Women taken from African mothers by Belgium now want redress

IMPERIALIST PRACTICE USED AGAINST ALL INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS WHERE COLONIALISM EXISTS

1 of 12 https://apnews.com/3dc5b6d9fcef9988456eb631cecd3b32
In this photo taken on Monday, June 29, 2020, clockwise from top left, Simone Ngalula, Monique Bitu Bingi, Lea Tavares Mujinga, Noelle Verbeeken and Marie-Jose Loshi pose for a group photo during an interview with The Associated Press in Brussels. Five women who were taken from their families as children in Belgian Congo and placed in a religious mission run by Catholic nuns have filed a lawsuit seeking reparations from Belgium. The women were among thousands of biracial children seized from their mothers and separated from their African roots by Belgian authorities ruling over the area from 1908-1960. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco)NEDER-OVER-HEEMBEEK, Belgium (AP) — Monique Bitu Bingi was only 4 years old when she was taken from her family in Belgian Congo and locked up in a religious mission run by Catholic nuns. Her friend Lea Tavares Mujinga was even younger the day her mother was forced to give her up: just a 2-year-old toddler.

Born from a white settler father and a Black mother — and despised because of their biracial heritage — both girls were seized from their mothers and separated from their African roots by Belgian authorities that ruled over the area from 1908-1960.

During colonial times, they, like thousands of other biracial children known as “métis,” were taken away and raised in Belgian institutions as the colonial power promoted a strict separation of white and Black people and systematically tried to prevent interracial unions.

At the St. Vincent de Paul sisters’ mission, they went through years of deprivation and abuse that have left indelible scars.

“We have been destroyed, both morally and psychologically,” Bitu Bingi told The Associated Press on Monday, the eve of the 60th anniversary of Congo’s independence on June 30, 1960. “We have lost our identities. Excuses are not enough.”

Now in their 70s, Bitu Bingi and Tavares Mujinga want reparations. Along with three other biracial women born between 1945 and 1950 in the African country, they have filed a lawsuit in Brussels targeting the Belgian state for crimes against humanity.

Their complaint comes amid growing demands that Belgium reassess its colonial past. In the wake of protests against racial inequality in the United States, several statues of King Leopold II, who is blamed for the deaths of millions of Africans during Belgium’s colonial rule, have been vandalized and a petition has demanded that Belgium remove all of his statues.

Last year, the Belgian government apologized for the state’s role in taking thousands of babies from their African mothers. And for the first time in the country’s history, a reigning king expressed regret Tuesday for the violence carried out by the former colonial power. In a letter to Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi, Belgium’s King Philippe conveyed his “deepest regrets” for the “acts of violence and cruelty” and “suffering and humiliation” inflicted on Belgian Congo.

Bitu Bingi, Tavares Mujinga and the three other women now live in Belgium and France after emigrating from Congo and have requested compensation of 50,000 euros ($55,000) each but are are also seeking broad reparations for all children seized from their mothers and placed in institutions during the colonial era.

“There were official documents from the administration, it’s a state crime that was organized by the Belgian colonial administration,” said Christophe Marchand, a lawyer representing the women.

Tavares Mujinga said she was taken away from her family while her father, a Portuguese man who worked in the cotton industry, had left the country for a holiday. Bitu Bingi’s father worked for the Belgian administration.

According to legal documents, in all five cases the fathers did not exercise parental authority and the Belgian administration threatened the children’s Congolese families with reprisals if they refused to let them go.

Time has passed since the five women were forced to cut ties with their relatives, but the trauma they went through has never been fully addressed, and their pain remains immense. None of them have ever received psychological assistance.

“When we talk about it, we cry,” Noelle Verbeeken, one of the five plaintiffs, told the AP on the outskirts of Brussels.

“We have no identity. We don’t know where we come from. ... We are nothing. Just the ‘children of sin,’” Verbeeken said, quoting the expression used to describe the children when they arrived at the religious mission in the Congolese town of Katende. There, Tavares Mujinga was reunited with her older brother, who had been seized a few years earlier.

The women lived in the mission with 20 other biracial children and Black orphans in very harsh conditions. Bitu Bingi recalls that food was scarce, and rare were the days when she could properly wash.

“We did not know how chicken tasted. And one of the doors of our dormitory was overlooking the morgue,” she said.

The girls did receive an education. Tavares Mujinga, who went on to marry a Belgian airplane pilot, became a primary teacher while Verbeeken studied Greek humanities and became a nurse.

“They wanted to make nuns out of us. We had other plans,” Bitu Bingi said.

The women’s traumatic journey took a turn for the worse several months after independence, when they and the other children were abandoned by both the Belgian authorities and the Catholic Church. The nuns and other mission personnel were evacuated amid political upheaval and the children were left on their own.

“There was no room for us,” Bitu Bingi said, recalling mutilated bodies around the mission during the post-independence unrest.

She doesn’t dwell on the sexual abuse and rape by Congolose militia fighters after the nuns left that is described in the lawsuit, which says the militiamen sent to the abandoned mission to look after the young girls molested them instead. Bitu Bingi was only 11.

To this day, she says she can’t help but think of the militia trucks whenever she hears the sound of a truck engine.

She found solace during a trip to South America decades later after finding out that her father had emigrated to Argentina to start a new life. She traveled there and finally met that branch of her family, a trip she said eased her suffering.

“My father was already dead, but I received a warm welcome,” she said.

Bitu Bingi and the women she calls “sisters” now hope their lawsuit will lead Belgium to finally recognize its responsibility in their suffering and in the pain of the thousands of other children who were snatched away.

“What we expect, and what they expect, is a reparation law, a strong decision,” said Jehosheba Bennett, another lawyer for the women. “Telling the stories of what happened during the colonization is really important, because now there is not much awareness about this.”

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Union tells actors not to work on pandemic film “Songbird”
 In this March 8, 2020 file photo, Michael Bay attends the world premiere of "A Quiet Place Part II" in New York. The union that represents film actors is telling its members not to work on the pandemic thriller “Songbird," one of the first films in production after coronavirus closures. The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Actors issued a do not work order Thursday, saying the filmmakers have not been transparent about safety protocols and had not signed the proper agreements with the union. The movie, produced by Michael Bay and directed by Adam Mason, had reportedly been preparing its actors remotely under locked down conditions for the shoot. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The union that represents film actors told its members Thursday not to work on the upcoming pandemic thriller “Songbird,” saying the filmmakers have not been up-front about safety measures and had not signed the proper agreements for the movie that is among the first in production after coronavirus closures.

Actors had reportedly been rehearsing remotely for the film produced by Michael Bay and directed by Adam Mason.

The film’s pre-production listing on IMDbPro.com says its stars include Demi Moore, Peter Stormare and Craig Robinson, and gives the description, “In a post-pandemic world, an even more serious virus continues to mutate.”

But the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Actors issued a do-not-work order to its members, saying the production company “has failed to complete the signatory process,” and working on the film could result in disciplinary action.

“The producers have not been transparent about their safety protocols and that is something we obviously take very seriously,” a SAG-AFTRA spokesperson said in a statement. “Also, as noted in the Do Not Work order, the producers have not yet become signatory to our agreement. We have no further comment.”

The small film was among the first to attempt to resume production after the long closure. California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave film and television productions the green light to resume shooting in the state starting June 12, so long as strict coronavirus restrictions were in place.

Messages seeking comment from the film’s production companies and representatives for Bay and Mason were not immediately returned.

One of the companies, Invisible Narrative, told Deadline, “We are actively working to resolve this paperwork issue with the guild.”

Fish more vulnerable to warming water than first thought

This 2014 microscope photo provided by Dr. F. Dahlke shows 1.5 mm diameter eggs of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). Global warming looks like it will be a far bigger problem for the world’s fish species than scientists first thought, since a study led by Dahlke released on Thursday, July 2, 2020 shows that when fish are spawning or are embryos they are far more vulnerable to hotter water. (Dr. F. Dahlke via AP)

Global warming looks like it will be a bigger problem for the world’s fish species than scientists first thought: A new study shows that when fish are spawning or are embryos they are more vulnerable to hotter water.

With medium-level human-caused climate change expected by the end of the century, the world’s oceans, rivers and lakes will be too hot for about 40% of the world’s fish species in the spawning or embryonic life stages, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science. That means they could go extinct or be forced to change how and where they live and reproduce.

