Retired AP photographer Ut gives pope ‘Napalm Girl’ photo

By NICOLE WINFIELD

1 of 13

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Nick Ut, center, flanked by Kim Phuc, left, holds the" Napalm Girl", his Pulitzer Prize winning photo as they wait to meet with Pope Francis during the weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at The Vatican, Wednesday, May 11, 2022. Ut and UNESCO Ambassador Kim Phuc are in Italy to promote the photo exhibition "From Hell to Hollywood" resuming Ut's 51 years of work at the Associated Press, including the 1973 Pulitzer-winning photo of Kim Phuc fleeing her village after it was accidentally hit by napalm bombs dropped by South Vietnamese forces. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia)

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Retired Associated Press photographer Nick Ut met Wednesday with Pope Francis and gave him a copy of his Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a young Vietnamese girl running naked down the road after a napalm attack.

Ut and Kim Phuc Phan Thi, whose terror the AP photographer captured on June 8, 1972 during the Vietnam War, greeted Francis at the end of his general audience Wednesday in St. Peter’s Square, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the iconic image.

Kim Phuc, who later resettled in Canada and raised a family there, had met the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio several years ago in his native Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she had travelled as part of her work as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. culture agency.

“He looked at the picture and remembered her right away,” Ut told AP in the piazza moments after the encounter. Kim Phuc said she wasn’t sure Francis would remember her, given the hundreds of people he meets every day.

“But he remembered very well. He said ‘I remember you, I know you. Do you remember we met each other in Buenos Aires?’ and I said ‘Yes I do. I said ‘God bless you with good health and for all you have done for peace.’”

Ut and Kim Phuc were in Italy to open an exhibit of his photographs in Milan ahead of the anniversary of his “Napalm Girl” photograph. Such images have a potent effect on Francis: He has previously handed out pocket-sized copies of another wartime photograph of a young Nagasaki boy carrying his dead brother on his back that was taken by an American military photographer during World War II.

Francis, who named himself after the peace-loving St. Francis of Assisi, had printed on the photo “The fruit of war.”

Ut was only 21 when he took the Vietnam photo, then set his camera aside to rush the 9-year-old Kim Phuc to a hospital, where doctors saved her life.

“It was only me with my driver there, then I said I don’t want to leave because I know she will die,” Ut recalled. “Then I picked her up, put her in the van and I brought her to the hospital.”

Ut later became a AP photographer based in Los Angeles, photographing A-list celebrities until he retired from the news agency in 2017.

Recalling the horror of that day, Kim Phuc said that 50 years ago she was known to the world only as a victim of war.

“But right now, 50 years later, I am no longer a victim of war. I am a mother, a grandmother and a survivor calling out for peace,” she said.

Most Great Barrier Reef coral studied this year was bleached

By ROD McGUIRK

In this photo supplied by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), a diver swims past coral on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Oct. 18, 2016. More than 90% of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed in 2022 was bleached in the fourth such mass event in seven years in the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, Australian government scientists said in its an annual report released late Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (M. Curnock/GBRMPA via AP)


CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — More than 90% of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed this year was bleached in the fourth such mass event in seven years in the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, Australian government scientists said.

Bleaching is caused by global warming, but this is the reef’s first bleaching event during a La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with cooler Pacific Ocean temperatures, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority said in its annual report released late Tuesday that found 91% of the areas surveyed were affected.

Bleaching in 2016, 2017 and 2020 damaged two-thirds of the coral in the famed reef off Australia’s eastern coast.

Coral bleaches as a heat stress response and scientists hope most of the coral will recover from the current event, said David Wachenfeld, chief scientist at the authority, which manages the reef ecosystem.

“The early indications are that the mortality won’t be very high,” Wachenfeld said on Wednesday.

“We are hoping that we will see most of the coral that is bleached recover and we will end up with an event rather more like 2020 when, yes, there was mass bleaching, but there was low mortality,” Wachenfeld added.

The bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 led to “quite high levels of coral mortality,” Wachenfeld said.

Simon Bradshaw, a researcher at the Climate Council, an Australia-based group that tracks climate change, said the report demonstrated the reef’s survival depended on steep global emission cuts within the decade.

“This is heartbreaking. This is deeply troubling,” Bradshaw said. “It shows that our Barrier Reef really is in very serious trouble indeed.”

Last December, the first month of the Southern Hemisphere summer, was the hottest December the reef had experienced since 1900. A “marine heatwave” had set in by late February, the report said.

A United Nations delegation visited the reef in March to assess whether the reef’s World Heritage listing should be downgraded due to the ravages of climate change.

In July last year, Australia garnered enough international support to defer an attempt by UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural organization, to downgrade the reef’s World Heritage status to “in danger“ because of damage caused by climate change.

But the question will be back on the World Heritage Committee’s agenda at its next annual meeting.

The Great Barrier Reef accounts for around 10% of the world’s coral reef ecosystems and was named because of the extensive hazards it posed to 18th century seafarers. The network of more than 2,500 reefs covers 348,000 square kilometers (134,000 square miles).

Coral is made up of tiny animals called polyps that are fed by microscopic algae that live inside the reefs and are sensitive to changes in water temperatures.

The algae provide the reefs with their kaleidoscope of colors and produce sugars through photosynthesis that provide the coral with most of its nutrients.

