Wednesday, June 12, 2024

THE RIGHT WING WAR ON PROGRESS

Alito doubts US right and left can co-exist and wife criticizes Pride flag in secret recording

Robert Tait in Washington
THE GUARDIAN
Tue, June 11, 2024

Samuel Alito and his wife Martha at the capitol in Washington DC 
Photograph: Alex Edelman/AFP via Getty Images



Samuel Alito, the US supreme justice at the center of a flag controversy that has called his impartiality into question, has said one side of the US’s bitter left v right ideological conflicts has to prevail, in secretly recorded remarks that are likely to exacerbate concerns about judicial neutrality.

In unguarded comments made to a film-maker posing as a conservative, Alito – one of the court’s most conservative justices – also agreed with the assertion that the US had to be “returned to a place of godliness”.

His wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was also recorded making critical comments about the gay pride flag.

The Alitos were recently revealed to have flown an upside-down US flag, symbolizing the “Stop the Steal” movement that attempted to overturn the results of the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump, outside their home only weeks after the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

The couple shared their sentiments with Lauren Windsor, a liberal film-maker who attended the court’s Historical Society black-tie annual dinner this month, using her real name but posing as a Catholic conservative. She engaged Alito in a conversation about the prospects for a compromise resolution to America’s polarised political landscape.

Appearing to rule out such a compromise, Alito said: “One side or the other is going to win”, before adding:

“There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

Windsor said: “People in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”

The justice replied: “I agree with you. I agree with you.”

The exchange will further intensify the scrutiny on Alito after the flag controversy has called his impartiality into question, particularly after additional revelations that the Alitos flew another flag favoured by the January 6 protesters, bearing the slogan Appeal To Heaven, at their New Jersey holiday home.

The disclosures have sparked calls from Democrats for Alito to recuse himself from forthcoming supreme court rulings on the January 6 events.

The justice has declined to do so, saying it was his wife who chose to fly the flags outside his house, and claiming he had no say.

Martha-Ann Alito waded further into the flag controversy at the Historical Society dinner as well, criticising the flag being flown for Gay Pride month.

“You know what I want?” she said in Windsor’s recording. “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag, because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.”

She then ruminated on other flags she might hoist to taunt her ideological adversaries – including one bearing the Italian word for shame.

“‘He’s like, ‘Oh, please don’t put up a flag,’” she said, in apparent reference to her husband. “I won’t do it because I am deferring to you. But when you are free of this nonsense, I’m putting it up and I’m gonna send them a message every day, maybe every week, I’ll be changing the flags.

“They’ll be all kinds. I made a flag in my head. This is how I satisfy myself. I made a flag. It’s white and has yellow and orange flames around it. And in the middle is the word ‘vergogna’. Vergogna in Italian means shame – vergogna. V-E-R-G-O-G-N-A. Vergogna.”

In a further and notably snide exchange that included critical comments about a female journalist, Martha-Ann Alito appeared to be won over by Windsor, agreeing it was impossible to negotiate with “the radical left” and expressing no objection to the journalist’s repeated expletives.

Windsor had less success in eliciting unmoderated opinions from the supreme court’s chief justice, John Roberts, who balked at her suggestion that the country’s polarised split was irreparable.

Pushed by Windsor on whether the court should have a role in leading the nation to a “more moral path”, Roberts said: “No, I think the role for the court is deciding the cases.”

Windsor’s tactics were criticised by the Historical Society. In a statement, the organisation’s president, James Duff, said: “We condemn the surreptitious recording of justices at the event, which is inconsistent with the entire spirit of the evening.”

She defended herself by saying the court’s lack of openness meant there was no other way. “They are shrouded in secrecy and we have seen them be willing to overturn long-standing precedent in ways that are really extraordinary,” Windsor told the Washington Post. “Americans are really at this crossroads of do we continue with a secular democracy or do we let a conservative majority take us down a path of Christian theocracy.”

Alito’s Wife Shocked Even the Activist Who Secretly Recorded Her


Ian Ward
POLITICO
Tue, June 11, 2024 


Lauren Windsor is not apologizing for recording her undercover conversations with Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, his wife Martha-Ann Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

In an interview with POLITICO Magazine, the progressive activist and documentarian discussed how and why she posed as a sympathetic anti-abortion activist to secure candid — and pugnacious — comments from Alito and his wife, including on the controversy surrounding the Alitos’ decision to fly politically-coded flags at their properties.

She said it was “shocking” to hear Martha-Ann Alito say she fantasized about designing a flag featuring the word “vergogna” — the Italian word for “shame” — to fly in response to LGBTQ+ pride flags. “I definitely did not see that coming,” she said.

Alito, meanwhile, raised eyebrows for his response to Windor’s question about the polarized state of American politics. “One side or the other is going to win,” Alito said on the recording. “There are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

Windsor also dismissed criticism from media ethicists who argue that she should have identified herself as a journalist and shouldn’t have secretly recorded the justices in 2023 and 2024.

“The Supreme Court is shrouded in secrecy, and they’ve really been dodging any accountability to the American public,” Windsor said. “Is it a bigger ethics problem for me to pretend like I’m a fangirl, or is it a bigger ethics problem for them to accept millions of dollars of undisclosed gifts from GOP donors?”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Were you surprised by Justice Alito’s response to your question about our polarized politics?

I was surprised that it was a departure from his response he gave to me in 2023. He was more forthcoming. Particularly at the Supreme Court level, judges exercise a very high degree of discretion, so I suspected that it would be very difficult to be able to get him to say anything newsworthy. I was really just trying to delve into whether he might give a different answer or if his thinking had evolved on it, given the level of media scrutiny he’s been under.

Why do you think he was more candid now? What could account for that change, in your mind?

It could very well be that he had the same belief when I talked to him in 2023 but he was just more guarded about it. That’s one option. It could be that he’s more aggrieved or has a bigger sense of grievance with the media, given everything over the past year. Maybe he felt like there’s a little bit greater trust since he had talked to me that one time before. It’s hard for me to say — I can’t see inside his mind.

Were you planning on going back to him to talk before the flag episode, or did you decide to do it after all the attention on the flags?

I had planned on going back regardless of the flag, but it certainly made it more interesting when the flags incident happened.

What are the logistics of these interviews? How do you get into the events, and then how do you actually get the recordings? Are you wearing a wire or something?

I’m not going to discuss methodology on any of this, but you buy a ticket. I registered, and I was a dues-paying member.

I think many of Alito’s critics have suspected for a while that his political biases are influencing his work on the court. Do you think your conversation with him revealed something about his thinking that his critics didn’t already suspect?

I think [some] people dismiss the story as, “Well, we already thought that this was happening — we already thought that his religious or political beliefs were influencing his decision, and this just confirmed that.”

It is something new, though, because it is a verbal confirmation of his lack of impartiality when deciding these cases. If you say there’s fundamental things that can’t be compromised, what are those things?

What did you make of that comment, as well as his comment that “one side is going to win”? It’s a little bit ambiguous what he’s saying, so I wonder how you understood it.

The reason that I chose to ask about polarization is that judges are very discreet, and if I had approached him asking about Democrats and Republicans, he probably would have shut down pretty quickly, right? But talking about polarization is really shorthand for political polarization, and that’s really bound up in the political conversation about religion. I feel like it’s kind of hard to separate out the religious from the political when talking about achieving “godliness” or “godly ends.”

He said at one point, “There are differences on fundamental things that can’t be compromised.” Do you agree with him that there are genuinely irreconciled views in the country, or do you think there is a path toward pluralism and peaceful coexistence at this point?

I believe in secular democracy. I don’t think that we should be legislating morality, and in order for that to happen, there has to be a separation of church and state. I think that is a fundamental value that we should not compromise. That’s a value that is bedrock to the founding of our nation.

Do you think that the type of reporting you do strengthens that barrier? Is it putting us on a path toward some sort of reconciliation, or is it just highlighting the contradictions that are already inherent in our political system?

I fear here that we are at a crossroads in this country of whether or not we want to remain a secular democracy or whether or not we want to become a Christian theocracy. And my reporting and my role is to expose public servants who will lead us down that path so that Americans are armed with the information they need to know to make decisions to hold those folks accountable.

Your conversation with Martha-Ann Alito was the most unusual of all your conversations. At one point in the conversation, Alito repeatedly meows at a woman named “Cat.” Were you expecting what you got from her?

In the audio, you can hear that I bring up my conversation with her husband, and I was definitely trying to get further evidence of bias in [his] decision making. Was this really her flag?

Let’s be honest here: He clearly knows that she has this affinity for these flags, and he let it go and let her do it anyway, even though it’s important to have an appearance of impartiality. I’m not going to let him off the hook as, “Oh, well, those are my wife’s flags. I had nothing to do with it.” He was clearly enabling that.

