McDonald's slammed with 3 new sexual-harassment lawsuits as workers say the fast-food giant failed to protect them on the job

ktaylor@businessinsider.com (Kate Taylor) 

© Provided by Business Insider McDonald's is facing new sexual-harassment lawsuits. Andrew Kelly/Reuters

McDonald's workers have filed three new sexual-harassment lawsuits in recent weeks.

The most recent was filed by Delisha Rivers, alleging McDonald's failed to offer support when her manager attempted to pressure her into sexual acts in exchange for cash and a raise.

"Our values drive our policies, including comprehensive safe and respectful workplace trainings that make clear our expectations for every person who works under the Arches," McDonald's said in a statement.

McDonald's is facing three new sexual-harassment lawsuits as the fast-food giant makes a major push on corporate values.

Workers at franchised McDonald's locations in St. Louis, Los Angeles, and Kansas City, Missouri, have filed lawsuits against the company in recent weeks alleging sexual assault and harassment. The most recent case was filed Thursday morning by a woman named Delisha Rivers.

Rivers alleges that a manager attempted to pressure her into sexual acts in exchange for cash and a raise when she was a shift leader at a McDonald's in early 2019. The complaint says she began facing retaliation at work after rejecting his advances.

The single mother of five said she struggled to find a way to contact McDonald's to report harassment. According to Rivers, she called multiple numbers - first connected to corporate, then to different field districts - attempting to report what she saw as targeted retaliation. None were able to offer her assistance.

Read more: Former Hamburger University worker sues McDonald's, alleging a coworker sexually assaulted and harassed her for years

"They were definitely impossible to reach," Rivers told Insider in a recent interview. "I still couldn't tell you how to reach them."

In February 2019, Rivers quit her job at McDonald's after facing what she calls unjustified criticism for things such as not speaking loudly enough, wearing the wrong color of shirt, and insubordination. It was a difficult process. With five children ages 2 to 9, Rivers said, she was forced to change her childcare routine, with her kids sitting in the lobby as she worked the night shift at her new job.

Rivers said she didn't feel as if McDonald's cared, because if it did, she said, "I'm pretty sure these franchise owners would be more aware and more careful about what goes on in their stores."

Read more: Del Taco will pay more than $1 million to settle a sexual-harassment lawsuit. It's just the tip of the iceberg for a growing problem plaguing restaurant workers

McDonald's introduced a new hotline in 2019 that allows workers to anonymously express concerns and report harassment. The company said in a statement that it did not tolerate sexual harassment and that the company or franchisees reviewed the facts when concerns were raised in restaurants.

"Our values drive our policies, including comprehensive safe and respectful workplace trainings that make clear our expectations for every person who works under the Arches," McDonald's said in a statement. "McDonald's franchisees share our commitment to being responsible partners to our communities, and we make versions of these trainings available as a resource to them."

Accusations of failing to support workers

The two other sexual-harassment lawsuits filed in recent weeks similarly allege workers were not offered sufficient training or support in situations in which they described facing sexual harassment.

Barbara Johnson said she faced sexual harassment while working at a McDonald's in St. Louis as a homeless teenager in 2018. Johnson said a manager and another coworker verbally harassed her on the job, with the manager grabbing her breasts on what ended up being her last shift.

"Barbara felt sick to her stomach. She clocked out and went home before her shift ended," said the complaint, filed in December. "Barbara felt she had no choice but to quit."

"She could not go back to the store," the complaint continued, after the manager assaulted her.

Elsy Rodriguez said in a complaint filed in November that she faced physical and verbal harassment while working at a Los Angeles McDonald's, starting in 2015. She accused a maintenance worker at the McDonald's location of verbally harassing her, refusing to leave the bathroom while she was using it, and spanking her multiple times.

The complaint said she reported the abuse to her kitchen manager and to two shift managers.

"None of these managers did anything to help Ms. Rodriguez, and the harassment continued," the complaint said.

Rivers told Insider that the company's failure to take action when she attempted to report harassment was part of a wider pattern of McDonald's failing workers.

"They really don't care," Rivers said. "I've missed funerals working at McDonald's. I've missed a lot of stuff. I went in sick. They don't care as long as you're there."

McDonald's is attempting to double down on values

© AP Photo/Richard Drew McDonald's CEO Chris Kempczinski is doubling down on values. AP Photo/Richard Drew

Florida McDonald's workers filed a $500 million sexual-harassment lawsuit against the company in 2020. A year prior, Michigan McDonald's workers filed a complaint alleging fast-food giant failed to address a "systemic problem" of harassment. Over the past four years, McDonald's employees have filed more than 50 sexual-harassment complaints.

In addition to the hotline, McDonald's rolled out a new training program to address harassment, discrimination, and workplace violence in 2019.

