77 years after battle’s end, Okinawa wants US base reduced

By MARI YAMAGUCHI

1 of 8

Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, right, offers a silent prayer during a ceremony at the Peace Memorial Park in Itoman, Okinawa, southern Japan Thursday, June 23, 2022. Japan marked the Battle of Okinawa, one of the bloodiest battles of World War II fought on the southern Japanese island, which ended 77 years ago, Thursday. 

(Kyodo News via AP)


TOKYO (AP) — Okinawa marked the 77th anniversary Thursday of the end of one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, with the governor calling for a further reduction of the U.S. military presence there as local fears grow that the southern Japanese islands will become embroiled in regional military tension.

The Battle of Okinawa killed about 200,000 people, nearly half of them Okinawan residents. Japan’s wartime military, in an attempt to delay a U.S. landing on the main islands, essentially sacrificed the local population.

Many in Okinawa are worried about the growing deployment of Japanese missile defense and amphibious capabilities on outer islands that are close to geopolitical hotspots like Taiwan.

At a ceremony marking the June 23, 1945, end of the battle, about 300 attendants in Okinawa, including Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and other officials, offered a moment of silence at noon and placed chrysanthemums for the war dead. The number of attendants was scaled down because of coronavirus worries.

At the ceremony in Itoman city on Okinawa’s main island, Gov. Denny Tamaki spoke of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying the destruction of towns, buildings and the local culture, as well as Ukrainians’ constant fear, “remind us of our memory of the ground battle on Okinawa that embroiled citizens 77 years ago.”

“We are struck by unspeakable shock,” he said.

Tamaki also vowed to continue efforts to abolish nuclear weapons and renounce war “in order to never let Okinawa become a battlefield.”

In May, Okinawa marked the 50th anniversary of its reversion to Japan in 1972, two decades after the U.S. occupation ended in most of the country.

Today, a majority of the 50,000 U.S. troops based in Japan under a bilateral security pact and 70% of U.S. military facilities are still in Okinawa, which accounts for only 0.6% of Japanese land.

Because of the U.S. bases, Okinawa faces noise, pollution, accidents and crime related to American troops, Tamaki said.

Kishida acknowledged the need for more government efforts to reduce Okinawa’s burden from U.S. military bases as well as more support for the islands’ economic development, which fell behind during their 27-year U.S. occupation.

Resentment and frustration run deep in Okinawa over the heavy U.S. presence and Tokyo’s lack of efforts to negotiate with Washington to balance the security burden between mainland Japan and the southern island group.

Kishida, citing the worsening security environment in regional seas in the face of threats from China, North Korea and Russia, has pledged to bolster Japan’s military capability and budget in coming years, including enemy attack capabilities that critics say interfere with Japan’s pacifist Constitution.

Tanzania’s Masaai demand Indigenous rights in UN framework

By WANJOHI KABUKURU

1 of 5

Jonathan Mpute ole Pasha, national coordinator of the Maa Unity Agenda group, is surrounded by tear gas thrown by police to break up a small demonstration of Maasai rights activists outside the Tanzanian high commission in downtown Nairobi, Kenya Friday, June 17, 2022. Tanzania's government is accused of violently trying to evict Maasai herders from one of the country's most popular tourist destinations, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
\

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Tanzania’s Maasai people, resisting government pressure to leave their ancestral homes in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, have presented their demands for Indigenous land rights to negotiators in Nairobi finalizing the proposed U.N. global biodiversity framework.

The appeal by the Masaai community of Loliando on Thursday follows a violent confrontation with Tanzanian security forces two weeks ago which forced many of them to flee to neighboring Kenya.

A decision by the East African Court of Justice on the politically sensitive issue was expected this week but has been postponed until later this year due to “unavoidable circumstances,” according to a court notice.

“We are being accused by our government as being destroyers of our environment and denied citizenship of Tanzania,” said the Maasai in their letter to the U.N. biodiversity meeting. “This is the fourth forceful eviction from our land. And our leaders languish in detention in big numbers. 20 of them are being charged with murder. We cannot tell the world of the happenings because media is banned from covering our story.”

Cases of abuse, torture and large-scale evictions continue to be reported among Indigenous communities as observed in Tanzania, where the Maasai community says it faces displacement to create a protected area for hunting.

The Maasai leaders were joined by civil society actors and other Indigenous community leaders in their calls for the inclusion and recognition of Indigenous land, territories and tenure rights in the framework, which is expected to be endorsed by world leaders when they meet in Montreal, Canada in December this year.

“The only way this can be a strong instrument is by incorporating and ensuring a strong human rights element and respecting the role of Indigenous peoples and local communities,” said Lucy Mulenkei, the co-chair of the International Indigenous Forum on Biodiversity, at a press conference on the sidelines of the negotiations.

The Indigenous forum has also called for free prior and informed consent of land use as well as a sound financial mechanism for conservation.

“If we don’t have a framework to protect nature that truly recognizes and respects the rights of Indigenous peoples and local communities, who are actually conserving biodiversity humanity is going to be in danger,” said the Indigenous forum’s Ramiro Batzin.

