The state of relations amongst the nations of the world is changing. If you are planning travel outside of the United States this coming year I suggest you give yourself enough lead time to accommodate for these changes that, according to this article, will be implemented sometime “in early 2024.”
Credit: Vladimir Gerdo / ZUMAPRESS / Newscom
Once upon a time, citizens of the United States could travel to almost every country in the European Union for 90 days without asking any government for permission beyond showing a passport at the initial point of entry. It was—and still is, for a few waning months—a marvelous if underacknowledged achievement for liberty.
Alas, the days of frictionless travel will soon be a memory. Starting at a so-far-unspecified date in early 2024, Americans and residents of 62 other countries that currently enjoy visa-free visitation to the Schengen Area of the E.U. will need to pay a fee and submit an online application (including biometric information, work experience, medical conditions, and initial itinerary), then pass a criminal/security background check, before enjoying that croissant in gay Paree. The grimly named European Travel Information and Authorisation System (ETIAS) is projected to cost 7 euros per application and take up to 14 days to render a decision.
Before you start shaking your fist at freedom-hating Eurocrats, know that ETIAS is the belated continental answer to a system […]
I tell you frequently about the differences I see in Red state governance compared to Blue state governance, and that based on objectively verifiable social outcome data, Red state governance is always inferior. In today’s edition I am going to show you why I say this. I will start with the good news coming from a Blue state. Bravo Massachusetts.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu and a first grader try new school lunches made by City Fresh Food at the Boston Haley Pilot School in Roslindale, Massachusetts Credit: Matt Stone / MediaNews Group / Boston Herald / Getty
“Congress must follow suit and make this a reality for every child who calls America home,” said U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
The Massachusetts Legislature on Monday approved a budget proposal that requires the state’s public schools to provide all K-12 students with free meals, making permanent a highly successful pandemic-era program.
Maura Healey, the state’s Democratic governor, is expected to sign the budget into law, which would make Massachusetts the eighth U.S. state to make universal free school meals permanent—joining California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, and Michigan.
“We would not be where we are today without the voices and activism of thousands of advocates and organizations, who made it clear that feeding our kids must be a statewide priority,” Erin McAleer, president and CEO of the Massachusetts anti-hunger group Project Bread, said in a
In contrast to Massachusetts, here is a report from a Red state on the same issue — seeing that school children get decent nutrition.
A Tennessee school district has some people upset after it implemented a policy that gives students an “alternate meal” if they’re behind on their lunch accounts, WSMV reported.
In a post to Facebook, Humphreys County Schools said the new policy will not allow students “to charge more than 2 lunches. After 2, then the students will be given an alternate meal of a peanut butter/cheese sandwich and a milk until balances are paid. Thank you for you help and cooperation in this matter.”
The post got a furious response.
“Inmates have it better than our children do,” said one, while another commenter said, “Great idea to publicly shame children for what their parents do. unbelievable.”
According to Director of Schools Richard Rye, students received their lunches for free during the COVID-19 pandemic, but now paid lunches are being reinstated.
Humphreys County schools had $29,000 in outstanding balances from unpaid lunches during the past school year.
SR deals with facts, not political partisanship, and here is yet another sordid tale of how a Red state treats children. It is very clear, when you look at the social outcome data, that this something wrong with the Republican legislatures that control Red states. It is not just their blatant racism; it is their lack of humanity, the sheer nastiness, in crafting policy for the people of their state
The entrance of Angola Prison, Louisiana, pictured on October 14, 2013. Credit: Giles Clarke / Getty
Children incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola prison have been locked in windowless cells for nearly 24 hours a day without air conditioning as heat indexes in the area reach up to 133 degrees.
The youth, almost all of whom are Black, are being detained in the former death row building of the nation’s largest adult maximum security prison, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana. One child also described being maced and thrown against the wall by staff in court filings.
In an emergency filing submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana on Monday, the ACLU and other legal groups asked the court to move the kids out of the unit immediately and cease transfers of children to adult carceral institutions.
“As predicted, the state’s unprecedented decision to hold children in abusive conditions inside Angola’s former death row building has resulted in almost a year of devastating effects,” Nora Ahmed, legal director of the […]
, - University of California - San Francisco, Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences.
Stephan:
I am so tired of reading and listening to the Republican Red state anti-choice crap about the benefits to women who are denied control of their own bodies. None of it, of course, is backed up with actual data. So what is the objectively verifiable data? What has the Dobbs decision by the christofascist Supreme Court cabal done to the women of the Red states? Here is the data, and it is horrifying.
The Turnaway Study is ANSIRH’s prospective longitudinal study examining the effects of unwanted pregnancy on women’s lives. The major aim of the study is to describe the mental health, physical health, and socioeconomic consequences of receiving an abortion compared to carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term. The main finding of The Turnaway Study is that receiving an abortion does not harm the health and wellbeing of women, but in fact, being denied an abortion results in worse financial, health and family outcomes. Highlighted resources include:
Before the Turnaway Study, there was little quality research on the physical and social consequences of unwanted pregnancy for women. Most of the research that did exist focused on whether abortion causes mental health problems such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, or alcohol and drug use. That body of work often used inappropriate comparisons groups—comparing, for example, women who obtain abortions with those who continue their pregnancies to term by choice—and used retrospective designs that depended on women’s reporting of pregnancies and abortions in hindsight. Such comparisons are inherently biased and […]