McDonald's has publicly reemphasized corporate values under CEO Chris Kempczinski, who was promoted to chief executive in late 2019.

Read more: McDonald's HR looks into new training and hiring processes to emphasize corporate values, as the fast-food giant faces controversies

Kempczinski's predecessor, Steve Easterbrook, was terminated after an investigation into the CEO's relationship with a subordinate. In August, McDonald's sued Easterbrook, alleging that he covered up three additional sexual relationships with employees at the fast-food chain.

Read more: Insiders reveal how former McDonald's CEO Steve Easterbrook went from the chain's savior to its worst nightmare as sex-scandal accusations threaten to envelop the fast-food giant

A group of McDonald's investors, led by CtW Investment Group, have called for McDonald's to oust two senior members of its corporate board, saying that the directors mismanaged the response to Easterbrook's conduct.

"The board hasn't been able to take decisive action," CtW Investment Group's executive director, Dieter Waizenegger, told Insider in December. "Issues started to fester. They can erupt and create much larger crises further on."

Read more: McDonald's investor explains why he and others are calling for the resignation of the fast-food giant's chairman

McDonald's also conducted a "top-to-bottom" review of its HR department after Heidi Capozzi was hired as global chief people officer in April. Capozzi's predecessor, David Fairhurst, was fired the day after Easterbrook was terminated. His termination was tied to his behavior making women at the company uncomfortable, Capozzi said in an internal meeting in 2020.
Read the original article on Business Insider

Enormous pigeon-eating catfish wreaking havoc on Europe’s ecosystems

The first time Frédéric Santoul witnessed the voracious feeding habits of Europe’s largest freshwater fish, he was standing on a medieval bridge in Albi, a town in southern France

© Photograph by Stephane Granzotto / NPL / Minden Pictures

Wels catfish, which are native to Eastern Europe, can grow up to 10 feet long.

On a small island below, in the Tarn River, pigeons wandered about, oblivious to the group of wels catfish moving near the gravel bank. Suddenly a fish catapulted out of the water and onto land, snatching a pigeon in a flurry of feathers before heaving itself back into the river, bird in mouth.

© Photograph by Remi Masson / NPL / Minden Pictures
Wels catfish encircle a small island in the Tarn River, preparing to grab unsuspecting pigeons.

“I knew that killer whales can beach themselves [to catch seals], but I had never seen that kind of behavior with fish,” says Santoul, a fish ecologist at the University of Toulouse, who spent the rest of the summer documenting the phenomenon.

At the time, almost a decade ago, little was known about the wels (also known as European) catfish in Western Europe, where it was introduced by anglers in the 1970s. The species, which can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh up to 600 pounds, is native to Eastern Europe, but has since expanded into at least 10 countries throughout Western and Southern Europe



Watch Zeb Hogan catch a wels catfish


In its native habitat, where the animal is both fished and farmed for food, the wels catfish is not considered a problem species. There, populations appear to have remained relatively stable for decades, with little evidence of excessive predation on other native fish.

But in newly inhabited rivers, these aquatic invaders are targeting endangered and commercially important migratory fish, such as Allis shad and Atlantic salmon, whose European populations are already in serious decline, Santoul says.

He’s concerned the predator could wipe out many native Western European fish species, fundamentally altering river ecosystems that are already struggling from the impacts of dams, water pollution, and overfishing. (Read how European rivers are littered with human-made barricades.)

“The cumulative effects of these factors could lead to a collapse of fish populations in another 10 years,” warns Santoul.

The giants’ feast

In 1974, a German angler released several thousand wels fry into Spain’s Ebro River. Other anglers, hoping for the opportunity to catch such a huge fish, did the same in rivers in other countries, and the species proliferated.

Like many invasive species, wels catfish thrive in rivers that have been altered by humans, where high water temperatures and low oxygen levels may have pushed out native species. The catfish also grows quickly, has a long life span (possibly up to 80 years), and reproduces easily, with females producing hundreds of thousands of eggs at a time.

But their hunting skills may give them their most formidable edge. Like all catfishes, wels have highly developed senses, particularly in detecting prey vibrations. They also have “an amazing ability to adapt to novel food sources,” says Santoul, who has documented how the catfish prey on Asian clams, another invasive species.

The catfish heavily target migratory fish moving from the sea into rivers to spawn, such as Atlantic salmon, which historically has had few predators; sea lampreys, primitive, jawless fish that are endangered in Europe; and Allis shad, a commercially valuable seafood.

They’ve also adopted new hunting strategies not observed in their native range, such as snatching pigeons from land.

In France’s Garonne River, the catfish will sometimes wait inside a fish tunnel to trap and kill salmon migrating through a hydropower plant.