The global biodiversity framework is set to replace the older Aichi Biodiversity Targets, that were agreed by the U.N. parties at a convention on biological diversity in 2010 in the Japanese prefecture of Aichi. None of the Aichi agreements’ 20 targets were met by the time the 2020 deadline elapsed. The ongoing Nairobi negotiations are a carry-over of intensive negotiations after failure to secure consensus in Geneva in March this year.

Key issues are still up for debate, with richer countries disagreeing with developing nations on several sticking points, such as benefit-sharing, removing incentives for harming nature, biotechnology and financing for developing countries to strengthen national aims and technology.

The proposed biodiversity framework is seeking to comprehensively tackle a number of global environmental concerns including pollution, climate change and other human-caused impacts on nature such as illegal wildlife trades, habitat loss and overconsumption.

The decline of biodiversity and degradation of ecosystems exacerbates climate change, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. It says the new framework must “aim to halt biodiversity loss by 2030 and achieve recovery by 2050.”

National coordinator of the Maa Unity Agenda group Jonathan Mpute ole Pasha, center, and another activist, left, sit arrested in the back of a police truck after police used tear gas to break up a small demonstration of Maasai rights activists outside the Tanzanian high commission in downtown Nairobi, Kenya Friday, June 17, 2022. Tanzania's government is accused of violently trying to evict Maasai herders from one of the country's most popular tourist destinations, the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

NEW LATIN AMERICAN LEFT
Colombia: President-elect looks to build governing coalition

By ASTRID SUÁREZ

Colombian President-elect Gustavo Petro, right, and running mate Francia Marquez, join hands during a ceremony that certifies their election victory, in Bogota, Colombia, Thursday, June 23, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Fernando Vergara)

BOGOTÁ, Colombia (AP) — President-elect Gustavo Petro, who has vowed to lift up Colombia’s poor and disenfranchised, has won the support of an influential party of the establishment as he tries to build a majority coalition in Congress.

Petro, a former Bogotá mayor and a member of the M-19 rebel group that disarmed decades ago, has won the support of the Liberal Party, which backed another candidate in the first round of Colombia’s presidential election. Petro won the second round on Sunday in a blow to political traditionalists who have presided for generations over Colombia, through violence and corruption, as well as economic growth and institutional stability.

The decision by the Liberal Party, led by ex-president César Gaviria, to join Petro’s Historic Pact group shows the pragmatic side of the president-elect as he makes political deals aimed at executing an ambitious legislative agenda that includes fiscal, agrarian, pension and other changes.

“We won’t be a party of opposition,” Gaviria said in a statement Wednesday. Details still have to be worked out regarding the Liberal’s Party role in a governing coalition and how it can collaborate with 62-year-old Petro’s camp, he said.

The Liberal Party is one of the largest groups in the bicameral Congress, with 14 senators in the 108-seat Senate and 32 representatives in the 187-seat lower house.

Petro’s Historic Pact has 20 seats in the Senate and 27 in the House of Representatives. A coalition including the Liberals and other allies would bring it closer to a parliamentary majority.

Sandra Borda, a political analyst at the University of Los Andes in Bogotá, said that a lot remains unclear about Petro’s vision of a “national accord” in which all sectors of society get involved.

“We have to see what will be the content of the policies that Congress will support, and in exchange for what,” Borda said. Foreign governments and international investors will follow closely to see who Petro picks as finance minister, which could indicate whether he plans on heavier state involvement in the economy, she said.

Some 47% of the electorate voted for real estate tycoon Rodolfo Hernández, who lost to Petro in the second round. As the losing candidate, Hernández was still guaranteed a Senate seat and he said Thursday that he would take it.

Petro is virtually certain to face robust opposition from the Democratic Center, the party founded by a former president, Álvaro Uribe. Current President Iván Duque, who by law was not allowed to run for a second term, is a member of the Democratic Center. He will hand power to Petro on Aug. 7.

PERMANENT FAILED STATE
Official: 8 more die as Haiti prisons lack food, water

By EVENS SANON and DÁNICA COTO

FILE - National police search for escaped inmates on the perimeters of the Croix-des-Bouquets Civil Prison in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Feb. 25, 2021. The United Nations Security Council released a report in June 2022 saying 54 prison deaths related to malnutrition were documented in Haiti between January and April alone. (AP Photo/Dieu Nalio Chery, File)


PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — An official said Thursday that at least eight inmates have died at an overcrowded prison in Haiti that ran out of food two months ago, adding to dozens of similar deaths this year as the country’s institutions crumble.

Hunger and oppressive heat contributed to the inmates’ deaths reported this week by the prison in the southwest city of Les Cayes, Ronald Richemond, the city’s government commissioner, told The Associated Press. He said the prison houses 833 inmates.

“Whoever can help should help immediately because the prisoners are in need,” he said.

The United Nations Security Council released a report last week saying 54 prison deaths related to malnutrition were documented in Haiti between January and April alone in the country of more than 11 million people.

