Apr 21, 2021

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Minneapolis Star Tribune

Genuinely good news in ocean of 2020 campaign cash

By Joe Ready
  • While big money has been a powerful part of American politics since the country's founding, the voices of regular people, represented by small-dollar donors, may finally be coming to the fore.
  • Providing $6 in federal money for every $1 raised in small increments — the ratio for presidential candidates proposed in HR 1, the democracy overhaul bill now before the Senate after passing the House — would have had a perverse effect on the 2020 campaign: It would have given Biden and Trump another $4.7 billion to spend.
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Minneapolis Star Tribune

The lesson of a little helicopter on Mars

  • The little helicopter weighs only 4 pounds, and its first flight lasted a mere 30 seconds and reached an altitude of only 10 feet.
  • That Space Race effectively ended in July 1969, when the late Neil Armstrong jumped off the last rung of the Lunar Module's ladder to announce "a giant leap for mankind." Back on Earth, while people across the globe were astonished that Earthlings were walking on the moon, many also wondered if those billions of dollars should have been spent instead on what we would now term social justice.
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Time

Archaeologists discover long-lost homesite once owned by Harriet Tubman’s father

  • Our federal partners, historians and others who seek to preserve our, our history for the last year, archaeologists at the State Department of Transportation, State Highway Administration have searched the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge for a site where Harriet Tubman's father, Ben Ross, once lived in november.
  • Today, I'm excited to announce that our archaeologists have confirmed that this site was once the home of Ben Ross and may have been where Harriet Tubman spent her early years.
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Chicago Tribune

Matteson, Tinley Park mass COVID-19 vaccination sites start accepting walk-ins

By Alice Yin
Two south suburban Cook County mass COVID-19 vaccination sites will accept walk-in appointments starting Wednesday as demand for shots dwindles. The Matteson and Tinley Park mass vaccination locations are opening up access this week as part of a pilot to see whether removing the barrier of making an appointment online or over the phone will expand the county’s endeavor at getting shots into arms, Cook County Health CEO Israel Rocha Jr. said in a news conference at Provident Hospital. […]Read more >Similar articles >

Minneapolis Star Tribune

White House aims to make it easier for people to get vaccine

By ZEKE MILLER
  • WASHINGTON — The White House is trying to overcome diminishing demand for COVID-19 shots by making it easier for Americans to get vaccinated even as the United States is set to meet President Joe Biden's goal of administering 200 million coronavirus doses in his first 100 days in office.
  • In a White House speech on Wednesday, Biden will discuss efforts to expand vaccine distribution and access in his first three months in office, and outline his administration's latest plans to motivate more Americans to get shots.
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Harvard Business Review

Why AI That Teaches Itself to Achieve a Goal Is the Next Big Thing

By Kathryn Hume
  • Because these systems learn through trial and error, they work best when they can rapidly try an action (or sequence of actions) and get feedback — a stock market algorithm that takes hundreds of actions per day is a good use case; optimizing customer lifetime value over the course of five years, with only irregular interaction points, is not.
  • Instead of machine learning that uses historical data to generate predictions, game-playing systems like AlphaGo use reinforcement learning — a mature machine learning technology that’s good at optimizing tasks.
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San Antonio Current

San Antonio Spurs face the Heat on Wednesday as brutal regular season winds down

By M. Solis
After an unlikely run to the Finals in the NBA Bubble, it’s been a challenging stretch for the Miami Heat.

Earlier this season, the team endured its first six-game losing streak since 2017, and injuries to key personnel along the way — including Bam Adebayo, Jimmy Butler and Goran Dragic — have led to creative lineups for Heat coach Erik Spoelstra. […]Read more >Similar articles >
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Minneapolis Star Tribune

Audit: Wisconsin economic agency’s performance improving

By TODD RICHMOND
  • The Legislative Audit Bureau's biennial review found the quasi-public Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation largely complied with state law and its contracts when administering tax credits, loans and grants to businesses during fiscal year 2019-20.
  • — The performance of Wisconsin's troubled economic development agency improved over the last fiscal year but it must sharpen its oversight of tax credit contracts, policies on closing contracts and the accuracy of online data, according to an audit released Wednesday.
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Vanity Fair

In Shocking Turn of Events, Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene Aren’t Happy With Chauvin Verdict

By Charlotte Klein
  • Yet despite the indisputable evidence, as well as testimony from fellow police officers who decried Chauvin’s use of force, Fox News host Tucker Carlson had a different message for viewers, as he argued Tuesday’s conviction “was never in doubt” following “nearly a year of burning and looting and murder by BLM” to achieve the guilty verdict.
  • Republicans who excused former President Donald Trump ’s role in the deadly Capitol attack distorted Waters’ call for activists to “get more confrontational” in the case of an acquittal, claiming the California Democrat was inciting violence and threatening the jury.
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Alabama News Network

