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China - Trade | history - geography | Britannica.com - 0 views

www.britannica.com/...Trade China history culture trade economics economic
shared by krystalxu on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • Trade has become an increasingly important part of China’s overall economy, and it has been a significant tool used for economic modernization.
  • In 1965 China’s trade with other socialist countries made up only about one-third of the total.
  • The principal efforts were made in Asia—especially to Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), Pakistan, and Ceylon (Sri Lanka)—but large loans were also granted in Africa (Ghana, Algeria, Tanzania) and in the Middle East (Egypt).
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • Taiwan also has become an important trading partner.
  • The lowest unit is the enterprise union committee. Individual trade unions also operate at the provincial level, and there are trade union councils that coordinate all union activities within a particular area and operate at county, municipal, and provincial levels. At
  • The great bulk of China’s exports consists of manufactured goods, of which electrical and electronic machinery and equipment and clothing, textiles, and footwear are by far the most important.
  • Women have been a major labour presence in China since the People’s Republic was established. Some two-fifths of all women over age 15 are employed.
  • Regionally, almost half of China’s imports come from East and Southeast Asia, and some one-fourth of its exports go to the same countries.
  • From the 1950s to the ’80s, the central government’s revenues derived chiefly from the profits of the state enterprises, which were remitted to the state.
  • More recently, however, reforms of the social security system have involved moving the responsibility for pensions and other welfare to the provinces.
  • All parts of China, except certain remote areas of Tibet, are accessible by rail, road, water, or air.
  • The construction of these smaller railways is encouraged by the central government, and technical assistance is provided by the state railway system when it is thought that the smaller railways can stimulate regional economic development.
  • Coal has long been the principal railway cargo.
  • Since the late 1950s there has been a change in railway-construction policy.
  • Since 1960 hundreds of thousands of workers have been mobilized to construct major lines in the northwest and southwest.
  • These projects, which were coordinated on a national level, contrast to the pattern prevailing before World War II, when foreign-financed railroads were built in different places without any attempt to coordinate or standardize the transport and communications system.
  • A major new line runs southward from Beijing to Kowloon (Hong Kong) via Fuyang and Nanchang and eases strain on the other north-south trunk lines.
  • Of the three highways, one runs westward across Sichuan into Tibet; another extends southwestward from Qinghai to Tibet; and the third runs southward from Xinjiang to Tibet.
  • By the 1980s many vehicles, especially automobiles, were imported. Domestic automobile manufacture grew rapidly after 1990 as individual car ownership became increasingly possible, and it emerged as one of China’s major industries. Several foreign companies have established joint ventures with Chinese firms.
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Out of Tragedy, An Opportunity for Somalia's Government - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...543123 US politics Goverment
shared by krystalxu on 23 Oct 17 - No Cached
  • more are certain to die in the city’s few under-resourced and over-crowded hospitals.
  • The most persistent lag with which the political elite will be forced to reckon is security reform.
  • The Islamic State, for one, has tried to infiltrate the country from the northeast.
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  • Somalis tend to expect little from from their government, ever since the formal state collapsed more than two decades ago, brought down by internal power struggles and clan politics.
  • and set milestones, including due dates for an accurate tally of all the members of the army, navy, or police, as well as a payroll system and legislation on countering violent extremism.
  • Somalia’s Internal Security Ministry spokesman has left office, though rumors in national media say he was fired.
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Boys on the Side - The Atlantic - 1 views

www.theatlantic.com/...309062 hookup women gender culture
shared by Javier E on 31 Dec 17 - No Cached
  • Single young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s, the same age as the women at the business-­school party—are for the first time in history more success­ful, on average, than the single young men around them. They are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money.
  • What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom—the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career. To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture.
  • And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.
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  • Did they want the hookup culture to go away—might they prefer the mores of an earlier age, with formal dating and slightly more obvious rules? This question, each time, prompted a look of horror. Reform the culture, maybe, teach women to “advocate for themselves”—a phrase I heard many times—but end it? Never.
  • “I would never come down on the hookup culture,” she said. “Plenty of women enjoy having casual sex.”
  • at this university, and even more so at other, more prestigious universities they studied, they found the opposite: women who were managing their romantic lives like savvy headhunters. “The ambitious women calculate that having a relationship would be like a four-credit class, and they don’t always have time for it, so instead they opt for a lighter hookup,”
  • The sexual culture may be more coarse these days, but young women are more than adequately equipped to handle it, because unlike the women in earlier ages, they have more-important things on their minds, such as good grades and intern­ships and job interviews and a financial future of their own.
  • The most patient and thorough research about the hookup culture shows that over the long run, women benefit greatly from living in a world where they can have sexual adventure without commitment or all that much shame, and where they can enter into temporary relation­ships that don’t get in the way of future success.
  • what emerged from four years of research was the sense that hooking up was part of a larger romantic strategy, part of what Armstrong came to think of as a “sexual career.” For an upwardly mobile, ambitious young woman, hookups were a way to dip into relationships without disrupting her self-development or schoolwork. Hookups functioned as a “delay tactic,” Armstrong writes, because the immediate priority, for the privileged women at least, was setting themselves up for a career.
  • The women still had to deal with the old-fashioned burden of protecting their personal reputations, but in the long view, what they really wanted to protect was their future professional reputations. “Rather than struggling to get into relationships,” Armstrong reported, women “had to work to avoid them.”
  • Many did not want a relationship to steal time away from their friendships or studying.