It urged Haiti’s government “to take the necessary measures to find a long-lasting solution to the prison food, water and medicine crisis.”

The country’s severely overcrowded prison system has long struggled to provide food and water to inmates. It blames insufficient government funds and the problem has worsened in recent months, leading to a new rise in severe malnutrition and deaths.

By law, prisons in Haiti are required to provide inmates with water and two meals a day, which usually consist of porridge and a bowl of rice with fish or some type of meat.

But in recent months, inmates have been forced to rely solely on friends or family for food and water, and many times they are unable to visit because gang-related violence makes some areas impassable, said Michelle Karshan, co-founder of the nonprofit Health through Walls, which provides health care in Haiti’s prisons.

The nonprofit joined three other organizations this year to feed the roughly 11,000 inmates in Haiti’s 20 prisons for three months, helping at a time when the country was increasingly unstable following the July 7 killing of President Jovenel Moïse.

But the situation has since deteriorated.

“These deaths are very painful,” she said. “The internal organs start to fail one by one. ... It’s a horrible thing to witness.”

Health through Walls has launched several programs to target the problem long term, including starting a garden at a prison in northern Haiti that produces spinach and other crops, along with a chicken coop and a fish farm.

“But that’s one prison,” Karshan said. “The bottom line is the prison system has to take responsibility. They can’t sit back. ... They’re the government.”

Les Cayes and other cities in Haiti’s southern region also have been affected by a spike in gang violence that has blocked the main roads leading out of Haiti’s capital, making it extremely difficult to distribute food and other supplies to the rest of the country, said Pierre Espérance, executive director of Haiti’s National Human Rights Defense Network.

In addition, a water pump that the Les Cayes prison relies on has long been broken, forcing relatives and friends of inmates to carry buckets of water from long distances, Richemond said.

Les Cayes, like surrounding cities, is also still struggling to recover from a 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck southwest Haiti in August, killing more than 2,200 people and destroying or damaging thousands of buildings.

Richemond said some of the prison cells were destroyed and have not been rebuilt, forcing authorities to cram even more people into a smaller space.

The cell occupancy rate in Haiti stands at more than 280% of capacity, with 83% of inmates stuck in pretrial detentions that in some cases can drag on for more than a decade before an initial court appearance, according to the U.N. Many prisoners take turns sleeping on the floor while others simply stand or try to make hammocks and attach them to cell windows, paying someone to keep their spot.

In January 2010, some 400 detainees at the prison in Les Cayes rioted to protest the worsening conditions. Authorities said police killed at least 12 inmates, and up to 40 others were wounded.

Espérance, with the National Human Rights Defense Network, blamed the current situation on the government and said officials need to impose rule of law.

“The situation is getting worse every day,” he said. “They can only fix the problem for one or two weeks. After that, the problem will continue. Today, it’s Les Cayes. Tomorrow, it could be somewhere else.”

___

Coto reported from San Juan, Puerto Rico.

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HAITI 

TECHNICALLY FULL EMPLOYMENT
Fewer Americans file for jobless aid

By MATT OTT

Hiring sign is displayed outside of a retail store in Vernon Hills, Ill., on Nov. 13, 2021. Fewer Americans applied for jobless aid last week with the number of Americans collecting unemployment at historically low levels. Applications for unemployment benefits fell by 11,000 to 200,000 for the week ending May 28, the Labor Department reported Thursday, June 2, 2022. First-time applications generally track the number of layoffs.

 (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans applied for jobless benefits last week as the U.S. job market remains robust despite four-decade high inflation and a myriad of other economic pressures.

Applications for jobless aid for the week ending June 18 fell to 229,000, a decline of 2,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. First-time applications generally mirror the number of layoffs.

The four-week average for claims, which smooths out some of the week-to-week volatility, rose by 4,500 from the previous week, to 223,500.

The total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits for the week ending June 11 was 1,315,000, up by 5,000 from the previous week. That figure has hovered near 50-year lows for months.

Much of the recent job security and wage gains that Americans have enjoyed recently has been offset by inflation levels not seen in four decades.

Earlier in June, the Labor Department reported that consumer prices surged 8.6% last month — even more than in April — from a year earlier. The Federal Reserve responded last week by raising its main borrowing rate — its main tool for fighting rising prices — by three-quarters of a point. That increase is on top of a half-point increase in early May.

Three weeks ago the government reported that U.S. employers added 390,000 jobs in May, extending a streak of solid hiring that has bolstered an economy under pressure. Though the job growth in May was healthy, it was the lowest monthly gain in a year and there have been signs that more layoffs could be coming, at least in some sectors.

Jobless claims applications the past few weeks, though still relatively low, have been the highest since the first weeks of 2022.

Online automotive retailer Carvana said last month that it’s letting about 2,500 workers go, roughly 12% of its workforce. Online real estate broker Redfin, under pressure from a housing market that’s cooled due to higher interest rates, said last week that it was laying off 8% of its workers.

