Drew Barrymore Show Writers Refusing to Return Signals a New Era in Hollywood

Drew Barrymore has always been a bit of an outsized figure in Hollywood. Now, she and her talk show have become an unwitting bellwether of change in the industry. On Oct. 4, the three former Drew Barrymore Show writers who are part of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) declined to return to the show after the end of the recent writers’ strike.

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The talk show will return for its Season 4 premiere on Oct. 16—notably without Chelsea White, Cristina Kinon, and Liz Koe, who shared the title of co-head writer on the show. (The Hollywood Reporter first broke this news, which the L.A. Times later confirmed.)

“I think the Drew Barrymore writers choosing to not go back to what is basically a guaranteed paycheck after five months on the picket line was a phenomenal act of courage,” says Eric Haywood, a writer, director, WGA West board member, and 2023 Negotiating Committee member. “I feel like the era of playing in people’s faces is over. And workers are really ready to demand what they feel they deserve.”

I want y’all to understand that Drew’s writers declining to come back is a clear sign that writers will no longer be disrespected. They saw clearly how the show viewed them and the disrespect they endure when she decided to come back. 🤷🏽‍♀️

— Caroline Renard (@carolinerenard_) October 4, 2023

The Drew Barrymore Show—and its high-profile host—became a lightning rod during the WGA strike. On Sept. 11, the show resumed filming without its three WGA writers.

“I own this choice,” Barrymore wrote on Instagram, in a since-deleted post. “We are in compliance with not discussing or promoting film and television that is struck of any kind. I want to be there to provide what writers do so well, which is a way to bring us together or help us make sense of the human experience. I hope for a resolve for everyone as soon as possible.”

It was a gray area: Technically, The Drew Barrymore Show was covered by a different WGA contract than the one that guild members were striking to change. But it would be virtually impossible for no one to draft any pre-written content for the show. And if anyone did write any content—say, a monologue or even interview questions—then that would be crossing the picket line. So guild members immediately began picketing the show—including struck writers from The Drew Barrymore Show. 

As the show taped, two audience members were kicked out for wearing pins that supported the WGA. The National Book Awards dropped Barrymore as its host, citing a desire to “ensure that the focus of the awards remains on celebrating writers and books.” The tide of public opinion, buoyed by frustrated writers, turned against Barrymore—a rare instance for an American sweetheart. On Sept. 15, Barrymore posted a since-deleted tearful video to Instagram, apologizing to writers and unions in one breath and reiterating that the show would still return in the next.

“I deeply apologize to writers,” she said. “I deeply apologize to unions. I deeply apologize.”

“I don’t have a PR machine behind my decision to go back to the show,” she continued. “I didn’t want to hide behind people. So I won’t. I won’t polish this with bells and whistles and publicists and corporate rhetoric. I’ll just stand out there and accept and be responsible.”

Two days later, The Drew Barrymore Show announced that it would resume its hiatus, pausing its premiere until after the strike had ended.

“I have no words to express my deepest apologies to anyone I have hurt and, of course, to our incredible team who works on the show and has made it what it is today,” Barrymore wrote on Instagram. “We really tried to find our way forward. And I truly hope for a resolution for the entire industry very soon.”

The WGA strike ended 10 days later, on Sept. 27. (Guild members are currently voting to ratify the terms of the agreement.) And when production restarted for The Drew Barrymore Show, its writers took a stand: They weren’t coming back.

That news coincided with comedian Roy Wood Jr.’s decision to leave Comedy Central’s The Daily Show after eight years as a correspondent for the program, most recently hosted by Trevor Noah. Noah left the show in December after seven years as host, and since then, rotating guest hosts have filled the role. Wood was in the running for the permanent host role, but left because he hasn’t been offered the job, and wants time to figure out what’s next.

“There’s no sense in me doing what I’ve been doing for the last eight years while concurrently trying to think of a new thing to do,” Wood told NPR. “The job of correspondent, it’s not really one where you can really juggle multiple things. And I think after eight years, I think I’ve earned the right to just take a quick break before January.”