Rising ocean temperatures turn the chemicals that the algae produce into toxins. The coral turns white as it effectively spits the poisonous algae out.

Heat stress beyond a few weeks can lead the coral to die of starvation.

The latest bleaching is an unwelcome reminder of the differences in climate change policy among Australian politicians.

The conservative government seeking reelection on May 21 has less ambitious emission reduction targets than the center-left opposition is promising.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party aims to reduce Australia’s emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.

The opposition Labor Party has promised to reduce emissions by 43% by the end of the decade.

Morrison was widely criticized at the U.N. climate conference last November for failing to set a more ambitious target.

The environmental group Greenpeace Australia Pacific said in a statement the extent of the latest bleaching was “another damning indictment of the Morrison government which has failed to protect the reef and exacerbated the problem through its support of fossil fuels.”

A BIG DEAL
EA Sports and FIFA end partnership, both eye new video games

FILE - FIFA President Gianni Infantino speaks during an interview conducted with The Associated Press in Doha, Qatar, March 29, 2022. Infantino said migrant workers gain pride from hard work when he was questioned on Monday, May 2, 2022, about workers suffering in Qatar while building World Cup infrastructure. (AP Photo/Lujain Jo, File)


ZURICH (AP) — Electronic Arts will stop making its hugely successful FIFA video game in its current name, marking a split in one of soccer’s most successful and lucrative partnerships after the sides failed to strike a new licensing deal.

Instead, the California company said Tuesday that EA Sports FC will be introduced from 2023 after it creates the final game in partnership with FIFA later this year.

Licensing rights for the game earn FIFA about $150 million annually — the single biggest commercial earner in its expected $7 billion total revenue from 2019-2022 — though FIFA struck a defiant tone in a statement published hours after the announcement of losing that income.

FIFA promised a “number of new non-simulation games (that) are already under production” and will launch ahead of the 2022 World Cup that kicks off in Qatar in November.

FIFA said it plans to create a “new gaming model” and cited the recent launch of its streaming service FIFA+.

“I can assure you that the only authentic, real game that has the FIFA name will be the best one available for gamers and football fans,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said in the statement.

EA has been producing a FIFA game for nearly 30 years and its fond association with tens of millions of gamers worldwide helped the Zurich-based organization’s brand when it was tarnished amid a wave of arrests of soccer officials in 2015.

For generations of young people, FIFA has means a video game rather than a sports institution.

Though EA Sports FC will be unable to include FIFA content including the World Cup, it retains licensing deals with prime soccer competitions including the English Premier League and the UEFA-organized Champions League.

The EA announcement showed the strength of those partnerships with warm comments from executives from the Premier League, UEFA and Spain’s La Liga while a coordinated release of tweets posted by dozens of soccer clubs used the slogan “We’re In The Club” to align with the EA Sports FC brand.

“We’re thankful for our many years of great partnership with FIFA,” EA CEO Andrew Wilson said. “The future of global football is very bright, and fandom around the world has never been stronger.”

Wilson promised “even more innovative and authentic experiences to the growing football audience” while its soon-to-be rival FIFA spoke of creating ”new, interactive experiences to fans across the globe.”

“The interactive gaming and e-sports sector is on a path of unrivaled growth and diversification,” Infantino said. “FIFA’s strategy is to ensure we can make the most of all future options and ensure a wide range of products and opportunities for gamers, fans, member associations and partners.”

Watery graves recall early Las Vegas’ organized crime days
By KEN RITTERyesterday


1 of 18

A formerly sunken boat sits on cracked earth hundreds of feet from what is now the shoreline on Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Monday, May 9, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. Lake Mead is receding and Sin City is awash with mob lore after a second set of human remains emerged within a week from the depths of the drought-stricken Colorado River reservoir just a short drive from the Las Vegas Strip.

 (AP Photo/John Locher)


LAS VEGAS (AP) — Stories about long-departed Las Vegas organized crime figures are surfacing after a second set of unidentified human remains were revealed as the water level falls on drought-stricken Lake Mead.

The reservoir on the Colorado River is about a 30-minute drive from the mob-founded Las Vegas Strip.

“There’s no telling what we’ll find in Lake Mead,” former Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said Monday. “It’s not a bad place to dump a body.”

Goodman was a defense attorney who represented Mafia figures including ill-fated Anthony “Tony the Ant” Spilotro before serving three terms as a martini-toting mayor who made public appearances with a showgirl on each arm.

He declined to speculate about who might turn up in the vast reservoir formed by Hoover Dam between Nevada and Arizona.

“I’m relatively sure it was not Jimmy Hoffa,” he laughed, referring to the former labor boss who disappeared in 1975. But he added that a lot of his former clients seemed interested in “climate control” — mob speak for keeping the lake level up and bodies down in their watery graves.

Instead, the world now has climate change, and as a result the surface of Lake Mead has dropped more than 170 feet (52 meters) since 1983. The lake that slakes the thirst of 40 million people in cities, farms and tribes across seven Southwestern states is down to about 30% of capacity.

“If the lake goes down much farther, it’s very possible we’re going to have some very interesting things surface,” said Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor whose father dealt blackjack for decades at casinos including the Stardust and Showboat.