Those cuts have extended to companies in the cryptocurrency sector with prices for bitcoin and other digital assets cratering in recent months.

Crypto trading platform Coinbase Global said last week it planned to cut about 1,100 jobs, or approximately 18% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring in order to help manage its operating expenses in response to current market conditions.

5.0 to 5.2 percent

---

The Federal Reserve considers a base unemployment rate (the U-3 rate) of 5.0 to 5.2 percent as “full employment” in the economy. The recovery has now achieved that level, known technically as the Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate of Unemployment, or NAIRU. What is considered full employment percentage?

What Is Meant By Full Employment Level Of Output

SADDEST EYES EVER

Sound off! Trumpet is 1st bloodhound to win Westminster show

By JENNIFER PELTZ

Trumpet, a bloodhound, competes for best in show at the 146th Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show, Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in Tarrytown, N.Y. Trumpet won the title. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II)

TARRYTOWN, N.Y. (AP) — Now this hound has something to toot his horn about.

A bloodhound named Trumpet won the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show on Wednesday night, marking the first time the breed has ever snared U.S. dogdom’s most coveted best in show prize.

Rounding the finalists’ ring with a poised and powerful stride, Trumpet beat a French bulldog, a German shepherd, a Maltese, an English setter, a Samoyed and a Lakeland terrier to take the trophy.

“I was shocked,” said handler, co-breeder and co-owner Heather Helmer, who also goes by Heather Buehner. The competition was stiff, “and sometimes I feel the bloodhound is a bit of an underdog.”

After making dog show history, does Trumpet have a sense of how special he is?

“I think he does,” his Berlin Center, Ohio-based handler said.

After his victory, Trumpet posed patiently for countless photos, eventually starting to do what bloodhounds do best — sniff around. He examined some decorative flowers that had been set up for the pictures, not appearing to find anything of note.

Winston, a French bulldog co-owned by NFL defensive lineman Morgan Fox, took second in the nation’s most prestigious dog show.

“I’m just so proud of him and the whole team,” Fox said by text afterward.

Fox, who was just signed by the Los Angeles Chargers and has played for the Los Angeles Rams and the Carolina Panthers, got Winston from his grandmother, Sandy Fox. She has bred and shown Frenchies for years.

Morgan Fox grew up with one and says that as he watched Winston mature, he knew the dog was a winner in both appearance and character. He went into Westminster as the top-ranked dog in the country.

“He’s a joy to be around,” Fox said by phone before Winston’s award. “He always walks around with as much of a smile on his face as a dog can have.”

The seven finalists also included Striker, a Samoyed that also made the finals last year; River, a big-winning German shepherd; MM the Lakeland terrier; Belle the English setter, and a Maltese that clearly was aiming for stardom: Her name is Hollywood.

After topping the canine rankings last year, Striker has lately been hitting a few dog shows “to keep his head in the game,” said handler Laura King.

What makes the snow-white Samoyed shine in competition? “His heart,” said King, of Milan, Illinois.

“His charisma shows when he’s showing,” and he vocally complains when he’s not, she said.

While he was quiet in the ring, an Alaskan Malamute provided a yowling — cheering? — soundtrack for a semifinal round featuring the Samoyed and other breeds classified as working dogs.

The competition drew more than 3,000 purebred dogs, ranging from affenpinschers to Yorkshire terriers. The goal is to crown the dog that most represents the ideal for its breed.

Usually held in winter at New York City’s Madison Square Garden, the show moved to the suburban Lyndhurst estate last year and this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Some dogs, such as golden retrievers, faced dozens of competitors just to win their breed and move on to the semifinals. Others were among few representatives of rare breeds

Ooma was the only Chinook that showed up. The sled-pullers are the official dog of the state of New Hampshire, but they’re rare nationwide.

“I would love to see a couple more” in the Westminster ring, said Ooma’s breeder, owner and handler, Patti Richards of West Haven, Vermont. “Without people who will show and breed, we’re in danger of losing our breed.”

Even for hopefuls that didn’t come away with a ribbon, the event was an opportunity to showcase dogs and all they can do.

Bonnie the Brittany is owner-handler Dr. Jessica Sielawa’s first show dog, and their teamwork extends beyond the ring.

Bonnie accompanies Sielawa to work at her chiropractic practice in Syracuse, New York, where “she’s really helped people with their emotional stress,” Sielawa said.

She plans to get her show dog certified as a therapy dog, too.

PHOTOS 3 of 23

WESTMINSTER KENNEL CLUB DOG SHOW

Westminster dog show gets 4 finalists, and one has NFL ties


Dog show 101: What's what at the Westminster Kennel Club


Virus postpones Westminster Kennel Club's annual dog show


Prime Peke! Wasabi the Pekingese wins Westminster dog show

  

Title IX: NCAA report shows stark gap in funding for women

“It speaks to the business side of what college sports has become.”

By AARON BEARD

1 of 4

Vanderbilt posses with the trophy after their team won the NCAA's women's team tennis championships against Oklahoma, Tuesday, May 19, 2015, Waco, Texas. The number of women competing at the highest level of college athletics continues to rise along with an increasing funding gap between men’s and women’s sports programs, according to an NCAA report examining the 50th anniversary of Title IX. 

