UN Women: COVID-19 is `most discriminatory crisis' for women


FILE - In this Wednesday, March 7, 2018 file photo, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of U.N. Women, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press, in New York. The U.N. health agency and its partners have found in a new study released Tuesday, March 9, 2021 that nearly one in three women worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetimes, calling the results a “horrifying picture” that requires action by government and communities alike. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women, called violence against women "the most widespread and persistent human rights violation that is not prosecuted.” (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, file)


EDITH M. LEDERER
Mon, March 15, 2021

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The head of UN Women called the COVID-19 pandemic “the most discriminatory crisis” that women and girls have ever experienced on Monday, pointing to women losing jobs far more often than men, a “shadow pandemic” of domestic violence, and 47 million more women being pushed into living on less than $1.90 a day this year.

Emerging from the pandemic, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said the world also faces more orphans and child-headed homes, an increase in child marriage, 59 percent of women reporting having to spend more time on domestic work since the pandemic began, and a digital gender gap leaving many women unprepared for the future.

She spoke at the opening of the annual meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women whose theme this year is on women's participation and decision-making in public life and combatting violence against women and girls.


Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of the U.N. women’s agency, said the World Health Organization’s latest report shows that the highest rates of intimate partner violence in the past 12 months -- 16% -- was against young women aged 15 to 24.

A report for the commission’s session also underlined that “violence against women in public life is a major deterrent to their political participation, and affects women of all ages and ranks, in every part of the world,” she said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said every month the toll from violence against women rises -- from sexual abuse to child marriage.

“The damage is incalculable and will resound down the decades, into future generations,” he said.

The U.N. chief said the fallout from the pandemic “has shown how deeply gender inequality remains embedded in the world’s political, social and economic systems.”

Over the past year, Guterres said women leaders are among those who’ve kept COVID-19 transmission rates low and put their countries on tract for recovery while countries with less effective responses to the pandemic “have tended to be those where strongman approaches prevail and women’s rights are under assault.”

But the secretary-general said “looking across the world, we see that women’s voices remain missing from the highest levels of leadership.”

According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s latest report released last week, only 25 percent of lawmakers worldwide are women and only 22 countries have a female head of state or government with Europe topping the list.

“At current rates parity among heads of government will not be achieved until 2150,” Guterres said. “That’s right, another 130 years of men making the same kinds of decisions they have made for the past 130 years and more.”

While these new numbers are little changed, UN Women’s Mlambo-Ngcuka said there are gains “to celebrate and inspire us.”

She pointed to the share of women in government in Lithuania increasing from 8 percent to 43 percent, Rwanda leading the world with the largest share of women ministers at 54.8 percent, and the percentage of women ministers in the United States rising from 17 percent in 2020 under former president Donald Trump to 46 percent in President Joe Biden’s Cabinet, “a historic high.”

Despite these positive developments, Guterres said men are dominating decision-making during the pandemic.

“A study of 87 countries found that 85 percent of COVID-19 task forces contained mostly men,” the U.N. chief said.

Guterres stressed that women have the skills and expertise for top jobs, and in many countries they’re graduating from higher education at higher rates than men.

“What we need is not more training for women, but to train those in power on how to build inclusive institutions,” he said. “We need to move beyond fixing women and instead fix our systems.”

Mlambo-Ngcuka called for “big, bold steps” and urged global leaders to make space especially for young women to enter public life.

“We see them on the streets across the world, leading movements even in the face of lethal threat,” she said.

David Stuurman: The South African who twice escaped Robben Island


Wed, March 17, 2021

David Stuurman statue

David Stuurman, who has just had an airport named after him, was one of the first leaders of resistance to colonial expansion in South Africa, yet few people in the country know much about him, as the BBC's Mohammed Allie reports.



To the colonial establishment of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, David Stuurman was a criminal and a threat, but to the Khoi and Xhosa people (or amaXhosa) he achieved hero status for his brave and continued resistance to forced removals and subjugation.

Stuurman also has the distinction of being the only person to have twice escaped from Robben Island - later known as one of the places where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated - off the coast of Cape Town.

In 1809 he was among the first political prisoners to be banished there.

First escape

"He was arrested and charged for resisting colonial rule as well as opposing the conscription of the Khoi into militias that were created to defend the colony and to attack the San and amaXhosa," cultural activist Stephen Langtry told the BBC.

"By December of 1809 Stuurman and a few others were the first to escape from the island using one of the whaling boats that was anchored in the harbour.

"He made it out of the colony and was given refuge amongst the amaXhosa. He was recaptured [a decade later] and put to hard labour on Robben Island. On 9 August 1820, he escaped again," Langtry added.

Even though the getaway boat capsized, Stuurman survived only to be caught once more and sent back to the island in December for a third stint.
Death in Australia

This time he was chained to a wall until he could be transported in February 1823 to Australia.

Stuurman was then put to work at the military barracks in Sydney for six years before he was granted a ticket to leave. But by that time he had become lame in his right leg and was unable to return home, according to Sydney Living Museums.

He died in Australia in 1830 and was buried in a cemetery which was later redeveloped as Sydney's central railway station, meaning that Stuurman's remains could not be located.

David Stuurman's spirit was laid to rest back in South Africa in a ceremony in 2017

After negotiations with the Australian authorities that lasted several years, a traditional ceremony was conducted in Sydney in 2017 to repatriate the spirit of Stuurman. Three days later a second spiritual repatriation was conducted at the Sarah Baartman Heritage Centre in the South African town of Hankey, Eastern Cape province.

Born around 1773, near the Gamtoos River in what is now Eastern Cape, Stuurman took over the leadership of his Khoi clan from his brother Klaas who died in 1803.

He became involved in the anti-colonial fight after his people were dispossessed of their land by the Dutch and British colonisers, forcing him and other indigenous people to live and work on their land as labourers.
'Tied up and beaten'

Stuurman himself worked for a farmer, Johannes Vermaak, but his brutal treatment led him to abandon his job.

At one point it was alleged that he had threatened Vermaak.

