Trump's financial interest in Anheuser-Busch is likely why he was silent during Dylan Mulvaney right-wing freakout: report

Sky Palma

RAW STORY
April 26, 2023

Donald Trump at CPAC / Gage Skidmore

As outrage from some conservatives blew up over Bud Light's sponsorship deal with trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney, former President Donald Trump was notably silent as calls for a boycott of the company grew.

According to The Independent, Trump's silence on the matter was possibly due to the fact that he holds a significant financial interest in Anheuser-Busch InBev, the company that produces Bud Light.

In his most recent financial disclosure, Trump is shown to own between $1 million and $5 million in Anheuser-Busch InBev stock under an account listed as “DJT Trust — Investment Account #2."

Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., even called for the boycott to end as outrage over Mulvaney peaked

“So here’s the deal. Anheuser-Busch totally s*** the bed with this Dylan Mulvaney thing. I’m not, though, for destroying an American, an iconic company for something like this,” Trump Jr. said on a recent episode of his Triggered podcast, adding that the company does not “participate in the same woke garbage that other people in the beer industry actually do” and claimed the company’s competitors “are significantly worse offenders."

It's not known if Trump Jr. holds the same financial interest in the company as his father.

'Veterans are specifically targeted': How white power movements are fueled by warfare

Travis Gettys

RAW STORY
April 26, 2023, 

Shutterstock


There's a direct correlation between American war and the white power movement, according to a history expert.


Extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan, show a huge surge in membership after every major war, and those groups adopt elements of those conflicts, such as uniforms, weapons and tactics, but historian and author Kathleen Belew told a recent conference in Florida that veterans make up only a portion of those new recruits, reported The Conversation.

"The white power movement came together in the late 1970s around a shared narrative of the Vietnam War," Belew said. "In this narrative, the war exemplifies the failure of government, the betrayal of the American people by the government and the betrayal of American men by the state. Disillusioned veterans and civilians alike mobilized around a number of other social grievances, such as dissatisfaction with changes caused by feminism, the Civil Rights Movement and other movements at home, as well as frustrations with economic changes like the farms crisis and the general move to financialization in the 1970s that made it harder to find and keep a working-class job."

The same pattern has played out after each U.S. conflict since then, Belew said, and has drawn men, women and children from a variety of backgrounds around white supremacist ideas and militant extremism, although veterans and active-duty military personnel often play key roles in these movements.

"Veterans are specifically targeted for recruitment into white power groups because they and active-duty service members have a set of experiences and expertise that is very much in demand by these groups," she said. "Veterans have tactical training, munitions expertise and weapons training that the white power movement wants because it is trying to wage war on the American government – in fact, this movement has directed recruitment specifically aimed at veterans and active-duty troops."

"While very few veterans returning from war join white power groups, the groups still feature an enormous percentage of people who are veterans or active duty – or falsely claim to be," Belew added. "This is because those military roles are in high demand among these groups – and their command structure within the movement mirrors military organization."

The white power movement is one of the hidden costs of warfare, Belew said, and represented a social failure to support service members returning to civilian life following combat.

"In the recent past, war has not been at the center of our political conversation," Belew said. "We don't reckon with the massive impact the people who serve in our armed forces shoulder for the nation. In all of these ways, the global war on terror has continued the cycle of generating a recruitment opportunity for extremist groups. We are now in the middle of a massive groundswell of white power and militant right activity, both underground and in public-facing actions."

Animals learn survival tricks from others – even if they live alone

The Conversation
April 25, 2023

Octopus (Shutterstock)

Many animals live in groups. One of the main benefits of this is shared knowledge. This information can help animals tackle problems such as where to find food and mates, how to follow migration routes and how to avoid predators.

Other animals in the group are valuable sources of information. Rats, for example, learn which kinds of food are safe to eat by smelling it on the breath of other members of their colony. While Indian mynah birds learn about new predators through the distress calls of their companions.

These animals increase their chance of survival by following, copying and learning from each other. Learning from others in this way is what behavioral scientists call “social learning”.

But many other animals prefer to spend their lives alone. Do these animals have to figure these problems out for themselves

This is what I set out to discover in a recent review of the literature on social learning in solitary animals. It would appear that living alone is no barrier to learning from others. There are dozens of examples of social learning in solitary species of insect, octopus, fish, shark, lizard, snake, turtle and tortoise.

Social lives

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. Solitary animals are not necessarily cut off from social contact. In fact, many live in rich social worlds awash with calls and scent cues from other animals – they also come into contact (and sometimes clash) with these animals regularly.

