By JOSH FUNK and ED WHITE, Associated Press

Federal investigators released dramatic photos Thursday of an engine flying off a doomed UPS cargo plane that crashed two weeks ago, killing 14 people in Kentucky, and said there was evidence of cracks in the left wing’s engine mount.

The MD-11 plane only got 30 feet (9.1 meters) off the ground, the National Transportation Safety Board said, citing the flight data recorder in its first formal but preliminary report about the Nov. 4 disaster in Louisville, Kentucky.

Three pilots on the plane were killed along with 11 more people on the ground near Muhammad Ali International Airport.

The NTSB said the plane was not due yet for a detailed inspection of key engine mount parts that had fractures. It still needed to complete nearly 7,000 more takeoffs and landings. It was last examined in October 2021.

“It appears UPS was conducting this maintenance within the required time frame, but I’m sure the FAA is now going to ponder whether that time frame is adequate,” aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti told The Associated Press after reading the report.

New pictures released by the NTSB show the left engine coming off the UPS plane and flying up and over the wing as it rolled down the runway.

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Minnesota’s annual “giving holiday” is underway, and as usual the generosity is incoming.

As of midday Thursday, more than $20 million had been donated to about 5,200 organizations including schools and nonprofits.

In 2024, more than $37 million was donated to 6,556 organizations, an all-time record.

The day of philanthropy, now in its 17th year, began in 2009 through GiveMN as a fun way to “shop” for charitable endeavors as the holiday season approaches with Black Friday, Cyber Monday and all the other ways we are tempted to spend our money this time of year. It’s become a tradition for many people across the state.

This year, according to a GiveMN survey, top causes currently are animals, the environment and hunger relief.

Info/donate at givemn.org/gtmd.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

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By LEAH WILLINGHAM

BOSTON (AP) — Inside the wide mouth of a stoneware jar, Daisy Whitner’s fingertips found a slight rise in the clay — a mark she hoped was a trace left behind by her ancestor, an enslaved potter who shaped the vessel nearly 175 years ago in South Carolina.

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Standing in the gallery of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston last week, Whitner said she felt a quiet connection to her ancestor, David Drake, in that moment.

“I was telling the kids, ’Inside this jar, I’m sure I’m feeling his tears, sweat drops off his face, his arms,’” said 86-year-old Whitner, a Washington, D.C., resident and a retired account manager for The Washington Post.

The jar is one of two returned to Drake’s family as part of a historic agreement this month between Drake’s descendants and the MFA Boston, one of the institutions that holds pieces of his work.

The vessels are among hundreds of surviving works by “Dave the Potter,” an enslaved man who labored in the alkaline-glazed stoneware potteries of Edgefield, South Carolina, in the decades before and during the Civil War. Dave signed many of his jars — and inscribed some with rhyming couplets — an extraordinary and unparalleled assertion of identity and authorship during a time when literacy for enslaved people was criminalized.

The agreement represents what experts say is the first major case of art restitution involving works created by an enslaved person in the U.S. — a process traditionally associated with families seeking the return of art looted by the Nazis in World War II.

It’s also rare: as enslaved people were denied legal personhood and documentation, tracing the ownership or lineage of their works is often impossible.

Children’s book author Yaba Baker, Dave’s 54-year-old fourth-generation grandson, called the return “a spiritual restoration.” Baker, whose first two children’s books explore Black history, said the family felt a dual sense of pride and grief. Many Black families, he noted, struggle to trace their ancestry past a few generations; recovering Dave’s work gave them back a piece of themselves.

After the museum returned the pots to the family, they sold one back so people can continue to learn from Dave’s legacy. The other is on lease to the museum, at least temporarily. The MFA Boston said it wouldn’t disclose how much it paid.

“We don’t want to hide them away in our house. We want other people to be inspired by it,” Baker said. “We want people to know that this person, Dave the Potter, who was told he was nothing but a tool to be used, realized he had humanity. He deserved his own name on his pots. He deserved to write poetry. He deserved to know who he was.”

