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In Louisiana, about 70 percent of the people who have died are African-American, though only a third of the state’s population is black.

In the county around Milwaukee, where 27 percent of residents are black, nearly twice as many African-American residents tested positive for the virus as white people

in Chicago, where African-American residents make up a little less than a third of the population, more than half of those found to have the virus are black, and African-Americans make up 72 percent of those who have died of the virus.

African Americans bear the brunt of Covid-19's economic impact

Donald Trump once again praised his job creation record. “Black people right now are having the best, statistically, the best numbers that you’ve ever had, and it’s really an honor,” he said. “Nobody has done more for black people than I have. Nobody has done more.”

That was 27 February and Trump was also still claiming he had done an “incredible job” with the looming coronavirus pandemic. Now the virus has led 26 million Americans to file for unemployment. While the US Bureau of Labor Statistics will not release unemployment figures broken down by race until the beginning of next month, economists are certain that black Americans are suffering the brunt of Covid-19’s economic impact and will probably suffer the most dramatic consequences of the looming recession.

Ahmaud Arbery killing reignites debate over sharing graphic viral videos

The outrage surrounding the viral video of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery being shot just outside Brunswick, Georgia, is what prompted prosecutors to request a grand jury to consider charges, according to many social justice activists.

The footage released this week shows Arbery jogging down a narrow two-lane road. A white law enforcement officer and his son, whose truck is stopped nearby, shoot Arbery within seconds of confronting him.

virus was a novel concept in 1918, and there was no diagnostic test for flu. That means that there was no such thing as a laboratory confirmed death from the disease,

Until the 1990s, people thought that around 22 million people had died. It wasn’t until 1998, the 80th anniversary of the disaster, that Australian historian and geographer Niall Johnson and German flu historian Jürgen Müller came up with the current estimates, which means that for 80 years humanity only had a tiny inkling of its loss in 1918. It was really only in the 21st century that people realized the full impact of the Spanish flu.

Scholars in the humanities, who have long been interested in collective memory, point out that impact is not the same as meaning. Meaning depends on language—that is, on having the language available to describe exactly what happened and why.

Study: 25% of Americans Say Politics Drove Them to Boycott Brands

Think there's more hoopla about brand boycotts than actual boycotting? Maybe not. A new Ipsos survey found that 25% of Americans said they had stopped using a brand's goods or services in the previous three months because of protests, boycotts or the brand's perceived political leanings.

Socially conscientious consumerism has been on the rise for years," said Ronn Torossian, CEO of 5W Public Relations. "Given the combination of that trend and the current politically charged climate, it's not surprising to see that such a significant number of Americans have changed their shopping habits due to politics."

MOSCOW — The Kremlin plans to sit out the centenary of the Russian Revolution.

There will be no national holiday on Sunday, March 12, the date generally recognized as the start of the uprising. Nor will there even be a government-issued official interpretation, like the one mandating that World War II was a “Great Victory.”

In comparison, the Kremlin has turned World War II into the apogee of national unity.

this week’s immodest proposal: Abolish racial preferences in college admissions, phase out preferences in government hiring and contracting, eliminate the disparate-impact standard in the private sector, and allow state-sanctioned discrimination only on the basis of socioeconomic status, if at all. Then at the same time, create a reparations program — the Frederick Douglass Fund, let’s call it — that pays out exclusively, directly and one time only to the proven descendants of American slaves.

But right now, giving every single African-American $10,000, perhaps in a specially-designed annuity, would cost about $370 billion, modest relative to supply-side tax plans and single-payer schemes alike. The wealth of the median black household in the United States was $11,200 as of 2013; a $10,000 per-person annuity would more than double it.

There is no clear or easy path to becoming a multiracial nation that isn’t divided politically by race. But reparations for the descendants of slaves today, rather than affirmative action for nonwhites forever, might be a better path than the one we’re on right now.

