Thousands have been displaced as cross-border attacks between Israel and Lebanon intensify. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is in Tel Aviv, can a U.S.-backed ceasefire deal bring calm to fighting on two fronts. I'm Michelle Martin, that's Rump Schmidt, and this is Up First from NPR News. The annual Southern Baptist Convention is starting today, and once again, cultural and political issues are on the agenda.
Foreign churches are straightforwardly telling us that they are basically out of sync with the Southern Baptist Convention on the issue of women preaching. Also on the agenda, a possible ban on IVF and the denominations handling of clergy sex abuse allegations. And Siri is about to get an AI upgrade. What changes are coming to Apple's virtual assistance day with us will give you the news you need to start your day.
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It's been more than eight months of Israel's war in Gaza after the surprise Hamas attack on October 7th. But Israel has also been fighting on another front exchanging frequent fire across the Lebanese border with his Bola. Now that low level conflict is becoming more intense and many Israelis are eyeing the possibility of a full on war against the Iranian backed group. NPR is Cat Londdorf was out near the border yesterday and joins us now from Haifa.
Good morning, Cat. Hey Rob. So Cat, what did you see near the border? Yeah, so my team and I started in a town called Kiarak Shimonah. It's mostly a ghost town right now. You know, all the shops are closed. There's no cars on the road. Department buildings are empty. It's a town that's gotten many direct hits from Hasbola in the past few months. But there are still some people living there. And yesterday we had just arrived in a man walked up to us and started talking to us.
And suddenly there was a big explosion and just a warn listener was going to play a sound of that here. And you know, you can hear the man. He just keeps talking. He was just like, yeah, that happens all the time now. We're used to it. We also went down to a town on the Mediterranean, a town called Naharia. It hasn't been evacuated yet. But just yesterday several rockets or drones were fired towards it. As far as we know, most of those were intercepted.
You know, Israel shoots down about 90% of those up here. And Israel fires back, causing a lot of destruction on the Lebanese side too. And I'll also just add Rob, just a while ago this morning, a siren went off here in Haifa. And I watched a rocket get shot down outside my hotel room window. You know, that's unusual for something to be fired this far south. Yeah. I'm more than 80 miles from the border right now.
Well, I mean, it certainly sounds like the situation there is becoming much more intense. What are Israelis saying needs to be done about this situation? Well, people here are anxious for the military to do more. There have been tens of thousands of people displaced for months now and they're eager to go back home. You know, everyone, every single person I talked to yesterday said they thought a war with Hezbollah was the only option to alleviate the tensions.
Even though there's already a war going on in Gaza, like you mentioned, here's 58-year-old Sarah Ben Hamel. She was back visiting Kierchmoni yesterday. If Israel was to be killed in the war, she told us that she thinks war, not diplomacy, because the only way people in the town will feel safe to come back. I know that sounds a little counterintuitive, but a lot of people here remember the 2006 war against Hezbollah. It was a horrible war, but there was relative calm afterwards.
And that's what many here think would be the outcome if another war were to start. You know, meanwhile, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several military officials have made it clear that they are preparing for a war in the north, that they're ready. And the government recently raised the number of reservists the military can call up specifically for the purpose. Well, so Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is in your region today trying to bring it into the eight-month conflict in Gaza.
Are there signs that he's having any success there? Well, you know, there are some, you know, a lot remains to be seen. You know, talks about possible peace talks have been dragging on for weeks. Yesterday, Blinken met with Netanyahu and reiterated afterwards that the U.S. and other countries are behind President Biden's three-step plan to end the war in Gaza.
You know, this is the plan that Biden announced a few weeks ago and referred to as the quote Israeli plan, although I should note Israel has not agreed to it and neither has Hamas. You know, meanwhile, yesterday the UN Security Council passed a resolution backing the deal.
And the feeling here is that a breakthrough in a ceasefire of some kind in the Gaza war would almost certainly ease the tensions up here, Hasbola started firing at Israel when the Gaza war began and what they said was solidarity with Hamas. That's NPR's Kat Lanzar for reporting from Haifa in northern Israel. Thanks, Kat, and stay safe. Thanks so much, Rob. The largest Protestant group in the U.S. starts its annual convention today and it's expected to affirm its ban on women clergy.
We're talking about the Southern Baptists. They're meeting in Indianapolis this week. Other items on the agenda include a resolution opposing in vitro fertilization and revisiting how the group deals with clergy sex abuse. Joining us to preview the meeting is NPR Religion Corp. Jason DeRose. Hey, Jason. Good morning. So let's start with women clergy. Didn't they already vote to ban female pastors? They did. They passed that ban last year, but it has to pass two years in a row to become policy.
Albert Moller is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He says this vote is about clarity since a few congregations still give the title pastor to women. Some churches are quite honestly straightforwardly telling us that they are basically out of sync with the Southern Baptist Convention on the issue of women preaching and a women holding a pastoral office. Moller argues the Bible prohibits women clergy. The measure is expected to pass again and therefore go into effect.
So then they'll need to figure out how to enforce it. They're also taking up in vitro fertilization. What does that resolution say? It calls on church members to advocate for human life, which, quote, necessarily includes frozen embryonic human beings. Now remember earlier this year, the Alabama Supreme Court used similar language. IVF usually involves creating more embryos than needed or wanted so they're either kept frozen or destroyed or used in medical research.