COVID-19 Hospitalizations Jump 20% in Alabama in 10 Days

Hospitalizations linked to COVID-19 have jumped about 20% in less than two weeks in Alabama. Statistics from the Alabama Department of Public Health show 362 people were hospitalized Monday for the illness caused by the new coronavirus. That’s up from the 301 patients just 10 days earlier. But the total is still just a fraction of the 3,070 patients who pushed the state’s intensive care wards to near capacity in mid-January. Officials said Tuesday they were monitoring the hike but don’t consider it to be a sign of another coming crisis in the pandemic since more people are getting vaccinated and many patients are younger people who tend to […]Read more >Similar articles >

Albany Times Union

New York limits parking at popular Adirondacks’ lookout for Roaring Brook Falls

By Rick Karlin
  • VALLEY — The state Departments of Environmental Conservation and Transportation have put in further parking restrictions on traffic-clogged parts of an Adirondacks High Peaks road that have grown increasingly popular with hikers in recent years.
  • The stretch of roadway had been too crowded with parked cars and created a traffic hazard for motorists and hikers walking along the road, officials said.
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Denver - Westword

Study Shows Cities Struggling With Homeless Encampments Before Pandemic

By Conor McCormick-Cavanagh
  • Dunton and her team found that the four cities in their study all used a common strategy for responding to the most visible homeless encampments: "clearance and closure with support." In Denver, that's known as a "sweep."
  • A new study funded by the federal government highlights how cities across the country are struggling to deal with homeless encampments, a major concern here in Denver.
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Raleigh, NC | WRAL News

Once abundant red-cockaded woodpecker population suffering effects of climate change, government action

Red-cockaded woodpeckerOnce abundant, with a population well over a million strong before European colonization, the red-cockaded woodpecker's territory stretched as far north as New Jersey, down to Florida and west to Texas. Now there are fewer than 20,000 total birds, with much of their historic habitat destroyed from logging, development and poor forestry practices. […]Read more >Similar articles >
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Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Milwaukee’s chronic problem with lead: Dr. Veneshia McKinney-Whitson explains what parents can do to keep kids safe

  • And health experts fear the problem may have grown worse — fears exacerbated by the combination of more children being at home during the pandemic year and a 37% statewide decrease in lead testing of kids.
  • Then you think about the parents, if they work in factories or industries like where batteries are made — they can bring that lead exposure back to their home and expose their kids to lead.
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Alabama News Network

Birmingham to Pardon More than 15,000 People with Marijuana Convictions

Birmingham will issue blanket pardons for more than 15,000 people with misdemeanor marijuana convictions dating back to 1990. Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin announced the pardon program on Tuesday, April 20, which is a day that many associate with marijuana use. The pardons from municipal court convictions are automatic. Many people have a hard time finding work because of drug convictions, and Woodfin says the pardons would allow them to rejoin the workforce and provide for their families. The announcement came as the Alabama Democratic Party said it would support the legalization of marijuana for recreational and medical use in the […]Read more >Similar articles >

Connecticut Post

Democrats adjust Lamont’s budget, focus on equity, non-profits

By Ken Dixon
  • Majority Democrats in the General Assembly have targeted about 20 percent of Gov. Ned Lamont’s proposed budget for changes, including more funding for non-profit social service providers, in a two-year $46-billion spending plan that would use $1.7 billion in anticipated federal support.
  • Possibly the centerpiece of the legislation is a seven-year plan to help the non-profit providers that the state has leaned on for decades, in housing the state’s disabled and needy, including the more than 700 group homes licensed by the state Department of Developmental Services.
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Minnesota Post

How the GOP made emergency public safety funding a wedge issue for DFL legislators

By Peter Callaghan
  • On Monday, in response to criticism from within the DFL, Walz said the money is needed to protect people and buildings, but that he continues to push for further police accountability measures this session.
  • Just a week after a Brooklyn Center police officer killed Daunte Wright during a traffic stop for expired license tabs, the state Senate passed a bill to provide emergency cash to Gov. Tim Walz .
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KevinMD.com

How deep mindset work helped me find the courage to make my career transition

By Maiysha Clairborne, MD
  • I loved being an integrative medicine doctor, but I thought to myself, “What if I could use this work to help and heal other doctors who are suffering from burnout?”
  • What I didn’t realize at the time was that all of these little voices were limiting beliefs that I had made up at some point in my life based on the way I was raised, my past experiences, and even the trauma I experienced as a young person through my educational journey including and beyond medical school.
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Chicago Sun-Times

Will Blackhawks and Bulls fans be allowed to return to United Center this season? (LIVE UPDATES)

  • Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Tuesday she expects Bulls and Blackhawks fans will be allowed to watch home games at the United Center this season, barring a turn for the worse in COVID-19 cases.
  • The Illinois Department of Public Health reported 2,587 new coronavirus cases diagnosed among 62,406 tests on Tuesday, decreasing the seven-day average statewide positivity rate to 3.8% — the first time that figure has fallen below 4% since April 6.
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Denver - Westword

What State Universities, Colleges Say About Requiring Vaccinations

By Michael Roberts
  • "The University of Colorado Denver is not requiring fall students to get the vaccine at this time.
  • Yet when we contacted fifteen major colleges and universities across the state to find out if vaccinations will be required for students signed up for the fall 2021 term, we discovered that only two have issued a mandate so far: Fort Lewis College in Durango and the University of Denver, which made its announcement on April 20.
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TIME

