World
Civil rights groups condemn ‘Soul Fest’ concerts at Georgia park with giant Confederate carving
ATLANTA (AP) — Civil rights groups are criticizing a concert series with Black performers dubbed “Soul Fest” that is being held at a Georgia park replete with Confederate imagery, including a giant carving of Confederate leaders.
Stone Mountain Park just outside Atlanta is where the Ku Klux Klan marked its rebirth in 1915. Its colossal, mountainside sculpture of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson is the largest Confederate monument ever crafted and has special protection enshrined in Georgia law.
The park has taken steps in recent years to try to soften its Confederate legacy and promote itself as a family site, but civil rights groups have said the moves fall way short of what’s needed.
The “Soul Fest” concert series is a way to “normalize and sanitize” the hateful message of the park, said Atlanta NAACP President Richard Rose.
“They’re saying, ‘This is OK. Get used to it. It’s cool,’” he said in a phone interview on Thursday.
Rose said he encouraged two of the bands to pull out of the event, but they told him they were under contract, and their music brings people together.
“The music can’t bring people together in front of this icon of the Confederacy,” he said.
Emails to the park and its management company, Thrive Attractions, were not immediately returned. In a news release earlier this month, the park promoted Soul Fest as a new event that would allow families to experience a “full day of fun.” An ad for the event on the park’s website featured a photo of a smiling Black man and Black woman on a lawn.
The event, which runs from Thursday night through Sunday night, features rhythm and blues groups, a gospel singer and a Prince cover band.
It’s a “bad faith effort” to distance the park from the Confederacy, said Rivka Maizlish, a researcher with the Southern Poverty Law Center.
“It’s an effort to pretend that the park is for everyone while still maintaining this massive symbol of white supremacy,” she said. Some supporters of the carving say it is a tribute to their ancestors who fought in the Civil War, not a celebration of white power.
The park 15 miles (25 kilometers) northeast of downtown Atlanta attracts large numbers of tourists and other visitors interested in hiking to the top of the mountain, walking the grounds or seeing a light show. In 2021, the park’s board voted to relocate Confederate flags from a busy walking trail and create a museum exhibit that relates the history of the site and the carving, which was completed in 1972 amid resistance to the civil rights movement and desegregation by Georgia and other Southern states.
The changes approved by the board came amid a national reckoning on race that brought down dozens of Confederate monuments in 2020.
The park, however, still maintains the giant carving, which measures 190 feet (58 meters) across and 90 feet (27 meters) tall. The Soul Fest concerts will take place on a lawn that faces the monument just months after a Confederate group gathered there.
“It’s just so beyond obnoxious and disgusting and gross that they’re hosting these artists now and trying to pull in a different audience,” said Brian Morris, a member of the Stone Mountain Action Coalition, an advocacy group that has called on the park to stop maintaining the carving.
World
Mavs rookie center Dereck Lively II leaves Game 3 of West finals after taking knee to head
DALLAS (AP) — Dallas Mavericks center Dereck Lively II left Game 3 of the Western Conference finals against Minnesota on Sunday night after getting hit in the back of the head by a knee from Karl-Anthony Towns.
The Mavericks said Lively was questionable to return with a sprained neck. The accidental contact caused his head to snap forward.
The rookie from Duke stayed on the court holding his head and was down for several minutes before appearing dazed as he was helped off the court and taken to the locker room.
Lively fell as Mike Conley was driving for a missed shot, and Towns was pursuing an offensive rebound when his knee hit Lively’s head in the second quarter.
The 20-year-old Lively and starting center Daniel Gafford played a big role in helping Dallas take a 2-0 lead in the series. Lively was 12 of 12 from the field in the series, including three makes in Game 3, when he was injured.
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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA
World
Israeli airstrike on Rafah kills 2 top Hamas commanders, dozens of civilians
An Israeli airstrike on a Hamas compound in the Gazan city of Rafah has killed two top Hamas officials as well as dozens of civilians.
While the exact number of killed remains unclear at this time, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed that it struck a Hamas compound in Rafah in which “significant Hamas terrorists were operating.”
The IDF, citing intelligence that it said indicated Hamas’ use of the area, said it carried out the strike “against legitimate targets under international law.”