In the same river, wels catfish have also learned to target spawning Allis shad at the river’s surface at nighttime, when the fish are preoccupied in their courtship displays, according to a study published in November 2020. An analysis of more than 250 catfish stomach contents revealed shad made up more than 80 percent of their diet—“the giants’ feast,” according to the study.

“All of these studies reach the same conclusion: That the European catfishes have become a serious threat to important migratory fish,” says Santoul.

But, he adds, there’s one species the catfish does not harm: Us. Despite a reputation as a gaping, broad-headed beast that attacks and even kills humans, “they’re harmless and curious with people, and you can swim right up to them in the river,” Santoul says.
A megafish exception

There are other examples of large, invasive fish disrupting freshwater ecosystems: the Nile perch, whose introduction as a game fish into Lake Victoria and other East African lakes in the 1960s resulted in the collapse of at least 200 native cichlid fish species by the 1980s.

More often than not, however, large freshwater fish are declining, threatened by invasive species, habitat loss, and overfishing. These species, often called megafishes, have declined globally by a staggering 94 percent since 1970, according to a 2019 study.

In its ability to adapt and spread, “the wels catfish really is an exception among the megafish,” says Zeb Hogan, a National Geographic Explorer and fish biologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, who founded the Megafishes Project and studies many of the most endangered large freshwater fish in Southeast Asia’s Mekong region. (See the stingray that may be the world’s biggest freshwater fish.)

Freshwater ecosystems as a whole are the most threatened in the world, with introductions of non-native species recognized as a leading cause, Hogan says.
Heading upstream

Ecological shifts driven by climate change, including warming temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns, could create even more favorable conditions for the wels catfish to spread, scientists say.

“Climate change affects species differently, with some alien species potentially having much larger distribution gains compared to natives,” says Rob Britton, a fish ecologist specializing in invasive species at Bournemouth University, in the U.K.

There is evidence that the wels catfish, which need water temperatures of at least 68 degrees Fahrenheit for their annual spawning, are colonizing previously uninhabited rivers in Belgium and the Netherlands as those water bodies warm, Santoul says.

There are also signs that catfish spawning now occurs several times a year in France, as rivers there stay warmer for longer periods of the year, he says.

On the Iberian Peninsula, home to more than 40 freshwater fishes found nowhere else, the aquatic invader has likely already extirpated one species, says Emili García-Berthou, an aquatic ecologist at the University of Girona in Spain.

“We forecast that the catfish, which is abundant in the main stem of the Ebro,” the river where they were first introduced, “will spread considerably upstream.”
Few solutions

And solutions remain scant, conservationists say. With a vibrant catch-and-release angling business built up around the wels catfish, primarily in Spain and Italy, there appears to be little appetite among governments and fisheries to remove the fish. Though they’re often eaten in Eastern Europe, they’ve never really caught on as a seafood in other parts of the continent.

Santoul stresses that European countries need to work more closely together to conserve freshwater ecosystems and address the threats facing migrating fish, such as dams. There are also no efforts underway to eradicate the catfish, Santoul says.

“My concern is for these migrating species that have already decreased before the catfish came here,” says Santoul. “If we at the European level we do not coordinate our conservation plans, it might be too late to save them.”

A frequent contributor to National Geographic, Stefan Lovgren often writes about freshwater conservation issues. He covers the Mekong River in Southeast Asia as part of a USAID project called “Wonders of the Mekong.” Follow the project on Instagram.

Syrian refugees celebrate fifth anniversary in Canada with virtual event

OTTAWA — Canadians' support for Syrian newcomers has been a beautiful example for the rest of the world, says the organizer of a virtual celebration to mark the fifth anniversary of Canada's welcoming Syrian refugees.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In an interview with The Canadian Press, the executive director of the Syrian Canadian Foundation, Bayan Khatib, said thousands of Canadians have volunteered to help Syrian refugees in almost every city and town in Canada.

Khatib, who came as a Syrian refugee to Canada more than 30 years ago, said most of the Syrian refugees her organization has worked with have learned English and found jobs thanks to the support they received from their communities.

"This has been a really successful example of Syrian refugees coming to a country (and) integrating well," she said

"Many of them have burning desire to give back to their communities and they have, in very big and small ways."

The first plane bearing Syrian refugees landed in Toronto on Dec. 10, 2015, following a promise by the Liberals during the 2015 election campaign to make it much easier for them to reach Canada.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Thursday event his government was elected by Canadians to bring in more Syrian refugees.

"This was something that Canadians asked for and Canadians did," Trudeau said.

"I'm extremely proud that my government was the vessel for that desire by Canadians"

He said welcoming Syrian refugees didn't just mean a better future for them but also a better future for all Canadians.

Nearly 73,000 Syrian refugees have been resettled in Canada since 2015.