The Drew Barrymore writers refusing to return, Roy Wood Jr. walking away from The Daily Show… if you learned only one thing from the last 5 months, I hope it’s how valuable you are 👏🏽

— Danielle Nicki (@DanielleNicki) October 5, 2023

“When you couple that,” Haywood says of Wood’s decision, “with the fact that the actors are still on strike, the writers just came off strike, the auto workers are on strike, the flight attendants, the hospital workers—nobody goes on strike because it’s fun. Nobody goes on strike because it is a cool act of rebellion. People really only go on strike when they feel they’ve been pushed to the limit, and they have no choice.”

source https://time.com/6321376/drew-barrymore-show-writers-refuse-return/

How U.S. Hospitals Undercut Public Health

This article was originally published in Undark Magazine.

Health care in the United States — the largest industry in the world’s largest economy — is notoriously cost inefficient, consuming substantially more money per capita to deliver far inferior outcomes relative to peer nations. What is less widely recognized is that the health care industry is also remarkably energy inefficient. In an era of tightening connections between environmental destruction and disease, this widely neglected reality is a major cause behind many of the sicknesses our hospitals treat and the poor health outcomes they oversee.

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The average energy intensity of U.S. hospitals is more than twice that of European hospitals, with no comparable quality advantage. In recent years, less than 2 percent of hospitals were certified as energy efficient by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program, and only 0.6 percent, or 37 in total, have been certified for 2023. As a result, in 2018, the U.S. health care industry emitted approximately 610 million tons of greenhouse gases, or GHGs — the equivalent of burning 619 billion pounds of coal. This represented 8.5 percent of U.S. GHG emissions that year, and about 25 percent of global health care emissions.

If U.S. health care were its own country, it would rank 11th worldwide in GHG pollution. If every nation produced an equivalent per capita volume of health care emissions, it would immediately consume nearly the entire global carbon budget required to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2030. Without even considering their global impact, air pollution from U.S. emissions accounts for an estimated 77,000 excess deaths annually in the U.S. alone. And according to one 2016 study, emissions from the U.S. health care system lead to the loss of more than 400,000 years of healthy life among Americans. This level of harm is commensurate with the tens of thousands of deaths attributable to medical errors each year, around which a massive patient safety movement has been organized in response. But despite these human costs — along with sizable financial costs — there has been no parallel policy movement to address the health care industry’s role in undermining health through its GHG emissions.

Read more: Tackling Climate Change Can Save Hospitals Money

The climate crisis is not just another problem among many. It is instead a meta-problem that layers onto countless other problems, exacerbating their consequences for health. Research suggests that particulate matter resulting from burning fossil fuels can damage every organ in the human body. In light of this, efforts to improve public health, health care quality, and patient safety without confronting the role of emissions are, at best, compromised once one accounts for the health care industry’s substantial contribution to a climate crisis that is driving an ongoing and accelerating sixth mass extinction.

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In addition to the general disaster this presents for global public health, it also constitutes a specific problem for U.S. health policy, as the health harms associated with GHG emissions disproportionately harm the populations who constitute Medicare and Medicaid’s roughly 145 million beneficiaries, including the 30 million patients treated at community-based Federally Qualified Health Centers. These care systems are meant to protect poor and vulnerable populations, but the means by which they attempt to do so are causing the very harm they seek to address. Consistent with what Ivan Illich described in his 1975 book “Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health” as cultural iatrogenesis — a phenomenon by which the supposed means of treating disease under capitalist health care regimes becomes not a cure but rather a cause of the debility it claims to alleviate — what we are seeing now is a form of environmental iatrogenesis.

Largely because of fossil fuel combustion, nearly the entire global population now breathes air that exceeds the World Health Organization’s air quality limits, but exposure to unhealthy air and associated health risks are not evenly distributed. In the U.S., Medicare beneficiaries, who are 65 and older and far more likely to suffer chronic lung disease, are particularly threatened by bad air quality. This is inseparable from the fact that fossil fuel-related air pollution, the leading environmental cause of human mortality, accounts for 58 percent of excess annual U.S. deaths, which joins 8.7 million — or one in five, prior to Covid-19 — excess deaths globally, according to a 2021 study.

Beyond breathing polluted air, Medicare seniors, already compromised by higher incidence of comorbidities, are also at greater risk of serious outcomes from climate-related arthropod-borne, food-borne, and water-borne diseases. The climate crisis can exacerbate the spread of over half of known human pathogens. And risk from extreme heat is especially severe: Globally, over the past 20 years, heat-related mortality among seniors has increased by over 50 percent.

