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ilanaprincilus06

Farmers Are Feeling The Pain As Drought Spreads In The Northwest : NPR - 2 views

www.npr.org/...ought-spreads-in-the-northwest

drought midwest wildfires

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Nicole Berg's stunted wheat field is so short and sparse she doesn't think the combine can even reach the wheat without, as she puts it, eating rocks.
  • Northwest farmers like Berg, and ranchers who depend on rain, are expecting what one farmer called a "somber harvest" this year.
  • Little moisture since February in wide swaths of the region is to blame. And drought is deepening across the West, with federal drought maps showing massive and growing areas of red.
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  • She says with all the Western wildfires in recent years, the wild grass and forage seeds have become expensive.
  • The region is parched from near the Canadian border clear to the edge of Nevada, with triple digit temps on the way making it worse.
  • Earlier this year, Oregon declared drought zones for eight counties, and six more have requested it since. Now the drought is rapidly expanding into usually cooler and wetter western Oregon, according to Ryan Andrews, a hydrologist for the state's Water Resources Department.
  • Jeff Marti, a drought expert for Washington's Department of Ecology, says it hasn't been this dry since the 1920s.
  • "It's the story of the irrigation haves and the have nots," he says. "Meaning those folks who get their water from rivers or storage, are probably going to be fine for their irrigation needs. But the dryland users and the folks that have cattle that depend on forage on the rangelands may be more challenged."
  • He says it's hard to lose animals and bloodlines that he's worked so hard to build up. He figures it could take him up to a decade to build his herd back up without going into debt.
  • Most ranchers say they don't have time to dwell on the trucked-off cattle or lost crops. They're busy applying for federal disaster aid. And they're also keeping an eye out for wildfires that are always top-of-mind in the dry, hot summer, but expected to be worse because of this year's terrible drought.
ilanaprincilus06

A Single Fire Killed At Least 10% Of The World's Giant Sequoias, Study Says : NPR - 2 views

www.npr.org/...rlds-giant-sequoias-study-says

Sequoia fire

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • At least a tenth of the world's mature giant sequoia trees were destroyed by a single California wildfire that tore through the southern Sierra Nevada last year,
  • a copy of the report that describes catastrophic destruction from the Castle Fire, which charred 273 square miles (707 square km) of timber in Sequoia National Park.
  • Researchers used satellite imagery and modeling from previous fires to determine that between 7,500 and 10,000 of the towering species perished in the fire. That equates to 10% to 14% of the world's mature giant sequoia population, the newspaper said.
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  • These trees have lived for thousands of years. They've survived dozens of wildfires already,"
  • The consequences of losing large numbers of giant sequoias could be felt for decades, forest managers said.
  • Redwood and sequoia forests are among the world's most efficient at removing and storing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
  • "I have a vain hope that once we get out on the ground the situation won't be as bad, but that's hope — that's not science," she said.
  • The newspaper said the extent of the damage to one of the world's most treasured trees is noteworthy because the sequoias themselves are incredibly well adapted to fire.
  • The old-growth trees — some of which are more than 2,000 years old and 250 feet (76 meters) tall — require fire to burst their pine cones and reproduce.
  • Brigham estimates that the park will need to burn around 30 times that number to get the forest back to a healthy state.
ilanaprincilus06

During The Pandemic Lockdown, Traffic Deaths Soared To The Highest Level In 13 Years : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...risky-behavior-during-the-pand

traffic death pandemic

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 06 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • U.S. traffic deaths rose 7% last year, the biggest increase in 13 years even though people drove fewer miles due to the coronavirus pandemic, the government's road safety agency reported Thursday.
  • blamed the increase on drivers taking more risks on less-congested roads by speeding, failing to wear seat belts, or driving while impaired by drugs or alcohol.
  • estimated 38,680 people died in traffic crashes last year, the most of any year since 2007,
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  • The increase came even though the number of miles traveled by vehicle fell 13% from 2019.
  • Motorcyclist deaths rose 9% last year to 5,015, while bicyclist deaths were up 5% to 846. Pedestrian deaths remained steady at 6,205, and the number of people killed in passenger vehicles rose 5% to 23,395, according to NHTSA.
  • Deaths involving a large truck fell 2%, while traffic fatalities among people 65 and older fell 9%.
ilanaprincilus06

