It's news you can use from places with different views! (Don't misuse or abuse you yahoos.)
This isn't super-important for anyone here, but I found it notable that she is so young (27) and, thanks to the wages of colonization, she was nevertheless blessed with a Bible. That balancing act is always interesting to me.
EDIT: The wikipedia page on the Māori King movement (Kīngitanga) is here, if you'd like to learn more.
If anyone has a NYT memberhip, please give me a gift link or post the text, because on headline alone I am super-curious about this story:
Pope Finds Fervent Fans Among Indonesia’s Transgender Community
For many trans women living on the fringes of the nation’s society, the Catholic Church is a haven, and Pope Francis a personal hero.
Looks like Shinjiro Koizumi, son of former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has officially declared his candidacy to become LDP leader and Japan’s next prime minister.
Good lord, the q's you get at these press conferences.
"Koizumi-san, everyone is worried that if with your low intellect, if you attend the G-7 as prime minister you will embarrass the country," asks one freelancer journalist. "Even so, will still try to become prime minister?"
To be fair iIt's a question that should be asked a lot more often than it is 
Yeah, can we send some American journos to Japanese journalism school please, like STAT?
China ends most international adoptions, leaving many children, families in limbo
The Chinese government plans to mostly end its international adoption program — a devastating blow for hundreds of families from the U.S. and around the world who had been hoping to adopt from the country.
China's Foreign Ministry formally announced the decision Thursday, adding the the only exception will be for families who are adopting the children or stepchildren of blood relatives in China.
It ends a three-decade program that began as a result of China's strict one-child policy, which forced many families to put their children up for adoption. Many couples chose to put girls up for adoption, favoring male children. Over the past decade, the government has eased its limitations and allowed married couples to have up to three children.
But since China formally opened its doors for international adoptions in 1992, more than 160,000 children have been adopted by families abroad— half of whom were adopted by families in the U.S. Many of the adoptees from China have been children with disabilities.
The U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to NPR's request for comment. But according to The Associated Press, State is seeking clarification on what this policy change will mean for families with pending applications; Chinese officials told U.S. diplomats in a phone call that they “will not continue to process cases at any stage” other than those covered by the exception clause.
Cherish Children Adoption International said they were heartbroken by the decision, both for the families who have been in the adoption process and the children who were matched with families abroad. As of 2019, there were 343,000 orphans in China, according to Chinese government officials.
"We have been spending our day grieving with our waiting China families on the phone and will continue to do so in the coming weeks and months," Cherish Children Adoption International said in a statement.
Touristy places have always been tired of asshole tourists, the biggest difference is that it's being reported on a lot more now. Kind of like how every few years shark attacks become big news and send people into a panic despite there being no more attacks than usual.
I suspect part of the reason for all the reports is that we had a lull in tourism due to covid, so people got a summer where they see what it could be like without tourists everywhere. Now that covid is "over" tourists are back with a vengeance. Sprinkle some entitled idiot influencers acting like entitled idiot influencers on top and you get a lot of people being more vocal about their hatred of tourists than usual.
Mexico’s Senate approves a contentious judicial overhaul after protesters storm the chamber
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Mexico’s Senate voted early Wednesday to overhaul the country’s judiciary, clearing the biggest hurdle for a controversial constitutional revision that will make all judges stand for election, a change that critics fear will politicize the judicial branch and threaten Mexico’s democracy.
The approval came in two votes after hundreds of protesters pushed their way into the Senate on Tuesday, interrupting the session after it appeared that Morena, the ruling party of outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had lined up the necessary votes to pass the proposal.
Judicial employees and law students had protested for weeks, saying the plan, under which all judges would be elected, could threaten judicial independence and undermine the system of checks and balances.
The legislation sailed through the lower chamber, where Morena and its allies hold a supermajority, last week. Approval by the Senate posed the biggest obstacle and required defections from opposition parties.
One came Tuesday from the conservative opposition National Action Party (PAN) after a lawmaker who had previously spoken out against the overhaul took leave for medical reasons and his father, a former governor, suggested he would vote for the proposal. The lawmaker ended up returning to his seat to give the proposal the last vote it needed.
Both of the Senate votes were 86-41. The chamber erupted into cheers and chants of “Yes, we could!”
The legislation must now be ratified by the legislatures of at least 17 of Mexico’s 32 states. The governing party is believed to have the necessary support after major gains in recent elections. Oaxaca’s legislature became the first to ratify it just hours after the Senate’s approval.
López Obrador, a populist long averse to independent regulatory bodies who has ignored courts and attacked judges, says the plan would crack down on corruption by making it easier to punish judges. Critics say it would handicap the judiciary, stack courts with judges favoring the president’s party, allow anyone with a law degree to become a judge and even make it easier for politicians and criminals to influence courts.
It has spooked investors and prompted U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar to call it a “risk” to democracy and an economic threat, after which López Obrador said relations with the U.S. Embassy were put “on pause.”
Experts said the overhaul is almost set in stone, and that it would be very difficult for courts or any other body to stop it from moving forward.