  • Most of the women considered success stories by their dormmates had a revelation and revised their plan, setting themselves on what was universally considered the path to success. “Now I’m like, I don’t even need to be getting married yet [or] have kids,” one of the less privileged women told the researchers in her senior year.
  • One of the great crime stories of the past 20 years, meanwhile, is the dramatic decline of rape and sexual assault. Between 1993 and 2008, the rate of those crimes against females dropped by 70 percent nationally.
  • The hookup culture opened her horizons. She could study and work and date, and live on temporary intimacy. She could find her way to professional success, and then get married.
  • Does this mean that in the interim years, women are living a depraved, libertine existence, contributing to the breakdown of social order? Hardly. In fact, women have vastly more control over their actions and appetites than we have been led to believe
  • You could even say that what defines this era is an unusual amount of sexual control and planning
  • She is up to about 20,000 responses—the largest sample to date. In her survey, college seniors report an average of 7.9 hookups over four years, but a median of only five. (“Hookups” do not necessarily involve sex; students are instructed to use whatever definition their friends use.)
  • Researchers guess that about a quarter of college kids skip out on the hookup culture altogether, while a similar number participate with gusto—about 10 hookups or more (the lax­titutes?).
  • For the majority in the middle, the hookup culture is a place to visit freshman year, or whenever you feel like it, or after you’ve been through a breakup
  • Most important, hookups haven’t wrecked the capacity for intimacy. In England’s survey, 74 percent of women and about an equal number of men say they’ve had a relationship in college that lasted at least six months.
  • Equal numbers of men and women—about half—report to England that they enjoyed their latest hookup “very much.”
  • About 66 percent of women say they wanted their most recent hookup to turn into something more, but 58 percent of men say the same—not a vast difference
  • Almost all of the college women Armstrong and Hamilton interviewed assumed they would get married, and were looking forward to it. In England’s survey, about 90 percent of the college kids, male and female, have said they want to get married.
  • Zoom out, and you see that for most women, the hookup culture is like an island they visit, mostly during their college years and even then only when they are bored or experimenting or don’t know any better. But it is not a place where they drown.
  • We’ve landed in an era that has produced a new breed of female sexual creature, one who acknowledges the eternal vulnerability of women but, rather than cave in or trap herself in the bell jar, instead looks that vulnerability square in the face and then manipulates it in unexpected, and sometimes hilarious, ways
  • The hookup culture is too bound up with everything that’s fabulous about being a young woman in 2012—the freedom, the confidence, the knowledge that you can always depend on yourself. The only option is what Hannah’s friends always tell her—stop doing what feels awful, and figure out what doesn’t.
  • Ultimately, the desire for a deeper human connection always wins out, for both men and women. Even for those business-school women, their hookup years are likely to end up as a series of photographs, buried somewhere on their Facebook page, that they do or don’t share with their husband—a memory that they recall fondly or sourly, but that hardly defines them.
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The inside story of how Pennsylvania failed to deliver millions in coronavirus rent relief - 0 views

www.inquirer.com/...enants-landlords-20210215.html
shared by lmunch on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • As a result, Pennsylvania tenants in dire need of assistance, some of whom had been living day to day in fear of losing their homes, missed out on roughly $96 million of $150 million in federal coronavirus relief.
  • unemployment spiked to 16.1 percent in April.
  • In May, the state legislature approved a spending package that included $150 million for rent relief from the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, as well as $25 million to help homeowners who had fallen behind on their mortgage payments
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  • They put a $750 monthly cap on the assistance each family could receive. In parts of Pennsylvania, that’s less than the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment. Assistance through the mortgage program was capped at $1,000 a month.
  • In addition, landlords who accepted the assistance payments had to agree to treat $750 as full payment of rent, regardless of the actual amount owed. Many balked. And tenants couldn’t receive the aid unless their landlords agreed to take part.
  • Some weren’t eligible because they weren’t yet behind on rent, or had landlords who wouldn’t participate. Others couldn’t produce the right paperwork. Many applications arrived incomplete, requiring hours of follow-up by local agencies.
  • To qualify, tenants couldn’t earn more than the median income in their county. They also needed to have filed for unemployment since March 1, 2020, or have lost at least 30% of their income. Both presented difficulties. To prove a loss of income, applicants needed paperwork to show their current income, as well as their income from before the pandemic — pay stubs from January or February, for instance.
  • A reform bill introduced by Democrats had been referred to the committee. But, despite pleas from officials and advocates for both landlords and tenants, Senate Republicans did not act on it.
  • A bill that would have made more sweeping changes to the program — replacing the $750 cap with a more flexible standard and allowing applicants who couldn’t document their loss of income to sign a certification form, instead — passed the state House unanimously later in October. But Republican leaders in the Senate did not bring it up for a vote, saying Wolf’s changes were enough
  • And this time, if Pennsylvania cannot spend the new funding quickly enough, the state could lose some of it to other states. Federal law says that, starting Sep. 30, the U.S. Treasury can redistribute unused money to state and local governments that have already spent at least 65% of their allocation.
  • While federal law allows state and local governments to spend up to 10% of their allocation on the cost of running their programs, Pennsylvania limits those expenses to 5%. That number was a compromise after Senate Republicans initially proposed a 2% cap that local officials said would be untenable.
  • Bryce Maretzki was in charge of a $150 million effort to keep Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable tenants in their homes.
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Barack Obama calls for stricter gun laws following Colorado shooting to prevent more 'r... - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html obama
shared by katherineharron on 23 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Former President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for stricter gun laws following the mass shooting in Colorado, bemoaning what he called a national tolerance for "these kinds of random, senseless acts."
  • they "are also feeling a deep, familiar outrage" for these types of tragedies.
