As many Chinese embraced new found freedoms on Thursday after the country dropped key parts of its tough zero-COVID regime, some cities warned residents to maintain vigilance against a virus that, until now, has been largely kept in check.

Three years into the pandemic, many in China had been itching for Beijing to start to align its rigid virus prevention measures with the rest of the world, which has largely opened up in an effort to live with the disease.

Those frustrations boiled over into widespread protests last month, the biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012.

Without saying it was a response to the protests, some cities and regions began relaxing COVID controls, in moves that heralded a nationwide loosening of the rules unveiled by the National Health Commission on Wednesday.

The NHC said infected people with mild symptoms can now quarantine at home and it dropped the need for testing and health status apps for a variety of activities including travelling around the country.

Domestic ticket sales for tourist and leisure spots have soared, according to state press, while some people took to social media to reveal they had tested positive for the virus – something that had previously carried heavy stigma in China.

Others expressed caution.

“I know COVID is not so ‘horrifying’ now, but it is still contagious and will hurt,” said one post on the Weibo platform. “The fear brought to our heart cannot be easily dissipated.”

China reported 21,439 new COVID-19 infections on Dec. 7, compared with 25,321 a day earlier.

“Too many positives!” said another Weibo user.

Top officials have been softening their tone on the dangers posed by the virus in recent weeks, bringing China closer to what other countries have been saying for more than a year as they dropped restrictions.

But, while announcing the implementation of the new measures late on Wednesday, some cities urged residents to remain vigilant.

“The general public should maintain a good awareness of personal protection, and be the first responsible person for their own health,” Zhengzhou, the central city home to the world’s largest iPhone factory, said in a message to residents.

It urged residents to wear masks, maintain social distancing, seek medical attention for fever and other COVID symptoms and, especially for the elderly, to get vaccinated.

Some analysts and medical experts say China is ill-prepared for a major surge in infections, partly due to low vaccination rates among vulnerable, older people and its fragile healthcare system.

“It (China) may have to pay for its procrastination on embracing a ‘living with Covid’ approach,” Nomura analysts said in a note on Thursday.

Infection rates in China are only around 0.13%, “far from the level needed for herd immunity”, Nomura said.

Feng Zijian, a former official in China’s Center for Disease Control, told the China Youth Daily that up to 60% of China’s population could be infected in the first large-scale wave before stabilising.

“Ultimately, around 80%-90% of people will be infected,” he said.

China’s current tally of 5,235 COVID-related deaths is a tiny fraction of its population of 1.4 billion, and extremely low by global standards. Some experts have warned that toll could rise above 1.5 million if the exit is too hasty.

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In a monastery in central Myanmar, a Buddhist monk, Wathawa, rallies his militia with a cry: “What’s our spirit like?”

“The spirit of iron!” shout a group of rifle-bearing men, loyalists of the military junta that seized power last year, now fighting to crush fledgling pro-democracy groups.

The scene, from a video posted online by army-linked media, would have seemed unimaginable to previous generations in the overwhelmingly Buddhist nation. Now, it underscores the close alliance the military has forged with the Buddhist hierarchy.

Myanmar’s Buddhist clergy previously sought to topple successive military dictatorships that kept citizens impoverished and isolated. Monks were part of the 1988 uprising that brought Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to prominence. Thousands thronged the streets during 2007 anti-government protests known as the Saffron Revolution.

Many are now supporters of the new junta.

The change reflects a years-long effort by the military to build stronger ties with Buddhist leaders by lavishing them with gifts and cultivating a shared ultranationalist and often Islamophobic vision, according to 11 people familiar with the monastic system, including three current or former monks and four researchers. Three spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of military reprisals.

In recent years, ultranationalist monks incited violence against Muslims in Myanmar, including riots that killed 25 people in 2013 and army-led attacks against the Rohingya minority.

As the new junta suppresses opponents, religious leaders have been largely absent from the widespread resistance to last year’s army coup, which ended the decade-long democratic experiment that brought Suu Kyi to power.

Some monks, like Wathawa, who claims to have thousands of armed followers, are serving to rally militia fighters against armed pro-democracy groups that emerged after the military crushed peaceful protests with deadly force.

