to help the South Korean coast guard combat illegal fishing within its exclusive economic zone.China’s Likely Considerations/CalculationsYoon’s foreign policy, however, is probably only one part of the story. Dismal Chinese economic numbers—including a collapse in exports, leveling off of inflation, rising unemployment, and slowing consumption, production, and investment—may be prompting Beijing to achieve a better partnership with Seoul. The same could be true for Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decision to meet with US President Joe Biden earlier this month at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in San Francisco.Another factor is probably Yoon’s push to open and strengthen ties with Japan, which has a strained relationship with China. Earlier this year, Yoon held a summit with his counterpart, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida—the first of its kind in over a decade. Since then, Seoul and Tokyo have agreed to resuscitate a military information-sharing agreement, and in August, Biden met with Yoon and Kishida at Camp David in the first-ever standalone trilateral summit between the three nations. Earlier this month, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sat down in another unprecedented trilateral with South Korean and Japanese defense ministers to share information relevant to “severe security environments,” suggesting that North Korea isn’t the only target. Hence, Beijing probably seeks to undermine and ultimately end the strengthening South Korea-Japan partnership possibly aimed at it.Yet another factor may have more to do with China’s military modernization than anything South Korea is doing. When I visited Seoul earlier this month, I spoke with an interlocutor who believed that Beijing’s calculus is rapidly changing on the so-called “Three No’s” demanded of Seoul in 2017, including no new deployment of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) batteries, no South Korean integration into US regional missile defenses, and no trilateral military alliance with Japan and the United States. His theory was that Beijing’s rapid progress in developing a credible nuclear triad (capable of nuclear attacks from land, air, and sea) reduces the salience of pressuring Seoul to follow the Three Nos—a commitment Seoul denies actually exists anyhow.ConclusionAlthough South Korea is arguably inching closer to a trilateral military alliance with the US and Japan, now featuring, for example, joint military exercises, China can still rationalize that the partnership is still too new and possibly ephemeral, likely circumscribed and strained by lingering mistrust from World War II legacy issues, such as the comfort women.In the end, Yoon’s China policy has been unexpectedly successful thus far. He is also buoyed by the South Korean public’s increasingly negative views on China, with the nation now reportedly holding the most anti-China sentiment worldwide. Of course, Yoon is still a relatively new president—he is less than two years into his five-year term—and much could still go wrong, especially if he pursues the Taiwan issue more assertively. But for now, at least, Yoon and his government have successfully managed China, and perhaps offered a road map for how others can too.

Source : 38 North

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It was 1989. D.C. had recently been dubbed the murder capital of the United States, and the crack wars were raging.

Then-D.C. Mayor Marion Barry (D) and council members were called before Congress to testify about what was going on in the nation’s capital, and they came bearing news. The city had just passed an anti-loitering law that allowed police to establish“illegal drug zones,” had set a curfew for juveniles and beefed up pretrial detention.

If that feels a little like déjà vu, it’s because Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) is recycling the same ideas more than 30 years later, as the District confronts a violent crime problem that has drawn comparisons to the city’s bloodiest era, even though today’s underlying causes bear less similarity.

Most recently, the mayor unveiled a proposal to revive those “anti-loitering” and “drug-free zones,” which would allow police to cordon off temporary zones for five days where anyone congregating to use, buy or sell drugs can be arrested if they don’t leave. The proposal is a throwback to a ’90s-era approach to cracking down on then-prolific open-air drug markets, a problem that has not been front-and-center in D.C. for years. Now, however, at a time when the major drivers of violent crime are not tied to drugs as they once were, Bowser may encounter some resistance to resurrecting the policy — primarily because of its history of drawing legal challenges and racial profiling concerns.

The 1989 iteration of the law was struck down in court as unconstitutional. The 1996 version that replaced it — and which Bowser’s proposal would revive — was never challenged in court but was repealed by the D.C. Council in 2014 when the attorney general’s office raised concerns that it ran afoul of the Constitution. Bowser herself, then a council member, voted for the repeal.

