Month: January 2020

Hundreds of employees are openly criticizing Amazon’s record on climate change despite what they say is a company policy that puts their jobs at risk for speaking out.

On Sunday, more than 300 employees of the online retail giant signed their names and job titles to statements on blog post on Medium. The online protest was organized by a group called Amazon Employees For Climate Justice, an advocacy group founded by Amazon workers that earlier this month said the company had sent letters to its members threatening to fire them if they continued to speak to the press.   

“It’s our moral responsibility to speak up, and the changes to the communications policy are censoring us from exercising that responsibility,” said Sarah Tracy, a software development engineer at Amazon, in a statement.   

Amazon said that its policy on external communications is not new and is in keeping with other large companies. It said the policy applies to all Amazon employees and is not directed at any specific group.

“While all employees are welcome to engage constructively with any of the many teams inside Amazon that work on sustainability and other topics, we do enforce our external communications policy and will not allow employees to publicly disparage or misrepresent the company or the hard work of their colleagues who are developing solutions to these hard problems,” according to an Amazon spokesperson.   

Amazon, which relies on fossil fuels to power the planes, trucks and vans that ship packages all over the world, has an enormous carbon footprint. And its workers have been vocal in criticizing some of the company’s practices.

Last year, more than 8,000 staffers signed an open letter to CEO and founder Jeff Bezos demanding that Amazon cut its carbon emissions, end its use of fossil fuels and stop its work with oil companies that use Amazon’s technology to locate fossil fuel deposits.

Amazon said in a statement that it is passionate about climate change issues and has already pledged to become net zero carbon by 2040 and use 100% renewable energy by 2030. 

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The U.S. Consulate in the epidemic-stricken Chinese city of Wuhan will evacuate its personnel and some private citizens aboard a charter flight Tuesday.

A notice Sunday from the embassy in Beijing said there would be limited capacity to transport U.S. citizens on the flight that will proceed directly to San Francisco.

It said that in the event there are not enough seats, priority will be given to to individuals “at greater risk from coronavirus,” a new respiratory disease that has sickened 1,975 people and killed 56, almost all in Wuhan.

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Four people were killed and five others were injured on Saturday in an explosion at a motel in eastern South Korea.

The explosion occurred on the second floor of the motel where seven guests were using a gas stove to grill meat, said Kim Dong-woo, an official from the fire department in the coastal city of Donghae.

He said four people inside the room were killed and the other three were seriously injured. The explosion also caused minor injuries to two other guests who were in different rooms.

Kim said officials were investigating the cause of the explosion. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety said the explosion could have been caused by gas leakage.

Officials did not provide the personal details of those who were killed or injured.

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The new virus accelerated its spread in China with 56 deaths so far in what the country’s leader called a grave situation, and the government stepped up efforts to restrict travel and public gatherings while rushing medical staff and supplies to the closed-off city at the center of the outbreak. 

The figures reported Sunday morning covered the previous 24 hours and marked an increase of 15 deaths and 688 cases for a total of 1,975 infections. 

The government also reported five cases in Hong Kong, two in Macao and three in Taiwan. Small numbers of cases have been found in Thailand, Japan, South Korea, the U.S., Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Nepal, France and Australia. 

Canada said it discovered its first case; the man is his 50s and recently flew from Wuhan to Guangzhou, China, and then on to Toronto. 

President Xi Jinping on Saturday called the spreading illness a grave situation in remarks reported by state broadcaster CCTV. He spoke at a meeting of Communist Party leaders convened on Lunar New Year — the country’s biggest holiday whose celebrations have been muted — and underlined the government’s urgent, expanding efforts to control the outbreak. 

Travel agencies have been told to halt all group tours, the state-owned English-language China Daily newspaper reported, citing the China Association of Travel Services. 

Millions of people traveling during the holiday have fueled the spread of the outbreak nationwide and overseas after it began in the city of Wuhan in central China. The vast majority of the infections and all the deaths have been in mainland China, but fresh cases are popping up. 

Singapore reported its fourth case on Sunday, a 36-year-old man from Wuhan. The Health Ministry said he did not exhibit any symptoms on his flight. He developed a cough the next day, sought treatment on January 24 and was immediately isolated. 

South Korea confirmed its third case, according to Yonhap news agency. 

In the heart of the outbreak where 11 million residents are already on lockdown, Wuhan banned most vehicle use, including private cars, in downtown areas starting Sunday, state media reported. Only authorized vehicles will be permitted, the reports said. 

