International
The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily allows emergency abortions to be done in Idaho
– The United States Supreme Court decided on Thursday to temporarily allow abortions in medical emergencies in the state of Idaho to protect the life and health of the mother.
The Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, formally dismissed an appeal on the strict prohibition of abortion in Idaho by 6 votes to 3, although the central issues of the case were not considered.
The document was published a day after it was briefly posted by mistake on the Supreme Court’s website and published by a news agency.
The decision re-establishes, therefore, a ruling of a lower court that temporarily allowed state hospitals to perform emergency abortions in hospitals if necessary to protect the mother’s health, while the case progresses in the lower courts.
Three of the court conservatives (President John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) sided with the three liberals (Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson) when they dismissed Idaho’s appeal.
Judges Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissaged.
The case focuses on whether a federal law aimed at guaranteeing emergency care for any patient – the Medical Treatment and Emergency Work Act (Emtala) – replaces the abortion ban in Idaho, one of the strictest in the country.
This has been the first time that the highest court has studied the state restrictions on abortion that came after the TS itself eliminated the Roe vs Wade doctrine that had protected the right to abortion at the national level.
This timid victory for abortion advocates is in addition to the victory achieved after the decision of the Supreme Court to reject a challenge to the approval of the abortion pill, the most widely used method to abort today in the United States.
On that occasion, again, the highest court did not rule on the merits of the case.
After the decision was heard, President Joe Biden recalled in a statement that it is only valid “while this case returns to the lower courts.”
“No woman should be denied attention, forced to wait until she is on the verge of death or forced to flee her state of origin just to receive the medical attention she needs. This should never happen in the United States,” but “it’s exactly what is happening in states across the country since the Supreme Court annulled Roe against Wade,” he said.
According to Biden, who tonight is facing the first debate of the White House race against Donald Trump, doctors “should be able to practice medicine” and “patients should be able to receive the care they need.”
“We will continue to fight for women’s right to make deeply personal health care decisions and we will continue to fight to restore Roe’s protections against Wade in federal law, for all women in all states of the country,” she said.
Since in June 2022 the U.S. supreme court, with a conservative majority, eliminated federal protection against abortion by annulling the ‘Roe vs. Wade’ ruling, dozens of states – Idaho among them – have carried out a frontal attack on women’s rights by implementing restrictive anti-abortion laws.
That same year, the Administration of the current US President, Joe Biden, sued the state of Idaho alleging that the restrictions on this procedure are regulated in part by federal law and cannot be interposed when it comes to saving the lives of pregnant women.
To defend this position, the 40-year-old Emtala Law was invoked, which obliges hospitals that receive federal funds to provide emergency medical care to anyone, also for reproductive reasons.
In the opinion of the vice president of reproductive rights and health of the National Center for Women’s Law, Gretchen Borchelt, “the Supreme Court does not deserve any credit for this decision.”
“This is the minimum that pregnant people and suppliers in Idaho deserve,” he said in a statement.
“Instead of issuing a decision that would unequivocally reaffirm that emergency abortion care is protected by a long-standing federal law, the Court ruled out this issue, opening the possibility that in the future more pregnant women will be denied care that saves their lives and health,” he added.
International
Deportation flight lands in Venezuela; government denies criminal gang links
A flight carrying 175 Venezuelan migrants deported from the United States arrived in Caracas on Sunday. This marks the third group to return since repatriation flights resumed a week ago, and among them is an alleged member of a criminal organization, according to Venezuelan authorities.
Unlike previous flights operated by the Venezuelan state airline Conviasa, this time, an aircraft from the U.S. airline Eastern landed at Maiquetía Airport, on the outskirts of Caracas, shortly after 2:00 p.m. with the deportees.
Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who welcomed the returnees at the airport, stated that the 175 repatriated individuals were coming back “after being subjected, like all Venezuelans, to persecution” and dismissed claims that they belonged to the criminal organization El Tren de Aragua.
However, Cabello confirmed that “for the first time in these flights we have been carrying out, someone of significance wanted by Venezuelan justice has arrived, and he is not from El Tren de Aragua.” Instead, he belongs to a gang operating in the state of Trujillo. The minister did not disclose the individual’s identity or provide details on where he would be taken.
International
Son of journalist José Rubén Zamora condemns father’s return to prison as “illegal”
The son of renowned journalist José Rubén Zamora Marroquín, José Carlos Zamora, has denounced as “illegal” the court order that sent his father back to a Guatemalan prison on March 3, after already spending 819 days behind barsover a highly irregular money laundering case.
“My father’s return to prison was based on an arbitrary and illegal ruling. It is also alarming that the judge who had granted him house arrest received threats,” José Carlos Zamora told EFE in an interview on Saturday.
The 67-year-old journalist was sent back to prison inside the Mariscal Zavala military barracks on March 3, when Judge Erick García upheld a Court of Appeals ruling that overturned the house arrest granted to him in October. Zamora had already spent 819 days in prison over an alleged money laundering case.
His son condemned the situation as “unacceptable”, stating that the judge handling the case “cannot do his job in accordance with the law due to threats against his life.”
International
Miyazaki’s style goes viral with AI but at what cost?
This week, you may have noticed that everything—from historical photos and classic movie scenes to internet memes and recent political moments—has been reimagined on social media as Studio Ghibli-style portraits. The trend quickly went viral thanks to ChatGPT and the latest update of OpenAI’s chatbot, released on Tuesday, March 25.
The newest addition to GPT-4o has allowed users to replicate the distinctive artistic style of the legendary Japanese filmmaker and Studio Ghibli co-founder Hayao Miyazaki (My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away). “Today is a great day on the internet,” one user declared while sharing popular memes in Ghibli format.
While the trend has captivated users worldwide, it has also highlighted ethical concerns about AI tools trained on copyrighted creative works—and what this means for the livelihoods of human artists.
Not that this concerns OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, which has actively encouraged the “Ghiblification”experiments. Its CEO, Sam Altman, even changed his profile picture on the social media platform X to a Ghibli-style portrait.
Miyazaki, now 84 years old, is known for his hand-drawn animation approach and whimsical storytelling. He has long expressed skepticism about AI’s role in animation. His past remarks on AI-generated animation have resurfaced and gone viral again, particularly when he once said he was “utterly disgusted” by an AI demonstration.
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