Florida man finds a second megalodon tooth in three weeks

July 8 (UPI) -- A Florida man talking a walk on a beach found a 4-inch tooth from a prehistoric megalodon shark just three weeks after he found a smaller tooth from the same species on the same beach.

Jacob Danner said he was walking on Fernandina Beach on Thursday morning, after Tropical Storm Elsa swept through the area, when he came across the 4-inch tooth.

Danner said he found the tooth near where he found a 3-inch megalodon tooth three weeks earlier.

Jim Gelsleichter, an associate biology professor at the University of North Florida, said the first tooth Danner discovered could be millions of years old. He said tooth discoveries can tell researchers a lot about the extinct species.

"The megalodon fossils that have been observed usually run around 30 feet in length or so," Gelsleichter told WJXT-TV.

"So we can use information about the size of the teeth to extrapolate the ultimate size of the animal. We can look at the distribution of where teeth are found and get an idea of the distribution of the animal."

 BIBLE LITERALISTS ARE WHITE SUPREMACISTS

Noah’s Ark park seeks expansion with new religious exhibit

July 7, 2021

WILLIAMSTOWN, Ky. (AP) — A Bible-themed attraction in Kentucky that features a 510-foot-long (155-meter-long) wooden Noah’s ark is planning to begin fundraising for an expansion.

The Ark Encounter said Wednesday that it would take about three years to research, plan and build a “Tower of Babel” attraction on the park’s grounds in northern Kentucky.

A release from the Ark Encounter park said the new attraction will “tackle the racism issue” by helping visitors “understand how genetics research and the Bible confirm the origin of all people groups around the world.” No other details were given on the Babel attraction or what it might look like.

Answers in Genesis, the ministry behind the ark, raised private funds to construct and open the massive wooden attraction in 2016. The group preaches a strict interpretation of the Earth’s creation in the Bible. The group also founded The Creation Museum, which asserts that dinosaurs walked the earth just a few thousand years ago, millions of years after scientists say they went extinct. That facility is just south of Cincinnati in Boone County, Kentucky.

The Ark Encounter’s expansion plans also include an indoor model of “what Jerusalem may have looked like in the time of Christ.”

The Ark Encounter said attendance is picking up after the pandemic lull in 2020, with up to 7,000 visitors on Saturdays, according to the news release.

THEY SHOULD KNOW

Vatican suppresses Italy group, determines revelations fake

July 3, 2021

ROME (AP) — The Vatican has taken the unusual step of suppressing a small Italian lay movement after determining that the presumed “revelations” that were the basis of its 1979 foundation were fake.

The dissolution of the Apostolic Movement, which is based in Catanzaro, Italy, and boasts a presence in several European and African countries, is the latest move taken by Pope Francis to crack down on local-level religious orders and Catholic movements. These groups were often encouraged under the previous two popes but in many cases have turned out to have serious governance, financial, sexual abuse or other problems.

In a joint decree, three Vatican offices — the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Congregation for Clergy and the Dicastry for Laity — ordered the dissolution of the Apostolic Movement and the distribution of its assets to charity.

It took action after concluding a six-month investigation into concerns about the legitimacy of the movement’s origins, doctrinal, disciplinary and governance problems, as well as the “profound divisions” its presence had created among the diocesan clergy, the decree said.

Fundamentally, the Vatican investigation determined that “the presumed revelations that gave origin to the Apostolic Movement through its founder, Ms. Maria Marino, are to be considered to not have a supernatural origin.”

The decree was dated June 10 and published this week on the website of the Archdiocese of Catanzaro, where the movement was founded as a private association of the faithful and received local diocesan approval in 2001.

Review: Working undercover every day as a straight Catholic
By MOLLY SPRAYREGEN

July 5, 2021

This cover image released by Atria shows "Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead," by Emily Austin. (Atria via AP)

“Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead,” by Emily Austin (Atria)

In Emily Austin’s first novel, “Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead,” 27-year-old Gilda is anxious, insecure and lost. She struggles to hold down a job and is a massive hypochondriac, visiting the emergency room multiple times per week.