(AP Photo/LM Otero, File)


The number of women competing at the highest level of college athletics continues to rise along with an increasing funding gap between men’s and women’s sports programs, according to an NCAA report examining the 50th anniversary of Title IX.

The report, released Thursday morning and entitled “The State of Women in College Sports,” found 47.1% of participation opportunities were for women across Division I in 2020 compared to 26.4% in 1982.

Yet, amid that growth, men’s programs received more than double that of women’s programs in allocated resources in 2020 – and that gap was even more pronounced when looking at home of the most profitable revenue-generating sports: the Football Bowl Subdivision, the top tier within Division I that features the Alabamas, Ohio States and Southern Californias of the sports world.

“It tells you schools are investing a huge amount of money in the moneymakers,” NCAA managing director for the office of inclusion and lead report author Amy Wilson told The Associated Press, referring to football as the primary revenue-generating sport along with men’s basketball.

“It speaks to the business side of what college sports has become.”

The gender gap in funding approached nearly 3-to-1 ratios when examining expenditures for recruiting as well as compensation for head coaches and assistant coaches. And that gap isn’t new, even with increased expenditures for women across all three divisions.

The difference between median total expenses for men’s and women’s programs at FBS schools, in particular, has grown from $12.7 million in 2009 to $25.6 million in 2019.

Wilson said those discrepancies don’t automatically amount to a violation of Title IX, which ensures equity between men and women in education and prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any education program or activity receiving federal funds. But they raise concerns when evaluating whether schools are providing equitable opportunities for, and treatment of, male and female athletes, and how they’re spending to achieve those goals.

“Yes, the numbers are stark. It’s not a little difference, it’s a big difference,” she said. “This milestone Title IX anniversary is an opportune time for recommitment to funding equitable participation opportunities, experiences, and financial aid for student-athletes in men’s and women’s athletics programs.”

Title IX compliance can be measured in multiple ways, including whether the overall program’s gender breakdown is proportionate to that of the general student body. And yet, the study found Division I athletics couldn’t match that standard when examining data from 2020; women accounted for 54% of the undergraduate student body in Division I compared to that aforementioned 47.1% rate.

“I think it’s enough of a gap that we need to ask ourselves: … are there opportunities that could be created and more teams that could be formed?” Wilson said.

Thursday’s Title IX anniversary comes at a time when the governing body for college sports recently updated its transgender policy, as well as facing criticism for failing to ensure equity for last year’s men’s and women’s basketball tournaments following a scathing outside review.


Other takeaways from the report:

LACK OF WOMEN IN LEADERSHIP

Fewer women are filling head-coaching roles since President Nixon signed Title IX into law.

The percentage of women’s teams led by female coaches declined from better than 90% in 1972 to 41% in 2020 among all three divisions. There were fewer women’s teams at that time and the study attributes the decline to more men coaching women’s teams, enough to outnumber women’s coaches by the late 1980s, with no corresponding increase of women coaching men’s programs.

These low women-coaching-women numbers don’t surprise Richard Lapchick, director of The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at Central Florida. TIDES annually compiles report cards examining diversity hiring for college sports and professional leagues, with its most recent report on FBS schools released in January.

“Without movement,” Lapchick told the AP. “It’s as baffling as any statistic we report on. Usually there’s some marginal improvement on some issues. And this one is barely budging.”

As for athletic directors, women have accounted for roughly 20% or less of ADs dating to 1980 after dropping “drastically” and 23.9% in 2020, according to the study.

The outlier among women in leadership roles has been conference commissioners, with women outpacing men in acquiring those positions in the past five years and accounting for 31% of those roles for 2019-20, according to the study.

DIVERSITY CONCERNS

The report also noted a lack of women of color in those leadership roles.

The report found that roughly 16% of women working as head coaches of women’s teams and 16% of female athletics directors across all divisions were minorities in 2019-20. Those percentages have increased “slightly” from five years ago.

HIGH SCHOOL DROPOFFS

Going back to high-school athletics, the report found that girls participation numbers have yet to reach that of boys in the 1971-72 school year leading to the law’s implementation.

At the time, participation opportunities for boys measured at nearly 3.7 million, more than 264,000 higher than girls had as recently as 2019.

“I think it’s a reminder that for those who say, ‘Girls and women can play any sport they want, it’s 50 years after Title IX,’ the college data and the high school data shows there’s still pretty big participation gaps,” Wilson said. “And I don’t think it’s that they don’t want to play. I think we’ve got to think more about: what are the barriers to that access?”