Until now, biologists had just studied adult fish. For adult fish, around 2% to 3% of the species would be in the too-hot zone in the year 2100 with similar projected warming. So using this new approach reveals a previously unknown problem for the future of fish, scientists said.

In a worst-case climate change scenario, which some scientists said is increasingly unlikely, the figure for species in trouble jumps to 60%.

These vulnerable times in the life of a fish make this a “bottleneck” in the future health of species, said study co-author Hans-Otto Portner, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany.

A marine heatwave last year, known as a blob, caused large numbers of migrating salmon to die throughout Alaska’s rivers. It also killed off cod eggs, showing what a warmer future might be like, said study lead author Flemming Dahlke, a marine biologist at the institute.

“With spawning fish and embryos most sensitive to warming waters, it means fish populations won’t be able to replace themselves,” said Rutgers University ecologist Malin Pinsky, who wasn’t part of the study but praised it. “Without reproduction and offspring, we have no fish, no fishing and no fish on our plates.”

In studying 694 species, Dahlke and Portner found some of the fish likely to be hardest hit by this phenomenon include Alaska pollock — the biggest fishery in the United States and the source of fast food fillets — and well-known species such as sockeye salmon, brown trout, bonito, barracuda and swordfish.

“The more we allow temperature to change ... the more we will lose the natural foundation of human life, including food from the sea,” Portner said.

When it gets too warm for spawning, the species could still possibly move to someplace cooler or spawn at another time, but that’s not easy, Dahlke said. “This could mean a lot of problems to many species.”

 This July 2019 photo provided by Peter Westley shows the carcass of a chum salmon along the shore of the Koyukuk River near Huslia, Alaska, July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded in the state. Global warming looks like it will be a far bigger problem for the world’s fish species than scientists first thought, since a study led by Dr. Flemming Dahlke released on Thursday, July 2, 2020 shows that when fish are spawning or are embryos they are far more vulnerable to hotter water. (Peter Westley/University of Alaska Fairbanks via AP)
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Bolivia tries to hold elections amid pandemic, risking chaos

Public transport drivers take part in a protest demanding an increase in fares because quarantine measures to curb the spread of the new coronavirus have decreased their income, in La Paz, Bolivia, Wednesday, July 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)

A public transport driver, wearing a protective face mask emblazoned with an image of Lionel Messi, attends a protest demanding an increase in fares because quarantine measures to curb the spread of the new coronavirus have decreased his income, in La Paz, Bolivia, Wednesday, July 1, 2020. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)
LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) — Deserted during months of quarantine, the streets of Bolivia are roiling again with protests that have forced the government into an uncomfortable challenge: trying to resolve the country’s long-term political crisis with elections in the middle of a rising pandemic.

If plans hold, Bolivia will conduct presidential elections in September, giving former President Evo Morales’ leftist party a chance to return to power after he resigned and fled the country at the end of 2019. The looming vote is increasing political tensions in Bolivia just as the novel coronavirus overwhelms the health system.

The capital, La Paz, and other major cities see demonstrations near daily in defiance of antivirus measures. On Tuesday, teachers protested in La Paz. On Wednesday, health workers marched in Santa Cruz, and the streets of Cochabamba were blocked by a variety of groups decrying the government.

Protesters rarely follow requirements for social distancing and pack closely together unmasked as they shout anti-government slogans. Police presence is at a minimum because much of the force is sick with the coronavirus.

After a year of protests and crises across Latin American and the Caribbean, Bolivia is one of several countries that put politics on hold to grapple with the new coronavirus, and it will be one of the first to attempt a return to some semblance of political normality. The Dominican Republic holds delayed elections on Sunday. Chile put off an April referendum on a new constitution until October, with many predicting further delays.

Bolivia is the country that appears to have the greatest immediate potential for chaos. The country is deeply polarized between Morales’ supporters and those who accused him of fraud in October 2019 elections and worked to push him from power after 14 years in office.


A homeless man sleeps at San Francisco square amid a government ordered lockdown to contain the spread of the new coronavirus, in La Paz, Bolivia, Thursday, June 25, 2020. (AP Photo/Juan Karita)Pressured by Morales’ Movement toward Socialism party, which still controls the legislature, and weakened by the pandemic and an accompanying economic crisis, interim President Jeanine Añez accepted elections on Sept. 6.

After a decade of growth under Morales, Bolivia’s economy began to slump and the coronavirus pandemic is expected to cut gross domestic product 5.9% this year, the first recession in four decades.

“We want the government to reactivate the economy,” small-business leader Juan Carlos Apaza said during a recent demonstration in La Paz. “Hunger can do more damage than the coronavirus.”

With over 70% of the population in informal day jobs, a 71-day quarantine has pushed many to desperation that’s fueling the daily protests.

“Confronting the political crisis first makes sense,” said independent journalist and political analyst Andrés Gómez.

Other analysts say trying to resolve the political crisis amid a raging epidemic could worsen the country’s instability.

Low turnout due to voters fearful of contagion could undercut the legitimacy of the vote, warned Franklin Pareja, a political scientist at the University of San Andrés.

Luis Larrea, president of the Medical College of La Paz, agreed, contending the vote could worsen the disease crisis.

“Holding a vote in the middle of a pandemic is irresponsible on the part of the politicians,″ he said. “Health comes first.″

Bolivia has had more than 32,000 diagnosed cases of the new coronavirus and more than 1,000 deaths, and the numbers are expected to peak around the time of the presidential election.

The country’s weak medical system is already overwhelmed, with intensive-care units full, patients dying in hospital lobbies or at home and protests from under-equipped and under-financed medical workers.

In Cochabamba, a series of coronavirus patients have died in the street for want of hospital beds and funeral homes have declared a crisis because the city’s crematorium can only cremate four bodies a day, a third of the current demand.

Morales remains in exile in Argentina and is wanted in Bolivia on charges of sedition, terrorism and electoral fraud, but polls have shown a double-digit lead for his party’s candidate, Luis Arce, a former economy minister. Centrist former President Carlos Mesa appears to be in second place, with Añez in third.

The weakened economy, a failing pandemic response and accusations of corruption in the health ministry’s purchase of respirators at triple the world price have damaged her credibility and contributed to her trailing badly.

The latest figures show Arce’s lead is likely narrow enough to require a second round of voting and Mesa, who ran against Morales last year, gaining ground.

“The people want answers from those making decisions confronting the pandemic,″ Mesa said.

Morales, a leader of the coca-growers’ unions, become the country’s first Indigenous president in 2006. His three terms in office coincided with a boom in natural gas and other commodities that allowed him to cut extreme poverty in half, to 17% of the population.

He lost popularity, particularly among the middle class, amid corruption scandals and his desire to seek a fourth term amid a political battle over term limits.

“Clean and transparent elections will be the way forward that the country needs,″ said María Teresa Zegada, a political scientist at the University of San Simón. “Afterward, we’ll need to leave confrontation behind and reach political consensus that will allow the new administration to govern.”

OUSTED BY A COUP 

Exiled Morales pulling Bolivian political strings as polls loom

Issued on: 02/07/2020 -

Former Bolivian president Evo Morales takes part in a meeting in Argentina in support of MAS candidate Luis Arce in March 2020 Andres Larrovere AFP/FileLa Paz (AFP)

From exile in Buenos Aires, former leftist president Evo Morales continues to influence Bolivian politics and is plotting his party's return to power in September elections, analysts say.

Though banned from running in the poll and facing arrest if he returns, the 60-year-old -- Bolivia's first indigenous president -- is masterminding opposition to right-wing interim leader Jeanine Anez.

"At this time when Evo Morales is in exile, outside of power, he has become a kind of kingmaker," political scientist Carlos Cordero told AFP.

Morales last year hand-picked economist Luis Arce as the man who can win back the presidency for his Movement for Socialism (MAS) party.

To do so he faced down grassroots members who favored former foreign minister David Choquehuanca or young coca-growers' leader Andronico Rodriguez.

Arce, however, has slowly won over the doubters and is riding high in opinion polls, which if confirmed in the September 6 elections, would hand the presidency back to MAS a year after Morales' tumultuous resignation.

The polls give Arce 33 percent and centrist ex-president Carlos Mesa just over 18 percent, while Anez trails with nearly 17 percent.