The ‘America First Caucus’ Is Backtracking, But Its Mistaken Ideas About ‘Anglo-Saxon’ History Still Have Scholars Concerned

By Olivia B. Waxman
  • TIME spoke to medievalist Mary Rambaran-Olm, an expert on race in early England and Provost Research Fellow at the University of Toronto, who has written about the loaded racist connotations behind the term “Anglo-Saxon .”
  • RAMBARAN-OLM: Basically it was an Anglo-Latin term that King Alfred used to describe how he was king over the Angles, which is the English, and the Saxons, two of the main tribes that had migrated to Britain.
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Texas Monthly

Get in Your Car and Drive to Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin

By Daniel Vaughn
  • Co-owners Ernest Servantes and David Kirkland didn’t wait this long in their barbecue careers to open a restaurant just to let it fail, though they did fear their dream was over before Burnt Bean Co. even opened for business.
  • The weak spots in a barbecue menu are generally multiple and obvious, but after trying breakfast (served on Sundays only) and lunch in a single day at Burnt Bean Co., I have no holes to report.
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Vanity Fair

Justin Theroux Is Great, but Mosquito Coast Is Warmed-Over Ozark

By Sonia Saraiya
  • In this loose adaptation of Paul Theroux ’s The Mosquito Coast premiering April 30, Justin Theroux (Paul’s nephew!) plays Allie Fox, a slippery inventor with strong beliefs about America’s flaws—to the point where his ideology has swept his wife ( Melissa George ) and two children into a life of perpetual motion.
  • Mosquito Coast ’s biggest problem may be that the show doesn’t really have enough story for seven episodes.
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Minneapolis Star Tribune

Jurors faced high-pressure, emotionally draining Derek Chauvin trial

By Susan Du
  • After finding Chauvin guilty in George Floyd's death, the jurors likely received an expression of gratitude from Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill, a flier on coping with jury duty — and little else, according to those familiar with Minnesota courts.
  • "You have this trauma exposure, and you have the pressure of the decision, and the worldwide scrutiny, and the consequences for racial justice, and the lack of your typical coping strategies and support," said Patricia Frazier, a University of Minnesota psychology professor who studies stress and trauma and also serves as an expert on sexual assault cases.
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Fast Company

The Apple Card’s new feature tackles one of credit’s biggest problems

By Carolina Milanesi
  • The path to women’s credit independence started with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, which put an end to lenders requiring women to have male cosigners on loans.
  • There’s been a lack of transparency and consumer understanding in the way credit scores are calculated when there are two users of the same credit card since the primary account holder receives the benefit of building a strong credit history while the other does not.”
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Minnesota Post

‘Something needs to change’: Walz responds to Chauvin verdict with call for more reforms

By Peter Callaghan and Walker Orenstein
  • Last week, Gazelka said that his GOP caucus would be willing to hold two sets of hearings before the session ended — one of police accountability and criminal justice and another on the civil unrest that occurred in Brooklyn Center after the death of Daunte Wright.
  • The April 11 shooting of Daunte Wright by a Brooklyn Center police officer during a traffic stop has led to a new push by the DFL, including suggestions by some that the state budget not be adopted without further reforms.
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US news | The Guardian

‘Way more work to do’: Athletes give cautious welcome to Floyd verdict

By Tom Lutz
  • The Minnesota Timberwolves play in the same city where Floyd was murdered and their star player, Karl-Anthony Towns, said he had been worried about the outcome of the trial before Tuesday’s game against the Sacramento Kings.
  • The sports world welcomed the verdict in the George Floyd murder trial on Tuesday, while cautioning that there is still work to do addressing systemic racism in the United States.
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Florida Sun Sentinel

DeSantis suggests Chauvin guilty verdict happened because jury was ‘scared of what a mob may do’

By Steven Lemongello
In June, DeSantis called Floyd’s death a murder. “When I saw the video of that cop murdering George Floyd, I was just absolutely appalled by what I saw. … I immediately asked folks at FDLE [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] and others, ‘How the hell did you get away with even doing that tactic?”’ Tuesday, however, DeSantis’s comments about the “mob” — his only reported comments on the verdict — ran counter to the reaction from many Florida Republicans. […]Read more >Similar articles >

New Hampshire | Concord Monitor

Letter: Foreign policy transformation needed

  • Sir David Attenborough states “we are no longer separate Nations each best served by looking after its own needs and security; we are a single truly Global species whose greatest threats are shared, and her security must ultimately come from acting together in the interests of us all” (Climate and Security, February 2021).
  • He refers to the threat of climate change to our collective security.
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Minnesota Post

The guilty verdict: What’s next

By Robin Phillips
  • Another important step is to address the racial disparities resulting from historic and continued discrimination: discrimination in employment, in housing, in health care, indeed, in every sector of life.
  • We have known – and tolerated – for years a disparity gap between white and Black Minnesotans that is among the largest in the country in nearly every indicator.
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Tucson Weekly

Potential jaguar habitat at U.S.-Mexico border identified by University of Arizona researchers

TUCSON – Although jaguars are widely assumed to live exclusively in Mexico, Central and South America, they once prowled Arizona, New Mexico and Texas before colonizers and poachers in the 19th century drove most of these beautifully spotted big cats out of the U.S.