Trudeau noted that newly appointed Transport Minister Omar Alghabra is the first Syrian Canadian minister in cabinet and suggested perhaps some young people participating in Thursday's event will find themselves in cabinet and leading the country one day.

Alghabra, who immigrated to Canada from Syria more than 20 years ago, said refugees and immigrants often face challenges as they start their new lives in Canada and that he has faced some of those challenges himself.

"There are many moments of love and hope that help us overcome these challenges," Alghabra said in Arabic.

"I'm confident that you all will succeed and you will play a notable role in building Canada."

Several Syrian newcomers shared their stories as they continue rebuild their lives in their new country.

Khatib said she was initially sad the celebration couldn't happen in person due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

But now she realizes it was a blessing, with almost 700 people from across the country registering to attend online.

Khatib's organization is based in Mississauga, Ont., and provides services for newcomers in several cities in Ontario.

She said the private sponsorship program that allows Canadians and permanent residents to sponsor refugees has helped many to pitch in and help.

"The government always does have an important role to play in supporting (those affected by) a humanitarian crisis, but private citizens ... and community groups can come together to support refugees directly as well and that's what happened in Canada," she said.

Trudeau said the the private sponsorship program proved to be successful after being in place for more than 40 years

"(The program) is a Canadian model now used all around the world," he said. "This program is the story of all Canadians from big cities to the smallest towns, whose generosity and kindness has changed hundreds of thousands of lives."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 14, 2020

———

This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Facebook and Canadian Press News Fellowship.

Maan Alhmidi, The Canadian Press

Natty Light Just Unveiled the 'Most Expensive Piece of Art in the World' — and You'll Never Guess What It's Made Of

© Provided by Travel + Leisure Natural Light

Natural Light Beer has long been the favored beverage on college campuses across the United States. Now, the beer company — lovingly referred to as Natty Light — is making a major effort to return all that love to college students everywhere.

On Wednesday, the company made history by unveiling the "most expensive" piece of art in the world in an effort to bring attention to the rising cost of college and the impact of college debt.

Entitled Da Vinci of Debt, the piece is made using 2,600 authentic diplomas provided by real college graduates across the nation.

"The art world is filled with absurd price tags that most people find impossible to justify," Daniel Blake, Vice President of Value Brands at Anheuser-Busch, shared in a statement about the piece, which now hangs in Vanderbilt Hall in New York City's Grand Central Terminal. "That's what made it the perfect medium for this campaign. It's a very fitting analogy for the outrageous cost of attending a typical four-year college and through Da Vinci of Debt, we hope to inspire action around the college debt crisis and drive more fans to enter for a chance to have the Natty College Debt Relief Program pay down their student loans."

According to Natural Light, Da Vinci of Debt's value is derived from the average total cost of a four-year college education. That means the 2,600 diplomas that make up the installation are valued at $470 million, "besting the most expensive piece of art ever sold at public auction — Salvator Mundi, a 600-year-old Da Vinci painting that sold for $450 million in 2017."

The installation sees the diplomas hang in mid-air in the hall "as if a gale of wind had just scattered all 2,600 of them throughout the cavernous, 6,000 square foot space at Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall," the company explained. The design, it added, is meant to illustrate both the scale of crippling student loan debt and to allude to the "chaotic impact college debt creates for those who are burdened by it."

Beyond creating a buzzed-about piece of art, the beer company is also putting its money where its mouth is with the Natural Light College Debt Relief program, which originally launched in 2018.

According to the company, each year, the program "provides $1 million to help students and graduates who are weighed down by the burden of debt." It's now in the fourth year of its proposed 10-year, $10 million commitment. And, the company will even sell its new artwork to the highest bidder to raise even more funds to help more grads.

"If it means giving more people the opportunity to enjoy the college experience without the debt that follows, we're all ears," Blake added. "Natty is dedicated to doing everything we can to provide real solutions to college debt, and if there is a serious bidder, you know where to find us...@naturallightbeer."

Those in New York can see the installation for themselves from Jan. 14-16, 2021. Anyone interested in viewing from afar can also see it on its virtual site.

And, anyone interested in applying for college debt relief can do so by sharing with the beer company what inspired them to go to college. Natural Light will be accepting entries using #NattyStories and #Contest from Jan. 11 through March 31, 2021. For more on the contest, the art, and the beer, check out Natty Light's website now.

Stacey Leasca is a journalist, photographer, and media professor. She'll school you on the beer pong table with Natty Light any day of the week. Send tips and follow her on Instagram now.

Lawmaker removes mask to sneeze at impeachment hearing
Duration: 00:41 

David Cicilline,(D) a state representative from Rhode Island, was caught on camera removing his face mask to sneeze during the impeachment proceedings in the U.S. House on Wednesday.

