Massachusetts lobster fishing limits to protect whales restored by appeals court
In a 3-0 decision, the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the National Marine Fisheries Service acted lawfully in banning from Feb. 1 to April 30 annually the use of vertical buoy lines in a 200-nautical-mile area of federal waters called the Massachusetts Restricted Area Wedge.
The Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association sued to block the rule, saying a Dec. 2022 appropriations rider reflected the U.S. Congress' intent not to extend emergency protections for North Atlantic right whales from earlier that year.
A federal district judge declared the rule void last March.
But in Thursday's decision, Circuit Judge Seth Aframe called that a mistake because the rule was "in place" when the rider took effect, though it was not being enforced at that time.
He said "the same threat to the right whale described in the 2022 emergency rule findings persisted beyond the 2022 foraging season and therefore ... required additional regulatory actions."
The lobstermen's group also said extending the rule would violate a June 2024 Supreme Court decision, Loper Bright Enterprises v Raimondo, that rejected court deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes.
Aframe disagreed, saying the circuit court was merely interpreting the December 2022 rider's text with no deference to what the fisheries' service thought it meant.
Lawyers for the lobstermen's group did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Conservation groups and the Biden administration urged upholding the rule.
Jane Davenport, a lawyer for Defenders of Wildlife, called the decision a major victory for protecting right whales. Erica Fuller, a lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation, said the court "made a reasoned decision based on the best available science."
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The judges on Thursday's panel, and all active 1st Circuit judges, are Democratic appointees.
The case is Massachusetts Lobstermen's Association Inc v Menashes et al, 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 24-1480.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Iran threatens planned Trump corridor envisaged by Azerbaijan-Armenia peace deal
DUBAI/MOSCOW, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Iran threatened on Saturday to block a corridor planned in the Caucasus under a regional deal sponsored by U.S. President Donald Trump, Iranian media reported, raising a new question mark over a peace plan hailed as a strategically important shift. A top Azerbaijani diplomat said earlier that the plan, announced by Trump on Friday, was just one step from a final peace deal between his country and Armenia, which reiterated its support for the plan. The proposed Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) would run across southern Armenia, giving Azerbaijan a direct route to its exclave of Nakhchivan and in turn to Turkey. The U.S. would have exclusive development rights to the corridor, which the White House said would facilitate greater exports of energy and other resources. It was not immediately clear how Iran, which borders the area, would block it but the statement from Ali Akbar Velayati, top adviser to Iran's supreme leader, raised questions over its security. He said military exercises carried out in northwest Iran demonstrated the Islamic Republic's readiness and determination to prevent any geopolitical changes. "This corridor will not become a passage owned by Trump, but rather a graveyard for Trump's mercenaries," Velayati said. Iran's foreign ministry earlier welcomed the agreement "as an important step toward lasting regional peace", but warned against any foreign intervention near its borders that could "undermine the region's security and lasting stability". Analysts and insiders say that Iran, under mounting US pressure over its disputed nuclear programme and the aftermath of a 12-day war with Israel in June, lacks the military power to block the corridor. Trump welcomed Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan in the White House on Friday and witnessed their signing of a joint declaration aimed at drawing a line under their decades-long on-off conflict. Russia, a traditional broker and ally of Armenia in the strategically important South Caucasus region which is crisscrossed with oil and gas pipelines, was not included, despite its border guards being stationed on the border between Armenia and Iran. While Moscow said it supported the summit, it proposed "implementing solutions developed by the countries of the region themselves with the support of their immediate neighbours – Russia, Iran and Turkey" to avoid what it called the "sad experience" of Western efforts to mediate in the Middle East. Azerbaijan's close ally, NATO member Turkey, welcomed the accord. Baku and Yerevan have been at odds since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. Azerbaijan