IDF sources told Fox News Digital the strike eliminated Yassin Rabia, the commander of Hamas’ leadership in Judea and Samaria, as well as Khaled Nagar, a senior official in Hamas’ Judea and Samaria wing.
The IDF said that both men had perpetrated numerous terrorist attacks in the early 2000s in which Israeli civilians and soldiers were killed.
The IDF acknowledged reports that “several civilians in the area were harmed” from the airstrike and a subsequent fire. It said the incident is “under review.”
HAMAS LAUNCHES ROCKET BARRAGE INTO ISRAEL FROM RAFAH, SOUNDING ALARMS IN TEL AVIV
Palestinian health and civil emergency service officials, meanwhile, say the airstrike killed at least 35 Palestinians and wounded dozens more.
A spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said the death toll is likely to rise as search and rescue efforts continue in Rafah’s Tal al-Sultan neighborhood, more than a mile northwest of the city center.
The Red Crescent Society said Israel had designated the location a “humanitarian area.” The neighborhood is not included in areas that Israel’s military ordered evacuated this month.
Footage from the scene showed heavy destruction.
The airstrike was reported hours after Hamas fired a barrage of rockets from Gaza that set off air raid sirens as far away as Tel Aviv.
There were no immediate reports of casualties in what appeared to be the first long-range rocket attack from Gaza since January. Hamas’ military wing claimed responsibility. Israel’s military said eight projectiles crossed into Israel after being launched from Rafah and “a number” were intercepted and the launcher was destroyed.
PRESIDENT OF UN’S TOP COURT HAS LONG HISTORY OF ANTI-ISRAEL BIAS: ‘CONFLICT OF INTEREST’
The war between Israel and Hamas has killed nearly 36,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and fighters in its count. Israel blames civilian deaths on Hamas because the militants operate in dense, residential areas.
Around 80% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, severe hunger is widespread and U.N. officials say parts of the territory are experiencing famine.
Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack inside Israel in which Palestinian militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seized some 250 hostages. Hamas still holds some 100 hostages and the remains of around 30 others after most of the rest were released during a cease-fire last year.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel must take over Rafah to eliminate Hamas’ remaining battalions and achieve “total victory” over the militants, who recently regrouped in other parts of Gaza.
Sunday’s strike came two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end its military offensive in Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s population sought shelter before Israel’s incursion this month. Tens of thousands of people remain in the area while many others have fled.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
World
Lithuania’s Gitanas Nauseda declares victory in presidential election
Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte conceded defeat in the final round of the Baltic nation’s presidential election.
Lithuania’s President Gitanas Nauseda has declared victory in the final round of the Baltic nation’s presidential election, as partial results showed him far ahead in the two-way race against Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte.
Ballots from nearly 90 percent of polling stations on Sunday showed Nauseda, 60, winning roughly three-quarters of the vote, followed by Simonyte, 49, from the ruling centre-right Homeland Union party.
Simonyte conceded defeat in comments to reporters and congratulated Nauseda.
This is the second time Nauseda and Simonyte have competed in a presidential run-off election. In 2019, Nauseda beat Simonyte with 66 percent of the vote.
As president, Nauseda has a semi-executive role, which includes heading the armed forces, chairing the defence and national security policy body and representing the country at NATO and European Union summits.
The former senior economist with the Swedish banking group SEB, who is not affiliated with any party, won the first round of the election on May 12 with 44 percent of the votes, short of the 50 percent he needed for an outright victory.
Simonyte was the only woman out of eight candidates in the first round and came second with 20 percent.
Both Nauseda and Simonyte support increasing defence spending to at least 3 percent of Lithuania’s gross domestic product, from the 2.75 percent planned for this year, in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Like other Baltic nations, Lithuania worries it could be Moscow’s next target. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said he has no intention of attacking any NATO countries.
The uneasy relationship between Nauseda and Simonyte has also caught the limelight in foreign policy debates, most notably on Lithuania’s relations with China.
Bilateral ties turned tense in 2021, when Vilnius allowed Taiwan to open a de facto embassy under the island’s name, a departure from the common diplomatic practice of using the name of the capital, Taipei, to avoid angering Beijing.
China, which considers self-ruled Taiwan a part of its territory, downgraded diplomatic relations with Vilnius and blocked its exports, leading some Lithuanian politicians to urge a restoration of relations for the sake of the economy.
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