This is such a sad story, a part of the pandemic little discussed. If you have a little time you might consider volunteering at an animal shelter near you. Americans took up pets when they were lonely, but are discarding them now that their lives are returning to their previous patterns. It tells you something unattractive about Americans, I am sorry to say.
A kitten peeking out of a box at Long Beach Animal Care Services in Long Beach, California. Credit: Brittany Murray / MediaNews Group /Long Beach Press-Telegram / Getty
Lonely and stuck at home, millions of Americans turned to animals for comfort in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, adopting and fostering cats and dogs from shelters at record rates. Videos of empty animal shelters went viral; Wired called it “the feel-good pandemic story you need right now.”
“It was a really fun time to be in animal welfare,” said Bobby Mann, chief programs officer of the Humane Rescue Alliance, the largest animal shelter in the Washington, DC, metro area. “We did absolutely see an uptick in adoptions.”
But starting in 2021, shelters began filling back up as there were more animals entering than leaving, and now many are packed to the brim. From Rhode Island to Seattle and everywhere in between, shelters are reporting they’re at capacity, forcing an increase in the number of dogs killed due to space constraints. Earlier this year, almost half of shelters surveyed reported an increase in […]
According to the 2023 Global Gender Gap Index no country has yet achieved full gender parity, the top nine countries (Iceland, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, Sweden, Germany, Nicaragua, Namibia and Lithuania are above 80%. What do you notice? Right, the United States is not on the top list. By any of a dozen social outcome measures the United States is not doing very well because we no longer place much emphasis on fostering social wellbeing.
The Global Gender Gap Index annually benchmarks the current state and evolution of gender parity across four key dimensions (Economic Participation and Opportunity, Educational Attainment, Health and Survival, and Political Empowerment). It is the longest-standing index tracking the progress of numerous countries’ efforts towards closing these gaps over time since its inception in 2006.
This year, the 17th edition of the Global Gender Gap Index benchmarks gender parity across 146 countries, providing a basis for robust cross-country analysis. Further, examining a subset of 102 countries that have been included in every edition of the index since 2006 provides a large constant sample for time-series analysis. The Global Gender Gap Index measures scores on a 0 to 100 scale and scores can be interpreted as the distance covered towards parity (i.e. the percentage of the gender gap that has been closed). Cross-country comparisons support the identification of the most effective policies to close gender gaps.
Key findings include the index results in 2023, trend analysis of the trajectory towards parity and data deep dives through new metrics partnerships and contextual data.
Arkansas is a Red state with very poor social outcome data, and now it is worse. in Arkansas 15.6% of the population are Black. But to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the state’s christofascist governor, their interests don’t matter. Students will no longer be taught anything about the contribution and history of Black people. It will all be European history, and christofascist indoctrination. Nor will they get science-based psychology courses. Huckabee’s nastiness is part of the growing destruction of American education in Red states all over the country. This is going to have a generation long impact. And once again please note this story appeared in the leading British newspaper, a publication read all over the world, and this is what America looks like to non-Americans all over the world.
Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, right, and Arkansas secretary of education Jacob Oliva discuss several aspects of the Learns Act on 14 April. Credit: Nena Zimmer / AP
Advocacy groups are outraged after the Arkansas department of education warned state high schools not to offer an advanced placement course on African American history.
The admonition from Arkansas education officials is the latest example of conservative lawmakers limiting education on racial history, sexual orientation and other topics they label as “indoctrination”.
The Arkansas Education Association (AEA), a professional organization of educators in the state, said the latest decision is of “grave concern” to its members and other citizens worried about “the abandonment of teaching African American history and culture”.
“Having this course pulled out from under our students at this late juncture is just another marginalizing move that has already played out in other states,” said a statement from AEA president April Reisma, which was shared with the Guardian.
In a statement to the Guardian, NAACP president and chief executive officer Derrick Johnson called the decision “abhorrent” and an “attempt to strip high school students […]
I don’t know what is going on within the Biden administration but, in my view, this is appalling. The Baptist Church is already in crisis over LGBTQ issues, with individuals and whole congregations leaving the church in droves. I think that is good news about a deeply flawed religious community. What I don’t understand is how a university can get federal funds — that’s money you and I contribute to the treasury — and yet still allow persecution of a student for their sexual orientation. If you have a minute, send Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona an email at Miguel.Cardona@ed.gov or give him a call at 916-319-0800 or 202-401-3000 and let him know your feelings about this decision. Personally, I will never recommend to any student that they consider applying to Baylor.
Baylor University Football field Credit: Rod Aydelotte / Waco Tribune Herald / AP
Biden’s Department of Education has granted Baylor University a religious exemption to Title IX provisions that hold schools accountable for sexual harassment against LGBTQ students, despite the university’s troubling history of alleged Title IX violations. The letters requesting and granting the exemption were dated May 1 and July 25, respectively, but didn’t receive widespread attention until after a tweet thread from the Religious Exemption Accountability Project about the letters went viral last week. The exemption protects Baylor from complaints that would cause other schools to lose their federal funding.
Baylor’s letter, signed by President Linda Livingstone, noted that the university was requesting an exemption in response to three complaints made to the DOE’s Office for Civil Rights: one about the decision to deny a charter for a queer student group, another about the school’s unsatisfactory response to students’ claims they were harassed based on their gender identity and sexual orientation, and a third based on allegations that the university pressured media outlets not to cover campus LGBTQ activism […]
This is the thinking in Trump world. When I read this I thought, How can any Jewish person vote for a Republican? What has gone so wrong in our culture that a person like this would be asked to keynote such a gathering?
Michael Flynn Credit: Dustin Franz / Getty
The Auschwitz Museum has slammed comments made by former Trump adviser who blamed Jews for their own deportations at the hands of the Nazis.
In a recent speech, Michael Flynn, a Christian nationalist, suggested mothers were complicit in handing over their young children to go on trains to Auschwitz.
He said “Any mother who would be told, ‘Give me your child, give me your baby, we’re going to separate you, we’re not just going to put you into a club coach car. We’re going to stuff you like a sardine into a train.’”
He went on to claim “there weren’t any guards,” implying that Jews could have simply left or said no to Hitler’s soldiers.
A clip of his speech was posted on Twitter and has been viewed over 8 million times.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial said: “The assertion that Jews could have easily resisted during deportations to extermination simply due to their numerical strength compared to the guards oversimplifies the dire circumstances they faced.”
