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Nearly 20M watched Jan. 6 hearing: Nielsen

Nearly 20 million people watched Thursday night’s first hearing of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol across broadcast and cable news, according to preliminary ratings figures from Nielsen.

Each of the major television news networks pre-empted their regularly scheduled programming on Thursday to show continuous live coverage of the two-hour hearings. 

ABC took the largest haul of viewers, earning 4.8 million viewers while NBC and CBS carried 3.5 million and 3.3 million, respectively. 

On cable, MSNBC pulled in a whopping 4.1 million viewers during the hearings, nearly four times what the network averages on a typical weeknight. 

Usually dominant Fox News Channel came in second place on cable on Thursday night, averaging 3 million viewers from 8 to 10 p.m. CNN came in third place with 2.6 million. 

Fox took criticism this week for its decision not to air continuous live coverage of the hearings on its main cable channel and pre-empt the regularly scheduled opinion shows featuring hosts Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham.

Instead, Fox relegated live coverage of the hearings to Fox Business Network, which ratings figures show pulled in 223,000 viewers from 8 to 10 p.m. Fox also provided its live coverage on its various streaming platforms and made it available to its affiliate stations across the country. 

Friday’s preliminary figures are likely to grow and do not include viewers who watched the hearing via streaming service online like YouTubeTV and other platforms. 

The total of nearly 20 million is smaller than other large primetime political events like President Biden’s State of the Union Address in March which pulled in 38 million viewers, but is much larger than the audience for a typical congressional hearing. 

A reported 9 million people watched former President Trump’s impeachment trial in 2020 on a typical day during those proceedings on The Hill. 

— Updated at 3:52 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Commanders fine coach $100,000 for Jan. 6 remarks

The Washington Commanders fined its coach Jack Del Rio $100,000 for comments calling the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol a “dust up” and comparing it to protests that occurred after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, the team announced Friday.

“After reflecting on the situation and circumstances, I have decided to fine Coach Del Rio $100,000, which the team will donate to the United States Capitol Police Memorial Fund,” Commanders Head Coach Ron Rivera said in a statement.

“I feel strongly that after our conversation this morning, he will have a greater understanding for the impact of his language and the values that our team stands for,” Rivera added.

Del Rio on Monday tweeted criticism of the media attention given to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol compared to what he perceived as a lack of coverage of looting and vandalism that occurred during some of the protests against racial injustice in 2020.

Responding to a tweet saying that “we must understand the whole story of January 6th,” Del Rio wrote: “Would love to understand ‘the whole story’ about why the summer of riots, looting, burning and the destruction of personal property is never discussed but this is ??? #CommonSense.”

Del Rio’s remarks came days before the highly-anticipated first public hearing of the House committee investigating the insurrection.

Del Rio elaborated on his tweet at a news conference on Wednesday, saying, “I’m just expressing myself, and I think we all as Americans have the right to express ourselves, especially if you’re being respectful. I’m being respectful.”

“It’s kind of hard for me to say, I can realistically look at it. I see images on the TV, people’s livelihoods are being destroyed, businesses are being burned down, no problem,” he continued. “And then we have a dust up at the Capitol, nothing burned down, and we’re going to make that a major deal.”

Rivera clarified on Friday that Del Rio’s comments “do not reflect the organization’s views and are extremely hurtful to our great community here in the DMV.”

“Coach Del Rio did apologize for his comments on Wednesday and he understands the distinction between the events of that day and peaceful protests, which are a hallmark of our democracy,” Rivera wrote.

Rivera continued, speaking of Del Rio: “He does have the right to voice his opinion as a citizen of the United States and it most certainly is his constitutional right to do so. However, words have consequences and his words hurt a lot of people in our community. I want to make it clear that our organization will not tolerate any equivalency between those who demanded justice in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the actions of those on January 6 who sought to topple our government.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Bipartisan lawmakers across the country are trying to codify marriage equality

A state senator in Utah is hoping to rally together a bipartisan group of lawmakers to codify marriage equality in an effort to protect the LGBTQ community following a leaked Supreme Court opinion that has the court poised to overturn abortion rights. 