___

For more on Title IX’s impact, see AP’s full package: https://apnews.com/hub/title-ix

Video timeline: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdgNI6BZpw0

___

Follow Aaron Beard on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/aaronbeardap

Black veteran groups seek policy agenda on racial inequities

By AARON MORRISON

Robert Dabney Jr. poses for a photo in Chicago, Monday, June 13, 2022. As a coalition of current and former military servicemembers hold the first-ever convening for Black veteran advocates in the nation's capital this month, they hope to draw attention to long-standing racial, economic and social inequities facing more than 2 million Black American veterans. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)


As a young man in Memphis, Tennessee, Robert Dabney Jr. wanted to blaze a path that could set his family up for a better life. So two weeks after high school graduation in 1998, at age 18, he joined the U.S. Army.

During nine years of service that included two tours in Iraq, Dabney was a combat medical specialist. But after he left the Army in 2007 and returned to Memphis, married with children, he struggled to see what he’d gained from his service.

“I had exchanged my youth, ambition and vigor for a future that is limited just because of my mental health,” said Dabney, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in 2013.

His experience seeking treatment through the veterans health care system was plagued with challenges, he said. After navigating the system as a Black veteran, he wondered if he might help others find more culturally competent services that the federal government seemed ill-equipped to provide.

Testimony like Dabney’s was being shared at the first-ever national policy conference for Black veterans in Washington on Thursday. Representatives from nearly 20 advocacy groups for service members of color were collaborating on a legislative agenda addressing longstanding racial, economic and social inequities facing more than 2 million Black American veterans.

“For many people from Black and brown (veterans) communities, we’re starting from a different place in life,” said Dabney, 42. “Being able to talk to people who started from that place, who have a mindset similar to yours as they went through the military, has a different meaning to us.”

In addition to disparities in the military justice system, homelessness and unemployment, federal veterans benefits data show Black service members’ post-Sept. 11 disability claims have been granted at lower rates than their white counterparts. Advocates say racial inequality in veterans’ benefit access stifles or, worse, upends the lives of those who proudly served their country.

“The system isn’t accommodating us, we’re accommodating it,” said Victor LaGroon, chairman of the Black Veterans Empowerment Council, which organized Thursday’s conference. “We’ve got to have these systemic and legislative discussions because, until there’s full transparency and accountability, people are going to continue to skirt the issues.”

Slated speakers include the secretaries of the Veterans Affairs and Labor departments, as well as officials from some state and local veterans service agencies.

Richard Brookshire, a former Army combat medic who served in the Afghanistan War, said a major goal is to help the Black veterans community coalesce around “what’s actionable” in a broader agenda that also targets historic inequity dating back to Black veterans serving in World War II.

“There needs to be a critical mass in the Black veteran community to demand it,” said Brookshire, who co-founded the Black Veterans Project. “The seed has been planted and we’re going to begin to see the tree bear fruit.”

The Black Veterans Empowerment Council was formed in 2020 amid the national reckoning that followed the murder of George Floyd by police, as a roundtable of Black veterans groups to advise the House Veterans Affairs Committee. Council members said part of their work has been acquiring data to prove how Black veterans have unequal access to the benefits system.

According to Veterans Benefits Administration records analyzed by the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School and reviewed by The Associated Press, there are statistically significant differences in disability claim outcomes for Black and white veterans. Although disability claim approval rates are low across the board, they are significantly lower for Black veterans.

Between 2002 and 2020, Black veterans had the lowest claim approval rate, at 30.3%, when compared to their non-Black counterparts. White veterans had 37.1% of their claims approved, while Hispanic veterans had an approval rate of 36% and Asian or Pacific Islander veterans had a rate of 30.7%.

Linda Mann, co-founder of the African American Redress Network at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, led a group of students that did an additional analysis on the benefits data. According to their findings, disparities in how Black veterans are rated on the severity of their condition amounted to lower disability compensation and decreased eligibility for other VA benefits.

These findings build on historic racial inequities in veterans benefits that stretch back to integration of the armed services in the late 1940s. Black service members who fought in World War II were either denied or prevented from taking full advantage of housing and educational benefits through the GI Bill. Black veterans of the Korean War had similar experiences with the program. Advocates say the generational effects of that discrimination, in terms of wealth, are still being felt today.

“What most people would usually say is we went through the civil rights movement and things are better,” Mann said, but that was not borne out by the Freedom of Information Act statistics the advocacy groups received.

“The continued inequity on the part of the military and VA tracked in not only the FOIA data that we looked at, but also in the practices and policies,” Mann said.

VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said the Biden administration’s focus on equity across the federal government has had significant implications for the agency’s approach in delivering benefits “to all veterans, and specifically to historically marginalized and underserved veterans.”

“We have used veterans’ voices as our North Star,” Hayes said in a statement.

Last year, the Black Veterans Project and the National Veterans Council for Legal Redress sued the VA over its Freedom of Information Act requests for benefits data by race. They won the access. In April, the White House released a summary of the VA’s equity action plan, in which the agency acknowledged race and gender disparities for veteran benefit access.

Dabney ultimately did blaze a better path for himself, going to college and becoming a hospital chaplain in Chicago. But it took overcoming a descent into alcoholism, infidelity and self-neglect before he found his calling.

