🌈 New Zealand Has Banned LGBT Conversion Therapy

Happy Monday!

Here’s your weekly email to help you stay updated and make sense of important stories happening around the world including:

• 🌏 This Week’s Top Stories
• 👩 Women To Know
• 🙌 Good News For Your Weekend
• ❄️ A special roundup of the Winter Olympics

Protests have broken out across India’s southern state of Karnataka after prime minister Narendra Modi’s party banned students from wearing religious garments in schools earlier this month.

• The demonstrations first began with a group of 28 Muslim girls who protested outside their school in the city of Udupi after they were denied entry into the classroom and marked absent for wearing a hijab.
• Muslims, who make up about 13% of India’s 1.35 billion population, say the ban is another move to further marginalize them in the majority Hindu country since Modi took power in 2014 on a platform of “good governance and a strong Hindu identity,” according to Reuters.
• The BJP has blamed Muslims for “seeking a different identity by insisting on wearing a hijab,” Reuters reported, and supporters staged counter-protests in support of the ban.
• The girls petitioned the court to overturn the ban for violating their right to practice their religion and access education, and a hearing is underway at the High Court of Karnataka.

Also happening around the world

• 🇦🇺 Australian prime minister Scott Morrison has formally apologized to the women who were sexually assaulted while working in the country’s parliament.

Elsy, a 38-year-old Salvadoran woman, has been released after serving 10 years in prison for suffering a miscarriage.

• Then a 28-year-old single mother, Elsy sought medical help for an obstetric emergency after suffering an apparent miscarriage while working as a domestic helper in 2011.
• She was accused of aborting her pregnancy and immediately arrested.
• Abortion is illegal in El Salvador under all circumstances, including medical emergencies that could threaten the woman’s life.
• Elsy is the fifth of of 17 women who activists and celebrities have been campaigning for. Last month, three women — Karen, Kathy and Evelyn — were freed after they were sentenced to 30 years in prison for the same charge.

Other women you should know about

• 🇮🇷 Mona Heydari, a 17-year-old girl in Iran, has been allegedly beheaded by her husband in an “honor killing” and people are demanding justice.

Russian teen figure skater Kamila Valieva finished fourth in individual women’s short program after she was allowed to compete at the Beijing Winter Olympics despite testing positive for a banned substance weeks ago.

• The 15-year-old had become embroiled in a doping scandal after news broke on Feb. 8 that she had tested positive for trimetazidine, also known as TMZ, a banned substance that has stimulant properties said to improve endurance.
• On Sunday Feb. 13, the Court of Arbitration for Sport held an expedited virtual ruling on the case and announced a day later that as Valieva is a still a minor, she is recognized as a “protected person” and barring her from competition would be unfair and cause “irreparable harm”.
• The verdict came a day before the individual women’s short program competition, which Valieva is seen as a favorite to win, begins.

Also happening at the Olympics

• 🇨🇳 Free skier and breakout star of the Beijing 2022 Games Eileen Gu wrapped up her inaugural Olympics with two golds and one silver medal, as well as the adoration and love of the host nation.
• 🇺🇸 Chinese American athlete Nathan Chen cemented his status as the world’s best male figure skater after he took home gold for Team USA in men’s figure-skating.
• 🇺🇦 We spoke to Ukrainian athlete Vladyslav Heraskevych, who held up a sign calling for peace at the end of his run for the men’s skeleton competition on Feb. 11 at the Beijing Winter Olympics.
• 🇸🇪 Swedish figure skater Josefina Taljegård defied tradition as the only woman athlete wearing pants for the women’s short program.
• 🇧🇾 Belarusian skier Darya Dolidovich fled the country with her family after being barred from competing in the Beijing Winter Olympics allegedly for joining the country’s opposition movement.

New Zealand has passed a law banning conversion therapy, a widely discredited practice that seeks to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.

• The new law, passed nearly unanimously on Feb. 15, makes it illegal for people to practice conversion therapy on anyone aged under 18 or on someone who lacks proper decision-making capacity, with sentences of up to three years. Conversion therapy that causes “serious harm” to anyone, regardless of age, is also considered an offense and punishable with up to five years in prison.
• The government received a record-breaking 107,000 public submissions on the bill, the highest number ever received on any piece of legislation.

More Good News To Start Your Week

• 🇳🇿 Also in New Zealand, a family had their GoPro stolen by a parrot, who captured an amazing video of itself in the mischievous act.
• 🇸🇬 A gay couple photobombed a live TV broadcast with a kiss and defied Singapore’s censorship laws and ban on same-sex relationships.

Thanks so much for opening this email. If you think a friend would like this, you can forward it to them! You can also follow Almost on Instagram, TikTok or YouTube. We also have a Chinese version.

Let us know your take on this week’s news in the comments or by replying directly to this email ✨