took back full control of the region in 2023, prompting almost all of the territory's 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia. "The chapter of enmity is closed and now we're moving towards lasting peace," said Elin Suleymanov, Azerbaijan's ambassador to Britain, predicting that the wider region's prosperity and transport links would be transformed for the better. "This is a paradigm shift," said Suleymanov, who as a former envoy to Washington who used to work in President Aliyev's office, is one of his country's most senior diplomats. Suleymanov declined to speculate on when a final peace deal would be signed however, noting that Aliyev had said he wanted it to happen soon. There remained only one obstacle, said Suleymanov, which was for Armenia to amend its constitution to remove a reference to Nagorno-Karabakh. "Azerbaijan is ready to sign any time once Armenia fulfils the very basic commitment of removing its territorial claim against Azerbaijan in its constitution," he said. Pashinyan this year called for a referendum to change the constitution, but no date for it has been set yet. Armenia is to hold parliamentary elections in June 2026, and the new constitution is expected to be drafted before the vote. The Armenian leader said on X that the Washington summit had paved the way to end the decades of conflict and open transport connections that would unlock strategic economic opportunities. Asked when the transit rail route would start running, Suleymanov said that would depend on cooperation between the U.S. and Armenia whom he said were already in talks. Joshua Kucera, Senior South Caucasus analyst at International Crisis Group, said Trump may not have got the easy win he had hoped for as the agreements left many questions unanswered. The issue of Armenia's constitution continued to threaten to derail the process, and it was not clear how the new transport corridor would work in practice. "Key details are missing, including about how customs checks and security will work and the nature of Armenia's reciprocal access to Azerbaijani territory. These could be serious stumbling blocks," said Kucera. Suleymanov played down suggestions that Russia, which still has extensive security and economic interests in Armenia, was being disadvantaged. "Anybody and everybody can benefit from this if they choose to," he said.
Reuters
2 hours ago
- Reuters
Insight: How a CIA hit on al Qaeda ensnared a US citizen in Afghanistan
WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) - As a crowd looked on, uniformed Taliban surrounded the Toyota Landcruiser in which Mahmood Habibi, a naturalized U.S. citizen, sat. Other Taliban smashed open the door of his Kabul apartment, emerging later with his laptop and papers. Blindfolded in the back seat, Habibi and his driver were driven off by gunmen sporting shoulder patches of the Taliban's feared secret police, the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI), according to several witness statements in U.S. government possession seen by Reuters. Afghanistan's Taliban government denies it detained Habibi, 37, who was a former head of Afghanistan's civil aviation. While dividing his time between the United States and Kabul working for a private company, he became a U.S. citizen after the Taliban took power in 2021. The Taliban also says they have no knowledge of his whereabouts, three years after he disappeared. That is contradicted by the witness accounts and other evidence, including data monitored from Habibi's cellphone, described to Reuters by a U.S. official and a former U.S. official familiar with the matter. The Taliban denials present a conundrum for the FBI, which is leading the U.S. government effort to gain his release; and for the State Department, which describes Habibi's detention a major impediment to exploring increased engagement with Afghanistan, three years after his August 10, 2022 arrest. U.S. President Donald Trump has made freeing Americans held abroad a top priority and already has secured the release of dozens, including from Afghanistan, Russia and Venezuela. The case of Habibi - the only publicly identified American held in the country - has been harder to resolve. This story is the most comprehensive account to date of the circumstances of Habibi's capture and includes previously unreported details. Among them, interviews with the U.S. official and a former U.S. official with knowledge of the case reveal that the Taliban likely detained Habibi because the CIA had penetrated the company where he worked. The sources say the U.S. spy agency had accessed one of the company's security cameras, helping it pinpoint the al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a Kabul guesthouse. Habibi's detention came 10 days after Zawahiri - the last of the top plotters of the September 11, 2001, attack on the United States - was dramatically assassinated by a U.S. drone strike on the guesthouse, ordered by Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden. At