So when Ganesh Marin was studying ecosystems along the border U.S.-Mexico this year, the University of Arizona Ph.D. student wasn’t expecting to see a young jaguar sauntering in his video feed in mid-March. […]Read more >Similar articles >

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Wall Street Journal

Europe’s Most Valuable Tech Company Can Help the Chip Shortage

  • ASML, which competes with Applied Materials to sell semiconductor-manufacturing gear to the likes of Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, on Wednesday more than doubled its growth forecast for the year and said it was increasing production capacity for 2022—a reassuring sign for any business that needs chips to make its products and any consumer waiting for them.
  • The company also said it was looking at boosting capacity in more standard deep ultraviolet (DUV) lithography.
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Indianapolis Star

“Private insurance gives better coverage” than under Medicaid expansion, GOP lawmaker says.

  • Asked for proof of that claim, Born spokesman Tyler Clark said cost shouldn’t be considered as part of the discussion over which plans offer "better coverage" — only the number of health care providers that accept Medicaid vs.
  • The reimbursements Medicaid pays to health care providers are about half what private insurers pay nationwide — though we’ll note the state has the ability to set higher reimbursement rates, if Born and other leaders felt that was a problem that should be addressed.
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US news | The Guardian

US jogger talks bear out of pursuing him further – video

A runner filmed a face-off with a large bear that pursued him for several minutes in Grand Teton national park inWyoming, producing a three-minute video that went viral. Evan Matthews said he often saw bears on his runs, but none had dared to come so close. ‘This one was interested in me, so I had to change its mind,’ hewrote. Rather than use his bear spray, Matthews opted to reason with his ursine inquisitor.


Continue reading […]Read more >Similar articles >
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Minneapolis Star Tribune

Wisconsin racial justice task force issues recommendations

By SCOTT BAUER
  • — The Wisconsin Assembly's bipartisan racial disparities task force created in the wake of a white Kenosha police officer shooting a Black man issued 18 recommendations on Wednesday, but stopped short of calling for a total ban on chokeholds and no-knock warrants as Gov. Tony Evers wants.
  • Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos created the task force in August, after the Legislature ignored nine proposals Evers put forward in June and after a white Kenosha police officer shot Jacob Blake, who is Black, leaving him paralyzed.
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Arkansas Times

Little Rock Board leads way on COVID health, but the state legislature has other plans

By Max Brantley
  • At the Board of Directors meeting Tuesday, Mayor Frank Scott, Jr. and the Little Rock Board of Directors extended the disaster emergency due to COVID-19.
  • The Mayor and the Board of Directors will continue to utilize the available powers vested in these offices to work in the best interest of Little Rock residents and follow the guidance of medical professionals.
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Minneapolis Star Tribune

Biden to pledge halving greenhouse gases by 2030

By MATTHEW DALY
  • WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden will pledge to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at least in half by 2030 as he convenes a virtual climate summit with 40 world leaders, according to three people with knowledge of the White House plans.
  • Scientists, environmental groups and even business leaders had called on Biden to set a target that would cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% below 2005 levels by 2030.
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Vox

Chauvin’s conviction shouldn’t obscure how broken our criminal justice system is

By Jerusalem Demsas
  • What does accountability look like if it’s not just Derek Chauvin and others who might be implicated in the death of George Floyd are convicted?
  • “But seeing the conviction as a success ignores the fact that Chauvin should perhaps never have been a police officer to begin with or, if he was, he should never have been going after a $20 bill in this way — in every way the system failed.
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US news | The Guardian

Georgia churches call for Home Depot boycott over voting rights stance

By Sam Levine in New York
  • Georgia religious leaders on Tuesday called for a boycott of Home Depot over the company’s refusal to speak out against a new law restricting voting access in the state.
  • The faith leaders said in a statement they were targeting Home Depot after representatives from the company declined to attend a summit of corporate and church officials recently.
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Wall Street Journal

The Jury’s Answer in Minneapolis

  • It’s obviously absurd to compare Floyd to Fitzgerald.
  • It became historic American theater, up there with Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scottsboro Boys, Alger Hiss and O.J. Simpson—that last one a circus and a travesty and a showcase of the idea of jury nullification, the principle that appeals to what the pioneering black lawyer Dovey Roundtree called “justice older than the law.”
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Boston Herald

Ferriabough Bolling: After the verdict, the real work of change begins

By Joyce Ferriabough Bolling
  • And the truth of the matter is that the reason George Floyd is dead is because Mr. Chauvin’s heart was too small.”
  • During the trial, my mind traveled first to about 10 miles down the road from the courthouse to Brooklyn Center, Minn., where 20-year-old Daunte Wright was shot and killed by 26-year veteran police officer Kim Porter, who alleges that she meant to fire her taser, but instead fired a gun.
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New Hampshire | Concord Monitor

Letter: Remembering George Washington Dugan

  • At age 44, George Washington Dugan left the farm off Old Marlboro Road and enlisted in the Massachusetts 54th.
  • The 54th Massachusetts was an infantry regiment that saw extensive service in the Union Army during the American Civil War. The unit was the second African-American regiment organized in the northern states during the Civil War. General recruitment of African Americans for service in the Union Army was authorized by the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln in 1863.
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The Salt Lake Tribune

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney calls Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal an ‘error’

By Sara Tabin, Matt Canham
  • Stewart said he supported former President Donald Trump’s call to withdraw troops last year and now he backs Biden’s plan to do the same.
  • “Like all Americans, I want our troops to come home, but I recognize and profoundly appreciate the vital role they often play in far and dangerous places like Afghanistan to protect our national security.”
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Denver Post

What kind of flag can I fly outside my house?