She is constantly thinking about death, how many ways there are to die, and the insignificance of her own existence. She’s also obsessed with making sure her presence in the world does not have a harmful effect on others. Everyday tasks are difficult for her. Often, she can’t bring herself to respond to texts from a girl she really likes, show up to work, or even do the dishes.

One day, Gilda responds to a flyer for free therapy at a Roman Catholic church. When she arrives, the priest thinks she is there for a job interview to replace the receptionist who had recently died. Gilda, who just lost her job, doesn’t correct him.

She is hired, and now Gilda, a gay atheist, must work undercover every day as a straight Catholic. But as the circumstances of the former receptionist’s death become more and more suspicious, Gilda finds herself swept up in a murder investigation.

Filled with dark humor, “Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead” is a beguiling read. Gilda is wholly unique, yet at the same time, exceedingly relatable. The world through her eyes is often a terrifying one, but it is one that anyone who has dealt with anxiety will no doubt recognize. Through it all, Gilda’s endlessly good heart shines through, making her impossible not to root for.

BYU students launch underground newspaper

By COURTNEY TANNER

July 3, 2021

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — To work for the student newspaper at Brigham Young University, you must first understand what you cannot write about.

Students aren’t allowed to report anything that’s critical of the school or The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which owns it. That includes any mention of the faith’s past support for polygamy or segregation that “could cause embarrassment” now, The Salt Lake Tribune reports.

Reporters should also avoid the topics of drugs, sex education, birth control, evolution and other “claims of science,” according to rules established for the publication in the 1970s that largely remain in place today. At the time, there was also a specific ban on any stories about “acid rock music.”

(The university president then wasn’t a fan of Pink Floyd, a band he considered “evil.”)

One communication student noted: “I feel like there’s just a lot of things I can’t say.” But there’s not much they can do about it at the private religious school.

Now, one group is trying a different approach. A few of them have left the staff at the school’s paper, The Daily Universe, and have launched their own underground, independent publication not controlled by BYU.

Their new paper, Prodigal Press, covers what happens on campus without the limitations that come with the university’s sanction.

“We talk about things that aren’t allowed to be talked about in other media outlets on campus,” said Martha Harris, a senior in the school’s journalism program who was frustrated by the “minefield of censorship, both spoken and unspoken” at the official newspaper.

Harris reported the cover story for the second issue of Prodigal Press, a piece on discrimination LGBTQ students describe encountering at the conservative Provo school. The story included Harris’ personal experiences, as someone who is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, choosing a restroom on campus and being called derogatory names. The same pitch was rejected at the campus paper.

“That would never appear in The Daily Universe,” Harris noted. “They just wouldn’t even consider it.”

Isabella Olson, a sophomore who does social media for Prodigal Press, said that’s the point — to cover subjects that would be ignored or blocked by the school. They’re not trying to attack BYU or the church or even the student newspaper, she noted. They just want to highlight perspectives that aren’t always given space.

“Without a platform that is unbiased, you can’t have truth,” Olson said. “We’re not being critical. We’re just being honest. And I think it’s very important, especially at a school like BYU where I would go as far to say things are censored, to have an independent voice. ”

This isn’t the first time students at BYU have published an underground newspaper. 

In fact, the private university has a rich legacy of independent publications that started as early as 1906. The first, titled The Radical, printed one 32-page edition that called for a cafeteria on campus and more resources at the library. The requests were granted.

Another paper in the 1980s, called Seventh East Press, was able to pay to print issues after its editor sold his car for cash. The students famously published an interview with an academic who was critical of LDS Church founder Joseph Smith, which caused the then-president of BYU to banish the publication from campus. Students caught reading it faced discipline.

After that, the biggest underground newspaper, The Student Review, started in 1986 and printed 15,000 copies at its height. It operated for about two decades entirely off campus, after what happened with Seventh East Press.