Just as those that live in groups acquire valuable knowledge from others, solitary animals can too.

One study found that wood crickets can learn to be wary by observing the behavior of other crickets that had recently encountered predatory spiders. Other research revealed that South America’s red-footed tortoises can watch other tortoises to learn how to navigate around a barrier. And Italian wall lizards, a species native to southern and central Europe, copied trained lizards to learn which lid to remove to access a food reward.


The Italian wall lizard. 

MattiaATH/Shutterstock

Social learning can explain how behavior can spread through animal populations. Some species of grazing mammal, for example, share migration routes between critical feeding and breeding habitats. Understanding how social learning arises and develops can thus inform conservation and species management.

Social learning is also a key part of human culture. Understanding how animals share knowledge offers insights into how our own minds develop. But we still know comparatively little about the role natural selection and the early exposure to social cues play in shaping social learning.

Some animals learn better than others

Sharing knowledge is an important mechanism across the natural world, and many solitary animals are capable of it. But which animals pick up social cues the best? Most group-living animals will be exposed to social information more frequently than solitary animals, so may become more attuned to it either through natural selection or through experience.

Some scientists argue that social learning is the same as other kinds of learning at the cognitive level, except that the source of information happens to be another animal rather than some inanimate feature of the environment. However, it is possible that the sense organs and brain regions that are involved in gathering and processing social information may have been selected over many generations to be more attentive to social cues.

Research employs statistical techniques to look for evidence of natural selection among groups of related animals to see if factors such as living in groups are linked with other adaptations, like those related to cognition. One study that was conducted on primates showed that a measure of social learning was related to the size and complexity of their social groups.

Similar approaches could be applied to family trees that contain both group-living and solitary animal species (like behaviorally diverse groups of fish and insects) in the future. This would allow scientists to see if grouping not only affects how well an animal learns socially, but also the sensory and neural hardware behind it.

Early exposure

The amount of social exposure that an animal receives early on in its life may also affect how well it learns from others later on. The rats that learn about new foods from their den-mates do so by associating the smell of recently eaten foods with compounds that the rats breathe out. They acquire this skill as pups and learn to pair food odour with the smell of their mother’s breath as she grooms them.

Remarkably, research finds that rats with inattentive mothers who groom them less as pups do not pick up the same ability to learn about foods from the breath of others.


Young rats learn about new foods from their den-mates. 

Chanawat Jaiya/Shutterstock

By contrast, little is known about the importance of social exposure in young solitary animals.

Yet, while restricting social exposure might be unethical for animals that live in groups, this will not be the case for solitary species where limited social interaction is the norm. In experiments that manipulate early exposure to social cues, these solitary species can widen scientific understanding of how animals pick up the associations that lead to social learning.


Mike Webster, Lecturer, School of Biology, University of St Andrews

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

NASA thought it knew source of annual Geminid meteor shower. Turns out, it was wrong

2023/04/25

A meteor streaks through the night sky over Myanmar during the Geminid meteor shower seen from Wundwin township near Mandalay city on Dec. 14, 2018. 

- Ye Aung Thu/GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/TNS

NASA just admitted a big scientific “oopsie” — and the ripple effect has left experts scratching their heads over Earth’s annual Geminid meteor shower.

The mistake involves the tail of Phaethon, an asteroid long assumed to be the source of meteors showering Earth each December.

Closer analysis of Phaethon by a team of scientists revealed its tail isn’t dusty at all.

Instead, it’s sodium gas, NASA revealed in a Tuesday news release.

So if the tail of the asteroid is gas, not dust, where are the dazzling Geminid meteors coming from?

Scientists aren’t sure. The only thing NASA knows for sure is “a weird asteroid has just gotten a little weirder.”

“We have known for a while that asteroid 3200 Phaethon acts like a comet. It brightens and forms a tail when it’s near the Sun, and it is the source of the annual Geminid meteor shower,” NASA reported. “Scientists had blamed Phaethon’s comet-like behavior on dust escaping from the asteroid as it’s scorched by the Sun.“

Phaethon was discovered in 1983, and scientists quickly realized its orbit “matched” the Geminid meteor shower. They concluded its debris trail must be behind “a swarm of shooting stars.” This year, the shower is expected to arrive Nov. 19 and continue through Christmas Eve, according to EarthSky.org.

The team of scientists who made the discovery — including California Institute of Technology PhD student Qicheng Zhang — have a vague theory about the origin of the spectacle.