Children, 46 percent of whom are Medicaid beneficiaries, are also especially vulnerable. Fine inhalable particles resulting from burning hydrocarbons, called PM 2.5 (particles 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter), are particularly harmful because children breathe more air than adults relative to their body weight, giving these particles more opportunity to diffuse into their bloodstreams and throughout their bodies. Research published last year found that climate-related adverse health effects to fetuses, infants, and children include low birth weight, death, hypertension, kidney and lung disease, immune-system dysregulation, structural and functional changes to the brain, and a constellation of behavioral and mental health diagnoses. Furthermore, evidence published by UNICEF in 2016 indicates that air polluted by fossil fuels contributes to more than half of the 1 million annual pneumonia deaths worldwide among children aged five and younger.

Read more: American Health Care Is Broken. Major Hospitals Need to Be Part of the Solution

With respect to racialized and economically dispossessed groups, a study published in 2021 found that racial and ethnic minorities, regardless of income and geographic location, are disproportionately exposed to higher levels of 11 of 14 sources of particulate air pollution. In a United Nations report titled “Climate change and poverty,” Philip Alston concluded that governments “have failed to seriously address climate change for decades,” and that “climate change threatens to undo the last 50 years of progress in development, global health and poverty reduction.”

The health care industry’s environmental disregard can be explained in part by what three bioethicists recently termed “lifeboat ethics framing.” In their book “Bioethics Reenvisioned: A Path toward Health Justice,” Nancy King, Gail Henderson, and Larry Churchill argue that bioethics has operated in a way such that any problem outside the lifeboat — that is, beyond the hospital bedside — is dismissed as irrelevant.

U.S. health officials have often exhibited the same narrow, clinically focused tunnel vision when it comes to health care emissions and the climate crisis. Public health’s widespread takeover by narrow medical mentalities that sideline root-cause analyses and associated policy action is now one of the most pernicious threats to health.

To add insult to injury, it is in the health care industry’s financial interests to decarbonize. New solar and wind energy are now the most affordable source of generating electricity in 96 percent of the world and cheaper than existing fossil fuels in 60 percent of the world. It is more expensive to continue to operate 99 percent of U.S. coal-fired power plants than to build and operate entirely new solar or wind energy generating stations.

Today, it is cheaper to save the climate than continue to destroy it. But federal policymakers and health care leaders continue to allow the industry to contribute to the climate crisis, which in turn is harming or killing those who are the most vulnerable. And if not stopped, GHG emissions could irreversibly undermine the possibility of health for all. Health care institutions should take a leading role in implementing immediate change to their own energy-use practices. As a core part of their ethical obligation to care, they should also use their enormous lobbying power to demand broader policy action to stop the environmental destruction to which they have been world-leading contributors.

source https://time.com/6321357/how-us-hospitals-undercut-public-health/

Maryland Supreme Court Weighs Victims’ Rights in Case of Adnan Syed

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Maryland Supreme Court on Thursday scrutinized a hearing that vacated Adnan Syed ’s murder conviction last year and released him after more than two decades behind bars, as the victim’s family says they weren’t given adequate opportunity to take part in the proceeding.

Syed’s case, chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial,” has been fraught with legal twists and divided court rulings for decades. The arguments Thursday before Maryland’s highest court were no exception.

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Among the issues discussed were whether Syed’s 2000 murder conviction should still be reinstated after a recent appellate court decision ruled in favor of the family, as well as the extent to which Maryland crime victims have a right to participate in hearings on whether to vacate a conviction. The panel of seven justices will release their ruling in the coming weeks or months.

Ultimately, Syed’s freedom hangs in the balance. While unlikely, he could eventually be sent back to prison for life if subsequent developments in the case don’t fall in his favor.

Outside the Annapolis courthouse after the hearing, Syed said he was looking forward to the decision. While maintaining his innocence from the start, Syed has often expressed concern for the family of Hae Min Lee, his high school ex-girlfriend who was found strangled to death and buried in an unmarked grave in 1999.

“We believe very strongly in trying to find justice for Hae and her family,” he told reporters. “And we’re hoping also that we’re able to find justice for us, too.”

He attended the hearing flanked by family members, including his mother and younger brother.