David Clove, a junior in political science who created Prodigal Press, said stumbling onto those earlier papers last summer inspired him. “That really provided the spark,” he said. “And I realized I had to do something.”

He had been feeling frustrated that there wasn’t a space where he and other students could openly publish their thoughts about BYU, on the good and bad, what was working and how things could be better.

“There was just this void,” Clove said. “There are topics that everyone just stays away from. But I wanted to talk about them. And I knew people who wanted to talk about them. It was the same reason why all those other papers existed.”

He added: “They knew that there needed to be something separate from the university, something independent.”

The private school needed a public platform.

So he started making a few calls to friends. Gracia Lee, a junior in graphic design, said she was surprised by Clove’s idea and surprised that she didn’t hesitate to join the cause.

“I never saw myself working at a secret, underground paper that’s occasionally critiquing my university,” she said with a laugh.

When she worked at BYU’s broadcast station, she knew there were things they couldn’t report on. The “most political story” they did, Lee said, was about an Indigenous museum.

“We were told to stray away from anything that was more political than that,” she said. “I didn’t realize what kind of a silencing effect that had. The museum wasn’t even political anyway.”

Together, Clove and Lee formed a team of six student editors and about 30 contributors, and their advisor is Bill Kelly, a BYU alumnus who co-founded The Student Review.

The first Prodigal Press launched in September, and they have published eight issues. The staff has tackled things like racism in the LDS Church and on campus, school police, feminism and the monopoly between BYU and landlords in Provo.

There was a graphic from a student showing how many times she’d been sexually assaulted at BYU. They printed an essay about whether the university really cares about its Black students. They featured students, too, questioning their faith.

There has been a long gap since the last underground paper printed at BYU. Clove said the name Prodigal Press plays off the parable of the prodigal son in the Bible — though he jokes they haven’t been welcomed back with such open arms as the man in the story — and signifies a return of an independent newspaper to campus readers.

He wants this one to stay.

Even though the founders call it a student newspaper, Prodigal Press is not technically distributed to students anywhere on campus — at least not intentionally. It’s not allowed to be, Clove said, because it’s not approved by the private school.

Instead, the staff members get together off campus every month to fold a few hundred copies of the paper and distribute them to local restaurants and coffee shops around Provo. (Yes, they find it funny to be at coffee shops when coffee is also not allowed at the school.)

But they also have something the other unsanctioned papers before them didn’t: the internet. And sometimes, they end up on campus anyway through that.

“That’s made a huge difference in how far our reach is,” Clove said. “It’s really amazing. We’re definitely getting to students that way. Some are brave enough to go to our site on BYU’s computers.”

It hasn’t been blocked yet, he added with a laugh.

Prodigal Press has more than 1,000 followers on Instagram, its most popular online platform. And it gets about 3,000 readers, on average, on the stories posted to its website, prodigalpress.org.

So far, they’ve financed the publication with advertisements, donations and support from about 100 people who pay to have it mailed to their homes.

There’s always some concern that the university might try to penalize the students who are involved. BYU’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

Some of the students who write stories for the paper do so anonymously or only once they’ve graduated. That includes some LGBTQ students who don’t want to be reported and possibly expelled for having same-sex relationships, which break the campus Honor Code.

Helaman Sanchez, a graduate, wrote a piece for Prodigal Press about how the leadership of the LDS Church has said it supports Black Lives Matter but hasn’t taken action “that would make a real difference.” He waited to publish until his diploma was in hand.

Sanchez, who identifies as Mexican American, previously worked for BYU Political Review, a policy and opinion publication at the school. He said he was told he couldn’t call out church leadership like that. But he was frustrated by his experience in the faith and on campus where he was often told to “go back to Africa” or had people shout “White Lives Matter” at him.

“Somehow that’s OK but my piece calling attention to the problem was not,” Sanchez said. “I felt silenced. I’m glad the Prodigal Press gave me the space to say what I needed to.”