It’s possible the annual light show is the result of a “disruptive event” tied to the asteroid that dates back thousands of years, the team says.

“Perhaps a piece of the asteroid breaking apart under the stresses of Phaethon’s rotation ... caused Phaethon to eject the billion tons of material estimated to make up the Geminid debris stream,” the team said. ”But what that event was remains a mystery.”

A DESTINY+ spacecraft is scheduled to fly past Phaethon later this decade, possibly providing answers while taking images of the surface, NASA says.

Phaethon is considered an “enigmatic asteroid” for many reasons, including the fact asteroids aren’t known for having comet tails, experts say.

Asteroids are mostly rock, while comets are a combination of ice and rock. It’s that mix of elements that “form tails as the Sun vaporizes their ice, blasting material off their surfaces and leaving a trail along their orbits,” NASA says.

———

© The Charlotte Observer

Does materialism really lead to lower life satisfaction? Surprising new study suggests otherwise

2023/04/25


New research casts doubt on the belief that heightened materialism leads to reduced life satisfaction. The results of the study suggest that the negative association between materialism and life satisfaction observed in past research might not be due to materialism itself causing lower life satisfaction, but rather because people who tend to be more materialistic also tend to have certain stable characteristics that are linked to lower life satisfaction.

The findings have been published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

“I started researching this topic during my PhD under supervision of Professor Rik Pieters,” said study author Esther Jaspers, a senior lecturer at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand.

“Materialism is generally perceived as something negative. However, possessions and their acquisition play an important role in all of our lives. We are interested in this topic because we want to deepen our understanding of the relationship between materialism and life satisfaction, and specifically, to find out if materialism is bad for people’s well-being, as is commonly believed.”

The study followed 6,551 people over three years to investigate the relationship between materialism and subjective well-being. The participants completed assessments between 2013 and 2015. The first asked questions regarding their demographics, the second used the Material Values Scale to measure materialism, and the third used the Satisfaction with Life Scale to measure subjective well-being.

The Material Values Scale consists of several items that assess three different facets of materialism: the belief that acquiring possessions will increase happiness, the belief that possessions are indicators of success, and the belief that possessions are central to one’s life.

The researchers used a statistical technique called the random-intercept cross-lagged panel model (RI-CLPM) to look at how materialism and life satisfaction relate to each other over time. This model separates stable differences between people from changes over time by using “random intercepts.” This helps to get more accurate estimates of how materialism and life satisfaction are longitudinally correlated with one another.

The study found that the analysis strategy had important impacts on the results and that traditional longitudinal analyses may suggest spurious causal relationships. The traditional analysis showed a negative relationship between materialism and life satisfaction, consistent with prior studies. However, the more advanced RI-CLPM analysis found no longitudinal effects of composite materialism on life satisfaction, or vice versa.

Instead, more materialistic people tended to have lower life satisfaction overall. But the model did not find a significant link between intra-individual changes in materialism and changes in life satisfaction over time.

In other words, the results suggest that the negative association between materialism and life satisfaction is mostly due to differences between people (i.e., some people are more materialistic and less satisfied with life), rather than changes in materialism and life satisfaction within the same person over time.

“We do find that materialism and life satisfaction are negatively related at the population level,” Jaspers told PsyPost. “That is, people who value possessions and acquisitions more than others report lower levels of life satisfaction. However, we do not find evidence that changes in materialism within people lead to subsequent changes in life satisfaction. This means that there might be other factors that are associated with both materialism and life satisfaction that could be responsible for the negative relation.”

Interestingly, when examining the particular facets of materialism, the researchers found that decreases in life satisfaction were associated with higher subsequent scores on the happiness facet of materialism.

“Even though we did not find that materialism leads to reduced life satisfaction, we did find that people who experienced lower life satisfaction increased in their belief that having more possessions would make them happier,” Jaspers explained. “This belief represents one of three facets of materialism as it is commonly defined and measured in materialism research.”

“This result suggests that materialism, at least to some extent, may be a coping strategy for people. Even though there are some studies that support this idea, the focus in the literature is usually on the effect of materialism on life satisfaction, and not the other way around.”

Longitudinal studies are better at understanding the order of effects than cross-sectional studies. Although they can’t establish causation like randomized controlled trials, they provide stronger evidence for reciprocal effects. However, the new study, like all research, includes some limitations.