- 'Polarizing factor' -

Maria Teresa Zegada, a sociologist at the state-run Universidad Mayor de San Simon, says Morales is a key player in the electoral campaign, despite his absence.

"I believe that he will continue to play an important role, as long as he continues to be a polarizing factor in the country's politics. There are important sectors that support MAS and that is where Morales' presence lies."

Ahead of the pandemic, the ex-president frequently convened meetings with MAS leaders in Argentina, but that direct communication has been frustrated by the pandemic lockdowns.

These days he issues instructions via social media.

"We will come back stronger and we will restore freedom and dignity to the Bolivian people," said a message on his Twitter account.

Morales on Wednesday condemned what he said was an attempt by Anez to get the courts to outlaw his party and remove Arce from the electoral race.

"The de facto government initiated a judicial strategy with political ends to disqualify our candidate and MAS and prevent us from participating in the elections," he tweeted.

Anez has accused Morales of conspiring to damage her electoral chances by sending overpriced Spanish ventilators for COVID-19 patients into the country as part of a relief operation during the pandemic.

Zegada said Morales has benefited from the errors and scandals that have tainted his adversaries in power.

- 'Messianic leadership' -

Morales fled the country after three weeks of protests over his controversial re-election in October 2019 in a poll in which he was constitutionally barred from participating.

He had tried to cling to power but lost the backing of the country's military after an Organization of American States audit found clear evidence of election fraud.

He initially fled to Mexico, which sent a government plane to pick him up, before settling later in Argentina, home to a large Bolivian population.

Most of Morales' cabinet fled with him, leaving behind a power vacuum in the bitterly divided country. Anez -- a hitherto little known conservative senator -- assumed the presidency the following month.

Her government accuses him of sedition and terrorism for allegedly urging his supporters to lay siege to major cities such as La Paz.

However, Morales, a member of the Aymara indigenous community, has built up a "messianic leadership -- which is why his voice continues to carry so much weight, even in exile," said Cordero, a professor at the Catholic University in La Paz.

"These leaders become political professionals... Their life is simply doing politics, that's the psychological profile of these people," he said.

Morales is a colossus of his own party, whose support comes mainly from indigenous people and poor farmers, and there is no one in the party ranks to overshadow him.

According to Zagada, his broader influence has waned, however.

"We have a gravitating figure, but at the same time one that is worn out, and he is no longer the figure he was when he was president of the country," she said.

Under Morales' 14-year rule, Bolivia's 36 indigenous groups -- which account for 62 percent of the country's more than 11 million people -- were constitutionally recognized.

The country also reduced extreme poverty from 38 percent to 17 percent, and achieved an average economic growth rate of 4.8 percent.

© 2020 AFP

Australian court upholds Geoffrey Rush’s defamation payout

CORRECTS THE AMOUNT TO MILLION, NOT BILLION -FILE - In this Aug. 2, 2012, file photo, Australian actor Geoffrey Rush arrives for the opening of the Melbourne International Film Festival in Melbourne, Australia. An Australian court on Thursday, July 2, 2020, rejected a newspaper publisher's appeal against Oscar-winning actor Rush's $2.9 million Australian dollars ($2 million) payout for defamation. (AP Photo/Paul Jeffers, File)

CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — An Australian court on Thursday rejected a newspaper publisher’s appeal against Oscar-winning actor Geoffrey Rush’s $2.9 million Australian dollars ($2 million) payout for defamation.

Three Federal Court judges ruled that articles published by Sydney’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2017 conveyed the imputation that Rush was a pervert and that the trial judge had correctly included the actor’s loss of earnings in calculating damages.

The Australian actor, who turns 69 on July 6, did not attend the Sydney court to hear the verdict.

News Corp.-owned Nationwide News appealed trial judge Michael Wigney’s ruling last year that Rush was defamed by newspaper reports saying he had been accused of inappropriate behavior by actor Eryn Jean Norvill. She played the daughter of Rush’s starring character in a Sydney theater production of “King Lear” in 2015 and 2016.

The publisher also appealed against the amount of Rush’s payout, including almost AU$2 million for past and future economic loss, for two articles published in the newspaper and a billboard poster that Wigney found portrayed him untruly as a pervert and a sexual predator.

David English, the newspaper’s editor, said he was disappointed by the appeals court ruling that highlighted the need for Australia to change its defamation laws.

“The Rush case exposes the inadequacies of Australia’s defamation laws and heightens the need for urgent legislative reform to enable public debate and to encourage women to come forward with their concerns,” English said in a statement.

“We will continue to report on the issues such as these which are of great concern to the Australian public,” he added.

Rush’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The publisher’s lawyer Tom Blackburn told the two-day appeal hearing that the trial judge “cobbled together” speculation and inference to find Rush was unable to work because of his state of mind following the publications and had fewer job offers since then.

The actor’s lawyer Bret Walker replied that Rush testified about the devastating effects the publications had on his mental state while other evidence heard during the trial supported conclusions that he was unable to work and had fewer job offers.

Rush received the best actor Oscar in 1996 for his portrayal of pianist David Helfgott in “Shine” and was nominated for roles in “Shakespeare In Love,” ″Quills” and “The King’s Speech.” He is also famed for his portrayal of Captain Barbossa in the “Pirates of the Caribbean” films.

He received Australia’s highest civilian honor in 2014, the Companion of the Order of Australia, for service to the arts.

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This story has been revised to correct the payout amount to millions, not billions.

A pinch where it hurts: Can Facebook weather the ad boycott?

In this Oct. 25, 2019, file photo, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the Paley Center in New York. On Wednesday, July 1, 2020, more than 500 companies kicked off an advertising boycott intended to pressure Facebook into taking a stronger stand against hate speech. Zuckerberg has agreed to meet with its organizers early the following week. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)
On Wednesday, more than 500 companies officially kicked off an advertising boycott intended to pressure Facebook into taking a stronger stand against hate speech. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to meet with its organizers early next week.

But whether Zuckerberg agrees to further tighten the social network’s carefully crafted rules probably boils down to a more fundamental question: Does Facebook need big brand advertisers more than the brands need Facebook?

In a broad sense, the current boycott, which will last at least a month, is like nothing Facebook has experienced before. Following weeks of protests against police violence and racial injustice, major brands have for the first time joined together to protest still-prevalent hate speech on Facebook’s platforms by taking aim at the social network’s $70 billion in annual ad revenue.

After years of piecemeal measures to address hate, abuse and misinformation on its service, Facebook’s critics hope that pinching the company where it hurts will push it toward more meaningful change. As of Wednesday, 530 companies have signed on — and that’s not counting businesses like Target and Starbucks, which have paused advertising but did not formally join the “Stop Hate for Profit” campaign, which calls its action a “pause” rather than a boycott.

“Many businesses told us how they had been ignored when asking Facebook for changes,” campaign organizers wrote in a letter to advertisers this week. “Together, we finally got Facebook’s attention.”

But Facebook’s already-tarnished public image may sustain more damage than its business. If the ad pause lasts one month, Citi Investment Research analyst Jason Bazinet estimates, the likely impact on Facebook’s stock will be $1 per share. Based on Wednesday’s closing price of $237.92, that’s a decline of less than half a percent.

If the businesses extend their boycott indefinitely, Bazinet suggests the likely impact would be $17 a share, or about a 7% decline. That’s less than the 8% drop Facebook shares sustained on Friday after global consumer-products maker Unilever said it would pause advertising on Facebook and Instagram for the rest of the year.

Also, Facebook shares have already bounced back from that dip.

On Wednesday, Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of global affairs and communications, tried to reassure businesses that Facebook “does not benefit from hate” and said the company has every incentive to remove hate speech from its service. He acknowledged that “many of our critics are angry about the inflammatory rhetoric President Trump has posted on our platform and others, and want us to be more aggressive in removing his speech.”

Clegg, however, offered few concessions, and instead repeated Zuckerberg’s frequent talking point that “the only way to hold the powerful to account is ultimately through the ballot box.” He pointed to Facebook’s get-out-the-vote efforts as evidence of the company’s commitment, along with the billions of dollars, tens of thousands of content moderators and other investments it has made in trying to improve its platform.

