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- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 09:53:44 -0600: 'Totally irresponsible': Dems criticize Pence presiding over Amy Coney Barrett vote after aides contract COVID-19 - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
"As vice president, I’m president of the Senate. And I’m gonna be in the chair because I wouldn’t miss that vote for the world," Pence said Saturday.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 09:22:32 -0600: Biden holds overall lead in Wisconsin, with big edge among early voters, in new UW poll - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
A new poll by the University of Wisconsin shows Biden with a big edge among those who have already voted. Trump lead among those who have yet to vote.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 09:14:00 -0600: Kushner faces sharp criticism after he suggests some Black Americans don’t 'want to be successful' - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is facing some sharp criticism over what his detractors believe was a textbook example of a lack of self-awareness.During a Fox News interview on Monday, Kushner, speaking about Black communities in the United States, said his father-in-law's policies "are the policies that can help people break out of the problems that they're complaining about, but he can't want them to be successful more than they want to be successful," before claiming there has been a groundswell of support for Trump among Black voters.Kushner's comments were understood by his critics to imply that some Black Americans don't strive for success, and he was quickly rebuked. Obsevers pointed out that Kushner comes from a wealthy family, and married into another one, and, therefore, was able to jump over hurdles faced by many other Americans throughout his life. > When I first met Jared, we were college students and he owned $10 million worth of residential rental properties in Somerville based on money he got from his dad.> > More Black people should try that. https://t.co/z13KwvXUKf> > -- Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 26, 2020> "he can't want them to be successful more than that they want to be successful," is a thing said by Jared Kushner, whose father bought him into Harvard and NYU, then gave him a real estate fortune, before he got his current job from his father in lawpic.twitter.com/iAp4yAs8va> > -- Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) October 26, 2020More stories from theweek.com The very different emotional lives of Trump and Biden voters The 19 greatest and worst presidential campaign ads of the 2020 election The Trump administration has surrendered to the pandemic
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 08:53:55 -0600: Chicago Public Schools Says Teachers Union ‘Refuses to Even Discuss’ Returning to In-Person Classes - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Chicago Public Schools on Friday pushed back against the Chicago Teachers Union, which filed an unfair labor practice charge last week accusing the city's school district of illegally refusing to negotiate with the union on how to safely resume in-person classes amid health concerns.The union has "refused to even discuss" returning to in-person classes, school district spokeswoman Emily Bolton said in a statement.“We are disheartened that CTU continues to obstruct and mislead the public about the necessary planning measures needed to prepare for a potential return to safe in-person learning,” Bolton said. “While the district is doing everything in its power to plan for all possible scenarios, the CTU refuses to even discuss a return to in-person learning, even as hundreds of private schools in Chicago are open.”Chicago's public schools are scheduled to start in-person classes in phases for pre-K students and some special education students during the school year's second quarter, which begins in two weeks on November 9.“We don’t know what the health situation will be in a couple of weeks' time, but it would be irresponsible not to plan ahead while thousands of students miss out on valuable learning," Bolton added.However, CTU has accused the city's public school district of violating the union’s collective bargaining agreement by neglecting to negotiate the start of in-person learning.“We all want to return to our students. We don’t want to die doing our jobs, and we don’t want to be vectors for spreading illness or death to our students and their families,” CTU vice president Stacy Davis Gates said in a statement. “Yet the mayor and CPS simply refuse to lay out and discuss their plan for returning to classrooms, when we know from their own facilities records that these buildings aren’t safe.”The union has demanded that its certified industrial hygienists be allowed to inspect school air quality in the district's buildings. CPS meanwhile has said it has hired state-certified environmental hygienists to perform inspections, the results of which the district says it will release to the public before schools are opened. The district argued that CTU does not have any legal or contractual right to demand its own inspection.Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have increased in the Chicago area, the city's positivity rate ticking up to 7.5 percent over the last week.Last week, Chicago ordered all non-essential businesses to close at 10 p.m., and more restrictions could be set in motion if cases of the virus continue to rise.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 07:56:15 -0600: Meadows doubles down on pandemic remarks: ‘We’re not going to control it’ - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
But the White House chief of staff also insisted the administration was not “waving a white flag.”