“We did not examine external factors that may be causing the negative relation between materialism and life satisfaction that we observe at the population level,” Jaspers told PsyPost. “In addition, our longitudinal data contained measurements of materialism and life satisfaction that were approximately 6 months apart and spanned 3 years in total. The findings may be different with different time intervals between measurements. For instance, changes in materialism over the course of multiple years might impact life satisfaction and vice versa.”

The study, “Materialism and life satisfaction relations between and within people over time: Results of a three-wave longitudinal study“, was authored by Esther D. T. Jaspers, Mario Pandelaere, Rik G. M. Pieters, and L. J. Shrum.

© PsyPost

Ocean warming study so distressing, some scientists didn't even want to talk about it

Agence France-Presse
April 26, 2023

Icebergs float in Baffin Bay near Pituffik, Greenland in July 2022 

Kerem Yücel AFP/File

Scientists are so alarmed by a new study on ocean warming that some declined to speak about it on the record, the BBC reported Tuesday.

"One spoke of being 'extremely worried and completely stressed,'" the outlet reported regarding a scientist who was approached about research published in the journal Earth System Science Data on April 17, as the study warned that the ocean is heating up more rapidly than experts previously realized—posing a greater risk for sea-level rise, extreme weather, and the loss of marine ecosystems.

Scientists from institutions including Mercator Ocean International in France, Scripps Institution of Oceanography in the United States, and Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research collaborated to discover that as the planet has accumulated as much heat in the past 15 years as it did in the previous 45 years, the majority of the excess heat has been absorbed by the oceans.

In March, researchers examining the ocean off the east coast of North America found that the water's surface was 13.8°C, or 24.8°F, hotter than the average temperature between 1981 and 2011.

The study notes that a rapid drop in shipping-related pollution could be behind some of the most recent warming, since fuel regulations introduced in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization reduced the heat-reflecting aerosol particles in the atmosphere and caused the ocean to absorb more energy.

But that doesn't account for the average global ocean surface temperature rising by 0.9°C from preindustrial levels, with 0.6°C taking place in the last four decades.

The study represents "one of those 'sit up and read very carefully' moments," said former BBC science editor David Shukman.



Lead study author Karina Von Schuckmann of Mercator Ocean International told the BBC that "it's not yet well established, why such a rapid change, and such a huge change is happening."

"We have doubled the heat in the climate system the last 15 years, I don't want to say this is climate change, or natural variability or a mixture of both, we don't know yet," she said. "But we do see this change."

Scientists have consistently warned that the continued burning of fossil fuels by humans is heating the planet, including the oceans. Hotter oceans could lead to further glacial melting—in turn weakening ocean currents that carry warm water across the globe and support the global food chain—as well as intensified hurricanes and tropical storms, ocean acidification, and rising sea levels due to thermal expansion.

A study published earlier this year also found that rising ocean temperatures combined with high levels of salinity lead to the "stratification" of the oceans, and in turn, a loss of oxygen in the water.

"Deoxygenation itself is a nightmare for not only marine life and ecosystems but also for humans and our terrestrial ecosystems," researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said in January. "Reducing oceanic diversity and displacing important species can wreak havoc on fishing-dependent communities and their economies, and this can have a ripple effect on the way most people are able to interact with their environment."

The unusual warming trend over recent years has been detected as a strong El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is expected to form in the coming months—a naturally occurring phenomenon that warms oceans and will reverse the cooling impact of La Niña, which has been in effect for the past three years.

"If a new El Niño comes on top of it, we will probably have additional global warming of 0.2-0.25°C," Dr. Josef Ludescher of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research told the BBC.

The world's oceans are a crucial tool in moderating the climate, as they absorb heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases.

Too much warming has led to concerns among scientists that "as more heat goes into the ocean, the waters may be less able to store excess energy," the BBC reported.

The anxiety of climate experts regarding the new findings, said the global climate action movement Extinction Rebellion, drives home the point that "scientists are just people with lives and families who've learnt to understand the implications of data better."

The real reason Social Security is going broke — and how to save it forever

Robert Reich
April 25, 2023, 

Photo by Emil Kalibradov on Unsplash

I run into lots of young people who don’t believe Social Security will be there for them when they retire.

They have reason for concern. The trustees of the Social Security Trust Fund — of which yours truly was once a member — just released their annual report on Social Security’s future. The report says Social Security will be able to pay full benefits until 2034 but then faces a significant funding shortfall. After 2034, it can pay only about 80 percent of scheduled benefits.

The biggest reason Social Security is running out of money is not what you (and the media) think it is: that boomer retirees are, or will soon be, soaking it all up.