The city will assign 6,000 taxis to neighborhoods, under the management of resident committees, to help people get around if they need to, China Daily said. 

Hong Kong’s response

In Hong Kong, leader Carrie Lam said her government would raise its response level to emergency, the highest one, and close primary and secondary schools for two more weeks on top of next week’s Lunar New Year holiday. They will reopen February 17. 

Lam said direct flights and trains from Wuhan would be blocked. 

In a sign of the growing strain on Wuhan’s health care system, the official Xinhua News Agency reported that the city planned to build a second makeshift hospital with about 1,000 beds. The city has said another hospital was expected to be completed February 3. 

The new virus comes from a large family of what are known as coronaviruses, some causing nothing worse than a cold. It causes cold- and flu-like symptoms, including cough and fever, and in more severe cases, shortness of breath. It can worsen to pneumonia, which can be fatal. 

China cut off trains, planes and other links to Wuhan on Wednesday, as well as public transportation within the city, and has steadily expanded a lockdown to 16 surrounding cities with a combined population of more than 50 million — greater than that of New York, London, Paris and Moscow combined. 

China’s biggest holiday, Lunar New Year, unfolded Saturday in the shadow of the virus. Authorities canceled a host of events and closed major tourist destinations and movie theaters. 

Temples, Disneyland close

Temples locked their doors, Beijing’s Forbidden City and Shanghai Disneyland closed, and people canceled restaurant reservations ahead of the holiday, normally a time of family reunions, sightseeing trips and other festivities in the country of 1.4 billion people. 

“We originally planned to go back to my wife’s hometown and bought train tickets to depart this afternoon,” said Li Mengbin, who was on a stroll near the closed Forbidden City. “We ended up canceling. But I’m still happy to celebrate the new year in Beijing, which I hadn’t for several years.” 

Temples and parks were decorated with red streamers, paper lanterns and booths, but some places started dismantling the decor. 

People in China wore medical masks to public places like grocery stores, where workers dispensed hand sanitizer to customers. Some parts of the country had checkpoints for temperature readings and made masks mandatory. 

French automaker PSA Group said it would evacuate its employees from Wuhan, quarantine them and then bring them to France. The Foreign Ministry said it was working on “eventual options” to evacuate French citizens from Wuhan “who want to leave.” It didn’t elaborate. 

The National Health Commission said it was bringing in medical teams to help handle the outbreak, a day after videos circulating online showed throngs of frantic people in masks lined up for examinations and complaints that family members had been turned away at hospitals that were at capacity. 

Military staff

The Chinese military dispatched 450 medical staff, some with experience in past outbreaks, including SARS and Ebola, who arrived in Wuhan late Friday to help treat many patients hospitalized with viral pneumonia, Xinhua reported. 

Xinhua also said medical supplies were being rushed to the city, including 14,000 protective suits, 110,000 pairs of gloves, and masks and goggles. 

The rapid increase in reported deaths and illnesses does not necessarily mean the crisis is getting worse but could reflect better monitoring and reporting of the virus. 

It is not clear how lethal the new coronavirus is or even whether it is as dangerous as the ordinary flu, which kills tens of thousands of people every year in the U.S. alone. 

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Pakistan’s bid to mediate a de-escalation of conflict between the U.S. and Iran is driven largely by its concerns about potential domestic fallout from hostilities between its two longtime partners, analysts say.

Islamabad’s peace effort, launched this month after the U.S. and Iran traded rare military blows in their decades-old tense relationship, also is rooted in its longstanding neutrality toward regional conflicts involving Iran or Iranian proxies, they say.

“We are not going to repeat our mistakes of getting involved in others’ wars. Pakistan will become a country which will make peace among states,” said Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan at a public event Jan. 9, a day after Iran carried out a missile strike on an Iraqi base housing U.S. troops.

The Iranian attack, which left dozens of U.S. forces with concussion-related injuries but killed no one, was Tehran’s retaliation for what the U.S. called a self-defense strike that killed top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad airport Jan. 3.

“I have told U.S. President Donald Trump that Pakistan is ready to mediate between Iran and the U.S. to resolve differences between them,” Khan said in his public remarks, adding that he also wanted to resolve longstanding tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia, a military ally of Washington.

Since then, Khan has dispatched Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi to Tehran, Riyadh and Washington to urge them to exercise restraint and warn them that further hostilities could destabilize the region.