Utah state Sen. Derek Kitchen (D) opened a bill file to codify marriage equality in his state and hopes to follow in the footsteps of New Jersey, where Gov. Phill Mury (D) signed legislation in January that ensures the right to same-sex marriage will continue to exist even if state and federal court precedents were to be overturned. 

Kitchen hopes to achieve the same protections for same-sex couples in Utah. In a statement, he said the recent leak from the U.S. Supreme Court indicated the justices were poised to overturn the 1973 ruling of Roe v. Wade, which affirmed a women’s constitutional right to seek an abortion, and that “signals a majority of justices may undermine the right to privacy and other precedent deemed essential to arguments in Obergefell v. Hodges, which made marriage equality the law of the land in 2015.” 

In a 2015 decision for Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court affirmed that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the right to marry and applies to same-sex couples in the same way it does to opposite-sex couples.  

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Kitchen himself is gay and was part of a lawsuit that sued Utah for its laws prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying. In 2013, a judge ruled that Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. 

New Jersey Assemblyman Don Guardian (R) is joining Kitchen’s efforts, saying in a joint statement that he’s working with state legislators from across the country to formulate legislation. 

“We cannot turb back the clock and give unelected officials the opportunity to deny any American the right to marry the one they love.” 

A report by the Movement Advancement Project (MAP) that’s part of an ongoing series called “Equality Maps,” found 15 states and the District of Columbia do not currently have statutes or constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage—but only Connecticut, Nevada and New Jersey have taken legislative action to codify marriage equality.  

However, at the same time there are 10 states that currently still have statues or constitutional amendments that prohibit same-sex marriage. Some could become enforceable if Obergefell were to be overturned. 

Fears that the Supreme Court could overturn the right to marry for same-sex couples are growing, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also saying eliminating the nearly 50-year precedent on abortion rights set by Roe v. Wade would lay the foundation for Republicans, “to obliterate even more of our freedoms.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Enough: We need gun violence prevention legislation now

I lost important people in my life — including my cousin — to gun violence before the age of 18. While this statement in itself is a tragedy, the bigger tragedy is that this is a reality that far too many Americans can relate to. Each day, more than 110 Americans lose their lives to gun violence, and 110 families’ lives are changed forever. 

A disproportionate number of these lives are in underserved communities of color like mine, in Peoria, Ill. Without the resources or funding that our communities need, these numbers continue to rise and daily shootings become something we are accustomed to. Nobody should grow up with gun violence and the tragedies that result from it as a normal part of their childhood. 

But what the recent mass shootings in Uvalde, Buffalo, and Philadelphia have shown us is that no community is safe from the epidemic of gun violence. It seems that each year, a new generation of school children is being sent to school where they will learn how to protect themselves from a shooter while studying mathematics and history. Until our elected leaders show up and deliver on the gun violence prevention legislation that has been sitting in Congress for years, it will continue to spread into each and every community in the United States. 

While our elected officials feel comfortable in their complacency and acceptance of the status quo, I knew that I had to take action. I refuse to believe that we have to accept this as our reality, which is why I have advocated for change since I lost my cousin in 2017. As a board member of March for Our Lives, I have demanded that lawmakers act to protect people from gun violence and I will continue to do so until these demands are fulfilled. 

I am a member of the generation that will get something done. The trauma we have experienced has made us resilient, and we will not back down until we see the change we know is necessary and we know is possible. For too long, politicians and lobbyists have tried to convince us that there is nothing we can do to solve this crisis. In response to this, we have our own message: fulfill your oath and pass legislation to protect us. 

Youth activists across the country share in this message, which is why we are marching this weekend in more than 400 cities. Survivors of gun violence will be marching in Parkland, Oxford, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. so that wherever our elected leaders are looking they will be forced to acknowledge what their inaction has done. 

When gun violence first affected my life, I was not yet old enough to vote. However, I and many other youth activists in the fight against gun violence have since turned 18 and brought our anger to the ballot box. We will not sit by and let the lawmakers we vote into office ignore our pleas for change. We will harness our power in the streets and at the ballot box to send a reminder to those who put politics ahead of our lives and we will vote them out of office. We will no longer accept campaign promises that go unfulfilled after the election. The time for action is now. The time for gun violence prevention legislation is now.