After his diagnosis for PTSD and depression, he was connected to mental health counseling services through the VA at a community-based outpatient center near Chicago. The assigned counselor, a white woman, frustrated Dabney because he felt she could not relate to the complexities of his identities as a war veteran and a Black man from rough beginnings in Memphis.

“I got to the point where I would just say ‘Yes. Yes, that’s it,’” Dabney recalled. “Instead of me advocating for myself, I began to mold what I said based on what I thought that they could understand. In doing so, I wasn’t able to really open up and present my full self to them.”

He was ready to give up, but what he really needed was a peer encouraging him to stick with it, he said.

Now, Dabney manages a peer apprentice program at the Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance in Chicago. The program helps other Black veterans through a network of peer-directed mental health resources.

“It’s those relationships that encourage individuals to seek further help, to seek help from clinicians,” Dabney said.

Walidah Bennett, founder and director of a multi-faith veterans initiative at DePaul University in Chicago is working to provide Black churches and clergy with resources to serve veterans in their congregations.

Bennett’s son, Saad Muhammad, a veteran of the Iraq War, died by suicide in 2013, and in the 10 years since his death, she has established 15 community sites for veterans in crisis. Suicide rates among Black veterans have been on the rise, increasing from 11.8% to 14.5% between 2001 and 2019, though rates remain highest among white veterans, according to the VA’s 2021 annual report on veteran suicide prevention.

“Had we had the community spaces that we have today, it could have been very helpful to my son,” Bennett said.

___

AP writer Larry Fenn in New York contributed.

___

Morrison is a New York-based member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

The AP Interview: Estonian PM says Russia not weary of war
By DASHA LITVINOVA and HARRIET MORRIS

Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Tallinn, Estonia, Wednesday, June 22, 2022. Kallas called European unity on the war in Ukraine “a negative surprise” for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Still, she told The Associated Press in an interview on Wednesday, one shouldn’t underestimate Moscow’s military capabilities, because “they are in this for the long haul.”

 (AP Photo/Sergei Grits)


TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The West should not underestimate Russia’s military capabilities in Ukraine, Estonia’s leader told The Associated Press, saying that as the war enters its fifth month, Moscow’s forces are in it for the long haul.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said in an interview Wednesday that Europe should ensure that those committing war crimes and attempted genocide are prosecuted, noting that Russian President Vladimir Putin escaped punishment for annexing the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and supporting an insurgency in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region that killed over 14,000 people even before this year’s war began.

“I’ve heard talks that, you know, there is no threat anymore because they have exhausted themselves. No, they haven’t,” she said of the Russian military, which failed to take Kyiv in the early stages of the war and is now concentrating its firepower in the east.

“They have plenty of troops still who can come (to fight) — They are not counting the lives that they are losing. They are not counting the artillery that they are losing there. So I don’t think that we should underestimate them in the longer term to still keep this up,” Kallas said, despite the low morale and corruption troubling Moscow’s forces.

Kallas praised the unity that Europe has shown in punishing Russia for the invasion that began Feb. 24, even though she said it was clear from the beginning that it would be “more and more difficult over time” to hang together.

“First, we did the sanctions that were relatively easy. Now we move to sanctions that are much more difficult. But so far, we have managed to get the unity, even if we have different opinions,” she said in the interview in Stenbock House, a government building where she has her office and holds Cabinet meetings..

“This is normal for democracy. We debate, we discuss, and then we get to the solution. So far, it has been a negative surprise to Putin that we are still united,” Kallas said.

The unity was displayed again Thursday when the European Union granted Ukraine candidate status, binding it more to the West. It set in motion a membership process that could take years or even decades.

Estonia, which shares a 294-kilometer (about 180-mile) border with Russia, has taken a hard-line stance over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Kallas has criticized other European leaders for talking to Putin and has advocated for isolating Moscow completely, leaving the decision on how to end the war up to Ukraine.

As the war has dragged on, some in the West have suggested reaching a negotiated peace deal with Russia — even if it meant that Ukraine would give up territory. Kallas has warned against it.

In her comments to the AP, she pointed out that this is exactly what happened after Moscow annexed Crimea, backed the separatists in the industrial Donbas and seized territory in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

“For us, it is important to not make that mistake again like we did in Crimea, Donbas, Georgia,” she said. “We have done the same mistake already three times saying that, you know, negotiations, negotiated peace is the goal. ... The only thing that Putin hears from this is that ‘I can do this because no punishment will follow.’

“And every time, every next time will be with more human suffering than the last one was,” she added.

In Ukraine, those committing war crimes and “conducting or trying to conduct genocide” should be prosecuted.

Sanctions against Russia will take effect over time, she said, and one just needs to have “strategic patience.”




Kallas defended criticism that the sanctions appear to hurt ordinary Russians while failing to deter Putin so far.

“And I still think that, you know, the effects should be felt by the Russian population as well, because if you look, the support for Putin is very high,” she said.

Kallas added that Russian soldiers are bragging about war crimes they commit “to their wives and to their mothers. And if the wives and mothers say that ‘This is OK what you are doing there’ ... I mean, this is also the war that Russia and Russian people are holding up in Ukraine,” she said.