HE ALSO FAILED TO SNEEZE INTO HIS ARM, NOT HIS HANDS

Holocaust denier in Alberta defends Florida principal who said, ‘Not everyone agrees in the Holocaust’

An Alberta Holocaust denier who was convicted for “incitement to hatred” in Germany has inserted herself into a Florida debate over the firing of a school principal who said, as school board employee, he wasn’t able to confirm the veracity of the Holocaust.

© Provided by National Post Former federal Green party candidate Monika Schaefer refers to the Holocaust as “the six-million lie” and claims 'these things did not happen'.

Monika Schaefer, from Jasper, Alta., was convicted in Germany in October 2018 and sentenced to 10 months in jail. She was released on time served, CBC reported.

Now, more than two years later, as president of the Truth and Justice for Germans Society, which claims to counter “the war propaganda regurgitated to this day,” Schaefer has written an open letter to the Palm Beach County School Board in Boca Raton, Fla., urging the reinstatement of the fired principal.

William Latson had been removed from Spanish River High School over an email from the year prior, when he wrote to a parent saying, “I can’t say the Holocaust is a factual, historical event because I am not in a position to do so as a school district employee.”

“Not everyone agrees in the Holocaust,” the email said, according to local media.

Schaefer — who ran as the Green Party candidate for the riding of Yellowhead in three federal elections — stepped into the fray with an open letter after Latson was fired for good last October after a court battle and backlash. 

Alex Rose: The complicated legacy of Holocaust education

Facebook updates policies, bans Holocaust denial or distortion content

Michal Schlesinger, with B’nai Brith Canada, said it’s “appalling but not surprising” to see Schaefer “spreading her tentacles of anti-Semitic hatred related to Holocaust across our southern border.”

She posted the open letter on the website of the “Truth and Justice for Germans Society.” The letter, dated Jan. 8, said the group is “appalled” that Latson was fired “because he could not confirm the holocaust story.”

According to local news reports, the letter was also sent to teachers and staff of the high school.

“What other event in history is so untouchable, that even a neutral stance on it will have a teacher dismissed for saying they cannot confirm that it happened?” the letter says.

The letter goes on to detail several conspiracy theories about the number of Jews who died in the Holocaust. Historians place the number of deaths around six million members of the European Jewry, with another five million people killed in Nazi death camps.

According to BocaNewsNow, under Florida law, email addresses for school staff are public, and staff and teachers reached out to the outlet last week after receiving the email from Schaefer.

CREEPY CRAWLERS

Mystery of massive, train-stopping millipede swarms solved
For over a century, thousands of poisonous millipedes have swarmed train tracks in the thick, forested mountains of Japan, forcing trains to grind to a halt. These "train millipedes," so-called for their famous obstructions, would appear every so often — and then disappear again for years at a time. Now, scientists have figured out why.  

© Provided by Live Science Swarms of millipedes travel to new feeding grounds, 

sometimes across train tracks.

It turns out that these millipedes (Parafontaria laminata armigera), endemic to Japan, have an unusually long, and synchronous, eight-year life cycle. Such long "periodical" life cycles — in which a population of animals moves through the phases of life at the same time — have only previously been confirmed in some species of cicadas with 13- and 17-year life cycles, as well as in bamboos and some other plants.


"This millipede is the first non-insect arthropod among all periodical organisms," said senior author Jin Yoshimura, a professor emeritus in the department of mathematics and systems engineering at Shizuoka University in Japan, who has conducted research on periodical cicadas for the last two decades.

Related: Gallery: Dazzling photos of dew-covered insects

Train operators in Japan first observed an outbreak of train millipedes in 1920; they had to briefly stop their train as they waited for the creepy crawlers to pass over the tracks. According to various accounts, the millipedes returned every eight years or so after that, each time forming a dense blanket that was impossible to pass through. In 1977, first author Keiko Niijima, a researcher at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, first proposed that they might have an eight-year periodical cycle.

Now, Niijima, Momoka Nii, also a professor in the department of mathematical and systems engineering at Shizuoka University, and Yoshimura have confirmed the life cycle using reports of historical outbreaks and detailed surveys. Over many years, the authors collected millipedes from mountains in Honshu, Japan, and conducted research on the critters; they determined their life stages by counting the number of legs and body segments, as these are particular to the age of a millipede.

The researchers found that multiple broods of this population each have their own synchronization; in other words, one brood might be in the egg phase whereas another may be full-grown adults. Each population cycles through its entire life cycle in eight years.

The brood of millipedes that periodically appear on the train tracks doesn't have an affinity for train tracks or mean to be disruptive; rather, the insects are just trying to get to feeding grounds that are sometimes on the other side of the tracks. It just so happens that the railroad is an "obstacle" in their journey to new feeding grounds, Yoshimura told Live Science. To survive, these train millipedes munch on dead or decaying leaves sandwiched between the soil and the fresh leaves on the surface, Yoshimura said.