In rolling out the policy, Bowser and top officials expressed confidence it was legally sound and said it addressed what she described as a troubling “emerging trend”:plain-view drug dealing and use, visible in some of the District’s busiest corridors such as Chinatown and H Street. Bowser has acknowledged the problem is nowhere near what it once was, saying officials believe there are fewer than 10 such “open-air drug markets” today, compared with an estimated 60 in 2002. Still, Bowser’s top public safety officials, including acting Police Chief Pamela A. Smith, believe those problems can spill into violence or create other dangers. They declined to identify suspected locations.

“We want to blunt a trend we see in open-air drug dealing that we have pretty much squelched in this city” in all but a few areas, Bowser said, “and we don’t want that activity to proliferate.”

Council member Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2), who chairs the public safety committee, welcomed Bowser’s proposal, noting that she has heard concerns across the city about hot spots for drug dealing or criminal activity, fearing police don’t have adequate tools to disrupt them. “This trend cannot continue without intervention,” she said.

But skepticism is already simmering. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) threw cold water on the idea in an interview last week, doubting its relevance to D.C.’s violent-crime spike, driven by carjackings and homicides. He said he supported the idea of drug-free zones — and prostitution-free zones — more than a decade ago, but, citing the 2014 concerns from the attorney general’s office and the American Civil Liberties Union, hequestioned whether Bowser’s proposal would hold up to legal scrutiny.

“I don’t oppose [anti-loitering statutes]. They’re just unconstitutional,” he said — an unsettled question that could drive debate within the council.

Pinto said she would hold a hearing on the legislation on Nov. 29.

Community, business concerns

Bowser’s proposal to revive the anti-loitering drug zones is a key facet of her Addressing Crime Trends Now Act, which would also target “organized retail theft” and roll back various provisions of D.C.’s major police reform legislation, passed after George Floyd’s murder. Bowser has also called on the council to pass her May “Safer Stronger” legislation, which would permanently expand pretrial detention for juveniles and adults charged with violent crimes and enhance gun penalties, among other things.

In recent years, cracking down on drug-dealing or drug-related loitering had not made up a significant part of city leaders’ crime strategy — but they’ve pointed to growing concernsabout these issues among residents, raised in community meetings and in online neighborhood forums. Chinatown offers one example.

In its 2023 report on the Gallery Place-Chinatown corridor, the DowntownDC Business Improvement District cited “visible drug sales” as a “complex challenge,” along with a growing number of homeless people and panhandlers, and called for “stronger police presence to disrupt drug sales activities.” (The DowntownDC BID did not respond to a request for comment.) During an August community meeting, a representative for Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Wizards and Capitals, decried the “open-air drug transactions” outside of Capital One Arena, and residents have described feeling on edge due to both petty crime and serious violence.

Howard Marks, vice president of the condo board for the Residences at Gallery Place, right next to the Metro station, said he and his neighbors were “totally thrilled” after Bowserunveiled the plan to revive anti-loitering drug free zones.

Marks had moved into his condo building in 2014, back when “there was a certain rhythm” to the neighborhood, he said,a sense of safety and ease on vibrant streets. The offices were filled. Since-shuttered Bed Bath & Beyond was busy with shoppers right downstairs. “Then covid hit, and everything changed,” Marks said.

“Once the office workers left to work from home, the streets were virtually empty, and — if I can use the word without offending anyone — miscreants suddenly became larger than life,” he said.

Drug deals seemed commonplace right beneath the historic Chinatown arch, and sometimes he smelled marijuana as he walked to and from home. Fare evaders hopped the gates and loitered at the top of the Metro station escalators. Reckless e-scooter riders whizzed past, contributing to a “sense of chaos” that took over, he said.

But there’s little police can do about loitering unless they’re catching a drug dealer red-handed, and by the mid-2010s, D.C. moved away from plainclothes street officers going after small-time dealers on the corner to focus more on big-time drug operations.

