Inspired by Canadian truck protests, ‘People’s Convoy’ heads to Washington

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday pledged billions of euros in aid for Central European countries that suffered enormous damage to infrastructure and housing during the massive flooding that has so far claimed 24 lives in the region.

Von der Leyen paid a quick visit to a flood-damaged area in southeastern Poland and met with heads of the governments of the affected countries — Poland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

She said funds will be made available quickly for infrastructure repair from the EU’s solidarity fund, as well as 10 billion euros ($11 billion) from what is called the cohesion fund — for the most urgent repairs. In a special approach, no co-financing will be required from these countries for the money to be released.

“Here we say it’s 100% European money, no co-financing,” von der Leyen told a news briefing. “These are extraordinary times, and extraordinary times need extraordinary measures. ”

Meanwhile, a massive flood wave threatened new areas and heavy rains also caused flooding and evacuation of some 1,000 people in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna. In Central Europe, the receding waters revealed the scale of the destruction caused by exceptionally heavy rains that began a week ago.

Czech Interior Minister Vit Rakušan said one more person was reported killed on Thursday in the country’s hard-hit northeast, bringing the death toll there to five. There were also seven deaths each in Poland and Romania, and five in Austria — with the overall death toll now at 24.

Authorities deployed troops to help. In the northeastern Czech Republic, soldiers joined firefighters and other emergency crews to help with the recovery efforts. Army helicopters distributed humanitarian aid while soldiers were building temporary bridges in place of those that were swept away.

Some 400 people remained evacuated from the homes in the regional capital of Ostrava. In the southwest, the level of the Luznice River reached an extreme high but the evacuation of 1,000 people in the town of Veseli nad Luznici was not necessary for the moment, officials said.

Cleanup efforts were underway in Austria, where flooding washed away roads and led to landslides and bridge damage. Firefighters and soldiers pumped water and mud out of houses and disposed of damaged furniture, broadcaster ORF quoted fire department spokesperson Klaus Stebal as saying.

The governor of Lower Austria province, Johanna Mikl-Leitner, said reconstruction was expected to take years, according to the Austria Press Agency.

The Vienna public transport company has had to pump almost 1 million liters (260,000 gallons) of water since last weekend. Ten towns and areas were still inaccessible on Thursday, APA reported.

In Hungary, flood waters continued to rise as authorities closed roads and rail stations. Ferries along the Danube River halted. In the capital, Budapest, water spilled over the city’s lower quays and threatened to reach tram and metro lines. Some transport services were suspended.

Further upriver, in a region known as the Danube Bend, homes and restaurants near the riverbanks were inundated.

Nearly 6,000 professionals, including members of Hungary’s water authority and military, were mobilized, and prison inmates were involved in filling sandbags, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said at a news conference Thursday.

The Danube stood at over 771 centimeters (25 feet), approaching the 891-centimeter (29.2 feet) record set during major flooding in 2013.

In southwestern Poland, the high waters reached the city of Wroclaw and an extended wave was expected to take many hours, even days to pass, exerting pressure on the embankments.

The water level on the Oder River just before Wroclaw was 6.4 meters (21 feet), some 2 meters (6.5 feet) above alarm levels but still lower compared to the disastrous flooding in 1997.

In the two most-affected towns, Stronie Slaskie and Ladek-Zdroj, tap water and power were restored, said Gen. Michal Kamieniecki, who was put in charge of the recovery operations there after an emotional appeal to Prime Minister Donald Tusk for help the day before by a young woman identified only as Katarzyna.

As concerns mounted, Tusk invited von der Leyen to Wroclaw to see the situation first hand. Government leaders from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria were also there.

In Italy, rivers flooded in the provinces of Ravenna, Bologna and Forlì-Cesena, as local mayors asked people to stay on the upper floors or leave their houses. Those areas were hit by devastating floods in 2023, when more than 20 rivers overflowed, killing 17 people.

Italy’s vice minister for transport and infrastructure, Galeazzo Bignami, said Thursday that two people were reported missing in Bagnocavallo, in Ravenna province.

At least 800 residents in Ravenna and almost 200 in Bologna province spent the night in shelters, schools and sports centers. Trains were suspended and schools closed while residents were advised to avoid travel.

