Stimulus: Dems Push Bill to Make $300 Monthly Checks to Parents Permanent—Will Biden Support It?

Christina Zhao 

NEWSWEEK

4/27/2021

House Democrats on Monday introduced a bill that would make the monthly $300 child tax credit expansion in President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan permanent. However, the president doesn't think the legislation could pass the Senate and is unlikely to support it.

© Al Drago/Getty Images President Joe Biden delivers remarks during a virtual Leaders Summit on Climate with 40 world leaders at the East Room of the White House April 22, 2021 in Washington, DC.

The measure was unveiled by Reps. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, Susan DelBene of Washington and Ritchie Torres of New York, according to Insider.

In a statement, DeLauro said, "We must use this moment to pass the American Family Act and permanently expand and improve the child tax credit by increasing the benefit to families and providing payments monthly. Children and families must be able to count on this benefit long after the end of this pandemic."

Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package, signed into law in March, expanded 2021 child tax credits to $3,000 for each child aged between 6 and 17 and $3,600 for each child under the age of 6.

Under the law, the IRS can send the payments as monthly $250 or $300 checks, depending on the age of the child. Single parents earning $75,000 or less and couples earning $150,000 or less are entitled to receive the full amount. The larger figure is reduced for those that earn over the threshold.

Earlier this month, IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said that administrators were on track to begin issuing the checks in July.

Last Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernandez of New Mexico said Biden disparaged calls to make the extended tax credit permanent in a meeting with lawmakers from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

"He said, 'I'd love to do it permanent, but I'm not sure that I can get that through the Senate," Leger Fernandez said, according to the Wall Street Journal. "You could tell he was interested in making it permanent, that was the back and forth on that."

Democrats used a budget process called reconciliation to pass the latest stimulus bill through Congress without GOP support. But the process can only be used once every fiscal year. With vaccines being rolled out, it's unlikely that the Biden administration would want to use reconciliation when it becomes available after October 1 for further stimulus measures.

Three unnamed sources briefed on Biden's American Families Plan recently told the Washington Post that the upcoming proposal will extend child tax credits until 2025. But the sources also warned that the plan could change before its release to the public.

Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment. This story will be updated with any response.

Biden to mandate $15 minimum wage for federal contract workers
4/27/2021

The official also said that Biden's Council of Economic Advisors reviewed the order and did not conclude that requiring a higher wage would lead to any job loss.

Although U.S. President Joe Biden was unable to get a $15 minimum wage provision included in his COVID-19 relief package, he's making good on that campaign promise for one group of people: federal contract workers.


Biden will sign an executive order on Tuesday increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour for hundreds of thousands of people who are working on federal contracts.MORE: Biden's 1st 100 days: Promises kept, broken, or in progress

However, the raise won't kick in immediately. The executive order states that all federal agencies will need to implement the $15 minimum wage in new contracts by March 30, 2022. It's difficult to amend existing contracts, but wages can be changed when they are up for annual review.

Currently, the minimum wage for federal contract workers is $10.95. It was raised to $10.10 under U.S. President Barack Obama in 2014 and later indexed to inflation.

Many federal contract workers make more than the current minimum wage. But the pay bump will give an extra boost to lower-wage workers like cleaning and maintenance professionals, food service employees on military bases and in government buildings, as well as nursing assistants who care for the nation's veterans.

The White House could not provide an exact number of how many federal contract workers will ultimately see a raise because of the executive order, given the constantly-changing nature of federal contracts.MORE: Infuriated by Dems dropping minimum wage hike, progressives say 'time for wealth tax'

The Biden administration said a higher minimum wage will not cost taxpayers by making federal contracts more costly. Citing a study by Harvard University, a White House official said paying such a competitive wage ensures reduced turnover, absenteeism, training and supervisory costs as well as lower recruitment, all of which will increase productivity, cut costs and ultimately zero out any increased costs for taxpayers.

The official also said that Biden's Council of Economic Advisors reviewed the order and did not conclude that requiring a higher wage would lead to any job loss.

ABC News' Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.

Biden establishes pro-union task force chaired by Harris

By Kate Sullivan, CNN 4/26/2021


President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Monday establishing a task force aimed at empowering workers to organize and bargain with their employers that will be chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, the White House said in a news release.

© Evan Vucci/AP President Joe Biden, accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks Tuesday, April 20, 2021, at the White House in Washington, after former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murder and manslaughter in the death of George Floyd.

The White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment will be vice-chaired by Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh and will include more than 20 Cabinet members and heads of other federal agencies. It will aim to facilitate worker organizing across the country, increase worker power in underserved communities and increase union membership.

The move is the latest of several pro-union actions taken by the President, who pledged the night before Election Day to be the "most pro-union president you've ever seen." Biden often says unions "built the middle class," and days after taking office signed an executive order restoring collective bargaining power to federal employees.

The order directs the task force to make a set of recommendations within 180 days on how existing policies, programs and practices can be used to promote worker organizing and collective bargaining in the federal government, and what new policies are needed to achieve the task force's mission.

Biden strongly encouraged the Senate to pass the so-called "PRO Act," a bill the President said would encourage unions and "dramatically enhance the power of workers to organize and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions." The House passed the bill last month, and it is unclear whether the Senate, which is divided 50-50 Democrats and Republicans, will pass the bill.

Earlier this year Biden took an unusual step of issuing a presidential video backing the right to unionize of workers at an Amazon plant in Alabama and appeared to warn the online retail giant not to interfere. Amazon ultimately defeated the landmark union drive that would have established the company's first US union.

The pro-union moves follow on campaign pledges from Biden and also come as the coronavirus pandemic has brought many workers rights issues to the forefront.

The task force is the latest high-profile assignment given to the vice president, who has also been tasked with overseeing diplomatic efforts with Central American countries to stem the flow of migrants to the US southern border.

Biden and Harris have worked to deepen their relationship since taking office and have spent five hours or more together per day in meetings at the White House, CNN has reported. Harris recently told CNN's Dana Bash that she remains the last person in the room when big decisions are made.

Harris has also molded herself as increasingly pro-union. During a trip to New Hampshire last week, she toured an IBEW training facility. She has often said unions are the reason workers have the rights they have now, including the five-day work week.

Biden mulls restoring California's authority to fight car pollution

Paul A. Eisenstein 
NBC 4/26/2021


President Joe Biden is taking a key step toward restoring California’s ability to set its own limits on air pollution, overturning a move made by former President Donald Trump to undo the state's authority to set stricter regulations on auto emissions.

© Provided by NBC News

The Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday it is "seeking public input on its reconsideration of the Agency’s 2019 action titled The Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule Part One: One National Program Rule (SAFE-1) for the purposes of rescinding the action taken by the prior administration."