In a statement, Paris Lewbel, a police spokesman, said drug-relatedinvestigations “are difficult cases to make, and too often don’t provide immediate or lasting relief to our communities because only a few people are arrested and may be quickly back on the street.”

Bringing back drug-free zones, he said, would “help disperse and interrupt this activity and help neighborhoods and businesses reclaim and clean up public space.”

Legal troubles

In its many variations, the anti-loitering approach has a long history of trial and error. Go back far enough and, even in the middle of a world war, President Franklin D. Roosevelt took the time to veto a 1941 D.C. “vagrancy” statute — a Jim Crow-era specialty often targeting Black people and poor people — over fears police couldn’t be trusted not to misuse it. A more tailored D.C. “narcotics vagrancy” law was struck down in federal court in 1968. And year after year, especially in the 1980s as drug-related crime became a more urgent problem, the D.C. Council kept trying to bring it back.

D.C. Housing Authority Police Chief Joel Maupin remembers when Barry and the council enacted a new anti-loitering law targeting “illegal drug zones” in 1989. Then a street officer for D.C. police patrolling Southeast’s 7th district, Maupin made one of the first arrests under the law.

“That was during the time when PCP was frequent in the streets, and crack cocaine was very prevalent,” Maupin said. “So drug-free zones, during that time frame, it was very much needed. … There was a lot of violence associated with crack cocaine. Now violence is most associated with anything or everything, it appears.”

According to a December 2021 report that studied the underlying causes of homicides in D.C., about 15 percent of the 274 killings where circumstances were known were tied to drug disputes or drug robberies — a different picture from the 60 percent tied to drugs in 1988, and 41 percent in 1990.

Still, even then, Maupin said he did not recall the law being frequently used, in part because “it didn’t last very long,” he said. Days before Barry’s own arrest on crack cocaine possession charges, in January 1990, a D.C. judge struck down the “Illegal Drug Zone” emergency act as unconstitutional. The problem, the court found, was that even though the intent was to squash suspected drug users or dealers, the law was so broad that it could apply to innocent people doing anything — evenmerely existing — in the targeted zone.

The council apparently learned from that case, and sought to draft a narrower law in 1996 — the version Bowser is seeking to revive in nearly identical fashion. Its champion, former council member Bill Lightfoot (I-At Large), says his legislation was also spurred by concerns from the community, like citizen patrol groups who had expressed unease about the proliferation of prostitution and open-air drug markets.

“Public safety has to be the priority. The rights of criminals have some bearing, but the role of government is to protect citizens,” said Lightfoot, who remains a close adviser to Bowser. “We were dealing with a crack cocaine epidemic, we had been named the murder capital … and [the council] took an attitude toward violent crime that it was not going to be tolerated.”

Under both the 1996 law and Bowser’s proposal, police would issue notices to residents in and around an established zone, stating that for up to five days, it would be unlawful to congregate “for the purposes of participating in the use, purchase, or sale of illegal drugs.” Police could only arrest people they “reasonably believe” are involved in drug activity if they ignore orders to disperse.

But in 2014, as the council debated whether to repeal the measure,the attorney general’s office cited due process concerns with the law. Andrew Fois, then the deputy attorney general, wrote in a letter that the law failed to sufficiently consider a person’s intent to engage in illegal activity among the elements of the crime. On Oct. 27, D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb (D) said on the Politics Hour with Kojo Nnamdi that he was reviewing those due process concerns now, though his office had not reached an opinion as of Friday.

Arthur Spitzer, senior legal counsel at the ACLU, said that in his view, the primary concern is about how police would make arrests. “Reasonable belief” that someone is engaged in drug activity is up for interpretation, he said, even if Bowser’s bill lists various criteria like “operating as a lookout” or exchanging “small packages.” It could allowpolice to make arrests under a lower standard than probable cause, which Spitzer said raises a red flag and spells legal trouble.

But, legal concerns aside, Spitzer questioned whether the approach will really make the impact leaders are hoping for.

“Designating a zone is just going to drive the market a couple streets over, and what good does that do, really?” he said. “It makes the people on this block happier for a while, but makes people on the next block suffer the same problems.”