the time, U.S. officials briefed journalists that it was a CIA operation. The U.S. sources told Reuters that Habibi was unaware of the CIA plot and was wrongly detained after returning to Kabul from a work trip to Dubai after the assassination, oblivious of the danger he was in. The CIA, the Taliban, the White House and Habibi's employer, Virginia-based ARX Communications, did not respond to detailed requests for comment for this story. ARX has previously said neither it, nor its subsidiaries, were involved with the strike on Zawahiri. Reuters could not independently verify whether Habibi was or wasn't aware of the plot. In a statement to Reuters, a State Department spokesperson called for Habibi's immediate release. "We know the Taliban abducted Mahmood Habibi nearly three years ago," the spokesperson said. A co-worker detained with Habibi, then later released, saw him in GDI headquarters and heard him in an adjacent room being asked if he worked for the CIA or was involved in the strike on Zawahiri, according to one of the statements in U.S government possession, seen by Reuters. Then, in June and August of 2023, the U.S. government detected that his mobile phone had been switched on in GDI headquarters, the U.S. official and former official said. Reuters could not reach the witnesses who made statements, including the coworker, or verify the accuracy of their account of Habibi's detention. The U.S. official familiar with the matter said excerpts of the statements have been presented to the Taliban in response to their repeated denials of Habibi's detention. As Habibi and his family on Sunday mark the third anniversary of his arrest, the Trump administration has stepped up efforts to win his release, including offering a $5 million reward for information. But so far, he appears no closer to freedom, the U.S. sources said. "Our family has new hope that the Trump team will be successful," said Habibi's older brother, Ahmad. Ahmad said his brother would never have gone to Kabul four days after the Zawahiri assassination if the CIA had told ARX to warn him it was too dangerous to return. 'Nobody told him anything. Neither the company, neither the CIA nor anybody. So, he just went back,' Ahmad said. The U.S. government officially considers Habibi a hostage, said the U.S. official, because his arrest and location remain unconfirmed by the Taliban. The official and the former official spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the case. In response to a request for comment, the FBI said that along with partners in other U.S. departments involved in hostage recovery, it remains "committed to bringing Habibi home to his family." The Taliban rejected an offer made last year to trade Habibi for alleged Osama bin Laden aide Mohammad Rahim al-Afghani, the last Afghan held in the Guantanamo Bay military prison. 'We've tried in terms of both carrots and sticks,' said the official, who requested anonymity to discuss the case. The Taliban "literally throw up a wall," said the official. As part of the operation against Zawahiri, the CIA penetrated the Asia Consultancy Group (ACG), a subsidiary of ARX, according to the current and former U.S. officials, who provided previously unreported details of how the spy agency was able to target the al Qaeda chief. Reuters presented these details to the CIA, ACG and ARX, requesting comment, but received no response. ACG, whose parent is headquartered in Herndon, Virginia, had a contract to erect cellphone towers around Kabul, the sources said. CCTV cameras were fitted to the towers to protect the structures, they said. One of the cameras, the sources said, was pointed at a house U.S. officials have linked to Sirajuddin Haqqani, the Taliban's acting interior minister both at the time and now, in the heart of Kabul's diplomatic quarter, a short distance from the shuttered British and American embassies. The sources said the camera sent back video to the CIA confirming Zawahiri's presence in the residence. That confirmation helped the agency kill the Egyptian Islamist with two drone-fired Hellfire R9X missiles on July 31, 2022, as he emerged onto a balcony, they said. His wife and family survived the strike. While officials in the Biden administration at the time described the CIA's drone operation to kill Zawahiri with Hellfires, the details of the agency's operation on the ground, including the presence of the camera and its role in identifying Zawahiri have not been previously disclosed. On the day of his arrest, Mahmood Habibi was in his apartment in Kabul's Sherpur neighborhood packing to return to New Jersey, where he had a home, with the help of a sister, who was there with her two children, according to Ahmad. It was about noon when a phone call came from the ACG office saying it had just been raided by the Taliban, Ahmad said. Habibi told his sister that he had to leave without explaining why. He was arrested immediately after getting into his vehicle, Ahmad said. A few minutes