“I wouldn’t bet the mortgage that we’re going to solve who killed Bugsy Siegel,” Green said, referring to the infamous gangster who opened the Flamingo casino in 1946 on what became the Strip. Siegel was shot dead in 1947 in Beverly Hills, California. His assassin has never been identified.

“But I would be willing to bet there are going to be a few more bodies,” Green said.

Last month. the dropping lake level exposed Las Vegas’ uppermost drinking water intake, forcing the regional water authority to switch to a deep-lake intake it completed in 2020 to continue to supply casinos, suburbs and 2.4 million residents and 40 million tourists per year.

The following weekend, boaters spotted the decomposed body of a man in a rusted barrel stuck in the mud of newly exposed shoreline.

The corpse has not been identified, but Las Vegas police say he had been shot, probably between the mid-1970s and early 1980s, according to the shoes found with him. The death is being investigated as a homicide.

A few days later, a second barrel was found by a KLAS-TV news crew, not far from the first. It was empty.

On Saturday, two sisters from the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson were paddle boarding on the lake near a former marina resort and noticed bones on a newly surfaced sand bar more than 9 miles (14.5 kilometers) from the barrels.

Lindsey Melvin, who took photos of their find, said they thought at first it was the skeleton of a bighorn sheep native to the region. A closer look revealed a human jaw with teeth. They called park rangers and the National Park Service confirmed in a statement that the bones were human.

There was no immediate evidence of foul play, Las Vegas police said Monday, and they are not investigating. A homicide probe would be opened if the Clark County coroner determines the death was suspicious, the department said in a statement.

Geoff Schumacher, vice president of The Mob Museum, said he expects “a lot” of whatever bodies lie beneath the lake’s surface will turn out to be drowning victims. But he said it’s clear whoever was in the barrel was a target.

Stuffing a body in a barrel has a “signature of a mob hit,” said Schumacher, whose museum is in a renovated historic downtown Las Vegas post office and federal building. It opened in 2012 as The National Museum of Organized Crime & Law Enforcement.

He and Green both cited the death of John “Handsome Johnny” Roselli, a mid-1950s Las Vegas mobster who disappeared in 1976. A few days later his body was found in a steel drum floating off the coast of Miami.

THE DEAD FISH A CLASSIC MOB TROPE

A dead fish that used to be underwater sits on cracked earth above the water level on Lake Mead at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, Monday, May 9, 2022, near Boulder City, Nev. Las Vegas is being flooded with lore about organized crime after a second set of human remains emerged within a week from the depths of the drought-stricken Colorado River reservoir just a 30-minute drive from the notoriously mob-founded Strip. 

(AP Photo/John Locher)

David Kohlmeier, a former police officer who now co-hosts a Las Vegas podcast and fledgling TV show called “The Problem Solver Show,” said Monday that after offering a $5,000 reward last week for qualified divers to find barrels in the lake, he heard from people in San Diego and Florida willing to try.

But National Park Service officials said that’s not allowed and that there are hundreds of barrels in the depths, some dating to the construction of Hoover Dam in the 1930s.

Kohlmeier said he also heard from families of missing people and about cases like a man suspected of killing his mother and brother in 1987, a hotel employee who disappeared in 1992, and a father from Utah who vanished in the 1980s.

Green said the discoveries have people talking not only about mob hits, but about bringing relief and closure to grieving families.

“They’re going to think we’re going to solve every mob murder. In fact, we may see some,” he said. “But it’s also worth remembering that the mob did not like murders to take place in the Las Vegas area, because they did not like bad publicity going out under the Las Vegas dateline.”

These photos of Saturday, May 7, 2022, provided by Lindsey Melvin of Henderson, Nev., shows human remains she and her sister discovered on a sandbar that recently surfaced as Lake Mead recedes. A closer look revealed a human jaw with teeth. The National Park Service confirmed in a statement that the bones are human.

 (Lindsey Melvin via AP)

Whatever story emerges about the body in the barrel, Goodman predicted it will add to the lore of a city that needed the creation of Lake Mead to sprout from the creosote bush-covered desert to become a marquee gambling mecca with a metro area home to about 2.25 million people.

“When I was the mayor, every time I went to a groundbreaking, I’d begin to shake for fear that somebody I may have run into over the years will be uncovered,” he joked.

Spilotro, Goodman’s one-time client, represented the Chicago mob in Las Vegas in the 1970s. He headed a crew dubbed the “Hole in the Wall” gang for drilling through walls to gain entry to homes and businesses. Spilotro’s body and the body of his brother, Michael Spilotro, were found in June 1986 by a farmer plowing a cornfield in northwest Indiana.

Tony the Ant served as the model for the character Nicky Santoro, portrayed by actor Joe Pesci, in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 movie“Casino.” Goodman played himself in the film.

“We have a very interesting background,” Goodman told The Associated Press. “It certainly adds to the mystique of Las Vegas.”

Yellen trip to Capitol detours into tense abortion debate

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

yesterday

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on monitor, questions Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during a Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee hearing, Tuesday, May 10, 2022, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Tom Williams/Pool via AP)


WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s appearance before a Senate committee took an unexpected and tense detour into the abortion debate Tuesday when senators questioned her about the potential impact of an abortion ban on the American economy.