The CDC's Anne Schuchat Says The U.S. Isn't Ready For Another Pandemic : NPR - 2 views

www.npr.org/...cdcs-principal-deputy-director

CDC Covid-19

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The United States was unprepared for the coronavirus, the response "wasn't a good performance," and there's still "a lot of work to do" to get ready for the next pandemic when it comes.
  • "But another threat tomorrow, we're not where we need to be. We're still battling this one. And we have a lot of work to do to get better prepared for the next one. But I think there's political will that might have been missing before."
  • But this virus was going to be difficult under the best circumstances of response. And of course, we've had very variable response to this.
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  • There are many things that our colleagues in Korea did that allowed them to have a very effective initial response. Our public-private smorgasbord of clinical laboratories and testing, our regulatory environment for how new lab tests can be rolled out, the public health capacity [being] very weak in terms of ability to get the contact tracing done.
  • There were just many things that delayed us. That said, there was lots of great work in many communities. But I think as a nation, it wasn't a good performance.
  • The supply chain is very interdependent internationally. This was a really complex, systemwide assault.
ilanaprincilus06

Why Democrats Are Angry At Wall Street : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...crats-are-angry-at-wall-street

banks Democrats pandemic

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • "They never get a second chance. They're just not in a position in an economy like this, where Wall Street writes the rules, where they can get ahead."
  • That anger has been magnified at a time when banks have seen their profits soar during the pandemic, in part, thanks to strong actions by the Federal Reserve to support markets.
  • They want to push the country's largest financial institutions to be agents of social change.
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  • "We've seen stratospheric compensation levels. We see stock buybacks and dividend distribution. Yet, wages throughout our economy are essentially flat."
  • Bank executives, Warren says, "have a responsibility to execute on making their banks part of the solution to our economic and racial problems across this nation."
  • But even with a change in power in Congress, analysts warn banks are likely to face continued pressure from Democrats — and society — on key aspects of their operations, from whom they lend money to where they invest.
  • "Banks have no choice but to address these issues, because it impacts their communities, their customers and their employees,"
  • "You have to live in the real world, and the real world has these issues as part of the banks' businesses."
ilanaprincilus06

The FDA Has Approved An Obesity Drug That Helped Some People Drop Weight By 15% : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-some-people-drop-weight-by-15

diabetes FDA obesity

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Regulators on Friday said a new version of a popular diabetes medicine could be sold as a weight-loss drug in the U.S.
  • In company-funded studies, participants taking Wegovy had average weight loss of 15%, about 34 pounds (15.3 kilograms). Participants lost weight steadily for 16 months before plateauing.
  • "With existing drugs, you're going to get maybe 5% to 10% weight reduction, sometimes not even that,"
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  • In the U.S., more than 100 million adults — about 1 in 3 — are obese.
  • Dropping even 5% of one's weight can bring health benefits, such as improved energy, blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol levels, but that amount often doesn't satisfy patients who are focused on weight loss
  • The drug carries a potential risk for a type of thyroid tumor, so it shouldn't be taken by people with a personal or family history of certain thyroid and endocrine tumors. Wegovy also has a risk of depression and pancreas inflammation.
  • Like other weight-loss drugs, it's to be used along with exercise, a healthy diet and other steps like keeping a food diary.
  • Wegovy builds on a trend in which makers of relatively new diabetes drugs test them to treat other conditions common in diabetics.
ilanaprincilus06

The 'Time Has Come' For A Global Pandemic Treaty, WHO's Tedros Says : Coronavirus Updat... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ndemic-treaty-whos-tedros-says