  • "It is long past time for those with the power to fight this epidemic of gun violence to do so. It will take time to root out the disaffection, racism and misogyny that fuels so many of these senseless acts of violence," Obama said. "But we can make it harder for those with hate in their hearts to buy weapons of war."
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  • The statement by the former president came shortly before President Joe Biden publicly commented on the shooting
  • The attack, which came days after another shooting rampage in Georgia that left eight dead, has renewed calls from lawmakers for federal gun control reform. close dialogSign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Sign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.Please enter aboveSign me upNo thanksBy subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.By subscribing you agree to ourprivacy policy.Sign up for CNN What Matters NewsletterEvery day we summarize What Matters and deliver it straight to your inbox.bx-row bx-row-image bx-row-image-d
  • During his time in the White House, Obama urged Congress to take up gun control legislation following several mass shootings around the country, though no significant congressional action was ever taken.
  • Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday called the shooting "absolutely tragic," but ignored a question about the future of gun control during a swearing-in ceremony for William Burns as CIA director.
  • Earlier this month, the House passed H.R. 8 that would expand background checks on all commercial gun sales and H.R. 1146 to try and close what's known as the "Charleston Loophole," which allows some firearms to be transferred by licensed gun dealers before the required background checks are completed.
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Opinion | Why Your Ballots Are Boring - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...errymandering-republicans.html history US policy Politics culture gop
shared by clairemann on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Gerrymandering is the age-old practice of trying to fix the boundaries of electoral districts to make sure your side gets as much advantage as possible.
  • The bill now headed toward Senator McConnell’s dustheap would require states to establish independent redistricting commissions when they prepare new maps for their legislatures and congressional districts based on the 2020 census.
  • Check out its website for an index that will tell you, for instance, that in the fast-growing state of Texas, only 9 percent of the 2018 state legislative races featured a real contest. A large chunk didn’t have even a second contender.
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  • There are a few saintly lawmakers dedicated to reform, but plenty just concentrate on making the system work for them.
  • In one, your party has at least a 40 to 50 percent chance of winning six. In the other, it has no hope whatsoever of taking four; a 65 percent chance of getting two; and a 97.7 percent chance of winning the one in which you happen to be running.
  • Right now in Louisiana, voters are picking a successor to Cedric Richmond, who gave up his House seat for a job as a White House adviser. The district, which resembles a very long and thin dragon balancing a ball on its nose, seems drawn to squish in as many Democrats — particularly Black Democrats — as humanly possible.
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Opinion: Why Biden's first press conference will be so challenging - CNN - 0 views

www.cnn.com/...index.html biden
shared by katherineharron on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • When the White House announced eight days ago that Biden would hold his first formal press conference on Thursday, his team probably hoped to use the exchange with reporters to tout progress on the Covid-19 vaccine rollout and the virtues of his signature American Rescue Act which greenlighted stimulus checks, as well as more aid for the unemployed and Americans facing eviction, and additional support for small businesses.
  • Since then, two mass shootings -- in the Atlanta area and in Boulder, Colorado -- have rekindled demands for federal action for stricter gun laws.
  • Illegal border crossings by unaccompanied minors are increasing, as is friction among factions of the Democratic base.
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  • And on the eve of the press conference came news of provocative new ballistic missile tests by North Korea
  • a week that was supposed to feature presidential events to lift up and underline the Rescue Act has yielded entirely different and vexing storylines that you can be sure will dominate Thursday's session.
  • Eager to avoid unforced rhetorical errors, Biden's team did a brilliant job throughout the general election campaign of controlling his interactions with the news media, mitigating the risk of unintended stories.
  • As president, Biden participated last month in a televised CNN town hall with citizens, a format that allowed him to display his prodigious empathy and decency, with limited opportunity for follow-ups from the moderator.
  • Biden may choose in an opening statement to make an announcement that he hopes will drive the news coverage. He will be furnished with a list of questioners, carefully curated by the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki. As is customary, he will have spent hours prepping with his team.
  • Biden and his team can only guess at the nature of the questions, many of which will be shaped by the events of the past week and even the hours before he takes the podium.
  • Last week, in one of Biden's rare interviews, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked the President whether he thought Vladimir Putin is a "killer." Biden paused, but after a moment of hesitation said, "I do." His blunt characterization of the Russian president touched off a diplomatic furor and probably was not the news the White House wanted to make.
