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Illinois House approves staff unionization, GOP questions whether it's necessary

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — The speaker of the Illinois House on Wednesday won approval for allowing legislative staff to organize for collective bargaining, overcoming Republican objections about whether it's necessary.Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch's legislation, endorsed 74-35 on a largely partisan vote, would allow legislative coordinators, subject-matter specialists, mailroom employees, custodians, doorkeepers providing security and others to unionize.After Oregon allowed legislative aides to unionize in 2021, the movement has gained momentum. California endorsed collective bargaining last month but efforts in other states, such as Washington, have so far stalled. Maine allowed some staff unionization in the early 2000s. USPS touts crackdown on postal crime, carrier robberies, with hundreds of arrests Welch urged lawmakers to discard “finite” thinking when they're engaged in “an infinite game," responsible for improving the machinations of government for the future.“Everyone...

Poison specialist charged with fatally poisoning his wife

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Authorities in Minnesota have arrested and charged a Wichita woman's husband in her murder. On August 16, Betty Bowman, 32, a Mayo Clinic pharmacist, was admitted to a hospital in Rochester, Minnesota, with severe gastrointestinal distress and dehydration — similar to food poisoning. She died on August 20. Connor Bowman (Courtesy: Olmsted County Sheriff's Office)Betty's husband, Dr. Connor F. Bowman, a former Mayo Clinic resident, was arrested on Friday, Oct. 20, and he has been charged with second-degree murder — with intent-not premeditated, in her death. His bond has been set at $5 million with no conditions. According to a criminal complaint and statement of probable cause filed on Monday, Oct. 23, in Olmsted County, Minnesota, the medical examiner alerted the Rochester Police Department to Betty's suspicious death on August 21, and her cremation was halted. That's when authorities began investigating Betty's husband.The complaint says Connor Bowman was a ...

Deer crashes through window at Pennsylvania middle school

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

BERWICK, Penn. (WBRE/WYOU) — A deer crashed through the window of a middle school classroom in Pennsylvania and ran down a hallway, causing a commotion Wednesday morning. Berwick Middle School officials said a teacher was inside the room when the deer bolted through the window around 9:30 a.m. The animal then went into another classroom, startling a small group of students and a teacher. The group immediately exited the room and locked the deer inside, according to officials. No one was injured. "We were fortunate of the timing that it had happened," said Greg Daily, the supervisor of the Berwick Area School District Police Department. "If it would’ve been six minutes or so earlier, there would’ve been students and staff in the hallway." WATCH: Deer run through field during high school soccer game Berwick and Salem Township police officers responded to the school and helped put a blanket over the deer's head. They then brought the deer outside before the Pennsylvania Game Commissi...

Can a Texas judge refuse to marry gay couples? Texas Supreme Court to rule

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

AUSTIN (Nexstar) -- The Texas Supreme Court on Wednesday heard arguments relating to disciplinary action taken against a Waco-area judge who refuses to perform same-sex marriages.The case tests the authority of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct while pitting LGBTQ+ rights against the discretion granted to elected officials on religious grounds.In 2019, the Commission issued a warning to McClennan County Justice of the Peace Dianne Hensley for her refusal to perform marriages for same-sex couples, claiming her conduct shows an inability to uphold her oath of impartiality.The state's attorney described instances in which Hensley's clerks would greet gay couples seeking to be married, turn them away, and provide them a list of other judges who would serve them."She has chosen to discriminate between some folks in the state of Texas in favor of other people. And it flies in the face of impartiality," attorney Douglas Lang argued to the court Monday morning.Hensley asserts state r...

Apartment complex in Hyde Park named after former city mayor

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- An apartment complex in Hyde Park has a new name that's familiar to many Austinites.The Workforce Affordable Complex will now be called The Adler -- named after former City of Austin Mayor Steve Adler, according to a news release from Affordable Central Texas.Back in 2016, Adler worked to address affordable housing availability for middle-income workers, the release said. This then led to the start of the Austin Housing Conservancy, which has preserved workforce affordable housing in the city.The Workforce Affordable Complex will now be called The Adler, which is named after former City of Austin Mayor Steve Adler | Todd Bailey/KXAN NewsThe Workforce Affordable Complex will now be called The Adler, which is named after former City of Austin Mayor Steve Adler | Todd Bailey/KXAN NewsThe Workforce Affordable Complex will now be called The Adler, which is named after former City of Austin Mayor Steve Adler | Todd Bailey/KXAN NewsThe Workforce Affordable Complex will now...

