Mississippi River water levels are plummeting to an all-time low this week at Memphis in the wake of a sweltering summer and ongoing drought – setting a record for the second consecutive year, new data shows.
The low levels have disrupted barge traffic and have allowed saltwater to move up the Mississippi River in Louisiana, threatening the drinking water for thousands of people.
The water level at Memphis fell to a record-low elevation of minus 11.5 feet on Wednesday afternoon, according to data from the National Weather Service. The preliminary record must be verified by the US Army Corp of Engineers, NWS Memphis noted on social media, and water levels could continue to drop in the coming days.
This year’s record is even lower than last. Near the end of last October, the Mississippi had dropped to minus 10.81 feet.
Several other records were set this weekend along the Mississippi and its major tributary, the Ohio River: Cairo, Illinois, was at a level of 4.5 feet, while New Madrid and Caruthersville in Missouri reached minus 6.4 feet and minus 2.6 feet, respectively.
Since at least mid-September, every water level gauge along a nearly 400-mile stretch of the Mississippi from the Ohio River to Jackson, Mississippi, has been at or below the low-water threshold, according data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and US Geological Survey.
The low water has again sparked concerns for barge traffic during the critical harvest period, when staple Midwestern crops including soybeans, corn and wheat are transported down the river.
The historic lows are a product of an exceptional drought – the US drought monitor’s worst level – that is plaguing parts of the South and Midwest. It has spread across parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi throughout the summer and was recently included as the 24th weather disaster so far this year that has cost at least $1 billion, according to NOAA.
Multiple days of heavy rain this week across the upper basin of the Mississippi River and lighter rain over the Ohio River Valley will cause the central and lower Mississippi River to rise “a few feet,” Jeff Graschel, a hydrologist with the Lower Mississippi River Forecast Center, told CNN.
“It certainly will not end the low water conditions that we have right now,” Graschel said. “What you need is several rain events like what we’re seeing this week over many weeks to really start to get the conditions to change on the lower part of the Mississippi River.”
Water from recent rain will take roughly a month to course through Midwest waterways into the Mississippi and then snake its way down to where the river meets the Gulf. Graschel said current projections show the river rising in Cairo, Illinois, by the end of October and in Memphis in early November.
Graschel estimated more substantial relief wouldn’t come until November and said “real recovery in high water levels really goes from December through about May.”
In Louisiana, the low flow has been allowing saltwater to creep up the Mississippi River this summer, threatening to infiltrate the water treatment systems for New Orleans and surrounding cities and towns.
The Army Corps of Engineers has been extending an underwater levee in the river to slow the advance of the saltwater, while parish officials upstream work to build pipeline systems that can draw freshwater into their intakes.
Army Corps officials previously said it would take 10 inches of rain over the entire Mississippi River Valley to push the saltwater back into the Gulf.
The rise from rains this week will be enough to push places like Memphis out of historic lows, but not enough to get the river’s flow back to average or to push the saltwater wedge all the way back into the Gulf of Mexico, hydrologists told CNN.
Rain from a separate storm system this week over southern Louisiana also won’t make much of a difference for river levels or the saltwater infecting water supplies there.
Better-than-forecast river flows in September slowed the saltwater’s upstream trek, state officials said last week, and the Army Corps now expects the saltwater to reach the city’s smaller water treatment intakes by late November. The large water treatment intakes around New Orleans – including the Carrollton intake, which serves most of the city – might not see saltwater inundation through the end of November, if at all.
Israel has formed an emergency government and war management cabinet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz jointly announced Wednesday, in the wake of Hamas’ surprise attacks on border communities that killed at least 1,200 people and injured thousands more.
Gantz, a former defense minister, will join Netanyahu and current defense minister Yoav Gallant in a “war management cabinet.”
The government will not pass any laws or make any decisions that do not concern the conduct of the war, the announcement said.
Israel has stepped up its offensive in Gaza following Hamas’ October 7 onslaught, when armed militants poured over the heavily-fortified border into Israel, raiding homes, rampaging through farms and communities and taking as many as 150 hostages back to Gaza.
Since Israel began airstrikes on the Palestinian enclave Saturday at least 1,055 people have been killed in Gaza, including hundreds of children, women, and entire families, according to the Palestinian health ministry. It said a further 5,184 have been injured.
Israel has ordered a “complete siege” on the enclave, including halting supplies of electricity, food, water and fuel. On Wednesday, Gaza’s only power station stopped working after running out of fuel, the head of the Gaza power authority Galal Ismail told CNN.
People are still able to use power generators, Ismail said, but with a blockade on all sides of the border, the fuel needed for the generators to work is running out.
The Palestinian health ministry warned that hospitals are set to run out of fuel on Thursday, leading to “catastrophic” conditions.
In Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told CNN that militants carried out a “massacre” in which women, children, toddlers and elderly were “brutally butchered in an ISIS way of action.”
Hamas has denied that its militants beheaded children and attacked women during its surprise assault. Spokesman and senior official Izzat al-Risheq said there was “no evidence to support such claims and lies.”
