In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today...

[Content Note: Police brutality; shooting] In Ferguson, Missouri, police officers shot and critically injured another man who police say "had turned and pointed a handgun at the officer. Police said they were responding to a report of four masked men with shotguns, and of shots fired." Well, I await what witnesses say happened, because I have no faith that the police account of this shooting is reliable, either.

Relatedly: There is a petition at Change.org asking New York Mayor Bill de Blasio to require that police officers carry an on-body camera that records their interactions. I think that's a very good idea. And not just in NYC.

[CN: Self-harm; harassment] Zelda Williams, Robin Williams' daughter, has closed her Twitter account after two Twitter users tweeted disturbing Photoshopped images of her father at her and said, using misogynist slurs, that she had caused his death. Fucking nightmares of humanity. Truly.

The jury is still out on climate change: "More than two months worth of rain fell in two hours in New York's Long Island suburbs on Wednesday, causing flash flooding and swamping cars on major roads that were turned into rivers during the morning rush hour." Meanwhile, in Detroit: "Some progress is being reported, but several Detroit-area freeways remain closed two days after heavy rain swamped much of the area and stranded motorists on water-clogged streets and highways."

[CN: Misogynoir] Today, "the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination begins a two-day review of the United States government’s efforts, or lack thereof, to address pervasive racial discrimination in law and practice. When the United States ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination in 1994, it consented to a periodic review by human rights experts of its progress toward meeting the goals in the treaty. ...A new shadow report, Reproductive Injustice: Racial and Gender Discrimination in U.S. Health Care, by the Center for Reproductive Rights, the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, and SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, shares some alarming data on maternal health outcomes as well as disturbing firsthand accounts of the racial discrimination experienced by Black women."

Congratulations to Iranian mathematician Maryam Mirzakhani, a professor at Stanford University in California, who is "the first woman to be awarded the Fields Medal, mathematics' equivalent to the Nobel Prize. ...'This is a great honour. I will be happy if it encourages young female scientists and mathematicians,' Mirzakhani was quoted as saying on Stanford's website." Awesome.

Speaking of awesome: Republican Texas Governor Rick Perry is not-campaigning for president in Iowa this week. "Perry seemed pumped up after his enthusiastic, heckle-free reception at the Register's Soapbox. When the Register's moderator thanked him as he came off the stage, Perry said: 'You're welcome. I'm awesome!'" Okay.

And finally: Robin Williams and his rescue pug Leonard Bean are "Mr. and Mr. August 2014 for Tony LaRussa's Animal Rescue Foundation." Blub.