FirstCircle

“Probably the biggest misunderstanding is they’re all homeless,” she said. “Instead, 76% are low-income elderly who worked their whole lives, are living on Social Security and are struggling.”

The newly named soup kitchen opened on St. Patrick’s Day 1982. It soon was serving an average of two dozen people,

“We thought this was a temporary fix — we never thought it would last,” Pieciak said. “Things were not good then, but they’re horrible today.”

The local influx of older patrons mirrors the situation statewide. According to “The State of Senior Hunger in America” report by the national hunger relief organization Feeding America, an estimated 8% of Vermont elders are considered “food insecure.”

“We know that inflation and the increase in food prices have hit people on fixed incomes hard,” said John Sayles, CEO of the Vermont Foodbank.

A medic who worked at Sde Teiman's field hospital said that Palestinian detainees there are stripped "of anything that resembles human beings" and that the harassment and torture are done not to "gather intelligence" but "out of revenge" for the October 7 attacks.

Israel has detained thousands of Gaza residents since October, with many of them held under a recently amended law that empowers Israeli authorities to imprison people indefinitely without charge or due process. Human rights organizations have documented Israeli forces' brutal and degrading treatment of Palestinian detainees, including women and children.

"A 19-year-old detainee told an Al Mezan lawyer that he was tortured from the moment he was arrested," the group said. "He described how three of his fingernails were removed with pliers during interrogation. He also stated that investigators unleashed a dog on him and subjected him to shabeh—a form of torture which involves detainees being handcuffed and bound in stress positions for long periods—three times over three days of interrogation. He was then placed in a cell for 70 days, where he experienced starvation and extreme fatigue."

Service charges; resort fees; "surcharge" add-ons: If you've been startled by unexpected fees when you pay your check at a restaurant — or book a hotel room or buy a ticket to a game, you're far from alone. But if you live in California, change is coming. A new state law requiring price transparency is set to take effect in July.

"The law is simple: the price you see is the price you pay," Attorney General Rob Bonta said on Wednesday, as his office issued long-awaited guidance about a law that applies to thousands of businesses in a wide range of sectors.

Restaurant owners like Laurie Thomas, who heads the Golden Gate Restaurant Association, say the changes will bring higher prices and sticker shock, which could then raise a psychological hurdle in customers' dining habits. That, in turn, will hurt restaurants and their workers, she warns.

"If it's in the core price of the menu, there will be a pullback" in patrons' spending, she told NPR shortly before the attorney general released the guidelines. "There are some people, I think, that are hoping that the restaurants will just absorb that cost, because we've seen people say, 'Oh, it's too expensive with the service charge.' "

Restaurant Association head thinks it's perfectly OK to mislead customers into thinking that prices are lower than they actually are, and gouge them after they've consumed/used the product. Because having knowledge of true prices would cause some customers to make informed decisions that might hurt sales. What other product information could be withheld to boost sales? What product misinformation could be provided to get those customers to "yes"?

The FAA has opened an investigation into Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner after the company disclosed that employees in South Carolina falsified inspection records on work done where the wings are joined to the fuselage body.

Boeing informed the Federal Aviation Administration in April that, despite records indicating completion of required inspections, workers had not performed some of those inspections to confirm adequate bonding and electrical grounding at the 787 wing-to-body join.

“The FAA is investigating whether Boeing completed the inspections and whether company employees may have falsified aircraft records,” the federal safety agency said via email.

Boeing said its engineers have established that this newly discovered lapse does not create “an immediate safety of flight issue.”

While the Gender and Sexuality Alliance is a student group, Serrott says it's become a safe community space for all queer folks at the college, not just the students — which is why it was especially painful for the club's sole annual event to be canceled.

To Serrott, the cancellation is indicative of the larger anti-queer rhetoric that's growing in North Idaho. It's become more common, especially online, to baselessly accuse LGBTQ+ people of being "groomers" or pedophiles.

"We have allowed a certain political group, or certain political ideologies, to define what it means to be queer in a way that is not true," Serrott says. "I see us bowing to these political pressures as giving fire to those definitions. We're not groomers. We are not obscene. It's almost unfathomable to me to think otherwise."

Serrott says that just underscores the importance of the event for NIC's queer community.

"For some students and faculty, it's their first time ever getting to experience or play with ... not only drag, but gender expression, too," he explains. "It's really a space for creativity, expression and belonging."

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/11456897

Congressman Adam Smith says ‘totalitarian’ protesters are ‘trying to silence anyone who dares to disagree with them’

Protesters calling for Israel to cease fire in its war with Hamas who have disrupted US public events and infrastructure are practicing “leftwing fascism” or “leftwing totalitarianism”, a senior US House Democrat said, adding that such protesters are “challenging representative democracy” and should be arrested.

“Intimidation is the tactic,” said Adam Smith of Washington state, the ranking Democrat on the House armed services committee. “Intimidation and an effort to silence opposition … I don’t know if there’s such a thing as leftwing fascism. If you want to just call it leftwing totalitarianism, then that’s what it is. It is a direct challenge to representative democracy now.”

A resolution called for ending the ability to vote for U.S. senators. Instead, senators would get appointed by state legislatures, as it generally worked 110 years ago prior to the passage of the 17th Amendment in 1913.