"[After the disagreement] Vermaak had first demanded that he be shot but settled for having him tied to a wagon and beaten with sjamboks [whips]," historian Vertrees Malherbe has written.

"After that he was salted and left in the burning sun, for some hours."

Key dates in Stuurman's life. [ Early 1770s Stuurman born in what is now Eastern Cape ],[ 1795 British forces seize Cape Colony from the Dutch, then return it in 1803 and finally gaining control in 1806 ],[ 1799 Khoi rebellion, which Stuurman helps lead, begins ],[ 1809 Stuurman arrested and held on Robben Island but later escapes ],[ 1820 Stuurman recaptured after second escape ],[ 1830 Stuurman dies in Australia after being transported there in 1823 ], Source: Source: SA History Online, BBC Monitoring, Image

Stuurman's active career as Khoi leader spanned a tumultuous period in the first two decades of the 19th Century, when the Xhosa, Boers, Khoikhoi, San and the British clashed intermittently in the Eastern Cape.

The conflict was largely because of colonial expansion which dispossessed Xhosa and Khoi people of their land, cattle and other belongings.

In 1799 the Khoi on the eastern frontier of the Cape Colony rebelled. Hundreds left the farms which, in many instances they were forced to work on, and went to live with the Xhosa, according to South African History Online.

Together the Khoi and the Xhosa attacked the colonialists.

Stuurman helped lead the expeditions to recapture cattle from Dutch colonists between 1795 and 1803.

By all accounts, Stuurman was a thorn in the side of both the frontiersmen and the new British authorities in the Cape as he refused to be coerced into giving up his clan's independence.

'For us, he's a legend'

"He was important for his contributions in resisting colonial occupation. He was also a formidable resistance fighter," cultural activist Shepi Mati told the BBC.

"At one point he received refugees - people who ran away from slavery and forced conscription into farm labour and offered them a safe haven among his community who resided in the area now called Hankey in the Eastern Cape.

"Stuurman himself was highly regarded in the community. He was not afraid to take on the colonialists. He took back land and cattle that was forcibly taken from his people."

Khoi activists and Khoi San community members took part in the symbolic burial in 2017

Mati added that Stuurman also played an important role in fostering unity between the Khoi and the Xhosa.

"For us he's a legend. He's one of the Khoi and San heroes who was the first, together with his brother Klaas, to fight colonialism, land dispossession and slavery at the time," says Christian Martin, an Eastern Cape-based Khoi and San activist. In 2016, he proposed that Port Elizabeth's airport should be named in Stuurman's honour.

"Stuurman was way ahead of his time when it comes to unity and nation building.

"There's a white people's version of Stuurman where he is painted as a murderer. Remember some people also thought of Nelson Mandela as a terrorist - but to millions he was a hero."

The colonists saw him as a bandit and unwilling to co-operate and in 1809 Stuurman was arrested and held on Robben Island.
'First revolutionary'

Martin reveals that he received several messages from white South Africans after the renaming of the international airport in Port Elizabeth (which itself has got a new name - Gqeberha).

One, written in Afrikaans, called Stuurman "a notorious robber and murderer" who had settlers killed, stole their cattle and "chased their women and children, barefoot and wearing only their nightclothes into the field in the bitter cold".

Perhaps part of the source of the anger was that the airport was once named after former Prime Minister HF Verwoerd, considered to be one of the architects of apartheid, which legalised racial discrimination.

According to Errol Heynes, a former deputy mayor of Port Elizabeth, Stuurman, by opposing forced removals, became "one of the first revolutionaries in the country".

"It was important to highlight those who had fought the first settlers and fought colonisation before the advent of apartheid," he adds.

Stuurman has been honoured in other ways. In 2015 a life-size bronze sculpture of him, created by Cape Town-based artist Keith Calder, was erected at the National Heritage Monument in Tshwane.

Despite this and having played a key role in resisting colonialism it has taken the renaming of the airport for many South Africans to learn more about him.

With this move and the tales of his heroism, including the double escape from Robben Island, there is now likely to be more interest.

Bernie Sanders rips into Jeff Bezos: 'You are worth $182 billion ... why are you doing everything in your power to stop your workers' from unionizing?

Annabelle Williams
Wed, March 17, 2021


Bezos declined Sanders' invitation to testify at a hearing, but the senator had harsh words for him.


Sanders criticized Amazon's countering of a union drive in Alabama despite the CEO's record wealth.


The hearing included testimony from a pro-union worker at Amazon's Bessemer warehouse.


At a hearing on Wednesday morning, Sen. Bernie Sanders spoke critically about Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who declined Sanders' invitation to testify, and Elon Musk, the two wealthiest men.

"Bezos and Musk now own more wealth than the bottom 40%. Meanwhile, we're looking at more hunger in America than at any time in decades," Sanders said in his opening remarks at the Senate Budget Committee hearing, which was titled The Income and Wealth Inequality Crisis in America

"If he was with us this morning, I would ask him the following question ... Mr. Bezos, you are worth $182 billion - that's a B," Sanders said. "One hundred eighty-two billion dollars, you're the wealthiest person in the world. Why are you doing everything in your power to stop your workers in Bessemer, Alabama, from joining a union?"

The unionization push being voted on at Amazon's Bessemer fulfillment center has been the focal point of a high-profile labor dispute between the behemoth "everything store" and the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union. Amazon has aggressively pushed its workers to vote against unionization, launching a campaign called "Do It Without Dues" to encourage workers to stick to the status quo.

Sanders pointed out the disparity between Bezos' wealth growth during the pandemic and the struggles of rank-and-file workers.

"Jeff Bezos has become $77 billion richer during this horrific pandemic, while denying hundreds of thousands of workers who work at Amazon paid sick leave," he said.

Jennifer Bates, an employee at the Bessemer warehouse who testified at Wednesday's hearing, said the unionization efforts were an attempt to "have a level playing field." Bates cited tough working conditions, long hours, and a lack of job security as major drivers of the unionization efforts.