US-Pakistan relations

Pakistan has generally enjoyed a close relationship with the United States for decades, according to the Office of the Historian at the U.S. State Department.

Islamabad has benefited from U.S. economic aid and has been a major purchaser of U.S. military equipment. But the Trump administration suspended security assistance to Pakistan in 2018 to press Pakistani authorities to take more action against what it called “externally focused militant groups and U.N.-designated terrorist organizations operating from its territory.”

When it comes to Iran, Pakistan has long expressed a mutual feeling of brotherliness toward its neighboring Muslim majority state. But those relations have been strained in recent decades by Pakistan’s close ties with predominantly Sunni Muslim regional states such as Saudi Arabia, its cooperation with the U.S. and its support for Afghanistan’s Sunni militant Taliban group — all rivals of predominantly Shiite Iran.

Islamabad has sought to mediate between the U.S. and Iran rather than take sides as it fears an escalation of their conflict could draw in U.S. ally Saudi Arabia and worsen Sunni-Shiite sectarian divisions in Pakistani society, according to political scientist Rasul Bakhsh Rais of Lahore’s LUMS University.

A 2018 State Department report said about 80% to 85% of Pakistan’s Muslim population is Sunni, while Shiites make up about 15% to 20%.

“One segment of Pakistani society supports (Sunni-majority) Saudi Arabia, while another feels closer to (Shiite-majority) Iran,” Rais said in a VOA Urdu interview.

Radicalized supporters

Saudi Arabia and Iran have radicalized their Islamist supporters in Pakistan for years by quietly funding thousands of Sunni and Shiite seminaries in Pakistan, respectively. Some Sunni and Shiite graduates of those seminaries have carried out violent attacks on members of the other sect, fueling Pakistan’s long-running sectarian tensions.

Pakistan also opposes letting U.S. forces use its territory for military action against Iran because of concerns about a potential domestic backlash from militants who would be angered by such cooperation, former Pakistani Interior Minister Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Moinuddin Haider told VOA Urdu in another interview.

In recent weeks, Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi repeatedly has said his nation will not allow its territory to be used in hostilities between the U.S. and Iran.

Policy of neutrality

In the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks on the U.S., Islamabad allowed U.S. forces to use an airbase in Baluchistan province to conduct drone strikes against Taliban-allied militants along the Pakistani-Afghan border, Wilson Center analyst Michael Kugelman told VOA. He said the Pakistani government ordered an end to such cooperation in 2011 as U.S.-Pakistani tensions intensified, especially following a NATO airstrike that inadvertently killed about two dozen Pakistani soldiers in the region.

Taliban-allied militants retaliated for the Pakistani-assisted U.S. drone strikes by carrying out suicide bombings across Pakistan. Former Pakistani Interior Minister Haider said Islamabad worries that if it helps the U.S. to attack a neighboring country such as Iran, a similar violent backlash would result.

Former Pakistani Foreign Secretary Najmuddin Sheikh told VOA Urdu that Islamabad’s push for peace between Iran, the U.S. and U.S. ally Saudi Arabia also reflects a pattern of Pakistani neutrality toward conflicts involving Muslim-majority nations.

Pakistan’s then-president Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq publicly expressed a neutral position regarding the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. More recently, then-Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif first declared neutrality in Yemen’s ongoing conflict between a Saudi-led coalition and Iranian-backed Houthi militants in 2015. Sharif’s successor, Prime Minister Khan, has continued that approach.

This article originated in VOA’s Persian Service. It was produced in collaboration with VOA’s Urdu Service and Extremism Watch Desk.

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ELAZIG, TURKEY — A powerful earthquake has killed at least 20 people and injured more than 1,000 in eastern Turkey, as rescue teams searched through the rubble of collapsed buildings for survivors Saturday.

At least 30 people were missing following the magnitude 6.8 quake Friday night, which had its epicenter in the small lakeside town of Sivrice in the eastern province of Elazig.

“It was very scary, furniture fell on top of us. We rushed outside,” 47-year-old Melahat Can, who lives in the provincial capital of Elazig, told AFP.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said all steps were being taken to aid people affected by the quake, which caused widespread fear.

“We stand by our people,” Erdogan said on Twitter.

The Turkish government’s disaster and emergency management agency (AFAD) said the quake hit Sivrice around 8:55 p.m. (1755 GMT). Turkey lies on major fault lines and is prone to frequent earthquakes.

