📌 Transgender First, Rebel Bombings, More

The Supreme Court this week wades into transgender rights from an attorney with knowledge that runs deep.

Chase Strangio will be the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the nation’s highest court, representing families who say Tennessee’s ban on health care for transgender minors leaves their children terrified about the future.

Strangio is an American Civil Liberties Union attorney whose legal career has included representing former Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, challenging a ban on transgender people serving in the military and helping win an LGBTQ worker-discrimination case at the Supreme Court.

Strangio has argued against US states banning gender-affirming health care for minors. Tennessee will argue before the Supreme Court that treatments like puberty blockers and hormones carry risks, and its law protects young people from deciding on treatments prematurely.

“Tennessee, like many other states, acted to ensure that minors do not receive these treatments until they can fully understand the lifelong consequences or until the science is developed to the point that Tennessee might take a different view of their efficacy,” state attorneys wrote in court filings.

The Biden administration supports the challenge to Tennessee’s law, but the federal government’s position is expected to change after Trump takes office in January. Strangio said he will nevertheless keep advocating for transgender youth to access health care that wasn’t available when he was young.

At least 25 people were killed in Syria in air strikes carried out by the Syrian government and Russia, a source said.

Russian and Syrian jets struck the rebel-held city of Idlib in northern Syria on Sunday, military sources said, as President Bashar al-Assad vowed to crush insurgents who had swept into the city of Aleppo.

Residents said one attack hit a crowded residential area in the center of Idlib, the largest city in a rebel enclave near the Turkish border where around four million people live in makeshift tents and dwellings.

The total death toll from Syrian and Russian strikes since Nov. 27 climbed to 56, including 20 children, according to the White Helmets Syrian opposition-run rescue service.

The insurgents are a coalition of Turkey-backed mainstream secular armed groups along with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, an Islamist group that has been designated a terrorist outfit by the US, Russia, Turkey and other states.

In a joint statement, the US, France, Germany, and Britain urged "de-escalation by all parties and protecting civilians and infrastructure to prevent further displacement and disruption of humanitarian access.”

Belgian sex workers have gained the right to sick days, maternity pay and pension rights under the first law of its kind in the world.

The law went into force on Sunday and ensures sex workers have employment contracts and legal protection. It is intended to end a grey zone created in 2022 when sex work was decriminalized in Belgium but without conferring protection on sex workers or labor rights such as unemployment benefits or health insurance.

Under the law, sex workers have the right to refuse sexual partners or to perform specific acts and can stop an act at any time. Nor can they be sacked for these refusals.

Employers must be of “good character” and have a business residence in Belgium. They must also ensure their premises have panic buttons, clean linen, showers and condoms.

The Belgian Union of Sex Workers described the law as “a huge step forward, ending legal discrimination against sex workers.” Some feminist organizations have criticized the law. “To assume that prostitution exists and that we must protect workers is to accept this sexist violence and not to fight it,” the head of the Council of Francophone Women of Belgium said.

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) is due to begin hearings in a landmark climate change case today.

After years of lobbying by island nations, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ last year for an opinion on “the obligations of states in respect of climate change.” Lawyers and representatives from more than 100 countries and organizations will make submissions before the ICJ in The Hague.

Vanuatu will be the first to present arguments in the hearings, which begin a week after Pacific and other developing nations denounced as woefully inadequate an agreement reached at the Cop29 summit for countries to provide $300bn in annual climate finance by 2035 to help poorer nations cope with climate change.

This year, Papua New Guinea withdrew from high-level talks at Cop29, describing the gatherings as a “total waste of time.” Dylan Kava, the regional facilitator at the Pacific Island Climate Action Network, described the climate finance plan delivered at Cop29 as an “empty gesture” that failed to address the extent of climate harm's impact on Pacific nations.

“We represent communities where every fraction of a degree of warming translates to real losses: homes swallowed by the sea, crops destroyed by salinity, and cultures at risk of extinction,” Kava said. “Pacific nations are left grappling with escalating costs of adaptation and recovery, often relying on meager resources.”

Australia’s PM would "engage" with X-owner Elon Musk over his criticism of its ban on under-16s joining social media.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese hailed the Australian parliament's Thursday passage of landmark legislation requiring social media firms to take "reasonable steps" to prevent young teens from having accounts. But he said he would “engage” with Musk if he wished to discuss the legislation.

The law, which will come into effect after 12 months, gives few details of how it will be enforced, including how sites like Facebook, Instagram and X will verify users' ages. Social media firms that fail to comply with the law face fines of up to Aus$50 million (US$32.5 million) for “systemic breaches.”

Musk posted on X that the law “seems like a backdoor way to control access to the internet by all Australians.” In October, his platform lost a legal bid to avoid a US$417,000 fine leveled by Australia's online watchdog. The watchdog has accused X of failing to stamp out harmful posts.

Albanese said he was “determined" to implement the legislation. “I've met parents who have had to bury their children as a result of the impact that social media has had as a result of bullying, and we need to do something about it.”

The UN children's charity UNICEF Australia warned this week that the law was no “silver bullet” against online harm and could push kids into "covert and unregulated" spaces online.

Georgian president Salome Zourabichvili said she will not stand down because its parliament is invalid. The South Caucasus country was thrown into crisis on Thursday when the prime minister of the Georgian Dream party, Irakli Kobakhidze, said it was halting EU accession talks for the next four years over what it called “blackmail” of Georgia by the bloc, abruptly reversing a long-standing national goal. EU membership is overwhelmingly popular in Georgia, and the country's constitution enshrines the aim of joining the bloc. However, the sudden freezing of accession talks has triggered large protests in the mountainous country of 3.7 million people. In an address on Saturday, Zourabichvili, a pro-EU critic of Georgian Dream whose powers are mostly ceremonial, said parliament had no right to elect her successor when her term ends in December and that she would stay in her post. Zourabichvili and other government critics said an October 26 election, in which Georgian Dream won almost 54% of the vote, was rigged and that the parliament it elected was illegitimate. The party is dominated by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire ex-prime minister who adopted increasingly anti-western positions in the run-up to the October election. The ruling party and Georgia’s electoral commission said the poll was free and fair. Western countries have called for an investigation.

There will be no prizes for honey in 2025 in the World Beekeeping Awards because of concerns about fraud in the supply chain.

Apimondia — the International Federation of Beekeepers’ Associations — said the change was "necessitated by the inability to have honey fully tested for adulteration.”

This decision comes after previous years’ events proved “adequate testing was impossible," and recent investigations showed the sticky situation importers found themselves in.

In March 2023, the European Commission found that 46% of sampled products were suspected to be fraudulent and likely bulked with cheaper sugar syrups.

Jeff Pettis, the federation’s president, said it was “continuing to fight for improvements to the testing” and wanted the public to know that “local honey is much less likely to be adulterated.”