Atlanta backs out of hosting Nobel Peace summit
ATLANTA — Dreams of Atlanta hosting the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in 2023 have been deferred.
Citing financial pressures brought on by the pandemic, the national racial and political unrest that made its way down to Atlanta and the withdrawal of major backers, including Rotary International, organizers of the event have backed out of the summit that could have brought in scores of Nobel Prize winners and about 40,000 people.
The event’s organizer, Bob Hope, chief executive of Atlanta Peace Inc., said he is now targeting future dates to bring the meeting to the city.
“We have found that we have run out of options in our planning for 2023, and we cannot move forward with our plans to host a World Summit,” Hope wrote in a letter to Ekaterina Zagladina, secretary for the Nobel Peace Laureates. “However, we are still committed to peace and want to leave the door open for the future as things settle here in Atlanta.”
In his letter, Hope also noted that Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was a big supporter of the event, is not seeking re-election.
Atlanta’s withdrawal marks the latest in a string of fits and starts for the city to host the event. Already the home to the Jimmy Carter Center, dedicated to the 39th president and 2002 Nobel Peace Prize winner, Atlanta also claims 1964 Nobel Peace Prize winner Martin Luther King Jr.
The World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates was put together in the early 1990s as a forum to support global peace initiatives. The nonprofit promotes the work of Nobel Peace Prize winners and organizes the mostly annual summit, which draws thousands of attendees, including laureates.
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
3 dead, 2 missing after group rafting in NC river plunges over dam
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Three people are dead and two more are missing after they rode inflated tubes over a dam on the Dan River in Rockingham County.
The Rockingham County Sheriff’s Office reported the deaths overnight and said it was continuing a “search and rescue operation” along the river “from the Duke Energy plant to the Va. state line.”
Investigators have not released the names of the people involved.
The incident happened around sunset Wednesday and the five were part of a larger group of nine people who were swept over the dam, the Associated Press says. The site is near the Eden community, along the Virginia state line.
Station WGHP reports the nine were members of the same family.
Rockingham County Emergency Services Director Rodney Cates told the Greensboro News & Record the four rescued people were taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. They were seen in the river “hanging onto various items” to stay afloat before being rescued, WTVD said.
None of the rescued tubers was wearing a life jacket when pulled from the river, the News & Record said. The four included “a 14-year-old boy, his uncle and two cousins,” WGHP said.
Rafting and tubing is a popular and common recreation on the river, “but most get out and walk around the dam, which is marked by signs,” Cates told the Associated Press.
—The Charlotte Observer
Trump supports GOP challenger against Murkowski
Former President Donald Trump on Friday officially backed Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican challenging GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a frequent Trump critic who voted to convict the former president of inciting an insurrection on Jan. 6.
Trump did not mention Murkowski’s vote to convict in his statement backing Tshibaka, the former head of Alaska’s Department of Administration. But Trump’s endorsement comes after he has pledged for months to campaign against Murkowski, who has yet to announce whether she is running for a fourth full term.
“Lisa Murkowski is bad for Alaska. Her vote to confirm Biden’s Interior Secretary was a vote to kill long sought for, and approved, ANWR, and Alaska jobs. Murkowski has got to go!” Trump said in a statement.
Trump carried Alaska by 10 points in 2020, which Tshibaka referenced in her own statement.
“President Trump won Alaska by double digits twice because his leadership and policies made him the best president our state has ever known,” she said. “He knows our Alaska values, knows that we must be free to tap into our vast natural resources, and knows that we ought to be able to chart our own course without constant, authoritarian interference from Washington, D.C.”
—CQ-Roll Call
Pence blasts Biden but is heckled as ‘traitor’ at evangelical event
ORLANDO, Fla. — A slate of more than a dozen prominent conservatives lambasted Democrats as pushing America toward socialism, blasted “The Squad,” and called on evangelical voters to deliver Republicans back into majorities in Congress in 2022.
They found a mostly friendly audience at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference, a meeting of evangelicals and conservative activists, in hopes of beginning momentum toward electoral wins next year.
But the rifts in the Republican Party following the tumultuous Trump era couldn’t entirely be papered over, with former Vice President Mike Pence being greeted with some boos and getting heckled as a “traitor” from at least one woman toward the back of the room. She was quickly removed by security.
The conference at the Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee featured speeches from politicians like Sens. Rick Scott, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Marsha Blackburn, in the lead up to a lunchtime talk with Pence.
“The time has come for every American dedicated to faith and freedom to stand up and be heard and turn back the agenda of the radical democrats,” Pence said Friday to a crowded ballroom. “The Road to Majority starts right here and right now.”
Pence, who was a target of a pro-Trump mob’s ire during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol for his refusal to overturn the election results, was a notable no-show at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando in February that concluded with former President Donald Trump’s first speech since leaving office.