“I believe that eliminating the right of women to make decisions about when and whether to have children would have very damaging effects on the economy and would set women back decades,” Yellen said in response to a question from Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J. He had introduced the topic with a question on how an abortion ban could financially harm women.

Yellen’s answer drew a sharp response from Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., who asked her, “Did you say that ending the life of a child is good for the labor force participation rate?”

“I think people can disagree on the issue of being ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-abortion’ — but framing it in the labor force participation rate feels callous to me,” he said, adding that the conversation “to me seems harsh.”

Yellen responded: “This is not harsh, this is the truth.”

She continued by saying an abortion ban “deprives them of the ability to continue their education,” and those impacted are most commonly young Black women.

The line of questioning at the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee came after a Supreme Court draft opinion leaked last week that suggests the court is poised to throw out the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling that has stood for a half-century.

The hearing also touched on inflation, sanctions imposed on Russia and rising energy costs. Yellen said the U.S. “is focused on everything we can do to bring inflation down.”

The abortion issue came up multiple times. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said he disagreed with Yellen’s perspective, and offered his own economic analysis.

“I look at low birth rates and an aging population,” he said, arguing that there are negative economic impacts from abortion.

A number of economic analyses indicate that limitations on access to abortion can negatively impact people financially and in other ways.

Sarah Miller, a researcher at the University of Michigan, authored a paper with two others on the impact of abortion restrictions. The trio evaluated data on women who sought abortions at 30 clinics in 21 states but were turned away because they were past the clinics’ gestation limit. Two-thirds ended up giving birth.

“As we show in our paper,” Miller said, an abortion ban “will have pretty severe economic consequences for women to keep their head above water,” adding that “there could also be physical and mental health consequences.”

Committee chair Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, ended by saying that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, every woman’s decision to determine her reproductive future and health would be “handed over to politicians.”

“It shouldn’t be handed over to me, it shouldn’t be handed over to Secretary Yellen, and it shouldn’t be handed over to Mitch McConnell,” he said, referring to the Senate Republican leader.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/05/yellen-says-letting-states-ban-abortion.html

How improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl

Randi Mann - 6h ago


This Day In Weather History is a daily podcast by Chris Mei from The Weather Network, featuring stories about people, communities and events and how weather impacted them.

--

On Friday, May 11, 1934, tons of topsoil blew from the Great Plains region of the United States all the way to New York, Boston, and Atlanta.

This was an event associated with the Dust Bowl.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936. Iconic photo taken by Arthur Rothstein." Courtesy of Wikipedia

The Dust Bowl was a series of severe dust storms during the 1930s. It was caused by the combination of drought and inaccurate farming methodology. Farmers deeply plowed the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains, which displaced the native grass that usually traps soil and moisture during droughts and heavy winds.

Farmers were able to widely convert arid grassland to cropland with new technologies like gasoline-powered tractors.


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935." Courtesy of Wikipedia

During the 1930s drought, the plowed soil turned to dust. Winds blew that dust that created large blackout clouds. The dust clouds were nicknamed "black blizzards" and "black rollers."

The black blizzards travelled as far east as New York City. The dust plumes reduced visibility to one meter.

Edward Stanley, an editor for the Associated Press, was rewriting another reporter's coverage of the storm and coined the term "Dust Bowl".


© Provided by The Weather NetworkHow improper farming methodology and drought caused the catastrophic Dust Bowl"Buried machinery in a barn lot; Dallas, South Dakota, May 1936." Courtesy of Wikipedia

The impacts of the catastrophic conditions were exasperated by the Great Depression. In 1935, the drought caused families to leave their farms and move to other areas to seek work. Areas in Texas, Oklahoma and other areas in the region were deserted because of the Dust Bowl conditions.

The dust storms left more than 500,000 Americans homeless. Some residents in the Great Plains areas died from dust pneumonia or malnutrition.

The Dust Bowl has been featured in cultural work such as the novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) by John Steinbeck.

To learn more about the Dust Bowl, listen to today's episode of "This Day In Weather History."


Thumbnail: "A dust storm approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935." Courtesy of NOAA

Charles Noble | The Western Producer

https://www.producer.com/news/charles-noble

When 30-year-old Charles Noble came to Canada from North Dakota in 1903, most farm work was hard, manual labour using oxen to pull a plow through the.

The Groundbreaking Legacy of Versatile Tillage 

https://www.versatile-ag.com/the-groundbreaking-legacy

The product is an immediate success and some years later the first Noble Cultivator factory opens in Nobleford, Alberta. The Noble Blade is designed to shear ...

Wide blade sweep plow - SARE - Sustainable Agriculture Research ... 

https://www.sare.org/publications/steel-in-the-field/dryland-crop-tools/wide-blade-sweep-plow

Overview: Often generically called 'Noble blades' due to the Canadian manufacturer, these implements are perhaps the ultimate steel force for weed ...

CANADA GUN CONTROLS

Feds tweak draft regulations, following criticism, to ensure gun buyers have licence

OTTAWA — The Liberal government has revised draft firearm regulations to ensure someone buying a gun actually has a valid licence.


© Provided by The Canadian Press

When Bill C-71 received royal assent in 2019, the government said it would require sellers to verify the validity of a firearms licence before selling a non-restricted firearm, such as a rifle or shotgun.