The Social Security trustees anticipated the boom in boomer retirements. This is why Social Security was amended back in 1983, to gradually increase the age for collecting full retirement benefits from age 65 to 67. That change is helping finance the boomers’ retirement.

So what did the trustees fail to anticipate? Answer: the degree of income inequality in 21st century America.

Put simply, a big part of the American working population is earning less than the Social Security trustees (including me) anticipated decades ago — and therefore paying less in Social Security payroll tax.

Had the pay of American workers kept up with what had been the trend decades ago — and kept up with their own increasing productivity — their Social Security payroll tax payments would have been enough to keep the program flush.

At the same time, a much larger chunk of the nation’s total income is going to the top than was expected decades ago.

Here’s the thing: Income subject to the payroll tax is capped. Every dollar of earnings in excess of the cap is not subject to Social Security payroll taxes. This year’s cap is $160,200.

The Social Security cap is adjusted every year for inflation, but the adjustment is tiny compared to what’s happened to incomes at the top.

As the rich have become far richer, more and more of the total income earned by Americans has become concentrated at the top. Therefore, more and more total income escapes the Social Security payroll tax.

The obvious solution to Social Security’s funding shortfall 11 years from now is to lift the cap so that the super-rich pay more in Social Security taxes.

To make sure it’s the super-rich — and not the upper middle class — who pay, it makes sense to eliminate the cap altogether on earnings in excess of, say, $400,000.

As it happens, Joe Biden campaigned for the White House on a plan to do exactly this.

What happened to that plan? The budget Biden proposed last month made no mention of any tax increase linked to Social Security (although it did include tax increases on high earners and corporations as a way to extend the solvency of Medicare by 25 years).

I suspect Biden’s plan for Social Security was a casualty of the bare-knuckled politics surrounding both Social Security and the debt ceiling. Biden doesn’t want to give Republicans any opening to debate Social Security in the coming fight over lifting the ceiling.

Hopefully, he’ll revive his plan for Social Security after that brawl. The long-term future of Social Security depends on it.

What do you think?

***


Reminder: Please join me Friday for the fourth class in my Wealth and Poverty course, right here on this page. We’ll be taking a deep dive into the widening inequalities of place — the geographic sorting mechanism that’s making the poor even poorer and the rich even richer, as well as shrinking the middle class.

If you missed the earlier classes, no problem. You can pick up with the fourth, or retrieve class one here, class two here, and class three here.

THE AMERICAN WAY

Disney sues DeSantis over nullification of its special tax district
Sky Palma Sarah K. Burris

RAW STORY
April 26, 2023, 

Ron DeSantis (Photo via AFP)

A Florida board designed to oversee government services at Disney World voted this Wednesday to nullify two agreements that greenlighted the company's expansion, The New York Times reported.

Disney responded by suing DeSantis, the board he appointed, and other officials, alleging “a targeted campaign of government retaliation."

Disney first became a target of DeSantis after the company criticized Florida's so-called "Don't Say Gay" law and halted political donations to the state. Disney’s lawsuit goes on to accuse DeSantis of a “relentless campaign to weaponize government power against Disney in retaliation for expressing a political viewpoint," adding that the board's actions “now threatens Disney’s business operations, jeopardizes its economic future in the region and violates its constitutional rights.”

As The Times points out, the c urrent fight between DeSantis and Disney is over a special tax district "that encompasses Disney World, which employs 75,000 people and attracts 50 million visitors annually. The district, created in 1967 southwest of Orlando, effectively turned the property into its own county, giving Disney unusual control over fire protection, policing, waste management, energy generation, road maintenance, bond issuance and development planning."
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IN OTHER NEWS: 'What rubbish!' Conservative feuds with Wall Street Journal editor over Clarence Thomas

Disney pushed through the agreements in early February before the DeSantis-appointed board was in place. In response, DeSantis floated a variety of punitive actions, saying at an April 17 press conference, “Maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks — someone even said, like, maybe you need another state prison."

According to Disney's suit, "a targeted campaign of government retaliation—orchestrated at every step by Governor DeSantis as punishment for Disney’s protected speech.

They specifically cited the attempt to "void" the development contracts as nothing more than retaliation that is "patently unconstitutional."

"The Governor recently declared that his team would not only 'void the development agreement'—just as they did today—but also planned 'to look at things like taxes on the hotels,' 'tolls on the roads,' 'developing some of the property that the district owns' with 'more amusement parks,' and even putting a 'state prison' next to Walt Disney World."

