US Business

A stampede occurred at a Pride parade in the US city of New York on Sunday, with hundreds of people attempting to flee after mistaking the sound of fireworks for gunfire, police said.

“There were NO shots fired in Washington Square Park. After an investigation, it was determined that the sound was fireworks set off at the location,” the NYPD said in a tweet shortly after the incident. 

Police told AFP “there were no serious injuries” from the stampede.

Terrified people ran or walked briskly along a street adjacent to the square after the scare, videos on social media showed.

Tens of thousands of people attended Sunday’s LGBTQIA+ Pride parade, which wound its way through the streets of lower Manhattan under the blazing sun.

The atmosphere was largely festive, although the shadow of Friday’s US Supreme Court decision to abolish a constitutional right to abortion — leaving states to legislate on the matter themselves — loomed over proceedings.

New York’s Pride parade is the second-largest in the United States, after San Francisco, and Sunday’s gathering was the first time it had taken place since the Covid-19 pandemic began.

Organizers said the US Supreme Court decision on abortion was “devastating.”

“This dangerous decision puts millions in harm’s way, gives government control over our individual freedom to choose, and sets a disturbing precedent that puts many other constitutional rights and freedoms in jeopardy,” organizers said. 

Many rights groups fear that the verdict on abortion could be the beginning of a broader push by the Supreme Court, currently dominated by a conservative majority, to curtail other freedoms won in recent decades, such as rights to contraception or same-sex marriage. 

Elected leaders across the US political divide rallied Sunday for a long fight ahead on abortion — state by state and in Congress — with total bans in force or expected soon in half of the country.

Two days after the US Supreme Court scrapped half-century constitutional protections for the procedure, abortion rights defenders kept up their mobilization, with several hundred gathered outside the high court during a candlelight vigil in Washington Sunday.

Dozens of arrests and some instances of vandalism were reported during a weekend of mostly peaceful protests that turned disorderly in places — as the country grapples with a new level of division: between states where abortion is or will soon be illegal, and those that still allow it.

Conservative-led US state legislatures have moved swiftly, with at least eight imposing immediate bans on abortion — many with exceptions only if a woman’s life is in danger — and a similar number to follow suit within weeks.

In a first glimpse of the legal battles ahead, the nation’s largest abortion provider Planned Parenthood filed suit in Utah seeking to block the state’s ban.

And Democratic governors in Michigan and Wisconsin have stepped in to try to keep abortion legal in their Midwestern states.

Defending the ban now in effect in South Dakota, which makes no exception for victims of rape or incest, Republican Governor Kristi Noem called the Supreme Court’s ruling “wonderful news in the defense of life.”

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Noem also voiced support for legislation banning “telemedicine abortions” in which a doctor prescribes pills to end a pregnancy — set to become a key resource in many places where abortion is illegal.

Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas likewise argued that “forcing someone to carry a child to term” in order to save an unborn baby was an “appropriate” use of government power.

States should now focus on helping mothers and newborns by expanding services including adoption, he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

But the Republican also opposed calls to go further with a federal abortion ban — an ultimate goal of many on the religious right — or restrictions on contraception, which he said is “not going to be touched” in Arkansas.

Fears that the Supreme Court’s strong conservative majority — made possible by Donald Trump — will now seek to target other rights like same-sex marriage and contraception have fueled the nationwide mobilization since Friday.

– ‘Appalling’ –

President Joe Biden has condemned the Supreme Court’s ruling as a “tragic error” — but with power now resting with often anti-abortion state legislatures, he has also acknowledged his hands are largely tied.

The president’s main hope is for voters to turn out in defense of abortion rights in November’s midterm elections — and in the meantime, Biden’s Democrats have vowed to defend women’s reproductive rights every way they can.

In Wisconsin, where an 1849 law banning abortion except to save the life of the mother may go into effect, Governor Tony Evers vowed to offer clemency to any doctors who face prosecution, according to local media.

And Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer promised to “fight like hell,” saying a temporary injunction has been filed to keep abortion legal in her state.

Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez warned nightmare scenarios may soon come true — as women are forced to continue with unwanted pregnancies, travel long distances to states where abortion remains legal, or undergo clandestine abortions.

“Forcing women to carry pregnancies against their will will kill them. It will kill them,” the progressive lawmaker told NBC, urging Biden to explore opening health care clinics on federal lands in conservative states in order to help people access abortion services.

A CBS poll released Sunday showed that a solid majority — 59 percent — of Americans and 67 percent of women disapproved of the court’s ruling.