However, proposed regulations included no obligation on the part of a seller to check with the federal firearms registrar to see if a prospective gun buyer had a valid licence — an omission that sparked criticism from gun-control advocates.

Final regulations made public today have closed that loophole.

Bill C-71 also requires vendors to keep records of non-restricted firearm transactions.

In addition, the legislation expands background checks that would determine eligibility for a firearms licence to a person's entire life, not just the last five years.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 11, 2022.

The Canadian Press

Anglican church put interests of alleged abusers ahead of victims, says woman whose trust was violated

Paige Parsons -CBC

May 10,2022


It all started with a desire to make the church a safer place.

In early 2021, Cydney Proctor and two other people spoke to a reporter for the Anglican Journal, the national newspaper of the Anglican Church of Canada. The trio were interviewed about alleged sexual misconduct they said they'd experienced at the hands of men connected to the church.

They had told the reporter about trying to report their alleged abusers to the church — processes that they said they found frustrating and retraumatizing. The Journal assured the sources the piece would be free of any details that could identify them.


© David Laughlin/CBC

Cydney Proctor says she disconnected from the Anglican Church of Canada after being the victim of alleged sexual misconduct by men affiliated with the church. She previously shared her story with the Anglican Journal, the church's national newspaper, and experienced a breach of journalistic practice.

But in an email to Proctor on May 12, 2021, the reporter, staff writer Joelle Kidd, shared bad news.

She explained she'd finished a draft of the story, and said it had been shared with the Journal's publisher — the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada. This was common practice if a story promised to be controversial with potential legal implications.

But, Kidd continued, unbeknownst to her or her editor, the draft was also sent out to the Anglican dioceses and colleges that the sources critiqued in the piece. This meant the very institutions the women believe previously mishandled their various allegations of sexual misconduct were given a chance to pour over a draft — with potentially identifying details in it.

"It's one of those things where if I didn't laugh about it, I was going to cry about it, and just like probably never stop crying," Proctor, 31, said from her home in Halifax.


© David Laughlin/CBC

Cydney Proctor says she's frustrated by the Anglican Church of Canada's response to her reports of alleged sexual misconduct by three men affiliated with the church.

Proctor was angry that, in her view, the church had again put the interests of alleged abusers and their employers before complainants.

A full year after the breach came to light, the church's efforts to make amends have fallen flat for the three sources and hundreds of Anglicans across the country who are demanding accountability for the breach and change in how the Anglican Church of Canada treats those who come forward to report sexual misconduct.
Frustrated with how complaints were handled by church

As a young person growing up in Nova Scotia, Proctor was a committed member of the Anglican community, volunteering with a number of groups, organizing and attending church events regularly.

Beginning in 2008, when Proctor was in her late teens and early 20s, she says she experienced varying forms of sexual misconduct from three different men with ties to the Anglican church.

The timeline of her interactions with the different men overlaps. She didn't take her allegations to police, but she did report each of them to various Anglican bodies that had authority, and said she got mixed results.


© David Laughlin/CBC

Proctor is one of three sources who spoke to the Anglican Journal for a story about how the church handles sexual misconduct complaints. But after Anglican leadership circulated an unpublished draft to the involved church institutions, she said she feels frustrated.

Her allegations against the men range from explicit messages to an attempted sexual assault. And while there were some consequences levied out by the institutions where she reported, two of the three are still working as Anglican clergy persons as far as she knows, and the other is still involved in the church community. CBC News did not investigate the claims.

Proctor said the stress of her experiences left her dealing with mental health challenges, including depression. She was struggling in school and drifting away from the church.

As years passed, Proctor said she still felt frustrated with how her different complaints had been handled.

She wanted to do more, and said she felt like speaking to a reporter might be the answer. In early 2021, she approached the Anglican Journal with her story.
Sources offered anonymity

She wasn't the only one. Around that same time, two other people also reached out to the publication making their own allegations that they were victims of sexual misconduct by people affiliated with the Anglican Church. They, too, believed the church's accountability process had failed them.

CBC News requested interviews with the two other sources who spoke to the Anglican Journal through an intermediary, but they did not provide a response. CBC News is not identifying the sources or their alleged abusers.

The Journal's editor at the time, Matthew Townsend, assigned a feature to delve into their stories and the cultural side of how allegations are handled by the church.

"How does the church view complaints? How does it handle them?" Townsend explained during an interview from his home in Dartmouth, N.S., in April. "And does it do it in a way that is sensitive to the people who say they've been harmed?"

Townsend assigned the piece to Kidd in early 2021 and then stepped away for a few months of parental leave. He expected that when he came back in May 2021 the story would be ready for editing. Kidd declined an interview request for this story.

Townsend said given the nature of the piece, the Journal took the unusual step of telling the sources they would be allowed to review the story before it was published so they could make sure no identifying details had been included.

All three sources were offered anonymity, though Proctor said she asked to be named in the final piece.
'The worst thing I ever experienced in my career'

The Anglican Journal and its relationship with the church is complicated. The church is the owner and publisher, but the Journal's mandate is one that is journalistic. Staff are journalists who work in similar ways to reporters and editors at other Canadian media outlets.

Townsend said it wasn't unusual for church leadership to review a draft of a controversial or legally fraught stories. He knew the sexual misconduct investigation would be one such story.