In a statement released Monday, EPA Administrator Michael Regan said: “I am a firm believer in California’s long-standing statutory authority to lead. The 2019 decision to revoke the state’s waiver to enforce its greenhouse gas pollution standards for cars and trucks was legally dubious and an attack on the public’s health and wellbeing."

California has long had the authority to regulate three key automotive emissions — carbon monoxide, particulates and oxides of nitrogen — and set stricter standards than those covering the rest of the country. Under former President Barack Obama, the state was given additional authority to set mandates for greenhouse gas emissions.

Since the production of CO2 is directly related to fuel consumption, the tight guidelines set by the California Air Resources Board would force a dramatic shift towards electrified vehicles, especially those running entirely on battery power or on hydrogen.

In September 2019, Trump announced his administration would overturn the waiver and also moved to roll back the Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, standards set under Obama.

Both moves have been tied up in court since then. Biden administration officials said Monday that eliminating the California waiver “exceeded” the authority of the prior president.

The announcement comes after Biden’s proposal to halve CO2 emissions in the U.S. by 2030. A key part of that effort will be the promotion of renewable energy production and the switch to battery-electric vehicles. The American Jobs Plan would set aside $174 billion for BEVs, with much of that going to create a nationwide network of 500,000 EV charging stations.

California is far and away the largest market for electrified vehicles, especially BEVs, and Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed an executive order that would begin phasing out the sale of both retail and commercial vehicles that use gas and diesel engines.

As big as it is, California has an even more outsized impact on the auto industry as 13 other states have adopted its emissions rules. All told, they represent about 40 percent of annual U.S. new vehicle sales.

The Trump administration’s attempt to strip California’s authority to regulate CO2 emissions was backed by a number of automakers, including General Motors and Toyota, who argued that a single national standard was needed. Four companies, BMW, Ford, Honda and Volkswagen, backed the state and subsequently reached a emissions compromise plan. GM reversed course after the November 2020 presidential election and also accepted the new agreement.

The Biden administration has signaled it will announce an updated CAFE target in the coming months. Many analysts expect a new approach that could strike a balance between the EPA and California targets.

Last week, 12 U.S. governors sent a letter calling on the Biden administration to set a phased-in ban on sales of internal combustion vehicles by 2035. California, Massachusetts and Washington have already put bans on the books.

Turkey puts 108 Kurdish politicians on trial over 2014 Kobani protests

Bethan McKernan Turkey correspondent 

THE GAURDIAN 4/26/2021

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images

 A soldier standing guard at the Sincan penal institutions campus in Ankara, where proceedings began on 26 April.

Turkey has put 108 Kurdish politicians on trial in what critics say is politically motivated “revenge” for their alleged roles in deadly protests in 2014 sparked by the Islamic State’s takeover of the Syrian border town of Kobani.

Proceedings on Monday got off to a tense start when defence lawyers walked out of the Ankara courtroom, alleging that some of their colleagues had not been allowed in for “arbitrary and unlawful” reasons.

The current and former members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic party (HDP) – 28 of whom are already in prison, including the former co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş – are charged with offences including homicide and “attacking the integrity of the state”. Prosecutors are seeking multiple life sentences and thousands of years in prison.

HDP says the Turkish police are to blame for the deadly violence.

Thirty-seven people died in protests across the mainly Kurdish south-east of the country triggered by the Isis assault on Kobani, where the vast scale of the fighting was clearly visible from the Turkish side of the border. Many in the country’s Kurdish community accused the Turkish army of standing by and allowing a massacre.

Smaller protests grew after the HDP tweeted an “urgent call” for people to take to the streets and demonstrate.

“For calling on people to protest, our members are now being accused of terrorism, and also of murder of those who died,” the HDP said in a statement as the mass trial got under way.

“This is a revenge trial,” said HDP’s co-chair Mithat Sancar.

Isis was driven out of Kobani in January 2015 by US-backed Syrian Kurdish fighters that Turkey views as terrorists linked to its own Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) insurgency.

The HDP is also under attack by Ankara over alleged links to the PKK: all but two of dozens of HDP mayors have been removed from office and replaced with government-appointed trustees in the past two years, and last month state prosecutors filed a case to close down the party altogether. The suit would also bar nearly 700 of HDP’s members from playing a role in politics for five years.

The HDP defendants in Monday’s opening trial refused to respond to questions by the judge during the identification process without their lawyers present, saying their right to defence was being violated. Defendants connected via video link tapped their cameras and clapped in solidarity, a statement from the party said.

All the defence lawyers were subsequently allowed in.

“Even though we are sitting in the defendant’s seat, we represent the people’s will,” said Demirtaş, a two-time election rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and one of Turkey’s most prominent politicians.

The 48-year-old has been in jail since 2016 and faces multiple trials on terror-related charges that western governments view as part of Erdoğan’s crackdown on political dissent. In December, the European court of human rights ruled his detention was unlawful.

Agencies contributed to this report

Enraged relatives say neglect caused deadly Baghdad hospital fire

By Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Nazeh 
4/26/2021

© Reuters/THAIER AL-SUDANI A member of Iraqi security forces walks at Ibn Khatib hospital after a fire caused by an oxygen tank explosion in Baghdad

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Fire extinguishers didn't work. Outdated medical equipment was being used. The fire alarm system in the hospital was broken.

These are the accusations being levelled by witnesses, medical staff, emergency response teams and those who lost loved ones in a fire at a COVID-19 hospital in Baghdad on Saturday that killed more than 80 people.

Iraq's latest tragedy, the result of an exploding oxygen tank, is a symptom of the mismanagement that has dogged its healthcare system for years, even at times of relative peace.

It has fuelled the anger of Iraqis who say their government and political class's inability to improve services and root out state-wide corruption ultimately ends in loss of human life.

"Everything in the hospital was old and outdated," said Mohammed Attar, three of whose relatives perished in the fire, which happened during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

© Reuters/THAIER AL-SUDANI Members of Iraqi security forces stand guard at the main entrance of Ibn Khatib hospital where a fire was sparked by an oxygen tank explosion, in Baghdad

"There is nothing good in Iraq's healthcare system."

Athar al-Maliki, who lost a family member, lamented what he said was the inability of authorities to respond to an emergency.

"Shouldn't there be ministerial-level supervision of a COVID-19 hospital in Baghdad? This is total neglect - a hospital burns and there aren't even firefighting trucks immediately available."

© Reuters/THAIER AL-SUDANI People walk at Ibn Khatib hospital after a fire caused by an oxygen tank explosion in Baghdad

Iraq's civil defence first-responder services said they had previously warned authorities of the fire risk at the hospital.