While officials won’t say exactly where the open-air drug markets are today, recently, the U.S. attorney’s office secured guilty pleas from six men tied to one operating around a Shell gas station on South Capitol Street SE.

While naming drugs of concern, Smith said that opioids and fentanyl topped the list. And while the use and possession of marijuana is legal in the District — though not to smoke in public or to buy or sell — Bowser said that the city’s inability to tax and regulate the drug has also contributed to violence, a problem prosecutors described as happening at the gas station.

Bowser and Lindsey Appiah, deputy mayor of public safety and justice, have brushed aside legal concerns, noting that the former law never was actually challenged in the 18 years it was on the books. A similar anti-loitering drug-free zone law was struck down by a federal judge in Annapolis in 2001 — but Bowser said this week that this did not concern her, and Appiah said she was not familiar with the case.

Appiah cited a policy briefing from the Sentencing Project as part of the research she reviewed that led her to believe the District’s policy is sound. The brief was about school-related drug-free zones, however — and according to the Sentencing Project, it has nothing to do with Bowser’s proposal.

“Not even relevant,” acting director Kara Gotsch said.

Gotsch said itwas puzzling to hear Appiah cite her organization, which does not endorse Bowser’s proposal and which asked the Bowser administration to not cite them again. (Appiah insisted the briefingwas relevant when asked about Gotsch’s objection.) It was more puzzling, Gotsch said, to see the Bowser administration seeking to revive the law so many years after it was repealed.

“Arresting more people for loitering because they might be involved in drug use or possess drugs is not how we solve our drug problem,” Gotsch said, noting concerns about racially disproportionate enforcement as well.

While it’s not yet clear where drug-free zones would be set up if Bowser’s proposal were to pass, some lawmakers have started to poke around. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) asked Maupin at a D.C. Housing Authority hearing whether public housing complexes might be targeted, as they were back when the law first came into use in ’89. Maupin said there had not yet been discussions.

“Unfortunately,” Parker said, “we’re coming full circle having to think about implementing that again.”

Source : The Washington Post

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Throughout its more than 20-year history, the Climate Centre has played an important role in shaping Red Cross Red Crescent policy, drawing on the best available science, evidence and experience.

In close collaboration with the IFRC secretariat – for which we are one of six global reference centres – and the ICRC, we have also brought bring a humanitarian perspective to global policy processes like the UN climate talks at yearly COP sessions, the Sendai framework, the Risk-informed Early Action Partnership, and the Nationally Determined Contributions partnership.

Key messages to COP28

Climate has risen higher and higher on the agenda of the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement. For example, the 33rd International Conference 0f the Red Cross and Red Crescent in 2019 called for “[e]ffective disaster laws, policies, strategies and plans that address climate change”.

In the first of 13 adopted resolutions, the 2022 Council of Delegates endorsed the Climate and Environment Charter for Humanitarian Organizations.

And at the 2022 General Assembly of the IFRC, its supreme policy-making body that meets every two years, Secretary General, Jagan Chapagain listed the biggest humanitarian issues affecting the world today: “the three Cs: Covid-19, climate change and conflict” (photo).

The IFRC’s Strategy 2030, first published in 2018, places climate change and environmental crises at the top of a list of five global challenges that must be addressed in the coming decade. Most recently, it has distributed six key messages to the COP 28 meeting in Dubai:

• Act urgently to address the humanitarian impacts of the climate crisis. Reduce greenhouse gas emissions to prevent worsening humanitarian impacts, whilst vastly scaling up adaptation action at the local level reaching the most at risk and impacted people and communities.
• Scale up anticipatory and early action to prevent extreme weather events becoming disasters, to save lives and livelihoods. Invest in early warnings and other systems for early action at the local level, reaching last-mile communities before disasters strike.
• Prioritize locally led action. Support meaningful engagement and participation to implement solutions by and with communities which builds resilience to climate impacts. Adopt and implement principles for locally led adaptation.
• Strengthen climate-resilient health systems, investing in primary health care, WASH, and community-level preparedness to respond to evolving climate risks and achieve universal health coverage goals.
• Increase adaptation finance for quality, quantity and accessibility. Prioritize funding for the most impacted countries and communities that reaches the local level.
• Avert, minimize and address loss and damage with new, additional, and predictable finance to support comprehensive action. Responses to loss and damage must reach the local level to people and communities most impacted.

