NASA has called off the scheduled Tuesday launch of its historic uncrewed mission to the moon due to a tropical storm that is forecast to strengthen as it approaches Florida.

After two previously canceled launch attempts, NASA is weighing returning the Artemis 1 mission rocket to its assembly site under the threat of extreme weather.

“NASA is forgoing a launch opportunity… and preparing for rollback (from the launchpad), while continuing to watch the weather forecast associated with Tropical Storm Ian,” it said Saturday.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Ian is due to “rapidly intensify” over the weekend as it moves toward Florida, home to the Kennedy Space Center, from which the rocket is set to launch.

Currently south of Jamaica, the storm is expected to approach Florida’s west coast “at or near major hurricane strength” early next week, threatening storm surge, flooding and hurricane-force winds across much of the state, the NHC said.

On the launchpad, the giant orange and white Space Launch System (SLS) rocket can withstand wind gusts of up to 137 kilometers (85 miles) per hour. But if it has to be sheltered, the current launch window, which runs until October 4, will be missed.

A decision on whether to roll back the rocket to the Vehicle Assembly Building is due to be taken by the Artemis 1 team Sunday, “to allow for additional data gathering and analysis,” with the operation, if necessary, starting late Sunday or Monday morning, NASA said.

Jim Free, associate administrator for the agency’s exploration systems development directorate, said on Twitter that a “step-wise approach” to the decision to roll back preserves “a launch opportunity if conditions improve,” indicating a launch date before October 5 was still on the table.

If not, the next launch window will run from October 17 to 31, with one possibility of takeoff per day, except from October 24-26 and 28.

The Artemis 1 space mission hopes to test the SLS as well as the unmanned Orion capsule that sits atop it, in preparation for future Moon-bound journeys with humans aboard.

Artemis is named after the twin sister of the Greek god Apollo, after whom the first moon missions were named.

Unlike the Apollo missions, which sent only white men to the moon between 1969 and 1972, Artemis missions will see the first person of color and the first woman step foot on the lunar surface.

A successful Artemis 1 mission would come as a huge relief to the U.S. space agency, after years of delays and cost overruns.  

But another setback would be a blow to NASA, after two previous launch attempts were scrapped when the rocket experienced technical glitches including a fuel leak.

The cost of the Artemis program is estimated to reach $93 billion by 2025, with its first four missions clocking in at a whopping $4.1 billion each, according to a government audit.
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Seated low in her canoe sliding through a rice bed on this vast lake, Kendra Haugen used one wooden stick to bend the stalks and another to knock the rice off, so gently the stalks sprung right back up.

On a mid-September morning, no breeze ruffled the eagle feather gifted by her grandmother that Haugen wore on a baseball cap as she tried her hand at wild rice harvesting — a sacred process for her Ojibwe people.

“A lot of reservations are struggling to keep rice beds, so it’s really important to keep these as pristine as we can. … It renews our rice beds for the future,” the 23-year-old college student said.

Wild rice, or manoomin (good seed) in Ojibwe, is sacred to Indigenous peoples in the Great Lakes region, because it’s part of their creation story — and because for centuries it staved off starvation during harsh winters.

“In our origin story, we were told to go where food grew on water,” said Elaine Fleming, a Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe elder whose manoomin class at Leech Lake Tribal College went harvesting last week. “It’s our sacred food.”

But changing climate, invasive species and pollution are threatening the plant even as its cultivated sibling rises in popularity nationwide as an exceptionally nutritious food, though often priced out of reach of urban Indigenous communities.

Those threats make it crucial to teach young band members to harvest wild rice respecting both rituals and the environment. That will help wild rice remain available as an essential element for ceremonies, but also as a much-needed income generator for the Leech Lake reservation, where nearly 40% of Native residents live in poverty.

The basic instructions for newbies reflect that dual reality — respect the rice by not breaking the stems, and if you lose balance, jump out to avoid tipping the canoe with its precious cargo.

Fleming gave everyone tobacco from a zip-close bag. Before scattering it on the calm water and setting out, the youths gathered around another elder praying in Ojibwe — to introduce the group to the natural elements around them, explain why it needed their help, ask for safe passage on the water and give thanks.

“Any time you take something from the earth, you want to thank the earth for what she’s given us,” said Kelsey Burns, a student and first-time ricer.

That reciprocity between humans and nature is essential to Ojibwe spirituality. In their stories, the Creator, before bringing to the earth Anishinaabe, the first Indigenous person, gathered all animals to ask how they could help.

“Plants were listening and chimed in and said, ‘We have gifts too, so Anishinaabe can have a good life,'” Fleming explained. “Rice said, ‘We’ll feed Anishinaabe.'”

In two hours on the water, the pairs of polers, who stood steering with 20-foot poles, and knockers, who rained rice into the canoe until it formed a thick, green-brown carpet, gathered about 35 pounds. Experienced ricers can harvest a quarter ton a day.