"We officially informed the hospital management and the health directorate that there were safety violations but never got a response," said Brigadier General Jawdat Abdul Rahman, a spokesman for the civil defence.

"A fire sprinkler system was not available, and there was no working fire detection system," he said. "Otherwise the fire could have been controlled in a shorter time and there would be fewer casualties."

 

© Reuters/THAIER AL-SUDANI A military vehicle of Iraqi security forces is seen at the main entrance of Ibn Khatib hospital where a fire was sparked by an oxygen tank explosion, in Baghdad

Four witnesses to the fire said that fire extinguishers at the hospital were not working when it began to spread.

Video: At least 82 die in Baghdad COVID hospital fire - Interior Ministry (Reuters)

Iraq's health ministry, which speaks for the country's state-run hospitals, has not responded to repeated requests for comment since the incident.

The Iraqi health minister was immediately suspended, a move which many Iraqis believe will make little difference to a healthcare system that has suffered decades of neglect.

Iraq was ravaged by war and U.N. sanctions under dictator Saddam Hussein which led to shortages of medicine and equipment. Sectarian conflict after his fall with the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the battle against Islamic State, wreaked more damage.

© Reuters/THAIER AL-SUDANI A medical staff member walks near the main entrance of Ibn Khatib hospital where a fire was sparked by an oxygen tank explosion, in Baghdad

But even in times of relative stability, Iraq has failed to expand and rebuild its healthcare system.


'CHAOS'

It has some of the lowest numbers of doctors and nurses per capita in the region, owing partly to an exodus of qualified medics over the years who have at various times been killed, kidnapped or assaulted, including in the coronavirus pandemic.

Government healthcare spending per capita is a fraction of that elsewhere in the region, and lower than the world average.

The fire at the Ibn Khatib hospital in southeastern Baghdad on Saturday brought those realities home.

"This was another blow to what's left of the limited trust in medical institution," said Ali Bayati, head of Iraq's semi-official Human Rights Commission. He said there had been few improvements made to fire response at medical centres in Iraq, despite previous such incidents.

A fire at a Baghdad maternity ward in 2016 killed 13 babies, with emergency response teams slow to end the blaze, he said.

"To have such an incident repeated years later means that still no (sufficient) measures have been taken to prevent them," he said.

A doctor who worked briefly at Ibn Khatib said he left to go to another hospital because of conditions there, describing it as "chaos".

"It was hell not only for patients but doctors, too," the doctor said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of being dismissed by the health ministry. "The hospital pharmacy only had paracetamols and simple antibiotic pills."

Wafa al-Shammari of the Iraqi parliament's health committee is among those investigating the fire.

"How can a major coronavirus hospital in Baghdad lack safety measures? Why this disregard for human life?" she said.

The government has vowed to hold those responsible to account.

Those who lost loved ones say that is of little comfort.

"He was in the hospital for 25 days. He was meant to be discharged and go home the next day (Sunday)," said 23-year-old Mohammed Ali, whose uncle died in the blaze. "They said, he's fine now, he's recovered and can leave."

(Reporting by Amina Ismail, Ahmed Rasheed, Maher Nazeh, Thaier al-Sudani, Baghdad newsroom; writing by John Davison, Editing by William Maclean)

Israel is committing the crime of apartheid, rights watchdog says

Oliver Holmes in Jerusalem 

THE GUARDIAN 

4/25/2021

Human Rights Watch has accused Israeli officials of committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution, claiming the government enforces an overarching policy to “maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians”

.

© Provided by The Guardian Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images

In a report released on Tuesday, the New York-based advocacy group became the first major international rights body to level such allegations. It said that after decades of warnings that an entrenched hold over Palestinian life could lead to apartheid, it had found that the “threshold” had been crossed.


“This is the starkest finding Human Rights Watch has reached on Israeli conduct in the 30 years we’ve been documenting abuses on the ground there,” said Omar Shakir, the group’s Israel and Palestine director. Shakir said his organisation had never before directly accused Israeli officials of crimes against humanity.

Responding to the claims, Israel’s foreign ministry accused Human Rights Watch of a “longstanding anti-Israeli agenda” and said the report was a “propaganda pamphlet” that had “no connection to facts or reality on the ground”.

“The fictional claims that HRW concocted are both preposterous and false,” it said.

The report drew on years of human rights documentation, analysis of Israeli laws, a review of government planning documents, and statements by officials.

Human Rights Watch compared policies and practices towards nearly 7 million Palestinians in the occupied territories and within Israel with those concerning roughly the same number of Jewish Israelis living in the same areas.

It concluded there was a “present-day reality of a single authority, the Israeli government … methodologically privileging Jewish Israelis while repressing Palestinians, most severely in the occupied territory.”

First used in relation to South Africa’s racist segregation against non-white citizens, apartheid – which is Afrikaans for “apartness” – is a crime against humanity under internationa

Under the 1998 Rome statute that established the international criminal court (ICC), apartheid is defined as an “institutionalised regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other” with the intent of “maintaining that regime”. Persecution, which is also a crime against humanity, is defined as “the intentional and severe deprivation of fundamental rights” of a group of people.

Human Rights Watch said that inside Israel – where about a fifth of the 9 million citizens are Palestinians – and in the occupied territories, authorities had sought to maximise the land available for Jewish communities and concentrate most Palestinians in dense population centres.

“The authorities have adopted policies to mitigate what they have openly described as a demographic ‘threat’ from Palestinians,” it said, referencing concerns expressed by Israeli politicians that a majority Palestinian population would endanger the Jewish state. “In Jerusalem, for example, the government’s plan for the municipality … sets the goal of ‘maintaining a solid Jewish majority in the city’ and even specifies the demographic ratios it hopes to maintain.”© Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images Israeli soldiers patrol the ‘separation barrier’ in Bethlehem in the occupied West Bank.

It said Israeli authorities “systematically discriminate against Palestinians”. This was most extreme in the occupied territories, it said, including the West Bank, which Israel captured in the six-day war in 1967. Several hundred thousand Israeli settlers now live there as citizens while about 2.7 million Palestinians are not and live under military rule.

Human Rights Watch’s executive director, Kenneth Roth, said this was not simply “an abusive occupation”. “These policies, which grant Jewish Israelis the same rights and privileges wherever they live and discriminate against Palestinians to varying degrees wherever they live, reflect a policy to privilege one people at the expense of another,” Roth said.

When similar allegations have been raised in the past, Israel has taken particular offence to the claim it discriminates against Palestinian citizens of the country, also known as Arab Israelis. It cites equal rights laws and the fact that Arabs are represented in government and the judicial system.