Source : Climate Centre

The post Engaging With the Global Process on Climate appeared first on Policy Print.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., said Saturday that U.S. policy toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “doesn’t add up” as Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists continues.

Omar has been critical of Israel’s government since Hamas launched its surprise attack against the Jewish State on Oct. 7.

“U.S. policy is essentially that Netanyahu has no achievable goals in Gaza and a ground invasion risks regional war, including potential US troops. And also we should give him $14 billion in weapons with no restrictions, and say there are no red lines as he bombs refugee camps,” Omar wrote Saturday on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.

“See how this doesn’t add up?” she added.

More than 10,000 people have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel in decades on Oct. 7, leading to retaliatory action from Israeli forces. Thousands more have been wounded, and many others have been taken hostage by Hamas and raped, tortured and murdered.

Omar is among more than a dozen progressive Democrats in the House to have co-sponsored a resolution last month calling for a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. She was also one of the more than 20 House members who voted against a separate resolution calling on administrators at U.S. universities to condemn antisemitism on their campuses and to ensure that Jewish faculty and students can exercise free speech without intimidation.

Last week, the White House called for a “humanitarian pause” in the war between Israel and Hamas to allow aid into Gaza, but it has argued against a cease-fire. The Biden administration has strongly supported Israel in its war against Hamas, including backing its right to defend itself and pledging billions in aid.

Netanyahu told U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a meeting on Friday that Israel “refuses a temporary cease-fire that does not include the release of our hostages. Israel will not enable the entry of fuel to Gaza and opposes sending money to the Strip,” The Times of Israel reported.

Omar’s comments come after fellow progressive Rep. Rashida, D-Mich., criticized Biden in a video posted to X on Friday, in which she accused the president of “support[ing] the genocide of the Palestinian people” for his administration’s support for Israel. A proposal to censure Tlaib over several statements critical of Israel failed to pass last week.

Source : Fox News

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For people flying coach, economy, or even basic economy, airlines have conditioned passengers to have very limited expectations. If you fly with a lower-tier ticket on the full-fare airlines including United, Delta, and American you may not get a seat assignment and certainly can’t expect extras like meals and snacks.

The big airlines have made their cheapest tickets essentially copies of Spirit (SAVE) – Get Free Report and Frontier Airlines which use an a la carte model. Basically, your ticket gets you on the plane and everything else costs extra.

That’s a model that works for the airlines because it allows them to advertise low fares. In theory, you could fly on a basic economy ticket without spending extra. That would mean boarding in the last group, getting your seat assignment at the gate, and not bringing a bag bigger than a purse.

In reality, people who buy tickets at the lowest price know they’re going to spend more. They get to pick and choose what services or products matter to them, but almost every person buying a super budget fare has to spend more than the advertised price.

People who pay for first-class seats, however, expect better. They don’t always get it and an American Airlines  (AAL) – Get Free Report policy says that they’re not actually entitled to it.

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American Airlines shares a policy you won’t like  

When a passenger books a first class ticket on a flight that’s three hours or longer, they expect not only a larger seat, but also meals, drinks, and snacks. It’s reasonable to think you will get handed a glass of champagne, or the drink of your choice, served in a real glass when you get onboard. 

Those are the expectations passengers have, but they’re not always the reality they experience on their flight. A passenger on American Airlines flight AA2676, a 5:22 p.m. departure from Newark to Phoenix, which is a 2,133 miles leaving at dinner time, learned that the hard way, according to View From the Wing.

After the flight, the passenger contacted the airline because no food was served. The airline, apologized, but made it clear that food was a courtesy and not actually something passengers pay for.