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Associated Press writers Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, Karel Janicek in Prague and Giada Zampano in Rome contributed to this report.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican on Thursday gave the green light for Catholics to continue flocking to a southern Bosnian village where children reported seeing visions of the Virgin Mary, offering its approval for devotion at one of the most contested sites of Roman Catholic practice in recent years.

In a detailed analysis after nearly 15 years of study, the Vatican’s doctrine office didn’t declare that the reported apparitions in Medjugorje were authentic or of supernatural origin. And it flagged concerns about contradictions in some of the “messages” the alleged visionaries say they have received over the years.

But in line with new Vatican criteria in place this year, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that the positive “spiritual fruits” stemming from the Medjugorje experience more than justified allowing the faithful to organize pilgrimages there and permit public acts of devotion.

The decision overrules years of doubts about the veracity of the alleged apparitions by the region’s past diocesan bishops and Vatican experts. And it ignores current concerns about the economic interests that have turned Medjugorje into a thriving destination for religious tourists.

Last year alone, 1.7 million Eucharistic wafers were distributed during Masses there, according to statistics published on the site’s website, a rough estimate of the numbers of Catholics who visited.

But with Pope Francis’ blessing, the doctrine office decided that “the abundant and widespread fruits, which are so beautiful and positive,” justified its decision. It said doing so “highlights that the Holy Spirit is acting fruitfully for the good of the faithful in the midst of this spiritual phenomenon.”

In 1981, six children and teenagers reported seeing visions of the Madonna on a hill in the village of Medjugorje, located in the wine-making region of southern Bosnia. Some of those original “seers” have claimed the visions have occurred regularly since then, even daily, and that Mary sends them messages.

By some counts, the Virgin Mary has appeared to the “seers” more than 40,000 times since 1981.

“It’s my third time here and each time I come I feel like I really want to come back,” said Mia Hash, a pilgrim from Lebanon who was visiting Medjugorje on a rainy Thursday as the Vatican made its announcement. “It’s the most peaceful place on earth, I really love it here.”

However, unlike at the more well-known and established Catholic sanctuaries in Fatima, Portugal or Lourdes, France, the alleged apparitions at Medjugorje were never declared authentic by the Vatican.

And over the years, the area’s local diocesan bishops and some Vatican officials had cast doubt on the reliability and motivations of the “seers.” Two experts tapped by Pope Benedict XVI to study the Medjugorje concluded the Medjugorje phenomenon was “demonic” in origin.

Even Francis in 2017 expressed doubts about the messages, saying “I prefer Our Lady to be a mother, our mother, and not a telegraph operator who sends out a message every day at a certain time,” he said.

Religious tourism has become an important part of the local economy, with an entire industry catering to pilgrims: hotels, private accommodations, family-run farm businesses, even sports complexes and camping sites. Their growth has contributed to the surrounding municipality’s financial well-being after the Bosnian war in the 1990s devastated the economy.

Yet the Vatican expressed no concern about the economic interests behind Medjugorje, and the Holy See’s editorial director, Andrea Tornielli, cited by name one Milan-based religious travel agency, Rusconi Travel, that takes pilgrims there by bus.

Robert Fastiggi, a consultant at the Vatican’s Marian apparitions observatory, praised the time the Vatican took to come to a decision and said he believed the Holy See was likely impressed by “the many signs of authentic Catholic spirituality connected to Medjugorje.”

“I believe the DDF (Vatican dicastery) made its decision in light of the Gospel criterion: ‘By their fruits you will know them,’’’ said Fastiggi, a professor of dogmatic theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.

In its assessment, the Vatican doctrine office recalled that in May of this year it announced it was no longer in the business of authenticating alleged apparitions and other supposedly supernatural phenomena that have attracted Catholics for centuries, including statues that allegedly weep blood or stigmatas that are said to erupt spontaneously on hands or feet.

The new criteria envisage six main outcomes, with the most favorable being that the church issues a noncommittal doctrinal green light, a so-called “nihil obstat,” which means there is nothing about the event that is contrary to the faith, and therefore Catholics can express devotion to it.

The Vatican on Thursday gave that “nihil obstat” to Medjugorje. The local bishop issued the decree authorizing devotion there, and it is now possible that a sanctuary could be built, said the head of the doctrine office, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández.

At a nearly two-hour news conference at which those present were invited to recite the “Hail Mary” prayer at the end, Fernández revealed that St. John Paul II was a firm believer in Medjugorje and had wanted to visit but was waved off by the local bishop.