  • In Pendery’s case, his community is overseen not by a traditional homeowners association, but a metropolitan district, which is a government entity with a democratically elected board.
  • California prevents homeowners associations from restricting flags except in matters of public health or safety; in Arizona and Texas, restrictions on political signs are lifted in the months immediately preceding an election and for a handful of days following.
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Vox

Taylor Swift’s songs haven’t changed. But she has.

By Emily VanDerWerff
  • “Fifteen” is a fairly famous song, so you might well know that Swift wrote it in her own teen years, and released it on the album Fearless in 2008, when she was just 18 years old.
  • Now, thanks to Swift’s decision to re-record all of her old music to gain control of the rights tied to the master recordings, she really is revisiting songs like “Fifteen” from the perspective of a woman in her 30s.
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Axios

Bolsonaro, Putin among dozens of leaders set to attend White House climate summit

By Andrew Freedman
  • The Biden administration offered new details this morning about the big, virtual climate summit Thursday and Friday and signaled they expect new emissions reduction and climate finance commitments from multiple countries.
  • Quick take: Biden administration officials can use the deal to show that other countries are acting as President Biden presses Congress for huge new investments and unveils a non-binding target to steeply cut U.S. emissions this decade.
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Las Vegas Review-Journal

Republican Sam Peters running again for 4th Congressional District

  • Small business owner and retired U.S. Air Force officer Sam Peters will once again seek the Republican nomination in Nevada’s 4th Congressional District, he formally announced Wednesday.
  • In an interview with the Review-Journal prior to the announcement, Peters said he is once again running on a set of conservative values, including diversifying the state’s economy, securing the U.S.-Mexico border, expanding military funding and limiting the country’s growing deficit.
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Vox

Think you own your stuff? Think again.

By Dan Greene
  • But even when music or a movie or book or art NFT is purchased digitally, it never holds a physical presence in its owner’s life; one imagines it is quite common for, say, a modern music fan to spend a good chunk of money to stream or download their favorite artists’ work and yet never have anything in their homes indicating as much.
  • Relying even more heavily on these models felt like a further concession to the powers that already wield such outsize influence over our 21st-century lives, not only through streaming and digital goods but increasingly through the internet-embedded everything around us.
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Texas Monthly

A Section of Trump Border Wall in South Texas Cost $27 Million a Mile. It’s Being Foiled by $5 Ladders.

By Aaron Nelsen
  • Every month for the past decade, Scott Nicol, a 51-year-old artist and activist, has set out from his home in McAllen to roam the Rio Grande Valley in search of ladders used to scale the border wall in South Texas.
  • On a cool and overcast day in early April, Nicol has centered his hunt on an eight-mile stretch of border between the towns of Hidalgo and Granjeno, where an Obama-era wall meets up with a newly constructed piece of Trump’s wall.
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Bloomberg View

International Flight Isn’t Delayed, Investors Are Just Early

By Brooke Sutherland
  • The first apparent trigger for the selloff was an announcement that the U.S. State Department is changing how it determines travel advisories to better align with health assessments from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and reflect on-the-ground logistics for things like testing capacity.
  • The company linked a return to positive net income to a recovery in business and international travel to 65% of 2019 levels but said it may be able to get to a positive adjusted Ebitda figure by the fourth quarter even if demand in those markets only climbs back to 30% of what it was in pre-pandemic times.
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TIME

What Will Office Life Be Like After the Pandemic? This Australian Fintech Company May Have the Answer

By Amy Gunia
  • “As a leader if I don’t show that I can work from home and I will do this, I think that people may copy me and easily return to how they used to do things,” she says, “and I don’t want that to happen, and I know it doesn’t have to.”
  • Katherine McConnell wanted to make sure that she and her employees didn’t fall back into their old habits when they returned to the office in Sydney, Australia—where the coronavirus situation has stabilized —after several months of working from home.
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Los Angeles Times

Festival of Books: Native American authors honor Leslie Marmon Silko, next generation of Indigenous writers

By Aida Ylanan
  • Geller joined authors Brandon Hobson and David Heska Wanbli Weiden in a Los Angeles Times Festival of Books discussion in honor of Silko, moderated by poet and Times contributor Rigoberto González.
  • Virgil, the protagonist in Weiden’s novel, wonders what it’s like to live free of the burden of “the murdered children, the stolen land, that every Native person carries around.”
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The Atlantic

The Suicide Wave That Never Was

By Tom Bartlett
  • Indeed, suicides did go up in 2020 compared with 2019, as The New York Times reported: The Clark County coroner’s office, according to the most recent tally, lists 16 youth suicides last year and 11 in 2019.
  • The numbers for teenagers had “ skyrocketed,” according to the coverage: In just the first two months after schools closed, teens’ insurance claims for mental-health treatment were “ approximately double ” what they’d been during the same period in 2019.
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Vox

“It’s deep. It’s dark. It’s elusive.” The ocean’s twilight zone is full of wonders.