Troops have burned more than 100 villages and killed civilians in attacks the United Nations has called probable war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In public comments and state media broadcasts as recently as November, the military has acknowledged forming militia in some villages “based on their demands”, but has denied arming monks. It denies targeting civilians, saying its operations are against “terrorists”. A military spokesman did not respond to Reuters’ requests for comment about its relationship with the militia.

Wathawa and other ultranationalist monks have appeared marching alongside soldiers, carrying weapons, in images published by local media and verified through open-source investigation by UK-based monitoring group Myanmar Witness, which also geolocated militia training happening at his monastery in Kantbalu, in central Myanmar.

Wathawa, who like many monks goes by one name, confirmed his leadership of militia fighters in a phone interview with Reuters, calling resistance forces “a bunch of thugs”.

He said he founded the militia, which operates out of Kantbalu, to stabilize the region and protect locals. Accusing resistance forces of killing civilians, including monks, and “doing nothing but destructive things”, he said, “I am doing what I can. It is not wrong that I founded the militia.”

Pro-democracy forces acknowledge killing suspected military informants, but deny targeting civilians.

“There is no guarantee for our lives,” Wathawa said. “Even though I’m talking to you today, tomorrow might be the day I die.”

Not all of the country’s several hundred thousand monks support the junta. Almost every week, dozens gather to protest in monasteries in the Buddhist heartland of Mandalay, despite surveillance and crackdowns. Several disrobed and joined armed resistance groups.

Htavara, a monk who led Saffron Revolution protests and now lives in exile in Norway, said monks who participated in the violence against the junta’s opponents were violating the first precept of their religion.

“Killing living things is an unforgivable crime in Buddhism,” he said.

The country’s top Buddhist authority, known as the Ma Ha Na, has been silent on the crisis. Its chairman met with army chief Min Aung Hlaing shortly after the coup. The organization did not respond to a request for comment about militant monks and whether it supported the junta.

Among the venerated religious leaders loudly backing the junta is Sitagu, a once beloved figure who took part in the 1988 uprising. Now he is a regular companion of Min Aung Hlaing, whom he calls “benevolent king”, flying with him to Russia. During the military’s 2017 expulsion of the Rohingya, he justified the killing of non-Buddhists in a sermon that asserted their lives were worth less.

In one recent video from a trip to Russia — President Vladimir Putin is one of the junta leader’s few remaining allies — Sitagu can be seen beating drums alongside Russian monks and chanting, “Peace and glory to the great country of Russia”.

In a message to Reuters, Sitagu said he was “deeply saddened by the current situation in Myanmar, especially by the difficulties that people are facing”. He said he did not favour “any parties” and that it was his desire that “the people and the nation prosper”.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, on a visit to Myanmar in August, said he backed the military’s attempts to “stabilize” the country. In an emailed response to Reuters, Russia’s embassy in Myanmar provided details of Sitagu’s trip and said Russia-Myanmar ties were “deepening in many directions” including trade, investment, education and energy. “This will benefit the peoples of the two countries in the long run,” it said.

The displays of bellicosity by some monks have led to a rare backlash in Myanmar. Online memes and expletive-filled posts against military-supporting monks are now common.

Ten people interviewed by Reuters in cities including Yangon and Mandalay, among them a grocery store owner and a director of commercials, said they had changed the way they donated to monks. Some were scrutinizing monks more closely to avoid aiding those that support the junta, while others had eschewed the centuries-old tradition completely.

“It is the start of the change,” said Naung Naung, a student from the central Magwe region, referring to the increasing willingness of Myanmar residents to question the religious establishment.

Until recently, everyone in the country recognized “dictators as dictators”, said one monk from Kantbalu, the same hometown as Wathawa. “People and monks were on the same side.”

In response, he said, the military organized a “separation”, in part by cultivating patronage relationships with monks, particularly the most influential.

Furthermore, the military instilled hatred against other religions, he said.

After the monks joined protests, the military started offering special privileges to religious leaders, through a patronage practice known as “masters and followers”, said Nickey Diamond, a Burmese academic from Mandalay who has written about religion and nationalism in Myanmar. His account was echoed by the monk from Kantbalu and another academic, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Myanmar monks teach laypeople who in turn provide them with essentials such as food and clothing. But monkhoods that built strong relationships with the military were awarded gifts like land, cars, and monasteries, said Diamond, without identifying the beneficiaries.