Regarding the occupied West Bank, Israel points to agreements signed in the 1990s that afforded Palestinians limited self-rule there. However, Human Rights Watch says the Israeli government still “retains primary control over many aspects” of their lives, including borders, natural resources and movement of people and goods.

Meanwhile, about 2 million Palestinians live under a strict blockade in Gaza. Israeli forces pulled out of Gaza in 2005 but still maintain control of its borders, sea and airspace.

The report follows similar findings by Israeli rights bodies, including a January announcement by B’Tselem that claimed the country was not a democracy but an “apartheid regime”. One other domestic group, Yesh Din, published a legal opinion last summer in which it argued that apartheid was being committed, but limited its findings to the West Bank. Israel strongly rejected those claims.

A shift in perception towards apartheid is part of a movement led by activists that gained momentum following Israeli annexation threats they claim prove the occupation is permanent, as well as laws that enshrine extra political rights for Jews over Arabs, two developments that Human Rights Watch cited in its report.

It called on the ICC prosecutor to “investigate and prosecute those credibly implicated” and called for sanctions including travel bans and asset freezes on responsible officials, without naming them.

Last year the same rights group found that abuses by the Myanmar government against Rohingya Muslims also amounted to the crimes of apartheid and persecution.

WHY THERE IS A REFUGEE CRISIS

U.S. slaps sanctions on Guatemalan officials in corruption crackdown

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Monday imposed sanctions on a member of Guatemala's Congress and a former presidential chief of staff in the country over alleged corruption, as Washington presses a number of Central American governments to crack down on graft.

© Reuters/JOSE CABEZAS FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden's special envoy for the Northern Triangle Ricardo Zuniga walks during a news conference

The move was announced hours before U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris was due to meet with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei to discuss an increase in Central American migration that has led to a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In a statement, the U.S. Treasury Department said it had blacklisted Felipe Alejos Lorenzana, an elected delegate in Guatemala's Congress, and Gustavo Adolfo Alejos Cambara, who was chief of staff under former President Alvaro Colom.

"These sanctions support efforts by the people of Guatemala to end the scourge of corruption, as part of the U.S. government’s commitment to support improvements in governance in Guatemala," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a separate statement.

A senior U.S. official last week said the Biden Administration is considering creating a task force of officials from the U.S. Justice and State Departments and other agencies to help local prosecutors fight corruption in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.

Ricardo Zuniga, U.S. special envoy to the three Central American nations, also told reporters the U.S. government has authority from the U.S. Congress to craft lists of officials in the region who are involved in corruption, revoke their travel visas and impose financial sanctions on them.

Guatemalan lawmakers recently refused to swear in a corruption-fighting judge, Constitutional Court President Gloria Porras, whom U.S. officials had seen as key to the country's fight against graft.

Monday's move, which Washington said was taken in coordination with the United Kingdom, freezes any U.S. assets of those blacklisted and generally bars Americans from dealing with them.

Blinken said Gustavo Alejos and Felipe Alejos "sought to interfere with the judicial selection process for appointing magistrates to Guatemala’s Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) and Court of Appeals."

He said the two attempted to influence the selection process for magistrates to both courts and to secure judicial rulings that would protect Gustavo Alejos and CSJ judges from corruption prosecutions.

(Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis; Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Paul Simao and Dan Grebler)

WAIT, WHAT?

Robert Fripp, Toyah Willcox Drift Into Space Rock With Hawkwind’s ‘Silver Machine’

Angie Martoccio 

ROLLING STONE

4/26/2021

© Youtube

Yep, Robert Fripp and Toyah Willcox are back with another quarantine video — this time a cover of Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine.”

The husband-and-wife duo is supported by their usual mysterious guitarist Sidney Jake, who hovers behind them in a gold mask. Willcox tears through the 1972 space rock track covered in body paint and surrounded by bubbles, as the King Crimson guitarist casually sits next to her.

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“Silver Machine” follows last week’s cover of the Rolling Stone’s “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Fripp and Willcox’s Sunday Lunch series previously featured renditions of Judas Priest’s “Breaking the Law,” Iron Maiden’s “The Number of the Beast,” and many more.

“The one thing that kept coming back to us was that people were desperately lonely,” Willcox told Rolling Stone last month. “All these messages were coming back from people going, ‘Thank you — I was on the brink.’ And you say, ‘Well, the brink of what?’ ‘The brink of not being able to continue.’ We realized that if we kept posting these with a continuity, we were saying we’re not in some big mansion somewhere, drinking champagne and laughing it off. We’re actually in this with you and we’re sharing this with you. We realized we could still be the performers that connect with our audience.”

REST IN POWER

 Calgary theatre community is mourning the loss of award-winning winning Calgary playwright Sharon Pollock dead at 85

Duration: 01:50 

NBA Players Kevin Durant and Mike Conley Win at Oscars for Short Film About Police Brutality

Jason Duaine Hahn
4/26/2021

Brooklyn Nets player Kevin Durant and Mike Conley of the Utah Jazz were part of a team of executive producers of Two Distant Strangers, a short film about policy brutality that won big at the 93rd Academy Awards.

The film, directed by Travon Free and Martin Desmond Roe, took home the honors for Best Live-Action Short on Sunday night. It follows Black cartoonist Carter James, who is killed by police while walking home after sleeping over with a date.

After James is killed, he ends up back where he started that morning, only to relive the day's events again and again in a time loop.

"From the minute we saw the script for this project, we knew it had the potential to be very powerful and we wanted to be involved," Durant told Slam Magazine earlier this year. "Getting to see it come to life on the screen was an intense experience."

RELATED: Kobe Bryant Is an Oscar Winner! The Ex-NBA Star Wins for Short Film Dear Basketball

"I also had the opportunity to screen it for my teammates and coaches at the Nets, and I think everyone came away with the same feeling that I did that the film is telling a really important story about the Black experience, but in a way that is real and raw and not at all preachy," Durant added. 

 Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty; Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Two Distant Strangers is a short film about policy brutality that won at Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday night

RELATED: LeBron James Says He's 'Honored' After Being Named TIME's Athlete of the Year

The film stars rapper Joey Bada$$, Andrew Howard and Zaria Simone.

After Two Distant Strangers won the Oscar, Durant reacted on Twitter, writing "Big time!" in a post.

Conley told Slam in February of the film, "I think that's huge to kind of show that visually for the general public and people to [help them] understand what my uncles and my grandparents taught me, like sometimes when you get pulled over you just pray, man."

"There's nothing you can do sometimes [but] just pray that everything comes out right like you can show your identity you can do everything you want to do in the right manner and still get shot or have something come out of that," Conley continued. "So it's just, it was a great way of portraying it and allowing I think all of us to kind of exhale a little bit that we have this film to be able to show all those examples."