I didn’t expect a lot of the other color at all. I didn’t expect the story about Robin Givhan at the Washington Post [in which Alito tangled with the Pulitzer-winning fashion critic]. I didn’t expect her to meow several times.

The thing that was most shocking was probably the thing about the “vergogna” flag and how she said that fantasizing about making flags satisfies her. I definitely did not see that coming.

What did you make of that? What do you think she is trying to signal by saying she fantasizes about flying a flag that says “shame”?

I don’t understand what is so abhorrent to her — I mean, I do understand what’s abhorrent to her about the pride flag, but it’s other people expressing who they are, and it’s their First Amendment right. But it clearly deeply affects her, because she spends a lot of time thinking about it.

Justice Roberts pushed back against some of your provocations. Were you heartened by his response?

I was heartened by his response because I was like, “OK, you know, this is great — this is someone who is an old-school, rational jurist.” But as the chief justice and someone who’s widely regarded as an institutionalist, he’s going to have much more discretion. So given that he says these things but then he allows Justices Alito and [Clarence] Thomas to act in a more brazen manner without really enforcing the appearances of propriety on the court — he’s enabling that behavior, so I have to question his sincerity.

You also brought up the leak of the Dobbs decision with Justice Alito. Why did you want to ask him about that in particular?

It’s widely suspected that he’s the person who leaked the opinion, so I was trying to gauge his reaction. And he seemed uncomfortable. That could be for any variety of reasons, but I’m not sure exactly what he was going to tell me. It was more of trying to gauge his reaction.

He looked uncomfortable? What gave you that sense?

You can tell when someone’s not comfortable talking about a subject. You know — a little fidgety and kind of looking the other way. That was over a year ago, so it’s not crystal clear, but my impression was that he wasn’t comfortable with it. But that may have also been an aggressive line of questioning. I don’t want to impute things on him that I don’t have evidence for, but it was my impression was that he was not comfortable.

In the recordings, you kept swearing and dropping F-bombs and then apologizing profusely for them. Was that a tactic?

I was only doing that with Martha-Ann. Obviously it would have been very inappropriate with the justices, and it was borderline inappropriate with her, but it was a way to show that I really care about this and am very passionate about it and I’m just so angry about what they’re doing to [her]. I felt it was a way to commiserate with her that would be a little bit more believable.

I mean, it seemed to work.

You did get some meowing out of her.

You’ve got to realize, too, that it’s at the end of a dinner, and we’ve had a couple glasses of wine.

That gets the conversation flowing.

You know…

You’ve gotten some pushback for conducting these interviews undercover, without identifying yourself as a journalist. Why do you think it’s justified to take that approach?

The Supreme Court is shrouded in secrecy, and they’ve really been dodging any accountability to the American public. They’re not going to go out and talk about what they’re doing or why, so we can’t get the answers to anything.

Is it a bigger ethics problem for me to pretend like I’m a fangirl, or is it a bigger ethics problem for them to accept millions of dollars of undisclosed gifts from GOP donors? Obviously this is what I believe, but maybe the media and others — instead of pearl-clutching — should be trying to get more answers from the court and more accountability.

Is it sort of an eye-for-an-eye equivalency in your mind? Like if they’re lying to us, it’s OK for us to deceive them?

I am not a fan of an eye-for-an-eye on things. I am a fan of accountability. I think that people who are in positions of power — if they’re going to refuse to be held accountable, then it warrants taking measures that you might not otherwise take.

Do you worry that the justices will become even more reclusive and more unwilling to answer any sort of questions now that something like this has happened? Or do you think we’re past the point where those considerations matter?

I don’t know what the marginal difference there is. They’re already not answering anything.

Was it all worth it in your mind?

Yeah. I think we have got to force a conversation about what’s at stake on the Supreme Court. We have a court that is now made up of five religious extremists and jurists, and I don’t think the average American is quite aware of the impact that’s having on the court’s decisions and how that trickles down into their everyday lives. But they’re becoming more and more aware of it as rights are being stripped away and as women are losing reproductive rights. And it’s not just abortion. Is birth control on the table?

There are many, many ways in which the Supreme Court’s decisions impact Americans’ lives, and I think the more that journalists can expose the decision-making process that goes into that, the better.

What kind of political response would you like to see?

The appropriate political response is holding congressional investigations. Let’s get the evidence, and let’s hear what they have to say about these various breaches, and then take appropriate remedies as need be. I’m not going to say that so-and-so will be impeached, but there have to be consequences. I don’t think the founders ever intended for us to just have a rogue court that’s not accountable to the American public.

Do you think your reporting will persuade anyone who’s on the fence about the court’s impartiality? Or have people just made up their minds, and this just confirms one side’s view and entrenches the other?

The country is polarized, but people can change their mind with new information. I feel like I do my part when I give people more information. That’s really all I can do, is make sure that the information gets out in the world and then people can do what they want with it. But beyond that, I can only do what I can do.


Supreme Court Justice Alito talks polarization, his wife talks revenge in secret recordings

Dan Morrison and Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
Updated Tue, June 11, 2024 

WASHINGTON – Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife were captured in secret recordings that featured the justice discussing the country’s left-right divide, while Martha-Ann Alito implied she would take revenge on media outlets that reported on controversial flags flown at Alito family homes.

“Look at me, look at me,” Martha-Ann Alito said. “I’m German, from Germany. My heritage is German. You come after me, I’m going to give it back to you.”

The recordings were made at a June 3 gala for the Supreme Court Historical Society by liberal activist Lauren Windsor and released Monday night.

“One side or the other is going to win,” Justice Alito said in one recording after Windsor, posing as a Catholic conservative, asked him leading questions about political polarization in America. “There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

More: Chief Justice Roberts says he'll stay clear of Alito's Trump recusal refusal

Windsor also recorded Chief Justice John Roberts, who declined to take her bait.

“Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?” Roberts asked her at the $500-a-head gala. “That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.”

When Windsor replied that she believed “we live in a Christian nation and that our Supreme Court should be guiding us in that path,” Roberts quickly shot her down, saying, “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“I don’t know that we live in a Christian nation,” the chief justice said. “I know a lot of Jewish and Muslim friends who would say maybe not, and it’s not our job to do that.”


WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 05: A flag is waved an event at the Supreme Court of the United States with MoveOn and progressive organizations whose members are demanding an investigation into Justice Alito on June 05, 2024 in Washington, DC.

Windsor defended secretly taping the justices.

"You know, the Supreme Court has been shrouded in secrecy, and they've dodged any accountability for what are − any reasonable person would consider − serious ethics violations or serious ethics problems, and I think that the American people deserve to have more information about that,” she told USA TODAY.

“Justice Alito is very ideological and that influences his opinions, right?" Windsor said. "But it takes on a different − you have a different understanding of things when you hear it from someone's own mouth that there's fundamental things that they can't compromise."

More: Amid blowback over Clarence Thomas travel, Supreme Court says it will adopt first-ever code of conduct

Windsor released the recordings at a fraught moment for the high court, after Alito and his wife were criticized for flying flags from their homes in Virginia and New Jersey that experts say are closely linked to the Stop the Steal election denial movement and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Critics including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, called on Alito to recuse himself from Supreme Court cases involving former President Donald Trump’s broad claims of immunity in his federal election interference indictment and separate case over a law used to charge Trump and scores of Jan. 6 defendants.

Alito refused and said in a letter to the committee that his wife had raised the flags without his knowledge.

More: Mike Pence was a Jan. 6 target. He says criticizing Alito's flag is 'absurd'

Approaching Martha-Ann Alito at the June 3 benefit, Windsor expressed sympathy for the criticism she and her husband had been experiencing. Martha-Ann Alito broke in: “It’s OK! It’s OK!”

“It’s OK because if they come back to me, I’ll get them ... The media.”

Last month it was reported that an upside-down American flag had flown outside the Alitos' Virginia home after Trump's defeat in the 2020 election. The inverted flag has become a symbol for some Trump supporters who, like the former president, continue to claim the election was stolen.

Last summer, an "Appeal to Heaven" flag was raised outside the couple's New Jersey beach house. The Revolutionary War-era flag has become a potent symbol for "Stop the Steal" activists and Christian identity movement.

“You know what I want?” Martha-Ann Alito told Windsor. “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.”

A spokesperson for the court didn't immediately return a call for comment.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alito, wife caught talking about political compromise on secret audio


Secret recordings of Justice Alito and wife Martha-Ann come on heels of flag controversy. A look at the recent Supreme Court issues.

