Jilly_in_VA
Jilly_in_VA's JournalBig Food is ready to sell you more plant-based meat
Animal agriculture accounts for around 15 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — yet lawmakers largely ignore it when crafting policy to combat climate change.
That neglect extends to the food industry more broadly, which for a long time has paid even less attention to its emissions than the energy or transport sectors. But as big fast food chains, grocers, and food manufacturers roll out sustainability plans, some are specifically committing to increasing and promoting their plant-based offerings, which are much less carbon-intensive than conventional meat and dairy products.
Panera Bread kicked things off two years ago when it announced in January 2020 that it would make half of its menu plant-based in several years, up from 25 percent vegetarian at the time. Earlier this month, Burger King UK went a step further by announcing a plan to make its menu 50 percent plant-based by 2030 as a way to achieve its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 41 percent by 2030. And this week, McDonald’s announced plans to trial its McPlant burger made with Beyond Meat in 600 San Francisco and Dallas-Fort Worth area locations starting February 14.
The change has been swift. In a report published late last year, FAIRR, or Farm Animal Investment Risk & Return — a nonprofit that lobbies food corporations to address the environmental and social risks of factory farming — found that the 25 companies it lobbies are all at work developing their own plant-based products, while seven of them have announced specific targets to expand their plant-based sales.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22883795/food-industry-plant-based-vegan-meat-dairy-climate-pledges
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OK for lots of people, not for me. The components of most "fake meat" have BAD effects on me. You don't wanna know.
Authorities charge teen in TN 'swatting' incident
Canadian authorities have charged the suspect believed to be behind “swatting” calls at Volunteer High School in Church Hill and Watauga High School in Boone, North Carolina, last year.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police told News Channel 11 that Sean Arthur Murdock, 18, was charged with two counts of public mischief and two counts of mischief related to both swatting incidents.
Public mischief is punishable by up to five years in prison while mischief is punishable by up two years.
RCMP Sgt. Paul Manaigre said Murdock is also being investigated for six other swatting incidents that happened in the U.S. and additional charges are pending.
Tennessee 3rd District Attorney General Dan Armstrong said Thursday that he was “comfortable” with those charges and will not pursue extradition because the charges Murdock would face here would not be as severe. Armstrong told News Channel 11 in October that he would wait for Canadian authorities to file charges before determining if he would seek extradition.
https://www.wate.com/regional-news/canadian-authorities-charge-suspect-in-volunteer-high-school-swatting-incident/
Officials respond to weapons comment made at Page County School Board meeting
The Page County School Board met Thursday night to vote in favor of Governor Glenn Youngkin’s executive order, making masks a choice for students.
During the citizen comment period, commenter Amelia King said “No mask mandates. My child, my children will not come to school on Monday with a mask on. Alright? That’s not happening. And I will bring every single gun loaded and ready.”
The school board cut her off for exceeding her three minutes, and she responded with “I’ll see you all on Monday.”
King later sent an apology to the school board that was read aloud at the end of Thursday night’s meeting.
https://www.whsv.com/2022/01/21/officials-respond-weapons-comment-made-page-county-school-board-meeting/
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Not only deplorable, but despicable.
USC Fraternities Will Be Required To Hire Security To Keep People Out Of Bedrooms Before They Can Pa
USC Fraternities Will Be Required To Hire Security To Keep People Out Of Bedrooms Before They Can Party Again
After a series of suspensions over allegations of drugging and sexual assault, fraternities at the University of Southern California can start hosting parties again in March — if they hire security guards to keep people out of bedrooms.
The new, unprecedented policy was announced this week after protests and calls to reform or abolish Greek life on campus last fall prompted the Interfraternity Council to halt all fraternity house events. In October, USC's Sigma Nu chapter was suspended after six students said they were drugged at party and one student said they were sexually assaulted. Three additional fraternities were placed on interim suspensions and another on a "modified suspension" while it underwent an investigation by the university's Office for Equity, Equal Opportunity and Title IX.
Last week, just before in-person classes were expected to resume and Greek organizations were expected to start recruiting new members, the university notified them what requirements they will have to meet in order to resume social events in the spring. A working group of fraternity members, student government, faculty, and safety officials drafted the new guidelines during the winter break, according to a statement from USC Provost Charles F. Zukoski.
"About 4,000 of our students participate in fraternity and sorority life at USC, and many say that this is a central part of their USC experience," Zukoski wrote in a letter to students. "Developing and strengthening this partnership will be critical to our long term success in meeting our goals."
Fraternities and sororities were already required to hire security guards at the doors of their parties, but the new guidelines will also require them to hire security "at stairs or hallways leading to bedrooms."
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/usc-fraternities-security-parties-assault
Rep. Massie tests positive for Covid, says he's unvaccinated
Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democratic Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona both announced Thursday that they tested positive for Covid-19.
Massie, who also said he is not vaccinated, is a fierce critic of White House chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, and has been among the loudest voices in Congress against vaccine and mask mandates.
"I have tested positive for SARS-CoV2. (Home test, confirmed by lab PCR.) I had cold/allergy symptoms for 1 day, and seem to be over it," he tweeted.
"I will not be voting, meeting in person, or making public appearances until next week," he continued. "I am not vaccinated or boosted."
He also suggested his case is mild because he's been previously infected by Covid-19.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/politics/thomas-massie-covid-19/index.html
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I kinda hope it's Delta. Is that too mean?
'Like witnessing a birth in a morgue': the volunteers working to save the Joshua trees
The trees are not exactly imposing. Slim and spiny, with limbs that grip small poms of sharp leaves, they look like something a child might dream up. Or maybe Salvador Dalí. Even the name, Joshua tree, sounds kind of awkward.