We, the consuming public, have failed to properly understand the new tech superpowers, he suggests, leaving little hope for stodgy and reluctant American regulators. The scope of their influence is obscured by the sheer number of things they do and sell, or problems they purport to be solving, and by our outdated sense of what constitutes a monopoly. To that end, Foer promotes the concept of the “knowledge monopoly,” which he qualifies with a mischievous grin. “My hope is that we revive ‘monopoly’ as a core piece of political rhetoric that broadly denotes dominant firms with pernicious powers,” he says, rather than as a “technical” term referring to one company cornerning a market. (His new monopolists, after all, aren’t raising prices. They’re giving things away free).

His best assessment of what has happened to media in general in the last decade is tucked in an aside about what Facebook, Google and Amazon all offer, or threaten: They are the “primary bundlers” of commercial media, whether it’s books, articles or video. “They are the ones that create a usable, coherent product from its disparate parts. Their business model is infinitely better than the one it displaced.”

More broadly, truly ambitious tech companies are in the business of creating markets, not competing in them; of wrapping themselves around industries, not merely disrupting them.

On the campaign trail, Trump styled himself as an advocate of working people who believed that the state has an obligation to help struggling Americans, irrespective of why they are in need. Whereas his main rivals for the Republican nomination insisted that Americans have a responsibility to procure their own health care, for example, Trump proclaimed that we “need health care for all people.” There was, he said in one interview, “a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

Since taking office, Trump has reverted to a more traditional Republican playbook: His economic policy offers huge handouts to the richest Americans, and it justifies this redistribution from bottom to top with the classic rhetoric of “personal responsibility” — a trope that has dominated American politics for the better part of three decades.

As Trump says in his official statement on the budget, he “will champion the hardworking taxpayers who have been ignored for too long” while reforming the welfare state so that it no longer “discourage[s] able-bodied adults from working.”

I’m just pointing out that there are some very significant structural problems that we need to fix, whether or not we leave the European Union.” The current economic malaise, he adds emphatically, “is not a blip. This is the moment we have to stop pussyfooting around in terms of solutions.”

Peston advocates a “wealth tax” – an annual levy of 1% on all net assets greater than £500,000. “Workers have become too powerless,” he goes on, and argues for “new forms of online collectivism” – digital trade union platforms – and the creation of a new ombudsman to regulate the labour market along the lines of the financial services’ Financial Conduct Authority.

. His book is full of depressing statistics about the vanishingly small prospect of disadvantaged Britons today climbing the economic or social ladder, but when I ask if he himself shares the worry that his own children will not enjoy a better life than his, he erupts.

But Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement have put new pressure on Congress and the White House to reduce racial health disparities. And there are few starker examples than this: Black smokers smoke less but die of heart attacks, strokes and other causes linked to tobacco use at higher rates than white smokers do, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And 85 percent of Black smokers use Newport, Kool and other menthol brands that are easier to become addicted to and harder to quit than plain tobacco, according to the Food and Drug Administration

Dr. Gardiner and other public health advocates are particularly concerned about the growing popularity of menthol cigars and cigarillos among Black teenagers. The 2020 National Youth Tobacco Survey, conducted by the federal government, found that 6.5 percent of Black students in high school and middle school, smoked cigars and cigarillos compared with 2.5 percent who smoked traditional cigarettes. The F.D.A. says that menthol is the preferred flavor for the cigarillos, which are cheap and mass-produced, unlike premium cigars.

The tobacco industry is in a tricky spot. For several years, the largest companies, Altria and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco, now owned by British American Tobacco, have sought to position themselves as transforming their companies into responsible businesses being eager to to preventing young people from smoking and to developing less harmful products. For critics, the industry’s lobbying to protect its menthol brands contradicts that assertion.

According to a report from the Governors Highway Safety Administration, which tracks pedestrian fatalities, America's roads are getting deadlier.In 2019, 6,301 pedestrians were killed by vehicles on American streets — up 46% from 2010. Over the same timespan, the total for all traffic deaths rose by 5%.

And in the first half of 2020, while driving was down because of the pandemic, the pedestrian death rate — the number of people struck and killed compared with the number of miles driven — soared by 20%, putting 2020 on track for the largest one-year increase in the death rate ever.

Speed undoubtedly plays a factor in that spike. With fewer cars on the road during the pandemic, some drivers chose to speed, with sometimes deadly consequences. But other factors predate the coronavirus and have contributed to pedestrian deaths for years now.

