Today’s comic by Jen Sorensen is McTeacher Night is new low in marketing to kids:
• Girls tested better than boys on national technology and engineering literacy:
Girls outperformed boys on a national test of technology and engineering literacy that the federal government administered for the first time in 2014, according to results made public Tuesday.
Among eighth-grade students in public and private schools, 45 percent of girls and 42 percent of boys scored proficient on the exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Overall, 43 percent of all students were proficient.
• On a scale of 1 to 10, Fort McMurray’s air pollution is a 38.
• Candidate for Virginia’s 8th Congressional district posts screenshot of his web browser, including tabs for porn sites.
• Human rights activist Michael Ratner’s death last week is a loss for justice:
Michael will probably be best remembered for his victory in gaining the right to habeas corpus for U.S. detainees held in Cuba at Guantanamo. Michael was lead counsel in the 2004 case of Rasul v. Bush, in which the Supreme Court upheld the right of those detained as “enemy combatants” at Guantanamo to have their petitions for habeas corpus heard by U.S. courts. The Bush administration had argued that since the detainees were being held on Cuban soil, they had no right of access to U.S. federal courts to challenge their confinement. But the court held that the United States exercises complete jurisdiction and control over the Guantanamo Bay base. As Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority, “Aliens held at the base, no less than American citizens, are entitled to invoke the federal courts’ authority” under the federal habeas corpus statute.
• Meet the Kenyan woman waging war against AIDS.
• Grammy Award-winning Tejano singer Emilio Navaira dead at 53:
Preliminary results indicate Emilio Navaira died of natural causes Monday night, said David Ferguson, a police spokesman in New Braunfels, Texas.
Navaira released nearly a dozen albums in Spanish and English, mostly a mix of traditional Mexican music and accordion-based polka known as Tejano but also some country. He won a Best Tejano Album Grammy in 2002 for "Acuerdate."
• Verizon enters its second month with no end in sight:
As the massive strike at Verizon enters its second month with no end in sight, the stakes — for the workers, the company, and the broader labor movement — are rising. Even mainstream media outlets like the New York Times have taken note, casting it as something of an epochal battle over whether the economy can tolerate good jobs that actually deliver economic security and decent benefits.
The strike began on April 13, when forty thousand Verizon landline workers, represented by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), walked out after nine months of contentious and fruitless contract negotiations. The unions are fighting employer demands to make outsourcing and offshoring jobs easier, as well as cutbacks in health benefits.
• Gender-segregated bathrooms have a long and ugly history of inequity.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Hairspray von Clownstick irked by reports on his pervy bikini closet. Voter ID is back before the courts, along with blurted-out admissions of its true purpose. Further NV convention details. Bathroom panic’s dangerous spread. An excerpt from David Dayen’s Chain of Title.
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