  • Thursday will be an interesting test for this nascent presidency. /* dynamic basic css */ .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-widget-items-container {margin:0;padding:0;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-widget-items-container .ob-clearfix {display:block;width:100%;float:none;clear:both;height:0px;line-height:0px;font-size:0px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-widget-items-container.ob-multi-row {padding-top: 2%;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-dynamic-rec-container {position:relative;margin:0;padding;0;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-dynamic-rec-link, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-dynamic-rec-link:hover {text-decoration:none;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-rec-image-container .ob-video-icon-container {position:absolute;left:0;height:50%;width:100%;text-align:center;top:25%;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-rec-image-container .ob-video-icon {display:inline-block;height:100%;float:none;opacity:0.7;transition: opacity 500ms;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-rec-image-container .ob-video-icon:hover {opacity:1;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-rec-image-container .ob-rec-rtb-image {background-color:white;background-position:center;background-repeat:no-repeat;width:100%;position:absolute;top:0;bottom:0;left:0;right:0;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob-rec-image-container .ob-rec-rtb-image.ob-lazy-bgimg{background:none!important;}.AR_36.ob-widget .ob_what{direction:ltr;clear:both;padding:5px 10px 0px;} .AR_36 .ob_what a:after {content: "";vertical-align:super;;;background-image: url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/achoice.svg');background-size:75% 75%;width:12px;height:12px;padding-left:4px;display:inline-block;background-repeat:no-repeat;background-position:right center;border-left:1px solid #999;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_what a{color:#757575;font-size:11px;font-family:arial;text-decoration: none;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_what.ob-hover:hover a{text-decoration: underline;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_amelia, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_amelia_covid, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_logo, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_feed_logo, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_sfeed_logo, .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_text_logo{vertical-align:baseline !important;display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;padding:0px 5px;box-sizing:content-box;-moz-box-sizing:content-box;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_amelia{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_16x16.png') no-repeat center top;width:16px;height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_amelia_covid{width:auto;height:16px;max-height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_67x12.png') no-repeat center top;width:67px;height:12px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_text_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_text_logo_67x22.png') no-repeat center top;width:67px;height:22px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_feed_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_feed_logo.png') no-repeat center top;width:86px;height:23px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_sfeed_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_smartFeedLogo.min.svg') no-repeat center top;width:140px;height:21px;} .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_sphere_logo{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_sphere.svg') no-repeat center top;width:93px;height:27px;vertical-align:baseline!important;display:inline-block;vertical-align:text-bottom;padding:0px 0px;box-sizing:content-box;-moz-box-sizing:content-box;-webkit-box-sizing:content-box;} @media only screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 2),(min-resolution: 192dpi) { .AR_36.ob-widget .ob_amelia{background:url('https://widgets.outbrain.com/images/widgetIcons/ob_logo_16x16@2x.png') no-repeat center top;width:16px;height:16px;margin-bottom:-2px; 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Voting Rights Bill Puts Democrats on a Crash Course With the Filibuster - The New York ... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...democrats-voting-congress.html history US Politics policy voting
shared by clairemann on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • A debate over Senate procedure seems likely to come to a head, with a divided Democratic Party pushing to expand voting rights and Republicans standing firmly in the way.
  • When they passed a $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief bill this month, Democrats in Congress sped past their Republican opposition, using the budgetary reconciliation process to present a case study of what happens when they don’t bend over backward for G.O.P. buy-in.
  • The bill isn’t eligible for reconciliation and is almost certain to meet gridlock in the Senate, given the threat of a filibuster from Republicans.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “Today, in the 21st century, there is a concerted, nationwide effort to limit the rights of citizens to vote and to truly have a voice in their own government,” Schumer said, later chanting, “Shame! Shame!” at Republican lawmakers.
  • “It is a contradiction to say we must protect minority rights in the Senate while refusing to protect minority rights in society,”
  • Some expressed outrage over the legislation’s proposal to end the mandatory 3-3 partisan split on the Federal Election Commission, a move that Democrats have said was necessary to promote reform.
  • “This bill is designed to corrupt the election process permanently, and it is a brazen and shameless power grab by Democrats,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said.
  • Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Republican of West Virginia, argued that the bill was trying to fix a voting system that didn’t need fixing, a position that seemed to go against prominent Republican narratives that the 2020 election was supposedly tainted by voter fraud.
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Boris Johnson Hopes Covid-19 Vaccine Success Can Inoculate Him Against Brexit Critics -... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...is-johnson-vaccine-brexit.html Brexit Politics policy culture economics
shared by clairemann on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • 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
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Now, though, the prime minister’s approval ratings have recovered, powered largely by the public’s enthusiasm about the vaccine rollout.
  • Sixty-seven percent of those surveyed said they thought Britain had performed better on vaccinations than E.U. countries
  • Significantly, a slight plurality of those surveyed — 40 percent — said they thought Brexit had helped improve Britain’s handling of the pandemic, while 14 percent said it had made it worse, and 38 percent thought it had made no difference.
  • But Mr. Goodwin said one consequence of the vaccine success is that there are few signs of significant numbers of people rethinking the wisdom of Brexit or suffering the acute regret — or as he called it, “Bregret” — that some expected.
  • The monthslong shutdown of much of Britain’s economy will also complicate the task of identifying the negative effects of Brexit, since they are likely to be lost in a sea of red ink.
  • “Brexit doesn’t solve those problems,” Mr. Frost added, “but it does give us means to solve them, to move on, to get a grip but also to reform our attitudes and become a country that can deal with problems again.”
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Court allows execution of Corey Johnson to proceed after COVID-19 diagnosis - SCOTUSblog - 0 views

www.scotusblog.com/...oceed-after-covid-19-diagnosis Politics SCOTUS US policy crisis
shared by clairemann on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The justices on Thursday night denied two last-minute appeals by Corey Johnson, who sought to postpone his execution so that he could recover from COVID-19, which he contracted in prison after spending most of his life on death row. Johnson also argued that he was ineligible for the death penalty on the basis of intellectual disability and that he should have been allowed to seek a sentencing reduction under a 2018 prison-reform law.
  • The two appeals were the subject of a flurry of last-minute litigation, in multiple federal courts, that reached the justices minutes before Johnson’s originally scheduled execution time of 6 p.m. on Thursday. In two unsigned orders issued around 10 p.m. (available here and here), the court denied both appeals.
  • Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan indicated that they would have put the execution on hold based on Johnson’s COVID diagnosis. Sotomayor and Kagan separately indicated that they also would have granted a stay based on Johnson’s other legal arguments.
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  • In their first appeal, Johnson’s lawyers raised two issues: intellectual disability and eligibility for resentencing.