Related video: Anglican Church under fire for breaching confidentiality of sexual abuse accusers (cbc.ca)

While he was away, church leadership requested a draft. Townsend said it wasn't close to what the finished piece would be and contained details that could potentially identify the three sources even though their names, including Proctor's, had been replaced by pseudonyms in this version.

The draft was shared with the Anglican Church of Canada primate Archbishop Linda Nicholls, the church's director of communications, and general secretary Alan Perry.

Townsend said Kidd and the editor acting for him were assured the draft would not be shared elsewhere. But Perry shared the draft with the institutions that were the subject of the three sources' complaints.

On Townsend's first day back at work in May 2021, he realized what had happened.

"It's the worst thing I ever experienced in my career, for sure. I was mortified by it . . . it was sickening, to be frank. These survivors had approached us very courageously, wanting to share their stories," he said.
Draft shared for fact-checking, church says

Townsend said he immediately began to push for the church to take steps to resolve the situation. An inquiry was planned and an apology was offered to the three sources, but Townsend said he didn't believe the church understood the gravity of the breach.

About a month later, both he and Kidd resigned.

In a May interview, Nicholls said the draft was shared in order to fact check with the involved institutions. Her account of what happened differs from Townsend's and other critics.

She said her office believed the draft they received was nearly the final version and said they weren't told about the conditions offered to the three sources. She said they didn't — and still don't — think there was any identifying information in the draft.

"The draft indicated that the sources of the story were protected in the story, so we did not feel we were sharing anything that was not going to be published imminently," she said.

Asked if church leadership told the journalists the draft wouldn't be shared beyond its office, Nicholls said not to her knowledge, but that she doesn't know for sure.
A systemic issue

The church hired an external reviewer to complete an inquiry report into the journalistic breach, which was delivered Aug. 11, 2021, according to a summary response to the incident prepared by Nicholls in September and later shared publicly.

"The current situation is primarily a systemic issue resulting from this lack of clarity, misinformation and situational circumstances that are not the responsibility of any single person alone," she said in that summary.

The church committed to an 18-month process to review and improve communication and processes between management and journalism staff. Nicholls declined to provide an update on how the process is going.

During the interview with CBC News, Nicholls said the actual inquiry report was only shared with people within the church who deal with journalistic matters so that they can understand what happened.

The church has not given the report to Proctor and the two other sources.

"The report is not about the sources or about their previous experiences. The report is about how the church house handled the journalistic side of dealing with this article," Nicholls said.
'Symptomatic of a larger problem in the church'

Releasing the report to the sources is one of the key demands of a group of Anglicans calling on Anglican leadership to hold someone accountable for the breach of trust.

Theology doctoral students and Anglicans Carolyn Mackie and Michael Buttrey were among those in the church community who were aware of what had happened.


© Derek Hooper/CBC

Lifelong Anglican and doctoral student Michael Buttrey is a co-organizer of the ACCToo open letter to the leadership of the Anglican Church of Canada.

They decided to form a movement called ACCToo — a play on "#MeToo" (the ACC stands for Anglican Church of Canada) that came to define online conversation around sexual abuse and survivors sharing their stories.

Working with the three sources' permission, they crafted an open letter calling for:
Releasing the inquiry report to the sources;
Requiring General Secretary Alan Perry, who circulated the draft, to resign;
Publishing an apology admitting wrongdoing in the Anglican Journal.

Once the letter was ready, they started gathering signatures online.

"We see this as symptomatic of a larger problem in the church," Mackie said. "And because of that, it seemed appropriate that addressing the problem should also invite the participation of the church itself."
High-ranking clergy sign open letter

When the letter was first published in February, they only had about a dozen names. Now, there are nearly 450. The names on the list include Anglicans from across the country, from lay people to clergy of various rank. Even the bishop of Quebec, Rt. Rev. Bruce Myers — the highest ranking position in a diocese — signed the letter.

Rev. Jordan Haynie Ware, the social justice and community connection archdeacon for the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton, is one of the many clergy signatories. Given her position and her experience in her own diocese, Ware said it made sense to sign the letter and to start from a position of believing people who say they've been harmed.

"Maybe there are things that the primate knows about that she's holding back. But I would like to see a really clear response that indicates why they don't feel that they can live up to the three calls," she said.


© Nathan Gross/CBC

Rev. Jordan Haynie Ware is the social justice and community connection archdeacon for the Anglican Diocese of Edmonton.

The letter sparked a flurry of responses, including a majority opinion from the Anglican Journal editorial board that the inquiry process was not sufficiently independent.

The board added that the inquiry report — even a redacted version — contains potentially identifying information about the sources.

Despite there being various understandings of what happened, the board said it's clear people were harmed, and that those responsible for the breach should face consequences.
An apology

The responses and signatures have not swayed Nicholls.

The archbishop apologized publicly in a written response to the ACCToo letter, and repeated that apology during her interview with CBC News.

"I am deeply sorry for the breach of trust that led to the pain that the three sources have felt," Nicholls said. "The retraumatization of what they experienced in the past because of our failure — that is of deep concern."

Nicholls has said it was never church leadership's intention that the story not be published. But after the breach, Townsend didn't feel the article could proceed and said one of the sources asked for work on it to be paused because they felt betrayed.