Turkish television showed images of people rushing outside in panic, as well as a fire on the roof of a building.

Interior, environment and health ministers, who were in the quake zone, said the casualties were in Elazig province and in the neighboring province of Malatya to the southwest.

At least 20 people died and 1,015 others were wounded, according to AFAD.

“There is nobody trapped under the rubble in Malatya, but in Elazig search and rescue efforts are currently under way to find 30 citizens,” Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said Friday.

Rescue teams were searching for survivors trapped in a five-story collapsed building in a village about 30 kilometers from Elazig, according to AFP journalists at the scene. One person was pulled alive from the rubble.

Emergency staff and people waiting at the scene lit fires in the streets to stay warm in freezing temperatures.

Sports centers, schools and guest houses had been opened to accommodate quake victims in Malatya.

Sivrice, a town with a population of about 4,000 people, is situated south of Elazig city on the shores of Hazar lake, one of the most popular tourist spots in the region and the source of the Tigris River.

The lake is home to a sunken city with archaeological traces dating back 4,000 years in its waters.

The tremor was felt in several parts of eastern Turkey near the Iraqi and Syrian borders, the Turkish broadcaster NTV reported, adding that neighboring cities had mobilized rescue teams for the quake area.

“Everybody is in the street, it was very powerful, very scary,” said Zekeriya Gunes, 68, from Elazig city, after the quakes caused a building to collapse on her street.

“It lasted quite long, maybe 30 seconds,” added Ferda, 39. “I panicked and was undecided whether to go out in this cold or remain inside.”

Greece offers aid

The U.S. Geological Survey assessed the magnitude as 6.7, slightly lower than AFAD, adding that it struck near the East Anatolian Fault in an area that has suffered no documented large ruptures since an earthquake in 1875.

“My wholehearted sympathy to President @RTErdogan and the Turkish people following the devastating earthquake that has hit Turkey. Our search and rescue teams stand ready to assist,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter.

In Athens, the Greek premier’s office said later that Mitsotakis had spoken by phone to Erdogan.

“The Turkish president … said Turkish teams had the situation under control for now and that it would be re-evaluated in the morning,” his office added.

Quake-prone Turkey

In 1999, a devastating 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit Izmit in western Turkey, leaving more than 17,000 people dead including about 1,000 in the country’s largest city Istanbul.

Last September, a 5.7-magnitude earthquake shook Istanbul, causing residents to flee buildings.

Experts have long warned a large quake could devastate the city of 15 million people, which has allowed widespread building without safety precautions.

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A Zimbabwean judge on Friday described as “frightening” the use of soldiers by the country’s vice president in a divorce-related dispute, and ruled that his wife should regain custody of their children and be allowed to access the family’s luxury home.

The ruling is the latest twist in a case that has gripped the southern African nation with allegations of black magic, attempted murder and drug addiction. The case has provided a glimpse of the luxurious lives of Zimbabwe’s ruling elite as the rest of the country grapples with economic collapse, hyperinflation and hunger.

The wife of Vice President Constantino Chiwenga, Marry, had approached the court seeking custody of the children and access to the house, a farm and vehicles. She said they were taken from her by Chiwenga when she was detained for more than three weeks on accusations of trying to kill him and money laundering.

After his wife was released from prison on bail earlier this month, Chiwenga refused to give her custody of the children and vehicles, and used soldiers to block her from entering their house in a wealthy suburb of the capital, Harare.

“It is unacceptable and anathema to the constitutional values of this jurisdiction that the military may be used to settle a matrimonial dispute,” said Judge Christopher Dube-Banda.

“This is frightening. What happened to the applicant (Marry) must be a cause of fear and concern to all law-abiding citizens,” he said. He ordered Chiwenga to return the children as well as three Mercedes-Benz vehicles and a Lexus to his estranged wife “forthwith.” He also said soldiers should not block Marry from accessing their home and farm.

Chiwenga, who as army commander led a coup against former president Robert Mugabe in 2017, separated from his wife, a former model, after he returned from four months of medical treatment in China in December.

He claimed his wife tried to kill him while he was on a hospital bed in neighboring South Africa before he was airlifted to China. He described her in court papers as “violent” and a drug addict who used black magic.

On her part, Marry accused her husband of being a “dangerous” man who “can summon the army when it suits him … to deal with perceived opponents” and suffering from “acute paranoia brought about by his poor health” and “his being under heavy doses of drugs, including un-prescribed opiates.’’