American Airlines sent the passenger the following note:

I know you were hungry and, I’m sorry to hear you’re disappointed that you didn’t receive a meal on your flight. Complimentary food service is offered in our First Class cabin on all itineraries system-wide that operate within traditional meal windows (breakfast, lunch, dinner) and have a fly time of more than 2 hours and 45 minutes.

Our ticket price reflects the cost of transportation. Any meals and snacks served on our flights are considered complimentary conveniences.

The flight did meet the stated requirements, but food was not served. The airline was apologetic and gave the passenger 15,000 bonus frequent flyer miles, but the more troubling issue is the idea that anything beyond transportation is considered a courtesy and not part of your ticket. 

“Airlines are, in fact, selling ‘carriage’ from Point A to Point B. Meals and beverages are, in fact, amenities. Always have been, always will be,” Jimbo posted in the comments section of the story.

American’s policy is not unique

American Airlines is not alone in making it clear in the fine print of its contract that a ticket only entitles a passenger to conveyance between points, not anything else.

“Any ancillary service or amenity, including but not limited to live television, Wi-Fi services, priority boarding, advance seat assignments, and meal service, are not guaranteed,” United Airlines shared in its Contract of Carriage. 

Delta Air Lines (DAL) – Get Free Report, however, does not cover what happens in the event it does not serve a meal to first-class passengers on qualifying flights. The company does lay out its first-class meal policy on its website.

“On flights between 900-2,299 miles and select departure times, you can enjoy a chef-curated breakfast, lunch or dinner along with a selection of snacks. For flights 2,300 miles and over, you’ll find a fresh meal service 24 hours a day and a selection of snacks,” the airline shared. 

Source : The Street

The post American Airlines Passengers Need to Know This Surprising Policy appeared first on Policy Print.

Gov. Maura Healey has unveiled what she’s touting as two “groundbreaking” new policies aimed at protecting the Massachusetts coastline.

The governor spoke about the policies during the keynote speech to a panel on ocean conservation at the Clinton Global Initiative’s meeting in New York City on Monday. She announced that, later this week, she’ll sign an executive order directing the state to create new biodiversity conservation goals for 2030, 2040 and 2050, as well as strategies for meeting them. Those targets, which will include coastal and marine habitats, will be “the strongest in the nation,” Healey vowed.

In addition, Healey said, she’ll sign another executive order that immediately bans the purchase of single-use water bottles by state agencies, a step she described as unprecedented among U.S. states.

“In our coastal state, we know climate change is our biggest threat,” Healey said. “We also believe that taking action is our greatest opportunity — to secure a safe, prosperous and sustainable future.”

Karissa Hand, a spokeswoman for the governor, said the state annually purchased about 100,000 single-use plastic water bottles. She added that while the ban will apply to state agencies including the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, it won’t affect individual school districts, which are controlled by municipalities.

Healey has positioned herself as a national climate leader since taking office in January, and she used her remarks to review previous steps she’s taken, including creating the nation’s first cabinet-level climate chief position — a role filled by former Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Melissa Hoffer — and moving to fill 25% of the state’s annual electricity needs via wind energy.

Local environmental activists were especially bullish on Healey’s announcement of new biodiversity targets Monday. 

Chris Powicki, who leads the Sierra Club of Massachusetts’ Cape Cod and Islands group, said the biodiversity push has “transformative potential.”

“That’s the most exciting part of today’s announcement,” Powicki said.”The idea that we can start to focus state policies and programs and investments and industries on protecting ecosystems is a really novel one, and one that has been a long time coming. And if the government actually succeeds in adopting it, I think there’s potential for really significant change.”

David O’Neill, the president of Mass Audubon, said he and his colleagues were “thrilled” by Monday’s announcement.

“The commitments that they are making, we hope. are hard and fast targets to protect land around our biodiversity hot spots around the commonwealth,” O’Neill said. “We’d love to see a commitment of resources to be able to protect more land, and to restore and manage land.”