While Facebook is making efforts to hear out its critics, it remains clear that ultimate decisions will always rest with its founder and CEO, who holds the majority of the company’s voting shares and could effectively run the company for life, should he desire to.

It’s not clear that he’ll see any reason to bend further to meet protesters’ demands.

“Data of past boycotts suggests the observable impact is relatively mild,” said Brian Wieser, global president of business intelligence at GroupM, advertising holding company WPP’s media agency arm.

At the same time, he added, given these “extraordinary times,” it’s possible that a long-term, pervasive boycott could shift advertising dollars away from Facebook to other companies.

Beyond bad PR, though, experts say the protest isn’t likely to make a lasting dent in Facebook’s ad revenue, in part because plenty of other advertisers can step in. Stifel analysts said in a note to investors this week that “well over” 70% of Facebook’s advertising dollars come from small and medium-sized businesses and “these advertisers may be less concerned with the optics of where their ads are placed than large brands.” Citing data from Pathmatics, Stifel said the top 100 brands spent roughly $4.2 billion on Facebook ads last year, representing around 6% of the company’s nearly $70 billion of total ad revenue in 2019.

Facebook hosts more than 8 million advertisers, according to JPMorgan. “We do not expect significant risk to numbers for Facebook as many other marketers ... will take advantage of potentially lower-priced inventory,” JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth wrote in an investor note.

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AP technology writer Mae Anderson contributed to this story.

California sues Cisco for bias based on Indian caste system

By TALI ARBEL July 1, 2020

 In this Oct. 3, 2018, file photo, the Cisco logo appears on a screen at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York's Times Square. California regulators have sued Cisco Systems for discriminating against an engineer at the company's headquarters because he is a Dalit Indian. India’s caste system has long placed Dalits at the bottom of a social hierarchy. California's lawsuit says Cisco broke the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — California regulators have sued Cisco Systems, saying an engineer faced discrimination at the company’s Silicon Valley headquarters because he is a Dalit Indian.

India’s caste system long placed Dalits at the bottom of a social hierarchy, once terming them “untouchables.” Inequities and violence against Dalits have persisted for decades after India banned caste discrimination.

The engineer worked on a team at Cisco’s San Jose headquarters with Indians who all immigrated to the U.S. as adults, and all of whom were of high caste, according to the lawsuit filed Tuesday by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing .

The “higher caste supervisors and co-workers imported the discriminatory system’s practices into their team and Cisco’s workplace,” the lawsuit says.

It says Cisco’s treatment of the employee, who is not named, violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.

The Civil Rights Act bans employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex and national origin. The lawsuit notes the employee is Dalit Indian, and that he is darker-complexioned than non-Dalit Indians.

“It is unacceptable for workplace conditions and opportunities to be determined by a hereditary social status determined by birth,” said DFEH Director Kevin Kish.

Two men who were Cisco supervisors and higher-caste Indians, Sundar Iyer and Ramana Kompella, are named in the suit for discriminating and harassing the employee. The employee received less pay and fewer opportunities, and when he opposed “unlawful practices, contrary to the traditional order between the Dalit and higher castes, Defendants retaliated against him,” the lawsuit says.

Cisco did not steps to prevent this discrimination, the suit says.

The suit says that Iyer told other workers that the employee was Dalit and enrolled at India’s prestigious Indian Institute of Technology through affirmative action. The employee contacted Cisco human relations, wanting to file a discrimination complaint against Iyer, and then Iyer took away his responsibilities and made other changes that reduced the employee’s role and made him feel isolated from his coworkers. The suit says Iyer disparaged the employee to coworkers and said they should avoid him.

After Iyer stepped down, Kompella replaced him, and the suit says Kompella “continued to discriminate, harass, and retaliate” against the employee, including by “giving him assignments that were impossible to complete under the circumstances.”

The lawsuit says that Cisco investigated and did not “substantiate any caste-based or related discrimination or retaliation” against the employee.

Cisco Systems Inc., a major supplier of computer networking gear that makes the internet work, said in a statement that it is committed to an inclusive workplace.

It said it has “robust processes to report and investigate concerns raised by employees,” which it followed in this case, and that it is in compliance with all laws and its own policies. The company said will defend against the allegations in the complaint.

Cisco spokeswoman Helen Saunders declined to say if Iyer and Kompella were still at Cisco, referring a reporter to LinkedIn.

Japanese firm to pay damages for harassment of ethnic Korean employee

IMPERIALISM = RACISM

The Osaka District Court ordered a local company on Thursday to pay damages for verbally attacking an ethnic Korean employee. File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI | License Photo

July 2 (UPI) -- A Japanese real estate company has been ordered to pay about $10,000 in damages for harassing an ethnic Korean employee.

The Osaka District Court ruled Thursday the plaintiff, identified as a woman in her 50s, is to receive compensatory damages from Fuji Corp. Ltd., after she suffered from emotional distress and sued the Japanese firm for about $300,000, Kyodo News reported.

According to the court ruling, in 2013 Fuji Corp. began to distribute racist books and magazines targeting ethnic Korean and Chinese people in Japan.

Two years later, the employee sued the company, citing human and civil rights violations.

The company is accused of retaliating with the distribution of a document that slandered the employee, an ethnic Korean. The document referred to the employee as a "fool who repays kindness with inimicality," according to Kyodo.

The Osaka Court said the company's actions were a violation of law because they did not treat the employee respectfully and raised concerns of discrimination by nationality.

Anti-Korean demonstrations, targeting immigrants, occur across Japan, but some cities are taking action to penalize protests that endorse discrimination against minority groups.

On Wednesday, the city of Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture began to enforce a law against "hate speech" protests.

The new law against protests that target ethnic minorities comes after the city began to fine individuals and groups about $4,600 for holding anti-Korean and other racist rallies, South Korean newspaper Hankook Ilbo reported.

Groups that engage in hate speech are banned in the city from using loudspeakers, carrying banners, distributing flyers or setting up tents, according to the report.

RELATED Asian Americans take campaign against 'Kung Flu' slur to the streets

Anti-Chinese sentiment may also be growing in Japan in the wake of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Earlier this year, a Japanese man in Kyoto was arrested after targeting Chinese nationals in the city and posted anti-Chinese flyers on a telephone pole in a residential neighborhood.

The flyers read, "Don't let in infected Chinese," according to Kyodo.

China, North Korea, Russia test out new freight rail

China, Russia and North Korea are cooperating on a freight rail line, according to a Chinese state-owned enterprise in Jilin Province this week. File Photo by Yonhap

July 2 (UPI) -- A freight rail line connecting North Korea, China and Russia has begun trial runs, according to a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

Jilin Province Northeast Asia Maritime Silk Road International Shipping Co. said on its proprietary website a train carrying six containers left from the city of Hunchun last Friday, arriving an hour later at a train station in the Russian Far East, South Korean news agency Yonhap reported Thursday.


The train then left Russia via a branch line in Khasan, Russia, arriving at the last stop, the Tumen River Station in North Korea on Monday afternoon, the Chinese agency said.

"This trial run was carried out with the active support and under the guidance of the Moscow state headquarters of the ministry of railways of the Russian Federation and the Korean State Railway" of the Ministry of Railways of North Korea, the provincial agency said.

The Chinese state-owned firm said the trial run showed improvements in transportation efficiency and met the objective of lowering logistics costs.

Jilin Shipping said the plan is to "further increase the potential of the route," as well as to "increase the types of cargo, and two-way transportation." The Chinese agency added China and North Korea are to "study the possibility of operating refrigerator cars" across the border within the scope of "policies and regulations."

China is North Korea's No. 1 trading partner, but cross-border exchange declined dramatically following the outbreak of COVID-19 in China in January.

North Korea could be preparing to fight drought, an increasing problem that exacerbates food shortages in the country.

Korean Workers' Party newspaper Rodong Sinmun said Thursday workers must do their utmost "to prevent damage from floods, wind and rain." North Korea's agriculture ministry also said a successful crop depends on the rainy season, according to North Korean state media.

Report: More than 60 countries violated sanctions with North Korea last year

A report from a U.S. think tank released Wednesday found that 62 countries violated international sanctions on North Korea over the past year. File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo'


SEOUL, July 2 (UPI) -- Sixty-two countries violated United Nations Security Council sanctions against North Korea over a one-year period, according to a report from a Washington, D.C.-based think tank

The Institute for Science and International Security report, released Wednesday, cites over 250 alleged violations from February 2019 to February 2020 based on data compiled by the United Nations Panel of Experts on North Korea.