Syed, 42, was released from prison in September 2022, when a Baltimore judge overturned his conviction. City prosecutors had dropped all charges after finding flaws in the evidence.

However, in March, the Appellate Court of Maryland ordered a redo of the hearing. The court said the victim’s family didn’t receive adequate notice to attend the hearing in person, violating their right to be “treated with dignity and respect.”

Syed appealed his conviction’s reinstatement, and the Lee family also appealed to the state’s highest court, contending that crime victims should be given a larger role in the process of vacating a conviction.

“This case is not about Mr. Syed’s underlying innocence or guilt. That dispute is simply not in the room today,” said Ari Rubin, an attorney for the Lee family, during Thursday’s arguments.

He said the issue at hand was whether the rights of Lee’s brother, Young Lee, were violated because he was unable to substantively participate in the process, which Rubin called extraordinary “in that it aligns the interests of the defendant and the state.” He argued victims and their attorneys should fulfill an adversarial role.

But several justices expressed skepticism about whether state law expressly spells out a victim’s right to be heard in such hearings where a conviction is vacated.

“Why isn’t this a question for the General Assembly? The right that you’re speaking of is not in the plain language of the statute,” said Judge Brynja Booth.

Some justices also questioned why the hearing that vacated Syed’s conviction was scheduled so hastily. Prosecutors told Young Lee about the hearing on a Friday and scheduled it for the following Monday, leaving him no reasonable opportunity to travel to Baltimore from his California home and attend in person. Instead, he ended up addressing the court via video call.

Justice Shirley Watts said the outcome of the hearing seemed predetermined, including Syed’s immediate release from custody. And Justice Lynne Battaglia spoke about properly balancing the rights of victims and defendants.

More From TIME

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Syed’s lawyer, Erica Suter, said the state met its obligation in allowing Young Lee to participate in the hearing.

Syed’s attorneys say the family’s appeal is moot because prosecutors decided not to charge him again after his conviction was vacated. And even if Young Lee’s rights were violated, Syed’s lawyers say, he hasn’t demonstrated whether the alleged violation would have changed the hearing’s outcome.

“Mr. Lee was heard, and his counsel was heard, and it did not influence Judge (Melissa) Phinn’s decision,” Suter said.

This isn’t the first time the Maryland Supreme Court has taken up Syed’s protracted legal odyssey.

In 2019, a divided court ruled 4-3 to deny Syed a new trial. While the justices agreed with a lower court that Syed’s legal counsel was deficient in failing to investigate an alibi witness, it disagreed that the deficiency prejudiced the case. A lower court had ordered a retrial in 2016 on grounds that Syed’s attorney, Cristina Gutierrez, didn’t contact an alibi witness and provided ineffective counsel. Gutierrez passed away in 2004.

In November 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the decision by Maryland’s top court.

More recently, Baltimore prosecutors reexamined Syed’s files under a Maryland law targeting so-called “juvenile lifers” because he was 17 when Hae Min Lee’s body was found. Prosecutors uncovered numerous problems, including alternative suspects and the unreliable evidence presented at trial. Instead of reconsidering his sentence, prosecutors filed a motion to vacate Syed’s conviction entirely.

___

Associated Press writer Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/6321094/maryland-supreme-court-weighs-adnan-syed/

State Legislative Staffers Across the U.S. Push to Unionize

Illinois House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch says he wants the state’s legislative staff to be allowed to unionize. The Democrat authored a bill he says would allow that last week, even though it’s unusual for the house speaker to write their own legislation. “I filed it in my name because I want folks to know that I’m 10,000% behind this effort,” he says.

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The move took some of his employees by surprise. In the weeks leading up to the filing, more than 20 staffers in his office—who are part of the Illinois Legislative Staff Association (ILSA)—had said Welch would not engage with them around their effort to unionize despite his pro-labor rhetoric. Welch had not filled the employees in on his plans to file the bill, although he says his office had been speaking with them since November.

“We’re not going to negotiate for anything crazy. We’re not going to ask for million-dollar salaries,” says Kelly Kupris, a policy analyst focused on K-12 education and a member of ILSA’s organizing committee. “We just want to be treated what we’re worth, listened to, and know that we have a safe workplace that is able to put food on the table at the end of the day.”