Because they live in such large numbers, the adults and seventh nymphs — the stage before becoming adults — quickly munch up all available food where they are born; and so they begin a trek to move to a new feeding site, he said. At that second site, they eat the decaying leaves, mate with each other, lay a batch of new eggs and later die.

The researchers hypothesize that their elongated life cycles could be synchronized with winter hibernation. Unlike periodical cicadas that emerge in mass numbers and thus make each individual less likely to succumb to predators, these train millipedes don’t need that added protection from predators. They already have a pretty good defense mechanism: when attacked, they release the poison cyanide, the researchers said.

The findings were published Jan. 13 in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

Originally published on Live Science.

Evangelicals must denounce the Christian nationalism in Capitol riots

It’s more important than ever for evangelicals to recognize the dangers associated with mistaking our fear for faith — and our faith for politics.

Trump supporters gather before breaching the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

January 7, 2021

By 

Jamie Aten, Kent Annan

(RNS) — The startling events in Washington on Wednesday (Jan. 6) were shocking to watch, not only for the scenes of unlawful rioters in the U.S. Capitol, but also for the sight of people waving flags and crosses in the name of Jesus and President Donald Trump. It was another brazen step for some who have harmfully traded in steadfast Christian ideals for a false white Christian nationalism.

As evangelicals, we must recognize, confess, and lament our role in allowing Christian nationalism to fuel these kinds of actions.

According to social science studies we’ve conducted, fear is a likely answer to why some evangelicals have accepted a politically driven gospel substitute, one that runs contrary to the teachings of Christ. Part of what we saw in the riots were Christian nationalists lashing out against people they perceive as “outsiders” or “different” from themselves because of their sense of insecurity.

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RELATED: Taking the white Christian nationalist symbols at the Capitol riot seriously

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Studies have shown that when groups feel threatened, in-group and out-group differences are more likely to be inflated. Though social psychologists have discovered this is a common mode of self-protection, it is associated with higher levels of anxiety, bias, prejudices and tribalism. It too often scapegoats those — like refugees and immigrants — whom Christians have a biblical call to care for. But understanding the causes of what happened is not enough. Too many evangelicals have accepted or turned a blind eye to a movement fueled by misinformation and lies.

What happened in the Capitol building was a culmination of these lies.

A Trump supporter carries a Bible outside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Supporting or staying silent about Christian nationalism is damaging not only our democracy but the testimony of the church. Influential evangelical pastor Tim Keller shared: “For Christians just to completely hook up with one party or another is really idolatry. … It’s also reducing the Gospel to a political agenda.” This week, it finally led to chaos in our halls of governance.

In a climate of fear and misinformation, evangelicals need to be committed to acquiring and sharing the best information available. As people who follow the one who said of himself, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” we need to commit to seeking truth and rejecting lies, even, and maybe especially, when it is inconvenient.

As evangelicals we must respond by praying, speaking and acting in ways that testify to the hope and faith to which we hold in Christ — not in a leader or political party. We must speak out against not only today’s riots but also against the related ideologies, beliefs, hatred, racism, fear-mongering, misogyny, bigotry, white privilege, xenophobia, oppression and other injustices. We need to be rebuking a dynamic in which biblical fundamentals are being so clearly compromised.

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RELATED: How the shofar emerged as a weapon of spiritual warfare for some evangelicals

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Don’t get us wrong: By no means are we suggesting evangelicalism is equal to Christian nationalists. Being evangelicals ourselves, we know it is possible for evangelicals to hold a deep spiritual commitment to Christian faith and still hold wildly divergent political convictions and vote differently.

But all evangelicals need to ask if our actions are furthering unity or division, as exhorted by the Apostle Paul in his Letter to the Ephesians: “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.” Our unity must affirm Christ’s call for us to love our neighbors, including those with whom we disagree. Scriptures should lead us to regularly care for the widow, the orphan, the hungry, the migrant, not hate our neighbors.

Regardless of our politics or who holds political office, let us not forget, as the Gospel of John teaches, that our ultimate hope rests in God’s kingdom and is misplaced if given to Caesar.

(Jamie Aten is founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College. Follow on Twitter at @drjamieaten or visit jamieaten.com. Kent Annan is director of Humanitarian & Disaster Leadership at Wheaton College. Follow on Twitter at @kentannan or visit kentannan.com. The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

'Not worth my life': Ugandans vote in tense election

KAMPALA, Uganda — Ugandans were voting Thursday in a presidential election tainted by widespread violence that some fear could escalate as security forces try to stop supporters of leading opposition challenger Bobi Wine from monitoring polling stations. Internet access has been cut off

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Long lines of voters snaked into the distance in the capital, Kampala. “This is a miracle,” mechanic Steven Kaderere said. “This shows me that Ugandans this time are determined to vote for the leader they want. I have never seen this before.”