Durant and Conley may be able to celebrate the win on the basketball court later this year — the Nets and Jazz are currently the top seeds in the Eastern and Western conferences and look to be favorites to meet in the NBA Finals in July.

Ronnie James Dio’s Black Sabbath Years to Serve as Focus of New Book

Kory Grow 

ROLLING STONE

4/26/2021

© Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images


A new book, Sabbath: The Dio Years, will offer a deeper look at singer Ronnie James Dio’s tenure with Black Sabbath.

The coffee table tome will cover the vocalist’s full experience with the musicians, from joining the band before the Heaven and Hell album in 1979 to his period in the rebranded Heaven and Hell band, up until his death. It runs more than 400 pages, according to Classic Rock. The book, which features new interviews with guitarist Tony Iommi and bassist Geezer Butler, is scheduled to start shipping in early September.

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“I first met Ronnie at our rehearsal house in Beverley Hills,” Butler said in a statement. “He arrived in this massive brown Cadillac that looked too big for him to drive. He seemed pleasant enough, but when he started singing I was blown away — so much power in such a diminutive stature. He quickly got to work on some of the ideas we had and turned them into songs for what would become the Heaven and Hell album.”

The publisher, Rufus, made the book with the full cooperation of the band. It features many images that have never been printed before and pictures of rare memorabilia. Among its many photos, there is a selection from the archives of Dio’s widow, Wendy Dio.

Iommi and Butler recently looked back on their time with Dio in an interview with Rolling Stone. In it, the bassist explained how he and Dio became close over the years. “We used to argue like husband and wife,” he said. “We would really go at it. And it’s hard to find people like that that you can really, really s***, and then the next day go and have a drink with them. It’s like being back in my family again, like the Irish family. Ronnie was totally outspoken. You always knew where you were with him, that’s for sure. And that we used to argue and stuff, and then make up and be best friends. And we were best friends when he passed away. I still go to his grave every year.”

 HE CREATED SIXTIES TV CULTURE

Bernie Kahn Dies: Prolific Writer-Producer For ‘Get Smart’, ‘Bewitched’ & More Was 90

© Personal Courtesy

Bernie Kahn, a comedy writer-producer who penned more than 100 episodes of television including Bewitched, The Addams Family, Get Smart and Three’s Company, died April 21 at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California. He was 90.

A spokesperson for his family confirmed the death.

Born on April 26, 1930, in Brooklyn, he began his showbiz career after a stint in the U.S. Army. His first job as a producer and writer was at NBC’s Monitor Radio. He later would join the Bob and Ray comedy radio show as a staff writer and was its last surviving original scribe. He also worked on a number of popular TV game shows in the early 1960s, including NBC’s Your First Impression, but the bulk of his work would be in sitcoms.

Over the years, he wrote for such series as Get Smart, Maude, The Addams Family, The Love Boat, Tabitha, Three’s Company, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, The Partridge Family, The Lucy Show, Love American Style, James at 15 and more than a dozen episodes of Bewitched.

He also created the sitcom Joe & Valerie, which aired on NBC in 1978-79.

On the feature side, Kahn wrote The Barefoot Executive and Basic Training, while producing movies for television, including She Led Two Lives, Father & Son: Dangerous Relations and Fire in the Dark.

He earned two Writers Guild Award nominations for Get Smart! and My World and Welcome to It.

Kahn was also an accomplished swimmer, winning city and state championships in New York and later representing the United States overseas at the Maccabiah Games, where he won the 100 meter backstroke race and set a record that lasted for a decade. He went on to represent the U.S. again at the Pan American Games in Argentina, winning a bronze medal, and was inducted into the Michigan Jewish Sports Hall of Fame in 2011.

Kahn is survived by his wife, Elinor Berger; three daughters; two step-children; and five grandchildren. A memorial is being planned—a date has not yet been set—in Los Angeles. Donations in his memory can be made to the Motion Picture & Television Fund by clicking here.

BOOK REVIEW

 The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health - and How We Must Adapt

 • By Sinan Aral

• HarperCollins • 390pp • ISBN: 978-0-00-827711-6 •

Ten years ago, Jeff Chester, director of the Center for Digital Democracy, issued a warning: the vast piles of data being collected and the techniques being developed by the advertising industry would open the way for a highly discriminatory society and political manipulation. Then came 2016, Cambridge Analytica, the EU referendum vote, and the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, all of which led to the close scrutiny of platform manipulation.

In The Hype Machine, MIT professor Sinan Aral examines the growth of the "social media industrial complex" -- the 'hype machine' of the title -- and considers what we should do about the many problems it has brought: widespread false news, threats to election integrity, harmful speech, and concentrated power exercised in inscrutable ways.

Aral brings multiple perspectives to his subject, beginning with a PhD dissertation he began in 2001, choosing as his subject the newly forming digital social networks, and continuing through entrepreneurship, consultancy, venture capital, and more academia. At MIT, he leads the Initiative on the Digital Economy, where he recently organised a social media summit that featured the same broad topics he considers in this book.


The Hype Machine, like many of the latest generation of technology books, does not huddle in the US. Aral's story starts, for example, with the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea. His lab, which was studying how fake news spreads online, found its interest piqued by spikes showing Russia's use of social media to control perception within Ukraine. From this and other research Aral derives the Hype Loop -- a description of the machine-human interaction that sits between the network substrate and the medium we use (mostly smartphones). In that rendering, the feedback loop of the hype machine acts as amplifier and manipulator.

Aral identifies four levers for controlling such systems: money, code, norms, and laws (in 1996, Lawrence Lessig had these as market, system architecture, norms, and laws in Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace). He then goes on to discuss how and why these social networks work, based on his formal study.
Forcing change

Aral's final section, which discusses how to force change, rejects many currently popular approaches. He calls breaking up Facebook "like putting a bandaid on a tumor", and appears unhappy with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which he says is blocking medical research because European countries are legally barred from sharing data such as DNA samples with US organisations. While we might say there's an easy fix if the US cares to take it, he contends that GDPR can be weaponised to interfere with the public's right to know, citing a Romanian government action against journalists who exposed massive election fraud.

Aral's preferred approach is to mandate interoperability and data portability, find a middle path for the US between China's surveillance state and the EU's data protection, and, most of all, set up a national commission on technology and democracy to include scientists, industry representatives, and policy makers. Such a group will need broader representation than that, but it's a start.