The push to allow legislative staffers to unionize is sweeping across different states, to mixed results. In California, the legislature recently approved a similar measure after at least five tries; it is now awaiting a potential signature from the governor. In New York, senate staffers launched a legislative workers group last year to attempt to unionize. Recent efforts to unionize in Washington, Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Hampshire have not succeeded so far. Oregon became the first state in the nation to allow legislative staff to unionize in 2021, although Maine allowed nonpartisan legislative employees that right in the late 1990s.

The effort in states follows success on the federal level, where congressional staffers succeeded in their attempts to protect staffers’ right to bargain collectively last year. Legislative workplaces are often characterized by a “big imbalance of power,” says Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, where he studies labor. “You have an elected official who has a pretty significant political role and often younger staffers, who are hoping to build a career in this area and may not have the bargaining power or ability to speak up or push back when working conditions are poor or deteriorating.”

Read More: Inside the Capitol Hill Staffers’ Effort to Unionize Congress

The effort to unionize legislative offices takes place as a screenwriters strike helped secure a new contract, while actors remain on strike and so do United Auto Workers. Momentum behind labor is high amid the work stoppages. A 2023 Gallup poll found that 88% of Democrats, 69% of independents, and 47% of Republicans approve of unions. In total, 67% of Americans approve of them.

The energy around labor issues is also reflective of other attempts to unionize workplaces that have not traditionally had them, such as fast-food restaurants and graduate schools. “This year is different because there has been such a national focus on previously unorganized groups of workers forming and joining unions—as well as huge waves of strikes and labor mobilizations, which have put forth demands for better wages and working conditions,” says Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center.

Many view legislative staffers as the next natural target for unionizing. There’s often an expectation for legislative staffers to keep up with the blistering pace of an elected official’s schedule—“You’re going to be working crazy hours and not making a lot of money,” Wong says. Moreover, some staffers may be hesitant to form or join a union depending on the politics of their boss or their future political aspirations, he says. “We may never see a day when legislative staffers work 9 to 5 and have weekends off,” Wong says. “However, we may see more accommodation.”

A staff survey from ILSA, which collected signed cards from more than two-thirds of its coworkers to represent them, found that 84% have worked hours they were not ultimately paid for, either through pay or comp time. 84% say they struggle to pay bills or make ends meet, 37% currently have or have previously taken a second job or gig work to supplement their income, and 32% currently have or have previously taken out debt because the office income was not sufficient.

Although ILSA views Welch’s bill as a “good starting point,” according to Kupris, they continue to disagree with the speaker over the need for the legislation and the specific rules around organizing.

Last November, staffers approached Welch’s office about voluntarily recognizing them as a union. Welch did not believe current law allowed him to do so and encouraged them to go before the Labor Relations Board in Illinois, which said it did not have jurisdiction.

Welch’s new bill will create a legal pathway for legislative employees in the House and Senate to organize, he says. (A few weeks ago, Welch’s mother asked him what was going on with his staff. “The law doesn’t allow it,” he says he told her of their wish to unionize. His mother asked: “Well, aren’t you in charge of making the laws?” He responded: “Well, on the house side, you’re right, Mom.”)

ILSA argues that they do not actually need a bill to unionize. “It definitely has good potential, but our right to organize is still existing right now and this bill…isn’t granting our authorization to do that; we’ve had that right,” says Kupris. (They point to a Workers’ Rights Amendment passed last year that establishes a constitutional right for employees to organize and bargain collectively. Welch argues that an existing law exempts staff in the General Assembly from organizing; ILSA disagrees.)

Kupris also says the effective date of 2026 is a “non-starter” for them; they have proposed 2024. “We just ripped that right out of the [California] bill,” Welch says, adding that it is about taking time and “getting it right.”

Experts suggest the recent passage of a bill in California to allow staffers to unionize starting in 2026 could inspire other states beyond Illinois to follow. California has often been a leader on labor issues, Wong notes: “If the California state legislative staffers are successful in unionizing, it’ll send ripple waves across the country, and it will challenge other legislative staffers to think, ‘Gee, you know, maybe it’s not right that we work 24/7.’”