The divorce case has not started, but even in its preliminary stages the bitter wrangle has “gone a long way to expose the depth of moral decay that has pervaded our national leaders,” the privately owned The Standard newspaper said.

“The divorce case presents our national leaders as completely out of touch with the reality that the citizens of this country are among the poorest in the region and the continent,” the weekly newspaper said in an editorial this week.

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The Chinese National Health Commission said Friday that there are 830 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus country-wide, while at least 25 people have died.

The Chinese government isolated more cities Friday, an unprecedented move to contain the coronavirus, which has spread to several other countries.

At least eight cities, and a total of at least 25 million people, have been put on lockdown — Wuhan, Ezhou, Huanggang, Chibi, Qianjiang, Zhijiang, Jingmen and Xiantao — all in central China’s Hubei province, on the eve of the Lunar New Year, when millions of Chinese traditionally travel.

The municipality authorities of Wuhan, where the coronavirus is believed to have originated, said Friday that the city is building a 1,000-bed hospital, expected to be completed by Feb. 3.

On Thursday authorities first banned planes and trains from leaving the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus is believed to have originated. Toll roads were closed, and ferry, subway and bus services were suspended.

Wuhan authorities have demanded that all residents wear masks in public and urged government and private sector employees to wear them in the workplace, according to the Xinhua news agency, which cited a government official.

Similar measures were taken hours later in the nearby cities of Huanggang and Ezhou.

The government also canceled holiday events in Beijing that usually attract large crowds.

Fifteen medical workers are among those who have been infected by the virus, which has spread from Wuhan to Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong province, as well as Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan and the United States.

WATCH: WHO Warns Coronavirus Is ‘High Risk,’ Stops Short of Declaring Emergency

The World Health Organization said Thursday the deadly virus has not yet developed into a worldwide health emergency.

“This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said after a two-day emergency meeting in Geneva.

The U.N. health agency’s decision came after it received information from independent experts who spent two days assessing information about the spread of the new coronavirus.

WHO considers an international emergency an “extraordinary event” that puts other countries at risk and one that requires a coordinated global response.

The U.S. announced its first case Tuesday in the northwestern state of Washington. Health officials there said a man who returned to Seattle from Wuhan last week is hospitalized in good condition with pneumonia.

U.S. President Donald Trump assured reporters during a press conference in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday that U.S. officials “have a plan” to deal with the new outbreak, praising experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as “terrific, very great professionals, and we’re in great shape.”

Airports around the world have begun screening travelers from Wuhan for any signs of the virus.

A coronavirus is one of a large family of viruses that can cause illnesses ranging from the common cold to the deadly SARS.

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U.S. President Donald Trump says he plans to release his long delayed Middle East peace plan before hosting Israeli leaders at the White House next Tuesday.

“It’s a great plan. It’s a plan that really would work,” Trump told reporters as he flew to Florida for a Republican Party meeting.

Trump will host Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leader Benny Gantz next week. The two will face off in March for the third Israeli general election in a year, with Netanyahu struggling to hold on to power after his indictment for alleged corruption.

Trump said he is surprised and delighted that the two bitter political rivals will come to the White House at the same time, calling it “unheard of.”

“They both would like to do the deal. They want to see peace,” Trump said.

The Palestinians were not invited to the White House and have rejected the U.S. plan before any details have been made public.

Palestinians are angry the Trump recognized Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moved the U.S. embassy there in 2018. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as their capital for a future state. They also are upset at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent declaration that Jewish settlements in the West Bank are legal.

Trump told reporters that U.S. officials spoke briefly to the Palestinians and said they have a “lot of incentive” to embrace a peace plan.

“I’m sure they maybe will react negatively at first, but it’s actually very positive for them,” he added.

The Trump administration unveiled the economic portion of its plan in June, which calls for $50 billion in international investment in the Palestinian territories and neighboring Arab states over 10 years.

Palestinian officials rejected it as an insult, saying the West can’t simply throw money at them while ignoring a two-state solution.

The White House has been working on a Middle East peace plan since Trump became president three years ago but has postponed releasing the details in part because of the Israeli political situation.
 

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Southeast Asia has been a major winner in the U.S.-China trade war. The region has seen a wave of new factories, as manufacturers move out of China to avoid U.S. tariffs. But Southeast Asia’s biggest economy, Indonesia, has struggled to attract new investment. That’s in part because of the country’s sprawling bureaucracy, as VOA’s Bill Gallo explains.