“When the Saffron Revolution happened, the military feared it, and attempted to divide the force,” he said, referring to the regime’s opponents.

Meanwhile, a virulent strain of Buddhist nationalism was being propagated within the country’s monasteries, its origins traceable to an official within the previous military dictatorship who wrote and distributed xenophobic, anti-Muslim tracts.

The books, which told sensationalized stories about misdeeds of Muslims and the marriage of Muslim men to Buddhist women, “brainwashed monks to be Islamophobic”, said the monk from Kantbalu, whose account of exposure to anti-Muslim texts echoed those of several others interviewed by Reuters.

“My life has been spent in prestigious monastic Buddhist centers in Myanmar,” he said. “Since I was 14 years old, I read books that condemned other religions.”

In the mid-2010s, an ultranationalist movement, Ma Ba Tha, advocated boycotts of Muslim-owned businesses, called for discriminatory race and religion laws, and was implicated in waves of deadly violence against Muslims. At the time, the group denied inciting violence and said it was only against Islamic extremists.

Min Aung Hlaing, the general who overthrew Suu Kyi in February 2021, has tried to cultivate an image as a protector of the nation’s majority Theravada Buddhist religion, in the style of a long line of warrior-kings.

The day before he seized power, he placed the first stone in a seated Buddha statue he says will be the world’s largest. He is also seeking donations for the world’s largest Buddhist pagoda “to show the world that Theravada Buddhism is shining brightly in Myanmar”, according to state media.

State news broadcasts displaying military support for Buddhism increased four-fold in the nine months immediately after the coup, according to an analysis by the United States Institute of Peace, a U.S.-funded institute that analyzes conflicts overseas. Min Aung Hlaing has sought to justify the coup by claiming Suu Kyi failed to protect “race and religion”.

Despite standing beside the army as it oversaw the deadly 2017 purge of 730,000 ethnic Rohingya, the Suu Kyi government later attempted to rein in ultranationalist Ma Ba Tha monks who publicly endorsed the violence. Ma Ba Tha was disbanded and Wirathu, a monk who toured the country inciting hatred of Muslims, was jailed for sedition.

Since last year’s coup, Suu Kyi and most of her government have been jailed on multiple charges, while Ma Ba Tha monks including Wirathu have been freed. The junta has not said why they were released. Wirathu’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.

In videos posted online, Wathawa, known locally as “Ma Ba Tha monk” because of his ties to the group, praises Min Aung Hlaing as the “greatest leader” to rule Myanmar. He says he has personally founded “many militia” to fight pro-democracy groups and has more than 4,000 followers.

Taiga, a spokesman for the Taze People’s Defence Force, a resistance group, who goes by one name, said the figure was lower and that Wathawa’s group forcibly recruited from villages. Reuters was not able to independently verify the recruiting tactics or the size of the militia’s membership.

He said his group would be prepared to kill monks if they were in battle with the junta, “There are good and bad monks… We consider an ally of an enemy to be an enemy, whether he is a monk or not.”

In one video, Wathawa can be seen beating villagers for supporting resistance fighters.

“It will never be possible for them to win over the military in the near future, or ever,” Wathawa told Reuters by phone.

Questioned further, the phone line went dead, and he did not answer subsequent calls. He did not respond to questions about the beatings.

State media broadcasts have shown military commanders showering Wathawa and his militia with cash and food donations.

In November, junta media announced the military had honored Wirathu with an award for “outstanding performance” and Wathawa a prize for “social excellence, first grade”.

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Asian equities edged higher on Thursday, propped up by Hong Kong and China stocks even as growing fears of an economic slowdown and worries over the pace of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes weighed on sentiment.

MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan (.MIAPJ0000PUS) was up 0.19%, set to snap a two-day losing streak. China’s stock market (.SSEC) was 0.12% higher, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index (.HSI) surging nearly 2%.

The gains in Chinese shares came after some investors booked profits on Wednesday after the government announced sweeping changes to ease a tough anti-COVID policy that has battered the world’s second-largest economy.

Elsewhere in Asia, Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index (.AXJO) lost 0.67%, while Japan’s Nikkei (.N225) fell to near one-month low.

