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A Florida school board candidate who lost his race in a county south of Jacksonville will get a seat on the board anyway, after Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis tapped him to fill a vacancy.

Derek Barrs will take an open seat on the Flagler County School Board in northeast Florida, succeeding a member who resigned in September, allowing DeSantis to appoint a replacement rather than the seat going on the ballot for voters to decide.

"Autism spectrum disorder spiked 175% among people in the U.S. from 2.3 per 1,000 in 2011 to 6.3 per 1,000 in 2022, researchers found. Diagnosis rates climbed at a faster rate among adults in their mid-20s to mid-30s in that period, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Network Open."

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Brian MacSharry, the head of the nature and biodiversity group at the European Environment Agency, says: “The habitat situation is pretty bad, the species little better, and there is a time lag between [the destruction of habitats and decline in] species. Overall, we know it is bad and that the trend is deteriorating. Agriculture is by far the biggest pressure.”

It was not supposed to be this way. Since the early 2000s, changes to Europe’s farming practices and subsidy regime – the common agricultural policy (CAP) – have been geared explicitly towards protecting the environment, as well as supporting farmers and food production. The CAP represents a third of the EU budget, coming to about €55bn (£46bn) a year and in return for that largesse, farmers are supposed to meet a minimum level of environmental protection. Taking additional measures such as growing more trees or conserving wetlands can net them extra support.

But so far at least, the environmental aspects of the CAP changes have not worked. The European court of auditors in 2020 found little evidence of a positive impact on biodiversity from the CAP. The European Environment Agency, in its State of Nature report in 2023, found that the EU’s farmed environment had continued to decline, with the health of only 14% of habitats and about a quarter of non-bird species classed as “good”. The CAP is also making the climate worse: about 80% of the budget goes to support carbon-intensive animal food products, according to a paper published this month in Nature.

“The CAP has become a monster,” says Faustine Bas-Defossez, the director of nature, health and environment at the European Environmental Bureau, a network of citizens’ organisations. “It is not helping farmers in the mainstream to adopt more sustainable practices. It’s driving the intensification of farming, and increasing the pressure on natural resources. Instead of the polluter pays principle, it’s turning into a system of the polluter gets paid.”

While Boeing did not specify what would be taken away from Thursday’s offer if it were to fail, Holden said that could mean cutting any number of gains, including canceling a commitment to build the next airplane in the Puget Sound region, backing away from a 38% wage increase or losing a 1% decrease in health care costs.

On Friday, some workers were heeding Holden’s warning. Sitting down for an interview with The Seattle Times, Holden had just finished a Zoom call with more than 500 members who questioned him closely about the new offer and his recommendation to accept it. He had told them about the risk of losing the earlier gains.

The response from those on the call, he said, “led me to believe … they’re looking to accept it.”

For sure, there are still Machinists unwilling to bend. Rob Davis, a 13-year Everett employee, said he’s still a no vote and dismissed the union leadership as “a finger puppet of Boeing.”

Andrew DeFreese, an equipment operator in Everett, said Friday he’s also sticking with his no vote. He wants to hold out for more paid time off and quicker steps to progress through the wage scales.

Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has ordered the country’s largest peacetime military deployment, announcing that 10,000 troops and police officers will be drafted in to help deal with the aftermath of this week’s devastating floods, which have killed at least 211 people in eastern, southern and central regions.

Speaking after chairing a meeting of the flood crisis committee, Sánchez said the government was mobilising all the resources at its disposal to deal with the “terrible tragedy”, which stuck hardest in the eastern region of Valencia. He also acknowledged that much of the help still wasn’t getting through and called for unity and an end to political bickering and blame games.

“There are still dozens of people looking for their loved ones and hundreds of households mourning the loss of a relative, a friend or a neighbour,” he said in a televised address on Saturday morning. “I want to express our deepest love to them and assure them that the government of Spain and the entire state, at all its different administrative levels, is with all of them.”

Summary

Gen Z posted greater voter turnout in 2022 compared to previous generations in midterm elections. As the 2024 election approaches, campaigning continues to be directed at this generation — including outreach led by Gen Z voters themselves.

Gen Z voters are more motivated to participate in elections due to specific policy issues, particularly reproductive rights. Political groups and candidates are implementing new strategies to engage this generation, including peer-to-peer organizing and authentic messaging.

Vice President Harris has been praised for her relatable social media presence, while former President Trump has appeared on popular male-dominated podcasts.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/21555013

Nearly 5,000 students who received vouchers in Year One continued into Year Two of the program. They were joined by more than 9,000 new enrollees who joined the program this year, for a total enrollment of 14,297. As with Year One, the overwhelming majority of the new enrollees — 83% — did not attend public school in the prior year.