  • In the second appeal, lawyers for Johnson and Higgs contended that putting their clients to death by lethal injection while their lungs were still recovering from damage due to the coronavirus would subject them to unconstitutional levels of suffering, in violation of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
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President Joe Biden's First News Conference - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...biden-news-today US Politics biden conference
shared by ethanshilling on 25 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • President Biden will face reporters in his first formal news conference Thursday afternoon, using the stately backdrop of the White House to promote the benefits of his economic recovery efforts, call for action on gun control and respond to criticism about his handling of the border with Mexico.
  • It will be Mr. Biden’s first high-stakes grilling by reporters since taking office more than two months ago. Since then, his advisers have carefully controlled his interactions with the press, which have included one-on-one interviews and some limited opportunities for reporters to ask questions during brief appearances.
  • In the wake of two mass shootings in a week, the president will probably be asked why gun control has not been a more pressing priority for his administration.
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  • Mr. Biden said this week that Congress should tighten background checks for gun buyers and renew the ban on assault weapons, which expired years ago.
  • Mr. Biden has said that responding to the coronavirus crisis is his No. 1 responsibility. In recent months, the numbers of cases and deaths have fallen, in part because of the accelerating pace of vaccinations.
  • The president campaigned on reversing former President Donald J. Trump’s immigration agenda, and he moved quickly to do so during his first hours in office.
  • Reporters will most likely press Mr. Biden on how he intends to resolve the immediate issue of border facilities crowded with children.
  • The administration is poised to announce sanctions on Russia for a series of actions, including the SolarWinds cyberattack, which compromised U.S. government agencies and companies.
  • Fresh off passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which is intended to help the economy recover and to finance the virus response, Mr. Biden is expected to soon propose another round of spending on climate change and infrastructure repairs that could total an additional $3 trillion.
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Biden News Conference: President On Vaccines, Immigration : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...s-conference-of-his-presidency
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  • President Biden is doubling his original COVID-19 vaccination goal to 200 million shots in arms by his 100th day in office — which is just over a month away.
  • When he entered office, Biden said his goal was 100 million vaccine doses in 100 days — a target many observers thought was not ambitious enough. According to federal health officials, that 100 million figure was hit on Biden's 58th day in office.About 2.5 million vaccine doses are being administered every day in the United States.He detailed his new goal Thursday, during the first news conference of his presidency.
  • Biden is also sticking to a goal of having a majority of K-8 schools open full time — in person, five days a week — by that same 100-day mark. So far, he said, roughly half of them are open full time.
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  • When it comes to the influx of migrants at the southern U.S. border, Biden said the Pentagon is making 5,000 beds available at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, to increase capacity.
  • He blamed the Trump administration for decreasing capacity and said his administration is building back up the systems that, he said, should have been maintained and built upon but that the former president "dismantled."
  • The Biden administration has changed policy from the Trump hard-line action of refusing to admit unaccompanied minors during the pandemic. Biden defended taking that action, saying what former President Donald Trump did broke from prior practice of past presidents and was, essentially, inhumane.
  • He stressed that a parent's decision to send their child to the United States unaccompanied on a dangerous journey shows desperation with their circumstances. Biden has assigned Vice President Harris to head up efforts to work with Mexico and Central American countries to stem the flow of migrants.
  • A solution to the immigration situation at the southern border has been elusive through Congress. When asked whether he would back eliminating or weakening the filibuster to facilitate his agenda, he delivered a potential threat.
  • If Republicans continue to make it a requirement for 60 votes to proceed to an up or down vote, "We'll have to go beyond what we're talking about," he said obliquely. Biden has in the past signaled openness to dismantling the filibuster if Republican opposition refuses to relent.
  • Biden also reiterated that he is in favor of bringing back the "talking filibuster," making it necessary for senators who want to hold up legislation to hold the Senate floor and speak.
  • Asked about gun violence following two high-profile mass shootings in the past week, Biden pivoted and said his next push will be on infrastructure. That's something he said he will announce in more detail Wednesday in Pittsburgh.
  • His answer indicated that Biden, who in recent days urged lawmakers to pass firearm legislation, may not believe the political will is there now to pass substantive gun restrictions. Congress has been unable to pass strong gun legislation over the past two decades despite countless mass shootings in that time. Biden, who's 78 years old, also said he plans to run for reelection in 2024.
  • It's advantageous for a president to say he expects to seek reelection or he becomes a lame duck too quickly. In other words, if a president says he is not going to run for reelection, Congress begins to look past that president's authority, reducing his political capital.
  • Biden also touted his early successes, including work to expand the COVID-19 vaccination program and the $1.9 trillion relief package enacted by Congress.
  • His remarks come a little over halfway through his first 100 days in office — a typical benchmark used to measure a president's early progress. Before this news conference, Biden had taken questions intermittently from reporters, but nothing at this length.
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Half Of The Jury In The Chauvin Trial Is Nonwhite. That's Only Part Of The Story : NPR - 0 views

www.npr.org/...e-thats-only-part-of-the-story
shared by anonymous on 25 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.
  • Among the 12 jurors and three alternates selected for the panel are three Black men, one Black woman and two jurors who identify as multiracial. If none of the three alternates — all of them white — is needed in the deliberation room, 50% of the panel that will vote on Chauvin's fate will be Black or multiracial.
  • 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.
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  • 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 that defense attorney Eric Nelson generally found acceptable as he considered which potential jurors to strike and which to allow.
  • 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.
  • In recent years, she has paid special attention to how professed support for the Black Lives Matter movement has gotten many Black people struck from juries. 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.