On a wet and chilly December morning, I stood at a makeshift encampment in the Mojave national preserve in San Bernardino county, California, listening as a group of strangers fretted over the trees’ precarious future. Within the preserve is Cima Dome, a broad-sloping mound that, until recently, contained the densest Joshua tree forest in the world.
That changed in August 2020, when a lightning storm ignited the Dome fire, which ripped through over 43,000 acres of Cima Dome and burned about 1.3m Joshua trees. Given that Joshua trees – which technically are not trees but a species of desert succulent – are native only to the south-western US, the Dome fire represented an outright disaster to their survival.
Looking out that morning, I saw seemingly endless fields of the trees’ scorched and tortured carcasses. This was a terrible harbinger of things to come: a 2019 Ecosphere journal study determined that, if carbon emissions stay at current levels, just 0.02% of the species would survive.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/20/joshua-trees-climate-crisis-wildfires
Boris Accused of Blackmail to Wreck the Plot to Oust Him
For decades, politics-watchers have speculated that Boris Johnson’s ramshackle appearance and oafish manner is all an act. That, underneath it all, he was actually a calculated political operator with a unique ability to charm the public and rise above scandal to cling to power. Over the past few weeks, that theory has been quite spectacularly obliterated.
His latest unprecedented humiliation came Thursday following a plot to get rid of him that was cooked up by his own lawmakers who were outraged over a string of revelations that he attended or hosted boozy parties while the rest of Britain was in lockdown—even Queen Elizabeth, who sat alone at her husband’s funeral hours after one Downing Street bash.
It looked like that plot had been seen off, at least for the time-being. But then a member of the British prime minister’s Conservative Party went public with an extraordinary allegation—that Johnson’s government was blackmailing lawmakers in a potentially illegal attempt to stop them from joining rebels who were trying to oust Johnson from office.
The lawmaker, William Wragg, went so far as to encourage his colleagues to contact the police if they had been subjected to the alleged threats, which Wragg claimed included withholding government money for local projects and leaking damaging stories about rebels to the press.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/boris-johnsons-government-accused-of-blackmailing-lawmakers-to-wreck-plot-to-oust-him?ref=home
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If true......
AG Seemed to Know He Killed a Man With His Car, Say Agents
South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg knew that he had run over and killed a man, a pair of North Dakota investigators told a South Dakota legislative panel considering impeachment proceedings on Wednesday afternoon.
North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NDBCI) Special Agents Arnie Rummel and Joe Arenz, who interviewed Ravnsborg twice in the weeks following the 2020 fatal crash, said there was a “very realistic possibility” that AG knew that he had struck a person and actually saw the body of Joe Boever, the 55-year-old Highmore, South Dakota, man whom he killed.
“He walked by a flashlight that’s on,” Rummel said. “There’s a body that’s laying within two feet of the roadway and obviously deceased and he’s all white, there isn’t any blood being pumped in him, and the fact white is reflective, I believe that he’d have to see him.”
Videos of their 2020 interviews with Ravnsborg, with the agents telling him that some people thought he was lying about having no idea he’d killed a man until returning to the scene of the crash the following day, had been posted on a South Dakota Department of Public Safety website for a few days last year. The judge hearing the criminal case against Ravnsborg ordered them taken down. But copies still exist online.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/south-dakota-ag-jason-ravnsborg-seemed-to-know-he-killed-a-man-with-his-car-agents-say-at-impeachment-hearing?ref=home
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When was the last time you saw a deer with a flashlight?
Cardi B to pay funeral expenses for victims of the Bronx fire
Cardi B will pay the funeral expenses for victims of the deadly Bronx fire, the New York City Mayor's office announced Wednesday. Seventeen people, including eight children, were killed after the fire ripped through a residential apartment complex in early January.
"I'm extremely proud to be from the Bronx and I have lots of family and friends who live and work there still. So, when I heard about the fire and all of the victims, I knew I needed to do something to help," the rapper, born Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, said in a statement from the mayor's office. "I cannot begin to imagine the pain and anguish that the families of the victims are experiencing, but I hope that not having to worry about the costs associated with burying their loved ones will help as they move forward and heal."
Many of the victims appeared to be immigrants from the Gambia. The statement said Almánzar has also committed to paying repatriation expenses for victims who will be buried there.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bronx-fire-cardi-b-pay-funeral-expenses/
The 'Great Resignation': Why a growing number of CEOs are leaving their jobs
Corner office or not, everybody seemed to need a break after 2021. CEOs and other executives have spent the past two years juggling work-life balance like everyone else — and just like employees on lower rungs of the corporate ladder, a growing number are walking away.
“The job of a C-level executive is you’re burning the midnight oil. You add Covid into that and it feels like you’re doing twice the work for half the payout. You can’t get in front of the fires that pop up,” said Miles Crawford, former CEO of a staffing company about an hour south of Walmart’s home base of Bentonville, Arkansas. Crawford left his job in June when the company was being sold.
In February of 2020, job site ZipRecruiter.com found that there were an average of 22,072 active C-suite level job openings advertised across its network. That number plunged to a trough of 9,301 in May 2020 — and then started to climb, hitting 40,681 in October 2021.
Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, said a number of factors are prompting people to quit top jobs. “It’s many factors — the burnout, the pandemic, the school closures, the need to take stock of life,” she said. “It’s a whole wide range of shocks.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/ceos-are-joining-great-resignation-trading-fatigue-family-time-rcna12223
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