Covid-19 government pandemic

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The COVID-19 pandemic proves that the world needs a pandemic treaty, says WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
  • It's the one major change, Tedros said, that would do the most to boost global health security and also empower the World Health Organization.
  • More than two dozen world leaders said in March that they support an international treaty or framework on pandemic preparedness and response, signing a letter whose signatories notably did not include the U.S., China or Russia.
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  • "The United States was one of the countries that supported the resolution to hold the special session," the WHO said Monday in response to an NPR inquiry. "That is not to say it has committed to support the treaty yet, as the process of moving forward was only confirmed today."
  • "The safety of the world's people cannot rely solely on the goodwill of governments."
  • A treaty would make countries more accountable to one another, he said.
  • The lack of sharing — of information, technology, resources and data — is the COVID-19 pandemic's defining characteristic, the WHO leader said.
  • "a monumental error for any country to think the danger has passed."
  • Tedros' remarks echoed the frustrations he raised last year, when he said the pandemic was presenting humanity with a test — one that we are failing.
  • "Are we unable to distinguish or identify the common enemy?"
ilanaprincilus06

Want To Mix 2 Different COVID-19 Vaccines? Canada Is Fine With That : Coronavirus Updat... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...cines-canada-is-fine-with-that

Canada Covid-19 vaccine

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Canada's public health agency says people can mix COVID-19 vaccines if they want to, citing cases where local supply shortages or health concerns might otherwise prevent some from completing their two-dose vaccination regimen.
  • Public confidence is also an issue: Health officials cite a study from late April that found more than 90% of participants said they were comfortable with either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, but only 52% of participants said they were comfortable with the AstraZeneca vaccine.
  • "we are recommending that someone who received a first dose of the AstraZeneca ... vaccine may receive an mRNA vaccine for their second dose,"
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  • The agency cites the results of a study in Germany and clinical trials in the U.K. and Spain as supporting the safety of vaccine interchangeability.
  • As of late May, 50.6% of Canada's population had received at least one vaccination shot — but only 4.6% of the population was fully vaccinated.
  • "Different vaccine products have been used to complete a vaccine series for influenza, hepatitis A, and others to complete a vaccine series for influenza, hepatitis A, and others."
  • "Basically, all vaccines work by showing people's immune systems something that looks like an invading virus but really isn't. If the real virus ever comes along, their immune systems will recognize it and be prepared to fight it off.
  • "Using two different vaccines is a bit like giving the immune system two pictures of the virus, maybe one face-on and one in profile."
  • "Individuals who have received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna COVID-19 vaccine should receive a second dose of the same vaccine to complete the vaccination series," the spokesperson added.
ilanaprincilus06

I survived a school shooting. My kids shouldn't have to face the same danger | Ashley J... - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...g-northern-illinois-university

school shooting congress

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Surviving a school shooting was an initiation of evil. The world didn’t look or feel the same afterward
  • Despite 12 years and countless other mass shooting incidents across the country, not much has been done by our federal legislators to make anyone safer from gun violence anywhere – let alone at school.
  • I clutched my eight-month-old son to my chest as the precious faces of young children murdered at school cycled across my television screen on the evening news.
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  • Little kids were new casualties in our country’s ongoing struggle to define itself. Its endless argument over guns appeared to be a symptom of a national identity crisis between political polar opposites – two parties so ideologically opposed that even the needless deaths of tiny innocents couldn’t bridge the divide between them.
  • What sickened me most, though, wasn’t our government’s failure to prioritize people over partisanship. It was knowing that there were parents who took their kids to school and returned home eternally empty-handed.
  • Survivors of school shootings like me are now raising kids of their own, worrying they will suffer similar fates. Although the psychological effects of school shootings on parents may not yet be fully known or understood, research suggests that those with loved ones who have been exposed to “assaultive violence” have a higher risk of mental health disorders.
  • School shootings don’t just deprive children of their lives and innocence; they deprive parents of a sense of safety and security their parents and grandparents took for granted.
  • This reality is a painful part of our collective consciousness. We send our kids to school, hoping the horror of gun violence won’t happen there, but knowing no child or school is immune.
  • Both sides seem content to debate the second amendment and the founders’ intent until they run out of breath. But in the meantime, Congress must come together, in earnest, to find common ground and common-sense solutions to stop this bleeding. The consequences of inaction have become too high – and our kids are counting on them.
ilanaprincilus06