"Amazon brags it pays workers above the minimum wage," she said. "What they don't tell you is what those jobs are really like. And they certainly don't tell you what they can afford."

When asked what having a union would mean to her and her coworkers, Bates said it would result in their voices being "amplified" and a "sense of empowerment, "and not just at the Amazon in Bessemer but all over the country."

"We take employee feedback seriously, including Ms. Bates's, but we don't believe her comments represent the more than 90% of her fulfillment center colleagues who say they'd recommend Amazon as a great place to work to friends and family," an Amazon spokesperson told Insider. "We encourage people to speak with the hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees who love their jobs, earn at least $15 an hour, receive comprehensive healthcare and paid leave benefits, prefer direct dialogue with their managers, and voted Amazon #2 on the Forbes best employers list in 2020."

While much of the hearing was devoted to the Amazon unionization fight, which will be decided at the end of March, Sanders said "Amazon and Jeff Bezos are not alone" and decried the "corporate greed" that drives income inequality.

Others who testified at the hearing included former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, who said unions were important and cited the steep decline in union membership since the labor heyday of the mid-1900s.

Sanders has been a vocal critic of Amazon, while President Joe Biden has taken a softer approach in referencing the union drive. In a statement earlier in March, Biden condemned "anti-union propaganda" from large companies but stopped short of naming Amazon.

Atlanta mayor calls police depiction of motive in spa killings 'victim blaming'

Caitlin Dickson and Christopher Wilson

Wed, March 17, 2021

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms took issue with the way authorities described the possible motive of the suspect in the Tuesday evening killings of eight people at three spa locations.

The mayor countered the depiction used by Capt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department shortly after he pointed to suspect Robert Aaron Long’s assertion that “sexual addiction” rather than racism toward Asian Americans was behind his shooting rampage.

“We are not about to get into victim blaming, victim shaming, here,” Bottoms said at a Wednesday news conference, adding, “We don’t know additional information about what his motives were. We will not begin to blame victims, and as far as we know in Atlanta these are legally operating businesses that have not been on our radar, the radar of [the Atlanta Police Department].”

Earlier at the news conference, Baker drew scrutiny for his matter-of-fact description of Long’s mindset.

“He was pretty much fed up and kind of at the end of his rope and yesterday was a really bad day for him, and this is what he did,” Baker said, adding that the businesses were seen by Long as “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”

Long, 21, was arrested Tuesday evening. Six of the eight victims were Asian women, but Atlanta Police Chief Rodney Bryant said Wednesday morning that it was too early to call the murders a hate crime. The killings come amid an increased focus on violence against Asian American communities, and the FBI is involved in the investigation.

On Wednesday afternoon, Long was charged with murder and assault.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms speaking about the arrest of Robert Aaron Long on Wednesday. (Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

The Cherokee County Sheriff’s Department said that Long confessed to the crimes and that he was apprehended after his family assisted law enforcement. Officials stated that Long told them he viewed the spas as a sexual outlet, but it is not yet known whether he had visited any or all of the three establishments prior to his attack, or if any of those establishments had ties to the sex industry.

Officials said they believe that when they apprehended Long he was heading to Florida to commit further violence, suggesting he was planning to target “some type of porn industry” business. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Long purchased a gun used in the killings on Tuesday just hours before the shooting.

Police responded to the report of a robbery in Acworth, a suburb of Atlanta, just before 5 p.m. on Tuesday. They found four people dead and one injured at Young’s Asian Massage. An hour later they responded to reports of a robbery at Gold Spa in northeast Atlanta. Three women were found dead there, along with another victim at Aromatherapy Spa across the street.

Authorities released names of four of the victims: Ashley Yaun, 33; Paul Andre Michels, 54; Xiaojie Yan, 49; and Daoyou Feng, 44.

“That the Asian women murdered yesterday were working highly vulnerable and low-wage jobs during an ongoing pandemic speaks directly to the compounding impacts of misogyny, structural violence and white supremacy,” said Phi Nguyen, a litigation director at Asian Americans Advancing Justice, in a statement.

“While authorities are still investigating the motive in these attacks and whether or not they were anti-Asian in nature, we already know that too many within the AAPI [Asian American/Pacific Islander] community fear every day for themselves and their loved ones as a result of the spate of attacks over the past year,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a statement. “We all must call on elected officials to take steps to counter anti-Asian hate and other extremist or hateful ideology. And law enforcement at every level, along with social media companies, must work together to help intercept and combat this growing threat.”


Atlanta mayor: Asian spa shootings ‘a crime against us all’

Nick Niedzwiadek
Wed, March 17, 2021

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms on Wednesday condemned the attacks on three Atlanta-area spas that left eight people dead, including six Asian women.

“Whether it is senseless violence that we've seen play out in our streets, or more targeted violence like we saw yesterday, a crime against any community is a crime against us all,” Bottoms said at a news conference.

Law enforcement officials in Georgia Wednesday said the shootings do not appear to be racially motivated but stressed the investigation into the deadly shootings is ongoing. A 21-year-old male suspect in the shootings was taken into custody Tuesday night following a police chase.

Captain Jay Baker of the Cherokee County sheriff's office said that the man claims to have a sex addiction and that the businesses were a “temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”

“It is still early on, but those were comments that he made,” Baker said, adding that investigators have not found a potential political or religious motivation for the attacks.

Authorities also said the alleged shooter said he was planning to leave the state when he was apprehended and may have gone after a business tied to "the porn industry" in Florida.

“For as tragic as this was on yesterday, it could have been worse,“ Bottoms said. “It is very likely that there would have been more victims on yesterday.”

The shootings Tuesday came amid heightened concern about a rise in hate crimes against people of Asian descent in recent months and immediately posed questions about why the particular businesses were targeted. At least one victim survived the attack but remains hospitalized.

The man, Robert Aaron Long, has been charged with four counts of murder and one count of aggravated assault in Cherokee County, part of the Atlanta metro area where one of the businesses was located. Additional charges are expected to follow related to the two shootings that occurred within the city.