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Companies are aiming for 'zero emissions' — but few are clear on what that means

Leticia Miranda 

NBC NEWS

4/26/2021

After President Joe Biden took office, corporate America rushed to put out statements boasting of a newly robust commitment to climate change, from going "net zero" to becoming "carbon neutral" — but with no government oversight of these terms, experts say many of these pledges could risk falling short of legitimate change.© Provided by NBC News

In the weeks immediately following the inauguration, Wall Street titans including Wells Fargo, Bank of America, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley announced "net zero" greenhouse gas emissions goals by 2030 and 2050. Energy giant Royal Dutch Shell doubled down on its previous goal; and BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, said its portfolio companies would need to show how they plan to reach net zero by 2050.

While these commitments represent a welcome shift toward corporate action in the face of the growing climate crisis, goals such as “net zero” and “carbon neutral” mean very little when they don’t reduce emissions released by companies in the first place, according to Joeri Rogelj, director of climate change research at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

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“The challenge here is really that there is no one definition for these terms, particularly ‘carbon neutral’ or ‘climate neutral,'” he told NBC News. “There is no clear scientific definition of what that means. In some contexts, it can mean different things, and that’s why it's important for a company to not just throw out that label but tell people what they're going to do.”

For instance, Royal Dutch Shell’s new goal to become net zero by 2050 also includes plans to increase its fossil fuel output in the near term by boosting gas production. To reach its net zero goal, the company plans to offset 120 million metric tons of carbon dioxide through “nature-based” projects.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told clients last year that it would divest from companies that generate more than 25 percent of their revenues from thermal coal production by the middle of 2020. But it still has about $85 billion indirectly invested in coal companies and funds a dozen fossil fuel expansion projects as it transitions its investments to support a low-carbon economy.

"Our conviction is that climate risk is investment risk," Matt Kobussen, a spokesperson for BlackRock, told NBC News in part in an emailed statement. "Among the many initiatives to help our clients navigate this risk, we have both achieved 100 percent ESG integration in our active strategies and, where we have discretion in these strategies, we have fully exited positions in our equity and bond holdings in companies generating more than 25 percent of revenues from thermal coal production."

"Shell aims to reduce the carbon intensity of the energy products we sell over the next decades to reach 100 percent reduction in carbon intensity by 2050 compared to its 2016 baseline," Anna Arata, a spokesperson for Shell, told NBC News in an emailed statement. The company did not respond to an NBC News request for comment on its increase in gas production.

The Environmental Protection Agency requires greenhouse gas emissions reporting across 8,000 gas suppliers and CO2 injection sites in the United States. But it does not have a program that requires companies to report greenhouse emissions stemming from electricity consumption, Enesta Jones, a spokesperson for the agency, told NBC News in an emailed statement. Earlier this month, U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said Biden plans to issue an executive order requiring financial institutions and companies to disclose climate change risks.

Some multinational companies still have a long way to go to deliver on their climate change promises, according to Climate Action 100+, an investor-led initiative that advocates for climate-related resolutions and holds companies accountable for failing to address climate risk. The group recently analyzed 159 company climate goals and found only six companies explicitly tied future capital expenditures to their long-term emissions reduction targets. Only 10 percent of companies use climate-scenario planning to help limit global warming to under 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels.

The lack of universal requirement for reporting emissions leaves room for variation when it comes to how companies track, calculate and report on their goals, said Robert Schuwerk, executive director of the North American office of Carbon Tracker, a nonprofit financial think tank focused on climate risk and the energy industry.

“A lot of people think, 'Let's add up emissions like you add up dollars in your bank account,'” Schuwerk said. However, “If I'm a company and I'm accounting for oil that auto users combust, that's their emissions that are my emissions. I think it's more valuable to cast a wide net and make it more responsible across the supply chain.”

Industry giants such as Microsoft and Ikea are frequently cited as examples of rigorous goal setting in the corporate world, according to Rogelj. Microsoft announced last year it will be carbon negative by reducing its direct and indirect emissions through investments in clean energy technologies. Similarly, Ikea uses the term “climate positive” to describe its goal to reduce more emissions than it produced by 2030. The furniture giant reported last year that it reduced emissions by 4.3 percent in fiscal year 2019 to 24.9 million tons of carbon.

“From a financial perspective, how do you get buy-in?” said Jennifer Keesson, sustainability manager for Ikea U.S. “It’s really a part of our ethos and we know that this is necessary to be able to contribute and sustain ourselves.”

Not all industry watchers are critical about recent corporate climate announcements. Phil Duffy, executive director of Woodwell Climate Research and a former climate science adviser under President Barack Obama, said it is “fantastic” that companies are now doubling down on efforts to combat climate change.

“Big picture: I feel encouraged by the clear awakening by the private sector about the risk of climate change, and there is a real sense of motion across the private sector about being a part of the solution,” he said.

“You can be cynical about it and say there is greenwashing — but I can tell you a lot is genuine.”

Julian Casablancas Interviews Noam Chomsky on Latest ‘S.O.S. — Earth Is a Mess’

Jon Blistein 

ROLLING STONE

4/26/2021

© Rolling Stone


Julian Casablancas has released a new interview with famed philosopher, linguist, and social critic Noam Chomsky on the latest episode of his Rolling Stone interview series, S.O.S. — Earth Is a Mess.

The interview finds the 92-year-old Chomsky chatting virtually with the Strokes and the Voidz frontman, appearing in the form of a giant Wizard of Oz-style head that fits the show’s sci-fi aesthetic. The interview finds Chomsky specifically touching on the ways democracy has changed and been constrained in the United States over time, and how representative the U.S. government actually is of the people compared to corporate interests.

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Casablancas also asks Chomsky about his work in linguistics, and whether he believes words are important or secondary to ideas. “That depends whether you see yourself as a propagandist who wants to control people or as somebody who wants to induce people to think for themselves and solve their own problems,” Chomsky replies. “That’s a decision.”

The interview ends with Casablancas asking Chomsky what he would do with a magic wand, to which he replies, “If I had a magic wand, I would get people to understand… let’s take the environment, which is the most crucial issue we face. You can’t overestimate, we have maybe a decade or two, that’s it, in which we can decide to get the heating of the environment under control. If we don’t do it, we’re finished. It’s not that everybody’s going to die the next year, but we’ll be on a course that is irreversible.”

Past episodes of S.O.S. — Earth Is a Mess have found Casablancas in conversation with journalist and professor Chris Hedges, Andrew Yang, and Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman.

In unusual move, leftist Democrat to respond to Biden's Congress address

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After U.S. President Joe Biden gives his first joint address to Congress on Wednesday, one of the more progressive members of his own Democratic party, Representative Jamaal Bowman, plans to deliver a response.