One of the editors at Prodigal Press published a piece under the pen name Lou Tenant, meant to sound like lieutenant, to criticize campus police and previous actions by the department to report victims of sexual assault to BYU’s Honor Code Office. The staff put up “Defund BYUPD” stickers around downtown Provo with QR codes that linked to the story.

“It was really edgy,” Olson acknowledged. “But it was also one of our most read articles. I don’t know if we’re doing anything that BYU could punish us for. But I’m willing to stand up for what I believe in. All these voices we’re getting out there deserve to be heard. They wouldn’t be heard otherwise.”

Grant Frazier, a junior who works for the newspaper, said he knows there are risks with the publication and any effort to speak out against the university.

He previously helped lead protests against the Honor Code Office in 2019. He requested his transcripts immediately after that, afraid that he would be expelled.

Frazier and Harris, though, want the university to understand that their purpose is to make things better. And they believe that requires a platform to talk about what’s not working that is independent from the institution. (They point out that the LDS Church also owns The Deseret News.).

Some of the students say the experience has helped them learn to think independently and a few, including Harris, want to go into journalism as a career. Above all, though, they still want people to know that they’re proud students of BYU and members of the church.

With that in mind, Frazier was the one who came up with the tagline for the newspaper, which he believes gets at the balance they’re aiming for in their reporting with Prodigal Press, which so far hasn’t included anything on acid rock music.

Under the underground newspaper’s masthead on each issue, it reads: “Not quite holy, not quite heretical.”

Archaeologists plan more digging after Wyoming finds

By EVE NEWMAN

July 5, 2021

LARAMIE, Wyo. (AP) — The southern Laramie Valley has served as a travel corridor for as long as humans have been crossing the plains, from Native American routes to the Cherokee Trail, Overland Stage Route, Union Pacific Railroad, Lincoln Highway and Interstate 80.

An archaeological site near Tie Siding, called Willow Springs, was recently the focus of an excavation conducted by the Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist, and the quantity of artifacts they discovered has the office planning to continue digging in the future.

Spencer Pelton, the Wyoming state archaeologist, said the site, which sits on private land northwest of Tie Siding, was used by Native Americans and later settlers traveling overland routes through the area, the Laramie Boomerang reports.

“It’s a beautiful spring in a pretty dry place, and it also has a really nice stand of trees around it,” he said.

In addition to fresh water and shade trees, the site attracts plentiful big game.

“There were a ton of elk hanging out there when we there,” he said. “It’s just a great oasis in the southern Laramie valley.”

In the 1850s, the Cherokee Trail took wagon trains from Oklahoma along the Arkansas River, the South Platte River and then along the Colorado/Wyoming border to Green River and points west. In the 1860s, the Overland Stage Route ran from Kansas to Salt Lake City.

The transcontinental railroad blazed a new overland route that allowed for the settlement of the city of Laramie in 1868, followed by the transcontinental Lincoln Highway in 1913.

“They all come through the same area right there, and before that it looks like Native Americans were using it comparably as well,” Pelton said.

The Willow Creek site was first excavated in the 1960s by archaeologist William Mulloy, the founding faculty member in the University of Wyoming Department of Anthropology. Mulloy found extensive Native American campsites with stone tools, pottery pieces, animal bones and beads. He also found artifacts from the 1860s suggesting the site’s use by overland travelers.

Pelton said Mulloy’s work at Willow Creek was never written up in a report and the artifacts are still stored at UW. Last year, the landowner approached the state office, knowing that the area had been studied before.

“The Office of the Wyoming State Archaeologist decided it would be a good idea to return to it, answer some questions, and try to get a report,” Pelton said.

Archaeologists worked at the site for about 10 days in mid-June. They found an extensive collection of arrowheads, pottery pieces and animal bones.

“This has one of the largest prehistoric ceramics assemblages that have ever been found in the state,” Pelton said.

They also found a surprising number of artifacts from the 1860s, including shell cartridges, pieces to muzzleloaders and equipment for melting down lead and making bullets.