Get the vax, win a shotgun: US states get creative to encourage vaccination | US politi... - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...ates-america-covid-coronavirus

vaccine US

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • And West Virginia upped the ante, adding the chance to win hunting rifles or shotguns.
  • Governors across the country are resorting to almost shameless incentives to lure Americans who haven’t gotten a coronavirus vaccine to willingly take a jab.
  • Businesses, too, have stepped in to nudge the unvaccinated. The percentage of a state’s population that has been vaccinated varies dramatically. Some states are approaching 70%, and others are still below 50%.
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  • The incentive programs have become a bipartisan trend with governors from deep-red states like West Virginia or deep-blue states like California offering a range of inducements.
  • “It would be really great if we didn’t need any incentives at all. Hopefully, not dying is a great incentive,” the governor said according to the Deseret News.
ilanaprincilus06

NFL to stop controversial use of 'race-norming' in brain trauma settlements | NFL | The... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...orming-brain-trauma-settlement

NFL brain injuries dementia race

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • The NFL on Wednesday pledged to halt the use of “race-norming” which assumed Black players started out with lower cognitive function in the $1bn settlement of brain injury claims and review past scores for any potential race bias.
  • The practice made it harder for Black retirees to show a deficit and qualify for an award.
  • Wednesday’s announcement comes after a pair of Black players filed a civil rights lawsuit over the practice, medical experts raised concerns and a group of NFL families last month dropped 50,000 petitions at the federal courthouse in Philadelphia where the lawsuit had been thrown out by the judge overseeing the settlement.
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  • According to the NFL, a panel of neuropsychologists that was formed recently to propose a new testing regime to the court includes two female and three Black doctors.
  • The NFL noted that the norms were developed in medicine “to stop bias in testing, not perpetrate it.”
  • The binary race norms, when they are used in the testing, assumes that Black patients start with worse cognitive function than whites and other non-Blacks.
  • The awards so far have averaged $516,000 for the 379 players with early-stage dementia and $715,000 for the 207 players with moderate dementia.
  • he settlement ended thousands of lawsuits that accused the NFL of long hiding what it knew about the link between concussions and traumatic brain injury.
ilanaprincilus06

'People were excited': Paxton Smith on her valedictorian speech for abortion rights | T... - 1 views

www.theguardian.com/...ban-speech-texas-valedictorian

Texas abortion

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 05 Jun 21 - No Cached
  • Texas’s new “heartbeat” measure ranks among the most extreme abortion bans in the US, blocking the procedure as early as six weeks into a pregnancy – before many women and girls even know they’re pregnant.
  • doesn’t include exceptions for rape or incest and allows private citizens to enforce its provisions through what could be a torrent of expensive and time-consuming lawsuits.
  • “I cannot give up this platform to promote complacency and peace when there is a war on my body and a war on my rights. A war on the rights of your mothers, a war on the rights of your sisters, a war on the rights of your daughters,”
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  • The school district’s board president told the Lake Highlands Advocate that Smith’s speech had not been submitted or approved and that her actions were “unexpected and not supported”
  • “It kind of makes me sad that this is a universal issue,” she said. “This is one of those times where it’s getting a voice, and it hasn’t really had a voice that’s very big before.”
ilanaprincilus06

