Supreme Court to teleconference cases; Alleged harassment victims sue McD's; Officials want 3-D gun files blocked; Nations shocked as US halts WHO funds; UN combats 'scourge of misinformation'
NewsHero - April 15, 2020 - Issue 77
Welcome to today’s edition of NewsHero for April 15, 2020.
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Ukrainian firefighters near the village of Ragovka, close to the exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. April 10, 2020 (EPA/Scanpix/LETA)
NewsHero Notes
Firefighters, emergency response personnel - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Ukrainian officials said Tuesday that forest fires in the radiation-contaminated area near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant had been extinguished, however grass was still smoldering in some areas.
CPJ, Chen Jiaping - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
Committee to Protect Journalists is calling on Chinese authorities to release documentary filmmaker Chen Jiaping and to drop all charges against him. Chen was reportedly detained by police in Beijing in early March. He’d recently shot a documentary on Chinese activist and scholar Xu Zhiyong.
Afternoon Brief
U.S. Supreme Court - 🦸♀️🦸♀️
The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will hold arguments by teleconference in May in major cases, including Donald Trump’s attempts to hide his tax records.
The court will make live audio of the arguments available for the first time. It had previously postponed courtroom arguments for March and April because of the coronavirus crisis.
The justices and the lawyers arguing the cases all will participate remotely. The court said a live audio feed will be provided to news organizations, which will be able to relay the arguments in real time.
The court has never live-streamed courtroom arguments and only rarely has it made the audio available on the same day. Cameras also are not allowed in the courtroom.
Most federal appeals courts already have moved to allow arguments by phone, though some cases are being postponed or decided without arguments.
Harassment victims coming forward - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
A class action lawsuit filed by McDonald’s employee Jamelia Fairley and former employee Ashley Reddick accuses the company of subjecting female employees in its corporate-owned fast-food restaurants in Florida to widespread sexual harassment.
The lawsuit, filed on Friday in federal court in Chicago, says the company fostered a climate of “severe or pervasive sexual harassment and a hostile work environment, including groping, physical assaults, and sexually-charged verbal comments.”
McDonald’s said in a statement that it was committed to ensuring workers were not subject to sexual harassment.
Fairley and Reddick said in their complaint that McDonald’s failed to provide training to prevent sexual harassment and shuffled serial harassers from one location to another without consequence.
“McDonald’s strategy in Florida appears to be: deny, ignore, and punish anyone who complains too loudly, and at times, move harassers from one restaurant to another restaurant, where they have access to and can further harass more women,” they said.
Sexual harassment allegations have plagued McDonald’s since 2016, when it first faced a wave of complaints filed with the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.
Officials opposing 3-D printed guns - 🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️
In a letter sent Tuesday, two dozen state attorneys general are asking the Justice Department and State Department to enforce rules against making undetectable firearms, by clamping down on Defense Distributed’s Defcad site for selling 3-D-printed gun files, reports The Verge. “If the federal government fails to act, these files will be distributed widely with potentially grave consequences for our national and domestic security,” says the letter.
Defcad is violating the Undetectable Firearms Act, the attorneys general argue, which bans guns that don’t trigger metal detectors. Anyone downloading the files could “automatically manufacture functional weapons that cannot be detected by a standard metal detector and, furthermore, are untraceable because they lack serial numbers,” says the letter. “Continued dissemination of these files will increase the risk of terrorist attacks and gun violence across the United States.”
Nations Shocked As US Halts WHO Funding
Jacinda Ardern, other PMs take pay cut amid COVID-19 battle
UNHCR staff share COVID-19 preventative health guidelines with indigenous Warao leaders from Venezuela at Pintolandia shelter in Boa Vista, Brazil. The guidelines were translated into Warao. (© UNHCR/Allana Ferreira)
NewsHero is continuing to offer a compilation of stories and resources that best represent the current state of the coronavirus pandemic, centered on those individuals, institutions, and organizations stepping up to end this crisis as quickly and effectively as possible. The public, too, has a duty. This includes staying responsibly informed and taking the situation seriously, while remaining as cool-headed and as isolated as possible. These are strange and difficult times, but we will endure.
Nations and health experts worldwide reacted with alarm today after Donald Trump announced a halt to the sizable funding the U.S. sends to the World Health Organization. They warned that the move could jeopardize global efforts to stop the coronavirus pandemic.
WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, China, Taiwan and the U.S. State Department have all weighed in on the organization’s handling of information in the COVID-19 pandemic, following Trump’s criticism, reports CNBC.
Human Rights Watch in a new report says that “African governments must adopt and implement, as part of their pandemic responses, measures to ensure that all girls can continue their education.”
In a time of anxiety and isolation, simple acts of kindness—a phone call, a song— from medical workers are giving comfort and hope to patients and their families.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has said she and other ministers will take a 20% pay cut lasting six months to show solidarity with those affected by the coronavirus outbreak, reports The Guardian.
Speaking of awesome women, a report from CNN asks why they are not more women leaders since “Women leaders are doing a disproportionately great job at handling the pandemic.”
FEMA and the CDC are leading a team that has created a public health strategy to tackle the coronavirus and re-open parts of the country. The strategy, obtained by The Washington Post, is part of a larger White House plan to get Americans back to work.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a plan yesterday on how best to re-open the state’s economy. “This phase is one where science—public health, not politics, must be the guide,” he said.
UNHCR staff explain WHO guidelines for preventing the spread of COVID-19 to Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Manaus, Brazil. (© UNHCR/Paulo Lugoboni)
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) says government scientists will review data on lab tests that claim they can tell if someone has antibodies to the novel coronavirus, reports CNN.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres tweeted: As the world fights #COVID19, we are also fighting an epidemic of harmful falsehoods & lies. I’m announcing a new @UN Communications Response initiative to spread facts & science, countering the scourge of misinformation—a poison putting more lives at risk.