By Byrd Pinkerton
  • “It’s almost easier to define it [the ocean’s twilight zone] by what we don’t know than what we do know,” says Andone Lavery, an acoustician at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who has been probing the mesoplagic’s depths for years.
  • Another thing we know: Every night, some number of those fish, along with many other non-fish organisms, rise up from the twilight zone to the surface of the ocean in order to feed.
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Harvard Business Review

Reshaping Your Career in the Wake of the Pandemic

By Dorie Clark
  • We’ve identified three key aspects of work that the pandemic has impacted and which — if you approach them thoughtfully and strategically — can help you reshape your career successfully for the future.
  • The authors identify three key aspects of work that the pandemic has impacted and which — if you approach them thoughtfully and strategically — can help you reshape your career successfully for the future.
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Orange County Register

Disneyland relaxes employee beard restrictions to Sneezy, Sleepy and Grumpy lengths

By Brady MacDonald
  • Disneyland has relaxed restrictions on mustaches and beards for employees as part of major changes to the Anaheim theme park’s dress code designed to make the guidelines gender inclusive .
  • Mustache and beard lengths are now at the discretion of Disneyland employees provided the facial hair is neatly groomed and maintained, according to updated Disney Look guidelines.
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Orange County Register

San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles counties rank as top three for bad air in the United States

By Martin Wisckol
  • The five-county Los Angeles region is the smoggiest metro area in the country for the 21st time in the 22 years that the American Lung Association has been issuing the rankings, according to the “State of the Air 2021” report released Tuesday, April 20, by the group.
  • Six other metro areas in the state were among the 10 worst in the country for smog, and six, including Los Angeles, were among the 10 worst for soot, also known as particle pollution.
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Vox

Why Best Picture nominee Sound of Metal resonates

By Alissa Wilkinson
  • Below, Vox film critic Alissa Wilkinson, associate editor Karen Turner, and critic at large Emily VanDerWerff discuss Sound of Metal, Darius Marder’s drama about a drummer grappling with sudden hearing loss, starring Riz Ahmed.
  • Regardless, Sound of Metal feels like an evolution in the portrayal of deaf and hard-of-hearing people onscreen that takes us beyond more one-dimensional depictions in past movies.
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The Atlantic

There Will Be More Derek Chauvins

By Adam Serwer
  • They are a reflection of a system that rarely holds officers accountable for abusing their powers, and a society that expects police to dispense “rough justice.”
  • The video of Floyd’s murder sparked what may have been the largest civil-rights protests in American history; it was the most consequential entry in a thick catalog of police abuses recorded by cellphone cameras .
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Minnesota Post

The National Guard should take right-wing extremism more seriously

By Joshua Preston
  • As a soldier, citizen, and resident of Minneapolis, I do not believe the Minnesota National Guard (MNARNG) takes seriously the threat of right-wing extremism in our ranks, and I worry what this will mean for Operation Safety Net. Having participated in the military’s extremism “stand down,” I’ve seen how military leadership tries to marginalize protesters and prohibit soldiers from having any association with the wider Minneapolis community.
  • Instead of addressing the insurrection or the right-wing extremist groups that are a threat to national security, this brief only marginalized protesters while discouraging soldiers from speaking up or speaking out.
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STAT

Opinion: Listen: A Baghdad-trained physician on the barriers to getting a medical license in the U.S.

By Patrick Skerrett
In this episode of the First Opinion Podcast, I speak with Lubab al-Quraishi, a Baghdad-trained physician, about her difficulty getting licensed to work as a physician in the United States. She worked for a decade as a pathologist in Iraq, but after being forced to flee the country with her family, ended up working at Popeyes in New Jersey because she could not afford the cost of the exams needed to transfer her license. But after being granted a temporary license to work as a physician during the pandemic — which recently expired — al-Quraishi is pushing for change to the slow and exclusionary system of licensing for foreign-trained […]Read more >Similar articles >
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Axios

South Korean president: Trump “beat around the bush and failed” on North Korea

By Jacob Knutson
South Korean President Moon Jae-in criticized former President Trump’s attempts to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula, telling the New York Times he "beat around the bush" with North Korea and "failed to pull it through."Why it matters: Moon, now in his final year in office, called denuclearization a "matter of survival" for South Korea and urged President Biden to resume negotiations with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un after a standstill of nearly two years.What they’re saying: “I hope that Biden will go down as a historic president that has achieved substantive and irreversible progress for the […]Read more >Similar articles >

Albany Times Union

For National Pretzel Day, get a little twisted

By Deanna Fox

“During COVID things slowed down, and doing takeout only was the perfect time to look at some of our recipes. We are such a high volume restaurant that when we slowed down, we were able to perfect our kitchen,” said Kelly Brown of Browns Brewing Company. She used the slower pace to consider ways in which the brew pub might be able connect the ethos of the brewery with the philosophy of the kitchen, and one product seems to link the two halves together perfectly: Pretzels.