Bottoms said that regardless of what fueled the violence, the fear and outrage it induced needs to be addressed.

“Whatever the motivation was for this guy, we know that many of the victims, [the] majority of the victims were Asian,” she said. “We also know that this is an issue that is happening across the country. It is unacceptable. It is hateful, and it has to stop.”

The Atlanta mayor said she has been in contact with the White House in the aftermath of the shootings, and the Biden administration said early Wednesday that the president had been briefed on the “horrific” situation.

President Joe Biden said Wednesday afternoon that he has been in touch with Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray about the situation and acknowledged the concern expressed by the AAPI community.

"I have been speaking about the brutality against Asian-Americans, and it's troubling," Biden said from the Oval Office. "I'll have more to say when the investigation is completed."

Earlier in the day Vice President Kamala Harris said the string of shootings was "tragic."

"It speaks to a larger issue, which is the issue of violence in our country, and what we must do to never tolerate it and to always speak out against it," the vice president said. "I do want to say to our Asian-American community that we stand with you and understand how this has frightened and shocked and outraged all people."

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) released a statement Wednesday saying he is "heartbroken" for the victims and their families.

"While the motive for last night's terrible violence remains under investigation, I express my love and support for and stand in solidarity with the Asian-American community, which has endured a shocking increase in violence and harassment over the last year," Ossoff said.

Numerous Asian-American political figures expressed outrage at Tuesday's shootings, as well as the animus directed at Asians within the United States.

Andrew Yang, a leading New York City mayoral candidate, said the tragedy underscores the need for additional resources to combat anti-Asian hate crimes and that he did not believe that race was a non-factor in Georgia.

“We should be treating hate crimes as such," he said in Times Square on Wednesday. "And make no mistake, these women were targeted on the basis of their race."

Yang's wife, Evelyn, similarly dismissed the idea that the locations of the shootings can be separated from the victim's identities.

"If you target massage parlors you are targeting Asian women," she wrote in a tweet. "I appreciate all the supportive sentiment out there but let’s be clear in calling this what it is — a hate crime."

Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) blamed former President Donald Trump for stoking some of the anti-Asian sentiment. The former president and some of his aides repeatedly used the racist term "kung flu" in reference to the coronavirus and frequently labeled it the "China virus." Trump invoked the latter as recently as Tuesday night in a Fox News interview that aired as news was starting to emerge about the shootings.

"We feel that we have been invisible," Meng, who is of Tawainese descent, said on MSNBC. "We are so hurt about what happened last night in Atlanta, but also hurt about this yearslong-worth of hateful incidents and hate crimes that have skyrocketed across the country.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki likewise told reporters Wednesday there's "no question" Trump contributed to "perceptions of the Asian-American community that are inaccurate, unfair [and] have elevated threats against Asian Americans."

LGBTQ Catholics stung by Vatican rebuff of same-sex unions

DAVID CRARY and LUIS ANDRES HENAO

Mon, March 15, 2021

The Vatican’s declaration that same-sex unions are a sin the Roman Catholic Church cannot bless was no surprise for LGBTQ Catholics in the United States — yet it stung deeply nonetheless.

Marianne Duddy-Burke, executive director of DignityUSA, said her organization’s membership includes same-sex couples who have been together for decades, persevering in their love for one another in the face of bias and family rejection.

“The fact that our church at its highest levels cannot recognize the grace in that and cannot extend any sort of blessing to these couples is just tragic,” she said.

She was responding to a formal statement Monday from the Vatican’s orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, saying Roman Catholic clergy may not bless such unions since God "cannot bless sin.” It was approved by Pope Francis.

"Having sin be explicitly included in this statement kind of brings us back to zero,” said Ross Murray, who oversees religious issues for the LGBTQ rights group GLAAD.

He expressed dismay that “the ability for us to live out our lives fully and freely is still seen as an affront to the church or, worse yet, an affront to God, who created us and knows us and loves us.”

Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, which advocates for greater LGBTQ acceptance in the church, said that if those priests who have already been blessing same-sex unions now stop doing so, lay Catholics could be moved take their place.

“If priests and pastoral ministers no longer feel they can perform such a blessing, the Catholic laity will step in and perform their own rituals,” DeBernardo said. “The toothpaste is out of the tube, and it can’t be put back inside.”

The Rev. Bryan Massingale, an openly gay Catholic priest and professor of theology and social ethics at Fordham University, said priests who want to engage in pastoral outreach to the gay and lesbian community “will continue to do so, except that it will be even more under the table ... than it was before.”

For Catholics in same-sex relationships, he said, the Vatican’s new message will hurt.

“Every human being is born with this innate desire to love,” he said. “For those who are oriented toward members of the same sex ... to have it being described as inherently or innately sinful without any qualification, that is crushing.”

The Rev. James Martin, another priest who advocates for greater LGBTQ inclusion in the Catholic church, said in a post on Twitter that he received dozens of messages from LGBTQ people on Monday saying they were discouraged by the Vatican’s pronouncement. He urged them not to despair.

“Besides, what is the alternative?” he asked. “To live in fear of the future that God has in store for us?... To doubt that Jesus is on the side of those who feel in any way marginalized?”

Vatican doctrine holds that gays and lesbians should be treated with dignity and respect, but that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered” and that same-sex unions are sinful.

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a professor of religious studies at Manhattan College, said those teachings, put together, are problematic.

“It boggles the mind that the hierarchy can affirm that LGBTQ+ persons are made in the image of God but that their unions are a sin,” she said via email. “Are they made in God’s image with the exception of their hearts? With the exception of their abilities and inclinations to love?"

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of the U.S.-based NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, said she was relieved the Vatican statement wasn’t harsher.

She interpreted it as saying, “You can bless the individuals (in a same-sex union), you just can’t bless the contract.”

“So it’s possible you could have a ritual where the individuals get blessed to be their committed selves.”

The Vatican's pronouncement was welcomed by some church conservatives, however, such as Bill Donohue, president of the New York-based Catholic League.

“There will be no recognition of homosexual unions or marriage by the Catholic Church. It is non-negotiable. End of story,” he said.