Less than 20 kilometers (12 miles) away, the farming community Be’eri was among the worst-hit, with more than 100 bodies recovered and eyewitnesses describing assailants going door to door, breaking into homes and executing civilians.
Inretaliation forthe atrocities, Israeli jets have been pounding Gaza – the densely-inhabited coastal strip that Hamas controls – with hundreds of airstrikes, reducing homes and neighborhoods to rubble and trapping residents, with many cut off from food and electricity.
The IDF has also bolstered troops and tanks along the border as speculation of a possible Israeli ground incursion into Gaza grows. An IDF spokesperson said Wednesday that it has massed 300,000 reservists near the border.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said he has “released all restraints” for the IDF in their fight against Hamas, saying the response will permanently change Gaza.
“They will regret this moment – Gaza will never return to what it was,” Gallant said.
That has deepened fears that Palestinian civilian casualties will continue to rise in the days ahead as Israel responds to the worst attack on its territory in decades.
Dozens of Israeli fighter jets struck more than 70 targets in the Daraja Tuffah area of Gaza Wednesday, where the IDF claimed “a large number of terror attacks against Israel are directed.” The IDF also said it had struck Hamas naval targets in Gaza early Wednesday, which it claimed were used to carry out attacks on the Israeli coastline.
The Palestinian Ministry of Interior Affairs said residential areas in the eastern part of Jabalia and the Qizan al-Najjar region of Khan Yunis came under intense airstrikes, with attacks targeting civilians’ homes and roads, resulting in “direct injuries among citizens,” the ministry said.
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday pledged that the US would make sure Israel has the tools needed to defend itself and is surging military assistance to it.
Part of that includes ammunition and interceptors to replenish the Iron Dome anti-missile system. The first supply of US weapons since Hamas’ attack arrived in Israel late Tuesday evening, according to the IDF.
At least 22 US citizens have died in Israel, a State Department spokesperson said Wednesday. Biden also confirmed that American citizens are among those held hostage by Hamas. He called the attacks by Hamas “pure, unadulterated evil” that bring “to mind the worst rampages of ISIS.”
Civilians in Gaza are facing a deepening humanitarian crisis as Israel ramps up its bombardment for a fifth day and the “complete siege” ordered by Israeli Defense Minister on Monday takes effect.
The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said imposition of sieges that endanger civilians by depriving them of essential goods “is prohibited under international humanitarian law.”
“These risks (are) seriously compounding the already dire human rights and humanitarian situation in Gaza, including the capacity of medical facilities to operate, especially in light of the increasing number of injured people,” spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said Tuesday.
See the devastation in Gaza after Israeli strikes
Cutting off the water supply to Gaza “affects over 610,000 people and will result in severe shortage of drinking water,” UN OCHA’s Jens Laerke added.
The strikes have already damaged Gaza’s medical infrastructure, say Palestinian officials, and have forced more than 263,000 Palestinians to flee their homes, the United Nations said.
Destruction of infrastructure and streets by Israeli bombs is hampering efforts by medical teams to reach victims, according to the UN.
Officials with the UN’s Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) said 11 of its employees have died as a result of airstrikes on Gaza and at least 14 of their facilities there have been damaged directly or indirectly.
The agency has been unable to bring any aid into Gaza since Saturday, according to UNRWA director of communications Juliette Touma.
Israel controls the movement of residents from Gaza into Israel through two crossings, Erez and Kerem Shalom, both of which have been shut.
The only border crossing between Gaza and Egypt was struck by Israeli warplanes Tuesday, the spokesperson for the Palestinian Interior Ministry Eyad al-Bozom said.
The tightly controlled Rafah crossing is the only one available to Gazans looking to flee.
The IDF said it struck the Rafah area Tuesday, including an underground tunnel used for “smuggling weapons and equipment.”
Several countries are evacuating their citizens from Israel as the conflict threatens to escalate. The US State Department said it has “been in conversation” with various airlines to “encourage them to consider resuming travel in and out of Israel” so that people can leave.
Mexico’s foreign ministry said 135 citizens were evacuated on a military flight from Israel on Tuesday evening. Germany said it will evacuate citizens from Israel on Thursday and Friday, and the French government is in contact with Air France to organize a flight Thursday to evacuate French citizens, according to the foreign minister.
There are also rising fears of the Lebanon-based Shia militant faction Hezbollah entering the conflict, potentially opening a second front in the war. The IDF said Tuesday that it has added tens of thousands of additional troops to its northern border with Lebanon in anticipation of an attack by the Iran-backed group.
Three Israeli soldiers were killed in an attack on the border with Lebanon on Monday, according to the IDF.
In a briefing on Wednesday, IDF spokesperson Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said that Hezbollah in southern Lebanon fired anti-tank missiles and rockets at Israeli positions and soldiers. “There has already been an attempt by Islamic jihad terrorists to infiltrate into Israel – that attempt was successfully thwarted by the IDF, sadly at the cost of the life of a senior officer and two additional soldiers,” he said.