Nicholls offered to meet with the three sources — even through a mediator so they could remain anonymous — but that offer hasn't been accepted.

But the archbishop stands by how the church handled the situation. She said she was surprised when the open letter was published.

The attention it has garnered was also unexpected for its authors. Buttrey said he thinks that's a reflection of the wider Anglican community's concern about how leadership has handled the situation.

"I think the senior leadership of the church believes that they sit at the heart of the Anglican Church and they know what is best for it. I don't think that's true," he said

Support is available for anyone who has been sexually assaulted. You can access crisis lines and local support services through this Government of Canada website or the Ending Violence Association of Canada database. If you're in immediate danger or fear for your safety or that of others around you, please call 91

What the polls really say about Americans and Roe v. Wade

Grayson Quay, Weekend editor
Tue, May 10, 2022

Protesters. Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock

With the U.S. Supreme Court apparently poised to strike down Roe v. Wade (1973), pro-choicers and pro-lifers have both claimed mainstream support while denouncing their opponents as extremists.

 Here's everything you need to know:

What do the polls say?

Outside the Supreme Court last week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) blamed Republicans for Justice Samuel Alito's draft ruling, which was leaked to the press the previous night and would overturn Roe v. Wade. "They have been out there plotting, carefully cultivating these Supreme Court justices so they could have a majority on the bench who would accomplish something that the majority of Americans do not want," Warren said.

A flurry of articles emerged to back up her claim that Roe is popular and overturning it is not. "By a nearly two-to-one margin, voters oppose overturning Roe v. Wade," Politico reported, citing a poll conducted Tuesday. "Sixty-six percent [of Americans] say Roe v. Wade should not be completely struck down," CNN found. According to an ABC News/Washington Post poll, 54 percent of Americans want the court to uphold Roe, while only 28 percent want to see it struck down.

The trend seems to hold even if the question isn't directly about the court case in question, the details of which many Americans may not know. When asked whether abortion should be legal or illegal in "all or most cases," respondents to the ABC poll favored "legal" 58-37. The margin was even wider when respondents were asked whether the decision to have an abortion should be left to a woman and her doctor or "regulated by law." Some 70 percent chose the first option, while only 28 percent backed legal restrictions on abortion.

But these questions are still rather vague. What about concrete policies? Well, the same ABC poll — which offered respondents a binary, yes-or-no choice — found that 57 of Americans oppose a 15-week ban, while 58 percent oppose a six-week ban. And if you add "It depends" as an option, those numbers drop from majorities to pluralities. A Pew Research Center survey found 44 percent of Americans think abortion should be legal at six weeks. Another 21 percent said it should be illegal at that stage, and 19 percent said it depends. On the question of a 14-week ban, the numbers were 34 percent opposed, 27 in favor, and 22 percent on the fence.

Data from Gallup shows public opinion on abortion has been mostly steady since 1973, with 10 to 20 percent of Americans believing abortion should always be illegal, between 20 and 30 percent believing it should always be legal, and between 50 and 60 percent saying it should be legal in some circumstances. Pew notes, however, that the divide is far more partisan than it was when Roe was handed down and that "change in attitudes has come almost entirely among Democrats," with support for legal abortion in all or most cases among Democrats up 17 points since 2007, from 63 percent to 80 percent.

But wait, what do the other polls say?

National polls aren't everything. The New York Times notes that support for legal abortion varies widely by state. In West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Utah, pro-lifers outnumber pro-choicers by a margin of 10 points or more.

Also, as with all surveys and polls, it depends on how you frame the question. According to FiveThirtyEight, "[p]olls have found that a large majority of Americans support abortion in the first trimester, but that support tends to drop in the second trimester."

At this point, respondents' views sometimes become contradictory. A 2018 Gallup poll found that 65 percent of Americans believed abortion should generally be illegal during the second trimester of pregnancy. In the same survey, 69 percent of respondents said the Supreme Court should not overturn Roe v. Wade. In other words around two-thirds of Americans supported Roe while a similarly large majority supported abortion restrictions that are unconstitutional under Roe, which protects the right to abortion until the last few weeks of the second trimester.

Abortion rights activists who advocate for unrestricted abortion up until birth are therefore "way out of the public mainstream," David O'Steen, the executive director of the National Right to Life Committee, told The Associated Press.

And writing for National Review, Alexandra DeSanctis argued that citing statistics about public support for Roe is too simplistic. "For one thing," she wrote, "surveys suggest that many Americans don't even know Roe dealt with abortion, as well as that a majority of Americans believe overturning Roe would lead to abortion being illegal across the entire country, a status quo that most Americans don't support."
What would overturning Roe actually do?

The majority opinion in Roe held that "the state may not regulate the abortion decision" during the first trimester of pregnancy, as summarized by the Oyez legal archive. During the second trimester, states are permitted to "impose regulations on abortion that are reasonably related to maternal health." Once the point of viability is reached — meaning the baby could survive outside the womb — states could "regulate abortions or prohibit them entirely" as long as they maintained exceptions for the life or health of the mother.

Under Roe, attempts to ban abortion before the point of viability — around 28 weeks in 1973, but now around 23 or 24 weeks due to medical advances — were struck down as unconstitutional. Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) held that any regulations on abortion before the point of viability were also unconstitutional if they imposed an "undue burden" on the woman seeking an abortion.