“Pope Francis has been under considerable pressure by gay activists, in and out of the church, to give the green light to gay marriage,” Donohue added, calling Monday’s statement “the most decisive rejection of those efforts ever written.”

Francis has endorsed providing legal protections for same-sex couples, but that is in the civil sphere and not the church.

Juan Carlos Cruz, a Chilean advocate for sex-abuse victims who is gay, reported in 2018 that when he met with Francis, the pope had told him, “God made you like this, and he loves you."

On Monday, Cruz said the Vatican officials who issued the new statement “are completely in a world of their own, away from people and trying to defend the indefensible.”

He called for a change in the leadership of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, saying it was undermining efforts by Francis to create a more inclusive church.

“If the church and the CDF do not advance with the world ... Catholics will continue to flee.” he said.

In Francis’ homeland of Argentina, LGBTQ activist Esteban Paulon said earlier statements by the pontiff conveying empathy and understanding for gays and lesbians were mere gestures, lacking any official weight.

“They were not institutional pronouncements,” said Paulon, executive director of the Institute of Public Policies LGBT+. “Saying that homosexual practice is a sin takes us back 200 years and promotes hate speech that unfortunately in Latin America and Europe is on the rise.”

Chile’s largest LGBTQ rights group, the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation, condemned the decree as a “homophobic and anti-Christian action” from the Catholic hierarchy.

Spokesman Oscar Rementería contrasted the Vatican’s stern rhetoric against same-sex marriage with the many documented cases of Catholic leaders covering up child sex abuse committed by clergy.

___

Associated Press writers Eva Vergara in Santiago, Chile; Almudena Calatrava in Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Nicole Winfield in Rome and Mariam Fam in Cairo contributed to this report.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support from the Lilly Endowment through The Conversation U.S. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Group of priests vows to bless same-sex couples
Caitlin O'Kane
Wed, March 17, 2021

A group of priests who have distanced themselves from the Catholic Church are criticizing the Vatican's recent decree that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex marriages. The Austrian Priests' Initiative, a group of priests leading a campaign of disobedience against the Vatican, said this week they will continue to bless same-sex couples.

The initiative (also as Pfarrer-Initiative) said in a statement that its members "are deeply appalled by the new Roman decree that wants to prohibit the blessing of same-sex loving couples."

"This is a relapse into times that we had hoped to be overcome with Pope Francis," the group's statement continues. "In solidarity with so many, we will not reject any loving couple in the future who wants to celebrate God's blessing, which they experience every day, in a church-service."

"Reality has long since shown that same-sex couples connected in love can very well celebrate God's blessing in church. A state-of-the-art theology establishes this responsible practice," the statement reads.

The Austrian Priests' Initiative was founded in 2006 by nine priests and now has around 350 members from the ranks of the Roman Catholic church. The majority of its members are from Austria, but the initiative has expanded to other countries. More than 3,000 people support the reform movement, led by Father Helmut Schüller.

The group's call to disobedience aims to reform the Catholic church. In part, they would like to create a new image of a priest, so that a man or woman, married or unmarried, can serve as a priest.

"The Austrian Priest's Initiative is an Austria-wide movement of Roman Catholic priests and deacons who follow their conscience and campaign for new paths in the church," the group said in its statement. "Its goals are: lively congregations, contemporary synodal church structures and, above all, a credible and open-minded world church that focuses on sincere service to people."

The group also said it "vehemently" protests against the assumption that same-sex couples are not part of God's divine plan. "We deeply regret that this decree, which seeks to revive the spirit of bygone times, widens the gap between Roman bureaucracy and the local Church," the group said. "This decree offends many Christians and obscures and discredits the liberating message of Jesus."

The Vatican's decree states the Church cannot bless same-sex unions since God "cannot bless sin," the Associated Press reports.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is the Vatican's orthodoxy office, issued a two-page explanation published in seven languages and approved by Pope Francis.

The Vatican upholds that gay people must be treated with respect and dignity, however, gay sex is considered "intrinsically disordered." In Catholicism, marriage is a lifelong union between a man and woman, is intended for the sake of creating new life, and is part of God's plan, the AP reports.


Elton John slams Vatican for blessing its 'Rocketman' investment but not gay marriage


Christie D'Zurilla
Tue, March 16, 2021

Elton John, left, in 2019 with husband David Furnish, is criticizing 

the Catholic Church for its refusal to bless same-sex marriages. 

(Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images)

Elton John is blasting the Catholic Church as hypocritical after the Vatican decreed Monday that priests could not bless same-sex unions, because God "cannot bless sin.”

Apparently, the church isn't as averse to earning money from a movie, "Rocketman," that closes with scenes of the singer, his husband, David Furnish, and their two young children.

"How can the Vatican refuse to bless gay marriages because they 'are sin', yet happily make a profit from investing millions in 'Rocketman' — a film which celebrates my finding happiness from my marriage to David?? #hypocrisy," John posted Monday on social media, including screen shots of articles about the decree and the film investment.

The Daily Beast discussed the investment in a 2019 story about a review of church finances that was ordered by Pope Francis. The probe focused in part on the Malta-based Centurion Global Fund, which reportedly draws two-thirds of its investments from the Vatican Secretariat of State. It's about $78 million, the Beast said.



"[T]he most curious item on the report to come out so far," the story said about documents that were reviewed by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, "is a $4.5 million expenditure recorded in February of this year related to finance for the 2019 films Men in Black: International and Elton John’s rather steamy biopic Rocketman, which portrays the entertainer’s drug problems and is the first studio movie to portray gay sex between men in an authentic way.

"While investing in mainstream entertainment is hardly sinful, the great contradiction is that the Catholic Church preaches to the devout that homosexuality is a sin."

The Vatican maintains that LGBTQ people must be treated with dignity and respect but that gay sex is “intrinsically disordered.” Catholic teaching holds that marriage between a man and woman is part of God’s plan and is intended for procreation.