Reuters/ANDREW KELLY Jamaal Bowman commemorates the sixth anniversary of Eric Garner's death, in New York

It is routine for a member of the opposition party to give a rebuttal to a president's address, and Republicans have chosen Senator Tim Scott to do so this time. But it is very unusual for someone from the president's own party to deliver a reply.

Bowman, 45, a Black former middle school principal who ousted a 16-term incumbent in New York City last November, is expected to urge Biden to push forward with a progressive agenda while the party has control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate.

"His main message is that this is a narrow historic moment of opportunity ... and we need to take advantage of that and meet the moment with even bolder action on climate change, bold action to combat racial and economic inequality," Bowman's spokesman, Karthik Ganapathy, said. "He really feels the sense of urgency that this moment calls for."

Biden is a moderate Democrat who pledged during the election campaign to work with Republicans on some issues, raising concerns among liberals he could slow down or water down the Democrats' agenda instead of pushing through bold changes.

The Democrats have narrow majorities in the House and Senate. History suggests they could lose those majorities as early as next year at midterm elections, which often favor the party not in the White House.

The left-wing Working Families Party, a small party with activists in over a dozen states that asked Bowman to give the livestreamed reply to Biden on Wednesday night, is keenly aware of the historical precedents.

Its national director, Maurice Mitchell, recalled that another Democrat, former President Barack Obama, was elected in 2008 with a broad mandate, but by August 2009 the conservative Tea Party movement had changed the political debate. Fueled by the Tea Party surge, Republicans made huge gains and won the House in the 2010 midterms.

"So what should we learn from that? I think what we should learn is that if we want Democrats and progressives to be in a position for success, then our movement cannot demobilize," Mitchell said. "And our movement needs to stay in the fight. We need to push the realm of what's possible."

(Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Karishma Singh)

Traditional Six Nations chiefs call for moratorium on development that includes Fergus and Elora



WELLINGTON COUNTY – Traditional Six Nations chiefs are calling for a ban on development along the Grand River.


They say any development on that tract of land, including in Wellington County, needs their consent.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council (HCCC) recently announced a moratorium on development in the Haldimand Tract. The HCCC are the traditional government separate from the federally-recognized elected governing body of the Six Nations.

The Haldimand Tract refers to land granted to the Haudenosaunee, also known as the Six Nations of the Grand River, in 1784 for their alliance with the British during the American Revolution

This land was approximately 950,000 acres that ran along 10 km each side of the Grand River from Lake Erie up to Dundalk and includes what is now Elora and Fergus.

Today, the Six Nations reserve boundaries is less than five per cent of the original land base.

The legitimacy of surrender documents obtained by the crown in the 1840s are disputed and the traditional chiefs and 1492 Land Back Lane group say the land is unceded.

Skyler Williams, spokesperson for 1492 Land Back Lane, confirmed Fergus and Elora fall into this declaration.

The two towns are expected to have significant population growth over the next decades and alongside that comes a lot of housing development.

Williams said there is opportunity for development but there needs to be meaningful dialogue needs to be done with the community.

“I think that the idea of consent is certainly one we’re talking about in Ottawa right now around the UN declaration on rights of Indigenous peoples, certainly when it comes to lands,” Williams said.

“Haudenosaunee people have been making government aware...that these are our lands and this unwanted development up and down the Grand River is something that needs to be done — certainly with consultation at the very least — with our community.”

Centre Wellington mayor Kelly Linton had no comment to make about the moratorium but said by email Indigenous consultation is "often a requirement of our developments in Centre Wellington."

Williams noted the problem ultimately isn’t really with developers.

“This obligation lies solely with the federal and provincial governments who are incentivizing the development of our lands, the Places to Grow Act which sets out the greenbelt and the like are pushing those developers to develop right along the Grand River,” Williams said.

“If we’re talking about areas that need to be protected here, the Grand River watershed absolutely needs to be taken into account for that.”

Williams clarified this doesn’t mean they’re going to go up and down the Grand River telling “settlers to get out of their homes.”

“Some of these settlers have been there for a couple hundred years in their families,” Williams said.

“There needs to be a meaningful process, a trigger mechanism that sets the feds and the province to come down here and make some meaningful effort to show that this is a process they’re going to respect. We’re going to be calling for that moratorium on development until that process can be respected.”

Keegan Kozolanka, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, GuelphToday.com

Census 2020 results: Bureau announces 331 million people in US, Texas will add two congressional seats

By Dan Merica and Liz Stark, CNN

The US Census Bureau announced Monday that the total population of the United States has topped 331 million people, marking the country's second slowest population growth rate in US history. Amid that, Texas will gain two seats in the redistricting process, the results found.

© Smith Collection/Gado/Sipa USA/AP

Additionally, Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Carolina and Oregon will each gain one seat in Congress.

California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will all lose congressional seats ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.

The results -- which show that political power in the country is shifting from states in the Midwest and Northeast to those in the South and West -- will have wide-ranging impacts on numerous aspects of American life, ranging from each state's representation in Congress to the amount of money each state will get from the federal government. The numbers could shift the political makeup of Congress and set up what will likely be contentious redistricting battles in the coming months.

And the numbers reflect which states are growing in both population and power. With Colorado, Florida, North Carolina and Texas all gaining seats -- and thus, electoral votes -- their political clout will grow over the next decade, largely at the expense of states like Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

The new numbers represented a decrease in the population growth rate when compared to growth between 2000 and 2010. It was only slightly more than the growth rate seen during the 1930s.

Census officials said they were "very confident in the quality of the data" that they collected.

"While no Census is perfect, we are confident that today's 2020 Census results meet our high data quality standards. We would not be releasing them to you otherwise," acting Director Ron Jarmin said.

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo also expressed her confidence in the results.

"2020 brought unprecedented challenges -- a global pandemic, destructive wildfires, the most active hurricane season on record and civil unrest across the country. With all of that happening, the Census Bureau had to quickly adapt its operations to confront these challenges head on," she said Monday.

Some expectations from census experts were off. Some believed that Texas would gain three total seats, not two, while others believed states like Arizona, which did not gain a seat, would add a House district. Experts also expected Minnesota and Rhode Island to lose a seat -- neither did, according to the Census Bureau.

Some of the figures were remarkably close, however. Census Bureau officials said that if they had counted 89 more people in New York during the census and all other state populations had stayed the same, the state of New York would not have lost a district.

More detailed data will also be released in the coming months that states will use to help draw the boundaries of their congressional districts. The agency has said those redistricting counts are expected to be released by the end of September.

Although the Census will publish resident counts for Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, their totals are not included in the overall apportionment population because they don't have voting seats in the House, the agency said.