This year, they can get $6 per pound of rice, a high price because the two-week harvest is particularly meager, said Ryan White. A 44-year-old single dad, he takes his two boys and a nephew ricing to help cover the bills and for the kids to buy video games.

“You learn the essence of hard work out here,” he said while knocking rice on a recent afternoon, with duct tape over his trousers’ hem and shoes so not a grain would be wasted.

“Cleaning the boat real good,” White explained later as he swiped the rice into a sack. “Because of stories we heard of old times, when … even a handful like this meant a meal or two for the kids, and at the end of winter it actually might save your family.”

“That manoomin is our brother, that saved us as a people many different ways,” said Dave Bismarck, who was loading about 200 pounds of just-harvested rice at a nearby landing. “Ricing to me is real spiritual. There’s a lot who have gone home already, and when I’m ricing, the harder I work … the closer I am to them.”

But the beds are “continually shrinking,” said White, who’s been ricing for three decades. And that endangers wild rice’s spiritual and economic gifts.

While some natural cycling is normal, bad years for wild rice are becoming more frequent, said Ann Geisen, a wildlife lake specialist with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

“It seems to be tied to climate change,” she added. “Bigger storm events when it’s uprooted and wiped out, we seem to have more of these. A big bounce (in water levels) in the spring can wipe out an entire lake.”

A warming climate can also damage the plant, whose seeds need to be close to freezing on shallow lake bottoms for months to germinate well, and brings destructive invasive species and fungi to Minnesota, Wisconsin and parts of Canada, wild rice’s only natural habitats.

“It’s going to completely ravish natural stands,” said Jenny Kimball, a professor of agronomy and plant genetics at the University of Minnesota. She works on both conservation and developing more resistant breeds for cultivated wild rice growers, an industry she estimates adds about $58 million to the state economy and has far outpaced natural production for decades.

Most Ojibwe bands want to save natural stands, however, and several recently filed lawsuits fighting water contamination — including one dismissed this year in White Earth tribal court that named manoomin as the lead plaintiff in a novel “rights of nature” approach.

The suit accused the state of failing to protect water where wild rice grows by allowing the pumping of billions of gallons of groundwater from an oil pipeline project.

In July, two other northern Minnesota tribes sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over its approval of state changes to water quality standards that the tribes allege would increase pollution and damage wild rice.

Leech Lake students and faculty discussed industrial pollution and controversial pipelines as they gathered outside the college for a feast celebrating their first day harvesting.

Before cooking the rice, they had to parch it, stirring it in a giant iron kettle for more than an hour; jiggle the husks loose by dancing over it as it lay in a hide-covered hole in the ground; and finally winnow it in birchbark baskets.

“We understand our responsibility, as nation, to this land. We’re supposed to think seven generations to the future,” Fleming said.

Burns, the student, was thinking of her son, who’s 5.

“I like learning everything that I can about our culture,” she said. “I didn’t learn much when I was younger, so I felt a part of me was missing. I want to keep teaching everything I learn.”
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Two of the world’s most persistent conflicts punctuated debate at the United Nations on Friday, as the annual gathering of world leaders deviated from the dominating issue of the war in Ukraine. 

Addressing hostilities thousands of miles apart and sharing little more than their decades of longevity, the Palestinian and Pakistani leaders nonetheless delivered similar messages, accusing a neighbor of brutality and urging world leaders to do more. 

“Our confidence in achieving a peace based on justice and international law is waning,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said. “Do you want to kill what remains of hope in our souls?” 

Stark assessment

With Israel’s military occupation of the West Bank in its 55th year and no substantial peace talks in 13 years, it was a stark if perhaps unsurprisingly pessimistic assessment. Israel’s prime minister backed a two-state solution to the conflict in his own speech a day earlier, but there is almost no prospect for one in the near term. 

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly after the Palestinian leader, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif of Pakistan similarly addressed a generations-old fight, accusing India of a “relentless campaign of repression” in Jammu and Kashmir. Those mountainous lands have been claimed by both sides since British rule of the subcontinent ended 75 years ago and India and Pakistan were born. 

Sharif urged world leaders and the U.N. to “play their rightful role” in resolving the fight and said India “must take credible steps,” too. 

India’s external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, might provide a rebuttal to Sharif when he gets his turn at the rostrum on Saturday. India has called the region an integral part of its nation. 

Also Friday, Iraqi caretaker Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi spoke of the “political impasse” gripping his country for nearly a year and preventing the formation of a new government. He called for “serious and transparent dialogue” among the various factions. 

And Bangladesh’s prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, repeated complaints that 1 million Rohingya refugees in crowded camps in her country are a threat to its security. 