While thousands of people rallied peacefully through the weekend — most of them in protest, but many others celebrating — there were isolated incidents of violence. Police fired tear gas on protesters in Arizona and a pickup truck drove through a group of protesters in Iowa.

In the Virginia city of Lynchburg, police were investigating a case of vandalism Saturday at an anti-abortion pregnancy center — which was spray-painted with graffiti and had its windows smashed.

And in Colorado, police were probing a suspected arson attack Saturday at a similar anti-abortion center in the town of Longmont, which was painted with graffiti reading: “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you.”

A long-delayed UN conference on how to restore the faltering health of global oceans kicks off in Lisbon Monday, with thousands of policymakers, experts and advocates on the case.

Humanity needs healthy oceans. They generate 50 percent of the oxygen we breathe and provide essential protein and nutrients to billions of people every day.

Covering more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, the seven seas have also softened the impact of climate change for life on land. 

But at a terrible cost.

Absorbing around a quarter of CO2 pollution — even as emissions increased by half over the last 60 years — has turned sea water acidic, threatening aquatic food chains and the ocean’s capacity to pull down carbon. 

And soaking up more than 90 percent of the excess heat from global warming has spawned massive marine heatwaves that are killing off precious coral reefs and expanding dead zones bereft of oxygen.

“We have only begun to understand the extent to which climate change is going to wreak havoc on ocean health,” said Charlotte de Fontaubert, the World Bank’s global lead for the blue economy.

Making things worse is an unending torrent of pollution, including a garbage truck’s worth of plastic every minute, according the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). 

On current trends, yearly plastic waste will nearly triple to one billion tonnes by 2060, according to a recent OECD report.

– Wild fish stocks –

Microplastics — found inside Arctic ice and fish in the ocean’s deepest trenches — are estimated to kill more than a million seabirds and over 100,000 marine mammals each year.

Solutions on the table range from recycling to global caps on plastic production. 

Global fisheries will also be under the spotlight during the five-day UN Ocean Conference, originally slated for April 2020 and jointly hosted by Portugal and Kenya. 

“At least one-third of wild fish stocks are overfished and less than 10 percent of the ocean is protected,” Kathryn Matthews, chief scientist for US-based NGO Oceana, told AFP.

“Destructive and illegal fishing vessels operate with impunity in many coastal waters and on the high seas.”

One culprit is nearly $35 billion in subsidies. Baby steps taken last week by the World Trade Organization (WTO) to reduce handouts to industry will hardly make a dent, experts said.

The conference will also see a push for a moratorium on deep-sea mining of rare metals needed for a boom electric vehicle battery construction.

Scientists say poorly understood seabed ecosystems are fragile and could take decades or longer to heal once disrupted.

Another major focus will be “blue food”, the new watchword for ensuring that marine harvests from all sources are sustainable and socially responsible.

– Protected areas –

Rising aquaculture yields — from salmon and tuna to shellfish and algae — are on track to overtake wild marine harvests in decline since the 1990s, with each producing roughly 100 million tonnes per year.

If properly managed, “wild ocean fish can provide a climate-friendly, micro-nutrient protein source that can feed one billion people a healthy seafood meal every day — forever,” said Matthews.

The Lisbon meet will see ministers and even a few heads of state, including French President Emmanuel Macron, but is not a formal negotiating session.

But participants will push for a strong oceans agenda at two critical summits later this year: the COP27 UN climate talks in November, hosted by Egypt, followed by the long-delayed COP15 biodiversity negotiations, recently moved from China to Montreal.

Oceans are already at the heart of a draft biodiversity treaty tasked with halting what many scientists fear is the first “mass extinction” event in 65 million years.

Nearly 100 nations support a cornerstone provision that would designate 30 percent of the planet’s land and ocean as protected areas.

For climate change, the focus will be on carbon sequestration: boosting the ocean’s capacity to soak up CO2, whether by enhancing natural sinks such as mangroves or through geoengineering schemes.

At the same time, scientists warn, a drastic reduction of greenhouse gases is needed to restore ocean health.

Abortion bans enacted across America will be especially painful for women in the US military, one more hurdle they have to face in a man’s world where sexual assault and unwanted pregnancies occur more often than in the rest of society.

After Friday’s tectonic decision by the US Supreme Court overturning constitutional protections for abortion rights, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed to review Pentagon policies to “ensure we continue to provide seamless access to reproductive health care as permitted by federal law.”

However, Austin stopped short of announcing any new measures to help the more than 230,000 women serving in the US military, including at large military bases in conservative states such as Texas or Kentucky, which either already have or will soon enact sweeping abortion bans.