A special report from Axios examines how the coronavirus pandemic is “disrupting the global food supply.”
Walmart announced yesterday a new daily 7 to 8 a.m. “pickup hour” for customers over 60, with disabilities, or belonging to high-risk groups susceptible to COVID-19, as designated by the CDC, reports USA Today.
UNHCR Ethiopia tweeted: UNHCR continues to provide life-saving assistance to refugees while working hard to prevent #COVID19. In Tigray Region, refugees keep social distance when collecting food and adhere to good hygiene practices
Johnson & Johnson said yesterday it plans to begin “at risk” production of its COVID-19 vaccine as it prepares for eventual testing and manufacture of the vaccine, reports Yahoo! Finance.
Business Insider shared a video piece on Twitter that “@Tesla employees have been working on a ventilator that's heavily based on Tesla car parts.”
A report from ProPublica suggests that many Americans will not get stimulus checks from the government, while others may be “tricked into paying TurboTax to get theirs.”
Republicans are apparently less afraid of the coronavirus than Democrats, according to a story from Wired that says Trump voters aren’t staying home as much as everyone else.
Extra! Extra!
In the spirit of our recent commentary on how 87-year-old, four-time cancer survivor Ruth Bader Ginsburg continues to work out at the Supreme Court gym, we came across a couple of other stories involving the power of age in the time of the coronavirus.
Reuters ran a story on Connie Titchen, a 106-year-old great grandmother from Birmingham, England, who battled COVID-19 for nearly three weeks before being discharged from City Hospital.
Titchen is thought to be the oldest patient in Britain to beat the novel coronavirus. “I feel very lucky that I’ve fought off this virus,” she said. “I can’t wait to see my family.”
How about this one we saw from NPR:
Tom Moore, a 99-year-old British World War II veteran, raised more than $9 million in donations for the NHS—the U.K.’s National Health Service.
Moore planned to walk 100 laps of the back garden at his home near London before his 100th birthday on April 30. His original fundraising goal was $1,250.
“His family said the fundraising site JustGiving had to stop the ‘Captain Tom Moore's 100th Birthday Walk for the NHS’ page from crashing, as more than 90,000 people tried to access it at one point. So far, more than 347,000 people have donated to Moore's effort.”
So take that, kids! The next time you find yourself wanting to complain about something that may seem trivial, remember there are people like Connie and Tom (and RBG) out there setting the example for perseverance, endurance, and seemingly limitless achievement.
Our heroes are identifies as follows:
🦸♀️🦸♀️🦸♀️ - the hero, hands down. - Meaning that it wasn’t even a close call.
🦸♀️🦸♀️ - the hero, but… - Meaning that in this situation the call needed to be looked at in a little more detail. For example, in this case, they did the right thing but there have been some questionable calls in the past.
🦸♀️ - the hero, but only here, and it was a close call. - Meaning that in this instance they did the right thing but it was either out of character or a maddeningly close call.
Sources:
Forest fires out near Chernobyl nuclear plant, Ukrainian officials say - Fox News
Chinese authorities detain documentary filmmaker Chen Jiaping on subversion charges - CPJ
China defends the WHO after Trump — and others — say it is deferring to Beijing - CNBC
Trump’s halting of funds to WHO sparks worldwide rebuke - AP News
The Supreme Court Will Hear Arguments by Phone. The Public Can Listen In. - The New York Times
Supreme Court to hold May arguments by teleconference - AP News
In historic first, Supreme Court to hear arguments by phone - NBC News
McDonald's faces class action over 'pervasive sexual harassment' - Reuters
Workers sue McDonald's over harassment at Florida stores - ABC News
US McDonald's workers file $500m sexual harassment lawsuit - BBC News
State officials ask Trump administration to pull 3D-printed gun files offline - The Verge
Trump faces demands to ban blueprints for 3D-printed plastic guns that terrorists could use to avoid metal detectors - The Sun
Attorneys general ask Trump Administration to ban distributing blueprints for 3D-printed guns - Advocate
Protecting Girls' Education During the Pandemic - Human Rights Watch
A phone call, a song: Small gestures soothe COVID-19 stress - AP News
Jacinda Ardern and ministers take pay cut in solidarity with those hit by COVID-19 - The Guardian
Women leaders are doing a disproportionately great job at handling the pandemic. So why aren't there more of them? - CNN
CDC, FEMA have created a plan to reopen America. Here’s what it says. - The Washington Post
Gov. Gavin Newsom Outlines Six-Point Guide To Help Reopen California - Deadline
FDA tightens enforcement on COVID-19 antibody tests - CNN
António Guterres, UN - Twitter
How the coronavirus is disrupting the global food supply - Axios
Walmart adds curbside pickup hour for seniors, most vulnerable to coronavirus, first responders - USA Today
UNHCR Ethiopia - Twitter
J&J eyes 'imminent' coronavirus vaccine production, aims for a billion doses worldwide - Yahoo Finance
Business Insider - Twitter
Millions of Americans Might Not Get Stimulus Checks. Some Might Be Tricked Into Paying TurboTax to Get Theirs. - ProPublica
Trump Voters Aren't Staying In As Much As Everybody Else - Wired
106-year-old woman beats COVID-19 in Britain - Reuters
99-Year-Old British Veteran Raises $9 Million For Health Service By Walking Laps - NPR
In unprecedented move, Treasury orders Trump’s name printed on stimulus checks - The Washington Post
Treasury Will Delay Stimulus Checks to Print Angry Yam’s Name on Them - Daring Fireball