On Wednesday, Hezbollah claimed that many Israeli soldiers had been killed and injured in an attack on an Israeli site on the Lebanon-Israeli border. The IDF did not immediately respond when asked by CNN about the casualties.
In pictures: The deadly clashes in Israel and Gaza
Rockets were also launched from Syria into Israeli territory, the IDF said Tuesday, adding that they landed in open areas.
Families in Israel are left with little information about their missing loved ones, as Hamas warned it will start executing hostages if strikes on Gaza continue.
Israel’s Ambassador to the US Michael Herzog on Tuesday strongly urged the international community to pressure Hamas to unconditionally release people taken as hostages.
He told CNN that they are still in the process of forming a complete understanding of the number of hostages, their identities, and their status. Herzog said he was not sure if any hostages had been killed.
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that the US has special operators who “are going to help” the Israeli military “with intelligence and planning” for potential operations regarding hostages taken by Hamas.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan made their pitches during the Tuesday meeting ahead of a conference vote for speaker on Wednesday, but GOP lawmakers made clear that the conference remains divided, and there’s a heavy dose of skepticism among Republicans that they will quickly coalesce around either candidate to be the next speaker.
Jordan told members he wants a long-term, stopgap spending bill that would cut current spending levels by 1% in order to give them more time to pass individual spending bills, according to multiple lawmakers in the room.
Rep. Don Bacon, a key moderate Republican, said he is leaning toward Scalise but was impressed by how “pragmatic” Jordan’s pitch was.
“Because of his past, I think we expected to hear the Freedom Caucus message – it was not that. It was very pragmatic,” Bacon said. “And I thought convincing, that he would do his best to represent everybody and I thought something like – they could work with the Democrats in the Senate, he has got to work with a Democratic president. So I thought he did a great job.”
Scalise, however, didn’t go as far in suggesting the need for a stopgap bill, but told members he wants to pass all 12 appropriation bills and force negotiations with the Senate.
“I think we’re voting not just for a speaker, but for the speaker’s plan to get us through the next 75 days. The appropriations cycle. And the biggest difference between Scalise and Jordan is Jordan has a plan to avoid a shutdown. And it wasn’t clear to me that Scalise does,” said Rep. Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who is backing Jordan.
Both Jordan and Scalise committed to supporting one another if they become the nominee, lawmakers said. And both committed to continuing the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry, according to lawmakers in the room.
Scalise told reporters leaving Tuesday’s forum that Republicans had a “great forum” and he was building a coalition in the conference, though he did not answer whether he thought he had the votes to secure the nomination.
“People want to see us get back on track. We need a Congress that’s working,” Scalise said. “Tomorrow, we need to get Congress back to work. Speaker Scalise on day one – we will, number one, be passing a resolution to express our strong support for Israel – Chairman (Mike) McCaul’s bill, which has over 200 cosponsors.”
But Republicans Tuesday evening expressed skepticism that they would be able to quickly elect a new speaker.
“In case you haven’t noticed, we’re a pretty a divided conference right now,” said Rep. Kelly Armstrong, a North Dakota Republican. “So I think this might take a little time to sort out.”
GOP Rep. Kat Cammack of Florida said, “No one is close to 217,” which is what will be required on the floor to win the speakership.
During the forum Tuesday, Cammack pressed Scalise and Jordan on what “promises” they made to members in their bid to become speaker, according to a source familiar with the meeting. It’s a pertinent question given that some of McCarthy’s January side deals to become speaker became a factor in his detractors’ decision to oust him.
Jordan’s response, according to a source familiar, was that the only promise he made was to “fight for you all.” Scalise, however, didn’t answer the question, the source said.
Vulnerable Republican Rep. David Valadao of California would not say which candidate for speaker he would support, but warned that it will be difficult for either Scalise or Jordan to get the needed votes.
“I think both candidates are going to struggle to get to 218,” he said.
McCarthy said Tuesday that he will support whichever candidate for speaker gets the Republican GOP conference’s support, after urging his supporters in the conference not to nominate him for speaker.
Asked who he would vote for while standing outside the party’s candidate forum, McCarthy told reporters, “Whoever comes out of there.”
After leaving open the idea Monday he could be renominated for speaker, McCarthy said Tuesday that he told his allies in the room not to nominate him. “I know a lot of them want to nominate me. I told them, ‘Please do not nominate me,’ ” he said. “There are two people running in there. I’m not one of them.”
McCarthy said that he only expected two members to be nominated, and that how they deal with the eight Republicans who voted to oust him will determine whether House Republicans are able to govern going forward.
“It’s more than selecting a speaker. If this conference continues to allow 4% of the conference to partner with Democrats when 96% of the conference wants something else, they will never lead,” McCarthy said.
Asked whether they could vote on a speaker this week, he said, “I expect there to be a vote and elect a new speaker this week.”
Some allies to Scalise saw McCarthy’s maneuvering heading into the speaker’s vote this week as designed to hobble Scalise’s bid for speaker, which has heightened tension between their camps.