The 62 countries in violation represented an increase of six countries compared to the previous year, according to the institute.

China topped the chart with more than 60 alleged violations and Hong Kong followed with over 20. Sierra Leone, Russia and Indonesia each had a total of 10 or more alleged violations and several countries, including India, Italy, Singapore and Vietnam, had more than five violations each.

South Korea made the list for violating sanctions that included entities selling luxury goods to North Korea, including a pair of armored Mercedes Benzes, and importing coal from the North.

The United States was also listed as a country through which payments related to vessels and shipping were routed.

The report noted, however, that South Korea and the United States were among the countries "reported to have taken remedying actions since becoming aware of the violations and to have prosecuted or extradited responsible companies and individuals."

In May, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed an indictment charging 28 North Koreans and five Chinese citizens with operating a money-laundering scheme worth billions of dollars to help fund the North's nuclear weapons program.

The United States also issued guidance in May for the maritime industry and energy sector to help avoid practices that countries such as North Korea use to evade sanctions, including secretive ship-to-ship transfers done at sea and the disabling of automatic identification systems on vessels.

The Institute for Science and International Security report found that nine countries were involved in arms sales and other military-related cooperation with North Korea, including China, Egypt, Iran and Syria.

"The states in this category warrant special international scrutiny, as they provide a platform for the DPRK to sell arms and also make sensitive procurements for its own WMD and missile programs," the report said.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.

The U.N. Security Council toughened sanctions against North Korea in 2017 after Pyongyang tested long-range ballistic missiles and detonated a nuclear weapon at its Punggye-ri test site.

Sanctions have remained a sticking point in nuclear negotiations between North Korea and the United States, which have been stalled since a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in February 2018 failed to produce an agreement.

North Korea had been seeking the lifting of some sanctions in exchange for taking steps to wind down its nuclear program.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has pushed for another Trump-Kim summit before the U.S. presidential election in November, according to reports Wednesday.

MONOPOLY CAPITALISM
Health experts slam US deal for large supply of virus drug

By MARIA CHENG July 1, 2020

 This is an April 30, 2020, file photo showing Gilead Sciences headquarters in Foster City, Calif. The maker of a drug shown to shorten recovery time for severely ill COVID-19 patients says it will charge $2,340 for a typical treatment course for people covered by government health programs in the United States and other developed countries. Gilead Sciences announced the price Monday, June 29 for remdesivir, and said the price would be $3,120 for patients with private insurance. It will sell for far less in poorer countries where generic drugmakers are being allowed to make it. (AP Photo/Ben Margot, File)

LONDON (AP) — Public health experts on Wednesday criticized the U.S. for securing a large supply of the only drug licensed so far to treat COVID-19.

The U.S. government announced this week that it had an agreement with Gilead Sciences to make the bulk of their production of remdesivir for the next three months available to Americans. The Department of Health and Human Services said it had secured 500,000 treatments through September, which amounts to all but 10% of production in August and September.

“To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it,” Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said in a statement.

Ohid Yaqub, a senior lecturer at the University of Sussex, called the U.S. agreement “disappointing news.”

“It so clearly signals an unwillingness to cooperate with other countries and the chilling effect this has on international agreements about intellectual property rights,” Yaqub said in a statement

Until now, Gilead had donated the drug. That ended Tuesday and Gilead this week set the price for new shipments at $2,300 to $3,100 per treatment course. The company is allowing generic makers to supply the drug at much lower prices to 127 poor or middle-income countries.

In a statement Wednesday, the California-based Gilead said its agreement with the U.S. allows for any unneeded supplies to be sent to other countries. The company said it is “working as quickly as possible” to enable access worldwide. But it noted that U.S. is seeing a significant rise in COVID-19 cases, while “most EU and other developed countries have reduced their levels of disease considerably.”

Early studies testing remdesivir in patients hospitalized with COVID-19 found that those who received the treatment recovered quicker than those who didn’t. It is the only drug licensed by both the U.S. and the European Union as a treatment for those with severe illness from the coronavirus.

Dr. Peter Horby, who is running a large study testing several treatments for COVID-19, told the BBC that “a stronger framework” was needed to ensure fair prices and access to key medicines for people and nations around the world. He said that as an American company, Gilead was likely under “certain political pressures locally.”

President Donald Trump signs his name on a piece of paper during a roundtable with governors on the reopening of America's small businesses, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Thursday, June 18, 2020, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s spokesman, James Slack, declined to criticize the United States for the move. He said the U.K. had a “sufficient stock” of remdesivir for patients who need it, but didn’t specify how much that was.

Thomas Senderovitz, head of the Danish Medicines Agency, told Danish broadcaster DR that the move could endanger Europeans and others down the road.
Full Coverage: Understanding the Outbreak

“I have never seen anything like that. That a company chooses to sell their stock to only one country. It’s very strange and quite inappropriate,” he said. “Right now we have enough to make it through the summer if the intake of patients is as it is now. If a second wave comes, we may be challenged.”

Dr. Michael Ryan, the emergencies chief of the World Health Organization, said the agency was looking into the implications of the U.S. deal for remdesivir.

“There are many people around the world who are very sick .... and we want to ensure that everybody has access to the necessary, life-saving interventions.” He said WHO was “fully committed” to working toward equitable access for such treatments.

Gilead had been developing remdesivir for years as a viral treatment, with millions in U.S. funding, before it was tried for coronavirus. The consumer group Public Citizen estimates that at least $70 million in U.S. public funding went to develop remdesivir.

On Wednesday, Gilead said its supply of remdesivir should increase by the end of September and meet global demand after that. It said some countries should have enough for current needs, from the supply they received for patient testing and other programs.

Gilead has said it expects to spend more than $1 billion by year’s end on testing and manufacturing of remdesivir.

Dr. Penny Ward of King’s College London, noted that many countries have legal provisions that allow them to prohibit the exportation of drugs to other countries during an emergency.

“It is unreasonable to expect that the U.S. government should deny their population access to drugs manufactured in the USA,” she said.

Ward pointed out that another drug that may help people with severe COVID-19, the cheap steroid dexamathasone, is long off-patent and available globally.

The U.S. has the worst coronavirus outbreak in the world, with 2.6 million reported infected and 127,000 confirmed virus-related deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. To date, COVID-19 has sickened more than 10.5 million people worldwide, killing around 512,000, according Johns Hopkins.

Numerous countries including Britain, France, Germany, Netherlands and the U.S. have struck deals with drugmakers to have millions of doses of experimental vaccines delivered before they are licensed. British politicians have said if a vaccine currently being developed by Oxford University and manufactured by AstraZeneca is proven to work, Britons will be first in line to get it.

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AP writers Jill Lawless in London, Jan M. Olsen in Copenhagen and Linda A. Johnson in Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.

Trio of former UConn greats leading social justice charge

 In this March 31, 2009, file photo, Connecticut guard Renee Montgomery brings the ball up during the second half of a women's NCAA college basketball tournament regional final against Arizona State in Trenton, N.J. At rear is Connecticut coach Gene Auriemma. Montgomery and Tiffany Hayes appreciated what former UConn teammate Maya Moore was doing when the All-Star forward stepped away from basketball two years ago to focus on criminal justice reform. The Atlanta Dream guards admit they weren't sure why she couldn't continue keep playing at the same time. Now they have a better understanding. (AP Photo/Mel Evans, File)

NEW YORK (AP) — Renee Montgomery and Tiffany Hayes appreciated what former UConn teammate Maya Moore was doing when the All-Star forward stepped away from basketball two years ago to focus on criminal justice reform.

The Atlanta Dream guards admit they weren’t sure why she couldn’t continue playing at the same time.

Now they have a better understanding.

“I had no idea,” Hayes said on a Zoom call last week. “I thought she wanted a break or something. ... Now I get it, I see what she was going through and trying to accomplish. I commend her for what she’s doing.”

Hayes and Montgomery are following Moore’s example with both deciding to take the upcoming WNBA season off to help with social justice reform and voter registration. They credit Moore’s decision to put her career on hold to help family friend Jonathan Irons get a conviction overturned for inspiration.