Kate Murphy
·Producer
Tue, June 11, 2024 

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, at the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington on Feb. 28, 2018. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)


Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is facing renewed scrutiny after a secret recording captured him speaking candidly about how compromise between the political left and right might be impossible. Alito was also heard agreeing with the woman who surreptitiously recorded him that America should return “to a place of godliness.”

In another secret recording, Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann, can be heard complaining about having to look at a Pride flag being flown in her neighborhood. It’s the latest bout of controversy surrounding the Alitos after they came under fire recently for flying flags associated with efforts to overturn the 2020 election at their homes.

The secret recordings of the Alitos are the latest in a series of recent incidents involving Supreme Court justices and their families.

Here’s what happened with the recordings and why it matters:

🎙️ The secret recordings

The secretly taped audio of the Alitos released on Monday was recorded by an advocacy filmmaker, Lauren Windsor, who said she posed as a religious conservative ally when speaking with them at the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner last week. (The Alitos were unaware they were being recorded, though Windsor was legally allowed to do so in Washington, D.C., as long as one party consented to the recording.)

Windsor asked Alito his thoughts on whether the polarization of the left and right will end, or if it boils down to one side winning. Alito can be heard saying to Windsor, “One side or the other is going to win. [...] There can be a way of working, a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised.”

Windsor then spoke to Alito about matters of morality, saying, “I think that the solution really is like winning the moral argument. Like, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that, to return our country to a place of godliness.”

“I agree with you,” Alito responded.

🏳️‍🌈 Another Alito flag controversy

Windsor also posed as a conservative supporter when she secretly recorded Alito’s wife at the same event.

“You know what I want?” Martha-Ann can be heard asking Windsor. “I want a Sacred Heart of Jesus flag because I have to look across the lagoon at the Pride flag for the next month.” Martha-Ann then described her husband’s reaction: “He’s like: ‘Oh, please, don’t put up a flag.’”

Martha-Ann agreed that she wouldn’t put up the flag for now, but vowed that when her husband was “free of this nonsense” that she would put it up “to send them a message every day, maybe every week. I’ll be changing the flags.”

Martha-Ann’s secretly recorded comments to Windsor come after two different reports that controversial flags were flown at two of the Alitos’ homes in recent years.

One instance was in the weeks following the 2020 presidential election when an upside-down American flag was flown outside their Virginia home. The upside-down flag is a longtime symbol used in dire distress and was adopted by supporters of former President Donald Trump when he challenged President Biden’s victory in 2020.

Another instance was last summer, when an “Appeal to Heaven” flag appeared outside the Alitos’ New Jersey summer home, another flag that has become associated with Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

Alito insisted he was not familiar with the flag connotations, saying in a May 2024 letter to Congress, “My wife is fond of flying flags. I am not.” Alito added that he didn’t have anything to do with either of the flag incidents and said Martha-Ann “makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so."

🏛️ Other recent SCOTUS controversies

The incident marked the latest public controversy involving a Supreme Court justice or family member. Some other recent events include:

  • Last week Justice Clarence Thomas disclosed free luxury trips he had not previously reported; an advocacy group estimates he has received nearly $4.2 million in gifts over the course of 20 years.

  • Alito also faced scrutiny in 2023 for accepting gifts, including a fishing trip with a person who later had business before the Supreme Court, according to ProPublica.

  • Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, sent texts to Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff Mark Meadows as Trump contested the 2020 election. It came as her husband was also hearing SCOTUS cases related to the 2020 election.

⚖️ Why it matters

The Supreme Court justices determine some of the most consequential cases that affect the laws and policies of the entire nation. Under the Supreme Court’s non-enforceable 2023 code of conduct: “A Justice should not allow family, social, political, financial, or other relationships to influence official conduct or judgment.” It also says: “A justice should perform the duties of office fairly, impartially, and diligently” and “refrain from political activity.”

The Supreme Court justices aren’t held accountable by any methods, other than impeachment, and they can decide which cases to recuse themselves from.

The secret recordings of Alito matter because Democrats have previously questioned the justice’s political impartiality, calling on him to recuse himself from two high-profile SCOTUS cases related to Jan. 6: One that will affect former President Trump’s Jan. 6 criminal case, and one regarding charges against Jan. 6 defendants. Despite the controversies coming to light, Alito has declined to recuse himself from both of these cases.






UKRAINIAN FASCISTS

The US lifts a ban on sending weapons to a controversial Ukrainian military unit

Associated Press
Updated Tue, June 11, 2024









 - Soldiers of 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov of the National Guard pose for a photo at the 155mm self-propelled gun M109 Paladin at the front line, near Kreminna, Luhansk region, Ukraine, Sunday, Jan. 28, 2024. The U.S. has removed restrictions on the transfer of American weapons and training to a high-profile Ukrainian military unit with a checkered past, the State Department said on Tuesday, June 11, 2024.
 (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)


KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The U.S. has lifted a ban on providing American weapons and training to a controversial Ukrainian military unit that was key to the defense of the major port city of Mariupol, the State Department said on Tuesday.

The Azov Brigade is among Ukraine’s most effective and popular fighting units but it has been dogged by its origins as a volunteer battalion that drew fighters from far-right circles and criticism for some of its tactics. The U.S. had banned the regiment from using American weapons, citing the neo-Nazi ideology of some of its founders.

The current members of the Azov Brigade, which has been absorbed into Ukraine’s National Guard as the 12th Special Forces Brigade, reject accusations of extremism and any ties with far-right movements. But the Kremlin has seized on the regiment’s origins in its efforts to cast Russia’s invasion as a battle against Nazi influence in Ukraine.


Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow took an “extremely negative” view of Washington’s decision. He described Azov as an “ultranationalist armed formation” and accused U.S. authorities of being “ready to flirt with neo-Nazis.”

U.S. law prohibits providing equipment and training to foreign military units or individuals suspected of committing gross human rights violations. The State Department said in a statement that it found “no evidence" of such violations.

“This is a new page in our unit's history,” the Azov Brigade wrote in a statement on Instagram. “Azov is becoming even more powerful, even more professional and even more dangerous for occupiers.”

“Obtaining Western weapons and training from the United States will not only increase the combat ability of Azov, but most importantly, contribute to the preservation of the lives and the health of personnel,” the statement said.

Up until the State Department’s decision, Azov was prohibited from sending fighters to Western military exercises or accessing weapons bought with American funds. Lifting the ban will likely bolster the brigade's fighting capacity at a difficult time during the war against Russia's invasion. Ukraine suffers from persistent ammunition and personnel shortages.

Years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Human Rights Watch raised concerns about Azov, writing that credible allegations of egregious abuses had been made against its fighters.

Moscow has repeatedly portrayed the Azov as a Nazi group and accused it of atrocities, but has publicly given little evidence of the allegations. In 2022, Russia’s top court officially designated Azov a terrorist group.

The brigade grew out of a group called the Azov Battalion, formed in 2014 as one of many volunteer regiments created to fight Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine. It quickly became a separate official unit under the Ministry of Internal Affairs and later a unit of the National Guard.

Since its first commander left in October 2014, the brigade says on its website, it has been “cleansing itself” of undesirable elements. It wasn't possible to ascertain whether the brigade has accomplished that. It has, however, tried to recast its public image away from the controversy surrounding its ultranationalist origins to that of an effective and skillful fighting force, and has shunned connections with controversial figures.

Azov soldiers played a key part in the defense of Mariupol, holding out in a siege and low on ammunition for weeks at the southern port city’s steel mill, despite devastating attacks from Russian forces in 2022.

They are hailed as heroes in Ukraine, remembered for defense of the sprawling plant that became a symbol of Ukrainian tenacity in the war against Russia, and people take to the streets for weekly rallies calling for the release of hundreds of Azov POWs who remain in Russian captivity.

___

Find more of AP’s coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine


U.S. lifts weapons and training ban on Ukraine's Azov Brigade

Guest Author, Anhelina Shamli
Tue, June 11, 2024 

The United States has lifted restrictions on providing weapons and training for the high-profile Ukrainian military unit the Azov Brigade. The U.S. State Department confirmed Monday that the unit, which has played a significant role in Ukraine's effort to repel the ongoing invasion launched by Russia in February 2022, could now be trained by U.S. military personnel and use U.S.-provided weapons.

The State Department's move reversed a decade-old prohibition imposed on the Azov forces under the Leahy Law, which prohibits the U.S. from supplying weapons or financial assistance "to units of foreign security forces where there is credible information implicating that unit in the commission of gross violations of human rights."

The State Department said it had concluded there was "no evidence of Gross Violation of Human Rights committed by the 12th Azov Brigade."