  • Despite those experiences, Juror 76 assured the judge and attorneys that he could put his opinions aside and decide the case against Chauvin fairly and based only on the evidence. He said he could foresee himself casting a not-guilty vote if the evidence required it. He had also served on a jury before. Defense attorney Nelson struck him nonetheless, citing the juror's bias against the Minneapolis police.
  • That decision elicited concern from Steve Schleicher, the lawyer leading jury selection for the prosecution, who disagreed that the juror's comments revealed anti-police bias. Instead, he said, they were a simple reflection of the juror's daily lived experience as a Black man.
  • 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, said Sonali Chakravarti, a Wesleyan University professor who has studied the role of race in jury selection.
  • That was in contrast to one potential juror — an African American man and former soldier — who said he had lived in the neighborhood where Floyd was killed and said police in the area were known to antagonize residents. The man, identified only by his juror number, 76, also spoke of experiencing racism on a daily basis and recounted seeing Black acquaintances sentenced to prison for crimes while white ones often got a "slap on the wrist."
  • 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. The prosecution in the Chauvin case also struck white jurors who expressed police-friendly views or who had negative opinions of Black Lives Matter or the protests that followed Floyd's killing.But Chakravarti said that given history, it is appropriate to apply greater scrutiny when Black jurors are struck.
  • Given Hennepin County's overwhelmingly white jury pool, that four Black and two multiracial people made it onto the Chauvin jury is a considerable feat, even if their expressed views on race and police are more conservative than those of countless African Americans who've marched for racial justice in the last year.
  • In a column, Mary Moriarty, the former chief public defender for Minneapolis, said she had watched the questioning of Juror 76 and, though she expected him to be struck, had hoped he wouldn't be.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.
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Opinion | I Survived 18 Years in Solitary Confinement - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...litary-confinement-reform.html US injustice prison
shared by ethanshilling on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Mr. Manuel is an author, activist and poet. When he was 14 years old, he was sentenced to life in prison with no parole and spent 18 years in solitary confinement. His forthcoming memoir, “My Time Will Come,” details these experiences.
  • As a 15-year-old, I was condemned to long-term solitary confinement in the Florida prison system, which ultimately lasted for 18 consecutive years. From 1992 to 2010. From age 15 to 33. From the end of the George H.W. Bush administration to the beginnings of the Obama era.
  • For 18 years I didn’t have a window in my room to distract myself from the intensity of my confinement. I wasn’t permitted to talk to my fellow prisoners or even to myself. I didn’t have healthy, nutritious food; I was given just enough to not die.
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  • In the summer of 1990, shortly after finishing seventh grade, I was directed by a few older kids to commit a robbery. During the botched attempt, I shot a woman. She suffered serious injuries to her jaw and mouth but survived.
  • For this I was arrested and charged as an adult with armed robbery and attempted murder.
  • I was thrown into solitary confinement the day I arrived at the Reception and Medical Center, a state prison in Lake Butler, Fla., because of my young age.
  • But a year and a half later, at age 15, I was put back into solitary confinement after being written up for a few minor infractions.
  • Florida has different levels of solitary confinement; I spent the majority of that time in one of the most restrictive. Nearly two decades caged in a roughly 7-by-10-foot room passed before I was rotated between the general population area and solitary for six more years.
  • Researchers have long concluded that solitary confinement causes post-traumatic stress disorder and impairs prisoners’ ability to adjust to society long after they leave their cell.
  • Yet the practice, even for minors, is still common in the United States, and efforts to end it have been spotty
  • More aggressive change is needed in state prison systems. Today, dozens of states still have little to no legislation prohibiting juvenile solitary confinement.
  • I also witnessed the human consequences of the harshness of solitary firsthand: Some people would resort to cutting their stomachs open with a razor and sticking a plastic spork inside their intestines just so they could spend a week in the comfort of a hospital room with a television.
  • I served 18 consecutive years in isolation because each minor disciplinary infraction — like having a magazine that had another prisoner’s name on the mailing label — added an additional six months to my time in solitary confinement.
  • It is difficult to know the exact number of children in solitary confinement today. The Liman Center at Yale Law School estimated that 61,000 Americans (adults and children) were in solitary confinement in the fall of 2017.
  • No matter the count, I witnessed too many people lose their minds while isolated. They’d involuntarily cross a line and simply never return to sanity.
  • Solitary confinement is cruel and unusual punishment, something prohibited by the Eighth Amendment, yet prisons continue to practice it.
  • When it comes to children, elimination is the only moral option. And if ending solitary confinement for adults isn’t politically viable, public officials should at least limit the length of confinement to 15 days or fewer, in compliance with the U.N. standards.
  • In the meantime, prisoners in Florida like Darryl Streeter, inmate No. 514988, are forced to spend their lives in long-term isolation. He recently told me by phone that he’s been in solitary confinement for 24 consecutive years.
  • As I try to reintegrate into society, small things often awaken painful memories from solitary. Sometimes relationships feel constraining.
  • I will face PTSD and challenges big and small for the rest of my life because of what I was subjected to. Some things I’ve grown accustomed to. Some things I haven’t. And some things I never will — most of all, that this country can treat human beings, especially children, as cruelly as I was treated.
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Opinion | Biden's news conference was pretty boring. That's just fine. - The Washington... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...-pretty-boring-thats-just-fine Biden US gop trump
shared by clairemann on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • “I want to get things done,” Biden said, while stressing his belief in “the art of the possible” and the importance of timing. He made clear that despite recent events tugging him in different directions, including two mass shootings, the country’s infrastructure needs are up next. Having a plan, and carrying it out despite inevitable distractions, are two admirable achievements for any new administration.