Irons was freed on Wednesday, walking out of a Missouri penitentiary nearly four months after a judge overturned his conviction on charges of burglary and assault.

“I saw what she was doing and admired it from afar,” Montgomery said. “Now I start to get it. ... I see why she couldn’t do both. For me, if I’m all focused on something else, I can’t do both. I started to just get why she did what she did.”

The trio of former UConn greats, along with Tina Charles, have come a long way off the court since they led the Huskies to an undefeated season in 2008-09.

UConn coach Geno Auriemma has been impressed by what many of his former players are accomplishing off the court.

“What’s amazing was all these guys were very much extroverts on the court,” the Hall-of-Fame coach told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “On the court, they have big games and personalities. They dominated games. Yet off the court they were so different, very introverted.”

He always knew they were passionate.

“One thing you can probably draw a line through was the passion they have,” he said. “This is coming out right now, and I couldn’t be more proud.”

Montgomery, Moore and Hayes credit Auriemma for helping guide them, even long after graduation. He was one of the first calls that Montgomery and Moore made when they were deciding whether to take time away from basketball.

“A lot of our conversations were about being informed and intelligent,” he said. “When they put their mind to it, they go all in. They were all in on basketball. They were following who they are

Montgomery and Hayes smiled at the thought that a dozen years ago the UConn players had any aspirations of being social activists. They do know that Auriemma and the UConn staff have always fostered players using their voices — even if it took a little while for them to do so.

While most college coaches took to social media to support the movement, the current UConn Huskies were one of the first college teams to put out a statement about racial inequalities with the blessings of their coach.

Hayes said there’s no doubt that her group would have done something similar had the current movement happened during their time in Connecticut.

“I know Renee and Maya would have led the way,” said Hayes, who was a freshman on that championship team.

Both Hayes and Montgomery loved seeing Auriemma and his wife and family at a protest in his community last month. While they appreciated his support, they were a little concerned about the 66-year old being in the higher risk category for the virus.

“He doesn’t need to be out there. Appreciate his support, but we don’t want him to be at risk,” Montgomery said.

Skipping the upcoming WNBA season, which is set to begin later this month in Florida at a single site because of the coronavirus pandemic, was not an easy decision. After the death of George Floyd, neither Montgomery nor Hayes could focus on basketball.

“I knew my mind wasn’t there, my heart wasn’t there,” Montgomery said. “Since those 8 minute and 46 seconds, everyone was a little bit changed. That was the moment I knew I needed to do something different this year.”

Hayes said she has a different mindset now.

“I stopped going to workouts since my mind wasn’t in it anymore.,” she said. “I think that was one of the main reasons why I feel this is the right thing to do right now.”

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AP Sports Writer Teresa M. Walker contributed to this story.

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Catholic priest suspended for comparing BLM to ‘maggots’

CARMEL, Ind. (AP) — A bishop suspended a suburban Indianapolis Catholic priest from public ministry on Wednesday for comparing the Black Lives Matter movement and its organizers to “maggots and parasites” in a recent church bulletin.

Bishop Timothy Doherty, of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana, took the action against the Rev. Theodore Rothrock, of St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Church in Carmel, for comments that the pastor wrote Sunday in the weekly bulletin.

“The only lives that matter are their own and the only power they seek is their own,” Rothrock wrote. “They are wolves in wolves clothing, masked thieves and bandits, seeking only to devour the life of the poor and profit from the fear of others. They are maggots and parasites at best, feeding off the isolation of addiction and broken families, and offering to replace any current frustration and anxiety with more misery and greater resentment.”

The diocese expressed “pastoral concern for the affected communities” in a statement posted on its website.

“The suspension offers the Bishop an opportunity for pastoral discernment for the good of the diocese and for the good of Father Rothrock. Various possibilities for his public continuation in priestly ministry are being considered, but he will no longer be assigned as Pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel. Deacon Bill Reid will serve as Administrator of St. Elizabeth Seton,” the statement said.

Rothrock had been due to take over as pastor of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel next month.

Rothrock issued an apology Tuesday night in a message sent to parishioners and later posted on the church’s website, The Indianapolis Star reported.

“It was not my intention to offend anyone, and I am sorry that my words have caused any hurt to anyone,” Rothrock wrote.

The church must condemn bigotry, which is “a part of the fabric of our society,” he wrote.

“We must also be fully aware that there are those who would distort the Gospel for their own misguided purposes,” Rothrock wrote. “People are afraid, as I pointed out, rather poorly I would admit, that there are those who feed on that fear to promote more fear and division.”

Doherty said Tuesday that Rothrock should issue a clarification of the bulletin comments.

The newly formed Carmel Against Racial Injustice group sought Rothrock’s removal from leadership. The group has said it planned to demonstrate Sunday on the sidewalk surrounding the church. It wasn’t clear Wednesday whether Rothrock’s suspension changed that. The group didn’t immediately reply to a message left Wednesday seeking comment about the suspension.

Movement for Black Lives plans virtual national convention

By AARON MORRISON

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 In this June 24, 2020, file photo, Antonio Mingo, right, holds his fists in the air as demonstrators protest in front of a police line on a section of 16th Street that's been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza, in Washington. Thousands of Black activists from across the U.S. will hold the 2020 Black National Convention on Aug. 28, 2020, via livestream to produce a new political agenda that builds on the protests that followed George Floyd’s death. Organizers of the gathering shared their plans with The Associated Press on Wednesday, July 1, ahead of an official announcement. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)


NEW YORK (AP) — Spurred by broad public support for the Black Lives Matter movement, thousands of Black activists from across the U.S. will hold a virtual convention in August to produce a new political agenda that seeks to build on the success of the protests that followed George Floyd’s death.

The 2020 Black National Convention will take place Aug. 28 via a live broadcast. It will feature conversations, performances and other events designed to develop a set of demands ahead of the November general election, according to a Wednesday announcement shared first with The Associated Press.


The convention is being organized by the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives, a coalition of more than 150 organizations. In 2016, the coalition released its “Vision for Black Lives” platform, which called for public divestment from mass incarceration and for adoption of policies that can improve conditions in Black America.

“What this convention will do is create a Black liberation agenda that is not a duplication of the Vision for Black Lives, but really is rooted as a set of demands for progress,” said Jessica Byrd, who leads the Electoral Justice Project.

At the end of the convention, participants will ratify a revised platform that will serve as a set of demands for the first 100 days of a new presidential administration, Byrd said. Participants also will have access to model state and local legislation.

“What we have the opportunity to do now, as this 50-state rebellion has provided the conditions for change, is to say, ‘You need to take action right this minute,’” Byrd said. “We’re going to set the benchmarks for what we believe progress is and make those known locally and federally.”

In this June 24, 2020, file photo, Tyshawn, 9, left, and his brother Tyler, 11, right, of Baltimore, hold signs saying "Black Lives Matter" and "I Can't Breathe" as they sit on a concrete barrier near a police line as demonstrators protest along a section of 16th Street t that has been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington. Thousands of Black activists from across the U.S. will hold the 2020 Black National Convention on Aug. 28, 2020,  hat has been renamed Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington. Thousands of Black activists from across the U.S. will hold the 2020 Black National Convention on Aug. 28, 2020, via livestream to produce a new political agenda that builds on the protests that followed George Floyd’s death. Organizers of the gathering shared their plans with The Associated Press on Wednesday, July 1, ahead of an official announcement. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)

Wednesday’s announcement comes at a pivotal moment for the BLM movement. A surge in public support, an influx in donations and congressional action to reform policing have drawn some backlash.

President Donald Trump lashed out again Wednesday on Twitter over plans to paint “Black Lives Matter” in yellow across New York City’s famed Fifth Avenue, calling the words a “symbol of hate.” White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Trump “agrees that all Black lives matter” but disagrees with an organization that would make derogatory statements about police officers. McEnany was referring to an oft-cited chant of individual protesters from five years ago.

The Black National Convention was originally planned to happen in person, in Detroit, the nation’s Blackest major city. But as the coronavirus pandemic exploded in March, organizers quickly shifted to a virtual event, Byrd said. The first-ever Black Lives Matter convention was held in Cleveland in 2015.

The most recent AP analysis of COVID-19 data shows Black people have made up more than a quarter of reported virus deaths in which the race of the victim is known.