David Drake

Laboring in the pottery yards in the South Carolina heat, Dave etched his name next to the date — July 12, 1834 — on a clay jar that would be sold by his owner and used to store pork and beef rations for enslaved people like him across the region.

He also inscribed the jar, which would likely end up on a cotton plantation in South Carolina, with the couplet:

“Put every bit all between / Surely this jar will hold 14” to mark the jar’s 14-gallon capacity.

The vessel was the first of hundreds, if not thousands, of stoneware jugs and jars made by Dave alongside other enslaved potters over 50 years before and during the Civil War.

Much of Dave’s poetry followed Christian themes. As he aged, he wrote more and explored themes related to his enslavement. One of his most resonant poems was etched into a jar he produced in 1857, around the time scholars believe Dave and his family were separated after being sold to different slave owners.

“I wonder where is all my relation / friendship to all – and every nation”

Multiple Drake descendants said they felt especially moved by Dave’s question about his relations — and that their restitution felt like Dave’s question was finally answered.

Claiming authorship

It’s unclear what became of the jars after Dave died. The MFA purchased them in 1997 from an art dealer. MFA Boston’s Art of the Americas Chair Ethan Lasser said he thinks they survived mostly from pure “benign neglect” in South Carolina because they were large and difficult to transport or break.

A signed stoneware vessel created by enslaved potter David Drake is seen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

The MFA has two Drake pots, a “Poem Jar” and a “Signed Jar,” both from 1857.

The jar the Drake descendants sold back to the museum is similar to the 1857 pot on which Dave asks about his relations because he uses first-person language that suggests ownership — something that makes it especially powerful, Lasser said.

“Think of this as an enslaved person, speaking in the first person claiming authorship,” Lasser said.

In the poem, Dave writes:

“I made this Jar = cash – / though its called = lucre Trash”.

On more than one pot, Dave writes “and Mark” next to his own name, suggesting he worked on the piece with another enslaved laborer. Oral histories indicate that Dave was disabled after losing a leg, although it’s unclear how, and may have needed help with his ceramic work later in life.

His last surviving jar, made as the Civil War raged on in 1862, reads: “I made this Jar, all of cross / If you don’t repent, you will be lost”.

Researchers believe Drake died sometime in the 1870s after gaining his freedom in the Civil War. He is accounted for in the 1870 census, but not in the 1880 census.

For the Drake descendants, encountering Dave’s work has been both moving and difficult — a collision of pride in his artistry and grief for the conditions in which he lived.

Yaba Baker, who has a 17-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son, said the experience gave his family something they had never had before: a traceable link.

“I was able to turn to my son and say, ‘This is your lineage.’ Dave the Potter was not only a great artist — he resisted oppressive laws, even though he could have been killed for it,” he said. “That’s what you come from. Before, we didn’t have that link.”

Yaba Baker said he often thinks about the anguish Dave may have felt if, as some historians speculate, the poems on his jars were attempts to signal to family members sold away from him — a common trauma of slavery.

“I can’t imagine not knowing where my own kids are,” Baker said. “Completing that circle is very moving for me.”

For his mother, Pauline Baker, discovering Dave’s story filled a void many Black families know intimately.

A stoneware vessel created by enslaved potter David Drake is seen at the Museum of Fine Arts, Monday, Nov. 10, 2025, in Boston. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

“If you’re not African American, you don’t understand the missing links in your history,” she said. “When you do find a connection, it becomes very personal.” She studies his life — the heat, the labor, the loss of a limb — and wonders how he managed such precision and focus. “He did not allow them to enslave his mind,” said Baker, 78, a retired speech pathologist who worked for three decades in Washington, D.C., public schools.

Since the MFA agreement was announced, the family has heard from museums and private collectors who hold Dave’s work and want to discuss what ethical restitution might look like for them as well.

