Voyager May Have Been Hacked in Bankruptcy Process as Customers Recovered Money
Voyager Digital Holdings Inc. may have been hacked just as it reopened its crypto platform so that customers
2023-08-02 01:55
Amazon expands its virtual health clinic nationwide
Amazon's virtual clinic is now available in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., the company announced on Tuesday.
2023-08-02 01:53
DeSantis wants Kamala Harris to meet the controversial right-wing scholar behind Florida’s slavery curriculum
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis wants to meet with Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss her criticism of the state’s Black history school curriculum standards after she joined widespread outrage over newly approved guidelines that diminish the impact of slavery and racist violence. “In Florida we are unafraid to have an open and honest dialogue about the issues. And you clearly have no trouble ducking down to Florida on short notice,” the governor wrote in a letter on 31 July, referencing her recent remarks in the state. “So given your grave concern (which, I must assume, is sincere) about what you think our standards say, I am officially inviting you back down to Florida to discuss our African American History standards,” he added. The administration also has invited William B Allen, one of the members of the working group that developed the standards who has a long history of inflammatory remarks and partisan rhetoric. The Independent has requested comment from the office of Ms Harris. The vice president travelled to Orlando on Tuesday to deliver remarks at the 20th Women’s Missionary Society of the African Methodist Episcopal Church Quadrennial Convention. Her visit follows remarks in the state on 21 July to condemn the state’s “propaganda” and the “extremist, so-called leaders” who support it. Though she did not name him or any other Florida officials, the vice president’s speech was directly aimed at the governor, whose administration has sought to radically overhaul public education and establish a “parents’ rights” agenda that restricts honest lessons of race and racism, threatens discussion of LGBT+ people and events, targets libraries and reshapes local school boards. A new set of standards for African American history in Florida schools will teach middle schoolers how enslaved people “developed skills” that could be “applied for personal benefit”. Another guideline instructs high schoolers to be taught that a massacre led by white supremacists against Black residents in Ocoee to stop them from voting in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.” Civil rights advocates, educators and lawmakers have warned that the guidelines present a distorted, revisionist picture of American history. “Adults know what slavery really was. It involved rape, it involved torture, it involved taking a baby from their mother, it involved some of the worst examples of depriving humanity of people in our world,” Ms Harris said in her remarks in Jacksonville. Members of the working group and the Florida Board of Education have defended the unanimously approved standards, assuring that they include comprehensive lessons on American history, including its darkest chapters. Mr Allen, a Black professor emeritus at Michigan State University who also sits on the national advisory board of the right-wing think tank Center for Urban Renewal and Education, has repeatedly defended the working group’s guidelines. A review of his past statements from Popular Information reveals a history of incendiary, contrarian remarks used to bolster and legitimise right-wing ideology. In 1989, he faced protests while participating in a panel titled “Blacks? Animals? Homosexuals? What is a Minority?” on which he claimed that special classes of protection for LGBT+ people and other minorities are a “fatal” mistake that heighten “tensions and antagonism”. Creating legal protections for minority groups “is the beginning of the evil of reducing American blacks to an equality with animals and then seducing other groups to seek the same charitable treatment,” according to prepared remarks. His speech was denounced by the US Civil Rights Commission – on which he was then serving as chair – as “disgusting” and “necessarily inflammatory”. That same year, he also was charged with kidnapping a 14-year-old girl from a Native American reservation in Arizona while she was the subject of a custody battle between her mother and a white couple who adopted her. Mr Allen also has opposed race-conscious admissions in higher education, including leading a campaign with a group that included members of the conservative Christian Hillsdale College and right-wing interest group the Heritage Foundation. He also has criticised The 1619 Project, which is explicitly banned from Florida schools, and has rejected concepts including “systemic racism, institutional racism [and] white privilege.” Mr DeSantis has routinely accused “the left” and Democratic officials of “indoctrinating” students in the state while he promotes an agenda that bans honest discussions of race and racism, sexuality and gender. The governor’s administration also recently approved materials from right-wing political advocacy group PragerU to be included in K-12 classrooms. The founder himself has said that those lessons are explicitly designed to indoctrinate. The campaign for Mr DeSantis, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president in 2024, has fired back at Black Republicans in Congress who have joined criticism of the African American history standards, including US Reps Byron Donalds and John James, as well as 2024 rival and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. Both Mr James and Mr Donalds have endorsed Donald Trump. Read More Why Florida’s new curriculum on slavery is becoming a political headache for Ron DeSantis Most of Florida work group behind controversial new guidelines on African American history did not agree, report says The GOP primary is already decided. We’re just pretending it isn’t
2023-08-02 01:27
Meta's AI 'personas' might launch on Facebook and Instagram next month
Meta's "AI personas" might launch as soon as next month, according to company insiders. According
2023-08-02 00:54
Codecademy Review
Codecademy has a bold mission to rethink education from the bottom up, and it's working
2023-08-02 00:51
Cotton Extends Gains as Extreme Heat Threatens US Supply
Cotton futures gained for a second day in New York as extreme heat is increasingly risking the health
2023-08-02 00:19
Oklahoma lawsuit seeks to block opening of first publicly funded religious charter school in the US
A lawsuit filed Monday in Oklahoma is seeking to block the state's support for the nation's first publicly funded religious charter school.
2023-08-01 22:46
Steve Wozniak’s Privateer Is Forging an Online Market for Satellite Access
Steve Wozniak’s space startup Privateer is launching a global online marketplace that aims to connect customers seeking planetary
2023-08-01 22:22
Uber's post-pandemic growth is slowing
Uber has reported that its revenue ticked up 14% last quarter, marking a slower pace of growth than recent quarters when sales surged as riders returned to pre-pandemic habits.
2023-08-01 20:22
Need to Repair an Xbox Controller? Microsoft Will Sell You the Parts
Microsoft is expanding its self-repair program to include Xbox controllers. As The Verge reports, Microsoft
2023-08-01 19:53
Twitter sues hate-speech watchdog, following through on its litigation threat
Twitter has sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit group that has criticized the company's handling of hate speech, following through on a litigation threat that had been publicly revealed just hours before.
2023-08-01 19:45
Occidental, Adnoc Agree to Team up on Carbon Capture Investments
Occidental Petroleum Corp. has agreed to partner with the top oil producer in the United Arab Emirates to
2023-08-01 19:45