Initial work to shape the new platform will take place Aug. 6 and 7, during a smaller so-called People’s Convention that will virtually convene hundreds of delegates from Black-led advocacy groups. The process will be similar to one that produced the first platform, which included early iterations of the demand to defund police that now drives many demonstrations.

Other platform demands, such as ending cash bail, reducing pretrial detention and scrapping discriminatory risk-assessment tools used in criminal courts, have become official policy in a handful of local criminal justice systems around the U.S.
Full Coverage: Racial injustice

Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, which organizes in 15 states, said the 2020 Black National Convention will deepen the solutions to systemic racism and create more alignment within the movement.

In this Aug. 24, 2018, file photo, Black Voters Matter Fund co-founders, LaTosha Brown, left, and Cliff Albright, right, lead Mississippi grassroots partners in some empowerment cheers aboard a bus tour to Greenville, Miss. Thousands of Black activists from across the U.S. will hold a virtual convention on Aug. 28, 2020, to produce a new political agenda that builds on the protests that followed George Floyd’s death. Albright, said the 2020 Black National Convention will deepen the solutions to systemic racism and create more alignment within the movement. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

“We’re in this stage now where we’re getting more specific about how all of this is connected to our local organizing,” Albright said. “The hope is that, when people leave the convention, they leave with greater clarity, more resources, connectivity and energy.”

The coalition behind the convention includes Color of Change, BYP100, Dream Defenders and the Black Lives Matter Global Network, which has 16 official chapters nationwide.

Convention organizers said this year’s event will pay tribute to the historic 1972 National Black Political Convention in Gary, Indiana, which concluded with the introduction of a national Black agenda. The Gary gathering included prominent Black leaders such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton, Rep. Shirley Chisholm, who ran for president, as well as Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale, Coretta Scott King and Betty Shabazz.

That convention came after several tumultuous years that included the assassinations of Malcolm X and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and outbreaks of civil unrest, all of which were seen as blows to the civil rights movement.

In this March 13, 1972, file photo, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, executive director of Operation: PUSH, speaks from the floor of the National Black Political Convention in Gary, Ind. Thousands of Black activists from across the U.S. will hold the 2020 Black National Convention on Aug. 28, 2020, via livestream to produce a new political agenda that builds on the protests that followed George Floyd’s death. Convention organizers said this year’s event will pay tribute to the historic 1972 National Black Political Convention. (AP Photo/Jim Wells, File)

The upcoming convention builds on more than a century of Black political organizing.

In 1905, civil rights activist and scholar W.E.B. Du Bois formed the Niagara Movement after a national conference of Black leaders near Buffalo, New York. In a written address to the country, Du Bois and others decried the rise of institutionalized racial inequality in voting, criminal justice systems and public education.

In the 1950s, William Patterson, founder of the now-defunct Civil Rights Congress, led the effort to charge the U.S. with genocide of African Americans using legal standards set by the United Nation. The resulting petition, “We Charge Genocide,” is an oft-cited document in conversations about fatal shootings of Black people by police in the U.S.

And in 1998, organizers of the Black Radical Congress in Chicago met to strategize ways to beat back attacks on affirmative action policies that helped to diversify higher education and other facets of American life.

Like any large political gathering, consensus is not guaranteed. The National Black Political Convention caused divisions between participating organizations over the Black agenda’s position on busing to integrate public schools and statements on global affairs that some viewed as anti-Israel. Ultimately, the agenda prompted a leader of the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, to sever ties with the convention.

Somewhat similarly, the Vision for Black Lives platform and its characterization of Israel as an “apartheid state” committing mass murder against Palestinian people drew allegations of anti-Semitism from a handful of Jewish groups, which had otherwise been supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Black Lives Matter movement’s coalition has more than doubled in size in the years since the first platform, largely because of organizers’ laser focus on issues central to Black freedom, Byrd said.

“That actually is the Black self determination that our politics require,” Byrd said, “that we don’t just respond to the Democratic Party. That we don’t just respond to the Republican Party. We don’t just say ‘Black lives matter’ and beg people to care. We build an alternative container for all of us to connect, outside of the white gaze, to say this is what we want for our communities.”

The August convention will happen on the same day as a commemorative, in-person march on Washington that is being organized by Sharpton, who announced the march during a memorial service for Floyd, a Black man who died May 25 after a white Minneapolis police officer held a knee to his neck.

The Black National Convention will broadcast after the march, Byrd said.

August “is going to be a huge month of Black engagement,” she said.

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Associated Press Writer Darlene Superville in Washington and news researchers Randy Herschaft in New York and Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report. Morrison is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

Court considers status of Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia
yesterday

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An aerial view of the Byzantine-era Hagia Sophia, one of Istanbul's main tourist attractions in the historic Sultanahmet district of Istanbul, Saturday, April 25, 2020. The 6th-century building is now at the center of a heated debate between conservative groups who want it to be reconverted into a mosque and those who believe the World Heritage site should remain a museum. (AP Photo)



ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — A state attorney on Thursday recommended that Turkey’s highest administrative court reject a request that Istanbul’s iconic Hagia Sophia, which now serves as museum, be turned back into a mosque, state-run media reported.

The 6th-century structure was the Byzantine Empire’s main cathedral before it was changed into an imperial mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic, then turned into a museum that attracts millions of tourists each year.

Nationalist and religious groups have long been pressing for the landmark, which they regard as an Muslim Ottoman legacy, to be converted back into a mosque. Others believe the UNESCO World Heritage site should remain a museum, as a symbol of Christian and Muslim solidarity.

On Thursday, Turkey’s Council of State, began considering a request by a group that wants Hagia Sophia to revert back into a mosque.

The lawyer of the group argued that the building was the personal property of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, who conquered Istanbul, and pressed for the annulment of a 1934 Council of Ministers’ decision that turned it into a museum, the Anadolu Agency reported.

A state attorney, meanwhile, argued that the 1934 decision was legal, Anadolu reported. He recommended the request be rejected, arguing that a decision on restoring the structure’s Islamic heritage was up to the government, the agency said.

A decision is expected within two weeks.

Greece as well as the Istanbul-based Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, considered the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, have urged Turkey to keep Hagia Sophia as a museum. Bartholomew warned this week that its conversion into a mosque “will turn millions of Christians across the world against Islam.”

U.S. State Secretary Mike Pompeo waded into the debate Wednesday, urging Turkey to keep Hagia Sophia as a museum “to serve humanity as a much-needed bridge between those of differing faith traditions and cultures.” His comments sparked a rebuke from Turkey’s Foreign Ministry, which said Hagia Sophia was a domestic issue of Turkish national sovereignty.

Built under Byzantine Emperor Justinian, Hagia Sophia was the main seat of the Eastern Orthodox church for centuries, where emperors were crowned amidst ornate marble and mosaic decorations.

Four minarets were added to the terracotta-hued structure with cascading domes and the building was turned into an imperial mosque following the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Constantinople — the city that is now Istanbul.

The building opened its doors as a museum in 1935, a year after the Council of Ministers’

Pompeo urges Turkey not to convert Hagia Sophia into mosque  
Issued on: 01/07/2020 -

The United States has urged Turkey not to change the status of the Hagia Sophia, a church turned mosque turned museum Ozan KOSE AFP

Washington (AFP)

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan not to convert the Hagia Sophia into a mosque and said Istanbul's celebrated former cathedral should remain open to all.

Erdogan, whose roots are in political Islam, has mused about turning Hagia Sophia back into a mosque, triggering tension with neighboring Greece.

Pompeo issued a statement on the eve of an expected Turkish court decision on whether Hagia Sophia was rightfully turned into a museum.

"We urge the government of Turkey to continue to maintain the Hagia Sophia as a museum, as an exemplar of its commitment to respect the faith traditions and diverse history that contributed to the Republic of Turkey, and to ensure it remains accessible to all," Pompeo said.

"The United States views a change in the status of the Hagia Sophia as diminishing the legacy of this remarkable building and its unsurpassed ability -- so rare in the modern world -- to serve humanity as a much-needed bridge between those of differing faith traditions and cultures," he said in a statement.

Pompeo -- an evangelical Protestant who often speaks about the rights of religious minorities -- said that the United States hoped to maintain dialogue with Turkey over the preservation of religious and cultural sites.