“It looks like this Willow Springs was part of the Overland Stage Route or Cherokee Trail — which slightly preceded it in the 1850s — even though it’s not been recognized as such yet,” Pelton said. “We’re trying to answer the question of what role it actually did fulfill.”

Pelton’s office has plans to spend the next year cataloging the artifacts and synthesizing their findings. They’ll return next summer for further digging, with the goal of writing up the project for a journal publication.

“We still have some lingering questions,” he said.

Dig at Pilgrim and Native American memorial sparks intrigue

By WILLIAM J. KOLE


FILE — University of Massachusetts Boston graduate students Sean Fairweather, of Watertown, Mass., left, and Alex Patterson, of Quincy, Mass., right, use measuring instruments while mapping an excavation site, Wednesday, June 9, 2021, on Cole's Hill, in Plymouth, Mass. The archaeologists are part of a team excavating the grassy hilltop that overlooks iconic Plymouth Rock one last time before a historical park is built on the site. David Landon, not shown, of the University of Massachusetts-Boston's Fiske Center for Archaeological Research, says his team unearthed a cache of personal items he thinks were buried there in the late 1800s, most likely by a brokenhearted settler who had outlived all three of her children. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)

Archaeologists combing a hill near Plymouth Rock where a park will be built in tribute to the Pilgrims and their Native American predecessors have made a poignant discovery: It’s not the first time the site has been used as a memorial.

David Landon of the University of Massachusetts-Boston’s Fiske Center for Archaeological Research says his team unearthed a cache of personal items he thinks were buried there in the late 1800s, most likely by a brokenhearted settler who had outlived all three of her children.

Landon says the objects — eyeglasses, clothing, sewing implements, a pocket watch and a book — gave him chills. That’s because they turned up during final excavations of Cole’s Hill, a National Historic Landmark site in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Remembrance Park is set to be constructed.

“Someone clearly used that space in that fashion in the past to memorialize members of their family,” said Landon, whose team spent the past month scouring the waterfront site where the Pilgrims are said to have come ashore in 1620.

“It’s an amazing array of things you don’t usually find as an archaeologist,” he said. “It plays very much to the remembrance aspect of the site. The idea of a human memorial there is emotionally powerful.”

Remembrance Park originally was conceived to mark 2020′s 400th anniversary of the Pilgrim’s 1620 arrival, the founding of Plymouth Colony and the settlers’ historic interactions with the indigenous Wampanoag people. But then the coronavirus pandemic hit, idling many commemoration events as well as construction. Work on the park is expected to begin late next year or early in 2023.

The newly reimagined park will highlight three periods of epic historical challenge: the Great Dying of 1616-19, when deadly disease brought by other Europeans severely afflicted the Wampanoag people; the first winter of 1620-21, when half of the Mayflower colonists perished of contagious sickness; and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.


FILE — University of Massachusetts Boston graduate students Nicholas Densley, of Missoula, Mont., left, and Kiara Montes, of Boston, right, use brushes while searching for artifacts at an excavation site, in this Wednesday, June 9, 2021 file photo, on Cole's Hill, in Plymouth, Mass. The archaeologists are part of a team excavating the grassy hilltop that overlooks iconic Plymouth Rock one last time before a historical park is built on the site. David Landon, not shown, of the University of Massachusetts-Boston's Fiske Center for Archaeological Research, says his team unearthed a cache of personal items he thinks were buried there in the late 1800s, most likely by a brokenhearted settler who had outlived all three of her children. (AP Photo/Steven Senne, File)


Donna Curtin, executive director of the Pilgrim Society & Pilgrim Hall Museum, which owns the tract, said the discovery of “this exquisitely personal family cache” makes the site even more evocative.

“A project like this helps reminds us that there’s real emotional power in history because real people lived through it,” she said. “That’s really the purpose of Remembrance Park.”

Who left the items in the soil? Initial research points to Judith Jackson, a 19th-century family matriarch who died in 1905. She was predeceased by all three of her children — a daughter who died very young, and then an adult son and adult daughter.