The Azov Brigade was initially a volunteer force that rose to prominence in 2014, when Russian forces first crossed Ukraine's eastern border and started seizing land. The following year, it was integrated into Ukraine's National Guard. It will now have access to the same U.S. military assistance as any other unit in the National Guard.

According to The Washington Post, U.S. assistance to the Azov unit was barred under the Leahy Law about a decade ago, over concerns about its founder, the ultra-nationalist Andriy Biletsky, and other members having Nazi sympathies. Some members of what was then known as the Azov Battalion were described as being far-right and xenophobic — a narrative that has been repeatedly promoted by Russian propaganda campaigns to justify the invasion of Ukraine.

The State Department did not say when the ban was lifted, but a spokesperson said Monday that the original unit had been disbanded years ago and that vetting of the current brigade had found no evidence of gross human rights violations, leading to the restrictions being dropped.

Members of the Azov Brigade attend the funeral of a member who was killed in battle, in Vinnytsia, Ukraine, May 10, 2024. / Credit: ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images

The Azov Brigade posted a statement on social media welcoming a "new page in the history" for the unit, saying that "obtaining Western weapons and training from the United States will not only increase the combat ability of Azov, but most importantly, contribute to the preservation of the lives and the health of personnel."

In 2022, Russia's top court officially designated the Azov unit a terrorist group, and speaking Tuesday in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that "such a sudden change in Washington's position shows that it will do anything to suppress Russia… even flirting with neo-Nazis."

Azov forces played a key role in defending the southern city of Mariupol, refusing to surrender for 80 days as they were holed–up in a sprawling steel mill with little ammunition and under blistering Russian artillery fire, before eventually laying down their weapons.

In Ukraine, the Azov troops have become a potent symbol of Ukrainian resistance in the war against Russia, and many remain in Russian captivity.


Activists and relatives of Ukrainian POWs hold up banners calling for the return of Ukrainian soldiers from Russian captivity during a rally on May 19, 2024 in Kyiv, Ukraine. / Credit: Oleksii Samsonov/Global Images Ukraine via Getty Images

–Camilla Schick contributed reporting.

US lifts weapons ban on Ukraine's Azov brigade

Jaroslav Lukiv - BBC News
Tue, June 11, 2024 



The US has lifted its long-standing ban on weapons supplies and training to Ukraine's Azov brigade, whose origins were mired in controversy over alleged links to far-right groups.

A state department spokesman told the BBC a vetting process "found no evidence of gross violations of human rights" by the brigade.

The Azov brigade, now a unit within Ukraine's National Guard, hailed the move, saying Russia's "lies... received a devastating blow".

Moscow condemned the decision, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying the US was "even prepared to flirt with neo-Nazis" to suppress Russia.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made false claims about a "neo-Nazi regime" in Kyiv to try to justify first the annexation of Ukraine's southern Crimea peninsula and backing of pro-Moscow fighters in the east in 2014, and then his full-scale invasion launched in 2022.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the state department spokesman told the BBC that Washington applied a vetting process to the National Guard of Ukraine's 12th Special Forces Azov Brigade and "found no evidence of gross violations of human rights committed".

"Russian disinformation attempts to conflate Ukraine's National Guard Unit of 12th Special Forces Brigade Azov with a militia formed to defend Ukraine against Russia's invasion in 2014, called the 'Azov Battalion'," the spokesman added.

Under America's "Leahy Law", sponsored in 1997 by then-Senator Patrick Leahy, a finding that a foreign military unit has committed gross violations of human rights means it can be cut off from US military assistance.

The US government says it considers torture, extrajudicial killing, enforced disappearance and rape as such types of violations when implementing the law.

Reacting to the US decision, the Azov brigade said in a statement: "The lies about Azov, which the Kremlin regime have been spreading in the West for years, received a devastating blow today.

"Receiving Western weapons and training from the US will not only increase the combat capability of Azov, but most importantly, will contribute to the preservation of the lives and health of the personnel of the brigade."

A volunteer militia battalion called Azov was originally set up in May 2014 to fight Russian-backed forces in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. Later that year it was briefly incorporated as a separate regiment in Ukraine's interior ministry before being transferred to the National Guard.

Some members of the original battalion were reported to have had links to far-right and ultra-nationalist groups at the time - but a number of them, including the first commander, later left the unit.

The US banned the regiment from receiving US weapons for the alleged links to the far right.

In 2016, a UN report accused the Azov regiment of "looting of civilian property, leading to displacement" in eastern Ukraine.

The current leadership of the Azov brigade says its members have no ties to far-right organisations or any other extremist groups - a claim that has not been independently verified.

Azov fighters are seen by many in Ukraine as national heroes for defending for months the southern city of Mariupol from a brutal Russian assault.

The port on the Sea of Azov was eventually taken by Moscow in May 2022.

Many Azov soldiers are still being held by Russia as prisoners of war, amid accusations that the Ukrainians have been subjected to torture in captivity.
Singer sues hospital, says staff thought he was mentally ill and wasn't member of Four Tops

Associated Press
Tue, June 11, 2024 


- Roquel Payton, from left, Alexander Morris, Ronnie McNeir, and Duke Fakir of the Four Tops perform at the All In Music & Arts Festival in Indianapolis on Sept. 3, 2022. Morris filed a lawsuit Monday against Ascension Macomb-Oakland Hospital in Warren, Mich. He is claiming racial discrimination and other misconduct during a 2023 visit for chest pain and breathing problems. 
(Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP, File)

WARREN, Mich. (AP) — The lead singer of the Four Tops said a Detroit-area hospital restrained him and ordered a psychological exam after refusing to believe that he was part of the Motown music group.

Alexander Morris, who is Black, filed a lawsuit Monday against Ascension Macomb-Oakland Hospital in Warren, alleging racial discrimination and other misconduct during an April 2023 visit for chest pain and breathing problems.

Hospital staff “wrongfully assumed he was mentally ill when he revealed his identity as a celebrity figure,” the lawsuit says.

The Four Tops started in the 1950s and had hits such as "I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)″ and “It's The Same Old Song.” The group was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

Morris is not an original member, but he joined the group in 2019.

The lawsuit says a nurse finally believed Morris was in the Four Tops and the psychological exam was canceled.

The hospital offered a $25 gift card as an apology, but Morris refused to accept it, the lawsuit says.

“We remain committed to honoring human dignity and acting with integrity and compassion for all persons and the community," the hospital said in response to the lawsuit. "We do not condone racial discrimination of any kind. We will not comment on pending litigation.”

Morris talked publicly about the incident last year, saying he had returned to Detroit, his hometown, and was "being told that I’m insane or schizophrenic.”

US bars imports from China footwear, seafood, aluminum firms over Uyghur labor


Containerships are shown at the Port of Los Angeles



Updated Tue, Jun 11, 2024

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. has added three more companies to a list that bars imports from firms allegedly involved with Uyghur forced labor in China, according to a U.S. government notice posted online on Tuesday.

The latest targets include shoe manufacturer Dongguan Oasis Shoes Co, electrolytic aluminum maker Xinjiang Shenhuo Coal and Electricity Co and food processor Shandong Meijia Group Co, also known as Rizhao Meijia Group, the notice from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said.

"Through these actions, DHS is increasing its focus on seafood, aluminum, and shoes - sectors that play an important role in Xinjiang's economy - and ensuring goods made with forced labor are kept out of the U.S. market," the department said in a separate statement.

Scores of companies have been added to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, which restricts the import of goods tied to what the U.S. government has characterized as an ongoing genocide of minorities in China's western Xinjiang region.

U.S. officials say Chinese authorities have established labor camps for Uyghurs and other Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang. Beijing denies any abuses.

Asked to comment on the latest U.S. move, Chinese embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu called allegations of forced labor in Xinjiang "nothing but an egregious lie propagated by anti-China forces and a tool for U.S. politicians to destabilize Xinjiang and contain China’s development."

Referring to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, he added: "It not only severely infringes on the human rights of people in Xinjiang but also destabilizes global industrial and supply chains and sabotages international trade rules."

(Reporting by Susan Heavey, Karen Freifeld and David Brunnstrom; Editing by Paul Simao and Rod Nickel)
4,000-year-old Greek hilltop site mystifies archaeologists. It could spell trouble for new airport

NICHOLAS PAPHITIS
Updated Tue, June 11, 2024 


Greece Archaeology
In this undated photo provided by the Greek Culture Ministry on Tuesday, June 11, 2024, the ruins of a 4,000-year-old hilltop building newly discovered on the island of Crete are seen from above. The wheel-shaped structure is puzzling archaeologists and threatening to disrupt a major airport project on the tourism-reliant island. Greece's Culture Ministry said Tuesday that it's a "unique and extremely interesting find" from Crete's Minoan civilization, famous for its sumptuous palaces, flamboyant art and enigmatic writing system.
 (Greek Culture Ministry via AP)

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — A big, round, 4,000-year-old stone building discovered on a Cretan hilltop is puzzling archaeologists and threatening to disrupt a major airport project on the Greek tourist island.