Muslim clerics in May recited prayers inside the landmark to celebrate the anniversary of the Ottomans' 1453 conquest of the city, then known as Constantinople.

The stunning edifice was first built as a church in the sixth century under the Byzantine Empire as the centerpiece of Constantinople.

After the Ottoman conquest, it was converted into a mosque before being turned into a museum during the rule of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the secularizing founder of modern Turkey, in the 1930s.

Erdogan mused last year about turning the museum into a mosque.

The remarks have drawn wide concern in Greece, whose Orthodox Church maintains its ecumenical patriarchate in Istanbul.

Turkey is a NATO ally of the United States but the two nations have seen friction in recent years, including over Ankara's incursions into Syria and its purchase of weapons from Russia.

© 2020 AFP

QUE?!

GOP candidate is latest linked to QAnon conspiracy theory


Businesswoman Lauren Boebert speaks during a watch party at Warehouse 25 Sixty Five in Grand Junction, Colo., after polls closed in Colorado's primary election on Tuesday, June 30, 2020. Boebert, a pistol-packing restaurant owner who has expressed support for a far-right conspiracy theory has upset five-term Colorado U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton. Lauren Boebert is an ardent defender of gun rights and border wall supporter. She will run in November’s general election against Diane Mitsch Bush, who won the Democratic nomination on Tuesday. (McKenzie Lange/Grand Junction Sentinel via AP, File)
STRAPS ON A GUN FAILS TO WEAR SENSIBLE SHOES
DENVER (AP) — When Lauren Boebert was asked in May about QAnon, she didn’t shy away from the far-right conspiracy theory, which advances unproven allegations about a so-called deep state plot against President Donald Trump that involves satanism and child sex trafficking.

“Everything that I’ve heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means that America is getting stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values,” she said.

At the time, Boebert was on the political fringe, running a campaign largely focused on her gun-themed restaurant and resistance to coronavirus lockdowns. She is now on a path to becoming a member of Congress after upsetting five-term Rep. Scott Tipton in Tuesday’s Republican primary. The GOP-leaning rural western Colorado district will likely support the party’s nominee in the November general election.

Boebert is part of a small but growing list of Republican candidates who have in some way expressed support for QAnon. They include Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is advancing to a runoff for a congressional seat in a GOP-dominated Georgia congressional district, and Jo Rae Perkins, the party’s Senate nominee in Oregon.

The trend pales in comparison to previous movements that have swept Capitol Hill, such as the 2010 tea party wave. But at a time when the GOP is facing steep headwinds among women and in the suburbs, the QAnon candidates could add extra headaches.

“The more times you have candidates who are crazy, the more it hurts your brand,” said John Feehery, a Republican consultant and former House leadership aide. “The trick is for Republicans to embrace the anti-establishment mood without embracing the crazy.”

Republican leaders have distanced from some candidates, such as Greene. But now that Boebert is the nominee in Colorado, the GOP made clear Wednesday it would support her.

“Lauren won her primary fair and square and has our support,” Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer, the chair of the House Republican campaign arm, said in a statement. “This is a Republican seat and will remain a Republican seat as Nancy Pelosi and senior House Democrats continue peddling their radical conspiracy theories and pushing their radical cancel culture.”

Boebert’s campaign manager, Sherronna Bishop, said the campaign was ignoring the headlines tying the candidate to the QAnon conspiracy.

“We know exactly what we’re about and that’s the Constitution and freedom,” Bishop said. “We are not into conspiracy theories.”

She said Boebert was not available for an interview until Sunday because she is traveling to South Dakota for a Bikers for Trump event near Trump’s Independence Day rally at Mount Rushmore.


The QAnon theory has ricocheted around the darker corners of the internet since late 2017. It is based around an anonymous, high-ranking government official known as “Q” who purportedly tears back the veil on the “deep state,” often tied to satanism, child molestation and even cannibalism.

Trump has retweeted QAnon-promoting accounts. Followers flock to Trump’s rallies wearing clothes and hats with QAnon symbols and slogans.

Republican voters may not know the details of the theory, but they’ve become more amenable to the notion of conspiracies because Trump exploited them during his own campaign and administration, said Joseph Uscinski, a political scientist at the University of Miami who studies conspiracy theories.

“Just as that worked for him, there are going to be copycats, too,” he said.

Uscinski stressed that Democrats also believe in conspiracy theories — he cited Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ insistence that the 1% run politics and that his 2016 losses in Democratic presidential primaries showed the system was “rigged.”

And Uscinski said there’s nothing in the QAnon theory that’s inherently conservative, and Boebert was nowhere near as enthusiastic about it as other candidates.

For example, Perkins, the GOP’s Senate nominee in Oregon, repeated the QAnon oath in a recent video. She took down a video backing the movement, then said she’d been duped by her own campaign staff and supported it again.

Still, Perkins has almost no chance in reliably Democratic Oregon. Boebert is running in a seat that leans Republican and stands the best chance of any of the candidates who have flirted with QAnon to end up in Congress.

“I shouldn’t have to guess if my congressperson believes in satanic, baby-eating child molesters,” Uscinski said.

Boebert owns Shooters Grill, an eatery where servers carry handguns in the aptly named western Colorado town of Rifle. She ended up on Fox News after confronting Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke in a Denver suburb last year over his plans to confiscate assault-style rifles.

Boebert’s sole known comments on QAnon came during a May interview with internet journalist Ann Vandersteel, whose site highlights other conspiracy theories. Vandersteel asked Boebert what she thought of “the Q movement.”

Boebert said she knew about it from her mother, who was “a little fringe.” Pressed, she added, “If this is real, it could be really great for our country.”

Some Republican candidates have referred to the conspiracy theory in social media posts but say they’re not believers. Angela Stanton-King, the GOP’s nominee in Georgia’s solidly Democratic 5th Congressional District, said in a statement that a post linking to a QAnon video on Instagram that begins: “This would explain why they tried so hard to make us hate him...” was just questioning the movement. She also said that her use of QAnon hashtags in tweets didn’t mean she was an adherent, explaining she peppers her social media with various hashtags to extend her reach.

Meanwhile, in Washington, the defeated Tipton was seen Wednesday sitting alone in the massive Capitol Rotunda. He said his campaign focused on the district’s issues and didn’t attack his opponent.

Asked if, in retrospect, he believed that was a winning tactic, he said: “I don’t know. Maybe we’re in a different world right now.”

___

Fram reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.

___

Catch up on the 2020 election campaign with AP experts on our weekly politics podcast, “Ground Game.”

COMMON SENSE VS PENCE
Poll: Two-thirds of Americans say COVID-19 crisis getting worse


A woman wearing a mask jogs in New York City's Brooklyn Bridge Park on June 25, with One World Trade Center and the Manhattan Skyline in the background at sunset. Photo by John Angelillo/UPI | License Photo

July 2 (UPI) -- Nearly two-thirds of Americans, a record share, believe the coronavirus crisis is getting worse, according to a new survey Thursday.

Gallup said 65 percent of respondents polled last week, amid new surges in cases nationwide, said the overall COVID-19 situation is worsening either by a "little" or "a lot." That figure is an increase from 37 percent just two weeks earlier, and the previous high of 56 percent in April.

Less than a quarter, 23 percent, answered that the situation is getting better -- down from 47 percent earlier this month.
Gallup also said the share of U.S. adults "very" or "somewhat" concerned about catching the coronavirus disease has increased to 56 percent, the highest figure since it was at 57 percent in April.

RELATED Poll: With election 5 months away, 20% satisfied with U.S. direction

Gallup said the results are based on its online COVID-19 tracking survey, which interviews weekly random samples from its probability-based panel. The pollster says it uses probability-based, random sampling methods to recruit panel members.

"Americans may dispute whether the recent increase in new daily coronavirus cases represents a continuation of the first wave or the start of a second wave of infections -- but there is a growing public consensus that the situation is getting worse," Gallup wrote.

"Recent developments are a grim reminder that even as the number of new daily cases declined in recent months, the virus never went away. Consequently, Americans are increasingly likely to think the disruptions to daily life will persist in the U.S. through at least the end of this year."

RELATED Poll: More than 80% in U.S. confident they can ward off COVID-19

Gallup polled nearly 3,500 panel members for the survey, which has a margin of error of 3 points.