Amy Boyd Rabin, the vice president of policy at the Environmental League of Massachusetts, said the push for new biodiversity targets will prove to be the more significant initiative. But she also praised the immediacy of the ban on water bottle procurement, noting that single-use plastics create new demand for fossil fuels, spread forever chemicals, and clog waterways.

Several Massachusetts municipalities have implemented similar bans, but prohibitions in some communities have been repealed after sharp debate.

“Doing things that can have immediate impact has a lot of significance, because the climate crisis and our ocean pollution crisis are not getting better with each passing day,” Boyd Rabin said.

Source : WGBH

The post Healey Unveils ‘Groundbreaking’ Policies on Biodiversity and Single-Use Plastic appeared first on Policy Print.

An increasing number of workers are seeking faith-based accommodations with respect to workplace diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, adding an extra wrinkle to an already tricky legal landscape.

Companies have adopted DEI programs to help weed out bias against historically marginalized workers and attract and retain an inclusive workforce, even where individual personnel decisions aren’t based on race or other protected categories.

But there’s been an upward trend in worker defiance against participating in workplace DEI programs or anti-bias training—some of which are mandated by state law—on the basis that they clash not just with their political views, but with their religious convictions, attorneys told Bloomberg Law.

These religious accommodation requests add to pending legal challenges over workplace inclusivity policies like the use of a co-worker’s preferred name and gender-affirming pronouns.

And they come at a time when diversity measures have become a political hot-button issue that’s attracted legal threats and lawsuits, especially following the US Supreme Court’s decision last June banning the use of race in university admissions.

“Companies are put in this very hard rock and a hard place right now,” said Sara H. Jodka of Dickinson Wright PLLC. “There’s been a number of these cases. Lots of them.”

This introduces another layer of headaches for employers, which now must walk a tightrope balancing workers’ sincerely held religious beliefs with the rights of members of other protected groups like racial minorities.

“The conversations on these issues are hard because we have protected rights going against each other,” Jodka said. “It’s like, ‘Whose rights get to win? Who gets to trump who?”

New Accommodation Standard

The issue of faith-based objections to DEI policies could get the Supreme Court’s attention, especially after the justices last June established a new standard making it more difficult for employers to reject workplace religious accommodations under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, attorneys said.

Groff v. DeJoy held that an employer cannot deny a religious accommodation unless it can show that the burden of granting that accommodation “would result in substantial increased costs” to the business.

“Pre-Groff, it was a very low burden” that employers had to meet to deny a religious accommodation, said Frost Brown Todd LLP partner Jonathan M. Werner.

Now, employers facing religious objections to their DEI policies must approach these issues with respect and sensitivity, he said.

The lower courts will have a chance to apply that new standard in the DEI context, attorneys said.

For example, a case against Compass Group USA pending in California federal court alleges that a human resources employee was fired for refusing, on religious grounds, to administer the company’s diversity program.

In a court filing, plaintiff Courtney Rogers said she has “sincerely held religious beliefs, based on deeply and sincerely held religious, moral, and ethical convictions, that people should not be discriminated against because of their race.”

Charles S. LiMandri, an attorney for the plaintiff, said in an email that Rogers is a Christian. His firm, LiMandri & Jonna LLP, is acting as special counsel for the Thomas More Society in the lawsuit.

There’s nothing inherently discriminatory about programs designed to boost workforce inclusion and diversity, as long as individual personnel decisions aren’t based on race, attorneys have told Bloomberg Law.

Compass Group’s program of offering mentorship and training only to women and people of color would, if the allegations are true, illegally exclude people based on their race, the attorneys said.

But some expressed skepticism about whether the plaintiff’s religious bias claim will hold up in this context.

The case “is complicated by the fact that the company decided to have DEI programs and opportunities that allegedly excluded White males. That is the source of the problem, not typical religious issues,” said Vito A. Gagliardi Jr., co-chair of Porzio, Bromberg & Newman PC’s employment and labor practice.

The plaintiff raised claims under federal and state anti-bias law, but the suit “looks like a clear whistleblower case otherwise,” Gagliardi said.