But delays were seen in the delivery of polling materials in some places, including where Wine voted. After he arrived to the cheers of a crowd and cast his ballot, he made the sign of the cross, then raised his fist and smiled.

Results are expected within 48 hours of polls closing at 4 p.m. More than 17 million people are registered voters in this East African country of 45 million people. A candidate must win more than 50% to avoid a runoff vote.

Longtime President Yoweri Museveni, an authoritarian who has wielded power since 1986, seeks a sixth term against a strong challenge from Wine, a popular young singer-turned-opposition lawmaker. Nine other challengers are trying to unseat Museveni.

Wine, whose real name is Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, has seen many associates jailed or go into hiding as security forces crack down on opposition supporters they fear could mount a street uprising leading to regime change. Wine insists he is running a nonviolent campaign.

Wine, of the National Unity Platform party, has said he does not believe the election is free and fair. He has urged supporters to linger near polling stations to protect their votes. But the electoral commission, which the opposition sees as weak, has said voters must return home after casting ballots.

Internet access was cut Wednesday night. “No matter what they do, the world is watching,” Wine tweeted.

“This election has already been rigged,” another opposition candidate, Patrick Oboi Amuriat, told local broadcaster NTV as polls opened, adding that “we will not accept the outcome of this election.”

The government’s decision this week to shut down access to social media in retaliation over Facebook’s removal of Museveni-linked Ugandan accounts accused of inauthentic behaviour was meant “to limit the eyes on the election and, therefore, hide something,” said Crispin Kaheru, an independent election observer.

The 76-year-old Museveni's support has traditionally been concentrated in rural areas where many credit him with restoring a sense of peace and security that was lost during the regimes of dictators including Idi Amin.

Security forces have deployed heavily in the area that encompasses Kampala, where the opposition has strong support partly because of rampant unemployment even among college graduates.

“Museveni is putting all the deployments in urban areas where the opposition has an advantage,” said Gerald Bareebe, an assistant professor of political science at Canada's York University. “If you ask many Ugandans now, they say the ballot paper is not worth my life.”

Some young people said they would vote despite the apparent risks.

“This government has ruled us badly. They have really squeezed us,” said Allan Sserwadda, a car washer. “They have ruled us for years and they say they have ideas. But they are not the only ones who have ideas.”

Asked if the heavy military deployment fazed him, he smiled and said: “If we are to die, let us die. Now there is no difference between being alive and being dead. Bullets can find you anywhere. They can find you at home. They can find you on the veranda.”

At least 54 people were killed in Uganda in November as security forces put down riots provoked by the arrest of Wine for allegedly violating campaign regulations aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus.

Wine has captured the imagination of many in Uganda, and elsewhere in Africa, with his bold calls for the retirement of Museveni, whom he sees as a part of a corrupt old guard.

Museveni has dismissed the 38-year-old Wine as “an agent of foreign interests" who cannot be trusted with power. Wine has been arrested many times on various charges but has never been convicted.

Museveni, who decades ago criticized African leaders over not leaving power, now seeks more time in office after lawmakers jettisoned the last constitutional obstacle — age limits — on a possible life presidency.

“I grew up when he was president. Even my children have been born when he is president,” taxi driver Mark Wasswa said as voting began. “We also want to see another person now.”

The rise of Wine as a national leader without ties to the regime has raised the stakes within the ruling National Resistance Movement party.

“(Ruling) party members and supporters ought to know that this is a watershed election to shape, determine and install a Museveni successor,” government spokesman Ofwono Opondo recently wrote in the Sunday Vision newspaper.

The African Union and East African bloc have deployed election observer missions but the European Union said “an offer to deploy a small team of electoral experts was not taken up. The role of local observers will be even more important than before.”

The EU, U.N. and others have warned Uganda's security forces against using excessive force.

Ugandan elections are often marred by allegations of fraud and alleged abuses by the security forces. The country has never witnessed a peaceful handover of power since independence from Britain in 1962.

Rodney Muhumuza, The Associated Press

Ocean acidification is transforming California mussel shells

New analyses reveal how over 60 years a critical marine species has responded to ocean acidification

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

Research News

 

IMAGE: UC SAN DIEGO RESEARCHERS HAVE FOUND THAT THE SHELLS OF CALIFORNIA MUSSELS, A CRITICAL SPECIES FOUND ALONG THE PACIFIC COAST, ARE WEAKENING AS A RESULT OF OCEAN ACIDIFICATION. view more 

CREDIT: ROY LAB, UC SAN DIEGO

The large mollusk known as the California mussel makes its home in the rocky shoreline along the Pacific Coast from Mexico to Alaska. Considered a "foundational" animal, Mytilus californianus provides homes for hundreds of other species and offers a rich food source for species ranging from spiny lobsters to humans.