Under a 1976 law, military medics can perform abortions only in cases of proven rape or incest, or if the mother’s life is in danger.

That means female service members stationed in states that curtail abortion will have to travel out of state and find a civilian clinic that performs the procedure, often taking time off work to do so.

Additional difficulties servicewomen will face are numerous: having to cover medical and travel expenses on modest military salaries, taking leaves of absence that may hurt their careers and having to disclose sexual activity that is discouraged in the military.

“I can see that being potentially a little bit more challenging for military women,” said Julie, a military nurse who spoke to AFP on the condition her last name not be used.

“I fear that women are going to access unsafe practices, so that they don’t have to disclose why they need four or five days off… and do have a procedure done, if they need to go to a different state two states away, three states away,” she said.

– ‘Dark cloud’ –

Women face additional sexual and reproductive risks in the army.

While they make up only 17 percent of the military, servicewomen are generally young and of childbearing age (75 percent of new recruits are under 22). And nearly one-quarter have been victims of military sexual trauma, according to a 2018 study by the journal Trauma, Violence & Abuse.

Yet even in cases of a rape, women are reluctant to turn to a military doctor, who would be required to report the assault and order an investigation.

Most instances of sexual abuse in the military are committed by a superior officer and women may fear reprisals if they seek medical care.

Access to family planning is another obstacle: Sexual activity is discouraged in the ranks, especially during deployment, so women may be reluctant to turn to military medics for the types of contraceptives that require a doctor’s prescription in the United States.

According to a study published in 2020 by the journal Military Medicine, women, especially those serving in the navy, are typically reprimanded for sexual activity during deployments, including missions that often last months on end.

Such reprimands stay on a woman’s record and may hurt her career.

“While they may not be officially punished, there is a dark cloud above anyone who becomes pregnant in deployment,” the journal quoted a navy reservist as saying. “They would not generally receive transfer awards or good evaluation marks.”

Democratic lawmakers in the House of Representatives have introduced a bill that would expand access to abortion within the military health care system.

Representative Jackie Speier of California, who chairs a House subcommittee on military personnel, said women in the military experience unwanted pregnancy at rates 22 percent greater than civilians.

“Our brave service members deserve the same access to basic health care as the people they are fighting to protect,” Speier said when introducing the bill earlier this month.

Democratic lawmakers also recently petitioned Austin to facilitate abortions for servicewomen by reimbursing travel costs as well as expanding insurance coverage for contraceptive products.

Baz Luhrmann’s rock’n’roll biopic “Elvis” hip-swiveled to the top of the box office on its opening weekend in North America, taking in an estimated $30.5 million in a rare tie with “Top Gun: Maverick,” industry watcher Exhibitor Relations reported Sunday. 

The nearly three-hour long extravaganza by director Luhrmann, known for glitzy films like “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Great Gatsby,” brought in nearly double the average for the musical biography genre, said analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research.

Despite being a “risky proposition,” in part for casting relative newcomer Austin Butler as Elvis Presley alongside Tom Hanks as his exploitative manager, Colonel Tom Parker, the film has impressed audiences and critics, Gross said.

“This is the Baz Luhrmann show, a music, dance and sex appeal spectacular — it’s a hit,” he said.

“Elvis” was locked in a dead heat with “Top Gun: Maverick” — the crowd-pleasing sequel to the original 1986 film that once again features Tom Cruise as cocky Navy test pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.

It also earned an estimated $30.5 million in its fifth weekend of release.

It is now the highest grossing film of the year worldwide, breaking the $1 billion mark with nearly $522 million in ticket sales in North America and $484 million overseas.

In third place was “Jurassic World Dominion,” Universal’s sixth installment in the “Jurassic Park” franchise, at $26.4 million. 

The latest dinosaur frightfest stars Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard alongside franchise originals Sam Neill, Laura Dern and Jeff Goldblum.

Fourth spot went to horror film “The Black Phone” starring Ethan Hawke as a serial killer, which earned $23.4 million on its opening weekend. 

“Lightyear,” Pixar and Disney’s latest computer-animated offering from the “Toy Story” empire, took the fifth position with $17.7 million in its second week. 

The spinoff from the wildly successful animation series stars Chris Evans and has taken $88.8 million domestically and $63 million overseas, after a lackluster opening.

Rounding out the top 10 were: 

“Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ($1.7 million)

“Jugjugg Jeeyo” ($604,000)

“Everything Everywhere All At Once” ($533,346)

“The Bob’s Burgers Movie” ($513,000)

“The Bad Guys” ($440,000)