Rate Of Gun Violence Deaths In U.S. Is Higher Than Much Of The World : Goats and Soda :... - 1 views

www.npr.org/...pares-to-the-rest-of-the-world

USA gun violence

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The horrific mass shooting events in the Atlanta area and Boulder, Colo., just days apart have once again shown a spotlight on how frequent this type of violence is in the United States compared with other wealthy countries.
  • The U.S. has the 32nd-highest rate of deaths from gun violence in the world:
  • 3.96 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019.
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  • In the District of Columbia, the rate is 18.5 per 100,000 — the highest in the United States.
  • "If you compare us to other well-off countries, we really stand out."
  • Prosperous Asian countries such as Singapore (0.01), Japan (0.02) and South Korea (0.02) boast the absolute lowest rates — along with China, also at 0.02.
  • "It is a little surprising that a country like ours should have this level of gun violence,"
  • with deaths due to gun violence rare even in many low-income countries — such as Tajikistan and Gambia, which saw 0.18 deaths and 0.22 deaths, respectively, per 100,000 people.
  • With the casualties due to armed conflicts factored out, even in conflict-ridden regions such as the Middle East, the U.S. rate is worse.
  • The U.S. gun violence death rate is also higher than in nearly all countries in sub-Saharan Africa, including many that are among the world's poorest.
ilanaprincilus06

Supreme Court Mulls Whether Police Can Enter Home Without Warrant To Save A Life : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...without-warrant-to-save-a-life

Supreme Court police warrants

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Just what sort of emergency allows police to enter your home without a warrant? That was the question before the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday.
  • Later that day, doctors concluded he was not a threat to himself or others and released him. In the meantime, police had confiscated his guns and ammunition. So he sued, alleging an illegal seizure and search of his home.
  • she isn't answering her phone, and her back door is open, so the neighbors call the police. "Would that be enough" for the police to enter the house without a warrant to check up on the missing neighbor?"No" answered Dvoretzky, "I think that alone would not be enough."
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  • The lower courts ruled that police could enter the home and under the so-called the community care-taking exception to the Constitution's warrant requirement.
  • Dvoretzky contended that a warrantless entry could only occur in a true emergency, but his definition was so narrow it didn't seem to satisfy many of the justices.
  • "No," replied lawyer Dvoretzky. Police can only enter if there were a genuine emergency going on at that very moment.
  • "Every single day, on average, there are 65 suicides by gunshot in the United States," he said, noting that "police officers are critical...as in this instance" to suicide prevention.
  • The Supreme Court has never explicitly recognized that police may enter the home without a warrant as part of their "community care-taking" duties.
  • There are some long-standing exceptions to the warrant requirement in "exigent circumstances, " such as hot pursuit of a suspect.
  • Can the police enter their locked fence around the yard to get the the cat down. "Is that community care-taking?" Roberts asked.Yes, replied DeSisto. "To me, climbing a tree and getting a cat doesn't interfere with the privacy rights."
  • "the key principle is if someone is at risk of serious harm and it's reasonable for officials to intervene now, that is enough. The officials don't need to show that the harm is mere moments away."
ilanaprincilus06

U.S. Refugee Program Faces Challenges To Rebuild : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...-support-facing-big-challenges

Delaware refugees

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Among the more daunting challenges President Biden faces in the coming year will be to make good on his goal of admitting 10 times as many refugees — 125,000 — as former President Donald Trump allowed to enter the United States last year.
  • "One hundred and twenty-five thousand refugees being resettled this [next] year is unrealistic," says Krish O'Mara Vignarajah,
  • "Our refugee resettlement has been on life support for the past few years," Vignarajah says. Seventeen of her agency's 48 resettlement sites have closed due to budgetary cutbacks in the U.S. government's refugee program.
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  • "It involves reopening offices that were closed, rehiring staff we lost, and regaining crucial institutional knowledge," Vignarajah says. The staff members who were let go, she says, represented decades of experience.
  • "No back home again," Pathy says. "From the hospital, we leave and run away." At that point, they had no idea whether their daughters were alive or dead.
  • With other refugees, the Mulemas made their way to Ghana. The refugee camp there was administered by the United Nations. They spent five years living in miserable conditions, with little or no shelter.
  • In a sign of the interfaith character of refugee resettlement work, Jewish Family Services of Delaware partnered with a local Christian church, Calvary Baptist, to accommodate the Mulema family. Over the next three years, about a dozen volunteers from the church helped the Mulemas deal with the new challenges they faced.
  • Given how much work is necessary to resettle a single refugee family, however, the prospect of vastly and suddenly increased refugee admissions is barely feasible, in large part because the refugee resettlement infrastructure has been eroded over the past four years.
  • Trump allowed fewer than 12,000 refugees to enter the country last year, the lowest number in the history of the U.S. refugee program.
  • Across the United States, about one out of three resettlement sites have closed. Jewish Family Services of Delaware was informed it would not be assigned any more refugee families.
  • "The Trump Administration really did some serious damage to the infrastructure of the refugee program," Hetfield says. "Also, obviously, the pandemic put some really serious restrictions on."
  • A renewed government commitment to refugee admissions is not enough on its own to bring the program back to full strength.
  • The United States was founded as a nation of ideals, with almost a religious obligation to welcome the tired and homeless. The country has met the commitment before. It's now challenged to do so again, hard though it may be.
ilanaprincilus06