Alito's draft ruling would overturn both precedents, allowing states to impose whatever abortion bans or restrictions they wanted at any stage of pregnancy, at least where federal reulation is concerned. Controversial policies already under consideration in some states, like a 15-week ban, a ban once a fetal heartbeat can be detected at around six weeks, a requirement that married women seeking abortions inform their husbands first, or even a nine-month waiting period, would all become feasible in states with conservative governments.

Of course, state laws and precedents would remain a constraining factor. Ten state supreme courts have ruled that their state constitutions protect a woman's right to have an abortion. In the other 40, everything's on the table — in theory. In practice, the end of Roe might see some blue and purple states codify protections of abortion rights while red states pass more regulations.

Neither party has the votes in the Senate to pass a federal law restricting or enshrining abortion rights, so these battles will be fought in state legislatures. Blue states like Massachusetts and New York have already moved to codify abortion rights into state law, while red states like Oklahoma have passed near-total bans.

Unsuspecting men don't yet know that overturning Roe v. Wade will also change their lives


Amanda Jayne Miller
Wed, May 11, 2022, 

Many unsuspecting men do not yet know that their lives are on the precipice of changing radically. Unless the leaked draft of a Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade is drastically altered, the nearly 50-year-old ruling, which guarantees women the constitutional right to an abortion, appears poised to fall.

Numerous authors have decried the collision course this will put American women of childbearing age onto, with predicted outcomes ranging from the need for women (at least those who can afford to do so) to travel out of state to America devolving into an Atwoodian hellscape. But it seems that no one is talking about the impact the end of Roe might have on the other half of the population: men.
Abortion does not only affect women

To be clear, many men support abortion rights. As a sociologist who has studied men’s views of abortion, I know that the majority of men feel that decisions about terminating or carrying out a pregnancy should be situational.

Nearly 70% of the men I interviewed said abortion should be legal, and choices about whether they personally would prefer that their partners terminate an unexpected pregnancy were dependent upon the state of their relationships, their financial situations and their own maturity.

These views are further reinforced by a study from the Pew Research Center finding that while men, in general, are less likely to believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases than are women, among young adults who are most at risk of unintended childbearing, two-thirds support abortion rights.

Wading into Roe: Supreme Court abortion leak investigation and the curious case of Clarence Thomas and Co.

The consequences of forced fatherhood – especially if their partners also prefer not to have children – are immense. Fatherhood is a lifetime commitment to childrearing, but even for those men who are not active participants in their children’s lives, they will be responsible for years of child support.

While data on which men’s partners have abortions is scant, because individuals tend to partner with people like themselves, we can extrapolate based on what we know about women who opt for abortions.

Dems need to fight back: It's time for Democrats to use the leaked Roe opinion as a battering ram against the GOP

Nearly 1 in 4 women in America will have an abortion by age 45. Of these women, more than half are in their 20s and 60% already have at least one child. Most important, 75% are poor or low income.

Abortion-rights supporters protest outside of the Supreme Court on May 3, 2022.

This means that their male partners are often among the most vulnerable. They are also likely to be young and low income. Those men who already have children with other partners are more likely to be in particularly precarious situations. The ability to get a better job by attaining more education will be thwarted; the need to work multiple jobs to support their families will take away time spent with children. Indeed, meeting the markers of successful fatherhood – a career, homeownership and marriage – will become infinitely more complicated.

Less often brought up is the impact on men’s romantic lives. In 2019, for example, just under 630,000 abortions were performed. This number has been steadily falling since the early 1980s, in part due to the availability of effective contraception.

NBA great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: His fight for social justice has always been about sacrifice

Some experts anticipate that challenges to Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) and Eisenstadt v. Baird (1972), which made contraception legal for married and unmarried couples respectively, could soon follow based on similar legal theories. Avoiding an unintended pregnancy may become far more difficult than these men anticipate unless 40-year-old happily married men agree to practice a lifetime of abstinence.

Of course, such arguments will not sway the nearly 10% of American adults who say abortion should be illegal in all circumstances, according to Pew. And the current focus placed upon how such a ruling might impact women is highly appropriate given that women will face the cruelest consequences of such a decision. But by ignoring the impacts that severe restrictions on abortion can have on men, we risk leaving a huge group of potential allies in the dark.

Wading into Roe: To the women who support abortion rights, it's time to make a stand. This ends now.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, should Roe v. Wade be struck down in June, 26 states are likely to make abortion illegal, with some states even attempting to codify laws that would make it illegal for residents to obtain an abortion by crossing state lines.

Amanda Jayne Miller

There are still options. The first among these is to vote in the 2022 midterm elections for pro-abortion rights candidates, allowing Congress or state governments to provide a legislative solution. We can also call our legislators to express our views and share our own stories.

Most important, men, especially, can reframe their thinking. Abortion isn’t just a women’s issue – it’s an everyone issue.

Amanda Jayne Miller is a professor of Sociology and director of Faculty Development at the University of Indianapolis. Her book (with co-author Sharon Sassler), "Cohabitation Nation: Gender, Class, and the Remaking of Relationships," won the 2018 William J. Good Book Award for Family Sociology. She is a Public Voices Fellows through The OpEd Project.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Roe v. Wade: Overturning abortion rights will hurt men, too