"Who knows? I just think the possibilities are endless,” Disney quoted DeSantis saying.

The lawsuit is large enough that it will likely end up at the Supreme Court.

Recently, former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) complained that the move by DeSantis was outside of the pro-business narrative of the Republican Party. Using the government to attack political foes seemed like a bad idea to him.

Politically, DeSantis is facing off of a hugely popular company beloved by people in Florida and throughout the country. Comparatively, DeSantis doesn't enjoy the same approval ratings. He's "slipping" against Trump, The New York Times reported.

Hate crimes have doubled since Trump entered politics – with a new surge expected: study

Travis Gettys

RAW STORY
April 26, 2023

A new report shows an "unmistakable pattern" of hate crimes reported during presidential election seasons.

FBI data going back to 2008 reveals an increase in crimes targeting racial groups around general elections, according to the report by the civil rights group Leadership Conference Education Fund. Those attacks have spiked more than 80 percent since 2015, reported USA Today.

"What it shows is an extremely disturbing and sadly not so surprising trend," said fund CEO Maya Wiley.

Most hate crimes are targeted against Black people, but religious groups such as Jews and Muslims are frequently hit, as are LGBTQ people. The crimes shot up with the election of Barack Obama -- the nation's first Black president -- in 2008 and have nearly doubled since Donald Trump entered politics in 2015.

"We should assume that unless we're acting now, that we're going to see another increase in hate crimes in the 2024 election cycle," Wiley said.

Not all hate crimes -- which can include acts of violence or threats of violence -- are carried out by white supremacists, but the report shows those groups have been particularly active during the past four presidential election cycles."We do see a difference when leaders speak out, we do see a difference when we support communities coming together and getting to know each other," Wiley said. "We can do that in advance of the election cycle, so that we can try to change this devastating, historic trend."

JESUIT REFORMATION
Pope allows women to vote at bishops meeting for first time
Reuters
April 26, 2023


By Philip Pullella

(Reuters) - Pope Francis, in a historic move that could lead to more inclusiveness in decision-making in the Roman Catholic Church, will allow women to vote for the first time at a global meeting of bishops in October.

In the past, women were allowed to attend the synods, a papal advisory body, as auditors but with no right to vote.

The revolutionary rules, announced on Wednesday, allow for five religious sisters with voting rights.

Additionally, the pope has decided the inclusion of what a Vatican document called "70 non-bishop members who represent various groupings of the faithful of the people of God".

The 70 priests, religious sisters, deacons and lay Catholics will be chosen by the pope from a list of 140 people recommended by national bishops' conferences. The conferences were encouraged to include young people. The Vatican has asked that 50% of the 70 be women.

Synods are usually attended by about 300 people, so the bulk of those with voting rights will still be bishops. Still, the change is remarkable for an institution that has been male-dominated for centuries.

The new rules follow two major steps Francis took last year to place women in decision-making positions in the Vatican.

In one, he introduced a landmark reform that will allow any baptised lay Catholic, including women, to head most Vatican departments under a new constitution for the Holy See's central administration.

In another last year, he named three women to a previously all-male committee that advises him in selecting the world's bishops.

RIGHT TO VOTE

Women's groups in the Church have for years been demanding the right to vote at the high-profile synods, which prepare resolutions that usually lead to a papal document.

A 2018 synod became a flashpoint when two "brothers", lay men who are not ordained, were allowed to vote in their capacity as superiors general of their religious orders.

But Sister Sally Marie Hodgdon, an American who also is not ordained, was not allowed to vote even though she was the superior general of her order.

In 2021, Francis for the first time named a woman to the number two position in the governorship of Vatican City, making Sister Raffaella Petrini the highest-ranking woman in the world's smallest state.

The same year, he named Italian nun Sister Alessandra Smerilli to the number two position in the Vatican's development office, which deals with justice and peace issues.

He also named Nathalie Becquart, a French member of the Xaviere Missionary Sisters, as co-undersecretary of the Vatican department that prepares synods.

The upcoming synod has been in preparation for two years, during which Catholics around the world were asked about their vision for the future of the Church.

Proponents have welcomed the consultations as an opportunity to change the Church's power dynamics and give a greater voice to lay Catholics, including women, and people on the margins of society.

Conservatives say the process has been a waste of time, may erode the hierarchical structure of the nearly 1.4 billion-member Church and in the long run could dilute traditional doctrine.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Alex Richardson)