Daisy Whitner said she felt her ancestor’s presence each time she slid her hand inside the jar.

“It broke my heart,” she said. “The outside is beautiful, but when you think about what he went through — sunup to sundown, in that South Carolina heat, on one leg — this poor man in bondage had no say in working so hard for nothing.”

By DAVID CRARY and HOLLY MEYER

The U.S. feminist movement’s perpetual quest for gender equality has suffered notable setbacks during President Donald Trump’s second term — including the dismantling of various nondiscrimination programs and the ouster of several high-ranking women in the military.

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Yet strikingly, outspoken women from the Catholic Church and the ranks of conservative evangelicals are engaging with gusto in ongoing political and social debates even as their faiths maintain longstanding rules against women serving as priests or senior pastors. Many of these women see these ministry barriers as a nonissue.

In a Dallas suburb, more than 6,500 conservative Christian women attended an Oct. 11 conference organized by commentator Allie Beth Stuckey. “Welcome to the fight,” was her greeting.

Ahead of the conference, Stuckey evoked the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, saying she had been inundated with messages from Christian women saying, “We’re done sitting on the sidelines of politics and culture.’’

“We’re not backing down; we’re doubling down,” Stuckey declared. “We’re unapologetically saying no to the lies of feminism and progressivism and yes to God’s Word.”

Some Catholic nuns are on the front lines

Among Catholic women, there is a different kind of passion exhibited by sisters from religious orders who are on the front lines of social-justice advocacy.

A striking example came in September after Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, praised Kirk as “a modern-day St. Paul” who was a worthy role model for young people.

Leaders of the Sisters of Charity of New York, an order founded in 1809, issued a public rebuke.

“What Cardinal Dolan may not have known is that many of Mr. Kirk’s words were marked by racist, homophobic, transphobic, and anti-immigrant rhetoric, by violent pro-gun advocacy, and by the promotion of Christian nationalism,” the nuns said. “These prejudicial words do not reflect the qualities of a saint.”

“In this moment,” the nuns added, “we reaffirm our mission: to walk with all people who are poor and marginalized, to welcome immigrants and refugees, to defend the dignity of LGBTQ+ persons, and to labor for peace in a world saturated with violence.”

Another religious sister, Norma Pimentel of the Missionaries of Jesus, is a leading migrant-rights activist along the U.S.-Mexico border. She runs Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, including a respite center for beleaguered migrants in McAllen, Texas.

FILE – Sister Norma Pimentel, the director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, plays with migrant children on the floor of the Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, Dec. 15, 2022. (AP Photo/Giovanna Dell’Orto, file)

At a recent forum in Washington, she recalled visiting immigrant families at a detention center in a “terrible condition,” and being moved to tears.

“I saw Border Patrol agents looking at us, and they, too, were moved and were crying,” she said. “When I walked out of there, the officer turned to me and said, ‘Thank you, sister, for helping us realize they’re human beings.’”

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, a professor in the theology department at Fordham University, praised Pimentel’s advocacy and the Sisters of Charity leadership’s statement as “the model of the way women show up in the public square.”

“Women religious are the face of the church,” she said.

Overall, Imperatori-Lee said she was disheartened by “this moment of very serious backlash to the gains that women and other minorities have made.” Yet she finds reasons to be encouraged.

“A lot of undergrads are passionate about women’s equality in the church,” she said of Fordham, a Jesuit school now with a woman as its president for the first time.

“Even if the headlines about our cultural backsliding are true, the on-the-ground activism that you’re seeing among young people shows they’re are up to the task,” she said.

Conservative evangelical women navigate a patriarchal doctrine

After the Catholic Church, the second largest denomination in the U.S. is the Southern Baptist Convention, whose evangelical doctrine espouses traditional gender roles at home and in the church. That includes barring women from being pastors, a belief that has put the SBC in the spotlight in recent years following high-profile ousting of churches that disobeyed the prohibition.