Gov. Ralph S. Northam on Wednesday signed a bill that abolished the death penalty in Virginia, making it the first Southern state and the 23rd overall to end capital punishment amid rising opposition to the practice.

He also noted racial disparities in the use of the death penalty: During the 20th century, he said, 296 of the 377 inmates Virginia executed for murder — or about 79 percent — were Black.

“For the state to apply this ultimate, final punishment, the answer needs to be yes. Fair means that it is applied equally to anyone, no matter who they are. And fair means that we get it right, that the person punished for the crime did the crime.”

Now, Mr. Johnson’s allies hope the stark disparity between Britain’s performance and the European Union’s will do something perhaps even more challenging: vindicate their larger Brexit project.

Pro-Brexit politicians and commentators are casting Britain’s vaccine deployment, which ranks among the fastest in the world, as an example of risk-taking and entrepreneurial pluck that comes from not being shackled to the collective decision-making of the 27 member states of the European Union.

“It is the first serious test that the U.K. state has faced since Brexit,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent who studies the British right. “Boris Johnson is going to have a vaccine dividend, and that will give him a who

“Full Frontal” host Samantha Bee on Wednesday torched the NCAA for its blatantly unequal treatment of female athletes. 

The March Madness tournament was mired in controversy over the past week after basketball players and coaches exposed major disparities between the training facilities, food, merchandise and even COVID-19 testing options that were provided to men in Indiana and women in Texas.

“Their real message had already been sent: Women athletes are worth less than men,” she said.

f the so-called Stop the Steal movement appeared to be chasing a lost cause once President Biden was inaugurated, its supporters among extremist organizations are now adopting a new agenda from the anti-vaccination campaign to try to undermine the government.

Bashing of the safety and efficacy of vaccines is occurring in chat rooms frequented by all manner of right-wing groups including the Proud Boys; the Boogaloo movement, a loose affiliation known for wanting to spark a second Civil War; and various paramilitary organizations.

One third of Republicans surveyed in a CBS News poll said that they would avoid getting vaccinated — compared with 10 percent of Democrats — and another 20 percent of Republicans said they were unsure. Other polls found similar trends.

Republicans in Georgia sped a sweeping elections bill into law Thursday, making it the first presidential battleground to impose new voting restrictions following President Joe Biden's victory in the state.

The bill passed both chambers of the legislature in the span of a few hours

Kemp, who is up for reelection next year, had refused to give in to former President Donald Trump's demands last year that he overturn Biden's victory -- earning Trump's public condemnation.

Hiring picked up last month as states lifted restrictions and stepped up vaccination efforts, with the government reporting on Friday that the American economy added 379,000 jobs last month.

But there are still about 9.5 million fewer jobs today than a year ago. Congress is considering a $1.9 trillion package of pandemic relief intended to carry struggling households and businesses through the coming months.

The unemployment rate in February was 6.2 percent, down from the previous month’s rate of 6.3 percent.

The immovable challenges of living in Alaska would, in theory, make it a nightmare to vaccinate all of its 731,000-plus residents: It's the largest state in the US in terms of land size, has some of the most extreme weather of any state and many resident Alaska Natives, who are disproportionately dying from Covid-19, live in the remote throes of the state.

And yet, at 40 doses administered per 100 people, Alaska is one of the leading states in the US when it comes to Covid-19 vaccinations.

What works in Alaska won't work everywhere -- it's over 660,000 square miles, after all, and not every state requires health care workers to travel by dog sled to administer vaccines. But the rest of the US can take cues from the state's unique approach to its unique problems.

Around the world, almost 1 in 3 women have experienced physical or sexual violence at least once in their lifetime, according to a new report released by the World Health Organization.

The report, which WHO says is the largest-ever study of the prevalence of violence against women, draws upon data from 161 countries and areas on women and girls age 15 and up collected between 2000 and 2018.

Lockdowns and related restrictions on movement have led to widespread reports of a "shadow pandemic" — a surge in violence against women and girls around the world, as many found themselves trapped at home with their abusers.