In its new document, the Vatican said questions had been raised in recent years about whether the church should bless same-sex unions in a sacramental way, particularly after the pope had insisted on the need to better welcome and accompany gay people in the church.

The Vatican stressed the “fundamental and decisive distinction” between gay individuals and same-sex unions, noting that “the negative judgment on the blessing of unions of persons of the same sex does not imply a judgment on persons.”

John and Furnish, now 73 and 58, respectively, met in 1993, had a civil union in 2005 and welcomed sons Zachary and Elijah via surrogacy in 2010 and 2013. The couple married in 2014 after it became legal in the U.K.

In the fantasy-musical biopic "Rocketman," the timeline of John's life is not beholden to reality, allowing the story to end with the 1983 release of the song "I'm Still Standing" despite showing John's failed 1984 marriage to recording engineer Renate Blauel and using the singer's 1990 rehab stint as a storytelling device.

And though Furnish was a producer, the 2019 feature contains no mention of the men's lasting relationship until its final two images before the credits roll.

This is hardly the "Crocodile Rock" singer's first criticism of organized religion.

"[T]here are so many people I know who are gay and love their religion," John, a self-declared atheist, told a London newspaper in 2006. "From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. ... Organized religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate."

The Associated Press con

Syrians in rebel-held Idlib mark 10 years since uprising




SyriaAn anti-Syrian government protester shouts slogans as others wave revolutionary flags, to mark 10 years since the start of a popular uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule, that later turned into an insurgency and civil war, In Idlib, the last major opposition-held area of the country, in northwest Syria, Monday, March 15, 2021. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

Mon, March 15, 2021


BEIRUT (AP) — Thousands of Syrians in the last opposition-held area of the country protested Monday, marking 10 years since the start of a popular uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule that later spiraled into an insurgency and civil war.

The protest in Idlib city was the largest in years, and aimed at recreating the early days of peaceful protests in which tens of thousands called for Assad's downfall. However, Syrian rebels have been crushed in most of the country and no longer pose a military threat to Assad. His troops, backed by Russia and Iran, have vanquished opposition-held territory over the past few years.

The city of Idlib is the last urban area still under opposition control in Syria, located in a shrinking rebel enclave in the northwestern province of the same name.


“A decade of global abandonment,” read one of the banners carried by protesters.

The Syrian conflict has killed more than half a million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. Those displaced include more than 5 million refugees, mostly in neighboring countries.

In Idlib’s Sabaa Bahrat square, more than 2,000 people gathered to mark the anniversary — almost none of them wearing masks to protect against coronavirus — with some chanting “no retreat, no surrender.”

“Injustice will eventually come to an end and righteousness will be victorious,” said citizen journalist Salwa Abdul-Raham, who is based in Idlib and took part in the protest.

“Those who lost their children or lost their lives, their blood will not be in vain,” she said. “There is divine justice and victory will be achieved to bring freedom and justice.”

Protests also took place in other rebel-held parts of Syria, including western districts of Aleppo province where demonstrators carried posters reading: “At the end of the decade, we renew the pledge.”

Also on Monday, Syrian security forces thwarted an attack in the capital Damascus killing thee militants and detaining three others, state TV reported. The TV said three of the attackers had explosive belts, an apparent reference to suicide attacks.

Chimps from two Czech zoos are Zooming each other
Story by Reuters

We humans may be tiring of video calls, Zoom birthdays and streamed performances, but the chimps at two Czech zoos are just starting to enjoy their new live online linkup.

Chimpanzees watch a giant screen inside their enclosure at Dvur Kralove Zoo, where a screen broadcasting fellow apes from Brno zoo has been installed as part of an enrichment project for chimpanzees amid zoo closures due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Dvur Kralove nad Labem, Czech Republic, March 16, 2021. REUTERS/David W Cerny

To make up for the lack of interaction with visitors since the attractions closed in December under Covid-19 restrictions, the chimpanzees at Safari Park Dvur Kralove and the troop at a zoo in Brno, 93 miles away, can now watch one another's daily lives on giant screens.

There are no mute-button disasters as the sound is off, but there has already been plenty of interest in what the distant cousins are up to since the project got underway last week.

"At the beginning they approached the screen with defensive or threatening gestures, there was interaction," said Gabriela Linhartova, ape keeper at Dvur Kralove, 84 miles east of Prague.

"It has since moved into the mode of 'I am in the movies' or 'I am watching TV.' When they see some tense situations, it gets them up off the couch, like us when we watch a live sport event."

The chimpanzees have also adopted other human behaviors such as grabbing goodies like nuts to chew on while watching the action.

The video conferences, also aired on the safari park's website, will run daily from 8 a.m. until 4 p.m. until the end of March, when keepers will evaluate whether they should continue.

© DAVID W CERNY/REUTERS A chimpanzee rests in front of a giant screen inside its enclosure at Safari Park Dvur

JORDANIAN HEALTH  MINISTER STEPS DOWN OVER DEATHS FROM OXYGEN SHORTAGE

SALT, Jordan — Jordan’s health minister stepped down Saturday after at least seven patients in a hospital COVID-19 ward died due to a shortage of oxygen supplies, state media reported  

.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Hours later, King Abdullah II arrived at the Salt government hospital to help calm angry families who had gathered outside.

Jordanian Prime Minister Bisher al-Khasawneh ordered an investigation into the deaths early Saturday morning at the hospital in the town of Salt, 20 kilometres (13 miles) north of the capital Amman.

King Abdullah has ordered the hospital’s director also suspended, according to Al-Mamlaka TV, which added that all of the dead were coronavirus patients.

The Al-Rai newspaper, a government mouthpiece, confirmed that Health Minister Nathir Obeidat had resigned.

Jordan, home to 10 million people, is grappling with surging coronavirus infections and deaths and struggling to secure vaccines.

About 150 relatives of the patients gathered outside the hospital, which was surrounded by a large deployment of police and security officers, who prevented the families from entering.