Greece's Culture Ministry said Tuesday that the structure is a “unique and extremely interesting find” from Crete's Minoan civilization, famous for its sumptuous palaces, flamboyant art and enigmatic writing system. Resembling a huge car wheel from above, the ruins of the labyrinthine, 1,800-square-meter (19,000-square-foot) building came to light during a recent dig by archaeologists.

The site was earmarked for a radar station to serve a new airport under construction near the town of Kastelli. Set to open in 2027, it's projected to replace Greece's second-biggest airport at Heraklion, and designed to handle up to 18 million travelers annually.


Archaeologists don't yet know what the hilltop structure was for. It's still under excavation and has no known Minoan parallels. So for the time being, experts speculate it could have been used for a ritual or religious function.

Ringed by eight stepped stone walls up to 1.7 meters (5.6 feet) high, the inner structure was split into smaller, interconnecting spaces and may have had a shallow conical roof.

The ministry's statement said it didn't appear to have been a dwelling, and the finds from inside it included a large quantity of animal bones.

“It may have been periodically used for possibly ritual ceremonies involving consumption of food, wine, and perhaps offerings,” the statement said.

“Its size, architectural layout and careful construction required considerable labor, specialized know-how and a robust central administration,” it said, adding it was certainly some kind of communal building that stood out in the entire area.

Culture Minister Lina Mendoni, an archaeologist, pledged that the find would be preserved while a different location would be sought for the radar station.

“We all understand the value and importance of cultural heritage ... as well as the growth potential” of the new airport project, she said. “It's possible to go ahead with the airport while granting the antiquities the protection they merit.”

The ministry said the building was mainly used between 2000-1700 B.C, and was founded around the time Crete's first palaces were being built — including at Knossos and Phaistos.

It said some of its features were comparable with early Minoan beehive tombs that were surmounted by stepped conical roofs and burial mounds in other parts of Greece.

Greece's rich cultural heritage often results in conflicts of interest during construction projects.

At the end of the last century, an entire hilltop fortified settlement from the 3rd millennium B.C. was excavated and then destroyed during construction work for Athens International Airport.

So far, at least another 35 archaeological sites have been uncovered during work on the new Kastelli airport and its road connections, the ministry said.
Chipmaker Intel to halt $25-billion Israel plant, news website says


FILE PHOTO: Intel logo ·Reuters

Reuters
Mon, Jun 10, 2024

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Intel Corp is halting plans for a $25-billion factory in Israel, Israeli financial news website Calcalist said on Monday, in a report that the chipmaker did not confirm or deny.

The U.S. company, asked about the report, cited the need to adapt big projects to changing timelines, without directly referring to the project.

"Israel continues to be one of our key global manufacturing and R&D sites and we remain fully committed to the region," Intel said in a statement.

"Managing large-scale projects, especially in our industry, often involves adapting to changing timelines. Our decisions are based on business conditions, market dynamics and responsible capital management," it said.

Israel's government in December agreed to give Intel a $3.2-billion grant to build the $25-billion chip plant in southern Israel.

Intel has previously said that the factory proposed for its Kiryat Gat site, where it has an existing chip plant, was an "important part of Intel’s efforts to foster a more resilient global supply chain" alongside the company’s investments in Europe and the United States.

Intel operates four development and production sites in Israel, including its manufacturing plant in Kiryat Gat called Fab 28. The factory produces Intel 7 technology, or 10-nanometer chips.

The planned Fab 38 plant was due to open in 2028 and operate through 2035.

Intel employs nearly 12,000 people in Israel.

(Reporting by Ari Rabinovitch; editing by James Mackenzie and Rod Nickel)
FORWARD TO THE PAST
Southern Baptists expel Virginia church for believing women can serve as pastors

PETER SMITH
Updated Tue, June 11, 2024 

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Even as they prepare to vote on a formal ban on churches with women pastors, delegates to the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to boot one such church from its ranks.

Messengers, as voting representatives are known, voted 6,759 to 563 to oust First Baptist Church of Alexandria, a historic Virginia congregation that affirms women can serve in any pastoral role, including as senior pastor. A similar scenario played out at last year’s meeting. Two congregations, including a well-known California megachurch, were ejected from the convention. Ninety-two percent of messengers approved this year's ouster.

The Virginia congregation has been involved in the nation's largest Protestant denomination since its 19th century founding and has contributed millions toward denominational causes. But it came under scrutiny after the pastor of a neighboring church reported it to denominational authorities over its having a woman as pastor for children and women.

The vote came after the denomination's credentials committee recommended earlier Tuesday that the denomination deem the church to be not in “friendly cooperation,” the formulation for expulsion, on the grounds that it conflicts with the Baptist Faith and Message. That statement of Southern Baptist doctrine declares only men are qualified for the role of pastor. Some interpret that only to apply to associate pastors as long as the senior pastor is male.

“We find no joy in making this recommendation, but have formed the opinion that the church’s egalitarian beliefs regarding the office of pastor do not closely identify with the convention’s adopted statement of faith,” said Jonathan Sams, chair of the credentials committee.

The Alexandria church is currently led by a man, Robert Stephens, but the church has made clear it believes women can serve as senior pastors, too. Stephens said his church has had women in ministry for more than 44 years and wants to continue cooperating with Southern Baptists who disagreed on this issue.

“First Alexandria stands before you today as a testament that we can maintain a fruitful partnership with churches that take a different stance on women in ministry,” he said. “We at First Baptist are advancing the gospel, and we hope that we will continue to work alongside you all.”

Afterward, representatives from the Alexandria church said they wished the SBC well. But they said they would focus on First Baptist's own work, ranging from sending a mission team to Nicaragua to partnering on a Bible translation project to taking part in a church youth camp and other ministries.

“This is a sad moment for us, but we also recognize that God has a future for First Baptist Church,” Stephens said.

“We have good news to share with the world, and we will keep doing that,” added Kim Eskridge, the pastor for children and women.

On Wednesday, delegates are slated to consider enshrining a ban on churches with any women pastors in the SBC's constitution. The proposed amendment received preliminary approval last year, and it requires a final vote this year to be enacted. As of Tuesday evening, 10,895 messengers were registered to take part.

Early Tuesday, a small group of women stood outside the Indiana Convention Center in a low-key demonstration in support of women in ministry.

“I hope that people know women have equal value and can be pastors,” said the Rev. Meredith Stone, executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry. The organization originated among Southern Baptists in the 1980s, but it now works with women in a variety of Baptist denominations.

Joining them was Christa Brown, who has long advocated for fellow survivors of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches and criticized the denomination’s resistance to reforms, an effort she has chronicled in a new memoir, “Baptistland.” The Southern Baptists ongoing struggles with sexual abuse reforms is also on this year's calendar.

She said there’s a direct connection between issues of abuse and the equality of women in ministry.

“When you squash some people, it sets up a lot more people to be squashed,” she said.

An SBC Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force recently concluded its work. While it has provided a curriculum for training churches on preventing and responding to abuse, it has not achieved the mandate of previous annual meetings to establish a “Ministry Check” database of offenders, which could help churches avoid hiring them.

“We’re probably beyond frustrated that there are not names on the database right now or the database is not live right now,” said Josh Wester, chairman of the task force, which officially concluded its work Tuesday. Messengers adopted its recommendations and assigned the denomination’s Executive Committee to complete goals such as activating Ministry Check and creating a “permanent home” for abuse response.

After denominational officials said they couldn’t get insurance for producing a Ministry Watch list, Wester said he and some others set up a separate non-profit organization to maintain it. But he said the Executive Committee’s new leadership is looking for ways to oversee it in-house.

The list would include those convicted or found liable for abuse in civil court — short of an earlier annual meeting’s call for a list including those who confessed or were credibly accused outside of court.

Wester said the ultimate goal is for a broader list.

“We’re just trying to get a database online because it can always be improved,” Wester said.

Though some have advocated for reforms for the past two decades, the SBC has particularly struggled to respond to sexual abuse in its churches since a 2019 report by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News. It said that roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers faced allegations of sexual misconduct in the previous two decades.

The denomination subsequently commissioned a report from a consulting firm, Guidepost Solutions. It concluded that leaders of the convention’s Executive Committee intimidated and mistreated survivors who sought help. The committee handles day-to-day business of the convention.

Some outspoken voices have contended that there is no crisis of abuse in the convention and that such claims are overstated.