And that's the ethical problem for people who view embryos as life. This resolution also encourages Southern Baptists to, quote, consider adopting frozen embryos in order to rescue them. I spoke with Aaron DeFoe Hunter who teaches Christian ethics at Fuller Seminary and Evangelical School in Pasadena. She worries moves like this actually scuttle moral deliberation over IVF.
One of the things that this kind of resolution can do is shut down any kind of creative kind of imagining of what it might mean to invite people into a new way of understanding, say, infertility. For instance, DeFoe Hunter would like to see more compassionate pastoral care for infertile couples. So the Southern Baptist Convention has phased numerous allegations of clergy sex abuse in recent years. How has the church responded? Well, they're actually having trouble responding.
The task force charged with creating a database of abusive clergy has issued a report saying it hasn't published the name of even one abusive pastor. The task force says its efforts have been hampered by a lack of funding, worries over legal liability, and a lack of will among church leaders. And remember, in 2022, a third party investigation detailed numerous instances of Southern Baptist leaders mishandling clergy sex abuse allegations. And that report in fact sparked a federal investigation.
Well, I mean, the church is dealing with all these difficult issues. So why are these votes important to people outside the Southern Baptist Convention? This church holds a lot of political sway. House Speaker Mike Johnson is Southern Baptist. It's a conservative church that influences Republican policy. You know, there are nearly 13 million Southern Baptists in the US who attend about 50,000 congregations. And what's happening also illustrates the reality of polarization in the country.
I was recently covering the United Methodist Church. Now that group dramatically liberalized rules around LGBTQ clergy and same sex weddings. These two churches, Southern Baptists and United Methodists are the first and second largest Protestant groups in the US. And their examples of deep divides in American public life, including in religious life. That's NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose. Thank you Jason. You're welcome. Apple's digital assistant Siri may soon have a lot more to say.
Yes, Siri is now getting revamped with chat GPT, part of a major deal the company announced yesterday. NPR's tech correspondent Dara Kerr has been following the news and is here to talk about it. Good morning Dara. Good morning. So Dara, tell us about what Apple has announced. So every year Apple has this big developer conference and mostly it's for tech insiders. But a lot of people were watching yesterday.
And that's because it was rumored that Apple was going to announce a partnership with Open AI, the company that makes chat GPT. And at the very end of its nearly two hour long keynote, that announcement came. And we're starting out with the best of these, the pioneer and market leader chat GPT. And I think people know why that's significant, but I'd like you to tell us why is that significant? What difference will this make for say the average iPhone user?
Yeah, so with Siri now, you can ask it questions. And I'll point you where to find answers on the web. But when it gets integrated with chat GPT, we'll have Open AI's technology and be able to scrape the web and form its own answers. So if you ask it something like how to make a Philly cheese steak, it will search recipes all over the web and come back with its own ingredient list and cooking instructions. And like chat GPT, Siri will also be able to compose essays or stories.
Here's how Apple software chief Craig Federiki explains it. In post, you want to create a custom bedtime story for your six-year-old who loves butterflies and solving riddles. Put in your initial idea and send it to chat GPT to get something back she'll love. Hmm, I think the jury's out on how many six-year-olds would love a chat GPT inspired story. But I mean, it seems like we are hearing about the evolution of AI every day. Has Apple been under the gun to compete?
Yeah. Apple definitely has been feeling the pressure. Other major tech companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft have already rolled out AI tools. But I should say, it hasn't necessarily been smooth sailing for all of these companies. For instance, just last week, Google announced it was pulling back on its new AI assisted search tool. And that's because within hours of its debut, the tool is giving people all sorts of wacky and possibly dangerous answers.
I think it told people adding glue to pizza would keep the cheese from sliding off and that eating a small rock every day was healthy. The small rock. Yes. Very healthy. And you know, chat GPT itself has also been accused of all sorts of things, including plagiarism, copyright infringement. It's made things up and has given incorrect and biased answers. So once Siri gets chat GPT and if it starts to do that, it could be really risky for Apple. Yeah, it sounds like it.
I mean, so is Apple basically outsourcing its AI development to this company? No, not completely. It also announced its own batch of AI centric tools yesterday. It's grouping all of this and what the company calls Apple Intelligence. But these are tools that will be familiar to us because we've seen them in other company's products. There's things like writing tools that can draft emails and letters or essays to your six-year-old.
It's also an image tool that lets people create things like animated avatars and emojis. So basically, what we're seeing is nothing really new, but it's the first time we've seen Apple really take a hold of AI. And why this is significant is that millions of people own Apple's iPhone and its other products. So essentially, the company will be bringing chat GPT and its other AI tools to a huge new group of people. And we're trying to turn artificial intelligence into Apple Intelligence.
NPR Tech correspondent Derek Kerr, thank you. Thank you so much. And that's up first for Tuesday, June 11th. I'm Rob Schmidt. And I'm Michelle Martin. For your next listen, check out NPR's Consider This Podcast. On the latest episode, our colleague Mary Lee Wieskele digs into how this week's events in Gaza and the resignation of Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz impacts US efforts to broker a ceasefire deal. I'm Jason to consider this.
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