“We are devolving into a democracy, because congressmen and senators are elected by the same pool,” was how one GOP delegate put it to the convention. “We do not want to be a democracy.”

Jeff Noble, who owns Noble Consulting and Expert Witness Services, was hired by Spokane police to evaluate Hilton’s actions. When investigating fellow law enforcement officers, it’s not uncommon to outside use of force experts.

Deputies are trained on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Graham v. Connor, that requires officers to balance the intrusion into an individual’s right with the government interests at stake, Noble wrote. They must consider the severity of the crime, whether the suspect poses a threat to officers or others and whether the suspect is actively resisting or trying to flee.

Hilton mistakenly believed that being in a Spokane Valley park after dark was a misdemeanor when in reality it was a civil infraction that does not warrant an arrest. Regardless, Noble found that Hilton’s “uses of force were objectively unreasonable and inconsistent with generally accepted police practices.”

The sergeant did not engage in de-escalation tactics, including slowing down the interaction, the report said.

“Here, the violation was very minor, did not involve weapons or violence, and there was no need for haste,” Noble wrote. “Sergeant Hilton radioed for back-up deputies and while Mr. Hinton did not cooperate with Sergeant Hilton’s demand for identification, he did not present any imminent threat. Any reasonable officer would have attempted to engage in de-escalation techniques to slow the situation.”

Instead, Noble wrote, Hilton made comments to escalate the situation, such as telling Hinton he would probably end up in jail and that he was going to get hurt.

The sergeant said he used force on Hinton because he was scared the man was reaching for a weapon. Noble noted that Hinton never appears to reach for any kind of weapon in the video and did not make any verbal threats to the sergeant.

Hilton continued to punch Hinton after forcibly removing him from his vehicle.

“There is no evidence that at the moment Sergeant Hilton delivered those strikes that Mr. Hinton presented anything more than a low level of active resistance by not giving Sergeant Hilton his hands,” Noble wrote.

Hilton had no standing to make any arrest, Noble found, and therefore any force used would be excessive.

“Even if Sergeant Hilton was making a lawful custodial arrest, I am of the opinion that his uses of force against Mr. Hilton were excessive, objectively unreasonable and inconsistent with generally accepted police practices,” Noble wrote.

In February this year, Spokane police investigators concluded there was probable cause to charge Sgt. Hilton with second-degree assault. The charges were referred to the Yakima County Prosecutor's office, which is still investigating.

The chat logs — which were obtained through a public records request and viewed by the Inlander this week — shed additional light on Sgt. Hilton's demeanor immediately after the violent arrest.

Joshua Maurer, an attorney representing Hinton, says the tone of the chat messages is "pretty sickening."

It's concerning that any officer — especially a sergeant — would make fun of and laugh about a citizen they had just assaulted and arrested, Maurer says.

"Sgt. Hilton was proud of his actions," Maurer says. "He told the dispatcher to look at the booking photo because that was evidence of the 'lesson' Sgt. Hilton taught Mr. Hinton."

Maurer says it's also troubling that Sgt. Hilton saw Hinton's perceived status as a "No Person" as justification for assaulting him to the point of breaking his ribs and puncturing a lung.

Despite knowing the communications would be recorded, Sgt. Hilton "shows no remorse, or even concern over being disciplined," Maurer says. "Instead, he is laughing and bragging about what he had done."

Florida Governor Ron DeStantis has signed a law that prevents cities or counties from creating protections for workers who labor in the state's often extreme and dangerous heat.

Two million people in Florida, from construction to agriculture, work outside in often humid, blazing heat.

For years, many of them have asked for rules to protect them from heat: paid rest breaks, water, and access to shade when temperatures soar. After years of negotiations, such rules were on the agenda in Miami-Dade County, home to an estimated 300,000 outdoor workers.

But the new law, signed Thursday evening, blocks such protections from being implemented in cities and counties across the state.

Miami-Dade pulled its local heat protection rule from consideration after the statewide bill passed the legislature in March.

"It's outrageous that the state legislature will override the elected officials of Miami Dade or other counties that really recognize the importance of protecting that community of workers," says David Michaels, an epidemiologist at George Washington University and a former administrator at the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA).

The loss of the local rule was a major blow to Miami-Dade activists and workers who had hoped the county heat protection rules would be in place before summer.

In Texas, Austin and Dallas created ordinances that required employers to provide paid water breaks to outdoor workers. But last year Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a "preemption" law that blocked local jurisdictions from making such rules. The goal, Abbott's office said, was to prevent a "patchwork" of differing local rules, which they contended would cause confusion for businesses in the state.

Hazard, Young, Attea & Associates held 12 focus groups with students, teachers, community members and school board members and put together a “Leadership Profile Report.”

The original report, released on March 13, 2024, included a section of “Desired Characteristics of the next Cedar Grove-Belgium Superintendent as identified by the school board.” One of the points listed was: “must match the make-up of our community (conservative, Christian values).”

Making religious beliefs a desired job characteristic is illegal, said Ryan Cox, legal director with ACLU of Wisconsin.

“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of religion, including in the recruitment phase,” Cox said. “The ACLU of Wisconsin is extremely concerned that a public body might be attempting to apply a religious test as a condition of employment, or even as a preferred ‘qualification.’

Cox added that the ACLU plans to investigate further, including past actions taken by the board and will “take appropriate action to enforce the law as the facts require.”