NCAA Looms Large In Debate Over Transgender Sports Restrictions : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...ransgender-sports-restrictions

NCAA transgender rights

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • When the South Dakota state legislature passed HB 1217 in early March, South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted that she was "excited" to sign it.That bill would have stopped transgender girls and women from playing on sports teams designated for girls and women.
  • These types of bills have been introduced in 25 states nationwide and have become a nationwide cause for social conservatives like Noem.
  • The ongoing fight in South Dakota is indicative not only of the way the issue of transgender girls in sports has become a nationwide phenomenon, but of the way that the NCAA looms over debates over transgender rights, and especially over the fight over transgender sports bans
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  • In 2016, that state passed a bill restricting which bathrooms transgender people could use.
  • Because of that law, the NCAA and other sports organizations pulled events from the state. That included seven NCAA championship events, among them two rounds of men's March Madness basketball games.
  • Proponents believe the laws will keep girls and women's sports free of unfair competition.
  • In other words, it's a variety of NCAA events — well beyond March Madness — that can affect a city's economy, especially a small city like Sioux Falls. For now, people like Lee will be watching closely to see what the South Dakota legislature does next with the bill.
  • The NCAA is uniquely situated in this debate in that it is an economic force and a sporting organization - one that already has a policy on transgender athletes. That 2011 policy does allow transgender athletes to participate on their gender's teams.
  • Idaho passed the country's first transgender sports ban last year. The NCAA came out against that bill, calling it "harmful to transgender student athletes."
  • More than 500 student athletes have signed onto a letter asking the NCAA not to host events in states with these laws.
ilanaprincilus06

The Pandemic Pushed People Outside And Now, Some Companies Hope They Stay There : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...companies-hope-they-stay-there

Covid-19 nature

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Something weird happened on the primitive mountain bike trails outside of Kansas City last spring. Coleen Voeks says she went from seeing a person or two stretched out along miles of trail there, to seeing a mass of humanity.
  • "This global pandemic caused people to globally to change their behaviors, which ultimately has led to a global bike boom,"
  • bike sales climbed 65% last year, and electric bike sales shot up 145%, despite shortages at many bike shops. Hage says sales would still more robust if factories could keep up with demand.
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  • And that's not just bikes, sales of golf equipment climbed 10%, in January camper sales were up almost 40% compared to January 2020, and boats are doing even better.
  • "Anytime you see a dramatic societal shift, like we have going on right now, a certain portion of that does stick,"
  • A society shift toward outdoor recreation presents sweeping opportunity for a company like Garmin International, in Olathe, Kan. It specializes in navigation and fitness devises.
  • For Garmin, locking in those new customers is partly a matter of rolling out new activity-specific devices, like the line of Descent dive computers it launched last year.
  • "It'll make you feel good. It really does. Little time spent outside will make you feel amazing,"
ilanaprincilus06