The market generally struggled for direction as traders digested data showing that U.S. worker productivity rebounded at a slightly faster pace than initially thought in the third quarter, but the trend remained weak, keeping labour costs elevated.

Increasing fears that the U.S. central bank might stick to a longer rate-hike cycle in the wake of strong jobs and service-sector reports has crimped investors’ risk appetite.

Also weighing on the equities market was U.S. Treasury yields, with five-year notes to 30-year bonds hovering at three-month lows.

“The thing that stands out is what’s going on U.S. Treasury market, there does not seem to be a lot behind the moves and I think that’s what driving most of the rest of the market,” said Rob Carnell, head of ING’s Asia-Pacific research.

“Ahead of the FOMC next week, we may see range trading a little bit.”

Wall Street closed lower on Wednesday, with the benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX) declining for the fifth straight session, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq (.IXIC) finished lower for the fourth day in a row.

Many in the market believe inflation is moderating and bond yields have peaked, allowing central banks to begin slowing rate hikes when policy-makers from the Fed, the Bank of England and the European Central Bank meet next week.

The Fed is widely expected to raise interest rates by 50 basis points next week after delivering four consecutive 75 bps hikes.

The Bank of Canada on Wednesday hinted that its historic tightening campaign was near an end as it raised benchmark overnight interest rates by 50 basis points to 4.25%, the highest level in almost 15 years.

Meanwhile, the yield on 10-year Treasury notes was up 4.3 basis points (bps) to 3.451%, while the yield on the 30-year Treasury bond was up 3.4 bps to 3.448%. Yields on both notes touched three month lows on Wednesday.

The two-year U.S. Treasury yield, which typically moves in step with interest rate expectations, was up 3.9 bps at 4.296%.

In the currency market, the dollar index rose 0.171%, with the euro down 0.05% to $1.05, while sterling was last trading at $1.2184, down 0.12% on the day.

Oil prices steadied in early Asian trade on Thursday after sinking to their lowest level this year.

U.S. crude rose 0.96% to $72.70 per barrel and Brent was at $77.79, up 0.8% on the day.

Dina Boluarte became Peru’s first female president on Wednesday amid a political maelstrom when her predecessor and former boss Pedro Castillo was ousted in an impeachment trial and detained by police after he tried to illegally shut down Congress.

Boluarte, 60, who started the day as vice president and next in line to replace Castillo, faces the unenviable challenge of healing a divided Peru where the presidency has been locked in battle with Congress for more than a year.

“I request a political truce to install a government of national unity,” she said in her first speech after being sworn in as the country’s sixth president in just five years. She pledged to form a broad Cabinet of “all bloods”.

“I ask for time, valuable time to rescue the country from corruption and misrule.”

A lawyer by training, Boluarte was relatively unknown to most Peruvians until recently. In 2018 she won less than 4% of the vote in a Lima district’s mayoral election and lost a bid for a parliamentary seat in 2021.

But she shot to prominence alongside Castillo as the vice president on his ticket when the pair pulled off a shock election victory in 2021 for the far-left Peru Libre party.

Born in Apurimac, one of the regions in Peru’s mountainous south where Castillo saw his strongest support, Boluarte spent years working at the National Registry of Identification and Civil Status, which records births, marriages and deaths.

Once in office, Castillo tapped Boluarte as his development and social inclusion minister, a role she managed to keep until recently amid several cabinet shakeups.

“Although she is previously inexperienced in politics, I think that after a year and a half of being a minister – roles that tend to be short-lived – she has gained a lot of policy experience that will serve her now,” said political columnist Gonzalo Banda.

Boluarte has proven to be someone who “goes with the flow”, said analyst Andres Calderon, noting how she quickly distanced herself from her socialist party’s polarizing Marxist founder Vladimir Cerron.

In recent weeks, Boluarte also distanced herself from Castillo, resigning from her role as a Cabinet minister after he replaced his prime minister in what some saw as an escalation in his showdown with Congress.

That move suggests she “has a better reading on politics and is more accommodating than her predecessor, which could help her stay in office until 2026,” said Calderon.

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BERLIN (JTA) – In a landmark step, investigators commissioned by Germany’s main Jewish organization have concluded that abuse of power and sexual harassment did occur at Germany’s liberal rabbinical seminary — and some of it, they say, may have crossed the line into illegality.