McCarthy and Scalise have maintained a cordial working relationship over the years but have long been seen as potential rivals. Scalise considered challenging McCarthy for leader in 2018, and this year, McCarthy tapped his trusted allies Reps. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina and Garret Graves of Louisiana – not his top leadership deputies – to help him with his January speaker’s bid, the debt ceiling crisis and government funding deadline.
McHenry is now serving as interim speaker.
On Monday night, the conference gathered for the first time since last week’s historic vote to oust McCarthy, but the two-hour session left them no closer toward coalescing around a speaker nominee and a path forward as they debated potential rules changes and grapple with the raw feelings lingering after the unprecedented events of last week.
While the impetus on Republicans to pick a new speaker escalated after the terrorist attack in Israel over the weekend, the House GOP conference remains bitterly divided over how it should proceed – and who can get the 217 votes needed to lead it.
Republicans are preparing for the prospect that neither Scalise nor Jordan can get the votes to be elected speaker, leaving the conference with no clear path forward. They’re also divided over the rules that the conference will use to elect a new speaker – while hoping to avoid the embarrassment of the 15-vote marathon that played out for McCarthy in January.
This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.
Kari Lake, an ally of former President Donald Trump and one of the Republican Party’s most prominent election deniers, on Tuesday launched her 2024 bid for Senate from Arizona.
Lake is vying for the seat held by independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who shed her Democratic Party affiliation in December and has not yet said whether she will seek a second term. Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego is also a candidate in what could become an unpredictable, three-way race.
“I am not going to retreat. I’m gonna stand on top of this hill with every single one of you, and I know you’re by my side as I formally announce my candidacy for the United States Senate,” Lake told a crowd of supporters.
Midway through her speech, Lake tossed to a pre-taped video of Trump, who said she had his endorsement.
A former Arizona television journalist, Lake has built her political image – and her 2022 campaign for governor – around her support for Trump’s false claims about extensive election fraud in the 2020 presidential election. She has become a fixture in the former president’s orbit since losing her gubernatorial bid.
She has also claimed, without evidence, that she won her election last fall against Democrat Katie Hobbs, the state’s current governor. Lake has lost a series of legal battles seeking to overturn the result of that contest, which she lost by more than 17,000 votes.
Lake had already filed paperwork to enter the Senate race before officially announcing her campaign Tuesday in Scottsdale. Last week, she met with several GOP senators in Washington, a source familiar with the meetings said, including Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.
“We have had productive conversations with Kari Lake and her team. She is a talented campaigner with an impressive ability to fire up the grassroots. We have a clear path to victory with two Democrats on the ballot in Arizona,” Montana Sen. Steve Daines, the chairman of the Senate GOP campaign arm, said in a statement.
Arizona has long been a Republican stronghold, but President Joe Biden narrowly carried the state in 2020, and Democrats have won the last three US Senate elections there. The state GOP is also reeling after losing key statewide races in November, including the key offices of governor and secretary of state.
Election deniers like Lake who have parroted Trump’s election lies have largely taken command of the GOP in Arizona, with several Trump-aligned candidates defeating more establishment contenders in recent primaries before losing general elections. Republicans, though, still control most statewide executive offices and the state legislature.
Sinema, who continues to caucus with Senate Democrats, has faced criticism from her onetime party colleagues over her refusal to support elements of Biden’s agenda.
Gallego, a Phoenix-area congressman and retired Marine who served in Iraq, launched his campaign in January with a video announcement: “The rich and the powerful, they don’t need more advocates. It’s the people that are still trying to decide between groceries and utilities that need a fighter for them.”
Gallego recently reported raising $3 million over a three-month fundraising period that ended September 30, finishing the third quarter with more than $5 million in the bank. Sinema’s campaign said it closed the quarter with $10.8 million on hand – but that was roughly the same as her cash balance at the end of June.
Lake will not have the Senate GOP primary to herself. Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, another promoter of Trump’s election lies, entered the Republican contest in April.
The Israeli military is going on the offense against Hamas with a force “like never before,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed Monday, more than 48 hours after a devastating and surprising attack that has left at least 900 people dead in Israel. source
The remaining debris from the Titan submersible that suffered a catastrophic implosion en route to the wreckage of the Titanic in June has been recovered – including presumed human remains, the US Coast Guard said Tuesday.
All five passengers on board the Titan, a 23,000-pound vessel roughly the size of a minivan, were killed shortly after the vessel lost contact with its mother ship about 1 hour and 45 minutes into its dive toward the Titanic.
The evidence recovered from the North Atlantic Ocean seafloor last week by marine safety engineers from the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation was “successfully transferred to a US port for cataloging and analysis,” a release from the Coast Guard says.
“Additional presumed human remains were carefully recovered from within Titan’s debris and transported for analysis by US medical professionals,” the release says.
The salvage mission was a follow-up to initial recovery operations after the submersible imploded, according to the Coast Guard.
The Marine Board of Investigation said it is coordinating with the National Transportation Safety Board and other international investigative agencies to schedule a “joint evidence review” of the recovered debris, which will determine the next steps for forensic testing.