“The situation can potentially fuel radicalization,” she said of those who fled a harsh crackdown by Myanmar’s military. 

Hasina has said that repatriation is the only solution to the crisis, but that Bangladesh would not force the refugees to go back to Myanmar, where members of the Muslim minority face extensive discrimination. 

Abbas’ frustration

Throughout the first three days and 104 leaders’ speeches, many criticized how Russia had managed to block U.N. action on Ukraine because of the veto it wields as a permanent member of the Security Council. Abbas shifted the attention to the power of Israel and its allies, which he said meant no matter how many hundreds of resolutions pass, none would be implemented. 

“Do you know who is protecting Israel from being held accountable? The United Nations,” he said in a speech more than three times the 15-minute limit leaders are asked to respect. 

Israel, in turn, has complained that it has been treated unfairly by the world body and has been held to a different standard from other member states, as when it comes to complaints about human rights violations. Its ambassador to the U.N., Joshua Lavine, issued a statement calling Abbas’ speech “a lie-filled rant.” 

Other refrains resounded in U.N. speeches, with repeated mentions of climate change, economic crises and inequality. The UNGA gathering is a rare moment for many leaders to grab the spotlight on a global stage dominated by the biggest, richest and most militarily mighty countries and issue calls for action. 

“The obligation of each leader before history is not to overlook failings and shortcomings in favor of wishful thinking or flattery,” President Nicos Anastasiades of Cyprus said Friday in his final General Assembly speech as leader of the Mediterranean island nation. 
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In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June to end the constitutional right to abortion, many Americans are wondering: Is abortion legal in my state?

In many parts of the country, the answer is often not clear-cut. In overturning Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that established a constitutional right to abortion, the Supreme Court left it to each of the 50 states to decide whether to allow the procedure.

The result has been an ever-shifting patchwork of state laws and policies.

While Democratic-led states have rushed to enhance protections for abortion access, many conservative-leaning states have moved in the opposite direction, seeking to ban or severely restrict the procedure.

With more states considering new bans even as abortion providers challenge the restrictions, so muddied has the terrain for abortion access become that even in places where the procedure is legal, many opt to seek out-of-state care.

“What it’s plunged our country into is a state of uncertainty and chaos,” said Alaap Shah, a health care attorney at the Epstein Becker Green law firm. “We have yet to see how things will really play out with respect to enforcement of the laws and how it will really affect the various states and the citizens of those states. It’s a work in progress.”

Trigger laws

Before the Supreme Court ruling known as Dobbs, 13 Republican-controlled states had enacted so-called trigger laws — abortion bans that would go into effect once the decision was announced.

Three months out, eight of the trigger laws are in effect while most of the rest are facing court challenges, according to Elizabeth Nash, principal policy associate at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group.

“It wasn’t like a light switch going on or off,” Nash said. “It has been that some of them went into effect immediately, like in Missouri, for example. But others, like the trigger ban in Tennessee, Idaho and Texas, went into effect at the end of August.”

In all, a dozen states — in the South and Midwest — have banned abortions, another two states have implemented six-week bans, while two other states — Florida and North Carolina — have 16-week and 20-week bans, respectively, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

With more states considering bans, “it does look like we will get closer to half the country living under an abortion ban in the next several months,” Nash said.

The bans have had far-reaching effects, forcing pregnant women seeking  abortions to travel to states where the procedure is legal or opt to bring  unwanted pregnancies to term, advocates say.

“We’re looking at 17.2 million women of reproductive age that now live in a state without abortion access,” Nash said.

Legal challenges

But abortion providers and rights advocates have been pressing for greater access, filing at least 15 major lawsuits to block the bans, many in states with a constitutional right to privacy or equality, according to Nash.

The state courts have responded in a variety of ways. In about half the cases, the courts have blocked laws banning abortion while in several others, judges have allowed the bans to remain in effect while legal challenges continue. All that has made for a deeply fragmented abortion access landscape.

Shah said, “We have to look state by state to see: What does the law say? Is someone enforcing that law? Is that enforcement up for debate because there’s another case challenging that enforcement?”

Take South Carolina. The Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe came down on a Friday and by Monday a 2021 state law banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy went into effect.

The law, known as the Fetal Heartbeat and Protection from Abortion Act, remained in force for a full seven weeks before the state Supreme Court, responding to a lawsuit filed by abortion providers, issued an injunction against its enforcement pending the outcome of the case.

As a result, a preexisting law allowing abortion before week 20 of pregnancy went back into effect.

But that wasn’t the end of the abortion debate in South Carolina. To muddy the waters further, Republican state lawmakers then launched a bid to enact a total ban on abortion. The effort failed after several GOP lawmakers refused to support the measure.

“I think it’s safe to say that the average South Carolinian is thoroughly confused about what is going on with abortion access in South Carolina now,” said Ann Warner, chief executive officer of Women’s Rights and Empowerment Network.