Some of the items found date to the 1840s, and Landon believes it’s likely that Jackson — who once lived in one of four colonial houses that once stood on Cole’s Hill — buried the objects in memory of the offspring she’d outlived.

The archaeologists also recovered stone-cutting tools — evidence of a much older Wampanoag living site that appears to have survived the ravages of time because a 1700s home was built atop it, shielding it from the elements, Landon said.

“Sometimes when you look, you find something, and sometimes you don’t,” he said. “This was a great success.”

HUMAN RIGHTS VS RELIGIOUS RITES

Hungary activists vow to resist LGBT law, symbol of EU rift

1 of 4
Activists pose for a photo after erecting a large rainbow-colored heart in front of the country's parliament building in Budapest, Hungary, on Thursday, July 8, 2021. The activists are protesting against the recently passed law they say discriminates and marginalizes LGBT people. (AP Photo/Laszlo Balogh)

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Activists in Hungary erected a 10-meter-high (30-foot-high) rainbow-colored heart opposite the country’s neo-Gothic parliament on Thursday, vowing to wage a civil disobedience campaign against a new law that they say discriminates against LGBT people and that has raised questions about what values the European Union stands for.

The law, which came into effect Thursday, prohibits the display of content depicting homosexuality or sex reassignment to minors — but critics say its goal is to marginalize and stigmatize the LGBT community as the country marches steadily to the right under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The law has drawn intense opposition in Hungary and from the EU and has become a significant battleground in the fight over what the bloc represents.

Orban and some other right-wing leaders of member states have been at the forefront of that fight, challenging the EU’s traditional “liberal consensus” by refusing to accept migrants, cracking down on media plurality and limiting the independence of their judiciaries.

At the Thursday demonstration, rights groups said the Hungarian law denies thousands of LGBT young people crucial information and support, and violates national and international human rights standards.

“We think that the only path we can pursue is civil disobedience, and we will not change anything about our activities,” Luca Dudits, a spokesperson for Hatter Society, Hungary’s largest LGBT advocacy group, told The Associated Press.

One provision in the law bans organizations from holding educational programs on sexual orientation in schools unless they are approved by the government. But Dudits said Hatter Society will continue to provide teachers with training and educational materials, and offer their services to anyone regardless of age.

Dudits added that the law “stigmatizes LGBTQ people and actually puts LGBTQ youth more ... in danger of bullying and harassment in schools and in their families as well.”

Many European leaders have demanded the law’s repeal, saying it violates the bloc’s values.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday that the law was “a disgrace.”

In a resolution adopted Thursday, EU lawmakers condemned “in the strongest possible terms” the new legislation in Hungary and said it constitutes a clear breach of fundamental rights.

They said the law is not a one-off case, but “rather constitutes another intentional and premeditated example of the gradual dismantling of fundamental rights in Hungary.” The parliamentarians urged the European Commission to take swift action against Hungary unless it changes tack.

Speaking earlier in the day in Belgrade, Orban dismissed the EU criticisms, characterizing the controversy as a “debate about who decides how we will raise our children.”

“Brussels bureaucrats have no place here,” Orban said.

The debate over the law reflects a larger one within the 27-member EU, where a handful of countries are led by populist leaders who have pressed ahead with laws and policies that many in the bloc feel are anti-democratic or violate its founding values. On the one hand, critics of those polices want the EU to take action to protect their vision of the bloc as a progressive institution; on the other, such action raises uncomfortable questions about how much power Brussels should have over member states’ own parliaments.

Orban’s government — which next year faces elections expected to be the most competitive since his party returned to power in 2010 — is one of the faces of this rift. A champion of what he calls “illiberal democracy” and a conservative religious worldview, Orban has depicted his rejection of immigration as a fight to preserve Christian civilization, and has taken increasing control over Hungary’s higher education system in an effort to instill conservative values.