The decision doesn’t require the faithful to believe in the Medjugorje phenomenon, but allows them to.

In its analysis, the Vatican listed what it called the many spiritual benefits that have been associated with pilgrimages to the site, including people deciding that they want to become priests or nuns, couples reconciling after troubles in marriage, healings after prayer and new works of charity caring for orphans and drug addicts.

It listed no example of any negative experiences associated with Medjugorje. Nor did it mention that the priest most closely associated with Medjugorje and the six “visionaries” was defrocked by the Vatican in 2009 for, among other things, spreading false doctrine.

The Vatican did seem to want to distance the place from the people who received the alleged apparitions, stressing that these benefits haven’t occurred as a result of meetings with them but rather “in the context of pilgrimages to the places associated with the original events.”

Fernández said there was no prohibition on contact with the “seers,” but that it wasn’t advisable. And in an indication that the jury is still out on them and the entire phenomenon, he reaffirmed that Francis’ personal envoy to Medjugorje would keep watch over the site and evaluate any future messages purportedly received by the “visionaries” before they are published.

“The nihil obstat doesn’t resolve everything for the future,” he said.

In its 17-page document, it used nearly four pages to list concerns about problems in some of the thousands of individual messages the alleged visionaries have received, including cases where the message contradicted aspects of Catholic doctrine.

The decision will surely impact Medjugorje, which lies in the municipality of Citluk, one of the smallest in Bosnia with some 18,000 residents but economically well-off.

“Medjugorje means a lot, all economic sectors lean on Medjugorje,” said Ante Kozina, the tourism association chief. “It is a growth generator for the entire municipality.”

On Thursday, pilgrims in raincoats and umbrellas said they were pleased with the Vatican’s decision.

“I think that is OK so they don’t make hasty decisions,” said Darko Dumic, a pilgrim from the Croatian coastal town of Split. But he expressed hope that there will be an even more positive decision in the future, “an official one for Medjugorje to become a holy place.”

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Emric contributed from Medjugorje, Bosnia. Gec contributed from Belgrade, Serbia.

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

WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alaska man accused of sending graphic threats to injure and kill six Supreme Court justices and some of their family members has been indicted on federal charges, authorities said Thursday.

Panos Anastasiou, 76, is accused of sending more than 465 messages through a public court website, including graphic threats of assassination and torture coupled with racist and homophobic rhetoric.

The indictment does not specify which justices Anastasiou targeted, but Attorney General Merrick Garland said he made the graphic threats as retaliation for decisions he disagreed with.

“Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families,” he said.

Anastasiou has been indicted on 22 counts, including nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce.

He was released from detention late Thursday by a federal magistrate in Anchorage with a a list of conditions, including that he not directly or indirectly contact any of the six Supreme Court justices he allegedly threatened or any of their family members.

During the hearing that lasted more than hour, Magistrate Kyle Reardon noted some of the messages Anastasiou allegedly sent between March 2023 and mid-July 2024, including calling for the assassination of two of the Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices so the current Democratic president could appoint their successors.

Instead of toning down his rhetoric after receiving a visit from FBI agents last year, Anastasiou increased the frequency of his messages and their vitriolic language, Reardon said.

Gray-haired and shackled at the ankles above his salmon-colored plastic slippers, Anastasiou wore a yellow prison outfit with ACC printed in black on the back, the initials for the Anchorage Correctional Facility, at the hearing. Born in Greece, he moved to Anchorage 67 years ago. Reardon allowed him to contact his elected officials on other matters like global warming, but said the messages must be reviewed by his lawyers.

Defense attorney Jane Imholte noted Anastasiou is a Vietnam veteran who is undergoing treatment for throat cancer and has no financial means other than his Social Security benefits.

She told the judge that Anastaiou, who signed his own name to the emails, worried about his pets while being detained. She said he only wanted to return home to care for his dogs, Freddie, Buddy and Cutie Pie.

He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for each count of making threats against a federal judge and up to five years for each count of making threats in interstate commerce if convicted.

Threats targeting federal judges overall have more than doubled in recent years amid a surge of similar violent messages directed at public officials around the country, the U.S. Marshals Service previously said.

In 2022, shortly after the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a man was stopped near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with weapons and zip ties.

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Thiessen reported from Anchorage, Alaska.

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