The 44-page “executive summary” of an investigation initiated by the Central Council of Jews in Germany is the latest and most damning report about the leadership of Rabbi Walter Homolka since accusations against him broke into public view last May.

Issued Wednesday after tense public conflict between the council and Homolka’s attorneys, the report concludes that structural changes are required to set Germany’s liberal rabbinical seminary, known as Abraham Geiger College, and other related Jewish institutions on the correct footing.

“A significant cause for the emergence of the problems identified by the investigators at the institutions under investigation is the personal misconduct of Rabbi Prof. Dr. Homolka in his function as a leader or person with great influence, which the investigators are convinced of,” the investigators wrote in their report.

Homolka announced Monday that he would withdraw from all functions in the seminary that he and a German-born American rabbi named Walter Jacob, founded in 1999. He also dropped out of the running on Tuesday for another term as chair of the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany.

A more comprehensive report including details about incidents in which investigators concluded that Homolka and his husband engaged in misconduct is due out in January, according to the Cologne-based law firm Gercke Wollschläger.

The preliminary report was welcomed in a joint statement by the Central Council, the German Interior Ministry and the Brandenburg State Ministry of Science, Research and Culture, which said they would “continue to fund the Abraham Geiger College to the same extent as before until the structural new beginning has been completed.”

It was also greeted with relief by the rabbinical student whose complaints kicked off the scandal.

“I think the report and the subsequent documents are a blessed development,” Itamar Cohen told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It seems to confirm many suspicions which I and others share. It does affirm that I did the right thing and [this] could be the beginning of a new chapter of liberal Judaism in Germany.”

The scandal that erupted publicly in May began after Cohen sought help from Jonathan Schorsch, a professor at the School of Jewish Theology, in dealing with unsolicited pornographic material allegedly received from Homolka’s husband, who was also an employee at the seminary. (Abraham Geiger College is part of the School of Jewish Theology, which itself is under the auspices of the University of Potsdam.)

A German newspaper’s report about the allegations and an apparent effort to obscure them opened the floodgates for criticism of Homolka from past and current students, employees and colleagues. Homolka took a leave of absence from the numerous leadership roles he held with liberal Jewish religious and educational institutions that he had helped found since the late 1990s.

The scandal has shaken the foundations of modern liberal Judaism in Germany, and the new report suggests that those foundations were weak because they rested largely on one individual.

Josef Schuster, the president of the Central Council of German Jews, said the report made it clear that Homolka could not continue in his previous roles.

Homolka has rejected the allegations against him throughout, and his attorneys told German news media Wednesday that they believed the entire investigation was politically motivated. They accused Schuster of wanting to see Homolka exit Germany’s liberal Jewish leadership and said the Central Council had failed to consider fully the statement Homolka had given to investigators.

Rabbi Walter Homolka. at left, with other leaders of Germany Jewry including Josef Schuster, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, at far right, at an event in October 2019. (Wolfgang Kumm/picture alliance via Getty Images) Image by

The report is the first to emerge from a third-party investigation into the allegations against Homolka. A separate investigation by the University of Potsdam, released in late October, found that some of the accusations regarding abuse of power to be justified, but did not find any criminally actionable behavior and thus confirmed Homolka’s ongoing employment there as professor. It did not investigate the sexual harassment accusations, as Homolka’s husband had left his job by then.

The new report did scrutinize those allegations. The investigators said they found 13 specific incidents involving allegations against Homolka’s husband. German libel law bars the publication of his name. Using what they called a “traffic light system,” the investigators classified nine of these incidents as “red” cases, in which 25 instances of misconduct could be identified. Two of these cases involved the “initial suspicion of a criminal offense,” they added.

Regarding allegations of abuse of power against Homolka himself, they found — after interviewing 73 individuals — a total of 45 concrete incidents, 14 of which they classified as “red,” involving a total of 23 instances of misconduct. A detailed account of those cases, including responses that Homolka delivered earlier this week, will be included in the final report in January, they said.

More broadly, they said, their interviews had illuminated a culture of misconduct in which unchecked, unlawful or arbitrary decisions could be made largely because of a consolidation of power under Homolka. He presided over an institution ruled by a “culture of fear,” the investigators found, leaving employees and students alike less likely to express criticism or concerns because of the possibility of reprisals.