But survivor Tiffany Thigpen, one of several advocates for abuse survivors attending the meeting, noted that SBC messengers have repeatedly supported reforms.

“Our hope has been that the messengers finally get as frustrated as we’ve been and say, ‘OK, wait, we’re not allowing this anymore,’" she said.

In events held on the sidelines of the meeting, politics has been featured. On Monday, former President Donald Trump appealed for votes in a videotaped message to attendees of a staunchly anti-abortion conservative group that met next door to the convention center.

On Tuesday, former Vice President Mike Pence told an audience of about 500 that he would “never” vote for President Joe Biden, criticizing him on border, abortion and other policies. But Pence stopped short of endorsing Trump, his estranged onetime running mate.

Later, messengers approved a resolution against any effort to establish a state religion, including “Christianity as the state religion of the United States” — a notable move given the rise of Christian nationalism in some conservative circles. The resolution calls for robust religious freedoms and for Christians to get involved in public office.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.


Southern Baptists are poised to ban churches with women pastors. Some are urging them to reconsider

Peter Smith, Associated Press
Tue, June 11, 2024 




(AP) – From its towering white steeple and red-brick facade to its Sunday services filled with rousing gospel hymns and evangelistic sermons, First Baptist Church of Alexandria, Virginia, bears many of the classic hallmarks of a Southern Baptist church.

On a recent Sunday, its pastor for women and children, Kim Eskridge, urged members to invite friends and neighbors to an upcoming vacation Bible school — a perennial Baptist activity — to help “reach families in the community with the gospel.”

But because that pastor is a woman, First Baptist’s days in the Southern Baptist Convention may be numbered.

At the SBC’s annual meeting June 11-12 in Indianapolis, representatives will vote on whether to amend the denomination’s constitution to essentially ban churches with any women pastors — and not just in the top job. That measure received overwhelming approval in a preliminary vote last year.

Leaders of First Baptist – which has given millions to Southern Baptist causes and has been involved with the convention since its 19th century founding — are bracing for a possible expulsion.

“We are grieved at the direction the SBC has taken,” the church said in a statement.

And it’s not alone.

By some estimates, the proposed ban could affect hundreds of congregations and have a disproportionate impact on predominantly Black churches.

The vote is partly the culmination of events set in motion two years ago.

That’s when a Virginia pastor contacted SBC officials to contend that First Baptist and four nearby churches were “out of step” with denominational doctrine that says only men can be pastors. The SBC Credentials Committee launched a formal inquiry in April.

Southern Baptists disagree on which ministry jobs this doctrine refers to. Some say it’s just the senior pastor, others that a pastor is anyone who preaches and exercises spiritual authority.

And in a Baptist tradition that prizes local church autonomy, critics say the convention shouldn’t enshrine a constitutional rule based on one interpretation of its non-binding doctrinal statement.

By some estimates, women are working in pastoral roles in hundreds of SBC-linked churches, a fraction of the nearly 47,000 across the denomination.

But critics say the amendment would amount to a further narrowing in numbers and mindset for the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, which has moved steadily rightward in recent decades.

They also wonder if the SBC has better things to do.

It has struggled to respond to sexual abuse cases in its churches. A former professor at a Southern Baptist seminary in Texas was indicted in May on a charge of falsifying a record about alleged sexual abuse by a student in order to obstruct a federal investigation into sexual misconduct in the convention.

SBC membership has dipped below 13 million, nearly a half-century low. Baptismal rates are in long-term decline.

The amendment, if passed, wouldn’t prompt an immediate purge. But it could keep the denomination’s leaders busy for years, investigating and ousting churches.

From women pastors to sexual abuse to Trump, Southern Baptists have a busy few days ahead of them

Many predominantly Black churches have men as lead pastors but assign pastor titles to women in other areas, such as worship and children’s ministries.

“To disfellowship like-minded churches … based on a local-church governance decision dishonors the spirit of cooperation and the guiding tenets of our denomination,” wrote Pastor Gregory Perkins, president of the SBC’s National African American Fellowship, to denominational officials.

The controversy complicates the already-choppy efforts by the mostly white denomination to diversify and overcome its legacy of slavery and segregation.

Amendment proponents say the convention needs to reinforce its doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, which says the office of pastor is “limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”

“If we won’t stand on this issue and be unapologetically biblical, then we won’t stand on anything,” said amendment proponent Mike Law, pastor of Arlington Baptist Church in Virginia.

Since Baptist churches are independent, the convention can’t tell them what to do or whom to appoint as a pastor.

But the convention can decide which churches are in and which are out. And even without a formal amendment, its Executive Committee has begun telling churches with women pastors that they’re out. That included one of its largest, Saddleback Church of California.

When Saddleback and a small Kentucky church appealed to the annual meeting in 2023, delegates overwhelmingly refused to take them back.

The amendment would give such enforcement actions more teeth.

Some churches with women pastors quit on their own in the past year. They range from Elevation Church, a North Carolina megachurch, to First Baptist of Richmond, Virginia, which had close SBC ties from the convention’s founding.

Law contended the issue has been a “canary in the coalmine” for liberal denominations, several of which began ordaining women and later LGBTQ+ people.

“Southern Baptists are facing a decisive moment,” he said in a video on a pro-amendment website. “Here’s the trajectory of doing nothing: Soon Southern Baptist churches will start openly supporting homosexual clergy, same-sex marriage and eventually transgenderism.”

Others point out that Pentecostal and other denominations have had women pastors for generations and remain theologically conservative.

Some SBC churches with women pastors are heavily involved with the convention, while others have minimal connections and identify more closely with historically Black or other progressive denominations.

Also, some SBC churches interpret the 2000 faith statement as only applying to senior pastors. As long as a the church leader is male, women can serve other pastoral roles, they say.

Such churches may leave if SBC leaders interfere with congregations following “their conscience, biblical convictions, and values by recognizing women can receive a pastoral gift from God in partnership with male leadership,” said Dwight McKissic, a pastor from Arlington, Texas, on the social media platform X.

Other churches say women can be in any role, including senior pastor, and churches can agree to disagree if they embrace most of the SBC faith statement.

That category includes First Baptist of Alexandria. Though its current senior pastor is male, it recognizes “God’s calling to ordain any qualified individual, male or female, for pastoral ministry,” the church said in a statement.

First Baptist leaders declined interview requests, but it has posted extensively about the issue on its website.

It said while it plans to send representatives to the SBC annual meeting, it was warned to expect a motion to deny them voting privileges.

“I do believe we need to be heard and represented,” Senior Pastor Robert Stephens told members in a video-recorded meeting.

The SBC’s top administrative body opposes the amendment. Investigating churches’ compliance would consume an unsustainable amount of time and energy over something that shouldn’t be a litmus test for fellowship, wrote Jeff Iorg, president of the SBC Executive Committee, in a Baptist Press commentary.

Baptist Women in Ministry, which began within the SBC in the 1980s but now works in multiple Baptist denominations, has taken note. The Rev. Meredith Stone, its executive director, said some women pastors within the SBC have reached out for support.

The group plans to release a documentary, “Midwives of a Movement,” about 20th century trailblazers for women in Baptist ministry, on the eve of the SBC meeting.

“As they are saying women have less value to God than men in the church, we want to make sure that women know they do have equal value and that there are no limits to how they follow Christ in the work of the church,” Stone said.











Southern Baptists
Messengers stand for worship during a Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting Tuesday, June 11, 2024, in Indianapolis. (AP Photo/Doug McSchooler)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Missed mortgage, credit payments in Canada hit pre-COVID highs: Report

More than 1.26 million people missed a credit payment in Q1 2024, says Equifax Canada

John MacFarlane
·Senior Reporter
Updated Tue, June 11, 202

(AUSTRALIA OUT) American express visa and mastercard credit cards (Photo by Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images) (Fairfax Media via Getty Images)

The financial burden on Canadian households intensified in the first quarter of 2024, with missed payments on mortgages and other forms of credit rising to pre-pandemic levels, according to Equifax Canada.

The “challenging economic conditions” since the pandemic have prompted Canadians to make various moves to manage their finances, including extending their mortgage lengths to reduce payments, says Rebecca Oakes, Equifax Canada’s vice-president of advanced analytics. “It’s not just homeowners feeling the strain. Whether you own or rent, the high cost of living remains a heavy burden for many.”

More than 34,000 Canadians missed a mortgage payment in Q1, nearly 23 per cent more than in Q1 2023, according to Equifax’s latest Consumer Credit Trends Report. More than 1.26 million people missed making some kind of credit payment in the quarter, up 12.2 per cent from last year.