One of those waiting anxiously outside was Fares Kharabsha, whose parents are COVID-19 patients. He was inside when the oxygen ran out in the ward and said medical and civil defence workers and people from outside the hospital rushed in with portable oxygen devices to try to prevent more deaths. “They resuscitated a large number of people, including my father and mother,” he said. “I do not know how many, but I saw people who died.”

The oxygen outage lasted for over 40 minutes, according to the reports.

Another relative, Habis Kharabsha, complained of a lack of sufficient services at the hospital. “At the isolation department, there was only one doctor and two nurses for 50 or 60 patients; this is mad,” he said.

The Middle Eastern kingdom has reported over 465,000 cases and more than 5,200 deaths during the pandemic. Last month, it tightened restrictions, restoring a weekend lockdown and nighttime curfews, to curb the spread of the virus.

Jordan launched its vaccination drive in mid-January with plans to inoculate over 4 million residents in 2021. On Friday, the country received 144,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccine delivered through the global COVAX initiative.

The COVAX alliance aims to share COVID-19 vaccines with more than 90 lower- and middle-income nations. However, the program is facing delays, underfunding and limited supplies.

The EU has allocated 8 million euros to support Jordan’s purchase of vaccines. A second shipment from COVAX is expected in April.

Police detain participants in Russian opposition forum

THANKS TO PUTIN'S PROVACATUER;NAVALNY

3/14/2021
MOSCOW — Police in Moscow detained about 200 people participating in a forum of independent members of municipal councils on Saturday, an action that came amid a multi-pronged crackdown on dissent by Russian authorities.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Police showed up at the gathering shortly after it opened at a Moscow hotel, saying all those present would be detained for taking part in an event organized by an “undesirable” organization. A police officer leading the raid said the detained individuals would be taken to police precincts and charged with administrative violations.

Moscow police said in a statement that they moved to stop the meeting because it violated coronavirus restrictions since many participants failed to wear masks. They said about 200 participants were detained, some of them allegedly members of an unspecified “undesirable” organization.

OVD-Info, an independent group monitoring arrests and political repression, posted a list of more than 180 people who were detained. They included Ilya Yashin, an opposition politician who leads one of Moscow's municipal districts; former Yekaterinburg mayor Yevgeny Roizman; and Moscow municipal council member Yulia Galyamina.

Police started releasing the detainees after handing them court summons for participating in the activities of an “undesirable” organization, which is an offence punishable by a fine. It was unclear how many remained in police custody on Saturday night.

“Their goal was to scare people away from engaging in politics,” Andrei Pivovarov, a politician who helped organize the forum, said in a video recorded while he was in a police van.

Pivovarov has played a leading role in Open Russia, a group funded by self-exiled Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky moved to London after spending 10 years in prison in Russia on charges widely seen as political revenge for challenging President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

A 2015 law introduced criminal punishment for membership in “undesirable” organizations. The government has used the law to ban about 30 groups, including Open Russia.

An earlier law obliged non-governmental organizations that receive foreign funding and engage in activities loosely described as political to register as “foreign agents.”

The laws have been widely criticized as part of the Kremlin’s efforts to stifle dissent, but Russian authorities have described them as a fit response to alleged Western efforts to undermine the country.

The police crackdown on Saturday's forum follows the arrest and imprisonment of Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most determined political foe was arrested on Jan. 17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.

Last month, Navalny was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison for violating the terms of his probation while convalescing in Germany — charges he dismissed as a Kremlin vendetta. His arrest and imprisonment triggered a wave of protests across Russia, to which the authorities responded with a massive crackdown.

The government has intensified its crackdown on the opposition ahead of parliamentary elections set for September as the popularity of the main Kremlin-backed party, United Russia, has dwindled.

Vladimir Isachenkov, The Associated Press

Climate crisis: An invisible, odorless gas is pitting Texas against the Biden administration

By Bill Weir, CNN Chief Climate Correspondent

3/126/2021


Deep in the heart of Texas, above an oil patch about the size of Kansas, a little team in a small plane is trying to reveal a big problem.

© Julian Quiñones/CNN Signs of old and new power: an oil pumpjack sits among wind turbines outside of Odessa, Texas.

They are methane hunters. With an infrared camera and a Picarro Cavity Ring-Down Laser Spectroscope, they fly spirals over pumps and compressor stations that stretch to both horizons. With each tight corkscrew, the little airplane sniffs out and measures planet-cooking, climate-changing pollution as the region below braces for an energy revolution amid a cold civil war.

The Picarro spectrometer is so sensitive, it caught the number of carbon dioxide molecules in my breath as we walked around the hangar. In the sky, it counts the density of carbon dioxide molecules on their way to heating up the sea, land and sky for the next 300 to 1,000 years.

More importantly, it also measures methane, which is 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide over the next 20 years. You know it better as natural gas. Heating and cooking are not the only methane culprits. Two-thirds of emissions come from belching cows, factory farms and rotting landfills. But as any Texan will tell you, it's a lot easier to control gas coming out of the ground than gas coming out of cows.

The "greenhouse effect" was discovered before women could vote (by a suffragist, in fact) but in 2021, the indoor gardening metaphor doesn't match the emergency. Instead, imagine a baby in a hot car. Carbon dioxide is like the steel and glass holding in the sun's rays as they bounce through the windshield. Methane provides the equivalent of cranking up the heater inside the car; it works much faster but is easier to control in the long term. Planet Earth, of course, is the baby.

Without the tools of a methane hunter, you can't see or smell natural gas but virtually all of Earth's peer-reviewed scientists agree that for life on Earth to survive with any semblance of today, it must go the way of the dodo along with coal and oil. Climatologists at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration tell us that deadly changes will only get worse until people stop using fuels that burn and leak.

But in Texas, methane is so plentiful and cheap, it escaped largely unseen and unmeasured until both the Environmental Defense Fund and oil producers started using tools like the Picarro spectrometer. Scientific Aviation, based in Boulder, Colorado, owns this one and will sniff the sky for all kinds of customers, but only the EDF makes the data public.