But this doesn’t mean Southern Baptist men are domineering nor that the women are doormats, said Susie Hawkins, a Bible teacher in Texas and wife of a former denominational leader.

“That’s not what complementarianism is,” said Hawkins, referring to the doctrine that men and women have distinct God-given roles. “The women I know have the freedom to speak their mind to their husbands, and to work through problems in situations with them, within certain boundaries.”

Many embrace being wives, mothers and women in the church, said Hawkins, who has watched Erika Kirk, the wife of the late Charlie Kirk, publicly demonstrate that same satisfaction and joy.

“I think this is really, really important for Christian women,” said Hawkins. “She exemplifies a Christian wife and mom who is not ashamed of her love for her husband and her desire to serve him and love him and their kids.”

Hawkins predicts Erika Kirk, now head of her husband’s Turning Point USA, will be influential: “I think her voice — it will be heard from this point on.”

Stuckey, who grew up Southern Baptist, recently addressed women’s roles in church and society on her “Relatable” podcast, following online blowback from men on the right for giving a speech at a Turning Point college event. Stuckey reiterated her belief that women should not be pastors nor preach from the pulpit on Sundays, and said she has turned down opportunities because of it.

FILE – A messenger attending the Southern Baptist Convention participates in worship during the 2025 SBC Annual Meeting, June 10, 2025, in Dallas. (AP Photo/Richard W. Rodriguez, file)

“A gentle and quiet spirit is something that women are told that we should have in Scripture, and we should. But that does not mean silence,” she said. “Women are also called to raise a voice and to be a bastion and refuge of clarity and courage.”

Most Southern Baptist women embrace accepted callings in the church, including in women’s and children’s ministry, said Hawkins, noting a special commissioning service at First Baptist Church of Dallas celebrating these roles.

“I just don’t think you see a lot of malcontent women complaining about not being able to be a pastor,” she said.

The Texas megachurch, which upholds that only men can serve as senior pastor, honored 13 women, said senior pastor, the Rev. Robert Jeffress.

“Instead of focusing on the one ministry women are prohibited from doing (senior pastor) we wanted to recognize and celebrate all the things that women can do in the church,” Jeffress said via email.

Hawkins has encountered a few women who felt called to off-limits roles in Southern Baptist churches. She was straightforward with them.

“Go do what God’s called you to do, but we’re not the denomination for you. You’re just going to get frustrated here. These boundaries were established a long time ago, so go where you can be happy,” said Hawkins.

Advocates of women’s ordination vow to persist

Long-established boundaries remain in the Catholic Church as well.

As Pope Leo XIV — the first American Pope — settles into his papacy, he has made clear he has no immediate interest in advocating for women to be able to serve as deacons, let alone to be ordained as priests.

Yet women continue to serve in high-level administrative jobs at the Vatican and at Catholic institutions in the U.S., such as Catholic Charities and the Catholic Health Association.

FILE – Advocates for women ordination hold banners during a protest in Rome just in front of the Vatican where Pope Francis is holding the Synod of Bishops, Oct. 4, 2024. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini, file)

“Within the Catholic Church when we look only at priesthood, we fail to look at the primary mission of the church — it’s education, health care, social service agencies,” said Susan Timoney, a professor of pastoral studies at The Catholic University of America.

“We need to tell that part of the story better,” Timoney said.

The largest U.S. organization working to open the priesthood to women is the Women’s Ordination Conference, which will mark its 50th anniversary in late November.

Its executive director, Kate McElwee, said she is alarmed by “anti-women rhetoric and policies being pushed out all over the globe” including in the U.S. She wants her group to function as a “Ministry of Irritation, making our cause as bold and loud and creative as possible.”

“As things get more polarized, we’re seeing more people find their courage in this moment,” she said, citing the Sisters of Charity as an example. “As feminism is under attack more broadly, our movement will become a more important symbol of resistance.”

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.