First amendment to the united states constitution

Berkeley Unified School District is looking into providing cash reparations to African American students whose ancestors were enslaved in the United States, with officials saying the district “can and should lead such a change” nationally. The district is creating a task force to make recommendations to the school board by January on how to fund and implement a reparations program that is focused on cash payments, according to a district webpage explaining the effort. The task force, with 15-20 members, will include board members, district staff, teachers and community members. Kad Smith, a Berkeley High School alumnus and  former project director at Oakland social justice nonprofit CompassPoint, will be the task force facilitator. The district is recruiting community members and plans an online informational meeting Thursday from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. for those interested. While the effort is still in its early stages, the district webpage says officials want to create a program … [Read more...] about This Bay Area school district could be first in U.S to offer cash reparations to some Black students

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 NEW YORK (AP) — FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with directing $40 million in bribes to one or more Chinese officials to unfreeze assets relating to his cryptocurrency business in a newly rewritten indictment unsealed Tuesday. The charge of conspiracy to violate the anti-bribery provisions of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act raises to 13 the number of charges Bankman-Fried faces after he was arrested in the Bahamas in December and brought to the United States soon afterward. FTX filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11, when it ran out of money after the cryptocurrency equivalent of a bank run. He has remained free on a $250 million personal recognizance bond that lets him stay with his parents in Palo Alto, California. He has pleaded not guilty to charges that he cheated investors out of billions of dollars before his business collapsed. The alleged bribes … [Read more...] about Bankman-Fried charged with paying $40M bribe to China

In proposing his judicial overhaul, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has said he was restoring the balance of power between elected lawmakers and unelected judges. “It is not the end of democracy, it is the strengthening of democracy,” Mr. Netanyahu said last week, before a huge wave of protest and civil unrest forced him to put his proposals on hold . But Mr. Netanyahu’s legalistic argument obscured what was at stake, and the outpouring on the streets has in part reflected the success of his opponents in persuading Israelis that his plan actually threatened to severely undercut their country’s democracy, not strengthen it. Key to making that case has been the example of other countries in which diminishing the judiciary has become a tool for fatally wounding democracy. “We have studied this dimension of so-called judicial reform in Hungary and Poland and Turkey, and we were aware of what was coming,” said Yaniv Roznai, a law professor at Reichman University in the … [Read more...] about Netanyahu Opponents Used Dangers of ‘Reform’ by Autocrats to Sound Alarm

From its earliest days, when the pianist Jelly Roll Morton spoke of a “Spanish tinge,” jazz has been extraordinarily open to international influences. Now it’s official. Last fall Unesco — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization — designated jazz a “universal music of freedom and creativity” and decreed that henceforth every April 30 is to be celebrated around the world as International Jazz Day. As part of the first year’s festivities — and also to show jazz’s global reach — some of the genre’s biggest names will be performing on Monday night at the United Nations headquarters, in the same space where world leaders gather each fall for the General Assembly. In addition to American players like Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Stevie Wonder, Wynton Marsalis and Esperanza Spalding, musicians from Latin America, Africa, Europe and Asia will also be participating. On Sunday afternoon, after a custom-made stage had been installed directly under the United … [Read more...] about Where Nations Debate, Harmony of a Jazzy Kind

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 11 America will probably get more killer tornado- and hail-spawning supercells as the world warms, according to a new study that also warns the lethal storms will edge eastward to strike more frequently in the more populous Southern states, like Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee. The supercell storm that devastated Rolling Fork, Mississippi is a single event that can’t be connected to climate change. But it fits that projected and more dangerous pattern, including more nighttime strikes in a southern region with more people, poverty and vulnerable housing than where storms hit last century. And the season will start a month earlier than it used to. The study in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society predicts a nationwide 6.6% increase in supercells and a 25.8% jump in the area and time the strongest supercells twist and … [Read more...] about Tornado-spawning storms may get worse due to warming

If jazz for you means tradition and inheritance, maybe Herbie Hancock can change your mind. At the very least, he’d like to make you think twice about what “tradition” means. The pianist and composer has never been interested in upholding any stylistic conventions — “I like to break things,” he said when we spoke last week — but he does insist on a few trusty ideals. For him, jazz will always mean cross-pollination, adventurism and faith in what’s ahead. After double-majoring in music and engineering at Grinnell College, Mr. Hancock joined Miles Davis’s band in 1963, close on the heels of his own debut album . Immediately, his piano playing represented some big new possibilities, connecting the shaded harmonies of Romanticism and the earth tones of the blues. By decade’s end, venturing into jazz-rock fusion, Mr. Hancock had figured out how to make synths and electric keyboards sound splintered and percussive. On albums like “Head Hunters,” “Thrust” and “Mr. Hands,” he put a kick of … [Read more...] about Herbie Hancock Is Still Breaking Rules