On the domestic front, the 45-year-old Kallas is fighting for her political future as Estonia’s two-party government led by her center-right Reform Party fell apart early June as she kicked out junior partner Center Party following disputes over welfare and spending issues amid rampant inflation in the Baltic nation.

Kallas, who has led the Reform Party since 2018 and became Estonia’s first female prime minister in January 2021, started coalition talks this month with two other parties, and they are expected to reach a coalition deal by early July.

If not, Kallas will face the grim prospect of governing a weak one-party minority government until the next general election scheduled for March 2023.

___

Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

Settlement would forgive $6B for defrauded college students

By COLLIN BINKLEY

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks at an event where Vice President Kamala Harris announced the cancelation of all federal student loans borrowed by students to attend any Corinthian Colleges, June 2, 2022, at the Department of Education in Washington. The Biden administration has agreed to cancel $6 billion in student loans for about 200,000 former students who say they were defrauded by their colleges, according to a proposed settlement in a Trump-era lawsuit. 

(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)


The Biden administration has agreed to cancel $6 billion in student loans for about 200,000 former students who say they were defrauded by their colleges, according to a proposed settlement in a Trump-era lawsuit.

The agreement filed Wednesday in San Francisco federal court would automatically cancel federal student debt for students who were enrolled at one of more than 150 colleges and later applied for debt cancellation because of alleged misconduct by the schools.

Almost all the schools involved are for-profit colleges. The list includes DeVry University, the University of Phoenix and other chains still in operation, along with many that have folded in recent years, including ITT Technical Institute.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a statement that the settlement would resolve the claims “in a manner that is fair and equitable for all parties.”

The deal has yet to be approved by a federal judge. A hearing on the proposal is scheduled for July 28.

If approved, it would mark a major step in the Biden administration’s efforts to clear a backlog of claims filed through the borrower defense program, which allows students to get their federal loans erased if their schools made false advertising claims or otherwise misled them.

The class-action suit was initially filed by seven former students who argued that President Donald Trump’s education secretary, Betsy DeVos, had intentionally stalled the borrower defense process while she rewrote its rules. When the suit was filed, no final decision had been made on any claims for more than a year.

When the department under DeVos started deciding claims months later, it issued tens of thousands of denials, often without any explanation. At the time, the judge overseeing the case blasted DeVos for the “blistering pace” of rejections, saying her approach “hangs borrowers out to dry.”

Tens of thousands of borrowers were still in limbo when the Biden administration took over and started negotiating a settlement in 2021, according to court documents. The latest federal data shows there are more than 100,000 pending claims for borrower defense.

Under the proposed settlement, anyone who attended an eligible school and applied for cancellation as of Wednesday would get their federal student loans and interest fully forgiven. They would also get refunds for past payments made on those loans.

An additional 68,000 plaintiffs who did not attend eligible schools will get a “streamlined review” of their claims. The oldest claims will get reviewed first, while the most recent ones will get a decision within 2½ years.

All borrowers who were caught up in DeVos’ flurry of denials will have their rejections revoked and their claims will be treated as if they have been pending since the date they were originally filed.

The Project on Predatory Student Lending, which represented students in the suit, said the agreement will help create a “fair, just and efficient for future borrowers.”

“This momentous proposed settlement will deliver answers and certainty to borrowers who have fought long and hard for a fair resolution of their borrower defense claims after being cheated by their schools and ignored or even rejected by their government,” said Eileen Connor, director of the project.

Borrower defense claims are typically reviewed individually, but the Education Department decided to grant automatic cancellation in this case because of “common evidence of institutional misconduct” at the schools in question, according to the settlement.

At some schools, there was already proof of “substantial misconduct,” while others were included because of high rates of claims coming from their former students, according to the deal.

The borrower defense process was started by Congress in 1994 but was rarely used until the collapse of the Corinthian Colleges chain in 2015. The for-profit company closed its campuses amid widespread findings of fraud, prompting thousands of students to apply for debt cancellation.

That led the Obama administration to expand the program and create clearer rules. It became the centerpiece of the administration’s efforts to crack down on for-profit colleges that lied or used high-pressure tactics to recruit students. Students at Corinthian and other chains said they enrolled on promises that they would land high-paying jobs, only to graduate with few job prospects.

Earlier this month the Biden administration agreed to cancel federal student debt for anyone who attended a Corinthian school from the company’s founding in 1995 to its collapse two decades later. The action will erase $5.8 billion in debt for more than 560,000 borrowers, the largest single discharge in the Education Department’s history.

The settlement adds to the administration’s effort to cancel student debt for certain groups of borrowers. It has erased billions of additional dollars in debt from other former for-profit college students, along with borrowers who have severe disabilities and those with jobs in public service.

Biden has also faced mounting pressure to pursue mass student debt cancellation. The White House recently signaled that it is considering canceling $10,000, but no decision has been reached.

___

The Associated Press education team receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The AP is solely responsible for all content.