[…]Read more >Similar articles >
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Alabama Political Reporter

Opinion | Man walks country to raise awareness for congressional term limits

By Byron Shehee
  • While not yet as high-profile as Forrest Gump, there’s a real-life story of a man walking across the country that is also providing inspiration and raising awareness for something that makes sense to people: placing term limits on Congress.
  • When I first heard about Izzy, my boss called me and said, “hey, there’s this guy who is walking across country trying to raise awareness for congressional term limits and I want you to go meet with him.”
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Denver Post

RTD retained more frequent service during pandemic in communities that need transit the most

By John Aguilar
  • But the agency made a concerted effort to keep routes serving low-income and transit-reliant neighborhoods at a more robust level of operation than many of its other lines connecting the city to the suburbs.
  • As the pandemic raged across Denver and its suburbs, leaders at RTD were concerned that cuts the agency needed to make across its bus and rail routes would fall hardest on the most vulnerable.
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Los Angeles Times

Column: Ending homelessness on skid row won’t happen just because a judge orders it

By Steve Lopez
  • Carter’s order Tuesday requiring Los Angeles city and county officials to offer shelter to the entire population of skid row by mid-October is a brash, bold move — and possibly marks a turning point in the enduring, shameful saga of homelessness in downtown Los Angeles.
  • Carter’s ruling Tuesday, as part of a lawsuit he is overseeing about homelessness in Los Angeles, made some astute observations as he criticized local and state officials’ failures, often using their own words to make his case against them.
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Houston Chronicle

Here’s how Texas elections would change under the bill Republicans are pushing

By Alexa Ura, The Texas Tribune
  • Texas generally has strict rules outlining who can receive a paper ballot that can be filled out at home and returned in the mail or dropped off in person on Election Day. The option is limited to voters who are 65 and older, will be out of the county during the election, are confined in jail but otherwise still eligible or cite a disability or illness that keeps them from voting in person without needing help or without the risk of injuring their health.
  • Like Republicans across the country, Texas lawmakers are pushing to enact sweeping changes to state voting laws, including new restrictions on how and when voters can cast ballots.
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The Salt Lake Tribune

Robert Gehrke: Angela Dunn was much more than a capable expert during an unprecedented pandemic

By Robert Gehrke
  • Research shows the public trusts health information from an expert, not a politician, so in scores of press briefings, day-in and day-out, Dunn stuck to just the facts of what we knew and, equally as important, what we didn’t know.
  • It felt like a fitting gesture, as she announced she was leaving her role as state epidemiologist to become the head of the Salt Lake County Health Department .
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Orange County Register

Taco Bell is testing a vegetarian taco with its own plant-based filling

By Fielding Buck
  • A couple of years ago, when other fast food chains started partnering with companies such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods on plant-based alternatives to beef, Taco Bell held back.
  • Although it has not had a product like the Cravetarian Taco on its menu, Taco Bell has long been a go-to for vegetarians and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) called it a secret vegan paradise because it is relatively easy to “veganize” its menu items.
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US news | The Guardian

Four in 10 Americans live in counties with unhealthy air pollution levels

By Paola Rosa-Aquino
  • “We won’t know the impact of the pandemic on the air quality itself until our report next year,” Pruitt says, “It’s looking a lot more complicated than people thought it was last at this time.
  • “It’s important for people to know the quality of the air they breathe,” says Katherine Pruitt, national senior director for policy at the American Lung Association.
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Omaha World-Herald

Retired Omaha doctor learns how he escaped the Holocaust, a story told in new book

By Marjie Ducey Omaha World-Herald
  • Kader, a retired pediatric neurologist in Omaha, put together what happened in the early years of his life through calls and meetings with other survivors, information provided with his birth certificate and a trip to his home country of Belgium.
  • OMAHA — Dr. Fred Kader was too young to know that he twice escaped a trip to the dreaded Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II.
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The Salt Lake Tribune

Letter: Kudos to Romney for working for the constituents instead of big donors

By Georgia Platts | The Public Forum
One of the things Utahns worry most about is government representatives who listen to their big-money donors instead of them. For instance, after passing the unpopular 2017 “tax cuts for wealthy interests,” Sen. Hatch immediately said we would need to cut Social Security and Medicare to pay for the billionaire-windfall.By contrast, we are now fortunate that Sen. Romney is supporting the bipartisan Trust Act which will protect popular — and needed — programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are threatened by insolvency.Without Social Security, alone, 15 million more Americans would fall into poverty. The humanitarian consequences are […]Read more >Similar articles >
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New York Post

Queen Elizabeth turns 95: Her brand is ‘three times’ bigger than Oprah’s

By Jane Ridley
  • Referring to the embattled nonagenarian as “the world’s longest-standing and most successful CEO,” Nick Bullen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of True Royalty TV, said she had “built the British monarchy into one of the world’s biggest brands.”
  • The on-demand service also discovered that, despite the damage wrought by her second son, Prince Andrew, through his links to the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, she had grown The House of Windsor into the world’s fifth-biggest “corporate” brand ahead of multi-nationals such as Coca-Cola, Nike, Ferrari and Microsoft.
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Alabama Political Reporter