Along with Poland, Hungary’s closest EU ally, Orban has repeatedly challenged the bloc over issues like migration, corruption and the rule of law. Last year, the two countries held up passage of the EU’s budget and COVID-19 economic recovery package over provisions that would allow the withholding of payments to countries that fail to uphold democratic standards.

David Vig, director of Amnesty International Hungary which co-hosted Thursday’s demonstration, called the recent legislation “fundamentalist,” and echoed the European Parliament’s call for action against Hungary’s government, including the possible freezing billions of dollars in funding to the nation.

“We expect EU institutions to act firmly and the European Commission to start an infringement procedure ... because this is in clear contradiction not just with EU values, but also with binding EU law and the commission’s LGBTQ strategy,” Vig said.

But he said that must be done in way that “does not affect the human rights of everyday Hungarians.”

In military authorization vote, Quakers claim a victory

 Repeal of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force

By JACK JENKINS

July 7, 2021


FILE - In this Jan. 24, 2018, file photo, U.S. Army soldiers conduct a mortar exercise at a small coalition outpost in western Iraq near the border with Syria. As with most legislative victories, many organizations played a role in the 268-161 House vote to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which originally authorized then-President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But few focused on the issue longer or more doggedly than the Friends Committee on National Legislation, which has toiled for years to stop what it describes as the “endless wars” launched by the United States. (AP Photo/Susannah George, File)


WASHINGTON (RNS) — As the U.S. House of Representatives began calling the roll last month to vote on a repeal of the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, staffers at the Friends Committee on National Legislation couldn’t stop messaging each other.

According to Shoshana Abrams, a manager of advocacy teams at the FCNL, her colleagues began frantically chatting over Zoom as the votes trickled in. Meanwhile, members of FCNL’s volunteer network exchanged exuberant emails, their excitement peaking as they watched numbers tick up among a difficult-to-persuade demographic: Republicans.

“It was like: 20 Republicans! 47 Republicans!” Abrams said in an interview. “It was our team really seeing that their work was paying off.”

As with most legislative victories, many organizations played a role in the 268-161 House vote to repeal the 2002 AUMF, which originally authorized then-President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But few focused on the issue longer or more doggedly than the FCNL, which has toiled for years to stop what it describes as the “endless wars” launched by the United States. As the AUMF repeal effort moves to the Senate, activists are celebrating the culmination of decades of quiet — but persistent — faith-rooted advocacy.

“Peace is possible!” tweeted FCNL General Secretary Diane Randall after the vote.

___

This content is written and produced by Religion News Service and distributed by The Associated Press. RNS and AP partner on some religion news content. RNS is solely responsible for this story.

___

Founded in 1943, the Quaker group — whose tradition often refers to members as “friends” — has long taken an anti-war posture. It lobbied against conscription during World War II and launched a successful, decade-long campaign to defeat legislation in the 1950s that would have required military training for young men.

The group hasn’t let up since. Its headquarters still sits just across the street from Senate offices on Capitol Hill, often adorned with distinctive blue-and-white signs decrying war.

The anti-war theology of the Quakers, though, traces its roots back much further — to a 17th century letter sent by Quakers to King Charles II of England, according to Alicia McBride, FCNL’s director of Quaker leadership. The letter, now known as the “Peace Testimony,” condemned “all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever.”

According to historians, Quaker communities largely maintained those beliefs when they arrived in what would become the United States. Adherents generally declined to participate in the American Revolution: Some of their governing bodies declared neutrality in the conflict, and the small number of Quakers who aided the fighting were often exiled from the community for violating the Peace Testimony.

Critics: US Postal Service plans imperil community newspapers

By DAVID BAUDER and ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE

FILE - In this Feb. 24, 2021, file photo U.S. Postal Service Postmaster General Louis DeJoy speaks during a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington. The U.S. Postal Service's plans to raise postage rates could present another damaging blow to community newspapers already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and advertising declines, industry leaders say. The rate increase, planned to take effect Aug. 29, is set to raise postage prices on periodicals more than 8%, according to agency filings (Jim Watson/Pool via AP, File)

The U.S. Postal Service’s plan to raise mailing rates could present one more damaging blow to community newspapers already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic and advertising declines, a trade group says.