“We Democrats talk about equity and workplace safety all the time. In California, it was time to put our money where our mouth is,” says California State Rep. Tina McKinnor, a sponsor of the bill, who used to be a staffer in the statehouse. “As Democrats, we’ve asked all different types of businesses and organizations to unionize. I just think that before we ask any other business to unionize, we should make sure that we’re protecting and unionizing our own employees in the legislature.”

source https://time.com/6320952/state-legislative-staffers-unionize-illinois-california/

A 16-Year-Old Iranian Girl Is in a Coma, Putting the Spotlight Back on the Morality Police

A year after the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s morality police, a 16-year-old girl has been hospitalized in the country after she entered a subway car with her hair uncovered, and left the same car unconscious.  

In security camera footage shared by Iran’s state television, the teen, Armita Garavand appeared to have her hair uncovered when she walked into a subway car in Tehran on Sunday. Shortly after, more security camera footage shows Armita being taken out of the train car unconscious.

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Footage of what happened on the train has not been released, but according to an Iranian Kurdish rights group, Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, the country’s morality police officers severely physically assaulted Armita for allegedly not abiding by the country’s dress code.

Authorities have denied any allegations against them, instead saying that Armita fainted after her blood pressure dropped because she skipped breakfast, the New York Times reports. Armita is currently in a coma in the intensive care unit of a Tehran military hospital under guard. 

Many are drawing comparisons to Amini, who died in custody of the morality police last year after she was arrested for allegedly wearing her head scarf too loosely. Amini’s death triggered a national uprising that became Iran’s longest protest since the late ‘70s, during which hundreds of people were killed. 

Here’s what to know. 

What happened 

Video footage of the incident shows a young girl with short black hair entering a train around 7 a.m on Sunday, though not much else is known about the sequence of events that followed.  

Journalist Farzad Seifikaran, who first reported on this story, according to the New York Times, interviewed Armita’s relatives who allege that Armita was with two friends on the train—who also had their hair exposed—when they got into an argument with officers over covering their hair. They said one of the officials then pushed Armita, who fell and hit her head against a metal object, according to the Times. Armita, the Times adds, has since suffered cerebral hemorrhaging from the incident and remains under critical care. 

The state news outlet IRNA, released footage of an interview with Armita’s parents on Tuesday reiterating the official version  of the incident. “My daughter, I think her blood pressure, I don’t know what, I think, they say that her blood pressure dropped then she fell down and her head hit the edge of the metro,” said Shahin Ahmadi, Armita’s mother. She said her daughter was on her way to school in the Shahada Metro when the incident occurred. 

During the interview, Armita’s father said that his daughter was healthy and was not on any medications. Both of the young girl’s parents reiterated that the events that transpired were an accident, and asked people to pray for their child’s recovery, per the IRNA. 

But many Iranians are skeptical of official accounts. A later press release by the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights alleged that Armita’s mother was later detained by Iranian officials. Her exact location, they say, has been unknown since Wednesday evening. The organization added that the interview released by IRNA with Armita’s parents was completed under “the intense presence and pressure of security forces.”

At the hospital, the Times reports that Armita is being guarded by security agents. Civil rights groups say that authorities have gone so far as to threaten to arrest family members if they speak to the press. 

A journalist for the newspaper Shargh was arrested and detained after she interviewed Ahmadi on Sunday, according to the paper’s editors.

Some say the extreme security measures and silencing of journalists is evidence of a greater crime committed. “Transparency means all the security agents leave Fajr Air Force Hospital and surrounding areas and journalists be allowed to report on what happened to the 16-year-old girl,” tweeted Mohsen Borhani, a lawyer in Tehran. “According to the laws of the country, preparing news about such an incident is not a crime.” 

What’s been happening in the country 

The past year has seen serious attacks against Iranian women. In March, more than 100 people were arrested for helping poison thousands of school girls across the country. Toxic gas attacks at schools, and especially girls schools, had been occurring since at least November 2022, and impacted numerous cities. The exact cause of the attacks remains unknown. Some say it was done by hyper-religious groups that are against the education of young girls while others say that the gas poisonings were meant to target young girls who took part in protests over Amini’s death.   

Current government rules in Iran mandate women to wear a hijab, but thousands have refused to do so daily in an act of defiance. The act is dangerous in a country that has warned women that they can use facial recognition technology to charge them for their crimes later. 