Senate OKs bill to require health care facilities to allow visitation

By Brandon Moseley
  • Tuesday, the Alabama Senate passed legislation granting Alabama residents continued access to their loved ones receiving acute care or residing in long-term care facilities during any public health emergency.
  • I appreciate Rep. Wood introducing this legislation in the House and ensuring that people in these facilities can get the companionship from loved ones they need.”
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Alabama Political Reporter

Shelby reviews Health Defense Program, highlights importance of Navy EPF ship built in Mobile

  • Senator Richard Shelby, R-Ala., vice chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations and its subcommittee on defense, today questioned witnesses during a defense appropriations subcommittee hearing on the Defense Health Program’s medical research investments and addressing warfighter health and readiness concerns.
  • During the hearing, Senator Shelby questioned Rear Adm. Gillingham about how the Navy is adapting and further developing its medical maritime operations and how the multi-purpose Expeditionary Fast Transit (EPF) ambulance ship, or the EPF Flight II, built by Austal in Mobile, will increase its capabilities to provide medical care.
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Alabama Political Reporter

Starliner test flight 2 has been authorized for late this summer

By Brandon Moseley
  • Friday, NASA and Boeing are targeting August or September for the launch of Starliner’s uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission to the International Space Station.
  • Currently NASA and Boeing have the August-September timeframe targeted for the launch of Starliner’s uncrewed Orbital Flight Test-2 (OFT-2) mission to the International Space Station (ISS), with Boeing being mission-ready in May if an opportunity arises.”
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Books | The Guardian

Mike Pence’s publisher refuses to cancel memoir after staff protest

By Alison Flood

Simon & Schuster president Jonathan Karp says seven-figure book deal will go ahead, after open letter from employees accuses publisher of being ‘on the wrong side of justice’

Simon & Schuster has said it will not pull out of a seven-figure book deal with Mike Pence after some of its employees called for the contract to be scrapped, stating that “we come to work each day to publish, not cancel”.

An open letter circulated by staff at S&S said that the publisher had “chosen complicity in perpetuating white supremacy by publishing Pence”, in a two-book deal struck earlier this month and reported to be worth $3-4m (£2.1-2.8m). The letter, which did not reveal how many members of staff had signed, said that the former vice-president had “made a career out of discriminating against marginalised groups and denying resources to BIPOC and LGBTQA+ communities”, and demanded his book deal be cancelled.

Continue reading […]Read more >Similar articles >
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US news | The Guardian

Los Angeles could become largest US city to trial universal basic income

By Gabrielle Canon
  • Los Angeles may soon become the largest city in the US to introduce a universal basic income (UBI) program, joining its neighbors to the north – including Stockton, Oakland and San Francisco – in offering some residents a monthly cash boost with no strings attached.
  • “We’re betting that one small but steady investment for Angeleno households will pay large dividends for health and stability across our city and light a fire across our nation,” Garcetti tweeted on Monday, announcing the new plan with a nod to Dr Martin Luther King who, as part of the civil rights movement, called for guaranteed income programs that would work to eradicate poverty.
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Books | The Guardian

Jane Austen’s tea drinking not under ‘interrogation’, says museum

By Alison Flood

Jane Austen’s House says decision to update displays with information on slavery links have been ‘misrepresented’, including tea detail that was reported as ‘woke madness’

Staff at the museum Jane Austen’s House are reassuring fans of the Pride and Prejudice author that they have never and will never “interrogate Jane Austen, her characters or her readers for drinking tea”.

The museum issued the statement on Tuesday, after the Telegraph reported that Austen’s tea drinking would “face ‘historical interrogation’” by the museum over the author’s family’s links to slavery. The Express and Daily Mail reported on it as “woke madness”, “a revisionist attack” and “Black Lives Matter-inspired”.

Continue reading […]Read more >Similar articles >
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San Jose Mercury News

Mysterious ailment, mysterious relief: Vaccines help some Covid long haulers

  • “I didn’t expect the vaccine to make people feel better,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at the Yale School of Medicine who’s researching long covid.
  • There are several leading theories for why vaccines could alleviate the symptoms of long covid: It’s possible the vaccines clear up leftover virus or fragments, interrupt a damaging autoimmune response or in some other way “reset” the immune system.
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The Salt Lake Tribune

Letter: No man has a right to tell a woman what to do with her body

Samuel Green owes me the breakfast I lost reading his missive on seeking forgiveness for the sin of abortion (“Opposing abortion is truly loving and compassionate,” April 18) — as if a woman needs the forgiveness of a man. Nowhere in his piece did he mention the other person involved, nor if that man should be seeking forgiveness. Green shows the cowardice he and other so called Christian men display in not calling out the behavior of their own sex. They would rather show off their supposed power in the possibility of providing absolution to some woman who is at a moment of crisis.As a man, my responsibility begins and ends at making sure […]Read more >Similar articles >