Rates on periodicals would increase by more than 8% as of Aug. 29, according to agency filings. The price jump is part of a broad plan pushed by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy to overhaul mail operations.

The impact of the periodical rate increase is expected to be felt most by small daily and weekly newspapers, as well as rural newspapers, which depend on the Postal Service since they have shifted from using independent contractors for deliveries.

In response, publishers potentially could be forced to further reduce staff or forgo home deliveries entirely and instead send papers to communal news racks, or even shutter their papers, said Paul Boyle, senior vice president at the News Media Alliance, a trade association representing nearly 2,000 news organizations in the U.S.

“It is one of several nicks and slashes that can damage the bottom line, especially if you are an independent publisher who is operating at break even or in the low single digits of profitability. And most are,” said Penelope Muse Abernathy, a Northwestern University professor who has extensively studied the decline of the news industry.

For some, it could be the tipping point for survivability, Boyle said.

The News Media Alliance, in comments opposing the rate increases, told the independent Postal Regulatory Commission that the plans “ultimately harm the public interest while doing little to improve the Postal Service’s financial condition.”

In a statement, Postal Service spokesman David Partenheimer said the agency’s leaders are “committed to judiciously implementing a rational pricing approach that helps enable us to remain viable and competitive and offer reliable postal services that are among the most affordable in the world.”

“While the price newspapers pay varies based on how they prepare and enter their papers into our system, the average proposed price increase for newspapers for local delivery is from 10.6 cents to 11.4 cents or 0.8 cent, less than one cent,” he said.

The newspaper industry has struggled greatly over the past two decades. Advertising has dried up due to the internet and readership has fallen. More than 2,100 newspapers in the United States have closed in the past 15 years, the majority of them weeklies that serve local communities, according to research by the University of North Carolina.

In the same period, regular newspaper readership has fallen by one-half, the researchers said.

Newspaper newsroom employment stood at 74,410 in 2006, the last year that figure grew over the previous year, according to the Pew Research Center in a study released last week. In 2020, there were 30,820 people in newsrooms.

DeJoy, along with Ron Bloom, chairman of the agency’s governing board, presented the 10-year plan for the Postal Service in March, arguing that significant changes would be necessary to stem a projected $160 billion loss over the next decade.

The strategy includes relaxing delivery standards on first-class mail going to the farthest reaches of its network, from a one-to-three-day benchmark to a one-to-five-day goal. Postal officials have said 70% of mail would still be delivered within three days. Postal leaders are also moving to increase the price of a first-class stamp from 55 cents to 58 cents, and want to consolidate underused post offices and invest in new delivery vehicles.

Democrats have criticized the plan as an unacceptable decline of mail service and have renewed calls for the removal of DeJoy, a major Republican donor who has been engulfed in controversy since taking over the agency last year.

DeJoy, a wealthy former logistics executive who has also donated to former President Donald Trump, drew national scrutiny last year when he put in place a series of operational changes that he said were intended to improve efficiency yet caused widespread delivery delays before the 2020 election as millions of people prepared to vote by mail. He was also blamed for a steep decline in on-time deliveries around the holiday season last year.

After Trump’s defeat, Democrats pushed again for DeJoy’s ouster. The Senate in late May approved three new appointees, nominated by President Joe Biden, to the Postal Service’s governing board, giving Democratic appointees a majority on the board.

Still, DeJoy has maintained that he intends to stay in the post and told members of Congress at a hearing this year, “Get used to me.” Bloom has stood by DeJoy, telling lawmakers in February that the postmaster general was “doing a good job.”

___

Izaguirre reported from Lindenhurst, New York. Bauder reported from Ithaca, New York.

___

Associated Press coverage of voting rights receives support in part from Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for this content.