The Southern Baptists are facing their own #MeToo crisis as the biggest Protestant denomination in the U.S. heads into its annual two-day meeting this week in Dallas.

A series of sexual misconduct cases has prompted the Southern Baptist Convention’s all-male leadership to seek forgiveness for the ill treatment of women and vow to combat it.

Illustrating the SBC’s predicament, the central figure in the most prominent of the #MeToo cases, Paige Patterson, had been scheduled to deliver the featured sermon at the gathering. However, Patterson withdrew from that role Friday, heeding a request from SBC President Steve Gaines and other leaders.

Patterson was recently dismissed as president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Texas because of his response to two rape allegations made years apart by students.

In a 2015 case, according to the seminary’s board chairman, Patterson told a campus security official that he wanted to meet alone with a student who had reported being raped, to “break her down.”

SBC leaders say there are more cases — adding up to a humiliating debacle for the 15.2-million-member denomination.

The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, acknowledged that while the crisis might raise questions about the SBC’s doctrine of “complementarianism” — which espouses male leadership in the home and in the church and says a wife “is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband” — the tenet would not be abandoned.

Prosecutor won’t refile case stemming from Greitens’ affair

ST. LOUIS — A special prosecutor investigating former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens said that she believed a woman’s claim that Greitens took an unauthorized and compromising photo during an extramarital affair but that there wasn’t enough evidence to merit a criminal charge.

Jackson County prosecutor Jean Peters Baker declined Friday to refile a felony invasion of privacy charge against Greitens, who resigned last week.

A St. Louis grand jury indicted Greitens in February, accusing him of taking a photo of the woman during a March 2015 sexual encounter without her permission while she was blindfolded, bound at the hands and at least partially nude. But St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner abruptly dropped the charge last month after a judge said Greitens’ attorneys could call Gardner as a witness.

Prosecutor: No evidence of any foul play in Bourdain death

PARIS — There’s no evidence of foul play or violence in celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain’s death in a French hotel room, a French prosecutor said Saturday.

The famed cook, writer and host of the CNN series “Parts Unknown” killed himself Friday in a luxury hotel in the ancient village of Kaysersberg, said Christian de Rocquigny, the prosecutor of Colmar in France’s eastern Alsace region.

Rocquigny said there did not appear to be much planning in the television personality’s suicide.

Rocquigny said toxicology tests were being carried on Bourdain’s body, including urine tests, to see if the 61-year-old American took any medications or other drugs, in an effort to help his family understand if anything led him to kill himself.

Rally for jailed far-right activist draws thousands in London

LONDON — A far-right lawmaker from the Netherlands joined thousands of people in central London on Saturday to demand freedom for a British commentator who was jailed for contempt of court after he broadcast outside a criminal trial for the second time.

Activists marched with “Free Tommy” placards and Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders told the crowd: “We will not be silenced.”

Police said bottles and other objects were thrown at officers.

The subject of the Saturday event was Tommy Robinson, 35, who founded an anti-Muslim protest group. He was arrested May 25 after livestreaming from outside a child sexual exploitation trial. Reporting restrictions to protect jurors’ impartiality are common in Britain.

Lasseter, Pixar co-founder, to exit at end of year

NEW YORK — John Lasseter, the co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and the Walt Disney Co.’s animation chief, will step down at the end of the year after acknowledging “missteps” in his behavior with staff members.

Disney announced Friday that Lasseter — one of the most illustrious and powerful figures in animation — will stay on through the end of 2018 as a consultant. After that he will depart Disney permanently.

Lasseter in November took what he called a six-month “sabbatical.” He apologized “to anyone who has ever been on the receiving end of an unwanted hug” or any other gesture that made them feel “disrespected or uncomfortable.”

Lasseter, 61, is the highest-ranking Hollywood executive to be toppled in the wake of the #MeToo movement that followed Harvey Weinstein’s downfall in October.

Gena Turgel, consoler of Anne Frank, dies at age 95

LONDON — Gena Turgel, a Holocaust survivor who comforted Anne Frank at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp before the young diarist’s death and the camp’s liberation a month later, has died. She was 95.Turgel died Thursday, Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, said on Twitter.

The news triggered tributes from some of the people the Polish native touched in the decades she shared her World War II experiences, including witnessing the horrors of the Nazi camps at Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Bergen-Belsen.

Turgel attended Britain’s annual Holocaust remembrance event two months ago, sitting in a wheelchair.

“My story is the story of one survivor, but it is also the story of 6 million who perished,” she said at the event in London.

Nurettin Canikli, Turkey's defense minister, said Turkish and U.S. soldiers will patrol the Syrian town of Manbij as part of a deal reached this week for the withdrawal of a Syrian Kurdish militia. Turkey has repeatedly called on the U.S. to stop backing the Syrian Kurdish People's Protection Units, which it considers terrorists.

More people were ordered to get out of the path of a growing wildfire in Colorado about 8 miles north or Durango on Saturday as ground crews contended with hot, dry and windy weather. More than 1,600 other homes have been evacuated. Authorities said no homes had been damaged or destroyed.