later, somebody announcing that they were with GDI knocked on his apartment door, according to Ahmad and a witness statement. His sister declined to open it, telling those outside that she had to conform to the Taliban rule that an adult male relative had to be present. The Taliban broke open the door, entered the apartment and rifled through closets and drawers, demanding Habibi's laptop, according to Ahmad and the witness statement. A crowd had gathered outside after the Taliban arrived in five vehicles, blocked the street and surrounded Habibi's car, before driving him off, according to Ahmad and a separate witness statement. The GDI arrested 30 other ACG employees, according to a letter that ACG sent to Afghanistan's Ministry of Communications, seen by Reuters. Except for Habibi and one other, all were eventually released. In the letter, dated September 15, 2022, ACG asked that family members be allowed to visit him and three other staff who the GDI still held. The ministry appeared to confirm Habibi was a GDI prisoner in a reply two days later, seen by Reuters, saying that the intelligence directorate would decide on the petition when its investigation was completed. However, in a July 3, 2025 statement reported by Afghanistan's state news agency, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said that in response to requests from Habibi's family, the Taliban had investigated but no evidence has been found to suggest that he was detained by Afghanistan's security forces. Mujahid said the Taliban are a legitimate governing body that does not detain individuals without due process or hide them from public view. Mujahid did not respond to a Reuters request for comment. Born to parents from the southern city of Kandahar, Habibi is one of eight siblings – three brothers and five sisters – who grew up in the Kabul neighborhood of Karte Parwan. His excellent English helped him secure a job with the U.N. civil aviation agency in Kabul in 2008. He worked for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's U.S. embassy office from 2011 to 2013. Tapped as deputy civil aviation minister, Habibi helped transition Afghanistan's air traffic system from U.S. control to the U.S.-backed Kabul government. Habibi became civil aviation minister in 2017. He held that post until 2019 while earning a civil aviation master's degree from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida, the university confirmed. In 2019, he resigned and then joined ARX to help oversee its Afghan subsidiary's contract to run air traffic control at Kabul's international airport. Habibi lived between the city and the United States, accumulating the last of the 30 months of U.S. residency he needed over a five-year period for U.S. citizenship in 2021, Ahmad said. He was in Kabul with his family during the chaotic departure of the last U.S. troops in August 2021, Ahmad said, as the Taliban consolidated its grip on the capital after 20 years of war. Habibi flew from Dubai to Kabul on August 4, 2022, after stopping in Qatar to check on his family and parents who were housed on a U.S. military base there waiting for final processing of U.S. immigration visas, said Ahmad. A week later Habibi was arrested. His wife, daughter and parents, who waited in Qatar until October for their visas before flying to the United States and settling in California, have not seen or heard from him since. Resolving Habibi's case would be the easiest way for the Taliban, who crave international recognition as Afghanistan's legitimate rulers, to explore improving ties with the U.S., the current U.S. official said. Since Habibi's detention, four other Americans have been arrested and released by the Taliban.
Scottish Sun
2 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
Russia is running ‘slave catalogue' of Ukrainian ‘orphans' with kidnapped children ‘treated like animals'
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) RUSSIA is allegedly running a grotesque online "slave catalogue" of abducted Ukrainian children in occupied territory. The profiles can be searched by hair colour, eye colour and even "personality" in the latest twisted move by Mad Vlad Putin's regime. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 9 Russia is reportedly running a twisted online 'slave catalogue' of abducted Ukrainian children Credit: Reuters 9 Children from an orphanage in the Donetsk region, eat a meal at a camp in Zolotaya Kosa, the settlement on the Sea of Azov, Rostov region, southwestern Russia Credit: AP 9 Ukrainian officials previously warned its children are being trained up to fight in Putin's army Credit: Bring Kids Back Ukraine According to the NGO Save Ukraine, it features almost 300 children labelled as "orphans" or "left without parental care". But campaigners insist many were forcibly taken from their families, re-registered under Russian documents and are now being "matched" with Russian families as if they were animals in a pet shop. Mykola Kuleba, head of