In an interview with Yahoo Finance Canada, Oakes says the Bank of Canada’s decision to cut interest rates by 25 basis points, though a welcome move for Canadians, isn’t likely to have a significant impact.

“It's only really scratching the surface in terms of what it's going to do to payments,” she said. “It needs to go down at least a full per cent, maybe, before there's probably some meaningful impact to individuals.”
Some provinces stand out

Oakes notes the financial stress is not distributed evenly across Canada, with certain indicators higher in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec. Those provinces all had “above-average jumps,” in the range of 13 to 15 per cent, among consumers missing some kind of credit payment in Q1.

“When you look overall, the numbers aren't terrible but then when you start to look at certain geographies, you start to see a lot more stress coming through,” Oakes said, adding that the high costs of owning or renting a home in certain cities can be a major driver.

In Ontario, the total of mortgage balances at 90 days or more without payment — known as “severe delinquency” — topped $1 billion for the first time. (Though delinquency rates in Toronto are up over 2020 figures, the growth of that dollar figure has been driven primarily by soaring home prices and resultant mortgage costs, Oakes says.)

Equifax’s report aligns with other recent research showing that ongoing financial stress and high prices have dampened the housing market and big-ticket spending. The report says new mortgages “hit an all-time low” in Q1 “as consumers held off making big purchase and financing decisions amid rate-cut speculations.” Nationally, there was a year-over-year drop in mortgage refinancing levels (down 2.6 per cent) and in first-time home buyer volumes (down 10 per cent).

On a provincial level, Alberta’s new mortgage originations actually rose 10.6 per cent year-over-year, with housing affordability concerns likely fuelling interprovincial migration, Equifax notes.

“As high home prices and reduced affordability continue in some geographies, more consumers are making the decision to relocate to more financially accessible regions,” Oakes said. “In the last 12 months, the number of individuals who moved from Ontario and British Columbia to other provinces exceeded those who moved to Ontario. Almost 71 per cent of all interprovincial movement to Alberta came from those two provinces alone.”

John MacFarlane is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jmacf.
CANADA

Corus Entertainment stock plunges over 20% to new 52-week low

Jeff Lagerquist
Tue, June 11, 2024 

The Corus logo inside Corus Quay in Toronto is photographed on Friday, June 22, 2018. Corus Entertainment Inc. is cutting its quarterly dividend.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Tijana Martin (The Canadian Press)

Corus Entertainment (CJR-B.TO) shares sank to a new 52-week low on Tuesday as analysts predict the loss of content from Warner Brothers Discovery could cost the Canadian media company over $150 million in lost revenue next year.

Last week, Toronto-based Corus announced that some of its programming and trademark arrangements with Warner Brothers Discovery will not be renewed in 2025. The change will mainly impact five of the company’s channels, including HGTV Canada, Food Network Canada, Magnolia Network, Oprah Winfrey Network, and Cooking Channel Canada. Corus channels Adult Swim, Cartoon Network, and Boomerang also broadcast content from Warner Brothers Discovery.

On Monday, larger rival Rogers Communications (RCI-B.TO) announced multi-year deals with NBCUniversal and Warner Brothers Discovery. In 2025, Rogers plans to carry Warner Brothers Discovery’s English-language lifestyle and factual content on its network.

Toronto-listed Corus shares fell as much as 21.7 per cent in early trading on Tuesday, setting a fresh 52-week low for the battered stock, which has dropped nearly 75 per cent in the last 12 months.

CIBC Capital Markets analyst Scott Fletcher downgraded Corus shares to “underperformer” from “neutral,” while slashing his price target from $0.85 per share to $0.25. He estimates the programming Corus is set to lose could result in as much as $150 million in lost revenue next year, and $40 million in lost profit.

Corus generated $1.51 billion in annual revenue in the fiscal year 2023, and an adjusted profit of $334 million.

“With Corus already facing the pressure of a declining advertising market, the additional hit to revenue calls Corus’ financial future further into question,” Fletcher wrote in a note to clients.

Drew McReynolds at RBC Capital Markets also lowered his price target from $1.25 per share to $0.50, while maintaining a “sector perform” rating.

“We have decreased our target multiples to reflect the higher risk profile associated with the step-back in earnings visibility against the backdrop of a still sluggish television advertising market and elevated leverage,” he noted in a report.

Citing Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission specialty channel data, McReynolds says the five Corus channels impacted by the loss of Warner Brothers Discovery content generated about $155 million in regulated revenue in 2022.

Pressure on Canada’s telecom sector has risen in recent months due to the impact of higher interest rates on consumers and heightened competition. Shares of Rogers and Bell Canada owner BCE (BCE.TO) have fallen significantly since early 2024.
Rogers Communications Inc. (RCI-B.TO)

For CIBC Capital Markets analyst Stephanie Price, that’s created a buying opportunity for the latter company. In a note to clients last month, she said concerns about competition, interest rates and free cash flow growth have been priced into the stock. That prompted a rating boost from “neutral” to “outperformer,” with a $52 per share price target.

“While we acknowledge the difficult competitive environment and the role of rates in telecom valuations, BCE appears attractive at current levels relative to the group," Price wrote on April 22.

Jeff Lagerquist is a senior reporter at Yahoo Finance Canada. Follow him on Twitter @jefflagerquist.


Rogers scoops rights to HGTV, Food Network, Discovery and more from Corus, Bell

Alex Nino Gheciu
Mon, June 10, 2024 

The Canadian Press


TORONTO — Rogers Communications Inc. has scored "milestone" multi-year deals that will see it scoop the Canadian rights to several lifestyle brands from Corus Entertainment and Bell Media in the new year, including HGTV, Food Network and Discovery.

The media giant said Monday that starting in January, Rogers will be home to several Warner Bros. Discovery lifestyle brands including HGTV, Food Network, Cooking Channel, Magnolia Network and OWN — currently held by Corus — and the brands Discovery, Motor Trend, Science, Animal Planet and I.D., currently held by Bell.

Rogers also said it will bring NBCUniversal’s Bravo channel to Canada in September, making it the rights holder north of the border for titles including reality TV mainstays "The Real Housewives," "Vanderpump Rules" and "Top Chef."

Colette Watson, president of Rogers Sports and Media, called the deals a "milestone long-term content partnership."


The news comes after Corus revealed a fall/winter lineup last week that added Pamela Anderson's "Pamela's Cookin' With Love" to Food Network Canada and Bryan Baeumler's “Building Baeumler” to HGTV Canada. New seasons from HGTV Canada personalities Sebastian Clovis, Scott McGillivray, Debra Salmoni and Randy Spracklin were also announced.

Troy Reeb, Corus' executive vice president of networks and content, said programming and brands on several of the lifestyle properties acquired by Rogers are "anticipated to be impacted" in the new year. He added that Corus' rights to Adult Swim and Cartoon Network won't be affected.

Corus announced last week that it had been informed by Warner Bros. Discovery that some of its programming and trademark arrangements would not be renewed when they expire at the end of the year.

Bell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

At a virtual event for media and advertisers Monday afternoon, Watson said this is "truly a transformational year" for Rogers and that the investment helps the company compete with foreign streamers.

Rogers said it will work with Canadian distribution partners to make the content widely available.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 10, 2024.

Companies in this story: (TSX:RCI.B, TSX:CJR.B)

Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press
African Elephants Use Unique Names LikeHumans, New Study Suggests


According to a new study published on Monday, June 10, African elephants refer to one another with "individually specific calls"


Getty
African Elephants walking across the savanna of the Massai Mara, Kenya


Gabrielle Rockson
PEOPLE
Tue, June 11, 2024 


Humans aren't the only animals to use names.

According to a new study published in Nature Ecology & Evolution on Monday, June 10, African elephants also refer to one another through unique sounds.


Per NBC News, the study found that elephants can hear their names over long distances across the savanna when they speak to one another using low rumbles.

The research also discovered that the elephants learn to recognize and address their mates using their names instead of just imitating sounds.

“Here we present evidence that wild African elephants address one another with individually specific calls, probably without relying on imitation of the receiver,” the study abstract read.

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Getty A family or herd of African Elephants marching in line at Amboseli National Park, Kenya

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To get the results, the study used “machine learning to demonstrate that the receiver of a call could be predicted from the call’s acoustic structure, regardless of how similar the call was to the receiver’s vocalizations,” adds the abstract.

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Scientists achieved this by following a herd of elephants in jeeps at Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve and Amboseli National Park, to closely observe the animals who called out and the ones who responded.

"We've had several incidents where we've been with these elephants and the matriarch of the family will give a call, and everyone in the family will answer,” co-author and Colorado State University ecologist George Wittemyer, said per ITV News.

"Then several seconds later, she'll give seemingly a very similar call and nobody in the family would answer except one individual."