“Shocked and concerned about reports that Iran’s so-called morality police have assaulted 16-year-old Armita G[a]ravand. We are following news of her condition,” tweeted Abram Paley, the U.S. deputy special envoy for Iran.“We continue to stand with the brave people of Iran and work with the world to hold the regime accountable for its abuses.”

source https://time.com/6320956/teen-girl-coma-armita-iran-morality-police/

In Reversal, Biden Moves to Expand Border Wall

When he was running to unseat Donald Trump in 2020, Joe Biden promised there would be “not another foot” built of the border wall, a divisive manifestation of Trump’s four-year crackdown on migration into the country. 

Now Biden is adding to Trump’s wall. 

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As the country sees a surge of migrants crossing into the country, the administration is moving forward with construction of 18-foot tall steel fencing along about 17 miles of land near the Rio Grande in south Texas, according to a notice published in the Federal Register on Thursday. The notice describes the area as one where Border Patrol agents have seen high numbers of people crossing between ports of entry.

“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas wrote in the notice.

The notice cites powers given to the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive environmental laws and other restrictions to speed up the construction of barriers and roads along the U.S. border.

The Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector in Southeast Texas is considered an area of “high illegal entry,” the notice states, and Border Patrol agents encountered more than 245,000 people trying to enter the US between ports of entry in that area during the 10 months leading up to early August. That rise in entries, Mayorkas stated, prompted him to use his authority to “install additional physical barriers and roads.”

The Associated Press reported earlier on the Federal Register notice.

Border Patrol agents and experts have said physical barriers at the border can be helpful in the right locations. In areas close to cities and Border Patrol stations, barriers can slow down migrants trying to cross between ports of entry or direct them to cross in areas with more surveillance. But in remote areas, where it can take hours or days to patrol, Border Patrol agents find sensors and cameras are more useful than barriers, which are expensive and time-consuming to maintain and repair.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump promised to build a wall across the entire 2,000-mile border. By the time he left office, he’d installed just over 450 miles of tall steel fencing, most of it replacing existing barriers. Trump only constructed 52 miles of new border wall.

Four years later, Biden was clear as a presidential candidate that he wasn’t going to add to the border wall.  “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration,” Biden said during an interview in August 2020.

On his first day as President, Biden filed a formal proclamation that halted construction of Trump’s border wall and ended Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border. “It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall,” Biden wrote in the Federal Register on Jan. 20, 2021. That proclamation blocked funds for wall construction that Trump had ordered diverted from military spending and other projects. 

Biden also paused all funds that Congress had already designated for border wall construction and ordered those projects be reviewed. “Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution,” Biden wrote. “It is a waste of money that diverts attention away from genuine threats to our homeland security.”

On Thursday, Biden ended that pause, using money Congress allocated in 2019 to build high barriers along a section of the Rio Grande in Starr County, Texas, that winds south from the Falcon Dam to McAllen. Some of the new steel bollards will run through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge, raising concerns that the barriers and road construction needed to maintain them will disrupt fragile wildlife habitat and animal migration patterns.

source https://time.com/6320907/border-wall-biden-migrant-surge/

Thousands of U.S. Workers Are on Strike. Here’s a Rundown of Major Work Stoppages

NEW YORK — It’s been a big year for labor organizing in the U.S. And from auto production lines to Hollywood, all eyes are on strikes taking the world of work by storm.

The boiling point we’re seeing today comes amid soaring costs of living and rising inequality, including growing pay gaps between workers and top executives. Now, thousands of workers who were asked to make sacrifices during the pandemic even as corporate profits soared are asking for better pay and protections — and walking off the job if progress isn’t made in heated contract negotiations.

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At least 453,000 workers have participated in 312 strikes in the U.S. this year, according to Johnnie Kallas, a Ph.D. candidate and the project director of Cornell University’s Labor Action Tracker. This year’s work stoppages have spread across multiple industries — including transportation, entertainment and hospitality.

Here’s a rundown of some of the largest strikes taking place in the U.S. today.75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers walk off the job 

In the health care sector, a major strike kicked off this week — with some 75,000 Kaiser Permanente workers walking off the jobWednesday in multiple states. Strikers include licensed vocational nurses, home health aides and ultrasound sonographers, as well as technicians in the radiology, X-ray, surgical, pharmacy and emergency departments.