The plan could be challenged in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights because it may violate international treaties where Mexico commits to having an independent and impartial judiciary. But the process would be slow and likely receive a backlash, said Georgina de la Fuente, an academic member of the Observatory of Political Reforms in Latin America.
“Any order coming from abroad will be manipulated in the public discourse as interference or violation of national sovereignty,” she said.
That same argument of violating international treaties could be taken to Mexico’s Supreme Court, said Laurence Patin, director of the Mexican legal NGO Foundation for Justice, but said it would be complicated to annul a constitutional reform with that argument. Another possibility would be to appeal to irregularities in the process if the changes are confirmed.
President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office Oct. 1, congratulated lawmakers on passing the overhaul.
The election of judges “will strengthen the delivery of justice in our country,” Sheinbaum wrote on the social media platform X. “The regime of corruption and privileges each day is being left farther in the past and a true democracy and true rule of law are being built.”
López Obrador acknowledged Wednesday that many are against the plan, but said “it’s incredibly important to put an end to corruption and impunity. “We’re going to make a lot of progress when the people can freely elect judges, magistrates and ministers,” he said.
Some experts and observers, however, have suggested that the overhaul could have the opposite effect, and allow corrupt individuals and criminals to have more sway over the justice system.
On Tuesday evening, just hours after the governing party appeared to have wrangled the votes it needed, protesters with pipes and chains broke into the Senate chamber. At least one person fainted.
The protesters said lawmakers were not listening to their demands.
Nation With Lowest Birthrate Is Rocked by Soaring Sales of Dog Strollers
(WSJ Paywall)
In 2023, sales of strollers for dogs outpaced sales of strollers for babies, the Wall Street Journal reports, citing data from Korean e-commerce platform Gmarket. It looks as if the trend will continue in 2024 as well. There’s been a turning of the tables since the website conducted the study in 2021, when baby strollers stood at 67% and puppy prams at 33%,per the Korea Times.
Some politicians have taken umbrage at these alternative bundles of joy. “What I worry about is young people not loving each other,” said South Korea labor minister Kim Moon-soo in 2023, according to the WSJ. “Instead, they love their dogs and carry them around. They don’t get married, and they don’t have children.”
Given the long-term economic ramifications of an aging and shrinking population, the also childless and dog-owning South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol declared the phenomenon a “demographic national emergency.”
“The birth strike is women’s revenge on a society that puts impossible burdens on us and doesn’t respect us,” Jiny Kim, an office worker in her thirties, told the New York Times. Indeed, there are larger societal issues at play to which politicians seemingly turn a blind eye.
Low birth rates have become a conservative talking point, not just in South Korea. The United States, too, faces a steadily declining birth rate, which Elon Musk has taken an interest in along with Republican Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance. Vance belittled Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats, calling them “childless cat ladies.”
But politicians might as well be shaking their fists at the sky, as long as they continue to shirk the actual root of falling birth rates. Experts have diagnosed the issue as the fallout from the skyrocketing cost of raising children, bleak labor markets, and the sexism rooted in these environments that leads to the motherhood penalty. South Korean women cited financial and cultural barriers as reasons for not having children, explaining to the BBC that one major fear is career consequences for taking time off from work.
Meanwhile, pets simply cost less than children, especially in countries like the U.S. and South Korea where the price tag for private or higher education is exorbitant. The pet industry, therefore, booms as young adults are barred from affording a family.
"THEY'RE PARENTING THE DOGS!"
"Please say my name."
*bow* Yes, Haizenbuguru-sama." *double bow*
Widespread adoption fraud separated generations of Korean children from their families
South Korea’s government, Western countries and adoption agencies worked in tandem to supply some 200,000 Korean children to parents overseas, despite years of evidence they were being procured through questionable or downright unscrupulous means, an investigation led by The Associated Press found. Those children grew up and searched for their roots — and some realized they are not who they were told.Their stories have sparked a reckoning that is rocking the international adoption industry, which was built in South Korea and spread around the world. European countries have launched investigations and halted international adoption. The South Korean government has accepted a fact-finding commission under pressure from adoptees, and hundreds have submitted their cases for review.
The AP investigation, done in collaboration with Frontline (PBS), was based on interviews with more than 80 adoptees in the U.S., Australia and six European countries, along with parents, agency employees, humanitarian workers and government officials. It also drew on more than 100 information requests and thousands of pages of documents — including many never publicly seen before and some the AP got declassified — from courts, archives, government files and adoption papers.
In dozens of cases AP examined with Frontline, it found: Children were kidnapped off the streets and sent abroad. Parents claim they were told their newborns were dead or too sick to survive, only to have them shipped away. Documents were fabricated to give children identities that belonged to somebody else, leading adoptees to anguished reunions with supposed parents — to later discover they were not related at all.
The agencies and governments each played a part in keeping the baby pipeline pumping. Adoption agencies created a competitive market for children and paid hospitals to supply them, documents show. The South Korean government not only knew of fraudulent practices but designed laws to speed up the exportation of children it deemed undesirable. Western governments turned a blind eye, sometimes even pressuring South Korea for children, while promoting the narrative that they were saving orphans with no other options.
And now they have a full on population collapse in progress
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