The investigators said structural changes were needed if there was any hope of shifting the culture. “As long as institutions are in private hands or even in the hands of an individual, or at any rate within the essential sphere of influence of the person who, in the opinion of the investigators, practices and exemplifies misconduct himself, it is hardly conceivable that the causes of the deficits identified can be remedied,” their report says.

Cohen told JTA he wants to see “real change in the leadership” of all liberal Jewish institutions in Germany, and “an external compliance system set up.”

He said, “I hope to see the institutions Homolka founded take a life of their own, no strings attached.”

Anticipating the report, the Abraham Geiger College had announced its own restructuring plans on Monday, a day after ordaining four new rabbis and two cantors at a ceremony in Berlin.

In a statement, interim director Gabriele Thöne said a new foundation would become the provider of rabbinical training in Potsdam.

Gabriella Thoene, interim director of Abraham Geiger College, in Berlin’s Rykestrasse Synagogue on the occasion of an ordination ceremony, Dec. 1, 2022. (Toby Axelrod) Image by

Further, Thöne said the “door is open to Zacharias Frankel College” — the Conservative movement seminary also under the umbrella of the School of Jewish Theology at the University of Potsdam —  “to join the new foundation on an equal basis while at the same time maintaining its independence.”

But in a scathing response issued Wednesday, the Conservative seminary said the Geiger College interim administration had not consulted them about the restructuring.

“A partnership between equal parties requires joint preparation, mutual trust, transparency and consensus. All this has been lacking so far, and continues to be lacking,” the statement said.

Signed by Rabbi Bradley Artson, dean of Zacharias Frankel College and the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, the Conservative seminary in Los Angeles among others, the statement also said the preliminary report released Wednesday “confirmed the asymmetrical constellations of power in the two Potsdam rabbinical training colleges.”

Zacharias Frankel College  “was in a state of dependency on the will of one person from the time it was founded in 2013. Our institution was deliberately pushed into invisibility and excluded from communication with funders in Germany,” the statement read in part.

“From the outset, the project of a Masorti rabbinical training in Potsdam was merely a makeshift means of being able to found the School of Jewish Theology [also in 2013] and give it the appearance of representing several denominations, and thus of being pluralistically positioned. Instead, however, the accumulation of power led to a monopolization of non-Orthodox Judaism in one person” – namely, Homolka.

For their part, the government and Jewish funding organizations said in their statement Wednesday that they were “committed to ensuring that there will continue to be both liberal and conservative rabbinical training in Potsdam in the future,” but that the proposals developed so far at the Abraham Geiger College do not meet the requirement of being “a clear cut from the previous structure and a comprehensive new beginning.”

The release of the Central Council-commissioned report was preceded by a volley of statements by lawyers for both parties.

On Monday, the council’s attorneys announced that their preliminary report would come out in two days. On Tuesday, Homolka’s attorneys issued a statement criticizing the impending “sudden” release of the report’s summary, suggesting it reeked of “prejudgment.”

The law firm representing Homolka — Behm Becker Geßner — noted that its client had received “a list of questions with serious accusations” from the council’s attorneys, and that he had responded in writing last Sunday. “Should the result not take into account the meaningful statement of our client, there would be a massive violation of personality rights,” warned the lawyers, who have successfully battled some critical press coverage of Homolka.

The Central Council criticized what it called Homolka’s delay tactics, saying its attorneys had asked Homolka in early September if he would respond to questions but had not gotten any response to questions sent Oct. 19 until late Sunday night, well after multiple previous deadlines. Still, the council confirmed, its investigators would take Homolka’s responses into account.

“This tactic is the main reason why the law firm will not be able to complete the final and detailed report of the investigation by the end of the year,” the Central Council said. “The courage of the numerous victims must not be sacrificed to Homolka’s delay tactics.”

Meanwhile, the Union of Progressive Jews in Germany is to meet next week in Berlin, after a three-month postponement. Board elections will be held for the position of chair, previously held by Homolka.

On Nov. 26, that group published a report from an investigation that it had commissioned, which concluded that there was no proof of abuse of power at Abraham Geiger College.