Other voices: Why are governments still subsidizing fossil fuels?

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

The fight against climate change commands the support of governments across much of the world. Targets for carbon abatement have gotten more ambitious and policies to address the challenge are proliferating. Yet one measure of progress shows how badly these efforts still fall short. Last year, global fossil-fuel subsidies expanded to a new record — $7 trillion, roughly 7% of global gross domestic output.This remarkable number comes from a recently updated assessment by the International Monetary Fund, drawing on detailed disaggregated data for 170 countries. Rightly, it uses a comprehensive definition of subsidy, combining outright support (spending that offsets production costs) and implicit support (underpricing for environmental harms and forgone tax revenue).Explicit subsidies have more than doubled since the previous assessment for 2020, to more than $1 trillion, thanks partly to efforts to soften the blow of higher energy prices after Russia attacked Ukraine. Implicit su...

F.D. Flam: Let’s stop insulting each other as ‘anti-science’

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

Peter Hotez, a vaccine scientist from Baylor College of Medicine, has been receiving a stream of hate mail. Much of it is unhinged, paranoid and threatening. He’s not alone — other prominent figures in public health have gotten hateful messages and death threats, especially since the beginning of the pandemic.He describes the abuse in his new book, “The Deadly Rise of Anti-science — A Scientist’s Warning.” And he argues that an estimated 200,000 people in the U.S. who died from COVID probably would have survived if they hadn’t refused to get free, easily accessible vaccines.He’s right about that, but throwing around the “anti-science” label isn’t helping bridge any divides. Take any scientific issue that involves political choices, from public health to climate change: All sides claim to be basing their concerns in science.For example, further into the book, Hotez applies that anti-science label to people who opposed ...

Bret Stephens: The Palestinian Republic of fear and misinformation — the nature of tyrannical regimes

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

JERUSALEM — Many years ago, when I first started covering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, I got to know a gifted Palestinian journalist who, for reasons that will become apparent in a moment, I’ll refer to only by his first name, Said.As with many other Palestinian journalists, Said’s primary source of income was working with foreign reporters as a “fixer,” someone who could arrange difficult meetings, translate from Arabic, show you around. Said had an independent streak, and he was no fan of Yasser Arafat, which made him particularly helpful in cutting through the Palestinian Authority’s propagandistic bombast.With Said, I interviewed senior Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip; and in the West Bank, officials in Ramallah, retired terrorists in Nablus, political dissidents in Jenin and construction workers in Hebron. We developed a friendship. Then, shortly after 9/11, he called me in a panic because something I had written in The Wall Street Journal had met with the displeasure of o...

Jamelle Bouie: Millennials and Gen Z are tilting left and staying there

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

As the saying goes, if you’re not a liberal when you’re young, then you have no heart, and if you’re not a conservative when you’re old, you have no brain.The idea, of course, is that liberalism is a game for the youth and that age brings security, stability and a natural resistance to change. The upshot, in American politics, is that while most voters might start on the center-left, with Democrats, they’ll end their political journey on the center-right, with Republicans. One party represents disruption and change; the other party represents a steady hand and the status quo.Or at least that’s the story. The reality is a little more complicated. Not only does our narrative of political change over time exaggerate the degree of rightward drift among different people as they age, but there’s good evidence that for the youngest generations of Americans, it is hardly happening at all.The evidence comes from a new Wall Street Journal analysis of the latest data from the General Social Su...

Wisconsin DNR approves new wolf management plan with no population goal

Published Wed, 12 Feb 2025 11:49:23 GMT

Wisconsin wildlife officials unanimously approved a contentious new wolf management plan Wednesday that doesn’t include a specific population goal despite demands from hunters and farmers to cap the number of wolves roaming the state.In backing the plan, Department of Natural Resources policy board members praised it as a scientifically sound compromise that could give federal officials confidence that Wisconsin would manage its wolf population responsibly if the federal government removes protections for the species.“Impressive work,” board member Todd Ambs told DNR large carnivore specialist Larry Johnson, who spent months developing and revising the plan in an attempt to please hunters, farmers and conservationists. “Amazing what you’ve been going through. … Congratulations on still being upright when you got here.”Wolf management has become one of the fiercest policy debates in Wisconsin hunting circles as the population has grown over the last three decades.Fa...