The board will continue analyzing evidence and interviewing witnesses “ahead of a public hearing regarding this tragedy,” it said.
The Titan’s failure to resurface on June 18 sparked a massive, international search that captured the world’s attention for days. On June 22, officials confirmed the Titan had suffered a “catastrophic implosion.”
The five passengers were identified as OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush; businessman Hamish Harding; diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet; billionaire Shahzada Dawood; and Dawood’s 19-year-old son, Suleman Dawood.
A Navy sailor pleaded guilty Tuesday to sending sensitive US military information to a Chinese intelligence officer, the Justice Department announced.
Petty Officer Wenheng Zhao, 26, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty to conspiring with the Chinese officer and receiving a bribe. Zhao worked at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme, California.
“The intelligence services of the People’s Republic of China actively target clearance holders across the military, seeking to entice them with money to provide sensitive government information,” Matthew Olsen, assistant attorney general for national security, said in a statement.
Zhao’s guilty plea comes months after he and another sailor were indicted and arrested for allegedly sending sensitive information to Chinese intelligence operatives.
According to the August indictment against him, Zhao allegedly sent information that included operational plans for a major military exercise in the Indo-Pacific to a Chinese intelligence officer posing as a maritime economic researcher between August 2021 and May 2023.
Prosecutors also said that Zhao, who was responsible for installing, repairing and servicing electrical equipment on US military installations, took photos of computer screens that displayed “operational orders of military training exercises” and provided them to the “researcher.” The indictment also accused Zhao of transmitting photos of blueprints and diagrams of a US radar system stationed on a military base in Okinawa, Japan.
In exchange for sending the information, Zhao received approximately $15,000 from the officer, prosecutors said.
Zhao, who has been in custody since his arrest, faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. His sentencing is set for January 8.
Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner have come to a interim custody agreement that will see their two daughters splitting their time between two countries.
“After a productive and successful mediation, we have agreed that the children will spend time equally in loving homes in both the US and the UK,” Jonas and Turner said in a joint statement sent to CNN on Tuesday. “We look forward to being great co-parents.”
Weeks later, Turner sued the Jonas Brothers singer, seeking the return of their two children to London, citing the “wrongful retention” of their children “in New York City from their habitual residence of England.”
The “Game of Thrones” star argued in her petition that their children, born in 2020 and 2022, “are both fully involved and integrated in all aspects of daily and cultural life” in England.
According to the petition, the couple anticipated purchasing a new home in the UK, for which they’d been in contract negotiations and planned to close on this December.
Jonas’s representative told CNN in a statement at the time that “Joe is seeking shared parenting with the kids so that they are raised by both their mother and father, and is of course also okay with the kids being raised both in the US and the UK.”
Turner and Jonas last month reached a different short-term agreement to keep their children in the states, according to court documents filed in New York and obtained by CNN.
More recently, Turner has been photographed spending time with Taylor Swift, while Jonas has been on tour with The Jonas Brothers.
Australian TV anchor Cheng Lei has been released by China and returned home to her family, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced Wednesday, more than three years after she was detained on opaque espionage charges.
“We are pleased to confirm that Australian citizen Ms Cheng Lei has arrived safely home in Australia and has been reunited with her family,” Albanese said in a statement.
“Her return will be warmly welcomed not just by her family and friends but by all Australians,” the statement said.
Cheng, a former business anchor for China’s state broadcaster CGTN and mother of two, was accused of illegally supplying state secrets overseas, a charge that carries a possible sentence of between five years to life in prison.
Cheng had been on her way to work on the morning of August 13, 2020, when she was taken by China’s Ministry of State Security, according to her partner Nick Coyle.
Beijing did not reveal details of the allegations against Cheng throughout her three years of detention, and the Chinese court delayed handing down verdict multiple times.
Her release follows the completion of legal process in China, according to the Australian statement.
Shortly afterwards, China’s Ministry of State Security said in a statement that Cheng was deported Wednesday after completing her sentence.
The ministry alleged that Cheng was approached by a “foreign organization” in May 2020 and – in violation of the confidentiality agreement she signed with her employer – provided state secrets she gathered from her work to the organization through her mobile phone.
It claimed Cheng had pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 35 months in prison.
At a regular news briefing later Wednesday, China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Chinese judicial authorities heard Cheng’s case and handed down a verdict in accordance with the law and had “fully guaranteed” her rights, including allowing consular visits.
Australian authorities have previously expressed concern about Cheng’s detention amid suggestions from analysts that strained ties between Canberra and Beijing may have provided impetus for the case against her.
Observers have also criticized China’s secretive, closed-door court process for Cheng’s case. China’s court system is notoriously opaque and the conviction rate is above 99 percent.
In March last year, Australia’s ambassador to China was denied entry to the start of Cheng’s trial in Beijing, a move he called “deeply concerning.”
Cases related to national security are typically tried behind closed doors in China. But the lack of transparency in Cheng’s case against the backdrop of deteriorating relations between China and Australia prompted concerns from analysts that the charges may be politically motivated.