The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which represents about 85,000 of the health system’s employees nationally, approved a strike for three days in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, and for one day in Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Back in August, unions representing Kaiser workers asked for a $25 hourly minimum wage, as well as increases of 7% each year in the first two years and 6.25% each year in the two years afterward. Union members say understaffing is boosting the hospital system’s profits but hurting patients, and executives have been bargaining in bad faith during negotiations.

Company executive Michelle Gaskill-Hames defended Kaiser — saying its practices, compensation and retention are better than its competitors. Kaiser has proposed minimum hourly wages of between $21 and $23 next year depending on the location.

Kaiser is one of the country’s larger insurers and health care system operators, serving nearly 13 million people. The Oakland, California-based nonprofit said its 39 hospitals, including emergency rooms, will remain open during the picketing, though appointments and non-urgent procedures could be delayed. Doctors are also not participating in the strike, and Kaiser said it was bringing in thousands of temporary workers.UAW strike nears 3-week mark, with 25,000 on the picket lines 

In an unprecedented labor campaign against three major car companies, some 25,000 auto workers have joined picket lines in recent weeks

The United Auto Workers ‘ targeted strikes against General Motors, Stellantis and Ford began at select factories after the union’s contract with the companies expired in mid-September — and have grown to a total of five vehicle assembly plants and 38 parts warehouses since.

UAW President Shawn Fain has announced strike expansions on each of the past two Fridays, citing a lack of what the union says is meaningful progress, but it’s unclear how much that will continue as the strike nears its 3-week mark.

A person with direct knowledge of the talks told The Associated PressWednesday that progress was reported at all three companies, with some offers being exchanged. Another said there was more movement in talks with Jeep maker Stellantis and less at Ford and General Motors. Neither wanted to be identified because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly about the bargaining.

Fain will update members on the negotiations again Friday. The union is seeking 36% general wage increases over four years, as well as a 32-hour week with 40 hours of pay, the restoration of traditional defined-benefit pensions for new hires and a return of cost-of-living pay raises, among other benefits.

The companies, however, fear that raising their labor costs could make their vehicles more expensive than those manufactured by Tesla or foreign automakers with U.S. factories where workers are paid less. Tensions have also risen amid layoffs impacting thousands of workers, with the auto makers saying some factories are running short on parts because of the strike.Striking Hollywood actors resume talks with studios 

Hollywood was taken by storm this summer with a historic dual strike from the unions representing writers and actors — bringing much of production to a halt.

After five months on the picket lines, the writers strike was declared over after their union approved a contract agreement with studios last week. Meanwhile, actors are still on strike — but a shot at cutting their own deal is finally on the horizon.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists began negotiations Monday with the same group of major studios and streaming services, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, for the first time since they joined writers on the picket lines on July 14. The two sides resumed talks Wednesday.

With similar sticking points to the writers, actors and their employers have been divided on issues of pay, the use of artificial intelligence and self-taped auditions. SAG-AFTRA leaders said they would look closely at the gains and compromises of the writers’ deal, but emphasized that their demands would remain the same as they were when the strike began.

The two sides said in a joint statement that “several executives” from studios would be in on the talks, without providing names.Southern California hotel workers’ rolling strikes 

Thousands of hotel workers in Southern California have staged staggered walkouts over recent months. Union leaders are calling for better wages, improved health care, higher pension contributions, better safety protections and less strenuous workloads, among other benefits.

Members of Unite Here Local 11 overwhelmingly voted in favor of authorizing a strike back in June. After contracts expired at more than 60 hotels — including properties owned by major chains such as Marriott and Hilton — cooks, room attendants, dishwashers, servers, bellmen and front desk agents began picketing outside major hotels in Los Angeles and Orange counties at the start of July.

During the staggered strikes, workers have also called for solidarityand a boycott of hotels in the Los Angeles area. According to United Here Local 11’s website, the rolling walkouts surpassed the 100th strike mark last month.

While walkouts continue at dozens of hotels, two companies have made agreements with the union to date. On Friday, United Here Local 11 said that Biltmore Los Angeles had reached a tentative contract agreement — joining Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, which averted walkouts with a June deal promising higher pay and increased staffing levels.

source https://time.com/6320913/thousands-u-s-workers-strike/