As the waters off our coasts change due to human influences, scientists at the University of California San Diego are finding that the composition of California mussel shells is weakening as it becomes more tolerant of acidic conditions.

Scientists have known that rising levels of human-produced carbon dioxide that are increasingly absorbed into the world's oceans will have an impact on sea life. But as ocean waters increasingly acidify, tracking impacts on specific species has been difficult to gauge over time. Most of what we know about species' responses to acidifying waters comes from short-term experiments that suggest these increases in ocean acidity--causing a lowering of seawater pH and less availability of carbonate ions to make shells--can lead to less fortified shells and more vulnerable animals.

But not every species from these studies responds the same way, with some even appearing to do better under these conditions. This makes long-term studies looking at how increases in temperature and ocean acidification impact species extremely valuable for understanding and ultimately making predictions about future vulnerability of these species.

Comparing new data with samples collected in the 1950s, UC San Diego Division of Biological Sciences graduate student Elizabeth Bullard and Professor Kaustuv Roy found that ocean acidification is transforming the composition of California mussel shells from mostly the mineral aragonite to the mineral calcite. The results are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Aragonite is much stronger than calcite and makes for a better shell to protect against predators and wave energy, two things that are expected to increase with warming waters. Calcite, on the other hand, is much weaker but does not dissolve as easily as aragonite--making a better shell material if the waters are acidifying. Experts had expected aragonite, the stronger of the two substances, to emerge as the dominant mussel shell mineral due to its preference to form in warmer waters. Instead, the new study has shown that the weaker but more stable calcite mineral is now the dominant shell substance, a response linked to increases in ocean water acidity.

"We found that these mussels are indeed secreting more calcite today than they were 60 years ago," said Bullard. "Lower pH eats away the shells these animals are able to create, so it's considered a major problem for marine organisms. There are 303 species that are associated with the California mussel, so if we lose the mussel we lose other species, some of which are really important to things like our fisheries and recreation."

In the late 1950s, Caltech scientist James Dodd traveled the Pacific Coast from La Jolla to Washington state, collecting mussels along the way. His specimen sampling led to a valuable baseline of information about mussels and their shell composition, including the ratio of aragonite to calcite. One of the results of his work was a stark geographical contrast between cold northern waters, where mussels mostly featured calcitic shells, with the warmer southern waters where aragonite was the dominant shell mineral.

To find out how the shell mineral profile has changed across six decades, Bullard similarly traveled the coastline with her lab mate, graduate student Alex Neu, in 2017 and 2018 to collect new specimens in a survey that geographically replicated Dodd's sampling. With more than 100 shell samples collected, Bullard then spent days meticulously grinding each shell down to a fine dust to dissect their composition--up to 16 hours of grinding for one shell in some cases.

"If you put too much heat or pressure on aragonite it will convert to calcite," said Bullard. "Calcite is extremely stable but aragonite isn't. In order to really make sure the ratio is accurate you have to be super careful and hand grind the specimens down to a super fine powder."

Finally, project collaborator Professor Olivia Graeve and her materials science group in the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering conducted X-ray diffraction analysis on each sample to determine their mineral profiles.

"By combining our expertise in crystallography of materials with our collaborator's expertise in ecology, we were able to make a real impact on our understanding of humans' long-term effects on other species," said Graeve. "This type of interdisciplinary research is what's required to continue advancing science and engineering for the benefit of our world."

The results told a new story. Instead of a geographical boundary between north and south California mussel shells, the new survey revealed that acidic waters are reducing shell aragonite throughout the coast, leading to calcite as the dominant shell mineral.

"James Dodd's data fit in a world where the balance of temperature and ocean pH was very different from that today," said Roy, a professor in the Section of Ecology, Behavior and Evolution (EBE). "For me it was surprising how big the effect was in 60 years. That's not a huge amount of time as these things go, but the effect was striking."

The researchers were surprised to find that ocean pH and changing amounts of carbonate availability, not temperature, played such a strong role in influencing shell mineralogy. It's a finding that would not be possible without Dodd's critical baseline work.

"This study highlights the importance of utilizing long-term data sets and large spatial comparisons to understand and test predictions about species responses to a changing world," the authors write in the paper.

Bullard and Roy are now probing deeper into shell viability questions. They are conducting lab experiments to test how this change from aragonite to calcite might impact the strength and overall function of the mussel shell.

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Co-authors of the paper include: Elizabeth Bullard, Ivan Torres, Tianqi Ren, Olivia Graeve and Kaustuv Roy.

A grant from NASA and the Jeanne Marie Messier Memorial Endowment Fund (EBE) supported this research.