Soon after Cheng was detained, two Australian journalists working in China fled the country after authorities attempted to question them on national security grounds, leaving Australia’s media without any journalists in China for the first time in nearly 50 years.
While there were still some Australian journalists working in China, all are employed by non-Australian media companies.
Relations between the two countries have thawed in recent months, with trade increasing and a new Australian government in place.
At the press briefing Wednesday, Wang, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, was asked whether relations between China and Australia will further improve now that Cheng’s case has been resolved.
“A healthy and stable China-Australia relationship serves the interests of the two countries and peoples, and is conducive to peace and stability in the region and the world,” Wang said.
“China is ready to work with Australia to promote the continued improvement and development of relations between the two countries for the betterment of the two peoples.”
For much of Cheng’s detention, there were widespread concerns about her wellbeing. Last June, Coyle told CNN affiliate Sky News Australia that Cheng had faced “difficult health challenges along the way,” exacerbated by an inadequate prison diet.
In a letter published May, Coyle described Cheng spending six months cut off from the outside world, limited to those consular visits, which began every month with Cheng “being led in, blindfolded and handcuffed.”
Since then, she has been placed with other cellmates and given access to an outdoor courtyard for two hours a day, he wrote.
In August, Cheng said in a rare message that she misses her family and life in Australia.
“I miss the sun. In my cell, the sunlight shines through the window but I can stand in it for only 10 hours a year,” she said in a message released by Coyle on the X account he runs, FreeChengLei.
“I haven’t seen a tree in 3 years,” she added.
In what she described as a “love letter” to Australia, Cheng spoke of her nostalgia for her life back home, writing “I miss the Australian people.”
“I miss the sweet encounters of wildlife in Australia, the sea salt whirling in my ear,” she wrote.
“I relive every bushwalk, river, lake, beach with swims and picnics and psychedelic sunsets, sky that is lit up with stars, and the silent and secret symphony of the bush,” she added.
She told CNN that her biology teacher in her home village in the southern Indian state of Kerala had spoken to the class about sexual intercourse just once and she didn’t recall learning much from that. So, when she found herself uncomfortable with her sexual encounters with her husband, she struggled to explain why or name what had been happening to her.
”I didn’t know about marital rape back then. I didn’t know even the term existed,” the now 32-year-old said, explaining that her husband never sought consent, nor did she realize at the time how much it might have changed her experience if he had.
Still, Manomi — whose name has been changed due to possible backlash for speaking out — was so unhappy that she says her mother “took the initiative” to help her daughter file for divorce, just three months after her wedding.
The young woman moved to the state capital and became an urban designer, but it would be years before she learned, through the social media posts of online sexual health educator Leeza Mangaldas, that sex should be “consensual, safe and pleasurable.” These “three things Leeza repeats everywhere,” Manomi said.
For Leeza Mangaldas’s 2.5 million followers across Instagram, YouTube and Facebook, she is a source of accessible and empowering information on sexual health and wellbeing — a subject that remains largely taboo across India and most of the Asia-Pacific region. According to the educator’s own analytics, 65% of her followers on Instagram are men and women between the ages of 18 and 34.
But Mangaldas’ ability to share information that her audiences tell her is useful, and which they say they are unable get elsewhere, is being hampered by changes to how social media platforms are moderated, she told CNN.
Mangaldas told CNN she earns her living from paid partnerships with corporations and international non-profit organizations on her social media platforms, as well as from a recently founded sexual wellbeing brand. She began posting on YouTube in 2017, just as India’s #Metoo movement was starting and ahead of the Supreme Court’s decision the following year to decriminalize homosexuality, she said.
”I feel like I was one of several people at that time who were frustrated by this state of affairs when it comes to sexual and reproductive health and rights. And what I was doing on social media connected with a lot of people,” Mangaldas said. “There was definitely a desire for change.”
Today the 33-year-old, who lives in Goa, is one of swathes of digital creators, educators and health service providers across the Asia-Pacific. Through social media, they are working to reach the one billion young people in the region with information that various United Nations agencies call “digital sexuality education”: content focusing on safe sex (and safe online) practices, sexuality, relationships and gender.
The UN Population Fund, UNFPA, has for years made the connection between the quality of the information women receive and their ability to make their own decisions about sex, contraception, and their overall health. Recent evidence shows that “young people are extensively using the digital environment as a key source of information about sexuality” which does not replace but complements classroom sexuality education, according to a UNESCO report.
However, CNN spoke to nine content creators and sexual health experts in South and Southeast Asia who are raising the alarm, warning that their educational content is being increasingly censored.
Among the creators CNN spoke to, eight shared multiple examples of content being restricted or taken down and of being unable to run ads on some sex-ed posts.
Caught in the crosshairs of the platforms’ attempts to address the proliferation of harmful content around sex, educators’ posts are being pushed behind sensitivity filters and inaccurately considered to be pornographic material, according to the content creators. CNN spoke with six young people across the region who are largely deprived of formal sex education, who told CNN that they are afraid of making ill-informed decisions about their sexuality, sexual practices or how to protect themselves in abusive sexual situations because of this censorship.