Half Of The Jury In The Chauvin Trial Is Nonwhite. That's Only Part Of The Story : Live... - 0 views

www.npr.org/...e-thats-only-part-of-the-story

jury selection Minneapolis

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The jury chosen for the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, charged with murder in the death of George Floyd, is notable because it is significantly less white than Minneapolis itself.
  • three Black men, one Black woman and two jurors who identify as multiracial.
  • 50% of the panel that will vote on Chauvin's fate will be Black or multiracial.
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  • Hennepin County, where the trial is being held, is only 17% Black or multiracial, while it is 74% white.
  • The jury's racial makeup will assuage some of the concerns that activists and others had expressed as jury selection got underway two weeks ago.
  • An insufficiently diverse jury, they believed, would undercut people's faith in the legitimacy of a trial seen as a critical moment in the racial justice movement that Floyd's killing helped reenergize last spring.
  • Two of the Black men on the jury are not African Americans but, rather, Black immigrants. During questioning, they expressed the kind of moderate views on policing and race relations
  • None of the Black jurors ultimately chosen for the panel spoke extensively about personal experiences with racism or about having had overtly negative interactions with police. Several said they had a healthy respect for law enforcement.
  • The fate of Juror 76 highlighted a tension that often exists in jury selection, especially in cases in which issues of race loom large. The experiences that come with being Black in America are often enough to get jurors struck from a case
  • That did not seem to be the case during jury selection for the Chauvin trial. Several jurors who expressed at least some support for the movement were seated on the jury — a sign of progress, Chakravarti said.
  • On one hand, that the defense would strike people with negative views of police is understandable, given Nelson's responsibility to seat a jury favorable to his client.
  • She said his fate was a reminder that the jury selection process should be reformed to ensure more African Americans have a fair shot to serve on juries."We should start," she wrote, "by recognizing that their lived experiences with racism are not justification to excuse them."
ilanaprincilus06

Octopuses, Like People, Seem To Have Active Stages Of Sleep, May Dream : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...eams-but-theyre-probably-brief

octopus sleep

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Octopuses have alternating periods of "quiet" and "active" sleep that make their rest similar to that of mammals, despite being separated by more than 500 million years of evolution.
  • During their active periods of sleep, octopuses' skin color changes and their bodies twitch,
  • And to make sure the animals were genuinely sleeping, the researchers checked to see if they would respond to a video of a swimming crab, a favorite food item, or to a vibration made by a hammer tapping on the tank.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • The scientists found that the octopuses had periods of quiet sleep, when they were pale and still, followed by short bursts of active sleep. This cycle repeated every 30 to 40 minutes.
  • "For around 40 seconds, they dramatically change their color and their skin texture. Their eyes are also moving,"
  • Their dreams, if they have them, can't be terribly complex or symbolic, given how short these active phases are, says Medeiros.
  • "because they are a separate example of the evolution of large brains. And so they are telling us something fundamental about what it is to have a large brain and what you need as part of that."
ilanaprincilus06

Biden On Track For Schools To Reopen, But Will Kids Go? : NPR - 1 views

www.npr.org/...n-as-promised-but-will-kids-go

Covid-19 school

shared by ilanaprincilus06 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden said Thursday that his administration is on track to keep a promise he made to the nation's parents and caregivers: to reopen the majority of elementary and middle schools for full-time, in-person learning within his first 100 days in office.
  • but that reopening the nation's schools doesn't mean all students will quickly return to classrooms.
  • 42% of students (fourth- and eighth-graders) represented in this survey attended public schools that, as of last month, were offering full-time, in-person learning to all students.
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  • "There's a lot of people that are still very wary about being in person. You know, there are those of us who have lost people we love."
  • 35% of public schools are also offering some sort of hybrid learning schedule to all students
  • While 42% of students attended schools that offered fully in-person learning, just 33% of students returned full time.
  • Students of color are much more likely to be learning remotely than white students — both because many families of color say they feel less comfortable sending their children back to school at this moment but also because, according to the data, city schools that serve large and diverse student groups are less likely to be open than largely white, rural districts.
  • nearly half of white fourth-graders were back in school full time — that's compared with 15% of Asian, 28% of Black and 33% of Hispanic fourth-graders.
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