Interactive Process

Pending judicial rulings on misgendering in the workplace could give courts and employers a “roadmap” on how to handle religious objections to workplace DEI policies, Jodka said.

But in the meantime, employers should engage in an interactive process with the worker who raised the religious objection and review the policy at issue to determine what the employee could be excluded from, she said.

Employers should ensure their DEI plans “align with what they are legally required to do and what makes sense for the workplace,” she said.

Groff is seen as a victory for adherents of minority faiths like Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs, whose accommodation requests are more likely to face headwinds because their worship, grooming, and dress requirements aren’t always the norm and may conflict with corporate policies.

However, some attorneys said there may be an unintended consequence of expanding the role of religion in the workplace to the detriment of marginalized employees—who themselves may be religious.

“I think this is an area where courts are going to tread very carefully,” said Gary M. Gilbert, principal of Gilbert Employment Law PC.

“They’ve always given great deference to an employer’s judgment on how to conduct their business,” he said.

Source : Blomberg Law

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Meta is facing a review into its policies on manipulated content and artificial intelligence-created “deepfakes”, after the company’s moderators refused to remove a Facebook video that wrongfully described US president Joe Biden as a paedophile.

The Silicon Valley company’s Oversight Board, an independent Supreme Court-style body set up in 2020 and consisting of 20 journalists, academics and politicians, said on Tuesday it was opening a case to examine whether the social media giant’s guidelines on altered videos and images could “withstand current and future challenges”.

The investigation, the first of its kind into Meta’s “manipulated media” policies, has been prompted by an edited version of a video during the 2022 midterm elections in the US. In the original clip, Biden places an “I Voted” sticker on his adult granddaughter’s chest and kisses her on the cheek. In a Facebook post from May this year, a seven-second altered version of the clip loops the footage so it repeats the moment when Biden’s hand makes contact with her chest.

The accompanying caption calls Biden “a sick paedophile” and those who voted for him “mentally unwell”. The clip is still on the Facebook site. Although the Biden video was edited without the use of artificial intelligence, the board argues its review and rulings will also set a precedent for AI-generated and human-edited content. “It touches on the much broader issue of how manipulated media might impact elections in every corner of the world,” said Thomas Hughes, director of the Oversight Board administration. “Free speech is vitally important, it’s the cornerstone of democratic governance,” Hughes said. “But there are complex questions concerning what Meta’s human rights responsibilities should be regarding video content that has been altered to create a misleading impression of a public figure.” He added: “It’s important that we look at what challenges and best practices Meta should adopt when it comes to authenticating video content at scale.” The board’s investigation comes as AI-altered content, often described as deepfakes, is becoming increasingly sophisticated and widely used.

There are concerns that fake but realistic content of politicians, in particular, could influence voting in upcoming elections. The US goes to the polls in just over a year. The Biden case surfaced when a user reported the video to Meta, which did not remove the post and upheld its decision to leave it online following a Facebook appeals process. As of early September, the video had fewer than 30 views and had not been shared. The unidentified user then appealed against the decision to the oversight board.

Meta confirmed its decision to leave the content on the platform was correct. The Biden case adds to the board’s growing number of investigations into content moderation around elections and other civic events. The board this year overturned a decision from Meta to leave up a Facebook video that featured a Brazilian general, whom the board did not name, following elections potentially inciting street violence. Previous assessments have focused on the decision to block former US president Donald Trump from Facebook, as well as a video in which Cambodian prime minister Hun Sen threatens his political opponents with violence.

Once the board has completed its review, it can issue non-binding policy recommendations to Meta, which must respond within two months. The board has invited submissions from the public, which can be provided anonymously. In a post on Tuesday, Meta reiterated that the video was “merely edited to remove certain portions” and therefore not a deepfake caught by its manipulated media policies. “We will implement the board’s decision once it has finished deliberating, and will update this post accordingly,” it said, adding that the video also did not breach its hate speech or bullying policies.

Source : Financial Times

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