Mangaldas and other digital sex educators are calling for improved content moderation, transparency, and more direct communication from the social media platforms on how they are applying their policies. “We can work together instead of against each other,” she said.
Pressured to change ‘sensitive content’
The sex-ed influencers, experts from social change organizations and non-profits CNN spoke to accused social media platforms of arbitrary and inconsistent crackdowns which have pressured them into self-censoring, resulting in them deleting posts and, for example, avoiding references to human genitals.
Across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok — where digital creators and organizations told CNN they suffered the most censorship — sexual activities and services are banned, and content that depicts sexual pleasure or gratification, including sex toys or fetishes, are either denied advertisements or banned. These policies come at odds with sex educators who are trying to explain to their followers about safe usage of sex toys or about female orgasms, the content creators explained.
Mangaldas believes the regulatory processes used by platforms are unable to distinguish accurately between nudity, sexual solicitation, pornography, art, and educational content. “So even when you are not actually violating their guidelines, often content gets wrongly flagged,” she told CNN.
Mangaldas said she started to notice more censorship in content moderation on Instagram, where she is the most active, when the platform introduced Sensitive Content Control in 2021.
The sensitivity feature is an embedded function which allows users to filter potentially upsetting content such as posts that may be “sexually suggestive or violent” in their Explore tab which shows recommendations from accounts users do not follow. Users over the age of 18 are able to manually tailor and broaden the amount of ”sensitive content” they wish to see.
In late July, Mangaldas received a notification from Instagram saying her account couldn’t “be shown to non-followers”, leading her to delete nine posts that had been flagged to be ”eligible for recommendation” again. Being restricted from reaching non-followers is also known as a shadow ban. The deleted posts include a video in which she talks about using lubricant and another explaining why some people cry after sex.
She told CNN that after this experience, she began to censor herself more, for example spelling the word ”porn” using a mix of Hindi and English when talking about false expectations about sex and noticed a huge uptick in reach to followers and non-followers.
She also gave the example of a cropped image from a piece of 19th century French art showing a nude bottom that she originally posted in 2020 but reused this year. The new post was blocked, Mangaldas said, though Meta’s policy states that nudity in photos of “paintings, sculptures, and other art that depicts nude figures” is acceptable. The older post is still visible.
Online healthcare network Women First Digital (WFD)’s director, Tisha Gopalakrishnan, also spoke of ”rampant” censorship on her organization’s Facebook pages over the past two years. “It’s affecting operations, it’s affecting visibility, it’s affecting impact to a much greater extent than what we can deal with,” she told CNN.
Her organization runs three digital platforms to provide information and resources about safe abortion and pleasure-based contraception practices not only in the US but around the world, with the highest traffic coming from India. A combined total of 3.7 million visits came from the South Asian country between 2015 and 2022 — more than three times higher than the 1.3 million visits from the US, according to WFD data.
In June, the non-profit submitted a public comment to Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram) to appeal several takedowns, one of which is the takedown of their entire ‘How to Use‘ page on Facebook, which provides advice on self-managed abortion pills.
The page was reinstated following direct intervention by global human rights organization Amnesty International who advocated on their behalf, Gopalakrishnan said. She added that Amnesty also helped WFD get their associated YouTube channel and Facebook page back online after being suspended in May for ”violating community guidelines,” with no specifics about what had been violated.
Gopalakrishnan believes censorship of abortion information stems from US domestic political affairs, even when operating in other regions.
”Abortion content has historically always been censored on Meta platforms globally, and the overturning of Roe v Wade just made things go from bad to worse,” Gopalakrishnan said. “In general, it is our experience that Meta policies are more reflective of current US political affairs than the local legislative and cultural contexts of the countries they serve.”
When asked for comment, Meta shared information on its policies, which state that the company allows posts and ads promoting health care services like abortion, as well as discussion and debate around them. But content about abortion, regardless of political perspective, must follow the rules, including those on prescription drugs, according to Meta, with content that attempts to sell, buy or trade prescription drugs (such as medication abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol) not allowed on any of its platforms.
After getting posts removed on Facebook and Instagram in 2018 and 2020 respectively, the founder of India-based sex-ed foundation Pratisandhi, Niyati Sharma, said her organization had to shift to a more creative approach to content that moved away from ”graphic diagrams or explicit imagery related to sexuality” to ones that are more educational, and focused more on prevention and protection, she said.
”For instance, we have a lesser focus on things like sex toys but more on hygiene or myths. Changing how we phrased the same content made a difference and also made it easier to appeal in case posts were restricted. We also changed our graphics to be a little more abstract since flagging algorithms don’t categorize those as nudity,” Sharma told CNN.
Getting content unblocked is hit or miss, multiple content creators told CNN, adding they rarely got a human response to their appeals.
“There’s a sense of acceptance, right?” Mangaldas said. “Like, OK, I need to use this platform. If no human being can fix this for me and I’m reliant on automated solutions, then my best bet is to just delete [content].”