But lingering uncertainty over the legality of abortion is likely driving others to seek out-of-state care, Warner said.

That’s because “they don’t know or they’re concerned about even hostility towards getting the care that they need here in South Carolina, given everything that’s going on,” Warner said.

Law enforcement

It’s not just the ever-changing state laws that have added to mass confusion over the legal status of abortion. Adding to the uncertainty are mixed signals coming from law enforcement authorities, according to Shah.

In Texas, local prosecutors have split over enforcing the state’s new six-week ban. In Dallas County, the state’s second largest, the district attorney has vowed not to prosecute women seeking an abortion. But in two neighboring counties, local prosecutors say they will treat a violation of the ban like any other felony.

In Wisconsin, a 19th-century ban on abortion went into effect in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. But the state’s Democratic attorney general, Josh Kaul, says he won’t enforce the law while the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, is pushing for its repeal.

Nevertheless, all abortion clinics in the state have shut down, forcing women to travel to neighboring Illinois to end a pregnancy.

“People are shying away from engaging in those activities, even if there’s no real prosecutorial risk, and it’s because people are unsure about what the scope of these laws are and how enforcement will happen,” Shah said.

In both Wisconsin and Texas, the new abortion bans are facing legal challenges.

‘Stabilizing treatment’

Anti-abortion activists, who long advocated for the repeal of Roe, see the legal challenges as a threat to their long-term goal of banishing the procedure.

“These court cases are very serious,” said Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League. The court battles could go on for years, potentially ending up before the Supreme Court.

One potential Supreme Court case could arise out of a pair of lawsuits recently filed by the Justice Department challenging abortion bans in Idaho and Texas under a decades-old federal law known as the Emergency Treatment and Active Labor Act.

The law says that hospitals receiving federal funds must provide “necessary stabilizing treatment” to patients arriving in an emergency condition. That means if a doctor determines that the “necessary stabilizing treatment” is an abortion, state law can’t prohibit it, according to the Justice Department.

Federal judges in the two states have issued split rulings in response. While a federal judge in Idaho has issued an injunction against the state’s total abortion ban when it conflicts with the federal statute, in Texas a federal judge sided with the state.

If appellate courts issue similarly different rulings, the Supreme Court will likely get involved, Scheidler said.

“I’m sure these battles will continue for years,” Scheidler said. “If, let’s say, Planned Parenthood were successful in suing a state and got that state Supreme Court to limit their law, they’re going to try it again in another state.”
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Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud vowed this week that his government will eradicate the threat of al-Shabab and other terrorist groups in his country.  

“We are now confident that with enhanced public support, our government will eliminate terrorism from Somalia,” Mohamud said in his address Sept. 22, 2022, to the U.N. General Assembly in New York.  

Somali army forces backed by local militias have retaken dozens of villages from the al-Shabab militant group in recent weeks, mostly in the central Hiran and Galgudud regions. 

The U.S. military, which has backed the Somali government with airstrikes against Islamist militants for a decade, said Wednesday it had killed 27 fighters from al-Shabab in an airstrike in the Hiran region.   

Mohamud said that the Somali government will take a leading role in the fight against terrorism and will continue to work with all its partners, including the African Union Transition Mission in Somalia, but added that Somalia needs international support to implement its plans.   

“We are fully committed to doing the heavy lifting to secure our future,” Mohamud said.  

“In Somalia we have a wise saying and it is: ‘One finger cannot wash the whole face.’ If we work together sincerely, collaboratively as a community of nations — no challenge, no matter how big it is — is insurmountable.”  

According to the president, terrorism in Somalia is a “persistent and complex challenge” that exacerbates all other crises, such as food insecurity, the displacement of people from their homes, and climate change.  

The U.N. has warned that because of the persistent drought, hundreds of thousands in Somalia are already in danger of starving and that shocking levels of malnutrition are anticipated among children under the age of five.  

The president called on Somalia’s partners to do everything possible to help avert a looming famine, which he said also threatens the wider Horn of Africa region.   

“We urge all our partners to heed our call and work with us to provide immediate support and relief to the most affected communities,” he said.  

Climate change  

In order to spearhead the urgent process of tackling the catastrophic effects of environmental deterioration, Mohamud said Somalia has for the first time formed a new ministry of environment and climate change.  

“Somalia is caught between floods and droughts annually, owing to climate change and poor infrastructure. Our people, who have a long tradition of living harmoniously with nature and barely contributing to poisonous emissions warming the Earth, are the ones who are paying with their lives today,” said the president.  

“We know that climate change is real, and we are living with the evidence of its painful and destructive reality today. We also know that Somalia, and the rest of the world, cannot develop sustainably without the global climate crisis being jointly addressed quickly and effectively.”  

 
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