Mariah Cooley is a board member of the March For Our Lives Foundation.

Source: TEST FEED1

Scientists find microplastics in Antarctic snow, indicating pollution reach

Researchers for the first time have discovered proof of microplastics in Antarctic snow, indicating a wider-than-known reach of microplastic pollution.

A study published in The Cryosphere scientific journal found that researchers confirmed the existence of microplastics in every snow sample they gathered from 19 different sites with “an average of 29 microplastic particles per litre of melted snow, which is higher than marine concentrations reported previously from the surrounding Ross Sea and in Antarctic sea ice,” according to a press release the University of Canterbury.

Polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, a polymer found in beverage bottles, was detected in close to four-fifths of the snow samples, according to the study. 

Researchers believe that microplastics may have come from long-range transport and local sources, including clothing that researchers and base staff wore and research station plastic equipment. 

The implications of the study are important because of the detrimental effects that microplastics can have on the environment, including biological function impairment, limited growth and negatively impacting reproduction.

“It improves our understanding of the extent of plastic pollution near to Scott Base and where it’s coming from,” Antarctica-New Zealand environmental adviser Natasha Gardiner said in a statement, referring to a New Zealand research station in the Antarctic. 

“We can use this information to reduce plastic pollution at its source and inform our broader environmental management practices.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden bashes big oil: 'Exxon made more money than God this year'

President Biden on Friday called out Exxon for raking in large profits while addressing high inflation and calling on Congress to act to tackle it.

“Why don’t you tell them what Exxon’s profits were this year? This quarter? Exxon made more money than God this year,” he said in remarks at the Port of Los Angeles. “Exxon, start investing. Start paying your taxes.”

Biden has called on Congress to pass tax reform to make the wealthiest Americans and big corporations pay what he argues is their fair share as a way to reduce inflationary pressures. His remarks follow the release of data from the Labor Department earlier on Friday that showed the consumer price index rose 1 percent last month alone and 8.6 percent in the 12-month stretch ending in May.

“But make no mistake about it, I understand inflation is a real challenge to American families. Today’s inflation report confirmed what Americans already know: Putin’s price hike is hitting America hard. Gas prices at the pump, energy and food prices account for half of the monthly price increases since May,” Biden said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

The president said that there are more than “9,000 permits for drilling” but that the oil companies “are not drilling.”

“Why don’t they drill more? Because they make more money not producing oil. Prices go up on the one hand. No. 2, the reason they are not drilling is they are buying back their own stock, should be taxed quite frankly. Buying back their own stock and not making new investments,” he said.

Biden also took a stab at the shipping industry and major shipping companies on Friday. He called on Congress to pass a bill this month to cut shipping costs as another way to lower the price of goods.

He said nine major ocean line shipping companies, which make up three consortiums, have raised their prices by as much as 1,000 percent, and Biden called on Congress to crack down on these corporations.

“Every once in a while something you learn makes you viscerally angry, like if you had the person in front of you, you’d want to pop them,” he said, referring to the corporations.

“Let those nine foreign shippers understand, the ripoff is over,” he said.

He touted the administration’s moves to lower the cost of moving goods through the supply chain, including efforts to decongest ports like the Port of Los Angeles since November and increase employment in the trucking industry.

And the president criticized Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) tax plan, saying it would require everyone to pay taxes. The White House has tied congressional Republicans to Scott’s plan, although other lawmakers have either distanced themselves from or declined to embrace it.

“Look, this is not your father’s Republican Party. This is a different deal, it really is. I’ve worked with a lot of honorable Republicans, very conservative Republicans over the years when I was a Senator. But this is the MAGA gang. This is the MAGA crowd. I really mean it,” Biden said on Friday. “They have a fundamentally different view of the role of government and who should pay what.”

