And another day of being contagious, pregnancy and childbirth killing Black women in TX, Twitter bans linking to major competitors, children with disabilities arrested at school, OSHA, and the spectacular World Cup final comes to a close:
“After all, tomorrow is another day.” -- Margaret Mitchell
Covid Deaths
US: 1,112,970
World: 6,671,886
Covid Cases
US: 101,760,149
World: 657,820,247
What to watch as Jan. 6 panel cites Trump’s ‘attempted coup’. The House committee investigating the Capitol riot will make its final public presentation Monday about the unprecedented effort by Donald Trump to overturn the results of the presidential election he lost in 2020. The committee has called it an “attempted coup” that warrants criminal prosecution from the Justice Department.
'Tripledemic' viruses still spreading. What science shows about being contagious. It’s a good time to brush up on what scientists know, and still don’t know, about how long people remain infectious with viral diseases — Covid, influenza, RSV — that are spreading across the U.S.
Why are pregnancy and childbirth killing so many Black women in Texas? A decade ago, Black women in Texas were twice as likely as white women to die from pregnancy and childbirth. Today, not much has changed.
The student loan company that could topple Biden’s debt relief plan. The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority, a state-created loan company known as MOHELA, is at the center of a legal challenge from six Republican states trying to stop Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt for more than 40 million Americans…All of the loan servicers hired by the Education Department decided against suing over the debt relief plan. MOHELA presented a different situation, Kerpen noted, because of the company's relationship to a state with a Republican attorney general who could take action on its behalf.
Twitter no longer allows links to major competitors like Facebook, Mastodon. Elon Musk has updated Twitter's rules once again, this time formally banning links to several competing social media sites. Critics say the updated rules fly in the face of Musk's promise to develop Twitter as a bastion of free speech. "Specifically, we will remove accounts created solely for the purpose of promoting other social platforms and content that contains links or usernames for the following platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Nostr and Post," Twitter's Support account on the platform tweeted.
Oregon's LGBTQ community worries that a new law will keep them from obtaining guns. The law, Measure 114, grants county sheriffs and police chiefs discretion to determine who qualifies to purchase a firearm under a new permit-to-purchase program. But Measure 114 lacks criteria clearly defining what disqualifies applicants, details on what makes someone a threat and what data can be used by law enforcement in making that decision. That's a problem for activists who have critiqued law enforcement, particularly in the racial justice protests that took place over the past two years.
The Price Kids Pay: School for children with disabilities calls police on its students every other day. Administrators at the Garrison School call the police to report student misbehavior every other school day, on average. And because staff members regularly press charges against the children — some as young as 9 — officers have arrested students more than 100 times in the last five school years, an investigation by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica found. That is an astounding number given that Garrison, the only school that is part of the Four Rivers Special Education District, has fewer than 65 students in most years. No other school district — not just in Illinois, but in the entire country — had a higher student arrest rate than Four Rivers the last time data was collected nationwide. That school year, 2017-18, more than half of all Garrison students were arrested. Officers typically handcuff students and take them to the police station, where they are fingerprinted, photographed and placed in a holding room. For at least a decade, the local newspaper has included the arrests in its daily police blotter for all to see. The students enrolled each year at Garrison have severe emotional or behavioral disabilities that kept them from succeeding at previous schools. Some also have been diagnosed with autism, ADHD or other disorders. Many have experienced horrifying trauma, including sexual abuse, the death of parents and incarceration of family members, according to interviews with families and school employees…The reports, written by school staff and obtained through public records requests, describe in detail what happened up until the moment police were called. These narratives, along with recordings of 911 calls, show that school workers often summon police not amid an emergency but because someone at the school wants police to hold the child responsible for their behavior…Police arrested them all. — This entire story is disgusting. Locking kids in concrete “seclusion rooms,” thinking of the kids as delinquents instead of disabled, calling police over minor things, like throwing a piece of paper, and failing to help children who so desperately need it.
As Workers Battle Cancer, The Government Admits Its Limit for a Deadly Chemical Is Too High. The U.S. agency that is supposed to safeguard worker health has all but given up on setting limits to protect them from dangerous chemicals. Meanwhile, workers are dying…Paralyzed by industry lawsuits from decades ago, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has all but given up on trying to set a truly protective threshold for ortho-toluidine and thousands of other chemicals. The agency has only updated standards for three chemicals in the past 25 years; each took more than a decade to complete.
Arctic air will blast much of US just before Christmas. Forecasters are warning of treacherous holiday travel and life-threatening cold for much of the nation as an arctic air mass blows into the already-frigid southern United States.
Messi wins World Cup, Argentina beats France on penalties. In probably the wildest final in the tournament’s 92-year history, Argentina won its third World Cup title by beating France 4-2 in a penalty shootout after a 3-3 draw featuring two goals from the 35-year-old Messi and a hat trick by his heir apparent, France forward Kylian Mbappé. -- It was a fantastic game!
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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