German rabbis who are part of the General Rabbinical Conference, Germany’s liberal rabbinical association, file into Berlin’s Rykestrasse Synagogue for an ordination ceremony, Dec. 1, 2022. (Toby Axelrod) Image by

On Wednesday, a critic within the body, the State Association of Jewish Communities of Lower Saxony, said the Central Council’s commissioned report “supports us in our demand for the resignation of Walter Homolka from all his offices within the Jewish community, which we already made in May.”

And there is dissent within the General Rabbinical Conference, Germany’s liberal rabbinical association, as well. About a dozen members issued a statement in November, breaking from the official, cautious tone, saying that “the abuse of power proven against Rabbi Prof. Dr. Homolka [in the university’s report of Oct. 26] is not compatible with the values of Jewish and general ethics.”

The association, known as ARK, issued a statement at the end of November stating that, despite differences of opinion in their ranks, they join the call for a structural and personal new beginning, as “a chance for the next phase of rabbinical training in Germany.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Prominent German rabbi resigns from leadership roles as report confirms allegations against him appeared first on The Forward.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday renewed vows to secure a new ban on assault weapons in the United States as he turns up heat on lawmakers to pass legislation before his party loses control of Congress next month.

Lawmakers have shown little inclination to outlaw assault weapons since a ban on high-capacity firearms expired in 2004, but Biden is hoping to seize on outrage about the regularity of shootings to lead to greater pressure on them to change their mind.

“We did it before,” Biden said of the ban at a vigil for victims of gun violence at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Washington. “We did it, and guess what? It worked … We can do it again.”

The two-hour candlelight vigil, organized by the “Newtown Action Alliance,” memorialized the 10th anniversary of the Dec. 14, 2012, Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, when 20 first-grade students and six adults were murdered by a gunman with a semi-automatic rifle in Newtown, Connecticut.

“Guns are now the number one killer of children in America, and we are asked to be brave while hiding under our desks in our classrooms, while too many elected officials lack the courage to pass common-sense laws to save our lives,” said Jackie Hegarty, a student who survived the shooting, introducing Biden at the vigil.

Biden has made banning so-called assault weapons a rallying cry for his gun safety agenda after pushing a bipartisan law through Congress in June that includes provisions intended to help states keep guns out of the hands of those deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.

In November, Biden said “I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons” and that he would “start counting the votes” on whether doing so was possible before the end of the current Congress on Jan. 3.

Pressed by reporters on Wednesday on where that pledge stands, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said: “I don’t have any determination to share with you at this time.”

The House of Representatives remains in the hands of Democrats for just a few more weeks before Republicans become the majority party. Democrats will keep their majority in the Senate.

Gun control advocates are a major pressure group within Biden’s Democratic Party, while those opposed to new restrictions are a force in the Republican Party.

U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters tweeted on Wednesday that a subpoena of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was “definitely on the table.”

Waters’ tweet was in response to a CNBC report earlier in the day that said she did not plan to subpoena Bankman-Fried to testify before Congress on Dec. 13.

Waters had earlier said on Twitter that it was imperative that the FTX founder testify and that the committee was “willing to schedule continued hearings if there is more information to be shared later.”

More than 1,100 union employees at the New York Times Co (NYT.N) will walk out for one day on Thursday after failing to negotiate a “complete and equitable contract” with the news publisher, the union said in a statement.

The union, part of the NewsGuild of New York, had pledged the 24-hour walk-out last week if a contract was not reached by Dec. 8. It will mark the first time New York Times employees have participated in a work stoppage since the late 1970s and comes amid a growing labor movement across the United States in which employees from companies such as Amazon (AMZN.O), Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) and Apple Inc (AAPL.O) have organized in an effort to push back against what they say are unfair labor practices.

The New York Times issued a statement confirming the strike. “It is disappointing that they are taking such an extreme action when we are not at an impasse,” the company said.

In the media industry, journalists at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, owned by Block Communications Inc, and the McClatchy-owned Fort Worth Star-Telegram are currently on open-ended strikes.

On Nov. 4 over 200 union journalists across 14 Gannett-owned news outlets – including the Desert Sun in California and New Jersey’s Asbury Park Press – participated in a one-day strike.

In August, nearly 300 Thomson Reuters Corp journalists in the United States, also represented by the NewsGuild of New York, staged a 24-hour strike as the union negotiates with the company for a new three-year contract.