Henrik Karlsson/GettyAn African savanna elephant


According to ITV News and NBC News, researchers then played recordings of the names to individual elephants and disovered that the animals responded more energetically by flapping their ears and lifting their trunks whenever they heard their own noises.

“Just like humans, elephants use names, but probably don’t use names in the majority of utterances, so we wouldn’t expect 100%,” study author and Cornell University biologist Mickey Pardo said, per NBC News.

Moreover, scientists say that animals with complex social structures and family groups are more likely to use individual names as it helps them reunite after a separation.

“If you’re looking after a large family, you’ve got to be able to say, ‘Hey, Virginia, get over here!’ ” Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who was not involved in the study, told NBC News.

“Elephants are incredibly social, always talking and touching each other — this naming is probably one of the things that underpins their ability to communicate to individuals,” Wittemyer added, per the outlet. “We just cracked open the door a bit to the elephant mind.”


African elephants use names to call each other, study suggests

Amarachi Orie, CNN
Mon, June 10, 2024 at 8:09 p.m. MDT·6 min read

Wild African elephants may address each other using individualized calls that resemble the personal names used by humans, a new study suggests.

While dolphins are known to call one another by mimicking the signature whistle of the dolphin they want to address, and parrots have been found to address each other in a similar way, African elephants in Kenya may go a step further in identifying one another.

These elephants learn, recognize and use individualized name-like calls to address others of their kind, seemingly without using imitation, according to the study published Monday in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

The most common type of elephant call is a rumble, of which there are three sub-categories. So-called contact rumbles are used to call another elephant that is far away or out of sight. Greeting rumbles are used when another elephant is within touching distance. Caregiver rumbles are used by an adolescent or adult female toward a calf she is caring for, according to the study.

The researchers looked at these three types of rumbles, using a machine-learning model to analyze recordings of 469 calls made by wild groups of females and calves in Amboseli National Park and Samburu and Buffalo Springs National Reserves between 1986 and 2022. All the elephants could be individually identified by the shape of their ears, as they had been monitored continuously for decades, according to the study.

The idea was that “if the calls contained something like a name, then you should be able to figure out who the call was addressed to just from the acoustic features of the call itself,” said lead study author Mickey Pardo, an animal behaviorist and postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University in New York.

The researchers found that the acoustic structure of calls varied depending on who the target of the call was.

The machine-learning model correctly identified the recipient of 27.5% of calls analyzed, “which may not sound like that much, but it was significantly more than what the model would have been able to do if we had just fed it random data,” Pardo told CNN.

“So that suggests that there’s something in the calls that’s allowing the model to identify who the intended receiver of the call was,” he added.

An elephant family comforts a calf while napping under a tree in Samburu National Reserve, Kenya. - George Wittemyer


Call and response


The researchers also found that the elephants probably weren’t just mimicking the voice of the individual they were addressing. By comparing pairs of calls between callers and receivers, as well as the receivers’ calls to other individuals, they discovered that the majority of the calls made by the caller did not sound more like the receiver’s call than when they addressed other individuals, according to the study.

The researchers then played back calls to 17 elephants to see whether they recognized and responded to ones that had originally been directed at them.

They found that the elephants would respond more strongly to a call that was originally addressed to them than to one from the same caller that was originally addressed to someone else. “So that meant that the elephants could tell if a call was meant for them just by hearing that call,” Pardo said.

He added that the study “tells us something about the cognitive abilities of elephants because if elephants are addressing one another in this way, they’re basically coming up with names for each other. That implies some capacity for abstract thought — they have to be able to learn this arbitrary sound and associate it with other individuals and essentially call each other by name.”

Coen Elemans, a professor of bioacoustics at the University of Southern Denmark who was not involved with the study, called the findings “very exciting because the use of names was unknown amongst animals.”

“In some animals, such a parrots and dolphins, individuals can have a specific call that others try to mimic, but that is not equivalent to a human name,” Elemans said.
The evolution of language

Elephants maintain lifelong varied social bonds with many individuals and are often separated from their closely bonded social partners, according to the study.

So, some calls can be used to grab the attention of an individual who is far away, whereas close-distance calls might be used to strengthen social bonds, similar to when humans respond more positively and cooperatively when someone remembers their name, the researchers said.

As several families cross the Ewaso Ngiro River together, a female from the Native Americans family responds to her calf’s distress call. - George Wittemyer

When elephants were close together, caregiving rumbles were more likely to be correctly classified by the machine-learning model than greeting rumbles. The researchers suggested that caregivers may use names more frequently with their calves to either comfort the calf or to help it learn its name.

Calls by adult females were also classified more correctly than calls by juveniles, suggesting that adult females may use names more in their calls because the behavior takes years to develop, according to the study.

Pardo said most mammals are not really capable of learning to produce new sounds — an ability needed in order to label something with a name.

He added that since humans, dolphins and elephants address individuals in their species with something like a name, “the need to name other individuals may have had something to do with the evolution of language.”

“Maybe this pressure of having all these complex social relationships — and you need to be able to address others as individuals — is what led animals, including potentially our own ancestors, to develop this ability to associate new sounds with new things. That sort of could be what led to language,” Pardo continued.

“It would be super interest to investigate if these names are learned. Only very few animal groups are able to imitate sounds, what we call vocal learning,” Elemans said in an email. “We knew some individual elephants could also mimic sounds. Now this study may point towards why vocal learning may also be important; name calling in the wonderfully complex social biology of elephants.”

The study authors were not able to conclusively determine whether different elephants used the same name to refer to the same individual, or if they addressed the same individual with different names.

They also could not determine which aspects of the calls were the name, with calls also having information such as the identity, age, sex and emotional state of the caller encoded in their characteristics, according to the study.

Pardo said he would really like to figure out “how these calls actually contain a name, and I’d be able to isolate the names for specific individuals, and then I think that would open up a lot of other areas of inquiry.”

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Scientists used AI to figure out elephants have names for themselves

Grace Eliza Goodwin
BUSINESS INSIDER
Tue, June 11, 2024


Scientists used AI to find elephants likely have unique names for each other.


Machine learning analyzed hundreds of elephant calls recorded in Kenya between 1986 and 2022.


Elephants' ability to recognize name-like calls indicates they may be capable of abstract thought.


Scientists using AI tools have discovered that elephants likely have unique names for each other, according to a new study.

A group of scientists used machine learning to analyze hundreds of wild African elephant calls recorded in Kenya between 1986 and 2022, publishing their findings on Monday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Specifically, the researchers looked at three different types of communication, or "rumbles" between the endangered species of elephants: "contact calling" rumbles when an elephant is calling to another that is more than 50 meters away, "greeting" rumbles when elephants are close to each other, and "caregiving" rumbles when a female elephant is comforting a calf.

They did not analyze other types of rumbles, like "let's go" rumbles, because elephants are less likely to use specific names in that context, the authors explained.

Within each of these types of interactions, the researchers found evidence that elephants address each other with name-like calls specific to each individual — the first time similar behavior has been observed outside humans.

Unlike dolphins and parrots, who address each other by mimicking the receiver's voice, these elephant calls are not imitations of what each elephant sounds like.

They're more abstract, like the names humans use for each other.

That could mean elephants have a capacity for abstract thought greater than we previously understood.

A machine learning model helped the researchers interpret each call's acoustic structure to determine which elephant was being addressed. This wouldn't have been possible without the help of AI, because humans alone aren't able to differentiate elephant rumblings very well, The New York Times reported.

When the researchers replayed a call originally addressed to one elephant, that elephant responded differently than to calls meant for another individual, the researchers explain in the study.

The researchers posted a video to YouTube that shows a mother elephant hearing a playback of her daughter calling to her. When she hears her daughter's call, the mother raises her head and calls back.

"So that meant that the elephants could tell if a call was meant for them just by hearing that call," Mickey Pardo, a lead author on the study, told CNN.

Still, the researchers couldn't identify which part of the call contained the elephant's name, noting that each call is also simultaneously coded with the caller's characteristics, like its age, sex, emotional state, and behavioral context.

Pardo told CNN that the study "tells us something about the cognitive abilities of elephants because if elephants are addressing one another in this way, they're basically coming up with names for each other."

"That implies some capacity for abstract thought," Pardo added. "They have to be able to learn this arbitrary sound and associate it with other individuals and essentially call each other by name."

And if the elephants have names for each other, it's also possible that they have names for other objects too, according to the study's authors.

The authors explained that although they found mixed support for their hypothesis that different elephants use the same name to refer to a fellow elephant, they did find "at least some convergence among different callers addressing the same receiver." And, the authors wrote, it's possible that every elephant within a family uses the same name to address a specific member.