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As a new virus spreads inside and outside of China, health officials are scrambling to contain it, but the virus is so new, not much is known about it. VOA’s Carol Pearson tells us what we do know about the coronavirus.

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Three people died Thursday when a C-130 Hercules aerial water tanker crashed while battling wildfires in the Snowy Monaro region of Australia’s southern New South Wales state, officials said.

New South Wales Premier Gladys Berejiklian confirmed the deaths and crash in comments to reporters as Australia attempts to deal with an unprecedented fire season that has left a large swath of destruction.

“The only thing I have from the field reports are that the plane came down, it’s crashed and there was a large fireball associated with that crash,” said Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.

He said all three aboard were U.S. residents.

“Unfortunately, all we’ve been able to do is locate the wreckage and the crash site and we have not been able to locate any survivors,” he said.

Berejiklian said there were more than 1,700 volunteers and personnel in the field, and five fires were being described at an “emergency warning level.”

Also Thursday, Canberra Airport closed because of nearby wildfires, and residents south of Australia’s capital were told to seek shelter.

The blaze started Wednesday, but strong winds and high temperatures caused conditions in Canberra to deteriorate. A second fire near the airport that started Thursday morning is at the “watch and act” level.
“Arrivals and departures are affected due to aviation firefighting operations,” the airport authority said in a tweet.

Another tweet from traffic police said “the fire is moving fast and there are multiple road closures in the area. Please avoid the area. Local roadblocks in place.”

Residents in some Canberra suburbs were advised to seek shelter and others to leave immediately.

“The defense force is both assisting to a degree and looking to whether that needs to be reinforced,” Defense Minister Angus Campbell told reporters.

“I have people who are both involved as persons who need to be moved from areas and office buildings that are potentially in danger, and also those persons who are part of the (Operation) Bushfire Assist effort,” he said.

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The discredited practice of conversion therapy for LGBTQ children is now banned in Utah, making it the 19th state and one of the most conservative to prohibit it.

Supporters navigated a winding path to passage and some dissent remains, but barring it in Utah could give a boost to similar efforts in other right-leaning states, said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

“It’s really given people a lot of hope,” said Minter, whose group has pushed for bans around the U.S. Virginia is considering a ban, and the issue could also come up in this year in Texas and Kentucky, he said.

The change in Utah comes after the state hammered out a regulatory rule that had the support of the influential Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Leaders had opposed a previous version because it didn’t have certain exceptions for clergy.

“This is no longer a partisan cause, we all agree on how important it is to protect children from suicide,” said Cliff Rosky, a law professor who sits on the advisory council for the group Equality Utah. He said he’s also been contacted by advocates in Iowa and Nebraska.

Republican Gov. Gary Herbert took the unusual step of calling on regulators after a proposed law was derailed by changes made by conservative lawmakers. State officials confirmed the rule became final late Tuesday.

“Ultimately, I’m grateful to live in a state like Utah where we say you matter to everyone,” said Nathan Dalley, a 20-year-old student who underwent so-called conversion therapy as a teenager and has said it culminated in a suicide attempt.

The original sponsor of the proposal, GOP Utah Rep. Craig Hall, applauded the rule going into effect, saying it prohibits dangerous practices while protecting healthcare professionals.

“It will simply save lives,” he said.

Conversion therapy is a practice used to try to change sexual orientation or gender identity. Many people who have been through it say it deepened feelings of depression and increased thoughts of suicide. The new rule bans licensed  Utah therapists from subjecting LGBTQ minors to the practice that the American Psychological Association has said is not based in science and is harmful to mental health. The Utah Psychological Association also spoke in favor of the rule at a news conference on Thursday.

Still, the ban has drawn pushback in Utah. Opponents argued it would prevent parents from getting help for children with “unwanted” gay feelings and keep therapists from even talking about sexuality with their kids. The rule could become an issue during the 2020 legislative session.

Utah’s predominant faith, known widely as the Mormon church, opposes same-sex marriage and teaches that intimate same-sex relationships are a sin. But it also urges members to be kind and compassionate to LGBTQ people. The religion holds tremendous influence in Utah, where the majority of state lawmakers and nearly two-thirds of the state’s 3.1 million residents are members.

The faith got behind the conversion therapy ban after supporters included assurances that church leaders and members who are therapists would be allowed to provide spiritual counseling for parishioners or families.

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