"What we found here in the Permian Basin is that operators are wasting enough gas to heat about 2 million homes a year," says Kelsey Robinson, project manager for the EDF's PermianMAP Project.

Sometimes the methane leaks from faulty equipment or the tens of thousands of orphaned wells. Sometimes, when there is no one to buy it, they just burn it in a practice called flaring. Former President Donald Trump tried to remove all regulations on methane, a move so extreme that even ExxonMobil opposed it. But until President Joe Biden's Environmental Protection Agency can navigate the legal booby traps left by the Trump administration's giveaways to methane leakers, it is up to oil and gas companies to fix a problem no one can see or smell.

"We found that the Permian Basin is emitting more than double any other oil and gas region in the United States," Robinson said.


Banning all bans

Named after Earth's biggest mass extinction event, the Permian Basin is so flat you'd swear you can see the curvature of Earth standing in the bed of a pickup. When oily, gassy, flammable proof of the Great Dying — the nickname given to the mass-extinction event that marked the end of the Permian geologic period — was found under the red dirt, Midland and Odessa grew into the vena cava of the state's oil industry, the setting for "Friday Night Lights" and the perfect place for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to fire the first shot in a methane civil war of 2021.

"I'm in Midland to make clear that Texas is going to protect the oil and gas industry from any type of hostile attack launched from Washington, DC," Abbott said, days after Biden signed his first round of executive orders aimed at a climate in crisis.

Then the Republican governor signed an executive order of his own, commanding every state agency to bring him every reason to sue and stop the Biden administration's clean energy efforts. In calling out cities like San Francisco, where a movement to ban natural gas heaters and appliances from new construction is growing, Abbott vowed to ban all bans.

"In Texas, we will not let cities use political correctness to dictate what energy source you use," he said. "So I am supporting legislation that prohibits cities and counties from banning natural gas appliances."

But as a sign of the changing times, Abbott's fierce opposition to the Paris Accord puts him at odds with the statements and soundbites of Big Oil's biggest lobbyist.

"We think the threat of climate change is very real," Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute (API), told CNN. "We support both industry actions and actions by the federal government in the United States and around the globe to address this very important issue that we know is existential in nature."

As more European energy companies embrace a green transition, France's Total became the first oil giant to tear up its API membership, citing differences over a carbon tax, electric car subsidies and ... methane. In October, the French government stepped in to block a $7 billion deal, deciding that liquified natural gas from Texas is too dirty for their standards.

But Sommers says the API is willing to work with the Biden administration on regulating new and existing sources of methane.


A call for more pipelines

As for Biden being an existential threat to oil and gas, Sommers seems less worried and argues that there is no need to transition them to geothermal, solar or wind because the world will demand fuels that burn and leak for generations.

"This industry provides about 60% of the world's energy today," he said. "And the trend there is going to be a transition in energy. But I'm also confident that this industry is going to be around for a long time."

To fix the methane problem, he argues that if America only had more pipelines, industry wouldn't have to needlessly burn so much natural gas.

"I think the biggest challenge that we have from an emissions perspective, honestly, is getting our infrastructure right," Sommers said. "We need to make sure that we have pipelines in place to get these products to market as quickly as possible. And what that means is we need a regulatory structure that allows these pipelines to be built."

Kelsey Robinson of the EDF has a simpler idea. "Reducing methane emissions is actually a job creator in and of itself because we need people to go out to survey these sites and then take steps to fix those leaks."

"It doesn't make sense to burn it," said Texas state geologist Scott Tinker as we stroll the elaborate rock garden map of Texas outside his office. "They don't have the gathering systems to collect it. So rather than leaking the methane, they burn it and leak CO2. CO2 is better as a product than methane if you're going to put something into the atmosphere. But it'd be much better to gather it."

After the 2008 recession, Tinker says the fracking boom caught West Texas by surprise. Years of oil field decline saw a renaissance when the new method of injecting water into shale doubled oil production and created gushers of invisible methane with no way to catch it.

"The conversation is shifting," Tinker says, after public and stockholder pressure. "It's happening, but it's slow, takes a lot of money, takes approval for the pipelines. It takes an industry and a regulatory system that caused that to happen in the first place."

Sommers insists that his API members are taking the problem seriously, with 70% of onshore producers joining the Environmental Partnership, which is all about reducing methane emissions within the oil and gas industry, he said.

"It brings together producers, large and small, to share technology and to share best practices on how to reduce methane emissions," he said. "And it's working."


Checking in from space

But far beyond the methane problem, the only way to save both life on Earth and the fossil fuel industry is to rabidly develop carbon capture and storage technology on a mind-boggling scale. This would require sophisticated, expensive methane catchers to be built around the smokestacks of every petrochemical works, power plant and steel mill in the world.

Hopes for such a miracle fix took a major setback this week, when the Petra Nova plant outside of Houston shut down indefinitely. Backed by a $190 million grant from the Department of Energy, the four-year plant set out to capture 90% of the carbon dioxide pumping out of a 240-megawatt, coal-fired power plant. It was the only major carbon-capture project in the U.S. after a $7.5 billion project in Mississippi was shuttered before ever going online.

Exxon Mobil says they are working on 20 new carbon capture projects around the world, including one in Texas, as part of a new $3 billion investment in a business they call ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions.

But Robinson and her flying methane hunters have heard promises before. Without enforceable regulations for producers big and small, she says profit motive almost always wins.

"ExxonMobil and some of the other big producers have set some pretty lofty goals for how they want to keep their emissions," Robinson said. "But we found that here in the Permian Basin, the methane leak rate is over 10 times higher than what a lot of companies have set out to do."

In the meantime, she says she'll keep her little team flying, sniffing and measuring methane while the airplane will soon have some high-altitude backup. After a $100 million grant from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos' Earth Fund, the EDF will soon launch their own methane-hunting satellite.





a group of people standing around a plane: 

This plane operated by Scientific Aviation is equipped with technology to measure climate-changing gases like methane.N
4 SLIDES © Julian Quiñon

This plane operated by Scientific Aviation is equipped with technology to measure climate-changing gases like methane.