Source: TEST FEED1

All four crew survive Navy helicopter crash in California

All four air crew aboard a Navy helicopter survived a crash Thursday evening near El Centro, Calif., according to the service. 

The MH-60S Seahawk crashed around 6 p.m. “while conducting a routine training flight from Naval Air Facility El Centro,” according to a Navy statement.  

“All four of the air crew on board survived the crash and have been safely recovered,” the statement added. 

One person aboard suffered non-life threatening injuries and was taken to a local hospital.  

The helicopter was assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 3, based at Naval Air Station North Island, Calif. 

The crash happened roughly 40 miles away from a Marine Corps aircraft crash a day earlier that killed all five Marines aboard.

In that instance, a training mission turned into tragedy when a MV-22B Osprey crashed near Glamis, Calif. 

The cause of the crash is still under investigation. 

Source: TEST FEED1

For a more stable US workforce, pregnant workers need stronger protection

Over the last few decades, women have become the engine of our economy, entering the workforce in record numbers while continuing to be singularly responsible for producing the next generation of workers. As these socioeconomic shifts have been underway, public policy has failed to create the supports necessary to keep our working mothers safe.

Women are now the primary breadwinner in roughly half of American households. On top of that, an estimated 72 percent of female workers will become pregnant during the course of their careers. And yet, in this country pregnant women still lack adequate workplace protection under the law, fostering deep economic instability.

Far too many pregnant women continue to be discharged or denied reasonable workplace accommodations, provisions often as simple as a stool or an extra bathroom break, leaving them physically stressed and economically vulnerable.   

The time has never been more critical as maternal mortality rates reach new heights in the wake of a viral pandemic that has left pregnant workers even more susceptible to health risks. In 2020, more than 850 pregnant women died, a 14 percent jump year over year, with Black women almost three times as likely to die from maternal causes as white women. This is stark and devastating evidence that our health and workplace laws are failing to provide adequate protection for our nation’s mothers.   

To put a point on it, one need only refer to the volume of litigation and pregnancy discrimination complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — which hit almost 40,000 in the last decade — to conclude that we have to strengthen and expand our current laws. More than 30 states have enacted expanded protections for pregnant workers, including Maryland, which passed the bipartisan Reasonable Accommodations for Disabilities Due to Pregnancy Act in 2013. This law has helped countless Maryland workers receive the kind of modifications that kept their pregnancies and jobs secure.   

This state rule protects the full range of pregnancy disabilities and creates the pathway by which employees can engage in meaningful dialogue with their employers regarding workplace accommodations. However, many advocates have argued that the law needs to be updated and bolstered in key ways. 

“Existing law would be improved if [pregnant] women didn’t have to establish a disability before they can have an accommodation,” said Glendora Hughes, general counsel of the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights, who oversees pregnancy discrimination complaints and litigation for the state, in a March interview with me.   

The law should be clarified to ensure that healthy pregnancies, and not just those with a “disability that is contributed to or caused by pregnancy” receive full protection under the law. Pregnancy, as we all know, creates physical limitations and should be safeguarded in the normal course of progression, to ensure that those disabilities don’t arise. In addition, updated legislation should specifically bar an employer from pushing a pregnant worker into unpaid leave, when an accommodation is available. These provisions have been considered but thus far, state senators have failed to get these updated protections across the finish line.

It’s time our country stood up for all working mothers.   

It’s time our nation’s lawmakers passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which would create a federal standard of protection for pregnant workers across the country and fill the gaps in existing Maryland law. This bipartisan, bicameral bill has been languishing for far too long in the Senate, after passing the U.S. House of Representatives multiple times by an overwhelming majority. Last month, bill sponsors Sens Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Bob Casey (D-Pa.) called on their colleagues to take up the issue at a webinar hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center.   

There are many ways we can come together to protect our new parents including enacting paid parental leave, lowering the cost of child and infant care and ensuring that every new parent has the means to feed and protect their children. But we can start with this simple protection, which has the support of the majority of representatives, would add minimal costs and red tape, and ensure that the next generation has a fighting chance. 

As Cassidy so aptly observed, pregnant women “contribute to our today and carry our future.”  