Save Ukraine, described it as 'digital trafficking' and a 'slave catalogue'. He warned: "This is not adoption. This is not care. This is digital child trafficking, masked as bureaucracy. "These children are not 'war orphans'. They had names, families and Ukrainian citizenship." According to The Times, the depraved search tool reportedly allows users to filter children by age, gender, health and physical traits - even by whether they are "calm" or "active". The portal is run by Luhansk's so-called Ministry of Education and Science — part of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic (LPR), a Russian-installed regime in territory internationally recognised as Ukrainian. While some of the children listed were born after Russia seized the area in 2014, Kuleba says most were born before occupation and held Ukrainian citizenship. Kyiv says the catalogue is just the latest stage in Moscow's mass child-snatching campaign — a programme that Ukrainian officials claim has seen tens of thousands of minors abducted since Putin's full-scale invasion in 2022. Yale researchers, UN experts and legal bodies have said the deportations could amount to war crimes. Nazi lies, Vlad's propaganda & troops on border… chilling signs Putin ready to invade ANOTHER European nation after Ukraine In 2023, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Putin and his children's commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, over the illegal transfer and adoption of Ukrainian children. Russia has long defended these relocations as "humanitarian" - but Ukrainian officials and returned captives tell a far darker story. Survivors have described being beaten, starved, locked in basements, forced to sing the Russian national anthem, and banned from speaking Ukrainian in re-education camps. Some say they were told their parents had abandoned them. 9 Pictures show children inside Russian 're-education' camps in a bid to rid them of their Ukrainian heritage Credit: Bring Kids Back Ukraine 9 A chamber in Kherson where Ukrainian children were allegedly abused Credit: Security Service of Ukraine 9 Vitaliy was held at a camp in Yevpatroia and spoke of horrors he saw after begging to be released from an isolation cell Credit: BRING KIDS BACK UKRAINE 9 One 11-year-old, Illia, was forced to have shrapnel removed without anaesthetic after he was snatched by Russian soldiers Credit: BRING KIDS BACK UKRAINE Earlier this year, Moscow announced plans to send 60,000 kidnapped Ukrainian children to remote summer camps in the wilderness - a move critics see as deepening indoctrination. Ukraine's presidential adviser Daria Zarivna has accused Putin of 'weaponising' these children, warning they are being groomed to fight for Russia in future wars. She told The Sun: 'It's a threat to global security, to Ukraine's security.' Lvova-Belova - dubbed "Putin's childcatcher" and sanctioned by Britain for her role in the abductions - has openly bragged about "adopting" a boy from Mariupol. 'I was snatched by Russian soldier' ILLIA, 11, was deported from Mariupol after a Russian missile strike killed his mother and left him with horror shrapnel wounds when he was nine. His neighbours buried his mum's body in their back garden before he was snatched by Vlad's soldiers and taken for surgery at a camp in Donestk. The shrapnel was removed without any anaesthetic and he was forced to write and speak Russian and repeat "Glory to Ukraine as part of Russia". He says Russian forces tried to turn him into a "propaganda tool" but that he is not "one to be duped so easily." Illia's grandmother had been searching for her grandson ever since losing contact with her daughter in March 2022. It wasn't until they spotted the young boy in a video from Russia that she realised he was alone and that her daughter had been killed. His grandmother never gave up hope and set about getting her injured grandson back home where he belonged. Months later, Illia returned home to Ukraine and had further surgery to remove more fragments from his leg, while 11 remain. His grandmother Olena said: "He had a school, he had a home, he had a mother and he lost all of that - his entire childhood. "He kept to himself, he was afraid of noise, he was afraid of sirens. He had no memory. He now has dreams of becoming a doctor so that he can help fighters on the frontline as a combat medic. She is accused of overseeing the heartless bureaucratic machinery that strips Ukrainian children of their identities before placing them in Russian homes. Kyiv's Bring Kids Back Ukraine initiative has so far rescued nearly 700 minors, but thousands remain missing. Officials say no peace deal will be struck with Moscow until every abducted child is returned. 'This is genocide,' said Ukraine's Human Rights Commissioner Dmytro Lubinets. 'These children are not commodities. They are victims of a brutal campaign to erase our nation's future.' 9 Putin meets with Russia's Children's Rights Commissioner Maria Lvova-Belova Credit: AFP