  • He seemed somewhat obsessed with his predecessor, invoking Donald Trump’s name several times without really being prompted.
  • He wants to pass the House’s election reform bill to counteract GOP efforts in the states. He offered conflicting signals on whether to keep the filibuster, indicating a preference for the old-fashioned “talk until you drop” style of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” but also noting that he has 50 votes and the tiebreaker, and he doesn’t intend to let that go to waste.
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  • Biden said people probably didn’t think he could get it passed “without any Republican votes,” but “pretty big deal, got passed.” Actually, his challenge was to live up to his promise to be a bipartisan president and gain GOP support for his legislation. Passing bills on purely partisan votes was something everyone thought he could do, given the Democrats’ control of both houses of Congress, but shouldn’t if he could help it.
  • Biden’s courteous relationship with the press corps was evident, especially compared with Trump’s. He avoided calling on Peter Doocy of Fox News, who might have asked him something more interesting and even controversial.
  • But in the early months of his presidency, Biden has done little to reassure. His appearances are infrequent and brief. He often speaks in disjointed phrases. His recent stumbles while climbing the steps of Air Force One were painful to watch, and it was something he should have been asked about Thursday.
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Opinion | We've Spent Over a Decade Researching Guns in America. This Is What We Learne... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...gun-reform-us.html
shared by rerobinson03 on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Gun violence did not go away during 2020. Gun homicides jumped 25 percent from the year before, apparently fueled in part by a rise in intimate-partner violence. Some people have approached the possibility of becoming a victim of violence, including anti-Asian hate crime, with what could be characterized as an act of anticipatory trauma: purchasing a firearm. This isn’t unprecedented. Americans have long turned to firearms as both a last (if not first) resort for addressing uncertainty, precarity and insecurity in a country that largely lacks a collective social safety net.
  • This trauma has a broad toll, unevenly borne. More than 240,000 students (including a disproportionate number of Black students) have experienced gun violence at school since the 1999 Columbine shooting, while socioeconomically underserved communities of color disproportionately bear the brunt of gun violence. Black boys and young men ages 15 to 34 are more than 20 times more likely to die of gun homicide than their white counterparts.
  • Many people recognized that the lull in mass public shootings during 2020 brought on by the pandemic response would eventually end. The violence that we have seen in the past two weeks in the Atlanta area and Boulder points us to a different kind of gun debate — one that recognizes the cyclical nature of gun trauma while also recognizing that many gun policies are also counterproductive. Policies that purport to end the trauma of gun violence by increasing the punitive surveillance of individuals with mental illness, increasing police presence and surveillance of students at schools or bringing more people into contact with the criminal justice system may ultimately create more, if different, trauma.
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  • Approaching guns from the perspective of trauma will require some imagination — and some courage. In the days and weeks to come, we will be tempted to double down on our usual agendas and party lines. We should embrace evidence-based policies to reduce gun violence. But we can’t stop there. Addressing gun violence in the spaces where we live our lives — our grocery stores, our workplaces, our schools, our streets and our homes — requires addressing the damage gun trauma inflicts on our souls, retooling our familiar agendas, letting go of partisanship and remembering that we share a basic vulnerability as humans that can unite us or, if we choose, divide us further.
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Joe Biden is giving left parties the world over a masterclass in how to use power | Joe... - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...-parties-power-radical-winning biden strategy politics crisis policy
shared by Javier E on 27 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • This is the first lesson that Biden is teaching would-be reformers. If you want to be radical in office, first reassure in opposition.
  • If your goal is to win power, then in societies where people tend to be small-c conservative, your initial task is to persuade them that they have nothing to fear from you – that your concerns are their concerns.
  • the second key lesson from Biden, one as old as politics. The true radical is not the fiery deliverer of revolutionary speeches or writer of maximalist manifestos. The true radical is the one who wins power and uses it for good.
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China's Plan to Win in a Post-Pandemic World - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...national-peoples-congress.html politics economics china
shared by ethanshilling on 05 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • China unveiled a road map for cementing its rise in a post-Covid world as it opened one of its biggest political events of the year on Friday, casting its success against the coronavirus as evidence of the superiority of its top-down leadership while warning of threats at home and abroad.
  • The message on Friday was one of optimism about the strength of its economy and the solidarity of its people, and of struggle against an array of challenges: a hostile global environment, demographic crises at home and resistance to its rule of Hong Kong.
  • According to the plan, the Basic Law, Hong Kong’s mini-Constitution, will be amended to change the process of selecting the territory’s chief executive and the legislature.
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  • The changes will amount to a new electoral process with “Hong Kong characteristics,” Wang Chen, a Politburo member who specializes in legal matters, said in a speech.
  • Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to Chinese rule in 1997 on the promise that it would be accorded a high degree of autonomy for 50 years. But “Beijing’s full grip on power in Hong Kong may happen well before 2047,” said Diana Fu, an associate professor of political science at the University of Toronto.
  • The government promised economic growth of “over 6 percent,” a relatively modest target by the standards of China’s pre-pandemic expansion but a big turnabout from last year and a signal of its commitment to keeping the world’s second-largest economy humming.
  • The forecast indicates that China expects a strong rebound after the pandemic brought the country’s economy to a standstill for several months last year.
  • The spending increases over the past two decades, which have given China the world’s second-largest military budget today, have paid for a modernization and expansion program aimed at challenging American military dominance in the Pacific, especially in the South China Sea and around Taiwan.