The release of the data has been a long time coming, delayed by both the coronavirus pandemic and controversial legal fights on how President Donald Trump's administration has handled the process.

The Census Bureau announced in February that the numbers, which would normally come out by April 1, would be delayed. The bureau cited the coronavirus pandemic, and the difficulty the virus created for those collecting census data, as the reason for the delay.

The process was also complicated by the Trump administration's efforts to exclude noncitizens when seats in Congress were apportioned, a decision that landed the bureau and the Republican administration in lengthy legal fights.

Former attorney general Eric Holder responded to the announcement, saying that with the release of the numbers, "each state now needs to prepare for a fair and transparent redistricting process that includes input from the public."

Holder, the head of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a Democratic group aimed at combating gerrymandering, added: "Make no mistake -- the same Republican state legislators who are pushing forward on hundreds of anti-voter bills at the state level have been very clear that they intend to manipulate the redistricting process to lock in their power."

In the majority of states, maps are redrawn and accepted by state legislatures, with many giving authority to the state's governor to either approve or deny the new districts. Only a handful of states rely on relatively independent commissions to determine new maps. Because Republicans have been more successful at winning state legislatures in recent years, the party has almost total control over the process in a number of key states, like Texas and Florida.

If Republicans embark on cutting up increasingly diverse populations in the suburbs around some of the nation's largest cities -- combining them with more reliably Republican voters in exurbs and rural areas -- the party will open themselves up to racial gerrymandering claims. Democrats are prepared to fight any attempts.

"The presumption that Republicans should get all of those new seats simply because they control the process is a presumption of gerrymandering," said Kelly Ward Burton, the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee. "And that is illegal."

Another issue facing both parties is how each should analyze the last four years of political shifts under Trump, a time that saw Democrats make up considerable ground in the suburbs and Republicans make inroads with Latino communities in places like South Florida and South Texas and consolidate support among rural voters.

The question for those party officials in charge of the redistricting process will be whether to treat these shifts as either aberrations or signs of more lasting changes.

"For people who did this stuff a decade ago, if they had known that Donald Trump was going to come along in 2016 and shift the American electorate, there's at least a couple dozen seats around the country that would have been drawn differently than they were," said Adam Kincaid, the head of the National Republican Redistricting Trust. "And that is the challenge for the next few years is trying to forecast out how much this realignment is permanent versus temporary."

Despite acknowledged promise: Fear, uncertainty and doubt surround AI adoption

Executives worldwide placed artificial intelligence as a top strategic priority for 2021, yet plans have slowed or been curtailed. Juniper Networks recently released the report, "AI is set to accelerate...is your organization ready?" which addresses this very curious dilemma: Developers, organizations (95%) and consumers know the benefits, welcome and are excited about the potential. But how can companies accelerate their adoption?

© Provided by TechRepublic Image: iStock/metamorworks

Today's AI

Today, AI's slow rollout includes the automation of daily tasks, such as chatbots for customer service, bank reconciliations and smart workflows for IT trouble ticket management. The aforementioned 95% of organizations believe their companies would benefit from embedding AI into daily operations, products and services. Curiously though, only 6% of C-level leaders reported adoption of AI-powered solutions across their organizations today.


"I wasn't all that surprised by the findings because the challenges are real and ones that come up in my discussions with other CIOs on the topic," said Sharon Mandell, senior vice president and CIO of Juniper Networks. "There are always challenges with new technology, but these concerns should not hold people back from experimenting, learning, moving forward and getting the real benefits that are there. Start by dipping your toes in the water and work to get comfortable before swimming into the deep end."

The top three challenges to embraceable AI adoption

Juniper found the gap lies within the following three challenges, ranked by respondents as the most prescient adoption inhibitors: AI-ready technology stacks, workforce readiness and AI governance.

Respondents were asked to rank developing company value-added AI models and data sets considered "the top technology-related challenge." Ingesting, processing and managing data to feed AI is their No. 1 tech challenge, Juniper's report stated. Financial commitment is essential "in robust cloud solutions and preparation of the right data for AI to use;" 39% of respondents said they're "likely to collect telemetry data to enhance AI to improve user experience, as well as ensure sensitive data is protected in the process." Thirty-four respondents said AI tool capabilities are the most critical to enable AI adoption.

Getting the workforce onboard: 73% of organizations struggle with the preparation and expansion of their workforce to integrate with AI systems. It's the highest priority for the company, C-level respondents reported, to hire people to develop AI capabilities within an organization than it is to train end-users to operate the tools themselves.

Under the right umbrella: 67% of respondents reported that AI has been identified as a priority by their organizations' leaders for a fall 2021 strategic plan, and 87% of executives agree that organizations have a responsibility to have governance and compliance policies in place to minimize negative impacts of AI, yet executives still ranked establishing AI governance, policies and procedures as one of their lowest priorities. A further 84% of executives agree cross-functional executive sponsorship and involvement is critical for AI to integrate into their products and services. Yet only 7% of executives said they haven't identified a company-wide AI leader to oversee AI strategy and governance. Seventy-four percent of respondents agree that employee satisfaction has increased since implementing AI solutions to assist in their operational tasks.

What AI there is, is very good

The organizations that are early AI adopters cite positive changes like operational efficiencies and enhanced user-experience. Juniper's research found companies that "adopted and harnessed AI are showing real and meaningful outcomes, providing optimism and excitement."

Further research found that as organizations scale their AI capabilities and integrate employees into solutions, user satisfaction steadily rises, and time saved allows employees to focus on value-added tasks that were previously unmanageable.
How to keep competitive

To keep competitive, the industry needs to "Adapt!" Mandell said. "Organizations have only just begun to understand the integration challenges and investment required for AI-ready technology stacks. Ultimately, they need the proper infrastructure as their base foundation for AI. Once they've built the proper base to ingest and process quality and unbiased data, they should focus on ensuring their workforce is armed with the proper skills and tools to support this AI wave. Finally, when it comes to AI adoption, governance, cross-functional and executive involvement are all critical to ensure that AI stays within the business' priorities."

AI's future in business

Looking forward, Mandell said, "While a lot of the fear around AI might still exist, it has the power to unlock our workforce, to enable businesses, to change the world. While there are some barriers to adoption, the optimism around the use of AI in organizations is palpable; AI in the enterprise is set to take off. With almost two-thirds of the organizational leadership surveyed noting that AI is a top priority for their 2021 strategic plans, we can not only expect to see more trials and deployments in the near future, but also watch as AI becomes essential to the business of tomorrow."

Methodology: Juniper surveyed 700 IT global decision makers who have direct involvement in their organization's AI and/or machine-learning plans or actual deployments to assess the attitudes, perceptions and concerns of the technology.