The risk of miscategorizing content has been known for some time, and is, in part, explained by a lack of awareness among content moderators.
A 2020 UNESCO paper stated that “educational initiatives are not always distinguished from pornography,” and identified the tens of thousands of subcontracted content moderators who might reject ”sexuality education as pornography” due to ”lack of awareness or lack of time.”
Platforms say it’s hard to get moderation right
When CNN asked to speak with them about content restrictions, and the challenges facing sex-ed content creators, none of the major social media platforms agreed to be interviewed. Most did not speak on the record, but did provide information on background and talked about the difficulty they face with moderation, as large corporations, serving multiple markets.
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Meta’s policies on Facebook state that the platform restricts the display of nudity and sexual activity because some audiences within their global community may be sensitive to this type of content, which may be because of a person’s cultural background or age, highlighting that users can be as young as 13, according to Meta. The company further claims that its policies are applied globally in a uniform manner, and acknowledged that as a result, their execution can sometimes be less nuanced and restrict content shared for legitimate purposes. Its policies further state that photos in the context of breastfeeding, birth giving and after-birth moments, health-related situations (for example, post-mastectomy, breast cancer awareness or gender confirmation surgery) or acts of protest are allowed.
YouTube informed CNN that health professionals can apply to become an ”authoritative health source” on the platform, with a number of sexual health-focused creators and channels already available.
Elena Hernandez, a spokesperson for YouTube said: “YouTube Health’s mission is to increase equitable access to high-quality health content, and that includes sexual health. YouTube creators help make public health and sexual education resonate with people around the world, and we’re always working on new ways to elevate and prominently feature credible health sources on the platform.”
As for TikTok, according to the company’s spokesperson, its rules allow reproductive health and sex education content, such as content on the use of birth control and abortion, discussed in medical language. But they also said that moderating at scale means mistakes are sometimes made, and as such, explained the company will continue to invest in improving its systems, in training teams, and making it easy for creators to appeal moderation decisions.
‘How would people like me know about sex?’
India is among the fastest-growing populations worldwide, with almost 40% of the population under 24 years old. A quarter of the total population is under the age of 14 and adolescents and young adults (10 -24 years old) make up 27% of the population, according to a May 2023 paper on comprehensive sexuality education in India. Its writer pointed out that the country’s young people face multiple health and social issues that are easily preventable, adding that knowledge around sexuality and sexual health are limited.
The paper highlights how poor knowledge and attitudes are linked to high-risk sexual behaviors and practices, listing examples of the prevalence of intimate partner violence and teenage pregnancy being associated with poor awareness of sexually transmitted infections and of HIV and AIDS.
These findings are supported by earlier research. Scholars in 2018 wrote that “India has one of the world’s poorest sexual and reproductive health records among adolescents.” But they also found “widespread support” for sex ed among the population surveyed, which “counter[s] politicized efforts to ban sex education by state leaders.”
Indeed, efforts by the central government to introduce a national sex education curriculum in 2005, 2007 and 2016 were met with opposition from several states who said it undermined Indian culture and values.
It is against the backdrop of this charged political atmosphere, coupled with high social media use — albeit less for women — that social media platforms have become relatively safe, and effective, sites to access sexual and reproductive health information.
A 2022 study among teenage girls in the Indian states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh found that those using social media had better awareness of topics such as sex, pregnancy, birth control, and HIV/AIDS, compared to non-users. But content moderation policies are now censoring and limiting access to vital information that can help young people make more informed choices and reduce harmful behavior.
As such, social media platforms have in effect become what one United Nations agency called “gatekeepers of crucial SRH (sexual and reproductive health) information,” who “withhold important educational content that is arbitrarily classified as sexually explicit”, to the detriment of the young people.
For 30-year-old Natasha Vijayalaxmi in Chennai, online educators and organizations have been a huge source of mental and physical support.
She told CNN about the dysphoria she felt, when she was younger, towards certain parts of her body, and towards the gender assigned to her at birth. As a transgender woman and survivor of childhood sexual abuse, she said her body had often been fetishized. As a result of these experiences, she developed negative perceptions about sex. But online, she said, she found people like her she could relate to and enable her to learn more about herself and how to think of sex in more positive ways.
“The sense that their vision of the world is something that is resonating with you…you find a lot of meaning in that,” Vijayalaxmi said, referring to Mangaldas’ work, before adding: “It’s really important (to have) greater awareness of sex positivity in this country in general because there’s so much stigma around it.”
Learning about the sex-ed content creators have faced, urban designer Manomi was indignant: “How would people like me know about sex if these people don’t put up content?,” she asked. ”I strongly oppose it.”
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Read other stories on sexual education from around the world
This article is part of The Talk, a series of stories, each produced by a different newsroom or team, painting a picture of the state of sex education around the world. During the month of October 2023, stories will be published by CNN As Equals, Kontinentalist, the Impact Newsletter, Unbias the News, Nadja Media, Suno India and BehanBox.
This story was edited by Meera Senthilingam and Eliza Anyangwe. Illustration by Alberto Mier.