  • Strengthening that message will be a major focus for Mr. Xi as he looks ahead to two important political events. In July, the party will celebrate the centenary of its founding.
  • As China’s rivalry over science and technology with the United States and other countries remains at a boil, Beijing is digging deep into its pockets in a bid for victory.
  • Just over a year after the coronavirus first emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, Beijing also pledged to increase resources to guard against emerging infectious diseases and biosafety risks.
  • The Communist Party’s latest five-year plan specifically calls for the construction of a “Polar Silk Road,” presumably aimed at helping China better capitalize on new energy sources and faster shipping routes in the Arctic.
  • China’s military budget is set to rise by around 6.9 percent this year, a slight increase from last year. As overall government spending is projected to decline slightly, the People’s Liberation Army is still being funded robustly.
  • As countries continue to grapple with the pandemic, the party has doubled down on the message that China’s political model of strong, centralized leadership is superior to the chaos of liberal democracies.
  • The government addressed concerns about China’s aging population and shrinking labor force by announcing pension reforms and gradual changes to the official retirement age
  • On Friday, the government announced plans to build a system to support “family development” and strengthen marriage and family counseling services.
  • “Fully implement the party’s basic policy on religious work,” read a draft of the five-year plan. “Continue to pursue the sinicization of China’s religions and actively guide religions so that they can be compatible with socialist society.”
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Biden's Pick for Justice Dept. No. 3, Vanita Gupta, Wins Backing of Law Enforcement - T... - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...-gupta-justice-department.html
shared by anonymous on 09 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The nominee, Vanita Gupta, had served as the department’s top civil rights official during the Obama administration. Some Republicans have already signaled that they will oppose her.
  • WASHINGTON — When the Obama administration convened a meeting in 2015 to discuss its investigation into police abuses in Ferguson, Mo., some officials were puzzled to see the conservative activist Grover Norquist in attendance, and even more surprised to learn that he was the guest of Vanita Gupta, a Justice Department official known for her work with progressive legal groups.
  • Ms. Monaco, 53, is a national security expert who began her career at the Justice Department as a federal prosecutor who worked on the Enron task force, and later served as an F.B.I. official and head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.
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  • “I have known and worked with Ms. Gupta for several years, and have been extraordinarily impressed by her seriousness, her honesty and her capacity to engage in fruitful and productive dialogue regarding policing and criminal justice,” David J. Mahoney, the president of the National Sheriffs’ Association, said in a letter to the Judiciary Committee.
  • he Judicial Crisis Network campaign, standing in opposition to the support of Ms. Gupta by mainstream law enforcement groups, shows a split among some conservatives over their willingness to work with the Biden administration on issues like criminal justice reform that have had bipartisan support. Former President Donald J. Trump signed a broad overhaul of the criminal justice system in 2018 that expanded job training and early-release programs and modified sentencing laws.
  • While the Judicial Crisis Network is not known for taking a strong stance on policing issues, it is little surprise that Ms. Severino would oppose Ms. Gupta’s nomination. The group has pushed for the Supreme Court to rule against measures that would expand gay rights, and Ms. Gupta was the head of the Civil Rights Division in the final years of the Obama administration while the department broadly supported extending those protections. The Trump administration pared back those protections, but that could be reassessed under the Biden administration.
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Mexico Passes Bill to Legalize Cannabis - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...mexico-cannabis-bill.html politics Policy Culture
shared by delgadool on 11 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Lawmakers in Mexico approved a bill Wednesday night to legalize recreational marijuana, a milestone for the country, which is in the throes of a drug war and could become the world’s largest cannabis market, leaving the United States between two pot-selling neighbors.
  • The 316-to-129 vote in Mexico’s lower house, the Chamber of Deputies, came more than two years after the Mexican Supreme Court ruled that the country’s ban on recreational marijuana was unconstitutional and more than three years after the country legalized medicinal cannabis.
  • The measure, as of Wednesday night, would allow adults to smoke marijuana and, with a permit, grow a small number of cannabis plants at home. It would also grant licenses for producers — from small farmers to commercial growers — to cultivate and sell the crop.
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  • If enacted, Mexico would join Canada and Uruguay in a small but growing list of countries that have legalized marijuana in the Americas, adding further momentum to the legalization movement in the region. In the United States, Democrats in the Senate have also promised to scrap federal prohibition of the drug this year.
  • Critics say it is unlikely to make a serious dent in Mexico’s soaring rates of cartel-fueled violence, and argue that it is unwelcome in a country where nearly two-thirds of people oppose legalizing marijuana, according to recent polling.
  • Security experts agree that the law’s practical impact on violence will likely be minimal: With 15 American states having now legalized marijuana, they argue, the crop has become a relatively small part of the Mexican drug trafficking business, with cartels focusing on more profitable products like fentanyl and methamphetamines.
  • Legalization “is an important step toward building peace in a country like ours, where for at least a decade or more, we’ve been immersed in an absurd war,” said Lucía Riojas Martínez
  • “But this bill falls short of achieving that,” she added.
  • “Doing this right could give Mexico an economic surplus,” he said.
  • “It’s a law for the rich, and marijuana should be for everybody,” said Ivania Medina Rodríguez, 18, a local activist. “They’re going for business before rights.”
  • Some activists fear that the law will overly favor large corporations that could obtain what the bill terms an “integral license,” giving them access to the entire marijuana supply chain, from seed to sale, while leaving small-scale producers and vendors locked out of the lucrative market.
  • “We live in a country where corruption and extortion is the norm,” said Zara Snapp, co-founder of the RIA Institute, a Mexico-city based drug policy research and advocacy group.
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