The health of our future is at stake.   

Maggie Cordish was most recently a policy adviser to White House adviser Ivanka Trump on paid leave and family policy. She is a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington D.C.  

Source: TEST FEED1

Making cities green using digital technology

Parks, small woodlands and even simple patches of grass not only keep a city attractive, but also help people find a sense of bliss in an otherwise bustling urban environment. With new technologies, we can plan and monitor these urban “green spaces” better than ever before.

As several studies have highlighted, nature within urban settings plays a pivotal role in combating many of the global public health challenges commonly associated with urbanization. This includes maladies such as depression and high blood pressure. A 2022 study showed that trees actually have the ability to improve urban air quality as leaves and pine needles capture pollutants from the air.

That cities do need green spaces is therefore not a particularly contentious issue. It is, however, an open question as to how much green space a city ought to have. Even here, science can provide some guidelines, as research points to at least 9 square meters of green space per individual, with an ideal value of 50 square meters per capita in a city (for comparison, an average UK car parking space takes up about 12 square meters).

Green landscaping

The big question is therefore what kind of green space do we want? A well-kept but human-made park? Or something more natural and unkempt, such as groves, meadows or field-like areas? This is largely contingent on the geographic preconditions of the city in question. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a diversity of different kinds of green areas if possible, yet it is an inescapable fact that some cities are blessed with lush vegetation while others are not.

However, all is not lost for cities without much natural green area, as such environments can be constructed in urban settings that have previously been bereft of naturally growing trees and grass. This “green landscaping” can be undertaken even in areas that would otherwise seem unlikely. One prime example is the High Line in New York City, a 1.45 mile long elevated linear park built on an abandoned railway viaduct. Since it opened in stages about a decade ago, the High Line has become an example of green landscape redesign that seeks to turn obsolete infrastructure into green, vibrant public spaces.

While it is known that greenery has positive effects on mankind at large, it is more difficult to prove the exact causal relationship in exactly how green areas affect our health. In this regard, digital technology can be an essential tool for urban planners to determine where green landscape redesign is best employed.

Smart technology

One concept that is seeing particularly rapid development is “smart urban forests,” which refers to using tree monitors, 3D-imagery and other internet of things-linked technologies to help manage the forest. This “internet of nature” could monitor soil health, measure air pollution or ensure urban forests are adequately hydrated.

Future technology could also enable the use of open data platforms and more public engagement. Planners could collect various perspectives from the general population using an app, for instance, while also using digital technology to map and boost urban biodiversity and to ensure that green areas are placed where they will achieve maximum efficiency.

One example of this is the Treepedia research initiative, which was launched in 2016 by Massachusetts-based MIT Senseable City Lab. Treepedia aims to raise awareness of urban forests by the use of digital vision techniques based on Google Street View images. Treepedia focuses on pedestrian street trees found in multiple cities around the world, as opposed to parks. The main reason is that pedestrians are more likely to see street trees without planning to, whereas most people in parks made an active choice to be there. Using an open-source library, Treepedia means the public can calculate the quantities of tree coverage for their own city or region.

If urban planners become more aware of the potential of digital technology, then urban green spaces should have a bright future. However, designing the optimal green space that we want for our cities may also call for a deeper future collaboration between urban planners and engineers.

Anthony Larsson, Ph.D., is an author, editor and researcher. He currently serves as a fellow at the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Sweden. He has previously been a researcher at the Stockholm School of Economics Institute for Research (SIR) and at the Institute of Environmental Medicine (IMM) at Karolinska Institutet. His publications mainly focus on digitalization, futures studies, innovation management, organizational failures and scientific controversies.

Andreas Hatzigeorgiou, Ph.D., is the CEO of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, Sweden, and an affiliated researcher at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Hatzigeorgiou’s research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and in reports for organizations such as the OECD. Hatzigeorgiou has also served as adviser to Sweden’s Minister for Trade and Nordic Cooperation and as a researcher at the World Bank in Washington, D.C. Hatzigeorgiou was selected among Sweden’s top agenda-setters within climate and sustainability.

Source: TEST FEED1