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 07:36:21 -0600: Woman shot to death in a Chuck E. Cheese that was ‘full of families,’ Iowa cops say - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
The alleged shooter fled the restaurant before police arrived.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 07:35:52 -0600: Republican Party is now more illiberal and resembles authoritarian parties in India, Hungary and Turkey, study says - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Study highlights ‘global trend’ in ruling parties in major democracies becoming more illiberal
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 06:37:07 -0600: Senate Democrats hold all-night talk protest of Coney Barrett confirmation - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Democrats, who hold the minority in the United States Senate, have staged an all-night “talk-a-thon” to protest the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Despite their semi-recent stance on nominating high court justices during an election year and the mere eight days before the 2020 presidential race concludes, Senate Republicans are pressing to push through the conservative Coney Barrett’s confirmation on Monday. Democrats hold 45 of 100 seats in the Senate, with two Independents who vote with them.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 06:35:22 -0600: Will Trump supporters accept defeat? If he loses, it could get really ugly - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Trump's been telling his fans for weeks that there's no way he can lose. So they're primed for a vicious backlash
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 06:24:00 -0600: Suspect arrested for allegedly abducting two girls from home where two boys found dead - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Donny Jackson, 40, was arrested after allegedly abducting his two daughters, who were later found safe. It is unclear what his relationship is to the two dead boys.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 06:22:01 -0600: France may be at 100,000 virus cases daily as Molotov cocktails thrown at German public health agency - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Pressure in France for local lockdowns is increasing after the government's chief scientific advisor estimated that the country is seeing 100,000 new coronavirus cases every day. On Sunday, 52,000 new Covid-19 infections were reported in France, another daily record - but yesterday Jean-François Delfraissy, the government's chief scientific advisor, said the true figure was probably twice as high. Dr Delfraissy joined other senior doctors in urging the government to introduce local lockdowns or a weekend lockdown that would effectively extend the current 9pm curfew in force in much of the country to weekends in order to limit social contacts.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 06:03:02 -0600: ‘A backwards step’: Experts warn Amy Coney Barrett is a threat to IVF - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Ms Barrett has historically supported organisations who are against both birth control and the in vitro fertilization process
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 05:59:14 -0600: Rats help clear minefields in Cambodia – and suspicion of the military - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Editor’s note: Dr. Darcie DeAngelo is a medical anthropologist at the Institute for Genocide and Mass Atrocity Prevention (I-GMAP) at Binghamton University, State University of New York. In this interview, she explains the relationship between locals who live near minefields in Cambodia and the mine detectors, often former military combatants, who are viewed with suspicion because of divisions caused by the series of civil wars between the 1970s and 1990s. Why are there so many unexploded bombs and minefields in Cambodia?Cambodia is known for being the site of U.S. bomb droppings during the Vietnam War and for the Khmer Rouge genocidal regime, which also planted land mines from 1975 to 1979. Today a majority of Cambodia’s population is age 35 or younger, which means most of the population has grown up since the Khmer Rouge regime ended in 1979. This statistic fails to take into account the uneven distribution of the regime’s end in the country as fighting continued in the northwest of the country where the Vietnamese and their Cambodian allies fought to keep the Khmer Rouge army out of the country. Most of the land mines in Cambodia were planted between 1985 and 1989, when the Vietnamese-allied government installed a “bamboo curtain” against the invading Thai and Khmer Rouge along the Thai-Cambodia border in the northwest. This area, called the K5 belt, remains the most densely land-mine-contaminated region of the world, a 1,046-kilometer (650-mile) strip of land with “up to 2,400 mines per linear kilometer.” Cambodia’s problem of millions of undetonated land mines makes it the country with the highest population of amputees in the world. On average it has 100 land mine accidents per year. Why are the military and other de-mining organizations viewed with suspicion by the locals?Land mine clearance requires a huge amount of military infrastructure. Decontamination, which is the term used for removal of land mines, depends on the same military skill sets that contamination depends on. So people who are de-miners are often soldiers or former combatants in Cambodia, and the divisions from the civil war still run deep. The largest de-mining organization in the country is part of the military branch of government. The current Cambodian state has been running operations to clear the land mines since the 1990s, but the state is also rumored to grab village lands, disappear people who disagree with the ruling party, and quell legitimate protests, so de-miners carry a stigma of military corruption. After war and mass atrocity, the state loses legitimacy. And so what happens is the villagers distrust even peacekeeping efforts, so even efforts to decontaminate the country result in a kind of mistrust. When you distrust the state, you need to build state legitimacy, and de-mining offers a real opportunity for states to do so. They can rehabilitate soldiers and build relationships between villagers and soldiers. But in Cambodia, I heard from villagers that they distrusted the de-miners and found them untrustworthy. They didn’t think that their land would be returned to them when the land mines were cleared, which causes some problems when it comes to information about where the land mines are. How does mine clearing with rats work?Rats are being used in de-mining because of their incredible sense of smell, relatively low cost of maintenance and ease of transport. Just like dogs, they don’t detect any false positives, as a metal detector would.In the minefield, the rat is connected to two de-miners who walk on cleared corridors with the decontaminated area in between them. The de-miners step down the field in unison as the rat sniffs for mines in the pit, scratching twice when it smells TNT. Then the de-miner maps the location, and clicks a clicker, telling the