Either way, the program has to date mostly provided vouchers to students who are not moving over from public schools. These results fit a consistent pattern in other similar statewide voucher programs nationwide. Most of the public cash doled out winds up boosting the bank accounts of families who were never in the public school system to begin with.

A federal judge in Austin has granted pro-Palestinian student groups at several Texas universities standing to pursue a sweeping lawsuit against their institutions' presidents and board members for alleged viewpoint discrimination and for First Amendment violations.

U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman found that the plaintiffs have "sufficiently pled injury" regarding university policies that comply with Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order in March limiting antisemitic speech and with university leaders' actions limiting pro-Palestinian speech.

"The Court finds that Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on their claim ... that the GA-44-compliant university policies impose impermissible viewpoint discrimination that chills speech in violation of the First Amendment," Pitman said in an order Monday, referring to Abbott's executive order charging public colleges to enforce free speech policies against pro-Palestinian student organizations and adopt a definition of antisemitism, which the judge said limits legal anti-Israel speech.

The FBI is investigating the death of a Black man in Alabama, who was found hanging in an abandoned house, following a request from a local sheriff amid fears among community members who accuse local law enforcement of longstanding, unchecked misconduct.

Sheriff’s deputies found Dennoriss Richardson, 39, in September in a rural part of Colbert County, miles away from his home in Sheffield, a city of approximately 10,000 people near the Tennessee River.

The Colbert County Sheriff’s Office ruled Richardson’s death a suicide. But Richardson’s wife, Leigh Richardson, has said that is not true, explaining her husband did not leave a note and had no connection to the house where he was found.

Instead, the 40-year-old fears her husband’s death was related to a lawsuit he filed against the local police department in February. Dennoriss Richardson, who coached kids in baseball and football, had alleged he was assaulted, denied medical attention, sprayed with tear gas and shocked with a Taser while in jail.

Robert F Kennedy Jr appears with Republican candidate, while congressman promotes state constitutional amendment to disqualify non-citizens from voting

At a Wisconsin rally on Friday, Donald Trump called Kamala Harris a “low-IQ person” and vowed to save the economy “from total obliteration” in a 1.5 hour-long meandering speech that touched on top campaign issues including the economy and foreign policy – but also featured threats to curb press freedoms and a lengthy discussion of his own rhetorical style.

…

On immigration, Trump’s message was characteristically dark. The campaign played a painful video of a mother describing her daughter’s murder and blaming Harris for allowing the accused to enter the US without authorization. Studies overwhelmingly refute Trump’s claim that immigrants are disproportionately responsible for crime in the US, but such claims are a feature of his campaign.

Peanut, who has amassed more than half a million Instagram followers, was euthanized by officials to be tested for rabies.

Peanut, the Instagram-famous squirrel that was seized from its owner's home Wednesday, has been euthanized by New York state officials. 

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation took Peanut, as well as a raccoon named Fred, on Wednesday after the agency learned the animals were “sharing a residence with humans, creating the potential for human exposure to rabies," it said in a joint statement with the Chemung County Department of Health.

Both Peanut and Fred were euthanized to test for rabies, the statement said. It was unclear when the animals were euthanized.

Summary

Early in-person voting in North Carolina has surpassed 2020 levels, with nearly 3.8 million voters casting ballots by Friday afternoon, according to the State Board of Elections. Including mail-in ballots, the total reaches almost 4.01 million, over 51% of the state’s 7.83 million registered voters. Early voting concludes Saturday at 3 p.m.

Summary

Abortion rights and state supreme court races are center stage in Tuesday’s elections, where 33 states will vote on judges who hold significant power over abortion laws. Controversial races in states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas could reshape access, with liberals and conservatives pouring millions into campaigns; spending is expected to break records, following the $100 million spent in the last cycle.

Groups like Planned Parenthood and the ACLU are investing unprecedented amounts to secure pro-abortion rights candidates, while right-wing groups avoid discussing abortion in campaigns.

Anti-abortion figures like Students for Life’s Kristi Hamrick emphasize courts’ role in restricting abortion, as Texas Democrats, led by Gina Ortiz Jones, seek to unseat justices enforcing abortion bans.

The 23-year-old said she was in the 'worst pain she'd ever felt'.

[...]It was the first conviction of a Louisville police officer who was involved in the deadly raid.

Some members of the jury were in tears as the verdict was read around 9:30 p.m. They had earlier indicated to the judge in two separate messages that they were deadlocked on the charge of using excessive force on Taylor, but chose to continue deliberating. The six man, six woman jury deliberated for more than 20 hours over three days. [...]