rat it can go get its reward, a delicious banana. The rats don’t get blown up by the mines because they’re so light. The rats each weigh 1 to 3 pounds, so they are weightless to a land mine, which usually requires a minimum of 11 to 35.3 pounds of pressure to activate. How did the introduction of rats to de-mining change how it is viewed in Cambodia?Rats have successfully been used to decontaminate Mozambique in Africa, and as for their import into Cambodia, the success story really lies in the fact that the organizations using them have been able to obtain donations and become independent so that they can work on demilitarizing the de-mining industry.Rats don’t fit in with the military aesthetic of de-mining, unlike dogs, which are military aid animals and have been used within militaries for centuries. The image of a soldier proudly standing next to his dog is very different from a soldier cradling a small rat in his arms. So when the villagers first saw the rat, they were a little bit puzzled, but I actually think the rat humanized the de-miners in a way that demilitarized them. When they see the rat with a soldier, it’s more of this kind of absurdity. So it make them pause and think, “OK, what is a rat doing there?” Villagers have said in interviews that they wondered about it and it made them take a second glance. It undermines the kind of villainous characterization of the de-miners for the villagers. APOPO, an organization that uses the rats in de-mining, posts publicity photos where the rats snuggle with their handlers. Since then the land mine detection dog organizations have started posting photos of their dogs being playful, and pictures of the puppies. So there is an effect which pervades other organizations, and demilitarization is seen as something to be valued, even in a highly militarized industry. These are opportunities for demilitarization of de-mining for the country itself, for the state and for people’s trust in authorities.This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Darcie DeAngelo, Binghamton University, State University of New York.Read more: * Rise of the super rat: rodents detect landmines, sniff out TB, find disaster victims * Cambodia has come a long way in 25 years of peace – but it’s far from perfectDarcie DeAngelo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 04:30:33 -0600: Court Ruling Could Kill Uber and Lyft in California - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
Just days before Californians themselves were set to decide on the matter, a state appeals court has ruled that app-based ride-sharing companies Uber and Lyft must comply with state law AB5 and classify all of their drivers as employees rather than contractors. The ruling raises the possibility that the companies will simply end operations in the state altogether, both having stated previously that their business model depends on the flexibility of using contractors.The companies claim, and drivers often confirm, that the flexibility of contract work is key to their operations. Employers are required under federal and state law to schedule and track their employees’ hours for overtime, unemployment, and other purposes. That’s not case with contractors, who are legally considered independent businesses.Critics of the ride-sharing companies, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom, claim that’s just a dodge to get out of paying overtime and complying with other workplace regulations. Labor unions have pushed for the drivers to be classified as employees, since contractors cannot join unions.A three-judge state appeals court panel on Thursday agreed, rejecting the companies’ arguments out of hand. The panel was in full crusader mode, calling the case a “reminder that the foundation of interim injunctive relief lies inequity comes from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was renowned for her expertise in procedure long before she became the national icon known as RBG.”The panel said that there was just no reason to assume that forcing ride-sharing companies to operate as traditional employers would in any way hurt their business model, even as it conceded that that model was built around contractors.“We recognize that defendants’ business models are different from that traditionally associated with employment, particularly with regard to drivers’ freedom to work as many or as few hours as they wish, when and where they choose, and their ability to work on multiple apps at the same time,” it said.The “multiple apps” point, in particular, is worth noting, because that refers to the ability of drivers to work for multiple different app-based companies at the same time. In other words, the drivers can work for a company and its direct competitor, a situation no traditional employer would tolerate. But a business cannot automatically restrict a contractor from doing that. The ride-sharing companies don’t even try. If you’ve ever taken a ride in an Uber or a Lyft, you’ve probably also seen a sticker for the other service in the drivers’ window.The panel nevertheless argued the companies were employers because the ride-sharing service they provided was the core of their business model, rather than an incidental activity, pointing to a Supreme Court ruling called Dynamex. As for the possibility that the companies cannot function as traditional employers, the panel asserted that just couldn’t possibly be true.“The People counter, correctly, that a party suffers no grave or irreparable harm by being prohibited from violating the law,” the panel said.That is not true in the real world, however: An ill-conceived law can cause great damage. A good example can be found in the case of AB5 itself. In addition to scaring off many employers who use contractors, the law reined in contract work generally, strictly limiting what even traditional freelancers like photographers or musicians could do. State lawmakers were forced to amend the law and carve out exemptions for numerous professions. That’s clear proof that they had overreached. Freelancers still claim it’s too restrictive.It may yet get worse for Californians. If the state ballot’s Proposition 22 to roll back AB5 fails and the panel’s ruling stands, the companies have said they’ll simply stop operating the state. Customers throughout the state will have limited transportation options — a potential public safety issue, as Mothers Against Drunk Driving has warned. Meanwhile, numerous drivers will be left without a way to make the additional money that ridesharing offers at a time when Californians need the opportunity. The national unemployment rate is 7.9 percent, but the Golden State’s rate is 11 percent. California’s unemployment has been consistently higher than the national average throughout the year, and the state’s effort to reign in gig-economy companies has likely been a factor.
- Mon, 26 Oct 2020 04:15:25 -0600: Critics slam 'shameless hypocrisy' of Saudi G20 meeting as women activists sit in jail - Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines
A virtual business event hosted by Riyadh promises to place a "special emphasis" on "creating a more equitable future for women."
